To stem the same semantic argument that's been made before...
Using the remark 'remove quests' to refer to questing hubs and the process you see out of many MMOs is a bad idea. There are those on this board that take it as an opportunity to quibble endlessly about how things are still quests regardless of if you clarified beforehand or after that you were citing different forms of questing.
It's a sadly difficult situation as there's little forms of phrasing that applies properly to explain what you need without going into things at length, and consequently it's a topic some will gleefully take jabs at and troll about.
To avoid this, let's clarify this point.
The implication in many cases is the delivery system with which players do quests. It's a fair assumption people are generally referring to the form of questing wherein your existence serves largely as the 'errand-boy', doing everything by running down a list of tasks.
I wouldn't consider this dramatically different from single player or non-MMO RPGs in many cases though, as many such titles tend to take the main quest and side quest style where the side quests tend to very much be that same experience.
You can say the main quest line tends to be a better experience in many non-MMO titles though. A stronger scripted experience that is impacted less by the realization of said event being recurring for as many others play the title.
What is railed against is perhaps more clearly thought of as the manner in which people are presented quests and the way in which it serves the game.
This is an unnecessary argument that tends to derail into semantic alone. Trying to get someone to understand what you mean generally goes alongside how strongly they prefer to make semantic arguments.
As it's Nariu, it'd perhaps be best to clarify one's meaning and move on, as any rebuttal is just going to be further into semantics.
"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
Maybe I am a weird person.. but whenever i play MMO games, I never read the quest log and NPC script for questing because
I mainly focus on leveling fast and you don't really have to read the whole test to complete the quest.
I believe that for most of MMORPG, the real fun begins once you get to the max level and basically the leveling part is just
tutorial part.
There is no offense, it is just my personal opinion.
Any thoughts?
I have NEVER had any doubt that there is a LARGE majority that think like this.I can't even blame you for the game's design,it is the developer who caters to this type of design.Of course if all you do is paint a yellow marker over a npc head and have players follow the paint by numbers,it is going to get extremely boring,i would expect it to.
The problem is the design is sooooooo weak,it just continues with any mention of "end -game".There should be "no-end" game, a rpg should be a living world that forever evolves and changes.
The game should be fun just to play it and that would revolve around MANY aspects such as exploration,combat,your character,discoveries both crafting and adventuring ect ect.
When a game designs itself to be played one way then finishes with again one dimensional game play,it has failed the genre in every possible way.It is nothing more than a single player design with added interent.Single player games are meant to be beat,like an arcade game,an end goal with nothing to be added or changed beyond the disc you bought and installed.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Too bad they're the main content for the entire game and get boring within 2 minutes of loading in, once you realize the game you're playing plays exactly like every other quest based game of the last 8 years.
How is that?
I was just playing STO the other day. The quest i did involves klingons, star ship battles, and some phaser combat.
How is that "exactly like" quest based fantasy MMORPGs?
You start at an NPC with a glowing marker, follow the yellow brick road to your sparkling target, click it until you get a popup telling you that you won. That's how.
Well, there is no yellow brick road in space. If flying a star ship is the same as walking to you ... well .. may be you need glasses to tell your differences in details of things.
I'm just able to see through the thin coat of paint and realize that each painted object is identical.
wow .. completely different combat mechanics is thin.
I bet you think DOOM is the same as Halo, is the same as Bioshock too.
Too bad they're the main content for the entire game and get boring within 2 minutes of loading in, once you realize the game you're playing plays exactly like every other quest based game of the last 8 years.
How is that?
I was just playing STO the other day. The quest i did involves klingons, star ship battles, and some phaser combat.
How is that "exactly like" quest based fantasy MMORPGs?
You start at an NPC with a glowing marker, follow the yellow brick road to your sparkling target, click it until you get a popup telling you that you won. That's how.
Well, there is no yellow brick road in space. If flying a star ship is the same as walking to you ... well .. may be you need glasses to tell your differences in details of things.
I'm just able to see through the thin coat of paint and realize that each painted object is identical.
wow .. completely different combat mechanics is thin.
Different combat mechanics has absolutely no bearing on differences in quest design. You've lost yourself in your own argument.
Last time I tried talking about this I had a nutcase ranting at me nonsensically.
For the most part quests are foremost treated as the primary mode of guidance and progression in many current titles. They lay the crux of the game play to be given to the players as specific tasks and have them fulfill these goals ad nauseam until they hit the 'end game'.
The problem I have with quests is largely an issue with presentation. A quest can only offer as many activities as the game provides, they only incentivize players to do these given activities by giving the bulk of the payout and progression as a reward to them.
Ostensibly it forces a greater variety of activity out of the game, by making the players more apt to run through many quests and consequently take a sample of all the types of play in a mix rather than doing a single activity endlessly.
The general consequence of quests though is cognitive detachment. Being explicitly led through games with constant scripted goals pretty much removes the need to invest thought into your actions. This ironically makes your activities, even if technically varied, feel very bland and redundant. Your mind is left to wander and you're personal attachment to the game generally exists only on a meta level where you consider the number crunching of your actions over the interaction you're having with the game.
The culprit really is pretty much quest hubs and the manner in which you're provided incentive and reward. As long as everything remains a static pin where you talk to X NPC that's always standing in Y place to get Z reward, the game is going to feel excessively mechanical in a manner that can take out any real consideration you might have for the world you're interacting with.
Even streamlining the questing experience to deliver quests to you from any location, so you can putt about the world completing tasks without returning to a specific hub, you still find yourself daisy chained along a very mechanical chain of actions that repeat themselves.
It's ultimately all a masking to the core game play of the title, and a way to usher people along through whatever experiences the game has to offer. Except in the delivery they have killed much of the reason to pay attention to the game world and simply trundle through the content.
Endgame and character progression are two other factors. When a game is built on vertical progression, there is only that pinnacle of final level and 'endgame' to achieve. Everything in between is essentially regarded as filler content until players hit max level and can obtain whatever is presently considered the best equipment to have for their character design.
Be it a sword, a ship, or a special type of plant to grow in your farming sim. Tiering content in a very vertical manner will drive players to execute on the most efficient methods to reach the end.
So, what are solutions?
It's not the only one, but I do highly advocate non-linear progression. Generally referred to as horizontal progression, but with the caveat that I do think players functionally should see some upward progress in addition to outward. More power personally alongside unlocking more specializations and more flexibility in stat and skill allotment.
In addition to that, quests itself has to shift from being a predominantly guiding experience to one of consequences. What I mean by this is that rather than having set quests you're told to follow you're given blurbs on what is going on around your character and by your actions it pushes a conclusion.
In this mechanic you are not told explicitly to do any action in particular to see an outcome, but instead the quest is built so that when any action taken by a player triggers a change in the event or narrative, it is considered to have progressed and rewards the player accordingly.
There are some elements that can be done more directly, like taking contract activities. Those would feel more like traditional quests, do X to be paid Y. The difference is that any kind of experience reward would exist external to the contracted activity. You might still get some from doing one, but it'd be because your activity was pushing an event/narrative rather than it being a set part of your contract's reward.
The goal of such a concept is to stop making players chase the game, and make them instead pioneer it. You know you'll get XP for doing any number of potential things to a quest line. When experience and reward is inherent, and you can more readily move between challenge not by looking for reaching 'endgame' but instead looking for major events, then one can push players to explore the game much more freely and fluidly.
Your issue as you present it isn't with quests but with quest-based progression. That said, your solution has nothing to do with quests, as both quests and progression that isn't level based (skill based, nonlinear, horizontal... whatever name you want to use) can exist in the same game. Some examples would be UO, EVE, and Free Realms.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Sometimes. It's a very ham handed and lazy way to tell the lore of a game without actually allowing that lore to be seen. It's telling and not showing, as its all just in the dialogue box and makes no real difference in gameplay or world.
Its the basic, the very first thing you learn as a writer not to do. And MMOs get away with it because they're made by hacks these days. The last MMO with a good subtle world that told a huge deep story was Vanguard. But now MMOs are aimed at the Family Guy Two and a Half Men audience and need to be told things upfront.
Hey, I like Two and a Half Men! *waggles finger*
I agree, that MMOs would probably benefit a lot better from lore relayed within the game world in some way, rather than in a wall of text that is going to be ignored because the player is clicking through to find out the number of foos to kill/collect and what the reward is for it. GW2's dynamic events seem to do a good job of that, as even someone who cannot read can play through the events in a zone and see the story unfold from one event to the next.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Quests are a way to tell the lore of the game, which is a facet of mmos that people enjoy. Its the same reason mmos have crafting, gathering, combat, pets, mounts, housing etc. These are all things that people can enjoy or not in an mmorpg.
I play mmos mainly for the crafting and enjoy the other aspects as well. Others play mmos for raids. For others, its pvp. Lore is a strong motivator for some people and is a feature of an mmo we can choose to experience or not.
I agree that quests ought to be a way of showing/telling the lore of the game.
One way of doing that more would if classes were directly derived from the game lore i.e. a wood elf druid type class had a specific function and purpose in the wood elf culture, then the classes and their abilities would fit that purpose and be part of the lore also. So instead of giving classes new skills/spells/abilities when they level each skill/spell/ability would be quested for e.g. their barkskin spell would have a quest, their root spell would have a quest, their charm animal spell would have a quest etc so levelling up would unlock the quests to gain those abilities not the abilities themselves.
So basically your wood elf druid would spend most of the game doing things that felt wood elf druidy.
This would still be linear but would make each class different in a lore-centric way - which i like. You could the same but make it non-linear by having a universal skill tree where each skill/spell/ability has a quest attached and you picked your own path through the skill tree.
Your issue as you present it isn't with quests but with quest-based progression. That said, your solution has nothing to do with quests, as both quests and progression that isn't level based (skill based, nonlinear, horizontal... whatever name you want to use) can exist in the same game. Some examples would be UO, EVE, and Free Realms.
Yeah...read my post again.
Your response has an answer and clarification refuting your remarks written in what I already posted and you quoted. You're telling me nothing new or insightful that I didn't already say myself.
You're also making the assumption that I am opting to remove quests, which I'm not. I talk about changing quests, but not removing them. Apparently you didn't read past the first couple phrases in each paragraph either as I also stated more than changing the mode of progression, noting I desired a shift in how quests operated as well as how progression worked to cumulatively provide a different experience.
This is why I outlined three different things I called issues with the system, the combination of focus on progression, endgame, and how questing is presented.
Seriously dude. Next time you want to pretend to understand what I mean, don't quote my entire post and then promptly forget over half of it's contents that refutes or corrects what you're saying.
The last two to do that at least had the graces to crop my commentary down to the parts they were cherry picking.
EDIT: I apologize if I sound bitey, but I'm getting tired of people very obviously not reading what it is they are responding to.
"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
Your issue as you present it isn't with quests but with quest-based progression. That said, your solution has nothing to do with quests, as both quests and progression that isn't level based (skill based, nonlinear, horizontal... whatever name you want to use) can exist in the same game. Some examples would be UO, EVE, and Free Realms.
Yeah...read my post again.
Your response has an answer and clarification refuting your remarks written in what I already posted and you quoted. You're telling me nothing new or insightful that I didn't already say myself.
You're also making the assumption that I am opting to remove quests, which I'm not. I talk about changing quests, but not removing them. Apparently you didn't read past the first couple phrases in each paragraph either as I also stated more than changing the mode of progression, noting I desired a shift in how quests operated as well as how progression worked to cumulatively provide a different experience.
This is why I outlined three different things I called issues with the system, the combination of focus on progression, endgame, and how questing is presented.
Seriously dude. Next time you want to pretend to understand what I mean, don't quote my entire post and then promptly forget over half of it's contents that refutes or corrects what you're saying.
The last two to do that at least had the graces to crop my commentary down to the parts they were cherry picking.
EDIT: I apologize if I sound bitey, but I'm getting tired of people very obviously not reading what it is they are responding to.
Honestly, you write in such a wordy, convoluted manner that it's often hard to tell where you are going with things. Sorry for misunderstanding.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Maybe I am a weird person.. but whenever i play MMO games, I never read the quest log and NPC script for questing because
I mainly focus on leveling fast and you don't really have to read the whole test to complete the quest.
I believe that for most of MMORPG, the real fun begins once you get to the max level and basically the leveling part is just
tutorial part.
There is no offense, it is just my personal opinion.
Any thoughts?
I don't agree that end game is always the best part of a MMO...I've played several where leveling was fun.....I do agree though that questing sucks.....I never read quest logs unless I get stuck and need more info.....When you factor in that some of us have played games that were extremely quest heavy (WoW, EQ2, LoTRO, SWTOR), then they really get old after awhile.
This is why I outlined three different things I called issues with the system, the combination of focus on progression, endgame, and how questing is presented.
