Risk vs Reward, The Grind vs Questing, and The story.....How important is that to you?

ArchivedUser

There is risk when taking on a world BOSS, and there is risk when your facing off with another player. But what about the rewards you gain from it, and should there be a risk of loss? Do you really want risk while you play a game?

Then you have the Grind of killing 100 of this, 500 of that to get a reward, and the quest to find whatever is needed. How many people read the quest anyway? Questing is the heart and soul of any MMO, the problem I found some quests have no real meaning. How should Quests be handled in AoC?

Then there is the story, SWToR does a great good on story, so does a game like Mass Effect, but is it really important to you? In AoC we will write our own story, but should there be stories within a story?

Lets hear your thoughts of the very basics of what a good MMO should be about.

IMO Grind needs to get tossed out the window, ran over by a road press, and buried and forgotten forever. But that just me. lol

But story driven quest should be in a good MMO, it helps give you something extra to do, when your not doing stuff with friends.

Oh and should we see some quests that if you fail, that's it, you failed it. No repeats or do overs? Then it triggers an event that you have to deal with later, good or bad. Just a thought.

ArchivedUser

Honestly grinding is such a subjective thing, what you consider grinding other's may enjoy doing. Some consider just levelling a character a grind and boring, others it is crafting, levelling skills, it does not matter what systems are put in place it will be a boring grind for some.

To my way of thinking it is this mentality of its just a grind that is put forward by some people that has slowly eroded mmo's into what they are today. In older games things took time to achieve you had to work towards your goals by doing some mundane things at times.

Ashes is going to try and MAKE MMO"S GREAT AGAIN and guess what that may very well mean harking back to some of those older game mechanics where time was needed to achieve things and for some just the mere fact that it will take time will be labelled a grind. I am sure that IS will try and make the activities as much fun as they can but again not all will enjoy what is presented, and that is fine we all have different taste but to label something a grind just because you don't like it.

Ashes will be a big open world where you arrive and there will be no one to take your hand and lead you along, just that big world to wander out into and find your own way, make your own fun. There will be quests and lore out there, it is my hope that through uncovering Verra's lore that other quests may open up or a desire to explore other areas and uncover yet more secrets. 

The narrative of this game will be driven so much by the players some may desire to rule and shape the nodes and world around them, others may simply want to craft and build, run a tavern, explorers will venture out to find hidden secrets, many will want to take on the challenges to be found in raids. Your story will be a blank canvas, the world will be there how you colour that canvas is completely up to you. 

ArchivedUser

As far as the risk element goes, I like the current balance they're striking. I want death to mean something, but at the same time I don't want to play knowing that a single badly-timed DC could set me way, way back if RNG kicks in and I drop a weapon that took me months to craft or something.

And all of my favorite games have always had a pretty heavy grind to them in one way or another. Could be like the nodes here, or the leveling curve in L2, whatever, so long as there's something to chip away at over time, I'm good.

For the story part, I enjoy long, detailed quest lines from time to time. But I'm generally much more interested in what's going on between players/guilds/alliances and all that.

ArchivedUser

First to address the issue of "Grinding", Steven already has an opinion (TheLazyPeon Q&A 05-15-2017) -

Is the game going to be leveling through quest or grind?

1. No grind. Grind sucks. We hate the grind.
2. Need to disassociate the word “grind” with “time”
   1. There’s a lot of things that involve time that can progress your character
   2. Repetition won’t be a part of that progression
   3. We want enough stuff to do in the game where you “can’t do them all”
   4. Want people to see the fruits of their effort while they are doing things.
   5. We want it to be fun, we don’t want it to be work
3. We’ve designed a lot of different paths for you to choose from

 
Second issue "Risk" - I don't want a system of "risk / reward" per say, rather "effort / reward".  If a boss kills me, I don't want to lose gear and whatnot.  There will already be penalties for death, which aren't completely hashed out just yet.  These penalties will happen in PvE or PvP, and be equal.  I think the risk of dying is enough on it's own.  That said, I want the effort i make to put time into PvP or PvE to be rewarding. The more effort required to attain the reward, the better the reward should be.

Third issue "Quests" - When I first do a quest, I usually read the entire thing.  The story could be interesting, I could get to know the world or an NPC better, ect.  That said, modern games have ended up having players speed read or outright skip reading the quest due to the fact that there are easy hand holding mechanics in place to help you get things done without any thought or effort.  This will not be the case in ashes.  There is zero hand holding to assist you.  There are no ! markers to help you find quests, you have to speak with every NPC.  The NPC will then have a dialogue tree that if you don't follow the right way, you won't receive a quest.  Assuming you receive a quest, there are no map markers, waypoints, arrows, lights, glitter, or yellow brick roads to get you where you need to go.  You have to read the quest, and use your brain.  Good luck.  While you go around poking NPCs for things to do, you'll run into a wide variety of quests, meaningless quests like saying hi to Neebur (BG), killing 100 boars for the Horde, or finding out what brown can do for you (UPS).  Then you may find quests that form massive chains and end up changing the node, or a single time quest that grants you the Sword of Bacon.  Variety is the spice of life, just sometimes the spice is salt, other times its a ghost pepper.  

Last issue "Story" - in Ashes we are the story.  Ashes isn't going to have any kind of overarching story that dictates to the players what happens or anything.  The games that have that are all "theme park" style MMOs, and the story is there to keep you on a specific track.  In Ashes Steven wants you to go where you want, do what you want.  The quests will be there to help you discover backstory, and give you an idea where the world as a whole is moving to based on player choices.  There will be plenty of sub-plot type stories, that tell you about local issues / lore, and always give you a better understanding of the world.  Just don't expect anything resembling the way the story is told in WoW / SWToR, or FFXIV.

ArchivedUser

I would say, in this regard, I would like both risk/reward and effort/reward. Although in Ashes I think risk=effort unless you count doing insanely hard quest for your level and "risking" a win/lose different than doing quest at your level.

I think risk is very important. There should be some quest for all of us depending on timing/class/level that are "if you don't complete this now it's just going to get worse." That way you feel motivated to risk it, but if you don't quite succeed you have likely gained something (xp/gold/materials) for your efforts.

I am very appreciative of the time philosophy. I am turned away from a game if after 10 hours I am level 40 and the cap is 50 when "the real game starts."

ArchivedUser

Azathoth said:

I think risk is very important. There should be some quest for all of us depending on timing/class/level that are "if you don't complete this now it's just going to get worse." 

Actually, on that specific note you may be pleased to hear that some world or event bosses will have conditions on them that if you fight them, and fail, they gain strength.  This means more hp, hits harder, new attacks / mechanics, ect.  Steven has warned that there will be costs to failing on some of these bosses, or even costs to ignoring them.

ArchivedUser

I think its important to add some "grind" to the game, but there is the thing, it's really about presentation as to the feeling of grind versus not. For instance, in Black Desert Online you grind into oblivion and lots of people like that, I didn't. And what I also didn't like was pulling as big of groups of enemies as you could because you just WTF pwned them all at once. WoW is like that now as well, just round em up and pew pew. I much prefer having enemies be more challenging, but not having to fight as many of them in order to gain the same reward. 

Fight one dude? No problem. Pull a second? Can still manage. But if you accidentally get a third and maybe fourth? No chance if your solo, unless you out level the area or have some amazing gear. That being said, some of my favorite quests are head hunting/killing quests.

SOLUTION:
I think where there is a good niche between quest line and grinding however is when they go hand in hand. If you talk to a bunch of people and they all give quests to head to the same area with similar objectives. Maybe one person wants you to collect a special mineral found there, or the other one wants you to clear out a pesky band of thieves that have taken up residence. This allows for some grind but also questing and offers the ability to allow areas to be multipurpose.