I completely agree with the argument that there is a correlation between repetition and frequency. You could call the observed trend: repetition vs. Time phenomenon. In my opinion one of the better ways to avoid creating a feeling of repetitively natured quests would be to ensure that any given town or encampment that contains multiple quests doesn't distribute too many similar themed quests. If a town had 1 kill quest, 1 escort, 1 gather, and 1 boss fight. Those quests wouldn't feel all that repetitive. Of course, as soon as you reach town #2, the situation may begin to feel repetitive if it's the same mold as used in town #1.
It's not necessarily about being different, it's about not feeling the same. Changing zones, changing mob types, introducing new abilities to either yourself or the mobs you fight, introducing new gameplay elements, ever-changing gear or rewards, environmental hazards, open-world pvp, public quests, dynamic environments, or rare-spawn mobs/NPCs. These things will distract you from the repetition you are involved in. Now it won't make the quests themselves less repetitive, but if you're occasionally jumped by other players mid questing, then the dynamic has shifted. It's no longer "man... Another kill quest?!" it's now "oh sh**, I need to kill 10 rats in Mt. Danger?! There's PvP there and sometimes the volcano erupts and I have to hide." changing the dynamics of a situation makes it feel fresh, even if the bottom line is that you're killing 10 rats. The countless other variables around you will keep you on your toes such that you don't even realize that your doing the same thing you did 15 minutes ago.
The real issue is not "how do I make this non-repetative?" but rather, "what must I implement to make it FEEL non-repetitive". A few of the ideas I posited would do the job, but in order to encourage those behaviors, or gameplay mechanics you'll need to give players on both ends of the spectrum a good reason to engage in those actions. Pvp rewards, quest rewards that warrant going to a dangerous place, an engaging dynamic content system (even if the system itself becomes repetitive eventually). The more content, the better.
Someday we'll all look back on the age of computers - and lol.
I've answered this question to myself a long time ago. The answer lies in a forgotten MMO time, longe before WoW hit its popularity.
A non-repetitive gameplay in fact lies in three major aspects: freedom of choice, immersion and community mentality.
Starting with the latter, community mentality: if the only thing players think about is reaching the end-game to farm epic gear, no matter the format of the game, it'll be ruined by repetition. It is a developer task to block this type of behaviour by balancing the game, polishing the journey and making it fun, investing in immersion, giving a lot of good choices to make, creating complex AND effectives builds so it won't turn into the classical "right now u maek a prot paladin and run through all content in three days so u can farm ICC and go pwn PvP". It's extremely difficult to do this, in fact i can't think of any game that was 100% successful in this aspect, because there is always a few people or a time when people themselves force the grinding.
Now for freedom of choice and immersion: this may be more of a personnal thing, but i HATE the typical post-WoW quest-oriented gameplay. It can be fun for a while, but no matter how the quests are, it tends to get boring and repetitive and eventually you will be turning off the sound, downloading questhelper, and playing like a zombie while u chat on msn. Then the time will come for you to realize that maybe that was all wasting time because it was no fun at all, seemed more like work and get a burnout, then repeat the cycle.
Now i'll show some examples of how a game should be made and then illustrate my point for you: obviously, UO (this is almost a cliche); Tibia; and Ragnarok Online. At first you'd say "wtf this guy must be crazy, on tibia and RO u need to kill liek 10000 monsters to pass level" and yes, you are right. It may seem a paradox, but since u are so far from leveling up all the time, it's way more easy to forget about where you are trying to go and just enjoy the freaking game.
UO is the perfect sandbox, i played it for years and years and never got a burnout because there were so many rewarding things to do, the no-level, skill based gameplay worked greatly, everybody knows about it.
Tibia (i know the graphics are crappy and it doesnt even have sound, but it still manages to be more immersive than most games nowadays) has some great aspects: the no level cap here is a total win, it's a way to avoid the boredom of the end-game (which tibia doesn't really have, its an endless journey, more like a late-game) while still three level 100's can easily kill a level 300. Also it gets so hard to level (early on already) u just forget about it and start to be like: "well well, where will i go hunt today... i guess i'll go to elven fortress"... and after a couple hours "DUDE U WON'T BELIEVE IT, i was in the elf fortress and fuck 5 elven archers spawned by my side i tried to rush for the stairs but a douche saw the situation and kept blocking the way, i managed to go down and went back he killed the elves but had red life, i took my vengeance. HE DROPPED A FREAKING MPA, now i knew i would be tottaly fucked he was like 30 levels above me and i bet he would try to hunt me, i took the armor and rushed to the swamps zerging as much as i could so he couldnt find my accurate position with the spell but he was getting nearer and nearer then... fuck he spotted me, and he was with 3 guys, i ran as fast as i could till i reached venore but i couldnt enter the temple or the depot yet so i got to the food store and kept going up and down the stairs they got me to red life but then i managed to get out and rush to the DP, fuck yea." <~ this is something exciting, that TOTTALY breaks the repetition and i've seen it happen in only a few games. Also the heavy death penalties helped a lot, they were very well implemented.
At last Ragnarok Online, what i'll focus here is the non-instanced dungeons, economy and the classses. Instanced dungeons are boner killers... it sure opens the way for ksers and looters but it's easy to handle that. In RO you could see people ranging from level 12 to 99 in the same dungeon (different floors) all fighting monsters in an epic kind of "gettings rid of the evil in mass attacks" thing. There was no Auction House too, the merchants would be on the street and HOLY FUCK in Prontera the streets would always be crowded with offers and deal proposals, it felt like a real world. RO class system WAS one of the best i know, very balanced, they were all good (pre-trans). You would start as a noob novice, level up to X and choose a way, then level up to X and choose another way. There were a few quests, they werent needed to actually level, but they were long as fuck, hard as fuck, epic and rewarding as fuck.
TL;DR: to break the repetition a MMO needs to give freedom of choice (plenty of hunt spots, plenty of customization for your character, all choices are good); immersion (non-instanced dungeons, merchants on the street, death penalties); and a good community mentality (keep the game balanced, polish the ride and make it fun, get rid of the end-game concept). Also Guild Wars 2 format, aiming more for casuality, may work.
Playing: Starcraft II. Played: Tibia, Ragnarok Online, Ultima Online, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft. Wanna play: Guild Wars 2, SW:TOR, Final Fantasy XIV, Diablo III.
Non repetitive means go to area X and kill A, then when you get back go to area Y and kill B, etc
Repetitive is go to area X and kill A, then when you get back go back to area X and kill A, etc.
You can make the game different by having different areas, and different mobs with different abilities and AI's. Or you can cheap out by just doing repeatable quests or by making all mobs behave the same in a different skin.
Killing a mouse is different than killing an elephant. Killing a human for revenge is different than killing a human for self preservation. Those are non repetitive. But thats only if you look at gameplay at a certain middle level of detail. if you look at it from a crazy myopic view, the game play will look all the same... repetitve.
For example with a really poor view of games, mmorpgs are repetitive in the same way all FPS are repetitive. You are always moving the mouse and hitting WASD. If you want something different, use a Wii. Heh. Looking at it that way, you can't see the forest because of the trees.
Okay, maybe you shouldn't compare things down to such a picayune level. Well, even if we take it at an extremely broad view, they are all STILL repetitive, they are all about killing monsters. I mean, who doesn't get bored with half life after the first hour, all you are doing is shooting and killing, shooting and killing for the whole frickin game! Its no different than a mmorpg. And people actually play those FPS all the way through, no levels or trainers or nothing! Heh. another silly view, just looking at the broad action and not seeing the details.
Okay, maybe just saying 'killing things' isn't the right level to look at missions, mmorpgs or fps. You have to find a middle area to compare missions, read the mission backstory, look at the models, the landscape. Now you can see how FPS missions arent' boring after 30 minutes or mmorpgs missions appear to be different whether you are in a fantasy world or a sci-fi world.
My point is that you can't look at games either too closely (mouse click level) or too broadly (its just killing).
Once you find the right level to look at games, its easy to find non-repetitve gameplay.
I've played every major mmorpg and most of the little ones. UO still reigns supreme as the most diverse and for the purposes of this thread non repetitive gameplay.
When people complain about something being repetitive, they are usually talking about feeling. People generally don't complain about Modern Warfare or Team Fortress or what have you being repetitive. This is because while you are playing, they take you through many highs and many lows. You need to have enough surprise - not knowing when the excitement is going to hit - in order to not break the game down into a pattern. Once you are on a set pattern, your brain shuts off and it gets boring.
What you want is a never ending, and unpredictable curve. A roller coaster ride if you will. Some excitement, with the downhill slopes, and some anticipation while climbing uphill.
If it's all exciting all the time (you are standing at the end of a conveyor belt of mobs, pressing the "kill" button each time one of them passes you by), that will feel repetitive. Even if you have more mobs on the belt, or move the belt faster, or slower, or less mobs, it doesn't matter. Once it becomes a treadmill, you are lost.
If it's all downtime, even if occasionally you run into something interesting, people will get bored, because they lack the patience. I don't think they will complain that the game is repetitive, but they will say things like "where's the content?"
=================================================
As far as missions are concerned, I think all "kill x" quests should be abolished. It just doesn't make much sense from a story point of view, makes it obvious we are in a game, and activates the part of our brain that looks for patterns and shuts down when it sees one. I would much rather have to collect an item of some kind, or activate a switch, or nearly anything else - maybe I do end up killing 10 boars to get to it, but at least I feel like I'm working toward something a bit more important than that.
The other mission types at least make sense. When you boil it down, there aren't that many different mission types, period. "Get to the end of the level" seems to be good enough for 99% of single player games. So it's not the mission types that create repetitiveness. It's the mission design themselves.
Here's some more ideas (some games are ok on some of these points, but there are a lot of offenders)
* If I have to collect x eyeballs, do they really have to be from this specific type of mob from this specific area? * Why can't I spend a few hours farming the mobs of one area, then go find out who needs the trash it dumped, and collect my rewards then? No, I have to go talk to the person first. If I just killed 500 of that mob without knowing there was a quest, too bad for me. * The amount of quests with several steps is really low. Having a few steps exponentially increases variety of a single quest. Shorten the individual steps so that the player doesn't get frustrated by doing 1/3 of the quest and then having to start over for some reason or another (although that's not a big problem). * If I just fought a bunch of a specific kind of mob, please don't give me another quest doing the exact same thing. Alternate! "Kill 12 spiders." I turn it in. "Now collect 24 spider legs!" No. * Use space better. Many quests take place in one location. Go to x, and camp there. I find quests that involve more than one location too feel more unique. Note: I am not referring to quests that involve traveling from zone x to zone y, back to zone x, and back to zone y again. I'm taking within a specific area, my quest should take me to a few spots. Kill x quests don't do this, because I can just sit at a respawn. * I also feel less repetitive when I can work on several quests at once, when convenient. That's usually done because the individual quests themselves are so boring. Maybe give out more single quests that have several different goals? Yeah, sometimes you'll have kill x newts AND kill y bears, but maybe there's more that can be done with this idea.
Diablo 2 and the Lost Dungeons of Norrath patch from EQ1 had randomly generated dungeons. While crawling through them did seem repetative at times, the layout was rarely the exact same. I think PvP battlegrounds would do well in this respect. It would introduce more scouting options and hopefully inspire more communication and more dynamic strategic planning.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Comments
It's not necessarily about being different, it's about not feeling the same. Changing zones, changing mob types, introducing new abilities to either yourself or the mobs you fight, introducing new gameplay elements, ever-changing gear or rewards, environmental hazards, open-world pvp, public quests, dynamic environments, or rare-spawn mobs/NPCs. These things will distract you from the repetition you are involved in. Now it won't make the quests themselves less repetitive, but if you're occasionally jumped by other players mid questing, then the dynamic has shifted. It's no longer "man... Another kill quest?!" it's now "oh sh**, I need to kill 10 rats in Mt. Danger?! There's PvP there and sometimes the volcano erupts and I have to hide." changing the dynamics of a situation makes it feel fresh, even if the bottom line is that you're killing 10 rats. The countless other variables around you will keep you on your toes such that you don't even realize that your doing the same thing you did 15 minutes ago.
The real issue is not "how do I make this non-repetative?" but rather, "what must I implement to make it FEEL non-repetitive". A few of the ideas I posited would do the job, but in order to encourage those behaviors, or gameplay mechanics you'll need to give players on both ends of the spectrum a good reason to engage in those actions. Pvp rewards, quest rewards that warrant going to a dangerous place, an engaging dynamic content system (even if the system itself becomes repetitive eventually). The more content, the better.
Someday we'll all look back on the age of computers - and lol.
I've answered this question to myself a long time ago. The answer lies in a forgotten MMO time, longe before WoW hit its popularity.
A non-repetitive gameplay in fact lies in three major aspects: freedom of choice, immersion and community mentality.
Starting with the latter, community mentality: if the only thing players think about is reaching the end-game to farm epic gear, no matter the format of the game, it'll be ruined by repetition. It is a developer task to block this type of behaviour by balancing the game, polishing the journey and making it fun, investing in immersion, giving a lot of good choices to make, creating complex AND effectives builds so it won't turn into the classical "right now u maek a prot paladin and run through all content in three days so u can farm ICC and go pwn PvP". It's extremely difficult to do this, in fact i can't think of any game that was 100% successful in this aspect, because there is always a few people or a time when people themselves force the grinding.
Now for freedom of choice and immersion: this may be more of a personnal thing, but i HATE the typical post-WoW quest-oriented gameplay. It can be fun for a while, but no matter how the quests are, it tends to get boring and repetitive and eventually you will be turning off the sound, downloading questhelper, and playing like a zombie while u chat on msn. Then the time will come for you to realize that maybe that was all wasting time because it was no fun at all, seemed more like work and get a burnout, then repeat the cycle.
Now i'll show some examples of how a game should be made and then illustrate my point for you: obviously, UO (this is almost a cliche); Tibia; and Ragnarok Online. At first you'd say "wtf this guy must be crazy, on tibia and RO u need to kill liek 10000 monsters to pass level" and yes, you are right. It may seem a paradox, but since u are so far from leveling up all the time, it's way more easy to forget about where you are trying to go and just enjoy the freaking game.
UO is the perfect sandbox, i played it for years and years and never got a burnout because there were so many rewarding things to do, the no-level, skill based gameplay worked greatly, everybody knows about it.
Tibia (i know the graphics are crappy and it doesnt even have sound, but it still manages to be more immersive than most games nowadays) has some great aspects: the no level cap here is a total win, it's a way to avoid the boredom of the end-game (which tibia doesn't really have, its an endless journey, more like a late-game) while still three level 100's can easily kill a level 300. Also it gets so hard to level (early on already) u just forget about it and start to be like: "well well, where will i go hunt today... i guess i'll go to elven fortress"... and after a couple hours "DUDE U WON'T BELIEVE IT, i was in the elf fortress and fuck 5 elven archers spawned by my side i tried to rush for the stairs but a douche saw the situation and kept blocking the way, i managed to go down and went back he killed the elves but had red life, i took my vengeance. HE DROPPED A FREAKING MPA, now i knew i would be tottaly fucked he was like 30 levels above me and i bet he would try to hunt me, i took the armor and rushed to the swamps zerging as much as i could so he couldnt find my accurate position with the spell but he was getting nearer and nearer then... fuck he spotted me, and he was with 3 guys, i ran as fast as i could till i reached venore but i couldnt enter the temple or the depot yet so i got to the food store and kept going up and down the stairs they got me to red life but then i managed to get out and rush to the DP, fuck yea." <~ this is something exciting, that TOTTALY breaks the repetition and i've seen it happen in only a few games. Also the heavy death penalties helped a lot, they were very well implemented.
At last Ragnarok Online, what i'll focus here is the non-instanced dungeons, economy and the classses. Instanced dungeons are boner killers... it sure opens the way for ksers and looters but it's easy to handle that. In RO you could see people ranging from level 12 to 99 in the same dungeon (different floors) all fighting monsters in an epic kind of "gettings rid of the evil in mass attacks" thing. There was no Auction House too, the merchants would be on the street and HOLY FUCK in Prontera the streets would always be crowded with offers and deal proposals, it felt like a real world. RO class system WAS one of the best i know, very balanced, they were all good (pre-trans). You would start as a noob novice, level up to X and choose a way, then level up to X and choose another way. There were a few quests, they werent needed to actually level, but they were long as fuck, hard as fuck, epic and rewarding as fuck.
TL;DR: to break the repetition a MMO needs to give freedom of choice (plenty of hunt spots, plenty of customization for your character, all choices are good); immersion (non-instanced dungeons, merchants on the street, death penalties); and a good community mentality (keep the game balanced, polish the ride and make it fun, get rid of the end-game concept). Also Guild Wars 2 format, aiming more for casuality, may work.
Playing: Starcraft II.
Played: Tibia, Ragnarok Online, Ultima Online, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft.
Wanna play: Guild Wars 2, SW:TOR, Final Fantasy XIV, Diablo III.
Non repetitive means go to area X and kill A, then when you get back go to area Y and kill B, etc
Repetitive is go to area X and kill A, then when you get back go back to area X and kill A, etc.
You can make the game different by having different areas, and different mobs with different abilities and AI's. Or you can cheap out by just doing repeatable quests or by making all mobs behave the same in a different skin.
Killing a mouse is different than killing an elephant. Killing a human for revenge is different than killing a human for self preservation. Those are non repetitive. But thats only if you look at gameplay at a certain middle level of detail. if you look at it from a crazy myopic view, the game play will look all the same... repetitve.
For example with a really poor view of games, mmorpgs are repetitive in the same way all FPS are repetitive. You are always moving the mouse and hitting WASD. If you want something different, use a Wii. Heh. Looking at it that way, you can't see the forest because of the trees.
Okay, maybe you shouldn't compare things down to such a picayune level. Well, even if we take it at an extremely broad view, they are all STILL repetitive, they are all about killing monsters. I mean, who doesn't get bored with half life after the first hour, all you are doing is shooting and killing, shooting and killing for the whole frickin game! Its no different than a mmorpg. And people actually play those FPS all the way through, no levels or trainers or nothing! Heh. another silly view, just looking at the broad action and not seeing the details.
Okay, maybe just saying 'killing things' isn't the right level to look at missions, mmorpgs or fps. You have to find a middle area to compare missions, read the mission backstory, look at the models, the landscape. Now you can see how FPS missions arent' boring after 30 minutes or mmorpgs missions appear to be different whether you are in a fantasy world or a sci-fi world.
My point is that you can't look at games either too closely (mouse click level) or too broadly (its just killing).
Once you find the right level to look at games, its easy to find non-repetitve gameplay.
I've played every major mmorpg and most of the little ones. UO still reigns supreme as the most diverse and for the purposes of this thread non repetitive gameplay.
When people complain about something being repetitive, they are usually talking about feeling. People generally don't complain about Modern Warfare or Team Fortress or what have you being repetitive. This is because while you are playing, they take you through many highs and many lows. You need to have enough surprise - not knowing when the excitement is going to hit - in order to not break the game down into a pattern. Once you are on a set pattern, your brain shuts off and it gets boring.
What you want is a never ending, and unpredictable curve. A roller coaster ride if you will. Some excitement, with the downhill slopes, and some anticipation while climbing uphill.
If it's all exciting all the time (you are standing at the end of a conveyor belt of mobs, pressing the "kill" button each time one of them passes you by), that will feel repetitive. Even if you have more mobs on the belt, or move the belt faster, or slower, or less mobs, it doesn't matter. Once it becomes a treadmill, you are lost.
If it's all downtime, even if occasionally you run into something interesting, people will get bored, because they lack the patience. I don't think they will complain that the game is repetitive, but they will say things like "where's the content?"
=================================================
As far as missions are concerned, I think all "kill x" quests should be abolished. It just doesn't make much sense from a story point of view, makes it obvious we are in a game, and activates the part of our brain that looks for patterns and shuts down when it sees one. I would much rather have to collect an item of some kind, or activate a switch, or nearly anything else - maybe I do end up killing 10 boars to get to it, but at least I feel like I'm working toward something a bit more important than that.
The other mission types at least make sense. When you boil it down, there aren't that many different mission types, period. "Get to the end of the level" seems to be good enough for 99% of single player games. So it's not the mission types that create repetitiveness. It's the mission design themselves.
Here's some more ideas (some games are ok on some of these points, but there are a lot of offenders)
* If I have to collect x eyeballs, do they really have to be from this specific type of mob from this specific area?
* Why can't I spend a few hours farming the mobs of one area, then go find out who needs the trash it dumped, and collect my rewards then? No, I have to go talk to the person first. If I just killed 500 of that mob without knowing there was a quest, too bad for me.
* The amount of quests with several steps is really low. Having a few steps exponentially increases variety of a single quest. Shorten the individual steps so that the player doesn't get frustrated by doing 1/3 of the quest and then having to start over for some reason or another (although that's not a big problem).
* If I just fought a bunch of a specific kind of mob, please don't give me another quest doing the exact same thing. Alternate! "Kill 12 spiders." I turn it in. "Now collect 24 spider legs!" No.
* Use space better. Many quests take place in one location. Go to x, and camp there. I find quests that involve more than one location too feel more unique. Note: I am not referring to quests that involve traveling from zone x to zone y, back to zone x, and back to zone y again. I'm taking within a specific area, my quest should take me to a few spots. Kill x quests don't do this, because I can just sit at a respawn.
* I also feel less repetitive when I can work on several quests at once, when convenient. That's usually done because the individual quests themselves are so boring. Maybe give out more single quests that have several different goals? Yeah, sometimes you'll have kill x newts AND kill y bears, but maybe there's more that can be done with this idea.
I really like the idea of daily quest or dungeons.
While it is still grinding, but it felt less of a grind because you have a long break between each repetitive gameplay.
Diablo 2 and the Lost Dungeons of Norrath patch from EQ1 had randomly generated dungeons. While crawling through them did seem repetative at times, the layout was rarely the exact same. I think PvP battlegrounds would do well in this respect. It would introduce more scouting options and hopefully inspire more communication and more dynamic strategic planning.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I play quite a bit of diablo2 back in the days. 2nd person to reach max level in hardcore mode on the East server after expansion.
Ya the mobs change location a bit, but essentially it dont' change all that much to be called different.