"introduced" is the correct term. Maybe "imposed" would have been even better. Like statistics, metrics can be twisted to give any result you want.
And what companies want is to "streamline" (ie chop) the dev process down to the point where it doesn't cost anything to produce. Deep immersive linked story arcs are antithetical to that streamlinig .
99% of MMOs suck in this area, not because that's what players want, but because that's what companies tell us we want.
Metrics are a Marketing tool. Metrics don't follow, they lead.
As with every other industry, from cosmetics to corn chips, companies don't use metrics to =discover= what customers want and then try to deliver it, they use metrics to =tell= customers what they're supposed to want, to shape opinion, to create consensus, in order to justify their continued cranking out of drek.
Vapid prose describing insipid quests aren't the result of customer demand, they're the result of greed on the part of the company.
Well it looks like it's been boiled down to the "babyfood" crowd and the Min/Max Level grinders. I guess those of us in the middle don't count. I suppose that's why it's beginning to seem to me like all MMO's are the same. That's a pity because I saw a lot of potential in the format. Well I guess we'll see what GW2 is like and if that bombs, then farewell for me.
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." Neitzsche
This column killed any and all desire I had to do MMOs. I think, instead, I'll stick to single or classic multiplayer (as in, 2 to a few dozen players) games - that way lies less frustration and self-hatred.
Very nicely written, and now I think I'll never look at killing rats the same way.
Fortunately, there are still some MMORPG which are plot-driven and have more imaginative quests, with actual backstory. Well, at the moment I can only think of two, but that still counts as "some", right?
First, there is Guild Wars - yes, it's arguable if it should be called a MMORPG, but it defenitely is an online RPG that relies heavily on story. The quests there are anything but the generic "kill X Y" thing, and usually have quite an amount of text with them, often rather funny too. I admit, more often than not I did skip past the text and just checked my quest list to see what to do. But sometimes I read it, and it almost always made for an interesting read. I would really miss it if it wasn't there.
Next, for something newer (alright, the game itself is not really new, but it was only recently introduced in the west), Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. Another game that is not your usual MMORPG - but this time I think no one would argue that it is a MMORPG. Also plot-driven, and even though it does contain some of these generic quests, many are different, and again, with a story to them.
Both of these are games I really like, and the story and quests are more than a small part of the reason why. I definitely hope there still will be more MMORPG which don't just follow suit with the rat-slaughters. Even if I also often skip large amounts of text in quest descriptions, I like them being there so I can read them when I feel like it.
I don't really have anything insightful that hasn't been said already. The rats were just too cute to not comment on though hehe.
Those rats are us, the player base.
The developer drops a piece of cheese somewhere within the maze of the game, then watches as we madly scramble around trying to quickly get to the piece of cheese.
Then we start complaining because, as we get close to the piece of cheese, they haven't put in any more walls to the maze.
We feel cheated because the piece of cheese is left out in the open, with no more "content" around it.
But we still feel "uber leet" because we got there fast.
Then we move on to the next game to do it all over again......
Why write a wall of text? Why write anything even?
Its a game, an experiance, why should everyone read it as a book? If I would want to read I would buy a great book to read not start up a game...
Show the quest in a different context. Videos, voice, a picture or something different and not a wall of text
Your right, took Guildwar the main quest is between each town that so funny and its keep the player in game. the video play uuntil a percent of people press "esc".
Well the only problem is the re-playability... Since after you did the game once you always press "ESC" for the other toons, so if a new gamer game into de the game he might miss some story only because the majority want to skip. They should keep this way of doing thing for the main story and pay developper for the developpement of new way of distributing the quest.
Have you played Dungeons & Dragons Online to date? If not, you're missing out a huge portion of knowledge of how "different" quest approach, or even whole MMO concept approach may be. You'll hardly find any "kill 10 rats-like" or "deliver x to npc x-like" quests there.
Of course, if you'll try, you may find some similarities to that in a few quests at the beginning. Especially Harbor quests. But they're hand-crafted too, with their own areas all designed just for those quests - not just some "area" in the open to fill in with 3-7 other quests.
So once again Sanya - I love your articles. They're not only good - they're crucial and important, I bet you're changing whole MMO community via giving us real knowledge. Most people now live in some unrealistic dream about MMOs and their developers. How they work, what is possible, what should we expect and what not. Nearly whole MMO community is NOT educated in those areas, and writing these columns you help us all - players, developers, everyone. Some realism, some logic would help us all to better understand each other. Help players understand developers and developers bettter understand players, who (the players) will know better what they want if they'll know what is like the reality they "play" in.
Just one thing for which I'd ask - check out DDO. I really wonder what would you think about it, but still I know you would need to spend in this game enough time to reach at least 6th level. Anyway, that would be appreciated. I still think DDO is a gem in some ways, especially how different it is from what you write about. There are some similarities, but those details in DDO seem to really make it stand out from the "herd" of other MMO games. In my own, humble opinion - you'd probably know better.
The problem is that this "questing" concept was invented for single player RPGs and is mostly irrelevant in an MMORPG. Player interaction is the only thing that really matters in an MMO, and players work to get the kind of interaction they want, whether it is power, prestige, companionship, respect, competition, fear, etc. The lore and backstory of the game is meaningless in this context, and that includes quests, it only gets in the way of the "real" game.
