Quote Originally Posted by Hulan View Post
The problem most people seem to have with Quest Chaining is three-fold. While nice in concept, the quests tend to be extremely dull and uninteresting (not entirely the developers' fault, it's pretty hard to make literally hundreds of quests all interesting without a lot of repeats).

The second reason is that it tends to be solitary in nature. While it could be designed otherwise, to my knowledge, every game that uses quest chaining has made the quests soloable. This results in an almost entirely solo experience from level 1 to cap, which many people find unappealing.

The third is reason is another design choice that could be avoided, but generally isn't. By it's nature, quest chaining moves you from place to place "conveyor belt" style through the game. Players almost never return to an area they have finished. For many, it quashes all sense of exploration and control that they have over their character.

Personally, I think "quest chaining" at it's simplest, could be outstanding. But as of yet, almost no one has accomplished the feat.
Aha, yes I see what you mean. I guess I have a good example myself, having played City of Heroes. There levelling is done basically exclusively through quest-based progression and I dare say they've refined it extensively. You proceed through a series of actually pretty interesting and diverse story arcs, at a point you even so far as hit a particular story arc that is about going back and doing previous arcs you've missed on 'extra hard' mode because there's time-travelling villains showing up. And then they also got entire party-based 'quest-chains' as well.

But yes, I do see how a badly-implemented system would feel pretty droll and I believe I now see where people's true problems lie with.