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The appeal of old school style morrowind questing
Weapon_Master
Member
This is just my personal opinion, feel free to give input on this however you please. I am currently unaware of how ashes intends to tackle this, but I assume it is the new school game as it appeals to a more casual audience as well as those who seek to blitz to end game.
In old school games quests didn't have a big arrow on your compass or a big OVER HERE! circle on your map. You would actually have to force yourself to problem solve and explore to find the objectives.
In old school games such as morrowind and classic wow ( Morrowind did it much better), you had to read the quests and they would say things such as, head east towards the big ancient tree, then once you reach it head right towards the mountains, before the mountains you will see the x y z.
When you had to actually read the quest and find the objective it had its own appeal and rewarding sensation, often you could accidently stumble across other interesting things in the world. Or perhaps even use a social interaction with another player to help find the objective! ( Crazy I know i know! ) The possibilities are limitless, but due to how lazy gamers have gotten, and how rush rush rush the meta is to blitz to end game this potential often gets overlooked.
Any thoughts?
In old school games quests didn't have a big arrow on your compass or a big OVER HERE! circle on your map. You would actually have to force yourself to problem solve and explore to find the objectives.
In old school games such as morrowind and classic wow ( Morrowind did it much better), you had to read the quests and they would say things such as, head east towards the big ancient tree, then once you reach it head right towards the mountains, before the mountains you will see the x y z.
When you had to actually read the quest and find the objective it had its own appeal and rewarding sensation, often you could accidently stumble across other interesting things in the world. Or perhaps even use a social interaction with another player to help find the objective! ( Crazy I know i know! ) The possibilities are limitless, but due to how lazy gamers have gotten, and how rush rush rush the meta is to blitz to end game this potential often gets overlooked.
Any thoughts?
4
Comments
But, given the mentality of many players, I would be OK with a mix of 'easy/go here/easy to solve' ones and 'old school' ones. The more difficult ones, of course, should have much higher rewards.
If what we saw in alpha-1 is an indication, they are tending towards the 'old school' ones. Some of the quests took some thinking through, some didn't. One or two I didn't complete because I didn't figure them out.
But hey, we live in a world where you buy jeans that come with holes in them to look like you do interesting things, instead of doing interesting things that put holes in your jeans.
Bright exclamation marks may be necessary.
My advice to IS would be to make their websites appealing, almost as if it's part of the videogame. That way people may choose a well made interface such as the quests in the official website, rather than a gamebreaking youtube tab.
If such steps were taken it would be possible to go oldschool but in line with the current trends of gaming.
That way we can remove some of those arrows and screaming "right here" markers.
Non only that, but such a well made, gameplay like website design could be used for some community content, directly related to the ingame gameplay. Think cartography or scribes or recruitment.
Awwww man, that doorway that only appeared at exactly 6am and exactly 6pm! I spent hours looking for that thing, before properly re-reading the quest text! And, what a sense of discovery when I finally came upon it!
But, Ashes is going back to old-skool gaming, no?!
Hahaha, I had a colleague who had a £180 pair of those pre-ripped jeans, and he was told he wasn't allowed to wear them to work cos they were "scruffy". He was fuming! Hahahaha
I'd take a Dark Green NPC-name for someone who doesn't have a quest, and a Light Green NPC-name for someone who does. Simple, and effective!
Unlimited Money!
1. Set your 'Mark' spell at Creeper the Scamp in Caldera, who bought all non-potion items at face value.
2. Use the Mages Guild Teleport in Caldera to go to Vivec City, and Taunt an Ordinator into attacking you.
3. Kill the Ordinator and take his goodies.
4. Cast your 'Recall' spell and sell all his gear to Creeper.
5. Go back to Step 2.
Morrowind is still my favourite game of all time.
Also, that is sandbox v themebox... yes.
The challenge should be completing the objectives of the quest; not figuring out what the basic objectives of the quest are.
Example: A small fishing village hasn't been able to connect their port to neighboring villages and major cities because the special tiles in their lighthouse reflector have broken and fallen to disrepair. There's a certain place they used to be made many decades ago, but the area has since been abandoned to farmers. The dock-master's son suggests that if you're ever able to get your hands on some of the tiles, to bring them back as soon as you can. If you take the hint and head to where the ceramic-master's studio once stood, you see some official looking folks poking around the area. Talk to them and you discover they're conducting an academic excavation. Snoop around the excavation site, and you'll eventually see the light flicker over some small objects protruding from the ground. They're not obvious, you have to look for them. Once you pick up a few, a character from the excavation society approaches you and offers you a hefty sum for the tiles. You can choose to sell them off for cash, or return them to the dock-master, who I think gives you a high quality item of some sort.
Now, I don't think all or even most of the quests in Ashes need to be this cryptic, but I think it would be really cool if there were some encounters, treasures, small/hidden resource areas, etc, that didn't have actual quests with trackers. You find a book somewhere that suggests a point of interest, you overhear some NPCs in a social organization mention a specific place and time, but refuse to tell you any more when you try to pry into it further. That sort of thing.
How so? Thinking about this in context of Ultima VII.
I'd forget what I was doing when I logged on the next day. I'd need it written down in some sort of quest journal.
Regardless of if they put in Morrowind style questing, wikis and videos will be up in a couple weeks max.
I say make the game have thought out quests for those of us that want to have a little problem solving and exploration. Those that don't will have the guides up before they know it.
Not for standard quests, absolutely not. But for epic quests? Maybe. It would be pretty interesting to see some quests where the objectives themselves are very vague and only by talking to an NPC might you find the next clues to unfold the quest completely.
Not something you are required to do, but something to hold on to and keep an eye out for whilst in certain nodes of Verra