I just don't relate with the crowd that Mark is associating with or speaking to here. I'm not in the "we" he keeps talking about. I like quests, enjoy reading them and don't need a multi bazillion dolllar MMO to enjoy doing them. I'm not looking for anyone to re-invent them and they don't need anything other than talented writers/develoeprs to make them interesting. I'm convinced that some people just don't like MMO's and think that re-inventing the genre is going to somehow solve their issue. Newer games (i.e., GW2, ESO) have proven that re-inventing quests do nothing to alleviate the boredom of players who just don't like MMO's anymore and are simply in denial of the fact.
First of all, the word 'quest' is entirely misused in MMOs. Gathering berries or killing vermin is not a quest- it is a task or a job. A real quest no matter its nature is a life defining event in the life of a person or character. Good fiction is based on real quests of relatable characters in a story. For the most part, MMOs should not provide quests IMO. There are 2 ways that players can engage in real quests. First, players could define their own quests and the game should provide the tools for them to fulfill that quest.- e.g. I want to become the richest player in this world or the best warrior or a proficient artisan. Second, players may gain an unexpected quest from events in the game. For example, group X attacked the town and killed some of your relatives. Now you want revenge.
Quests should grown organically from the world and they should matter both to the player and the environment. Players certainly can be on the same types of quests because many will have the same goals but watching players line up to hand in the same 'quest' is just painful to watch. It simply reminds you that these games lack both immersion and imagination.
What world are you living in exactly? The current formula is good? Have you even talked to players? I'm thinking not. The current formula is old and stale. Players are demanding more but not receiving it.
On a side note related more to the headline than to the actual content of the article - As long as players get XP's for completing quests the quests will remain in boring quest hubs where the game is segmented based of what quest line you are working and where you are on that quest line. The only real solution that I can come up with is do not give any xp reward for quest completion and instead give only money/item/faction type rewards. In this way quests become optional to character advancement and not a requirement to advancement.
The quest/event should be an entertainment in and of itself that makes the game fun to play and not a chore to complete to advance to the next step. The xp's should come as a byproduct of fun play.
The problem with reading in a game is too much of it makes a persons eyes heavy. This is pretty much scientific, and well known, it's a normal side effect of reading for an extended time.
It's also a lot harder to display emotion and a story of interesting value in text than it is with VO animation and cutscenes.
It has nothing to do with a fear of reading and everything to do with subpar writing and/or boring sleep inducing presentation.
True, too much text (and usually uninspired stuff why farmer Bob needs you to kill 10 bugs) makes the eyes heavy.
But too many voice acted cutscenes in a multiplayer game is no way better.
If say bandits wants to burn down farmer Bobs barn (maybe the bandit boss girlfriend said Bob was cute or something, I have no idea why bandits do other stuff than steal and drink) there are 3 ways to get the players into the action.
1. Farmer Bob has a huge text you get to read when you click on him. It is whining about how poor he is because evil bandits loot him all the time and now they want to burn down his barn. Click to accept.
2. Same thing as 1 but voice acted and with a cutscene. Since Bob ain't a najor npc his voice is done by the same guy who make most unimportant male guys.
3. You see bandits start running to a barn with torches. You might hear Bob scream something in panic, do something.
Yeah, the last might be more of a DE then a quest but for stuff like this that actually works best. I don't want to hear Bob or the bandits personal stories, I just want to kick some bandit butt.
Real quests is a different matter but those should be epic (you know, throw the one ring down into the volcano it was made in), there voice acting is fine but a MMO should mainly be about doing stuff, not reading walls of text or listening to every jerk with a menial task.
I agree, well said.
