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New idea for player interaction.
Boge
Member Posts: 182
I was just thinking, why don't they have more interactive quests between players? For instance, you always begin your adventure by some training mission, right? And some higher up is directing you. Why can't your training partner be another higher level character? Why couldn't they get a quest to go back to a newbie area and train some newbies and you get the quest where you're the newbie to be trained? Perhaps you could get captured somewhere and have to wait for some higher level characters to come and rescue you and escort you safely out of the area.
Yeah, that could be inconvenient if there is nobody else on those quests to interact with, but it could be like a chance of an NPC or a player.
A good example is in Demon's Souls. There is a boss in the game that will pull a random player in to play as that boss against another player. If there isn't a player to pull in there, the boss is just an NPC, but it's rather interesting when you suddenly get summoned into someone's game and you're the boss fighting against a player trying to complete their quest. Perhaps they could do things like that for instances in MMOs. Sometimes a player could queue up to fight as a boss against a group of players. It would be balanced so naturally the players would have a fair chance to win. Doing it this way would also mix things up so you don't have the typical hokey pokey rhythm fight.
They could do all sorts of different things to help involve players with each other without the whole grouping up or PvP thing.
Comments
that would be like opening the pandora box of player griefing 101 .. Even if it turned great in the long run you'd have more bad than good coming out of it.
Perhaps it wouldn't be forced, but optional. Like you could queue up for questing with others for this system, or you could do it the instanced way with NPCs. Of course there would be small perks for playing with the other players, like social points in Star Wars.
Essentially this is the PvE version of PvP quests, which already require you to interact (i.e. KILL) other players.
I just don't see MMO players jumping on bored this random idea. Just seems so ill thought out and very easy to grief.
Let me try to explain it this way...not necessarily PvP, but more high level characters playing a part in lower level quests, even though for them, it's still the high level quest. A small example is Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. They start out and meet themselves from the future. Then later during the movie, they go back in time and talk to themselves the way they did before. So for instance, you would play a later part of a quest that you've interacted in earlier, such as training new players in a skirmish, or a rescue mission where when you were a newbie, a higher level played his part and rescued you.
Maybe in some part of the game, as a newbie, there is a great battle, and you're required to rush equipment to the front lines, but as a more experienced player, you get to play one of the fighters on the front lines and hold off the attack until that newbie shows up with new supplies.
That's the kind of thing I'm thinking. Sort of the same quests, but from different sides, different points of view sort of thing so you're interacting with other players questing in an indirect way.
Perhaps still none of you understand what I'm thinking, and I don't know how better to explain it. So I guess nevermind. We'll just continue the same way we have been for 15 years now.
Going back and interacting positively with newer players is something that already happens in two ways. You've got people that legitimately help new players by teaching them what they need to know: don't vendor those crystals, you can sell them on the AH for much more; carry a stack of these potions and use one before every boss fight; this ability is inefficient so don't spam it every time it comes off cooldown. And then you've got people that illegitimately help by giving a ton of money and equipment or by healing them through content that is much higher level. This doesn't teach people how to play the game, it just makes them get to higher level faster and without experiencing the game for themselves.
I don't think there's a need to provide incentives for either of these forms of help. You don't want to encourage the latter because it's ultimately not a good way to help people; you're just allowing them to skip over playing part of the game, not fostering their understanding of the mechanics. And there's no need to reward the people who give legitimate help because they're not doing it for a reward. Making it a clickable quest would cheapen the experience, like doing charity work just to earn a prize. There's also no good way to detect whether someone's giving good advice or just leading the noob by the nose through the quest without adequately explaining anything.
While the idea that player interaction between noob and vet is excellent I think you should take the PvE out of it, or you have to give the high level player a severly underpowered mob.
But I could see something like making the older player a spirit and have in guiding the noob without being able to interact with the enviroment. Of course other spirits could attack him if that is needed.
Or an evil quest that temporarily lowers the players level to the lowest possible for the first dungeon and have him create a group with low level players...
The basic idea is good, but I think it needs some thinking.
I don't like the idea of player controlled bosses, because what if some players make easy to kill bosses while others are hard to kill bosses. That wouldn't be fair.
I like the idea and appreciate your enthusiasm, but this idea wouldn't work.
If I was chosen to be a raid boss, I wouldn't fall for some tanks stupid taunt or attack the person who does the most damage to me. I would instantly smash the healers and clothies. The rest would break apart like water on rock.
You mean like coaching in TF2? Maybe, but I don't think it is necessary in PvE content that could have NPC coaches. Plus there are people who feel awkward having a random player coach. I'd much rather have somebody I know coach me.
Honestly, I think this isn't a bad idea, but needs refinement. WAR and GW2 seem to have / are developing the best systems for this type of gameplay in the form of public quests / dynamic events. While they were fairly simplistic in WAR, I think that there is pleanty of room to do a lot more w/ them, and make for a much more dynamic and involved pve experience.
I'm also surprised that more dungeons / raids don't adopt a similar mindset since you already have a group together anyways. I don't know about other players, but for me I've always enjoyed dungeons that have some form of puzzle elements, or require different players to be performing different tasks as well as fighting / healing. It just makes the dungeon that much more exciting and fun.
I think some games introduced the conceprt of mentors. In game, you can open a window that list people who are looking for apprentices, then you can ask them to be your mentor. The advantages are that you can ask this person game related questions while he/she will get a reward once you graduate ( achieve a certain level).