Let's see...
I already had my Bard epic in EQ (prior to WoW coming out) and was attempting to help another Bard with part of the quest line and we somehow screwed it up. That sickening failure made me want to quit. This brings me to the challenge of a quest(line) producing fun, but frustrating technicalities can turn the experience into a raging dumpster fire. I do not want to have something like Grammarly running in order to progress a quest.
A quest, that was not a quest per se, was more faction-ish related. Doing the vanilla WoW grind to rank 14 (PVP) was something I considered a quest line of progression with phat loots at teh end. The group-centric nature of tackling that beast was epic in nature due to the logistics involved (herding pvpers=cats) and the time, skill and knowledge required. The fun was in crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women.
In ESO, the Rivenspire vampire quest line was fun for me due to the nature of the subject and the flow of the quests one into another.
Just a few examples to get the ball rolling.
Mage Epic, never completed, extremely rare drops and massive extensive raid required to get some of the items needed that no raid group had any interest in doing. The main problem is they put one of the key items very high up in the plane of sky and there was very little reason for guilds to go there. And guild cared about getting mages their epic because nobody liked pets in raids due to bad pathing.
Kilsin said:Developer Feedback - What's the hardest quest you've ever attempted and what made it so difficult? Were you able to complete it, and whether you did or not, most importantly, did you have fun? Let us know below.
The 8 Coldain Prayer Shawls because of the ridiculous amount of tradeskills required. Tailoring, Brewing, Baking, Fletching, Jewelrycraft, Blacksmithing. All needed to >=180 if you wanted any chance of success and if you really wanted to minimize failure, you gathered enough materials to do each shawl 2 or 3 times. Oh, then there were rare drops off rare spawns. Was it fun? #&%@% no it wasn't fun. It was tedious and expensive but you got, arguably, the best shoulder slot item for a caster for several expansions. If there had been other quests prior which required mulitple tradeskills it might have not come as such a shock, but clearly someone at SoE was upset that not enough people were doing tradeskills and shoved them all onto one quest.
Compare this to the ridiculously easy Coldain ring series of quests that could be done (rings 1-9) in a fraction of the time, required barely any tradeskills and you had a huge zone-wide event at the end which could earn your raid a bunch of loot.
I'm having a hard time thinking of a questline I found hard in terms of difficulty. I think one of the most satisfying quests for me was the questline for obtaining the dreadsteed mount for warlocks in classic WoW. I was sooo elated when I got that thing.
I'm sorry if that's not much help, but I don't find quests difficult or challenging like I do something like a dungeon or boss. They can be tedious, like requiring faction or skilltrades, but that's not the same as challenging. I think time invested into a quest is what really makes them memorable and endearing (afterwards) to us. If a quest requires max faction to complete and a player already has it when they pick up the quest, they'll feel very very differently than the person who grinded for days or weeks to get the faction needed specifically by that same quest.
I do also enjoy quests that have time limits where many things can go wrong. They can be incredibly frustrating, but feel fantastic when completed.
Most difficult ,but one not to replicate. Eyepatch of plunder in EQ, made difficult by a long random spawn with placeholders that was constantly camped.
Spent over 20 hours at that camp... never again!
Most fun & difficult: Planes of Power progression to plane of time. Long, linked quest with progressive rewards and an actual epic final boss (Although the final boss was easier than what came before!).
Great things were the accomplishment of doing it , congrats from other guilds & players and a feeling that it was 'quest complete' which is something rare in MMO.
Most fun and difficult 2: The Necro ?? epic in EQ where you had to go to the bottom of the hole zone with Snareks. We did this with a small overlevelled group in an empty zone , but it was still a challenge as we battled 20+ mobs at a time. At one point nearly everyone died, but we recovered at very low health with ranger heals and memory wipe, as the naked cleric pulled a small train of respawns back to our position. Was super fun, really chaotic 60 mins where everyone was playing to the limit and cutting it very close. I guess to replicate this quests should not have restrictions on player level / count and people should be able to make thier own fun. Plus returning to places you visited when you were lower level and owning them is always good.
By far the hardest quest I ever completed and I think ever tried was the Wizard epic in EQ. Mostly it was hard to get help. By the time I even started the quest I had already gotten a better item for the slot. It was really just something I wanted to complete. That is not a very motivating speech to get help from others that will get nothing other then the satisfaction of helping.
Fun was elusive. It was rewarding for sure to complete the tasks and finish it. I did have fun at times. Mostly I lost a lot of sleep camping spawns for days at a time to even get a chance to kill the mobs I needed. I think at one point I checked a spawn about every hour for like 3 days. Not the smartest decision making there.
If I wanted to have fun I would grab a few friends maybe a pickup or two to fill the group out and work our way into a deep dungeon in search of rare loot, gain some EXP and challenge ourselves. That is fun. Long frustrating quest… Not so much.
There is something to be said for the back burner reward. Or the back-burner attitude, provided there is enough rewards in the immediate and interim stages. immediate being today to a week. interim being 2weeks to 3-4 month stages, Back burner being 6 months to 1 year +
/Agree with the mage Epic, although I was one of those caught in the "bloop" where all mages level 46 (or 55?) and up got epics thrust into their spell books. I think some people knew someone in the dev side that was planning on doing it and word spread secretly. Suddenly had the Mage epic and the holy ale of brell spell that I could cast and I thought that was nice. I tried to keep it secret because I think an erudite was not supposed to be able to cast holy ale of brell. I still have it in my book but I cant cast it now. They must have done something somewhere.