Except for "role players", who are the most unimaginative of all gamers, most gamers want the "story" of the game to be basically what they make of it. It is like life, the "story" is what happens to you, you figure it out along the way and conceptualize it yourself as your mind gradually develops a contextural "story" framework around the experiences that you have had and events you have witnessed. If I fight an epic battle against a dragon in-game, that has a particular, personal, special meaning within the context of my story, I don't need some so-called writer trying to tell me what it means [unless I'm an imagination challenged "role player"], he only gets in the way and takes me out of the immersion in the game story that I am experiencing, i.e. MY game story.
Part of the solution to making the world content matter more would be to make character progression less signifigant. The whole concept of "leveling up" was not intended for MMOs, and does not make sense in them. Your character's skills and abilities should be a part of you, something in your brain, not an arbitrary game mechanic that happens from pushing a butten 10 million times.
Game developers should be working to put quest creation into the hands of the players, rather than trying to think of clever ways to describe "collect 10 rat tails quests". The average gamer is not as dim witted as the average mmo "writer" apparently is, and recognizes these quests for what they are: empty, boring, uniform, and completely arbitrary. Nobody likes to think their life is exactly the same as everyone else's, everyone likes to imagine that they are somehow different [and in real life we all are], but backwards ass game developers of mmos do everything they possibly can to make players feel like they are all the same. Players, who want to enjoy the game as a kind of "second life", an escape from their life into another more fun life, these players naturally rebel against such attempts by the game developer of trying to make all the players feel the same, unifrom, grey, and worthless, for example by giving them quests such as "collect 10 wolf tails" which just underlines for the player that they are exactly the same as everyone else in the game, having the exact same experience, jumping through the exact same hoops. This is everything the player doesn't want, and so the players ignore it as much as possible and just get it over with to the extent necessary.
Anyways..... The bottom line is that your article [or at least the developers you spoke to] tries to paint the players as if they are too dim to pay attention to a good story line, but this is really a misconception of what is happening in an mmo.
I'm an old timer. When we first played D&D it was all about the levels. Hell, we even eschewed scenarios in favor of just rolling up random encounters, killing them, and makng lists of the rolls we'd make on the loot tables at the end of the day. This was Diablo before there was Diablo. Then, slowly, we got a little more into the tactics and started getting into the classic Gygax modules. Story mattered a little more here and some of us got, if superficially and more for comic relief than drama, into our characters.
Two companies really changed how we looked at tabletop roleplaying which was, in early going, essentially the same grind for levels and lewt most MMOs are today.
One was Judges Guild. Instead of laying out pat scenarios they built entire world maps chalk full of interesting little places and situations. The players were dropped into the world, broke and inexperienced, but could really set out and discover new things. The DM would find himself, instead of reading text from a block quote somewhere, improvising details from the thousands of broad but leading descriptions in the JG worldbooks. Pretty soon something would have sparked the player's imaginations and they'd be taking the initiative, finding a place worth defending or a foe worth pursuing or some other personal goals. The DM's would adapt and work in elements from the worldbooks and we ended up seeing some great improvised narratives rising from that interaction. The world felt 'real' because it was so vast and because you could effect it. Later JG products would be nothing but lists of randomized tables for all kinds of things. These worked because they could give a DM a list of attributes to synthesize into some unique and more elaborate places or encounters that could be fitted into the moment.
With Judges Guild we tended to forget, a little at least, about magic items and levels and became more curious about what was going on right now and how NPCs or our personal goals fit into it.
Taking that "improvised world" a step further was a company called Game Designers Workshop who produced Traveller. Here were deep background systems for generating characters, randomized tables for patrons, types of quests, creature creation, jobs and the generation of entire sectors of space. You want a real adventure with a fleshed out character who feels like he had a past? There was no alternative at the time. Nobody knew, even a GM if he was a seat-of-his-pants improviser, what would happen next. What anchored the game to a kind of reality was the fundamental economics of running a starship and how trade routes functioned. However, this was twenty five years before Firefly mind you, the crew would almost always be scraping by rather than accumulating wealth and took more 'interesting' missions on the side in hopes of picking up some temporary economic advantage.
After that you had the next generation of "fluff" (as powergamers called them) games like Vampire: The Masquerade that brought setting, story and interpersonal drama to a whole new level. There are many many more that all helped RPers move beyond the "kill ten rats" and "end game" mentalities (powergamer, min-max, rule lawyer, monty haul, twink) that were endemic in early tabletop roleplaying too.
But these things will take time. People have to get bored of what they're doing and want something more. They won't know what they want. They may argue violently against the very thing they'll ultimately end up embracing simply because they're wary of something new. You can't force it.
Those of us who want more depth in settings, more believeable worlds and gameplay, and all the rest will see this come to pass. We just have to wait for the world to catch up. It has before.
I find it interesting that the 2 games mentioned as having superior storylines; DDO and LoTRO, are both Turbine games. ( Did someone mention Asheron's Call also? Also Turbine). So props to the folks at Turbine, they seem to be " getting it " more than any other MMO company at the moment.
Interesting to note is, that most of us, errr, those people *cough* who don't care/hate the standard lowbie quests, complain if it is made too obvious (or cheap), eg. instead of ten different "kill 12 xyz", only one "kill 120 xyz" .....
Killing 120 is actually not that bad if you are in a group. Some PQs in Warhammer are like that and it can go pretty fast and gives good xp. If you do it in lineage 2, especially alone, well, then you are scr..ed. Now, if there isn't a group available and trhat quest is your only alternative.... speak of grind.
The most bothersome thing is, if you do such a quest at point A, you go, say, to the other end of the village of A, and are requested to do a similar quest. "What??? I already killed 10 Wolves! Why again? Can't you give me credit anyway?" "Oh, you want the pelts, sure, I got some here. What? Hello? I finished the quest! I got your 10 pelts!" And so you have to kill again.
Drop rates are another question. "You want their paws? Sure, one bear, 4 paws".....50 kills later, 5 paws.....
Although some modern MMOs try to adress this, it is still far from "perfect". Funny thing is, if one points this out during a beta, then it doesn't feel as if it is being listened to. LOTRO was an extreme example for me in that aspect, which promised not to have have the average quests, and still ended up with tons of these shitty quests (even if there might be "tons of different, cooler quests").
Something else I would like to mention, even if it deviates a bit from the article, but there is a connection, imho:
(XP) "Grind" - obvious(?) part of leveling, especially for fast leveling, and even more so for repetitive quests. In contexts of MMOs widely known.
But to a certain extend, this existed in single player old school rpgs as well:
Ultima series, they were not linear (even if some of the dungeons were only doable from a certain skill level). If you were not able to do roam in a certain area which you needed for progression, (and didn't know where else to go, no internet for cheating), then you killed mobs for your skills.
Or Dungeon Master I remember, no quests, other than to get through the dungeon - but man there were some great puzzles. Anyway, too weak with magic? Or weapons? Stand by a wall and click on attack constantly.
And finally a more modern version (still talking single player rpg): do side-quests (Baldur's Gate or similar), to get XP to get stronger to do the main questline. [This would by the way be based on D&D rules at least, back to DDO with great quests; but there we are back to repetitive quest-grind].
So single player old school rpgs aren't only the "Roses" that everyone would like to see them to be. It was the overall story where you are the hero and there is a definit ending. And MMOs will never have that, no matter how close they try to get or come to that (as say LOTRO with the epic story line).
Quest grind, kill this kill that, weapons grind, spells grind.... Whether its level base or not you will always have grind, just different forms.
And it seems like the problem is mmo is being chun out in mass productions lines.... Now we are seeing more and more mmo being produce, and at a faster and faster rate, War only takes 4 years?
With this kind of mass produce for goods, the quality will definately goes down the drain sooner or later, and that's what we are getting now.
All companies want a piece of pie and want it fast, so we end up with unimaginative kill rats quests, early release of games, and copy paste of gameplay...
Till a company really takes their time to do it and do it right, we will be in with this kind of crap for a very long time...
To say that "verb number noun" quests format is the problem is misleading. In a sense your main grief is with the number part.
All quests are going to have verbs and nouns (and usually a preposition or two). Stop the orcs (from killing travelers in the forest). Forge this blade. Take the One (uh oh! a number!) Ring (and destroy it in a volcano).
Almost all complaints eventually lead to one fact: players have no effect on the game.
For instance, a player gets a "quest" like this...
"Those rats are destroying my field! Kill ten rats and return to with 10 rat scalps, and yes, I know not every rat has a scalp, you'll have to kill at least 30 to get your ten scalps."
All 20 players in the newbie area hunt and kill-steal for the rat bounty. When they are done they get their reward and perhaps a thank you ("Thanks! Now I can plant those crops!") before they move on to the next quest giver, wherever that may be...
...and the field is still flooded with rats with 20 new newbies hunting and kill-stealing for the rat bounty.
Oh, and... Want to create a new character and try out a new class? Better be ready for that rat quest again!
SOLUTION
The solution i think, comes from the REAL TIME STRATEGY genre.
Take this scenario, for instance...
You're a human. The orcs army is coming. If you don't go out and kick some orc butt, the city will be overrun and there won't be any merchants in this area for you to sell your phat loot to- unless your an orc, which you're not.
Now - you'd better complete this fed-ex quest to get this bundle of wood to the bowyer and this ore to the blacksmith because they will probably reward you with a weapon and you can get out there and kick some orc butt!
If they players don't act, the orcs will overun the area. If the orcs overrun the area, the playerbase is faced with the task of re-taking the area.
Either way, the players have things to do that will affect their gameplay...
_____________________________ "Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
This article should be stickied so whenever we see another complaint of how boring a game is and if they say the quests suck, just link this piece.
Anyways, has anyone thought of the reason why a majority of the mentality is to powerlevel? Every MMO veteran knows the answer. They want the unique, rare loot. They want it because few have it. It looks kewl. It performs great, maybe has unique animations and effects.
Why don't game developers think outside the box and provide this incentive on day one. I applaud city of heroes/ villians in starting the ball rolling with their invention system. Only in the sense that enhancements (loot in the game) can scale in level with their players. In other words, you don't outgrow your loot.
Why can't games provide loot that can be enhanced from day one to be as effective and unique throughout the characters game life? Yes, monsters can still drop items and treasure can be found, but the player is given the option to toss aside his weapon, or like in some games disenchant it for spare parts which could enhance your original gear. The trick is to make the choice mysterious so cheat sites like Allakazam won't turn the gear system into a lop sided economy (Oh that Shield of the Fallen can only be broken down into x components, which is useless for a wizard). A player that does not want to use the item must sell it or break it down with a chance of receiving a random rare component that is bound to the user or equip it.
Players can hire blackmsiths, jewelers, etc to enhance appearance of their gear too, so a player can enjy various looks of their gear.
In theory, a player doesnt have to throw away that practice dagger from the day he started to the day he ends playing. The dagger is enhanced and modified over time and perhaps become a purple dagger after all.
What does this have to do with quests? because we do quests as a means to an end. Level and level fast to obtain new skills and use them to consume the end game content, because we perceive the end game has the real prizes.
I find that the quests in most MMOs are boring and ill written. I can read a wall of text if it is intresting but if I already read a lot of junk I just click it by.
I hope Bioware change that and introduce interesting quests into MMOs. Remember Baldurs gate or Neverwinter nights? A lot of the quests were still boring and grindy but they were well written and many of them got a lot funnier if you read tehm.
But we need to get rid of all the crap quests. I rather do 1 long and fun quest that 20 short and boring, deliver this and kill that.
I want to be a hero (or villain) when I play, not a messenger or pest control.
Funny, the game that I played the longest and had the most fun in was UO and there were no quests, at least when I played it. Of course this was before EQ and Wow decided to cater to the "I want it now" generation. Your article describes to me what is wrong with all the new MMO's coming out lately, the story and the questline are basically after thoughts.
Well "ever"-quest at launch should have actually been called NeverQuest. How many quests were actually in game the first year? (yes there were some but not enough to even entertain the name).
As to UO... no there were not quests. There were "events".
Ultima Online had the interest team. Seers and Troubadors were pretty much the start of the volunteer side. Seers were meant to create long term content and interact with player towns... Toubs were people who played roles in the events. Elders were added to create short term or "instant" events... and then there were the Interest Game Masters who were the "go between" for the volunteers and the company. IGM's also did the "official" events.
The thing with UO was you could try to get to "end game" which was spending your 700 skill points. Yet even once you got there you could take part in content... anywhere.
The only thing this article really does is highlight the core flaw with the level base design for MMO's. Along with the fact that from the launch of EQ in 1999... right through the launch of WAR... Developers still aren't testing "end game" content.. tho they know exactly what will happen.
Altho I feel it was an attempt to slant the blame towards the players... rather than after 10 years... developers still aren't testing end game content.
*note* I know about the Interest team for UO because I was part of it. Pretty much I cut my ties with Ultima Online the day they shut the programs down. Which wasn't EA's fault... but that's a totally different story.
I usually liked reading the quest texts. WoW, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, PotBS no problem.
But some time ago I played the WAR trial, and that was the first time I just had the urge to race trough stuff. Maybe my mindset changed. But it was just so much text. At least it was (usually?) split up, but skipping that I felt I was missing out on things. At least their map region-marking per quest was quite a good feature. AoC really had the worst directions. Bad directions aren't a disaster.. unless they make you think you have to go trough this area where you can die in seconds by pulling too many mobs.
There's a very delicate line in the amount of 'text' and how it's being told. A good writer also really makes the difference.
There's this indy MMO, A Tale In The Desert, where you didn't really have quests (and no combat in the normal sense). Just society goals. And for some reason the developer decided that they needed sort-of levels and quests, because players expected progression like that in MMOs of 'today'. I happened not to have played it that much with those changes, but it always felt limiting.
Some of my all time favorite quests lines would definitely have to be the Heritage Quests from EQ2. Alot of people skipped certain ones that really didnt benefit them in favor of power leveling. Me personally I never skipped one once I was appropiate level range and had blasts doing them. I eventually incorporated them into guild events and had HQ Sundays. After doing them a couple of times I would have tons of in game email asking me when was the next one. People commonly would tell me that was the most fun they ever had in game because all they typically do was power level.
On behalf of the jaded MMO players you need to bring good meaningful quests back to games. Because if you don't then you will at least know one reason why your subscription bases loses half in only two months after release. Fellow gamers don't just settle demand better games. Vote with your wallet. I started doing this and have been much happier. Hell gives me an excuse to dust off my Xbox 360 quite a bit these days.
Speaking of Heritage Quests in EQ2 - yes, they are pretty interesting, but some of the older quests include like 3+ hours spawns of the (not even final) hero character/monster. SWG had a few of those quests as well. Respawn timer in the range of hours, so that the loot in the end wouldn't be something that everyone had. Okay. But if those are the more interesting quests, than long respawn timers are just as poor as the usual lowbie quests.
BTW, we are discussing lowbie quests, but those quests are just as common in the max-level area. Heck, just the fact to get rid of 1-2 hours of trash-mobs in a raid, isn't really a sign of design-ingenuity.
I find it interesting that the 2 games mentioned as having superior storylines; DDO and LoTRO, are both Turbine games. ( Did someone mention Asheron's Call also? Also Turbine). So props to the folks at Turbine, they seem to be " getting it " more than any other MMO company at the moment.
Yeah but Lotro is full of kill 10 X get 10 X Take X to X where X will give you a quest to kill 10 X - Some of the early quests involved running back and forth between hobbits over and over and over..
Funcom made a point of trying to remove a lot of 'rat' quests and making it much more entertaining with voice acting.. its just a terrible shame that after the 1st 20 levels the voice acting all but stopped.
Perhaps they should forget about story and have KILL 10 RATS! pop up in big red letters with some exciting music.. trying to make story out of that is just silly.
Storyline and quest type are not the same thing. If you just want to level quickly and dion't care WHY you are doing anything, then LoTRO will be boring and repetitive to you. If you enjoy the journey and the STORYLINE, then you might enjoy this game. That running back and forth between 2 hobbits was a love story that I actually enjoyed from a STORY p.o.v.
Comments
but then the industry introduced metrics...
... and intentionally misinterpreted the results.
"introduced" is the correct term. Maybe "imposed" would have been even better. Like statistics, metrics can be twisted to give any result you want.
And what companies want is to "streamline" (ie chop) the dev process down to the point where it doesn't cost anything to produce. Deep immersive linked story arcs are antithetical to that streamlinig .
99% of MMOs suck in this area, not because that's what players want, but because that's what companies tell us we want.
Metrics are a Marketing tool. Metrics don't follow, they lead.
As with every other industry, from cosmetics to corn chips, companies don't use metrics to =discover= what customers want and then try to deliver it, they use metrics to =tell= customers what they're supposed to want, to shape opinion, to create consensus, in order to justify their continued cranking out of drek.
Vapid prose describing insipid quests aren't the result of customer demand, they're the result of greed on the part of the company.
Well it looks like it's been boiled down to the "babyfood" crowd and the Min/Max Level grinders. I guess those of us in the middle don't count. I suppose that's why it's beginning to seem to me like all MMO's are the same. That's a pity because I saw a lot of potential in the format. Well I guess we'll see what GW2 is like and if that bombs, then farewell for me.
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." Neitzsche
Wait for Bioware's Old Republic MMO. It may restore Narrative back to it's rightful place.
"Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope."
Also, genres evolve. Much like TV and film, eventually a Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock will emerge and produce quality stuff.
Yea! Someone else remembers Scruffy.
Be seeing you.
This column killed any and all desire I had to do MMOs. I think, instead, I'll stick to single or classic multiplayer (as in, 2 to a few dozen players) games - that way lies less frustration and self-hatred.
Very nicely written, and now I think I'll never look at killing rats the same way.
Fortunately, there are still some MMORPG which are plot-driven and have more imaginative quests, with actual backstory. Well, at the moment I can only think of two, but that still counts as "some", right?
First, there is Guild Wars - yes, it's arguable if it should be called a MMORPG, but it defenitely is an online RPG that relies heavily on story. The quests there are anything but the generic "kill X Y" thing, and usually have quite an amount of text with them, often rather funny too. I admit, more often than not I did skip past the text and just checked my quest list to see what to do. But sometimes I read it, and it almost always made for an interesting read. I would really miss it if it wasn't there.
Next, for something newer (alright, the game itself is not really new, but it was only recently introduced in the west), Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. Another game that is not your usual MMORPG - but this time I think no one would argue that it is a MMORPG. Also plot-driven, and even though it does contain some of these generic quests, many are different, and again, with a story to them.
Both of these are games I really like, and the story and quests are more than a small part of the reason why. I definitely hope there still will be more MMORPG which don't just follow suit with the rat-slaughters. Even if I also often skip large amounts of text in quest descriptions, I like them being there so I can read them when I feel like it.
Those rats are us, the player base.
The developer drops a piece of cheese somewhere within the maze of the game, then watches as we madly scramble around trying to quickly get to the piece of cheese.
Then we start complaining because, as we get close to the piece of cheese, they haven't put in any more walls to the maze.
We feel cheated because the piece of cheese is left out in the open, with no more "content" around it.
But we still feel "uber leet" because we got there fast.
Then we move on to the next game to do it all over again......
Your right,
took Guildwar the main quest is between each town that so funny and its keep the player in game. the video play uuntil a percent of people press "esc".
Well the only problem is the re-playability... Since after you did the game once you always press "ESC" for the other toons, so if a new gamer game into de the game he might miss some story only because the majority want to skip. They should keep this way of doing thing for the main story and pay developper for the developpement of new way of distributing the quest.
My personal question to Sanya Weathers:
Have you played Dungeons & Dragons Online to date?
If not, you're missing out a huge portion of knowledge of how "different" quest approach, or even whole MMO concept approach may be. You'll hardly find any "kill 10 rats-like" or "deliver x to npc x-like" quests there.
Of course, if you'll try, you may find some similarities to that in a few quests at the beginning. Especially Harbor quests. But they're hand-crafted too, with their own areas all designed just for those quests - not just some "area" in the open to fill in with 3-7 other quests.
So once again Sanya - I love your articles. They're not only good - they're crucial and important, I bet you're changing whole MMO community via giving us real knowledge. Most people now live in some unrealistic dream about MMOs and their developers. How they work, what is possible, what should we expect and what not. Nearly whole MMO community is NOT educated in those areas, and writing these columns you help us all - players, developers, everyone. Some realism, some logic would help us all to better understand each other. Help players understand developers and developers bettter understand players, who (the players) will know better what they want if they'll know what is like the reality they "play" in.
Just one thing for which I'd ask - check out DDO. I really wonder what would you think about it, but still I know you would need to spend in this game enough time to reach at least 6th level. Anyway, that would be appreciated. I still think DDO is a gem in some ways, especially how different it is from what you write about. There are some similarities, but those details in DDO seem to really make it stand out from the "herd" of other MMO games. In my own, humble opinion - you'd probably know better.
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The problem is that this "questing" concept was invented for single player RPGs and is mostly irrelevant in an MMORPG. Player interaction is the only thing that really matters in an MMO, and players work to get the kind of interaction they want, whether it is power, prestige, companionship, respect, competition, fear, etc. The lore and backstory of the game is meaningless in this context, and that includes quests, it only gets in the way of the "real" game.
Except for "role players", who are the most unimaginative of all gamers, most gamers want the "story" of the game to be basically what they make of it. It is like life, the "story" is what happens to you, you figure it out along the way and conceptualize it yourself as your mind gradually develops a contextural "story" framework around the experiences that you have had and events you have witnessed. If I fight an epic battle against a dragon in-game, that has a particular, personal, special meaning within the context of my story, I don't need some so-called writer trying to tell me what it means [unless I'm an imagination challenged "role player"], he only gets in the way and takes me out of the immersion in the game story that I am experiencing, i.e. MY game story.
Part of the solution to making the world content matter more would be to make character progression less signifigant. The whole concept of "leveling up" was not intended for MMOs, and does not make sense in them. Your character's skills and abilities should be a part of you, something in your brain, not an arbitrary game mechanic that happens from pushing a butten 10 million times.
Game developers should be working to put quest creation into the hands of the players, rather than trying to think of clever ways to describe "collect 10 rat tails quests". The average gamer is not as dim witted as the average mmo "writer" apparently is, and recognizes these quests for what they are: empty, boring, uniform, and completely arbitrary. Nobody likes to think their life is exactly the same as everyone else's, everyone likes to imagine that they are somehow different [and in real life we all are], but backwards ass game developers of mmos do everything they possibly can to make players feel like they are all the same. Players, who want to enjoy the game as a kind of "second life", an escape from their life into another more fun life, these players naturally rebel against such attempts by the game developer of trying to make all the players feel the same, unifrom, grey, and worthless, for example by giving them quests such as "collect 10 wolf tails" which just underlines for the player that they are exactly the same as everyone else in the game, having the exact same experience, jumping through the exact same hoops. This is everything the player doesn't want, and so the players ignore it as much as possible and just get it over with to the extent necessary.
Anyways..... The bottom line is that your article [or at least the developers you spoke to] tries to paint the players as if they are too dim to pay attention to a good story line, but this is really a misconception of what is happening in an mmo.
The one and only.
I'm an old timer. When we first played D&D it was all about the levels. Hell, we even eschewed scenarios in favor of just rolling up random encounters, killing them, and makng lists of the rolls we'd make on the loot tables at the end of the day. This was Diablo before there was Diablo. Then, slowly, we got a little more into the tactics and started getting into the classic Gygax modules. Story mattered a little more here and some of us got, if superficially and more for comic relief than drama, into our characters.
Two companies really changed how we looked at tabletop roleplaying which was, in early going, essentially the same grind for levels and lewt most MMOs are today.
One was Judges Guild. Instead of laying out pat scenarios they built entire world maps chalk full of interesting little places and situations. The players were dropped into the world, broke and inexperienced, but could really set out and discover new things. The DM would find himself, instead of reading text from a block quote somewhere, improvising details from the thousands of broad but leading descriptions in the JG worldbooks. Pretty soon something would have sparked the player's imaginations and they'd be taking the initiative, finding a place worth defending or a foe worth pursuing or some other personal goals. The DM's would adapt and work in elements from the worldbooks and we ended up seeing some great improvised narratives rising from that interaction. The world felt 'real' because it was so vast and because you could effect it. Later JG products would be nothing but lists of randomized tables for all kinds of things. These worked because they could give a DM a list of attributes to synthesize into some unique and more elaborate places or encounters that could be fitted into the moment.
With Judges Guild we tended to forget, a little at least, about magic items and levels and became more curious about what was going on right now and how NPCs or our personal goals fit into it.
Taking that "improvised world" a step further was a company called Game Designers Workshop who produced Traveller. Here were deep background systems for generating characters, randomized tables for patrons, types of quests, creature creation, jobs and the generation of entire sectors of space. You want a real adventure with a fleshed out character who feels like he had a past? There was no alternative at the time. Nobody knew, even a GM if he was a seat-of-his-pants improviser, what would happen next. What anchored the game to a kind of reality was the fundamental economics of running a starship and how trade routes functioned. However, this was twenty five years before Firefly mind you, the crew would almost always be scraping by rather than accumulating wealth and took more 'interesting' missions on the side in hopes of picking up some temporary economic advantage.
After that you had the next generation of "fluff" (as powergamers called them) games like Vampire: The Masquerade that brought setting, story and interpersonal drama to a whole new level. There are many many more that all helped RPers move beyond the "kill ten rats" and "end game" mentalities (powergamer, min-max, rule lawyer, monty haul, twink) that were endemic in early tabletop roleplaying too.
But these things will take time. People have to get bored of what they're doing and want something more. They won't know what they want. They may argue violently against the very thing they'll ultimately end up embracing simply because they're wary of something new. You can't force it.
Those of us who want more depth in settings, more believeable worlds and gameplay, and all the rest will see this come to pass. We just have to wait for the world to catch up. It has before.
Always notice what you notice.
I find it interesting that the 2 games mentioned as having superior storylines; DDO and LoTRO, are both Turbine games. ( Did someone mention Asheron's Call also? Also Turbine). So props to the folks at Turbine, they seem to be " getting it " more than any other MMO company at the moment.
Interesting to note is, that most of us, errr, those people *cough* who don't care/hate the standard lowbie quests, complain if it is made too obvious (or cheap), eg. instead of ten different "kill 12 xyz", only one "kill 120 xyz" .....
Killing 120 is actually not that bad if you are in a group. Some PQs in Warhammer are like that and it can go pretty fast and gives good xp. If you do it in lineage 2, especially alone, well, then you are scr..ed. Now, if there isn't a group available and trhat quest is your only alternative.... speak of grind.
The most bothersome thing is, if you do such a quest at point A, you go, say, to the other end of the village of A, and are requested to do a similar quest. "What??? I already killed 10 Wolves! Why again? Can't you give me credit anyway?" "Oh, you want the pelts, sure, I got some here. What? Hello? I finished the quest! I got your 10 pelts!" And so you have to kill again.
Drop rates are another question. "You want their paws? Sure, one bear, 4 paws".....50 kills later, 5 paws.....
Although some modern MMOs try to adress this, it is still far from "perfect". Funny thing is, if one points this out during a beta, then it doesn't feel as if it is being listened to. LOTRO was an extreme example for me in that aspect, which promised not to have have the average quests, and still ended up with tons of these shitty quests (even if there might be "tons of different, cooler quests").
Something else I would like to mention, even if it deviates a bit from the article, but there is a connection, imho:
(XP) "Grind" - obvious(?) part of leveling, especially for fast leveling, and even more so for repetitive quests. In contexts of MMOs widely known.
But to a certain extend, this existed in single player old school rpgs as well:
Ultima series, they were not linear (even if some of the dungeons were only doable from a certain skill level). If you were not able to do roam in a certain area which you needed for progression, (and didn't know where else to go, no internet for cheating), then you killed mobs for your skills.
Or Dungeon Master I remember, no quests, other than to get through the dungeon - but man there were some great puzzles. Anyway, too weak with magic? Or weapons? Stand by a wall and click on attack constantly.
And finally a more modern version (still talking single player rpg): do side-quests (Baldur's Gate or similar), to get XP to get stronger to do the main questline. [This would by the way be based on D&D rules at least, back to DDO with great quests; but there we are back to repetitive quest-grind].
So single player old school rpgs aren't only the "Roses" that everyone would like to see them to be. It was the overall story where you are the hero and there is a definit ending. And MMOs will never have that, no matter how close they try to get or come to that (as say LOTRO with the epic story line).
Quest grind, kill this kill that, weapons grind, spells grind.... Whether its level base or not you will always have grind, just different forms.
And it seems like the problem is mmo is being chun out in mass productions lines.... Now we are seeing more and more mmo being produce, and at a faster and faster rate, War only takes 4 years?
With this kind of mass produce for goods, the quality will definately goes down the drain sooner or later, and that's what we are getting now.
All companies want a piece of pie and want it fast, so we end up with unimaginative kill rats quests, early release of games, and copy paste of gameplay...
Till a company really takes their time to do it and do it right, we will be in with this kind of crap for a very long time...
RIP Orc Choppa
PROBLEM
To say that "verb number noun" quests format is the problem is misleading. In a sense your main grief is with the number part.
All quests are going to have verbs and nouns (and usually a preposition or two). Stop the orcs (from killing travelers in the forest). Forge this blade. Take the One (uh oh! a number!) Ring (and destroy it in a volcano).
Almost all complaints eventually lead to one fact: players have no effect on the game.
For instance, a player gets a "quest" like this...
"Those rats are destroying my field! Kill ten rats and return to with 10 rat scalps, and yes, I know not every rat has a scalp, you'll have to kill at least 30 to get your ten scalps."
All 20 players in the newbie area hunt and kill-steal for the rat bounty. When they are done they get their reward and perhaps a thank you ("Thanks! Now I can plant those crops!") before they move on to the next quest giver, wherever that may be...
...and the field is still flooded with rats with 20 new newbies hunting and kill-stealing for the rat bounty.
Oh, and... Want to create a new character and try out a new class? Better be ready for that rat quest again!
SOLUTION
The solution i think, comes from the REAL TIME STRATEGY genre.
Take this scenario, for instance...
You're a human. The orcs army is coming. If you don't go out and kick some orc butt, the city will be overrun and there won't be any merchants in this area for you to sell your phat loot to- unless your an orc, which you're not.
Now - you'd better complete this fed-ex quest to get this bundle of wood to the bowyer and this ore to the blacksmith because they will probably reward you with a weapon and you can get out there and kick some orc butt!
If they players don't act, the orcs will overun the area. If the orcs overrun the area, the playerbase is faced with the task of re-taking the area.
Either way, the players have things to do that will affect their gameplay...
_____________________________
"Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit"
This article should be stickied so whenever we see another complaint of how boring a game is and if they say the quests suck, just link this piece.
Anyways, has anyone thought of the reason why a majority of the mentality is to powerlevel? Every MMO veteran knows the answer. They want the unique, rare loot. They want it because few have it. It looks kewl. It performs great, maybe has unique animations and effects.
Why don't game developers think outside the box and provide this incentive on day one. I applaud city of heroes/ villians in starting the ball rolling with their invention system. Only in the sense that enhancements (loot in the game) can scale in level with their players. In other words, you don't outgrow your loot.
Why can't games provide loot that can be enhanced from day one to be as effective and unique throughout the characters game life? Yes, monsters can still drop items and treasure can be found, but the player is given the option to toss aside his weapon, or like in some games disenchant it for spare parts which could enhance your original gear. The trick is to make the choice mysterious so cheat sites like Allakazam won't turn the gear system into a lop sided economy (Oh that Shield of the Fallen can only be broken down into x components, which is useless for a wizard). A player that does not want to use the item must sell it or break it down with a chance of receiving a random rare component that is bound to the user or equip it.
Players can hire blackmsiths, jewelers, etc to enhance appearance of their gear too, so a player can enjy various looks of their gear.
In theory, a player doesnt have to throw away that practice dagger from the day he started to the day he ends playing. The dagger is enhanced and modified over time and perhaps become a purple dagger after all.
What does this have to do with quests? because we do quests as a means to an end. Level and level fast to obtain new skills and use them to consume the end game content, because we perceive the end game has the real prizes.
I find that the quests in most MMOs are boring and ill written. I can read a wall of text if it is intresting but if I already read a lot of junk I just click it by.
I hope Bioware change that and introduce interesting quests into MMOs. Remember Baldurs gate or Neverwinter nights? A lot of the quests were still boring and grindy but they were well written and many of them got a lot funnier if you read tehm.
But we need to get rid of all the crap quests. I rather do 1 long and fun quest that 20 short and boring, deliver this and kill that.
I want to be a hero (or villain) when I play, not a messenger or pest control.
Well "ever"-quest at launch should have actually been called NeverQuest. How many quests were actually in game the first year? (yes there were some but not enough to even entertain the name).
As to UO... no there were not quests. There were "events".
Ultima Online had the interest team. Seers and Troubadors were pretty much the start of the volunteer side. Seers were meant to create long term content and interact with player towns... Toubs were people who played roles in the events. Elders were added to create short term or "instant" events... and then there were the Interest Game Masters who were the "go between" for the volunteers and the company. IGM's also did the "official" events.
The thing with UO was you could try to get to "end game" which was spending your 700 skill points. Yet even once you got there you could take part in content... anywhere.
The only thing this article really does is highlight the core flaw with the level base design for MMO's. Along with the fact that from the launch of EQ in 1999... right through the launch of WAR... Developers still aren't testing "end game" content.. tho they know exactly what will happen.
Altho I feel it was an attempt to slant the blame towards the players... rather than after 10 years... developers still aren't testing end game content.
*note* I know about the Interest team for UO because I was part of it. Pretty much I cut my ties with Ultima Online the day they shut the programs down. Which wasn't EA's fault... but that's a totally different story.
I usually liked reading the quest texts. WoW, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, PotBS no problem.
But some time ago I played the WAR trial, and that was the first time I just had the urge to race trough stuff. Maybe my mindset changed. But it was just so much text. At least it was (usually?) split up, but skipping that I felt I was missing out on things. At least their map region-marking per quest was quite a good feature. AoC really had the worst directions. Bad directions aren't a disaster.. unless they make you think you have to go trough this area where you can die in seconds by pulling too many mobs.
There's a very delicate line in the amount of 'text' and how it's being told. A good writer also really makes the difference.
There's this indy MMO, A Tale In The Desert, where you didn't really have quests (and no combat in the normal sense). Just society goals. And for some reason the developer decided that they needed sort-of levels and quests, because players expected progression like that in MMOs of 'today'. I happened not to have played it that much with those changes, but it always felt limiting.
Some of my all time favorite quests lines would definitely have to be the Heritage Quests from EQ2. Alot of people skipped certain ones that really didnt benefit them in favor of power leveling. Me personally I never skipped one once I was appropiate level range and had blasts doing them. I eventually incorporated them into guild events and had HQ Sundays. After doing them a couple of times I would have tons of in game email asking me when was the next one. People commonly would tell me that was the most fun they ever had in game because all they typically do was power level.
On behalf of the jaded MMO players you need to bring good meaningful quests back to games. Because if you don't then you will at least know one reason why your subscription bases loses half in only two months after release. Fellow gamers don't just settle demand better games. Vote with your wallet. I started doing this and have been much happier. Hell gives me an excuse to dust off my Xbox 360 quite a bit these days.
Speaking of Heritage Quests in EQ2 - yes, they are pretty interesting, but some of the older quests include like 3+ hours spawns of the (not even final) hero character/monster. SWG had a few of those quests as well. Respawn timer in the range of hours, so that the loot in the end wouldn't be something that everyone had. Okay. But if those are the more interesting quests, than long respawn timers are just as poor as the usual lowbie quests.
BTW, we are discussing lowbie quests, but those quests are just as common in the max-level area. Heck, just the fact to get rid of 1-2 hours of trash-mobs in a raid, isn't really a sign of design-ingenuity.
Yeah but Lotro is full of kill 10 X get 10 X Take X to X where X will give you a quest to kill 10 X - Some of the early quests involved running back and forth between hobbits over and over and over..
Funcom made a point of trying to remove a lot of 'rat' quests and making it much more entertaining with voice acting.. its just a terrible shame that after the 1st 20 levels the voice acting all but stopped.
Perhaps they should forget about story and have KILL 10 RATS! pop up in big red letters with some exciting music.. trying to make story out of that is just silly.
Storyline and quest type are not the same thing. If you just want to level quickly and dion't care WHY you are doing anything, then LoTRO will be boring and repetitive to you. If you enjoy the journey and the STORYLINE, then you might enjoy this game. That running back and forth between 2 hobbits was a love story that I actually enjoyed from a STORY p.o.v.
For most of us running back and forth is unacceptable even if the story is epic. Running back and forth is a awful time sink, plain and simple.