Rokien's new thread on Open World.

[Wincy]

lets not forget questchaining

I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying we have quest chaining in the current game? Or has SE said they want to add it in the future? I hope it's not the latter...

[Rokien]

I am not sure what you mean by this. Are you saying we have quest chaining in the current game? Or has SE said they want to add it in the future? I hope it's not the latter...

SE is going to be making quest chaining. Yoshi said he wants to create quest hubs.

[Wynn]

I fail to understand what's so horrible about instances. The only valid complaint is "immersion breaker" but IMO the impact of it is trivial and the benefits outweigh it.

I hate this word immersion. It means a thousand different things to a thousand different people. And most of those definitions are completely wrong. It's a buzz word people use to make themselves sound more authoritative on whatever subject they are discussing, nothing more.

Agree with your entire post.

[Gramul]

quest chaining, where you go to a hub and pick up 3 or so questts, they tell you to go around the same area and either kill or talk to an npc. you turn those in and 3 more quests pop up. once you get done with sll the quests you will be at a certain level and leave the area and not come back. You get to another area and do the same thing. WoW does it, tera does it, failwars does i.

sorry ut this game shouldnt be like every other mmo out there

Is that what it's called then?
Yeah. I hate that crap. Expecially when the quests are the cheap "go kill X of Y" quests.

[Arcell]

all the strong holds are the same, all those nms are not even nms, all dungeons going to be instaced, content finder, hamlet, heck they are going to try and make part of the open world instanced with CF.

lets not forget questchaining

How different can the strongholds really be? I mean I'd say they're different enough. Different beastmen, different zones, different themes, different layouts. By your logic any part of the same system is exactly the same.

All RPGs are the same: Start game, introduce characters, level up, go through world, kill boss, story progression,level up, go through world, kill boss, story progression, level up, go through world, etc... until the end.

All shooters are exactly the same: Move through the levels and shoot enemies, maybe kill a boss, repeat for all levels.

All RTS games are exactly the same: Collect resources, build army, attack enemies, repeat if attack fails until the end.

You can't make such broad umbrella statements like that when the difference lies in the details. What's the difference between Nataland and O'Ghamaro? Different beastmen, one is in a cave while the other is out in the open mountain plains, the classes of the Beastmen vary a little bit, the rewards are different, the layout of the strongholds themselves is different.

Honestly though I think you're complaining for the sake of complaining. They have been adding both open-world and instanced content. Your fears are pretty unfounded but of course you'll ignore the actual argument and just complain about what we're given.

[Eliseus]

Sadly this kind of stuff isn't what the majority of the gaming community wants now and days. People want to do quests because it helps the flow of the game (personally I wouldn't mind it either and this is coming from someone that played EQ since I was 9 and FFXI since I was 14). I just hope some day that threads like this stop getting made and that people realize the people that DO matter want easier stuff. Yes, the hardcorish players don't matter because like I said in a previous thread complaining, SE wants to make money and the way they will do that is w/e benefits the majority of the player base which isn't this kind of content.

Also, doing quests over and over obviously isn't the worse thing ever. WoW is #1 MMO because it's bad?

[Sephrick]

Is that what it's called then?
Yeah. I hate that crap. Expecially when the quests are the cheap "go kill X of Y" quests.

What more can quests in a video game be? Kill things or craft things.

And what's the alternative to quest-based progression? Instead of having an NPC tell you to "go kill X for Y reason" you go stand in a spot and kill hundreds of X for no reason other than it's what currently doles out the best exp per hour.

[Hyrist]

Leve's are quest chains, effectively - it's the root essence of the quest grind without the predisposition of trying to assume it's not. There really isn't any need to do more in this department except perhaps some more unique Leves. But then agian, what is Crystal Tower if not a more interesting Leve?

As far as instanced content vs World Content? You'll probably not hear about more open world content until 2.0 nears, in which case it'll probably be closer to Beta Time anyways.

Either case, so long as open world content does not distill the essence of aggressive competition, I'm all for it. I don't particularly feel the pull of waiting for 4 hours for some world boss to spawn only to watch the botters get it and sell the item, spawn timer, and claiming program for real life money.

[Rokien]

Ya exactly leves are the best quest chaining thing out there.

[Jokerz]

Really I don't understand how much open world content people want. I mean I'd like some but I had more fun doing instanced events in FFXI. I think what a lot of the issues people are having with instanced raids is much more of a stereotype then anything(which SE is playing heavily into atm...) Instances and raids don't have to be like the crap we have now, again I look to FFXI as to some instanced content that was particularly fulfilling, salvage had interesting mechanics with great rewards for participating, nyzul isle was intense and fast paced with goals presented, BCNM's were structured battles often with highly valuable drops.

Now I'd love some open world content but depends on how it's implemented. This is where SE needs to get creative. HNM's were a horribly flawed mechanic and I'd hate to see them implemented in a similar way as FFXI. Force popping bosses is one thing but again I rather SE were more creative then saying "here go farm this and then you can pop XXX," cause then we'll just be fighting over ???'s. Couple oh HNM's I did like however was Ixion and Turul(tho not sure if turul can qualify as an HNM) since they didn't have a static pop location. For both of these NM's you kinda had to hunt and actively look for them. I really liked that. Also a few abby NM's had some interesting claiming mechanics like Fistule in abby highlands, where you had to use a lesser NM and have Fistule absorb them in order to get claim.

tldr:As long as SE doesn't get lazy doesn't really matter whether the content they release is instanced or not.