Dailies, the perfect solution?

[Zarcath]

WoW Dailies simply amaze me.

What's a Daily? A Daily is a quest thats available for you to complete once a day. There are numerous Daily quests for you to complete, and all of them give you something of token value. Some reward you with golds, reputation, honor, badges or potential rare loot.

What does a Daily accomplish? It gets people to play more often, more frequently.

I could have done any of this shit before Dailies came along. I could have spent hours grinding mobs for rep, or running heroics to no end to pick up badges, or farming mobs for gold/loot. I even PVP now, just to complete the Daily PVP quest and I loathe PVPing. What's the difference now with Dailies? Now I feel like I HAVE to log in and do these things, or else I'm letting them go to waste. It's something to complete, now I have a tangible goal with a tangible reward. Even if that reward is the same thing I could have gotten just grinding.

Dailies is simply the most incredible thing to go in, maybe ever. It tricks people into playing more and Blizzard knows this. From here on out, we're only going to see more of it in the future, more dailies are already announced for Sunwell.

The question is, will other MMOs recognize this and include it in their games, or will this strictly be a Blizzard thing? Is this good or bad?

[Runnen]

I think Daily Quests are a good thing. First off, I agree that Daily Quests tend to make you feel like you HAVE TO log in before the day is over otherwise it's a wasted Daily, but nobody is forced to complete the Dailies every day, so I think this argument about Dailies being a way to "force" people to play more often is a bit exagerated.

What Dailies do accomplish however, is remove one of the most annoying grinding bottlenecks ever, by making you able to only complete the quest once per day. WoW, and other MMOs, have always had players that are dedicated, patient and motivated to grind almost to the point of insanity, and other players, with less free time or simply less patience for tedious grinding. Until Dailies came along, the former were rewarded much faster for their grinding, and the others eventually got the rewards from doing it bit by bit over time. The problem this caused was that when quests required you to kill certain monsters, loot certain items, or gather certain ressources, the spots would be camped 24/7 by the people from the first category, and the more casual / less patient crowd (which makes up 90% of the population) was forced to settle for the scraps left behind miraculously by one of the "elite grinders" who know the spots by heart and have them on a tight schedule.

Now with the Dailies, whether you're a grinder or more casual, once you've done your quest, you move on and people are free to do it for the rest of the day. Take for instance the Dailies in Skettis a while back, remember the quest to bomb the 20 eggs? Or in Ogrila Plateau, the quest to bomb 15 stacks of explosives? Well, imagine trying to do that if the quest wasn't a Daily and you had to compete with the other 500 people trying to do the quests, only make it worse because while Ogrila had relatively little in the upgrades department, I expect Sunwell Plateau Dailies will be another story entirely.

In short, Dailies are good, nobody is forcing you to like them, or do them, and it's an amazing option for the people that don't want to have to compete with the 24/7 campers or the unemployed addicts while still moving towards a tangible goal in the game (reputation, item, honor, money..).

[Cybsled]

I agree they are a pretty good idea. It allows you to control rate of entry/advancement, while at the sametime promoting the idea that it's advantageous to log in every day to complete them.

Bliz has no doubt keyed into this, since in WoTLK they raise the daily cap to 25.

[mek]

I think PVP dailies are especially awesome and there should be more of them with substantial rewards. If each outdoor PVP objective had an associated daily with a reward of ~500 honor and >10g gold (Terokkar towers, Zangarmarsh flag, Halaa, hell Silithyst even (giggle)), we'd be much better off. I hope the outdoor PVP zone in WotLK has a good pile of dailies available to give a reasonable alternative to the mindless BG grind. If I could login and group up with 10-15 people and hammer out 10 PvP dailies in ~2hrs for ~5k honor + gold, I would be a VERY happy man.

The dungeon and BG dailies were great ideas as well, and preserve interest in aging content, and I hope to see more of that. Sunwell Isle will provide an interesting preview of the next expansion's design.

[Zarcath]

daily cap of 25 is in the sunwell patch I think? who knows what it'll be for expansion. I imagine every rep in wotlk will have at least 2-3 daily quests, and then rotating dailies for instances/heroics, plus additional dailies for woltk-based tradeskills.

[Sean]

Originally Posted by Runnen

I think Daily Quests are a good thing. First off, I agree that Daily Quests tend to make you feel like you HAVE TO log in before the day is over otherwise it's a wasted Daily, but nobody is forced to complete the Dailies every day, so I think this argument about Dailies being a way to "force" people to play more often is a bit exagerated.

If you have even a little bit of OCD in you you'll probably go a bit bonkers if you don't do them.

And yeah - the 25 cap is in 2.4 with the Sunwell and its new dailies. We don't have to wait for Northrend for the cap increase.

[mek]

I think it's a smart move for Blizz to raise the cap to something rather absurd, at 10 it feels almost reasonable to hit the cap on a regular basis, but at 25 it's more like, "if you hit this cap you should probably get some sleep now."

[Mahes]

I like them, but at the same time I do not. Yes, it is great for the casual player that has a little time everyday to play. On the other hand it is yet another control mechanism that essentially /tells a player you must play this way.

Imagine if Honor was capped for the S1 gear. A player could only earn 1000 honor per day. You would still get the gear, but it would take you 27 days for the weapon you wanted.

