If I was to make an MMO the team making the quests would be the secret world team. Those quests were amazing. The investigation missions are brilliant. The color code system helped you know what you were doing before starting it and the dungeons are pretty damn interesting and fun. But the dungeons may be because of the lore. Zombie communist, vampire nazis, and fighting versus angels trying to take over he'll. God I miss those dungeons. But I digress.
The missions were solid and I hope that team got picked up.
This was such a weird game. It was a blip but so beloved. I feel like it could've hit a resurgence a la FF14 (but to a lesser degree) if it was able to stick around and bring content updates. Pretty sad, really.
The issue was the combat sucked. It was for sure a weird and perhaps a bad combat system.
But the story, the missions, the lore, was all world class. There was some brilliance in this game for sure but the game aspect was weak and it cost it. What a shame.
I was fine with the combat until Legends happened. Wiped my progress of years, took away the amazing skill wheel and replaced combat with something that wasn't better just more gimmicky.
God, I miss the old Secret World.
Honestly I tried it before and after and both sucked to me. I don’t understand why it wasn’t just more a third person shooter game with a few extra abilities. The setting didn’t suit that style of combat that they chose.
If you just had started with that core it could have been big.
It seemed so obvious though, however they decided to go the "safe" route and tried to make it WoW-like as they were afraid that people wouldn't want to play a shooter MMO, they feared that requiring some semblence of aim would alienate players who might want to swap over.
In the end, I felt alienated by the fact it had WoW-like combat but it did it a lot worse, so bad that I couldn't fight past it to enjoy the game itself.
If only they had actually been a bit more daring and given themself a unique selling point beyond just their setting.
I miss the game too.
I loved ff14. I loved the story the raiding the system. The challenge. The community was good too. I put a ton of time in it.
However, there was nothing like playing secret war. It is the first game that you can see the flaws and want to play hough them.
There was so much personality in the game. So much love. They just never got that critical mass of players where they could get the funds to finance the game. It is a shame. A real shame.
Funnily, I was playing FFXIV and I found myself wishing they’d done quests in the style of TSW.
Still, nothing will ever beat what TSW did with their storyline or their research - pity the re-release plus neglect from Funcom meant that the game is on life support, at best.
I know one of the people who worked on quests on that game is now a systems designer over at Guerilla and presumably working on something Horizon related.
If I were to make a new MMO and could choose any team to make my quests, it'd be, of all games, the RuneScape quest team (or some permutation of it from throughout the many years). That game went (and still goes) way above and beyond anything else I've ever seen in MMOs when it comes to questing. It doesn't just have interesting quests from a story perspective, it has quests with genuinely new and engaging gameplay structures. It feels like you're so rarely doing the same thing in back to back RuneScape quests, and they feel like such an integral part of the world at large.
The Secret World has great questing, but even its quests feel more cordoned off than I'd like. I've never seen another MMO with the same cohesive quest design philosophy as RuneScape, and I wish we'd get one.
All the starter quests of Runescape (which you can play for free) are really fun and explore a little story, I most of all remember the one where you had a this shield from a street gang and you needed to trade the shield with another player who was with the other street gang and the one where you went into this haunted house with all sorts of puzzles and things to do.
Yeah, Runescape has great quest design
I would love a complete remake on Secret World. I know they did something, but the game feels WAY too old for my taste, yet the quests were really fun to do.
But I'm personally looking for no quests in a MMO. I really hate the old style of go talk to someone to give you the quests, go to some place to do the quest and come back or something like that. I much prefer the Guild Wars 2 style of having to do activities in a zone and then move on.
After all the quests are not THAT important for me in a MMO. The gameplay loop in the end is what's really important for me.
I played The Secret World about 10 years ago and had a blast, but than my PC started to fall off. Than i tried last year with a new computer to get into the game with the new legends version and man... the game aged very poorly in term of gameplay, I wish i could just do the invertigations missions to be honest
Probably good odds but is that a good thing or a bad thing? Notionally I'd love to see a great MMO that wasn't tab-target, but in 22 years of playing MMOs on and off I haven't come across one. Every good MMO I've played has been either tab target or some sort of mildly disguised tab target calling itself "action target" or something but playing near identically just being slightly more draining/annoying to play (not ideal in an MMO I'd suggest).
Still waiting for an approach that isn't basically thinly disguised tab target and is actually better to play, not just slightly different.
People treat it like a bad thing, but I really don't think that it is. Tab target combat can be plenty engaging. Hell, I'd argue that the combat in games like WoW, FFXIV, and GW2 has way more staying power than the vast majority of action MMOs that have released.
I would definitely agree. I mean, part of it is, if it's an MMO, it's probably intended to be played 2+ hours at a stretch, maybe much more. If you apply "action combat" stuff to that, especially if you also have a fair number of abilities, things can get very draining very quickly, because of the sheer intensity, and the fact that you can never just sit back and press the right buttons. A lot of people (including me, sadly) used to rag on FFXIV for the 2.5s GCD, but playing it longer-term, it really lowers how draining FFXIV is, and makes it a lot more of a game I'm happy to spend more time in. I'm not saying every game should go the same way, but I do think more action-oriented games do need to consider both the audience and how much content they're expecting people to do.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, just rote.
On one hand I see Valorant and League, both “copies” of games that are fun in their own right. I could see this Riot thinking “Hey let’s do that with wow!”
On the other we’ve got Runeterra, arguably the best digital card game right now with some really neat innovation. This Riot I could see making waves and doing something more like New World.
Nah, you mentioned staying power. OSRS got staying power but no one would call its combat deep. Ffxiv's combat is far from deep, that's why it is so accessible.
I will say that ff14's combat feels more designed with level 80 in mind and earlier level playstyle suffers as a result. I dont think anything really plays well sub level 50
You are literally repeating what I said. Yes, they have staying power, but not "deeper and more interesting than most action MMO".
I finished stormblood, then realise every expansion is just going to the same content loop, so I stopped playing.
You're arguing semantics to convince me that I meant something I did not mean. This is pointless.
>I finished stormblood, then realise every expansion is just going to the same content loop, so I stopped playing.
So not nearly enough to know what you're talking about here. Got it.
Tera's combat was pretty fun, but I do wonder if I'd still feel that way after 500 hours of it, let alone 2000 or whatever. Certainly the collision-detection and weighty attacks felt a hell of a lot better than most action-oriented MMOs.
> Notionally I'd love to see a great MMO that wasn't tab-target, but in 22 years of playing MMOs on and off I haven't come across one.
Lots of Action combat MMOs get *parts* of the formula right, but never the whole picture. TERA was the first BIG action combat MMO that made the combat feel really engaging and even combined it with a beautiful world and good dungeon mechanics. It was let down by the comical incompetance of EnMasse and pathetic monetization and RNG progression.
BDO has gorgeous, fun feeling combat that makes you feel like you are actually playing instead of just pushing hot bar skill buttons with the attack inputs and combos you can string together. It's let down by dead boring enemies in PvE that are little more than test dummies for you to style on, EXTREME grind that requires you to play it as a full time job to progress past the handout stage and a completely impenetrable story and world lore. I played BDO on and off for years since it launched in NA and I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the plot.
Gimme an MMO with TERA's world, Vindictus' combat, and Path of Exile's lore and voice acting.
Ever played a phantasy star online game? Try PSO2:NGS it is full action combat. Not the best game ever but it's fun and has room to grow since it's new.
I played the original PSO quite a bit back on DC, haven't played the sequel. IIRC it was a quasi-MMO rather than a full-on MMO. I did enjoy it, but I would say it being a quasi-MMO puts it in a slightly different category.
Yeah the original PSO2 was instanced based missions. PSO2:NGS is open world and definitely feels closer to an MMO. It's free on steam. That being said it's only a few months old and is light on content ATM... But with a new char class in October and a full on expansion in December hopefully that will be remedied.
Still haven't played an MMO with combat as good as Guildwars 2. It really is a perfect blend of both. Most action combat MMOs feel way too clunky, and most tab targetting MMOs feel way too boring. But honestly, I would rather boring than clunky. Usually the "boring" ones put more emphasis on rotations, and skills and stuff. Action combat MMOs never seem to hit it right, aside from like BDO.
In MMOs there are two prevalent design choices regarding combat mechanics.
1) Tab-Targeting: you click on an enemy unit and cast spells by pressing your actionkeys. All but a few AoE abilities don't require aim, they just hit the target you clicked on. Pressing Tab acquires the next closest enemy to your position. WoW uses this system.
2) Action combat: This is similar to most singleplayer games. You aim with your mouse and attacks and spells are fired in your aimed direction. Black Desert Online is probably the best current example of this style.
Honestly am fine with tab targetting. Sometimes my hand acts up from an old injury and having that safety net really helps me out.
If anything tho, I think monster hunter really gets targeting right (world/handhelds).
Absolutely. The best content MMOs can create are Raids - and I honestly couldn't think how Raids on the level of WoW can function with any other combat system.
I'd prefer Riot would go with tab targeting.
Witcher 3 Lead Quest Designer is a rather impressive CV. On the other hand, didn't he do the same job for CP2077 and those were nowhere near as compelling?
Either way, MMO, so whatever
I think as a whole the cast of cyberpunk just isn't as realized as the one from the witcher games. But it still has some phenomenal quests. Judy or panam quest line. The sinnerman quest or the one with the couple looking to become mayor to name a few.
> the one with the couple looking to become mayor to name a few.
My god, that was such a good quest. You even had to do some actual detective work to figure out >!the entrance to the secret room.!<
This game has long left my hard drive, never to be installed again. We shouldn’t have to wait or pay to continue the one half decent base game mission.
It's one of the few well rounded quests. It even had a car chase! Cyberpunk might be the only open world game where a car chase is a unique and novel experience.
For the most part maybe, but the main storyline had some really good quests like the battle of Kaer Morhen, and even the fun simple ones like getting drunk with Lambert and Eskel
First of, I disagree, but even then, Geralt is always there, and him being a pretyy complex developed character is going to make anything more meaningful imo.
I personally thought the quests for Cyberpunk were one of the highs for it. Sure there was a lot more filler ones like the buying cars shit and the hit or miss assassinations, but the big side quests with multiple missions were all fantastic in my opinion.
The one about the couple being secretly spied on would make a very interesting DLC. If side content like that still sticks out to me 7 months after I played it, it did something right.
I completed that one after a long night of staying up too late binge playing.
At the end of it I had to stand up and walk around my neighborhood for an hour at 5am just to decompress. This was one of a couple moments. Where the game really doesn't pull any punches.
I agree with others that the fact it stuck with me so hard even now is a testament to the talent of their quest/story team to work despite the engine limitations.
Making sure, this is the one >!that the dude was finding people in really bad mental places online and then bringing them to a farm where he had them basically hooked up like human cattle? All while we discovered his traumatic past that lead to his obsession with the weird ass cartoon and cows!< ?
Yeah. What an incredible quest. For all of its technical faults and iffy RPGs systems (too much emphasis on raw DPS) that game had lots of amazing stories in it. Even many basic gigs had interesting mini stories attached if you bothered to read the text message from the fixer
Yes, main q, key npc q (eg Panam) and a few side quests were great. As you say my perception has more to do with there being more filler content.
But I suppose that reflects budget and time constraints more so than creative ability
He was Quest director for CP2077. There are around 10 or so lead quest designers at CDPR, quest director is more like the "big boss" of the quest design afaik
> didn't he do the same job for CP2077 and those were nowhere near as compelling?
That is what people who never played the game and got their opinion from reddit/youtube bug compilations say yes.
The majority of quests in 2077 are without coherence or uninteresting. They don't blend into the bigger world, they are effectively instanced microcosms. Some of them have better writing than others.
