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General: Riddle Me This, Riddle Me FAQ
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In the latest installment of her weekly Player Perspectives column, MMORPG.com's Jaime Skelton tackles the age of information in MMOs. By this, Jaime discusses exploration vs in-game quest guides, for example. Is there such a thing as too much available information for players in today's MMOs? Read Jaime's article and let us know what you think!
Games today are complex, and MMOs are hardly an exception, with multiple quest lines, factions, rewards, zones, and experience to consider. The immense scale of MMOs, plus their daunting nature, makes the idea of relying on guides far more appealing. As a result, games have adapted to community needs with new innovations that many of us take for granted; for instance, the implementation of a quest log with recorded quest text to offer in-game hints. The past two years have also seen a surge in games providing assistance through map markers, including highlights on the world map and on the mini-map itself. Many free-to-play games also incorporate auto-routing, the ability to simply click on the name of an NPC or an objective and be directed there without having to manually travel.
Read Riddle Me This, Riddle Me FAQ.
Comments
This is one of the reasons I love Asheron's Call. There are no markers over the heads of NPCs. No mark shows up on the map to say "Hey here is the place you need to go". You don't get to select NPCs and find out if they drop the trophy you need. It doesn't have a journal which automatically fills out the information for you. You have to actually do the work and figure it out.
Now of course there is the wikia site which has the walk throughs all the players have done, but you can ignore that since it isn't in your face like when the game hands it all to you. Occasionally you will get frustrated on a quest and give up by looking it up on the wikia, but that is a fairly good mix.
I hate the modern MMO age of holding your hand all the way through, how is that even fun?
As for when guides and FAQs started, I remember Sierra had a toll phone service you could call to get hints/walk throughs on games back in the early Kings Quest days. I remember my parents finally let me call it one day (it was like a buck a minute) when I had been stuck on one of the kings quest (which ever was the first one you played a female character). They told me I could get one hint on there, and here is how amazing the service was. I called up to find out about one thing and it had an option (there were options after options to get to what you needed to waste time and run up the bill) that was like "What secret can you do with item X" and being the young kid I was I thought "Man I never even thought about doing something with that!" so I chose that option. The service replied with "You can not do anything with item X" and that was the one hint I got to get, pretty anti-climactic for my parents finally allowing me to call that number.
One of my fondest memories was completing the Stein of Maggok quest in Everquest for the first time. It starts like any quest did back then, with no idea where and what it would lead too.
I did not use any guides, but occasionally i would ask local erudites info on where i might find certain areas.
That was extremely rewarding, but if every quest had you traveling multiple contents, navigating through hostile zones, and reputation grinds, I think i would have quit a lot sooner.
I fear that developers may start to factor in the "guides" when developing content, and make a lack luster experience for those who don't use them.
I'm definitly 1 to use guide when I find myself stuck.
What game is the last screenshot from?
"If you're going to act like a noob, I'll treat you like one." -Caskio
Adventurers wear fancy pants!!!
This is a topic where balance is absolutely the crux.
Either extreme will alienate some type of player. I don’t always want my hand held, but when I think about how FF14 does it (opinion based on beta) it’s too much the other way.
There should be secrets a lot of secrets but you also need things that provide balance and direction. Does anyone really “want” to be lost when driving to a destination? Definitely we love to explore but sometimes we just want to hit the grocery too.
The game player demographic has dramatically changed and increased in the last say ~6 years. Plus you have folks like me who were there when Pong started, grew up into Atari 2600, 5200, Amiga, NES. Spent our childhood and often teenage years refining our gaming mechanic understanding, in those years the tech and ability to provide hand-holding was not refined. It was in infancy stages. You were lucky if there was text, buttons behaved as expected and good music.
You have a group of people that regurgitate “figure it out!” rhetoric. I don’t think that fits in today’s online games so much, the point of playing MMO is to participate in a community (I know that is my rhetoric). You don’t have to give them the answer, but excluding them from the community for a question isn’t helping you, the game or them.
