I always thought the title Everquest was ironic. I played that game for several years when it was essentially the only game in town and actual questing wasn't something I did a lot of. The epic quests were great though and I always enjoy long quest lines that have a truly rewarding reward at the end of the chain as opposed to the simple kill 10 x or gather 15 y where you get magic pants.
A quest, IMHO, is supposed to be something epic, or close to it. It's supposed to be hard and arduous. It's supposed to mean something and be memorable. Fine, have a few cheapies for tutorial purposes. Or not.
But I think the OP misses the point really. Whether XP is driven by quests or kills or escorts or whatever, the generating factor is the XP grind. That is the modus operandi of main stream MMOs. If you want something different, get rid of XP. Get rid of levels.
I might add that the XP for questing in EQ was minimal. Nobody quested for experience in the old days. In WoW that is turned on its head. But as I say, in the long view it doesn't matter - the driver is the grind, not the details.
Like a lot of others in this thread, I want bigger more exciting more involved quests, and with relevant rewards for doing them. One of the tragedies of WoW is that the rewards for quests are by and large "meh", even interesting questlines don't achieve anything special, there's a questline in Nagrand for example where you need to start a war between two races of ogres to save your allies from extinction.
It's a well written quest, but even once you complete it, you don't get to see the war and the results of your actions, nor are you particularly more regarded by your allied faction so... you need to go and grind ogre deaths for another 2 weeks to become Exalted and get your mount.
That's pretty shoddy design, you save me from extinction and I won't let you buy a horsey?
And while I know cut scenes are not always the answer surely a quick cut scene beginning the ogre war, followed by you having to fight your way clear of the war, rather than nothing significantly changing as the results of your actions would be better?
WoW quests don't fail. The rewards fail. 80% of people power level and totally ignore them. Then 20% of the 10 million people are not 'concurrent' players. There are only ever like 200 people on-line at a time, and they are scared you are a wacko idiot and will track them down in real life and mess with them because most WoW conversations have an IQ of a small overchewed jawbreaker. So WoW is not a solo player game. WoW only rewards people that group, only at max level, and WoW still allows Loot Whoring (Ninja, DKP, whatever stealing things from other players is called this week). In WoW the end goal is to watch TV and die in Battle Grounds over and over like a console game, or play Arena once a week for 3 months while you do your homework for gear need to solo quests with no rewards no one wants to do.
The game is pretty fun, but they have trouble paying the writers when they switched to 'all pvp all the time'; "Make Love Not WarCRaft", and should let the rewards guy out of the box they locked up during the creation of the Burning Crusade because no one plays any of it unless they have to, as player's will tell you, "There is no point." /cry
I don’t know, maybe you need to make a name for yourself before you take the micky out of WoW, but well done Mr Jennings, you are the only ‘staff’ writer on here that has done so.
Vanguards diplomacy and WAR’s public quests were breakthroughs, I think we will see public quests in future MMO’s. Not sure about VG diplomacy, it was a collection of ‘verbs’ that actually changed the way you saw the region you were in, far more difficult to implement.
Very entertaining article, and I must say I'd LOVE to see another isometric game, which - with help of some 3D graphics - continues this spirit of exploring in the snow.
But have you played Dungeons & Dragons Online? I guess that's the only game where you WILL find questing, and see that it's done VERY differently.
I mean, Warhammer Online and Vanguard isn't even 1/10 of what Turbine has done with the quests in DDO. Those are really, and I mean REALLY varied as you make your way up to the level 20 (each divided into 5 ranks). And I guess there's more exploring, uphil, in the snow in DDO's quests than in any other MMO that features questing at all.
So, D&D Online has probably much more key words, and adds to that very frequent optional objectives, which we can call "old school exploring", but in quests.
If you don't know this game, you're missing a key and unique element of knowledge how MMO's can be done... differently. And be successful.
I don't mind quests. The first MMO I really played was Asheron's Call which I do not think it had any quests. If it did I never found or did them. AC did have a world so vast that the act of exploring put you into conflict with enough mobs to level you a good bit. Like all games of that time I did eventually have to grind mobs. I would say games need to become larger where simple exploration helps with leveling. Fewer generic quests but more interesting epic string quests. I really like some of the long string quests in WOW but I kinda wish for the old days where I could run my toon 20-30 mins into the wilderness, find a hidden house with a dungeon in the basement. A realm so large that if you don't know exactly where you are going you might not find it, thats what I would like to see replace quests. Not likely to happen but It would be nice.
Ah, my friend... but there WERE quests in Asheron's Call! They just weren't marked with a freakin' gold exclamation point over every 2nd NPC's head. They were involved, they were tricky to find unless you knew where to look, and some of them were downright epic.
Also, I don't think there is or was a 'quest tracker' system of any kind. It was more that you had to read what the NPCs were saying and get an idea about where there might be something you could do. The Atlan Weapons (way back in the day) were a major quest to obtain, and then you had to find the information on the quests to retrieve the different elemental damage gems to socket in the Atlan Weapons for maximum effect.
I fondly remember my first time trying to get my Atlan Claw. Running across miles of wilderness in the northern part of Dereth desperately trying to avoid being aggro'd by critters 10-20-30 levels higher than me to get to a fort in the middle of the arctic waste where there was a smith that would forge the materials I'd found (motes, if I recall) into a sword for me. Also, there was a chance of failure (if I remember right) that could render all of your work invalid and you'd have to go back to hunting golems for motes again.
Ah... I realize that my memories are colored by nostalgia, but THIS was the kind of game I liked to play.
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"Give a man a fire, and he is warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he is warm for the rest of his life."
I have recently started playing Face of Mankind. One of its most groundbreaking features is the complete absence of quests and questgivers. instead, the player is given a set of 6 objectives to complete. Once he completes any 3 of those, he or she is given new ones.
What this gives is flexibility. For example one of the most common objectives is "Guard Location X in Colony Y for Z minutes". Once you find the location, it's entirely up to you what you do there - stand still, run around, chat... What matters is actually being there. Or "heal X points of damage on an ally". You decide where and how. Different objectives give different amount of XP, but there are no levels.
The best thing about this system is the player's ability to make up their own story while always knowing what to do next. Although some people get hopelessly confused by this system and complain about being "bored", I think it should be used in more games.
In a nutshell, I'd agree with the essence of the post, or at least what it hints at: less is more. Make what quests there are meaningful and interesting. If it's not going to be intriguing, don't populate that sector of gameplay just to claim 'we have over 5000 quests you can do!' when really only 10% of them are of interest.
Obviously, can't go wrong with poor, or overabundance, of quests in a game that forgoes them altogether. Again, indication the genre desperately needs to return to its roots.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc. We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be. So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away. - MMO_Doubter
Why why WHY has nobody yet created Ultima Online with an updated graphics engine?! No, Darkfall doesn't count. I tried to go back. I did. I just couldn't. The isometric PoV made my aged self dizzy. *cries*
They have. It's called Kingdom Reborn and looks VERY nice.
If you mean a fully 3D model....I think the consensus, for some reason, was that that didn't "fit" with UO, though I'm not really sure why other than the fact that many veteran UO players (still playing) actually PREFER the enhanced 2D model.
I do not see the point of your article at except to rehash what hundreds of others have gone over and over and over and over .....infinitium
I tend to have the same feeling over the article but the writers here have to say something or editors get angry. (Editor SMASH puny writer!!!!!!)
I did find the part boiling the actions down to a set of action verbs(which though couched in programming language, is a primary logical basis of any game) quite amusing. Reminded me of good old Zork, Wizardry (1-X) and all the other text based games I used to play.
Hello Scott! Very entertaining article, and I must say I'd LOVE to see another isometric game, which - with help of some 3D graphics - continues this spirit of exploring in the snow. But have you played Dungeons & Dragons Online? I guess that's the only game where you WILL find questing, and see that it's done VERY differently. I mean, Warhammer Online and Vanguard isn't even 1/10 of what Turbine has done with the quests in DDO. Those are really, and I mean REALLY varied as you make your way up to the level 20 (each divided into 5 ranks). And I guess there's more exploring, uphil, in the snow in DDO's quests than in any other MMO that features questing at all. So, D&D Online has probably much more key words, and adds to that very frequent optional objectives, which we can call "old school exploring", but in quests. If you don't know this game, you're missing a key and unique element of knowledge how MMO's can be done... differently. And be successful. My Galleries: http://www.mmorpg.com/galleries/Sarr And raid recently done with my Polish friends (half of the team is new here): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi25H8ZGRRg
I don’t know, maybe you need to make a name for yourself before you take the micky out of WoW, but well done Mr Jennings, you are the only ‘staff’ writer on here that has done so. Vanguards diplomacy and WAR’s public quests were breakthroughs, I think we will see public quests in future MMO’s. Not sure about VG diplomacy, it was a collection of ‘verbs’ that actually changed the way you saw the region you were in, far more difficult to implement.
Of all the myriads of MMOs I have played, Vanguard's diplomacy stood out FAR and above every other MMOs systems as being fresh, unique, interesting (especially if you're a lore lover), fun, and challenging (easy to start, but progressively more difficult and very fun and challenging to master).
I SO wish that some other game would pick up on what they did with that and use it again. I had more fun doing diplomacy than any other single thing. And part of the "cool factor" was....if you wanted to make a strictly diplomat character....you could. Challenging? Yes...but doable. There's something about being in the diplomat / political arena of an MMO that's just TONS of fun to me. Love, love, LOVED VG's diplomacy.
Interesting points in the article, but I disagree that the paucity of verbs is necessarily a bad thing. EQ2 has combined those verbs into some pretty interesting quests, particularly in Kunark and later expansions. Some of the epic quets come to mind, along with the zone progression quests, which not only advance your character, but give it a baseline of gear allowing you to operate in that zone as you explore it. Done correctly, the six or seven verbs available can still make some interesting adventure.
The other choice is no or few quests, such as existed in EQ. Then you have mindless slaughter to level your character. Ah, the good old days of camping a particular spawn point for hours on end. Mmmm, mm! If you have levels, you need ways to advance through them, and questing as a way to advance is far more interesting than any other suggestions or implementations I have heard/seen. And if you have a skill-based system, a la UO, it amounts to the same thing - endless repition of some mundane task to raise those skills.
And most importantly, quests are not necessary. You can slaughter your way to the top, if you so choose, in a level or skill based system. Quest are popular precisely because they are more interesting.
"The glory days of Ultima Online" I take as humor. Never was there a duller game coded in history. Lack of quests? Yes, as well as a lack of anything interesting. Chop wood to make a bow, or mine a bit of metal (for as little as you could carry,) all the while dodging PKers... fun, fun, fun. I've tried a variety of MMORPGs, and it was by far the worst. I think some people wax rhapsodic over UO because it was their first, but like a first love, forgetting all the while what a god-ugly mess it was.
Get rid of quests? It reminds me of Churchill's quote on democracy. Quests may not be all that great to some, I suppose, but they are better than all else that has been tried.
I think one vital trick that keep quantity and quality of quests up, without burning out those delicate flowers designing quests for the developers, is to intelligently incorporate player generated content.
Here's an example. Star Trek Online clearly is a bit skinny on the developer provided quest content side. What there is is pretty good but once you wander a little further afield, say into Exploration, things get pretty repetitive pretty quickly. Episodic missions, while using the same 'verbs' as Exploration have a bit more color to them and the verbs can be intertwined in ways that suspend disbelief if a player cares about the setting (presumably) and the characters involved (this can vary).
Both employ a tool called Genesis to generate diverse worlds and systems, visually, from a fairly wide array of Mister Potatohead parts.
The problem here is that STO needs more content like yesterday. I'm talking about mainstream PvE gameplay not specialty content like raids or PvP. Even with Genesis it doesn't seem like the developers have a prayer of keeping up with the need for variety in Exploration mode and certainly not if their attentions are divided between Exploration and Episodic content.
Exploration in particular has to offer novelty. Otherwise you're not really exploring much, right? So how to fill the galaxy with interesting sights and stories in a relatively short period of time and with a modest budget?
Bring the players in. Unlike CoH's Architect, I propose Cryptic not actually reward people for designing or playing basic player generated content. Stick all that in something like a Holodeck and call it "just for fun". People will still use it, as they do in SWG's Storyteller and Chronicles systems, but they'll be using it to entertain people not to simply rake in some material rewards. That's what screwed the pooch with Architect. All the cheese missions people churned out for easy leveling or maximizing loot potential and so on.
However there should be a second tier, Subspace Transmissions, where developers screen those missions designed in Holodeck specifically for this system which pushes approved content right out into Exploration mode as an optional quest folks can take. Presented, of course, as an emergency subspace transmission. How perfect is that? When a mission is approved the designer gets some C-bucks for the C-store and when players play the mission they get the usual rewards for an Exploration mission series.
Yes, players will be using the same tools and same 'verbs' as the developers but with so many monkeys typing there is going to be good content. The developers only need to cherry pick and send it out to fill up the Exploration portion of the universe. Meanwhile less skilled, would be, designers still have the Holodeck to entertain their friends with or to do more original or strange stuff.
I really see some huge potential in a system like STO's exploration. Randomized content, bite-sized bits, mixing up radically different styles of gameplay (ground/space/exploration) and more can be added into it so easily between Genesis or other sources like player created content. This isn't like anything we've seen before. But it desperately does need more visual and quest variety. Another approach I've suggested is to appeal to outside sources for even more Exploration variety. One example might be partnering with NASA for scientifically accurate text and graphics to spruce up scanning missions, for example, or to possibly design some new 'verbs' for Exploration that do it better justice.
But the whole idea of randomization if you're really getting some interesting variety isn't something anyone's really tried before in any MMO. This, for me, is a big part of what makes STO feel more like a real game than an MMO. The gameplay, the action, and the potential for the unexpected (even if at this early stage you can anticipate almost everything that comes your way adding to it should be easy.)
Thanks to the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in WoW it is much , much easier to level to 80 without resorting to the endless quest treadmill . XP gained through PvP is another great addition to WoW that gives players an alternative method of leveling .
I always liked the Mission based advancement used in Guild Wars . I know many people don't like all the instances , but I found the Missions to be a great way to tell a story & generally more enjoyable than 99% of the solo quests in any mmo that I have played .
WoW has some of the most awesome quest lines ever. The problem is that, to me at least, they get a little trivialised due to the fact that there are so many "filler" quests. I think you should only have big, epic quests in a game, and some other form of advancement for your character, XP or skill wise. Make quests give proper rewards, both in fame and fortune, but keep them long, and keep them hard.
I never liked long quest chains only because if you got to a part you needed help with and wasnt lucky to find someone on the same part as you you either had to backtrack and redo the parts you did already to get help up to your part or hope that someone would do the same for you that was farther along in the chain(which is making them do what they did again)
There needs to be a good mix of filler quests(maybe the types you dont have to do if you dont want) mobs to grind on( for when you just dont feel like questing and what you said your epic quests that you need to do to continue the story arc(which should be kept interesting by the developers)
Quests aren't essential, but the games with them have been more successful than the ones without them. Ultimately what matters is how such content is presented to players, with the text box model showing flavour text, mission objective and rewards arguably being one that needs an update.
But if quests aren't the best way to get XP / rewards, then players ignore them. If they are, then players do them. It's the reason why even well-written, well presented quests can be left to rot - they don't provide the return on time that players feel are adequate.
The fact is that WOW has the abilty to create huge varieties of quests. They can fly - use diffrent mounts - veicles - in other word do billion diffrent quests that are never the same. No other game can do that atm (maybe Vanguard but since its in maintanance mode we all know it wont happen. MMO games have evolved. Unless these games do MASSIVE variety in diffrent ways of actually doing self driven content (wich no games do now adays) then its a childish dream to think Ultima days will ever come back. BTW - Somehow I think the writer forgot to realise that EVE is probably the only game in today markets that still is 100% playable without doing any predefined questing.
I don't think that MMO gamers have evolved, so much as I think that OTHER gamers have been brought into the genere because of the casual & inclusive direction that WOW has taken the industry in.....thereby changing the landscape of the the wants and needs of the market.
You don't find many old school MMO players who are advocating for easier content. You find console & FPS gamers that have crossed into the MMO genere asking for stuff to be easier, faster, and more instantly gratifying because those aspects of game play are similar to their previous gaming experiences.
