Level Progression/Questing

[Forgo]

Except it's the number 1 thing people hate about MMO quests? And I know they can do better?

A little change never hurt anyone but sometimes old and true can be rewarding... and besides without the so called (Cookie cutter quest) how would one get better at say fighting an enemy type if they only face it once on a quest? the quest help the player learn the mobs and the best ways to deal with them! Its training ^.^

[Gramul]

A little change never hurt anyone but sometimes old and true can be rewarding... and besides without the so called (Cookie cutter quest) how would one get better at say fighting an enemy type if they only face it once on a quest? the quest help the player learn the mobs and the best ways to deal with them! Its training

The many other ways of progression. Like party based grinding, dungeons, leves, F.A.T.E quest and the like. Things naturally based on fights. Heck you can even have non fight quests reward little exp. I just want some gameplay variation and spontaneity in the missions I undertake.

[Forgo]

The many other ways of progression. Like party based grinding, dungeons, leves, F.A.T.E quest and the like. Things naturally based on fights. Heck you can even have non fight quests reward little exp. I just want some gameplay variation and spontaneity in the missions I undertake.

I agree i wasn't saying change was bad but was talking for the third person view on things, i would love to have new types of things to do with the grind/party/quest/F.A.T.E. just saying old and new don't have to go their own ways but maybe become friends and work together (good lord i'm so long winded sometimes >.>)

[MrKupo]

I think people are fearful of the overstreamlining of what is generally a pretty complex genre. WoW for example was the pinnacle of streamlining MMOs. They made it as easy as clicking accept, killing somethings or gathering some things, and then clicking complete.

I feel that gamers today have evolved into 2 different directions. There's open world gamers and there's linear gamers. There is much fun to be had in sandbox games as you create your own adventures, but developers have to sacrifice storyline for freedom. This isn't always a bad thing: Minecraft, DayZ, etc. But many gamers want to feel a sense of progression whether it be through numbers or story. MMOs tend to straddle the line between these 2 because of the nature of the genre. MMOs are multiplayer games in which players can directly interact with each other. One would like to think that this interaction can change something in the game. In order to allow such interactions to be of any impact, stories must be broader so as to not get in the way of user creativity. But at the same time, many of these MMOs are RPGs, games that focus on progression of both numbers and story...

What modern MMOs have done, I think, is streamlined the progression to be less heavily emphasized. That means we get through the leveling and story line faster so that we may get to the part of the game where we interact with others. This is done by making text generally skippable (as actually reading it is pretty unnecessary since your log tells you everything in such a minimalist way), leveling faster, etc. The experience is even more streamlined to make initiating interaction a thing of the past. Now we have matchmaking! We don't need to ask if someone wants to party up because everyone clicked a button that says they want to party up.

The problem is that when that progression is lost, in a sense, that demographic of players is alienated. And it's not that current day MMOs are abandoning progression in the traditional sense, it's that we are getting closer and closer to a genre of MMOs that does not segregate the new player from the old and the good player from the bad. Newer MMORPGs used the progression as training for the eventual interaction with other players. As we go on, that training will no longer be needed. We will be told what move is best when it is best so that everyone is on equal playing field.

Older MMORPGs focused on progressions (which I would venture to argue is opposite of "end-game"). The levels aren't there as a middle ground from new player to actual player... the levels are there as an indicator of how far we've gone in the game and how much we've accomplished. They are not an obstacle, they are an achievement.

TLDR: Modern day questing makes leveling simply an obstacle and not a journey.

[KiriA500]

TLDR: Modern day questing makes leveling simply an obstacle and not a journey.

Modern day leveling makes leveling a journey, not an obstacle.

You're moving around the world more than you would by just standing around grinding. On top of that, leveling has always been a hurdle to keep you striving for more. In Final Fantasy XI, having to level multiple jobs in a slow way was more of an obstacle than anything. Oh, I can't level my main class because I have to stop everything to level it's sub-class? OH BOY!

[Radacci]

The problem with that is balancing, quest mob's exp would have to be nerfed, or the questing would be far better with mob exp and quest rewards, if the quests didn't reward exp then you are just grinding.

Here's an example of what I mean, kill a mob for 200 exp, then another and another. There's 600 exp.

Now go to a kill 3 slugs quest for example, you kill the three slugs for 200 exp, then turn the quest in for 500 exp, that's 1100 exp, almost double for what could be a similar amount of time.

except the time it takes to turn in quests lowers the xp rate, while you could grind more mobs and lv faster than questing. questing is generally useless early on, because XP reward is shitty compared to the XP mobs give.

[MrKupo]

Modern day leveling makes leveling a journey, not an obstacle.

You're moving around the world more than you would by just standing around grinding. On top of that, leveling has always been a hurdle to keep you striving for more. In Final Fantasy XI, having to level multiple jobs in a slow way was more of an obstacle than anything. Oh, I can't level my main class because I have to stop everything to level it's sub-class? OH BOY!

What I meant was that as of today, MMOs tend to be more about what there is to do at level cap, not about the levels in between. Look at the gripes people had with SWTOR. Quite a few people complained that there wasn't enough content at release as they all raced to level cap, a few I know that had to cancel their subscriptions because there was nothing to do other than PVP. And I don't think it was completely the developers fault here. Bioware does wonders with RPGs and progression. It is the players. Many of us just want to get to the end as quick as possible. I have even seen a few people that don't even read quest logs for half a second. They go to the guy with the exclamation point and immediately click accept as they stack up a countless number of quests on their quest log.

Even if the devs got rid of the streamlined mechanic of telling you exactly what you have to do, the players will be upset at being felt forced to read through all the text that the writers painstakingly put together. Believe it or not, there's a story in that wall of text! We have a mindset now that all that matters in an MMO is the "end-game content".

On a side note, it has never made sense to me how a mother can lose her child and ask you for help, then immediately mark on your map exactly where her child is! If you know exactly where she is, then you didn't lose her! What is a search type quest when you don't actually have to search?

[KiriA500]

What I meant was that as of today, MMOs tend to be more about what there is to do at level cap, not about the levels in between. Look at the gripes people had with SWTOR. Quite a few people complained that there wasn't enough content at release as they all raced to level cap, a few I know that had to cancel their subscriptions because there was nothing to do other than PVP. And I don't think it was completely the developers fault here. Bioware does wonders with RPGs and progression. It is the players. Many of us just want to get to the end as quick as possible. I have even seen a few people that don't even read quest logs for half a second. They go to the guy with the exclamation point and immediately click accept as they stack up a countless number of quests on their quest log.

Even if the devs got rid of the streamlined mechanic of telling you exactly what you have to do, the players will be upset at being felt forced to read through all the text that the writers painstakingly put together. Believe it or not, there's a story in that wall of text! We have a mindset now that all that matters in an MMO is the "end-game content".

On a side note, it has never made sense to me how a mother can lose her child and ask you for help, then immediately mark on your map exactly where her child is! If you know exactly where she is, then you didn't lose her! What is a search type quest when you don't actually have to search?

The problem with those other games is that literally all they have is end-game. Final Fantasy XI was unique in that you could level multiple jobs at once. There was a broad range of mid-level content to do (BCNM, etc.) to obtain fantastic gear to use while leveling these lower jobs. This is great, but also a huge problem in design.

With games like World of Warcraft, if you want to continue to better your character, you have to beat all the newest dungeons. Once you get all the best stuff, a new dungeon comes out, thus giving you more drive to get better stuff. In Final Fantasy XI, gear was hardly ever added, so there were very few options to go for. The reason people spammed low level content in XI was because they were trying to go for the ONLY option available to them. Nobody actually wanted to just stay level 20 the entire time while doing BCNM20 for Astral Rings, they were doing it just for the sake of getting one of the very few MP rings in the game, so they could better their main class, which was much higher level.

I feel that games should have mid-level content, obviously, but I don't think making the leveling process worse just for the sake of having to be stuck in mid-level longer...just for the sake of being mid-level. Everybody is playing an MMO to reach the max level, because that's why you fight things to begin with.

For your side note:
Maybe bandits took the child, and a mother isn't capable of fighting them to save her daughter. I mean, not everyone in Eorzea is an adventurer...there's a chance she knows where they ran to, but is unable to do so herself. Be the hero, save the girl!

[Gramul]

Everybody is playing an MMO to reach the max level, because that's why you fight things to begin with.

I fight things because they're often the obstacles I have to face when I want to go through an adventure. Leveling just means I'm getting stronger the more I fight. I'm not playing to reach max level. Max level is a side effect of me enjoying the game a lot.

[NoctisXZ]

You problem, Noctis, is hanging on the 'primary' somehow being 'only', 'exclusive' or 'single'.
If there are Dungeons, Grinding, FATEs, Leves and Quests, and quests account for 35% of the XP intake, they are still the primary means. But they are hardly the 'only' way. We can only make a judgement come beta and we truly discover what 'primary' means.

I'm beginning to wonder if you've read my posts fully. For the second time.. and my god I hope this clarifies the already basic premise that I'm trying to get across.

As long as questing is the PRIMARY form of level progression in any game in the genre than they will amount to little more than "Kill X" or "Collect Y" for the MOST part. As the PRIMARY form of progression you'd need a wealth of quests so that the player base can properly level all the way to cap, You can in no way have every single quest be exciting and a new adventure if this is the model you are basing your game off of because it would take so much time and there would be a whole lot less quests around.. and that's a problem if the PRIMARY form of leveling is through questing.

Basically what I'm trying to say is this.. There are only so many ways you can do quests... as long as they are the PRIMARY way to level you're never going to see what you want. So stop complaining about the types of quests we already have.. that's all I'm trying to say.

And Skies.. If you bothered to read my posts you'd know that it's not about different ways there is to level. I don't care about that.. it's not even what I'm talking about. What I am talking about however is the people I see complaining about questing being a grind and boring.. mostly consisting of "Kill X". They will ALWAYS be that way.. sure, there could be more variety but it wouldn't change anything really.

Please actually read what I've said next time.

And on a side note it's rather tiring to see the next hot game that's about to come out trying to revolutionize the way we level. You can't.. ever.. and you can't revolutionize the way in which we quest. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the ways we already have to level in the games we have or the way quests are in these games.

The majority WANT questing to be the way we level. So to than go as far as to complain about how dull most quests are is one of the reasons I'm starting to hate the type of people that play these games. It drives me absolutely bonkers.. because if questing was more fleshed out and each one turned into a 30 minute foray out into the world people would than proceed to complain about quests taking way to long to complete or that they've become to hard to do.

They are meant to level you up so they will always be a "grind".