The Shawl was not terrible if you took the time to find what tradeskills you could max or get high with small or cheap ingredients, like fishbone dart tool for fletching- up to 150 I think. AND can use for fish- multi tasker, Alton Brown would be proud- lol. Or tigeraptor hide stuff, to 150 tailoring, only problem was foraging for yew leaves whicn I could not do but I had to bribe rangers for those. everything else was not terrible to boost up, brewing- harvest mushrooms in kaladim for the Norrath version of OE 800, Minotaur hero brew. Even with alcohol tolerance maxed one of those still gets me loopy.
The MOST fun I had was the mnemonic of Khati shah although the 50/50 was a PITA. It took a long time (years) to get another group together to do that. It was a small, complex event that started with eliminating all the grimlings in grimling forest so that the vah shir took over and THEN you could get a book to fill with pearls to continue the quest. But inbetween that time someone could come in and make the grimlings come back so you would have to do it again to get the vah shir. But once inside and most people never made it down past the blood pool so they were supsised to see the bigger grimlings past the secret where you touch the gem on the statue forehead. Then there is this upstairs/downstairs event where you have to split up. Its frantic and hard and will make the healer hate you, lol but then opens a secret door in the floor and you have to move because normal respawns. Then you have the 50/50 to open the other door to the mini boss event. It had unique and rare-ish loots and the nice thing? is I was only after the lore item to finish the quest but the drops I could let everyone else have a go at. This made getting a group to help alot easier because I could say I'm only after the lore piece for a quest, anything else you guys can have. The nice thing? is after I completed the quest and showed the group and sent thanks, some would say they knew a class that might like it and I would always offer to help and put on friends list.
The only good quests are difficult quests. If they are easy then I'd just call them every day living, or tasks if they really need a name. When I approach a quest I shouldn't go into it thinking "Oh look, a quest, this is something that I should be able to do with little effort." It should be more like "Hmm, I wonder how I could go about this? What should I try first? Where should I go? Who should I talk to?" Etc.
A quest should be possible to fail, over and over and over, until eventually you find a way to advance. Maybe it takes 15 different play sessions to finally find the next step.
I guess I'm not really sure how to describe what I'm thinking. I'm fine with all kinds of different levels of difficulties in "quests," I just think there should be plenty of quests that are difficult enough that some people just don't figure them out. I have more fun with quests that require thought, attention, and time, than I do with quests that are just checking off boxes.
I've noticed that people often use the word "tedius" when describing difficult/challenging feats. I'm not sure why I think about these things differently but it seems I'm in the minority.
A quest that requires you to be at a certain faction isn't necessarily designed thinking "let's force them to spend weeks getting their faction up." I think it's designed more like "For people that already have their faction up, let's give them a quest."
A quest that requires 180+ in every trade skill wasn't designed to force players to spend months getting their tradeskills up, it was designed as an opportunity for those that did have their tradeskills up.
I imagine it definitely feels tedius if the only reason your working on the faction or the tradeskill is so that you can do that quest. It just feels off to me. You're taking something that is supposed to be considered a reward for a subset of players and treating it like it's a punishment for the rest of the group.
How do you balance that? If I had a much more creative brain I could probably give some suggestions, but I suppose the most basic is to have rewards for each subset of players. If group A gets a special quest line because they have amazing faction with Humans, then maybe group B should have a special quest line because they have amazing faction with Ogres. I don't think it's right for all players to expect all things, but I also think it's a tough balance to find.
Monk Epic 1.0 in EQ. Had a perfect combination of:
The thought of needing a larger raid would have been overly discouraging. Larger raids get plenty of other loot opportunities.
zelius99 said:SWG jedi quest was 10 times harder then any other mmo quest line ive played.
Little bit of a tease for those of us that have not tried it. Can you give some details on what made it so hard? Did they just use the same mechanics but much more of them or did they do something completly. new?
Honestly it was the first quest I ever did in EQ. Langseax of the Wolves. It had some tedium, luck and though not super hard it was interesting as well as challenging, especially for a lower level quest. The reward was really good for early EQ as well. Will always remember doing it with my friends help. We all had a ball even though it was a Warrior only end reward. We did it enough to get them some to sell.
Susurrus said:zelius99 said:SWG jedi quest was 10 times harder then any other mmo quest line ive played.
Little bit of a tease for those of us that have not tried it. Can you give some details on what made it so hard? Did they just use the same mechanics but much more of them or did they do something completly. new?
If I remember it right you had to master 5 of your random skills to master level out of like 32 skills, you could use a really rare holocron item to confirm one but it would consume the item.
After mastering all 5 you would become force sensitive and then meet an old man that would send you all over the game to remote locations and farm some other rare items.
At the end of this you could make jedi character but they were permadeath and if you were found out get a pvp bounty on your head.
If you died though you only needed to remake the dead jedi character and not go through the quest again atleast.
Kind of late but I will add one here.
Runescape Recipe for Disaster
Yes was fun, some parts of course were annoying, but by finishing the quest you get the best gloves in the game. Which makes all the hard work of months doing the quest feel special. and also bragging rights.
Will say quests in OSRS are so unique that I don't think I have seen them in any other MMO. One quest leads to another and if you see someone wearing Dragon Sq Shield you know that guy worked his azz off to be able to equip that piece of gear.
The hardest quests for me are the ones which are tedious and for solo. It's pretty much impossible for me to finish them. I'm not a big questing fan in general and usually steer clear of them, unless they are group content quests which are interesting.
The most challenging quests are probably quests from The Secret World. One required your character to die to solve it. That game had many very well designed quests that weren't kill x, find x, or simple fetch. Unfortunately, many of them were also made for solo, which is a non-starter for me.