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[Column] General: The 5 Worst Types of MMO Quests
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
For this week’s List, we’ll be exploring the 5 worst types of MMO quests, what makes them so tedious, and maybe even how they could be improved. There will undoubtedly be plenty that I’ve failed to mention, or maybe you actually like some of the ones on this list, so either way we’d love to hear your thoughts down below after checking out the List!
Read more of David Jagneaux's The List: The 5 Worst Types of MMO Quests.
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Comments
How the hell did groupquests end up on that list ???
I understand it when a solo storyline end up with a big group quest, like the personal storyline in GW2 ex. but in general groupquests are a lot of fun imo. If you don't like them, then don't do them.
At least change the headline to "mandatory groupquests" then I might agree. However I don't mind mandatory groupquest to get the keys or get "attuned" to do other types of groupcontent.
Getting the key ex to scarlet monestary was a pretty long quest, even involved a lot of travelling, but I didn't mind. Some of the quests back in classic wow involving stratholme and scarlet monestary were grerat. Thinking especially of the quest to kill ras frostwhisper (not 100% sure that was his name)
Even mandatory groupquesting can be great. Just keep the quests separated so you know when you pick up a quest it's a groupthing. And don't tag a groupquest to the end of a personal story or soloquest without giving some warning when you pick up the start-quest.
Worst quest is a bugged quest!! :P
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Quests that don't flow well, especially the ones that keep having you come back to the NPC multiple times or send you all over the map then you have to trek back. As much as I loved Lord of the Rings Online, some of the fetch quests drove me bonkers. Coupled with collect xyz things, quests could get very tedious. I remember endlessly collecting boar meat in that darn game.
Some of the best questing....The Secret World.
Why do I get the feeling some of these "Worst types of MMO Quests", would also be featured in "Best types of MMO Quests"?
Done well, and not too much, all those styles of questing can be very enjoyable... not to mention there are only so many different styles of questing that are possible.
Original RPGs had no need for these "granulated" style questing that modern MMOs have, and instead fully focused on the story. Unfortunately, filling in an entire MMO with only story settings is nigh impossible, due to the amount of scripting that it would requires... and so... we are back to having the same ole same ole...
#3 "Go talk to this person" should be renamed to THE ENTIRE ZELDA FRANCHISE
But honestly, none of these quest types are bad, it's just how they're dressed up that matter.
If a quest says Kill 10 dudes. People will say it's boring themepark garbage.
But if Dragonage Origins says, "Fend off the attack!" and throws enemies at you until the attack ends, you likely did not pay attention that you just did a Kill 15 dudes quest, because that's what it is.
Or in Skyrim where you have to go get Item X from some outpost. The quest doesn't say, "Kill 20 dudes in the outpost." But once you get there, you will kill all the dudes in the outpost (all 20 of them) in order to get the item.
How horrible are fedex/talk to so and so quests? Pretty horrible right? Now go play The Witcher (either one). Yeah, nearly everything you do in that game is a fedex/talk to so and so quest. It's obscene. Yet, look at the rave reviews. That's the power of well written dialogue and narrative.
The other thing my examples have in common? They're single player games. People think differently when playing SRPG vs MMO. In MMO's people are rushing and competing to get to stuff first (because #winning) and they'll click through dialogue and voice scenes. In SRPG people listen and read and take their time to enjoy the experience. Amusingly enough, I think that's why so many people have a favorable view of TSW. Gameplay wise it's pretty lackluster (possibly even terrible), but it has good atmosphere, dialogue and narrative so it draws you in - unless you try to play it like an MMO and just run around Killing X (because that's what you do in TSW too).
90% of MMO quests suck but the ones I especially hate:
-Quest chains that send you to the same location multiple times to kill different types of mobs when you could have easily just killed them all the first time you were there but the NPC just didn't tell you.
-A densely packed area with extremely quick respawn timer. "OK I finally finished killing the 20 orcs now I just need to heal....WTF? Why are there suddenly 3 orcs right on top of me?!"
-Escort quests especially those which fail the quest automatically if the moronic NPC gets himself killed and doubly especially if on top of this the NPC does his best Leeroy Jenkins impression running ahead and aggroing everything around him.
-Anything with a mandatory jumping puzzle/platforming element.
-Stuff that the NPC could obviously easily do themselves if they weren't lazy like killing stuff right beside them. Pretty much any quest that is totally brainless with no reason in lore why you would need an "adventurer" to do it.
Amazingly except for the jumping puzzles Archeage seems filled with all of these bad quest varieties.
Most of these complaints seem to stem from A) a lack of desire by the player for immersion in a living, breathing virtual world, and
a lack of desire by developers to provide quality immersion.
To the player: If all you want to be is marauding orc where you slaughter everything you encounter without need of any campaign's "excuse" for violence, then yes all of the above items detract from that mission. If you want to be part of a "living" virtual world, though, then you have to accept NPCs who are not skilled warriors. You, as the skilled PC, have to provide the muscle for their own NPC interests. You have to collect the hard-to-get-items, and you have to escort them through dangerous territories. You are the skilled adventurer, not them.
To the developer: Stop with the constant running back and forth. Let the player go adventure and collect anything/everything she desires for as long as she wants to adventure, then come back to the city and sell everything off. If an NPC collects skins from the overpopulated rats (or metal from weapons, or rare herbs, or cloth), then let them always collect that stuff and reward the player for bringing it at any time. Note the collector's location on a map, then let the player decide whether to use that NPC resource at their convenience. No need to make a special quest out of it. Sure, the rewards can fluctuate with how much of the stuff the NPC already has in stock. Save the quests for "unlock" features, not simple resource gathering. Also, encourage players to keep participating in the local economy, perhaps by rewarding players for using the same NPC vendor by giving them loyalty points and unlocking new resource opportunities ("Hey, I don't usually mention it, but you seem to be pretty skilled at acquiring these things for me, and I've heard stories of...")
Yeah that pretty much covers every type of quest. Well, maybe all except for ones that require you to go to a location / NPC and perform a specific emote, though I suposse those could be categorized right along with talking to an NPC.
When you get down to it, that is really all there ever can be. Sure, you can change the presentation of it, call it something different, etc but in reality everything you will ever do will consist of talking to someone, collecting something, or killing something. There isn't really anything else to do. Even when you get to something like a crafting / building quest it is still essentially collect X of this and X of that so that you CAN craft / build this item.
The best we can hope for is for the developers to present things to us in interesting ways and make them more challenging and meaningful. Make you feel like youre actually doing something impactful, rather than feeling like 1 of the millions of "only hero who can save the world" who is still somehow playing the part of a FedEx employee even though youve saved the wold from destruction a dozen different times.
Things like Dynamic Events are a good basic start, but it really needs to be made truly dynamic and randomly generated for individual players (everyone gets their own unique set of quests to play through, not that none of them are shared with others but the entire set of quests differs from someone else's set) and made into the core aspect of quests rather than just a public event type thing.
I don't think the MMORPGs are the games author should play MMORPG, nor he should try to force his solo-oriented vision on games that obviously aren't made to him.
I want to add timed missions and "Defend X" to the list. The "Defend X" is like the escort except what you're supposed to protect doesn't move and you have to defend it against waves of mobs. As for timed missions I haven't seen them outside City of Heroes, but they were a huge pain in the early days of the game when you got one right before you were going to go to bed or leave for work. Later on they changed things so you were warned before you accepted them, but there's still the pressure to do it soon or else.
For the group questing, CoH had a few missions where something had to be done at the same time in several locations requiring you to team up with 1 or more people. Those were annoying as well. There weren't many, and there was an unwritten rule that you help anyone who had one of these missions because you may need help yourself one day. (The community in CoH was awesome.)
The only purpose to "Kill X" I can see is to introduce you to X's abilities and tactics. But that could be done with an instanced dungeon. At least CoH tried to give an in-game justification by saying one of them had information or to cull a gang's numbers so they'll leave people alone. As long as there was a plot-based reason for a type of quest, I didn't mind the type so much.
And yet the most popular MMOs are all built around them.
Go figure.
Gather quests are my least favorite by far. Especially if they aren't guaranteed drops or they are contested drops with other group members. Gather quests are lazy, far lazier than kill X of this mob.
Group quests do not belong on this list. As you said, the 2nd M is for Multiplayer. If I wanted to play a single player game, I'd play a RPG on a console.
With all this being said, what do you expect? Fundamentally, all quests come back to Kill, Collect, and Talk.
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
Wants: The World
Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring
Best quest in the Biz:
All The Secret World Quest ---> Voice Acting, deep/great back ground and ends with a phone call xD Investigation Misión make u think and really LOVE google xD
LOL so author basically listed nearly every type of quest in temepark mmos.. oh well better stop playing them..
myself the ones that annoy me the most are the kill those mobs or collect these things.. GW2 made them even worse by maknig you do it a million times instead of just 5 or 10 lol..
Worst type of MMO Quests ?
Exp filler quests (tasks) , those are type of quest you just want to finish it as soon as possible .
What's worst than type of quest where most people just accept without care about read the story behind it
The root of evil is the EXP , lol .
Good post. Quests make single player games and break MMOs. I think MMO designers should accept that the leveling grind is a grind. Get away from the quests that no one even reads, just give the players a few zones to choose from with some periodic events to keep things interesting.
Marvel Heroes does a good job. Originally you had to play through the story to get to level 25, then face a merciless grind to get to 60. Now, you can level 1-60 in a few hours, going with either the "Holo-Sim" or "Midtown Patrol" zones. Each is full of random enemies and occasional boss spawns. One zone is a party instance, the other is "open". You needn't bother with the story at all -- which is good, because that's a game where you can easily play 30 different characters and even the best written story would get old.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
Voice acting alone isn't enough to make quests more enjoyable, even moreso, make Story Driven games last longer. Take SWTOR. The voice action wasn't bad, the story was decent, but after playing through it 2 or 3 times, you start skipping everything because you've already heard it.
I will agree on TSW though, the investigation missions and puzzles were probably the best thing about the game.
That's saying a lot coming from me. I quit the game in about 1-2 weeks from boredom.
Raquelis in various games
Played: Everything
Playing: Nioh 2, Civ6
Wants: The World
Anticipating: Everquest Next Crowfall, Pantheon, Elden Ring