[MUD-Dev] MMO Quest: Why they're still lousy

[Michael Hartman]

Sporky McBeard wrote:

> You want to "fix" MMORPG quests. Here's what needs to happen:

I disagree with almost all of your points to varying degrees of
intensity.

>  1) Dump the story crap - Nobody reads that stuff, nobody
>  cares. They see "Find 12 Bloody Monkey Paws" and skip the rest.

Wrong. Horribly, short sightedly, wrong.

There are actually a lot of people who read the stuff and derive a
lot of enjoyment from that part of the quests. I can give you a
perfect example of varying ranges of "caring" from my own 3 person
group in WoW (me, my wife, and a RL friend).

My wife could care less about the story. She wants to get on with
the action and the phat lewt.

I like a good story, but sometimes when I am motivated towards a
goal (like a major level or a good reward) I won't read the junk.

Our friend has to read EVERYTHING. If we try to nudge him along he
gets very unhappy.

I've seen these kinds of ranges in my own games and in every game I
have played. Some people love the story and would be absolutely
bored to tears if the story did not exist.

>  2) Change the world - MMORPG quests are fundamentally flawed in
>  that they cannot change the world.

This point I agree with. This is a weakness of MMORPGs. This is also
something that is a lot harder to do in graphical games.

You should really try out some text games. In many of those, players
can dramatically change the world through quests.

>  3) Change the missions - Players go through the exact same
>  motions with every quest as just about every other
>  player. Something like Thottbot allows other players to look up
>  the locations and goals that other players had already
>  discovered. Personally, I think that instance missions are the
>  answer here, because you can modify the mission based on the
>  player.

Instanced missions have their place- they prevent having to watch
the Uber Evil Bad Guy you just killed respawn. But they are not in
and of themselves the answer and overuse of instances has a severe
negative aspect of the MM part of an MMORPG.

>  4) Allow certain players to create their own quests - I think it
>  would be pretty nifty for a player to post a mission saying that
>  they need X number of monkey paws and that they'll pay Y dollars
>  for it.

Not a bad idea, but really not a very effective one. Players can
already do this through interaction. Perhaps a formally coded method
might help, but I suspect the impact of this would be minimal.

>  5) Allow certain players to create their own dungeons - I promise
>  you that players are far more creative than most MMORPGs give
>  them credit for.

I can assure you that the majority of players are LESS creative than
you think and will create such inane filth that it will actually
cheapen your game and damage your gaming environment.

You might say "Yeah, but find the good ones." Good luck with that.

Modding works because the mods just float on the internet and do not
get implemented unless someone chooses to. Also, moddable non-MMORPG
games don't need to maintain consistency. Nobody thinks badly about
Quake 3 because they played one mod that was sci-fi and the next one
was fantasyish. There is no expectation of consistency or even
balance.

In an MMORPG, areas/zones need to have a logical reason for existing
and there has to be some kind of world
justification/consistency. Also, they need to be balanced (VERY
HARD), they need to NOT violate other people's trademarks/IP, and
they need to not suck. A few areas with tons of typos, idiotic
design, etc. will make your entire game look bad.

>  6) Dump the quests altogether - I mean, what purpose do quests
>  really serve.

Perhaps this one sums up why so many of the above suggestions are
bad ones. It sounds like YOU don't really like quests and just churn
through them for the rewards. That's fine. That is why no game
should REQUIRE questing (WoW requires a few painful quests just to
get core class abilities, for example).

But don't let the fact that you clearly dislike quests bias you
towards them entirely. There are certainly ways to make them better,
but dumping them or dumping the story are not two good suggestions.

--
Michael Hartman
President and CEO, Threshold Virtual Environments, Inc.
http://www.thresholdrpg.com
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev