Ideas for 2.0

[Onidemon]

Here's some things i hope they do add in 2.0.

First I'd like to see more NPC around town and not static one that juts stand there and don't move like statues. I wish they were more of them walking around, more guards in the city and that they salute you when you pass by them.

Minor voice acting. Ok the game may not need full voice acted cut scenes like SWTOR but just a little speech whenever you click on an NPC or when talking to a quest giver would be nice and add some atmosphere to the world.

Different and more elaborate quest with choice. I played a game recently and liked how the quests were done, it felt very refreshing. I'll give you one example.

I talked to this NPC who asked me to recover the brain of a wild beast and to talk to his assistant first. When talking to the assistant, she confessed that she thinks her boss is a fraud and wanted to expose him so she asked me that when i recover the brain, to go see her first in order to set her boss up. Now after recovering the item, i had 2 choices... either going to the girl first or directly to the first NPC. Each would give me different outcome and rewards. I went to the first NPC and then i had the choice to tell him his assistant is a traitor or not which again would give me a different reward.

These type of quest feel very refreshing, especially when 90% of the quests in any mmo out there are always "kill X number of that beast and your done"

Another quest i had to do, was to interrogate 3 prisoners and decide their outcome based on the interrogation.(Set free, execute, etc)

The quests we have right now are quite terrible, as they are not even just "kill X number of beats" but most of the time, run around town or the world map to talk to that NPC, which in the end is even more boring.

with 2.0, SE has the opportunity to make something that will really stand out and some games out there have proven that things can be done differently and better, so i'm sure SE and Yoshi-P can do too.

[Stanislaw]

Here's some things i hope they do add in 2.0.

First I'd like to see more NPC around town and not static one that juts stand there and don't move like statues. I wish they were more of them walking around, more guards in the city and that they salute you when you pass by them.

I believe it was stated somewhere that this was planned for 2.0, as well as the ability to enter houses/doors inside towns.

Minor voice acting. Ok the game may not need full voice acted cut scenes like SWTOR but just a little speech whenever you click on an NPC or when talking to a quest giver would be nice and add some atmosphere to the world.

Main quest storyline cutscenes have some voice acting. It's incredibly minor, but it's in there, unlike FFXI which had none whatsoever. Although currently it's in English only, I believe it was also stated somewhere that voice acting will be done in multiple languages in the future.

Different and more elaborate quest with choice. I played a game recently and liked how the quests were done, it felt very refreshing.

Again, main quest storylines have this, although this system was mostly in place so crafters/gatherers had a chance to finish these quests without having to actually do battle, which in the end caused these quests to be rather stale - hence the changes Yoshi-P mentioned recently.

The quests we have right now are quite terrible, as they are not even just "kill X number of beats" but most of the time, run around town or the world map to talk to that NPC, which in the end is even more boring.

This I agree with, but all we can say/do is wait and see.

with 2.0, SE has the opportunity to make something that will really stand out and some games out there have proven that things can be done differently and better, so i'm sure SE and Yoshi-P can do too.

In summary, I believe the Dev team is already aware of all of this, so I think there's hardly anything we have to worry about when it comes to the above subjects.

[Onidemon]

I know story cutscenes have voice acting but i was refering to just regular NPCs around town, shops etc... that when clicking on them they could say a little something. Same for quest givers, when talking to them to accept a quest they could say something too.... maybe just 1 sentence. It is by no means an absolute need but it would add much life to the game.

As for quest with choice, it may be part of the story quests but it should also be part of regular quests or even leves imo. They should spice things up and make it more interesting.

But i guess you are right, we will know along the way to 2.0 what they plan on doing. I'm just hoping they do add these little things, because details is something very often overlooked but sometimes it is what separates a great game from an ok one. They need to step up their game if they want to attract the masses and offer them something the competition isn't already doing, besides the FF brand name.

[Jennestia]

Well we don't need voice acting for EVERY NPC in the game, it's honestly fine with just the main storyline. MMOs that does this on even a smaller scale reuse the same voice pool for every town because it's a lot of unnecessary work to voice out hundreds of NPCs when you can just voice out 8 and reuse it 100 times, which then makes it stale and feel lazily done.

