Alpha First Look: Video 5 - Quests and Combat

[Antanias]

Why change the claim system? The one introduced in 1.19 on 1.0 seemed well enough to keep around.

[Hestern_Nestern]

I don't usually like "kill x amount of creature" quests but what is different about ARR's approach seems to be, speaking only of this video, the level of heart within each ordinarily meaningless request. And like Sieg said - you are forced to read the dialogue and so you care more about what you are doing. That's important.

My soul twitched a little when the Miqo'te explained why we had to kill those slugs. <3

I obviously don't have enough information to go on but I'll say this much is true: I hope each time I am given a quest I will be made to care. So even if it is a quest type I am not ordinarily interested in, at least my soul will be there to recognize compassion. <3

...Sorry for the abysmal structure of my response. @_@

[Preypacer]

I don't usually like "kill x amount of creature" quests but what is different about ARR's approach seems to be, speaking only of this video, the level of heart within each ordinarily meaningless request. And like Sieg said - you are forced to read the dialogue and so you care more about what you are doing. That's important.

How are you forced to read the quest dialog? You don't have to read a word of it. You can tell even the person in that video isn't reading it - unless they're a speed reader (not likely).

You can choose to read it, just as you can in WoW, or LoTRO or Rift or any other MMO based on that template over the last 8 years. But by no means are you "forced" to, nor is it even necessary. Every step of the way is clearly pointed out to you. Just follow the glowing map markers and huge golden icons floating around on your screen.

ARR is doing nothing different or better than any of those. It's a copy and paste of those same quest systems... and I use the term "quest" extremely lightly.

What this video shows are nothing more than mindless busy work, making you run around doing mundane tasks for a reward. They could just as well cut out the "running around" part and just give you the reward for managing to successfully click through all the dialog screens.

[Hulan]

How are you forced to read the quest dialog? You don't have to read a word of it. You can tell even the person in that video isn't reading it - unless they're a speed reader (not likely).

You can choose to read it, just as you can in WoW, or LoTRO or Rift or any other MMO based on that template over the last 8 years. But by no means are you "forced" to, nor is it even necessary. Every step of the way is clearly pointed out to you. Just follow the glowing map markers and huge golden icons floating around on your screen.

ARR is doing nothing different or better than any of those. It's an exact carbon copy of them.

While I agree this in no way forces you to read the quest dialog, your post makes it clear you will never see the other side of the issue, or be willing to see the other side of the issue. That being that the action of the quests is only half of the whole for many people; the motivation and process are just as important to a lot of people. And while the action of this quest is, indeed, no better than WoW or it's predecessors, it shows a love and attention to detail of motivation and story that I have not seen in them.

Not to mention, it's pretty obvious this video was recorded as a demo of the combat and question systems. Of course they are going to save time by skipping through the dialog. Don't forget, whoever made this video probably has done this exact same quest 20 times testing it. I can't blame him/her if he/she doesn't take the time to read it for the 20th time.

[Yukagama]

Alpha is very beautiful and very very enjoyble ^_^

[Alhanelem]

god the quest looks so easy...... even my dog can figure that out......

lol did you not watch the video? the player was higher level than the mobs, and these are progression quests, they aren't supposed to be the hardest.

I'm sure the quests you do when you're approaching level 50 will not be so easy.

Every quest in every mmo is in some way or another going to fit into a particular archetype. Ive seen people laud the quest system of this game and that game but it's not very different. Do you really want longwinded, complicated quests for leveling up at level 10, when you probably could have leveled up faster by ignoring the quest altogether and just grinding? I'd still take a simple kill-the-target-monsters quest over mashing monsters with no purpose or reason other than to get XP.

[Meta]

Please explain, oh glorious MMO designer, how sidequests should be implemented. Are we to expect Yoshi-P and all of Square Enix to churn out hundreds of hour-long quests with fully-voiced cutscenes? Should every single quest be as cryptic as a Myst game and feature unclear objectives so that we're constantly ALT-TABing between the game and http://www.eorzeapedia.com/ to see where to go next?

What's wrong with having a healthy supply of mini-quests that have meaningful EXP and Gil rewards? How else are you supplement the game's primary content (Raids, story missions, PVP, FATEs, Hamlet Defense, etc) to ensure that players will gradually develop their characters, especially with a Leve allowance reset? What's wrong with simple conveniences like map markers? And what makes you think that every quest is as simple as the ones featured in the video? I bet some of our lucky Alpha players could tell you that some quests actually more meaty and varied than you think...

[Reika]

This is how you make level progression, repetitive, mindless and boring if you have no imagination and have decided instead to just copy almost every other MMO for the past 8 years with the same repetitive "kill x of y" crap.

Talk about uninspired and derivative.

And why even have the quest dialog in there at all? Hell even the person in the video isn't taking the time to read it. And why bother? They have *3* different indicators showing you exactly where to go for the kill quest, and 2 showing you where to go for the "moist depression".

"Well, we have all this dialog but, you probably won't read it anyway. But, in case you do, you're probably too dumb to figure out where we're directing you to. So, we'll show you on the mini-map. And because you're probably too dumb to realize the circle on the mini-map indicates where you should be, we'll put markers for the mobs on the mini map too. Now don't panic... We know you're too dumb to figure it out even then. We've accounted for that by also putting large markers over the mobs' heads in-game too. You don't even have to know what the mobs are called or what they look like. Just look for the big, intrusive golden markers walking around."

For the other quest.. "go to the clearly marked, pulsating markers on your mini-map and look for the moist depression. Okay, you're too dumb to figure out the purple hazy looking spots that just happen to be exactly in the same spot as the mini-map markers are likely them, and you're probably too much of a mouth-breather to figure out that targeting those spots will tell you what they are. So, don't worry. We'll make sure to have the words "moist depression" hovering over them as well. Hopefully it's not too presumptuous of us to assume you can read big words like "depression".

"See? We have your time in mind! We know you don't want to be bogged down with boring stuff like interesting content that actually requires your participation, attention and, you know... usage of your brain (I mean, pfft.. who wants to use that?). We realize what you're really interested in is getting all this boring gameplay stuff out of the way so you can get back to serious stuff... like jumping up and down on tents."

Give me a freaking break already with this patronizing, hand-holding "we will show you exactly where everything is so you don't even have to try" crap already. Seriously. Gamers are far smarter than this nonsense.

What a cop-out.

And going out and mindlessly slaying the same monsters over and over is not repetative? Theres not much you can do to avoid repatition to level up uneless they start us off at max level or it simply is not level base, like super mario brothers.

Feel free to point out a successful MMO where you did not repeate X action to gain exp.

[IloveYouPumpkin]

I mean, I like the game. It looks pretty and I think I'll enjoy it. But the hand-holding preypacer is talking about.. I also find incredibly irritating. It's something that plagues a lot of MMO's in recent years.

[Nayto]

Looks like next in the line of complaints will be 'cookie cutter herp derp quests' or 'one-combo WS spam confirmed'

Nonetheless complaining about what we see here is about the same as that person who wrote a review based on 'farming rats for hours, exciting!' for FFXIV 1.0.