QOTD: how interactive/immersive do YOU want quests to be?

Would you like to see super long quests that take you all around verra, or would you like a fairly light quests?

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I keep saying I don't want any quests at all. I know this is a rather extreme position, but to me quests are just busy work that take me out of the game. MMOs started with the goal of being a fantasy world simulator, and somewhere along the line they ended up leaning too heavily on the crutch of quests to make the world feel alive. Quests are not needed if there is enough reasons to socialize. That being said, I don't want quests to be any bit interactive or immersive. Just give me the dumb list of goals that end up being a short cut to grinding.

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.

Kionashi

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I keep saying I don't want any quests at all. I know this is a rather extreme position, but to me quests are just busy work that take me out of the game. MMOs started with the goal of being a fantasy world simulator, and somewhere along the line they ended up leaning too heavily on the crutch of quests to make the world feel alive. Quests are not needed if there is enough reasons to socialize. That being said, I don't want quests to be any bit interactive or immersive. Just give me the dumb list of goals that end up being a short cut to grinding.

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.

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

Sathrago

one of the things that really turned me off in WoW during BFA was the stupid power scaling. Just the "other day" I was fighting a galactic god-like being and helped seal him away with the other god-like beings. No, I don't wanna freakin help you feed your pigs or find your lost cat.

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.

George_Black

For me running around helping lowly NPCs is not immersive at all, when my character is a badass warrior that kills raid bosses, sieges castles and has items more valuable than the entire grocery store of the node.

"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.

daveywavey

I like different kinds of quests, ones that take me a while, and ones I can just cut through quickly if I'm short on time. Vary it a little, keep it interesting. Just don't keep sending me back to the same place asking for a set of different items each time.

TheRealJakeman

George Black wrote: »

For me running around helping lowly NPCs is not immersive at all, when my character is a badass warrior that kills raid bosses, sieges castles and has items more valuable than the entire grocery store of the node.

"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.

Ravudha

Super long quests that can be hard to find, aren't given to every player, and give unique rewards.

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.

Marcet

Some quests are lighter than others, but yeah ofc I want inmersive long quests that are completely epic. At least don't make quests super easy with 0 challenge just so a 3 year old baby can do it.

Yuquiyu

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I keep saying I don't want any quests at all. I know this is a rather extreme position, but to me quests are just busy work that take me out of the game. MMOs started with the goal of being a fantasy world simulator, and somewhere along the line they ended up leaning too heavily on the crutch of quests to make the world feel alive. Quests are not needed if there is enough reasons to socialize. That being said, I don't want quests to be any bit interactive or immersive. Just give me the dumb list of goals that end up being a short cut to grinding.

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.

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)

OnlyOne

I would agree with most people here that I'm not a fan of mundane quests where it asks of you to gather x amount of y item. However I can see that there might be a need for such quests in the sense of trying to achieve master rank of an artisan skill so naturally you must acquire items and ingredients. In that regard, those "fetching" quests would make sense.
All things considered, I would love for my quests to be as immersive as possible!

Vhaeyne

Yuquiyu wrote: »

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)

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.

Nagash

Depends on the quests. I would hope mainline quests or long quests are immersive but I'm ok if shorter quests are just for grinding

Dygz

Vhaeyne wrote: »

I keep saying I don't want any quests at all. I know this is a rather extreme position, but to me quests are just busy work that take me out of the game. MMOs started with the goal of being a fantasy world simulator, and somewhere along the line they ended up leaning too heavily on the crutch of quests to make the world feel alive. Quests are not needed if there is enough reasons to socialize. That being said, I don't want quests to be any bit interactive or immersive. Just give me the dumb list of goals that end up being a short cut to grinding.

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.

MMORPGs started with the goal of being online RPGs with masses of people playing in the same space/server at the same time. Some gamers like to try to ignore the RPG portion.
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.

Dygz

Yuquiyu wrote: »

Would you like to see super long quests that take you all around verra, or would you like a fairly light quests?

Super-long quests tend to be super-tedious rather than super-entertaining.
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.

maouw

In my experience, the most entertaining long-quests are when the "story" of the quest gets interrupted and complicated and you get swallowed into a much bigger event.

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.

daveywavey

maouw wrote: »

e.g.
Harry potter goes to school to learn magic just coz. Ends up fighting the ultimate evil wizard.

Spoiler Alert!

HazardNumberSeven

No quests, thanks. Not interested in doing quests, unless it's missions related to gathering things for the city or something along those lines.

maouw

I understand the "no quests" people from a pure sand-box perspective, I'm wary of theme-park MMOs too.

Not sure I'm quite ready to depart from questing though.
Any reasons for "I'm not bothered to do them"?

McShave

I don't know what questing in Ashes is gonna be like. There is a history to the world of Verra, but there is no real story to Ashes. The people come back from Sanctus and have to prosper is the entire story.

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.

daveywavey

McShave wrote: »

There is a history to the world of Verra, but there is no real story to Ashes. The people come back from Sanctus and have to prosper is the entire story.

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".

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