As for the three options you listed, #3 works the best for a multiplayer environment. I think in general though it's really these types of tasks that need to take a back seat, and in their place we should have more investigation based puzzles instead. SO instead of cutscenes/dialogue a majority of a "quest" or task would be presented in a more natural breadcrumb sort of way.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
quests should be voiced, they should include interesting characters, choice, be interwoven in the world/story and might also be a bit longer with several stages...eso went the right way but i still think tsw had by far the best quests
1. Move to other forms of advancement outside of task.
2. Separate quest from task.
3. Make Task more procedurally generated.
4. Make quest less common, longer, "epic." Get rid of some of the chosen one crap and give some rite of passage, world building and intrigue type quest.
I would like to see developers answer a column such as this. Not only at a GDC, but here (most likely necessary under heavy moderation, but anyway).
Otherwise - I can only say I enjoy again games like Fallout 3 and such because there the quest lines matter. Having said that - even in those fantastic high praised single player games, there are tons of side-quests mainly there for you to gain xp, more often than not, they are also fedex or kill-x-rat type of quests - ALTHOUGH, they do lead to exploration, something many players cry for as well.
The only time I have seen people finish a single player game with only the "relevant" quests are speed-runs when you already know exactly what to do - and is that really "epic" in the end other than the bragging of speed?
Your article is a good one and I enjoyed the read. Concerning the title, I assumed some pointers on quest inflation and average duration of typical mmo quests, though. However, combining your ideas on dynamic content with lacerating all the filler quests, kinda get's me excited:)
For a long time I have believed the best way to make quests interesting again is to dramatically increase the average time it takes to complete them. If you limit dynamic content just to quests, I guess I still believe that. However, you could expand the principle to economy, politics and pvp and at that point you'd be really on to something:) Thx for the read.
P.S. To be honest, without taking into account quest inflation, I doubt improving quests in the way you describe would leave me very satisfied. Kinda a wrong place w/e: as pointed out in the comments, just stop relying on quests so much for content gating. Make getting from place A to B a challenge unless the player and the character are good enough. Plus some more ranting about economy:)
Please, these are not quests. Quests are something that you undertake with a knowledge you're not going to finish it within a few minutes. Asheron's Call had quests. Quests you had to be on your toes at all times, plan your next pull, and involved everything from traps to puzzles to secret areas. The crap that games like ESO, Wildstar, WoW and every game released since WoW is nothing more then tasks. And yes I am damn tired of doing tasks, menial tasks at that.
Until MMO's get back to TRUE adventures that take time and energy to complete the genre will remain mired in mediocrity. Taking the One Ring to Mount Doom and all the perils that existed for Sam and Frodo as a QUEST. Running 100 yards off into the forest and killing 10 bears for pelts is not a QUEST.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
First get rid of levels and let us go wherever we want with small limitations such as cost of travel or story driven attunements that are required to progress to some areas. Give us the ability interact with, explore and alter zones in a meaningful manner. Let us find things in the zones that are off the beaten path that actually are worth searching out.
Make interactions with town’s people more important and interactive than just finding the nearest vendor or quest giver. Instead, let us choose how we want to interact with the NPCs and how we want to help them out as optional secondary content. This could be attached to different reputations in each zone that could yield different rewards.
Cut out all of the useless quests and give less but longer story driven quests in every zone which ultimately give us a required attunement to the zones end PVE content. Make the effort of attuning to the content important and engaging for players so that the experience of getting to each zone’s end content is both fun and meaningful. Make every zone have something worth getting for our character that can only be obtained in that zone so that we actually have a reason for being there. This will force people out of the cities and into the world to experience all of the content; because every zone will be important for our progression; rather than just being a necessary evil to blaze through so we can get to the “real” content.
Make the world dynamic with roaming raid and group level bosses roaming around creating a real hazard in the area. Give us dynamic events in each zone that vary enough to feel natural and unscripted. I don’t know if I have the perfect solution; but the main point I am trying to make is that the world needs to be important and meaningful rather than being a drudgery to blaze through as fast as you can to get to the end game content. I personally love getting out in the world and soaking in the atmosphere and lore. So much effort goes into creating such amazing worlds just to have everyone ignore it and blaze through as fast as they can to get to the end game. Every zone should be an important and challenging milestone of our progression that creates great memories and a sense of accomplishment.
