SWTOR

[Nebu]

Public Quests are essential for MMO to me.  I want a world the reacts to the players.  PQ are a start down that road.  I know we have a lot more to go but I support development teams that are trying. 

I agree with you in principle and loved how AC made me feel like I lived/played in an evolving world.  I just hope that they will soon become more than just mob generators.  I'm hoping that GW2 is a step in the right direction. 

[Nevermore]

What exactly is a 'public quest'?

[Evildrider]

What exactly is a 'public quest'?

Quests you do in public, duh!   

[Ingmar]

What exactly is a 'public quest'?

Did you play any of WAR, Champions, STO, or Rift?

[Nevermore]

What exactly is a 'public quest'?

Did you play any of WAR, Champions, STO, or Rift?

No.

[Ingmar]

So, it's basically a recurring event that everyone can participate in, it autogroups you, tracks your contribution, and rewards you at the end (assuming you win.) Usually they have phases, like 'Kill 40 demons coming out of portals! Now kill the guys holding the portals open! Now kill one really big demon that managed to push its way through the last portal!"

When you get participation in them they're pretty cool.

[Evildrider]

In Warhammer it was a small part of the game world where a set of quests would play out like every 30 minutes.   All those in the area worked to complete the objectives until the boss spawned.  After killing the boss, rewards were handed out to all who participated.

[Rasix]

Implementations so far have mostly been multi-stage events in shared areas that can be completed by multiple people with each individual receiving a reward at the end (chance of greater reward improved with a greater partcipation in the event).

Most have implementations have somewhat fallen flat due to insufficient scaling based on ever changing player populations/participation levels.

edit: So, what Ingmar said, but in a nerdier tone.

[Threash]

The Rift implementation, while repetitive, seems to have worked so far.

[Lantyssa]

It still suffers problems, but it was a step in the right direction.

[Rasix]

The Rift implementation, while repetitive, seems to have worked so far.

Mostly.  Zone events tend to make or break the equation and it's a crap shoot on whether you'll be able to solo a minor Rift sometimes.  Zone event fail due to not enough people or a completely wacko-elite difficult event popping up lessened when we moved to Threesprings, but there were still zones like Droughtlands where events would kick off quite often at times where there weren't populations available to complete them.   Or, they'd kick off so often that people were sick of them and decided to just not even try.

Rift can also have the problem of so zone events making the zone almost completely intraversible and thus have an adverse effect on your gameplay if you don't feel like partcipating at that moment.

[Nevermore]

So basically and expanded version of the CoX giant monster/invasion events?  Or the crashed Rikti ship thing?  Funny how innovative that game has turned out to be...

[Tannhauser]

WAR's PQ's were indeed fun, but many were placed in retarded locations that drove me crazy.  Especially since no one was doing them.  Rift's PQ's fired off way too often and don't feel special.  I would log on early in the morning, kill a mob, and BAM planar invasion. Now your quest hubs are wiped out.  FFFFFUUUUUUUU   

[Sjofn]

And this will be the first game I played in a while without some sorta public quest. Then again, my list of MMOs is not all that long.

I'm fine playing this game without public quests.  The fewer XxxHanSoloxxX clones I have to look at, the better. 

Hannah Solos are alright, though. Right? Right?!


 

[Ingmar]

So basically and expanded version of the CoX giant monster/invasion events?  Or the crashed Rikti ship thing?  Funny how innovative that game has turned out to be...

Um, I guess in the sense that they're all zone events, sort of. I'd peg them as more similar to say, the Halloween events in WoW where the Horseman tries to burn down a inn. That has a similar kind of phase 1-phase 2-reward-reset structure.

[Nevermore]

The crashed rikti ship had a phase 1, phase 2, reset structure.  It wasn't random, though.  It was always available to be started by people in the zone whenever they wanted.

[Lantyssa]

CoX was the first with the concept.  Giant monsters were pretty simple, though their events have become more complex with time.  And though not perfect, it did have damage scaling.

WAR was based on PQs being a common pursuit.  They were a three or four stage event in a fixed location.  Generally the first stage had no time limit, so the next stage wouldn't trigger until players fulfilled the kill conditions.  Subsequent stages were about killing X number of things in time.  Tier 1 PQs were reasonable in requirements.  T2 and higher got ridiculous.  There was no scaling for the number of players present.  Large groups would breeze through, small (level appropriate) groups would be lucky to complete them after the early tiers.  Later they rebalanced the PQs to different, but still fixed, group sizes.

The more complicated of WoW's seasonal events are pretty close to WAR's PQs.

RIFT introduced what are essentially moving PQs which interact with the world.  Their difficulty is fixed upon spawning, but there's more variation, and one rift type will fight another one.  It's a little more dynamic in that things spawned from rifts try to take over nearby areas.

GW2 looks to have events which temporarily alter the area and can spawn further events depending upon how it was resolved.  These are crafted to affect a specific area, but there are supposedly thousands of them throughout the game.

SWTOR?  Just has instances.

[Sky]

While I enjoyed the WAR PQs and rifts were ok, so far the concept isn't something I need to see to be attracted to an mmo. The world event invasions were often as annoying as they were inviting, and by inviting I mean you generally see this icon for some guy who's name is on your dynamic quest list, so you hump over there and hope he's not dead by the time you get there and spam over and over and over and then hope you get the purple token that means you'll (after repeating this four or five times, of course...and getting the purple token every time) cash it in for a piece of gear that is so far beyond BIS for your tier that I hope you like it skippy because it's going to be there a LONG DAMN TIME, meanwhile what was going on who knows just look at map, kill icon name guy over and over.

So not a huge fan, really. I do like instances, though.

[Shatter]

No game yet has done a PQ system well.  Rift's got repetitive after doing 3 of them and now invasions are just a nuisance.  Dont care if SWTOR doesnt have anything like this..prefer they have decent world pvp

[Amaron]

PQ's are great but they can easily cause you to outlevel normal content.   Considering I'm going to play this like a single player game I don't really care if they are missing.

[kildorn]

No game yet has done a PQ system well.  Rift's got repetitive after doing 3 of them and now invasions are just a nuisance.  Dont care if SWTOR doesnt have anything like this..prefer they have decent world pvp

Man, Thidranki was an awesome PQ.

[luckton]

So, in summarizing the last couple pages, in documenting on our road to page 300...

A world that reacts to players = good.

PQ gameplay as a start to world reacting = good

Repetitive PQ gameplay = bad.

Find way of having dynamic world that reacts to players without getting stale = goal.

I don't see that happening with TOR.  I see TOR as a sci-fi reskinned WoW, with more emphasis on story/role-play than anything that came before it.  I think TOR has a good chance of supporting dynamic gameplay, but not from the get-go.  Maybe an x-pack down the line, but by then it may be too late, as people will be accustomed to the DIKU model that it will launch with.

Multiple edits: Spelling and adding stuff

[Malakili]

The world will react to you in the same way it reacts to you in KOTOR.  The problem )= is that it reacts to ONLY you.  The cool thing about a dynamic world is that it would react to other players as well.   TOR is going to react to YOU and the rest of the players may as well not exist.   I understand the "Well, this is just a singl eplayer game to me" argument, its moderately appealing to me as well.  But then that goes back 200 pages to my original complaints about why the fuck make an MMO in the first place then.

Bah.

[01101010]

So, in summarizing the last couple pages, in documenting on our road to page 300...

A world that reacts to players = good.

PQ gameplay as a start to world reacting = good

Repetitive PQ gameplay = bad.

Find way of having dynamic world that reacts to players without getting stale = goal.

I don't see that happening with TOR.  I see TOR as a sci-fi reskinned WoW, with more emphasis on story/role-play than anything that came before it.  I think TOR has a good chance of supporting dynamic gameplay, but not from the get-go.  Maybe an x-pack down the line, but by then it may be too late, as people will be accustomed to the DIKU model that it will launch with.

Multiple edits: Spelling and adding stuff

You forgot to add:

The install is now up to 5 terabytes and only 500 randomly selected preorders will get to play on release as EA will gate entry to stem the lag - just like getting on a water slide at a park. 

[Merusk]

But then that goes back 200 pages to my original complaints about why the fuck make an MMO in the first place then.

DRM, Sub-Fees and marketing.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Have we gotten any kind of peek or info on how the player economy will work? With the existence of more crafting professions than you will be allowed to pursue with a single character it's obvious they must intend SOME form of player economy, but I've seen nothing.about it.  Did I just miss it or is that all still under wraps?

I was quite surprised by just how much I despised Rift's auction house, to the point that I dreaded logging in because of it and it actually became the single biggest reason I quit.  Usually I quit over broken shit, dev asshattery, grind, general boredom, or a thousand little unremarkable things that add up to not enough fun, but this time that one thing, even though it was implemented competently, really got to me.   

So I'm wondering if that is one of the things TOR is copying from WOW even though other games have shown far better ways of doing it?

It seems to me that it would behoove MMO developers to keep in mind that every former or current WOW player they hope to snatch has left WOW for a reason, and if they slavishly copy TOO much of WOW, they will end up with those same problems in their own game, but with a population of gamers who has already used up their tolerance for those specific problems.

[01101010]

Have we gotten any kind of peek or info on how the player economy will work? With the existence of more crafting professions than you will be allowed to pursue with a single character it's obvious they must intend SOME form of player economy, but I've seen nothing.about it.  Did I just miss it or is that all still under wraps?

I was quite surprised by just how much I despised Rift's auction house, to the point that I dreaded logging in because of it and it actually became the single biggest reason I quit.  Usually I quit over broken shit, dev asshattery, grind, general boredom, or a thousand little unremarkable things that add up to not enough fun, but this time that one thing, even though it was implemented competently, really got to me.   

So I'm wondering if that is one of the things TOR is copying from WOW even though other games have shown far better ways of doing it?

It seems to me that it would behoove MMO developers to keep in mind that every former or current WOW player they hope to snatch has left WOW for a reason, and if they slavishly copy TOO much of WOW, they will end up with those same problems in their own game, but with a population of gamers who has already used up their tolerance for those specific problems.

I would really like it if Bioware looked at and COPIED IT EXACTLY as EQ2 did it.

[Draegan]

GW2 promises to fix that problem, so yay for that.

I'll believe it when it's more than an idealized video used as part of a marketing campaign. 

Check out the Totalbiscuit Gamescom reviews.  He's got a fully 40min demo on there and you can see a bit of the scripted events.

[luckton]

Have we gotten any kind of peek or info on how the player economy will work? With the existence of more crafting professions than you will be allowed to pursue with a single character it's obvious they must intend SOME form of player economy, but I've seen nothing.about it.  Did I just miss it or is that all still under wraps?

I was quite surprised by just how much I despised Rift's auction house, to the point that I dreaded logging in because of it and it actually became the single biggest reason I quit.  Usually I quit over broken shit, dev asshattery, grind, general boredom, or a thousand little unremarkable things that add up to not enough fun, but this time that one thing, even though it was implemented competently, really got to me.   

So I'm wondering if that is one of the things TOR is copying from WOW even though other games have shown far better ways of doing it?

It seems to me that it would behoove MMO developers to keep in mind that every former or current WOW player they hope to snatch has left WOW for a reason, and if they slavishly copy TOO much of WOW, they will end up with those same problems in their own game, but with a population of gamers who has already used up their tolerance for those specific problems.

I would really like it if Bioware looked at and COPIED IT EXACTLY as EQ2 did it.

My understanding of crafting so far is:

A) Casuals can craft stuff that benefits them, to the point that if they want to do more than just craft things for themselves, they would fall into...
B) The hardcore crafters that will be the only ones that have unique recipes that they acquired through the time commitment they put in to achieve the hardcore tag.

The crew skills thing is not something to just auto-pilot your way to max skill.  It's more of a 'hey, I'm not going to be around from X date to Y date, so I'mma have my posse work on this thing I've been really wanting while I'm away.  Or even for the limited time of 'OMG, it's raid night and I still haven't made that thing I wanted or gotten that samophlage made for Bob.  I'll just have my crew make it and send it his way when I'm done raiding."  All of this in the name of a money-sink/offline progression.

The hardcore crafter will not only be using his crew, but also doing the crafting/gathering themselves.  I'm to believe that there's really no money to be made in having your crew do everything, rather it's a convenience thing.  Only the crafter that's out there to make money without investing a lot will do everything and ignore their crew.

[Amaron]

But then that goes back 200 pages to my original complaints about why the fuck make an MMO in the first place then.

Because they wanted to make a diku MMO.   It's not like it's actually really a single player game.

[Paelos]

I have a feeling that the only thing seperating hardcore crafters from regular crafters is raiding drops.

Which is dumb.

[Draegan]

Its hardly raiding when it's either 8 or 16 people.

[Nebu]

Its hardly raiding when it's either 8 or 16 people.

I'd call anything over 6 people a raid.  So would Rift and WoW.

[Nevermore]

I just can't consider 8 people a raid when that was the standard party size in DAoC.  Actually, I think that's the regular party size in CoX as well.

[Ingmar]

I much prefer the 5-6 person standard for group content myself. Would love to see some structured 3 person content outside of LOTRO too.