it always boils down to what the "end-game" is all about. if it is about PVP then most of your pvpers will blaze through to the end just to take part in the end-game pvp battles etc. if its a pure role playing game with no pvp elements then, most likely you won't have the so called "hardcore" players that skip content to just level as fast as possible, as much, there will always be people like that to some degree. and you really can't cater a game to that sort of gaming style. because you'll never win...
honestly if you look at some of the most addictive games in history, none of them have the "Kill 10 rats" sort of quests, except WoW. its all about making it interesting, addictive and overall fun. making tons of mini thought provoking quests... that lead into dungeons that have actual traps that test your gaming dexterity, eye-hand coordination and overall character building talents.
Asheron's Call 1 has some of the best dungeons in any game to date... well thought out and somewhat puzzley.
Sure you could be catering to a nitch group of people, but there is still that nitch market group out there. because there is only so much room for the mindless EQ style gameplay. and eventually you are only left with a small nitch group anyway when its all said and done.
companies just need to learn to keep being unique, because they all can't be the phenomena that WoW is. you have to have an already huge player fan base before making an MMO in order to do that.
Quests are boring and dependent on player objective. Fallout 3 for example and offline single player game had an awesome quest design and layout. Cause and effect quests that determine your path of success. My personal objective in an MMO being that i prefer PVP style games is to get to the max level and play against other players. Getting gear does not appeal to me along the way as long as i have a fair chance to beat any of my opponents 1 vs 1. Skill based.
I started MMO's early on but my first were World War 2 flight simulations. Fighter Ace, World War 2 Online, Aces High yada yada. You got promoted based on kills and kill ratio but everybody started in the same equipment. There were no levels. Sure there were mission objectives but they played no real outcome on the game itself other then adding challenge.
Dark Age of Camelot was my first fantasy based game with quests as a leveling quotient. I didn't care about the story line. I barely even quested back in the hard grind days because i could level faster just killing mob after mob after mob achieving max level, getting Epic Armor and off to RVR i go. Had they gave me a 50 as soon as i logged in with Epic Armor i would of been much more happy from a PVP perspective but the upside of quests and PVE was i met alot of wonderful people. That was one of the sole benefits of questing.
Quests have there place in PVE based games because they are all about storyline. PVP is a place quests or leveling really has no purpose other then to time sink. The next BIG PVP game will be a game thats skill based like Guild Wars but on a LARGE scale like Dark Age of Camelot. Bottom line is game companies need to separate PVE from PVP because they really don't go together. Developers who are directing quest makers need to realize that if the quest and the way its projected isn't immersive, people wont bother with them and are seen as a waste of time since all they want is the EXP bonus/prize. Oh btw Sanya your still hot! ..
In other words "thank you MMO community for being min/maxing failbags who only care about hitting the level cap and then complaining why there's no content". Seriously, the first time I heard of a mod designed specifically to skip quest text, my faith in humanity, if I had any left, would have died just a bit more.
I agree, but what can ya do? You give them books, and give them books, and all they do is eat the pages!
Well sorry if someone mentioned this already (I wasn't about to read 7 pages of posts to put in my 2 cents) but one thing I usually find to be the problem with the whole simple vs. story heavy/complex questing argument is that it assumes we can't have both. The current model of questing became popular because it made progression more interesting by forcing you to hunt different mobs and see different areas instead of camping the same things in the same camp spots all day long.
I don't see why we can't keep this system in place while adding some other type of quests/events on top of it to make the game world feel more alive. I just wish games would stop calling them "quests" to try and trick us into thinking there more interesting than they are. They should just call em "tasks" or "choirs" or "work", then you don't even need to bother with a stupid storyline or anything. Save the writing and effort for a smaller number of quality events that really intrigue the player, and make em optional in some way so people won't "have" to do them to progress (intice them with other rewards that aren't just better equipment, like a fancy title or some other thing they can show off but doesn't effect combat efficiency).
Forgive me for not reading over what has allready been said, I just wanted to get my thoughts out there. ill go back read all the posts after.
I thinkt he reason for the prefferance of the fedex quests is due to the nature of level grinding. Who wants to be at newb level? You have to reach max level and get geared to be accepted by anyone other than your group of friends you run with. This sadly where I find fault with newer MMO's. Yes it may be tried and true but damn its reptetive and boaring. And after a decade of playing MMO's with the grind mindset i am burnt. I would like to see some new games with an alternative to leveling levels. I would love to see an innovative MMO where the journey is not a grind. Maybe im just dreaming but there has to be a devlopment team out there some where that can pull it off.
Well I can say that I play one MMO that has trully been inovative and that is Eve-Online. I would love to see this type of innovation applied to a fantasy MMORPG.
I do skip quest texts often, simply because I'm a slow reader. I remember doing the Van Cleff chain for Alliance in WoW for the first time and being blown away. Especially at the end with the characters that had voices, the cannon that shoots down the door, a Goonies moment when you find a big ship in a cave.. It was excellent.
The problem I see with most text quests is, there's a sort of disconnect between the story we're reading, and what actually happens in the game world around it. I'm sure there's a lot of technical reasons behind it, and that's due to the nature of MMO's and you have to accept that - There's really no way around it in a persistant world. Here's what I'm saying, and a little story.
Lets say I need to kill 10 rats because the rats are growing too big, and starting to eat merchants and soldiers gaurding caravans traveling to some city to bring medical supplies because that city is under siege. Sounds like a good story. I'd like to know more about why the city is being invaded, but that's sure to come in a perfect world. Anyway, I'm off! I'm going to save the people going to save the city!
Umm... Where are they? The rats are just wandering a circle. The city? Not even under attack. The rats are apparently fat and lazy and don't feel like attacking anything today. The fact that nothing is really happening that remotely pertains to the story enforces that disconnect between the story I'm reading and the adventure I'm playing.
Now, on the assumption that it were technically possible (It's likely not in an MMO without some heavy instancing, or at pre-set or random intervals, hence, fits in with single player RPG's moreso then MMO's) lets take that same story and add a few twists.
The carvan is bringing medical supplies to the city. It needs someone to defend against rats - they're not going to tell you how many - to get those supplies to the city as it's under siege by an undead army. It can start 2 ways, much like a typical escort quest. You leave with the caravan, or you have to wait till the next one sets out. And it sort of make sense that it not always happen immediately, they'd have to schedule this sort of thing - There's logistics involved here!
So anyway, the time finally arrives and the caravan is about to set out. There's some other people who showed up since they need the quest too. So they set out. Now we can add in possible scenarios to this quest to differentiate it.
A) Depending on the number of people, WAVES, and I mean WAVES of rats start coming in from all directions. It's mayhem! People trying to pull the rats off the NPC caravan, slaying and looting everything they can, over and over! You succed or fail by defending the carvan as it moves to the city.
A n NPC comes and says to the closest player or players in earshot (Not a big popup for everyone on the quest) saying, "Stop killing the rats! The medicines they've been sending have been tainted! The rats can smell it and they're eating the infections before leaving the good portion of the medicines to be picked up later! Stop the other players from killing them, and get everyone away from the supplies!" Now the players have a choice - Keep fighting, looting, and do as quest intended, or get people to stop and get away.
C) You say, "Screw them, they're too slow I'll bring the medicine there myself as much as I can carry as much as possible, run ahead, and bypass the rats. It's important that they get the medicine - The rats are merely the obstacle."
With either A, B, or C, whenever they get to the city, I better see it under attack. An NPC vendor better not be just standing there waiting for me to come buy something. And depending on what happens between A, B, or C, I need different outcomes.
A) The medicine was fine, you get them to the wounded in the city and the next part of the chain (And it SHOULD be a chain for a STORY, at least until the invasion of the city actually ends, and it should always start again for anyone who wants to do it at some interval).
You decided or tried to get everyone away from the supplies. Rats do their job. You get everyone back to the caravan and bring the cleaned supplies to the city, maybe you get something different but better. Yay! OR, you say screw it, and bring the caravan, tainted goods and all, to the invading city. Some die, some live. No one knows why. You still get your reward.
C) You bring the medicines in a crate at a time, saving as many as you can. Maybe you get the reward, maybe you don't.
These various paths you can decide to take is what makes it FEEL like you're part of the story. The environment in which the setting takes place, and more importantly, CHOICES a player can take all satisfy the requirement of a more abstract objective (In this case, getting medicine from A to , and HOW they do it, and how the circumstances of the success affect the reward are what MMO's lack.
So until you can really CONNECT the player to the story in the game, they'll never take the story seriously.
To those who think these articles are "blaming" the MMO players... yes and no. The author is passing along the sentiments of MMO industry folks. Most of them are passing judgement.
But that's okay, because in truth, we are to blame.
Let's examine the reality of the situation a moment. We have millions playing MMOs these days. Aside from WOW, we probably have at least 2-4 million MMO gamers worldwide in most of the other top-tier games.
How many of them are actual geeks/nerds? How many of these millions do you think have even read any fantasy fiction, including Tolkien? How many of them made better than a B- in English (or the literary equivalent) in high school?
Most of you people on this website are very silly. You crawl into this aquarium, see all the other fish and the water and the little castle, and you think, "My God! The world is made for us! How can it be any different?"
All this article is doing is taking off the fishbowl and examining the truth. The truth is that most people do not give a rat's rectum about lore, storytelling, or character development. Role-players are routinely marginalized and harrassed in every game out there. Christ, half of Darkfall is already like that, and the game hasn't even been out more than a year or two.
The cruel, hard, unforgiving truth about questing is that those who want dynamic and interesting quests seem to be in the minority. Try going to 10 official MMO game forums and demanding less raiding, less grinding, and more story-based questing. Not only will you get flamed by half the community at that forum, you'll get either stoney silence or beat-around-the-bush platitudes that basicaly say, "No, we are not going to waste time on something that we see no clear majority wanting in the game."
