You want quests?

[Bori Grimbattle]

The MAIN difference between DDO and Horizons is in DDO objects in the world can be manipulated. Whether it is shatterring boxes to find a key or pulling levers to open a door or gate or setting a floor puzzle to shut down a force field.

In Horizons you CANNOT manipulate ANYTHING in the world that would allow such things to occur. Thus the Quests in DDO are far more immersive then the ones offered by Horizons. Even with the Quest Editor, the game engine itself would not allow the manipulation of objects. That is why Horizons has no doors on any building that one can open and close.

Thus a Quest in DDO can be more fun and more challenging then any Quest in Horizons as all one can really do in Horizons is "get a Trigger Point" be it an NPC or xyz locations and then kill a Mob or Mobs.

That is why I say Horizons is far more Fed-Ex in its' Quest delivery then DDO.

As far as grinding goes. I only repeated a couple of Quests and still managed to advance my level according to the Quests offered. HZ is far more of a grindfest where you head out to your favorite MoB, pull...kill...rinse...repeat.

[Dhalin]

Honestly, I think one the coolest quests in the game is RoP. Its not "Just" a Fedex quest, to use that one poster's analogy.

In fact the RoP is mayhaps one of The most complex quest lines I've seen in many MMORPGs, including WoW and FFXI. To sum RoP up, its...

1). Talk to an NPC and learn a bunch about this event.
2). Talk to Faction leaders and make a choice.
3). You are given 4 major goals in this quest: Obtain Item #1, Obtain Item #2, Do Action #3, and Do Action #4 then you finally complete the Entire quest.
4). Item #1 has a few Sub-Parts, acquire this stuff, make that thing, kill this mob, go talk to that guy, etc.
5). Same for Item #2.
6). The Actions are also like this too.

See, this quest has sub-quests you have to do to fulfill the main parts. This is how Epic quests should be.... if you are questing, say, a Piece of Armor.... instead of:

1). Go Kill 20 of this mob and 10 of that mob and I give you this (uber armor here).

It should be:

1). To make this armor for you, I need (insert rare 'never heard of it item' here) and (2nd never heard of it item here) and (3rd 'wth is this item?') here.
2). To Aquire these items, you need to quest a few of this, a few of that, go to some special place to make the sub-component, blah blah.

That'd be much cooler....sadly not many games Do this.

--Xylia

[UlteriorModem]

You want a complicated quest ?

Try that darn old "Parrot" quest given by the guard in Sslanis.

Oh your gonna need some help/friends to complete it ;)

[LaughingOtter]

Despite Bori's assertions, the ability to manipulate objects does not make quests "better"; it just adds some diversity to the list of available actions. Combining diverse actions with good dialog and making a good story out of the whole thing is what makes a quest "better".

Keep in mind that "quest" is an industry standard term meaning "a player-completed activity". That's how games can claim to have thousands and thousands of 'quests'; 'Kill X of Y' counts just as much as the RoP, by that definition. Players tend to divide things into 'quests' and 'tasks', usually by the amount of storyline and complexity an activity has. The Lord of the Rings - the entire trilogy - is a FedEx quest with a ton of lore, kill tasks, and NPC interaction.

Tasks have their place. Crafting and adventure trainer turn-ins are great examples. If people are going to repeat them many many times - which players will do - they need to be short and specific with limited rewards. They can still have good dialog and be part of an overall story, but in form and execution brevity is required.

Dhalin, you are correct with regards to epic quests. Problem is, youseem to be talking aboutincedental & storyline quests. Storyline quests are those that (obviously) advance the storyline. Incedental quests are those that do not. The Kion Militia emblem, Balit's Friend, and the Outpost quests are storyline. Priscilla the Shoulder Parrot, the Free Grant!/Vault upgrade quests, the Darkstaff series and Sly Loki's are incedental. Epics are usually very long, very complex, and not repeatable.

In any game, tasks are going to make up the bulk of the available quests. This is as it should be. They will be used by almost everyone, so they have to be as generic as possible. Yes, Horizons needs more of these.

An incedental or storyline quest can be "Go Kill 20 of this mob and 10 of that mob and I give you this (uber armor here)". The Saris Blade quest Lady Kendra used to give was three sequential kill tasks, as you describe. It wasn't bad, but the item was not really "uber" - just nifty. Saja's quest at the outpost is a little more complex - kill task, kill task, FedEx, FedEx, kill task, FedEx, kill task, reward, if I remember correctly.

Sure, you can keep adding complexity, but you're going to run smack into a hellacious barrier - the reward for effort zone. Make your quest long and complicated, you had better offer a terrific reward. OK, so you make ALL your quests long and hard and complicated with much juicy uberness at the end - and you lose your entire casual and mid-level player base due to being seen as "catering to the power gamers". Make it too easy and you have Monty Haul Syndrome.

As I said, you are correct with regards to epics. Epics, however, are the least common quest - as it should be. Sure, the game needs more. It needs more quests of all types, and always will, just like every other game out there. Quests don't need complexity to be cool; they needquality presentation (meaning lore & dialog) and tostick their landingsolidly inthe reward for effort zone.

[LaughingOtter]

You want a complicated quest ?

Try that darn old "Parrot" quest given by the guard in Sslanis.

Thank you! :-)

Oh your gonna need some help/friends to complete it [img]/Web/emoticons/emotion-5.gif[/img]

Oh, cool, I finally get to say it... [:D]

"It's functioning as designed!!!!"

Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

[Bori Grimbattle]

Despite Bori's assertions, the ability to manipulate objects does not make quests "better"; it just adds some diversity to the list of available actions. Combining diverse actions with good dialog and making a good story out of the whole thing is what makes a quest "better".

I will stick to that assertion. Without the ability to manipulate objects Quests will usually end up beingsimilar copies of each other as you are restricting the number of variables you can throw into creating them. The fewer the variables the less variation you will have in the Quest. You cannot have the diversity you seek if you restrict the number of variables possible.

Even in an older game such as AC1 you had the ability to manipulate switches,pressure plates etc. which could involve a whole team to be able to accomplish. Kill tasks are easily soloable by many in Horizons which leaves few Quests that are team oriented. This factor does little to build community as most would rather run the Quest solo. The only option HZ has to make a Quest team oriented is to make the MoBs involved harder then the norm. This in turn will just lead to "class balance" arguements as some will be able to do with less help while others will need more.

One of the better Quests ever in HZ was during the Dryad event where the whole server was involved in figuring out the puzzles. However, it pales in comparison to what "could have been" if the ability to manipulate objects was present. This is the point I was trying to make in my previous post on this thread. Horizons lacks that ability and that "lack" is restrictive.

[LaughingOtter]

Without the ability to manipulate objects Quests will usually end up beingsimilar copies of each other as you are restricting the number of variables you can throw into creating them. The fewer the variables the less variation you will have in the Quest. You cannot have the diversity you seek if you restrict the number of variables possible.

To which I reply, "DDO is restricting the diversity of actions available by not having crafting".DDO lacks that ability and that "lack" is restrictive.

For that matter, DDO does not have overland travel, thus further restricting the possible options available by all but eliminating location-based triggers and theoption to hunt a specific creature such as a named mob over a wide area.

There is no argument that a greater number of possible player interactions allows more freedom and creativity in quest design. That does not mean 'better'. A game of Whack-a-Mole is a very dynamic, exciting type of object manipulation, but stringing 20 of them together does not a quality quest make.

As a matter of fact, a lot of the same functionality object manipulation & containers offer can be achieved in the HZ quest system. Not everything, of course. Something like "search this area for the bag containing X" can be accomplished as a multi-part kill task with a create-item action, or a craft-FedEx-Kill-Fedex-item creation combination. Search tasks exist to add time (Ohh, DDO, slowing down your grind to cover a lack of content...), but they only work once. Manipulating levers or buttons to open a door, or doing something to get to a key, those are just various ways of triggering the next steps in the quest. "Find a way to pull that lever so we can get the map" is in no way inherently superior to "bring me a dozen gruok kabobs and the map is yours".

As I said, a 'better' quest is a result of creative use of the possible actions you have to work with, good dialog, and a good story - not "Oh, lookie, I can spend all day yanking this lever back and forth".

[Bori Grimbattle]

Crafting and Questing are two separate things. The only reason to add a craftable to a Quest is to gain an extra variable because the options are so restrictive to begin with.

All you really can have in HZ are trigger points, NPC interactions,craftables (includes harvestables)collectables,and kill tasks.

In DDO you can have trigger points, NPC interactions, kill tasks, levers, switches,secret doors, underwater tunnels, puzzles to manipulate, traps, collectables

I may have missed a few from each one but DDO still has more variables then HZ, hands down.

So, even though they may not be there in the first few levels of beta, the potential for variety and depth in Quests is far more in DDO then in Horizons.

If and when they rewrite the engine to allow the world model to function as it should and thus allow object manipulation then I may retract my stance on this matter. However, at present, a Quest in DDO is far more entertaining then one in Horizons.

That may be my opinion but you see clearly the reason for that opinion.

[LaughingOtter]

levers, switches,secret doors, underwater tunnels, puzzles to manipulate, traps,

Five of those are object manipulation, just in different forms. You only get to count object manipulation once. Underwater tunnels is geography, so at best that comes under trigger points.

If you count fairly, by your listing the forms of quest variables are 5:5. [8-|]