On a side note, code player skills to work differently against AI and player characters. That way we can end the constant need to balance a skill between PVE and PVP. If each skill had separate rule sets for AI and player characters; it would solve a lot of problems.
Are you nuts ? Almost everything one can think about any "formula" in mmos is broken to the bone. With virtually identical copypasta repeated for 10+ years.
We need less quests to fetch or kill x things and more quests that give few pointers where you need to go but don't specifically require you to engage in combat if you don't want too.
Like in the elder scrolls franchise or even fallout 3 if you played it. You get tasked to find x item in a cave/whatever but there could also be other people seeking it so you might have to fight for it or avoid bobby traps. The quest only wants you to acquire said item, the rest is just extra stuff that has nothing to do with the reward but it has to do with the journey to reach it.
There, just invented that in a minute. No hand holding, no clear pointers where the item is and certainly not get explained everything in detail of what there is or there isn't before even being in the place.
I feel that not until a breakthrough is made in AI are all the well-meant discussions, about how to improve questing as I know it, fruitless.
Heck, why even call them quests? They're tasks. I can't remember the last time when I thought "this quest is EPIC". Also another mangled term.
At the moment I'm so far removed from what I envisioned these virtual worlds to be. Soullessly whacking away at what basically amounts to me being led by the hand. Or lead by the nose?
To make quests matter again game designers need to move beyond the paradigm of a single group of "heroes" completing a journey. They need to acknowledge that the game contains hundreds of thousands of players, instead of hamster wheel tasks to be completed by every character they need to construct virtual worlds were tasks and quests emerge from the world itself.
The problem with quests is not weather they matter as they already DO matter,for gaining xp.That is the problem,they should not give any xp at all because xp=experience,you do NOT become a more experienced Warrior doing quests.
NPC "Go fetch me 10 bear skins"............On return you hand over the Bear skins and WHOA!! you have gained xp and are now a more experienced Warrior,umm no thanks.
I want a realistic LIVE ECO system.That means a fierce boss should be roaming the hill sides killing things in it's path.Quests should be there for a reason and the end result or that reason should seen in the game world.Example he wants 50 skins and will trade you a secret on how to make Bear skin shoes.Then you can make shoes and sell them to the npc who in return would sell them to players.
XP should be relegated to where it makes sense,you become a more experienced wood crafter by making wood things or become a more experienced Warrior by utilizing Warrior skills.You become a more experienced Swordsman by utilizing swords ..ect ect.
Quests should NEVER have a yellow marker over a npc head,who ever thought that was a cool idea should have been roasted at the stake by the one eyed cyclops from Sinbad movies.
well as developers you shall better give a look at East and on BlackDesert Online to see what they do there with the quests which they dont give experience (you have to soft grind for this) but knowledge about the world which you need it in order to unlock more options/quests/shops/rent items or meet more NPCs and relate with them ... their approach on the quests for a MMORPG is really innovative .
an AI which generates quests looks like dreaming a machine which creates art ...
Devs added these quests because people complained about having to grind on only monsters. I personally enjoy quests for gold, story, interesting loot. Leveling I feel is more fun by killing monsters/exploration. Nowadays you get rewards for every little thing and quest constantly making these things insignificant.
What needs to happen are completely random events/quests that change all of the time and are available for whoever finds them. Not "scripted randomness", but an actual random quest system. These quests should matter like this:
The blacksmith needs ore to make weapons. He can hire people and others can find ore for him for money. He won't "give" you a sword like would be the case in current themeparks. If the blacksmith has no gold left, he can't buy your goods (that show up in his inventory) or provide the quests, but chances are he'll have a lot of crafted weapons/armor. The longer time he goes without much money, the better the gear he crafts along with other mats and crafting equipment. Now higher level players have a reason to return. This makes a simple ore fetching quest meaningful and separates quests as a means to leveling since leveling should be an actual experience than an instant plus up. You can transfer this for every single crafting npc...woodworking/alchemy.