I think a lot of games are doing the right things – just that none of them seem to combine all the right things. You get so much hit and miss with the mechanics in this generation of titles. For example, I love the WAR tome. I love EQ2 quests (the ghoulbane series for example) and I loved the long cohesive Tortage story of AoC albeit it is abruptly discontinued and you are left with crumbs every 10 levels or so. I love discovering secret quests or mysterious unexplained things. Consider the children of Gold shire, creepy, simple and without a definite answer.
The next crop of titles is touting a lot of “your story” type of features. We shall see if they are able to maintain accessibility and mystery balance. All while having playable game mechanics allowing you experience it.
Everyone wants everything handed to them on a platter these days. They don't want to take the time to solve anything themselves. So what we end up with is quests that lead you by the hand over and over again. I call it the Wow factor. Blizzard figured out that people did not want to work at anything so they fixed that problem for everyone.
Years ago (like in the 90's) I played a text MUD 3-Kingdoms (www.3k.org) which had the most amazing quests...and the admins of the place had a zero tolerance policy about sharing "quest info" . It was awesome because you HAD to figure it out for yourself...if you didn't you couldn't just ask for the answer because a person could be banned for doing so. That kind of environment isn't really possible for a for profit enterprise, but remains the singularly best gaming experience of my life.
You can’t say everyone – because I don’t so that invalidates statement, and you can’t say everyone meaning generally most people.
I agree with you on a pervasive “WoW factor” pattern. I think Blizzard was focused on offering accessible entertainment. Entertainment often focuses on path of least resistance since that increases ROI. The problem is that the wow factor, instead of being the way they did it, became the Holy Grail for how it’s done.
Games were not so much popcorn entertainment as they were an experience or hobby. Today they are both. Did you play Metal Gear to watch Snake or be Snake?
I hate tutorials.
I hate the fact that a lot of tutorial type gizmos STAY in games well after the tutorial.
I don't mind having a quest log with some specific information. Maybe highlight an area name (Mount Demonhead) , a key clue (an oddly shaped rock), and if there's much danger involved (the area is heavily patrolled by rabid pandagorillas!) and let me adventure!
No big X on the map (MAYBE occassionally) and no big arrow pointing me direclty there. No Google real time Tomtom style MAP to begin with in certain MMOs.
I hate it.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Many of us who enjoy MMOs also have other things that demand our time, such as work and school, etc. I don't want to waste, yes waste, my time going around in a circle for hours looking for something that is barely distinguished from the surroundings. I appreciate the sentiment that you should just figure it out, but being frustrated and bored for hours on end is not fun.
I don't even believe in Jeebus.
Thank you for this amazing and thought provoking article, Ms Skelton.
While I can understand why these tools have come about it seems that now days many people are actually afraid to play a game without them. Is the idea of being challenged or having to use one's brain for a few moments so tedious or terrifying in the new millenium?
Both single player and MMORPG games used to feel a bit like THIS
Or THIS
Now thanks to the simplification of character building we've seen in most recent MMOs, these games are starting to feel like THIS
Add in all the hand holding quest helpers, FAQs, and guides and what you are essentially left with is THIS
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, riddle 'em with bullets
Brilliant!
I have Chess and Candyland but always been partial to Life and Monopoly... Where do those fit in? Can I be the bank?
LOL. Life always seemed a bit complex or at least long for a childrens game, so I'd place it somewhere pre Wow.
Monopoly is raising its ugly head in the MMO world right now in all the games that are turning to the FTP hybrid model.
And no, sorry you can't be the bank. Blizzard is always the bank these days.
Considering how much money Blizzard is making these days, more than some small countries, I wonder how long before A: They start printing their own currency, and B: They get a seat on the United Nations.
If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, riddle 'em with bullets
I like the option to be able to look up where something is sometimes for the simple fact that there have been occasions where I have spent literally hours looking for something that was, as another poster put it, quite literally indistinguishable from everything else in the landscape.
I don't think questgivers and items all need to be marked with a giant question mark or anything like that, as I do like to explore in my own time and on my own terms, but it does get frustrating at times to have to go pick up, say, a particular rock that is located in the middle of a rockslide, hehe.
