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Was the lack of quests a good thing??
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
I wonder. Mind ya, I am still mostly enjoying GW2. But there is something at the horizon of my mind, like an insight. I begin to feel... aimless. My excitement to see what's behind the next corner is a bit diminishing. I am not sure if it's just autumn depression, teh. No really. Maybe it is just a temporal down I am in, that's why I wondered of someone else feels similar.
You see I love the events, most of them. They mask the grind well. But on the flip-side, they are sort of causing a rush rush feeling, which just begins to wear me out at the moment. With normal quests, I feel like I more have my own speed. Now it is like the game dictates his speed and forces it on me, like, oh look there is an invasion HURRY to defend, and OH look, an NPC needs to be guarded, hurry hurry. I feel always rushed and pressured. Sort of. I am still fishing for the right words for what I just feel right now. As I said, don't read TOO much into it. Maybe I just have bad days. But maybe not. *shrug*
It's like the absence of any real, normal quests takes away direction, purpose. I just feel like I stroll around and stumble from even to event and it doesn't really create a coherent image or story or what. When you have quest giver camps, you always unfold the regional story step by step, and here I feel a bit lost. I gather skill points (blue arrow symbol) on several 1-15 maps to pimp my char, I gather heart quests to get better equip... but it all loses coherence. I can't say it better atm.
Thoughts?
(Please, no trolling accusations, ok?)
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
you have personal story and heart quests all over the earlier areas for direction if yuo want it.. not sure how much more direction is needed.. the strolling around and stumbling onto stuff is the main thing most people seem to enjoy about the game and how it sets itself apart from the rest of the themepark games out there. I would like to ask are you a fan at all of any open ended type games like the elder scrolls series? GW2 doesn't offer as open a world as those games but its a step closer in that direction than games like Rift or TERA.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I went into this game sort of blind in a way. I knew some stuff, but I mostly ignored it during development/beta. I knew there were going to be dynamic world events. What I didn't realize was just how freaking many there would be. Nor do I think I realized there would be an almost complete lack of side-quests in favor of the area quests that GW2 uses.
I really do love the dynamic events. But I agree they begin to feel forced. And unfortunately this game suffers from the same problem that Final Fantasy XIV suffered from...the story quests are awesome but...there aren't enough of them and they are spread out across many levels at a time. Compare that to SWTOR where story-quests do taper off, but never do you go more than a level at a time between each segment. In GW2...what do you do between story quests? DEs and heart areas? Really? That's it? Why? What's the motivation to run around doing them?
That's what I'm feeling at the moment...a lack of motivating factor combined with a sense of aimlessness but also a weird sort of pressure to participate in the DEs because if I don't what else am I going to do? All I want to do is get to the next story quest.
So yes, awesome that I fee like I'm raiding with huge groups of people, awesome that we don't actually have to form a group, all of that is amazing and fun. But...why are we doing this again? Zergfest ftw? (It's like someone designed the perfect way to take the poinless neverending, neverchanging, zerginess of PvP battlegrounds and design the entire PvE experience around it).
It's a great game nonetheless.
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
That's a good question.
I love both Elder Scrolls and Bioware RPG, but I feel both are extremes of which I'd prefer a balance.
The upside of a real quest is, I can do it in my own speed. I mean, sure I can do events as I want to, but they make me feel more pressured, like rush rush gogo! But maybe I am overly sensitive atm. I try to sort out this feeling. Same with classes. I kinda miss a bit more order in the cooperation due to the absence of the Trinity. Like everyone zergs alone for himself. I am exxagerating maybe.
Don't take what I say here too serious. I am just probing my own insights here. (Damn, some things are difficult to say in a foreign language...)
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
the balance you ask of is odd to me because to me GW2 offers a balance between the two extremes.. it offers personal story quests and hearts to follow for those who need direction and a dynamic event system for those who just want to explore and watch events unfold.. also the early zones events are much faster and repeat at a higher rate.. as you get up in the zones the events don't repeat as quickly and are more involved.. id get up a little more in levels and think you will enojy what you see in the higher level zones. Enjoy:)
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I feel the same way sometimes. Im bored and need direction. My mood is low and I dont feel like doing anything so I want a game to tell me what to do. It becomes more like watching TV and just following whatever. But the thing is, Im not really enjoying anything. Im just sitting back, letting time pass.
It becomes a "yeah whatever" thing. Or you turn into a 3 eyed alien bear. ("")(O.o.O)("")
''/\/\'' Posted using Iphone bunni
( 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**
The way I feel about it is that removing the classic WoW style questing system was a postive and refreshing advancement. GW2 is not perfect, but I personally am bored of quest hubs, and while the heart quests are similar to that design, they are different enough to pull me through them. Besides that, many of the heart quests are quite entertaining, and the dynamic events that occur often give the world the sense that it has a pulse.
I like that the game takes a free form approach. I can go anywhere up to my level or below and find content that is challenging and interesting due to the effective level system. If I don't like an area I can move somewhere else, and if a certain path strikes my fancy I can follow it and often find something interesting. I liked climbing the hidden jump puzzles, despite the game not giving any sign that something was actually there until the achievement at the top (no view point or any marker there). I like that I can go in some caves and find rare monsters and loot. It feels a bit more like an elder scrolls game due to the non-linearity (although nowhere near that free roaming of course), and I like that.
I think it sometimes suffers from seeming repetitive if you just run with a huge group from event to event, and that is bad. However, two things saves my interest there. 1. The personal story, which provides just enough of a linear story to give the game character without being invasive. 2. If you stop to read npc dialogue or listen to what is being said closely, they often reveal interesting story information that ties in with larger story areas (the areas where the dynamic event text is always present in the upper right telling the current status of some event story), and if you follow them, they often lead to interesting little secrets and phases of the events.
I don't think the game is perfect, and I don't think the release has been what it should have been (TP down, some nasty lag, wvw matching issues), but overall GW2 is fun, and I don't think that the typical quest system would have been a good thing. Humans are ever changing creatures, and therefore innovation and change, even subtle, can make things a lot more fun.
Perhaps the word you're looking for to describe the DE's is that they add a sense of "urgency"? Urgent as in "Hey the city is under siege by Centaurs! Get here now before they burn it down (or before other players push them out)". When there is a sense of urgency added you can't take these events at your own pace. They are on a timer. The Timer could be an actual count down, or it could be players beating you to the punch.
Personally I like that the world moves with out you. That events can pass or fail with or with out you. This sense of urgency was one of my main criticisms of the classic quest system. In traditional quests the NPC will tell you the centaurs are laying siege to the town. He then will proceed to ask you to vanquish 10 centaurs to help out. Well that's fine and dandy, but it was always so boring to know that the centaurs will always wait for the next savior of the village (such nice guys!).
I can see how others may dislike having that layer of urgency added ontop of the questing/events. It's not exactly condusive to a leisure stroll through the content. Although as Aerowyn pointed out, they have the personal stories and hearts as static content to be tackled at your own pace. I think that is a nice compromise but perhaps it's not enough for some.
lack of quests?
There are plenty of them...they are simply presented differently....
I love it,so much inmersive...so much fun...and so much time saving.....
...hated to have to go all the way back to just hand in done quests.
In my opinion, no.
PVE is nothing more than a DE Zerg. An event, mind you, that doesn't really care if you're there or not. There are many who really enjoy this. For them I am so hapy that they have found a game that they enjoy. But for me: "Thanks for the offer but I'll have to pass." There are simply far too many games that do it better, for my taste that is.
You realize you dont have to do the Dynamic Event if you chose not too? Its not forced unless you allow it. If you choose to slow down and gather or maybe craft you dont have to drop what your doing to run to a dynamic event.
You also have the quests where its kill this many of X or collect this X if you want too, again you dont have too.
I get that people will not all like the same things, and thats ok, its how you get variety. What I dont get is why you complain because you can't control yourself from not doing dynamic events. I like the fact I can go back to a lower level area, to say gather and if I so chose jump into a dynamic event there or just keep gathering.
I myself couldnt stomach the quest's in SToR ( or whatever it is ) and could care less how wonderful the personal story was because I hated the kill x of these and collect x of those. It felt like I had reupped my subscription with WoW again.
Dynamic events in GW2 IMO mask's/ hides the quest grind very well so far. Anyway, to each his own, I am enjoying myself at the moment after many years of personal dissapointment in newly released MMO's.
I can't really comment toward your questing opinion. However the other (feeling rushed) that does make sense, as well as wanting to play at your own pace. I can see the base DE design going against those who like to take things slow. I hated that in games like EQ2 or even GW1, players were always rushing even though the content didn't force it. In this case it kind of does.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I would say the lack of quests is not a good thing.
I'm allready having a tough time logging in. I've done all the heart quests in the area i'm in and am still 3 levels below my next story quest. The DE's are boring as they are zergfests with zero challenge and you can have a huge string of bad luck and not be in the right place for them. So now when i log in i have no quests, and nothing to do but aimlessly wander around looking for DE's that might pop. That said, there only seems to be like two DE's per heart quest area so you end up having to repeat them just to level.
