I play different games if I want a story, so I would say relatively simple and straightforward is what works for me in MMO's. I'm hoping this game isn't heavily quest based, though - a few quests here and there are just fine. I would also prefer they take a long time to complete. Not like a few hours, more like a few days or even a week.
A good quest is a quest thats either fun to do, or has purpose beit keys for locked off areas, items, or just simple experience boosters. I think the teir 1 armor in EQ which you could start doing around level 30 that being crafted/ivy etched/totemic etc, were great mid-game to end=game quests which forced you to journey the world find items which were all hinted at in dialog, then you reaped a for the time pretty good reward, also the keying quests were also great moderately did the same thing - earned you some experience and a gateway to possibly better items if you found enough ambitious players as you were to go get them, and then just the simple experience boosters where you could camp an area get random items that at the end your of camp you could turn in for a little more experience, these are all great and im sure you could expand as you guys are with abilities and such, i know in WoW doing the warrior quests at level 10 for defensive stance, taunt, and a sweet tunic was a great experience with great rewards. Im not a huge fan of currency quest as i think all the currency in circulation should have came out of an NPC's pocket via death or trade, i guess some currency reward wouldnt be bad as long as it was negligable.
Asya said:
Just wanted to add something:
One thing I hate the most in games nowadays is that you outlevel way too quickly the gear, for instance in SWToR you looked really bad ass at lvl10 then at 11-12-13 you start getting different pieces of gear and you start looking like a clown because the looks you like from the previous tier is no longer there.
I would love if there was a way to TRANSMOG just like in Diablo3 the gear to what you like the most, they (Blizzard) understood this issue.
This a hundred times. I love getting new gear upgrades just not every five minutes. I'd like to see gear get a bit more mileage before we start tossing it off to the scrap pile. As for the clown-like appearance, one thing I like that SWTOR added later was the option to click your gear window and have the pieces match colors to make them more matching in appearance. But a good dye system would go a long way.
There's a lot of good responses here on quests as well. And while I agree with Sorte to some extent that it shouldn't be the primary means of gaining experience (we don't need another quest hub hopper), I'm not opposed to it giving at least a little bit. That said, I think some of the classic quest desis like those of the epic class quests and the Coldain Ring War could get a modern day take while keeping that old school feel and even be tied into the Perception system to make things a bit more interesting. Pantheon has a chance to do something many more recent MMORPGs don't do and that's make quests meaningful, fun, and important without being the key means of progression.
To further the idea I posted earlier I would break what is usually lumped together into the “quest category into three different NPC interactions.
TLDR: Quests are story and or Epic/Class quest only. Faction tasks are the only way to get faction and only reward faction, if you don't want the faction then you never need to do them. Contracts can build another way to play within Pantheon without directly adventuring and a full NPC guild system can fuel it.
The quest of a Knight Errant.
Knight Errant quests are your classic longer story quests. Ideally they would be one time through that the choices matter and effect the game world, at least for your character. Errant quests are great for introducing game lore, making a player feel attached to story elements, and rewarding major items. Good Errant Quests are the hardest and most time consuming quests to write with very limited return on developer time as by their definition you can only do them once. That being said an MMO without good Errant Quests is just a murder hobo romp through a fantasy world. Errant quests are also the only type of quest I would award combat experience for.
I could see each class having a specific Errant Quest every 10 levels and you cannot unlock the ability to go past that level until you have completed your Class Errant quest. Your choices through the levels dictate what your max level Class Errant Quest become.
The task of a good citizen of X
Citizen tasks I think are usually considered the most annoying and pointless of quests. They usually involve a lot of running around talking to people and killing x number of local story driven enemies. Citizen quests tend to be very formulaic and repeated at each new point of interest. While Citizen Quests are pretty bland I think they still have their place.
In order to have Citizen Quests not only be acceptable but actually meaningful to have done I would do two things. First I would make Citizen Quests only reward faction and or open interactions with certain NPCs, (its about who you know, not what you know). Secondly I would not award faction for killing mobs. If you want to raise your faction with a group you need to actively work towards it or bring some proof back that you did kill 2345 orcs. With these two changes Citizen quests have meaning and will give a reward that cannot really be gotten any other way making high faction meaningful as well. Additionally if you do not happen to care about your faction in most cities then you can bloody well skip the repetitive Citizen Quests.
A business contract
A business contract quest is exactly what it sounds like. You are being requested to go get, deliver or destroy something in exchange for some tangible reward. Contract quests are great ways to facilitate both trading only characters and crafting only characters. It gives them something to do and a way to advance without necessarily going out to adventure. I would have contract quests only reward resources of one type or another and no combat experience.
Secondarily I would add NPC guilds/unions that keep track of the contracts you complete and how many you fail. Rather than faction with these guilds you have reputation. Based on your reputation with a specific guild they may offer you more lucrative contracts or just give you more to choose from. There could be many benefits to having high reputation with guilds.
NPC Guilds
To make Guild reputations different from City/Race factions I would do three things. First, I would have failing to complete contracts be fairly painful to your reputation, roughly 10 to 1 so don't take a contract you are not positive you can complete. This will also add excitement to quests that may be hard to complete but reward something nice and a lot of reputation because the game knows it is hard.
Second, I would have reputation decay over time. It's a lot like “what have you done for me lately”, if you have not completed contracts with a guild lately they begin to forget about until eventually they forget about you entirely. To counter act the time decay I would institute lifetime partnership contracts. Based on your tier of reputation you can purchase a lifetime partnership contract, I would set these as very expensive and only guard to the level bellow the contract was purchased at. As you increase your tier you can upgrade your partnership level. So long as you do not take any contracts from an embargoed guild you will never drop bellow X tier due to decay over time.
Third, Guild WARS. Rather than ripping off a trademark name I am referring to an ongoing narrative between the different guild. Based on the total number and type of contracts completed in the previous time increment the relative strengths of the different guilds change. Basically the strong try and take out the weak and the weak gang up to stop the strong from getting too strong. Allied guilds will have joint contracts and or give each other assistance. Neutral guilds will not side either way. Enemy guild will embargo each other and try and offer incentives for players to trash their faction with the enemy and come to them. This could end up being a tool for Pantheons narrative or it could almost be its own stand alone game within a game.
Anyway I can't seem to post without writing a wall of text. Hopefully it wasn't too painful.
Trasak
I've recently picked up ESO with my husband, and though we've only just started playing, I have to say that so far I'm quite impressed with how they've handled questing/leveling. I haven't encountered a single "Collect 10 bear butts" quest yet! Everything is tied to little stories, some innocuous (like a mage and an alchemist getting in a quarrel over who is the better healer) and some more significant (like uncovering a conspiracy to disrupt treaty agreements, or an NPC taking a relic and accidentally unleashing a creepy sorcerer who steals people's bodies to wear as clothes). We've even encountered some situations where we could choose one or the other quest ending. We've not gotten far, so I'm not sure what kind of impact those choices will have, but it's neat anyway.
It also proves to me that questing and leveling in MMOs doesn't have to rely upon those "Collect 10 bear butts" quests at all. Take note, VR!
That's a lot to quote but some good ideas there Trasak. I particularly like the "Guild Wars" one. One thing I would add is something that is a bit of a take on something from the original Defiance. Their vendor machines had items that would refresh every hour or two. I think for certain tasks and quests like you mentioned something could be augmented with a take on that. Say for example that you can always go and take on basic tasks/quests from a list provided by these guilds, NPCs, or what have you. But every few hours these lists will refresh and there may be a very small chance that a rare quest or task will appear. The rare task would be based on your faction and could provide a chance to earn a substantially better reward or perhaps even just a gateway object to a larger quest. This would provide incentive to not only work on these quests, but to also check back regularly.
Imagine a business contract to take out an adventurer acquiring a special artifact for a rival guild. That quest leads you through a series of events and battles to gain information on his whereabouts. And eventually it leads you down into the depths of a dungeon where he went to retrieve said object. You and your group venture down and somewhere down there at some point in a random location (maybe even a location that someone with Perception tracked footprints to), an NPC will spawn just for your group. It's the guy you've been looking for. He knows that you've been tracking him and is on alert, so you can maybe engage in dialogue to obtain the artifact or alternatively kill him. Upon looting the corpse you find the artifact and a portion of a map. You return the item and get your reward that gains influence for your faction while weakening others. As a bonus, you later learn that the map portion you looted too was a rare drop and part of Pantheon's version of the Eyepatch of Plunder. :) And that starts you on a new, longer, and more epic quest to find the rest of the map.
Not fully fleshed out of course, but it's a thought.
Kratuk said:*A bunch of good ideas from Kratuk*
As far as the available contracts based on your current reputation I was thinking of something along the lines of a classified adds board at the different NPC guild halls. I could see different guild halls having different tiers of contracts. One type would be always available, another type would be X number available per X time period and when they all have been taken no one else can have them, response contracts which come up when one trigger or another happens that you could possibly learn how to trigger. Lastly rare requests with the highest difficulty and highest reward and your reputation controls if you can see them.
NPC guilds themselves could definitely be a source for acquiring semi Errant Quests in addition to standard contracts though I would try an limit the reward to having something to do with the guild system and not specifically a reward raiders would feel they need to get. The idea is to build in a second way to play not increase the amount you “need” to play to have a finished character.
I don't think quests should be a primary way to advance...anything. They can round out the world, fill in gaps, and there should be awesome "epic" quests, and such, but I hate few things more than being told what to go do in a virtual world. If the world is worth exploring, you don't need a bulletin board of quests that sends people out to various places. Those who explore will find awesome things without being led around by their noses by a quest journal.
If you're exploring and find a cave behind a waterfall and fight your way to the back and find a named mob, nobody told you to go there. Maybe you heard about the cave from a friend who said some nice loot dropped and YOU decided to make the venture, or maybe you just happened upon it. That is organic gameplay. Speaking for myself, I'm likely to spend TIME in this cave, creating an attachment to it. I will kill multiple spawn cycles, trying to find more named mobs, trying to get the rare drop.
If you are in that cave solely because you got a bounty quest to kill the rabid bear, as soon as you kill it, you're going to leave and go run somewhere else, whatever is next on your quest hit list. I think that stinks. That's how every other game works right now. It shrinks the world and doesn't promote the creation of attachment and long lasting memories.
Keno Monster said:I don't think quests should be a primary way to advance...anything. They can round out the world, fill in gaps, and there should be awesome "epic" quests, and such, but I hate few things more than being told what to go do in a virtual world.
I get what you're saying. On the other hand, the alternative to quests providing XP is... ugh, grinding mobs. Which is just utterly distasteful to me.
Naunet said:I get what you're saying. On the other hand, the alternative to quests providing XP is... ugh, grinding mobs. Which is just utterly distasteful to me.
It would be interesting if VR had something like "Encounter Exp" rather than just mob killing exp. An example would be a single mob only awards its base experience. A pair of mobs that are linked will provide slightly more than double the base. A set of 4 mobs that need to be pulled together, CCed and tanked strategically will provide more than twice what 4 mobs singularly would. Additionally you could add in bonus experience for fighting near a hazard or completing some world objective (think capture the flag).
It would still be mostly killing monsters for combat experience but more than just the simple single pull and grind.
Kilsin said:What, in your opinion, makes a good questline and what do you prefer as quest rewards? #PRF #MMORPG #Communitymatters
On Itemization:
I agree with the thoughts expressed on not outleveling your reward. However that speaks to itemization more then anything. One of the impressive feats of EQ was that just because a new expansion
comes out does not make the previous expansions irrelevant. ie. You were still adventuring and doing dungeons for specfic items (Fungi Tunic). In the same vein you could do your velious armor quests and still do other quests that would make improvements to pieces of armor or fill in the gaps. And there were a lot of gaps. A necklace, 2 rings... Shoulders, lots of pieces that werent included in your armor set. Bracer of Benevolance anyone?
There were times that you might keep multiple pieces because of the resitances built into them.
On Questlines:
I think the Burning Rapier into the Rogue Epic was perhaps a great story line. But I love the idea of neat quest mechanics. Lets not just kill to complete. Lets pickpocket a mob in the bottom of a dungeon, charm an adversary to make them go along, fake our own deaths with feign death. Would love to see more abilities come into play. Maybe poison an NPC (can you tell I played a rogue) I love the idea of a quest that can only be completed by a few classes easily but by any class the hard way. Say a mob that paths at the bottom of a dungeon. Hes week to a backstab and can be oneshot between other sentry mobs and taken out with out being noticed. Or charmed, etc.... (a couple different classes could have a way to complete the quest) A group could also work there way down there and just take him out if thats whats needed.
The Book of Souls run in EQ was by far one of the most intense moments for any rogue especially if they did the run solo with just a wizard teleporting them in.
The end of the Epic was also great. You could Kill the General and complete as normal (Ragebringer). Or betray the quest giver and get the items that the General has as thanks. (High Elf Illusion Mask)
Having played both an enchanter and a rogue quite a bit I could go on and on about using their abilities to make the quest play fun. Ie... You have an NPC that your supposed to guard and he panics. You can either brute force kill all the mobs hes going to train on to you. Or you could mez, memblur him til its safe and shortcut it.
So what makes a good quest? Well not always killing X to get Y. More incusion and specialization to classes, incorporating abilities into completing quests by design.
Slightly off topic - I will give the somewhat disconcerting opinion that most quests should not be good quests at all. Not in the sense discussed in this thread.
It takes time and effort to come up with good quests and scatter them all around a large world. Yet I consider quests a sine qua non of a good MMO.
Not, repeat NOT, in the sense of something you can do 50 of and be at maximum level. Not quests in a golden path from level 1 to maximum level. Not quests as the only efficient way to level.
But going back to the roots of the genre - I think of MMOs as being roleplaying experience to an extent even when we do not "roleplay". Spending a week killing bears - over and over and over and over again for 3xp a kill or 50 copper pieces a hide is not roleplaying. Finding a NPC offering a small reward to kill 5 bears is much more so. It adds interaction with the world and gives a sense of what is going on in the world. Or at least one small town. Or a NPC offering a quest to recover an item on a body dragged off by a bear. Or a NPC offering a reward to *protect* bears from poaching or from local extinction at the hands of a wyvern.
Far too simple and straightforward to be "good" quests as this thread uses the term but the developers can throw literally thousands of this type of quest covering every town in the game and they will add a truly mindboggling feeling of being in a real world where the locals have their own local concerns that you can help with, impede or ignore.
Not "hero of the world" quests as in LOTRO or EQ2 or SWTOR or Rift or Conan or ....... Things that ordinary people want done for ordinary reasons.
OMG THIS
Celandor said:If we're using EQ as a baseline, one thing I'd like to see are more quests with significant negative faction hits. If you need to kill a humanoid for the quest, his aunts/uncles/cousins and his dog should hate you for a long long time. Nor should there be any silly quests like turning in sandwiches to a guard to redeem yourself for committing such a heinous act. "I'm sorry I killed your father, have a popsicle and we can be friends." So I guess what I want to see are more consequences and that risk/reward also has a cost/benefit element. I should think twice before taking on every task where someone promises me a magic ring if I will serve them. Related to this, toss in a few quests where you take some pretty heavy faction hits along the way but repair them on completion. Let there be a penalty for failure to complete.