That is the key. Think about SP games with great quests & stories (like BIoshock Infinite.). All the quests are also kill this and that, or go from point A to B. What is the difference between great quests in SP games, and not so good quests in MMOs?
he's right narius. All quest based games feel exactly alike regardles of combat or whatever. because its talk to guy x ignore what he says follow wherever your arrow is pointing kill mob or talk to someone run back. thats quests for you in a nutshell.
May be you should develop some feelings for details.
I don't feel that Deus Ex is the same as Dishonored. Or feel that Dishonored is the same as Splinter Cell Blacklist. And they are all quest-based.
Heck ... you are arguing that all RPGs feel the same. If so, you may as well stop playing games.
Thank you they feel different to me.
Im ignoring the details because the details is just skin. The core behind quests in MMO's (god only knows why you bring up a couple SP's) is Talk to person X then move from location A towards location B and either talk to person Y or kill mob Z then return to location A and talk to person X.
That is the underlying mechanic for MMO quests and it is the same for all mmo's. If you are not reading any questlines or whatever after playing alot of MMO's every new mmo with said mechanic wil feel the same regardles of being in a spaceship or riding on a horse or whatever.
With a SP game you are drawn into the world by cenematics and stuff. and you don't actually have quests but you move from objective to objective and it gives of a really diffrent feeling. But again we are talking about MMO's don't bring in other games and if you cannot do that then jsut don't say anything at all.
That's a good point on the difference in use between singleplayer and MMOs. In single-player, the quests either support the story being told by the rest of the game or they are an integral part of the player's goal in the game, thus making then important to the player. In MMO, the quests are usually the only thing driving the story, a story that is so far removed from the player's goals that the text itself is largely irrelevant.
For example, in a SP game, your quest may be to sabotage a power plant. The player does the quest because that action and the power plant are part of the player's story. Not blowing it up directly affects the path they are on. However, in an MMO, when Farmer Zed wants you to burn the silo of Jethro the Tull because of their blah blah blah, it's a very detached action. The player is simply going through pointless motions for stories that don't affect them, so logically the reward and basics of the task fulfill the basic "What's in it for me" with the lore being long winded nonsense for most.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
That's a good point on the difference in use between singleplayer and MMOs. In single-player, the quests either support the story being told by the rest of the game or they are an integral part of the player's goal in the game, thus making then important to the player. In MMO, the quests are usually the only thing driving the story, a story that is so far removed from the player's goals that the text itself is largely irrelevant.
It does not have to be. Just tell good stories in instances.
Sometimes. It's a very ham handed and lazy way to tell the lore of a game without actually allowing that lore to be seen. It's telling and not showing, as its all just in the dialogue box and makes no real difference in gameplay or world.
Its the basic, the very first thing you learn as a writer not to do. And MMOs get away with it because they're made by hacks these days. The last MMO with a good subtle world that told a huge deep story was Vanguard. But now MMOs are aimed at the Family Guy Two and a Half Men audience and need to be told things upfront.
Hey, I like Two and a Half Men! *waggles finger*
I agree, that MMOs would probably benefit a lot better from lore relayed within the game world in some way, rather than in a wall of text that is going to be ignored because the player is clicking through to find out the number of foos to kill/collect and what the reward is for it. GW2's dynamic events seem to do a good job of that, as even someone who cannot read can play through the events in a zone and see the story unfold from one event to the next.
Yup, GW2's dynamic event system is probably the only decent quest system to come out of the post WoW era. What you do actually impacts the world, as quests used to do.
But they're far too simple and easy for my liking.
Originally posted by nariusseldon
Originally posted by Loktofeit
That's a good point on the difference in use between singleplayer and MMOs. In single-player, the quests either support the story being told by the rest of the game or they are an integral part of the player's goal in the game, thus making then important to the player. In MMO, the quests are usually the only thing driving the story, a story that is so far removed from the player's goals that the text itself is largely irrelevant.
It does not have to be. Just tell good stories in instances.
Instances are temporary, nothing you do impacts the game world. Not the case in singleplayer games. Hence why MMOs will always have weak stories.
Maybe I am a weird person.. but whenever i play MMO games, I never read the quest log and NPC script for questing because
I mainly focus on leveling fast and you don't really have to read the whole test to complete the quest.
I believe that for most of MMORPG, the real fun begins once you get to the max level and basically the leveling part is just
tutorial part.
There is no offense, it is just my personal opinion.
Any thoughts?
Actually quests are the backbone of RPGs, e.g. save a village, free some enslaved people, escape slavery, unite warring villages to fight a common threat, etc. Quests provide a focus, a goal.
While you are out to achieve you goal your character will engage in combat. Your character will become more experienced (rise in level/skill). Your character will find unusal objects, weapons, armours, etc.). Things that will help you on your quest. Your character will meet other people (NPCs or PCs). You might help each other or fight each other. But hopefully you'll continue on your quest (whatever that may be). Maybe with some new allies or by overcoming obstacles.
Quests as you find them in MMORPGs are a mockery of quests. Devs simply mislabeled errands and called them quests. And they literally added billions of similar errands (obviously some players were upset by lack of content and demanded content). Additionally the games offer so many convenience features that doing those errands doesn't require any thought. Players, obviously by being bored by doing errands, changed the "game" and now quests/story is irrelevant and hunting for power (equipment/levels/skills) is king.
So lesson learned: Beware what you wish for as it may come true (but not in the way you would have liked it).
It does not have to be. Just tell good stories in instances.
Instances are temporary, nothing you do impacts the game world. Not the case in singleplayer games. Hence why MMOs will always have weak stories.
Phases fix that. Plus, you can always keep the changes in the following instances. I don't really care about the game world in games where 90+% of the gameplay happens inside instances.
I do I cant really take being ushered through ..well anything. I even hate movie ushers. I chose my seat darn it!
This is where there is alot of misconception in a game world. When you call it an "open world" that means exactly this. You are not ushered around to level-like content. An open world is designed around geological features. Or fauna features. Or sentient specics made features. And the content is localized level wise by the "kool" rating. Like 1 world builder(or team) makes a kool forest. Well the news is that forest was compltly blown away by the team that made the volcano. And guess what the volcano has the higher level content around it. But it is localized in an area that isnt subject to level routing but instaed in a place that made some logical geological sence!
Open world!
The next step is to make sure that each location has a resource that is nessasary and in line with level routing not via a route but by mob and location dificulty. And the important part is that I FOUND IT!! Yea me I found it it wasnt a quest goal it wasnt an arrow marking the location it just looked freaking kool from a distance and I traveled to it and found the level rating simular enough to my own(group) that I was able to check it out throughly enough to get more then the basic jist.
And yea.. there really can be quests for these areas. Not like crappy quests I mean event like quests that are epic and player will talk about them later on. Or if you will an overland dungeon! yea thats what I mean...
Honestly, you write in such a wordy, convoluted manner that it's often hard to tell where you are going with things. Sorry for misunderstanding.
Shenanigans.
"The problem I have with quests is largely an issue with presentation" Can only be interpreted so many ways.
I stated this notion early and reinforced it. The only way in which you could have failed to understand it is if you skipped what I wrote past the first two paragraphs and skimmed down to my breakup for the solution.
Same situation with the solutions segment, I stated very clearly "In addition to that, quests itself has to shift..."
This means that you had to have read nothing past the first paragraph of that segment to assume I didn't account for anything else.
That is not my writing being convoluted, that's it not being read.
"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
Comments
To stem the same semantic argument that's been made before...
Using the remark 'remove quests' to refer to questing hubs and the process you see out of many MMOs is a bad idea. There are those on this board that take it as an opportunity to quibble endlessly about how things are still quests regardless of if you clarified beforehand or after that you were citing different forms of questing.
It's a sadly difficult situation as there's little forms of phrasing that applies properly to explain what you need without going into things at length, and consequently it's a topic some will gleefully take jabs at and troll about.
To avoid this, let's clarify this point.
The implication in many cases is the delivery system with which players do quests. It's a fair assumption people are generally referring to the form of questing wherein your existence serves largely as the 'errand-boy', doing everything by running down a list of tasks.
I wouldn't consider this dramatically different from single player or non-MMO RPGs in many cases though, as many such titles tend to take the main quest and side quest style where the side quests tend to very much be that same experience.
You can say the main quest line tends to be a better experience in many non-MMO titles though. A stronger scripted experience that is impacted less by the realization of said event being recurring for as many others play the title.
What is railed against is perhaps more clearly thought of as the manner in which people are presented quests and the way in which it serves the game.
