Yeah, that skipped the fact that a quest system is just a wrapper for activities.
You only perceive the action of flipping activities to be a penalty because you built a dichotomy that caters to it. Arguments built to task are not arguments of the systems as a whole.
Quests functionally only serve to make the grind shorter by tossing lumps of reward at you. When they are accounted for with the leveling curve in the game, that claim flies out the window as well, because it becomes a balance of reward gained from the activity as well as that gained from the quest.
So no, in reality it does nothing for the grind save to put it in a different package.
The claim time goes unrewarded only works in the context of events not being supported. Players can very easily have the option of earning xp for exploring zones or receiving a reward for hitting forms of travel milestones, thereby replacing what they would have 'lost' in your mind to the lack of a quest driving that action.
The problem with the example you give is that those older titles didn't have the same activities and rewards, it's not equivalent comparison between content, and an inaccurate argument to make.
And that was my entire point right there. No matter which way you do it, it's just looking for a way to keep people going.
Ultimately I just have the opinion that pushing the reward system back away from quests and instead into an achievement system coupled with a bit more randomness would end up making players more content, as the treadmill is always running at their pace instead of having to grind mobs at a single spot or constantly jump between quest hubs.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
afaik questing didnt really exist much Pre-WoW, even Eve doesnt really have questing, oh you can do mission running for cash and LP's but their not really all that significant, even in SWG, before they shot it to pieces with the NGE, the closest thing to 'questing' there was mission terminals that would create a creature/faction spawn for you to destroy, i think too many games focus too much on the whole questing experience, and less on the 'world experience' though with games like Neverwinter, its because there isnt really a 'world' but a series of maps with very linear pathways/mobs etc. it seems like modern MMO's have moved away from having a 'persistent world' in favour of instanced and phased zones that are 'stitched' together with quests/missions, i see these games as having zero longevity tbh, as their dependent on the players willingness to continue 'grinding' quests with very little variation except perhaps the name of the mob involved or the locations. Imo one of the main reasons why WoW managed to continue as long as it did, was because it had such a huge game world, even if the progression was linear, the number of paths you chose to travel throughout the game were numerous enough that you werent repeating things too much, and you didnt really have to quest either, i even levelled up a hunter in WoW without doing a single quest, even managed to get to level 54, just by travelling around, killing things, and doing the odd dungeon run - without accepting any quests in the process, something that just isnt possible with some games as the model the game relies on is too closely tied into the questing system, whether its quest hubs or dynamic quest 'spawns'.
To me, if a MMO isnt fun to play without questing, then its not a complete game.
We've been stuck with quest mechanics for a while and likely will be stuck with them forever. Kill, Fedex, Collect items from dead, Escort, Locate items in area, defend area against waves, click something to activate something. I am sure they're more but it's largely the gist of it.
OK, to the question how would you modify current MMORPG quest to bring freshness to SOME has become a stale aspect of MMORPG gaming?
Start with "interaction" there is little of that.
I guess i should side track and mention the fact that you need a developer that wants to make a great game and not just looking to make a fast mmo designed around making tons of profit and that has been the biggest problem.
To have really fun interaction you need to remove the hand holding and sparkles.Then you need to have PHYSICs,so that you can have destructive surfaces and just overall realistic interaction,other wise you end up with dull things like pull this lever or enter this warp field.
Basically you need TOOLS to work with to make a great quest.One of the worst ideas i see in games is making you wander to some instance and linear dungeon path that really has no purpose than to force you to fight a dozen trash mobs to get to some boss.
A quick example,perhaps you enter some zone,everything looks empty but you can blast away the side of a mountain to enter to the other side or maybe a dungeon.Perhaps you have to cross a bridge to avoid being attacked and then can destroy the bridge to make the enemy fall into a gorge.If the game has climbing abilities then you might have to scale mountain sides but might encounter hidden paths along the way and enemies to fight as well.How about falling debris as you try to scale the mountain side?Imagine if you could actually destroy the ground and make your own paths or tunnels.
We have seen ideas already used they just need a little more to them ,example putting out fires or flying a ship or plane.Maybe you would have to actually craft that plane or ship to be able to do the quest.If you have meaningful stats in the game,you might need a player with a lot of strength to open a passage or pull that sword out of the ground.Instead of simply clicking on a NPC,perhaps he challenges you to a duel or a card game.
I could go on and on,just think of any base idea and you can expanding on it in endless ways.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The problem is that MMO's have become far too linear, which, when you're trying to emulate a fantasy world, really doesn't make a lot of sense. Most MMO's have everyone start in the same location, move on from quest hub to quest hub, before eventually reaching end game which is the furthest link in the chain. It's horrible design.
The reason I liked EQ and LOTRO so much was the different starting areas and the actual feel that you were in a world, not just a series of linked areas. In the case of LOTRO, if I was a Hobbit I'd start in The Shire and make my way up toward Bree and onwards. If I was a Dwarf I'd be in a different place entirely, as an Elf somewhere else. But they were all accessible to everyone else. The same with EQ, I could start in Freeport, Greater Faydark, Qeynos, Neriak and a load of other places. The world was massive and everything was connected - some areas were more dangerous than others, some areas had dangerous mobs wandering through on occasion, which always kept you on your toes.