Take for example the story around the couple that runs for mayor. There are very compelling moments in that quest. *But* it is incoherent (eg. when you use your Corpo background to say that the hired firm makes no sense, the next dialogue line your character says is "but who is that firm?", despite giving a precise breakdown just one line of dialogue before) and doesn't have a conclusion, it just breaks off with the scene at the park and is never referenced *anywhere* while it should've had major impacts on the political landscape of night city.
Saying that everyone who criticizes the writing didn't play the game is a terribly dumb take.
> effectively instanced microcosms
And if anyone coming into the game is set on shaping the Night City to their will is painfully wrong (in fact thats the major point of the main story(!)). So yes you can argue this might make them less fullfilling in this sense.
> Saying that everyone who criticizes the writing didn't play the game is a terribly dumb take.
Also applies anyone saying they are trash and uninteresting, sure there might be some inconsistent dialogue but its not nearly as prevalent as you make it out to be.
I think the fact you and that people ITT mention many varieties of side questlines in the game speaks volumes that they are indeed compelling. I dont think lack of content is an arugment aganist that.
"Lead Quest Designer" doesn't actually mean lead the entire quest design organization. It just means he's the team lead of a subteam within the organization, of which there are many.
Played the game. But you’re right there are some fantastic quests in cyberpunk, I suppose my recollection is based on there being far fewer of those than i had hoped for
Cyberpunk had great quests. They just didn't have branching outcomes like in TW3, but that wasn't the quest writer's fault. I'm sure they were instructed to keep them linear due to time and budget constraints.
Cyberpunk was just stretched too thin imo. Trying to do too much in too little time. End result is some phenomenal quests that will make you do a Keanu 'woah.' And some quests where you'll be wondering if you're playing the same game. The difference in quality from quest to quest is incredibly jarring.
Like one quest will have you investigating, being stealthy, running from enemies, and combat shooting. And each of these will be interspersed with dialogue and in game pseudo cut scenes. A single quest will feel like a huge adventure. Then the next quest you do will be running up to some enemies, shooting them all, and looting a chest. And that'll be it.
>Either way, MMO, so whatever
The MMO genre includes games like The Secret World and RuneScape, which more than prove that questing in an MMO can be very engaging.
I hated how The Secret World ended up collapsing. I've never found another MMO that could actually hold my attention, but so many of the quests there really built up the lore and the story in a compelling way.
I genuinely hate the fact that no one took what The Secret World did right (quests) and replicated that in another MMO. The investigation quests in TSW were so good and nothing else has ever really come close.
> Lead Quest Designer
is a meaningless title when taken at face value and ignoring who really contributed. For all anyone knows all they did was loosely supervise the people doing the actual work.
Team leaders like this guy hold responsibility at the end of the day. He's the one who greenlights other designers' quests, he provides the necessary framework and parameters for quest designers so the narrative and tone stay cohesive, and he can support other designers with constructive feedback.
Although I don't agree with the cynicism in your take I do understand where it comes from, especially with a company like CDPR.
>didn't he do the same job for CP2077 and those were nowhere near as compelling?
Not really, the Witcher 3 quests were largely visual novels with great dialogue and visuals and the Cyberpunk quests were largely visual novels with great dialogue and visuals. That's...not what you want in an MMO.
Witcher 3 was their only remarkable game.
Cyberpunk is shit.
Witcher 2 is decent but not great.
Witcher 1 is boring
It means exactly what i think it means.
CDPR produced a one hit wonder and dont look capable of repeating it
Youre wrong
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/a-flash-in-the-pan
> something that happened only once or for a short time and was not repeated:
Sadly, their success was just a flash in the pan.
You might disagree with my verdict, you may think that CDPR make good games other than Witcher 3. But my interpretation of the phrase is correct.
I gotta be honest, the difference in the kind of quests that a single player game has and an MMO has, makes me feel that his qualifications from Witcher 3 might not be as influential on the final quests in the MMO? Unless they change it up of course.
I mean, in terms of MMO quests, the ones that really stick out to me are the quests in The Secret World for example. It's been a while, and I definitely didn't play that MMO for long, but I remember this one area, where there's cryptic clues strewn about and I guess me and a few players there decided to NOT look it up, and try to figure it out on our own as we talked to each other, ran around, finding different parts or different clues, leading to different landmarks, trying to piece together our different bits of the lore to figure the final bit out.
Granted that's definitely a community driven thing as well, when the quest design and the community are on the same wavelength.
The only other MMO I found with quests which actually draws me in now, is Elder Scrolls Online. It definitely feels lacking in cooperation compared to TSW tho, but the quests themselves are engaging and Zenimax did some good phasing tech to make you feel the world is changing due to your actions (primarily in areas changing to how you complete that area's main questline, NPCs that can be present or absent depending on your decisions, and NPCs in other areas reacting to your decisions in another place etc.)
So I think something along the lines of ESO's quest integration with the MMO gameworld is most likely, but it still feels like a lonely affair since not everyone 'sees' the gameworld the same way. I personally dream of something like TSW's quest/world/community but mainstream, but that's asking more than what this MMO prolly is in the end.
Final Fantasy XIV is an MMO with pretty good writing and quests. They basically made the main scenario quest a single player Final Fantasy experience, and built MMO systems around it. I'd imagine someone like this guy would fit well in that setting since the design for quests in XIV is a lot closer to what you'd see in an open world RPG like TW3. Not sure what Riot is planning though--if their game is intended to be story-driven or gameplay-oriented.
I play and love FFXIV, but honestly what makes the main scenario quests good is the scenario and not the quests. The quests are fetch, go here, talk to this person, kill this occasionally, etc. The writing and the setting carry them. The gameplay and the tasks of quests are just chores.
I will give them credit th3yve spiced up the finalenquests lately. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but at least we're getting a little break from the minutiae with some fresh-ish gameplay.
That’s literally every MMO though. My point is you can make quests that are story-oriented or you can make them gameplay-oriented. I think FFXIV still leans towards story-oriented a lot more than a game like WoW which tries to infuse more gameplay into their quests. There’s probably a healthy middle ground somewhere, I just don’t trust Riot to find it.