MMORPG.com may have 10,000 people in favor of better stories and lore and quests.
That's still a minority in a single game with even just 100,000 players. And of the 10,000 people noted above, how many of them even play the same games?
This isn't to say we shouldn't demand better. Oh, no. But some of you are trying to lay the entire burden of blame upon the MMO company. What idiocy. That's like saying it is McDonald's fault that you choose to eat there instead of either eating at a healthier place, or just making your own lunch.
We need to pick a better fight. We aren't going to win against financial security for programmers and whatnot in the middle of a recession. So we need to target something else. My suggestion would be the rest of the MMO community, the folks who don't yet appreciate game settings for what they can be. As for how to get them interested, there's only one actual method I know of - get them interested in fiction of the correct genre.
The article is spot on. And should be a wake-up call to the entire community: get organized and stop the in-fighting, or look forward to a future full of suck and fail.
After all, the more we fight each other, the more companies like Blizzard smile and wring their hands as they get ready to count more easy money made off of suckers who could have better games if only they knew better...
To those who think these articles are "blaming" the MMO players... yes and no. The author is passing along the sentiments of MMO industry folks. Most of them are passing judgement. But that's okay, because in truth, we are to blame. Let's examine the reality of the situation a moment. We have millions playing MMOs these days. Aside from WOW, we probably have at least 2-4 million MMO gamers worldwide in most of the other top-tier games. How many of them are actual geeks/nerds? How many of these millions do you think have even read any fantasy fiction, including Tolkien? How many of them made better than a B- in English (or the literary equivalent) in high school? Most of you people on this website are very silly. You crawl into this aquarium, see all the other fish and the water and the little castle, and you think, "My God! The world is made for us! How can it be any different?" All this article is doing is taking off the fishbowl and examining the truth. The truth is that most people do not give a rat's rectum about lore, storytelling, or character development. Role-players are routinely marginalized and harrassed in every game out there. Christ, half of Darkfall is already like that, and the game hasn't even been out more than a year or two. The cruel, hard, unforgiving truth about questing is that those who want dynamic and interesting quests seem to be in the minority. Try going to 10 official MMO game forums and demanding less raiding, less grinding, and more story-based questing. Not only will you get flamed by half the community at that forum, you'll get either stoney silence or beat-around-the-bush platitudes that basicaly say, "No, we are not going to waste time on something that we see no clear majority wanting in the game." MMORPG.com may have 10,000 people in favor of better stories and lore and quests. That's still a minority in a single game with even just 100,000 players. And of the 10,000 people noted above, how many of them even play the same games? This isn't to say we shouldn't demand better. Oh, no. But some of you are trying to lay the entire burden of blame upon the MMO company. What idiocy. That's like saying it is McDonald's fault that you choose to eat there instead of either eating at a healthier place, or just making your own lunch. We need to pick a better fight. We aren't going to win against financial security for programmers and whatnot in the middle of a recession. So we need to target something else. My suggestion would be the rest of the MMO community, the folks who don't yet appreciate game settings for what they can be. As for how to get them interested, there's only one actual method I know of - get them interested in fiction of the correct genre. The article is spot on. And should be a wake-up call to the entire community: get organized and stop the in-fighting, or look forward to a future full of suck and fail. After all, the more we fight each other, the more companies like Blizzard smile and wring their hands as they get ready to count more easy money made off of suckers who could have better games if only they knew better...
Im definitely partying with you cowboy! Nice write up!
Originally posted by wolffin Well I can say that I play one MMO that has trully been inovative and that is Eve-Online. I would love to see this type of innovation applied to a fantasy MMORPG.
Oh yes! Or any other genre! There is way too much sameness in MMORPGs. I don't blame the companies - they are just trying to make a buck. But I wish I had more options!
Originally posted by wolffin Well I can say that I play one MMO that has trully been inovative and that is Eve-Online. I would love to see this type of innovation applied to a fantasy MMORPG.
Oh yes! Or any other genre! There is way too much sameness in MMORPGs. I don't blame the companies - they are just trying to make a buck. But I wish I had more options!
Well put! EVE-Online is a pretty innovative game and I would agree to the prospect of seeing this type of gameplay put into a fantasy setting. As long as theres no more Orcs, and Elves!
[rant] They call it fanatsy, but the only fantasy they seem to refer to all the time is Orcs and Elves. Im sorta burned out on that concept. I want to see new races, and lore made in games. Example AION seems ot hit this on the nose to me. While not totally innovative the fantasy setting is pretty cool! Now if everyone else would put the Orcs and Elves to rest and think of new characters to forge and stories to tell, it would be truly called "fantasy unlimited"! [/rant]
That’s the hardest thing about designing MMOs, by the way – people want to get past all of the content as quickly as possible so they can get to (and consume) the “real” content. That “real” content is the least tested and least complete part of the game, but if there’s a way to powerlevel past the tested and polished material, people will find it.
There's a rule in business called "The 80/20 Rule". In nearly every endeavor, 80% of your expense is going to come from 20% of your customer base. And the real secret to success is to either identify and get rid of the sponges, or figure out a way to make their fee proportional to the expense they create.
In nearly every MMORPG, the people who want to blow by all the content and then scream at the top of their lungs for an utterly undefinable "endgame" pay the exact same monthly fee as everyone else. But the unwinnable race to appease them takes up a hugely disproportionate share of the developer's resources.
It would be easy to code a game to make maximum advancement rate be in some way tied to the longevity of the account - through some sort of asymptotic soft cap on experience gains, with a dividing line kept well short of the end of the currently-designed material. The people who are interested in getting to the head of the pack can do that, but "the top" can be a fairly narrow range. Playing 24/7 and doing everything possible to break the system will still get you (marginally) ahead of everyone else, but always short of the current end of the content. The imaginary overachiever is free to scream "Yeah, I win!" (whatever the Hell that means) but he doesn't take a disproportionate share of resources away from all the of players who just want to play the game for its own sake and quietly pay their fees.
The thing that ruins the immersion for me, which makes the whole storytelling element fall apart, is the lack of persistence and game memory.
It isn't just "kill ten rats" but also "go kill the goblin king." You kill him, and the next day you run into another NPC who says "go kill the goblin king." Just once I would like to say "killed him yesterday, here's his signet ring, give me the darn reward." They could introduce a gazillion flags, which is data intensive, and the designers are probably afraid that I won't go back and help someone else kill the darn thing. So I have to kill the stupid goblin king every day. At that point, no wall of text can get me interested.
Also, three other variants on this grind really bug me.
First, is the 'the random number generator hates me' quests. You know, "kill ten rats and bring me their tails" and none of the rats have %^&*^ tails. After killing 30 and getting four tails, I want to kill the developer instead. You go on the forums and at least a half dozen people say "oh, I got mine killing only a dozen rats." I would rather the NPC say "kill fifty rats."
The second is the 'why can't you guys talk to each other' problem. In this one NPC A says "kill ten rats" and NPC B standing next to him says "kill ten wolves." You kill the ten rats and ten wolves, return, and NPC A says, "next, kill ten wolves" and NPC B says "next, kill ten rats." It is amazing how often I have bumped into variations on that one.
Finally are two variations on the classic 'hot dogs and buns' problem. One type is "kill five gribbles" and they always spawn in highly social packs of four. The other is "kill five blue gribbles and five red gribbles" and they always spawn in packs of four blue gribbles and one red gribble.
I thinkt he reason for the prefferance of the fedex quests is due to the nature of level grinding. Who wants to be at newb level? You have to reach max level and get geared to be accepted by anyone other than your group of friends you run with.
I don't really understand why MMO's can't be a lot less "tall" and a lot more "broad" in their approach.
The first few levels of an RPG are always my favorite, where you start with nothing and each new piece of equipment gives a noticeable feeling of improvement and capability. But most MMO's nowadays just blast you through this part. That paradigm makes perfect sense in single-player CRPG's, where the authors want to push you through their story in a linear fashion. But why do MMO's need to do that? Why not give me a lot more flexibility as to which zones I want to go to and whom I want to group with?
Of course, by their very nature, the pathetic souls who feel the need to "win" at an MMO will always be by far the most vocal element. But I can't help but feel there are at least a few million other people out there who are interested in the journey rather than the destination.
I thinkt he reason for the prefferance of the fedex quests is due to the nature of level grinding. Who wants to be at newb level? You have to reach max level and get geared to be accepted by anyone other than your group of friends you run with.
I don't really understand why MMO's can't be a lot less "tall" and a lot more "broad" in their approach.
... That paradigm makes perfect sense in single-player CRPG's, where the authors want to push you through their story in a linear fashion. But why do MMO's need to do that? Why not give me a lot more flexibility as to which zones I want to go to and whom I want to group with?
I blame the levels. Since levels tend to advance you in raw power rather than bredth of ability, the games too have to be "tall" rather than "broad". After all, the same area isn't going to be good for a 1st level character and a 50th level one.
I think a better approach would be something like Guild Wars, where after a certain point, there are no more levels to get and you just want to hunt new skills. Its like a collectable card game like Magic the Gathering - the new cards you get aren't necessarily more powerful than your old cards, but you collect new ones because they open up fun new tactics.
Originally posted by MudHekket I blame the levels. Since levels tend to advance you in raw power rather than bredth of ability, the games too have to be "tall" rather than "broad". After all, the same area isn't going to be good for a 1st level character and a 50th level one. I think a better approach would be something like Guild Wars, where after a certain point, there are no more levels to get and you just want to hunt new skills. Its like a collectable card game like Magic the Gathering - the new cards you get aren't necessarily more powerful than your old cards, but you collect new ones because they open up fun new tactics.
Yeah, I hate the idea of general increases in power; where your hitpoints, to-hit, defense, etc., all go up a notch at the same time.
I prefer the idea of "punctuated advancement," where ONE aspect at a time gets an improvement that you can really FEEL. Maybe like one new spell, or faster running speed, etc., every few hours - so each step can actually alter your gameplay, rather than simply advance you to the next zone.
Same with equipment. In most MMORPG's today, a piece of equipment gives you an armor increase, along with a whole bunch of stats that just advance along with it. In mythology or fantasy, each character would have a very few special items like a sword, or shield, or belt, etc., that had a very noticeable effect -- not a dozen items with a hundred bonuses and stat increases that you need a spreadsheet to keep up with.
Originally posted by SuperCrap Except for "role players", who are the most unimaginative of all gamers, most gamers want the "story" of the game to be basically what they make of it.
What drugs are you on? Non-RPers don't want any story, period -- these losers are the min/maxing failbags who make the bulk of statistics telling devs that yes, players don't want text. You say these guys are more imaginative than RPers? Puh-lease. These are the unthinking reactionists who mash the esc button during videos, click the "gimmeh nao" quest button within seconds of the NPC text box coming up, and end up standing around the PVP arena yelling at each other all day long.
The problem with levels is people start out playing with people. Their friends, guilds, people they meet in game. If they actually like the game, they play it more. But their friends may not be able to play it as much, or go out of town ect.. So they all end up at different levels doing different content. By level 25 we're all playing solo because we dont want to ever interupt our friends enjoyment by asking them to wait, or help catch up. The only time we can start to play together again is end-game. Thats why its the good part. Not because its any better content, because we can play together again. Developers keep making it worse and worse and worse. MMORPG's are about the PEOPLE playing together. That is the ONLY fun. FFS...it's a simple solution, stop ignoring the problem. Keeping friends apart is against the rules. MMORPGS are screwed when a mmo comes along and proves this.
See you in the dream.. The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.
Comments
it always boils down to what the "end-game" is all about. if it is about PVP then most of your pvpers will blaze through to the end just to take part in the end-game pvp battles etc. if its a pure role playing game with no pvp elements then, most likely you won't have the so called "hardcore" players that skip content to just level as fast as possible, as much, there will always be people like that to some degree. and you really can't cater a game to that sort of gaming style. because you'll never win...
honestly if you look at some of the most addictive games in history, none of them have the "Kill 10 rats" sort of quests, except WoW. its all about making it interesting, addictive and overall fun. making tons of mini thought provoking quests... that lead into dungeons that have actual traps that test your gaming dexterity, eye-hand coordination and overall character building talents.
Asheron's Call 1 has some of the best dungeons in any game to date... well thought out and somewhat puzzley.
Sure you could be catering to a nitch group of people, but there is still that nitch market group out there. because there is only so much room for the mindless EQ style gameplay. and eventually you are only left with a small nitch group anyway when its all said and done.
companies just need to learn to keep being unique, because they all can't be the phenomena that WoW is. you have to have an already huge player fan base before making an MMO in order to do that.
Quests are boring and dependent on player objective. Fallout 3 for example and offline single player game had an awesome quest design and layout. Cause and effect quests that determine your path of success. My personal objective in an MMO being that i prefer PVP style games is to get to the max level and play against other players. Getting gear does not appeal to me along the way as long as i have a fair chance to beat any of my opponents 1 vs 1. Skill based.
I started MMO's early on but my first were World War 2 flight simulations. Fighter Ace, World War 2 Online, Aces High yada yada. You got promoted based on kills and kill ratio but everybody started in the same equipment. There were no levels. Sure there were mission objectives but they played no real outcome on the game itself other then adding challenge.
Dark Age of Camelot was my first fantasy based game with quests as a leveling quotient. I didn't care about the story line. I barely even quested back in the hard grind days because i could level faster just killing mob after mob after mob achieving max level, getting Epic Armor and off to RVR i go. Had they gave me a 50 as soon as i logged in with Epic Armor i would of been much more happy from a PVP perspective but the upside of quests and PVE was i met alot of wonderful people. That was one of the sole benefits of questing.
Quests have there place in PVE based games because they are all about storyline. PVP is a place quests or leveling really has no purpose other then to time sink. The next BIG PVP game will be a game thats skill based like Guild Wars but on a LARGE scale like Dark Age of Camelot. Bottom line is game companies need to separate PVE from PVP because they really don't go together. Developers who are directing quest makers need to realize that if the quest and the way its projected isn't immersive, people wont bother with them and are seen as a waste of time since all they want is the EXP bonus/prize. Oh btw Sanya your still hot!
..
I agree, but what can ya do? You give them books, and give them books, and all they do is eat the pages!
Well sorry if someone mentioned this already (I wasn't about to read 7 pages of posts to put in my 2 cents) but one thing I usually find to be the problem with the whole simple vs. story heavy/complex questing argument is that it assumes we can't have both. The current model of questing became popular because it made progression more interesting by forcing you to hunt different mobs and see different areas instead of camping the same things in the same camp spots all day long.
I don't see why we can't keep this system in place while adding some other type of quests/events on top of it to make the game world feel more alive. I just wish games would stop calling them "quests" to try and trick us into thinking there more interesting than they are. They should just call em "tasks" or "choirs" or "work", then you don't even need to bother with a stupid storyline or anything. Save the writing and effort for a smaller number of quality events that really intrigue the player, and make em optional in some way so people won't "have" to do them to progress (intice them with other rewards that aren't just better equipment, like a fancy title or some other thing they can show off but doesn't effect combat efficiency).
Forgive me for not reading over what has allready been said, I just wanted to get my thoughts out there. ill go back read all the posts after.
I thinkt he reason for the prefferance of the fedex quests is due to the nature of level grinding. Who wants to be at newb level? You have to reach max level and get geared to be accepted by anyone other than your group of friends you run with. This sadly where I find fault with newer MMO's. Yes it may be tried and true but damn its reptetive and boaring. And after a decade of playing MMO's with the grind mindset i am burnt. I would like to see some new games with an alternative to leveling levels. I would love to see an innovative MMO where the journey is not a grind. Maybe im just dreaming but there has to be a devlopment team out there some where that can pull it off.
Well I can say that I play one MMO that has trully been inovative and that is Eve-Online. I would love to see this type of innovation applied to a fantasy MMORPG.
peace
Wolffin
Wonderful article, Sanya! As always.
I do skip quest texts often, simply because I'm a slow reader. I remember doing the Van Cleff chain for Alliance in WoW for the first time and being blown away. Especially at the end with the characters that had voices, the cannon that shoots down the door, a Goonies moment when you find a big ship in a cave.. It was excellent.
The problem I see with most text quests is, there's a sort of disconnect between the story we're reading, and what actually happens in the game world around it. I'm sure there's a lot of technical reasons behind it, and that's due to the nature of MMO's and you have to accept that - There's really no way around it in a persistant world. Here's what I'm saying, and a little story.
Lets say I need to kill 10 rats because the rats are growing too big, and starting to eat merchants and soldiers gaurding caravans traveling to some city to bring medical supplies because that city is under siege. Sounds like a good story. I'd like to know more about why the city is being invaded, but that's sure to come in a perfect world. Anyway, I'm off! I'm going to save the people going to save the city!
Umm... Where are they? The rats are just wandering a circle. The city? Not even under attack. The rats are apparently fat and lazy and don't feel like attacking anything today. The fact that nothing is really happening that remotely pertains to the story enforces that disconnect between the story I'm reading and the adventure I'm playing.
Now, on the assumption that it were technically possible (It's likely not in an MMO without some heavy instancing, or at pre-set or random intervals, hence, fits in with single player RPG's moreso then MMO's) lets take that same story and add a few twists.
The carvan is bringing medical supplies to the city. It needs someone to defend against rats - they're not going to tell you how many - to get those supplies to the city as it's under siege by an undead army. It can start 2 ways, much like a typical escort quest. You leave with the caravan, or you have to wait till the next one sets out. And it sort of make sense that it not always happen immediately, they'd have to schedule this sort of thing - There's logistics involved here!
So anyway, the time finally arrives and the caravan is about to set out. There's some other people who showed up since they need the quest too. So they set out. Now we can add in possible scenarios to this quest to differentiate it.
A) Depending on the number of people, WAVES, and I mean WAVES of rats start coming in from all directions. It's mayhem! People trying to pull the rats off the NPC caravan, slaying and looting everything they can, over and over! You succed or fail by defending the carvan as it moves to the city.
A n NPC comes and says to the closest player or players in earshot (Not a big popup for everyone on the quest) saying, "Stop killing the rats! The medicines they've been sending have been tainted! The rats can smell it and they're eating the infections before leaving the good portion of the medicines to be picked up later! Stop the other players from killing them, and get everyone away from the supplies!" Now the players have a choice - Keep fighting, looting, and do as quest intended, or get people to stop and get away.
C) You say, "Screw them, they're too slow I'll bring the medicine there myself as much as I can carry as much as possible, run ahead, and bypass the rats. It's important that they get the medicine - The rats are merely the obstacle."
With either A, B, or C, whenever they get to the city, I better see it under attack. An NPC vendor better not be just standing there waiting for me to come buy something. And depending on what happens between A, B, or C, I need different outcomes.
A) The medicine was fine, you get them to the wounded in the city and the next part of the chain (And it SHOULD be a chain for a STORY, at least until the invasion of the city actually ends, and it should always start again for anyone who wants to do it at some interval).
C) You bring the medicines in a crate at a time, saving as many as you can. Maybe you get the reward, maybe you don't.
