Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling)

[Vatoreus]

The Drakefire Amulet questline for Alliance side is a great example of an epic feeling quest that was fun as shit to do. More of that please, less of "Get me 10 Bear Asses please."

Longer quest lines that take you through multiple levels/tiers that give a feeling of a larger story would be pretty good and having multiple options of these types of quests at different points in the leveling process would be ideal, for better replayability through the game. Maybe having different quest lines that deal with the same overall objective but dealing with different aspects of attaining those goals would be something to look at. Allowing for these different parts to intermingle at different points would help some with getting people grouped up and working together.

Look at how an investigation/trial works. Multiple people working toward a similar goal, but taking different approaches at getting there, while still needing to intermingle to achieve said end goal.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Ukerric

I suspect those quest are already cut down to less than that. Most of the 136 quests can't be taken out of the bat. They are the "multiple steps" you want to add to the overall quest line. Most of these larger quest arcs are quite short, but you do have some that go for dozens of steps, even in a non-epic Zangarmarsh zone (the Sporelok quest line, for example).

One thing you could do that VG sorta did during beta and then abandoned along with every other semi-good idea they had was to separate quests into different categories and handle them that way.

In the quest log/adventure journal/whatever you have 4~5 tabs. One for 'adventures' which are long quest series. The series updates as you complete objectives and the like. You could have adventures that last the entire game, guiding you from place to place. You could have adventures that tie several zones or even just a single zone together.

One for tasks. These would be your "Go here, do this, get that, talk to them, retrieve these" quests.

One for bounties. "Kill 20 x, collect 15 y, kill boss mob G". Simple enough.

Finally one for 'rumor's'. This would be your item-spawned quests, activated from world objects, maybe even gained just from standing around an area.

Just separating them as such would go a long way. It's ultimtaely just perception but look how much perception helps epix vs. rares in games. A purple is automatically equated to more value even if a rare item outclasses it.

Anyways...

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

1) The entire game. This "expect bugs to be patched later" thing is bullshit. Always has been, always will.

2) Customer Service. If my company had the same customer service as Blizzard or Sony or Mythic or etc...had we'd be out of fucking business. It's shameful.

It's a testament to the willpower, patience and understanding of gamers that we put up with all the bullshit companies put out. We can ignore the minor flaws for the grander fun.

But time and again some company thinks they can exploit this and get away with a shoddy product and time and again they fail.

Don't be that company.

Not sure what world you're from but even MMO's with shitty customer service have better CS than most companies I've had to deal with in "real life". Not that that's an excuse, just sayin'.

Bugs on release that will be patched later is definitely bullshit though. It's always been a plague for PC games ever since internet connection became commonplace (and sometimes before - remember the patch disks in software stores anyone?). Sadly the problem seems to be getting worse as even consoles are infected with it now. And of course it's worse of a problem with MMO's as it's a very different type of genre, where your continual satisfaction is necessary. You don't have to have fun for every single second you're in the game, but frustration that compounds is a surefire way to lose a customer. One bug that's left unfixed with for a while can easily do this.

[Grave]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

In the quest log/adventure journal/whatever you have 4~5 tabs. One for 'adventures' which are long quest series. The series updates as you complete objectives and the like. You could have adventures that last the entire game, guiding you from place to place. You could have adventures that tie several zones or even just a single zone together.

One for tasks. These would be your "Go here, do this, get that, talk to them, retrieve these" quests.

One for bounties. "Kill 20 x, collect 15 y, kill boss mob G". Simple enough.

Finally one for 'rumor's'. This would be your item-spawned quests, activated from world objects, maybe even gained just from standing around an area.

This would be fantastic.

On the topic of how to handle the multi-step quests as far as grouping is concerned, I see only two scenarios:

1.) Let people join at any step in the quest and adventure with you. The quest automatically goes into their log at the step the person they joined is on, and they continue from there. The player that gets "caught up" would not gain the exp. from the previous steps but would gain the benefit of progressing their quest faster.

I don't like that one at all, as it messily throws away part of the story for the player who is further behind, and creates other situations which may be bad for the game overall, such as people holding at a particular point in the quest and trying to sell "progression" to players who might just want to get to the end reward quickly.

2.) Allow people to meet the objective of a quest at any time. This one is the best solution I think.

To clarify, let's say you're on a step where you're investigating the whereabouts of a dangerous Necromancer. You happen to see a group forming up to kill said Necromancer, but you aren't on the step yet. You join anyway, and are able to loot his head, then you go back to soloing your own questline and when the time comes to slay the Necromancer for yourself, you say "no problem, already did it." It even makes more sense from a story standpoint, if you later realize the guy you killed earlier is the threat you were looking for, then the problem is obviously already solved.

This would have other benefits in the overall game as well when applied to all quests. Kill a guy and see that he drops some sort of medallion, but you don't have the quest for it? The game should let you loot it anyway, and give you a hint as to what quest it pertains to. Meet someone at the GY who is killing skeletons and they offer to group? You can loot the dust they drop even though you aren't on that stage of the quest yet, just save it until you do need it.

This encourages your players to just play, to explore, to kill, do whatever they want with their time in game and ensure them that it wont be wasted.

[Ngruk]

Originally Posted by TwiNCannoN

Bugs on release that will be patched later is definitely bullshit though. It's always been a plague for PC games ever since internet connection became commonplace (and sometimes before - remember the patch disks in software stores anyone?). Sadly the problem seems to be getting worse as even consoles are infected with it now. And of course it's worse of a problem with MMO's as it's a very different type of genre, where your continual satisfaction is necessary. You don't have to have fun for every single second you're in the game, but frustration that compounds is a surefire way to lose a customer. One bug that's left unfixed with for a while can easily do this.

I was in this camp until about 3 years ago. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the MMO space will ever come out bug free. I am not making excuses or saying we'll suck, we won't, but it showed a real clear lack of understanding on my part to be espousing a 100% perfect game at launch. There are so many reasons, big and little, that goes into this.

I don't even know them all. What I do agree with is that there is another level to be reached in launching games in this space that hasn't been done. We do have a community that allows us to get 'paid' for later beta stage (or that 1st 60 day period a game goes live) and for the most part that business model is just rare as hell.

The patching process is the best and worst of evils because some companies, many, use the patching process to finish a game we've already paid for.

The issue though, is that you are talking about a game with content so far beyond your imagination in size and scope it's scary. You cannot replicate the launch day server load to a degree that answers the questions around 500K plus players all banging on your log in service and billing, at once, around the world.

Also, you can test as much as you want but unless you open the end of your beta to the world, you cannot get close to that size/volume replication. Things are certainly better, but we are living in the day and age where we are ecstatic when an MMO launches with minimal server crashes. That's the bar, that's something to be ecstatic about? I may be naive but I don't see it, I don't feel it, and I don't believe it. There needs to be more, and there needs to be better ways to making that happen.

But it is not even close to as simple as we'd like to believe it is when you get even the slightest peek behind the curtain. These things are massive on a scale I had no idea a few years back.

Those are not excuses, you need to stand by and be accountable to your company, and more importantly your customers on launch day. It's those huge decisions made at Gold Master that you answer too then.

You want a perfect bug free MMO? I'd argue you are asking for a game with a 7-10 year dev timeline and easily a 9 figure budget, at a minimum. That's a modern day large world MMO using up to date tech.

Those two things, to me anyway, only made sense for Star Wars and LotR. Both of those IPs had decades of history that would not lose interest, and were as non-tech reliant as anything the space will see from an expectations standpoint. I saw those two as build and sell IP's, don't mess with them, just give me the basic classes, races, and let me go play in that world!

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Ngruk

I was in this camp until about 3 years ago. Nothing, and I mean nothing in the MMO space will ever come out bug free. I am not making excuses or saying we'll suck, we won't, but it showed a real clear lack of understanding on my part to be espousing a 100% perfect game at launch. There are so many reasons, big and little, that goes into this.

Pretty sure there's a significant difference between your servers shitting out on you because you weren't prepared for 1 million users and a terrain exploit allowing one team advantage in a battleground for nearly 11 months.

One thing I'll never understand is why gaming companies keep releasing their game right after beta ends. That to me just sounds fucked up. For us we put out our software for beta/testing, then we gather data, then we use that data to fix any bugs. Once the bugs are fixed, then we announce a release date.

We don't release anyways and then fix bugs post release. And don't give me that "Well it costs money and takes time and you gotta keep up with technology..." bullshit excuse. LOTRO did it. And that was fucking turbine. The game was boring as shit but that's what happens when you have uninspired developers who phone it in after the first 2 hours of gameplay.

Look, we understand that shit happens. Like I said, gamers are patient and understanding. We know hardware can crash, we know conflicts can arise. Those of us that have done software/application programming know that when you involve multiple departments programming departments headaches can arise (Hrmn...this line of code seems redundant, why don't I just dele...OH SHIT EVERYTHING IS BROKE NOW)

Shit happens.

The problem my dear friend is that -bullshit- happens way too often.

Ask anybody that played WoW how they feel about the phrase, "Uninstall your addons and delete your WTF folder." That's the response a GM gave my guild after we zoned into a fully despawned molten core. And we were one of the lucky ones. Most guilds wound up in the wrong instance ID. Hell, someone should dig up the screenshot of Alliance ending up zoning into a Horde ID.

Ask us about the Rathe Council and C'thun cockblocks. Ask AoC players about half their feats not working. Ask WAR players how they felt about white lions gimping the shit out of certain scenario's. Ask me about alchemy flat out not being doable for the first 5 months your game is on the market and not even being worthwhile until 4 years later.

Go ahead and ask me how I feel about the phrase, "Working as intended."

[Cadrid]

I was writing a nice dissertation about the difference in magnitude between some goofy mob pathing and the entire end game being unplayable/unbeatable. Then I refreshed the page, so I'll just go with:

What Zehn said.

[Quince]

Along the "longer fewer quest lines" thinking it would be cool if besides having an epic quest for items etc, you had one for your race, class, alignment, sex, etc.

So some times you are grouped with a bunch of halfelves and other times its a bunch of tanks etc. You could even make custom tailor it so the bad ass boss for the tank line actually needs 6 tanks to kill it. Something like they don't hit hard but if one is allowed to run free it blows up everyone else or other things like that. Whenever you encourage people to work together, and have some skill while doing it, its a win-win for everyone.

It was fun when you had a guild healer help with some type of quest then in return you have to help him/her with their own different quest. Granted these types of quests would be few and far between, but at least it shakes it up a bit.

[Draegan]

If you're going to have a lot of complicated long quest lines makes sure you make them update the instant a step is completed. Look at what happened with VG every quest that involved a group had 10 steps to it and everyone in the group was on a different step.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Well, to make a focus on long quest chains work you'd have to do what others have said. Essentially allow completion ahead of time in a quest chain. If you have a 30 stage quest line and while grouped with friends you complete steps 13~21 and 28, while your'e still only at stage 3, once you get to those points you auto update.

You could also tack on a reward for people who have already done it. A small but significant Faction/xp/money/whatever bonus whenever someone completes a quest objective in your group that you've already done.

[Kuro]

Or just make the different parts of the quest chain worth doing if you aren't on the quest/that step.

You were able to get a lot of people onto the final step of the Coldain Ring War who weren't trying to finish a ring, just because the stuff that spawned for the quest dropped some nice shit for the time and it was a fun event. Expanding on that, there were a lot of quests where Quest pieces dropped off of names that also dropped decent loot that would get other people to show up.

In WoW, this only really applies to Instance Quests, since all the "named" out in the world that are for quests are mostly special loot-less quest update pinatas with no reason to kill them except to complete the quest.

If step 36 of the epic quest "Obtain The Ultimate Bear-ass Leather Chaps" is to collect 30490920403940 Mystical Mana Infused Bear Asses then Bear Ass Cave should be a good place for exp, with random chance at good loot on the Bear Cave general loot table, and toss in a named bear or two with superior loot, to give people a reason to go there if they aren't necessarily on that exact quest step.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

bear ass

[Draegan]

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Well, to make a focus on long quest chains work you'd have to do what others have said. Essentially allow completion ahead of time in a quest chain. If you have a 30 stage quest line and while grouped with friends you complete steps 13~21 and 28, while your'e still only at stage 3, once you get to those points you auto update.

You could also tack on a reward for people who have already done it. A small but significant Faction/xp/money/whatever bonus whenever someone completes a quest objective in your group that you've already done.

I don't think you can do that unless you write the quest to specifically do that. If Steps 10-15 are Kill THis guy, Kill that Guy, then go kill X of these, then you should be able to complete it out of turn no problem. But if it's story driven, then I don't think you can.

[Grave]

That's just a sacrifice you have to make for gameplay. The only alternative is to do it like other games where people wont want to group up unless they are on the same step. I'd still make the quests story driven, and if a player chooses to complete it out of order they're just going to have to accept that they're seeing events differently. It's not perfect, but you have to do things like that sometimes. I don't think it would matter too much in the end, as long as the overall story told is cool and the player had fun doing it, it's good.

I also think most people solo while leveling up anyway, especially in a game like WoW, so most players would see it in the proper order. Quests that absolutely require a group could obviously be tailored to the fact that people may complete them out of order, so there's no real problem there.

[Zehn - Vhex]

Originally Posted by Draegan

I don't think you can do that unless you write the quest to specifically do that. If Steps 10-15 are Kill THis guy, Kill that Guy, then go kill X of these, then you should be able to complete it out of turn no problem. But if it's story driven, then I don't think you can.

Well you could always flag certain stages un-predoable depending on the logic behind it. It would rely heavily on how you design quests and if you made them with being able to complete stages ahead of time in mind it would have a heavy influence. It would still be doable it's just how you build them would be different.

Though occam's razor would suggest you just give some kind of reward everytime someone else in your group gets a quest update and leave it at that.

[Grave]

Example of a 5-step group quest that would work fine with the method in discussion:

Main Quest - The player must destroy Nal'kyrith, a powerful Dracoliche. Nal'kyrith has been defeated before, but the magic that binds him allows him to reconstruct himself only days after he is destroyed. It is believed that his summoning was the joint effort of multiple dark magi. Only by seeking out those who summoned him and destroying them can you be sure that Nal'kyrith will truly be defeated and his threat ended.

So, subquests:
(Optional) Find more information about the magi.
(Required) Slay Nelon and crush the orb of binding in his possession.
(Required) Slay Kelial and crush the orb of binding in her possession.
(Required) Slay Verith and crush the orb of binding in his possession.
(Required) Slay Dal'karda and crush the orb of binding in his possession.

Main Quest:
(Optional) Find out more about the summoning of a dracoliche, and the implements used.
(Required) Destroy Nal'kyrith

So, we've got a quest here that can be completed in any order and still make sense. The player can kill Nal'kyrith first and then destroy the summoners, or he can kill the summoners and then Nal'kyrith, or even mix it up. It still makes sense because it takes the dracoliche awhile to reform, so as long as they destroy the summoners and their orbs in time, they have succeeded. This means that the player is free to get a group for whatever step they may have and do it however they need to.

Each step of the quest would offer a little more of the story: what the summoners intent was, their goal, who they were working for. It could end up being a much larger problem than just this, and that would lead the player to later quests dealing with this cult or group.

The optional steps would be for players who want a little more story, maybe they need to go to a library and research the subject or speak with some NPCs who they know are knowledgable about such things. They'd get some bonus exp and story for their effort, but it's not required so players who just want to get to the killing may do so.

Just design the group-required quests like that and you're fine. Soloable quests will just have to suffer a little bit story-wise, but it'd be okay. Gameplay must come first.

Originally Posted by Zehn - Vhex

Though occam's razor would suggest you just give some kind of reward everytime someone else in your group gets a quest update and leave it at that.

That's a good idea also.