Fuck quest driven content.

[Ratman_tf]

Fuck it right in it's ear. This shit just makes me want to go back to Hellgate London where I don't have to pay a monthy fee for a shitty single player game.

If some random jackass NPC wants me to collect 10 rat tails for him, I'm going to punch a dev right in the face.  

This rant was brought to you by the Lord of the Rings Online free trial.

[ezrast]

Glad someone other than me said it. It amazes me how almost no major MMO dev puts any effort whatsoever into designing features that let their players actually play together. You'd think that would be pretty standard in this genre.

[pxib]

Fun, long-lasting, cooperative content is hard to produce. It's not just MMO devs, co-op isn't any more than a tiny fraction of the video game world. Some of the best video gaming (in my experience) is a bunch of friends gathered around a screen while one person holds the controller and the rest act as advisors and peanut gallery. When everybody gets a controller, there tends to be a lot of needless death, wasting resources, dragging the people who can't play behind you...

...and these are YOUR FRIENDS. This isn't some random hooligan you just met who'll probably steal from you, get you killed, and run off. These are people who may have known you for years and have to be nice to you because they want to be invited over for beers again. Also when you decide to play a game, you can sit down and play. You don't wait around for 45 minutes while a few people get prepared, and then one of them bails out so you have to find another, and during that wait someone else leaves.

Games have been designed with an entry bar set low enough that anyone can drop in, throw down, and contribute. Then the exit bar is low enough that anybody can leave whenever they like without major consequence. A persistant MMO has not produced either of these, much less both.

The crappy single player game keeps a lot of people interested enough to keep them  p(L)aying.

[ezrast]

I know I'm sort of a broken record in these conversations, but, uh, have you played City of Heroes?

e: specifically with regards to your third paragraph.

[Glazius]

I know I'm sort of a broken record in these conversations, but, uh, have you played City of Heroes?

e: specifically with regards to your third paragraph.

I think EQ2 and ChampO have both had some kind of "everyone is relevant" code. EQ2 could only take you down to somebody else's level, and I know ChampO was BILLED as letting you play with anyone at any level.

Not to take away from what CoH has done. They were the first to let you roll a newb and help your buddy who's raiding other planes, and it's gotten even easier now.

[Numtini]

Glad someone other than me said it. It amazes me how almost no major MMO dev puts any effort whatsoever into designing features that let their players actually play together. You'd think that would be pretty standard in this genre.

Solo questing has always been my least favorite method of "grinding."

At least in WoW you can get a good chunk of xp helping in instances even if you don't have the quest. Doesn't do you much good anymore, but I remember doing SM, ZF etc. again and again. Beat questing. In LOTRO, in an instance, you got the quest xp and that was pretty much it. The kill xp was minimal. I found it an endless drudgery of quests.

For me, I'll take instances, even AO/COX generated missions as my preferred way of "grinding." But I'd prefer more than one option. The run from 70 to 80 in WoW was woderful because you could do a few quests, do an instance, get a few more quests. It broke it up.

[Zzulo]

I don't mind quests. I just think there are too many filler and generic quests in most MMO's today. How about less quests, but longer, more intricate ones instead? Like, actual storylines and stuff, rather than 1500 "kill 10 pigs over yonder and you get a fancy new leather betl!" types.

[Nebu]

I don't mind quests either.  As a solo player, it's far more enjoyable to do quests than to randomly kill static mobs as I did in DAoC or EQ. 

What I do hate is a) doing a LONG quest chain only to be rewarded with a few silver or b) doing two quests in the EXACT SAME AREA that produce identical rewards. 

I'd really enjoy a system more like I saw in AO, AC, or DAoC.  Enter a solo instance, kill a boss mob, get cash/item. 

[Murgos]

Fuck it right in it's ear. This shit just makes me want to go back to Hellgate London where I don't have to pay a monthy fee for a shitty single player game.

If some random jackass NPC wants me to collect 10 rat tails for him, I'm going to punch a dev right in the face.  

This rant was brought to you by the Lord of the Rings Online free trial.

Just so long as you realize that what you are asking for is completely directionless grinding of mobs just standing around.  And, HG:L had quest driven content so I have no clue what that's doing in there.

[jakonovski]

Eh, the real problem is gameplay. Quests are awesome if the game has honestly good gameplay like Red Faction: Guerrilla. If it's the standard mmo fare of "press 1-2-3", of course it's going to suck.

[Mrbloodworth]

I put forth that LOTRO has content just like what you guys describe. In fact, they are adding even more of it, mega dynamic random group type as well. It, also has most likely one of the longest quest chains in any MMO history, that is, for the most part, not standard fare and ripe with good writing.

I do believe its the filler content that Ratman_tf takes issue with. However, its is funny the comments come from someone with 1840 hours in WoW, and 8 of those are this week. Just pointing that out. (Not saying wow is a bad game or any of that crap, just that.... perhaps you are burned out by 1800+ hours of kill 10 rats from that title)

EDIT: Ironwood, They (LOTRO Dev)  have been rectifying that issue.

[Ironwood]

My particular problem with this type of questing is when it just doesn't make sense.

When I wander over to 'Big Bad Scaries Group #1' and kill 10 of them, plus the leader who, let's face it, was hanging around anyway, I don't want to go back to the quest giver and be told 'aha, now you've got the small guys, I want you to go back and kill the leader'.

Because I JUST DID.  His head is even now adorning my shield.  

Fucking Clownshoes.

I'd much rather the quest guy said 'Now, I wanted you to kill the leader, but I see you just did so here's your quest XP and your Fucking Reward, now fuck off out of here you wee shite.'

Anything else is just silly.

[Kageru]

I don't mind quests. I just think there are too many filler and generic quests in most MMO's today. How about less quests, but longer, more intricate ones instead? Like, actual storylines and stuff, rather than 1500 "kill 10 pigs over yonder and you get a fancy new leather betl!" types.

These tend to run into problems because making sure everyone is at the same stage, or doesn't miss a quest trigger or item, quickly becomes painful. I'm pretty sure WoW intentionally limits the length of a given quest chain these days.

I'd be perfectly happy if WoW included another level of content. Outdoor normal mobs for soloing, clumped elite mobs for duo'ing or grinding and five person instances for teaming. I'm pretty sure that was their design but they've backed off it now (outdoor elites are now generally rare named). Probably because soloists got frustrated at there being quests they couldn't complete solo, while the "sit in one spot and chain-pull for 10 hours" was just too efficient. Quests are after all quite a good way to both guide and lengthen the levelling process.

Then again, I liked their original design of fatigue reducing your XP gain if you grind too much (neither affects nor affected by quest XP). I think EQ gave me my fill of sitting in one spot killing several hundred mobs with 1-2 models.

[Ratman_tf]

Just so long as you realize that what you are asking for is completely directionless grinding of mobs just standing around. 

I'm asking for more sandbox content like UO, SWG and Eve. Had/have.

And, HG:L had quest driven content so I have no clue what that's doing in there.

It's being an offline MMOG. And the fact that I can even type that contradiction may tell you what I'm talkin' 'bout.

[Ratman_tf]

I do believe its the filler content that Ratman_tf takes issue with. However, its is funny the comments come from someone with 1840 hours in WoW, and 8 of those are this week. Just pointing that out. (Not saying wow is a bad game or any of that crap, just that.... perhaps you are burned out by 1800+ hours of kill 10 rats from that title)

 

Well, I don't kill 10 rats, I mostly raid with a bit of killing 10 rats for dailies in between raids.
And I hated 70-80. Fucking frozen rat tails. Great... Wonderful expansion Blizz...

What I'm saying is that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of gated/scripted content. Quests were fun and rad and awesome when EQ and DAOC were still big dogs, and that gave us a break from camping crabs.

Just... gah. Welcome to the fantastical world of Middle Earth, collect 10 rat tails. ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

[Venkman]

These old school ideas seem largely predicated on the D&D method: you show up to an MMO with your dedicated group of six and live the game from start to finish together.

Bull. Yes, people play like that. No, the game doesn't need to be designed for that.

Ironwood nails this. And it's something friggin' EQ1 had: you could make progress on a quest before taking the quest, thus having a leg up on the quest once/if you take it. Aion does this to some degree, not strictly hiding drops behind quest triggers, but it's rare.

I would prefer a more fluid experience. If I'm wearing a clan leader's ear, I should be KOS to that clan. If I just went on a tear through a wolf pack, then I shouldn't be told to cut my stripes on killing 10 wolves. Yes, this means being able to theoretically be on all quests at all times. And it means some players are likely just to grind. But that's fine. This genre doesn't need to be canned-content-WoWGWEQ1 on one end and open-world/sim-Eve on the other. FE is sounding like it's a good middle ground, for example.

[Sky]

Then the exit bar is low enough that anybody can leave whenever they like without major consequence.

Heh. Should Nunzio show up and make you an offer you can't refuse? What's wrong with leaving a game whenever you like?

Wait, did you just make a rant post about kill quests and you're a raider?

Retard_tf

[Mrbloodworth]

I do believe its the filler content that Ratman_tf takes issue with. However, its is funny the comments come from someone with 1840 hours in WoW, and 8 of those are this week. Just pointing that out. (Not saying wow is a bad game or any of that crap, just that.... perhaps you are burned out by 1800+ hours of kill 10 rats from that title)

 

Well, I don't kill 10 rats, I mostly raid with a bit of killing 10 rats for dailies in between raids.
And I hated 70-80. Fucking frozen rat tails. Great... Wonderful expansion Blizz...

What I'm saying is that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of gated/scripted content. Quests were fun and rad and awesome when EQ and DAOC were still big dogs, and that gave us a break from camping crabs.

Just... gah. Welcome to the fantastical world of Middle Earth, collect 10 rat tails. ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

Oh, believe me, I understand your basic argument.  I have said it before to myself in that, or other games...  But, you have an awful lot of time int he game that, by all accounts, is the KING of kill 10 rats. I believe you are accustomed to the "end game" where, for all intents, questing is all dried up for you, and maybe has been for a while. I tend to avoid the quests like that in LOTRO, or only do it, if i know i will accidentally get the things I need, while on the way to a more interesting quest

Good news is, Skirmishes in LOTRO are random, scaling, repeatable instanced content starting at 30.

For the record, I agree with you though.

[Ratman_tf]

Wait, did you just make a rant post about kill quests and you're a raider?

Retard_tf

Piss off, mate. I used to hate raiding, but then I actually *gasp* tried it, and at least raiding is playing with other people. Which is more than I can say for questgrinding. Like I said, if I wanted to grind quests, I'd fire up Hellgate London for a local session. If anyone likes, they can subsitute their favorite weeaboo Final Fantasy console game or Diabo 2 for HGL in that example.

[tmp]

Like I said, if I wanted to grind quests, I'd fire up Hellgate London for a local session. If anyone likes, they can subsitute their favorite weeaboo Final Fantasy console game or Diabo 2 for HGL in that example.

There's big difference between solo questing in a MMO and these offline examples, though -- in the MMO there's tons of other people also running around and doing their quests. And personally, i enjoy this background traffic and random encounters and/or chats. It's like a difference between doing your shopping in a local mall before and after the zombie apocalypse swept through it.

[Arthur_Parker]

Like I said, if I wanted to grind quests, I'd fire up Hellgate London for a local session.

Or fire up WoW and make a new character?  LOTRO was released post WoW, it copies the WoW quest grind (maybe not as well) but the point stands, maybe you would find WoW quest grinding almost as annoying, if had played LOTRO for a couple of years first.  Not that I don't agree that quest grinding is boring, but it's still better than non-quest grinding.

[Ratman_tf]

Sure it goes through phases. I have a ton of WoW alts, until I started to taper off and got 'serious' with my guild. And I used to solo or duo the heck out of 'old' MMOGs like AO. I don't consider SWG to be solo because of the robust economy it had, though I rarely grouped up to kill mobs in SWG. It was more wheeling and dealing over mail and vendors. 

So anywho. Yeah, I'm an old, grizzled MMOG fart who's had his fill of questgrinding. Somebody make the next SWG or Eve, eh? Stat! 

[Malakili]

And I hated 70-80. Fucking frozen rat tails. Great... Wonderful expansion Blizz...

Reminds me of a post someone made on the WoW general forums while Burning Crusade was still the latest expansion, and Wrath of the Lich King had just been announced.

The name of the thread was "Welcome to Northrend Hero!"
and when you clicked on the thread it said:

Please kill 10 Howling Fjord bears.

....

Nailed it.

[Stormwaltz]

I don't think a game with only long, intricate quest chains would work. Some people like 'em. Shit, I love them. But others want a quick fix they can finish over lunch. They want to be able to walk away for a week and not have forgotten what they were doing when they get back. Even those who like the longer arcs sometimes just like the mac & cheese comfort of kill ten rats.

LotRO actually strikes a better balance than most, with the divide between Epics and K10Rs. Unfortunately, the Epic arcs nearly always end with quests that require a group to complete  Good luck finding PUG for a level 15 Epic when everyone and their Galadhrim Horse is standing at the bank of the Anduin, looking east and pawing the ground.

Epics sound like what you want with grouping content. As a counter-example I hate PUGs, so I've only managed to finish two or three Epic books in the year and a half I've played. I don't live off K10Rs, but I enjoy my Shire pub crawls and Lothlorien tree serenades.

When I wander over to 'Big Bad Scaries Group #1' and kill 10 of them, plus the leader who, let's face it, was hanging around anyway, I don't want to go back to the quest giver and be told 'aha, now you've got the small guys, I want you to go back and kill the leader'.

I hear Fallen Earth resolves this by having all leaders drop a head if you haven't completed their kill quest. If you get the kill quest later, you can turn it in. For this change alone, the FE devs deserve a box sale (if only I could find a damn box).

[Threash]

What really fucking pisses me off about this type of quest is when you are asked to bring back body parts from the shit you are killing and the mobs don't drop as many as they should have.  The biggest culprit here is spiders, every fucking game has at least one "bring me some spider legs" quest and every fucking game has spiders dropping ONE leg.  Fuck you, spiders have 8 fucking legs, i don't care if you multiply the requirements by 8 but every fucking spider i kill needs to have 8 legs.  And every bear better have two fucking eyes.

[Mrbloodworth]

I hear Fallen Earth resolves this by having all leaders drop a head if you haven't completed their kill quest. If you get the kill quest later, you can turn it in. For this change alone, the FE devs deserve a box sale (if only I could find a damn box).

Even that is a trade off though, in terms of bag space. At one point I had about 10 heads, tails ETC...

It is better, but I really do think quest items should have its own bags from now on and forever.

What really fucking pisses me off about this type of quest is when you are asked to bring back body parts from the shit you are killing and the mobs don't drop as many as they should have.  The biggest culprit here is spiders, every fucking game has at least one "bring me some spider legs" quest and every fucking game has spiders dropping ONE leg.  Fuck you, spiders have 8 fucking legs, i don't care if you multiply the requirements by 8 but every fucking spider i kill needs to have 8 legs.  And every bear better have two fucking eyes.

What if they dropped 1 leg, and 7 broken legs? 

[Tmon]

I hear Fallen Earth resolves this by having all leaders drop a head if you haven't completed their kill quest. If you get the kill quest later, you can turn it in. For this change alone, the FE devs deserve a box sale (if only I could find a damn box).

Funny, I remember EQ did that, you got that damn ogre head in the dwarf starter zone and had to carry it around forever before you were able finish the quest.  Of course like all the early EQ quests you really had to hunt to find the actual quest and there wasn't any easily accessible information to tell you what the quest was.  As I recall the only info you got when the head dropped was that it was marked as unsellable.

Personally long quest chains piss me off, after about 5 steps I just get to the point where I want the damn things to end mostly because I'm an episodic player, I like to log in and spend an hour or so doing something and log out.

[Slyfeind]

I hear Fallen Earth resolves this by having all leaders drop a head if you haven't completed their kill quest. If you get the kill quest later, you can turn it in. For this change alone, the FE devs deserve a box sale (if only I could find a damn box).

Yeah, EQ did that too. And AC for that matter! Everything old is new again!

I put forth that LOTRO has content just like what you guys describe. In fact, they are adding even more of it, mega dynamic random group type as well. It, also has most likely one of the longest quest chains in any MMO history, that is, for the most part, not standard fare and ripe with good writing.

I'm up to 15 in LOTRO now, and I haven't seen anything like that since the tutorial. The tutorial was great. It felt like Lord of the Rings, with hobbits captured by bandits who wanted to sell them to Sauron. Then after that, it was Kill 10 Rats.

Or do we have to grind through the Kill10Rats in order to get to the cool stuff?

[Rasix]

There have been attempts, successful or not to improve on the quest based advancement.  

WAR had PQs and auto tracking of certain kills.  WAR unfortunately had possibly the worst PVE I've seen (bad AI, boring, poorly balanced) and still managed to include the standard kill/collect/deliver quests.  PQs didn't scale well enough for the eventual population ebbs and flows.

AO had missions.  Missions got stale and the rest of the leveling was your standard group based farm (or exploiting).  I quit at the game killing patch (11.6 was it?) so I don't know if it got better.

AOC had some nice solo instances included with it's standard array of quests.  The Lovecraftian house in Khopesh, the sewers, and the pyramid were all pretty cool to run.  They gave you great experience both in the sense of advancement and in crafting a module of content for you to complete.

I like the idea of LOTRO books, it just breaks down for me when it transitions from a solo experience to a group experience.  I'd rather not have my personal plot advancement hindered by the ability to find someone on the exact same step of a quest chain as I am.  I've heard this is better not but not completely remedied or able to be done at appropriate levels.

Personally, I prefer the quest grind to the mob grind. The pure EQ era sit and pull mob grind is an absolute non-starter for me.  If you're going for a quest grind and there are massive content gaps, that could kill your game for me also.  I liked Northrend because there were a lot of quest areas that were either themed (hello cool Howling Fjord pirate area) or tied to a bit a lore/story/plot progression.  

A great open world sandbox can do away with all of this, but without a plot or point, I'll likely get bored. Diablo style grinding/advancement would also be great thing to see, where you're purely driving towards the completion of plot points, but I'm not sure how this can successfully be incoporated into a MMO framework.  Isn't this what Old Republic is aiming for?

[Aez]

Same.  I hate quests.  I prefer to simply kill random mobs for xp and loot, ideally in a difficult area where pulling is tough and the group gets a sense of danger.  That's only for a vanilla diku game though, an already pretty bad option.

[Sobelius]

DDO is one of the only MMOs that doesn't really have the "kill x of y" and "fedex" quests. Though it is group-focused, it's more soloable than it used to be, as well. Unfortunately, each quest/dungeon is SO self-contained, the entire game feels strongly like "rides within a theme-park". You ask your group mates if everyone is one the quest (i.e. "does everyone have a ticket to get on the ride, or at least get a reward at the end of the ride"). Outside of the rides, there is not much else to do. But the rides, at least for the most part, are good. And there are a few hellish rides, like "The Pit" (a notorious multi-level death-trap dungeon)...
Also, DDO does not claim to have the "dynamic living world where everything you do makes a difference!" BS. It just gives you ton of adventures (rides) packed in a small area. I wish other MMOs would find ways to bring something similar and ditch the ad-nauseum quest grinds.

[Threash]

Personally, I prefer the quest grind to the mob grind. The pure EQ era sit and pull mob grind is an absolute non-starter for me.    

But that doesn't exist anymore.  Quest grind is exactly the same as mob grind but with a bunch of running back and forth thrown in, the only difference is with straight mob grinding you spend your time fighting rather than running places.

[Stormwaltz]

Yeah, EQ did that too. And AC for that matter! Everything old is new again!

In AC we did that because at ship our NPCs were too bone-stick-stone stupid to do more than react to what you gave them. And for a long time, if you have them something they didn't recognize, they'd eat it.

I'm up to 15 in LOTRO now, and I haven't seen anything like that since the tutorial. <snip> Or do we have to grind through the Kill10Rats in order to get to the cool stuff?

At 15, you should be nearly to Othrongroth -- the conclusion of Epic Book I, set in the Barrow Downs. It's the only Book I've finished with a group, and it's pretty memorable.

[Lantyssa]

Ironwood nails this. And it's something friggin' EQ1 had: you could make progress on a quest before taking the quest, thus having a leg up on the quest once/if you take it. Aion does this to some degree, not strictly hiding drops behind quest triggers, but it's rare.

Not always, but Fallen Earth has a lot of this.  You kill a dude and get his quest drop whether you're on it or not.

[Rasix]

But that doesn't exist anymore.  Quest grind is exactly the same as mob grind but with a bunch of running back and forth thrown in, the only difference is with straight mob grinding you spend your time fighting rather than running places.

There's no flavor to that.  I know what I'm essentially doing, but instead of just grinding out mobs; I'm moving around, getting some lore/story in, exploring, and getting rewards on top of whatever I got for killing.  If combat were that interesting in these games, I might not mind grinding, but there's other issues mob grinding introduces.  I haven't seen them addressed, because I really haven't seen that mode of leveling encouraged in games I'm interested in.  Of course, I do enough research that I'll likely avoid that in any case, so I'll likely not see the improvements.  

Wandering around just killing shit to grind levels isn't much of an attraction for me either.  I crave direction and purpose.