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The Future of Questing
Disgusting
Member Posts: 25
I've noticed that recently quests on average have sort of stagnated in terms of innovation. From the onset of MMO's, the mere presence of a sufficient number of quests was reason to rejoice. Nowadays we take them for granted having been spoiled from the complete lack of forced grinding from games like WoW, Rift, LotRO etc.
However, the dreaded "kill x retrieve y, go to z" format is starting to get old. Blizzard is very good at spotting trends and if you've played their most recent expansion you will have noticed that a few of the brand new quests have taken a surprisingly new format: If you've ever ventured to the badlands, then you would have noticed the puzzle quests that have been anything but the norm. For me, personally, they were probably among my favorite parts of the expansion, since the higher level content sort of converged back to the old "kill x" task system. The same could be said for some of the quests in hillsbrad foothills, where you play a tower defense minigame (for those of you who are not familiar with RTS custom maps, it's where you build structures that do damage to prevent waves of bad guys from getting to a certain spot).
Even Rift has implemented a puzzle in their game, which certainly portends that future content might be similar IF gamers enjoy it.
I am very enthused about this trend, since I have become fed up with merely repeating game mechanics i.e. "kill x/retrieve y" quests. The big question is, however, if other gamers feel the same way, since companies won't go to the trouble to implement anything but the same old unless gamers so desire them to.
So what is your take on questing? Are you happy with the same stuff that we've been doing for the past decade (or more), or would you like to see questing that is more varied in nature?
Comments
I'm looking forward to GW2's DEs. I'm tired of the same ol' same ol' single player questing most MMOs have.
Anyone who votes yes is a communist :O
Yes I have a dream And its not some MLK dream for equality. I wanna own a decommissioned lighthouse And I wanna live at the top And nobody knows I live there. And theres a button that I can press, and launch that lighthouse into space.
Ah crap!
Umm...I am not really satisfied but there have been some small changes (soon to be big changes)
For example there is the CoX and GW1 type which was quite a welcome change.
Theres also the games that doesnt actively focus on quest grinding (f2p games mostly)
Umm...Final Fantasy 14 had a new way which would work quite well if tweaked a lot more. (Levequests)
SWTOR will be putting a large focus on story bringing singleplayer quality quests to an MMO.
GW2 will bring dynamic events.
Secret world will bring out those investigation thingies...
So I think the future is going to be a lot better in terms of quests and how theyre handled. ^_^
Edit :
On topic - No im not satisfied yet but Im sure I will be soon @_@
Edit 2:
Omg someone actually voted yes o.o
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**This bunny was cloned from bunnies belonging to Gobla and is part of the Quizzical Fanclub and the The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club**
If you dont vote "no", the terrorists win.
If I could I would vote for there to be no more premade quests/events/stories in mmorpgs.
I voted yes, because I think that "kill x" is incredibly broad. Saying that you're sick of quests where you have to kill a certain mob is almost as silly as saying that you're sick of achievements where you have to do a certain thing. As long as you are in a game that is completely centered around killing mobs, quests will inevitably be centered around killing mobs. This doesn't strike me as a tragedy.
I vote for a ban on all hand-held quest.
/agree
die.
Rift is kinda a bad example of "breaking the trend". A few (completely hidden) puzzle quests and rifts aren't enough to offset the generally lower quality of quests. In Rift questing I don't see massive world state changes, nor do I participate in really unique experiences (like all the really different quests that exist in Cataclysm.)
I'm mostly enjoying Rift right now, but honestly their quests aren't exactly blowing me away.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I just hit 50 in Rift. That being said, I (in general, all MMOs) am sick of accepting quest without the NEED to read the text. I swear I have not read more than 10 lines of quest text in the entire game. That being said, the text window may not be the most briliant ideea of delivering info on a quest.
I would like a lot less quests, with much better quality.
quests should be more like they were in everquest, not WoW.
I'd like to see more open quests.
Currently we have these quests that are required to be done in a certain order. First talk to this NPC and only then can you pick up the barrels sitting at the troll village. And the chieftain of that village only drops his head if you've got the follow-up quest from that, nobody cares if you kill him before or after that.
Instead a system where I can pick up these barrels no matter what. I get a note in my quest log saying that I found some barrels likely looted from the vicinity and I should check if any nearby villagers are interested. If I kill the chieftain I can loot his head and a note telling me that the chieftain seemed like an important fellow and I should check with the local authorities if there's a bounty on his head.
Now those are pretty simple examples but I can see some real emergent questing coming from this if quests are kept a lot more vague. No marked areas to go to, no precise descriptions.
You talk to a villager who one day woke up to find some family heirloom stolen by thieves. He doesn't know anymore. So you go adventuring in the area and come across all kinds of quest items and objectives that you can collect until you figure out what else to do with them. Eventually you return to the village. As you talk more with the villagers you start noticing how all these other quest items and objectives are linked together. One of the villagers may thank you for killing the goblins he'd seen sneaking around the village for the past days, breaking into houses. One of the goblins may have been carrying some sort of letter in an unknown language. When talking to the local cleric he tells you that it's a demonic script. So you start looking for demons and eventually find a cave inhabited by lots of demons and a single goblin warlock possesing the heirloom. Kill him and take it back to complete what initially started your adventure.
You could however also first come across the demon cave and find the heirloom and then start looking for clues as to who it belongs to and eventually complete the adventure in a totally diffirent path. Maybe you never come across the goblin thieves and just draw the conclusion the demons stole it.
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Resistance is futile.
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Something needs to change.
Maybe GW2s dynamic events are the right way, maybe not.
I would personally split up questing into quests and tasks or jobs.
A quest is a long epic line you do for a great reward, like a cool item and experience. Maybe you save the princess from the evil duke, maybe you retrieve a powerful artifact or something. This is the stuff of legends, something worthy that can become a tale for bards to sing about.
Task on the other hand is menial tasks you do for money. Like killing rats or deliver messages. They should be optional and only give the XP you get for killing stuff when you do it.
Quests are fun but what most games passes off as quests are not quests at all. Finding the holy grail is a quest, picking some berries that grow just outside town isn't. I don't mind that tasks are in the game but I should be able to not do them.
EQ2s HQs and SQs are good examples of real quests, the rest of the quests in the same game is example of mundane tasks.
That is my 5 cents, but I need to play some GW2 to see if DEs are a better solution.
I'm hoping GW2's quests will be more of what I'm looking for; will have to wait and see. The biggest problem I have with questing in current MMOs are the prerequisite quests. If I meet someone while leveling or have a friend in zone and want to group, but they are either further along in a quest chain or behind and we cannot both complete the same quests at the same time then that's a problem- it's a disincentive to group.
*nods sagely* Quite true.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Can't wait for Guild Wars 2 to launch.
Gameplay footage:
i might get flamed lol for saying this but after all the games ive played i think the best quest ive ever done were in runescape i know lame game but there quest system had you doing a lot of puzzle stuff from what i can remember not just kill x amount of the same thing
same as D&DO SOME OF THERE dungeons have you doing small puzzles which makes the whole grp work as a team name a game out now that dose not have you killing bears spiders wargs orcs birds people shades frogs skeletons dragons goblins i could go on at some point we have all killed some thing from that list in most if not all mmo we play
now im off to kill 130 wargs in north downs for my next deed in LOTR break out the coffee and pro plus
Whooooooooooooooooosh, to both of you.
I think we're on the verge of an evolution of questing.
- WoW CATA brought its own phased storytelling/minigame questing with it.
- GW2 will have Dynamic Events and Personal Story
- SWTOR will bring RPG quality of story immersive questing
- The Secret World will have story heavy quests and Investigation Missions, puzzle and mystery quests that require you to use your brain and work with others in solving them.
So all in all, it looks to me like things are on the right path
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
I'm not quite sure what you mean by AAA-quality "free range" (e.g. Minecraft?), but the trend has been over the past decade that quests and storylines have become a lot more linear. It's possible to vary sometihng while keeping players on a steady track and I don't think players really care to invest the time to make their own content. Look at old online games like NWN where people could make their own worlds with their own rules. Given the number of players, the actual people willing to commit their time to make the content were sparse in comparison to the people who were just willing to play them.
People, especially now in this time of extreme economic competition, want a game where they can dive in and not be bothered with tedium. If you don't believe me, then there's WoW's success, Rift's success and every other clone of EQ with accessible content.
I was merely pointing out that Rift represents the exact same slow, steady step-evolution that happens in any industry. (A watched industry never innovates, as they say...er wait they don't say that. But they should!)
If you want specifics: puzzles don't work well because they can be solved. Once solved, their answers are trumpeted by the explorer players who discovered them and subsequently post the solution (chat/wiki/wowhead/etc).
You post an example of typical step-evolution, then ask if players want their products to improve (to which the answer is pretty obviously "yes")
If you want more specifics: "Kill x" will always exist as a quest. The quality of a quest isn't whether you're killing something or delivering something or traveling somewhere. The quality of a quest is the presentation of that task.
How many love stories exist? Do we say they're all crap because we can sum them up as "love story"? Of course not, but that's what they are.
What sets love stories apart? Presentation.
It's the same with quests. Getting hung up on the "kill x" part of the equation is just silly.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver