Post by Morreion on Jan 22, 2010 9:50:14 GMT -5
The Daily Grind: Should MMOs be more or less reliant on questing? (Massively)
Quests in MMOs suck -- and it's your fault. (Dopass)
Questing has been entirely overdone to the point that you see phrases like 'quest grind' popping up among players. Indeed, how many read quests? Oh, it's another 'kill 10 of these, bring me 20 of those, deliver this to the guy with a huge yellow exclamation mark over his head' quest. Escort quests are more fun, but really, there's a limitation to the quest mechanic.
Quest games can be good; I think LOTRO is the best questing MMO out there. It tells a lore-filled story well. But. Quest-driven games are only one way to structure an MMO. And quests are more of a single-player mechanic, because, well, there's no other players in a single-player game. Who else are you going to interact with?
Quest-driven games tend to promote a mindless 'click on NPC, do what she says, click again, reward, rinse repeat' loop. Do this hundreds of times. This is a very mechanical process that leads players around by the nose in a channeled experience.
Really, this tends to come back to the theme park versus sandbox argument. Sandboxes tend to rely much lest on quests. Theme parks are full of them- players all doing the same thing in the same zones at the same time. Sort of like a factory work approach to 'fun'. This is an approach that is the tired old default mode that is frankly making me sick of the genre. Why not a world where you do what you want, create your own adventures with interactions with other players? Is that too scary to try? Or is having every player click on the same quest-givers in the same locations to do the same things without reading the quest text the ultimate game experience, because you don't have to think about it? Is that fun?
I'm guessing that very structured lead-you-around-by-the-nose games are more profitable because, let's face it, having a huge toolset to create your own fun takes too much thinking, time and effort. Easier to be a drone and not have an original thought. Plus, if all you do is hundreds of quests, you don't even have to acknowledge other players around you in that massive multiplayer game you're in! Whoooopeee!
Like I said, I'm not against quest-based games; LOTRO is my favorite game based on that model. What I am against is the idea that MMOs can only do the same quest/level/class/theme park experience over and over again. The player base is very jaded and new MMOs are flopping left and right. I think a good reason for that is that we can't get past the same stale tired mechanics, like the Game Of A Thousand Quests.
Please devs, try an occasional fresh approach. A game with a small amount of quests or even no quests at all would be appreciated; that way I'd have much less quest text not to read, and I'd probably have a more memorable experience that wasn't totally pre-scripted.
Today's question is an interesting one, as we want to know what you guys think of quests. Do you think MMOs should be more reliant on questing, using quests to drive story and other gameplay elements, or should they be less reliant on questing, seeking to entertain the player through a more varied set of systems?
Quests in MMOs suck -- and it's your fault. (Dopass)
Single Player Games do everything they can to tell the story first. In fact, this "trick" is why single player games try to hide the objectives from players (to integrate the objectives into the world, if you prefer). The story and the quests serve each other -- you feel like you're a part of the story by completing the quests. The two exist in an intricate weave of exposition, action and reward. In a good single player game, exposing more of the story is a reward (think of unlocking cutscenes in games from the 90s or collecting audio logs or diaries in games of today)... but in MMOs, we do everything we can to make sure the story takes a back seat -- again, to make the game more accessible to everyone.
As far as the industry decision makers are concerned, you don't want to know the story, you only want to play the game (and they don't believe the two are related in your minds). If my own conversations with fellow gamers are any indication, the decision makers of this industry aren't entirely wrong about this. How many of you even bother to read the quest text in an MMO, at all? More of you are saying you don't bother than do, I'd wager.
...In case you haven't noticed, this bothers me. If I blame you, the gamers, for not bothering to read the text and thus failing to become immersed in the game world, I have to also blame me, the game designer, for not only telling you that's exactly what you should do, but in many cases not even giving you the choice to do anything else. After all, a big part of my job is to teach you the player what matters and what doesn't in my world and I'm doing that all the time, even if I don't mean to.