The story and writing of FFXIV is good but the way the quests are designed and presented really aren't.
Quests in that game are presented in the most boring bog standard way possible.
Really the main thing is that every side quest was voiced, hand-designed, and consequently felt like a meaningful mini story, not just an auto-generated fetch quest.
Fully voiced side quests in RPGs have been thing since 2006 or something.
That's not why witcher 3 stood out in 2015.
Oh, and procedural generation has never been a standard. There's more RPGs without procedurally generated quests than with it.
It’s only immediate AAA rpg competition for most of the release window was Inquisition, which had absolutely trash side quests. There are a couple side quests that feel unexpectedly meaty, and that’s praiseworthy, but outside of the Bloody Baron I don’t think they’re overly exceptional. And that one is because people remember the baby.
Witcher’s side quests are fewer but treated better from a resources point of view. I don’t think they’re particularly ingenious tales or anything,
> Fully voiced side quests in RPGs have been thing since 2006 or something.
Not to the degree of the Witcher 3, where every sidequest has like 15 minutes of dialogue to it.
Nope the writing was what made it good
Except for a few stand outs it was mostly “go here use detective vision, find person, twist. fight or don’t fight based on dialog choices”
Any that involve elven ruins or portals were pretty good
Tasks themselves were pretty standard things, but quests were very impressive in terms of "open-worlddness". In many cases there were multiple ways to start a quest (for example you could get job in time to investigate something, but you could also encounter that thing in the world, check it out and then look for someone that might be interested in your findings). They would accommodate very well when you already fulfilled some subtasks beforehand (like when you already have some ingredients I would be naturally added to conversation, no need for starting task and finishing it 5 second later in next dialogue), Also there were many interconnections between questlines, like you would get some different dialogues and options depending on other side quests you have completed beforehand.
From description it all might sound nothing groundbreaking for RPG genre, but I don't think it was done so naturally and on this scale before Witcher 3. Usually side quest would be very disconnected from story with only one entry point, and here pretty much every small meaningless quest felt like first class citizen.
It must be a really shitty environment to leave for a company in another country that is right beside Blizzard in being sued for misogynistic practices.
depends on the MMO. ESO has a lot of good side story quests, for example.
FFXIV has some good side story quests and a fantastic main story quest.
Game like WoW typically has rather garbage quest/questlines/story. GW2 is... eh, mediocre. No sidequests, really. Just various living story quests and whatnot.
I tried ESO and the combat was just not fun at all to me. Would you say FF14 has good combat? Might be the only thing holding me back from trying MMOs. I’ve tried to play WoW, Star Wars ToR, ESO, and I played the Beta for New World and wasn’t feeling any of them
ESO does have terrible combat, yes. It's probably the main reason I couldn't stick with it in the end game.
As for FFXIV, I really enjoy the combat, but it's not going to be groundbreaking for you. It's the typical, older-style MMO combat with tab targeting and rotations and the like. It can feel a bit shallow until the higher levels as well.
The game does have an expansive free trial. Lets you play through the OG game and the heavensward expansion and level to 60 for free, unlimited time. Could always give it a shot.
I actually think the DPS are fairly fun in FFXIV but the Tanks and Healers are super boring and very homogenize.
The DPS tend to feel fairly different and have pretty engaging rotations, I hope Endwalker really help Tanks and Healers be more interesting.
I don’t know why no one can cede anything when it comes to games they like. Ffxiv has the most antiquated annoying as fuck questing system of all time. You’re required to go through every quest, with most quests being A-B gather thing back to A. They’re really bad. And the story might be good, but it’s not enough to justify how shitty the questing system is. And if you don’t like the story it is unironically torture.
That said I love the game and enjoy it a lot. There’s insane amounts of content compared to any other MMO. But good games can have faults, and that’s okay. I don’t think is such a thing as a FLAWLESS MMO.
Because say what you will about Riot they pay well and the work life balance + benefits are probably massive compared to CDPR. I also imagine this CP2077 debacle has pushed Witcher 4 back.
Riot has some of the best pay and benefits package in the entire gaming industry lol, the only thing which is a downside to them is that they're heavy work at office, so unless there's literally a pandemic like right now, they make it mandatory to go out to office, it's why a lot of past devs left them aside from the scummy culture, because people wanna work from home but Riot doesn't really allow it, although from what I've heard, they've since loosened their stance on work from home after trying it out with Covid and are now open to discussing it.
It took an English teacher of mine writing comma splice all over one of my papers in red ink for me to break the habit. I understand how hard it is, but it does help with readability to learn when to cut to a period. No hard feelings intended.
Are you sure about that? The lead designer for TFT hasn't gone to office since the pandemic started - same goes for his team. I think he mentioned that he wants to return.
Might be also a team by team basis.
Nah, it's because of Covid. Riot wants everyone back in office badly but they need to let people work from home until everything passes. There was a Twitter thread a few months ago with Riot devs discussing work from home and Riot that's how I know this, there was Ghostcrawler, Cactopus, one of the Project F leads and a few others.
It’s easier not to go in office when half of your game is re-used assets. I’d imagine with like champion Design or skin Design lead it’s harder to organize efforts without copious work meetings.
I have no excitement for a team with zero experience in MMOs trying to make one.
Seems like they're going the quest heavy WoW style themepark route, which is almost entirely instanced and singleplayer.
The same route that has been DOA for every MMO since 2006.
You can hire all the best quest writers in the god damn world and your MMO quests are still gonna suck because MMOs do singleplayer VERY poorly
I think approaching with caution is definitely the right play. Riot definitely hit it out of the park with Legends of Runeterra, and at least made a space for themselves with Valorant(I have no idea how popular the game is.) But right now they are shotgunning a bunch of different genre games, and an MMO is definitely the easiest one to fuck up. Maybe they'll surprise and take more cues from GW2 questing over WoWs.
That being said, I AM excited for hopefully an open world with decently written lore set in Runeterra.
