Sorry but I love all of the above. Even talk to this guy quest are a huge help. How many bad MMOs have you played where you didnt know where to go next? Pointer quests stop that from happening.
The quest I hate the most without a doubt are the ones where you have to go from Person A... then travel for two and half days to talk to Person B who instructs you to go back to Person A then back to B etc. These quests are 99% travelling and 1% talking to an npc for 1 second.
The second type of quest I hate are the ones where the cost of the quest is more than the reward. The ones that make you craft some item that requires you spend 10 gold on npc mats, and then rewards you with 5 silver.
Thirdly I have never played an MMO with HEALING quests for healers. The point of quests is gaining exp (sure) BUT it's also to help players learn to use their skills. If i have to escort someone, then he can fight his own damn self and I will heal him. If I have to craft something, it better be something related to playing my class: healing scrolls, health potions whatever. We should be getting exp based on how quickly we dispel debuffs, using our support skills like buffs and CC to help, whether people in our party die or not etc.
Originally posted by Mardukk Yeah, I think they covered all quests with this list. And with that I agree. Quests are evil. Actually I should say required questing (that isn't eq1 epic quest) is evil.
Actually they forgot one, The Daily quests... Tied to rep, crafting, whatever,.. they get repetative and boring. So hoping Citadel of Sorcery breaks this mold.
Originally posted by immodium The one that really annoyed me was the travel stupidly long distances back and forth to talk to NPCs. LOTRO is guilty of this.
Wouldn't be so bad if travel in LOTRO wasn't so tedious in the first place. That's one of the main reasons I stopped playing the game, it took to long to get somewhere to actually do something.
Concerning the article, group quests I agree with in that groups shouldn't be mandatory. Grouping should be rewarding, difficulty and rewards should scale with number of players but also soloable for players who don't want to or can't find a group.
Really though, whether or not quests are tedious has a lot to do with how they are presented. Even kill quests and item gathering quests aren't bad if they feel like they make sense in the context provided.
WoW invented this type of questing and I think people forget what leveling was like in MMOs before quests. Most people dont have the time to grind a char to top level. I think an MMO without quest has a market but its really small.
Yeah, count me in as not really understanding the point of this article or why it was promoted by MMORPG. It can pretty much be summarized as "I hate MMOs" and micdrop. I suspect we're going to see a "5 Best Types of MMO quests" article soon that pretty much repeats each topic above and why they're fun.
I get the feeling someone at MMORPG realized they didn't have enough articles to include in the email today, so this article was posted as filler.
-=Star Wars Galaxies: Sunrunner=- Roleplayer -=World of Warcraft: Shadow Council=-
Originally posted by azzamasin How about all quests in general? Can we leave questing to something we do sparingly and with out being guided.
Funny thing is, we had an MMO that did this. It was called Asheron's Call. There were a few quests but unless you talked to a bar keep or a townsperson you might never know it existed. Now the game is dead because people seem to prefer questing...
Real question is what else is there? What this list REALLY should be called: "I hate Questing", "I hate playing non-FPS games", or "I hate RPGs".
I know your gonna say, "But I love Sky rim-job." Cause you can do any thing you want to? Or what you really mean is anything you can do in an FPS? This list of anything you can do is actually very small. If you think about it.
I responded to the same type of post last week, so I'm going to copy/paste my response from there.
1. & 2. This is my absolute favorite mission type, and in fact it should have been your number one (Here it was). I saw a cartoon that compared WoW to GW2 (See above link). The WoW quest read, kill 10 bandits and collect 10 apples. The GW2 quest read, defend us from the bandits and rescue the stolen food. Now the WoW quest probably used the exact same words as the GW2 quest, but all anyone focuses on is the 10 of Name. A game is a GUI to a data base. Kill 10 of X is a goal that can be tracked and achieved. We could just say, “I hear town Y is in need of food go there and see if you can help.” On the way there you happen to pass apple tree. If the player has enough sense to investigate the trees, they learn they can pick the fruit. Picking the fruit triggers an attack from bandits. A smart player may realize the fruit is a way to help the starving village they are going to. A typical player will not, until they read the leveling guide another player has made. The typical player will arrive at hunger town with one apple or none. They hungry people will ask if your saw any food on the way here, and they will keep asking until they are feed. The player will kill NPC cats, dogs, chickens, sheep, and cows looking for easy food before going near those attacking bandits in the apple orchards. That is my idea of a “sandbox” kill 10 of X, collect 10 of Y quest.
3. This is also new. Most games start out with massive levels, where you have to travel some distance to get to the next NPC, These game levels are quickly redesigned, and you see NPC right next to each other or 3 meters away. Blame player test groups. Most asked for feature by players? Auto-Run & pathing to destination. Gamers ask, "When I get a quest, why can't I click on the on the mob name and the game runs my avatar to the hunting location." "When I am done, why can't I click on the Turning NPC's name and just auto run to them on the safest path?" why don't we see more of this in games? No everyone wants to spend money or space to develop it, but some are.
4. This is new. I have had many jobs in my life. I have worked with people 1 point above mentally challenged (Insert your preferred term here). And every time I show them the respect they deserve, and they are grateful for it. I was once told by a 45 year old labourer, that he expected to be ridiculed at every new job. I apologies to every 'elite gamer' who has to put up with grouping with his fellow human beings. These same 'elite gamers' are the ones we see cutting in to the front of a line waiting to make a left turn, or driving 80 on a 65 highway. "There’s always that one character that struggles to grasp basic concepts and you end up having to pick up the slack." Glad to see you understand how other feel about grouping with you.
5. This is another copy and paste. Empathy, why we should even try to nurture it in a community so clearly devoid of it is beyond me. Most game developers are basically artist, we create to express what it is we are feeling. Unfortunately our audience can’t, or won’t empathize with what we create. A.I. Is one of the most complex systems, it literally takes a Doctorate to perform. Every time we add functionality to a game we limit how much space we can waste on A.I. Fancy Art, Models, and animations all take space away from A.I. Instead of Cry3 we could go Doom 1 and A.I. When we ask consultants, how do we make escort missions more real? The answer is, “the escortee should die at the most tragic moment.”
If you could come up with a new quest type I would love to hear it. But most suggestions are in fact nothing more than what is all ready on this list.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Yeah, count me in as not really understanding the point of this article or why it was promoted by MMORPG. It can pretty much be summarized as "I hate MMOs" and micdrop. I suspect we're going to see a "5 Best Types of MMO quests" article soon that pretty much repeats each topic above and why they're fun.
I get the feeling someone at MMORPG realized they didn't have enough articles to include in the email today, so this article was posted as filler.
There are two types of gamers on this site. RPG gamers who enjoy these quests, and FPS gamers who don't.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
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.
I think we all understood that to mean when your running your quest line hub to level and sudenly you get one that says kill this elite that takes 5 people to kill. In games like GW2 where there isn't tagging this isn't so bad but in other games they can be completely immersion breaking especialy a while after launch when you can't get anyone to kill the mob with you. Its poor design to force people to group once for something and then there is no incentive to do it ever again limiting the number of people willing to help.
We see MMOs as kids first dance, with solo'er on one side and grouper on the other. Elite quest are our way of introducing solo'er to potential group mates. Else they will do the game entirely without ever interacting with another player.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
I was going to ask what does that leave, then I remembered the entertainer quests in SWG. ESO has a quest where you have to jump to your death in order to complete it. Some games have drinking contest quests. I questioned whether this should be Locate.
As some one who leveled 3 Ents in SWG, the Ent missions where Deliver missions. You Delivered yourself to a performance location
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Quests should be optional if you wanted to do them, otherwise I would love a game where you just level by being just logged into the game and whatever action / quest / humor / dance you do reflects the type of character you will be building. No more level 1- 1000 needed.
So if I did a max of 50 push ups a day, I am building strength for my character, if I start designing homes (architecture), if i go out and just kill stuff like critters will skill at hunting if I go out and kill npc's / players (instant most wanted list and become like Simon Phoenix http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Simon_Phoenix), if I sit and just read books (not comics) my intellect sky rockets and I am the next Harry Potter.
It's the worst thing devs have ever tried to pass off as content ...ever.
To play Devil's Advocate: Dailies are a replacement for killing mob after mob to get your faction up. Which would you prefer?
Killing mobs yo. I can do it whenever. I can go at it whole day or not do it for a week. If only way to raise somekind of rep is to do dailies, well then, gotta do it. I understand dailies are a gating mechanic, but still, I don't like them. Specially if there's fucktons of them, and especially if they offer somekind of BiS or near BiS items.
Anyway, escort quests, man I hate those. The longest escort quest I had was 45 minutes of escorting the slowest NPC to have ever been made...and it only spawned a certain time of day. Annnnd it was easy to fail - dem elite mobs. And XP was very verrry precious in that game. It's been 6 years and I still remember this one quest.
Kill/collect, dunno, after so many years of MMOs, you just do them, hell, it's XP. I do hate it when they want inordinate amount of mobs killed or items collected, or yeah, items have 0,01% drop rate and crap like that. I do agree with the dude that wrote how stupid some of the collect quests are: collect cow hoofs -> every 5th cow has 1 hoof, WTF devs, rly.
Agree. :-) I'm not bothered by none of that 5 points. But ... hated always quests that STAT as single quests and that ENDS as elite quest requiring few days at some times to find group. Main problem I had with this kind of quests was Wow, original & BC. Later they removed this annoying kind of quests. No problem with then when there are a lot of players around but sooner or later as game grow up, expansions start to pile up ... that become virtually mission impossible.
How the hell did group quests end up on that list ???
Honestly in most games if I get a group quest I completely skip it and continue on, when I'm leveling in a new game I prefer playing alone so I don't feel rushed/slowed because of somebody else. I prefer playing the game instead of typing looking for group for "insert quest here".
I also dislike escort quests, though, kill & collect quests I don't mind (I'm a WoW player, don't judge me)
When all is said and done, more is always said than done.
I don't mind the Escort quests as long as the darn NPC can move as fast as you can. They're often just way too slow and I'm curious why they chose to do such a thing.
The talk quests are really annoying when the other person is across the room. Seriously, just f'n shout over there yourself ya lazy npc :P
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.
If we use that reasoning then this entire article is pointless. If you don't like them don't do them.
You just described the only 5 types of quests in MMOs. Worthless. As if I had to have more reasons to hate "The List", this is one of the worst excuses for a blog I have read in a long time. GG.
I'd like to see a MMORPG actually give you a quest without the instructions.
-----
Example:
The Quest: "The Goblins are planning an attack on the village. Stop them."
That's everything you have. Now you can seek out the Goblin village and kill all the Goblins. Or you ask around town where the Goblin village even is. Or you ask around town what their plans are. Or you steal their plans.
-----
Project Gorgon is alot like that. No "!" above peoples heads, some NPCs will ask you to do things for them, but only if you ask them if there is anything you can do for them, and there isn't any hand holding, directions, etc. Just figuring it out.
Comments
The quest I hate the most without a doubt are the ones where you have to go from Person A... then travel for two and half days to talk to Person B who instructs you to go back to Person A then back to B etc. These quests are 99% travelling and 1% talking to an npc for 1 second.
The second type of quest I hate are the ones where the cost of the quest is more than the reward. The ones that make you craft some item that requires you spend 10 gold on npc mats, and then rewards you with 5 silver.
Actually they forgot one, The Daily quests... Tied to rep, crafting, whatever,.. they get repetative and boring. So hoping Citadel of Sorcery breaks this mold.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
Wouldn't be so bad if travel in LOTRO wasn't so tedious in the first place. That's one of the main reasons I stopped playing the game, it took to long to get somewhere to actually do something.
Concerning the article, group quests I agree with in that groups shouldn't be mandatory. Grouping should be rewarding, difficulty and rewards should scale with number of players but also soloable for players who don't want to or can't find a group.
Really though, whether or not quests are tedious has a lot to do with how they are presented. Even kill quests and item gathering quests aren't bad if they feel like they make sense in the context provided.
Yeah, count me in as not really understanding the point of this article or why it was promoted by MMORPG. It can pretty much be summarized as "I hate MMOs" and micdrop. I suspect we're going to see a "5 Best Types of MMO quests" article soon that pretty much repeats each topic above and why they're fun.
I get the feeling someone at MMORPG realized they didn't have enough articles to include in the email today, so this article was posted as filler.
-=Star Wars Galaxies: Sunrunner=-
Roleplayer
-=World of Warcraft: Shadow Council=-
Funny thing is, we had an MMO that did this. It was called Asheron's Call. There were a few quests but unless you talked to a bar keep or a townsperson you might never know it existed. Now the game is dead because people seem to prefer questing...
And the one thing that is common between all 5 types?
"Quests that require absolutely zero brain activity from the person sitting at the computer."
See The Secret World for examples of interesting quests.
Real question is what else is there? What this list REALLY should be called: "I hate Questing", "I hate playing non-FPS games", or "I hate RPGs".
I know your gonna say, "But I love Sky rim-job." Cause you can do any thing you want to? Or what you really mean is anything you can do in an FPS? This list of anything you can do is actually very small. If you think about it.
I responded to the same type of post last week, so I'm going to copy/paste my response from there.
Take Guild Wars 2 for example – the opening for each race is incredibly immersive and engaging right from the start. No it's not any different, you're just easily fooled. If you think GW2 is not a WoW clone when it comes to quest, then you aren't qualified for writing or commenting about video games.
1. & 2. This is my absolute favorite mission type, and in fact it should have been your number one (Here it was). I saw a cartoon that compared WoW to GW2 (See above link). The WoW quest read, kill 10 bandits and collect 10 apples. The GW2 quest read, defend us from the bandits and rescue the stolen food. Now the WoW quest probably used the exact same words as the GW2 quest, but all anyone focuses on is the 10 of Name. A game is a GUI to a data base. Kill 10 of X is a goal that can be tracked and achieved. We could just say, “I hear town Y is in need of food go there and see if you can help.” On the way there you happen to pass apple tree. If the player has enough sense to investigate the trees, they learn they can pick the fruit. Picking the fruit triggers an attack from bandits. A smart player may realize the fruit is a way to help the starving village they are going to. A typical player will not, until they read the leveling guide another player has made. The typical player will arrive at hunger town with one apple or none. They hungry people will ask if your saw any food on the way here, and they will keep asking until they are feed. The player will kill NPC cats, dogs, chickens, sheep, and cows looking for easy food before going near those attacking bandits in the apple orchards. That is my idea of a “sandbox” kill 10 of X, collect 10 of Y quest.
3. This is also new. Most games start out with massive levels, where you have to travel some distance to get to the next NPC, These game levels are quickly redesigned, and you see NPC right next to each other or 3 meters away. Blame player test groups. Most asked for feature by players? Auto-Run & pathing to destination. Gamers ask, "When I get a quest, why can't I click on the on the mob name and the game runs my avatar to the hunting location." "When I am done, why can't I click on the Turning NPC's name and just auto run to them on the safest path?" why don't we see more of this in games? No everyone wants to spend money or space to develop it, but some are.
4. This is new. I have had many jobs in my life. I have worked with people 1 point above mentally challenged (Insert your preferred term here). And every time I show them the respect they deserve, and they are grateful for it. I was once told by a 45 year old labourer, that he expected to be ridiculed at every new job. I apologies to every 'elite gamer' who has to put up with grouping with his fellow human beings. These same 'elite gamers' are the ones we see cutting in to the front of a line waiting to make a left turn, or driving 80 on a 65 highway. "There’s always that one character that struggles to grasp basic concepts and you end up having to pick up the slack." Glad to see you understand how other feel about grouping with you.
5. This is another copy and paste. Empathy, why we should even try to nurture it in a community so clearly devoid of it is beyond me. Most game developers are basically artist, we create to express what it is we are feeling. Unfortunately our audience can’t, or won’t empathize with what we create. A.I. Is one of the most complex systems, it literally takes a Doctorate to perform. Every time we add functionality to a game we limit how much space we can waste on A.I. Fancy Art, Models, and animations all take space away from A.I. Instead of Cry3 we could go Doom 1 and A.I. When we ask consultants, how do we make escort missions more real? The answer is, “the escortee should die at the most tragic moment.”
If you could come up with a new quest type I would love to hear it. But most suggestions are in fact nothing more than what is all ready on this list.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
There are two types of gamers on this site. RPG gamers who enjoy these quests, and FPS gamers who don't.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
We see MMOs as kids first dance, with solo'er on one side and grouper on the other. Elite quest are our way of introducing solo'er to potential group mates. Else they will do the game entirely without ever interacting with another player.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
As some one who leveled 3 Ents in SWG, the Ent missions where Deliver missions. You Delivered yourself to a performance location
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Quests should be optional if you wanted to do them, otherwise I would love a game where you just level by being just logged into the game and whatever action / quest / humor / dance you do reflects the type of character you will be building. No more level 1- 1000 needed.
So if I did a max of 50 push ups a day, I am building strength for my character, if I start designing homes (architecture), if i go out and just kill stuff like critters will skill at hunting if I go out and kill npc's / players (instant most wanted list and become like Simon Phoenix http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Simon_Phoenix), if I sit and just read books (not comics) my intellect sky rockets and I am the next Harry Potter.
Anyways, some of you may catch my drift, I hope
Killing mobs yo. I can do it whenever. I can go at it whole day or not do it for a week. If only way to raise somekind of rep is to do dailies, well then, gotta do it. I understand dailies are a gating mechanic, but still, I don't like them. Specially if there's fucktons of them, and especially if they offer somekind of BiS or near BiS items.
Anyway, escort quests, man I hate those. The longest escort quest I had was 45 minutes of escorting the slowest NPC to have ever been made...and it only spawned a certain time of day. Annnnd it was easy to fail - dem elite mobs. And XP was very verrry precious in that game. It's been 6 years and I still remember this one quest.
Kill/collect, dunno, after so many years of MMOs, you just do them, hell, it's XP. I do hate it when they want inordinate amount of mobs killed or items collected, or yeah, items have 0,01% drop rate and crap like that. I do agree with the dude that wrote how stupid some of the collect quests are: collect cow hoofs -> every 5th cow has 1 hoof, WTF devs, rly.
Agree. :-) I'm not bothered by none of that 5 points. But ... hated always quests that STAT as single quests and that ENDS as elite quest requiring few days at some times to find group. Main problem I had with this kind of quests was Wow, original & BC. Later they removed this annoying kind of quests. No problem with then when there are a lot of players around but sooner or later as game grow up, expansions start to pile up ... that become virtually mission impossible.
Honestly in most games if I get a group quest I completely skip it and continue on, when I'm leveling in a new game I prefer playing alone so I don't feel rushed/slowed because of somebody else. I prefer playing the game instead of typing looking for group for "insert quest here".
I also dislike escort quests, though, kill & collect quests I don't mind (I'm a WoW player, don't judge me)
If we use that reasoning then this entire article is pointless. If you don't like them don't do them.
if you ask what's a good quest... try the 4th coming!
Yeah, it's old, but still have one of the best quest system I've seen in almost 20 years playing mmos and online games!
Sometimes they don't even make sense.
I remember an EQ 2 quest to collect 10 orcs heads, how the hell do only 1 in 4 orcs have heads?
Project Gorgon is alot like that. No "!" above peoples heads, some NPCs will ask you to do things for them, but only if you ask them if there is anything you can do for them, and there isn't any hand holding, directions, etc. Just figuring it out.
~I am Many~