You can even expand things for the "city guard" giving quests to take monster hubs that level the longer they remain unchecked and can potentially become like Rift and attack cities/towns etc. When too few low level hubs remain, bosses start to appear in their place.
There are ALWAYS ways to make every single part of the game meaningful. Unfortunately, most mmo players did not grow up with the genre, they grew up with FPS, quick stories, quick rewards, quick ease-of-access mini-games. When things gain in meaning, it often takes longer to feel success or reach an end goal (end game is a stupid concept). So...mmo questing turns into shallow and meaningless mini-games.
That being said...ESO is the first of these modern themepark questing types (wow included) that I actually enjoy getting into. Yes I played Wildstar.
People who just click through the dialog will never be happy with quests. They're just in it for the xp, currency and item rewards and the questing for them will only ever be as good as the mechanics of playing the game.
What I find telling is that you're not even considering the possibility of developers actually putting some effort and significant resources into designing their quests. I thought TESO did this really well, I never felt like I was collecting this or killing that, I was avenging ghosts or laying them to rest, I was fighting off small scale invasions and clearing towns of werewolves.
So yeah, if you don't consider quests important enough to devote resources to them, they will continue to be shit. When you do put effort into them, they can be pretty cool.
The problem with quests is not weather they matter as they already DO matter,for gaining xp.That is the problem,they should not give any xp at all because xp=experience,you do NOT become a more experienced Warrior doing quests.
NPC "Go fetch me 10 bear skins"............On return you hand over the Bear skins and WHOA!! you have gained xp and are now a more experienced Warrior,umm no thanks.
I want a realistic LIVE ECO system.That means a fierce boss should be roaming the hill sides killing things in it's path.Quests should be there for a reason and the end result or that reason should seen in the game world.Example he wants 50 skins and will trade you a secret on how to make Bear skin shoes.Then you can make shoes and sell them to the npc who in return would sell them to players.
XP should be relegated to where it makes sense,you become a more experienced wood crafter by making wood things or become a more experienced Warrior by utilizing Warrior skills.You become a more experienced Swordsman by utilizing swords ..ect ect.
Quests should NEVER have a yellow marker over a npc head,who ever thought that was a cool idea should have been roasted at the stake by the one eyed cyclops from Sinbad movies.
Amen to this. Quests should be like they are in the first zone of mists of pandaria. They should be a means by which to change your surroundings. You should be collecting jade because you want to see the finished mural and so that the jade artists can move on to work on the palace and statues, not because they give you some xp, Questing should be about adventures rather than tasks if you want basic tasks let those be dynamic events. The bear skin man comes out of a cave and is fighting bears and you show up to help him, this is the thing that ESO does do better than other games in that when the town is on fire you get the quest walking down the beach by a screaming girl running up to you. The idea that there is someone just standing around asking for bear skins over and over is laughable and needs to be done away with.
I see one other direction they could go with quests and thats to long story driven based quests. Take a single player level approach to MMO zones. You complete the zone story by doing a few things while fighting your way across the zone which to do effectively you have to complete a series of dynamic events. This is very similar to what Guild Wars 2 does except they place more emphasis on hearts and not enough on the green quests. Make it so that I can't do my green quests without clearing out des and some phased hearts because its too hard to get across otherwise. If you've ever had to run through a ravine in GW2 during a DE you know what i mean. You just can't do it without completing the DE.
Comments
I just don't relate with the crowd that Mark is associating with or speaking to here. I'm not in the "we" he keeps talking about. I like quests, enjoy reading them and don't need a multi bazillion dolllar MMO to enjoy doing them. I'm not looking for anyone to re-invent them and they don't need anything other than talented writers/develoeprs to make them interesting. I'm convinced that some people just don't like MMO's and think that re-inventing the genre is going to somehow solve their issue. Newer games (i.e., GW2, ESO) have proven that re-inventing quests do nothing to alleviate the boredom of players who just don't like MMO's anymore and are simply in denial of the fact.
Quests have no place in a mmorpg. If I want quests I would play a single player game which does it MUCH better.
Perhaps as filler when you want to take a break from the main game.
First of all, the word 'quest' is entirely misused in MMOs. Gathering berries or killing vermin is not a quest- it is a task or a job. A real quest no matter its nature is a life defining event in the life of a person or character. Good fiction is based on real quests of relatable characters in a story. For the most part, MMOs should not provide quests IMO. There are 2 ways that players can engage in real quests. First, players could define their own quests and the game should provide the tools for them to fulfill that quest.- e.g. I want to become the richest player in this world or the best warrior or a proficient artisan. Second, players may gain an unexpected quest from events in the game. For example, group X attacked the town and killed some of your relatives. Now you want revenge.
Quests should grown organically from the world and they should matter both to the player and the environment. Players certainly can be on the same types of quests because many will have the same goals but watching players line up to hand in the same 'quest' is just painful to watch. It simply reminds you that these games lack both immersion and imagination.
Expertly written with well-thought-out ideas! Thanks, Mark, for sharing.
P.S.
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life." ~ Winston Churchill
Interesting idea. It might be pretty cool.
On a side note related more to the headline than to the actual content of the article - As long as players get XP's for completing quests the quests will remain in boring quest hubs where the game is segmented based of what quest line you are working and where you are on that quest line. The only real solution that I can come up with is do not give any xp reward for quest completion and instead give only money/item/faction type rewards. In this way quests become optional to character advancement and not a requirement to advancement.
The quest/event should be an entertainment in and of itself that makes the game fun to play and not a chore to complete to advance to the next step. The xp's should come as a byproduct of fun play.
I agree, well said.
As for the three options you listed, #3 works the best for a multiplayer environment. I think in general though it's really these types of tasks that need to take a back seat, and in their place we should have more investigation based puzzles instead. SO instead of cutscenes/dialogue a majority of a "quest" or task would be presented in a more natural breadcrumb sort of way.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Imagine an MMORPG where all NPCs control by the GameMasters , i mean "human" .
"Good" GMs re"Quests" players and reward when they finish the requests.
"Bad" GMs control enemies attack players or being target of requests.
And "neutral" GMs add neutral enemies , they attack everyone and get target by everyone.
To the players , the game are RPG where players role playing on stages build by the GMs
To the GMs , the game are RTS where they build stages for players role playing.
The re-"quests" never be same and always dynamic
And without said you need the help of machine to control a game world with thousands players inside .
Basic of the logic , don't write boring books for players read (quests) which make they want to skip to the end pages .
but build stages for player role playing . And "you" who run the game are the staffs behind the scenes.
It not like i again boring books , they always sell well though never being masterpiece .
1. Move to other forms of advancement outside of task.
2. Separate quest from task.
3. Make Task more procedurally generated.
4. Make quest less common, longer, "epic." Get rid of some of the chosen one crap and give some rite of passage, world building and intrigue type quest.
I would like to see developers answer a column such as this. Not only at a GDC, but here (most likely necessary under heavy moderation, but anyway).
Otherwise - I can only say I enjoy again games like Fallout 3 and such because there the quest lines matter. Having said that - even in those fantastic high praised single player games, there are tons of side-quests mainly there for you to gain xp, more often than not, they are also fedex or kill-x-rat type of quests - ALTHOUGH, they do lead to exploration, something many players cry for as well.
The only time I have seen people finish a single player game with only the "relevant" quests are speed-runs when you already know exactly what to do - and is that really "epic" in the end other than the bragging of speed?
--------------------------------------------
Youtube newb:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC96N3cxBuqKTPV2BQNlzGUw
Your article is a good one and I enjoyed the read. Concerning the title, I assumed some pointers on quest inflation and average duration of typical mmo quests, though. However, combining your ideas on dynamic content with lacerating all the filler quests, kinda get's me excited:)
For a long time I have believed the best way to make quests interesting again is to dramatically increase the average time it takes to complete them. If you limit dynamic content just to quests, I guess I still believe that. However, you could expand the principle to economy, politics and pvp and at that point you'd be really on to something:) Thx for the read.
P.S. To be honest, without taking into account quest inflation, I doubt improving quests in the way you describe would leave me very satisfied. Kinda a wrong place w/e: as pointed out in the comments, just stop relying on quests so much for content gating. Make getting from place A to B a challenge unless the player and the character are good enough. Plus some more ranting about economy:)
Please, these are not quests. Quests are something that you undertake with a knowledge you're not going to finish it within a few minutes. Asheron's Call had quests. Quests you had to be on your toes at all times, plan your next pull, and involved everything from traps to puzzles to secret areas. The crap that games like ESO, Wildstar, WoW and every game released since WoW is nothing more then tasks. And yes I am damn tired of doing tasks, menial tasks at that.
Until MMO's get back to TRUE adventures that take time and energy to complete the genre will remain mired in mediocrity. Taking the One Ring to Mount Doom and all the perils that existed for Sam and Frodo as a QUEST. Running 100 yards off into the forest and killing 10 bears for pelts is not a QUEST.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Quests are the WORST thing about all the MMO's that use them. They are boring, meaningless and something to be done with to start playing the game.
As a result im done with themeparks.
First get rid of levels and let us go wherever we want with small limitations such as cost of travel or story driven attunements that are required to progress to some areas. Give us the ability interact with, explore and alter zones in a meaningful manner. Let us find things in the zones that are off the beaten path that actually are worth searching out.
Make interactions with town’s people more important and interactive than just finding the nearest vendor or quest giver. Instead, let us choose how we want to interact with the NPCs and how we want to help them out as optional secondary content. This could be attached to different reputations in each zone that could yield different rewards.
Cut out all of the useless quests and give less but longer story driven quests in every zone which ultimately give us a required attunement to the zones end PVE content. Make the effort of attuning to the content important and engaging for players so that the experience of getting to each zone’s end content is both fun and meaningful. Make every zone have something worth getting for our character that can only be obtained in that zone so that we actually have a reason for being there. This will force people out of the cities and into the world to experience all of the content; because every zone will be important for our progression; rather than just being a necessary evil to blaze through so we can get to the “real” content.
Make the world dynamic with roaming raid and group level bosses roaming around creating a real hazard in the area. Give us dynamic events in each zone that vary enough to feel natural and unscripted. I don’t know if I have the perfect solution; but the main point I am trying to make is that the world needs to be important and meaningful rather than being a drudgery to blaze through as fast as you can to get to the end game content. I personally love getting out in the world and soaking in the atmosphere and lore. So much effort goes into creating such amazing worlds just to have everyone ignore it and blaze through as fast as they can to get to the end game. Every zone should be an important and challenging milestone of our progression that creates great memories and a sense of accomplishment.
On a side note, code player skills to work differently against AI and player characters. That way we can end the constant need to balance a skill between PVE and PVP. If each skill had separate rule sets for AI and player characters; it would solve a lot of problems.
"standard formula is good"
Are you nuts ? Almost everything one can think about any "formula" in mmos is broken to the bone. With virtually identical copypasta repeated for 10+ years.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DStuff
We need less quests to fetch or kill x things and more quests that give few pointers where you need to go but don't specifically require you to engage in combat if you don't want too.
Like in the elder scrolls franchise or even fallout 3 if you played it. You get tasked to find x item in a cave/whatever but there could also be other people seeking it so you might have to fight for it or avoid bobby traps. The quest only wants you to acquire said item, the rest is just extra stuff that has nothing to do with the reward but it has to do with the journey to reach it.
There, just invented that in a minute. No hand holding, no clear pointers where the item is and certainly not get explained everything in detail of what there is or there isn't before even being in the place.
I feel that not until a breakthrough is made in AI are all the well-meant discussions, about how to improve questing as I know it, fruitless.