All that aside, I also tend to like the option to exist for the simple fact that I have a traumatic brain injury which affects things like my memory and cognitive ability, so I have the perspective that having the option does make games a little more accessible and less frustrating in terms of questing for people with disabilities. Sure, there's the statement many will make, "if you're disabled, don't play MMOs," but that is really a very asinine statement for anyone to make in my opinion. And MMOs, which do of course have to cater to the majority audience from a business perspective, also will generally make at least a cursory attempt to make themselves accessible to people with disabilities - also for business purposes.
For those who do not want the option, or for the days that I don't want to use the option, it can usually be turned off in your options in games where it is enabled by default and there's nothing requiring people to visit websites that provide walkthroughs. Really, in most cases, it is an option or choice (except for the ginormous identification icons over questgivers) to use questhelpers and guides in games - the five seconds it takes to turn it off in the UI, in my opinion, really doesn't warrant all the griping people do about it.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
That's what those MMO theme parks are made of. To avoid frustation.
Another excellent article Jamie.
It makes me long for the days without arrows and colorful red circles on the back of every quest with paragraphs of information detailing exactly what to do.
The feeling of figuring something out or just asking for help in the chat channels was really fun. I miss that.
I think the shift to thousands of quests has helped speed along this mindset. Instead of fewer, but more meaningful and lenghty quests forces some people to need help keeping track of all of them.
There are so many quests in todays mmos, that most of them are meaningless or just get lost amongst in the sea of endless quests being taken and completed. Questing now more closely resembles errands and tasks than it does anyting else, in my opinion.
I believe this is only half of the problem. It's not just that people are lazy, but more that experienced players who have already uncovered every secret and quest and reward, no longer have the same level of patience as they did the first time through. The more times they run through the content, the faster they just want to get through it. It's no longer something to be enjoyed, but something to be endured.
This jaded attitude will tend to rub off on new players, who might otherwise be happy enough to wander through the content at a leisurely pace, stopping to scratch their heads when they run into a wall, or asking for help when they are well and truly stumped. Of course, this all too often invites terse replies from those more experienced players, who having run through their quota of patience three level-capped characters back, and simply reply with a URL to a web guide. So newbie shrugs and looks up the answer, gets step-by-step directions on exactly what must be done and in what order, then goes ahead. The next time he needs an answer, he'll just consult the guide, and he'll spend less and less time scratching his head before he does it. And all this completely ignores the fact that if you are a new player and don't know how everything works, you can expect a whole lot of flak ranging from insults to being unceremoniously kicked from a group when you can't recite every step of a certain activity, verbatim from the guide.
It's not that players are lazy, it's that arrogant asshats regularly make it to clear to anyone experiencing a game for the first time, that curiosity and wonderment will not be tolerated. It's our own jaded, arrogant natures that have screwed up our games. If you wan to lay blame, the first stop is the mirror.
Of course, this is all a generalization, since there are many players out there who will continue to go out of their way to help new people. The point is that the longer a game runs, the more they become an endangered species. WoW is a perfect example of this.
I think the problem can be found with the incentive structure of quests. When the only consequences of a quest are to succeed and get loot or fail and repeat the quest, then the only part of the quest that becomes important is the reward. At that point, the who and why of the quest doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the how and FAQs/guides give us the how in a more efficient way than the NPC, who is still trying to sell us on the who, why, and how bundled together.
There can be no immersion when your actions in game have no real consequences beyond acquiring loot. You will complete quest A for a flaming sword so you can see yourself swing that flaming sword while completing quest B. The reward for quest B is yet another, flashier, flaming sword. This sword helps you complete quest C for another, bigger flaming sword, ad infinitum from level 1 to max and each subsequent expansion.
And yet... Some tutorials are necessary. To be quite honest, anyone who is able to pick up EvE Online, completely disable the tutorial, refrain from searching the internet and just figure it out on his or her own is probably too intelligent for me. I'd have serious difficulty enjoying that play experience. I agree most games take it too far though.
Well to some MMOs gave a great combonation of 'adventure' and 'social' gaming.
Now it's 'casual' and 'solo-friendly' and therefore 'retarded'.
Play Tetris you casual freaks. That's what that god damn game was made for. You think a little, time goes by, you get points, you lose, broo-ha-ha.
I kill other players because they're smarter than AI, sometimes.
Kind of looks like Warhammer, but I'm not positive.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
In any installment I know of, The Legend of Zelda never really required obvious holding hands in game. It made it with clever level design and clear game play structure among other tricks (like using mentor characters), while being considered open world and puzzle-heavy. Of course, the internetz isn't short of walkthroughs for those who need them. In some way this applies to Nintendo games in general, as they always seem to appear lighter and more accessible than similar games of other companies.
MMORPGs come from a super geek corner of gaming, where Asperger Syndrome was the default personality disorder. RPGs evolved from wargaming, the most unwieldy kind of game imaginable. This history left it's influence and for example bred elitism and in-group/out-group behavior (what you touch on with "Newbies"). There were many MMO-gamers who want their games complicated and clunky, because it created the niches where people who learned the ropes could feel elite and look down at others. There are still games that gain significant attention on this site the more inaccesible, angular and obscure they are, as long as they also appear as "hardcore".
Not too long ago, the main method to control larger parts of the game were programmer style "slash commands". Certain games hardly dressed up their bare bones gameplay mechanics. In many of today's MMORPGs you can easily see through their play patterns of going to some point, click on something, then go back and click on something else to finish the mission.
Journalists and community, it looks like, aren't as informed as they assert when it comes to documentation. Many a review could have been written while the game was in alpha stage. All the tweaking and tricks that make Zelda a Zelda, why exactly something works and something else doesn't are hardly described. Even basic information, like a full documentation on a regular MMORPG combat is hard to find. How exactly does the camera behave, in which situations, when and how exactly are attacks triggered. Where are the key differences betweens EQ2 and WOWs control scheme, if there are any etc. This is why new generations of game developers often reinvent the wheel and miss out the 80% of stuff that makes games truly Miyamoto-Grade awesome.
This might explain why parts of the community are very vocal against autopilot style helpers (the elitist faction). Why the design isn't awesome (lack of good documentation and reviews) and why the majority of people find autopilots and other things helpful in one situation or the other (due to the former reason).
All with pointed emphasis of course
P.S.: Could somebody of MMORPG.com fix the Blog view. The Line-Break vs. Paragraph issue. Also, Snarling Wolf must be a Bot, as he is always the default first poster
That doesn't look like Warhammer.
But what is it? It's bugging me to not know.
"If you're going to act like a noob, I'll treat you like one." -Caskio
Adventurers wear fancy pants!!!
Great article again Ms Skelton, long time reader and finally gotta register and comment. As a vet and former hardcore mmo gamer, I'm just burned out on all the "Candy Land" style games (hallarious analogy farginwar !). My criteria for a game that's going to bore me within the first month free sub: If you can skip the dialogue of a new quest and accomplish all the goals without getting close to death, then it's time to find a new game. When I try to do this test but end up failing the quest, something in my brain triggers and I think, "Dang I guess it's time to pay attention." The fun part of these engaging quests is just that. You gotta actually read, move objects, something to interact with the game. Otherwise you might as well turn off the brain and go through the motions. And for me that's a large part of what an MMO have always been about. Yea you can go out and kill a bunch of mobs, but there has to be that sense of a purpose, goal, and reward for actions.
Businesses are obviously making a ton of cash with these less interactive MMOs. Once popular trends usually cycle back to popularity and here's hoping the challenging style quests of a RPG-MMO return soon.
Guides are good. I appreciate player made quest guides. They're a nice backup plan if you get stuck on a quest. The new trend, auto-routing, I don't get. I hate it. What's the point? 50% of your "gaming" time you spend sitting there staring at your character while it runs places. Boooooring... All the games I have tried out that had auto-routing got uninstalled within 48 hours of me first playing.
"Trying is the first step towards failure." -Homer J. Simpson-
I thought it looked like Warhammer except for the bookmarks. But then again...I haven't played WAR since the month it was released, so....heh. Yeah, it's buggin' me too...lol
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club