It's interesting that a quest centric game like WOW (that puts a ton of focus on quests and lore) have the majority of their players completely ignoring the quest write-ups and using either QuestHelper or the new intergrated QuestFinder feature. Hardly anyone reads the text anymore.
Just click on the guy with the exclamation point over their head and follow the arrow on screen to the place you need to be. Mouse over a monster or NPC and it will tell you if that is what you need to kill or not......then follow the arrow back to the guy that gave you your quest for your reward.
So are people really fans of the quest system or are they fans of a system that constantly gives rewards for meeting small scope goals?
Quests can be a valid & much-loved mechanic within an MMO world but they should feel like they have a point & an impact upon the world they take place in, also their over-use degrades their importance.
"Content" & Gameplay overall need to viewed in different ways, after all there are many kinds of players that like MMO's so offereing each style of gameplay a way to enjoy the game should be an important design goal, things we know that work are quests, mob killing, crafting, PvP &/or territory battles...each of these things need to have a purpose be it story or "progression".
There are many things that have been tried & fell out of favor or simply got ignored, adding more verbs is only useful in the questing style, or is it?
Day-jobs, as an alternative way of "faction grinding" could be an interesting way to set up some inter-faction PvP conflict if the system was robust enough, you've got your day job to guard a caravan, someone else has a day job to attack it, someone else has a job to rob it, 3 or more factions interacting in such ways could give a real "point" to PvP confrontations, if the technology was in place to make the caravan & an area outside into a PvP flagged moving zone it would open up the game to having PvP areas even within PvE games that fitted more seamlessly, I don;t think PvP has been used in as many ways as it can be, this example could turn a very simple plot-device & then add a huge "unpredictability factor" by setting off multiple factions against one another with a definiable reason for doing so.
Farming....
House & village/city building, a guild of crafter-gamers that build homes, castles, village halls, city walls, guild houses, gaining power & influence employing guards, blacksmiths stonemasons carpenters, then all the ancilliary things a city needs, food markets with farmers selling their wares.
A game that offered far more than just the Hack 'n Slash adventurer gameplay & allowed players to "be" a part of what is needed in the game, be that guards, diplomats, farmers, traders, craftsmen, hunters, entertainers, magicians, doctors, etc etc but they do so not as a single awesome totally self-sufficient entity but as part of a fledgling community that can rise to power on it's efforts, it may be happy to exist as a small village or it may grow into a huge city, all depending on the co-operation & organisation of it's citizens & how they work together, defend against attacks from outside factors, build in social factors such as seasons, holidays, dances, celebrations, voting for the village elder / city mayor, religions, cults, ...allow the players ways to create that content & give them the tools as they become needed, the relationship between a freeform world & it's developers needs to be initmate & symbiotic.
Quests can be a valid & much-loved mechanic within an MMO world but they should feel like they have a point & an impact upon the world they take place in, also their over-use degrades their importance. "Content" & Gameplay overall need to viewed in different ways, after all there are many kinds of players that like MMO's so offereing each style of gameplay a way to enjoy the game should be an important design goal, things we know that work are quests, mob killing, crafting, PvP &/or territory battles...each of these things need to have a purpose be it story or "progression". There are many things that have been tried & fell out of favor or simply got ignored, adding more verbs is only useful in the questing style, or is it? Day-jobs, as an alternative way of "faction grinding" could be an interesting way to set up some inter-faction PvP conflict if the system was robust enough, you've got your day job to guard a caravan, someone else has a day job to attack it, someone else has a job to rob it, 3 or more factions interacting in such ways could give a real "point" to PvP confrontations, if the technology was in place to make the caravan & an area outside into a PvP flagged moving zone it would open up the game to having PvP areas even within PvE games that fitted more seamlessly, I don;t think PvP has been used in as many ways as it can be, this example could turn a very simple plot-device & then add a huge "unpredictability factor" by setting off multiple factions against one another with a definiable reason for doing so. Farming.... House & village/city building, a guild of crafter-gamers that build homes, castles, village halls, city walls, guild houses, gaining power & influence employing guards, blacksmiths stonemasons carpenters, then all the ancilliary things a city needs, food markets with farmers selling their wares. A game that offered far more than just the Hack 'n Slash adventurer gameplay & allowed players to "be" a part of what is needed in the game, be that guards, diplomats, farmers, traders, craftsmen, hunters, entertainers, magicians, doctors, etc etc but they do so not as a single awesome totally self-sufficient entity but as part of a fledgling community that can rise to power on it's efforts, it may be happy to exist as a small village or it may grow into a huge city, all depending on the co-operation & organisation of it's citizens & how they work together, defend against attacks from outside factors, build in social factors such as seasons, holidays, dances, celebrations, voting for the village elder / city mayor, religions, cults, ...allow the players ways to create that content & give them the tools as they become needed, the relationship between a freeform world & it's developers needs to be initmate & symbiotic. But here's the catch It has to be a world to begin with.
Very good ideas....and I think that many of the MMO gamers that made the move to MMO gaming Pre-WOW did so because they wanted to play in a world where you could do things like that. One of the things I enjoyed about Ultima Online and old Star Wars Galaxey was that it wasn't ALL HACK n' SLASH.
If you wanted to be a merchant, thief, or even a Hearder in Ultima Online.....you could, and there was a place for your in the game. If you wanted to be an Entertainer and do nothing but dance or play music in a SWG Cantina.....you could, and there was a place for you.