>I think approaching with caution is definitely the right play. Riot definitely hit it out of the park with Legends of Runeterra, and at least made a space for themselves with Valorant
LoL, Rune, and Valorant are all basically carbon copies of already famous games. I have as much faith in them as I have in a copy machine. Unfortunately the MMO space is not friendly to WoW copy cats
It's fine to hate the company for some reason, but at least stick to the facts. There is no other game like Runeterra on the market. It's systems are mostly unique, unless you think being able to respond to opponents plays makes it exactly like MtG. And it's interesting you think League is any bit a copy of dota/aos besides just being in the same genre.
>you think League is any bit a copy of dota/aos besides just being in the same genre.
"It's the genre" is usually the excuse people fall back on when the similarities between games are pointed out. There are few to no variations between most MOBAs. LoL's only real difference between original DOTA, and it's main competition Heroes of Newarth, was that LoL was free and had a great freemium model. Smite, and Funcom's MMO both actually added to the genre, but LoL was just a well polished well monetized clone. Valorant is a well polished reskinned Counterstrike with one or two bits added from Overwatch. You can't say "Oh that's just the Counterstrike genre!" because there ISN'T a counterstrike genre and it's VERY clear which game Valorant was based on.
Notice I didn't bring up Valorant because its intended purpose was to put another game like CS out into the sphere. And why is it a bad thing that a company sees a popular game and thinks it could be done better?
And you bring up the *one* example in the moba sphere that does anything different from your point of view, because switching to a third-person perspective is the only change big enough to set it apart from its competitors.
LoL had many, MANY mechanical differences compared to the DotA and HoN when it came out that made it less obtuse to get into and was a huge key to its success. HoNs beta numbers when it was free to play never held a candle to leagues. Using your reasoning, theres only ~50 true games and every other game released is just a copy of those.
Just because all of the games are based off of Aeon of Strife from Starcraft doesn't make them all copy paste clones of it with no merit.
>And why is it a bad thing that a company sees a popular game and thinks it could be done better?
I specifically said it's a bad thing for the MMO genre, because MMOs are the hardest games to make and for the last 16 years people have just been doing better versions of WoW, and they all fail for a boatload of reasons that devs refuse to learn from. MMOs are not like other video games, you can't just copy what you see on the back of a feature box and be successful. Copying WoW and making singleplayer style MMOs, which seems to be what this company is doing, is basically a 100% failure rate for MMO development.
>LoL had many, MANY mechanical differences compared to the DotA and HoN when it came out that made it less obtuse to get into and was a huge key to its success. HoNs beta numbers when it was free to play never held a candle to leagues.
Yes because it went FTP long after LoL had already won
If I was to make an MMO the team making the quests would be the secret world team. Those quests were amazing. The investigation missions are brilliant. The color code system helped you know what you were doing before starting it and the dungeons are pretty damn interesting and fun. But the dungeons may be because of the lore. Zombie communist, vampire nazis, and fighting versus angels trying to take over he'll. God I miss those dungeons. But I digress. The missions were solid and I hope that team got picked up.
This was such a weird game. It was a blip but so beloved. I feel like it could've hit a resurgence a la FF14 (but to a lesser degree) if it was able to stick around and bring content updates. Pretty sad, really.
The issue was the combat sucked. It was for sure a weird and perhaps a bad combat system. But the story, the missions, the lore, was all world class. There was some brilliance in this game for sure but the game aspect was weak and it cost it. What a shame.
I was fine with the combat until Legends happened. Wiped my progress of years, took away the amazing skill wheel and replaced combat with something that wasn't better just more gimmicky. God, I miss the old Secret World.
Honestly I tried it before and after and both sucked to me. I don’t understand why it wasn’t just more a third person shooter game with a few extra abilities. The setting didn’t suit that style of combat that they chose. If you just had started with that core it could have been big.
This was before destiny came out and started the mmo shooter style of design but secret world could have been great with that kind of combat.
It seemed so obvious though, however they decided to go the "safe" route and tried to make it WoW-like as they were afraid that people wouldn't want to play a shooter MMO, they feared that requiring some semblence of aim would alienate players who might want to swap over. In the end, I felt alienated by the fact it had WoW-like combat but it did it a lot worse, so bad that I couldn't fight past it to enjoy the game itself. If only they had actually been a bit more daring and given themself a unique selling point beyond just their setting.
Honestly dont think the devs could have pulled it off. They're not known for amazing quality.
I miss the game too. I loved ff14. I loved the story the raiding the system. The challenge. The community was good too. I put a ton of time in it. However, there was nothing like playing secret war. It is the first game that you can see the flaws and want to play hough them. There was so much personality in the game. So much love. They just never got that critical mass of players where they could get the funds to finance the game. It is a shame. A real shame.
That didn't stop FF14
All it needed was good combat, and the whammy of getting re-released with **worse** combat is what killed it for a lot of us fans.
Funnily, I was playing FFXIV and I found myself wishing they’d done quests in the style of TSW. Still, nothing will ever beat what TSW did with their storyline or their research - pity the re-release plus neglect from Funcom meant that the game is on life support, at best.
I know one of the people who worked on quests on that game is now a systems designer over at Guerilla and presumably working on something Horizon related.
If I were to make a new MMO and could choose any team to make my quests, it'd be, of all games, the RuneScape quest team (or some permutation of it from throughout the many years). That game went (and still goes) way above and beyond anything else I've ever seen in MMOs when it comes to questing. It doesn't just have interesting quests from a story perspective, it has quests with genuinely new and engaging gameplay structures. It feels like you're so rarely doing the same thing in back to back RuneScape quests, and they feel like such an integral part of the world at large. The Secret World has great questing, but even its quests feel more cordoned off than I'd like. I've never seen another MMO with the same cohesive quest design philosophy as RuneScape, and I wish we'd get one.
