Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

About that Grind

    • 2756 posts
    April 20, 2018 4:16 AM PDT

    If you're enjoying the game, it's not a grind, however long it takes.

    Personally, I hope they make levelling *very* slow so that you are needing to stay in each level-appropriate area until you've explored every bit and gotten to know every camp intimately... and then just a bit more.

    People who want to just grind on the same monsters until they level can always do that, but what's worse is when you level so fast you barely got to know an area before the content is trivialised.

    Re. quests, I don't see what was ever bad about them per se. If they were done well, they would ensure that you would see all the content there was to see and experience all the lore there was to experience.  The only problem I ever had in WoW and LotRO and other quest-centric games was if you did everything there was to do you would out-level the area you were in before doing it all and would start too high for the next area.  Things were trivialised.  I suppose because they wanted to cater for people who didn't want to explore everything.  Maybe they simply gave too much XP, but the idea of talking to people and doing tasks to unfold a lore-based narrative?  What the heck is wrong with that?

    I've never even found the ! signs that offensive.  What's so cool about pressing H to hail every single NPC in a town until someone says something in brackets that you have to repeat back to them?  Sure, something a bit more immersive and involving a bit more thinking than looking for floating exclamation points is good, but how to find quest-givers was hardly 'better' in EQ.  Be honest, most people went to a forum or got told by another player.

    "Why are you rolling dice for those orc belts?". "There's a guy in Freeport who gives XP for them". Yeah. Immersive.

    A classic EQ experience: Killing orc pawns in noob area they sometimes have Picks. They are heavy and like some rusty weapons they aren't great to use and sell for peanuts.  Eventually, you don't even bother picking them up, especially since you have no bags and maybe low strength.

    8 levels later you pass a guard at a checkpoint and maybe bother to hail him (even though he looks just like the previous 12 guards who said nothing special). Turns out he accepts Orc Pawn Picks as a bounty quest.  Oh.  So those 20 or 30 I obtained over the last 8 levels... you wanted them... if I could have even carried them to you (since his area is level 9 monsters).

    Is that 'better' than quest hubs and exclamation points?  Really?

    As long as VR stick to their guns and keep the content tough then they can have quests galore and lead you by the nose or they can leave you to explore for yourself and do your own thing.

    Even in classic EQ where there were very few 'quests' (ironic name, really) you could farm Orc Belts and hand them in for, what, level 6 til 12 in just two zones?  There were other such things at most level bands.

    People who want to 'grind' will find a way hehe.

    Anyway - I'm waffling as usual and the conclusion is always: I'm pretty confident VR will do it better in Pantheon.  Better than EQ but not go as far as other modern MMORPGs.

    • 752 posts
    April 20, 2018 11:53 AM PDT
    For me i hope the grind is longer so that i can explore DIFFERENT areas and dungeons that were meant for the same level range. I enjoyed exploring new spots to exp and i wish i could have done some of them when it was level appropriate. And i hope all dugeons/zones have a scaling aspect from lower to higher levels. That way you can seek out help for corpse runs from other higher level groups that will be hanging around
    • 1785 posts
    April 20, 2018 12:19 PM PDT

    disposalist said:

    Re. quests, I don't see what was ever bad about them per se. If they were done well, they would ensure that you would see all the content there was to see and experience all the lore there was to experience.  The only problem I ever had in WoW and LotRO and other quest-centric games was if you did everything there was to do you would out-level the area you were in before doing it all and would start too high for the next area.  Things were trivialised.  I suppose because they wanted to cater for people who didn't want to explore everything.  Maybe they simply gave too much XP, but the idea of talking to people and doing tasks to unfold a lore-based narrative?  What the heck is wrong with that?

    Quests on their own aren't a bad thing, and I'm sure Pantheon will have its share of quests.  From my perspective, the reaction you see against questing is because the pendulum got swung too far in other games.  It was a combination of these factors.

    1) Questing was the most efficient way to level.  This led players into a belief that they had to quest in order to level.  Please note:  I'm a fan of having quests give meaningful rewards, but that doesn't have to mean massive experience.

    2) Many quests were poorly written and felt like "filler" tasks - they weren't meaningful or memorable experiences and jus felt like means to an end (experience or money) for players

    3) Quests were concentrated in "hubs".  While this was intended to make them easy for players to find, it reinforced a linear experience in progression.  Ran out of quests?  Time to move to the next town (and there's probably a quest that sends you there)

    4) Quests were attached to almost every NPC.  This was an effort to insure players always had something to do, but it compounded the above issues, especially #2.

     

    The combination of all these factors made quests something that players didn't enjoy.  It started out with good intentions but was taken too far.

    Like I said I'm all for quests in Pantheon, but what I want to see is:

    - Quests are meaningful stories and experiences in their own right.  Not simply "deliver this package" or "kill these enemies".

    - Quests lead to something more than a simple reward.  Whether it's new equipment, new abilities, or even just an amazing storyline, quests should be more than xp and cash dispensers.

    - Quests require thought and interpretation on the part of the player as they progress.  These are stories, and need to be treated as such.  The goal of continuing a quest should be as much "I want to find out what happens next!" as it is getting the reward at the end.

    - The best quests are not easy to find.  I'm not talking about Perception here either, although Perception is a good system.  But to find the really rewarding quests, you should have to raise your faction, explore off the beaten path, or even complete other tasks for NPCs before they'll entrust you with the good stuff.

    - Quests add to the experience instead of driving the experience.  They shouldn't amount to guided tours of the content, but instead add to that content.  That is to say, a player should have a rewarding experience even if they don't have a quest.  If they have a quest, it should be icing on the cake.

    • 769 posts
    April 20, 2018 12:40 PM PDT

    Nephele said:

    disposalist said:

    Re. quests, I don't see what was ever bad about them per se. If they were done well, they would ensure that you would see all the content there was to see and experience all the lore there was to experience.  The only problem I ever had in WoW and LotRO and other quest-centric games was if you did everything there was to do you would out-level the area you were in before doing it all and would start too high for the next area.  Things were trivialised.  I suppose because they wanted to cater for people who didn't want to explore everything.  Maybe they simply gave too much XP, but the idea of talking to people and doing tasks to unfold a lore-based narrative?  What the heck is wrong with that?

    Quests on their own aren't a bad thing, and I'm sure Pantheon will have its share of quests.  From my perspective, the reaction you see against questing is because the pendulum got swung too far in other games.  It was a combination of these factors.

    1) Questing was the most efficient way to level.  This led players into a belief that they had to quest in order to level.  Please note:  I'm a fan of having quests give meaningful rewards, but that doesn't have to mean massive experience.

    2) Many quests were poorly written and felt like "filler" tasks - they weren't meaningful or memorable experiences and jus felt like means to an end (experience or money) for players

    3) Quests were concentrated in "hubs".  While this was intended to make them easy for players to find, it reinforced a linear experience in progression.  Ran out of quests?  Time to move to the next town (and there's probably a quest that sends you there)

    4) Quests were attached to almost every NPC.  This was an effort to insure players always had something to do, but it compounded the above issues, especially #2.

     

    The combination of all these factors made quests something that players didn't enjoy.  It started out with good intentions but was taken too far.

    Like I said I'm all for quests in Pantheon, but what I want to see is:

    - Quests are meaningful stories and experiences in their own right.  Not simply "deliver this package" or "kill these enemies".

    - Quests lead to something more than a simple reward.  Whether it's new equipment, new abilities, or even just an amazing storyline, quests should be more than xp and cash dispensers.

    - Quests require thought and interpretation on the part of the player as they progress.  These are stories, and need to be treated as such.  The goal of continuing a quest should be as much "I want to find out what happens next!" as it is getting the reward at the end.

    - The best quests are not easy to find.  I'm not talking about Perception here either, although Perception is a good system.  But to find the really rewarding quests, you should have to raise your faction, explore off the beaten path, or even complete other tasks for NPCs before they'll entrust you with the good stuff.

    - Quests add to the experience instead of driving the experience.  They shouldn't amount to guided tours of the content, but instead add to that content.  That is to say, a player should have a rewarding experience even if they don't have a quest.  If they have a quest, it should be icing on the cake.

    Aye, Dispo, you specifically mentioned LOTRO and WoW, so I wanted to point something out. 

    While I do have a somewhat illogical hate towards any "!" marks, or other quest indicators, that's not really my biggest problem with most quest-centric MMO's. I played LOTRO for a pretty long time, and I can't recall ONE time ..not one, single, time.. that I would go into an dungeon of any kind solely for the purpose of XP. In fact, if I recall correctly, the XP gained by killing mobs was so negligible as to make it worthless. 

    The way to gain XP in LOTRO was through quests and the completion of daily tasks through things like Skraids (instanced raids), and not through combat and hunting with friends. I'm not completely sure, as I never really played, but I've heard WoW is similar. So, yes, I think an argument can be made that the quests themselves weren't THAT bad, and when you compare them to some of the more grindy (and popular) quests in EQ - such as gnoll fang/orc belt/bone chip turn-ins, they're pretty much identical.

    Where the problem really shows itself is that when quests are too abundant, they negate the need for gaining experience any other way. One might argue that the solution to that is to just make quests not give as much XP, but then what's the point of the quests? Would people even do them? Probably not. Which leaves only two options available. 

    XP primarily gained through quests? Or XP primarily gained through killing mobs? I'll pick killing every single time.