Maybe it is me, but I do not like control mechanisms, unless of course they fit the story. I have never liked Dungeons Timers as an example. Why can I not go back into a dungeon and help other players who perhaps might need my help? Oh, because I already beat the dungeon, or I am locked out. I have always hated that mechanism.

I always find it interesting that an online game feels the need to limit a player's ability to.....play.

Daily's in no way make me feel as if I have to log on. They are quests just like any other quests. Sure, it might take me longer because of thier limitation to get the item, but in the end given that it is purely time I am in no hurry.

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Sean

If you have even a little bit of OCD in you you'll probably go a bit bonkers if you don't do them.

And yeah - the 25 cap is in 2.4 with the Sunwell and its new dailies. We don't have to wait for Northrend for the cap increase.

Yeah, not that they "force" force you to do it, but they're getting at you, psychologically. I'm ADD and the aspect of instant rewards for my effort is appealing. Like I said, 1 game of AB would have given me the same amount of honor from the PVP Daily. Now I'm doing 3-4 AB's just so I can complete it.

[Ravensign]

I am glad to see this thread.

Dailies seemed like such a small thing at first, but you can quickly see how they can drive the entire experience. It looks likes another concept that's going to become part of the MMO status quo.

Just like the quest driven gen of MMO's has given xping more context, dailies give max level players some context and structure to their play, without it having to come purely from either raiding or grinding honor.

Also, it turns out to be great for getting casual people to PuG better. It puts people on the same page. I see way more "premade" (not cpu matched) PuG's going into BG's for the daily, since everyone is on the same page.

Same thing for instances. Now, instead of spreading your population across many instances, people congregate to the same instance, and Pug's form faster with people more focused on the goal.

I am thinking of how to get the concept into other games or twist it around, CoH could make a daily enemy faction worth more xp or influence or badge credit, for example. Again, this improves PuG'ing by influencing the PvE content people are LFG for into narrower channels temporarily creating more chance of groups forming easily.

[The Hiram Key]

I think the dailies are a fantastic idea. I don't like when the PVP daily gets stuck on the same BG for 4-6 days in a row (like it did between Xmas and New Years) but I enjoy doing them alot. It's a very clever way of directing player activities that strengthens the community.

[Plorkyeran]

Originally Posted by Mahes

Imagine if Honor was capped for the S1 gear. A player could only earn 1000 honor per day. You would still get the gear, but it would take you 27 days for the weapon you wanted.

The good part about dailies is it lets them balance the amount of time requried to get something around casual players. Right now S1 weapons cost 27k because they don't want people grinding them out in a day or two. If honor was capped at 1k/day, weapons would probably be more along the lines of 15k if not less. The hardcore would still get the items later, but would have significantly more time to spend working on the rest of thier gear.

Dailies are great for everyone as long as there's enough different things to grind that you're never in danger of running out. The move to 25 per day is a significant improvement in this area, as it makes it much less punishing for players who don't play a lot, but not nessesarily every day.

[Zarcath]

Originally Posted by Ravensign

Same thing for instances. Now, instead of spreading your population across many instances, people congregate to the same instance, and Pug's form faster with people more focused on the goal.

This is true, it's nice to see everyone on the same page and it makes forming pug groups easier, but, there's a downside. It's difficult to get a pug going for any of the off-day heroics. People can be more hostile or picky when doing daily heroic because if they fail, not only are they locked in, but they fail their daily. I've had pug groups where we couldn't finish it and I was angry that the fools cost me my daily. Especially with the lowered rep needed for heroics.

With this directed focus on content, you start to ignore other areas. People are less interested in doing anything thats not related to dailies. So you have this full vibrant game world and you're only really playing 10% of it every day. Is this good or bad? What does it mean for future MMOs? If developers from the start, design their game from the ground up, so that every day, or every week, there's a focused area, what kind of game experience would that create?

Actually now that I think about it, SOE might have been the first to try this approach with Hotzones. Giving out XP bonuses and new item drops to encourage players to visit old zones.

Also food for thought, eventually there will be a point where there are more dailies available then you can complete. Some might have significant impact on your gaming experience. I can imagine a time where you're doing so many dailies in a given day you either don't have enough time to max out, or you're maxing out and have to start being more selective on what dailies you have to do first. If a rep has a trinket thats crucial for raiding, you may be pigeonholed into doing dailies for that for an entire month before you could move on to another daily series. Just an extreme example, I can't even imagine reaching a 25 daily cap unless you're playing 24 hours a day or these dailies are bunched up together in a way you can complete 2-3 in an hour or two.

[The Ancient]

Originally Posted by Zarcath

This is true, it's nice to see everyone on the same page and it makes forming pug groups easier, but, there's a downside. It's difficult to get a pug going for any of the off-day heroics.

It's not like it was easy to get a group together for anything but Mechanar pre-daily heroics.

[Faith]

I like dailies for rep and badges, however....

They flood the servers with gold, something not very good in my opinion. Sure the raids demand gold but there are other ways for them to control that (remove the fucking durability ok? remove need for pots, there we go!). Prices on everything are at rediculous levels now. 4000 for a BOE epic? Come on.

If you dont fancy doing the same shitty quests every day (bomb the eggs!) you dont get enough money to buy what you need since gold isnt worth shit anymore.

So, yeah make the dailies for rep and such but please, for the love of god, remove the gold rewards. I can grind hundreds of gold every day on my 70s if I want and its rather rediculous.