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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
QOTD: how interactive/immersive do YOU want quests to be?
Yuquiyu
Member, Alpha Two
Would you like to see super long quests that take you all around verra, or would you like a fairly light quests?
3
Comments
One of my biggest hates is when a game makes your camera focus on a NPC when you talk to them. ESO and ArcheAge come to mind. I don't want to talk to these objects. I don't want to hear them. They are never compelling or interesting. If I wanted compelling story or narrative I would enjoy it in a stand alone format like a book or show/movie. I play video games to be challenged, I play MMOs to be challenged with other people.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
daaam, extreme position indeed...
I want Immersive missions, I don't mind if is in my node or all across Verra, I want deep and interesting characters and story worth doing
So, what I want is for our characters to be doing quests that befit their statuses be it a starting adventurer or xxDragonslayer Lord of the Demon Bangers.
"Go get 3 flowers 5 honey combs and 1 bucket of water"
"Kill 10 wild boars"
"Collect payment from 3 people in the village"
Bitch no, who do you think you are talking too?
Immersive quests must be cool and few. They must have a reason to be immersive, to feel like a quest, not an apprentices chores.. Quests for:
Class progression
Unlock top weapon skill
Rare gear blueprint discovery
Many more examples that only L2 players would get.
I dont like quests, unless I know that it will take me 1-5 days to complete them and there will be a great, meaningful reward, a milestone every player dreams of reaching.
They can include exploration, puzzles, killing, raiding, crafting a quest item, aid a lore NPC with their mysterious arcs, anything.
If the reward is great, it's a great quest. And that's immersive.
I agree with this. Although I will say, I would allow for some of the earlier quests to be in the previously mentioned format because you need to learn your rotation/character feel/etc. You aren't going to create a character that is soloing raid bosses at level 1. That stuff takes time and each quest leading up to that gratifying, endgame feel should be moderately difficult to progress your character.
I think Steven has enough experience with MMO's to know what you mean. The thing I would avoid (that I think you're also alluding to) are pointless World Quests that are severely gated by extraordinarily tedious grinds. I say extraordinarily here because reputation grinds and material grinds are fairly common in the genre but to make the quests meaningful the time put in should equate to the reward gained. The hard part for developers, IMO, is coming up with the cohesive story to fit all of those things into.
Kind of like what @Vhaeyne said about challenge. I want quests that are a challenge to discover; players need to figure things out rather than just be able to spot a highlighted NPC name plate and left click.
I get making this a staple is hard to achieve in MMOs and am glad that the devs are least breaking quest terminology down into events, tasks, and narrative quests. What most MMOs have tried to sell as quests are just tasks.
extreme position indeed
i feel like the only game that i know of today that does that properly would be albion online
(the tutorial and first like 20-30 mins could even be considered a quest but its honestly just goals to teach you the mechanics of the game)
All things considered, I would love for my quests to be as immersive as possible!
I played a little Albion. I did not really get into it. I have no big issues with it. Just the play style and art style take me out of it. Oddly it makes me want to play PoE. A game with quests, but I can be mapping on a new character in an average of 8 hours, so the quests in PoE don't bug me too bad.
I actually had a suggestion thread a while back, to not even put the tutorial quests in the game. Just to have them on a single player client as something to do while the servers are down. The idea is that new players would not get handouts, and you could have something to do while servers are down or even put it up a month before the game goes live. Keep the tutorials out of the game.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Quests are a core element of RPGs. It's not that quests are a crutch, it's that devs cannot create new quest content at the same pace players race through the quests.
Which is why Ashes is relying on Nodes and Castles and Caravans and Crafting to help players concoct their own content and lore.
I think the only super-long quest we need in Ashes is getting a Node to the Metropolis stage with the buildings and services and mayors/government we want...and then striving to protect that Metropolis.
e.g.
Harry potter goes to school to learn magic just coz. Ends up fighting the ultimate evil wizard.
Geralt wants to find Yennifer. Ends up doing EVERYTHING. (And for most people, disappointing her).
Things like: you go to deliver the honey and flowers to the damsel, but when you return, she's being pestered by gaston. So you end up pretending to be her lover, as you hand her the flowers and honey. Gaston challenges you to a duel. The village thinks you are a couple. Grandma starts pressuring you to propose.
All of this, just because you started the quest to deliver flowers and honey.
Spoiler Alert!
Not sure I'm quite ready to depart from questing though.
Any reasons for "I'm not bothered to do them"?
I would be fine if questing was situation based, like your node wants to create a building and it needs x crafting materials, or maybe you can have quests that send you to dungeons when they spawn.
The only opportunity for interesting quests I see is whatever they have planned for the social organization (and maybe religion) quests. This is where you can have the quests that are not "go kill 10 boars", but I don't expect them to be epic quests about saving the world and such. Keeping it simple is ok in my books.
I dunno. We've been told that The Ancients are the "primary antagonists" of the game, so that suggests they'll play some quest-based role. If it's just people building up cities, there's not much scope for them to "antagonise".
I can say I sort of have the same position. But in a way, I like quests that give decent rewards but are also challenging. None of those kill quests are necessary unless it really makes sense. Runescape is a good example of quests that can be fun.