Interesting stuff. What's the status of the Korean version. Has it released yet?
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I mean, how much time, and thus money, does it take to create these hundreds/thousands of pointless, stupid quests?
You have to put the assets in town, the quest givers, do the dialogue text, often some voice over, you have to place the objectives, balance the spawn/placement, balance the rewards... test, reiterate, test, reiterate, test....
That is writers, programmers, designers, world builders... testers, Q/A, producers, item designers, database admins...
So, so many people... so much time... for a bullshit 5 minute quest to run from point A to point B and kill X of Y.
How much would it cost to make per quest? What is the return on that investment?
At least Western developers are starting to get it - questing sucks.
So you see games like ESO and WoW that take a lot of effort to actually tell stories and create memorable characters. Then you have a game like Witcher 3 where (so everyone says) each quest, even the side ones, are masterfully crafted little gems.
And these Eastern dev houses keep pumping out game after game after game with kill 10 rats and fetch quest after quest after quests, calling it "content" and trying to lure you in with flashy combat and sexy graphics.
The problem with quests being the main leveling avenue in mmorpgs is it cost a lot more money/time to make thought provoking quests and story. An mmo can't be compared to single player rpg because single player only needs to fill 40-200 hours of playtime versus an mmo which is can be hundreds to thousands of hours. ESO has pretty good quests and story but then you see them have very little unique class story and the main story has to be continued in other dominions.
Swtor actually pulled off having a unique main story and unique class quest for each of their 8 classes. But then they had a huge budget which left them high and dry in the endgame content at launch. Yet to achieve all the great storytelling they had to resign themselves to not so graphically beautiful worlds and characters and standard tab target wow/esque combat.
FFXIV met the need for unique main story and class quests but fell into the trap of simple side quest. But they didn't lack endgame content at launch for that sacrifice.
Keep in mind that many of the eastern development teams do not have the budget of Elder Scrolls, Swtor, or Final Fantasy either. So expecting them to give the flashy combat and worlds plus match those big budget games in storytelling is ludicrous. Western developers could just as easy create flashy worlds if that was priority but they don't.
Ain't nothing wrong with grinding monsters though. One of my favorite rpgs is Dark Souls and it is not a quest heavy game. I also enjoyed grinding in Final Fantasy XI.
I am excited to play Black Desert because of it's beautiful world and unique combat. But it will most likely end up like Tera. Awesome combat and beautiful world but mediocre everything else. Sounds like the game is having an identity crisis in beta and that doesn't sound good for a team lacking a big budget. It will either be in beta hell for aeons or release broken as shit most likely.
There is no faster way to kill your audience than to put an enormous level-grind in front of all your real content.
The thing people don't want to do, at all, is level by themselves for 50 solid hours, much less 150, in order to catch up with high-level friends.
You know what catering to hardcores does for you? Literally nothing. You have to have room for both, and the way to do this is to introduce content for hardcores while making the game accessible and easy to enter for casuals. Looking up at a vast, looming levelgrind kills casuals immediately; even veterans (like me) hate doing fetch quests and kill quests over and over and over again just to access dungeons and endgame PvP.
It's not a fucking journey no matter how hard people want it to be; traveling across the country on a bicycle is a fucking journey. This is a video game and it should not be designed specifically to suck hours out of your life for the sake of 'being hardcore'. That's not what hardcore is about.
I really think the "westernisation" of some of these great games from Asia is being done incorrectly. There is every possibility that the changes made can fuck up the game.
For example in the case of Black Desert, my understanding was that it is basically an open world mmo with sand-boxy elements and pvp at "end game". The levelling was supposed to be quite fast as that was designed more as tutorial to get players used to the game's various systems, with the real game actually starting at level 50.
In that context the promised changes outlined in the OP make no sense, and seem to go totally against the grain of what the game is about.
Leveling is supposed to be slow. I remember the early days of MMO... "Oh man! That dude is level 50! Crazy!"
These days, if you're not 50 (or whatever cap is) in just a few days, you're considered a n00b.
I'm looking forward to this game and I support long / hard grinding. Part of the reason why games suck so bad these days is because there is no feeling of true reward via effort.
I still remember Anarchy Online, where getting from lvl 219 to 220 took about as much XP as getting from Lvl 1 to 219 :P
That being said, I'll be keeping an eye on this game. Currently in between games since Funcom failed AoC bigtime, and TESO not having any of my friends in it. And, of course, since I cannot be bothered to dealing with Multiplayer Excel (aka Eve Online).
LoL, this game was such big kaboom in the industry and now it actually turned to be the worse MMO ever... well at least they learned one thing.... taking too much time in questing is boring... doing end game content (speaking of a lot of content like 80% of the game to be end game content, with different instances (around 500-1000)), may be they will hit the right spot...
Comments
Interesting stuff. What's the status of the Korean version. Has it released yet?
The problem with quests being the main leveling avenue in mmorpgs is it cost a lot more money/time to make thought provoking quests and story. An mmo can't be compared to single player rpg because single player only needs to fill 40-200 hours of playtime versus an mmo which is can be hundreds to thousands of hours. ESO has pretty good quests and story but then you see them have very little unique class story and the main story has to be continued in other dominions.
Swtor actually pulled off having a unique main story and unique class quest for each of their 8 classes. But then they had a huge budget which left them high and dry in the endgame content at launch. Yet to achieve all the great storytelling they had to resign themselves to not so graphically beautiful worlds and characters and standard tab target wow/esque combat.
FFXIV met the need for unique main story and class quests but fell into the trap of simple side quest. But they didn't lack endgame content at launch for that sacrifice.
Keep in mind that many of the eastern development teams do not have the budget of Elder Scrolls, Swtor, or Final Fantasy either. So expecting them to give the flashy combat and worlds plus match those big budget games in storytelling is ludicrous. Western developers could just as easy create flashy worlds if that was priority but they don't.
Ain't nothing wrong with grinding monsters though. One of my favorite rpgs is Dark Souls and it is not a quest heavy game. I also enjoyed grinding in Final Fantasy XI.
I am excited to play Black Desert because of it's beautiful world and unique combat. But it will most likely end up like Tera. Awesome combat and beautiful world but mediocre everything else. Sounds like the game is having an identity crisis in beta and that doesn't sound good for a team lacking a big budget. It will either be in beta hell for aeons or release broken as shit most likely.
There is no faster way to kill your audience than to put an enormous level-grind in front of all your real content.
The thing people don't want to do, at all, is level by themselves for 50 solid hours, much less 150, in order to catch up with high-level friends.
You know what catering to hardcores does for you? Literally nothing. You have to have room for both, and the way to do this is to introduce content for hardcores while making the game accessible and easy to enter for casuals. Looking up at a vast, looming levelgrind kills casuals immediately; even veterans (like me) hate doing fetch quests and kill quests over and over and over again just to access dungeons and endgame PvP.
It's not a fucking journey no matter how hard people want it to be; traveling across the country on a bicycle is a fucking journey. This is a video game and it should not be designed specifically to suck hours out of your life for the sake of 'being hardcore'. That's not what hardcore is about.
I really think the "westernisation" of some of these great games from Asia is being done incorrectly. There is every possibility that the changes made can fuck up the game.
For example in the case of Black Desert, my understanding was that it is basically an open world mmo with sand-boxy elements and pvp at "end game". The levelling was supposed to be quite fast as that was designed more as tutorial to get players used to the game's various systems, with the real game actually starting at level 50.
In that context the promised changes outlined in the OP make no sense, and seem to go totally against the grain of what the game is about.
I still remember Anarchy Online, where getting from lvl 219 to 220 took about as much XP as getting from Lvl 1 to 219 :P
That being said, I'll be keeping an eye on this game. Currently in between games since Funcom failed AoC bigtime, and TESO not having any of my friends in it. And, of course, since I cannot be bothered to dealing with Multiplayer Excel (aka Eve Online).
Warning contains flashing images
this is what the combat is like
http://www.staggeringbeauty.com/