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Quest-Grinding Errand-Runner Trend
Xerathule
Member UncommonPosts: 114
There has to be other people out there that are just getting tired of the games following the trend of WoW with numerous quests(tasks) to do for $15/mo. If there was an MMO that turned a profit for those errands then I would think different, but there isn't!
Why is it that we have become dependent on quests to progress? I will tell you why. When Blizzard created the quest system, they created the system to give you experience for doing the quest - which is really the running back and forth - and getting a reward for it as well which isn't always worth it versus just grinding experience all day in Everquest Original (2nd Pioneer, but revolutionizer of the MMORPG trend). After running these quests back and forth you start to feel like a rat in maze don't you?
The definition of Addition is "being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming", but it is an accepted addiction and it doesn't kill near as much as other addictions, but it does cause health problems if not kept in control.
I have been trying to figure out a way for an MMO to succeed without the running around for progress and it is simple. Let the people fight for there experience by increasing the experience gained for each kill and make the fights more interesting by increasing the difficulty for leveling so it isn't mindless. You would be supprised how fun the game would be if there was some strategy required for living through it. I don't know about you but I got to the point of just going completely blank minded and thinking about other things while playing!!! That is because it is boring and has no challenge to it. That could be driven by players that would rather complete the quest quickly versus face a challenge because they just want to complete the quest. You wouldn't need to complete quests quickly if you didn't have to run back to the 600+ quest givers for a reward. I suggest rewards out in the field when your leveling as a replacement as well as including Blizzards model of random drops and Everquest's model of NPC drops directing people to camps or dungeons instead of running around like a chicken with it's headcut off all day long. I know there are dungeons that you can grind now in WoW which is better than nothing and that has been working for me, but it really makes the quests in the game pointless if nobody is going to want to do that so it really shows that people are going to become tired of quests for good reason.
Vanguard is the only game I know that doesn't create a dependency on questing due to the large experience gained from turn-in because it gives you good enough experience from each kill and doing quests are completely optional AND LOGICAL!
I am good at foresight as far as technology goes and I include games. I would like to see a gaming pioneer send the MMORPG trend in a different direction to create an environment where people can all group together for a cause that is fun and isn't a grind by creating a COMPLETELY OPEN environment that isn't controlled and is open to the players choices of leveling when solo or grouping with a feature of mentoring created by SOE unless somebody thinks of a better way of progressing. Blizzard could create something like that being that they are faced with this issue being that everybody is 80 now and completely equipped.
Games are worthless if they are built with money in mind by creating a system that fits everybody versus creating a game with gaming in mind by gamers. There are a small number of people that are inclined enough to operate a computer. I don't want my games formed in ways that aid people that don't know enough about RPG that dumbs the game down. Or maybe life is just changing and people are changing right along with the industry!
Comments
This is a badly researched comment.
1. Yes tons of people hate themepark MMOs so have moved on to games like Darkfall.
2. WOW certainly did not create quests, WOW is a direct rip from EQ so put all your blame for them at the feet of the early MMOs like EQ.
3. This is a very old arguement that is getting very very old.
Go try Darkfall or perhaps Mortal Online if it ever gets released.
There are lots of people in WoW who level up by grinding mobs.
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I prefer to quest.
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Choice is good.
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Some in WoW level up by PvP now.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
You are quick to assume you know where I'm coming from. I don't play Darkfall or Mortal Online.
I know WoW didn't create quests. I hated quests in EQ an didn't even do them, but I had that option.
BTW, did you even read the whole post? Sounds like you quit half way through.
The ones that do are out of their minds because it is mindless fighting and you don't get good enough exp for it. That should be well known. So the people doing this are not smart people! So don't pay attention to what people do!! People are idiots!
Quests were good in EQ, they gave squat exp and junk items, they were mainly just fun to do, a break from other things. I did a lot of them, a whole lot. There were a few epics with good loot & exp, but rare.
WoW grinders?? LOL
I did my tour of duty, think not. Carrots are for crappy quests and instances, that's it.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
early MMOs like EQ didnt feed you 1 million quests, I like quests but not in the silly mindless way WoW do them, and EQ2´s last few expansions..and well most of the original game too now since they added alot of solo quests for xp there too.
not saying WoW made the quests for xp trend, but hate that every newer games Ive played are doing them....one of the things I love in darkfall, they only have a very limited amount of quests.
dont know who in their right mind thought the xp grinder quests is a good thing, and sure didnt come from EQ1....quests should be few and have a nice story/purpose", not ow Ive got rats in the basement go kill them please ?!? even as a joke it have become abit watered down like in dragon age
the quests I love from EQ2 is the signature quests, special weapon/armour quest lines, the rest should only have been to pass time while being LFG....which it aint now, its the way to reach max lvl ....where the "fun" begins and ends within a month or 2
EQ1 had enough quests to keep you busy, not to level grind, but they were not very simple and took time. No pointy arrow either
If it were a game about knights, I could go with a questing model, to a degree, but only since that would actually be logical, and if not instanced and soloed since it would be more army co-op based. But maybe to do so now would rip, with all the illogical games currently released doing this questing/instancing/solo model.
Fascinating…
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
I cant agree with you.
What you suggest is exactly what Aventurin in Darkfall was trying to do. They tryed to make grinding challenging, but they just pissed off people, as it wasnt challenging at all but simply annoying. Like mobs sniping you with bow from 50m while you even dont see them. Mobs were running same fast as you and zick zack so you couldnt hit them and if you switched to bow they instant went melee for you.
In fact what you suggest, is make grinding annoying. Maybe for you it would be fun, but for vast majority it wouldnt. The grind is and stay the small evil price which we are ready to pay to reach the goal (quest, reward etc).
Nearly all people who i know socialise while they grind, as it is only way to be able to do it, without stopping by disqust.
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I have to wonder if people who say this ever even played EQ. Especially since the subject is quest grinding. EQ had quests, yes, but it was nothing like the quest grinding format of WoW. In EQ the quests were mostly done to get specific items and the experience you were rewarded was hardly noticable and you didn't do quests constantly. From 1-50 in original EQ there were really only a handfull of quests that were worth doing at all.
The only quests in EQ which rewarded enough experience to make them worth doing just for the experience were the bounty turn-ins like the gnoll teeth in Qeynos and crushbone belts in Kaladim. And those were only good up to level 8 or so. And they weren't like the quest grinding thing in WoW where you collect X of Y and then run back. Those bounty turn-ins in EQ allowed you to turn in as many of the items as you wanted so you just did your thing in Blackburrow or Crushbone and collected the items as you played and then whenever you felt like it you could go turn them in. You could turn in one gnoll tooth or one hundred. You didn't have to collect 5 of this, then run to turn it in, then go collect 10 of that and run to turn it in, etc.
Every game has grinding.
Most of the grinding is just repackaged hype to get you to think they have something new so you will quit your game and play theirs. It's like, grind mobs in a sandbox vs. grid mobs in an instance, what's the REAL difference? I mean beyond the instance most likely being solo/anti-social and cheaper on bandwidth for the company. There is no real difference, and really that is more like stale old off-line CRPG play style.
In the end, I'm not going to base years of research and play on some new release game I have not played called Darkfall. And I don't care about the "vast majority", that's too sheepish to me. You see there is competition in mmo's since people continue to sub after reaching cap and all that, so you get exposed to marketing hype that they may have spent many millions into researching to be effective, and it is. At least with grinding mobs in a sandbox, it has a real social element.
M59, UO, EQ1, WWIIOL, PS, EnB, SL, SWG. MoM, EQ2, AO, SB, CoH, LOTRO, WoW, DDO+ f2p's, Demos & indie alpha's.
Arenanet's Guild Wars 2 is completely dispensing with quests as we know them. It seems there won't be any quests at all in that game. They've designed something called Dynamic Event system which looks extremely interesting - you should look it up. If they make it work it will surely revolutionize the genre and hopefully make "kill ten rats" quests a thing of the past.
I refuse to kill 1 million mobs without a reason. When I play a game I want to progress through a story. If I'm gonna kill those things give me a reason why. That's what every game does, not only mmo. I killed those north koreans and aliens in Crysis for a reason, not to be better in first person shooters. The problem is that quests in mmo are kinda shallow. Are not fun enough. But removing quests at all makes no sense. A game that gives you a pixelated character and throws u at 1 million mobs to kill is a mindless game with nothing else to offer but slaughter.
OP, out of curiosity, what singleplayer RPGs have you played?
EDIT: Rather than wait for a response, I'll just get to the point. Is it questing in general that you hate? Does it get in the way of your PEW PEW PEWing of other players? Or is it the type of questing? If the latter, I can agree. I hate FedEx quests and the "go kill X number of blue mobs" followed by "go kill X number of red mobs in the SAME EXACT AREA" types of quests. I'm a lore hound. Give me story. Give me a good mystery to solve. If you must add a FedEx quest, at least wrap it up in something that makes me want to carry that sack of regurgitated goat testicles clear across the map.
If you just don't like questing, maybe you just don't like RPGs, which MMORPGs still are at their foundation. A good shooter will let you get your pwnage on without all that silly questing junk.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Not this topic AGAIN! "The mighty Everquest - the one true MMO".... OK, dump the rose-tinted specs and let's just recall that Everquest had quests - yes, the same old quests involving farming stuff, such as rat's tails, bear's skins, Ulthar Tusks or Acrylia Ore, as every other MMO ever since. The quests in Everquest didn't really get much more innovative as time went on. I know how it went, having several high level characters in Everquest.
On a secondary note, Everquest also had the WORST spawn-camping I've ever seen in a game! You had to literally form a queue just to get, say, an Orc Camp in the Commonlands for your group to grind at for a couple of hours. Usually some higher-level character was there farming Belts all day.
OK, you can put your rose-tinted glasses back on now.
So instead of putting *some* effort in creating content, it is better to not put any effort in at all and just make people grind monsters all day long?
Your logic sir, is infallible.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Search for a idiotic NPC with a "?" over his head (oh yeah thats RPG), click accept and then looking going around searching for the "quest object" or even more stupid following the quest marker -->braindead as it gets. In order to level up all you have to do is repeat this crap 10000times.
I'd rater prefer creating my own leveling way by group grinding mobs, instead of playing the slave for stupid NPC's. In World of Warcraft you didn't have the choice to grind, because they made the huge mistake giving quests more XP and removed some of former great grindspots.
Quests done the right way should be: high quality, rare and hard to finish.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
how is it diffrent from what you are doing in the current "trend" of quests....do you really need a NPC to tell you the "rats" is so evil, go get 10 of them.....even if clearly there is 100s of evil beings in the area.
its all about proper design, quests can be good but god I hope to find a game that doesnt abuse it like WoW and EQ2 currently does, effectively lock you to a certain path through out the expansion, with little to no choice ( not talking WoW there, but EQ2....cant talk much of WoW other than how ppl describe it and the horrible trial, that I did play...getting to lvl 15or something only)
either way point is quest grinders is no worse/better than just kill things.....those MMO companies develope in this way have to make fast and shallow quests which, atleast I, just stop reading after awhile.
hm GW2 event system, do fear that it will be the same quest grinder, tho in a more engaging way which may prove to make a big diffrence, but I do fear that you will see alot of "reskin of same event" over n over, with afew treats now n then. will for sure try it tho - its a great idea....do wonder if they will make it impossible to do the full event, could imagine some bottle necking if you can, at the same time hope the events is so good that you d want to follow it through.
But you grind monsters anyway. Wether you take the quest or not, you grind monsters. Well, sometimes you must gather some interactive stuff on the ground or on the walls. But it's the same mindless grind at the end of the day. The OP is suggesting a good solution to solve it - make fights more interesting, more intelligent and more rewarding.
I just want to be able to have a choice. I want to be able to get the same amount of exp wether i'm doing quests or just killing mobs. Otherwise it's forced quest grinding.
All gams are grind based. It's about making the grind enjoyable - thus quests.
Jeez, I'm a bit bored of errand-grinders too, but if you want to propose an alternative, please, propose a new alternative, not just a return to the good old days of mindlessly killing mobs. The whole reason WoW and other recent games lean so heavily on the quests is that most people don't like endlessly killing, they want something like running back to a questgiver to break it up.
Let's hear a new idea from you. Not just "let the people fight for their experience, but oh, make the fighting fun."
Good ideas there. I'd also suggest removing fluff NPCs. Make ALL NPCs potential questgivers, including those that just wander around to add life to a setting. Yes, the big exclamation points and question marks may be "easy mode", but clicking on 15 npcs with "Hail traveler" being their only dialogue before discovering one that actually has something for you to do is a frustrating exercise in tedium.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
I'm not saying I find those grind quests the greatest thing ever, but simply removing them and thereby having even less content in the game is just stupid.
You have the choice to grind rats all day long and not do quests if you want that, that's no excuse and if you equate those quests to grinding its simply forced grinding anyhow, quests give XP and thus lessen the grind required, you're simply asking for more grind.
Making fights more interesting is something I'm all for; but it is simply unrelated to these quests.
Why do they do these quests? It's very simple: instead of saying: "YOU NEED TO KILL 10000 MONSTERS FOR THE NEXT LEVEL" they divide that huge number in smaller parts that don't seem to be so daunting, like "Kill 10 rats" / "Gather 5 boar tusks" and so on and they throw in a little reward now and then to motivate people to go on.
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
I mentioned my idea in the post about making dungeons and camps (for camps I would add a deep camp that takes time to go through if you don't die). I would like to see difficult fights, not trivial fights! It is a grind when you kill 6000 mobs which took no thinking at all. The original WoW was good about difficulty in dungeons and outdoors but lately it has just been getting ridiculous.
I want to see difficulty like you would in Demon's Souls if you haven't played that yet on the PS3. That game took skill and talent to get through it. If only it was more of an MMO though, the multi-player isn't something you would want to use to group with friends.
[quote]Originally posted by Xerathule
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I want to see difficulty like you would in Demon's Souls if you haven't played that yet on the PS3. That game took skill and talent to get through it.
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Why aren't you playing Demon's Souls now? Got bored of it?
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That's the difference between a solo game and an MMO. Solo games hold your interest for a week or two. MMOs can hold your interest for years.
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Try another solo, Dragon Age Origins
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren