What Tera taught me about the quest plans for ARR.

[Zetsubou]

It seems to me that Quests method is just easier to code and develop at the end of the day. when you have a template of code where you just change some variables and boom you have a quest, and by variables I mean, name, giver, target, area, reward, it seems much easier for developers to tweek around for the leveling process.

While grinding would require testing by acutely going down the camps, quantity of monsters, multiple spots for X amount of parties at the same time, and far more tests. why would I bother with such iterative and troublesome process while there is an actual process that can be streamlined?

[Reika]

It seems to me that Quests method is just easier to code and develop at the end of the day. when you have a template of code where you just change some variables and boom you have a quest, and by variables I mean, name, giver, target, area, reward, it seems much easier for developers to tweek around for the leveling process.

While grinding would require testing by acutely going down the camps, quantity of monsters, multiple spots for X amount of parties at the same time, and far more tests. why would I bother with such iterative and troublesome process while there is an actual process that can be streamlined?

Sure, if all the quest giver said to you was 'go kill 4 marmots' then suddenly QUEST START, yea that would be way too easy. But it isn't like that. Neither of the quests shown to us did that. Adding groups of monsters is easier than adding thought out quest chains.

[Zetsubou]

SE seems to share the opinion of quest based leveling being the better way to go. Those other games also didn't fail soley because of quest based leveling, or didn't fail because of quest based leveling at all They failed for various other reasons, like TERA's boring repatitive gold/enchanting grind, that didn't have any raids for way too long. See SE knows the game will fail if they didn't add raids too, so ARR is getting raids. The game would fail for so many more reasons that have nothing to do with how you level up. All those other games had NOTHING else in their games besides the level up. End game was just not there and there was nothing else to do BUT level up.

If you think the game will fail because of quest leveling, you haven't been following this game at all.

You are ignoring that leveling does mean something for a MMO. End game is just half of the game, the other half is leveling. many people in other MMOs would just level one character and just play endgame till they quit, then whats the point of having access to all jobs in your same character?

[Reika]

ENDGAME is called ENDgame, because it is the END of the GAME. The game should be enjoyable from the start, and not need to be OVER before it's enjoyable. If the entire game is just a mad rush to the end content, what is the point in all the content before that even existing??

The point of that post was to say there will be no enjoyment for the new player because no one is going to be around in those low level towns when ARR is 5 years in with 4 expansions. I would certainly hope there would be more than 3 cities in eorzia by the time the 4th expansion hits. And since it will be a ghost town, with people 100 levels above the new player somewhere else in the world, it would be pretty difficult, time consuming, and more boring to have to solo monsters to gain those levels, rather than follow the quest chains that level you up and would eventually join you with those people in the place I called 'endgame town'. in XI, prior to me quitting, 'endgame town' was jeuno. I'm pretty sure it has a new endgame town now.

[Reika]

You are ignoring that leveling does mean something for a MMO. End game is just half of the game, the other half is leveling. many people in other MMOs would just level one character and just play endgame till they quit, then whats the point of having access to all jobs in your same character?

I'm not ignoring that leveling is something, what I'm not ignoring is that ARR will MORE CONTENT than those other failures. All they had was the level up and the dungeons. If they quit a game after reaching cap, they quit for other reasons. I'm sure you remember in 1.0 how you can quickly level up your characters by monster grinding. After you leveled all your battle classes to 50 under monster grinding, did you just quit? Of course not, because XIV had more to do than those dungeons, far more to do than those other garbage games. But the way you're putting it, one would eventually quit after leveling everything to 50 and that the way they reached 50 is the only determining factor in their quitting, but that certainly isn't true.

[Zetsubou]

Sure, if all the quest giver said to you was 'go kill 4 marmots' then suddenly QUEST START, yea that would be way too easy. But it isn't like that. Neither of the quests shown to us did that. Adding groups of monsters is easier than adding thought out quest chains.

How would you know that that group of monsters that you just add amount of the exp that you need to go through the levels for that area? how do you know that this spot will not be over camped by multiple parties? how do you know there will be a continuous respawn of monsters if the killing process were executed correctly? its not just tossing monsters in one area and hope for the best.

Both of them needs to be though out through, but quests seems far less easier to streamlined with developers at hand.

[Reika]

How would you know that that group of monsters that you just add amount of the exp that you need to go through the levels for that area? how do you know that this spot will not be over camped by multiple parties? how do you know there will be a continuous respawn of monsters if the killing process were executed correctly? its not just tossing monsters in one area and hope for the best.

Both of them needs to be though out through, but quests seems far less easier to streamlined with developers at hand.

I have to disagree. Putting in well thought up quests and quest chains while balancing the EXP gain is much harder than throwing monster groups into various areas. I remember them saying leveling by quest is going to be slower than 1.0's leveling by monsters, lvl1-15 is expected to take 30 hours if I remember. you can get that much faster in 1.0s monster grind system. I for one didn't find much satisfaction of getting some of my classes to 50 after they added exp chains and monster groups. Prior to that, with the Fatigue system in place, it took much longer and finally getting that 50 brought more cheers. 'Woot grats! all right awesome!' turned into 'gratz'.

Will quest based leveling suddenly turn it back into woot gratz? doubtful. The only way that is going to happen is if they go back to the slow leveling days with the fatigue system. But, no one wants that because in reality, even tho we want our levels to have 'impact' we still want to cap out and be done with leveling up. And the game is only going to be fun after that if there is content to do after cap, which 1.0 had much more of than other MMO's that failed, and ARR is going to have even more of.

[Zetsubou]

I'm not ignoring that leveling is something, what I'm not ignoring is that ARR will MORE CONTENT than those other failures. All they had was the level up and the dungeons. If they quit a game after reaching cap, they quit for other reasons. I'm sure you remember in 1.0 how you can quickly level up your characters by monster grinding. After you leveled all your battle classes to 50 under monster grinding, did you just quit? Of course not, because XIV had more to do than those dungeons, far more to do than those other garbage games. But the way you're putting it, one would eventually quit after leveling everything to 50 and that the way they reached 50 is the only determining factor in their quitting, but that certainly isn't true.

we had no contents in 1.XX, then its all different game at the end, I'm not afraid of having no content at all. and I look forward to whats coming.

This is FF game, people takes pride of having all their jobs maxed out, cause leveling does mean something to them, then why people would bother showing their 50s in their signature. I'm not bashing that Quests shouldn't be made available to level all your jobs with them, but what I'm trying to say, they shouldn't ignore developing for exp parties.

[Yellow]

SE seems to share the opinion of quest based leveling being the better way to go. Those other games also didn't fail soley because of quest based leveling, or didn't fail because of quest based leveling at all They failed for various other reasons, like TERA's boring repatitive gold/enchanting grind, that didn't have any raids for way too long. See SE knows the game will fail if they didn't add raids too, so ARR is getting raids. The game would fail for so many more reasons that have nothing to do with how you level up. All those other games had NOTHING else in their games besides the level up. End game was just not there and there was nothing else to do BUT level up.

If you think the game will fail because of quest leveling, you haven't been following this game at all.

I stopped playing WoW because all it was only questing/raiding.

I stopped playing TERA because it was only questing.

I stopped playing SWTOR because it was only questing.

Must I go on? There's a list of MMORPGs that I stopped playing because they all use useless, boring and restrictive quest based levelling.

It's a really important factor of my disapproval of many MMORPGs, and I continually see the same group of people asking for the same things, and then complaining about the problem they asked for.

'I want a quest based casual game guys' -> WoW Cataclysm and onwards -> 'Jeez this gets boring after a while'.

Main problem was identified as the questing.. Especially in Mists of Pandaria.

'I want a casual game guys' -> Guild Wars 2 -> 'Jeez this gets boring after a while'.

They removed 'quests' and put in random events.. AKA repeatable quests on a timer.

People believe that questing gets rid of grinding? If you want to play a game for more than 2 weeks, and want it to be done via questing, I can guarantee that you'll be grinding quests or their equivalent instead of monsters.

Giving us more dungeons and more quests isn't going to stop the game from becoming boring. It just means more content to repeat again and again. Do you really enjoy running the same dungeon over and over again to level up? I thought everyone hated the fact they had to repeat primals over and over and over again?

Am I asking for too much when I ask for things to do besides levelling up? If you restrict a game to levelling up a combat class, eventually the game's going to get dry. Player Owned Houses was going in a good direction, but I think they need to expand on more things to do besides questing.

I wish they'd let you pick any disciple from the beginning, not just DoW/DoM.

[Reika]

I stopped playing WoW because all it was only questing/raiding.

I stopped playing TERA because it was only questing.

I stopped playing SWTOR because it was only questing.

Must I go on? There's a list of MMORPGs that I stopped playing because they all use useless, boring and restrictive quest based levelling.

It's a really important factor of my disapproval of many MMORPGs, and I continually see the same group of people asking for the same things, and then complaining about the problem they asked for.

'I want a quest based casual game guys' -> WoW Cataclysm and onwards -> 'Jeez this gets boring after a while'.

Main problem was identified as the questing.. Especially in Mists of Pandaria.

'I want a casual game guys' -> Guild Wars 2 -> 'Jeez this gets boring after a while'.

They removed 'quests' and put in random events.. AKA repeatable quests on a timer.

People believe that questing gets rid of grinding? If you want to play a game for more than 2 weeks, and want it to be done via questing, I can guarantee that you'll be grinding quests or their equivalent instead of monsters.

I didn't say people quit because of quest based leveling, they probably do - just like people quit because all the game is monster grinding. And once again, both quest based leveling and monster based leveling are boring but they have to pick one, and they happen to be picking what is the better boring. But those games didn't fail because of quest based leveling. WoW hasn't failed period, TERA failed (tho some people dont like to believe it failed) because it is typical KMMO. The grind is in all MMO.

Really, people are going to quit because of quest based leveling and people would have quit if they went monster-based grinding. Hell, people would refuse to purchase the game if either one added did not suit their likeings. Then again, people will be picking up the game if either one suited their likings. People will purchace this game BECAUSE it has quest based leveling.