...If you don't read the text, the best we can do is tell you how to succeed - to make the objectives easy to see and simple enough to understand without lengthy explanation that you'll read them even though you won't read anything else. I don't know about you, but as a gamer, I don't want simple objectives. I want deep, complex, sophisticated objectives that leave me a lot of room to decide how I'm going to complete them. I want to discover for myself what I need to do to succeed and I want to be rewarded for being clever, when I do. I want to win not because I followed your instructions, but because I was awesome enough to win on my own terms.
As far as the industry decision makers are concerned, you don't want to know the story, you only want to play the game (and they don't believe the two are related in your minds). If my own conversations with fellow gamers are any indication, the decision makers of this industry aren't entirely wrong about this. How many of you even bother to read the quest text in an MMO, at all? More of you are saying you don't bother than do, I'd wager.
...In case you haven't noticed, this bothers me. If I blame you, the gamers, for not bothering to read the text and thus failing to become immersed in the game world, I have to also blame me, the game designer, for not only telling you that's exactly what you should do, but in many cases not even giving you the choice to do anything else. After all, a big part of my job is to teach you the player what matters and what doesn't in my world and I'm doing that all the time, even if I don't mean to.
...If you don't read the text, the best we can do is tell you how to succeed - to make the objectives easy to see and simple enough to understand without lengthy explanation that you'll read them even though you won't read anything else. I don't know about you, but as a gamer, I don't want simple objectives. I want deep, complex, sophisticated objectives that leave me a lot of room to decide how I'm going to complete them. I want to discover for myself what I need to do to succeed and I want to be rewarded for being clever, when I do. I want to win not because I followed your instructions, but because I was awesome enough to win on my own terms.
Questing has been entirely overdone to the point that you see phrases like 'quest grind' popping up among players. Indeed, how many read quests? Oh, it's another 'kill 10 of these, bring me 20 of those, deliver this to the guy with a huge yellow exclamation mark over his head' quest. Escort quests are more fun, but really, there's a limitation to the quest mechanic.
Quest games can be good; I think LOTRO is the best questing MMO out there. It tells a lore-filled story well. But. Quest-driven games are only one way to structure an MMO. And quests are more of a single-player mechanic, because, well, there's no other players in a single-player game. Who else are you going to interact with?
Quest-driven games tend to promote a mindless 'click on NPC, do what she says, click again, reward, rinse repeat' loop. Do this hundreds of times. This is a very mechanical process that leads players around by the nose in a channeled experience.
Really, this tends to come back to the theme park versus sandbox argument. Sandboxes tend to rely much lest on quests. Theme parks are full of them- players all doing the same thing in the same zones at the same time. Sort of like a factory work approach to 'fun'. This is an approach that is the tired old default mode that is frankly making me sick of the genre. Why not a world where you do what you want, create your own adventures with interactions with other players? Is that too scary to try? Or is having every player click on the same quest-givers in the same locations to do the same things without reading the quest text the ultimate game experience, because you don't have to think about it? Is that fun?
I'm guessing that very structured lead-you-around-by-the-nose games are more profitable because, let's face it, having a huge toolset to create your own fun takes too much thinking, time and effort. Easier to be a drone and not have an original thought. Plus, if all you do is hundreds of quests, you don't even have to acknowledge other players around you in that massive multiplayer game you're in! Whoooopeee!
Like I said, I'm not against quest-based games; LOTRO is my favorite game based on that model. What I am against is the idea that MMOs can only do the same quest/level/class/theme park experience over and over again. The player base is very jaded and new MMOs are flopping left and right. I think a good reason for that is that we can't get past the same stale tired mechanics, like the Game Of A Thousand Quests.
Please devs, try an occasional fresh approach. A game with a small amount of quests or even no quests at all would be appreciated; that way I'd have much less quest text not to read, and I'd probably have a more memorable experience that wasn't totally pre-scripted.