BUT, if you listen to many of the people that make up this new MMO Market (most of which who have crossed over from other gaming generes), all they want is a HACK n' SLASH. They want to be able to log in and dive right into some action for 30min - 1hr, log out and realize some tangible gain for spending such a limited amount of time in game.
And.....when you have 11+ million subs with a MMO Hack n' Slash game (with the closest competitor in the hundreds of thousands), guess who the other game devs are going to base their game off of? The 200k subcription one?
Fallen Earth has some great story lines. There are typical 'kill rats' missions, but in many areas there are long historic chains of quests. There are factional quests. There are also interrelated quest lines in towns that explore the local politics and issues.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
WoW has some of the most awesome quest lines ever. The problem is that, to me at least, they get a little trivialised due to the fact that there are so many "filler" quests. I think you should only have big, epic quests in a game, and some other form of advancement for your character, XP or skill wise. Make quests give proper rewards, both in fame and fortune, but keep them long, and keep them hard.
I never liked long quest chains only because if you got to a part you needed help with and wasnt lucky to find someone on the same part as you you either had to backtrack and redo the parts you did already to get help up to your part or hope that someone would do the same for you that was farther along in the chain(which is making them do what they did again)
There needs to be a good mix of filler quests(maybe the types you dont have to do if you dont want) mobs to grind on( for when you just dont feel like questing and what you said your epic quests that you need to do to continue the story arc(which should be kept interesting by the developers)
CoX dealt with this well, in a very simple manner. You got credit (XP, drops) for any leg of most story archs as long as you were in the mission for a short period of time before completion but wouldnt get the story arch bonus. People would join to help just for a chance to pound a tough boss (who had higher drop rates).
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
There's a few MMORPG who got the Quest system right. For exemple, Mabinogi's Quest is mainly a very long storyline filled with plot twist. There is sometimes a few "kill 10 rats" quests but there are very few of them (except as a new player to learn the ropes). There aren't many side-quest either though, instead they call it "Part-Time Jobs" where you can accomplish a job based on the NPC during a specific time of the day but you are not forced to do them.
Instead, you will have to run various instanced dungeons, do some fetch quests and uncover a larger part of the story with every succesfull quest. There's even some "RP Dungeon" where you will play the role of a different NPC to learn of his background, which often leads to some twist plot. Every action you take regarding the quest will uncover more mysteries about the Storyline and that's why I think they did the Quest system right.
WoW also did it right but as someone mentionned, the many "filler" quests just hides everything, which is a shame. Still, WoW possibly has the best storyline on the market at the moment (as far as MMORPG goes).
Comments
A quest, IMHO, is supposed to be something epic, or close to it. It's supposed to be hard and arduous. It's supposed to mean something and be memorable. Fine, have a few cheapies for tutorial purposes. Or not.
But I think the OP misses the point really. Whether XP is driven by quests or kills or escorts or whatever, the generating factor is the XP grind. That is the modus operandi of main stream MMOs. If you want something different, get rid of XP. Get rid of levels.
I might add that the XP for questing in EQ was minimal. Nobody quested for experience in the old days. In WoW that is turned on its head. But as I say, in the long view it doesn't matter - the driver is the grind, not the details.
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Rose-lipped maidens,
Light-foot lads...
Like a lot of others in this thread, I want bigger more exciting more involved quests, and with relevant rewards for doing them. One of the tragedies of WoW is that the rewards for quests are by and large "meh", even interesting questlines don't achieve anything special, there's a questline in Nagrand for example where you need to start a war between two races of ogres to save your allies from extinction.
It's a well written quest, but even once you complete it, you don't get to see the war and the results of your actions, nor are you particularly more regarded by your allied faction so... you need to go and grind ogre deaths for another 2 weeks to become Exalted and get your mount.
That's pretty shoddy design, you save me from extinction and I won't let you buy a horsey?
And while I know cut scenes are not always the answer surely a quick cut scene beginning the ogre war, followed by you having to fight your way clear of the war, rather than nothing significantly changing as the results of your actions would be better?
I agree, these "quests" should be implemented in a different way as "jobs" or "tasks".
And then make bigger more hidden, harder to get a hold of quests that give you a "rare" and "unique" reward.
WoW quests don't fail. The rewards fail. 80% of people power level and totally ignore them. Then 20% of the 10 million people are not 'concurrent' players. There are only ever like 200 people on-line at a time, and they are scared you are a wacko idiot and will track them down in real life and mess with them because most WoW conversations have an IQ of a small overchewed jawbreaker. So WoW is not a solo player game. WoW only rewards people that group, only at max level, and WoW still allows Loot Whoring (Ninja, DKP, whatever stealing things from other players is called this week). In WoW the end goal is to watch TV and die in Battle Grounds over and over like a console game, or play Arena once a week for 3 months while you do your homework for gear need to solo quests with no rewards no one wants to do.
The game is pretty fun, but they have trouble paying the writers when they switched to 'all pvp all the time'; "Make Love Not WarCRaft", and should let the rewards guy out of the box they locked up during the creation of the Burning Crusade because no one plays any of it unless they have to, as player's will tell you, "There is no point." /cry
I don’t know, maybe you need to make a name for yourself before you take the micky out of WoW, but well done Mr Jennings, you are the only ‘staff’ writer on here that has done so.
Vanguards diplomacy and WAR’s public quests were breakthroughs, I think we will see public quests in future MMO’s. Not sure about VG diplomacy, it was a collection of ‘verbs’ that actually changed the way you saw the region you were in, far more difficult to implement.
Hello Scott!
