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About the quests in MMO games
DETJI88
Member Posts: 10
Maybe I am a weird person.. but whenever i play MMO games, I never read the quest log and NPC script for questing because
I mainly focus on leveling fast and you don't really have to read the whole test to complete the quest.
I believe that for most of MMORPG, the real fun begins once you get to the max level and basically the leveling part is just
tutorial part.
There is no offense, it is just my personal opinion.
Any thoughts?
Comments
Isn't it fun to reading all the dialogue and understanding the background story while you play?
I've also seen many players just rush their level and skipping all the video clips and quest dialogue..but what is the point?
Grinding for EXP sounds not fun for me..
Those people need to learn to enjoy the game instead of rushing..
I simply cannot do questing anymore. Rushing or taking my time. If it wasnt for /follow I probably would have never played one.
I like quests. But my definition of quest is pretty literal.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
For me fun end at endgame where you max your level , bonus endgame gears wasn't that interested,
well that depend on player's taste so i can't say much about it.
My personal thought about current quests design are :
- Have too many garbage quest make by cheap ingredients
- The contents was grinded to too small pieces (quests) to the point it lost the taste when chew , people don't chew it anymore , they just swallow it and because of that , they don't care about contents of the quest because it have no taste anymore.
- Because there are too many tiny pieces (quests) player have to moving around too much to the point of no needed. (get quest pass quest)
My ideal for quest design are no more than 10 quest per level.
If you going to make 10 quest ask player kill 10 mobs per quest then just ask them kill 100 mobs in 1 quest.
More monster hunting quest and lest item collect quest.
I do not think you are weird at all. People play differently. You want to get straight to end game content, I don't see any issues with that. However, for someone like myself I enjoy the "journey" and reading those quest texts.
MMO should use scripting and in-game events to relay the story, like SP games. Few SP games ask you to read wall of text to convey the story anymore.
Thanks,
Mike
Working on Social Strategy MMORTS (now Launched!) http://www.worldalpha.com
Too bad they're the main content for the entire game and get boring within 2 minutes of loading in, once you realize the game you're playing plays exactly like every other quest based game of the last 8 years.
I used to read quest text, but nowadays there's no point. There are so many quests that each plot gets repeated and reskinned about a hundred times. This is a necessity because MMOs need lots of quests to keep people on the yellow brick road the whole time.
I used to read quest texts because that was how you figured out how to do quests. Now with GPS mini maps and glowing waypoints and sparkling objectives, quests play themselves. It's a chore the whole way through. There's never challenge or adventure or discover. There's no wondering what your reward will be. It's all so surgical and boring.
I'd rather make my own path, but games give you so little exp for killing monsters. Quest based leveling is the worst thing to happen to MMOs since instancing. It doesn't reward any play style other than solo, it actively discourages people to group up, and it makes the game boring.
How is that?
I was just playing STO the other day. The quest i did involves klingons, star ship battles, and some phaser combat.
How is that "exactly like" quest based fantasy MMORPGs? Let's just pick the biggest example WOW. How is fighting solo (most wow quests are solo) with melee combat "exactly like" fighting in an NPC landing party with phasers?
What is "exactly like" star ship battles in a WOW quest?
You may as well say Dishonored quest are "exactly" like Splinter Cell Blacklist missions because they are both 3rd person games.
I've never played STO online but I can tell you why most games feel the same. It's the same method of progression that many games have that make all quest feel the same regardless of the lore or combat.
Quests are a way to tell the lore of the game, which is a facet of mmos that people enjoy. Its the same reason mmos have crafting, gathering, combat, pets, mounts, housing etc. These are all things that people can enjoy or not in an mmorpg.
I play mmos mainly for the crafting and enjoy the other aspects as well. Others play mmos for raids. For others, its pvp. Lore is a strong motivator for some people and is a feature of an mmo we can choose to experience or not.
You start at an NPC with a glowing marker, follow the yellow brick road to your sparkling target, click it until you get a popup telling you that you won. That's how.
I found that fun in PotBS, Asheron's Call and Vanguard, but not so much fun in most other MMOs.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Sometimes. It's a very ham handed and lazy way to tell the lore of a game without actually allowing that lore to be seen. It's telling and not showing, as its all just in the dialogue box and makes no real difference in gameplay or world.
Its the basic, the very first thing you learn as a writer not to do. And MMOs get away with it because they're made by hacks these days. The last MMO with a good subtle world that told a huge deep story was Vanguard. But now MMOs are aimed at the Family Guy Two and a Half Men audience and need to be told things upfront.
Right, in those stories the lore is baked into the world and impacts the things around you. It never does in on rails themeparks.
Last time I tried talking about this I had a nutcase ranting at me nonsensically.
For the most part quests are foremost treated as the primary mode of guidance and progression in many current titles. They lay the crux of the game play to be given to the players as specific tasks and have them fulfill these goals ad nauseam until they hit the 'end game'.
The problem I have with quests is largely an issue with presentation. A quest can only offer as many activities as the game provides, they only incentivize players to do these given activities by giving the bulk of the payout and progression as a reward to them.
Ostensibly it forces a greater variety of activity out of the game, by making the players more apt to run through many quests and consequently take a sample of all the types of play in a mix rather than doing a single activity endlessly.
The general consequence of quests though is cognitive detachment. Being explicitly led through games with constant scripted goals pretty much removes the need to invest thought into your actions. This ironically makes your activities, even if technically varied, feel very bland and redundant. Your mind is left to wander and you're personal attachment to the game generally exists only on a meta level where you consider the number crunching of your actions over the interaction you're having with the game.