This is an unnecessary argument that tends to derail into semantic alone. Trying to get someone to understand what you mean generally goes alongside how strongly they prefer to make semantic arguments.
As it's Nariu, it'd perhaps be best to clarify one's meaning and move on, as any rebuttal is just going to be further into semantics.
"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
I have NEVER had any doubt that there is a LARGE majority that think like this.I can't even blame you for the game's design,it is the developer who caters to this type of design.Of course if all you do is paint a yellow marker over a npc head and have players follow the paint by numbers,it is going to get extremely boring,i would expect it to.
The problem is the design is sooooooo weak,it just continues with any mention of "end -game".There should be "no-end" game, a rpg should be a living world that forever evolves and changes.
The game should be fun just to play it and that would revolve around MANY aspects such as exploration,combat,your character,discoveries both crafting and adventuring ect ect.
When a game designs itself to be played one way then finishes with again one dimensional game play,it has failed the genre in every possible way.It is nothing more than a single player design with added interent.Single player games are meant to be beat,like an arcade game,an end goal with nothing to be added or changed beyond the disc you bought and installed.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
wow .. completely different combat mechanics is thin.
I bet you think DOOM is the same as Halo, is the same as Bioshock too.
"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
Different combat mechanics has absolutely no bearing on differences in quest design. You've lost yourself in your own argument.
Of course it does, since 99% of the quests are just excuse in killing some stuff.
Your issue as you present it isn't with quests but with quest-based progression. That said, your solution has nothing to do with quests, as both quests and progression that isn't level based (skill based, nonlinear, horizontal... whatever name you want to use) can exist in the same game. Some examples would be UO, EVE, and Free Realms.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Hey, I like Two and a Half Men! *waggles finger*
I agree, that MMOs would probably benefit a lot better from lore relayed within the game world in some way, rather than in a wall of text that is going to be ignored because the player is clicking through to find out the number of foos to kill/collect and what the reward is for it. GW2's dynamic events seem to do a good job of that, as even someone who cannot read can play through the events in a zone and see the story unfold from one event to the next.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I agree that quests ought to be a way of showing/telling the lore of the game.
One way of doing that more would if classes were directly derived from the game lore i.e. a wood elf druid type class had a specific function and purpose in the wood elf culture, then the classes and their abilities would fit that purpose and be part of the lore also. So instead of giving classes new skills/spells/abilities when they level each skill/spell/ability would be quested for e.g. their barkskin spell would have a quest, their root spell would have a quest, their charm animal spell would have a quest etc so levelling up would unlock the quests to gain those abilities not the abilities themselves.
So basically your wood elf druid would spend most of the game doing things that felt wood elf druidy.
This would still be linear but would make each class different in a lore-centric way - which i like. You could the same but make it non-linear by having a universal skill tree where each skill/spell/ability has a quest attached and you picked your own path through the skill tree.
Yeah...read my post again.
Your response has an answer and clarification refuting your remarks written in what I already posted and you quoted. You're telling me nothing new or insightful that I didn't already say myself.
You're also making the assumption that I am opting to remove quests, which I'm not. I talk about changing quests, but not removing them. Apparently you didn't read past the first couple phrases in each paragraph either as I also stated more than changing the mode of progression, noting I desired a shift in how quests operated as well as how progression worked to cumulatively provide a different experience.
This is why I outlined three different things I called issues with the system, the combination of focus on progression, endgame, and how questing is presented.
Seriously dude. Next time you want to pretend to understand what I mean, don't quote my entire post and then promptly forget over half of it's contents that refutes or corrects what you're saying.
The last two to do that at least had the graces to crop my commentary down to the parts they were cherry picking.
EDIT: I apologize if I sound bitey, but I'm getting tired of people very obviously not reading what it is they are responding to.
"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
Honestly, you write in such a wordy, convoluted manner that it's often hard to tell where you are going with things. Sorry for misunderstanding.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I don't agree that end game is always the best part of a MMO...I've played several where leveling was fun.....I do agree though that questing sucks.....I never read quest logs unless I get stuck and need more info.....When you factor in that some of us have played games that were extremely quest heavy (WoW, EQ2, LoTRO, SWTOR), then they really get old after awhile.
That is the key. Think about SP games with great quests & stories (like BIoshock Infinite.). All the quests are also kill this and that, or go from point A to B. What is the difference between great quests in SP games, and not so good quests in MMOs?
Presentation.
That's a good point on the difference in use between singleplayer and MMOs. In single-player, the quests either support the story being told by the rest of the game or they are an integral part of the player's goal in the game, thus making then important to the player. In MMO, the quests are usually the only thing driving the story, a story that is so far removed from the player's goals that the text itself is largely irrelevant.
For example, in a SP game, your quest may be to sabotage a power plant. The player does the quest because that action and the power plant are part of the player's story. Not blowing it up directly affects the path they are on. However, in an MMO, when Farmer Zed wants you to burn the silo of Jethro the Tull because of their blah blah blah, it's a very detached action. The player is simply going through pointless motions for stories that don't affect them, so logically the reward and basics of the task fulfill the basic "What's in it for me" with the lore being long winded nonsense for most.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It does not have to be. Just tell good stories in instances.
Yup, GW2's dynamic event system is probably the only decent quest system to come out of the post WoW era. What you do actually impacts the world, as quests used to do.
But they're far too simple and easy for my liking.
Instances are temporary, nothing you do impacts the game world. Not the case in singleplayer games. Hence why MMOs will always have weak stories.
Same here man!
I don't see any point of reading all the quest dialogues when you can actually complete the quest by straight killing required monsters.
Leveling part has to be quick as possible and the real fun part will start after maxing out the level.
Most of my friends including me are just same as you.
RUSH and WIN
Actually quests are the backbone of RPGs, e.g. save a village, free some enslaved people, escape slavery, unite warring villages to fight a common threat, etc. Quests provide a focus, a goal.
While you are out to achieve you goal your character will engage in combat. Your character will become more experienced (rise in level/skill). Your character will find unusal objects, weapons, armours, etc.). Things that will help you on your quest. Your character will meet other people (NPCs or PCs). You might help each other or fight each other. But hopefully you'll continue on your quest (whatever that may be). Maybe with some new allies or by overcoming obstacles.
Quests as you find them in MMORPGs are a mockery of quests. Devs simply mislabeled errands and called them quests. And they literally added billions of similar errands (obviously some players were upset by lack of content and demanded content). Additionally the games offer so many convenience features that doing those errands doesn't require any thought.
Players, obviously by being bored by doing errands, changed the "game" and now quests/story is irrelevant and hunting for power (equipment/levels/skills) is king.
So lesson learned: Beware what you wish for as it may come true (but not in the way you would have liked it).
Phases fix that. Plus, you can always keep the changes in the following instances. I don't really care about the game world in games where 90+% of the gameplay happens inside instances.
I enjoy quest that dont involve kill x amount of mobs then x amount more..... Send us on a journey to a cave, fort, swamp and go get a prize ect.
AKA AC quest lol
I really hate quests.
I do I cant really take being ushered through ..well anything. I even hate movie ushers. I chose my seat darn it!
This is where there is alot of misconception in a game world. When you call it an "open world" that means exactly this. You are not ushered around to level-like content. An open world is designed around geological features. Or fauna features. Or sentient specics made features. And the content is localized level wise by the "kool" rating. Like 1 world builder(or team) makes a kool forest. Well the news is that forest was compltly blown away by the team that made the volcano. And guess what the volcano has the higher level content around it. But it is localized in an area that isnt subject to level routing but instaed in a place that made some logical geological sence!
Open world!
The next step is to make sure that each location has a resource that is nessasary and in line with level routing not via a route but by mob and location dificulty. And the important part is that I FOUND IT!! Yea me I found it it wasnt a quest goal it wasnt an arrow marking the location it just looked freaking kool from a distance and I traveled to it and found the level rating simular enough to my own(group) that I was able to check it out throughly enough to get more then the basic jist.
And yea.. there really can be quests for these areas. Not like crappy quests I mean event like quests that are epic and player will talk about them later on. Or if you will an overland dungeon! yea thats what I mean...
Shenanigans.
"The problem I have with quests is largely an issue with presentation" Can only be interpreted so many ways.
I stated this notion early and reinforced it. The only way in which you could have failed to understand it is if you skipped what I wrote past the first two paragraphs and skimmed down to my breakup for the solution.
Same situation with the solutions segment, I stated very clearly "In addition to that, quests itself has to shift..."
This means that you had to have read nothing past the first paragraph of that segment to assume I didn't account for anything else.
That is not my writing being convoluted, that's it not being read.
"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
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee