Quote:
Originally Posted by spronk  Be nice to see more games get away from the mentality of "rush to max level, thats where the game REALLY starts!" No clue how to do it well, but yeah, would love to see quests be more meaningful and involved rather than all the bullshit ones WoW and others give you. |
It'd actually be pretty easy to do by simply making the player feel like a hero early on, which we discussed earlier in the thread.
Stuff like cool looking armor sets, major storylines that culminate in an epic battle with some powerful being, meaningful rewards that stick with the player like titles or permanent character boosts; these are all things that are for some reason nearly always stuck on at the end of the game instead of spread throughout it. If you rewarded the player meaningfully at all levels they would be much more likely to enjoy their time leveling and not feel in such a rush to get to the "good" stuff.
Some games are trying to do this. I know LOTRO and WAR both offer titles and other achievements a player can earn at all levels of play, EQ2 has some low level armor sets. It needs a step up though. I should be able to earn a full set of matching, badass armor through an incredible storyline that makes me feel like I saved the world
at level 20. There's no reason to make the player wait until max level to do some crazy stuff. With enough creativity on the team, there will be plenty of stories to tell later on as well.
Less quests to kill bears at low levels, more engaging storylines and substantial rewards.
EDIT: @Maleficence: Certainly a valid point. One could also argue that if a major story needs to be told they could simply do it through instancing or have the "boss orc" not even spawn until the player is at that point in the quest, preventing anyone from killing it by accident. That frees up open world quests to be able to be completed in multiple ways.
