SWTOR

[UnSub]

Regardless of the actual quality of SWOR, the biggest risk the game faces is actually its budget. They need 2m+ players, PC only (mentioned because BioWare has done quite well out of console sales) to maintain a subscription just to break even. I've no doubt SWOR will be a unit shifter when it launches, but it's the 'maintain the sub numbers' issue I'm leery about.

Regarding quests: there really are only 10 quest types (20 if you are pedantic enough to invert them i.e. a fedex delivery quest could become a fedex receiving quest). Other BioWare games certainly rely on these quest types, although they do dress them up with dialogue.

[Vinadil]

They have a budget requirement of $30million per month? That seems rather extreme...

Where is this 2million subs number coming from?

[UnSub]

Oops - they expect 2m+ players, but break-even is over 1m players.

[Rendakor]

Is there an official list of the 10 quest types, or is that a number you just made up?

[UnSub]

I made it up and am happy to be challenged on it, but I see the 10 basic quest types as:

   1.  Kill X of Y: You have to defeat a certain number of the same opponent. This starts out as Kill Ten Rats and ends up at Kill 250 Elder Rat Gods.
   2. Kill [Named] Y: Some mob has gotten tough enough to earn itself a name. You are to assassinate it for rising above its station.
   3. Delivery (aka Fedex): The quest giver wants something delivered to someone else. In a time of magic or ultra-tech science, the best way of getting it there is to give it to some wandering adventurer and have them deliver it in person.
   4. Collect X of Y: A character is tasked with finding a certain number of objects of a certain type to continue the quest. This starts out as Collect 10 Rat Droppings and ends up at Collect 100 Elder Rat God Droppings. Sometimes it involves collecting the organs of creatures you kill e.g. collect 10 Rat Noses - please note that not every Rat will have a nose to collect.
   5. Escort: Lead another NPC from point A to point B. There will always be complications, especially if the NPC decides that they'd rather run straight through the most dangerous part of the zone, insulting its inhabitants and frequently get stuck on rocks / logs / their own shoes.
   6. Locate: A particular individual, item or location needs to be found. Sometimes they will be marked on the map, which defies logic since they are already located, but is a lot more fun than wandering aimlessly looking for them / it, only to find out they were / it was around the corner from the quest giver the whole time.
   7. Defend: Defend an NPC, item or place for a fixed period of time against waves of attackers. These kinds of quests often guarantee that players are forced into one location for the entire time until the quest is complete; it also sees them get very aggravated when they fail the mission on the last wave.
   8. Interact: Slightly different to Locate in that the specified NPC / item needs to be activated by the player as part of the mission requirement. This means it involves at least one extra click. Most puzzle-solving quests (i.e. put the pillars in the right spots, align the coloured pegs, etc) are Interact quests.
   9. Craftskills: In order to complete the mission something needs to be crafted by the player (or developed by some kind of craftskill). Every now and again the mission designers remember there are other systems in their MMO outside of combat and movement and drop one of these in.
  10. Reach Achievement X: The quest is to reach a certain achievement, such as a particular level or craftskill rank or even earn a particular achievement before you can continue. Usually this is used as a gating mechanism - the contact won't even talk to you before you reach this particular achievement - but sometimes the quest itself states what achievement you have to get to before continuing.

My later thinking is that you can invert those quest types to an extent - Defend for 3 minutes can become Attack for 3 minutes, Craft can become Destroy - and I'm sure there are exceptions.

[Rendakor]

Ahh, ok. Good list, pretty comprehensive. The only other type I can think of that I've seen would be like...Roleplay Quests, where the quest simply involves picking the right dialog or doing the appropriate emote. EQ2 had several of these, where if you said the wrong thing the NPC would attack you; they also had a few riddle quests. FFXIV has the emote quest; you had to do the proper emote back to the NPC to advance the quest.

[Koyasha]

Collect X of Y is functionally identical to Kill X of Y, so separating that into two categories is technically unnecessary.

However, depending on whether they also have quests the sort of which we've seen in other Bioware games that aren't directly combat related.  Talk to various people and determine X, or make a decision for them, and so on.  This might be covered under your 'interact' category, but my reading of that category was more along the lines of 'talk to X' rather than 'talk to a variety of people and make a decision/determination based on the information you gain from them'.  One example of such a quest off the top of my head is on Dantooine in KOTOR where you're presented with the two suspects and the dead guy and have to determine what happened by observing the inconsistencies in their stories.

This is the kind of interaction they need to maintain their focus on throughout the entire game and never let us drift to thinking about killing womp rats.  We may be killing womp rats in between these various things, but they have to keep us constantly involved.  Kill x of y is a really bad quest type all things considered, and hopefully they're smart enough to realize that if they want us to kill X of Y, they need to put X of Y in between us and an actual objective, not actually tell us to kill X of Y, because that instantly drags people out of 'story' mode and into 'mmo grind' mode.  Furthermore, the 'kill [named]' type quest can drag you back to 'mmo grind' mode of thinking - but it can also be very effective if you have the named character to be killed interact with the player first, so that the player actually dislikes this individual and wants to kill him.  Even simply witnessing something that the named is doing that therefore prompts someone to ask you to kill him involves the player in the story in a way that being told 'he did bad stuff' doesn't, at all.

[Rendakor]

Sometimes Collect X of Y involves clicking items, sometimes it involves constant mob drops (in which case you're right), sometimes it involves uncommon or rare drops. Some quests are even a combination: items are both clickable and drops from mobs. It's different enough to warrant a distinction; particularly if you don't say that Kill Named isn't just Kill 1 of Y.

[Malakili]

Sometimes Collect X of Y involves clicking items, sometimes it involves constant mob drops (in which case you're right), sometimes it involves uncommon or rare drops. Some quests are even a combination: items are both clickable and drops from mobs. It's different enough to warrant a distinction; particularly if you don't say that Kill Named isn't just Kill 1 of Y.

Well, if its collect stuff by clicking on it, its a glorified interaction quest as listed, and if its collect stuff from monsters its just a kill number to collect x drop rate quest.

[Stabs]

A New Hope is essentially a fedex quest involving Death Star plans followed by a pull off a trick shot quest (interact quest per Unsub) but the story was interesting enough.

[eldaec]

A New Hope is essentially a fedex quest involving Death Star plans followed by a pull off a trick shot quest (interact quest per Unsub) but the story was interesting enough.

And if Star Wars had trivial travel like all current MMOs that are not EVE, the film would have been exactly as dull.

(in fact Leia's ship would never have been caught in the first place, so the film could skip straight the battle of yavin which the rebels would have lost because they wouldn't have any ~protagonist~ characters in the attack)

[Tarami]

Oops - they expect 2m+ players, but break-even is over 1m players.

They were the right people to make the game, because clearly they're from another fucking planet.

[UnSub]

I admit I hadn't considered a 'Deduce' type quest - read the dialogue and make a decision - which is something that BioWare can do very well with SWOR (and Cryptic is trying with some of their diplomatic missions in STO). At some point I'll go back and finesse that list again.

There's also a very thin line between the Locate and Interact quest types and perhaps I should combine them. 

[ajax34i]

While we're talking about quests, I'm curious about two things:  What happens if you fail a quest in SWTOR, can you re-take it? and do you have to sit through the dialogue all over again?

[Malakili]

A New Hope is essentially a fedex quest involving Death Star plans followed by a pull off a trick shot quest (interact quest per Unsub) but the story was interesting enough.

Yes, it was good to watch, however in an MMO the entire beginning of the movie like this in terms of GAMEPLAY which is what matters in a game:

1) Quest Objective: Buy 2 droids from Jawa Dealers (open up vendor window, click click done)


2) Using your mechanic skill, clean the droids (open up tradeskill window, click click fail, click click success)

3) Venture into the desert looking for the R2 unit, into a zone with mobs that can one shot you at this level.

4) You're now at Ben's hut.  Drive speeder home.  Driver speeder back to Bens.  Driver speeder t Mos Eisley.



Anyway, my point is, just because something makes a good story doesn't make it a good game.  Then again I've been on my  "story is overrated kick" since around the time I gave Dragon Age an honest go

[Lucas]

Yes, but DUDE, you forgot the unexpected cut-scene during your usage of the mechanic skill, when the hologram of a beautiful woman comes out of the R2 unit.

That's very bioware-ish :D

[Cyrrex]

Oops - they expect 2m+ players, but break-even is over 1m players.

The guy who threw out those numbers is either talking out of his ass, or he is deliberately dumbing the information down.  You cannot determine a break even point for a product like this based on raw sub numbers - you have to include box sales/digital downloads (a significant part of the equation, I would imagine) and then you have to factor in how long those subs stay on for (not to mention ongoing development costs).  In other words, there are infinite break even scenarios for an MMO.

And by the way, though I'm sure I've said it before in this thread:  they are going to have box sales like gangbusters for this thing.  That's my opinion, anyway...and if it plays out, it may mean that they'll recoup a lot of their costs on that alone.  The game might still suck, but there you go.

[Stabs]

I think the point is you can't reduce SWTOR to what you, the player, do.

SWTOR is a film-game hybrid where they do stuff and you have to watch most of the time, interspersed with moments where you do stuff while they watch.

At least that's the SWTOR they started talking about before everyone started whining about having to sit through cut-scenes. If you don't like cut-scenes and they're skippable why play this? The bits that aren't story are going to be bad WoW-clone.

[Malakili]

I think the point is you can't reduce SWTOR to what you, the player, do.