, and HOW they do it, and how the circumstances of the success affect the reward are what MMO's lack.
These various paths you can decide to take is what makes it FEEL like you're part of the story. The environment in which the setting takes place, and more importantly, CHOICES a player can take all satisfy the requirement of a more abstract objective (In this case, getting medicine from A to
So until you can really CONNECT the player to the story in the game, they'll never take the story seriously.
Just my opinoin anyway.
To those who think these articles are "blaming" the MMO players... yes and no. The author is passing along the sentiments of MMO industry folks. Most of them are passing judgement.
But that's okay, because in truth, we are to blame.
Let's examine the reality of the situation a moment. We have millions playing MMOs these days. Aside from WOW, we probably have at least 2-4 million MMO gamers worldwide in most of the other top-tier games.
How many of them are actual geeks/nerds? How many of these millions do you think have even read any fantasy fiction, including Tolkien? How many of them made better than a B- in English (or the literary equivalent) in high school?
Most of you people on this website are very silly. You crawl into this aquarium, see all the other fish and the water and the little castle, and you think, "My God! The world is made for us! How can it be any different?"
All this article is doing is taking off the fishbowl and examining the truth. The truth is that most people do not give a rat's rectum about lore, storytelling, or character development. Role-players are routinely marginalized and harrassed in every game out there. Christ, half of Darkfall is already like that, and the game hasn't even been out more than a year or two.
The cruel, hard, unforgiving truth about questing is that those who want dynamic and interesting quests seem to be in the minority. Try going to 10 official MMO game forums and demanding less raiding, less grinding, and more story-based questing. Not only will you get flamed by half the community at that forum, you'll get either stoney silence or beat-around-the-bush platitudes that basicaly say, "No, we are not going to waste time on something that we see no clear majority wanting in the game."
MMORPG.com may have 10,000 people in favor of better stories and lore and quests.
That's still a minority in a single game with even just 100,000 players. And of the 10,000 people noted above, how many of them even play the same games?
This isn't to say we shouldn't demand better. Oh, no. But some of you are trying to lay the entire burden of blame upon the MMO company. What idiocy. That's like saying it is McDonald's fault that you choose to eat there instead of either eating at a healthier place, or just making your own lunch.
We need to pick a better fight. We aren't going to win against financial security for programmers and whatnot in the middle of a recession. So we need to target something else. My suggestion would be the rest of the MMO community, the folks who don't yet appreciate game settings for what they can be. As for how to get them interested, there's only one actual method I know of - get them interested in fiction of the correct genre.
The article is spot on. And should be a wake-up call to the entire community: get organized and stop the in-fighting, or look forward to a future full of suck and fail.
After all, the more we fight each other, the more companies like Blizzard smile and wring their hands as they get ready to count more easy money made off of suckers who could have better games if only they knew better...
Im definitely partying with you cowboy! Nice write up!
Oh yes! Or any other genre! There is way too much sameness in MMORPGs. I don't blame the companies - they are just trying to make a buck. But I wish I had more options!
Oh yes! Or any other genre! There is way too much sameness in MMORPGs. I don't blame the companies - they are just trying to make a buck. But I wish I had more options!
Well put! EVE-Online is a pretty innovative game and I would agree to the prospect of seeing this type of gameplay put into a fantasy setting. As long as theres no more Orcs, and Elves!
[rant] They call it fanatsy, but the only fantasy they seem to refer to all the time is Orcs and Elves. Im sorta burned out on that concept. I want to see new races, and lore made in games. Example AION seems ot hit this on the nose to me. While not totally innovative the fantasy setting is pretty cool! Now if everyone else would put the Orcs and Elves to rest and think of new characters to forge and stories to tell, it would be truly called "fantasy unlimited"! [/rant]
There's a rule in business called "The 80/20 Rule". In nearly every endeavor, 80% of your expense is going to come from 20% of your customer base. And the real secret to success is to either identify and get rid of the sponges, or figure out a way to make their fee proportional to the expense they create.
In nearly every MMORPG, the people who want to blow by all the content and then scream at the top of their lungs for an utterly undefinable "endgame" pay the exact same monthly fee as everyone else. But the unwinnable race to appease them takes up a hugely disproportionate share of the developer's resources.
It would be easy to code a game to make maximum advancement rate be in some way tied to the longevity of the account - through some sort of asymptotic soft cap on experience gains, with a dividing line kept well short of the end of the currently-designed material. The people who are interested in getting to the head of the pack can do that, but "the top" can be a fairly narrow range. Playing 24/7 and doing everything possible to break the system will still get you (marginally) ahead of everyone else, but always short of the current end of the content. The imaginary overachiever is free to scream "Yeah, I win!" (whatever the Hell that means) but he doesn't take a disproportionate share of resources away from all the of players who just want to play the game for its own sake and quietly pay their fees.
The thing that ruins the immersion for me, which makes the whole storytelling element fall apart, is the lack of persistence and game memory.
