Raidan - I agree that having factions and needing to do various things to build or keep faction can serve some of the same functions as quests. Giving us a reason to do things - a roleplaying objective some might say. But this supplements having a lot of quests it doesn't replace them. Or maybe the quests supplement the faction - it doesn't matter.
If quests do not give excessive experience and do not follow the "golden path" approach I do not yet understand why they bother you. Perhaps you can elaborate.
To me if quests let you get to level-cap in essentially the same amount of time as pure grinding they simply give an alternative approach to play the game and allow both grinders and questors to be happy. Since they aren't a "better" way to get to level cap they wouldn't discourage grinders by making you feel that your efforts are wasted since everyone else makes far faster progress (as in most MMOs today).
Some quests may give a bit more than you can get in the same amount of time grinding some may give less but as long as the total reward per hour is comparable can't we all be happy, Dorotea asks somewhat plaintively (and with no hope of a "yes" answer).
Porygon - I cannot say you are wrong since my way of playing isn't necessarily "better" than yours. But surely you understand by now (this isn't the first or second thread where this debate has popped up) that the game only starts at level-cap for players that are almost exclusively focused on getting a character to the ultimate in terms of having every ability available and having the best gear available in every slot.
I venture to guess that this type of player is far from the majority in a game like this - *very* far.
Most of us want getting to maximum level to take a long time and be challenging - not to race there so we can "begin" the game.
Most of us want to learn and enjoy the world - not speed through it as an annoyance and distraction that keeps us from beginning the important work of gearing up at level-cap.
Most of us see raids at level-cap as something nice to have for some hyper-competitive people just as soloable content is nice to have for some anti-social loners (note that I balanced out the slurs and digs both ways - clever, I am) but essentially irrelevant to the primary focus of the game - grouping and socializing.
Many of us - maybe most - have at least some roleplaying interest. Maybe not in exchanging emotes in a tavern or calling the character "me" rather than "my character" but at least feeling that we are in a living world and should interact with it appropriately not just race to four raid dungeons to endlessly grind for every last piece of gear that is ridiculously useless overkill except for preparing you do do *other* raids.
Most of us would tear our hair out - hair that we spent hours in character creation getting *just* perfect - if we felt that the game *started* when we got to grind those raids and level-cap dailies endlessly until we got so bored we moved on to another game. Far more of us feel that the game *ends* at that point and will pray to the Gods of Terminus that by the time we get one or two or three (some of us love alts some do not) to level-cap there will be new content and we will never need the raids and the dailies and the grind.
To borrow from an old Twilight Zone episode which some of us still remember - after a month in your heaven working on gear and abilities many of us will say "this IS the other place".
@Barin999
Right, and I agree. I want to play on a Roleplay server, but that doesn't have to mean quests on rails though in order to do so. I'd still wager that a "choose your own adventure" type could easily be equally definied as roleplaying and could achieve a better result once players adapted to that style. Also, as noted in my other posts, it also wouldn't be completely directionless - I would want some townfolk to mention the growing threats, issues, etc. there just doesn't need to be a formal quest for everything.
To your expectations point though, I also agree that it may scare off a few that are used to a more guided play, but I think most players would adapt, similar to the OP title here of slow progression - many newer age MMO gamers that are following Pantheon haven't experienced that either - but I wouldn't say to abandon that playstyle due to that fact.
And, lastly for the record, I didn't say I didn't want any quests, but that I agree with Vandraad's post and VRs stance on quality over quantity with quests (think Coldain Ring quest if you played EQ) to grant that feeling of accomplishment or fleshing out the lore.
Anyway, we agree more than we disagree - I just think less is more in this case.
((quality over quantity with quests (think Coldain Ring quest if you played EQ) to grant that feeling of accomplishment or fleshing out the lore.))
I agree in terms of major quests. Where we may differ is that I like the idea of dozens or even hundreds of minor quests scattered around that also can flesh out the lore without guiding the player on rails or giving excessive rewards.
If it will help, think of the more major things as "quests" and the more minor and numerous things as "tasks".
Yes - we do not need a lot of major "quests" that take days and days of effort and give very nice rewards.
But I do want many "tasks" that give life and personalities to the many farms and hemlets and towns and cities and help us learn and understand their cultures and needs and desires. And let us help or hinder them as we so choose. Even if the task reward is *only* faction and not experience.
I am after life and depth in Terminus not rails to follow or expedited progress to level-cap.
shuk said: I like quests, but quests do not need to be explicit. This is why I have high hopes got the perception system. You can learn about the goings-ons through the environment, and tasks can be made intuitive. You can give a person a story without a to-do list. Let the players choose what to do, through the story told by their environment. Say you pick up something odd, take it back to town, learn that it has to do with a family in town from a local or by inspecting it - you can sell it, use it, or go talk to the family and turn it in for faction and xp. No need for quest indicators, let the player figure it out.
If this forum had likes I couldn't spam the like button enough on this one.
THAT is the way 'quests' should work. Maybe add an entry to your journal/codex or whatever as a reminder that you picked up the odd item and got a perception trigger for it (and then secretly use that flag under the hood as a requirement to activate possible future triggers relating to it, such as if you engage in conversation with the family in question or NPCs in town), but the rest should be left up to the player. It's the most natural way to let the player interact with the world and can make the world feel that much more immersive and it feels like the choice is actually yours. You're not picking option A, B or C from a list in a menu or following steps exactly as described for you.
Name a time you got to max level and stopped playing...
It hasn't happened for the vast majority of players, even those who dont strive to raid.
Even super casual players want to experience endgame content this is why raid finder was made in WoW, this is why the newer everquest TLPs began to instance raid zones. I'm not saying the game should not exist from 1 to 50. I'm saying that the REAL game shouldnt start until 50.
I guarantee no matter how fun they make the grind... if you get to 50 and have nothing to do... you wont be happy. (And yea I'm sure someone will come in and say something along the lines of endless alts etc etc) but again, that is a small minority of people that play these games.
Porygon said:Name a time you got to max level and stopped playing...
It hasn't happened for the vast majority of players, even those who dont strive to raid.
Even super casual players want to experience endgame content this is why raid finder was made in WoW, this is why the newer everquest TLPs began to instance raid zones. I'm not saying the game should not exist from 1 to 50. I'm saying that the REAL game shouldnt start until 50.
I guarantee no matter how fun they make the grind... if you get to 50 and have nothing to do... you wont be happy. (And yea I'm sure someone will come in and say something along the lines of endless alts etc etc) but again, that is a small minority of people that play these games.
I'll one-up you.
I played EQ1 for about 20 months, give or take, and never hit the level cap of 60 (at the time). I leveled 2 characters into the 50s though. While getting those *dings* on leveling up was satisfying for sure, a rush to reach the maximum level was never on my mind because I was just enjoying myself playing the game with the friends I'd made online. And I did play quite a lot, I just didn't aim for efficiency.
Now here comes the kicker.. the difference in power between level 50 characters and level 60 ones wasn't that huge at all and my level 52 and 54 characters could contribute on end game raids just fine, sometimes using items I'd acquired 10 levels ago that I bought from another player. Part of this was that raids weren't tightly designed to be done by exactly 40 people using very specific character builds and items of a very specific power level.
Then I had to quit the game because I needed to focus on my graduation, not because I wasn't having fun. When I went back to MMO land, I picked WoW over EQ2 (because I was into the Warcraft games) and I quit playing twice. Once after 2 years of vanilla WoW, then again after 1 year of TBC because I got bored of the tedious railroaded end game. Never gone back since.
I could've gone back to EQ maybe, but by that time that game itself was already changing as well.
@Dorotea
This is beginning to become offtopic from the OP, but my thoughts are basically as follows:
The quests don't bother me, I just feel they are unnecessary and can be implemented much better with the Perception system like Shuk said. Have them be more implicit to the game world, have people truly need to explore to find them. Have some of the major quests follow the more traditional routes (I'd still like to see the perception system or other innovative be used with them as well though). I'd like to see both types be used in conjunction with faction gains though. Maybe without certain faction levels you would not be able to see certain perception cues due to not knowing X about the faction, etc.
I look at quests at hubs or in general similar to the old JRPG games. You go to each town and help X number of townfolk and then rinse and repeat with the next. I enjoyed those games, and they did need to follow a more linear path to advance a storyline; however, a MMORPG does not and most JRPGs today I quit from boredom. I also always preferred console games that had a more open world to explore - so it's definitely partly my bias/preference to what I think is a better world design.
