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Why the hate for quests?
Dauntis
Member UncommonPosts: 600
Why do so many people on these forums hate quests?
I see a lot of folks seethe hatred for quests, I just picture the old D&D cartoon Dungeon Master aproaching them and saying something like. "Oh mighty hero, I have a quest for thee!" and then the player spitting in his face and kicking him in the groin for having the odacity to give them a quest.
I guess I just don't get the hatred.
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Comments
For me it's the repetition. There is only really a handful of "quest types" in most MMOs and they rinse and repeat. Some games do a better job than others of mixing it up but I haven't played a MMORPG yet where I haven't had the feeling I'm doing the same thing over and over. It doesn't help that the lore is often as generic as the quest themselves.
That said I think that questing generally has seen some improvements. The lore is told better these days with more cinematics and so on. I like the idea of dynamic quest although the implementation hasn't got to level I'd like it to be at. I think there's a lot of room for improvement with dynamic quest.
Other than dynamic quest though I'd generally just prefer to do what I want when I want. I'd prefer if player activity presented more opportunities than linear quest.
I think that many "complainers" see quests as "restrictive." They just want go off and do what they feel like doing. There is nothing wrong with that.
Personally, I enjoy having reasons for doing what I am doing, other than gaining XP and levels. I have rarely been a player that sought out the "best Mob killing places" just to get XP and level up. EverQuest was the huge exception for me, though I tried looking for quests
Most of my playtime there consisted of grouping up, finding a camp spot, and killing Mobs to gain levels. Even when in a guild, the question of the day was, "Where will we level today?" That never really appealed to me, though I did enjoy my time grouping with guildies because we chatted a lot.
Ozmano had some good points, too, about the repetitive nature of questing. Many of the quests in MMOs are just chores for lazy NPCs. Some, however, tell great little stories.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
The title tasks would suit modern quests better. Now, do people hate these so-called quests? Not necessarily, they just dislike leveling being completely based on them.
Take Wildstar for example. You mainly level by doing quests in the game. In some older games, you generally remembered the quests, where they were, what they rewarded and so on - that was because they weren't overdone: they were pretty scrace and not extremely linear. Some games had quest hubs, but hubs weren't all linked together, and the quests were a little more varied: they may even have taken you to other zones and then made you come back to collect your reward.
In Wildstar, which I am using as an example because its something a lot of people have probably tried here in the beta, you don't remember specific quests. You click an NPC, you follow the 3D arrow on your screen and then kill some clearly marked monsters or collect some sparkly items until the arrow points in another direction or the area is no longer highlighted on your map. Once you've done that a few times, you return to the quest hub, click a few NPCs and the arrow points you to the next hub. In the best case you're even teleported there or transported in another fashion.
Quests became not a break from the grind, but the grind. World of Warcraft started it with the big exclamation marks, but it wasn't that bad originally. Now they are a mere annoyance to a lot of people. That's why they're disliked. There's no choice either, because all modern themeparks have a group XP penalty - wanna grind monsters with your friend, good luck getting way less XP.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
I used to play runescape back in 2002, I still think they had better quests than most new MMO's.
Its not really hate for quests, its mostly hate at HOW quests are being executed. You can have nice quests with deep text (or voice), interesting dialogs that immerse you in the story of the game..... but no, they prefer to add an infinite amount of horrid quests with boring dialogs that have nothing to do with the game, just to make you grind levels.
The predictability and the non-dynamic nature get me with most quest-based games however if it is in some way dynamic (like the Repop wants to do it) or you have to hunt down stuff on your own (a lil bit like exploration in EVE) then I am to put it mildly: thrilled by the prospect of such quests.
Edit: Ah and they shouldn't exclude other means of progression (PVP, crafting, etc) from the game.
I only hate simplisitc quests which send you out to collect 10 dragon eggs or something of that sort.
Good quest design, this is why I think Secret World is the best themepark out there.
I self identify as a monkey.
You pretty much nailed it.
I've always enjoyed long quest lines, that make you kill mobs, travel other places and explore map, enter to dungeons with other people and maybe even craft or buy some crafted items from other players. That is a good quest. It encourage you, the player, to discover things in a game and make you want to keep playing. In the end there's always a nice reward, not something you would vendor for a few gold, but a real upgrade that helps your journey further in the game.
Add some random element to the quest chain, like different craftables, different mobs to kill in different zone, etc. and you want to play the game again on different toon as well.
The modern way - take all quests on a hub, follow the yellow arrow above your head, kill all marked mobs and collect all sparkling objects on the ground, teleport back to the quest hub, collect all the quest rewards and vendor them but do it quickly since your dungeon is about to pop up in DF tool - doesn't interest me one bit.
So it's not that i hate quests, it's just that they are executed poorly, as the others said.
I agree that investigation missions are really cool but other than those investigations the rest of the quests in TSW are equally generic and bad as the next mmo.
all the story missions have high quality including puzzles, same goes for investigation and the "run" icon action missions, and the evasive missions with the dynamite box icon (don´t know how they are called at the moment).
Yes there are "packet" missions too, the simple ones but even those are usually compelling. I rarely found a kill x of y mission and I go for all missions to get the achievements.
I believe Tyler Freeborn was a "Run Icon" mission and that had all the elements, action, puzzle, grand story arc. I loved it. Also the Carter Unleashed missions from Issue 1 come to mind. And the James Bond-ish missions from Issue 7. So many grand quests.
heck, even the "Extra Credits" guy pointed out TSW as the most innovative MMO mission design
i did a ton of those, thats why i say they are equally generic. They do have a nice twist when some of them chain together making it feel like its evolving into something else. But the kill 10 rats and collect bear arses are still there.
maybe yes, there are some, but the magic is in the mix.
There is NO mix whatsoever, in other MMOs.
SWTOR for example, go there click X kill Y. That´s it. The whole freakin´game. Same with GW2 and all the others.
For me it is the feel whcih is very different in TSW, overall
The vast majority of MMOs utilizes a vertical progression. This means that you level up until you reach the maximum level cap. While advancing through the levels, more and more abilities and skills are unlocked. This classic approach worked for almost a decade.
By today, many players know this system very well and simply get bored when they play yet another MMO that offers blunt and boring quests such as kill 10 rats, collect 20 flowers or talk to Mr. X. They find it quite boring and to them such quests are nothing but a barrier that need to be taken to have fun in the so called endgame. To them stories behind quests do no matter. What matters is to reach maximum level as quickly as possible. The amount of MMOs with mediocre or sub-par quest design given, this is very much understandable.
On the other hand I believe that we as players need to relearn what it means to really play a good MMO. At the moment and after having played so many quest grind pseudo MMOs, I very much enjoy The Elder Scrolls Online. The quests are excellent written, often surprise and develop throughout whole zones. At the end of a zone you put together the pieces and understand the whole plot. I really enjoy it and can only recommend to break free from personal habits like rushing MMOs.
i completely agree with that. Other mmos stick to the wrong side of things... not mixing them and the ones we get are all the bad ones instead.
There's nothing wrong in a vertical progression, but the problem is you don't have to progress anymore in modern MMOs. In vanilla WoW you pretty much had to keep your gear up to date all the time in order to kill even basic mobs properly. If you wanted to enter to MC or even BRD you had to have some gear from Sunken Temple and Uldaman, and you had no business in those places if you didn't have gear from Scarlet Monastery and other lower level dungeons. I know this, because my first character was a warrior back in vanilla, and i hesitated to group up with strangers and only did soloable content, which led me to hit a brick wall around lvl 45ish, and i couldn't even kill mobs in Feralas.
Quests were designed for entering these places. Many vanilla WoW quests concluded in a dungeon or even raid. They were made to encourage people to gather a group and enter these places. So in a way, vanilla WoW's end game started somewhere around level 30-40, not on 60. You just started raiding on level cap.
Quests in modern MMOs are nothing else than a quick way to get lots of exp, and every quest having a green piece of gear as a reward guarantees that you progress automatically and don't hit the said brick wall. That's why most people think the end game starts on level cap.
Quests can be good as part of a game.. but most themepark games basically make quests the only way to play the game.. so they turn into a quest grind.. ESO appeared to be a super quest grind when i was testing.. so many little pointless quests all over the place over and over and over..
For me that kind of thing makes the game very boring.
Having a mix of everything in a game for me is the best way to go..
So you can progress with quests, or going out killing mobs, crafting, exploring, pvp you name it just open it up and give the player the choice on how he wants to play the game instead of forcing him from quest hub to quest hub doing hundreds of pointless go kill 10 of these quests over and over
not one single reason for the "hate", but for me it is because solo quests just aint what I think of as. what MMOs is all about. When I did quests back in time, it would be for access to something or an heritage/"epic" quest, be it my own or helping someone else getting their done...items usually being something you would use for a couple of expansions....which touch abit on my dislike for current itemization ; )
I used to see solo quests as something to do "if everything else failed", or if waiting for something to happen.
Players complain about grinding mobs without any sort of instruction. But they like if the computer tells them to grind mobs. Very strange.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
It wasnt just grinding mobs for exp in eq. They had unique loot from rare boss mobs. Not the horrible universal loot tables they in games today. You typically had an item you were looking for and got exp in the meantime.
Bottom line for me is that quests are ok if they are 100 percent optional side content.
Does anyone feel that quests are just terrible in general. To me they never fit into MMOs, but they seem to be bad in general outside of adding a little story. The problem is there are so many quests in MMOs it doesn't matter if the story may appeal to you or not. Sooner or later it will just be a grind following the GPS around all by yourself. To me that isn't much different then grinding a camp of mobs, but you are now doing it alone and at the expense of having little interaction with others. Being able to just jump into a game, start exploring, and run into someone who is doing the same thing as you, needs help, or helps you out of trouble is much more interesting then following a scripted story around.
I never played PnP, but in D&D the Dungeon master would make things challenging for groups on the fly. They would add various traps and other things to make the journey more interesting and perilous.
That doesn't happen in an MMO and in an MMO a quest basically consists of killing something or following a GPS to an item and following it back to the quest giver. There are only a few instanced content based on group and none of it involves group roles like scouting for traps, healing, tanking, etc. It's generally just DPS with a little healing and CC thrown in on the side.
I remember there was a gnoll and orc in highpass people would try and get a weapon off of. Of course there were things even at low level like the crushbone tunic. I remember a popular quest was to get the langseax of the wolves. I'm pretty sure it was trade able at one point. That was before the dreaded no drop days began.