Everything stated so far for 2.0 will make it a great game. Most of the competition as you say are generally just doing the same thing, the only reason ToR is even being looked at is because it's by Bioware, the game itself isn't that great, it's only strength is storytelling.

They stated when they introduced quests that it was mainly to get the framework in (remember: FFXIV is under an Overhaul.) and better quality quests would be coming in time, most quests are about talking to NPCs which is true, but it gives you backstories and more lore -- Most MMOs give you "lore" by giving you a popup box with text you likely don't read which end in telling you to kill 10 bores, next chain, kill 10 tigers, next chain kill 10 orcs, next chain kill 10 higher leveled bores ad infinitum.

[Avraym]

I agree.

Most MMORPGS go along with this out-dated "Kill X and return to Y" or "Find 5 Rat Tails and return to Y"

Questing doesn't have to be dull and repetitive.

Theres been mmorpgs out there both young and old that proove this.

Quests need to be interactive and immersive. These days, attention span is shorter than ever.

Now is the best time to re-define the Questing aspect of the genre.

With the jump feature being inevitably implemented, it could be a decent chance to shake things up a bit.

Some suggestions:
- Quests involving mounts (scouting from above ect?)
- See how many of X you can kill in an amount of time, reward differs based on amount killed (will challenge players to actually have to try in the "Kill X" circumstance)
- A chase (either being both run from or catch)
- Hide and Seek (find hidden NPC, make the NPC location random so people can't google it but have a hot and cold system to guide)
- Ultra rare drop rate with awesome rewards to compliment the hunt
- Climb the mountain style quest, kill the monster on top, climb down
- Jump platforms to retrieve item

Some ideas of the top of my head. Basically, if you take some of the aspects that make console's fun and addictive and implement them into the mmorpg quest genre, could be awesome IMO. Eg Mario Parties Minigames.

[Onidemon]

Well we don't need voice acting for EVERY NPC in the game, it's honestly fine with just the main storyline. MMOs that does this on even a smaller scale reuse the same voice pool for every town because it's a lot of unnecessary work to voice out hundreds of NPCs when you can just voice out 8 and reuse it 100 times, which then makes it stale and feel lazily done.

Everything stated so far for 2.0 will make it a great game. Most of the competition as you say are generally just doing the same thing, the only reason ToR is even being looked at is because it's by Bioware, the game itself isn't that great, it's only strength is storytelling.

They stated when they introduced quests that it was mainly to get the framework in (remember: FFXIV is under an Overhaul.) and better quality quests would be coming in time, most quests are about talking to NPCs which is true, but it gives you backstories and more lore -- Most MMOs give you "lore" by giving you a popup box with text you likely don't read which end in telling you to kill 10 bores, next chain, kill 10 tigers, next chain kill 10 orcs, next chain kill 10 higher leveled bores ad infinitum.

I don't mind if they make only 10-15 voices and reuse them. It add life to the game and it is a lot more stale and lazy to not have any... unless you trying not to steer to far away from XI hum hum.... anyways.

Have you played Tor? I did and the story telling is not the only thing that is great, almost everything i experienced so far is. You can actually parry/block enemy attacks by timing your attacks at the right moment(there's no auto-attack). That along is damn great for battle and makes it more fun but that's just the tip of the iceberg but i won't get into details as this is not the place. So yeah, story telling is not the only strong point of that game, inform yourself before making assumptions.


I am not asking to change the current quests and i know everyone is aware that they suck big time, what i am asking is that in their 2.0 plans, that they put in a big effort to make quest a lot more fun, original and interactive and not just come out with the same recipe as they have now or what other mmos are already doing like WOW. There is tons of ways to make this more interesting if you just put some effort.

As for quests now giving you backstory and lore... Do you or anyone actually read them? I played WOW for years and stopped reading quest the first week as they get repetitive and the gameplay is much more fun than reading about the lore. I learned a lot more about the lore in WOW from cutscenes and voice acting here and there. Same as for Tor, when taking on a quest there is no text(besides the chat log) only voice acting and you cannot skip it and the result is that i actually got to learn a lot and it was very interesting.

So when it comes to comunicating lore to the players IMO SE fails at it and other companies succeeded with means that you Ms deem "unnecessary".

[Onidemon]

I agree.

Most MMORPGS go along with this out-dated "Kill X and return to Y" or "Find 5 Rat Tails and return to Y"

Questing doesn't have to be dull and repetitive.

Theres been mmorpgs out there both young and old that proove this.

Quests need to be interactive and immersive. These days, attention span is shorter than ever.

Now is the best time to re-define the Questing aspect of the genre.

With the jump feature being inevitably implemented, it could be a decent chance to shake things up a bit.

Some suggestions:
- Quests involving mounts (scouting from above ect?)
- See how many of X you can kill in an amount of time, reward differs based on amount killed (will challenge players to actually have to try in the "Kill X" circumstance)
- A chase (either being both run from or catch)
- Hide and Seek (find hidden NPC, make the NPC location random so people can't google it but have a hot and cold system to guide)
- Ultra rare drop rate with awesome rewards to compliment the hunt
- Climb the mountain style quest, kill the monster on top, climb down
- Jump platforms to retrieve item

Some ideas of the top of my head. Basically, if you take some of the aspects that make console's fun and addictive and implement them into the mmorpg quest genre, could be awesome IMO. Eg Mario Parties Minigames.

I like your ideas and another thing they could add is "bonus quests". When doing a leve or quest you could get a bonus for completing some requirements. Like finishing the quest under X mount of minutes, or soloing a party mode difficulty or killing X amount of a certain beats that is in the area but is not required to finish the quest.

[Seirra_Lanzce]

First I'd like to see more NPC around town and not static one that juts stand there and don't move like statues. I wish they were more of them walking around, more guards in the city and that they salute you when you pass by them.

source : http://bit.ly/tIi79T


6. Will you implement walking/active/talking NPCs, by way of adding some life to the cities/world?

Yes, in 2.0, NPCs will be more involved in conversations and there will be increased animations all around. Our new engine will allow all NPCs to be active, but it may get irritating if NPCs move around too much, so only certain NPCs will be updated. We plan on adding more life to the world through these changes.


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About quest,

is look like you're talking about Dynamic Quest, which is very fun. Hope this idea can be much breeming, but then again, is suck because is not a repeatable quest and can't know the other ending if there is any.

[Onidemon]

source : http://bit.ly/tIi79T


6. Will you implement walking/active/talking NPCs, by way of adding some life to the cities/world?

Yes, in 2.0, NPCs will be more involved in conversations and there will be increased animations all around. Our new engine will allow all NPCs to be active, but it may get irritating if NPCs move around too much, so only certain NPCs will be updated. We plan on adding more life to the world through these changes.

Hell ya.


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About quest,

is look like you're talking about Dynamic Quest, which is very fun. Hope this idea can be much breeming, but then again, is suck because is not a repeatable quest and can't know the other ending if there is any.

Well most quest are not repeatable unless they are dailys or leves. As for the other ending well that is simple, right now quest are character bound, meaning if you complete one quest regardless of the class you are on, it is not repeatable if you chose another class. They should make quest Class/job bound so that you can repeat quests with all the classes and thus have a different path everytime while doing the same quests.

[Seirra_Lanzce]

Hell ya.


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Well most quest are not repeatable unless they are dailys or leves. As for the other ending well that is simple, right now quest are character bound, meaning if you complete one quest regardless of the class you are on, it is not repeatable if you chose another class. They should make quest Class/job bound so that you can repeat quests with all the classes and thus have a different path everytime while doing the same quests.

Hmm this goes back to the scenario in an interview Yoshi spoke of about Main Plot Quest. Definitely not going to implemented from the way he answer this.

source : http://bit.ly/uHZWt1

you can read the whole thing if you want, because it play a similar role to your quest idea and situation.