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Kill 10, Harvest 5, Loot 15, Questing in MMORPGs...
Sharlochar
Member Posts: 52
People who play the last generation of MMORPGs should find the subject familiar and maybe have done it many many times.
However, what puzzles me is, why do so many people, even in reviews of magazines describe this is "standard-questing" in MMORPGs? I agree that it is standard nowadays and my EQ-memory is dull, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but did the good old Everquest 1 ever ask you to go out and kill a specific number of mobs, describing their exact location as precise as you would have a GPS with you? EQ made you farm mobs for hours and hours yes, but else it had the more involved questing.
I remember myself typing in trigger sentences for even advancing the quest to it's next stage. I don't want to go the nostalgic road here, as times are times and things come to an end eventually, so nowadays games need an easier approach, that is just how the market works, but I wonder how other people feel about this topic. Wasn't there a much bigger feeling of accomplishment when you finished another milestone of your particle weapon, aka "epic" quest then in any of those checklist like quests of the new-gen-games?
In EQ-quests you always had some "unknown factors", like:
-where do these mobs spawn?
-how can I travel there, and if, so I have a chance of surviving this journey.
-can I solo this mob, or do I need company?
The feeling of not knowing was a big fun factor in questing, which is totally missing nowadays.
With today's con systems, you know by one glance if the mob is soloable for your character class and level. They are so precise you can say in most cases if it is worth engaging with the firepower you have or not. Furthermore, you actually never ever have to search for locations again, the quest description will point out exactly where to go.
I have a lot of fun playing the new generation of games no doubt, but still I never had this feeling of immersiveness again like I had in my EQ years. Many people just say "Hey, this is the magic of the first moment", but I personally think there is more to it, because the character of games has changed and I think the changes in questing are a big reason that the games don't deliver the kind of immersion that the first gen MMORPGs did.
Comments
Ya. its a bit lame when they say go north just past the old barn and the creatures are found underneath the large tree. Slapping levels on quests is bad too I think. And allowing players to know how hard a monster is by clicking on it. I liked how UO did it, you had nfi. anyway..
WAR is trying very hard to be innovative with their questing though. Since I'm still not in beta (
) i can only speculate, but even the way kill quests are being done is awesome. ex: you kill 5 trolls getting to a quest npc, he says he hates trolls.. and he sees you've killed 5, Heres a reward. Public quests are going to involve a lot of cool things too. As far as the unknown factor.. i wouldnt expect to see that for a couple reasons. 1) the average gamer is not hardcore. 2) data circulates so fast these days that the info is public after its found. Still, theres a few quests in games that are somewhat hidden or secret. Even WoW has a few (mostly with keying quests). Vanguard had a lot of unknown factors in their quests. We'll see what the future brings us 
I am ok with not knowing the exact location of those mobs, but I do want to know if I will be able to fight them. In WoW and Vanguard there is a narrow slot in levels where I have a chance to kill a mob and still get experience from the kill or the quest. I am not so fond of dying that I want to take chances. (Not hardcore if you will.) I also hate filling my quest log with quests that are not right for my level (one of my reasons to quit Vanguard).
To avoid too much information being published on the web, I think spawning points and quests should involve a random factor. Let each server have an id number, that is used as a seed, to make each server differ somewhat from the next. If each char also has an id number that is used in the same way, a quest could be different from one char to the next.
I would also want no-fight quests that make you have to figure out something. These quests would involve finding information in books or from NPCs, figure out who is lying or where the treasure is hidden, or open a lock by solving a logical puzzle or a riddle. I do have a brain and I want to use it when playing.
During developement all games are sandboxes. At release they all become theme parks.
The limited quest logs really make no sense to me, at least from a roleplaying factor.
I see your point that you dont want to overload your questlog with quests you can't solve, and then having no room for the new ones you could do. In my eyes it is a book my character takes notes in, if you look closely at it. So why am I limited in how much i write into it, except from running out of ink or coal for that matter?
I am not very familiar with databases, but might it be that it is a technical reason that quest logs are limited? If not I can't really understand why developers give quest logs a limitation.
i'm sorry, but those are passive factors, not exclusive to EQ2. "Where do they spawn?" i reckon you'll also get a vague explanation as to where you should be looking for them. You have the same thing in Lotro then. It sais, go meet Tom Bombadil in the south west part of the old forest, and trust me, that's way not accurate, we had to run through the entire forest to finally find him somewhere north west instead.
"How do i travel there, can i survive this" ... i don't know, that sounds rather dramatic than realistic. That's an epic way of saying, is it infested with high powered elite monsters or not?
"can i solo" most of the time, it just is plain obvious, people can't help it. it's either exclaimed clearly by use of gradation in types of enemies such as normal, elite, archnemesis (lotro examples). on the other hand, it's just the natural perception, if you read your quest log and it sais, "you should better find a strong companion to help you defeating this monster" than it's more than obvious.
I don't think that games caused the feeling to disappaer, but people itself just lost that feeling eventually because we are all getting used to this system. We all know MMO's have normal solo'able monsters, strong party monsters and raid monsters. it has become a dogmatic perception to already know what you're up against by just reading the log.
Quests-a-plenty (aka questmarts) removed the feeling of exploration. Especially kill quests or loot quests... It's a hidden form of grinding on a camp, except that you are directed to that specific camp instead of having the luxury of choosing yours.
It also adds the necessity to run back to that damn quest giver every 5-10 mins for your meaningless reward and I find that very annoying. I feel sorry for the guy that works at fed ex and has an mmorpg account. The poor guy works double shifts...
The worst part about those 9 min quests is that they are a big detriment to xp grouping. Once the quest is done, everyone disbands and few friends are made.
/ventingon Spoon fead content for the loss... I bet they are about to bring legitimate macro tools to facilitate your gameplay even more... oh ... wait they already did it... put a monkey in front of your pc and go eat nachoos while you hit max lvl... then you can brag about how kewl you are in the raid channel using that oh-so-annoying leet talk. /ventingoff
To answer the question... I guess it's "standard-questing" because WoW made it standard. No one said standards are fun... just easier to make... I still do not want to go back to EQ 1's questing formula. It sucked and had tons of bugs. I sure am intrigued by WAR's approch on questing. Time will tell and I think it will be the deciding factor for the next succesfull mmo gen. I do not think we will be free from the spoon fead contents anytime soon though. It brings the masses and that means money.
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i'm sorry, but those are passive factors, not exclusive to EQ2. "Where do they spawn?" i reckon you'll also get a vague explanation as to where you should be looking for them. You have the same thing in Lotro then. It sais, go meet Tom Bombadil in the south west part of the old forest, and trust me, that's way not accurate, we had to run through the entire forest to finally find him somewhere north west instead.
"How do i travel there, can i survive this" ... i don't know, that sounds rather dramatic than realistic. That's an epic way of saying, is it infested with high powered elite monsters or not?
"can i solo" most of the time, it just is plain obvious, people can't help it. it's either exclaimed clearly by use of gradation in types of enemies such as normal, elite, archnemesis (lotro examples). on the other hand, it's just the natural perception, if you read your quest log and it sais, "you should better find a strong companion to help you defeating this monster" than it's more than obvious.
I don't think that games caused the feeling to disappaer, but people itself just lost that feeling eventually because we are all getting used to this system. We all know MMO's have normal solo'able monsters, strong party monsters and raid monsters. it has become a dogmatic perception to already know what you're up against by just reading the log.
You misunderstood me, because I was not referring to EQ2 which is a lot more softened down. I was referring to EQ1 where you had next to know information about the quest. I have to strongly disagree on Lotro as I started this 2 weeks ago and I enjoy it, but I never ever needed more than 5 minutes to pinpoint the location where I needed to go for the quest. All who need more time to find something in this game just don't care or didn't read the quest text carefully. I am not saying that the whole system should go back to the roots, I just think that a little less "catering" could result in a little more fun.
As for your point about travelling. I meant it like I said. In EQ1 you could very well die just while finding something as there have been mobs randomly spread out who basically could kill your max lvl character in one or two swings if you got aggro and were not able to outrun them. This is why you sometimes waited around to get a run speed buff before even attempting a journey, because you knew for sure that you will die without increased run speed. This is very unlikely or close to impossible in a game like Lotro, because you can basically train away and escape. The mobs dont follow you for a very long time. In EQ you actually needed a zone line most of the times to get away safely. So what I have been trying to say was not dramatic, but realistic, because travelling was a major factor and linked to dangers. Kithicor Forest by night anyone?
For your point the con system: This was not always like this. You did actually not know the capability of a monster, until you tried it out yourself. You just had a con system that gave you a vague idea of what the monster was like. It could con "red" to you and you could still be able to solo it with some classes, while some green cons were not soloable to you until hell freezes over, due to a high damage nuke they had or other features. This is what I meant with the factor of uncertainty. You actually had to try stuff, or had to ask around among others for information to get an idea of what you would face. You could well die a few times until you had figured out how to do things, much more in raids until the strategy was ironed out.
Sharlochar, sounds like you want a sandbox style game; create your own quests and stuff. Granted... there arent usually quests at all in those, and your choices of games like that are reaaaally slim right now
come on darkfall.. dont be vaporware 
maybe not and i'm way off. Another thing about EQ1 is that it was one of the first big MMOs (following UO imo) and i think that quest description and mob info wasnt nearly as thought through as today.
I don't consider today's games bad nor do I want to invent the wheel new or turn back the time, I just say it might get a little too much in catering everything to the player. In other words: You see a monster in the wilderness, so you target it and see right away, "jeez, i better come back in 5 levels"
This right there is not well thought through, this is outright boring.
Yep you have some points right there. Actually the fact that they weren't "thought through" as you call it was the big plus, because you had to think more about how to solve things, which resulted in a sense of adventure.I don't consider today's games bad nor do I want to invent the wheel new or turn back the time, I just say it might get a little too much in catering everything to the player. In other words: You see a monster in the wilderness, so you target it and see right away, "jeez, i better come back in 5 levels"
This right there is not well thought through, this is outright boring.
There are 2 mmo's I can think of that allow you to create content (not sure if there are more) Ryzom has a complete quest editor and SWG has a storyteller system now although I know very little about how its actually working out for them.
The whole problem with MMO's and this "quest issue" is this: its difficult, if not impossible to connect a quality, engaging storyline to a math table (xp and levels) That is the basic obstacle to higher quality content. As long as there is some sort of arbatrary number attached to a story, its not gonna work out. The two are opposing. Storylines equating to imagination and creativity and XP equating to math, linear progress and sequence.
In the past (EQ era) the quest worked out fine BUT thats because leveling for the mostpart was the the players problem. What I mean by that is, the quest itself was added in. If you were not powerful enough (high enough level) to complete a step, that was your issue to solve. Hence the growing complaints about grind in the old games. There was a "void" so to speak in the design of the game. There was no bridge between the story line and the ability to actually (mathmatically) do it. Devs found an easy way out and that was to attach the quest to the numbers. Intergrating them into the leveling but to do that they needed to sacrifice any depth they had and simplify the storylines to irrrelevent chores. (kill 10 rats or beliver a pie)
The only way out of the mmo "math trap" is to ditch the numbers altogether as they are nothing more then a barrier to quest or story driven play and that is in essence what RPG's are. (levels are simply ONE single method of many to scale a characters skill or abilities, they are NOT a defining element of RPG's)
If you really want that style of gameplay you are going to need to look outside of MMO's. The genre has devolved into a battle of stats and endgame raiding rather then creating "living" worlds which is what they originally set out to do.
As to WARs Questing Locations:
In a recent Interview (I believe it was Jeff) Mythic explained what they've come up with:
You receive a Quest (for example: Collect 20 Teeth from Wild Orcs), then a red-transparent Circle will appear on your Zone map, showing the Area where wild orcs can be found.
In the beginning, these circles will be rather small, and thus accurate, but as you progress, the circles will get bigger and bigger, thus less accurate, and in the end you might have quests where the entire northern half of the zone is marked red, where those wild orcs could be. (Those Circles will be optional, you can choose to turn them off, but I believe noone will do that at all...) They basically try to send you in the general direction of the mobs, so you don't stumble around blindly for hours, searching for the mobs, but also that you don't "Auto-Follow the GPS Dot" to the Mobs location.
What they're trying to achieve is that you won't need Quest Guides on the Internet, but that the Players should still think a bit while playing.
Another thing they're adding are so-called "random Encounters", or Christmas Quests, or whatever. They basically are "Small Bits of "Uh, cool!"" as Paul said it. Example: You wander around a Forest, far away from the normal, safe way or the quickest route. Deep in that Forest lies a Dead Dark Elf with a Sword pierced right through him. You go to him, notice that he's dead...and since he won't need the sword anymore, you take it, and now you got yourself a new sword! Those Things are to make Players explore again, as these Quests are placed randomly. No guides can help you with them, you might be lucky to find them, or not.
So I think the times of "Kill 20 Bears" "Collect 40 Bear Paws" "Collect 100 Flowers"-Quests are over, at least at future high-class MMOs. Asia Grinders/F2P MMOs will continue to have them for years I guess.
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Paragus1/062007/20_Rant-Quests
I know exactly how you feel man. As the genre goes forward, quests seem to be going backwards.
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This is largely a WoW concept, and it was much lauded by reviewers as a "meaningful" way to grind XP.
Personally, I find the entire quest hub concept an extremely poor design.
The problem i see with quests in games like WoW, Vanguard, etc.. Is that they are thrown into your face that this is the fastest and best way to level. You feel obligated to do them because there is the big yellow exclamation point above someones head and you just want to get rid of that big yellow exclamation point (at least thats how i felt about quests).
If my memory serves me right. Quests back in the original Everquest weren't mainly for exp or leveling. Its how you got all your cool items.
Personally, I feel that the questing system of today is a HUGE step in the right direction. Any fool can make or play a game where only monsters give exp and given the slow ass rate of exp in most MMOs. The kill 10 type of quests are the fastest exp of those, with the bonus quest exp alleviating a huge part of the grinding burden.
I hate games where the vast majority of exp does not come from quests, because any fool can grind, but sometimes quests take a little bit of knowledge. Perhaps the problem is that quests need to scale. I would rather do 1-2 epic quests that take me up a whole level, than do 20 of those kill 10 missions.
As for the con system, EQ1 and DAOC had the same system we see today. Perhaps it is time for an update, but a more realistic update to this system would not work unless you make a huge overhaul to combat. Not know the level of creature can be fun at times, but under the current "target and click" rules, a one-shot kill against you from multiple unexpected foes is not my idea of fun.
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I don't actually see where EQ and DaoC have the same con system as new gen games like WoW and Lotro. EQ just gave you a vague idea of how the mob ranges compared to your level. You could only know the actual level if you conned the same mob while you levelled up as the colours always represented a lvl range. On top even a green con could be tougher to beat than a red con. In fact you had many undercons, while you dont meet them as frequent in the latest games. So no, the con systems are not the same at all.
I have to agree completely, the quest systems really do kill that 'Sense of adventure'. The quest log spoon feeds you all the information you need to complete the quest; followed by grinding until you have the 100 stacks of meaningless items that have a drop rate of 0.1/1000.
And then comes the XP... utterly crap.
Here's an idea for you, a game that has no xp-till-next-level; no xp bar and no xp for killing a creature. Instead, you get 10 or 20 epic quests that throws you into a world of adventure... sweaty palms, jumping out of your chair-type quests. Once the adventure, not quests - has been completed... walla - level up!
Hopefully one day.
I think most quest systems are utter and complete garbage.
I do like the CoX system. Go to building X and killing everything in sight. Pretty much the same thing every single time. And the reason I like it, is because the combat is fun. As it should be.
I almost find it hard to believe that games have quests like, "go to point a - get bucket of water. Bring water to point b with no challenge along the way". Would a 3 years old even find that entertaining? WoW and LOTRO and both guilty of this.
And can think of 10,000 good ways to do a good quest system. These game companies aren't even trying.
For anyone that is making a MMO I'll give a you hint. You have many people on the same server at the same time. You are dealing with computer software and therefore things can be dynamic. Put those two things together. And you can fill in the rest.
Need another hint? Don't tell people what to do, give them choices. Let people mess stuff up, let people fix stuff.
YEAH. THAT'S LIKE, SO INNOVATIVE.
[/sarcasm]
O'rly.
I like the quests in EQ but there were collect ones; collect gnoll fangs, collect pelts, collect ears, collect bronze daggers. Although some of those were for faction increases and didn't have a fixed amount.
Are you saying I have less imagination than a 3 year old? Just because I think walking - no challenge quests are lame? Oouch.
Here’s a good quest system for you. Let's take a paper RPG example. The DM says ok, you guys are sitting in the Rusted Nail tavern on clarke st. What do you do?
Now, that’s a quest system!. What do you? Well you walk around and talk to people, find stuff out.
Then with that information you’ll have several choices of things to do. But you won't have time to do all of them, you are going to have to pick. Save the baby, rob the bank, or have a chat with a scientist. Or don't do any of the above and walk down the street looking for something else. Or don't even walk down the street. Just sit there. Sit there long enough and action will come to you.
Then you say, that's too much reading, or listening what about the guy that just wants to fight? Well I have that covered to. See my posts in the Dev’s corner.
And furthermore, lets say you create a new character 2 weeks from then. You go into that same bar. And none of the same characters are there. Yup things changed. You will have a complete different game experience every single time.
When EQ came out there weren't people drawing maps of ever dungeon/location and where every item or quest NPC was. It was easy to get lost in the world. Everything is mapped out rather quickly these days when new games come out. People are just better prepared. Yes the interface for questing and maps was practically non existant, but that wouldn't stop people these days from mapping everything out fairly quick.
The quests in EQ were generally pretty pointless. You would get a horrible reward more often then not and very little to no experience.
The mob con system in EQ was based around group conning. It wasn't based around weather you could solo the mob or not. That makes sense considering it was havily based on 2nd Edition D&D.