Very entertaining article, and I must say I'd LOVE to see another isometric game, which - with help of some 3D graphics - continues this spirit of exploring in the snow.
But have you played Dungeons & Dragons Online? I guess that's the only game where you WILL find questing, and see that it's done VERY differently.
I mean, Warhammer Online and Vanguard isn't even 1/10 of what Turbine has done with the quests in DDO. Those are really, and I mean REALLY varied as you make your way up to the level 20 (each divided into 5 ranks). And I guess there's more exploring, uphil, in the snow in DDO's quests than in any other MMO that features questing at all.
So, D&D Online has probably much more key words, and adds to that very frequent optional objectives, which we can call "old school exploring", but in quests.
If you don't know this game, you're missing a key and unique element of knowledge how MMO's can be done... differently. And be successful.
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Ah, my friend... but there WERE quests in Asheron's Call! They just weren't marked with a freakin' gold exclamation point over every 2nd NPC's head. They were involved, they were tricky to find unless you knew where to look, and some of them were downright epic.
Also, I don't think there is or was a 'quest tracker' system of any kind. It was more that you had to read what the NPCs were saying and get an idea about where there might be something you could do. The Atlan Weapons (way back in the day) were a major quest to obtain, and then you had to find the information on the quests to retrieve the different elemental damage gems to socket in the Atlan Weapons for maximum effect.
I fondly remember my first time trying to get my Atlan Claw. Running across miles of wilderness in the northern part of Dereth desperately trying to avoid being aggro'd by critters 10-20-30 levels higher than me to get to a fort in the middle of the arctic waste where there was a smith that would forge the materials I'd found (motes, if I recall) into a sword for me. Also, there was a chance of failure (if I remember right) that could render all of your work invalid and you'd have to go back to hunting golems for motes again.
Ah... I realize that my memories are colored by nostalgia, but THIS was the kind of game I liked to play.
--------
"Give a man a fire, and he is warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he is warm for the rest of his life."
I have recently started playing Face of Mankind. One of its most groundbreaking features is the complete absence of quests and questgivers. instead, the player is given a set of 6 objectives to complete. Once he completes any 3 of those, he or she is given new ones.
What this gives is flexibility. For example one of the most common objectives is "Guard Location X in Colony Y for Z minutes". Once you find the location, it's entirely up to you what you do there - stand still, run around, chat... What matters is actually being there. Or "heal X points of damage on an ally". You decide where and how. Different objectives give different amount of XP, but there are no levels.
The best thing about this system is the player's ability to make up their own story while always knowing what to do next. Although some people get hopelessly confused by this system and complain about being "bored", I think it should be used in more games.
Decent read!
In a nutshell, I'd agree with the essence of the post, or at least what it hints at: less is more. Make what quests there are meaningful and interesting. If it's not going to be intriguing, don't populate that sector of gameplay just to claim 'we have over 5000 quests you can do!' when really only 10% of them are of interest.
Obviously, can't go wrong with poor, or overabundance, of quests in a game that forgoes them altogether. Again, indication the genre desperately needs to return to its roots.
That is exactly right, and we're not saying NO to save WoW, because it is already a lost cause. We are saying NO to dissuade the next group of greedy suits who decide to emulate Blizzard and Cryptic, etc.
We can prevent some of the future games from spewing this crap, but the sooner we start saying no, the better the results will be.
So - Stand up, pull up your pants, and walk away.
- MMO_Doubter
They have. It's called Kingdom Reborn and looks VERY nice.
If you mean a fully 3D model....I think the consensus, for some reason, was that that didn't "fit" with UO, though I'm not really sure why other than the fact that many veteran UO players (still playing) actually PREFER the enhanced 2D model.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I tend to have the same feeling over the article but the writers here have to say something or editors get angry. (Editor SMASH puny writer!!!!!!)
I did find the part boiling the actions down to a set of action verbs(which though couched in programming language, is a primary logical basis of any game) quite amusing. Reminded me of good old Zork, Wizardry (1-X) and all the other text based games I used to play.
HA HA HA. Good old days
But every "quest" in DDO....is instanced.
I wasn't all too fond of THAT part.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Ditto that. Fun with friends/voice chat but the instancing was tiring over time.
Of all the myriads of MMOs I have played, Vanguard's diplomacy stood out FAR and above every other MMOs systems as being fresh, unique, interesting (especially if you're a lore lover), fun, and challenging (easy to start, but progressively more difficult and very fun and challenging to master).
I SO wish that some other game would pick up on what they did with that and use it again. I had more fun doing diplomacy than any other single thing. And part of the "cool factor" was....if you wanted to make a strictly diplomat character....you could. Challenging? Yes...but doable. There's something about being in the diplomat / political arena of an MMO that's just TONS of fun to me. Love, love, LOVED VG's diplomacy.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Interesting points in the article, but I disagree that the paucity of verbs is necessarily a bad thing. EQ2 has combined those verbs into some pretty interesting quests, particularly in Kunark and later expansions. Some of the epic quets come to mind, along with the zone progression quests, which not only advance your character, but give it a baseline of gear allowing you to operate in that zone as you explore it. Done correctly, the six or seven verbs available can still make some interesting adventure.
The other choice is no or few quests, such as existed in EQ. Then you have mindless slaughter to level your character. Ah, the good old days of camping a particular spawn point for hours on end. Mmmm, mm! If you have levels, you need ways to advance through them, and questing as a way to advance is far more interesting than any other suggestions or implementations I have heard/seen. And if you have a skill-based system, a la UO, it amounts to the same thing - endless repition of some mundane task to raise those skills.
