Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Community Debate - How many quests...

    • 844 posts
    September 25, 2018 10:52 AM PDT

    Kilsin said:

    Community Debate - How many quests in an MMORPG are too many, in your opinion? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters

    Once again. I guess I don't understand the question.

    Are these required quests? If not, why would anyone care?

     

    For those that don't want quests, they don't have to do them.

    For those that like quests, the more the merrier.

    • 14 posts
    September 25, 2018 11:13 AM PDT

    I'm not so concerned about the number of quests as I am the purpose.

    For me, there are only 3 real reasons for a quest: world storyline, class storyline, carrot to suggest other zones/areas of the appropriate level.

    • 151 posts
    September 25, 2018 11:41 AM PDT

    Kilsin said:

    Community Debate - How many quests in an MMORPG are too many, in your opinion? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters

    No such thing as too many.  If a person doesn't want to do a quest then don't do it.

    Questing should be a valid method of gaining experience, along with mob grinding.

    • 239 posts
    September 25, 2018 1:43 PM PDT
    To be honest EQ did it right I think. If you go to any EQ walk through site and click a zone they would have a few pages of quest, roughly 20-30. Yes a lot of these were the old kill 10 bats, or collect bone chips. Really those are not that bad, people say they hate them, but your grinding in that area anyways. In newbie zone you going to kill anything that cons even to you for the first 10 levels or so. Now you have a quest for bat wings and a bat spawns you got just that little bit more excitement to kill that bat before someone else does.
    What I think most of us do not like is these small quest or task with a separate currency to buy different items that can only be purchased this way. That feels like we are being forced into daily task to fill the emptiness of the game.
    I love picking up 90% of the junk drops that go to some quest half way across the world.
    • 239 posts
    September 25, 2018 1:43 PM PDT
    To be honest EQ did it right I think. If you go to any EQ walk through site and click a zone they would have a few pages of quest, roughly 20-30. Yes a lot of these were the old kill 10 bats, or collect bone chips. Really those are not that bad, people say they hate them, but your grinding in that area anyways. In newbie zone you going to kill anything that cons even to you for the first 10 levels or so. Now you have a quest for bat wings and a bat spawns you got just that little bit more excitement to kill that bat before someone else does.
    What I think most of us do not like is these small quest or task with a separate currency to buy different items that can only be purchased this way. That feels like we are being forced into daily task to fill the emptiness of the game.
    I love picking up 90% of the junk drops that go to some quest half way across the world.
    • 2138 posts
    September 26, 2018 10:01 AM PDT

    Dalmarus said:

    I'm not so concerned about the number of quests as I am the purpose.

    For me, there are only 3 real reasons for a quest: world storyline, class storyline, carrot to suggest other zones/areas of the appropriate level.

    ^ I agree with this. A direction where I can start from and get lost or distracted by other sanboxxy things but come back to if I get too lost.

    On the flip side I like having quest optoins available if I dont know what to do, or teaser hints from NPC's. Even as vague as "you have not proven yourself to our kind, I will not share the secrets of Uber summonerness....."

    "... that will take forever and make everyone that sees you envy you at the end and wonder how you got such a thing- while at the same time giving you "accidental" completions just from your happening to kill something when in another area or having picked up that odd lore thing when you were level 1 and did not know what it was for- untill now- 20 levels later!!" 

    • 200 posts
    September 28, 2018 3:58 AM PDT
    I like the idea of there being a typical npc you can go to who’ll point you to other npc’s in the area who have tasks for you. The innkeeper would make sense. But that may be because I really despise getting to a village/town/city and having to talk to everyone to see whether they have something for me, I can imagine to others this might be fun tho. But yeah, small tasks for a little xp with items you can get from fighting mobs in the vicinity of the town or city, I enjoyed that in EQ.

    I’d love more complex tasks besides those, maybe for rewards for professions or some such, which serve as a carrot for exploration and seeing multiple zones. Perception would tie in with those, or profession trainers, or class trainers for spells/abilities etc.

    Then I’d love some really epic quests, long storylines, encompassing many levels, that take you all over the place for great gear rewards and maybe cosmetics. In that sense I wouldn’t expect there to be a great many of these, but each questline to contain quite a few follow up steps. I love class quests too, if they give you a deeper understanding of your class, a deeper sense of connection to it. It might be interesting to tie that into race/class combination but I’m probably asking for too much then :D.

    For me quests and tasks are something I enjoy on the side, where they aren’t mandatory or overwhelming. I wouldn’t want the game to revolve around them as a means of leveling up. I do love when they provide a deeper understanding of the world, its inhabitants, lore and my character itself tho.
    • 212 posts
    September 28, 2018 1:39 PM PDT

    MyNegation said:

     

    and the answers is as few as possible, because quests make the MMO world into an online version of "the amazing race" when you or your party run from hub to hub trying to complete tasks as fast as possible and reach the end line to win the prize.

    but the most important aspect is that quests should not grant XP at all.

    quests should grant currency and reputation, skills, special gear, crafting materials and any other reward except XP.

     

     

    Completely agree with this.

    • 432 posts
    September 30, 2018 7:14 AM PDT

    Kilsin said:

    Community Debate - How many quests in an MMORPG are too many, in your opinion? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters

     

    As this is a quantitative question and I take it seriously , I will make an attempt at how to quantify that .

    A quest is an activity that rewards with money , items , faction , XP or any combination of that . A way to quantifying that is to consider the time spent on this activity versus any other activity which is not questing  like exploring , chatting , RPing , crafting or grinding on some camp . I would say that about 50 % of gaming time spent by an average player (average player being defined like the player who plays an average number of hours / week) on questing is a reasonable maximum . If it was much more then for most players there would not be enough time for other non questing activities if they do them all (or they would do only a small fraction of the available content) and if it was much less then the world would feel empty and without purpose .

    Then it immediately appears that this is tied to the level of the quest because the time spent in a level is extremely different - perhaps 10 minutes for level 1 and 1 month for level 50 . So it is useless to develop intricate quests taking much time for low levels because the reward would be vastly outlevelled by the time the quest is finished . I could imagine the following structure :

    Level 1 to 10 : mostly simple repeatable tasks (get me 5 Orc ears) rewarded with money and XP which are meant to make the player faimiliar with the zone . Quite a few faction quests because people will need to grind class/race faction . No or very few special item quests . No or few crafting quests, only to make familiar with the tradeskill . The time spent in these levels is low so 20-30 such tasks/quests per starting city should be enough .

    Level 10 - 30 : Towards the upper end the quests for items will start to prevail . The time spent in these levels is counted in weeks so quests may demand travelling and contain several steps . Typically we could have here "newbie" and "mid level" class armour/weapon/spell quests because the armour won't be outlevelled by the time the quest is finished . Also crafting quests for recipes or rare materials . Here the zone is no more the relevant parameter . For the whole level range there could be 2 - 3 specific racial lore quests / race , 5 specific class quests/ class and 5  specific craft quests / craft . This would give a maximum of about 100 - 150 quests for the whole level range overall or 15-20 quests / PC. Besides items there would always be faction but no or little money/XP rewards .

    Level 30 - 50 : Here is the kingdom of Epic quests . Both for epic armor/weapons and for epic craft . An average player will spend months in these levels so there is no limit for imagination . As for a given time spent on questing players generally prefer a long quest with a good storyline rather than 10 simple 1-2 step quests , most quests should be of the former type . The notion of a maximum is here irrelevant because what will be limiting is the manpower available to design such quests . Perhaps as the danger here is to have too little rather than too much , throw in the mix a few simpler faction / craft quests .


    This post was edited by Deadshade at September 30, 2018 7:29 AM PDT
    • 239 posts
    September 30, 2018 7:45 AM PDT
    I think Deadshade puts a good prospective on the level and quest. Imagine your character at level 12. You will be very limited on where and what you can explore safely. In EQ, maybe 3 hostile zones around your starting town ( I’m not talking about running across the world to the other starting area )
    These zones should have small task. Small dumb quest just to get you to move around the zone, and not sit at that orc camp on the fire with 4 yellow orc spawn points. I’m ok, running to the lake to talk to bob the farmer, then going to get his rake from the orc camp, then saving his prized milk cow from the goblins.... this is level 12, there might not be an epic dungeon for me to get a full group and camp that boss.
    Now at lvl 36 I hope I can leave bob the farmer alone and work on taking out the wizards tower and really working on my class gear and collecting information and pieces from all over the world.
    • 168 posts
    October 1, 2018 5:36 PM PDT

    Kilsin said:

    Community Debate - How many quests in an MMORPG are too many, in your opinion? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters

    No such thing as too many if they are meaningful to the character you are playing. Fetching 20 rat hides isn't meaningful. Learning about the planet you are living on, the diety you follow, the history of your race; that is meaningful. Class quests can be meaningful as well if they are designed so that you are at a disadvantage by not doing them.


    This post was edited by Dashed at October 1, 2018 5:37 PM PDT
    • 48 posts
    October 2, 2018 12:24 AM PDT

    I was over 2k before I quit EQ2, and I will be perfectly honest, I do not mind "fetch this" or "kill these" quests. Sure nothing but epic level quests (or just interesting ones) would be fantastic, but I spent many an hour working on them as something to do. Much like I did with AAs in EQ.

    • 415 posts
    October 3, 2018 7:35 AM PDT

    MyNegation said:

    the most important aspect is that quests should not grant XP at all.

    quests should grant currency and reputation, skills, special gear, crafting materials and any other reward except XP.

    This. 

     

    • 753 posts
    October 3, 2018 8:36 AM PDT

    I know I'm late to the conversation, but...

    This is a really difficult question.  Without giving numbers, I would say something like this (with each line being additive - and the list perhaps not being compl

    - Enough quests to introduce you to a zone / region of the game... and no more.

    - Enough quests to tell lore that needs to be told... and no more.

    - Class / epic quests.

    - Key quests.

     

    I don't think quests should be "Tasks" (go pick 10 apples from that tree) - and I don't think experience should be a reward.  That is, if the reason the game has you doing quests is in any way related to chasing exp (realizing, of course, that you will get exp as you do things involved within quests)... then it shouldn't be in the game.

    • 158 posts
    October 7, 2018 6:46 PM PDT
    How many quest are too many is a tough answer.

    I think as long as quest has a story line that fits the game lore it’s great. I’m not a fan of filler quest or doing the same quest over and over.

    I hope some storylines have 1-2 quest.

    While master long storylines have 5-11 quest that are very long and become unlocked as we level up.

    I think quest verity needs to exist so at launch several storylines. The player needs to feel like they are a part of a living breathing world and our actions matter,npcs we meet matter.

    I just hope every quest has a place and is important to the game lore and future. I would rather have long several hour quest then very fast little task done in 5 minutes.

    Quick quest just aren’t long enough time to build a good storyline or come to admire and care about a certain npc.
    • 1618 posts
    October 7, 2018 7:07 PM PDT

    Unlimited quests, if they come with lore. But no quests just to have quests, such as a guy standing outside of the armory paying me 10 silver to walk into the shop and get his armor for him.

    Quests are fantastic ways to introduce lore or to encourage exploration of unique places.