Quests in MMORPG's are a necessary evil in the western gaming style. Indeed killing 10 rabbits and going back to npc1 for reward are dull type of quests but provide a meaning to attract the general public in these games. What many tend to forget is that RP in many MMOG is only in for a lesser part of the community as more and more of the stathunters are about. This is the single player game public that is comming in.
Personally I know that a synergy between pvp (not pk) based quests and a dynamic npc would be the most valuable providing real fun. Quests with several possibilities to attain goals, I can think of plenty of examples in NexusTk which has been around since the early days of mmorpg's. This is the case for part of the item quests and part of the quest with a "legend mark" as a result. The legend mark system is a journal of completed quest visible to all on click and can hold marks of landscape events, crafting skills levels, and pvp games.
The same game provides players the true possibility of questing/doing missions with a wide array of player ran subpaths. Missions provided by these subpaths are rp based and not just some hack and slash giving you the oportunity to build your character's story. The legend system though at times abused empowers that system providing marks issued by players upon completion of the mission/quest set out.
If players had more opportunity and ability to really contribute, I think many of them would. Right now, "contributing to the overall experience" is confined to "pick your battles." All current MMORPGs (with the exception of A Tale in the Desert, Second Life, There, The Sims, and perhaps Eve Online) are 99% based on fighting.
I think the reason why so many MMOs are (and will continue to be for the foreseeable future) centered around fighting is because that is simply what the vast majority wants. Nothing else is really deemed interesting. Take the non-combat MMOs that you listed off in your example. Each one of them has a comparatively tiny player base because their concepts just aren't found appealing by the player base.
It's not that your ideas for what MMOs should be are bad, rent..they're just simply the minority right now. I think quests in these games are there to provide direction for players, because even if a questless game provided players with the tools to direct the world themselves, most players would lack the desire or motivation to do so.
Once again--I am not calling your thoughts stupid; in actuality, I would think a game like the one you describe would be great. Thing is, what you describe, and how it would work, is pretty much a template for the 'ideal' MMO, and one that I think would have a very hard time succeeding if attempted.
It's not that your ideas for what MMOs should be are bad, rent..they're just simply the minority right now. I think quests in these games are there to provide direction for players, because even if a questless game provided players with the tools to direct the world themselves, most players would lack the desire or motivation to do so.
This pinpoints the exact problem with player involvement. While there is a part of the gamers out there that will try to influence the game design and questing as much as possible, most part will prefer to just sit around and wait untill they get fed a quest. A game is ment to be fun and giving out quests and missions you do not take part in is often considered as work. To our mind where you go to work in order to get money. Work often has a boring sound to it, due to the obligations it brings along.
Thus in order to have fun we try to have others do the work for us. In a MMOG this is possible through NPC's as the workload on gm's/admins/players would be too large to keep the game profitable. Due to some companies being sued in the past, 'unpayed help by players' has been scratched from many game concepts. As I put above, there is an evil we can't go without if we want to keep the game running on a Massive scale. Some of the massive games let you manage and set up a seperate server, it is always possible to bring in your personal views and leave the NPC foundation aside on that server, this ofcourse leads you to going back to the smaller groups of friends we used to know on paper. There'ld be some of the exitement of meeting new people that would disappear.
I don't know about EQ, but I played the beta of WoW, so the text below is based on WoW.
The quests you can do are sometimes ridiculous, but you are not obliged (I don't know if this word is correct, english is not my native language) by the creators of the game. You can easily freestyle and play the game without caring for those quests. It is important, though, to have those quests in the game. Some players think the opposite of you and do like those quests. And most of the time quests can be a motivation to explore new areas, areas you might not would have seen when you did not accepted that quest.
IMO we should stay positive about quests, cause like many others have said, it can be a direction for some players. In WoW for example you can easily stay in 5 to 6 areas (at low level) while there are many others waiting to be discovered. With a quest in mind you may explore it faster.
Originally posted by stav1 OK a quest in EQ2 where i have to deliver cake got me thinking about this. EQ2 and WoW boast about how many quests they have ingame. But all these quests just force a player to conform to what the game wants you to do. Rather than enjoy the game in your own time and in your own way - quests force you to do things. And 90% of those things are tedious. Now it may just be that i find the PvE concepts in both EQ2 and WoW so old fashioned. For example do a quest to get uber item x, repeat, repeat ad nauseum. PvP? EQ2 doesn't have any and WoW seems to have added it as an after thought. Nothing new. So it boils down to quests. Deliver the ring, harvest some stone, kill monsters in dungeon to get loot. Why? Why did the devs of EQ2 and WoW think "let's design new mmorpgs with lots and lots of quests"?? All that time the devs wasted on creating quest after mind-numbing quest when they could ahve created new and unique gameplay elements. The mind boggles. What's even stranger is we buy this kind of garbage (myslef included). A little poll also on the subject.
Download WWIIonline.com and you will have a game!Build rank kill drive miles and miles ,Do what you wont !See you in the field soldier!
In WoW I often see people run up to a "quest giver" and run away in the direction of the quest in 2 or 3 seconds.
The only conclusion I can draw is that people simply don't read the purpose or meaning of the quest they've been given.
Granted, quests in MMORPGs tend to be; kill X number of mobs, gather X number of materials or FedEx but I've found that in WoW (and EQ2 for the short time I played) taking some time to read and understand why I'm doing what I've been asked to do stimulates my imagination and helps me see through the mundaness of it.
If quests are used as a way to gain experience or get nice items then they become a meaningless grind just like camping mobs.
Take some time to enjoy the game that the content creators have made and I think you'll have a much better experience.
As for developing new gameplay elements I think developers have one hand tied behind ther backs by the speed of networks and hardware. I don't think developers lack the imagination. They probably have a million and one ideas during a games development cycle by are stiffled by costs and time.
---------------------------------- Don't jump off the roof Dad You'll make a hole in the yard ----------------------------------
It is indeed so that in WoW peepz often do not read their quests. They ask where they have to go to other players, which can be pretty ennoying for those other players. In the beta I saw more than once that players started to get pissed of on those we-don't-read-quests people. But I still stay with the thought that quests helps players to get forward, and to have a reason to play further.
This pinpoints the exact problem with player involvement. While there is a part of the gamers out there that will try to influence the game design and questing as much as possible, most part will prefer to just sit around and wait untill they get fed a quest. A game is ment to be fun and giving out quests and missions you do not take part in is often considered as work. To our mind where you go to work in order to get money. Work often has a boring sound to it, due to the obligations it brings along. Thus in order to have fun we try to have others do the work for us.
It comes down to what most players find fun. I think that, in general, among "gamers", it's fair to say that most gamers prefer combat in terms of defining what they find "fun". That's not *all* gtamers, but it's proabably most gamers. So most of these games are designed to appeal to that larger group of combat-oriented gamers. I honestly think that is why there are so many combat-based games -- a large group of gamers like and prefer that kind of game play.
What's been suggested here is that it could be possible to create a game that not only has a combat focus, but has other areas of focus as well. EVE does this pretty well -- you can focus on combat more or less exclusively, or not at all, really, depending on what you enjoy doing. What you really need to do, I think, is (1) get rid of levels , (2) have a (mostly) player-based economy and (3) allow players to modify the game world in some way. Now, you'll say SWG did this, but people did not like it -- the reason for that is that SWG was (a) fairly poorly executed, (b) replaced levelling with a huge skilling grind that really made it levelling by another name and (c) was designed to appeal to a broad audience, and the broad audience doesn't like to create its own content, it wants content there. What you need to do is create a more niche-type of game that will appeal to the kind of gamer that likes a player-driven game -- the problem is that this market of gamers is smaller, and so it is harder to make money from it, I think, in terms of comparing the cost of developing such a game with its projected subscriber base.
The best game I've played as far as quests go is AC1 in its peak it offered monthly events and added fun new quests all the time. Even without the additions there were quests that existed and if you needed a certain item or wanted to do a certain quest you could attempt to solo it but most of them required groups. The fact that you have to plan ahead and make a time to go on a quest with a group or allegiance is much more fun (at least to me) than an NPC telling u to go get something or to kill some monsters to me thats boring and gets repetative (especially in WoW). I still think that AC1 offers the best of any MMO I've played in many areas, quests being one of them.
Comments
Quests in MMORPG's are a necessary evil in the western gaming style. Indeed killing 10 rabbits and going back to npc1 for reward are dull type of quests but provide a meaning to attract the general public in these games. What many tend to forget is that RP in many MMOG is only in for a lesser part of the community as more and more of the stathunters are about. This is the single player game public that is comming in.
Personally I know that a synergy between pvp (not pk) based quests and a dynamic npc would be the most valuable providing real fun. Quests with several possibilities to attain goals, I can think of plenty of examples in NexusTk which has been around since the early days of mmorpg's. This is the case for part of the item quests and part of the quest with a "legend mark" as a result. The legend mark system is a journal of completed quest visible to all on click and can hold marks of landscape events, crafting skills levels, and pvp games.
The same game provides players the true possibility of questing/doing missions with a wide array of player ran subpaths. Missions provided by these subpaths are rp based and not just some hack and slash giving you the oportunity to build your character's story. The legend system though at times abused empowers that system providing marks issued by players upon completion of the mission/quest set out.
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If players had more opportunity and ability to really contribute, I think many of them would. Right now, "contributing to the overall experience" is confined to "pick your battles." All current MMORPGs (with the exception of A Tale in the Desert, Second Life, There, The Sims, and perhaps Eve Online) are 99% based on fighting.
