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Quest helpers and trackers are ruining mmorpgs
madnessman13
Member UncommonPosts: 91
it's true! I remember when I first played WoW back before they added the quest tracker or helper or whatever you want to call it. It actually required you to read the text. god forbid you actually have to read something in a mmorpg and do a little detective work. it's a role playing game, thats the reason you're playing it, is for the exploration and discovery and lore. Not to go from quest hub to quest hub constantly checking your world map to see where it tells you to go. I remember it being a process and the satisfaction I got from completely the quest on my own, yeah it took longer but it was more immersive and getting to end game actually meant something now it seems like old news.
Another thing i'v noticed recently and this is actually about wild star and a few others like tera and swtor is the transition from zone to to zone is awful. Just the other day i got done with wilderrun in wildstar and teleported back to the main city then teleported to the new zone... what fun is that? you miss the whole world teleporting from spot to spot. Yeah it's fast but it takes away from the open world experience. WoW had it right with all the interconnecting gryffin rides and summoning stones. Yeah once it again it took longer but it was an actual game not just a set of rules
madnessman
Comments
If by "MMO" you mean YOUR immersion, then sure.
What prevents you of reading the quest test, ignore helpers and find things by your own?
What forces you to use instant teleport? cant you go by foot?
Play the way you like it, if the mmo dont allow that, then is time to change and look for something that fits your play style.
Isnt that simple?
"Y'ALL GET OFF MY LAWN !"
Lol, I sympathize with the OP actually, but I also understand why things went this way. There's just too many players that are not interested in the lore or story of MMORPG's and/or don't care the slightest about immersion. To them the "open world experience" is just an unfocused waste of time.
The inevitable consequence of increased visual guidance and "quest helper's" is that the quest descriptions and dialogue become so trivial that they are basically useless. You can no longer play the game without the helping mechanisms, because the quest text has been watered-down so much that it tells you nothing of value.
You sometimes have the option to turn quest trackers off. I don't do that, but I do turn off the sparkle path some MMOs give you.
As for your second point... yes, I like the way WoW did it. An MMO should fee like a virtual world. Having small, unconnected zones can work, but it depends on the game setting. For me it worked in Neverwinter, but not in SWTOR. In Neverwinter when you jump between zones, it just feels like you're skipping hours of uneventful travel through the countryside. In SWTOR on the other hand, it feels very limited to only see a few acres of each planet, the same few acres every time you visit.
^^^ Exactly what SpottyGekko said. even if you turn off the quest tracker in most games you still can't get away from all the tips and hints and arrows they use to guide you through the game. Quest text has been watered down severely because they know a majority of the players don't read it. they just accept, open world map, go toward the closest quest and then click around for a few moments and find what they need and move on.
madnessman
Imo there are at least 2 types of immersion in a mmo, the relation with npcs and the relation with other players. With npcs i like single player games or something like follow the story in TSW, usually in mmos i want immersion with other players so yeah, i ignore the quests as much i can. About instante travel we need to look case by case if interfear or not with players immersion.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Is it the helpers and trackers that are diluting the questing experience, or is it the overwhelming number of quests that players are getting barraged with that makes it difficult to follow or even care about a single one? I think it's the latter.
I think that when a player has fewer quests to follow at once, players get more interested and invested in what is happening in the quest, especially when the quests are relevant to the main story arc or actual occurrences in game. The Secret World seems to handle this very well. Conversely, there are games like Wildstar where, even if you wanted to follow a particular storyline, the world layout and inundation of quests makes it very difficult to do. You actually have to work against progression and logical flow of travel to follow any particular quest path.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I believe this is related to the human psyche.
Basically you have a lot of people who just want to click like yahoos. Everything that isn't solved by quickly clicking is not fun (frustrating waste of time).
These people would try old MMORPGs and spam the chat channel constantly with where is x mob. Someone would reply it's northwest "In WoW this would be a small paragraph summon everything up so that you don't have to read the lore
". Then the person would say I still can't find it (/quit).
These are the people who dominate MMOs now and bring in the money.
I think this is similar to anything in life. If people were willing to put in some effort (like exercising a little every day) they would start to become better at it. Once they become better/accustomed to it they might actually start to enjoy reading, exploring, and problem solving. The problem is they can't be bothered. To me the excuse of I have to work hard is pretty poor. Usually if you work hard and are good at solving problems your mind will crave solving new ones.
Because if he did, he'd level slower than his peers and miss out on all the fun...
What's ruining MMOs is impatience... it's like you've got hot coals under your feet or something. The game isn't going anywhere. The big bad boss will still be in the same instance waiting for you 10 years from now. Killing him today or tomorrow makes no difference at all.
Slow down... drink less caffeine... pace yourself... try leveling backwards... you can't run backwards!
You forgot one major component to that. "....and miss out on all the fun, and wouldn't be able to complain about a lack of content."
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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The problem is not with quest trackers, the problem is games that make you need to race to end game so you can start playing the 'real game'. Do away with end game and people won't need to race anywhere. Besides, when I played vanilla wow back in te day when there was no quest trackers you'd just go to wowhead or similar so that you knew where to kill 10 rats or 6 boar meat, god forbid you were killing the wrong rats...
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Absolutely not, it saves me the trouble of having a quest guide open on another screen. A quest to level MMO without quest markers is absolutely disgusting.
I think the auto path to quest objective feature in some browser games is actually really great, takes all the effort out of the no effort quests.
If the quests are optional/not the best xp then I just don't do them.
Waiting for:
The Repopulation
Albion Online
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
I remember when LotRO was young, the Old Forest section of the map was fairly vague. No paths or anything, just a blob of trees on the map. It was a veritable maze of paths and loops and dead ends. And players complained. About getting lost. In the Old Forest. Think about that for a moment. So Turbine changed it, a nice zoomable map that showed you exactly where you were in the Old Forest and how to get exactly wherever you needed to. *facepalm*
Quest helpers and trackers have a shared culprit with the above, I imagine.
Hah ya, god forbid you try make players use their brain in your game. If those types played chess, they'd complain that every game piece should be able to move like the queen.
Out of any response I'm more inclined to agree with this one, but for different reasons than those stated. Early on it seemed MMO's were designed in a way where the players helped each other cooperatively, however as with everything in life A-holes had to muck it all up. SO instead of help many players were receiving ridicule from their peers for asking questions, leading devs to take said responsibility from the players hand. I really think it's as simple as that, too many have a problem with playing nice.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Running around in hope to stumble on the thing you need because of crappy directions =/= using your brain, any idiot can do it.
another one of these post, about what is the "correct" way to play.
almost every mmo for the past decade have quest trackers and helpers, gosh, maybe the majority wants it.
Don't worry, it will get worse.
In Perfect worlds games you click on the quests and your character runs there by herself. Soon a feature to be in every game.
To be honest is part of the problem with trackers the fact that they do very badly together with he simple idiot quests we had since Meridian 59 (kill 10 rats in the moat, take this message to my brother who are 10 feets west of me). With long and advanced quests they are far less annoying (but still not good).
I think MMOs have gotten just a bit too user friendly and that kills the exploration from the game.