Players will never care more about the journey than the reward, but at least developers could stop forcing everyone to pretend that the leveling-up journey is somehow sacred.
That's a pretty broad claim and not an attitude that can be assumed to be universal. Many people do enjoy classic RPG progression. I certainly do but not in an MMO context. The best approach is to legitimately allow people to play the way they want and not try to enforce a vision one way or another.
... Just make quest rewards actually meaningful, and people will do quests. It's not rocket science.
Things players want and are willing to quest for: good-looking costume items, skills (implemented in a horizontal progression framework), titles, items for personal housing, mounts, etc.
"Just" make the game fun! If it were that easy so so many games would not have cratered. It isn't, so they have.
Yes that's a bit reductive and you did give examples of what motivates you which is great but again, not universal. Some people's reward are stories with progression. That's also not universal. The truth there is no one solution to what makes a game fun.
Players will never care more about the journey than the reward, but at least developers could stop forcing everyone to pretend that the leveling-up journey is somehow sacred.
I will admit that I'm very reward motivated but I wouldn't go so far as to say "never". There was one game, one story where I didn't care two flips about power progression or the next new shiny because the story was just that damn good. The original Planescape: Torment in case anybody was wondering.
MMO MSQ's are among my favorite ways to level in part because they're one of the more efficient ways to level. Some of them even have enjoyable stories but I've yet to play one with the depth of a good single player game. Despite my bias I would never tell somebody that is only interested in a game's story that the way they're having fun is wrong.
I've never really been a fan of the leveling process in MMORPGs.
I don't care about the story, as I've said many times I don't believe games are a good medium for telling stories. So, the primary driver of the leveling process in your average themepark has no hold on me.
What I care about is taking on challenges, and exploring the world.
Sadly, challenges are few and far between during the leveling process. Its very hard to create solo challenges, due to the inherant differences between different classes and roles. Devs *have* to tune the content to the lowest common denominator, otherwise that content forms a roadblock that causes players to quit.
They could create group challenges, but the natural result of vertical progression means that if you don't level with the pack, you are unlikely to be able to find groups for those challenges. It's inevitable, and so creating those challenges is essentially a waste of developer resources.
At endgame, there are more players, so creating group challenges makes sense. Devs also know with greater probability the relative power levels of the players, so tuning those challenges is also easier.
At endgame, your character also has access to all of their abilities. this means that endgame is where the most amount of complexity and potential depth exists.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Look at Old School Runescape or games similar such as "RPG MO". The game is the "end game". People misunderstand what "end game" means when they use this term.
You hear people say "I can't wait for the end game". It means what they are doing right now is not fun. Therefore, leveling in these MMO's you are all talking about isn't fun.
In Runescape and RPG MO style "skilling" MMORPG's, the game from start to finish feels like you are progressing. You earning mining skill xp, to mine higher level ores or reaching a higher blacksmith skill, to be able to craft better items etc...
In games like WoW, you are spamming 632672462 quests which mean nothing other than story. There is no game. The progression isn't felt especially in modern WoW where the world scales to your power. At least in Classic, you geared up in deadmines and felt powerful for a while.
Pretty much, the MMO genre needs to re-imagine itself entirely.
I think a big thing people discount is the primacy effect when it comes to MMORPGs. You remember your first. It's because you've never been exposed to an active, persistent world with hundreds of other people at the same time. It's new, and exciting, like you took the red pill from The Matrix and are now aware of a whole new existence other people can't even fathom, or so it seems.
Well, no matter how good a subsequent MMO is, it will never be your first. Instead of being in awe of this new, exciting world you go immediately into comparison mode to see what is or isn't better than your first. There is no magic. You're immediately a critic. It's the same reason it's so hard for sequels to do better than the original when it comes to movies/books/coca cola products.
I think people disregard this effect and just assume the first game had some special 'magic' and they come up with all sorts of reasons why no other game can every hold a candle to it when the fact of the mater is, it was your first.
My first game was DAoC. Was pretty magical, still is.
For a lot of MMORPGs that have been around awhile the player base is at endgame so if your goal is to play with others you want to push there as fast as possible. Not many of them allow people with characters of greatly disparate levels to comfortably play together.
It seems like two distinct issues are being conflated here:
A. Players who want to "complete" the game as quickly as possible.
B. Players who want to reach the endgame quickly to play with friends, bypass poor design, or avoid level disparities that disrupt group cohesion.
The core issue, as some have pointed out, is vertical progression. This is why games like WoW, ESO, and FFXIV have thriving raiding communities—once players reach the level cap, they can generally group with others who are also at the cap without significant barriers.
Vertical progression creates problems, especially in games that implement Gearscores or similar systems, which often divide groups. In Classic WoW, for example, gear could be a consideration, but it was rarely a major factor in preventing players at level cap from raiding together—unless they were separated by an entire expansion.
Group A represents a completely different mindset. Players in this category don’t appear to make up a large portion of the MMO community, as MMOs that cater to them have historically struggled.
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I will admit that I'm very reward motivated but I wouldn't go so far as to say "never". There was one game, one story where I didn't care two flips about power progression or the next new shiny because the story was just that damn good. The original Planescape: Torment in case anybody was wondering.
Look at Old School Runescape or games similar such as "RPG MO". The game is the "end game". People misunderstand what "end game" means when they use this term.
You hear people say "I can't wait for the end game". It means what they are doing right now is not fun. Therefore, leveling in these MMO's you are all talking about isn't fun.
In Runescape and RPG MO style "skilling" MMORPG's, the game from start to finish feels like you are progressing. You earning mining skill xp, to mine higher level ores or reaching a higher blacksmith skill, to be able to craft better items etc...
In games like WoW, you are spamming 632672462 quests which mean nothing other than story. There is no game. The progression isn't felt especially in modern WoW where the world scales to your power. At least in Classic, you geared up in deadmines and felt powerful for a while.
Pretty much, the MMO genre needs to re-imagine itself entirely.
My first game was DAoC. Was pretty magical, still is.