Fuck quest driven content.

[Malakili]

 i hear "I need a break because my inventory is full and i need to go transfer/sell/whatever" i want to punch a developer in the face.

Pretty much.  It may have cost me 16k gold, but I am happy I bought the mammoth mount in WoW (even though I am currently not playing).  Now if I am out and need to sell/repair or anyone I am playing with does, I just mount up and have a vendor sitting with me.   Totally worth the cash in terms of enjoying the game.  Now if we could just get this sort of thing without it being a huge gold/time sink in the first place, we'd have a nice mechanic. 

For some reason running from the wilderness back to town is a core mechanic in RPGs  these days and I'm not sure why.  I think single player RPGs are actually more forgiving than MMOs these days, even though you say it is more ok for SP RPGs to do it.  Usually in most single player RPGs I've got a huge inventory compared to MMOs.

Part of this may be related to the fact that in most MMOs I'm carting a lot of shit around with me.  On my druid in WoW for instance, I am carrying at any given time 3 sets of gear + rarely used but worth keeping on me trinkets and idols, potions, reagents, flasks, etc.  My bank is already filled to the brim, so I can't really store more stuff in there and head back and forth when I need stuff even if I wanted to.  So, I'm lucky at any given time to have more than 20 free slots, which makes things even worse.

In fact, one of the things i liked about Champions Online (until recently), was that I almost never ran out of inventory space because items didn't drop that frequently.  Then they did their economy patch where things drop vendor trash all the time, and now I fill up frequently, which is even more of a pain since there aren't vendors conveniently located at every hub.

I think this all really DOES have to do with the quest based content stuff because everything is built with the idea that you won't be out  "in the field" for very long at any given time.  If you do want to stay out for a while though, you'll eventually have to come back to sell off your stuff, or else just leave plenty of crap on the ground, which defeats 1/2 the purpose.  Anyway, I'm done ranting about this for now...

[Draegan]

WOW likes making people go back to places to "force" people coming together. Whether it's vendors or the AH.  I think it's pretty dumb.

[Mrbloodworth]

WOW likes making people go back to places to "force" people coming together. Whether it's vendors or the AH.  I think it's pretty dumb.

If you would like to see a game where this need was negated. Try SWG. and look at the NPC towns.

[Draegan]

No thanks.

[Mrbloodworth]

Hay, just saying :)

[Venkman]

At launch and after cities were very different; however, major gathering spots never really went away. At least during my few stints. The point of doing so is the same as WoW (and LoTRO, and EQ2 and Aion, etc): in the absence of a requiring a return home periodically, the only people that would are those in commerce. If you let everyone have bottomless inventories and remote access to the AH from wherever they are, the games would feel like single player experiences with a chat channel.

Which people already complain about

[Ingmar]

Or DAOC after housing - as convenient as the player houses and stores were, they pretty much killed the social hubs that had sprung up around crafting areas.

[Malakili]

At launch and after cities were very different; however, major gathering spots never really went away. At least during my few stints. The point of doing so is the same as WoW (and LoTRO, and EQ2 and Aion, etc): in the absence of a requiring a return home periodically, the only people that would are those in commerce. If you let everyone have bottomless inventories and remote access to the AH from wherever they are, the games would feel like single player experiences with a chat channel.

Which people already complain about

I don't mind making people come together for commerce between players (AH, mail access), but making me come back to dump a bunch of vendor trash isn't too exciting.  In fact, I wouldn't mind dumping the idea of vendor trash all together and just having things drop increased cash, but I guess thats a slightly different topic.

[Fordel]

But how else will I get [A Gnome Effigy] ?  :(

[Lantyssa]

WOW likes making people go back to places to "force" people coming together. Whether it's vendors or the AH.  I think it's pretty dumb.

If you would like to see a game where this need was negated. Try SWG. and look at the NPC towns.

On second thought, lets just end the idea of inventory management in MMO's. Bags, slots, weight, etc. Fuck all that shit, that is for single player games where it serves as a limiter, not for games where it serves as a hindrance as you go get your 10th mule character. MMORPG's are for killing things with friends, and every time i hear "I need a break because my inventory is full and i need to go transfer/sell/whatever" i want to punch a developer in the face.

I'm highly amused that it takes a casual kid's game to solve the problem.  Free Realms has no inventory limits.  It's awesome.

[Goreschach]

I'm highly amused that it takes a casual kid's game to solve the problem.  Free Realms has no inventory limits.  It's awesome.

That might work in a kids game, but you have to consider that in a game like WoW, were this to be implemented, the servers would instantaneously combust as every OCD catass in the game starts hoarding fifty million rat tails or some shit.

[01101010]

That might work in a kids game, but you have to consider that in a game like WoW, were this to be implemented, the servers would instantaneously combust as every OCD catass in the game starts hoarding fifty million rat tails or some shit.

I have no idea why but this made me laugh... pretty god damn hard too...

[Ingmar]

It's awesomegod-awful annoying trying to sort through everything.

At least that was my experience. Probably more of an issue with their particular interface than with the fact that inventory was unlimited.

[Lantyssa]

I only go into inventory on the class equip screens.  Since it filters out everything that isn't usable the list gets a lot better.

I know they've added some other filters for things like collections, but I rarely go into those screens to notice updates.  It still gives me the option of keeping everything, and it's nothing an improved filter couldn't handle.  I'll take it over the alternative.

[Mrbloodworth]

At launch and after cities were very different; however, major gathering spots never really went away. At least during my few stints. The point of doing so is the same as WoW (and LoTRO, and EQ2 and Aion, etc): in the absence of a requiring a return home periodically, the only people that would are those in commerce. If you let everyone have bottomless inventories and remote access to the AH from wherever they are, the games would feel like single player experiences with a chat channel.

Which people already complain about

I recall it being much more drastic, and only one hub survived, and that's because it was in the center of the galaxy. All other NPC towns, were dead. Dead dead. I was the mayor of two cities, each had 3-5 guilds in them, with well over 200 or more citizens.

My job was to make NPC city's obsolete.

Why the never used the NPC cites as housing first, is beyond me. They even had models, and elevators, and apartments all laid out, and never used.

[Tmon]

I think they had an aversion to instancing, which is why they never opened apartments. 

[WayAbvPar]

Scatter the world with mobs. Let me explore and find them on my own. Don't hold my hand and force me down a railroad in order to advance at a reasonable pace. I loved UO- as my character got better, I was able to fight tougher and tougher things, which in turn dropped better stuff. Add in the occasional random phat lewt drop (nothing more exciting than have a purple item drop from some random trash mob that I only killed because it attacked me on the way back to turn in quests)  and some decent crafting stuff and call it a day. A few epic-style quests are fine, but when groupmates complain about killing monsters because they don't have the quest for them I want to go on a killing spree.

[ezrast]

Glad someone other than me said it.

Wut?  This has been the constant, weary (and wearying) refrain for the best part of a decade. If you're glad he said, you'll be delighted that it's at least the second thread on this this month on this very board.  God knows how often over the last few years.

tl;dr this thread topic is as tired as killing ten rats.

It's common to complain about quests (e.g. bad writing, weird difficulty curve, etc.), less common to complain about questing systems, which in my opinion are fundamentally broken because they actively discourage grouping. People who enjoy soloing, which seems to be most people, don't have a problem with this.

My problem isn't with killing 10 rats,* it's with not having any common goals with 99.9% of the people I'm supposed to be playing with.

*although the time I first set foot on the vast, untamed wilderness of danger and adventure that is Northrend and was immediately tasked with collecting dog food was a bit much even for me.

[tazelbain]

Glad someone other than me said it.

Wut?  This has been the constant, weary (and wearying) refrain for the best part of a decade. If you're glad he said, you'll be delighted that it's at least the second thread on this this month on this very board.  God knows how often over the last few years.

tl;dr this thread topic is as tired as killing ten rats.

It's common to complain about quests (e.g. bad writing, weird difficulty curve, etc.), less common to complain about questing systems, which in my opinion are fundamentally broken because they actively discourage grouping. People who enjoy soloing, which seems to be most people, don't have a problem with this.

My problem isn't with killing 10 rats,* it's with not having any common goals with 99.9% of the people I'm supposed to be playing with.

*although the time I first set foot on the vast, untamed wilderness of danger and adventure that is Northrend and was immediately tasked with collecting dog food was a bit much even for me.

So true.  Which contributes to why group instances are popular.  They put everyone on the same goal.

[Ingmar]

I'll never play another game where I'm forced to group to level, unless the game makes it clear from the get-go that that is the entire point of it like DDO, and I have a set group of friends who I can rely on to want to do all that stuff together in at least a semi-organized way, etc.

DAOC-like 'lets all grind this camp for hours' systems are gone for a reason. Because they sucked. Questing systems, when done right (WoW and the revamped LotRO stuff I would describe as done right) keep you moving around, change what you're doing, give you a bit of story with your leveling, etc., and you can work at your own pace.

[Venkman]

I recall it being much more drastic, and only one hub survived, and that's because it was in the center of the galaxy. All other NPC towns, were dead. Dead dead. I was the mayor of two cities, each had 3-5 guilds in them, with well over 200 or more citizens.

My job was to make NPC city's obsolete.

Why the never used the NPC cites as housing first, is beyond me. They even had models, and elevators, and apartments all laid out, and never used.

Really no point in having in-city apartments when player housing was there right away too. Sorta need to pick a lane there. I'd have preferred they had a two year plan and stuck with it:

1. Launch with apartments.
2. Release player housing at four months
3. Release player cities at one year.
4. Release space flight at two years.

This way all the player congregation forms into social groups, based on origination. Then these groups start to naturally go from inhabitants to immigrants in sub-groups to settlers to explorers to colonizers. Unfortunately, you can't stick to a plan when you're burning up in the daily fires.

Only a few places survived Player Cities, but by then it didn't matter because there wasn't a whole slew of new players arriving that needed to be trained up anyway.

[Slyfeind]

I'm trying to remember the first game that required the player to go back to town to sell things they didn't want. Bard's Tale? Wizardry? The early Ultimas had unlimited inventory, but added limits later because it was more realistic. Resource management is fun to a degree.

What isn't fun is Vendor Trash, which I think was invented with EQ. I think the idea there was a rat wouldn't carry money, but someone somewhere might need a rat tail and would buy it off you. That seems to have snowballed a bit.

[Jayce]

Allow me to summarize this thread:

"I hate the old stuff, it was horrible.  The new stuff solved all the problems, but I still hate it." *logs in*

"Forced grouping is horrible.  Also stupid is a game that lets you play solo."

[Venkman]

It's much simpler than that:

Be careful what you wish for.

[Ashamanchill]

Boy do I feel smug. My tastes seem to coincide with the average consumer, or dev. I don't hate quest generated content if it's done reasonably well (WoW, EQ2, LotR, AoC, fuck, even some of WaR). It's when it's done shitty (Aion), that I hate it. I'm not looking for a complete overhaul of the MMO anymore, just something that can make a fascimile of WoW down to the right details.

Just to further agitate, I also rather like the holy trinity. It suits the group I play MMOs with rather well.

[Ratman_tf]

It's much simpler than that:

Be careful what you wish for.

That's it, really. I hate the design pendulum swinging from campgrinding over to questgrinding, and most big name games following suit because they have the imagination of a brick.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm trying to remember the first game that required the player to go back to town to sell things they didn't want. Bard's Tale? Wizardry? The early Ultimas had unlimited inventory, but added limits later because it was more realistic. Resource management is fun to a degree.

Eamon? Telenguard (Rogue)? I seem to remember going back to town to sell in the olde school games from the Apple II era.

[Koyasha]

Between constant repetitive kill 10 rat quests and camping mobs, at this point I want the camping mobs back.  No game has had me sit in one place and camp while also managing to set up a very smooth, relaxing rhythm for several hours since EQ, though.  It's not just camping a spot, which you can do in almost any game, particularly Aion, but something about the whole getting into a relaxing groove, that EQ managed to put me into but Aion and other games don't.

Of course, I'm one of the ones that never hated the old stuff in the first place and I've never liked the whole quest-driven content thing at all.  Never really asked for anything other than EQ before it started trying to copy WoW.  I occasionally consider getting a mac for the express purpose of playing on the EQ Mac server, that's time-locked in the Planes of Power era (unless they finally shut it down at some point).

[Azazel]

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.

I agree with this totally, but I'm not keen on the "all quests at all times" model either.

From an RP perspective, you might have just killed 700 wolves, but did you know to collect their tails? No? Then STFU bitch and go out and get me 10 tails.
From a mechanical perspective, fuck the old EQ1 style of "shit that rat dropped a testicle. gimme a sec I have to alt-tab to allakhazam to see if it's for anything before I sell it. Ah it's for a quest, better keep it and have it clog my inventory for the next 3 hours/days/months."

I do like the LOTRO mechanic of quest items going into a "quest item inventory" and so not clogging your bags.
I don't like the overly-long wordiness of the questgivers in LOTRO.

I mean, I'm all for story and context and background. I read the quest descriptions in WoW so I know why I'm collecting the frozen rat tails. LORTO, though is just way to fucking wordy with that kind of shit. I don't need a huge 20-line block of text to accompany my K10R quests. So now I skip pretty much ALL of LOTRO's quest text, and I've played less than 10 sessions still.

[Merusk]

Nothing forces you to do every single quest, and nothing but them, in any game.   In the Aion beta I ground out kills for 20 mins or so because I didn't want to run back to town only to run to where I was again.  I did so in FE and LOTR as well.  WoW's the only one I haven't done it in when leveling, but that's because I want to know all the little lore details of each quest.  I could have done it if I wanted to.  I fail to see the problem.

As for EQ's pacing; you're right, Koy, no other game has done it and there's a reason for that.  EQ mobs took a minute or more to kill per mob.  That gave the puller plenty of time to run out, grab one from the pack and run back just as it was dying (or to kite it for a moment) so the tank could move on to the next.   I don't think the modern playerbase of MMOs would put up with that kind of time frame, and nobody seems interested in developing niche games.  They're certainly not willing to risk a few million trying it out 'just to see.'

[Koyasha]

As for EQ's pacing; you're right, Koy, no other game has done it and there's a reason for that.  EQ mobs took a minute or more to kill per mob.  That gave the puller plenty of time to run out, grab one from the pack and run back just as it was dying (or to kite it for a moment) so the tank could move on to the next.   

Never really thought of it that way before, but yeah.  I think that's exactly what made the pace so smoothly relaxing that I was happy camping a spot for hours in EQ, but I get annoyed, bored, and antsy to move on, in other games.  That is exactly what I miss about pulling in EQ.  It's frantic trying to keep a mob in camp at all times in other games - not to mention the annoying leashing mechanics make pulling to a camp really irritatingly difficult in most games now.

[Venkman]

When you're alternative to quest grinding is mob grinding, that's not really a choice. It's still a game play mechanic unique to this genre. Well, unique in that it usually involves exactly the same action over and over.

There's certainly grinding in other games and genres. Heck, leveling up in CoD# is grindy. However, the wrapper around that feels very different because it's not the same chain of four skills against every single target there is in the game.

I don't hate quest grinds. I'd rather that than mob grinds any day of the week because at least the quest grinds are intended to move you through the content at a measured pace. CoH started along this path and almost every diku since has used it. I'd much rather ride the rails the designers intended than to find a hill and camp it hoping nobody else shows up to poach my hunt. Because that is the type of old school best left to history.

What I personally can't do anymore is PvE grinds for a PvP game. No diku yet has had as compelling a PvP system as a FPS match, and with more persistent elements coming to the latter, I'm willing to accept MMO PvP just isn't going to be for me. So if I take that and then add 15 hours of PvE grind before it, yea, not worth my time.

tl;dr: If a PvP MMO doesn't have PvP right away, it's not a PvP MMO.

[Ratman_tf]

I don't hate quest grinds. I'd rather that than mob grinds any day of the week because at least the quest grinds are intended to move you through the content at a measured pace. CoH started along this path and almost every diku since has used it. I'd much rather ride the rails the designers intended than to find a hill and camp it hoping nobody else shows up to poach my hunt. Because that is the type of old school best left to history.

But you can have the worst of both worlds! I loved  getting a mission in CO where all the target mobs were camped by players.

[Ashamanchill]

When you're alternative to quest grinding is mob grinding, that's not really a choice. It's still a game play mechanic unique to this genre. Well, unique in that it usually involves exactly the same action over and over.

There's certainly grinding in other games and genres. Heck, leveling up in CoD# is grindy. However, the wrapper around that feels very different because it's not the same chain of four skills against every single target there is in the game.

I don't hate quest grinds. I'd rather that than mob grinds any day of the week because at least the quest grinds are intended to move you through the content at a measured pace.

This is what I was trying to say a lot clumsier, both in this thread, and the Aion one.

[Venkman]

I don't hate quest grinds. I'd rather that than mob grinds any day of the week because at least the quest grinds are intended to move you through the content at a measured pace. CoH started along this path and almost every diku since has used it. I'd much rather ride the rails the designers intended than to find a hill and camp it hoping nobody else shows up to poach my hunt. Because that is the type of old school best left to history.

But you can have the worst of both worlds! I loved  getting a mission in CO where all the target mobs were camped by players.

Yes. Hence I do not own it. HATED this in beta. I appreciate persistence, and can actually stomach camping to a degree. But your game between have more than just one or two starting tracks if you're gonna pull public-space stuff like this. Otherwise it's just annoying for everyone who shows up in the first three weeks of launch, and does nothing to compel people to role alts. Even if the second time is less annoying due to there being less people around, you can't help but remember how bad it was the first time.