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Originally Posted by Maleficence  I'm all for story lines, but seriously you've lost my interest in the story when it starts off with: "Help us, a Big Orc Boss is threatening our village." and I've already killed off Big Orc Boss. At that point, I'm annoyed more than anything, as the game has made two things clear:
a. the story is bullshit.
b. my actions in the story are bullshit.
So unless the writing is so superb or the story so engaging that I'm just aching to read the next part, I've lost all my motivation story-wise. The only motivation left is getting the quest reward, which is a game play aspect.
If they want to tell a story I think there are better mechanisms, where the story revolves around your actions. Hence there is no Big Orc Boss roaming around unless you've triggered it as part of the story you're developing. Otherwise, if my actions have no impact other than advance to the next wall of text, what's the point?
Finally, you can still relate the story even if you've completed the objectives. "Thank you, Big Orc Boss had been terrorizing our village. Have this as your reward." Same message conveyed, just in a different manner to suite the situation. |
Have you played Final Fantasy XI? I think they handled that portion of it as well as it can be handled.
It being the inherent paradox of being "the gratest hearo in teh landz" in a game where over 9,000 other players are also "the gratest hearo in teh landz."
It isn't that hard of a problem if you instance everything. You don't get the key to get into the Orc's house unless you're on that quest, etc. FFXI even had level restrictions so you couldn't gimp encounters.
You're right, of course, that one day every MMO will be able to store all of the quests you've completed if you have the quest or not.
I suppose that's the "what the fuck is all this shit in my bag" nature of EQ versus the "i only can pick up the sparkling shit if I have the quest" of WoW.
WoW could stand to have some more quests that don't lead you around by the hand like a chaperone. The flipside is, I wish there was a way to turn on quest notification for old quests because talking / interacting with NPCs randomly is fucking boring.