Now we have - everyone starts at A, does quest B, C and D, then moves on to area E which gives quest F, G and H before pointing people to location I. If the worlds were more open such as EQ and LOTRO then you'd have more varied quests. Some of the quests in EQ, for example, started off in one part of the world and had you searching for parts of an item that were dropped in other parts of the world, be it random mobs in open areas or a named mob in a dungeon somewhere. These, to me, were actual quests, not some random task to travel 10 feet and kill half a dozen wolves who are threatening that farmer 15 feet in the same direction.
If developers started making actual worlds instead of little mini-game activities that lead you along a set path, I think we'd see a lot more interesting quests incorporated. The chances of that while WoW is still king? Probably nil.
Yeah, that skipped the fact that a quest system is just a wrapper for activities.
You only perceive the action of flipping activities to be a penalty because you built a dichotomy that caters to it. Arguments built to task are not arguments of the systems as a whole.
Quests functionally only serve to make the grind shorter by tossing lumps of reward at you. When they are accounted for with the leveling curve in the game, that claim flies out the window as well, because it becomes a balance of reward gained from the activity as well as that gained from the quest.
So no, in reality it does nothing for the grind save to put it in a different package.
The claim time goes unrewarded only works in the context of events not being supported. Players can very easily have the option of earning xp for exploring zones or receiving a reward for hitting forms of travel milestones, thereby replacing what they would have 'lost' in your mind to the lack of a quest driving that action.
The problem with the example you give is that those older titles didn't have the same activities and rewards, it's not equivalent comparison between content, and an inaccurate argument to make.
And that was my entire point right there. No matter which way you do it, it's just looking for a way to keep people going.
Ultimately I just have the opinion that pushing the reward system back away from quests and instead into an achievement system coupled with a bit more randomness would end up making players more content, as the treadmill is always running at their pace instead of having to grind mobs at a single spot or constantly jump between quest hubs.
What are you talking about?
Quests are a wrapper for the varied activities, absolutely. They're a wrapper that works.
It's not that I "perceive" there being a penalty for switching, there actually is a penalty for switching. If you kill one mob a minute, then in 100 minutes you can either:
Kill 100 mobs.
Kill 80 mobs, because you spent 20 total minutes traveling between 3-4 different mob types.
So switching activities is a significant penalty, and players are rewarded for the most boring choice: repetition. (Incidentally this is why it wouldn't matter if you gave early MMORPGs more activity variety: because if you can do 1 activity per minute, the same principle applies, and switching is significantly penalized.)
Quests don't make the grind shorter due to reward. The reward's only importance (beyond being a reward, which is fun) is what I just described above: ensuring activity variety isn't penalized.
Quest make grind less because they're more varied. "Grind" is a player saying "I'm bored". Players are bored fastest in repetitive games. And as we've been discussing, the primary function of quests is to reduce repetition (by rewarding activity variety.)
Basically removing quests fundamentally gimps the gameplay of a game. You're going to have quests in some form, whether or not they're an interface for serving up big text blocks. Because without some system for serving the player gameplay variety, they won't end up experiencing gameplay variety, and will quickly bore of the game and describe it as a grind.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's not that I "perceive" there being a penalty for switching, there actually is a penalty for switching. If you kill one mob a minute, then in 100 minutes you can either:
Kill 100 mobs.
Kill 80 mobs, because you spent 20 total minutes traveling between 3-4 different mob types.
So switching activities is a significant penalty, and players are rewarded for the most boring choice: repetition.
Wow. Is that how you approach games? With the most efficient way of advancing? See, I'd be asking to move on after 50 mobs, get a new bit of scenery, not sticking to the same spot because it's a less efficient way of gaining xp if you spend time moving. What nonsense. If people want to play that way then good for them, but a game is meant to be enjoyed, not be an exercise in precision mechanics.
Originally posted by maplestone ...So my argument is that in order to improve quests, you have ignore the quests, ignore the story, ignore the lore and simply ask: if there were no exclaimation marks and no question marks, is this something that I would have fun doing for a few hours?
Yes that is the perfect test, IMO.
Originally posted by Deivos ...You only perceive the action of flipping activities to be a penalty because you built a dichotomy that caters to it. Arguments built to task are not arguments of the systems as a whole. Quests functionally only serve to make the grind shorter by tossing lumps of reward at you. When they are accounted for with the leveling curve in the game, that claim flies out the window as well, because it becomes a balance of reward gained from the activity as well as that gained from the quest. So no, in reality it does nothing for the grind save to put it in a different package...
Devious, I think I shall refer to you as The Oracle. There is much wisdom in your words.
Originally posted by UsualSuspect The problem is that MMO's have become far too linear, which, when you're trying to emulate a fantasy world, really doesn't make a lot of sense. Most MMO's have everyone start in the same location, move on from quest hub to quest hub, before eventually reaching end game which is the furthest link in the chain. It's horrible design....If developers started making actual worlds instead of little mini-game activities that lead you along a set path, I think we'd see a lot more interesting quests incorporated. The chances of that while WoW is still king? Probably nil.
Agreed, and well said.
Originally posted by UsualSuspect Wow. Is that how you approach games? With the most efficient way of advancing? ... a game is meant to be enjoyed, not be an exercise in precision mechanics.
Exactly, and this is why the term "Grind" arose; players today focus on their xp gain, whereas in EQ the xp gain was secondary to enjoying the scenery for many of us.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon. In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
The problem is that MMO's have become far too linear, which, when you're trying to emulate a fantasy world, really doesn't make a lot of sense. Most MMO's have everyone start in the same location, move on from quest hub to quest hub, before eventually reaching end game which is the furthest link in the chain. It's horrible design.
That is a false premise. There is no reason why a MMO needs to emulate a fantasy world. In fact, that is the problem.
If they put everything in instances, and change the instances around the user, it will feel much more alive, because the "world" can change around you in response to the story and what you do.
There is no reason for quest hubs except because you have to use a persistent fantasy world. That is why story instances like those in STO or NWO has much better story quests, than world-based questing.
The best way to overhaul quest is to put everything into instances.
Quests are a wrapper for the varied activities, absolutely. They're a wrapper that works.
It's not that I "perceive" there being a penalty for switching, there actually is a penalty for switching. If you kill one mob a minute, then in 100 minutes you can either:
Kill 100 mobs.
Kill 80 mobs, because you spent 20 total minutes traveling between 3-4 different mob types.
So switching activities is a significant penalty, and players are rewarded for the most boring choice: repetition. (Incidentally this is why it wouldn't matter if you gave early MMORPGs more activity variety: because if you can do 1 activity per minute, the same principle applies, and switching is significantly penalized.)
Quests don't make the grind shorter due to reward. The reward's only importance (beyond being a reward, which is fun) is what I just described above: ensuring activity variety isn't penalized.
Quest make grind less because they're more varied. "Grind" is a player saying "I'm bored". Players are bored fastest in repetitive games. And as we've been discussing, the primary function of quests is to reduce repetition (by rewarding activity variety.)
Basically removing quests fundamentally gimps the gameplay of a game. You're going to have quests in some form, whether or not they're an interface for serving up big text blocks. Because without some system for serving the player gameplay variety, they won't end up experiencing gameplay variety, and will quickly bore of the game and describe it as a grind.
Incorrect. You're attributing aspects to quests that do not define them exclusively.
I already gave an example in the use of achievements. By replacing the presence of quests to reward such gaps with achievements given at regular intervals, you are able to avoid such shortcomings.
Quests do not give you fundamentally more variety, that can't be said clearly enough. They are a single method to absolve an issue with the way some games are seen to operate, and by far not the only ones.
I don't even see why you're trying to rant about this as what you said is largely in agreement with my own commentary. Not once have I said to kill quests, I have talked of evolving them.
The only divergence is where I have noted that quests are a wrapper for what is ultimately the same set of activities. Perhaps the biggest point we'd be separated in is the notion of fun, where I consider the activity itself should be fun and not only so due to a reward handed after. But that is a separate debate for a different thread.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
3) Player returns to town, asks NPCs about said item
4) Random NPC responses:
a) "I've heard about those, if you get A, B and C, I might be able to create D, E or F."
b) "NPC U was talking about that the other day, check with them."
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
5) Random rewards:
a) Alternate quest advancement/chains
b) Random items within parameters and random stats
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
You get the idea. Where is the creativity? Where are the dreams? Where's the excitement and wonder?
The MMO industry had/has so much potential but so much fail. So much fail.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
3) Player returns to town, asks NPCs about said item
4) Random NPC responses:
a) "I've heard about those, if you get A, B and C, I might be able to create D, E or F."
b) "NPC U was talking about that the other day, check with them."
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
5) Random rewards:
a) Alternate quest advancement/chains
b) Random items within parameters and random stats
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
You get the idea. Where is the creativity? Where are the dreams? Where's the excitement and wonder?
The MMO industry had/has so much potential but so much fail. So much fail.
The creativity is in how to dress that up into a story.
Look at Bioshock Infinity .. you go from point A to B, killing stuff .. no difference than the list you make up ... but it is a great game. The difference is that it dress it up with good writing, good animation, and create the right mood..
The biggest change I'd make to quests, is to make quests optional. I don't mean simply not doing the quest, I mean that you need to think if you want to do the quest or not.
Maybe killing 10 wolves for their pelts would be a good quest for an industrial character, but for a class that is looking to enter a grove of druids, accepting that quest would be a negative thing. While I realize this type of system lends itself to branching and thus more complex game design, I do feel it'd make quests feel like they'd have a meaningful impact on your characters story as how your character interacts with the world is a direct result of your choices.
You might be presented with two quests at one point, kill ten vampires, or bring ten humans to the vampires, one could bring you favor with vampires, the other with the town guards.
3) Player returns to town, asks NPCs about said item
4) Random NPC responses:
a) "I've heard about those, if you get A, B and C, I might be able to create D, E or F."
b) "NPC U was talking about that the other day, check with them."
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
5) Random rewards:
a) Alternate quest advancement/chains
b) Random items within parameters and random stats
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
You get the idea. Where is the creativity? Where are the dreams? Where's the excitement and wonder?
The MMO industry had/has so much potential but so much fail. So much fail.
The creativity is in how to dress that up into a story.
Look at Bioshock Infinity .. you go from point A to B, killing stuff .. no difference than the list you make up ... but it is a great game. The difference is that it dress it up with good writing, good animation, and create the right mood..
No, I don't want developers spending ridiculous amounts of time and money on storylines and video cutscenes. Develop solid, immersive content/worlds and players will make their own stories. We all realize after your countless themepark defense posts that you love those type of games, but a lot of us don't. You keep pretending that you have the answers for everyone else and you don't.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
That is a false premise. There is no reason why a MMO needs to emulate a fantasy world. In fact, that is the problem.
If they put everything in instances, and change the instances around the user, it will feel much more alive, because the "world" can change around you in response to the story and what you do.
Seriously? It's an RPG, of course you need a fantasy world. Instances are just cheap ways of creating different areas in that fantasy world and, personally, I find them to be a terrible invention. It turns an MMO into little more than a lobby game. And what happens in your instanced world to all the other players if they choose different responses to you? Player 1 kills Dragon, saves town, Player 2 loses against Dragon and town is destroyed. How are those two players now supposed to interact?
What you're proposing works great for a single player game, but for an MMO it really doesn't. But then, most MMO's now seem to be becoming single player games, so what the hell, might as well go the whole route and get rid of the other players too.
Wow. Is that how you approach games? With the most efficient way of advancing? See, I'd be asking to move on after 50 mobs, get a new bit of scenery, not sticking to the same spot because it's a less efficient way of gaining xp if you spend time moving. What nonsense. If people want to play that way then good for them, but a game is meant to be enjoyed, not be an exercise in precision mechanics.
The lion's share of game mechanics are about being efficient at whatever it is you're doing. How can you advance the fastest, deal the most damage, survive the roughest encounters, and earn the best rewards?
Because it's the mastery of those types of patterns which fundamentally drive much of gaming's fun, because our minds are pre-programmed to enjoy learning them (and because they've been designed in turn to be fun to learn,) which is why we play.
The thing is, this isn't a necessary evil. Questing systems solve it. Even with travel time, variety is rewarded (even better rewarded than grinding usually.) Players are going to search for and find the quickest, most effective path to being the strongest character they can make, and if that path involves excessive repetition they're going to quit because their options are (a) excessive repetition or (b) intentionally advancing slow for no good reason other than the fact that the game is designed poorly.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Incorrect. You're attributing aspects to quests that do not define them exclusively.
I already gave an example in the use of achievements. By replacing the presence of quests to reward such gaps with achievements given at regular intervals, you are able to avoid such shortcomings.
Quests do not give you fundamentally more variety, that can't be said clearly enough. They are a single method to absolve an issue with the way some games are seen to operate, and by far not the only ones.
I don't even see why you're trying to rant about this as what you said is largely in agreement with my own commentary. Not once have I said to kill quests, I have talked of evolving them.
The only divergence is where I have noted that quests are a wrapper for what is ultimately the same set of activities. Perhaps the biggest point we'd be separated in is the notion of fun, where I consider the activity itself should be fun and not only so due to a reward handed after. But that is a separate debate for a different thread.
If achievements provide rewards, they're quests. They're an interface with a stated goal, and you do that goal and you get a reward.
But sure, if it makes you feel like you've "gotten rid of quests" by creating quests (er, I mean "achievements!" *wink*) then more power to you.
I never said quests were the only method to provide gameplay variety. In fact I pointed out two other ways variety could exist without quests. But they don't fit very well in MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
All of that breaks down into "Run to the glowing point on your map, click one button". There's no thought behind it, no actually different mechanics. They're just chores. And they're all the same and always will be the same.
When killing mobs in DAoC, I could choose where to go, make my own difficulty, explore where I wanted, fight different mobs with different tactics. Different players would make each experience unique. The grind lasted too long, that's for sure, but the game didn't try to insult your intelligence by pretending you were doing some noble quest for an NPC (that in reality is just a boring chore). It was an honest grind. I'd rather have the freedom to group with other players and go where I want (with the option of taking a break by finding a quest, doing bounty missions, or kill tasks) than by being forced to solo grind chores for a layabout NPC with no change for 70 levels.
You don't really get to address a list of varied activities and claim they involve "no thought" when your side of the fence requires less thought and fewer activities.
Stopped reading there.
There was SO MUCH more thought involved in managing a camp in a hostile non instanced area than there is following a glowing quest marker to a level scaled instance where you are designed to win and there is no penalty for failure. And the quests in old MMOs actually had you think.
My plan is to get away from the typical static/chain questing systems for my game, I also looked at the storybricks system that's going to be used for EQnext but really that kind of a system will just produce static user made quests(I'm not saying that's not cool, it's cool when in a diverse sandbox environment).
But my approach is to integrate a AI NPC generation system combine with multi dimensional quest trees and chain diversification, available dependent on NPC context, environment, player to NPC communication and player to NPC attributes (yeah you need to talk to my NPC's by typing)(similar to talking to an "semi intelligent" IRC Bot but with context keyword and sentence definition).
There's so much more to this, such as cross context NPC to NPC root quest to node conformation and extended Quest chain generation etc... It's not going to be easy but I think it's worth it.
If achievements provide rewards, they're quests. They're an interface with a stated goal, and you do that goal and you get a reward.
But sure, if it makes you feel like you've "gotten rid of quests" by creating quests (er, I mean "achievements!" *wink*) then more power to you.
I never said quests were the only method to provide gameplay variety. In fact I pointed out two other ways variety could exist without quests. But they don't fit very well in MMORPGs.
An achievement isn't a quest for the same reason you wouldn't call killing a monster a quest. Slapping a UI on something doesn't make it a quest, that's only the idea in your head.
Sure, you know killing X amount of mobs will net you a bonus. But there's no dialog, context, etc that dictates the need to do so. It's just something that given time will happen.
Same as if you made the game measure distance traveled to reward the player on intervals.
If you're going to call that questing, then killing mobs endlessly is also questing (given there is a clear means of action to grant reward) and you have zero logical ground to make any argument.
If you wanted to be technical, any activity a person chooses to do would be a quest. Seeing as that's not generally the case in games and we knowingly are referring to quest as a specific setup, flexing the definition to fit your whim is just semantics for a worthless debate.
It's nice that you'd give a few suggestions, seeing as that was somewhat the point of the thread. To be arbitrarily rebuking other posts incorrectly is rather unnecessary though.
I additionally don't see your point in your last remark as I never argued for or against that, don't start more pointless arguments.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Imagine for a moment, if GW2 had never included any of the renown hearts. And instead had filled the world with 10x 20x as many randomly spawning events through out it's zones. With every single one of the event lines having a great backstory and interesting reasons for the events actually happening. Also imagine that they had enough events in each zone that you would rarely ever see the same event twice in a weeks time period.
I understand that this isn't logistically feasible, but that would be one badass MMO.
An achievement isn't a quest for the same reason you wouldn't call killing a monster a quest. Slapping a UI on something doesn't make it a quest, that's only the idea in your head.
Sure, you know killing X amount of mobs will net you a bonus. But there's no dialog, context, etc that dictates the need to do so. It's just something that given time will happen.
Same as if you made the game measure distance traveled to reward the player on intervals.
If you're going to call that questing, then killing mobs endlessly is also questing (given there is a clear means of action to grant reward) and you have zero logical ground to make any argument.
If you wanted to be technical, any activity a person chooses to do would be a quest. Seeing as that's not generally the case in games and we knowingly are referring to quest as a specific setup, flexing the definition to fit your whim is just semantics for a worthless debate.
It's nice that you'd give a few suggestions, seeing as that was somewhat the point of the thread. To be arbitrarily rebuking other posts incorrectly is rather unnecessary though.
I additionally don't see your point in your last remark as I never argued for or against that, don't start more pointless arguments.
A rewarded task list UI by any other name is still questing.
Achievement: Rat Slayer
Task: Kill 10 rats
Reward: 100 xp
Meanwhile grinding mobs for XP doesn't exist in a rewarded task list UI. That's why it's not a quest.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There was SO MUCH more thought involved in managing a camp in a hostile non instanced area than there is following a glowing quest marker to a level scaled instance where you are designed to win and there is no penalty for failure. And the quests in old MMOs actually had you think.
Most of that gameplay also exists while questing. And when you compare the difference left over, there's only a small amount of extra thought involved in managing a mob area over a longer term compared with a short term, and not enough to make up the additional thought required by quest systems sending you to do all sorts of different things rather than repetitively grind an area of mobs all day.
And the penalty for failure doesn't factor into the thought required. The thought required (challenge) is driven by how much of a skill-check something is before you die. Penalty only happens if you die, so has no bearing on the thought required to succeed.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Except it's still a quest as it's still something they chose to commit to. A quest isn't defined as a 'rewarded task list UI', a quest is either the act itself, or a particular form of presentation. You can't encompass all UI elements that might throw something at you into being called a 'quest'.
You are rather literally making up your own definition to stand by and arguing consequently for nothing more than opinion on how you want people to use a word.
So again, if all you're gonna do is argue the semantics of a word then you're argument is meaningless.
EDIT: Did a bit of poking about for an external definition of quests and achievements as it applies to gaming.
Basically, it's what I already said.
Quests are generally just tasks that grant rewards. There is no need of UI elements or otherwise. What it is is simply one form of packaging for the activities in a game.
And rather literally due to the nature of kill quests, they are just bonus xp stacked on mob grinds as a task rewarding you for completing a set of personal tasks.
Achievements differentiate themselves by almost entirely lacking a game driven context. They do indeed operate much like quests, but their division comes with the fact they exist on a more metagaming level and the tasks can be handled differently, as they can be treated as persistent milestones for a player and character.
Examples crop up as challenges in shooters, where the task is designed to be sought over the course of play rather than being the specific purpose of play.
So functionally yeah, achievements and quests are very similar if not the same in most regards. But then again so is killing monsters and doing a quest to kill monsters. They are actually their own separate concepts however, and serve differently enough in their way to influence the user experience.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You can't encompass all UI elements that might throw something at you into being called a 'quest'.
You are rather literally making up your own definition to stand by and arguing consequently for nothing more than opinion on how you want people to use a word.
So again, if all you're gonna do is argue the semantics of a word then you're argument is meaningless.
Quests are generally just tasks that grant rewards. There is no need of UI elements or otherwise. What it is is simply one form of packaging for the activities in a game.
And rather literally due to the nature of kill quests, they are just bonus xp stacked on mob grinds as a task rewarding you for completing a set of personal tasks.
Achievements differentiate themselves by almost entirely lacking a game driven context. They do indeed operate much like quests, but their division comes with the fact they exist on a more metagaming level and the tasks can be handled differently, as they can be treated as persistent milestones for a player and character.
Examples crop up as challenges in shooters, where the task is designed to be sought over the course of play rather than being the specific purpose of play.
So functionally yeah, achievements and quests are very similar if not the same in most regards. But then again so is killing monsters and doing a quest to kill monsters. They are actually their own separate concepts however, and serve differently enough in their way to influence the user experience.
I didn't say all UI elements that throw something at you. I specifically said the rewarded ones.
