Are Quests so hard to produce?(Is there an action MMORPG with quests?)

Shorun · June 2007

I've played between 20-30 MMORPGs now. Some were free, some were monthly, some had action, some not etc. BUT- I've been searching a good Action MMORPG. At first, there are not so much action MMORPGs, but I've been able to find a few. They were fun till ~lvl10 or 15, but then, there were no quests anymore. Just Beginning Quests and then kicking monsters for 0,0001% Expierence Points. And this for the next 85lvls. This is f***ing boring! Killing Monsters and getting a zombie, because you have to lvl at monsters, your character never dies at and you are using 5 different skills 100lvls long? I don't want to be unfriendly but...., who out there, who has a real life gets lvl 100 in such a game? What such a game needs is quests. Is it so hard to think of 2.000 quests, that have got 100 shemes? No. But you as you see - it works. World of Warcraft-Everquest 2-Lord of the Rings Online. They all have quests! Okay, every 5th quest is almost the same, but it's better than just running around thinkless and without goal, except killing the next 3.000 enemies. Are Quests so hard to produce?-I don't think so. Nowadays I don't even give grinding games a try, because I don't have fun with them.

As you could read in the topic, I couldn't find an action MMORPG with some quests.(That means it isn't from Korea

)

I would like to hear your Opinion on this!

(Sorry, if such a thread already exist, but I searched for it and couldn't find anything!)

Paragus1 · June 2007

I feel your anger on the quest thing. I haven't a clue why they even call half of that crap quests? What is so heroic about picking mushrooms, collecting rabbit tails, and other such nonsense. If you want to vent about check out a piece I wrote on the blog section of this site. I think the guy writing these quests works for UPS or something....

http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Paragus1/062007/20_Rant-Quests

GreenChaos · June 2007

If you want a really good quest system, you will probable have to wait for BioWare’s first MMO in 09. Until then just have fun with the combat. Or play a MUD with active GMs that interact with the players.

Zindaihas · June 2007

Keep in mind that to make a good size game with a large world, the devs have to come up with literaly hundreds of quests. With that many, there are bound to be some duds in there. On top of that, I would think that they would also suffer some imagination burnout after thinking up the first couple of dozen.

However, I am a strong proponent of a good quest system and quests that put together too quickly will only hurt the game. So then you get into the issue of how long should you take to make sure every single quest is top notch. If you did that, the game would never be released.

I've given this quite a bit of thought because I'm putting together ideas for my own game right now. I think the best answer is probably put together a good team to work on quests and have them begin very early in the production stage.

Huntn · June 2007

There is the static vs dynamic world debate. Seems like mostly you see static worlds cause they must be easiest to do.

Wolfenpride · June 2007

Not sure if you've tried this or not..

But id say City of Heroes/Villians might intrest you.

Action in CoH/V is extremely intense, probably the most intense of any mmo out right now. And the quests/missions/what not are just as intense and fairly , usually instanced buildings and or parks or bank robbery scenarios or some such super hero scenario.

Seriously battles are huge in that game o_o

Unless you dont like the whole superhero thing..kind of implied forced grouping to if you want to progress well

morbiddog · June 2007

ok tbh here i think that before a dev team even thinks about starting on the mmo aspect of an mmorpg game that they need to plan out a really good rpg with really good in depth quests because lets face it what makes an rpg other that the quests and another hard fact any game out right now claiming to be and mmorpg needs to cut the rpg part out of there name and replace it with gg (grinding game) because to date i have not found an mmorpg with a decent story line save for lotro and even that has the grinding aspect and i may get flamed for this but in my opinion it was WoW that popularized the whole kill 20 wolfs and pick 30 "magic" mushrooms because before wow many games did have the whole grind quest aspect to it but none of them got the publicity of WoW nor the subscription base

Huntn · June 2007

Originally posted by morbiddog
ok tbh here i think that before a dev team even thinks about starting on the mmo aspect of an mmorpg game that they need to plan out a really good rpg with really good in depth quests because lets face it what makes an rpg other that the quests and another hard fact any game out right now claiming to be and mmorpg needs to cut the rpg part out of there name and replace it with gg (grinding game) because to date i have not found an mmorpg with a decent story line save for lotro and even that has the grinding aspect and i may get flamed for this but in my opinion it was WoW that popularized the whole kill 20 wolfs and pick 30 "magic" mushrooms because before wow many games did have the whole grind quest aspect to it but none of them got the publicity of WoW nor the subscription base

Gather and collect quests I believe were popularized by the original Everquest. So WoW is just copying but WoW is the most popular so I guess you can blame Blizzard.

But the problem with questing in a static MMO is that you have multiple characters/groups doing the same quest at the same time so it is difficult to get the same level of depth as you would in a solo RPG. You all could be running down to the same cave to kill the same mob and of course the mob is back 5 min later. This brings you to a discussion about a static vs dynamic world. I'm not a programmer, but I can see it is a most difficult prospect to create a dynamic world where it actually changes and different people might see different quests depending on the circumstances. That seems about 10x complicated as compared to a static world MMO. But whoever pulls it off first might make a fortune.

This Twitch Guru article suggests that the solution is to simply get rid of leveling. I can't say that one item would fix MMOs. The static MMO world, being forced to constantly move to new zones is what mostly bugs me now.

XTinTioN · June 2007

Ok ...you want a Action MMO with lots of quests?!??!?

CABAL ONLINE!!!!!!!!!

I leveled untill lvl 80 without grinding -.-

Each time you level up you get like 10 quests!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (not in the beggining)

Its true...i never grinded in Cabal Online......you level up with the quests...cuz they give you lots of XP and money.....soo try it

I think the game as a total number of 5000 quests so lol xD

Note: In the beggning you wont have many quests cuz you level up fast so you just need like 2 quests to level up.....

Note2: Cabal is in Closed Beta now cuz they are changing to free2play....in a week it might be open.

Good luck

Cheers

lanemyer · June 2007

Get the game progress Quest. It's the first MMO where you don't have to do anything except load up and exit. No more wasting time grinding.

GalactaLlama · June 2007

There's a game that I tested in closed beta. It's an action MMORPG and it has a lot of quests that you can do as you level (Not just at beginning levels either) The game is called Lunia and it's going open beta very soon.

http://global.lunia.com <-------That's the main site. It works best in Internet Explorer. There are a couple fansites, but I haven't decided which is the best yet. One of them is www.luniafan.com

CleffyII · June 2007

Yes, yes quests are hard to produce.

You have to really understand what it takes to put together one quest. You have to setup a couple triggers and determine when Quest Objectives have been met through hard coding in a proprietary scripting language that is usually buggy. Ontop of this you have to write up the story, and figure out how to make the player flow in a particular direction while still allowing them to take alternative routes and mapping those out. To make 1 good quest usually takes 1 person 1 whole day, then another few days of testing and checking to assuring it meets a certain Quality.

It takes a whole team to develop the quests for an mmorpg that usually is a long grind of planning, developing story arcs, and mapping key markers.

If you want a real-life example of this. Look at Oblivion Mods. Most of the Mod Quests are piss poor, and aren't very involved or good. In reality, the tools the amateurs used to develop the mod are similiar to what the developers have to use.

Edit- Also you have to remember, most of the positions taken in a company are programmers and artists; since the game just won't be there unless there are alot of these. Things like Quests are kinda dressing to add onto the game after the basics are done which is extremely time consuming.

Howdy, Stranger!

Are Quests so hard to produce?(Is there an action MMORPG with quests?)

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Quick Links

Are Quests so hard to produce?(Is there an action MMORPG with quests?)

Comments