Heck, why even call them quests? They're tasks. I can't remember the last time when I thought "this quest is EPIC". Also another mangled term.
At the moment I'm so far removed from what I envisioned these virtual worlds to be. Soullessly whacking away at what basically amounts to me being led by the hand. Or lead by the nose?
well as developers you shall better give a look at East and on BlackDesert Online to see what they do there with the quests which they dont give experience (you have to soft grind for this) but knowledge about the world which you need it in order to unlock more options/quests/shops/rent items or meet more NPCs and relate with them ... their approach on the quests for a MMORPG is really innovative .
an AI which generates quests looks like dreaming a machine which creates art ...
Devs added these quests because people complained about having to grind on only monsters. I personally enjoy quests for gold, story, interesting loot. Leveling I feel is more fun by killing monsters/exploration. Nowadays you get rewards for every little thing and quest constantly making these things insignificant.
What needs to happen are completely random events/quests that change all of the time and are available for whoever finds them. Not "scripted randomness", but an actual random quest system. These quests should matter like this:
The blacksmith needs ore to make weapons. He can hire people and others can find ore for him for money. He won't "give" you a sword like would be the case in current themeparks. If the blacksmith has no gold left, he can't buy your goods (that show up in his inventory) or provide the quests, but chances are he'll have a lot of crafted weapons/armor. The longer time he goes without much money, the better the gear he crafts along with other mats and crafting equipment. Now higher level players have a reason to return. This makes a simple ore fetching quest meaningful and separates quests as a means to leveling since leveling should be an actual experience than an instant plus up. You can transfer this for every single crafting npc...woodworking/alchemy.
You can even expand things for the "city guard" giving quests to take monster hubs that level the longer they remain unchecked and can potentially become like Rift and attack cities/towns etc. When too few low level hubs remain, bosses start to appear in their place.
There are ALWAYS ways to make every single part of the game meaningful. Unfortunately, most mmo players did not grow up with the genre, they grew up with FPS, quick stories, quick rewards, quick ease-of-access mini-games. When things gain in meaning, it often takes longer to feel success or reach an end goal (end game is a stupid concept). So...mmo questing turns into shallow and meaningless mini-games.
That being said...ESO is the first of these modern themepark questing types (wow included) that I actually enjoy getting into. Yes I played Wildstar.
People who just click through the dialog will never be happy with quests. They're just in it for the xp, currency and item rewards and the questing for them will only ever be as good as the mechanics of playing the game.
What I find telling is that you're not even considering the possibility of developers actually putting some effort and significant resources into designing their quests. I thought TESO did this really well, I never felt like I was collecting this or killing that, I was avenging ghosts or laying them to rest, I was fighting off small scale invasions and clearing towns of werewolves.
So yeah, if you don't consider quests important enough to devote resources to them, they will continue to be shit. When you do put effort into them, they can be pretty cool.
Amen to this. Quests should be like they are in the first zone of mists of pandaria. They should be a means by which to change your surroundings. You should be collecting jade because you want to see the finished mural and so that the jade artists can move on to work on the palace and statues, not because they give you some xp, Questing should be about adventures rather than tasks if you want basic tasks let those be dynamic events. The bear skin man comes out of a cave and is fighting bears and you show up to help him, this is the thing that ESO does do better than other games in that when the town is on fire you get the quest walking down the beach by a screaming girl running up to you. The idea that there is someone just standing around asking for bear skins over and over is laughable and needs to be done away with.
I see one other direction they could go with quests and thats to long story driven based quests. Take a single player level approach to MMO zones. You complete the zone story by doing a few things while fighting your way across the zone which to do effectively you have to complete a series of dynamic events. This is very similar to what Guild Wars 2 does except they place more emphasis on hearts and not enough on the green quests. Make it so that I can't do my green quests without clearing out des and some phased hearts because its too hard to get across otherwise. If you've ever had to run through a ravine in GW2 during a DE you know what i mean. You just can't do it without completing the DE.