And most importantly, quests are not necessary. You can slaughter your way to the top, if you so choose, in a level or skill based system. Quest are popular precisely because they are more interesting.
"The glory days of Ultima Online" I take as humor. Never was there a duller game coded in history. Lack of quests? Yes, as well as a lack of anything interesting. Chop wood to make a bow, or mine a bit of metal (for as little as you could carry,) all the while dodging PKers... fun, fun, fun. I've tried a variety of MMORPGs, and it was by far the worst. I think some people wax rhapsodic over UO because it was their first, but like a first love, forgetting all the while what a god-ugly mess it was.
Get rid of quests? It reminds me of Churchill's quote on democracy. Quests may not be all that great to some, I suppose, but they are better than all else that has been tried.
I think one vital trick that keep quantity and quality of quests up, without burning out those delicate flowers designing quests for the developers, is to intelligently incorporate player generated content.
Here's an example. Star Trek Online clearly is a bit skinny on the developer provided quest content side. What there is is pretty good but once you wander a little further afield, say into Exploration, things get pretty repetitive pretty quickly. Episodic missions, while using the same 'verbs' as Exploration have a bit more color to them and the verbs can be intertwined in ways that suspend disbelief if a player cares about the setting (presumably) and the characters involved (this can vary).
Both employ a tool called Genesis to generate diverse worlds and systems, visually, from a fairly wide array of Mister Potatohead parts.
The problem here is that STO needs more content like yesterday. I'm talking about mainstream PvE gameplay not specialty content like raids or PvP. Even with Genesis it doesn't seem like the developers have a prayer of keeping up with the need for variety in Exploration mode and certainly not if their attentions are divided between Exploration and Episodic content.
Exploration in particular has to offer novelty. Otherwise you're not really exploring much, right? So how to fill the galaxy with interesting sights and stories in a relatively short period of time and with a modest budget?
Bring the players in. Unlike CoH's Architect, I propose Cryptic not actually reward people for designing or playing basic player generated content. Stick all that in something like a Holodeck and call it "just for fun". People will still use it, as they do in SWG's Storyteller and Chronicles systems, but they'll be using it to entertain people not to simply rake in some material rewards. That's what screwed the pooch with Architect. All the cheese missions people churned out for easy leveling or maximizing loot potential and so on.
However there should be a second tier, Subspace Transmissions, where developers screen those missions designed in Holodeck specifically for this system which pushes approved content right out into Exploration mode as an optional quest folks can take. Presented, of course, as an emergency subspace transmission. How perfect is that? When a mission is approved the designer gets some C-bucks for the C-store and when players play the mission they get the usual rewards for an Exploration mission series.
Yes, players will be using the same tools and same 'verbs' as the developers but with so many monkeys typing there is going to be good content. The developers only need to cherry pick and send it out to fill up the Exploration portion of the universe. Meanwhile less skilled, would be, designers still have the Holodeck to entertain their friends with or to do more original or strange stuff.
I really see some huge potential in a system like STO's exploration. Randomized content, bite-sized bits, mixing up radically different styles of gameplay (ground/space/exploration) and more can be added into it so easily between Genesis or other sources like player created content. This isn't like anything we've seen before. But it desperately does need more visual and quest variety. Another approach I've suggested is to appeal to outside sources for even more Exploration variety. One example might be partnering with NASA for scientifically accurate text and graphics to spruce up scanning missions, for example, or to possibly design some new 'verbs' for Exploration that do it better justice.
But the whole idea of randomization if you're really getting some interesting variety isn't something anyone's really tried before in any MMO. This, for me, is a big part of what makes STO feel more like a real game than an MMO. The gameplay, the action, and the potential for the unexpected (even if at this early stage you can anticipate almost everything that comes your way adding to it should be easy.)
Always notice what you notice.
Thanks to the introduction of the Dungeon Finder in WoW it is much , much easier to level to 80 without resorting to the endless quest treadmill . XP gained through PvP is another great addition to WoW that gives players an alternative method of leveling .
I always liked the Mission based advancement used in Guild Wars . I know many people don't like all the instances , but I found the Missions to be a great way to tell a story & generally more enjoyable than 99% of the solo quests in any mmo that I have played .
I never liked long quest chains only because if you got to a part you needed help with and wasnt lucky to find someone on the same part as you you either had to backtrack and redo the parts you did already to get help up to your part or hope that someone would do the same for you that was farther along in the chain(which is making them do what they did again)
There needs to be a good mix of filler quests(maybe the types you dont have to do if you dont want) mobs to grind on( for when you just dont feel like questing and what you said your epic quests that you need to do to continue the story arc(which should be kept interesting by the developers)
Quests aren't essential, but the games with them have been more successful than the ones without them. Ultimately what matters is how such content is presented to players, with the text box model showing flavour text, mission objective and rewards arguably being one that needs an update.
But if quests aren't the best way to get XP / rewards, then players ignore them. If they are, then players do them. It's the reason why even well-written, well presented quests can be left to rot - they don't provide the return on time that players feel are adequate.
I don't think that MMO gamers have evolved, so much as I think that OTHER gamers have been brought into the genere because of the casual & inclusive direction that WOW has taken the industry in.....thereby changing the landscape of the the wants and needs of the market.
You don't find many old school MMO players who are advocating for easier content. You find console & FPS gamers that have crossed into the MMO genere asking for stuff to be easier, faster, and more instantly gratifying because those aspects of game play are similar to their previous gaming experiences.
It's interesting that a quest centric game like WOW (that puts a ton of focus on quests and lore) have the majority of their players completely ignoring the quest write-ups and using either QuestHelper or the new intergrated QuestFinder feature. Hardly anyone reads the text anymore.
Just click on the guy with the exclamation point over their head and follow the arrow on screen to the place you need to be. Mouse over a monster or NPC and it will tell you if that is what you need to kill or not......then follow the arrow back to the guy that gave you your quest for your reward.
So are people really fans of the quest system or are they fans of a system that constantly gives rewards for meeting small scope goals?
Quests can be a valid & much-loved mechanic within an MMO world but they should feel like they have a point & an impact upon the world they take place in, also their over-use degrades their importance.
"Content" & Gameplay overall need to viewed in different ways, after all there are many kinds of players that like MMO's so offereing each style of gameplay a way to enjoy the game should be an important design goal, things we know that work are quests, mob killing, crafting, PvP &/or territory battles...each of these things need to have a purpose be it story or "progression".
There are many things that have been tried & fell out of favor or simply got ignored, adding more verbs is only useful in the questing style, or is it?
Day-jobs, as an alternative way of "faction grinding" could be an interesting way to set up some inter-faction PvP conflict if the system was robust enough, you've got your day job to guard a caravan, someone else has a day job to attack it, someone else has a job to rob it, 3 or more factions interacting in such ways could give a real "point" to PvP confrontations, if the technology was in place to make the caravan & an area outside into a PvP flagged moving zone it would open up the game to having PvP areas even within PvE games that fitted more seamlessly, I don;t think PvP has been used in as many ways as it can be, this example could turn a very simple plot-device & then add a huge "unpredictability factor" by setting off multiple factions against one another with a definiable reason for doing so.
Farming....
House & village/city building, a guild of crafter-gamers that build homes, castles, village halls, city walls, guild houses, gaining power & influence employing guards, blacksmiths stonemasons carpenters, then all the ancilliary things a city needs, food markets with farmers selling their wares.
A game that offered far more than just the Hack 'n Slash adventurer gameplay & allowed players to "be" a part of what is needed in the game, be that guards, diplomats, farmers, traders, craftsmen, hunters, entertainers, magicians, doctors, etc etc but they do so not as a single awesome totally self-sufficient entity but as part of a fledgling community that can rise to power on it's efforts, it may be happy to exist as a small village or it may grow into a huge city, all depending on the co-operation & organisation of it's citizens & how they work together, defend against attacks from outside factors, build in social factors such as seasons, holidays, dances, celebrations, voting for the village elder / city mayor, religions, cults, ...allow the players ways to create that content & give them the tools as they become needed, the relationship between a freeform world & it's developers needs to be initmate & symbiotic.
But here's the catch
It has to be a world to begin with.
Very good ideas....and I think that many of the MMO gamers that made the move to MMO gaming Pre-WOW did so because they wanted to play in a world where you could do things like that. One of the things I enjoyed about Ultima Online and old Star Wars Galaxey was that it wasn't ALL HACK n' SLASH.
If you wanted to be a merchant, thief, or even a Hearder in Ultima Online.....you could, and there was a place for your in the game. If you wanted to be an Entertainer and do nothing but dance or play music in a SWG Cantina.....you could, and there was a place for you.
BUT, if you listen to many of the people that make up this new MMO Market (most of which who have crossed over from other gaming generes), all they want is a HACK n' SLASH. They want to be able to log in and dive right into some action for 30min - 1hr, log out and realize some tangible gain for spending such a limited amount of time in game.
And.....when you have 11+ million subs with a MMO Hack n' Slash game (with the closest competitor in the hundreds of thousands), guess who the other game devs are going to base their game off of? The 200k subcription one?
Fallen Earth has some great story lines. There are typical 'kill rats' missions, but in many areas there are long historic chains of quests. There are factional quests. There are also interrelated quest lines in towns that explore the local politics and issues.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I never liked long quest chains only because if you got to a part you needed help with and wasnt lucky to find someone on the same part as you you either had to backtrack and redo the parts you did already to get help up to your part or hope that someone would do the same for you that was farther along in the chain(which is making them do what they did again)
There needs to be a good mix of filler quests(maybe the types you dont have to do if you dont want) mobs to grind on( for when you just dont feel like questing and what you said your epic quests that you need to do to continue the story arc(which should be kept interesting by the developers)
CoX dealt with this well, in a very simple manner. You got credit (XP, drops) for any leg of most story archs as long as you were in the mission for a short period of time before completion but wouldnt get the story arch bonus. People would join to help just for a chance to pound a tough boss (who had higher drop rates).
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
There's a few MMORPG who got the Quest system right. For exemple, Mabinogi's Quest is mainly a very long storyline filled with plot twist. There is sometimes a few "kill 10 rats" quests but there are very few of them (except as a new player to learn the ropes). There aren't many side-quest either though, instead they call it "Part-Time Jobs" where you can accomplish a job based on the NPC during a specific time of the day but you are not forced to do them.
Instead, you will have to run various instanced dungeons, do some fetch quests and uncover a larger part of the story with every succesfull quest. There's even some "RP Dungeon" where you will play the role of a different NPC to learn of his background, which often leads to some twist plot. Every action you take regarding the quest will uncover more mysteries about the Storyline and that's why I think they did the Quest system right.
WoW also did it right but as someone mentionned, the many "filler" quests just hides everything, which is a shame. Still, WoW possibly has the best storyline on the market at the moment (as far as MMORPG goes).