You feel so disconnected from the world, your actions have no direct consequence, like there are no physics and the whole world is just static. You might as well be running on a pre rendered background Final Fantasy 7 style. What is up with MMOs and the lack of transitions and animations? Every time I do a quest in an MMO, you press E (like in TESO) and all of a sudden the item vanishes or a character pops up out of the blue, you get a bit of text saying you've done something, where is the effort? It is like they made all the quests from a random generator. Why have we not evolved to have physics where we actually brake an item or pull a lever? Why is it still the item just vanishing or text saying you've pulled it? Why don't NPCs ever naturally appear? Why do they always just vanish or pop up out of the blue?
When playing TESO I noticed everything was just running to a point and pressing E and waiting for something to happen, usually just text popping up telling you that you've done something. I ended up wondering what was the point of all the questing? Really all you did was run from point a to b, pressed E and run back to trigger some other quests which sent you to a new location. You slowly got pushed through the world as it got smaller and smaller and gave you no reason to ever go back.
When I played Skyrim, you had the main quest line which was linear, yet it didn't send you down a linear path through the world, you went to lots of different locations and it all felt natural. Playing TESO and most modern MMOs, it feels like you're walking through Ikea and following the arrows (if they still have them) and everything feels artificial. The end result is, there are side quests, but they're all placed alongside the story ones and you end up just picking them all up and grinding on them because you need to so you gain levels. It all just felt natural in the main series, I just picked up quests for fun, they didn't exist to grind, the world was very natural, I loved exploring and I could do anything at any time.
TESO doesn't have that feeling, it is basically just SWTOR, where they took WoW and dressed it up a little to make it feel more like a Single Player game... which makes no sense for an MMO... another thing I hate about it is how you are given no reason to group and it is even hard to tell who is an NPC and who is a player, usually the players vanish as you're phased off. God phasing, it is the worst PoS ever invented in the genre, it takes the world and kills it, you no longer feel part of a world with thousands of people, you feel instanced and segmented all the time.
It is such a shame because The Elder Scrolls as a series was what I wanted an MMO to be, but for TESO they took everything that was good about it and turned it into a typical MMO and put some dressing over it to fool people. The sad thing is, some people have fallen for it and feel like the questing isn't boring, yet if they looked at what they were doing, they'd realise it is just WoW questing.
The end result is none of it is fun, none of it is long term, it is so linear you don't want to run through it again, the world isn't a world, it is a linear level and when you've beaten it all you have nothing to do. Why doesn't any one frigging pay attention to this shit when making a new MMO? Instead they all do the same thing and they all fail with most of the player base gone within the first month.
I remember playing MMOs like SWG Pre CU where quests would just be dotted around and you'd have to search for them by talking to random NPCs. The fun was just finding hidden gems of quests which gave you interesting things to do, though sadly with SWG they were few and far between because SOE made little content. I remember the original EQ and having to type to NPCs and there would be keywords and it would feel so natural and was really immersive and fun. I phoned up a tech support serivce the other day and you had to speak quite naturally about your problem (to an automated system) and it would direct you, it worked so well and I wish'd something like that was implemented into MMOs today.
Even EQ2 when I played it in beta (came out around the same time as WoW) didn't do the typical questing it does today because SOE copied the WoW model. You used to just run past an NPC and they'd call out to you, it felt so natural, they were placed realistically around the world and not all in little hubs following a linear path. They had the dialogue boxes that MMOs like SWTOR and TESO do today, only they keep you in the world, they don't lock you into this stupid camera thing that breaks immersion. In fact EQ2 did so much right in beta, they even had the one server system where they'd clone the same zone over and over. Sadly though SOE launched the game, threw that out of the window and did 40 odd servers that all died within the month and there was no one to group with and it died. Frigging EQ2 solved grouped based MMOs and yet SOE were too blind to see it, in beta because they bunched everyone up, you always got groups and that game was GROUP ONLY! You could not progress without one, it was so fun.
I don't get why A. We've gone backwards and B. why we haven't progressed, every one just seems to accept what an MMO is today and never looks into what it could be.
give it time, we can only hope that ESO and Wildstar are the last of the wow clone themeparks for awhile. maybe we will finally start moving forward with some new stuff next year.
The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
We might someday get a world where you adventure in rather than just doing quests but it would have to be very large and probably with procedurally generated land, NPCs, mobs and adventrues. When a hero goes on a adventure in a book or movie they are pretty much the only one trying to solve that problem where in a MMO you can bet there are a hundred others trying to at the same time and thousands more queued up behind you to do that same quest in the future. The only way it would work is either taking phasing even to more extremes than ESO which might just turn it into a single player game with a multiplayer end game or make the world really big with lots of ways for people to spread out.
For what it's worth I think ESO has done a better job than any MMO before it in making questing feel like it has impact on the world around you. It's not perfect by any means but I do consider it a step towards making MMO's adventures and not quest grinds. It's very much personal opinion if you think that's the right direction MMO's should be going or not.
The world in itself doesn't need to be randomized. I was speaking of dungeons, bosses and the loot that's associated with them. The world could have hundreds of possible dungeons, much like you said Anarchy Online did. Yes, those dungeons were pretty simple and eventually repetitive but that game was made a decade ago. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be hard to have instanced random dungeons with random bosses with random abilities with random loot. Yes, you can only have so much artwork and so forth, but even that is more random than the current dungeon / raid grind in most MMO's where you are guaranteed to fight the same bosses with the same abilities with the same loot tables.
Even a little randomness goes a long way in fighting the boring grindfest of current MMO's. This would also eliminate a majority of dungeons / bosses being mastered to the point useless. If I recall, City of Heroes also had randomly generated missions and bosses just like Anarchy Online. If you ask me, random missions in random dungeons with random bosses is by far leaps and bounds more entertaining than killing the same boss, over and over and over.
If you want a static game world with instanced, randomized dungeons, that's more doable. Indeed, it's been done before. But that's also the sort of thing that a number of people who post in threads like this one tend to be adamantly against.
I'm sympathetic to your argument that a little bit of randomness can help quite a bit. For example, the slight randomness in mob spawn locations in Guild Wars 1 forced you to alter pulling strategies from one run to the next.
But the more randomness you add, the riskier it is. It is a high-risk, high-reward proposition, but if you're relying on randomized dungeons as a major game mechanic and your programmers end up being terrible at making up formulas for interesting probability distributions, you've got a big-budget flop on your hands.
Again, I mostly agree with you that adding a fair bit of randomness is a good thing if done well. I'm more trying to explain why it isn't done more often.
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
The problem with "Questing" in mmorpgs is that it is no longer questing. It is now just doing tasks over and over.
Frodo had a quest to bring the ring to mordor or w/e. Along the way, he had to make several choices and fight many battles. But there wasn't someone at every corner telling him exactly where to go or what to do. He made his own choices to accomplish one overall goal.
The point is, in an MMORPG, the players need one Big quest, not several small tasks. They then create their own adventure and achieve their goals in their own way.
This guys knows what he's talking about. A "Quest" should be EPIC!!! I mean EPIC!!!!! Even the MQ in ESO is forgettable (granted I'm only level 18). Asheron's Call 2 had few quests but they were memorable. Diablo 2: 6 quests per act. All memorable. You hack and slash your way to the goal and it was FUN.
"Quests" as they call them now are just to-do lists that can be completed in 10 minutes or less. Boring.
I'll take 1 crazy challenging and multi-faceted quest that requires player coordination, over the constant stream of to-do's in ESO any day.
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
I get what you are saying. but if i look at how many games come out and they all sort of do small belly flops are are not as succesfull as they want them to be. The market for these questhub themeparks is dwindling.
Now the pure grind market nobody knows how big it is. there arent any games to compare with. Just because people don't play games wich are over a decade old does not mean there is no market.
You feel so disconnected from the world, your actions have no direct consequence, like there are no physics and the whole world is just static. You might as well be running on a pre rendered background Final Fantasy 7 style. What is up with MMOs and the lack of transitions and animations? Every time I do a quest in an MMO, you press E (like in TESO) and all of a sudden the item vanishes or a character pops up out of the blue, you get a bit of text saying you've done something, where is the effort?
A lot of your actions have consequences. It's called phasing. For instance there's a quest where you have to save a village where the whole town is turned into stone. After saving it, every time you enter the place you will now find vendors and NPC's. Hell you can even become an emperor in the game. There's even a quest where the town will help you defeat your objective based on you having helped them. The more you have helped the greater the numbers.
The problem is, you not being able to immerse yourself in a game for whatever reason
You will never get a single player in a MMOs clothing. We already had one of those, called SWTOR
The problem with randomized dungeons is they are not very compelling content compared to structured dungeons and specialized bosses. Procedural content - like say the Dungeons in Diablo III is just not strong. Computers are poor dungeon designers.
If what you are asking for has never been done or has been done poorly - you are being unreasonable. I'd like open world games where the story changes based on my character and play alone that is created in real time and has voice acting and matches the best scripted content ever made. But its not going to happen.
BTW - its a mistake to lump all theme park questing together. The quests in ESO are mechanically simple but well written with good voice acting.
Designers have choices.. This is all.
It's quests vs. endless grinding.
It's good static dungeons vs. shitty unpredictable ones.
it's strong rule sets and directed play vs. letting players gank NPCs and gank other players.
It's leveling with a strong progression vs. feeling like there is no progression and 'nothing to do'
It's having a strong need for certain classes and builds vs. not needing anyone ever and being able to group with anyone
The successful games might have made some choices you don't like. But that's because the other choice is even worse.
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
But most quest aren't even quest. IMO its wasted recources to design elaborate quest to kill 10 NPCs. Half the time you'll likely have already killed 10 NPC before you got to the NPC. Most of the generic task can be done with procedually generated quest.
I will always be in the take away some of the task and make more epic quest side. Take away the vertical leveling and give us more horizontal progression with abilities and gear unlocked by epic quest. Take away the level block worlds and make the world divided by interest, difficulty and practical restrictions. Its more realistic, resourceful and better for longevity. Sandbox or Themepark both benefit to get away from how things are done IMO.
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
But most quest aren't even quest. IMO its wasted recources to design elaborate quest to kill 10 NPCs. Half the time you'll likely have already killed 10 NPC before you got to the NPC. Most of the generic task can be done with procedually generated quest.
Let's not exaggerate. They had procedurally generated quests in Skyrim and they were pretty dull. As for the 'get some of the stuff done' before you start on the quest. GW2 has this. Your ideas have been done with mediocre results.
I will always be in the take away some of the task and make more epic quest side. Take away the vertical leveling and give us more horizontal progression with abilities and gear unlocked by epic quest. Take away the level block worlds and make the world divided by interest, difficulty and practical restrictions. Its more realistic, resourceful and better for longevity. Sandbox or Themepark both benefit to get away from how things are done IMO.
Once again Longevity is not the only goal. Yes you could make the whole world accessible at any time. This would increase the freedom but ultimately decrease the retention. The PVE level blocks serve to funnel the players through the story and provide a more compellilng experience for most players. The problem with 'no levels' is people stop caring because they don't feel the advancement.
Again this has all been done - and tried. GW2 for example had downscaling (as well all know) and UPSCALING in early builds. The problem was people didn't feel they were making any progress in the PVE. Even now with just the downscaling this is a complaint.
There is no free lunch. You are not a ddesigner. You haven't tested these design options - unlike the gaming companies. Some ideas sound good on paper but suck because of unforeseen consquences..
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
I get what you are saying. but if i look at how many games come out and they all sort of do small belly flops are are not as succesfull as they want them to be. The market for these questhub themeparks is dwindling.
Now the pure grind market nobody knows how big it is. there arent any games to compare with. Just because people don't play games wich are over a decade old does not mean there is no market.
If people just wanted to grind today, why didn't they play MMORPGs when they tended to be more grind-heavy? It's not an accident that WoW greatly expanded the market for MMORPGs by putting off the grind until the level cap. For that matter, there are plenty of grind-heavy MMORPGs today, especially "free to play" imports. But they're not popular, largely because of the grinding.
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
But most quest aren't even quest. IMO its wasted recources to design elaborate quest to kill 10 NPCs. Half the time you'll likely have already killed 10 NPC before you got to the NPC. Most of the generic task can be done with procedually generated quest.
Let's not exaggerate. They had procedurally generated quests in Skyrim and they were pretty dull. As for the 'get some of the stuff done' before you start on the quest. GW2 has this. Your ideas have been done with mediocre results.
I will always be in the take away some of the task and make more epic quest side. Take away the vertical leveling and give us more horizontal progression with abilities and gear unlocked by epic quest. Take away the level block worlds and make the world divided by interest, difficulty and practical restrictions. Its more realistic, resourceful and better for longevity. Sandbox or Themepark both benefit to get away from how things are done IMO.
Once again Longevity is not the only goal. Yes you could make the whole world accessible at any time. This would increase the freedom but ultimately decrease the retention. The PVE level blocks serve to funnel the players through the story and provide a more compellilng experience for most players. The problem with 'no levels' is people stop caring because they don't feel the advancement.
Again this has all been done - and tried. GW2 for example had downscaling (as well all know) and UPSCALING in early builds. The problem was people didn't feel they were making any progress in the PVE. Even now with just the downscaling this is a complaint.
There is no free lunch. You are not a ddesigner. You haven't tested these design options - unlike the gaming companies. Some ideas sound good on paper but suck because of unforeseen consquences..
Guild Wars 2 has been pretty successful, so any argument that requires Guild Wars 2 to have failed doesn't work.
Originally posted by VengeSunsoarSo if they change the name to tasks does that make them any less boring, more fun, less repetitive, more repetitive, change how people level up.Does changing the name change anything at all about the game or how a person plays it?
Some games allready did that small changes and seams to work, for exemple, change the "!" for "v"
Seemed to work in what way?
Did it not work before?
How does it work better changing it to a v?
edit - unless your being sarcastic and then oops haha
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Diablo series have rare bosses that are randomly generated. Why can't the same be done in an MMO? Why can't dungeons be random? Why is it, everything has to be static? Bottom line is, it doesn't. You can have a persistent world without static repeatable quests or dungeons. Quite frankly, that type of environment would be far more realistic and eliminates the boring gear grind as rewards would be random as well.
There is no reason.
There is also no reason why scripted missions and stories cannot be in MMOs. They just need to learn from other genres.
Let's not exaggerate. They had procedurally generated quests in Skyrim and they were pretty dull. As for the 'get some of the stuff done' before you start on the quest. GW2 has this. Your ideas have been done with mediocre results.
I thought GW2 was very successful and still is. UO, SWG it worked for people who played those games. Skyrim is a very bad example because its largely a story driven game. But I think most people don't even read or listen to generic task so I don't see how it makes any difference it they're automated in MMORPG. There has to be effort put into first.
Once again Longevity is not the only goal. Yes you could make the whole world accessible at any time. This would increase the freedom but ultimately decrease the retention. The PVE level blocks serve to funnel the players through the story and provide a more compellilng experience for most players. The problem with 'no levels' is people stop caring because they don't feel the advancement.
Again this has all been done - and tried. GW2 for example had downscaling (as well all know) and UPSCALING in early builds. The problem was people didn't feel they were making any progress in the PVE. Even now with just the downscaling this is a complaint.
There is no free lunch. You are not a ddesigner. You haven't tested these design options - unlike the gaming companies. Some ideas sound good on paper but suck because of unforeseen consquences..
What you say simply isn't true and the designs have been done before single, multiplayer and MMORPG. In a generation of MMORPG's that have horrible retention I would say that I don't see your point. If anything it seems to ago against what your saying. The simple fact is that games are designed in a way that has shown the most potential to pull in subs which is do it like WoW. This has proven to be a one time event period. I think we have had a lull in MMORPG's because I think many people are rethinking conventional wisdom. We have had essentially two cycle's worth of MMORPG development time since WoW and nobody has had a quarter of the success trying imitation.
The problem with randomized dungeons is they are not very compelling content compared to structured dungeons and specialized bosses. Procedural content - like say the Dungeons in Diablo III is just not strong. Computers are poor dungeon designers.
If what you are asking for has never been done or has been done poorly - you are being unreasonable. I'd like open world games where the story changes based on my character and play alone that is created in real time and has voice acting and matches the best scripted content ever made. But its not going to happen.
BTW - its a mistake to lump all theme park questing together. The quests in ESO are mechanically simple but well written with good voice acting.
Designers have choices.. This is all.
It's quests vs. endless grinding.
It's good static dungeons vs. shitty unpredictable ones.
it's strong rule sets and directed play vs. letting players gank NPCs and gank other players.
It's leveling with a strong progression vs. feeling like there is no progression and 'nothing to do'
It's having a strong need for certain classes and builds vs. not needing anyone ever and being able to group with anyone
The successful games might have made some choices you don't like. But that's because the other choice is even worse.
The random content generated by games like Diablo is very primitive given what machines are capable of these days. There are systems out there use classic story telling methods to build dynamic content that while not something that would stand side by side with the best writers in the industry certainly could make compelling dynamically generated adventures. It's way to early to tell yet but we might see a first gen version of that in EQN given what the dev's have been saying.
Traditionally game developers really only have had two paths they can take with content. Either they craft all the content by hand which is time consuming and expensive or they create systems where the players can create the content to play which puts you at the mercy of the players to not burn your game to the ground with abuse of poorly/broken systems and griefing anywhere they can.
The problem with randomized dungeons is they are not very compelling content compared to structured dungeons and specialized bosses. Procedural content - like say the Dungeons in Diablo III is just not strong. Computers are poor dungeon designers.
If what you are asking for has never been done or has been done poorly - you are being unreasonable. I'd like open world games where the story changes based on my character and play alone that is created in real time and has voice acting and matches the best scripted content ever made. But its not going to happen.
BTW - its a mistake to lump all theme park questing together. The quests in ESO are mechanically simple but well written with good voice acting.
Designers have choices.. This is all.
It's quests vs. endless grinding.
It's good static dungeons vs. shitty unpredictable ones.
it's strong rule sets and directed play vs. letting players gank NPCs and gank other players.
It's leveling with a strong progression vs. feeling like there is no progression and 'nothing to do'
It's having a strong need for certain classes and builds vs. not needing anyone ever and being able to group with anyone
The successful games might have made some choices you don't like. But that's because the other choice is even worse.
The random content generated by games like Diablo is very primitive given what machines are capable of these days. There are systems out there use classic story telling methods to build dynamic content that while not something that would stand side by side with the best writers in the industry certainly could make compelling dynamically generated adventures. It's way to early to tell yet but we might see a first gen version of that in EQN given what the dev's have been saying.
Traditionally game developers really only have had two paths they can take with content. Either they craft all the content by hand which is time consuming and expensive or they create systems where the players can create the content to play which puts you at the mercy of the players to not burn your game to the ground with abuse of poorly/broken systems and griefing anywhere they can.
Unless you're trying to heavily randomize the graphics, hardware capabilities not only aren't the barrier today, but weren't a barrier 10 years ago. The barrier to good random content is programmer cleverness, and more to the point, the ability to pick an interesting probability distribution for the randomized content.
Originally posted by Rhoklaw No one explained why quests have to be repeatable. To say everyone should be able to complete the same quests as everyone else is being narrow minded. Why can't you complete whatever quests that you are presented with? Why do you HAVE to do the same quests as everyone else?Diablo series have rare bosses that are randomly generated. Why can't the same be done in an MMO? Why can't dungeons be random? Why is it, everything has to be static? Bottom line is, it doesn't. You can have a persistent world without static repeatable quests or dungeons. Quite frankly, that type of environment would be far more realistic and eliminates the boring gear grind as rewards would be random as well.Hence why I said he needs to lean more towards Sandbox MMO's as you have a better chance of this happening since Themepark MMO's go against the very laws of logic in terms of realism.
Because having "singularly questing" raises your development costs x10,000 (quests for each individual player).
Even if you create a "pool of quests" from which to draw from, eventually you will have multiple players doing the same quest, negating their uniqueness.
Static World. Imagine the complaints when players can not "easily find" what they seek. When they get (by pure chance) the wrong boss, or the dungeon moves on them to a different location. Diablo, a single player game (with a multiplayer mode) is NOT the same as an MMO, no matter what some posters seem to think.
When you travel to a different state or country, does that country change every time you visit? Does the state or country change when you return? This is where immersion comes in. Sure, "gameplay-wise", having random everything would be great. How do you explain it lore-wise? Why did dungeon X move locations, or even layout? Who changed it?
Themepark goes against the laws of realism? Really? And random everything sticks to it?
Themeparks are very much like reality. Can you go to college from 2nd grade? Can you become a doctor by passing 6th grade? How about being a professional athlete at age 3?
Also, I find it odd that "Themepark" is used to indicate stifling, railroaded path design. I have never, NEVER been to a themepark where my path was laid out for me. I could ride ANY ride whenever I felt like it (unless I was not tall enough ). I have never HAD to ride the merry-go-round first, then the bumper cars, then the scrambler, then maybe do a low-level roller coaster before hitting the fun house. I am happy the rides are there, instead of having to build them myself, or depend on some random stranger building them.
Personally, I like a combination of the two, a "Sandpark" or 'Themebox." Having the devs give some activities to do (and direction for my character), through quests (NOT chores) with room to make my own, or play through others ideas would be ideal. Some players have great imaginations and a great grasp on the game's lore. Most, though, want Geralt's armor in the game, or their favorite anime weapon. Basically something that does not fit with the game world.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by Hakulani The original EQ when it first came out you didn't do quests except for your epic and that was about the only thing. I played that for 5 years for just grinding until I started raiding and never complained because I liked it. People have there own type of play style, questing and just killing is fine with me. Some people are so picky because the game doesn't come out how they want it to be. Lots of grinding in EQ1 but back then you could find groups easily or solo depending your style. Plus in some areas you didn't even need a full group because there wasn't group only zones, don't get get me wrong but some places needed a full group to play in but normally you could get one pretty easy.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
But most quest aren't even quest. IMO its wasted recources to design elaborate quest to kill 10 NPCs. Half the time you'll likely have already killed 10 NPC before you got to the NPC. Most of the generic task can be done with procedually generated quest.
Let's not exaggerate. They had procedurally generated quests in Skyrim and they were pretty dull. As for the 'get some of the stuff done' before you start on the quest. GW2 has this. Your ideas have been done with mediocre results.
I will always be in the take away some of the task and make more epic quest side. Take away the vertical leveling and give us more horizontal progression with abilities and gear unlocked by epic quest. Take away the level block worlds and make the world divided by interest, difficulty and practical restrictions. Its more realistic, resourceful and better for longevity. Sandbox or Themepark both benefit to get away from how things are done IMO.
Once again Longevity is not the only goal. Yes you could make the whole world accessible at any time. This would increase the freedom but ultimately decrease the retention. The PVE level blocks serve to funnel the players through the story and provide a more compellilng experience for most players. The problem with 'no levels' is people stop caring because they don't feel the advancement.
Again this has all been done - and tried. GW2 for example had downscaling (as well all know) and UPSCALING in early builds. The problem was people didn't feel they were making any progress in the PVE. Even now with just the downscaling this is a complaint.
There is no free lunch. You are not a ddesigner. You haven't tested these design options - unlike the gaming companies. Some ideas sound good on paper but suck because of unforeseen consquences..
Guild Wars 2 has been pretty successful, so any argument that requires Guild Wars 2 to have failed doesn't work.
I'd agree. My point was that GW2 attempts at UPSCALING PVE characters didn't make it out of Alpha. Its in the code and they use it for some things namely PVP and some living story.
Let's not exaggerate. They had procedurally generated quests in Skyrim and they were pretty dull. As for the 'get some of the stuff done' before you start on the quest. GW2 has this. Your ideas have been done with mediocre results.
I thought GW2 was very successful and still is. UO, SWG it worked for people who played those games. Skyrim is a very bad example because its largely a story driven game. But I think most people don't even read or listen to generic task so I don't see how it makes any difference it they're automated in MMORPG. There has to be effort put into first.
Once again Longevity is not the only goal. Yes you could make the whole world accessible at any time. This would increase the freedom but ultimately decrease the retention. The PVE level blocks serve to funnel the players through the story and provide a more compellilng experience for most players. The problem with 'no levels' is people stop caring because they don't feel the advancement.
Again this has all been done - and tried. GW2 for example had downscaling (as well all know) and UPSCALING in early builds. The problem was people didn't feel they were making any progress in the PVE. Even now with just the downscaling this is a complaint.
There is no free lunch. You are not a ddesigner. You haven't tested these design options - unlike the gaming companies. Some ideas sound good on paper but suck because of unforeseen consquences..
What you say simply isn't true and the designs have been done before single, multiplayer and MMORPG. In a generation of MMORPG's that have horrible retention I would say that I don't see your point. If anything it seems to ago against what your saying. The simple fact is that games are designed in a way that has shown the most potential to pull in subs which is do it like WoW. This has proven to be a one time event period. I think we have had a lull in MMORPG's because I think many people are rethinking conventional wisdom. We have had essentially two cycle's worth of MMORPG development time since WoW and nobody has had a quarter of the success trying imitation.
What I am saying is that designers need to design for other things beside longevity. Roguelike games have limitless longevity. Few care because the experience is a 1 out of 10 on the awesome scale.
Let's imagine you could date a movie star of your choice for a month or you would be given a chance to watch any movie that's out for free each day for 10 years. Which option would you pick? Dating a movie star would be pretty awesome for a lot of guys so most would pick that over the free movie. Not all - some people are shy.
So for most people they value a short quality experience over a long stretched out experience. This has been the trend in MMOs. No longer are they about stringing out some addicts. Now they play like regular single player games.. You can buy them - play them through in a month or two - and then quit. What's important is that with the handcrafted scripted content you get a better experience.
Take ESO for example - you get voice acting, nice graphics, lots of little stories and such. You don't get any of that in some randomnly generated dungeon. Developers love it because it cuts down on pirating. Why Skyrim sold 20 million copies - I wouldn't be surprised if another 20 million were downloaded.
The trick is making an MMO that plays as well as Skyrim - what you lose in Skyrim 'freeness' you get back in group fun. ESO is pretty close.
Comments
give it time, we can only hope that ESO and Wildstar are the last of the wow clone themeparks for awhile. maybe we will finally start moving forward with some new stuff next year.
We might someday get a world where you adventure in rather than just doing quests but it would have to be very large and probably with procedurally generated land, NPCs, mobs and adventrues. When a hero goes on a adventure in a book or movie they are pretty much the only one trying to solve that problem where in a MMO you can bet there are a hundred others trying to at the same time and thousands more queued up behind you to do that same quest in the future. The only way it would work is either taking phasing even to more extremes than ESO which might just turn it into a single player game with a multiplayer end game or make the world really big with lots of ways for people to spread out.
For what it's worth I think ESO has done a better job than any MMO before it in making questing feel like it has impact on the world around you. It's not perfect by any means but I do consider it a step towards making MMO's adventures and not quest grinds. It's very much personal opinion if you think that's the right direction MMO's should be going or not.
If you want a static game world with instanced, randomized dungeons, that's more doable. Indeed, it's been done before. But that's also the sort of thing that a number of people who post in threads like this one tend to be adamantly against.
I'm sympathetic to your argument that a little bit of randomness can help quite a bit. For example, the slight randomness in mob spawn locations in Guild Wars 1 forced you to alter pulling strategies from one run to the next.
But the more randomness you add, the riskier it is. It is a high-risk, high-reward proposition, but if you're relying on randomized dungeons as a major game mechanic and your programmers end up being terrible at making up formulas for interesting probability distributions, you've got a big-budget flop on your hands.
Again, I mostly agree with you that adding a fair bit of randomness is a good thing if done well. I'm more trying to explain why it isn't done more often.
The reason that the WoW questing model was introduced is precisely that most people don't like such grinding. It's more interesting to kill ten of this, ten of that, ten of these, and ten of those than it is to sit in one spot and kill 200 of something until you've leveled past it. Without quests to encourage players to move around, players who don't just go to the optimal grinding spots and grind away will level far too slowly. Take away quests without offering anything to replace them and you end up with a big game world with nothing to do in it apart from grinding, and there isn't much of a market for that.
This guys knows what he's talking about. A "Quest" should be EPIC!!! I mean EPIC!!!!! Even the MQ in ESO is forgettable (granted I'm only level 18). Asheron's Call 2 had few quests but they were memorable. Diablo 2: 6 quests per act. All memorable. You hack and slash your way to the goal and it was FUN.
"Quests" as they call them now are just to-do lists that can be completed in 10 minutes or less. Boring.
I'll take 1 crazy challenging and multi-faceted quest that requires player coordination, over the constant stream of to-do's in ESO any day.
So if they change the name to tasks does that make them any less boring, more fun, less repetitive, more repetitive, change how people level up.
Does changing the name change anything at all about the game or how a person plays it?
I get what you are saying. but if i look at how many games come out and they all sort of do small belly flops are are not as succesfull as they want them to be. The market for these questhub themeparks is dwindling.
Now the pure grind market nobody knows how big it is. there arent any games to compare with. Just because people don't play games wich are over a decade old does not mean there is no market.
in the end of day , the question is why we have to grind this and that.
Fight with mobs and boss is fine , but when it turned to grind ... it suck
Quests/task is fine , but when they turned to grind ... they suck .
If possible , i don't want to grind , mobs or quest .
A lot of your actions have consequences. It's called phasing. For instance there's a quest where you have to save a village where the whole town is turned into stone. After saving it, every time you enter the place you will now find vendors and NPC's. Hell you can even become an emperor in the game. There's even a quest where the town will help you defeat your objective based on you having helped them. The more you have helped the greater the numbers.
The problem is, you not being able to immerse yourself in a game for whatever reason
You will never get a single player in a MMOs clothing. We already had one of those, called SWTOR
The problem with randomized dungeons is they are not very compelling content compared to structured dungeons and specialized bosses. Procedural content - like say the Dungeons in Diablo III is just not strong. Computers are poor dungeon designers.
If what you are asking for has never been done or has been done poorly - you are being unreasonable. I'd like open world games where the story changes based on my character and play alone that is created in real time and has voice acting and matches the best scripted content ever made. But its not going to happen.
BTW - its a mistake to lump all theme park questing together. The quests in ESO are mechanically simple but well written with good voice acting.
Designers have choices.. This is all.
It's quests vs. endless grinding.
It's good static dungeons vs. shitty unpredictable ones.
it's strong rule sets and directed play vs. letting players gank NPCs and gank other players.
It's leveling with a strong progression vs. feeling like there is no progression and 'nothing to do'
It's having a strong need for certain classes and builds vs. not needing anyone ever and being able to group with anyone
The successful games might have made some choices you don't like. But that's because the other choice is even worse.
But most quest aren't even quest. IMO its wasted recources to design elaborate quest to kill 10 NPCs. Half the time you'll likely have already killed 10 NPC before you got to the NPC. Most of the generic task can be done with procedually generated quest.
I will always be in the take away some of the task and make more epic quest side. Take away the vertical leveling and give us more horizontal progression with abilities and gear unlocked by epic quest. Take away the level block worlds and make the world divided by interest, difficulty and practical restrictions. Its more realistic, resourceful and better for longevity. Sandbox or Themepark both benefit to get away from how things are done IMO.
Let's not exaggerate. They had procedurally generated quests in Skyrim and they were pretty dull. As for the 'get some of the stuff done' before you start on the quest. GW2 has this. Your ideas have been done with mediocre results.
Once again Longevity is not the only goal. Yes you could make the whole world accessible at any time. This would increase the freedom but ultimately decrease the retention. The PVE level blocks serve to funnel the players through the story and provide a more compellilng experience for most players. The problem with 'no levels' is people stop caring because they don't feel the advancement.
Again this has all been done - and tried. GW2 for example had downscaling (as well all know) and UPSCALING in early builds. The problem was people didn't feel they were making any progress in the PVE. Even now with just the downscaling this is a complaint.
There is no free lunch. You are not a ddesigner. You haven't tested these design options - unlike the gaming companies. Some ideas sound good on paper but suck because of unforeseen consquences..
If people just wanted to grind today, why didn't they play MMORPGs when they tended to be more grind-heavy? It's not an accident that WoW greatly expanded the market for MMORPGs by putting off the grind until the level cap. For that matter, there are plenty of grind-heavy MMORPGs today, especially "free to play" imports. But they're not popular, largely because of the grinding.
Guild Wars 2 has been pretty successful, so any argument that requires Guild Wars 2 to have failed doesn't work.
Some games allready did that small changes and seams to work, for exemple, change the "!" for "v"
Seemed to work in what way?
Did it not work before?
How does it work better changing it to a v?
edit - unless your being sarcastic and then oops haha
There is no reason.
There is also no reason why scripted missions and stories cannot be in MMOs. They just need to learn from other genres.
I thought GW2 was very successful and still is. UO, SWG it worked for people who played those games. Skyrim is a very bad example because its largely a story driven game. But I think most people don't even read or listen to generic task so I don't see how it makes any difference it they're automated in MMORPG. There has to be effort put into first.
What you say simply isn't true and the designs have been done before single, multiplayer and MMORPG. In a generation of MMORPG's that have horrible retention I would say that I don't see your point. If anything it seems to ago against what your saying. The simple fact is that games are designed in a way that has shown the most potential to pull in subs which is do it like WoW. This has proven to be a one time event period. I think we have had a lull in MMORPG's because I think many people are rethinking conventional wisdom. We have had essentially two cycle's worth of MMORPG development time since WoW and nobody has had a quarter of the success trying imitation.
The random content generated by games like Diablo is very primitive given what machines are capable of these days. There are systems out there use classic story telling methods to build dynamic content that while not something that would stand side by side with the best writers in the industry certainly could make compelling dynamically generated adventures. It's way to early to tell yet but we might see a first gen version of that in EQN given what the dev's have been saying.
Traditionally game developers really only have had two paths they can take with content. Either they craft all the content by hand which is time consuming and expensive or they create systems where the players can create the content to play which puts you at the mercy of the players to not burn your game to the ground with abuse of poorly/broken systems and griefing anywhere they can.
Unless you're trying to heavily randomize the graphics, hardware capabilities not only aren't the barrier today, but weren't a barrier 10 years ago. The barrier to good random content is programmer cleverness, and more to the point, the ability to pick an interesting probability distribution for the randomized content.
Even if you create a "pool of quests" from which to draw from, eventually you will have multiple players doing the same quest, negating their uniqueness.
Static World. Imagine the complaints when players can not "easily find" what they seek. When they get (by pure chance) the wrong boss, or the dungeon moves on them to a different location. Diablo, a single player game (with a multiplayer mode) is NOT the same as an MMO, no matter what some posters seem to think.
When you travel to a different state or country, does that country change every time you visit? Does the state or country change when you return? This is where immersion comes in. Sure, "gameplay-wise", having random everything would be great. How do you explain it lore-wise? Why did dungeon X move locations, or even layout? Who changed it?
Themepark goes against the laws of realism? Really? And random everything sticks to it?
Themeparks are very much like reality. Can you go to college from 2nd grade? Can you become a doctor by passing 6th grade? How about being a professional athlete at age 3?
Also, I find it odd that "Themepark" is used to indicate stifling, railroaded path design. I have never, NEVER been to a themepark where my path was laid out for me. I could ride ANY ride whenever I felt like it (unless I was not tall enough
). I have never HAD to ride the merry-go-round first, then the bumper cars, then the scrambler, then maybe do a low-level roller coaster before hitting the fun house. I am happy the rides are there, instead of having to build them myself, or depend on some random stranger building them.
Personally, I like a combination of the two, a "Sandpark" or 'Themebox." Having the devs give some activities to do (and direction for my character), through quests (NOT chores) with room to make my own, or play through others ideas would be ideal. Some players have great imaginations and a great grasp on the game's lore. Most, though, want Geralt's armor in the game, or their favorite anime weapon. Basically something that does not fit with the game world.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I'd agree. My point was that GW2 attempts at UPSCALING PVE characters didn't make it out of Alpha. Its in the code and they use it for some things namely PVP and some living story.
What I am saying is that designers need to design for other things beside longevity. Roguelike games have limitless longevity. Few care because the experience is a 1 out of 10 on the awesome scale.
Let's imagine you could date a movie star of your choice for a month or you would be given a chance to watch any movie that's out for free each day for 10 years. Which option would you pick? Dating a movie star would be pretty awesome for a lot of guys so most would pick that over the free movie. Not all - some people are shy.
So for most people they value a short quality experience over a long stretched out experience. This has been the trend in MMOs. No longer are they about stringing out some addicts. Now they play like regular single player games.. You can buy them - play them through in a month or two - and then quit. What's important is that with the handcrafted scripted content you get a better experience.
Take ESO for example - you get voice acting, nice graphics, lots of little stories and such. You don't get any of that in some randomnly generated dungeon. Developers love it because it cuts down on pirating. Why Skyrim sold 20 million copies - I wouldn't be surprised if another 20 million were downloaded.
The trick is making an MMO that plays as well as Skyrim - what you lose in Skyrim 'freeness' you get back in group fun. ESO is pretty close.