I know that inventory management is part of a good MMO, but for a quest that might take months to complete, I'd rather not have two bags filled with quest sub-components. Have a few consolidation points in the quest line where six items can become one, even if the consolidated item is not equipable (ie a modest sword as a sub-reward along the way to your epic sword of wootness).
Certainly, the best quests are, as Kratuk mentions, infused with lore and make you feel like you're doing something, if not heroic, then at least contributing to some sort of storyline.
Don't have quests that involve slow static ground spawns where you're going to have 5 players sitting on a spot waiting for it to appear. If something is only going to appear every 20 hours, then make it harder to find, move it around and give it placeholders so it takes considerable effort to locate - rather than hours to stare at the same green patch of grass.
For quest mobs (or even mobs that just drop a decent item that players are going to want to camp) make them spawn in different locations with placeholders. It's a lot more fun to work to find a mob than it is to set your six hour timer, sit beside a lake and wait for the barbarian to pop so you can steal his fishbone earring. (ie think Pyzjn rather than Hadden) Rather than making mobs/items rare by setting long respawn timers, let us work for it. Eliminate AFK camping.
I like quests that have some sort of later reference or follow-up. So, you've got your epic wand now. That shouldn't be your career end goal. Let the new item contribute to the perception system so that maybe a wizard in the great library sees my gear and offers me a task.
I love travel and collection style quests where you start the quest and leave it on the back burner while you head out on other adventures. Every once in awhile I'd like the perception system to notice that I'm part way through one of those quests and give me a clue that there's a component nearby that I should keep my eye out for.
I think the bulk of quests should be multi-part. Anything where I do something for 15 minutes then go get a reward might as well be "kill 20 rats".
I also agree that you should not receive experience for completing the quest itself. The reward is the quest item, the faction that it might yield along the way and the pile of fun you had doing it.
dorotea said:Slightly off topic - I will give the somewhat disconcerting opinion that most quests should not be good quests at all. Not in the sense discussed in this thread.
It takes time and effort to come up with good quests and scatter them all around a large world. Yet I consider quests a sine qua non of a good MMO.
Not, repeat NOT, in the sense of something you can do 50 of and be at maximum level. Not quests in a golden path from level 1 to maximum level. Not quests as the only efficient way to level.
But going back to the roots of the genre - I think of MMOs as being roleplaying experience to an extent even when we do not "roleplay". Spending a week killing bears - over and over and over and over again for 3xp a kill or 50 copper pieces a hide is not roleplaying. Finding a NPC offering a small reward to kill 5 bears is much more so. It adds interaction with the world and gives a sense of what is going on in the world. Or at least one small town. Or a NPC offering a quest to recover an item on a body dragged off by a bear. Or a NPC offering a reward to *protect* bears from poaching or from local extinction at the hands of a wyvern.
Far too simple and straightforward to be "good" quests as this thread uses the term but the developers can throw literally thousands of this type of quest covering every town in the game and they will add a truly mindboggling feeling of being in a real world where the locals have their own local concerns that you can help with, impede or ignore.
Not "hero of the world" quests as in LOTRO or EQ2 or SWTOR or Rift or Conan or ....... Things that ordinary people want done for ordinary reasons.
I bolded the part I really appreciated above.
Maybe even make these location type quests be keyed for ONCE, instead of turning in 200 Greater Lightstones, you can turn in 4. Then the quest giver says "Thank you, you have done exactly as I asked" and gives a small amt of xp and then no longer has that quest available to that character.
Maybe it keys a second quest of a more hard nature, but you wont have people farming GL's to level an alt from 1-15 with them.
dorotea said:But going back to the roots of the genre - I think of MMOs as being roleplaying experience to an extent even when we do not "roleplay". Spending a week killing bears - over and over and over and over again for 3xp a kill or 50 copper pieces a hide is not roleplaying. Finding a NPC offering a small reward to kill 5 bears is much more so. It adds interaction with the world and gives a sense of what is going on in the world. Or at least one small town. Or a NPC offering a quest to recover an item on a body dragged off by a bear. Or a NPC offering a reward to *protect* bears from poaching or from local extinction at the hands of a wyvern.
