Do you want "Daily Quests" if so, to what extent?

Many MMO:s have daily quests to give you a steady source of income and reputations, as well as to keep you logging in everyday. Do you want daily quests? Why/why not? If you want them, how important/impactful should they be?

Personaly I would like some form of daily quests but I want them to be interesting and relevant. The best ones for me are quests that make you go out and explore the world. This helps making the world and "older" less relevant areas feel more alive.

For me, if daily quests are present in the game, they should be for max level and they should not take more than 30 mins to complete. They should be optional and focus mostly on income. I also like profession quests.

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Dygz

If you can just buy out the daily quests rather than doing them, there is no point.
The daily quests should ideally be tasks that players want to do... and they should be relatively meaningful.
Feeling obligated to do stuff in an MMORPG is subjective.

DrEpoch

Daily's are a direction, and in an open world it's easy to get lost along the way. We know some form of daily will be in the game, maybe not for everyone but for the majority yes.

Your node will need materials every day, and your node is your progression to getting stronger, unlocking new content and harder enemies.
So logging in, and working with members of the node to forward plans to making sure everything is okay, will probably be a thing.

Logging out and not playing for a week, so many things could happen. Node destroyed, you no longer own a house, or node upgraded and your house upgraded.

Perhaps a daily board of tasks will need to be completed, something that the mayor of the node that every citizen needs to complete, or if you're looking to get some extra rep with one of many player guilds (NPC guilds) you'll probably have something there

Blackhearted

No.
The only way to make daily quests worthwhile is to hand out easy rewards and then they become meta.

Ferryman

Dygz wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

What is the purpose of daily quests? From what I've seen they have 2 purposes:

1. Give new max level characters a starting point into end-game content
2. encourage players to log in every day

Daily quests give players some thing quick to accomplish each day.
If I only have 15 minutes to play, I can probably find something of some small significance to do.
Doesn't necessarily matter whether I'm max level.

I'm not max level in Wiz101, but I know if I log in for 10 minutes, I can win some gold or crowns.
I'm not max level in Apoc, but the Daily quests help push me a bit closer to the next level. It's great when I can jump in for one match, finish a daily by opening 3 chests and jump back out. Especially on nights when I have class or homework or really need to be studying for an exam.
And, it's easy enough to ignore the Daily quests when they aren't enticing.

The problem isn't really the Daily quests.
The problem is having nothing else new to do for months and years except the Daily quests.

I guess most people understand why daily quests usually exist as part of the end game content. However, the problem is, that repeating the same quests is getting more and more boring everyday. Eventually it will lead people to hate the daily quest -system in general. But you are right, that the other side of the problem is, that if there is not enough other activities to do, then we could say that daily quests are better than nothing. Now this is where we throw the ball to the developers, they are responsible for offering players meaningfull content everyday, even in the so called end game or may be we could speak of late game content instead.

I can recognize myself from your example to have days when I just have a very limited time to do anything in the game. Still I do not want to use that time to repeat same old quests over and over again. I want to do something else, maybe different things in different days. I do not want to feel like I am forced to log in to accomplish boring dailies, I am still logging in if I know there is something reasonable things to do.

nefelia

I don't think daily quests as seen in typical MMOs would fit the game IS is trying to create.
I'd rather see something like work orders created by players, and completed by players: something like: Player X requires 50 bars of iron. Deliver to Market node Y. Reward of Z gold coins. It would give some guidance to people who are looking for some, while also allowing facilitating cooperation among the player base.

Dygz

ferryman wrote: »

I can recognize myself from your example to have days when I just have a very limited time to do anything in the game. Still I do not want to use that time to repeat same old quests over and over again. I want to do something else, maybe different things in different days. I do not want to feel like I am forced to log in to accomplish boring dailies, I am still logging in if I know there is something reasonable things to do.

It depends on what the daily quests are.
In Wizard101, it feels like it's a different quest each day on a monthly cycle, so we're only repeating the same quest once a month.

For Apoc, I like some daily quests more than others, so it feels great when I get one like Open 3 Chests. I know I can complete that in one match and jump out.
I know I can complete Deal 200 Damage With Maces in 2-3 matches, so I'm happy to give that one a go. I suck at Wands, so it's not worth any amount of time or effort for me to attempt that Daily. I ignore that one and I don't feel bad about ignoring it.
I don't feel bad about skipping that one or skipping both Dailies on any given day because I know there will be several that I won't mind doing throughout the week.
Completionists probably feel pressure to always complete all the Dailies.

For the Ashes MMORPG, Dailies need to feel meaningful - and should it be easy for them to be meaningful - like helping to prep for a Castle Siege or building/escorting/attacking a Caravan. Or participating in a Node/Religious/Social/Guild vote.
For me, it would probably feel great to have a Node related daily one day, a Religious related daily the next day, a Social related daily the day after that and a Racial related Daily the day after that. I would expect there to be some combat, crafting and exploration dailies available, too.
There should always be meaningful tasks for us to do. And it's fine for some mini-tasks to be repeatable because there will be stuff that we will want to do repeatedly anyway - even if it's prepping or participating in a Siege or prepping or participating in a Caravan run.

Player work orders are fine and good, but I don't want to be stuck without something to do just because other players don't have anything for me to do during in the minutes that I have free to play on any given day. or because I'm not interested in any of the player contracts that are up when I'm online.
I'd rather know that there will be something I am interested in doing when I log in - especially if I can anticipate the day when the mini-task I like will be available.

Caeryl

I want to have something worthwhile to do every day

That doesn’t mean I need or want a checklist of repeated tasks as fluff in place of worthwhile activities

Noaani

Caeryl wrote: »

I want to have something worthwhile to do every day

As do I.

I just don't want the game to tell me what that is. I can work out what worthwhile things I will do on any given day myself, thanks.

Nagash

noaani wrote: »

Caeryl wrote: »

I want to have something worthwhile to do every day

As do I.

I just don't want the game to tell me what that is. I can work out what worthwhile things I will do on any given day myself, thanks.

Agreed. There are so many different ways to spend my time in a MMO but daily quests just take up unnecessary time

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

For the Ashes MMORPG, Dailies need to feel meaningful - and should it be easy for them to be meaningful - like helping to prep for a Castle Siege or building/escorting/attacking a Caravan. Or participating in a Node/Religious/Social/Guild vote.

While I am against dailies in general, I am the first to say that there will likely need to be something that fulfills the role they provide to MMO's that make use of them.

That aside, even if Ashes did have dailies as per other games, the three examples above are literally the worst thing Intrepid could have as tasks for daily quests, and I'm going to go through each of the three and explain why.

Castle sieges are essentially going to be events between two guilds and/or alliances of guilds. They are not things for individual players to get involved with. Furthermore, most days, most servers won't even have a castle that is in a state of being sieged - or any declarations of such - and so such quests would not be possible to complete.

Caravans should not have their economic importance diminished by encouraging people to simply create one and then disband it immediately just so they can complete a daily. If they are cheap to create, this is what will happen - if they are not cheap to create, people simply won't complete it as a daily task. It leaves you with the question of "why even bother having it there?"

Attacking or escorting a caravan is equally pointless - there is enough risk to running caravans without people attacking them for quest credit - and people tasked with escorting a caravan will likely just click on the pop-up button that asks if they are attacking or escorting the caravan when they are near to get that same credit, and then carrying on with their day.

Lastly in terms of caravans, you have to assume that players will always take the path of least resistance. In an MMO where people actually talk to people on their server (rather than just paying for friends on Discord) you have to make the assumption that they will use that communication to find that path of least resistance. If there were daily tasks to build/escort/attack a caravan, it won't take long before people work out that they can all communicate with each other to make thing easier. Player X will build a caravan, player Y will claim to be escorting it, and player Z will claim to attack it, and then all three players walk off having done that daily task in a matter of seconds.

Real meaningful content right there.

As for the voting idea - what votes? As far as I know, the only actual player vote is for the leader of scientific nodes - and this only happens once a month. Basing a daily quest on an event that happens once a month for 1/4 of the population is probably not going to be popular.

To my knowledge we have no indication that religion or social entities will have any form of voting, and it is stupid to make a daily quest based around a mechanic that a guild can initiate - it becomes less of a daily quest at that point and more of being online at the point in time where the guild leader initiated the pointless vote that serves no purpose other than allowing guild members easy daily task completion.

Again, real meaningful content.

No game has ever had actual meaningful dailies - because no task that you do in 10 minutes every day in a game is meaningful. All games do is increase the rewards of dailies so that people associate the acquisition of that reward with the daily task, and so the daily task takes on the meaning of that heightened reward.

The problem is, in increasing this reward, these daily tasks become the best use of player time in many games - and when you factor in daily tasks for different aspects of the game, different zones etc, doing these daily tasks that are the best use of player time quickly mount up to taking several hours every day.

Dygz

Um. Castle sieges are weekly events which require prep for defense... and for attack. While it's technically not necessary to have daily prep, daily prep will be best for the most favorable outcome.

Caravans will always be aiding Node progression, so no point in creating or disbanding a caravan just to complete a daily quest.

Previous games haven't had Node progression or Religious progression or Social progression, so, you many be right that previous games have not had tasks that can be completed by an individual in ten minutes that have anything more than minor individual impact.
Ashes is not like previous games in that respect.

Guild leaders are not in charge of Religious and Social organizations AFAIK. Individuals will be participating in Religious and Social and Racial and Naval progression, so we can expect to see some form of dailies encouraging that participation. Voting is just one possibility.

Your Caravan example assumes that all three tasks - build, escort and attack - will be available on the same day. It's more likely that only one of those tasks would be available. I also think it's doubtful that the initial Creation will be the daily. More likely that crafting materials for an already created Caravan will be the daily. So, more likely that those three players would all provide a modular piece for the Caravan. And might as well capitalize on the investment by also escorting it's built.
Come to think of it, have we been told that's even possible to disband a Caravan once it's been built?
Also, seems more likely that three players working together would choose to escort or defend together - especially since we can be sure that the completion of the daily is really going to be either successfully defending or successfully looting the Caravan rather than simply joining a Caravan battle.

You can, of course, create strawman examples that have no bearing on the actual design.
It's a free world, after all.

Caeryl

Dygz wrote: »

Um. Castle sieges are weekly events which require prep for defense... and for attack. While it's technically not necessary to have daily prep, daily prep will be best for the most favorable outcome.

Caravans will always be aiding Node progression, so no point in creating or disbanding a caravan just to complete a daily quest.

Previous games haven't had Node progression or Religious progression or Social progression, so, you many be right that previous games have not had tasks that can be completed by an individual in ten minutes that have anything more than minor individual impact.
Ashes is not like previous games in that respect.

Guild leaders are not in charge of Religious and Social organizations AFAIK. Individuals will be participating in Religious and Social and Racial and Naval progression, so we can expect to see some form of dailies encouraging that participation. Voting is just one possibility.

Your Caravan example assumes that all three tasks - build, escort and attack - will be available on the same day. It's more likely that only one of those tasks would be available. I also think it's doubtful that the initial Creation will be the daily. More likely that crafting materials for an already created Caravan will be the daily. So, more likely that those three players would all provide a modular piece for the Caravan. And might as well capitalize on the investment by also escorting it's built.
Come to think of it, have we been told that's even possible to disband a Caravan once it's been built?
Also, seems more likely that three players working together would choose to escort or defend together - especially since we can be sure that the completion of the daily is really going to be either successfully defending or successfully looting the Caravan rather than simply joining a Caravan battle.

You can, of course, create strawman examples that have no bearing on the actual design.
It's a free world, after all.

All the more reason we don’t need any of those activities as dailies on a checklist.

Caravans are rewarded anyway.

Castle sieges require prepwork and planning no matter what.

Voting should be done because people care about the topic being voted on.

There’s absolutely no reason to stick a checklist of menial tasks into a game if the game actually has meaningful activities. If Ashes has to rely on dailies to keep players logging in, then it’s failed at its most basic goals.

Dygz

I don't know that dailies would need to be on a checklist.
And I don't believe the purpose of dailies in Ashes would be to keep players logging in.
That has been the purpose in previous MMORPGs, sure.

Caravans are rewarded anyway - sieges require prepwork anyway - voting should be done because people care about the topic...doesn't mean there should be no additional incentives or bonuses.
Same with all the other tasks/activities that might be used for dailies.

Caeryl

Dygz wrote: »

I don't know that dailies would need to be on a checklist.
And I don't believe the purpose of dailies in Ashes would be to keep players logging in.
That has been the purpose in previous MMORPGs, sure.

Caravans are rewarded anyway - sieges require prepwork anyway - voting should be done because people care about the topic...doesn't mean there should be no additional incentives or bonuses.
Same with all the other tasks/activities that might be used for dailies.

Dailies are a checklist.

They absolutely should not have any extra bonuses unrelated to the task at hand.

When you successfully guide a caravan you should not be receiving something that’s used for progression in a religion skill line.

When you complete a PvP bounty, you shouldn’t be getting a buff to damage against PvE mobs.

When you vote on an issue within a node, you shouldn’t be getting crafting materials.

It doesn’t make sense and it obligates those who don’t have an interest in the content to do it anyway because it gives them items for their actual preferred content.

We have absolutely no need for dailies if the content is designed well.

If you guide a caravan to its destination with minimal damage, you can get bonuses to materials or pay.

If you pick up a PvP bounty and turn it in on the same day, you can get bonuses to pay and experience.

If you vote regularly in a node, you can become more influential with NPCs.

Reward dedication and efficiency, not pure the ability to repeat a task.

Noaani

@Dygz, I'm not really sure where to begin...

Dygz wrote: »

Um. Castle sieges are weekly events which require prep for defense... and for attack. While it's technically not necessary to have daily prep, daily prep will be best for the most favorable outcome.

Each castle is sieged every 4 weeks, the nodes attached to each castle are sieged in the three weeks prior to the castle being sieged.

Thing is though, just because the game tells players that the siege is happening every 4 weeks, doesn't mean that players will show up every 4 weeks. Sieging a castle is expensive, and so is defending it. Defenders have no choice but to put time and resources in to defending their castle every month, but potential attackers do not. The single best strategy for successfully taking over a castle would therefore be to put several months worth of resources in to a single attempt, rather than attempting every month with a single months worth of resources.

The thing is, there is no way to have a "turn in" for a quest where the objective is to help the attackers of a siege. The preperation for attacking a castle happens in individual players inventories, it happens in guild banks. It isn't like the attackers are building structures out in a field somewhere for a week before a siege.

Even "if" this were the case, how would a siege daily task quest work if no one was actively working on attacking the castle this month? Would we have to rely on NPC's to siege player castles now just so that daily quests can feature castle sieges?

I think you have a resource dump mechanic in mind here. That isn't how sieges will work.

Dygz wrote: »

Previous games haven't had Node progression or Religious progression or Social progression, so, you many be right that previous games have not had tasks that can be completed by an individual in ten minutes that have anything more than minor individual impact.
Ashes is not like previous games in that respect.

There have been games with both social and religious progression paths.

Dygz wrote: »

Guild leaders are not in charge of Religious and Social organizations AFAIK. Individuals will be participating in Religious and Social and Racial and Naval progression, so we can expect to see some form of dailies encouraging that participation. Voting is just one possibility.

Now, I can only comment in regards to the specific words you type out and post to these forums. I can not speak to what you have in your head when you type them out - only to the actual words themself. Your specific suggestion in relation to the above was

Dygz wrote: »

Or participating in a Node/Religious/Social/Guild vote.

Now, while you are right in that guilds leaders do not necessarily need to be the people in charge of religions or social organisations - although I can not see any confirmation at all that any players will be in charge of these entities at all (both have a progression path, but there is no talk of them being lead by players).

However, what guild leaders DO lead (and the clue to this is in their title), is guilds. You SPECIFICALLY said that you think participating in a guild vote should be a daily task - and guild votes are things guild leaders have control over.

Now, I can fully agree that if daily tasks were a thing in Ashes, there could be tasks based around nodes, social organizations and religions (I doubt anybody would argue against that). This is not what I was disagreeing with you on. I was SPECIFICALLY disagreeing with you on participation in votes being a suitable daily task - especially if that task can be completed via voting in a guild vote - which is exactly what you suggested.

Again, I can not speak to what you were thinking or meaning, only to what you have typed.

Dygz wrote: »

Your Caravan example assumes that all three tasks - build, escort and attack - will be available on the same day. It's more likely that only one of those tasks would be available

If there are daily tasks to start a caravan, defend a caravan and attack a caravan, and only one of each of the three is offered on any given day, then on the day when the quest is to attack a caravan, people will simply not run caravans.

It's almost like you forgot that people are able to talk to each other in game.

Lets remember that you said that daily quests should take 15 minutes.

Dygz wrote: »

Daily quests give players some thing quick to accomplish each day.
If I only have 15 minutes to play, I can probably find something of some small significance to do.

Now, you also said this.

Dygz wrote: »

So, more likely that those three players would all provide a modular piece for the Caravan. And might as well capitalize on the investment by also escorting it's built.

All of a sudden, the daily task that you think should take players 15 minutes to do is now all about running a caravan which would likely take an hour or longer if you include the time it takes to set up and such.

Finally, I want to point out to you that in this thread, you have made the following two statements.

Dygz wrote: »

So, daily quests should be superfluous.

Dygz wrote: »

For the Ashes MMORPG, Dailies need to feel meaningful - and should it be easy for them to be meaningful

So you somehow want daily quests to be both superfluous (or unnecessary), and meaningful (or worthwhile).

While these are not diametrically opposed terms, I don't see any way for them to co-exist as accurate adjectives for the same thing.

You seem at times to be more interested in "winning" a debate online than you are in having a coherent opinion on a topic and putting that across. Your opinion on daily quests (at least in as far as you have put across in this thread) is absolutely not coherent - you want them to be quick, yet to take an hour, you want them to be important, but also unnecessary.

---

It seems to me that there are only two perspectives from a players point of view on wanting daily quests in games.

Either they want to be given a range of easy tasks to do each day so that they don't need to think about what to do, or they want to get free shit for various tasks that they would likely do anyway.

Neither are overly good arguments from a developer point of view - if a task they have added to the game isn't enjoyable enough and doesn't reward enough for players to want to do that task without the addition of a daily quest for it, then that task needs to be re-evaluated.

If that task is worth doing without the addition of the daily quest, then the daily quest is just giving players something for nothing.

From a development perspective, if daily tasks *have* to exist in Ashes, my first two suggestions would be as follows.

First, the tasks ask players to do something they couldn't or wouldn't do if they didn't have that task. This may be finding an item or entity, it may be an escort task (though only if the AI pathing is up to par), it could even be a purely dialogue based quest where you have to navigate through a web of dialogue options with an NPC to get a piece of information.

The second thing is that any daily task should be able to be accepted, completed and turned in within the boundaries of the one node. Any quest that sees you having to leave the influence of the node you are in is larger in scope than a daily task.

Dygz wrote: »

You can, of course, create strawman examples that have no bearing on the actual design.
It's a free world, after all.

A strawman is where, after you have put forward a perspective in a debate, rather than debating the perspective you put forward, I claim to be debating that but instead debate something else. Essentially, a strawman is when you debate something other than the point the other puts across.

Now, as I have said several times in this post, I can only speak as to what you have typed out and posted. All points I have made have been in direct response to things you have posted - regardless of whether you meant what you were saying or not.

Coming up with potential examples of how things could work isn't a strawman - it is simply coming up with potential examples.

Dygz

A straw man is where you reframe and misrepresent an existing argument in a manner which can be easily knocked down.

https://grammarist.com/rhetoric/straw-man-fallacy/
The straw man fallacy involves misrepresenting an opponent’s position to make it easier to refute. Straw man arguments often oversimplify opposing views or disregard inconvenient points in favor of points that are easy to argue against.

Nagash

I sware you two fight more than an old married couple who can't afford a divorce

Noaani

Dygz wrote: »

A straw man is where you reframe and misrepresent an existing argument in a manner which can be easily knocked down.

https://grammarist.com/rhetoric/straw-man-fallacy/
The straw man fallacy involves misrepresenting an opponent’s position to make it easier to refute. Straw man arguments often oversimplify opposing views or disregard inconvenient points in favor of points that are easy to argue against.

Yeah, other than me dumbing it down a bit for ease of understanding, that's what I said.

As I said several times in the above post - all I can speak to are the words you type. There are times when I don't think you mean the words you type - either because they make no sense or because they directly contradict something else you just said.

Most people that claim others use strawman arguments against them are simply suffering a disconnect between what they think they have said and what they have actually said. It's really easy to think people are using strawman arguments against you if you think you have said something other than what is contained within the words you have used.

If you think someone is using a strawman against you in a forum debate, the appropriate thing to do is to quote what you said, and then quote their response that you think is a strawman. Chances are, what you quote will not actually mean what you think it means, and coming at the situation in this manner gives you the chance to clarify your position rather than blatantly claiming strawman useage is in effect and then not actually discussing any other points.

Wandering Mist

Nagash wrote: »

I sware you two fight more than an old married couple who can't afford a divorce

Well someone has to do it and I'm just here to supply the popcorn

edgymcmemelord

If we're going with the traditional bland MMO "fetch" or "kill X number of monsters" quests, then NO. If AoC is being developed as a new spin on MMORPG's, then pointless daily quests will just seem like typical spaceholder content. Weekly and even monthly qeusts, or more appropriately called something like "Endeavors", could allow more freedom in design and gameplay, especially if the actual objectives are more open-ended or ambiguous.
Daily quests punish players who have full-time jobs and families, or otherwise less spare time than "hardcore" gamers. Longer time frames not only encourage more long-term commitment, but they also don't require you to stress over whether or not you can log in every single day to do boring repetitive missions.
And for the love of God, NO DAILY LOGIN BONUS SYSTEM. Those are almost as bad as daily quests, and sort of ruin the immersion when you can simply log in every day, get a reward, and log out. Some MMO's throw end-game content at you just for logging in enough days in a row, even if it takes months-worth of a login streak. A credible steady source of income based on game performance would be enough to satisfy at least 90% of the player base, and with a dynamic world setting, the fluctuating economy would be a perfect way to create that daily income.

tl:dr NO daily quests, NO daily login bonus streak BS, YES to a daily income source affected by player actions, performance, and state of relevant economy and world setting. Sorry for wall of text.

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