Originally posted by Jimmydean These quests are terrible. Story and Lore can exist in a fantasy world without being shoved down your throat every second you are playing. Single Player games? Sure, they exist because of this. In an MMORPG, there is no place.
Why do non-MMO gamers and non-TES players keep making these threads?
The quests are similar to many MMOs, which MMO gamers love. This particular style of the quests are exactly the same as the other Elder Scrolls games, which have been highly acclaimed and loved by millions. People obviously like this stuff. Just because you don't doesn't change that fact.
Originally posted by Jimmydean Take a look towards the Dark Souls franchise for how questing can exist in a game, and not be shoved down your throat. And that's a single player game even! You know you are working towards a goal, but you aren't forced to go about that goal in a certain way and go from quest giver to quest giver. You make your own story on the way.
That's great. When have you been forced to work toward a goal so far in ESO in one certain way? You can pretty much tackle all around you in any order you want, take on which quests you want, etc.. It's not your typical hub where you have to work your way through quest chains to be able to move to the next area of quests. While there are quest chains, they're not needed to move on to other places or activities, none that I've seen anyway.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Serious question. I did maybe 50 quests this weekend, and every one was more or less the same:
1. Go here, talk to this guy.
2. Go there, talk to this other guy.
3. Go to the third spot and kill something for a shiny.
4. Use the shiny to save the day, then go back and talk to that guy again.
It's all totally boring stuff that just feels like one chore after another. The quest writing is REALLY bad. Contrast this with other themeparks like 'The Secret World' which is a similar, but at least a lot of the quests had interesting puzzles or something to break the mould (and that game utterly failed). ESO quests seem like they were written by 14 year olds, who were aiming at 10 year olds as their target audience. No intelligence whatsoever.
I'm a huge fan of ES single player games, but this is _nothing_ like the sandbox feel of those games. It doesn't help that combat is terrible: you literally don't have to aim at anything. If you point your target reticle 180 degrees opposite your enemy, your character will automatically turn around and never miss the target.
I can only imagine the kind of person who enjoys this type of progression as someone who has never played a themepark in their life.
How is it different from any of the es games, at least from Morrowind on?
It's not.
The problem is that exploration doesn't yield large places to "explore" and get lost in like other elder scrolls games while on the way to do these quests.
Morrowind: find woman on road, find out that her jewels were taken, she doesn't care about the jewels she just wants you to deliver a note, you deliver the note and go back to her.
Morrowind: get quest to retrieve acnestral skull, go to tomb, get anestral skull, go back again.
Morrowind, get quest to kill three bandits hiding out in a kwama mine, go kill the three and come back.
Oblivion: get quest to greater mundus stone, get mundus stone (it helps that it is in a larger ruin) run back.
Oblivion: get quest from guy who thinks he is followed, spy on person who doesn't do anything suspicious, rinse and repeat three times. Granted you do have a chance to lie to him to kill the people he suspects even though they never did anything.
Obvlivion: woman's daughter is missing, you go to creepy town and find out she is being held captive, you free her and run back.
Skyrim: woman's son has been taken by Dominion, you free him and run back.
Skyrim: Golden Claw was stolen. You run through dungeon, find claw and bring it back
Skyrim: Man's wife is missing, you enter imperial ruin to find out that she is now the leader of the bandit troup, you have a choice to tell him the truth or tell him a lie, you run back and do one of the choices.
As opposed to other mmo's, go here, kill x of y, run back, go here, gather x of y, run back?
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I thought the quests were awesome, overall this game is awesome, not sure why so many people are complaining about dumb things. Yes there are bugs.. to be expected. The quest bugs have to be the most common types of bugs in mmos, and really, cannot be that hard to fix. I am going to enjoy the hell out of this game, will reach max level, and you know, if wildstar ends up being better, I will go play that, but this game will get at least a good 6 months out of me
Originally posted by Jimmydean Take a look towards the Dark Souls franchise for how questing can exist in a game, and not be shoved down your throat. And that's a single player game even! You know you are working towards a goal, but you aren't forced to go about that goal in a certain way and go from quest giver to quest giver. You make your own story on the way.
That's great. When have you been forced to work toward a goal so far in ESO in one certain way? You can pretty much tackle all around you in any order you want, take on which quests you want, etc.. It's not your typical hub where you have to work your way through quest chains to be able to move to the next area of quests. While there are quest chains, they're not needed to move on to other places or activities, none that I've seen anyway.
That's the problem. You aren't working towards a goal in ESO. You are doing meaningless tasks for meaningless NPCs. Does it really matter if this person has the 3 apples he needs to make his apple pie? No, not in the slightest.
Originally posted by ste2000 Not me.................. I am done with Quest Hubbing games, that's now officially the most boring feature of modern MMOs and what puts me off completely.
Good thing there are no quest hubs here then right?
You mean that if I want I can skip the starting zone and do quest in another zone?
Of course you can't......... that's quest hubbing my friend
All zones are level based, and each Zone has several level hub (with appropriate quests for your level), you can't make quests on the other side of the map because they are not appropriate to your level.
So you have to follow a certain path and complete the quests along the way so when you arrive the other side of the map you are able to make those quests.
If that's not quest hubbing, I don't know what it is.............
Originally posted by ste2000 Not me.................. I am done with Quest Hubbing games, that's now officially the most boring feature of modern MMOs and what puts me off completely.
Good thing there are no quest hubs here then right?
You mean that if I want I can skip the starting zone and do quest in another zone?
Of course you can't......... that's quest hubbing my friend
All zones are level based, and each Zone has its level hub, you can't make quests on the other side of the map because they are not appropriate to your level.
So you have to follow a certain path and complete the quests along the way so when you arrive the other side of the map you are able to make those quests.
If that's not quest hubbing, I don't know what it is.............
Even in sandbox games you're stuck dealing with content you can complete until you move past it ( skill up). Other than that what?
You can go straight to the main land after the introduction now if that's what you're asking...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Serious question. I did maybe 50 quests this weekend, and every one was more or less the same:
1. Go here, talk to this guy.
2. Go there, talk to this other guy.
3. Go to the third spot and kill something for a shiny.
4. Use the shiny to save the day, then go back and talk to that guy again.
It's all totally boring stuff that just feels like one chore after another. The quest writing is REALLY bad. Contrast this with other themeparks like 'The Secret World' which is a similar, but at least a lot of the quests had interesting puzzles or something to break the mould (and that game utterly failed). ESO quests seem like they were written by 14 year olds, who were aiming at 10 year olds as their target audience. No intelligence whatsoever.
I'm a huge fan of ES single player games, but this is _nothing_ like the sandbox feel of those games. It doesn't help that combat is terrible: you literally don't have to aim at anything. If you point your target reticle 180 degrees opposite your enemy, your character will automatically turn around and never miss the target.
I can only imagine the kind of person who enjoys this type of progression as someone who has never played a themepark in their life.
You realize what you just wrote can be said about each game of the Elder Scrolls series. Not just the MMO, but the single player games to.
You're describing part of the '5 Ds' of questing, in which, once you simplify them down to a certain point they are literally all the same, because there's only so many 'types' of quests you can actually implement. Its the way u implement them that makes them good, and ESO has quite a lot of good ones if u nother to look.
It definitely doesn t feel or look any different from almost every themepark MMO in existence. I foulnd it utterly boring, and almost amateur feeling. The game shouldn t have a sub IMO, and I m sure we ll see that dropping soon enough.
Originally posted by Jimmydean Take a look towards the Dark Souls franchise for how questing can exist in a game, and not be shoved down your throat. And that's a single player game even! You know you are working towards a goal, but you aren't forced to go about that goal in a certain way and go from quest giver to quest giver. You make your own story on the way.
That's great. When have you been forced to work toward a goal so far in ESO in one certain way? You can pretty much tackle all around you in any order you want, take on which quests you want, etc.. It's not your typical hub where you have to work your way through quest chains to be able to move to the next area of quests. While there are quest chains, they're not needed to move on to other places or activities, none that I've seen anyway.
That's the problem. You aren't working towards a goal in ESO. You are doing meaningless tasks for meaningless NPCs. Does it really matter if this person has the 3 apples he needs to make his apple pie? No, not in the slightest.
You realize your mileage may vary right? IF I thought it felt meaningless, I doubt I would have been in disagreement here with you to begin with.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Originally posted by Soki123 It definitely doesn t feel or look any different from almost every themepark MMO in existence. I foulnd it utterly boring, and almost amateur feeling. The game shouldn t have a sub IMO, and I m sure we ll see that dropping soon enough.
The problem with posts like this is, it would be like me saying this game is a definite success because I like it. How would you respond to that I wonder?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For me personally I don't mind random missions or quest terminals that you can go to to get basic kill/fetch/guard/destroy quests but its when its done in a Themepark MMO way were its required to level up/skill up and creates a cheese ball story of you being the savior of the world well I get the feeling that its just a giant joke.
I'm the savior, your the savior EVERYONES the savior! Its over done and does not fit a MMORPG in the slightest. Your character should be nothing more than another player in the world and needs to create his own story through your actual player created name, and the social interactions between players in game.
A MMORPG can have huge amounts of lore but it shouldn't be force fed. Most don't give a hoot about Lore and only care about game play and well I don't blame these people. For just about every MMO out there that starts with a story, your some mystical magical being of super awesomeness that is here to save the world. Yet that guy your inside of because he spawned in you, is the same exact thing you are. Talk about some Sci-fi B Movie acting, well this type of story and questing is the equivalent of to a Sci-fi B movies acting.
Well, some (few) MMORPGs try to get the player interested in the world by means of quests that don't follow the usual routine of "go here, kill/click on that, return".
With MMORPGs that don't do that often (or not at all), you have two options:
a) you consider each quest to be some irrelevant random blabla, quickly click through it and just kill and click on stuff. Well, that works, but you will get bored very quickly, because you then realize too quickly that it's all the same over and over.
b) You read through the quests. Now if the quests are badly written, then you will still get bored. But if the quests are well written, you'll get interested into them, into the recurring characters, the background stories and so on.
Originally posted by ste2000 Not me.................. I am done with Quest Hubbing games, that's now officially the most boring feature of modern MMOs and what puts me off completely.
Good thing there are no quest hubs here then right?
You mean that if I want I can skip the starting zone and do quest in another zone?
Of course you can't......... that's quest hubbing my friend
All zones are level based, and each Zone has several level hub (with appropriate quests for your level), you can't make quests on the other side of the map because they are not appropriate to your level.
So you have to follow a certain path and complete the quests along the way so when you arrive the other side of the map you are able to make those quests.
If that's not quest hubbing, I don't know what it is.............
Nah, that's just a quest chain. A quest hub is a town or other location with a couple of quest givers.
The biggest problem is that the MMORPG audience majority no longer consists of MMORPG players. Ironically, the majority of MMORPG players are just single player gamers who somehow got confused and ended up here.
The game was free to test... you told yourself... what do I have to lose? Even if it sucks, it didn't cost me a dime, just my time... and time is something I have to waste. So in the end, you wasted time, spent nothing, and are now a few hours closer to something that might actually entertain you.
Think of it as a giant atomic clock where the hours blend into weeks and into years. You're hopelessly waiting for some new game to come out and sweep you off your feet but that's months, nay, years away. What will you do to occupy your time? Why collect x from mob y. Time passes. That is your reward... making the hand of the clock move forward. Entertainment is in the eye of the beholder... some see it as an absence of time, others see it as an abundance of time. I have too much time on my hands... I have no time on my hands... either way, you are still observing that giant clock. Wow, time flies when you are having fun... Are we there yet? This is taking forever.
Glass half empty, half full... it is what it is. Drink it or not, doesn't change the fact that it is.
Queue up Happy! from Despicable Me 2...
Happy... happy... happy... happy... clap your hands...
It just comes down to personal preferences. Some people prioritize lore and story over interesting questing mechanics. I like lore and if I do end up getting ESO will take it slowly to immerse myself in it.
That being said, I still prioritize interesting quest structure and mechanics over lore. So far I agree with the OP that most of the quests in terms of how they work have been pretty boring and unimaginative. There are so many "talk to him, then walk and talk to her" errand boy quests and not enough engaging gameplay amongst them.
Another problem is that when running around doing these quests there are barely any mobs to fight, I actually find myself happy to get a quest that says "Kill X of Y." The lands seem barren with so few mobs compared to other games. Not only that, but the enemies don't even aggro you until your basically in front of their face, very odd.
I really hope that "the game gets better after lvl 10" or whatever is true. First they said it opens up around lvl 7-8 after the starter islands, but I havent noticed much change honestly. I will playing a bit more of the beta today and following the game after to make my final decision on buying it.
Well, they wrap up their quests in a nice story. So that's a positive for me, even though the quests themselves are indeed nothing new.
At the end of the day, even more innovative questing models like GW2 could move not away from the underlying "kill/collect/deliver" quests.
Perhaps player generated quests would be fun if we had the tool... via PvP or PvE.
It could even help a crafter who needs for example 50 planks (posts "500 xp" from his pool and someone collects planks for him), or dude gets ganked, and put a 1Gold/500xp reward on XYZ's head, etc.
Originally posted by Soki123 It definitely doesn t feel or look any different from almost every themepark MMO in existence. I foulnd it utterly boring, and almost amateur feeling. The game shouldn t have a sub IMO, and I m sure we ll see that dropping soon enough.
The problem with posts like this is, it would be like me saying this game is a definite success because I like it. How would you respond to that I wonder?
No its not even close to saying what you did. He stated anecdotal reasoning why he felt the game was going to fail. Not to mention he also used historical anecdotal reasoning from him playing previous Themepark MMOs. To him, the game feel like it will go F2P quickly based on his reasoning.
You on the other hand said 'because i like it it will be good." No explanation other than your enjoyment of the game.
Nah, that's just a quest chain. A quest hub is a town or other location with a couple of quest givers.
A quest chain is a series of quests that are linked together.
Quest hubs are specific parts of the zones that gives you quests appropriate to your level.
The only difference between ESO and other MMOs is that in many MMOs questgivers are concentrated in a small area, while in ESO they are scattered in a bigger area
ESO has bigger Quest hub areas, but you are still guided to follow a certain path in order to progress to the next quest hub which otherwise will not be available to you.
You cannot avoid to skip certain areas of a map or you won't be able to progress any further.
You have to play ESO zones following a pre-established path decided by the developers............ you cannot choose to explore other zones and find quests appropriate to your level in other zones like in Skyrim.
Comments
Wellcome to your average themepark mmorpg.
Once you are done with your quests you wait for the next mmorpg themepark
+1.
Why do non-MMO gamers and non-TES players keep making these threads?
The quests are similar to many MMOs, which MMO gamers love. This particular style of the quests are exactly the same as the other Elder Scrolls games, which have been highly acclaimed and loved by millions. People obviously like this stuff. Just because you don't doesn't change that fact.
Yep, and then wonder why games go from 2 million to 100k subscribers within a few months. Can't even imagine!
That's great. When have you been forced to work toward a goal so far in ESO in one certain way? You can pretty much tackle all around you in any order you want, take on which quests you want, etc.. It's not your typical hub where you have to work your way through quest chains to be able to move to the next area of quests. While there are quest chains, they're not needed to move on to other places or activities, none that I've seen anyway.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
How is it different from any of the es games, at least from Morrowind on?
It's not.
The problem is that exploration doesn't yield large places to "explore" and get lost in like other elder scrolls games while on the way to do these quests.
Morrowind: find woman on road, find out that her jewels were taken, she doesn't care about the jewels she just wants you to deliver a note, you deliver the note and go back to her.
Morrowind: get quest to retrieve acnestral skull, go to tomb, get anestral skull, go back again.
Morrowind, get quest to kill three bandits hiding out in a kwama mine, go kill the three and come back.
Oblivion: get quest to greater mundus stone, get mundus stone (it helps that it is in a larger ruin) run back.
Oblivion: get quest from guy who thinks he is followed, spy on person who doesn't do anything suspicious, rinse and repeat three times. Granted you do have a chance to lie to him to kill the people he suspects even though they never did anything.
Obvlivion: woman's daughter is missing, you go to creepy town and find out she is being held captive, you free her and run back.
Skyrim: woman's son has been taken by Dominion, you free him and run back.
Skyrim: Golden Claw was stolen. You run through dungeon, find claw and bring it back
Skyrim: Man's wife is missing, you enter imperial ruin to find out that she is now the leader of the bandit troup, you have a choice to tell him the truth or tell him a lie, you run back and do one of the choices.
As opposed to other mmo's, go here, kill x of y, run back, go here, gather x of y, run back?
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
That's the problem. You aren't working towards a goal in ESO. You are doing meaningless tasks for meaningless NPCs. Does it really matter if this person has the 3 apples he needs to make his apple pie? No, not in the slightest.
You mean that if I want I can skip the starting zone and do quest in another zone?
Of course you can't......... that's quest hubbing my friend
All zones are level based, and each Zone has several level hub (with appropriate quests for your level), you can't make quests on the other side of the map because they are not appropriate to your level.
So you have to follow a certain path and complete the quests along the way so when you arrive the other side of the map you are able to make those quests.
If that's not quest hubbing, I don't know what it is.............
Even in sandbox games you're stuck dealing with content you can complete until you move past it ( skill up). Other than that what?
You can go straight to the main land after the introduction now if that's what you're asking...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You realize what you just wrote can be said about each game of the Elder Scrolls series. Not just the MMO, but the single player games to.
You're describing part of the '5 Ds' of questing, in which, once you simplify them down to a certain point they are literally all the same, because there's only so many 'types' of quests you can actually implement. Its the way u implement them that makes them good, and ESO has quite a lot of good ones if u nother to look.
You realize your mileage may vary right? IF I thought it felt meaningless, I doubt I would have been in disagreement here with you to begin with.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The problem with posts like this is, it would be like me saying this game is a definite success because I like it. How would you respond to that I wonder?
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
For me personally I don't mind random missions or quest terminals that you can go to to get basic kill/fetch/guard/destroy quests but its when its done in a Themepark MMO way were its required to level up/skill up and creates a cheese ball story of you being the savior of the world well I get the feeling that its just a giant joke.
I'm the savior, your the savior EVERYONES the savior! Its over done and does not fit a MMORPG in the slightest. Your character should be nothing more than another player in the world and needs to create his own story through your actual player created name, and the social interactions between players in game.
A MMORPG can have huge amounts of lore but it shouldn't be force fed. Most don't give a hoot about Lore and only care about game play and well I don't blame these people. For just about every MMO out there that starts with a story, your some mystical magical being of super awesomeness that is here to save the world. Yet that guy your inside of because he spawned in you, is the same exact thing you are. Talk about some Sci-fi B Movie acting, well this type of story and questing is the equivalent of to a Sci-fi B movies acting.
Well, some (few) MMORPGs try to get the player interested in the world by means of quests that don't follow the usual routine of "go here, kill/click on that, return".
With MMORPGs that don't do that often (or not at all), you have two options:
a) you consider each quest to be some irrelevant random blabla, quickly click through it and just kill and click on stuff. Well, that works, but you will get bored very quickly, because you then realize too quickly that it's all the same over and over.
b) You read through the quests. Now if the quests are badly written, then you will still get bored. But if the quests are well written, you'll get interested into them, into the recurring characters, the background stories and so on.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Nah, that's just a quest chain. A quest hub is a town or other location with a couple of quest givers.
You don't need a sandbox to make a decent quest system.
Have you ever played Skyrim?
That's how you build a quest system........... unfortunately ESO took everything from WoW and almost nothing from TES.
Enjoy your boring "follow the path" MMO, I will re-play Skyrim instead, it's more fun and I won't spend a dime.
The biggest problem is that the MMORPG audience majority no longer consists of MMORPG players. Ironically, the majority of MMORPG players are just single player gamers who somehow got confused and ended up here.
The game was free to test... you told yourself... what do I have to lose? Even if it sucks, it didn't cost me a dime, just my time... and time is something I have to waste. So in the end, you wasted time, spent nothing, and are now a few hours closer to something that might actually entertain you.
Think of it as a giant atomic clock where the hours blend into weeks and into years. You're hopelessly waiting for some new game to come out and sweep you off your feet but that's months, nay, years away. What will you do to occupy your time? Why collect x from mob y. Time passes. That is your reward... making the hand of the clock move forward. Entertainment is in the eye of the beholder... some see it as an absence of time, others see it as an abundance of time. I have too much time on my hands... I have no time on my hands... either way, you are still observing that giant clock. Wow, time flies when you are having fun... Are we there yet? This is taking forever.
Glass half empty, half full... it is what it is. Drink it or not, doesn't change the fact that it is.
Queue up Happy! from Despicable Me 2...
Happy... happy... happy... happy... clap your hands...
It just comes down to personal preferences. Some people prioritize lore and story over interesting questing mechanics. I like lore and if I do end up getting ESO will take it slowly to immerse myself in it.
That being said, I still prioritize interesting quest structure and mechanics over lore. So far I agree with the OP that most of the quests in terms of how they work have been pretty boring and unimaginative. There are so many "talk to him, then walk and talk to her" errand boy quests and not enough engaging gameplay amongst them.
Another problem is that when running around doing these quests there are barely any mobs to fight, I actually find myself happy to get a quest that says "Kill X of Y." The lands seem barren with so few mobs compared to other games. Not only that, but the enemies don't even aggro you until your basically in front of their face, very odd.
I really hope that "the game gets better after lvl 10" or whatever is true. First they said it opens up around lvl 7-8 after the starter islands, but I havent noticed much change honestly. I will playing a bit more of the beta today and following the game after to make my final decision on buying it.
MMOs Played: FFXI,Age of Conan, Aion, Rift, SWTOR, TERA, TSW, GW2
Playing:None
Waiting For: Wildstar, The Repopulation, Archeage, TESO, Warhammer 40K:EC, EQN
Well, they wrap up their quests in a nice story. So that's a positive for me, even though the quests themselves are indeed nothing new.
At the end of the day, even more innovative questing models like GW2 could move not away from the underlying "kill/collect/deliver" quests.
Perhaps player generated quests would be fun if we had the tool... via PvP or PvE.
It could even help a crafter who needs for example 50 planks (posts "500 xp" from his pool and someone collects planks for him), or dude gets ganked, and put a 1Gold/500xp reward on XYZ's head, etc.
No its not even close to saying what you did. He stated anecdotal reasoning why he felt the game was going to fail. Not to mention he also used historical anecdotal reasoning from him playing previous Themepark MMOs. To him, the game feel like it will go F2P quickly based on his reasoning.
You on the other hand said 'because i like it it will be good." No explanation other than your enjoyment of the game.
A quest chain is a series of quests that are linked together.
Quest hubs are specific parts of the zones that gives you quests appropriate to your level.
The only difference between ESO and other MMOs is that in many MMOs questgivers are concentrated in a small area, while in ESO they are scattered in a bigger area
ESO has bigger Quest hub areas, but you are still guided to follow a certain path in order to progress to the next quest hub which otherwise will not be available to you.
You cannot avoid to skip certain areas of a map or you won't be able to progress any further.
You have to play ESO zones following a pre-established path decided by the developers............ you cannot choose to explore other zones and find quests appropriate to your level in other zones like in Skyrim.