You know...exactly the definition you established later in your post?
That same definition (tasks a character does in order to gain a reward) conclusively ends our discussion actually!
Rewarded achievements are tasks a character does in order to gain a reward.
While there's a clear difference between the molecular "kill monster" and the packaged "kill 10 monsters for this reward", there's no clear difference between "kill 10 monsters for this reward" and "kill 10 monsters for this achievement reward."
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Comments
Yeah, that skipped the fact that a quest system is just a wrapper for activities.
You only perceive the action of flipping activities to be a penalty because you built a dichotomy that caters to it. Arguments built to task are not arguments of the systems as a whole.
Quests functionally only serve to make the grind shorter by tossing lumps of reward at you. When they are accounted for with the leveling curve in the game, that claim flies out the window as well, because it becomes a balance of reward gained from the activity as well as that gained from the quest.
So no, in reality it does nothing for the grind save to put it in a different package.
The claim time goes unrewarded only works in the context of events not being supported. Players can very easily have the option of earning xp for exploring zones or receiving a reward for hitting forms of travel milestones, thereby replacing what they would have 'lost' in your mind to the lack of a quest driving that action.
The problem with the example you give is that those older titles didn't have the same activities and rewards, it's not equivalent comparison between content, and an inaccurate argument to make.
And that was my entire point right there. No matter which way you do it, it's just looking for a way to keep people going.
Ultimately I just have the opinion that pushing the reward system back away from quests and instead into an achievement system coupled with a bit more randomness would end up making players more content, as the treadmill is always running at their pace instead of having to grind mobs at a single spot or constantly jump between quest hubs.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
afaik questing didnt really exist much Pre-WoW, even Eve doesnt really have questing, oh you can do mission running for cash and LP's but their not really all that significant, even in SWG, before they shot it to pieces with the NGE, the closest thing to 'questing' there was mission terminals that would create a creature/faction spawn for you to destroy, i think too many games focus too much on the whole questing experience, and less on the 'world experience' though with games like Neverwinter, its because there isnt really a 'world' but a series of maps with very linear pathways/mobs etc. it seems like modern MMO's have moved away from having a 'persistent world' in favour of instanced and phased zones that are 'stitched' together with quests/missions, i see these games as having zero longevity tbh, as their dependent on the players willingness to continue 'grinding' quests with very little variation except perhaps the name of the mob involved or the locations. Imo one of the main reasons why WoW managed to continue as long as it did, was because it had such a huge game world, even if the progression was linear, the number of paths you chose to travel throughout the game were numerous enough that you werent repeating things too much, and you didnt really have to quest either, i even levelled up a hunter in WoW without doing a single quest, even managed to get to level 54, just by travelling around, killing things, and doing the odd dungeon run - without accepting any quests in the process, something that just isnt possible with some games as the model the game relies on is too closely tied into the questing system, whether its quest hubs or dynamic quest 'spawns'.
To me, if a MMO isnt fun to play without questing, then its not a complete game.
Start with "interaction" there is little of that.
I guess i should side track and mention the fact that you need a developer that wants to make a great game and not just looking to make a fast mmo designed around making tons of profit and that has been the biggest problem.
To have really fun interaction you need to remove the hand holding and sparkles.Then you need to have PHYSICs,so that you can have destructive surfaces and just overall realistic interaction,other wise you end up with dull things like pull this lever or enter this warp field.
Basically you need TOOLS to work with to make a great quest.One of the worst ideas i see in games is making you wander to some instance and linear dungeon path that really has no purpose than to force you to fight a dozen trash mobs to get to some boss.
A quick example,perhaps you enter some zone,everything looks empty but you can blast away the side of a mountain to enter to the other side or maybe a dungeon.Perhaps you have to cross a bridge to avoid being attacked and then can destroy the bridge to make the enemy fall into a gorge.If the game has climbing abilities then you might have to scale mountain sides but might encounter hidden paths along the way and enemies to fight as well.How about falling debris as you try to scale the mountain side?Imagine if you could actually destroy the ground and make your own paths or tunnels.
We have seen ideas already used they just need a little more to them ,example putting out fires or flying a ship or plane.Maybe you would have to actually craft that plane or ship to be able to do the quest.If you have meaningful stats in the game,you might need a player with a lot of strength to open a passage or pull that sword out of the ground.Instead of simply clicking on a NPC,perhaps he challenges you to a duel or a card game.
I could go on and on,just think of any base idea and you can expanding on it in endless ways.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
The problem is that MMO's have become far too linear, which, when you're trying to emulate a fantasy world, really doesn't make a lot of sense. Most MMO's have everyone start in the same location, move on from quest hub to quest hub, before eventually reaching end game which is the furthest link in the chain. It's horrible design.
The reason I liked EQ and LOTRO so much was the different starting areas and the actual feel that you were in a world, not just a series of linked areas. In the case of LOTRO, if I was a Hobbit I'd start in The Shire and make my way up toward Bree and onwards. If I was a Dwarf I'd be in a different place entirely, as an Elf somewhere else. But they were all accessible to everyone else. The same with EQ, I could start in Freeport, Greater Faydark, Qeynos, Neriak and a load of other places. The world was massive and everything was connected - some areas were more dangerous than others, some areas had dangerous mobs wandering through on occasion, which always kept you on your toes.
Now we have - everyone starts at A, does quest B, C and D, then moves on to area E which gives quest F, G and H before pointing people to location I. If the worlds were more open such as EQ and LOTRO then you'd have more varied quests. Some of the quests in EQ, for example, started off in one part of the world and had you searching for parts of an item that were dropped in other parts of the world, be it random mobs in open areas or a named mob in a dungeon somewhere. These, to me, were actual quests, not some random task to travel 10 feet and kill half a dozen wolves who are threatening that farmer 15 feet in the same direction.
If developers started making actual worlds instead of little mini-game activities that lead you along a set path, I think we'd see a lot more interesting quests incorporated. The chances of that while WoW is still king? Probably nil.
What are you talking about?
Quests are a wrapper for the varied activities, absolutely. They're a wrapper that works.
It's not that I "perceive" there being a penalty for switching, there actually is a penalty for switching. If you kill one mob a minute, then in 100 minutes you can either:
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Wow. Is that how you approach games? With the most efficient way of advancing? See, I'd be asking to move on after 50 mobs, get a new bit of scenery, not sticking to the same spot because it's a less efficient way of gaining xp if you spend time moving. What nonsense. If people want to play that way then good for them, but a game is meant to be enjoyed, not be an exercise in precision mechanics.
Yes that is the perfect test, IMO.
Devious, I think I shall refer to you as The Oracle. There is much wisdom in your words.
Agreed, and well said.
Exactly, and this is why the term "Grind" arose; players today focus on their xp gain, whereas in EQ the xp gain was secondary to enjoying the scenery for many of us.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
That is a false premise. There is no reason why a MMO needs to emulate a fantasy world. In fact, that is the problem.
If they put everything in instances, and change the instances around the user, it will feel much more alive, because the "world" can change around you in response to the story and what you do.
There is no reason for quest hubs except because you have to use a persistent fantasy world. That is why story instances like those in STO or NWO has much better story quests, than world-based questing.
The best way to overhaul quest is to put everything into instances.
Incorrect. You're attributing aspects to quests that do not define them exclusively.
I already gave an example in the use of achievements. By replacing the presence of quests to reward such gaps with achievements given at regular intervals, you are able to avoid such shortcomings.
Quests do not give you fundamentally more variety, that can't be said clearly enough. They are a single method to absolve an issue with the way some games are seen to operate, and by far not the only ones.
I don't even see why you're trying to rant about this as what you said is largely in agreement with my own commentary. Not once have I said to kill quests, I have talked of evolving them.
The only divergence is where I have noted that quests are a wrapper for what is ultimately the same set of activities. Perhaps the biggest point we'd be separated in is the notion of fun, where I consider the activity itself should be fun and not only so due to a reward handed after. But that is a separate debate for a different thread.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
1) Player kills mob x or finds y
2) Mob x drops item z
3) Player returns to town, asks NPCs about said item
4) Random NPC responses:
a) "I've heard about those, if you get A, B and C, I might be able to create D, E or F."
b) "NPC U was talking about that the other day, check with them."
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
5) Random rewards:
a) Alternate quest advancement/chains
b) Random items within parameters and random stats
c) Use your imagination, isn't that what designers are supposed to do? Duh.
You get the idea. Where is the creativity? Where are the dreams? Where's the excitement and wonder?
The MMO industry had/has so much potential but so much fail. So much fail.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
The creativity is in how to dress that up into a story.
Look at Bioshock Infinity .. you go from point A to B, killing stuff .. no difference than the list you make up ... but it is a great game. The difference is that it dress it up with good writing, good animation, and create the right mood..
The biggest change I'd make to quests, is to make quests optional. I don't mean simply not doing the quest, I mean that you need to think if you want to do the quest or not.
Maybe killing 10 wolves for their pelts would be a good quest for an industrial character, but for a class that is looking to enter a grove of druids, accepting that quest would be a negative thing. While I realize this type of system lends itself to branching and thus more complex game design, I do feel it'd make quests feel like they'd have a meaningful impact on your characters story as how your character interacts with the world is a direct result of your choices.
You might be presented with two quests at one point, kill ten vampires, or bring ten humans to the vampires, one could bring you favor with vampires, the other with the town guards.
No, I don't want developers spending ridiculous amounts of time and money on storylines and video cutscenes. Develop solid, immersive content/worlds and players will make their own stories. We all realize after your countless themepark defense posts that you love those type of games, but a lot of us don't. You keep pretending that you have the answers for everyone else and you don't.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Seriously? It's an RPG, of course you need a fantasy world. Instances are just cheap ways of creating different areas in that fantasy world and, personally, I find them to be a terrible invention. It turns an MMO into little more than a lobby game. And what happens in your instanced world to all the other players if they choose different responses to you? Player 1 kills Dragon, saves town, Player 2 loses against Dragon and town is destroyed. How are those two players now supposed to interact?
What you're proposing works great for a single player game, but for an MMO it really doesn't. But then, most MMO's now seem to be becoming single player games, so what the hell, might as well go the whole route and get rid of the other players too.
The lion's share of game mechanics are about being efficient at whatever it is you're doing. How can you advance the fastest, deal the most damage, survive the roughest encounters, and earn the best rewards?
Because it's the mastery of those types of patterns which fundamentally drive much of gaming's fun, because our minds are pre-programmed to enjoy learning them (and because they've been designed in turn to be fun to learn,) which is why we play.
The thing is, this isn't a necessary evil. Questing systems solve it. Even with travel time, variety is rewarded (even better rewarded than grinding usually.) Players are going to search for and find the quickest, most effective path to being the strongest character they can make, and if that path involves excessive repetition they're going to quit because their options are (a) excessive repetition or (b) intentionally advancing slow for no good reason other than the fact that the game is designed poorly.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
If achievements provide rewards, they're quests. They're an interface with a stated goal, and you do that goal and you get a reward.
But sure, if it makes you feel like you've "gotten rid of quests" by creating quests (er, I mean "achievements!" *wink*) then more power to you.
I never said quests were the only method to provide gameplay variety. In fact I pointed out two other ways variety could exist without quests. But they don't fit very well in MMORPGs.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Stopped reading there.
There was SO MUCH more thought involved in managing a camp in a hostile non instanced area than there is following a glowing quest marker to a level scaled instance where you are designed to win and there is no penalty for failure. And the quests in old MMOs actually had you think.
My plan is to get away from the typical static/chain questing systems for my game, I also looked at the storybricks system that's going to be used for EQnext but really that kind of a system will just produce static user made quests(I'm not saying that's not cool, it's cool when in a diverse sandbox environment).
But my approach is to integrate a AI NPC generation system combine with multi dimensional quest trees and chain diversification, available dependent on NPC context, environment, player to NPC communication and player to NPC attributes (yeah you need to talk to my NPC's by typing)(similar to talking to an "semi intelligent" IRC Bot but with context keyword and sentence definition).
There's so much more to this, such as cross context NPC to NPC root quest to node conformation and extended Quest chain generation etc... It's not going to be easy but I think it's worth it.
An achievement isn't a quest for the same reason you wouldn't call killing a monster a quest. Slapping a UI on something doesn't make it a quest, that's only the idea in your head.
Sure, you know killing X amount of mobs will net you a bonus. But there's no dialog, context, etc that dictates the need to do so. It's just something that given time will happen.
Same as if you made the game measure distance traveled to reward the player on intervals.
If you're going to call that questing, then killing mobs endlessly is also questing (given there is a clear means of action to grant reward) and you have zero logical ground to make any argument.
If you wanted to be technical, any activity a person chooses to do would be a quest. Seeing as that's not generally the case in games and we knowingly are referring to quest as a specific setup, flexing the definition to fit your whim is just semantics for a worthless debate.
It's nice that you'd give a few suggestions, seeing as that was somewhat the point of the thread. To be arbitrarily rebuking other posts incorrectly is rather unnecessary though.
I additionally don't see your point in your last remark as I never argued for or against that, don't start more pointless arguments.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Imagine for a moment, if GW2 had never included any of the renown hearts. And instead had filled the world with 10x 20x as many randomly spawning events through out it's zones. With every single one of the event lines having a great backstory and interesting reasons for the events actually happening. Also imagine that they had enough events in each zone that you would rarely ever see the same event twice in a weeks time period.
I understand that this isn't logistically feasible, but that would be one badass MMO.
A rewarded task list UI by any other name is still questing.
Achievement: Rat Slayer
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Most of that gameplay also exists while questing. And when you compare the difference left over, there's only a small amount of extra thought involved in managing a mob area over a longer term compared with a short term, and not enough to make up the additional thought required by quest systems sending you to do all sorts of different things rather than repetitively grind an area of mobs all day.
And the penalty for failure doesn't factor into the thought required. The thought required (challenge) is driven by how much of a skill-check something is before you die. Penalty only happens if you die, so has no bearing on the thought required to succeed.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Except it's still a quest as it's still something they chose to commit to. A quest isn't defined as a 'rewarded task list UI', a quest is either the act itself, or a particular form of presentation. You can't encompass all UI elements that might throw something at you into being called a 'quest'.
You are rather literally making up your own definition to stand by and arguing consequently for nothing more than opinion on how you want people to use a word.
So again, if all you're gonna do is argue the semantics of a word then you're argument is meaningless.
EDIT: Did a bit of poking about for an external definition of quests and achievements as it applies to gaming.
Basically, it's what I already said.
Quests are generally just tasks that grant rewards. There is no need of UI elements or otherwise. What it is is simply one form of packaging for the activities in a game.
And rather literally due to the nature of kill quests, they are just bonus xp stacked on mob grinds as a task rewarding you for completing a set of personal tasks.
Achievements differentiate themselves by almost entirely lacking a game driven context. They do indeed operate much like quests, but their division comes with the fact they exist on a more metagaming level and the tasks can be handled differently, as they can be treated as persistent milestones for a player and character.
Examples crop up as challenges in shooters, where the task is designed to be sought over the course of play rather than being the specific purpose of play.
So functionally yeah, achievements and quests are very similar if not the same in most regards. But then again so is killing monsters and doing a quest to kill monsters. They are actually their own separate concepts however, and serve differently enough in their way to influence the user experience.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
http://thewordiz.wordpress.com/
I didn't say all UI elements that throw something at you. I specifically said the rewarded ones.
You know...exactly the definition you established later in your post?
That same definition (tasks a character does in order to gain a reward) conclusively ends our discussion actually!
Rewarded achievements are tasks a character does in order to gain a reward.
While there's a clear difference between the molecular "kill monster" and the packaged "kill 10 monsters for this reward", there's no clear difference between "kill 10 monsters for this reward" and "kill 10 monsters for this achievement reward."
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver