[Column] General: Questing to Monotony

SBFord

I’m not a partisan MMO gamer. I’ll play a sandbox, a themepark, an Action MMORPG, or anything that offers me fun when I boot up the title. But if there’s something made clear by recent MMO offerings, it’s this: traditional questing as a means of progression is really getting tired.

Read more of Bill Murphy's Questing to Monotony.

serialMMOist

I'd love to see MMO's cater purely to the sandbox crowd and do away with questing. Then as events, random of not reintroduce questing as a way to reward gameplay not for progression purposes but rather for fun, memorable experiences.

WereLlama

Perhaps there is a way to allow players to nudge the base quests into more fun experiences by allowing them to be iteratively modifiable.

versulas

Aww, but I thought "dynamic events" were supposed to save us from the monotony of fedex-style questing >.>

Vorthanion

Multiple and viable avenues of progression are what I want to see taking hold in upcoming MMOs.  What is disturbing is how narrow minded both developers and many gamers can be when it comes to this problem as it becomes some kind of pride issue about whose play style is supreme.

Jackdog

Questing will always be limited to kill x amount of mobiles, or travel from point A to point  B and interact with either a mobile or non mobile object in the game worlds. That is all you can really do with your avatar. Every quest in every game you have ever played can be summed up by my first sentence. You cannot feel, taste, or smell anything in a game and until AI and the interface goes to a new level questing will always be kill ten boars, mine some ore and craft ten iron bars, grab a bucket of virtual water and click on the virtual fire, or take this object to the NPC over there.

I am sick of the follow the bread crumbs quest trail to play in pre scripted dungeons and connect the dots raids myself. I yearn for the days of when playing a online RPG  meant more than being some character in a scripted interactive movie

 

Only part of the article I would disagree with is that WoW started it, I would go back to Everquest 1 and their never ending hamster wheel of raiding defining what made a good MMO

koboldfodder

Go play The Secret World investigation quests if you think all that there is are Kill X or interact with this object.  I can promise you, that game will bring you back down to earth and you will end up using the ingame web browser to cheat.

 

Those are serious quests.  Maybe the only game since original EQ to have quests that make you think.  The rest of the game is your basic Kill X type of thing, but those investigation quests are the real deal.

Crusades

I used to play in 24 hour scenario paintball wars. There was a game producer that handed missions out in real time. It never got old and he orchestrated the missions in such a way that there would be peaks of highs and lows and you never new what you were getting into. I don't think it would be to hard to implement a real time scenario producer to orchestrate missions / quests in real time to keep things interesting. I don't think player created quests should be to far fetched either.

I should mention there was a chain of command on each side as well. The Generals where the only ones who communicated with the game producer. Your mission would come down from an appointed or elected King , General, President what ever you want to call it. In our wars we had generals, we had an xo, ie vice or field General, and we had officers.

Whiskey_Sam

Three changes I would make to the typical quest hub set-up:

• Make it more like Skyrim where you walk into a town and have to actually talk to NPCs to figure out who has a quest.  Remove the ! over people's heads.  Let the open world have dungeons that are unconnected to quests, but if there is a quest object there, have that trigger the quest in case you haven't found the NPC that normally starts the quest.
• Allow for more spontaneous questing through on-the-fly generated quests.  SWG had this in mission terminals, but it doesn't require a sci-fi setting just a static location(s) people can go to select something to do.
• Make quests more open-ended in how they can be accomplished.  Instead of kill 10 rats, make it clear the basement they're in.  Or perhaps bring 10 hides which would allow for someone killing rats or buying the hides from someone else.  Involve crafting quest objects, too.  In short, make multiple ways to finish a mission rather than run to spot A, kill NPC B, return for reward.  

None of these require sandbox or themepark only set-ups.  I'd prefer a game that is largely sandbox that has some directed content, but the larger problem, if you're going to have levels at all, is everything becomes geared to leveling through combat.  That results in players doing nothing but combat to level faster which turns questing into a grind.  Provide alternate leveling paths based on improving skills which allow for more than the typical "Combat or logoff" mindset.

CrazKanuk

I don't think that questing is the problem, it's a symptom of the problem that you eluded to here, and that is developers deliberately trying to prolong your gaming experience by slowing progression. 

 

I think that Destiny is actually taking an interesting stance on levelling. Apparently the level cap at launch is like 20. Those who played the beta and alpha can certainly attest that this probably won't be very long to reach cap. Bungie has said that they're focus is on the social gaming aspect and they wanted to remove the grind to level cap so people can actually group together and play. Of course this put a stress on Bungie to continue to release compelling content. Whether or not it's actually possible, I don't know, but I guess time will tell. 

 

I think this is really what people like about sandbox games. It isn't that they aren't about progression, but they are just less grindy. Although there are exceptions, like the SWG Jedi grind. 

FelixMajor

I like the ideas of 'live npcs' and real time quests.

I played Regnum a few years back and the server's GM was very active. He would spawn random events and bosses and notify the server of an epic hunt and what not.

Now that was all very basic, but it was so fun. I don't get it why more modern games don't just implement systems like this. Have a GM running the server, who can make things happen real time! Just like a Dungeon Master would with good old PnP!

Distopia

I always wonder if this is a symptom of simply playing every MMO that comes along, just because it's an MMORPG. I'm sure if I picked up every single game that came along, I'd be sick and tired of their mechanics as well. It's not like they're designed like single player rpgs. The longevity kinda requires a lot of filler, so instead of playing through that leveling experience and moving on to the more community related features, guilds, raiding, PVP etc... People move on to the next filler filled leveling experience. People essentially spend all their time grinding levels, and wonder why they're sick of grinding levels.

rodingo

Good article and sums up how I feel too.  Questing and quest hubs as the main ways to gain exp besides grinding mobs has really gotten old.  It was novel and mostly fun for me when WoW first launched and playing through their quest system.  Having come to WoW straight from SWG where you would go to Dantooine, get doctor buffed, grab two missions, then join a hunting group over and over and over just got very repetitive.  WoW's themepark ride and guided tour of Azeroth was a nice change of  pace back then.  Now, after 10 years though that same style of advancement is getting old.  Not that I want to go back to just grabbing two missions of "destroy creature lair" either, but something different would be nice.  Not sure how it can be done, but hopefully someone will have a good idea and implement it well.

Lobotomist

Good article. I agree

Deathtognomes

IDK how many played EQ1 prior to Luclin, but there were quests that required you to be a certain faction level. Granted this made the grind all that more tedious. Early EQ1 didnt do quests to dish out enormous amounts of experience, they did them to reward gear, faction or access to higher zones. Some whiners dislike the quest for access part, those that do think they are entitled,  and often just lazy. I dont think content should be given freely just because you meet the suggested level.

I'd have to say VT access was the best group quest ever. When it was the endgame for that expansion. I think games that are catering to small groups and raids(less than 20) have ruined more MMO experiences than questing issues have.

Fourplay

Quests are never going to be the best they can be due to money, workload,repetition,and progression.

A)Money and workload- There is no shortcut to making each quest feel completely novel and not repeated short of hand-crafting each one with different mechanics. The cause and effects can be feel different with changing AI and quest alternatives. But if the mechanics don't vary from quest to quest it gets the comments like hearts are the same things as ! or story bricks just add a few alternatives.

You are still mostly pushing the same buttons or C to complete the quest.

B)Repetition and progression- Once the word progression enters the mind of developers and players. That projects the means to an end vibe. And with that one thought players feel the need to reach the end faster which then prompts the developer to make content faster or more dumbed down or repeated to meet demand. But if progression is removed from the equation. Is it still considered an rpg? Is it something players would even want? I am talking about making the world in the now, access to everything, no levels, no unlocking areas or quest lines. You still get better at stuff but minus the gating. No safe zones, or re-dos, the world is ever-changing with or without player input.

 

If we are ready for that. Then all that lacks is the tools to create content, game mechanics, bosses, flora and fauna, quests, buildings, forests, etc. There is no shortcut to creating novelty. Either developers or players have to. 

Soandsoso

I stopped reading at the 2nd paragraph...another GW2 is awesome thing.

observer

Originally posted by versulas
Aww, but I thought "dynamic events" were supposed to save us from the monotony of fedex-style questing >.>

They do, if you're talking about GW2.  You don't have to do a single heart quest if you don't want to.  You can level purely by events.  You just have to find them though, and ignore the heart quests.  That's the whole point of this article.  Arena-net only made heart quests because people didn't know how to play without quests.  The majority of MMO players never played a "sandbox" MMO, i.e. an MMO with alternative leveling paths.  In other words, they needed theirs hands held.  It was probably one of their most terrible decisions ever, which made players think that GW2 was another "wow-clone".  Archeage made the same mistake.

As for the article.  I wouldn't want the elimination of quests altogether, but the only way to break that mold, is to offer alternative leveling paths right from the start.  That means, no exclamation-mark questing until all the other alternatives are learned first.  If an MMO company can do this, it would help the genre tremendously.

Loke666

Great article.

I agree, there must be a more exciting way to let players interact with the world and adventure then by just give us a whole bunch of simple and often pretty boring tasks.

GW2 has made things more interesting there but it is just a small piece of the puzzle, in PvE quests the npcs and the players need to interact in a totally different way.

First lets get rid of the overfulol questlog, few of even the most questloving fans enjoy getting 80 quests filled in and getting the boring stuff left to grind through. Let us focus on a single adventure with maybe a few sidesteps or possible directions to take.

Let the quest feel more alive than a guy standing still in his questhub and always paying everyone a cloak and a few silvers for killing 10 wolves nearby and delivering him the pelts.

A movie sets up the heroes with something interesting to get the heroes into things, not always having a dude in the tavern asking them just to perform menial tasks for him.

But let whatever happens do so in the game, don't show us a zillion cutscenes in a multiplayer game. 

I think that if many of the people who enjoys quests thought more about how they could be even more fun we could get somewhere. The technology have changed very much since Meridian 59 but the quests are basically the same and even people who really enjoys regular quests should consider if this couldn't be done more fun.

Loke666

Originally posted by observer

They do, if you're talking about GW2.  You don't have to do a single heart quest if you don't want to.  You can level purely by events.  You just have to find them though, and ignore the heart quests.  That's the whole point of this article.  Arena-net only made heart quests because people didn't know how to play without quests.  The majority of MMO players never played a "sandbox" MMO, i.e. an MMO with alternative leveling paths.  In other words, they needed theirs hands held.  It was probably one of their most terrible decisions ever, which made players think that GW2 was another "wow-clone".  Archeage made the same mistake.

As for the article.  I wouldn't want the elimination of quests altogether, but the only way to break that mold, is to offer alternative leveling paths right from the start.  That means, no exclamation-mark questing until all the other alternatives are learned first.  If an MMO company can do this, it would help the genre tremendously.

Hearts were implemented after people tried the alpha, many people just got confused when they didn't get a certain goal. It is very possible that if GW2 releases another campaign (like Factions and Nightfall for the first game) they would just skip them, there are no hearts in Orr after all.

zzax

What is wrong with MMOs is not questing, its levels. Leveling is core element of singleplayer games that simply wont work in MMOs no matter what.

 

Remove levels = questing sorted out by itself.

 

 

 

syriinx

Questing isn't a bad mechanic at all.

Tasking is, and that's what most games offer. 

A true quest cant be done in 2 minutes.  95% of MMO 'quests' can, they are really tasks.

 

To add to the problem, most games nowadays have a bad world, bad lore, and bad writing (or sometimes just bad presentation) (Rift, TERA, and ArcheAge, Im especially looking at you...but most games are guilty of at least one or two of these)

 

 

syriinx

Originally posted by zzax

What is wrong with MMOs is not questing, its levels. Leveling is core element of singleplayer games that simply wont work in MMOs no matter what.

 

Remove levels = questing sorted out by itself.

 

 

 

 

You are 100% wrong.

 

Levelling is a great mechanic (though it doesn't need to be the only mechanic)

 

It worked great in EQ, WoW, and many other games.

 

You know what other game it worked in?  SWG.  Yes, SWG had leveling.  You still had to get exp to grow stronger. 

 

 

Wizardry

I believe devs keep designing this way because they look at the alternative and believe a high % of gamer's will not accept the alternative.

There is really only ONE way to become a better more experienced Warrior and that is to act out as a Warrior and to raise his skills by utilizing his skills.You should NEVER become a more experienced Warrior chasing around yellow exclamation marks.FFXI already did it correctly,you could argue it could have been done better to which i would agree but differently,nope.

So these modern games do not see the players accepting a kill mobs type game to gain xp and if they did the next wave of players would not accept a SLOWISH xp grind.We already see the crying and acceptance of develoeprs now making quests auto updated,you don't even return to the NPC with those bear skins...well i guess they were shipped with some courier service in a mere seconds and the NPC found out and gave you your reward.../lol ../not.So how else to keep players interested and that is to make a few thousand simple boring so called quests.You have to remember that running from yellow marker to yellow marker wastes a lot of time over the months,just look at Wizard 101 and how they make players run from one end of a map to the other end for every quest to make it looks like a lot of content because you waste hours running around.

Alomar

Couldn't agree with the article more. Completely bored out of my mind as a hardcore pvper who mostly finds pve as a means to a level cap anyway with the current state of questing in 99% of mmo's. The only games I've actually found interest in pve is where questing isn't the traditional format, and as you know there hasn't been many.

sethman75

I totally disagree.

If there is no focused content for PvE players to do, it becomes a zerg fest like GW2.

And if you think questing is boring......