It isn't just "kill ten rats" but also "go kill the goblin king." You kill him, and the next day you run into another NPC who says "go kill the goblin king." Just once I would like to say "killed him yesterday, here's his signet ring, give me the darn reward." They could introduce a gazillion flags, which is data intensive, and the designers are probably afraid that I won't go back and help someone else kill the darn thing. So I have to kill the stupid goblin king every day. At that point, no wall of text can get me interested.
Also, three other variants on this grind really bug me.
First, is the 'the random number generator hates me' quests. You know, "kill ten rats and bring me their tails" and none of the rats have %^&*^ tails. After killing 30 and getting four tails, I want to kill the developer instead. You go on the forums and at least a half dozen people say "oh, I got mine killing only a dozen rats." I would rather the NPC say "kill fifty rats."
The second is the 'why can't you guys talk to each other' problem. In this one NPC A says "kill ten rats" and NPC B standing next to him says "kill ten wolves." You kill the ten rats and ten wolves, return, and NPC A says, "next, kill ten wolves" and NPC B says "next, kill ten rats." It is amazing how often I have bumped into variations on that one.
Finally are two variations on the classic 'hot dogs and buns' problem. One type is "kill five gribbles" and they always spawn in highly social packs of four. The other is "kill five blue gribbles and five red gribbles" and they always spawn in packs of four blue gribbles and one red gribble.
I don't really understand why MMO's can't be a lot less "tall" and a lot more "broad" in their approach.
The first few levels of an RPG are always my favorite, where you start with nothing and each new piece of equipment gives a noticeable feeling of improvement and capability. But most MMO's nowadays just blast you through this part. That paradigm makes perfect sense in single-player CRPG's, where the authors want to push you through their story in a linear fashion. But why do MMO's need to do that? Why not give me a lot more flexibility as to which zones I want to go to and whom I want to group with?
Of course, by their very nature, the pathetic souls who feel the need to "win" at an MMO will always be by far the most vocal element. But I can't help but feel there are at least a few million other people out there who are interested in the journey rather than the destination.
I don't really understand why MMO's can't be a lot less "tall" and a lot more "broad" in their approach.
... That paradigm makes perfect sense in single-player CRPG's, where the authors want to push you through their story in a linear fashion. But why do MMO's need to do that? Why not give me a lot more flexibility as to which zones I want to go to and whom I want to group with?
I blame the levels. Since levels tend to advance you in raw power rather than bredth of ability, the games too have to be "tall" rather than "broad". After all, the same area isn't going to be good for a 1st level character and a 50th level one.
I think a better approach would be something like Guild Wars, where after a certain point, there are no more levels to get and you just want to hunt new skills. Its like a collectable card game like Magic the Gathering - the new cards you get aren't necessarily more powerful than your old cards, but you collect new ones because they open up fun new tactics.
Yeah, I hate the idea of general increases in power; where your hitpoints, to-hit, defense, etc., all go up a notch at the same time.
I prefer the idea of "punctuated advancement," where ONE aspect at a time gets an improvement that you can really FEEL. Maybe like one new spell, or faster running speed, etc., every few hours - so each step can actually alter your gameplay, rather than simply advance you to the next zone.
Same with equipment. In most MMORPG's today, a piece of equipment gives you an armor increase, along with a whole bunch of stats that just advance along with it. In mythology or fantasy, each character would have a very few special items like a sword, or shield, or belt, etc., that had a very noticeable effect -- not a dozen items with a hundred bonuses and stat increases that you need a spreadsheet to keep up with.
What drugs are you on? Non-RPers don't want any story, period -- these losers are the min/maxing failbags who make the bulk of statistics telling devs that yes, players don't want text. You say these guys are more imaginative than RPers? Puh-lease. These are the unthinking reactionists who mash the esc button during videos, click the "gimmeh nao" quest button within seconds of the NPC text box coming up, and end up standing around the PVP arena yelling at each other all day long.
" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge! "
Whats going to happen with Onlive .com ?
How do you feel about this potential revolution?
Do you think Sony Entertainment will compete now that they have Free Realms... currently online?
(and anything else they have up their sleeves?) LOL.
The problem with levels is people start out playing with people. Their friends, guilds, people they meet in game. If they actually like the game, they play it more. But their friends may not be able to play it as much, or go out of town ect.. So they all end up at different levels doing different content. By level 25 we're all playing solo because we dont want to ever interupt our friends enjoyment by asking them to wait, or help catch up. The only time we can start to play together again is end-game. Thats why its the good part. Not because its any better content, because we can play together again. Developers keep making it worse and worse and worse. MMORPG's are about the PEOPLE playing together. That is the ONLY fun. FFS...it's a simple solution, stop ignoring the problem. Keeping friends apart is against the rules. MMORPGS are screwed when a mmo comes along and proves this.
See you in the dream..
The Fires from heaven, now as cold as ice. A rapid ascension tolls a heavy price.