The leveling pacing in this game is horrid and reminds me of FFXIV with the stupid guild leves and no other content at all but the story quests. I find myself allready bored and lacking ambition to login and just kill mobs for 10xp each. And don't even talk to me about crafting, i hate crafting and shouldn't have to craft just to level. Exploration is pointless if there's not a quest there as teh mobs give such little exp it's not worth killing them.
Try another starter area.
I've done all 5 level 1-15 areas and the charr 15-25 area whie doing discoveries for Leatherworking and Huntsman with the dropped materials. I am now level 37. Scaling makes it possible for this content not to become too easy while also rewarding you for exploring it.
Back to the OP point, I consider the lack of quests a good thing. I don't have to worry about quest hubs and repetition of grabbing all available quests in the area, heading out to complete them and then returning. Along with the inventory management posssibility in this game I pretty much never need to return to a town because my inventory is full.
The lack of quests is a very bad thing imo. But the inclusion of dynamic events is a very good thing. The next MMO we should want should be a fine mixture between the two, which is what games like Skyrim do. In GW2, there are no relics to search the land for, no sword of the lost ages laying at the bottom of some dungeon, no history, rumors or greatness surrounding anything we do (except personal story, which isn't the great choice based storytelling adventure most people want to believe it is, your choices only affect beginning, middle and end with set scripted pieces). This game is a technical feat for MMOs because of the large scale mobile events but it's greatly overused. Plus, dynamic events cycle so the whole game is almost 100% repeatition, I killed The Shatterer 3 times today because it's on a simple 3 hour timer.. I even set my watch to remind me about it... there's something not right about that. Is that even dynamic? Sure if you fail the preevent then the shatterer event doesn't happen.. but just like any quest system, if you fail the quest you can't do the next quest in the chain and have to repeat it to get what you want. The only difference here is that we can't choose when we repeat it, we are told when we can and have to wait. I'm not convinced it's a better option than what we had before.
The Shatterer is no where near as good as it looks in the old gameplay videos btw.. stood there hitting it each time without even moving and I didn't even get hit once. No use of any siege weapons or anything, mechanics were: everyone hit this, out of this world lag, now hit this, out of this world lag, now hit this again, dead dragon. Either the scaling is completely wrong or the devs description of the event wasn't accurate at all.
I've gone to multiple different starter questing areas and that makes everything fine as far as leveling goes.
I saw someone mention earlier that they have too much of a penalty on mob killing and I couldn't agree more. But other than the extreme penalty for mob killing (and the god awful boring universal loot table...hook us up with some mobs to kill for specific items as long as everyone that hits the mob gets the loot) I've found the game to be very enjoyable at a laid back pace.
I think I've heard it all when people are begging for linear quest hubs to come back....kill me now. The most fun I've ever had was EQ1 and they really only had large epic quests back in the day, so I think this slight step back to freedom is the right step.
Death is nothing to us, since when we are, Death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.
I like not having quests and I love lore.
You can easily get both in GW2. I often talk to the NPCs and a ton of them have stuff to say about what is going on. Heck, even ones with generic names often have dialogue options.
Not a good thing at all. I feel it makes an already chaotic mess, more chaotic, I find the game gives me a headache after awhile. I actually re subbed DAOC, to see my old guild, and damn on another note WvW is so boring compared to RvR. So much more strategy, and real reasons to fight. I m starting to really hate the 2 week change when it comes in.
To answer I think more "traditional quests" are needed.
TBH, I feel the same way. I wish there was a combination of both. Often with events, I miss the story or the point. I just know the action. I can find out what happened after, but I usually am responding to the circle on the map and I miss the "why we are doing this". I kind of wish it was a mixture of the two mechanics. I too enjoy GW2 though.... Maybe the next game will combine both.
Cannot really say if its a good thing or not, but it is certainly better than old quest-hub thing. Why? Because, it create world that feels more alive than the older Themepark Worlds did. Also quest hubs are bad because they limit you to certain world areas and you dont have incentive to explore them at all.
Now, are DEs feels repetitive? Maybe. Do they feel like zerg-fest? Some yes, some no. Of course, it is more immersive to have masses fighting on battlefield with thousands of centaurs than thousands of players picking apples for peasants.
But are they seems to be "plastic"? Well, far away from it. You certainly get a feeling that something is going on except the "ogres stands and pick flowers". And it is the best you can get from themepark world so far.
Main MMO at the moment: Guild Wars 2
Waiting for: Pathfinder Online