Nephele said:Bankie said:
Like if you want to play Minecraft go right ahead, but I think most of the people who are excited for this game want it to have levels. What is the point of making ANY OTHER CONTENT if I can skip right to the most difficult thing and do it as soon as I create my character. On the other side of that what is the point AT ALL of playing the game if there is no clear path of progression? Even in a sandbox style MMO there still needs to be some sort of idication of "Oh those monsters are way stronger than me perhaps I need to get a friend, or need to get stronger before coming back here". If the toughest zones are meant for level 50 people I have no problem with a group of level 40 players being able to explore that region. For some reason you are reading as I am trying to RESTRICT players to certain areas, but what I am asking is how to ENHANCE the lower level experience of the game.
You missed my point entirely.
To make the lower level experience of the game more fun, you simply make that content meaningful and challenging, and give players multiple choices, just like you do for higher levels. No hubs needed. No "guided tour" questlines needed. Give players freedom to take their own path through the game without being led by the nose or funneled into "appropriate" areas. They'll figure out what they can do and what they can't do (yet) on their own.
So my question was litearlly how to make the lower level content meaninful. I still think you are failing to understand lol. You literally said "no no no forget the whole "level" system". I never said anything about a guided tour or taking away freedom of choice and exploration. I was asking how to make those features meaninful and not just another way to speed level to max. Once again you inital answer was to literally not have levels.
I do like some of the idea's and concepts everyone is coming up with. I feel like everyone is getting hung up on the word "quest" too much though, which was never in my OP lol. I don't think anyone here wants "go kill X number of wolves and bring me back their hides" type quests, but I did like the idea someone said on the first page about wandering around a town maybe questioning NPCs, or overhearing someone talking about a cave full of rats to the east. You go explore the cave only to find the rat king at the bottom.
However a lot of the questing talk is getting away from the OP honestly. Specifically what can be done at levels 1-30 to keep you engaged and not just make it feel like you are doing a job until you reach max level?
I may be wrong but I am not off-topic. I think having a lot of quests, or tasks if you prefer that term for more minor quests, does a lot more in the early part of the game than later on although I like them at any level.
Done right tasks tell the character about the world and the people in the world and the lore.
Done right tasks give characters an incentive to talk to any NPC they meet because you never know who may have a task for you. Most will not but the conversations still may be enlightening or entertaining.
Done right tasks give the character an incentive (not a roadmap) to go and explore because you never know what interesting NPCs you will find in out of the way spots. Not everything can or should or will be based on perception.
Bankie you are entirely wrong. No one here wants the core of the game to be people standing around wanting 10 wolves dead but quite a few of us consider that type of task very nice to give variety and purpose.
Well, to keep things fresh and to keep players engaged...first, you need enough diversified content. If there is only one or two dungeons for levels 15-25, then it gets stale fast.
Make earning things meaningful. Half the time in WoW I don't notice I ding because it's not a big deal and it happens so fast. Once in a blue moon I get another ability...gear gets replaced multiple times per 10 levels, nothing about my character feels like it stands out. With a slower progression, you get to appreciate a lot more getting a new piece of gear or a new ability, because it's not part of a run to the top, it's part of a process.
But to be honest, and it's not possible at all to fix sadly, the biggest enemy is something outside of the game completely...I feel people would enjoy themselves a lot more without all the websites and Youtube videos. Because it doesn't matter how much you want to go adventure and discover things, the time will come where you will be expected to watch a 30 minutes video on how to defeat an encounter, and I don't think there is anything that destroys the engagement that you can have with your character more than to have to study the mechanics, numbers and patterns of a boss fight before you attempt them.
Add to that the material that will be published across all platforms that will show where all the best loot is, where the best spots to xp are, where the meaningful quests are. The disengagment anyone has from their character typically comes from others expecting you to follow a manual that is outside of the game. I'm really hoping there will be multiple ways to defeat certain encounters. I quit FFXIV over that. Everytime I had to go watch a video to figure out an encounter because everything was so scripted, I lost a piece of my soul.
I want to be able to get in a group and suggest "Hey, how about we go to the tower of Zut ?" without someone saying "Yah but SuperGameZZZZRulllleeZZZZZ says it's the worst place to go adventure so let's go to the Cave of Overcrowd instead because despite the 45 other groups there, that's where we'll get all the fat XP !". But it's 2019 so...we'll see I guess.
I just don't want to feel like I have to go to the Cave of Overcrowd every single time I log in.
dorotea said:But I do want many "tasks" that give life and personalities to the many farms and hemlets and towns and cities and help us learn and understand their cultures and needs and desires. And let us help or hinder them as we so choose. Even if the task reward is *only* faction and not experience.
I am after life and depth in Terminus not rails to follow or expedited progress to level-cap.
Here's the thing though, none of that requres sending players on task after task after task. When you impose the condition of every npc having some list of things for players to go fetch, kill, etc. it becomes obvious that the intent is 90% about giving players quests to grind and MAYBE 10% about actual story and lore. Lets consider a hypothetical situation using that cliche about wolves menacing a farm. Option 1 is the traditional quest where you talk to the NPC, they tell you the problem & task you with killing wolves, you go kill some wolves, and you return for a faction reward. Option 2: If you go near the wolf den, the perception system pings you with a message about seeing animal carcasses, likely from sheep. Killing wolves gives you faction. If you go talk to the farmers, they will tell you about how the wolves have been eating their sheep. If you have killed the alpha-wolf in the den, the farmer also thanks you for your actions.
IMO option 2 is much more immersive and far more conducive to the overall playstyle of Pantheon. The less we have to deal with fetcing quests, making sure the group is on the same quests, deciding which quests to do, etc. the better. Players can just play the game as they want, but the story details are still there IF you want to investiage.
Kaeldorn said:Porygon said:Name a time you got to max level and stopped playing...
It hasn't happened for the vast majority of players, even those who dont strive to raid.
Even super casual players want to experience endgame content this is why raid finder was made in WoW, this is why the newer everquest TLPs began to instance raid zones. I'm not saying the game should not exist from 1 to 50. I'm saying that the REAL game shouldnt start until 50.
I guarantee no matter how fun they make the grind... if you get to 50 and have nothing to do... you wont be happy. (And yea I'm sure someone will come in and say something along the lines of endless alts etc etc) but again, that is a small minority of people that play these games.
I'll one-up you.
I played EQ1 for about 20 months, give or take, and never hit the level cap of 60 (at the time). I leveled 2 characters into the 50s though. While getting those *dings* on leveling up was satisfying for sure, a rush to reach the maximum level was never on my mind because I was just enjoying myself playing the game with the friends I'd made online. And I did play quite a lot, I just didn't aim for efficiency.
Here's the thing though... velious was 100% a raid focused wxpansion. It introduced more raid encounters in a single zone than have ever existed before. And that's just 1 zone. Eventually, you would have hit max level and would have had a ton to do. You wouldnt have hit 60 and said ... ok, games done.
Eq was unique in that lower level players, given curtains classes were absolutely able to help on a raid. But that doesnt mean the raids were designed for that. Eq raids (if I were to guess) were designed for 42 to 48 players ... but would consistently be battled with 72 (part of this due to gear limitations and player abilities). So having a level 54 in the doesnt have as much impact as having a level 54 in the raid of a game that is more tightly designed.
dorotea said:To me if quests let you get to level-cap in essentially the same amount of time as pure grinding they simply give an alternative approach to play the game and allow both grinders and questors to be happy. Since they aren't a "better" way to get to level cap they wouldn't discourage grinders by making you feel that your efforts are wasted since everyone else makes far faster progress (as in most MMOs today).
Most of us want to learn and enjoy the world
To me these are somewhat, if not exactly, contradictory statements. The problem with questing in non EQ mmos to date is that it dictates your gampelay. Questing tells you exactly where to go, exactly what to do, and exactly how long to stay. To me that is compeltely counter to learning the game, adventuring in the game, myself. How does that reward exploration?
If I see a cave over there and feel like I can't spend the time to go into it because my quest doesn't take me there, something is wrong. It is incumbant upon the developers to make that cave worth your time to go into without having to be told that it exists and what you should be doing in it. The WOW method of using quests to show off the world to make sure people make it to all the corners is awful, imo. Make the content meaningful and worthwhile on its own, and it will reward people who go off the beaten path without having to be told.
"Real" adventures are organic, not scripted. Once a person compelets a quest objective, again in today's MMO, what do they do? They turn around and leave. You aren't going to learn the world, you're going to learn the quest. Being told where, what and when is the opposite of what a game that has core values founded in open world themepark adventure "should"(yes this is a bad word) be. To me it is infinitely more rewarding to go to a place for no reason other than that it exists and stay for as long as I want, than to be told to go somewhere and do something for a reward. If the developers fail to make exploration and adventure rewarding enough on their own, via whatever mechanisms(loot, easter eggs, discovery, whatever) then they have failed and that's on them. Quests that dicate where you go, at what level, TO level, destroy the value of true exploration. Why go over there when you know that if you go here you'll get 10 silver guaranteed? Wash rinse repeat. Questing to max level creates a linear path through what should be an amazing matrix of content.
Forgive the bold: Questing is what games do when playing the game itself isn't rewarding. It is a crutch. And obviously this is not an absolute, nothing is, there are lots of fun, challenging, rewarding quests in all kinds of games. But for me, the path in MMOs today is designed around the questing shortcuts. The world doesn't need to be deep and engaging, the content and gameplay don't need to stand on their own because quests!
And I will continue to take exception to the term "grinding". It implies drudgery, boredom, frustration. If you can kill mobs to max level while exploring, attaining awesome loot and making friends all along the way, that is not a grind. I realize I'm speaking only for myself but classic EQ was *never* a grind.
You know what an awesome quest is? Seeing some Ogre with a sword you've never seen before and asking him where it comes from. Then finding out where that is. Then getting there. Then realizing you're not strong enough. Then getting stronger. Then finding friends to help. That is an organic quest chain started on your very own, and imo it is the foundation of what I hope this game is.
Playing the game should be the quest, by and large.
If an MMO is fun enough people won't want to sprint to max lvl.
Hopefully people will try and lvl then suddenly find and huge cave and just want to explore.
Also if you can fight in areans at any lvl, mmos should have lots of time wasters for when questing gets boring.
I dont want to be handed epics for a quest or rewards for logging in.
But if i spend hours doing something i exspect a reward.
>To me these are somewhat, if not exactly, contradictory statements. The problem with questing in non EQ mmos to date is that it dictates your gampelay. Questing tells you exactly where to go, exactly what to do, and exactly how long to stay. To me that is compeltely counter to learning the game, adventuring in the game, myself. How does that reward exploration?<
Your post is well written, as usual, and I agree with almost all of it. But your response to my comments has almost nothing to do with those comments so let me try to be clearer.
Questing in non-EQ MMOs does indeed guide (not dictate - you are always free to explore and go into that cave you have no quest for) your gameplay.
Worse, questing in non-EQ MMOs speeds you to level-cap and gives not just a little but a *lot* of extra experience which discourages players from doing much else other than questing.
I think you and I agree in essentially all respects here.
But my topic was not questing in current MMOs. My topic was questing in Pantheon and I was suggesting a very different approach which would allow Pantheon to have many tasks (let us avoid the Q word since it seems to trigger instant antipathy and incorrect assumptions, such as that quests *must* give huge amounts of experience and quests *must* guide the player through the world - neither of which happens to be true) without triggering the negative effects of which you accurately speak.
The *tasks* of which I speak would give some experience but not in large amounts - perhaps less per minute than simply killing things. Some might just give reputation not experience.
The *tasks* of which I speak would not guide the player from place to place to place to the exclusion of exploring - they would mostly be things for the player to do once he or she was already at the place.
The *tasks* of which I speak would help give lore and background about Terminus and its many races and factions - yes just talking to NPCs could achieve the same result but I think the carrot of possibly getting a *task* would encourage players to spend many hours talking. Remember that Pantheon will not have quest symbols over the heads of NPCs so to get *tasks* a player will need to talk to innumerable NPCs most of whom will *not* have any tasks to give. Thus encouraging a slower paced progress and learning more about each area.
Also keep in mind that many players will not be those of us on the forums - if Pantheon is to be successful most players should not be those of us on the forums. Players today are condidtioned to do quests and look for quests - if we can give them *tasks* (think of that as quest-lite) it will keep them happier and guide them into the Pantheon style of play.
Once a player arrives in Butt Cheek Hills let us suppopse that the mayor of a hamlet mentions a problem with wolves and offers a reward for helping solve it.
This does not in any respect whatsoever dictate where the player should go - the player is already there.
This does not in any respect whatsoever dictate where the player should go next - the wolves are all near the hamlet.
This does give an encouragement to kill wolves rather than do something else but I submit that if the reward is not excessive the encouragement helps those of us that like interaction with the locals and positive feedback from them a LOT more than it hurts those that prefer playing a game where no one ever suggests what they might or might not do and they are totally on their own from character creation to maximum level. I also submit that very very few players enjoy such a level of complete isolation from the needs and wants of the various communities in Terminus.
So half the group wants to run back to town every 30 minutes to turn in their "task" and get another, and the other half who are ignoring "tasks" don't? No thanks.
Quests in moderation based on the principle of quality over quantity is fine. But endless quest chains and "tasks" doesn't work well with the type of game Pantheon is aiming to be. The perception system and talking to npc's will easily be able to give context to the world and explain important lore points to players without bogging the game down with these repetitive, cliched tasks.
I'm not one for absolutes or gross generalizations. Quests are neither bad or good it's all in how they are written and then done.
For example....
A quest to take mail to the town of hiccup.
Well where is hiccup? Don't know, you have to go adventuring to find it. Are you strong enough to defeat the many obstacles? Do you need friends along?
Sure a poorly done quest can lack imagination and lead to boring game play. But quests can also be exciting as well as fullfilling.
I will never forget the aging quest for dragon players in Istaria. You could do parts solo, other parts you needed a team and some parts you even needed assistance from the biped player characters. It was a well rounded well thought out quest.
dorotea said:>To me these are somewhat, if not exactly, contradictory statements. The problem with questing in non EQ mmos to date is that it dictates your gampelay. Questing tells you exactly where to go, exactly what to do, and exactly how long to stay. To me that is compeltely counter to learning the game, adventuring in the game, myself. How does that reward exploration?<
Your post is well written, as usual, and I agree with almost all of it. But your response to my comments has almost nothing to do with those comments so let me try to be clearer.
Questing in non-EQ MMOs does indeed guide (not dictate - you are always free to explore and go into that cave you have no quest for) your gameplay.
Worse, questing in non-EQ MMOs speeds you to level-cap and gives not just a little but a *lot* of extra experience which discourages players from doing much else other than questing.
I think you and I agree in essentially all respects here.
But my topic was not questing in current MMOs. My topic was questing in Pantheon and I was suggesting a very different approach which would allow Pantheon to have many tasks (let us avoid the Q word since it seems to trigger instant antipathy and incorrect assumptions, such as that quests *must* give huge amounts of experience and quests *must* guide the player through the world - neither of which happens to be true) without triggering the negative effects of which you accurately speak.
The *tasks* of which I speak would give some experience but not in large amounts - perhaps less per minute than simply killing things. Some might just give reputation not experience.
The *tasks* of which I speak would not guide the player from place to place to place to the exclusion of exploring - they would mostly be things for the player to do once he or she was already at the place.
The *tasks* of which I speak would help give lore and background about Terminus and its many races and factions - yes just talking to NPCs could achieve the same result but I think the carrot of possibly getting a *task* would encourage players to spend many hours talking. Remember that Pantheon will not have quest symbols over the heads of NPCs so to get *tasks* a player will need to talk to innumerable NPCs most of whom will *not* have any tasks to give. Thus encouraging a slower paced progress and learning more about each area.
Also keep in mind that many players will not be those of us on the forums - if Pantheon is to be successful most players should not be those of us on the forums. Players today are condidtioned to do quests and look for quests - if we can give them *tasks* (think of that as quest-lite) it will keep them happier and guide them into the Pantheon style of play.
Once a player arrives in Butt Cheek Hills let us suppopse that the mayor of a hamlet mentions a problem with wolves and offers a reward for helping solve it.
This does not in any respect whatsoever dictate where the player should go - the player is already there.
This does not in any respect whatsoever dictate where the player should go next - the wolves are all near the hamlet.
This does give an encouragement to kill wolves rather than do something else but I submit that if the reward is not excessive the encouragement helps those of us that like interaction with the locals and positive feedback from them a LOT more than it hurts those that prefer playing a game where no one ever suggests what they might or might not do and they are totally on their own from character creation to maximum level. I also submit that very very few players enjoy such a level of complete isolation from the needs and wants of the various communities in Terminus.
Great post, thank you for the reply. I agree with everything, it can be done. A perhaps over simplified example in EQ would be collecting blackburrow pelts(scalps? whatever). Nobody went to BB to get them, it was just a little something extra that if you collected them while you were already there, you could turn in for a small bonus. You didn't go to BB for that, it just happened to be that there was a little synergy between the zones you were moving around in at that time. Not a great example, but I think *tasks* like that are more organic and dont get my hackles up so much.
I also like the idea, borrowing again from EQ, of making these task items tradeable so it promotes a low level player to player economy. It even allows low level players to collect items for higher level players that may wish a specific reward(you mentioned faction. I think of bone chips, etc).