Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Quests: The Double Edged Sword
PatchDay
Member Posts: 1,641
People like quests because you can do other things besides combat and use some problem solving.
Problem is they nuked our freedom to simply assist other people. Think bout it. Say you have completed the quest "Find the Hostages". I'm running along and I see my guildmate and he needs help. So I help the guy to do his quest but because the silly devs are nerfing pure mob XP gains I'm kinda getting punished for helping a friend
To make matters worse. Last night, was helping a guildie do his quest he needed help on that I didnt even do yet. I help him kill the boss, etc. Next thing you know, I happened to get assigned the same quest to kill the boss again. What the frak- I already killed the boss why are you making me go back and kill him again? Why cant this NPC just die already anyway
Hate PVE. Hate retarded MMORPG PVE with a passion
The sad part is I LOVE Single player RPGs to death. But MMORPG is like totally brain dead. Silly devs cant think of ideas of their own. Guess I'm going to have to take a break for a bit
Comments
Oh yes the classic I just killed that bastard...
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
80% of the games now are based around PvE. -made up stat but i am sure it's near right-
Questing in games has become dribble at best anyhow, often a contrite and sad attempt at writing is done with many quests.
The personality of the npc's near non -existant .As one poster said "cleverly disguised buttons".
I actually hate questing in this day and age, I disdain it with a passion. I hate being forced to "quest" as they are often stupid ass bounty jobs or collections.
My character is a Arch Magi of the Crimson Towers, Yet he must collect no less that 20 boar tusks, 50 skeleton teeth and 40 Ginseng from some area that looks like it could be posted in "Theme park tours weekly".
And yet my all mighty Arch Magi has to do this in order to get to the next series of quests for that bad ass wand of uberpwnage +6 (Fire damage).
That just sucks.
I'm still a firm believer that "quests" should be hard, should take a certain something to complete. Once you complete them you've done something that not everybody can do. It should make you unique, and the quest itself should be epic, in scale and difficulty!
Killing boars and snakes for their parts is nothing more then a chore. It's like taking out the garbage at home. You don't want to do it, but if you don't your wife will be pissed off and that gets you nowhere.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Nothing beats being grouped and doing the same quest only to get to the end boss kill him then hear your teammate tell you, "that didn't count for me."
All this, now place yourself as a master of the very arcane around you.
Shades tremble at your shadow. The universe flows through you and your power to weave mana.
Yet it be time to take out the trash!
[Quest Giver]
[Ur Wyfe]
"Honey,
The trash is out of hand! It's everywhere! Collect 5 pieces and put it in the bag"
[Tracker]
Red trash 0/2
Blue trash 1/1
Green trash 0/2
On completion.
[Quest Giver]
[Ur Wyfe]
"Great job hon! Heres your reward"
REWARD
[Arcane Ring of Ultimateness]x1 [Scolding Face Mask]x1
[Optional]
[Dinner] x1 OR [Loving] x0.5
NOW THATS A QUEST.
Nah, after you take out the trash you find out it's just a chain of more chores. The excuse is "you're up anyways".
You throw out the garbage, then you gotta walk the dog, change the light bulb in the basement, reshingle the roof and talk to your mother in law. Kinda makes you wonder if taking the first part of this "quest" was really worth all the hastle.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
I believe if the devs truely focused on PvE content they could come up with better then what is currently available.
To start with I would do away with the GPS systems that quests have these days. Having a map that always points you to the right place kills any challenge in exploring the world.
Another thing I would like to see attempted is a more dynamic quest system. Instead of going to all the NPCs in town to pick up a quest try something different. Go to the local bar and gather hints of what problems and places of interest are around the current area.
When an NPC dies have them respawn in a different location and perhaps with a different name/appearance.
When you get back to town perhaps encounter NPCs that tell you they hear what you did and would like to give you a reward for helping them.
Have faction bases for NPCs so not all quests can be completed by everyone.
Try to impiment spontanous encounters that let you deciede you faction. You encounter a group of mobs while exploring. They are attacking a person. Do you help them, help the person, or do nothing. If you help the bandits you gain faction with them and are able to go to their secret town in the woods. Have these things kept track of so they don't happen more then once to a character.
Make complex dungeons. Since the days of Everquest I haven't seen a game with complex dungeons. In EQ there were all kinds of secret hidden doors, traps, underwater areas, and other nasty things that made going into a dungeon something you didn't want to do alone. There was a dungeon in velious where you had to run accross a slippery area and make a big jump over a dangerous/deep pit.
Overall it does seem that the devs are not trying to make things better at the moment in terms of PvE. Bioware would like to make a great story to pay through which is great, but in truth I think PvE could be a lot better then going to pick up all the quests in town from NPCs with "!" over their heads and follow the GPS.
I agree with you there man I would love to play a game that has Dynamic PVE like that. You know, where dynamic situaitons can occur as I walk around and explore.
Directing people with a heavy hand really messes up exploration too me. Ive seen some MMO where they are so linear, if you try to explore into another zone the NPCs are like "Are you lost? Please return to your former zone!"
Grr...
I hate quests in MMO nowadays they are just boring dumb down kill tasks with different mobs. thats why I don't even read them now I just collect them and then find out what i have to do later on. they aren't even quests they are just chores that need to be done
the joke in this thread is actually a good one its how i actually feel in some of these games
"I am Ravanos protector of the queen, destroyer or dragons ... slayer of the Orc hordes ... I saw you beckoning me M'lady how may i be of service ... did a vile vampire steal your heirloom pendant? did a giant clan steal your child? is there a horde of cyclops threat your land? ... No then what?
Maiden: "I like stew and I enjoy making stew ... can you bring me some wombat meat from the wombats behind my house so i can make stew?
you have got to be kidding me.
I would rather have 10 EPIC quests with no ingame help, where you actually have to figure out for yourself what to do.actually have to read the quests and respond correctly to the NPC.
Nothing beats being grouped and doing the same quest only to get to the end boss kill him then hear your teammate tell you, "that didn't count for me."
this sounds very WoW'ish
My opinion would be that the quests are too static that people feel bored after a while, and the mechanic is too simple (kill x, loot y, rinse and repeat), without any meaning to the background story (except faction rep. or some reward...)
If the developers would figure out a way to do dynamic quests where when you kill a named boss, it stays dead (until random generated in another location with different model/attribute). This would be better...
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
I miss quests like in Asheron's Call, where the quests were for items and recognition, and were legitimately difficult because they might take days or weeks of doing things on your own before you could take something on as a group.
Getting my mage armor.. the focusing stone quest.. getting the pieces for my atlan weapon and then having to find a player alchemist of high enough skill to make the highest quality out of it so I could get the best atlan weapon. -Then- doing the quests for the stones to put in the weapon to change its properties.
Shadow armor, atlan weapons, weeping weapons, focusing stone, mage armor, the gaerlan quests, lady aerlinthe, olthoi queen, bobo. So many memorable times in that game, and all for just plain cool items, or the challenge of completing the quests. You got XP from killing the things in the dungeons the quests were in. You got XP along the way from start to finish during quests just from killing to collect the items in order to put them together.
They didn't feel like a grind, because the reward was something useful that didn't get instantly outdated when the next patch came out. Things remained useful for months, and sometimes years.. and you felt good when you got them.