SWTOR is a film-game hybrid where they do stuff and you have to watch most of the time, interspersed with moments where you do stuff while they watch.

At least that's the SWTOR they started talking about before everyone started whining about having to sit through cut-scenes. If you don't like cut-scenes and they're skippable why play this? The bits that aren't story are going to be bad WoW-clone.

I've typed up 3 separate responses to this, none of which I liked.  Instead I'll just suffice to say: This makes no sense. 

[Goreschach]

Fuck all of you. Night Trap was awesome.

[SnakeCharmer]

I've typed up 3 separate responses to this, none of which I liked.  Instead I'll just suffice to say: This makes no sense. 

It kinda makes sense.  He's saying you'll spend more time watching (cutscenes) than you will spend playing (between cutscenes), and if you don't like that then you won't like SWTOR.  And SWTOR will be a WoW clone. 

Or something.

[Riggswolfe]

A New Hope is essentially a fedex quest involving Death Star plans followed by a pull off a trick shot quest (interact quest per Unsub) but the story was interesting enough.

And if Star Wars had trivial travel like all current MMOs that are not EVE, the film would have been exactly as dull.

(in fact Leia's ship would never have been caught in the first place, so the film could skip straight the battle of yavin which the rebels would have lost because they wouldn't have any ~protagonist~ characters in the attack)

LFM Battle of Yavin 25 man. Must have Exalted with Rebel Faction. Need 2 Y-wing Tanks and 3 X-wing/Freighter DPS. PST. We're farming for the rare Vader's Cloak drop!

[Pyran]

I've typed up 3 separate responses to this, none of which I liked.  Instead I'll just suffice to say: This makes no sense. 

It kinda makes sense.  He's saying you'll spend more time watching (cutscenes) than you will spend playing (between cutscenes), and if you don't like that then you won't like SWTOR.  And SWTOR will be a WoW clone. 

Or something.

He's saying if you dont like chocolate chip then dont buy a chocolate chip cookie? 

[Reg]

No, no. This game is going to be absolutely perfect for people that despise Bioware's style of game. I encourage them all to preorder right now.

[Lucas]

Such a mess, this thread is  

But anyways, stealthy update on the official site about the Miraluka (playable) species, in the "inhabitants" section (before, they were only mentioned in the playable species generic article):

http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/inhabitants/miraluka

Some references to KOTOR II in the description.

[Merusk]

Ah.. retconning so that Nihilus only wiped out a colony and not the home world.  I wondered how they were including the race.

The guy who threw out those numbers is either talking out of his ass, or he is deliberately dumbing the information down.  You cannot determine a break even point for a product like this based on raw sub numbers - you have to include box sales/digital downloads (a significant part of the equation, I would imagine) and then you have to factor in how long those subs stay on for (not to mention ongoing development costs).  In other words, there are infinite break even scenarios for an MMO.

You're also assuming that there isn't some required monthly revenue on the LA side for the license to remain in EA's hands.  It's always been hinted at that being the case for SWG, and cited as the reason they tried so many revamps, but we've never heard it confirmed.

[Ingmar]

FWIW that big Star Wars wiki describes Katarr as a colony world too, so it might not even be a retcon - the history has it described as such for several years. I definitely had the impression that they were all dead from playing KOTOR2, though. Maybe we were just making assumptions based on Visas saying her home planet was destroyed as meaning that was the home planet for everyone or something?

[Merusk]

Yeah, that's what I based it on I guess.  Still feels like a retcon, but it's the EU so.. who cares! 

[Kageru]

Exactly. Fucking exactly. The reason people skip quest text is because the lore behind it is irrelevant to the gameplay. I did not read a single word of quest text in Wrath, and it didn't matter one whittle.
 I have far more hope that GW2's content is going to be immersive and atomospheric. Beta will tell, but that's my feeling.

And that's mostly because Blizzard has actually been learning lessons. Tigole discussed in some depth (*1) that they intentionally hard limit quest text and have worked to move any content it might have contained into the actual gameplay. That's why a lot of the Wrath quests have relevant NPC's actually getting involved in the quests and raids, why they used cut-scenes and phasing for things like wrath-gate and why long before you reach ICC you've seen the fall of Arthas and actually played as and opposed the Lich King in multiple quests. That's also why before you see wrath gate you spend a lot of time gathering and testing poisons so that even while the quests are individually basic (though they're far more advanced than any other MMO has come close to) doing them ties you into the story of the game.

That said forcing players to continually watch long cut-scenes has all the negative gameplay of spurious quest text in a more tedious and expensive to produce form.

In addition what exactly is the alternative to quests for levelling? Back to the EQ path of chain-pulling mobs to the zone line? hell no. Every quest a masterpiece of unique gameplay and story-telling? Yeah, good luck with scaling that to enough content to keep people busy for the amount of time they expect.

(*1) The same interview where he apologised for writing the stranglethorn book quests.

[Merusk]

In addition what exactly is the alternative to quests for levelling? Back to the EQ path of chain-pulling mobs to the zone line? hell no.

Frighteningly, I've seen newer to the genre players in some of my guilds say they wished the game played like this.  When asked if they'd played EQ, they said No.   I proceed to explain, in detail, how much it actually sucked but I don't think they listened.

[Malakili]

In addition what exactly is the alternative to quests for levelling? Back to the EQ path of chain-pulling mobs to the zone line? hell no.

Frighteningly, I've seen newer to the genre players in some of my guilds say they wished the game played like this.  When asked if they'd played EQ, they said No.   I proceed to explain, in detail, how much it actually sucked but I don't think they listened.

I think its a general impulse of being sick of just being ordered around in a game that is ostensible supposed to give a player freedom to do whatever they want in a gameworld.   Quests are just grind with purpose 90% of the time anyway.  Quests don't really disguise the grind for me anymore. When they were new and different, it felt different, now that both styles are old hat, they don't really feel all that different, and at least when I'm "grinding" I'm choosing what to kill instead of the game telling me what to kill.  Grinding in Darkfall never bothered me, as a recent example.  I picked some other goal besides gaining experience points (gather material compenents for spells or something), and then I'd go kill what dropped it for a while.  No quest, no turn in, just do what I wanted when I wanted.

Now, the good thing quests have going for them is you end up killing a variety of things and they move you from area to area.  However you can do these things on your own if you want, and if you are such a slave to the dinggrats that you camp one spot for 40 hours in a row, well..you have no right to complain it isn't fun to do that when there are plenty of other things to do.

[Velorath]

I did not read a single word of quest text in Wrath, and it didn't matter one whittle.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the fact that you generally don't see any credits for writers in any of Blizzard's games (unless you want to be real generous and say Chris Metzen qualifies).  Until Starcraft II, where they hired former Bioware employee Brian Kindregan as lead writer, it doesn't look like Blizzard has ever really gone out of their way to actually hire writers for their games.

[Malakili]

I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the fact that you generally don't see any credits for writers in any of Blizzard's games (unless you want to be real generous and say Chris Metzen qualifies).  Until Starcraft II, where they hired former Bioware employee Brian Kindregan as lead writer, it doesn't look like Blizzard has ever really gone out of their way to actually hire writers for their games.

It has to do with the fact that it doesn't matter why this guy at the guard tower wants you to kill 12 gnolls. It has no effect on anything. Want to know why? Because if you do or don't don't kill 12 gnolls, hes still fucking standing their 9 months later asking people to kill gnolls.  This utter lack of responsiveness from the game world has trained people just not to care, because it just really doesn't matter. Phasing tried to address this, but I think it does so in a half assed way.  Guild Wars 2 has been talking a good game with regards to this, but its hard to know if they'll deliver.

Short Version:

The MMO playerbase has been trained to pull a level and get a treat, not to care whos making the level work, or why they are being asked to pull it in the first place.  They could probably replace all the quest dialog in the game with gibberish and most people wouldn't notice, it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing.

[Kageru]

(I had a nice reply but the internet ate it.)

Having a "writer" sitting away from the game design and churning out prose doesn't seem too useful. So having a large team of content creators who can "own" quests and do what they can to make them interesting is more productive. Even Metzen is I believe much more about invention, consistency and direction than actually writing in game content.

That said XP grinding is a terrible gameplay mechanic because players will find the point of optimal XP / time (at minimal risk) and then grind themselves silly while complaining the game is repetitive. And the game designers have very little they can do to vary or deepen the gameplay experience. It's also somewhat of a false argument since the existence of quests does not stop you grinding mobs for XP unless the designers have explicitly degraded mob XP. In WoW grinding XP mobs is still certainly competitive and may even be superior, it's just sufficiently boring that most people prefer quests.

[Velorath]

It has to do with the fact that it doesn't matter why this guy at the guard tower wants you to kill 12 gnolls. It has no effect on anything. Want to know why? Because if you do or don't don't kill 12 gnolls, hes still fucking standing their 9 months later asking people to kill gnolls.  This utter lack of responsiveness from the game world has trained people just not to care, because it just really doesn't matter. Phasing tried to address this, but I think it does so in a half assed way.  Guild Wars 2 has been talking a good game with regards to this, but its hard to know if they'll deliver.

Short Version:

The MMO playerbase has been trained to pull a level and get a treat, not to care whos making the level work, or why they are being asked to pull it in the first place.  They could probably replace all the quest dialog in the game with gibberish and most people wouldn't notice, it has nothing to do with the quality of the writing.

If you think that every game should be designed around what the playerbase has been trained to do, go fuck off cause you're part of the problem.

Or just write another few hundred posts about a game you seem to have no intention of buying I guess.