3.5/5 - GameRevolutionFollow

Since it's been brought up, I'm personally one who'd take FFXI quests over modern MMO questing. While I wouldn't go as far as saying that FFXI is the pinnacle of quest design, and I couldn't recall many of them in great detail, I do remember being taken to some very interesting parts of the world. I remember some of them having a progressing storyline. I remember them taking more than a minute and a half to complete, and at times feeling like I had actually completed a "quest."

Modern MMO "questing" is the complete opposite. They typically don't make you walk more than 20 seconds from the quest giver, involve about a minute or two of busy work, and you come back to grab your rewards and move onto the next thing. While it's be possible to complete many, many more quests in the same time period using this method, if you're the type who feels that walking outside to grab 3 of this or kill 4 of that isn't rewarding the first time, you aren't going to feel that it's rewarding the tenth time, or the hundredth time, or the thousandth time. I would rather do one quest that feels like an actual quest and leaves somewhat of a lasting impression than one hundred short quests that feel rather meaningless.

Edited, Sep 17th 2013 11:03pm by Susanoh

FFXI's questing isn't any different than FFXIV's; your nostalgia is tinting your glasses. Like was mentioned above you either killed X mob, brought in Y items from Z mobs, or went to go click on a random ??? in the middle nowhere.

No, you think it's a "better" question option because the story of why you're bothering to get those items or kill that monster is because the meaningless story is literally shoved down your throat in cutscenes. Take away all of those cutscenes, leave nothing but text boxes, and it's absolutely no different than anything everyone else has done.

The stories haven't gotten better or worse in FFXIV. You're simply able to skip them now, people don't bother to read the stories. If you need the sob story about why you need to go carry this woman's love the lunch he forgot (true FFXI quest! -- delivery, just like everyone else) spoonfed to you then you really didn't give a damn about the story aspect of a game anyway.

Nostalgia is a terrible thing.

~~~~

And Catwho I agree, absolutely no one ever gives any real alternatives to what we have for MMO questing. Sandpark made a huge wall of text about... nothing and provided absolutely zero alternatives. No one ever does.

Unsurprisingly, the implied alternative is simply no questing and just leveling through grinding, as brought up on the official forums the past million times. "Your quests suck" => "it was so much better when we killed the same mob over and over ad nauseum".

The quest model hasn't changed in close to 20 years because at the base you're doing something for someone else (BTW, based on official press releases and video demos, ESO's "different" quest model seems to be the thing from Oblivion/Skyrim; you run into stuff in the world and it triggers a quest or objective). I personally liked how setting was established through quests, though at times did feel a certain amount of hopelessness. If you did the Coerthas questlines you know what I'm talking about. I do wish more memorable and recurring characters had been introduced along the way. For every Thancred and Nanamo there should have been a Hildibrand or two.

Touche.

Although Lu Shang's, like the bat wing quest, isn't the type of quest that I'm talking about for the sake of this discussion.

Edited, Sep 18th 2013 7:03am by Susanoh

Thing is, all you've really touched upon are derivatives of the "Kill X, Fetch Y, Go To Z, and Defend/Escort Q" dynamic. Whether it's talking to an NPC directly, overhearing them, or basically stepping into an "event" you're including a bare bones level of the Go To Z element. Quests started by finding a random drop included a mix of the Kill X and Fetch Y unless maybe it's a random interactable in the world (Thus, Go To Z) or harvested from a node. As well, I'd be exceptionally cautious of what you basically outlined in a reputation system. These do exist in MMOs today, perhaps not to the intricacy you hope for, but at the same time, knowing how people play these games, when it's determined the rewards of Faction A are better than those of Faction B, you will never see people do Faction B if it's an either/or situation. From the dev perspective, I also dislike the notion of deliberately gating people from content you've created because it risks eliminating a percentage of Things To Do(tm) with their playing.

I've spent a fair amount of time contemplating how I'd do things had I the means to put a game out there. While I wouldn't call my ideas superior, innovative, or likely for the hardcore, I know one thing I'd definitely like to emphasize is the players having the ability to affect the world in tangible ways. For example, I'd like to establish a good monster eco-system where there's a predator/prey relationship between mobs. If, for example, a certain prey's predator is killed so much within a given span, you'll see more of that prey spawn while less of the predator. On the other hand, if the prey is over-hunted, you'll see them less often while the predators might start popping up in other nearby locations taking on different tastes and potentially influencing that little eco-bubble. I'm on the fence with this possibly affecting harvesting potential, but it's something I haven't drowned out. Either way, the hope would be to create an ebb and flow. I also entertained the thought of actual mob extinction, but in the end I think I take more to the thought of there always being a place where, say, wolves would lurk and could always have a chance to expand their territory and take everything back to "normal" if player intervention was minimal or non-existent. This is also perhaps a point where it's could to simplify crafting materials, like instead of having red, black, and white wolf furs, you'd just have a single wolf fur drop all sub-species would share.

Anyway, this could actually apply the holds NPCs have on areas, too. While I'd probably never make a PvP game for reasons of balancing difficulty, weighing hadcore contribution against casual to avoid that feeling of helplessness, and so on, the thought of players doing things to help an NPC "hold" an area, and thus allowing access to a dungeon, new/special NPCs, and so on does appeal. And while GW2 tried this to a degree, I feel like it was both fleeting and not really... epic enough. You could even tie this into the monster eco-system where if a particular region is suffering from a high pest level, then crops are either more expensive or not available at all from vendors. Overall, the world shouldn't be terribly static and "nature" would always be on the offensive trying to reclaim things toward what one could probably call a launch state.

I also realize this doesn't deviate much from the hated quest tropes, but if done right, you could have no two days of doing "quests" in a particular area being the same. I quoted that because I would indeed like to see FATE-like things going on "out in the field" that could tie into this twisted web of progression and regression.

I'm also somewhat quirky in the fact I wouldn't have our characters run off a general EXP level, but instead have the ability to learn, improve, and later modify abilities. Just to crudely correlate to XI here. Let's say you fight with a sword enough to learn Fast Blade. You also take the time to learn Fire and Banish. With all three "mastered" you could then learn Fire Blade and Banish Blade. With those then capped, you could learn Fusion Blade. Yeah, this basically shifts EXP away from the concept of character to skills, but I've always hated the the aspect of XI and XIV where you "forget" things you've learned just because you talked to a moogle or put on a different weapon. As well, I'd probably tie equipment restrictions to masteries. Like, you couldn't use a 2nd tier sword until you're level 2 in Fast Blade. Stuff like that. Given enough time, someone could potentially master everything, sure, but if MMOs have taught me anything, you have some people who will never touch certain classes for whatever reason. And that's only toxic when they turn around and insist their particular preferred class be top dog and those who invest in others should be deliberately weaker. Anyway, I know this system would need a few more refinements, but my main goal is striving for that good mix of character (skills, gear, crafts) and world growth. I'd also probably try and keep the stories more modular, avoiding END OF TEH WORLD tropes because of the whole hero meets errand boy mis-match that tends to happen with the curious absence of reference to those other players who help you do whatever. So while there could come a point where you'd slay a dragon to protect whatever, you'd never be revered as THE dragonslayer, but more pragmatically amongst those who helped do the deed.

The richest goblin on the planet in FFXI lives in Castle Zvahl. I think he bought the place after Shadowlord died and uses all the ancient currency we give him to pay the mortgage.

I still slap him every time I see him since he charged me a 10,000 Whiteshell piece for my Gjallarhorn.

Exactly. It's incorrect to equate FFXI's quests to FFXIV/other modern MMORPG's quests. FFXI did not depend on quests for leveling, they were extra padding sprinkled here and there. Often they resulted in some strange or esoteric reward that varied between useless and amazing. It made some of them as memorable as they were optional.

It's also because quests weren't meant to be a major source of progression that they were able to take you to odd places or have difficulty spikes or give you odd rewards: there wasn't this perceived need to optimize every task to the point of the barely conscious. I'm so tired of situations like: "Right-click the guy standing next to me. You'll get 12,865 exp., 439 gil, and your choice of a hat, some pants, or another 1200 gil." What the hell kind of interactions are these?

What I would have liked, along with the quest NPCs we have now, would be NPCs that don't get the quest ! until you've just talked to them once to shoot the ****.

There are a lot of NPCs that have no names and say nothing. Give them a name, and then 20 levels later after you've exhausted the known quests for an area, have them remember you talking to them and suddenly pop up a ! next time you're in town.

Seems more natural than asking random strangers to run off jobs for you.

"Convoluted story", sorry, but its not a fair review if he thinks the story is bad. For an MMO, this game has one of the best stories out there.