I think the reason why so many MMOs are (and will continue to be for the foreseeable future) centered around fighting is because that is simply what the vast majority wants. Nothing else is really deemed interesting. Take the non-combat MMOs that you listed off in your example. Each one of them has a comparatively tiny player base because their concepts just aren't found appealing by the player base.
It's not that your ideas for what MMOs should be are bad, rent..they're just simply the minority right now. I think quests in these games are there to provide direction for players, because even if a questless game provided players with the tools to direct the world themselves, most players would lack the desire or motivation to do so.
Once again--I am not calling your thoughts stupid; in actuality, I would think a game like the one you describe would be great. Thing is, what you describe, and how it would work, is pretty much a template for the 'ideal' MMO, and one that I think would have a very hard time succeeding if attempted.
Interesting discussion.
This pinpoints the exact problem with player involvement. While there is a part of the gamers out there that will try to influence the game design and questing as much as possible, most part will prefer to just sit around and wait untill they get fed a quest. A game is ment to be fun and giving out quests and missions you do not take part in is often considered as work. To our mind where you go to work in order to get money. Work often has a boring sound to it, due to the obligations it brings along.
Thus in order to have fun we try to have others do the work for us. In a MMOG this is possible through NPC's as the workload on gm's/admins/players would be too large to keep the game profitable. Due to some companies being sued in the past, 'unpayed help by players' has been scratched from many game concepts. As I put above, there is an evil we can't go without if we want to keep the game running on a Massive scale. Some of the massive games let you manage and set up a seperate server, it is always possible to bring in your personal views and leave the NPC foundation aside on that server, this ofcourse leads you to going back to the smaller groups of friends we used to know on paper.
There'ld be some of the exitement of meeting new people that would disappear.
-
I don't know about EQ, but I played the beta of WoW, so the text below is based on WoW.
The quests you can do are sometimes ridiculous, but you are not obliged (I don't know if this word is correct, english is not my native language) by the creators of the game. You can easily freestyle and play the game without caring for those quests. It is important, though, to have those quests in the game. Some players think the opposite of you and do like those quests. And most of the time quests can be a motivation to explore new areas, areas you might not would have seen when you did not accepted that quest.
IMO we should stay positive about quests, cause like many others have said, it can be a direction for some players. In WoW for example you can easily stay in 5 to 6 areas (at low level) while there are many others waiting to be discovered. With a quest in mind you may explore it faster.
In WoW I often see people run up to a "quest giver" and run away in the direction of the quest in 2 or 3 seconds.
The only conclusion I can draw is that people simply don't read the purpose or meaning of the quest they've been given.
Granted, quests in MMORPGs tend to be; kill X number of mobs, gather X number of materials or FedEx but I've found that in WoW (and EQ2 for the short time I played) taking some time to read and understand why I'm doing what I've been asked to do stimulates my imagination and helps me see through the mundaness of it.
If quests are used as a way to gain experience or get nice items then they become a meaningless grind just like camping mobs.
Take some time to enjoy the game that the content creators have made and I think you'll have a much better experience.
As for developing new gameplay elements I think developers have one hand tied behind ther backs by the speed of networks and hardware. I don't think developers lack the imagination. They probably have a million and one ideas during a games development cycle by are stiffled by costs and time.
----------------------------------
Don't jump off the roof Dad
You'll make a hole in the yard
----------------------------------
It is indeed so that in WoW peepz often do not read their quests. They ask where they have to go to other players, which can be pretty ennoying for those other players. In the beta I saw more than once that players started to get pissed of on those we-don't-read-quests people. But I still stay with the thought that quests helps players to get forward, and to have a reason to play further.
It comes down to what most players find fun. I think that, in general, among "gamers", it's fair to say that most gamers prefer combat in terms of defining what they find "fun". That's not *all* gtamers, but it's proabably most gamers. So most of these games are designed to appeal to that larger group of combat-oriented gamers. I honestly think that is why there are so many combat-based games -- a large group of gamers like and prefer that kind of game play.
What's been suggested here is that it could be possible to create a game that not only has a combat focus, but has other areas of focus as well. EVE does this pretty well -- you can focus on combat more or less exclusively, or not at all, really, depending on what you enjoy doing. What you really need to do, I think, is (1) get rid of levels , (2) have a (mostly) player-based economy and (3) allow players to modify the game world in some way. Now, you'll say SWG did this, but people did not like it -- the reason for that is that SWG was (a) fairly poorly executed, (b) replaced levelling with a huge skilling grind that really made it levelling by another name and (c) was designed to appeal to a broad audience, and the broad audience doesn't like to create its own content, it wants content there. What you need to do is create a more niche-type of game that will appeal to the kind of gamer that likes a player-driven game -- the problem is that this market of gamers is smaller, and so it is harder to make money from it, I think, in terms of comparing the cost of developing such a game with its projected subscriber base.
If you need to do quests, then they are a burden(WoW style).
If quests are an option, they are welcome(CoH style).
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren