One to Fifty, One Zone - Long OP

[Duelle]

Quest-based leveling has become the norm in many big MMOs. It's not only a clever way to hide the level grind (immersing you in story so you're hooked and want to see what happens next), but we become used to that kind of structure.

Personally, I liked that approach much better than L2's and XI's "camp somewhere and kill stuff to level". It also ties your growing stronger to the stories you see as you level.

WoW tried to make their questing in Cataclysm a bit less linear. Usually, the tales of each zone were all woven into a bigger story. But this time, the quest lines would start and end within a zone, instead of using breadcrumbs to lead you where they wanted you to go. They gave people the choice, and instead of embracing the freedom, people complained that it felt disjointed (admittedly, I was one of those people).

Guess I'll add that to the list of things they screwed up with Cata, then. I haven't played since sometime after ICC came out, since my work schedule utterly killed all of the time I had set aside for raiding.

Most people need that little nudge.

100% agree with you there.

If this game is truly intended to be a 'sandbox' environment, with little story and no direction, I don't see myself sticking it out much longer. Because this format just isn't working for me.

I'd say it was supposed to be sandbox under Tanaka. The way he and his team designed the game hints to that. Yoshida might have a different idea of how things should run, for all we know. The "damage" is still done, per se, seeing that there are obviously part of the game's core design that he's not going to be able to get rid of.

How does WoW not have a player defined progression path are you joking me?

Idk about CoH as I'm sure that 2 people have played it since it was released.

WoW's progression always involved a quest that directly sent you to the next quest hub. You start in Northshire, you get sent to Goldshire, you then get sent to run an errand to Stormwind where you find more quests, and then get ultimately sent to Westfall, then back to Stormwind to finish the thing with the Defias Brotherhood, then to the Redridge Mountains, then to Darkshire, and so on. I'll concede on one point and one point alone, that being that after Darkshire people started grinding in Scarlet Monastery for drops, even though that only applies to Alliance players as Alliance players have next to no quests that involve Scarlet Monastery.

CoH worked the same way. You got door missions from contacts and after you finished all their missions they would say "thank you for all your help. Here is the name of this guy/gal I know that could also use the help of a hero like you". Something you even got to choose one of several contacts to go to throughout various zones.