The culprit really is pretty much quest hubs and the manner in which you're provided incentive and reward. As long as everything remains a static pin where you talk to X NPC that's always standing in Y place to get Z reward, the game is going to feel excessively mechanical in a manner that can take out any real consideration you might have for the world you're interacting with.
Even streamlining the questing experience to deliver quests to you from any location, so you can putt about the world completing tasks without returning to a specific hub, you still find yourself daisy chained along a very mechanical chain of actions that repeat themselves.
It's ultimately all a masking to the core game play of the title, and a way to usher people along through whatever experiences the game has to offer. Except in the delivery they have killed much of the reason to pay attention to the game world and simply trundle through the content.
Endgame and character progression are two other factors. When a game is built on vertical progression, there is only that pinnacle of final level and 'endgame' to achieve. Everything in between is essentially regarded as filler content until players hit max level and can obtain whatever is presently considered the best equipment to have for their character design.
Be it a sword, a ship, or a special type of plant to grow in your farming sim. Tiering content in a very vertical manner will drive players to execute on the most efficient methods to reach the end.
So, what are solutions?
It's not the only one, but I do highly advocate non-linear progression. Generally referred to as horizontal progression, but with the caveat that I do think players functionally should see some upward progress in addition to outward. More power personally alongside unlocking more specializations and more flexibility in stat and skill allotment.
In addition to that, quests itself has to shift from being a predominantly guiding experience to one of consequences. What I mean by this is that rather than having set quests you're told to follow you're given blurbs on what is going on around your character and by your actions it pushes a conclusion.
In this mechanic you are not told explicitly to do any action in particular to see an outcome, but instead the quest is built so that when any action taken by a player triggers a change in the event or narrative, it is considered to have progressed and rewards the player accordingly.
There are some elements that can be done more directly, like taking contract activities. Those would feel more like traditional quests, do X to be paid Y. The difference is that any kind of experience reward would exist external to the contracted activity. You might still get some from doing one, but it'd be because your activity was pushing an event/narrative rather than it being a set part of your contract's reward.
The goal of such a concept is to stop making players chase the game, and make them instead pioneer it. You know you'll get XP for doing any number of potential things to a quest line. When experience and reward is inherent, and you can more readily move between challenge not by looking for reaching 'endgame' but instead looking for major events, then one can push players to explore the game much more freely and fluidly.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
he's right narius. All quest based games feel exactly alike regardles of combat or whatever. because its talk to guy x ignore what he says follow wherever your arrow is pointing kill mob or talk to someone run back. thats quests for you in a nutshell.
The only MMO this day wich does it diffrently is TSW. don't start about GW2 they don't have dynamic quests the only thing they removed was having to talk to someone to do your quest. and its scripted.
If only developers would see that it issnt the endgame they should be focusing at but rather the journey towards it. the more time you invest in a character the more it will grow on you. blowing trough lvl cap in 2 weeks doesnt bind you to anything. you only get to realise faster that the new game your playing is exactly like the game youve came from but with a diffrent lore and art style..
Well, there is no yellow brick road in space. If flying a star ship is the same as walking to you ... well .. may be you need glasses to tell your differences in details of things.
May be you should develop some feelings for details.
I don't feel that Deus Ex is the same as Dishonored. Or feel that Dishonored is the same as Splinter Cell Blacklist. And they are all quest-based.
Heck ... you are arguing that all RPGs feel the same. If so, you may as well stop playing games.
Thank you they feel different to me.
Im ignoring the details because the details is just skin. The core behind quests in MMO's (god only knows why you bring up a couple SP's) is Talk to person X then move from location A towards location B and either talk to person Y or kill mob Z then return to location A and talk to person X.
That is the underlying mechanic for MMO quests and it is the same for all mmo's. If you are not reading any questlines or whatever after playing alot of MMO's every new mmo with said mechanic wil feel the same regardles of being in a spaceship or riding on a horse or whatever.
With a SP game you are drawn into the world by cenematics and stuff. and you don't actually have quests but you move from objective to objective and it gives of a really diffrent feeling. But again we are talking about MMO's don't bring in other games and if you cannot do that then jsut don't say anything at all.
Actually it's more than a yellow brick road.
You can autopilot to every quest if your transwarp (portal directly to location) is on cooldown.
STO has a ridiculous amount of streamlinging to their game to the point that you can pretty much ignore that there is a game world outside of quest locations and instanced events.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Yeah .. and different from flying in WOW. Now tell me how is instant teleporting the same as flying and following an arrow (or a dot on the minimap)?
If you'll tell me how following a carrot on a stick is different.
That's rather the problem you're ignoring, the fact that fundamentally you are always following a carrot. Whether it's in a ship or on foot, you're ultimate actions are dictated by a few lines of text in a dialog box telling you to do a specific task for reward.
A hamster can be running in a wheel or in a ball, the end result is the same.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
uh .. that sounds like quests to me.
You move from objective to objective in MMO quests too .. what are you smoking?
Hmm .. i am going to keep bringing other games up .. the place listed LoL and D3 under the MMORPG list. Other games have quests, and clearly comparison is fair game. If people bring up macdonald and restaurants, i cannot bring up other games?
And how are you going to stop me from saying anything?
I'm just able to see through the thin coat of paint and realize that each painted object is identical.