I disagree. RP is a way players can choose to play and it doesn't need game-generated quests. Farming bears can be RP if you really want it to be (some bear hatred or traumatic backstory perhaps). Sure, well-crafted narratives can really add a lot to RP with, but its not a prerequisite.
Shake 'n' Bake kill X or Fetch quests are so dull that, for me, they pull me out of my suspension of disbelief and make the world feel less real. If the kill number feels arbitrary and my actions don't noticeably diminish/ remove the targeted npc spawn, it doesn't feel like I actually did anything. That makes the game feel less alive to me, since nothing I do matters.
Counterfleche said:dorotea said:But going back to the roots of the genre - I think of MMOs as being roleplaying experience to an extent even when we do not "roleplay". Spending a week killing bears - over and over and over and over again for 3xp a kill or 50 copper pieces a hide is not roleplaying. Finding a NPC offering a small reward to kill 5 bears is much more so. It adds interaction with the world and gives a sense of what is going on in the world. Or at least one small town. Or a NPC offering a quest to recover an item on a body dragged off by a bear. Or a NPC offering a reward to *protect* bears from poaching or from local extinction at the hands of a wyvern.
I can't disagree with any of this. Ideally, if I complete a quest or task to kill 10 bears the area will be free of bears any time I visit at least for a few game months and the NPC will thank me or ignore me, not ask me to kill more bears. But even without this - to me, killing the bears for a reason feels more immersive than just slaughtering themn by the hundreds for drops or to spawn a boss bear. To you it feels less immersive.
My bottom line remains - the best solution is to have both grinding and quests/tasks available in many places and at all levels and we all will be able to cope with the lack of an ideal world for our style of play. As long as neither approach is *so* far superior to the other in terms of xp per minute that one of us feels like his or her preferred approach is just a waste of time.
This thread was such a good read. I think everyone here covers really well the memorable and exciting quests found in MMO's. Dorotea already mentioned it's impossible to do this for every quest, so I'd like to expand on that idea with the importance of good tasks (part of the quest umbrella I believe).
Tasks should be side jobs that aren't required, but make players want to do certain ones because it's beneficial or impactful to them in some way. Many of them, if not all, should be repeatable. Even if they're placed on a personal timer.
I can see this happening in a few ways. Lord of the Rings Online does faction tasks well in my opinion. You turn in drops you get while naturally adventuring to help the town and gain favor. This could be made further impactful by creating visual queues of the success of tasks. For example, the town is short on winter supplies. Two of the possible tasks turn-ins are bear furs or wolf furs to keep the townspeople warm. Every week, the number of bear vs wolf furs is tallied by the system and for the following week the people in town are now wearing either brown bear furs if that was most turned-in or gray wolf furs if that was the highest. It could be even more complicated by changing it by percentages. 80% bear / 20% wolf and you would see the same percentages of people wearing those color furs.
There can also be merchant tasks. The would be something like a wood crafter tells you to get 5 fire gems from lava golems. After you turn in, you get to choose between a free fire staff or fire wand or fire bow. That merchant will also have the remaining four of whatever option you chose for sale in their inventory for the next 24 real life hours.
An enchanter could offer tasks to collect 1 of 5 different plant parts. Depending on the one you collect, you can get one piece of gear enchanted by them with a stat correlated to the plant part. The enchants would be equal to the very base ones learned by enchanters, but never as powerful as the ones beyond the base version a player can imbue.
Systems like these would make everyone pick and even seek different tasks based on their class, needs, and near future adventure goals as opposed to seeing them as useless chores. They also allow you to see the effect on the towns/cities your completion of said tasks have, whether through visual changes in the town or the available inventory of the merchants in the town.