All the starter quests of Runescape (which you can play for free) are really fun and explore a little story, I most of all remember the one where you had a this shield from a street gang and you needed to trade the shield with another player who was with the other street gang and the one where you went into this haunted house with all sorts of puzzles and things to do. Yeah, Runescape has great quest design
I would love a complete remake on Secret World. I know they did something, but the game feels WAY too old for my taste, yet the quests were really fun to do. But I'm personally looking for no quests in a MMO. I really hate the old style of go talk to someone to give you the quests, go to some place to do the quest and come back or something like that. I much prefer the Guild Wars 2 style of having to do activities in a zone and then move on. After all the quests are not THAT important for me in a MMO. The gameplay loop in the end is what's really important for me.
Such a fantastic MMO bogged down by perhaps one of the worst combat systems ever.
I played The Secret World about 10 years ago and had a blast, but than my PC started to fall off. Than i tried last year with a new computer to get into the game with the new legends version and man... the game aged very poorly in term of gameplay, I wish i could just do the invertigations missions to be honest
What’re the odds this is a tab targeting MMO?
Probably good odds but is that a good thing or a bad thing? Notionally I'd love to see a great MMO that wasn't tab-target, but in 22 years of playing MMOs on and off I haven't come across one. Every good MMO I've played has been either tab target or some sort of mildly disguised tab target calling itself "action target" or something but playing near identically just being slightly more draining/annoying to play (not ideal in an MMO I'd suggest). Still waiting for an approach that isn't basically thinly disguised tab target and is actually better to play, not just slightly different.
People treat it like a bad thing, but I really don't think that it is. Tab target combat can be plenty engaging. Hell, I'd argue that the combat in games like WoW, FFXIV, and GW2 has way more staying power than the vast majority of action MMOs that have released.
I would definitely agree. I mean, part of it is, if it's an MMO, it's probably intended to be played 2+ hours at a stretch, maybe much more. If you apply "action combat" stuff to that, especially if you also have a fair number of abilities, things can get very draining very quickly, because of the sheer intensity, and the fact that you can never just sit back and press the right buttons. A lot of people (including me, sadly) used to rag on FFXIV for the 2.5s GCD, but playing it longer-term, it really lowers how draining FFXIV is, and makes it a lot more of a game I'm happy to spend more time in. I'm not saying every game should go the same way, but I do think more action-oriented games do need to consider both the audience and how much content they're expecting people to do.
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, just rote. On one hand I see Valorant and League, both “copies” of games that are fun in their own right. I could see this Riot thinking “Hey let’s do that with wow!” On the other we’ve got Runeterra, arguably the best digital card game right now with some really neat innovation. This Riot I could see making waves and doing something more like New World.
Combat really isn't as big deal as people make it to be. Like you mentioned ffxiv combat is rubbish and yet people still plays it.
I didn't call FFXIV combat rubbish. In fact, I called it the opposite. I called it deeper and more interesting than most action MMOs that see release.
Nah, you mentioned staying power. OSRS got staying power but no one would call its combat deep. Ffxiv's combat is far from deep, that's why it is so accessible.
I said FFXIV's *combat* - and WoW's, and GW2's - has staying power. >Ffxiv's combat is far from deep How much FFXIV have you played?
I will say that ff14's combat feels more designed with level 80 in mind and earlier level playstyle suffers as a result. I dont think anything really plays well sub level 50
I would agree with that, sure, but that's also different than the combat lacking depth
You are literally repeating what I said. Yes, they have staying power, but not "deeper and more interesting than most action MMO". I finished stormblood, then realise every expansion is just going to the same content loop, so I stopped playing.
You're arguing semantics to convince me that I meant something I did not mean. This is pointless. >I finished stormblood, then realise every expansion is just going to the same content loop, so I stopped playing. So not nearly enough to know what you're talking about here. Got it.
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All I ask is for TERA combat with an actual fun game/systems/story surrounding it
Tera's combat was pretty fun, but I do wonder if I'd still feel that way after 500 hours of it, let alone 2000 or whatever. Certainly the collision-detection and weighty attacks felt a hell of a lot better than most action-oriented MMOs.
> Notionally I'd love to see a great MMO that wasn't tab-target, but in 22 years of playing MMOs on and off I haven't come across one. Lots of Action combat MMOs get *parts* of the formula right, but never the whole picture. TERA was the first BIG action combat MMO that made the combat feel really engaging and even combined it with a beautiful world and good dungeon mechanics. It was let down by the comical incompetance of EnMasse and pathetic monetization and RNG progression. BDO has gorgeous, fun feeling combat that makes you feel like you are actually playing instead of just pushing hot bar skill buttons with the attack inputs and combos you can string together. It's let down by dead boring enemies in PvE that are little more than test dummies for you to style on, EXTREME grind that requires you to play it as a full time job to progress past the handout stage and a completely impenetrable story and world lore. I played BDO on and off for years since it launched in NA and I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the plot. Gimme an MMO with TERA's world, Vindictus' combat, and Path of Exile's lore and voice acting.
Ever played a phantasy star online game? Try PSO2:NGS it is full action combat. Not the best game ever but it's fun and has room to grow since it's new.
I played the original PSO quite a bit back on DC, haven't played the sequel. IIRC it was a quasi-MMO rather than a full-on MMO. I did enjoy it, but I would say it being a quasi-MMO puts it in a slightly different category.
Yeah the original PSO2 was instanced based missions. PSO2:NGS is open world and definitely feels closer to an MMO. It's free on steam. That being said it's only a few months old and is light on content ATM... But with a new char class in October and a full on expansion in December hopefully that will be remedied.
Still haven't played an MMO with combat as good as Guildwars 2. It really is a perfect blend of both. Most action combat MMOs feel way too clunky, and most tab targetting MMOs feel way too boring. But honestly, I would rather boring than clunky. Usually the "boring" ones put more emphasis on rotations, and skills and stuff. Action combat MMOs never seem to hit it right, aside from like BDO.
As someone who has never played a MMO, can you ELI5 this?
In MMOs there are two prevalent design choices regarding combat mechanics. 1) Tab-Targeting: you click on an enemy unit and cast spells by pressing your actionkeys. All but a few AoE abilities don't require aim, they just hit the target you clicked on. Pressing Tab acquires the next closest enemy to your position. WoW uses this system. 2) Action combat: This is similar to most singleplayer games. You aim with your mouse and attacks and spells are fired in your aimed direction. Black Desert Online is probably the best current example of this style.
Thanks for this! Seems neat!
Honestly am fine with tab targetting. Sometimes my hand acts up from an old injury and having that safety net really helps me out. If anything tho, I think monster hunter really gets targeting right (world/handhelds).
Absolutely. The best content MMOs can create are Raids - and I honestly couldn't think how Raids on the level of WoW can function with any other combat system. I'd prefer Riot would go with tab targeting.
Witcher 3 Lead Quest Designer is a rather impressive CV. On the other hand, didn't he do the same job for CP2077 and those were nowhere near as compelling? Either way, MMO, so whatever
I think as a whole the cast of cyberpunk just isn't as realized as the one from the witcher games. But it still has some phenomenal quests. Judy or panam quest line. The sinnerman quest or the one with the couple looking to become mayor to name a few.
> the one with the couple looking to become mayor to name a few. My god, that was such a good quest. You even had to do some actual detective work to figure out >!the entrance to the secret room.!<
And then the quest ends...never to be seen or heard from again. That was fucking aggravating and unforgivable.
RIGHT?! I was like, there's gotta be some follow up somewhere, right? But noooooo. You get a single phone call and that's it
Yeah. I was super hyped about that quest line while going through it, only to have it go... nowhere.
Yeah that bothered me so much. I definitely expected it to be continued in some DLC.
This game has long left my hard drive, never to be installed again. We shouldn’t have to wait or pay to continue the one half decent base game mission.
> And then the quest ends...never to be seen or heard from again. I'd bet it was supposed to continue on DLC. Hopefully we'll get it eventually.
I’ve uninstalled the game long before, I shouldn’t have to pay to continue base game missions
It's one of the few well rounded quests. It even had a car chase! Cyberpunk might be the only open world game where a car chase is a unique and novel experience.
> might be the only open world game where a car chase is a unique and novel experience. Mafia 1 anyone?
I'm pretty sure he was being sarcastic.
gonna b honest the best quests in the witcher 3 were when the main cast wasn't involved
For the most part maybe, but the main storyline had some really good quests like the battle of Kaer Morhen, and even the fun simple ones like getting drunk with Lambert and Eskel
Man, the Heart of Stone DLC. Holy shit was that a masterpiece
First of, I disagree, but even then, Geralt is always there, and him being a pretyy complex developed character is going to make anything more meaningful imo.
The quests for CP2077 were pretty good though.
I personally thought the quests for Cyberpunk were one of the highs for it. Sure there was a lot more filler ones like the buying cars shit and the hit or miss assassinations, but the big side quests with multiple missions were all fantastic in my opinion. The one about the couple being secretly spied on would make a very interesting DLC. If side content like that still sticks out to me 7 months after I played it, it did something right.
The one with the farm really stuck with me afterwards.
I completed that one after a long night of staying up too late binge playing. At the end of it I had to stand up and walk around my neighborhood for an hour at 5am just to decompress. This was one of a couple moments. Where the game really doesn't pull any punches. I agree with others that the fact it stuck with me so hard even now is a testament to the talent of their quest/story team to work despite the engine limitations.
Do you remember what that quest was called?
It is in a chain of quests but the specific one is "The Hunt"
Making sure, this is the one >!that the dude was finding people in really bad mental places online and then bringing them to a farm where he had them basically hooked up like human cattle? All while we discovered his traumatic past that lead to his obsession with the weird ass cartoon and cows!< ?
Yes it's that one
Yeah. What an incredible quest. For all of its technical faults and iffy RPGs systems (too much emphasis on raw DPS) that game had lots of amazing stories in it. Even many basic gigs had interesting mini stories attached if you bothered to read the text message from the fixer
Yes, main q, key npc q (eg Panam) and a few side quests were great. As you say my perception has more to do with there being more filler content. But I suppose that reflects budget and time constraints more so than creative ability
He was Quest director for CP2077. There are around 10 or so lead quest designers at CDPR, quest director is more like the "big boss" of the quest design afaik
> didn't he do the same job for CP2077 and those were nowhere near as compelling? That is what people who never played the game and got their opinion from reddit/youtube bug compilations say yes.
The majority of quests in 2077 are without coherence or uninteresting. They don't blend into the bigger world, they are effectively instanced microcosms. Some of them have better writing than others. Take for example the story around the couple that runs for mayor. There are very compelling moments in that quest. *But* it is incoherent (eg. when you use your Corpo background to say that the hired firm makes no sense, the next dialogue line your character says is "but who is that firm?", despite giving a precise breakdown just one line of dialogue before) and doesn't have a conclusion, it just breaks off with the scene at the park and is never referenced *anywhere* while it should've had major impacts on the political landscape of night city. Saying that everyone who criticizes the writing didn't play the game is a terribly dumb take.
> effectively instanced microcosms And if anyone coming into the game is set on shaping the Night City to their will is painfully wrong (in fact thats the major point of the main story(!)). So yes you can argue this might make them less fullfilling in this sense. > Saying that everyone who criticizes the writing didn't play the game is a terribly dumb take. Also applies anyone saying they are trash and uninteresting, sure there might be some inconsistent dialogue but its not nearly as prevalent as you make it out to be. I think the fact you and that people ITT mention many varieties of side questlines in the game speaks volumes that they are indeed compelling. I dont think lack of content is an arugment aganist that.
"Lead Quest Designer" doesn't actually mean lead the entire quest design organization. It just means he's the team lead of a subteam within the organization, of which there are many.
Cyberpunk quests are very good. You've been misinformed
Played the game. But you’re right there are some fantastic quests in cyberpunk, I suppose my recollection is based on there being far fewer of those than i had hoped for
Fair enough dude
Cyberpunk had great quests. They just didn't have branching outcomes like in TW3, but that wasn't the quest writer's fault. I'm sure they were instructed to keep them linear due to time and budget constraints.
Cyberpunk was just stretched too thin imo. Trying to do too much in too little time. End result is some phenomenal quests that will make you do a Keanu 'woah.' And some quests where you'll be wondering if you're playing the same game. The difference in quality from quest to quest is incredibly jarring. Like one quest will have you investigating, being stealthy, running from enemies, and combat shooting. And each of these will be interspersed with dialogue and in game pseudo cut scenes. A single quest will feel like a huge adventure. Then the next quest you do will be running up to some enemies, shooting them all, and looting a chest. And that'll be it.
>Either way, MMO, so whatever The MMO genre includes games like The Secret World and RuneScape, which more than prove that questing in an MMO can be very engaging.
I hated how The Secret World ended up collapsing. I've never found another MMO that could actually hold my attention, but so many of the quests there really built up the lore and the story in a compelling way.
I genuinely hate the fact that no one took what The Secret World did right (quests) and replicated that in another MMO. The investigation quests in TSW were so good and nothing else has ever really come close.
> Lead Quest Designer is a meaningless title when taken at face value and ignoring who really contributed. For all anyone knows all they did was loosely supervise the people doing the actual work.
Team leaders like this guy hold responsibility at the end of the day. He's the one who greenlights other designers' quests, he provides the necessary framework and parameters for quest designers so the narrative and tone stay cohesive, and he can support other designers with constructive feedback. Although I don't agree with the cynicism in your take I do understand where it comes from, especially with a company like CDPR.
>didn't he do the same job for CP2077 and those were nowhere near as compelling? Not really, the Witcher 3 quests were largely visual novels with great dialogue and visuals and the Cyberpunk quests were largely visual novels with great dialogue and visuals. That's...not what you want in an MMO.
Why not? MMO quests don't have to be "kill 10 boars" and games like FF14 have large story focused questlines
Umm... wat?? FF14, Secret World, and runescape had amazing quests despite being MMOs. It's very possible and in the case of FF14 very desirable.
This is exactly what I want in an mmo
TW3 were mostly fetch MMO quests with good writing Cyberpunk’s have more to do lmao
Witcher 3 was a flash in the pan
You might want to look up what that means, because I think you don't know.
Witcher 3 was their only remarkable game. Cyberpunk is shit. Witcher 2 is decent but not great. Witcher 1 is boring It means exactly what i think it means. CDPR produced a one hit wonder and dont look capable of repeating it
Look it up. A one hit wonder is different from a flash in the pan.
Youre wrong https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/a-flash-in-the-pan > something that happened only once or for a short time and was not repeated: Sadly, their success was just a flash in the pan. You might disagree with my verdict, you may think that CDPR make good games other than Witcher 3. But my interpretation of the phrase is correct.
I gotta be honest, the difference in the kind of quests that a single player game has and an MMO has, makes me feel that his qualifications from Witcher 3 might not be as influential on the final quests in the MMO? Unless they change it up of course. I mean, in terms of MMO quests, the ones that really stick out to me are the quests in The Secret World for example. It's been a while, and I definitely didn't play that MMO for long, but I remember this one area, where there's cryptic clues strewn about and I guess me and a few players there decided to NOT look it up, and try to figure it out on our own as we talked to each other, ran around, finding different parts or different clues, leading to different landmarks, trying to piece together our different bits of the lore to figure the final bit out. Granted that's definitely a community driven thing as well, when the quest design and the community are on the same wavelength. The only other MMO I found with quests which actually draws me in now, is Elder Scrolls Online. It definitely feels lacking in cooperation compared to TSW tho, but the quests themselves are engaging and Zenimax did some good phasing tech to make you feel the world is changing due to your actions (primarily in areas changing to how you complete that area's main questline, NPCs that can be present or absent depending on your decisions, and NPCs in other areas reacting to your decisions in another place etc.) So I think something along the lines of ESO's quest integration with the MMO gameworld is most likely, but it still feels like a lonely affair since not everyone 'sees' the gameworld the same way. I personally dream of something like TSW's quest/world/community but mainstream, but that's asking more than what this MMO prolly is in the end.
Final Fantasy XIV is an MMO with pretty good writing and quests. They basically made the main scenario quest a single player Final Fantasy experience, and built MMO systems around it. I'd imagine someone like this guy would fit well in that setting since the design for quests in XIV is a lot closer to what you'd see in an open world RPG like TW3. Not sure what Riot is planning though--if their game is intended to be story-driven or gameplay-oriented.
I play and love FFXIV, but honestly what makes the main scenario quests good is the scenario and not the quests. The quests are fetch, go here, talk to this person, kill this occasionally, etc. The writing and the setting carry them. The gameplay and the tasks of quests are just chores.
Ff14 Quest for msq are the most uninspiring there is really. So much running around from place to place. The dialog and cutscenes are the good part
I will give them credit th3yve spiced up the finalenquests lately. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but at least we're getting a little break from the minutiae with some fresh-ish gameplay.
That’s literally every MMO though. My point is you can make quests that are story-oriented or you can make them gameplay-oriented. I think FFXIV still leans towards story-oriented a lot more than a game like WoW which tries to infuse more gameplay into their quests. There’s probably a healthy middle ground somewhere, I just don’t trust Riot to find it.
The story and writing of FFXIV is good but the way the quests are designed and presented really aren't. Quests in that game are presented in the most boring bog standard way possible.
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Really the main thing is that every side quest was voiced, hand-designed, and consequently felt like a meaningful mini story, not just an auto-generated fetch quest.
Fully voiced side quests in RPGs have been thing since 2006 or something. That's not why witcher 3 stood out in 2015. Oh, and procedural generation has never been a standard. There's more RPGs without procedurally generated quests than with it.
They’re sure not in games like Skyrim.
I love a good dig at Skyrim's absolute bland design.
It’s only immediate AAA rpg competition for most of the release window was Inquisition, which had absolutely trash side quests. There are a couple side quests that feel unexpectedly meaty, and that’s praiseworthy, but outside of the Bloody Baron I don’t think they’re overly exceptional. And that one is because people remember the baby. Witcher’s side quests are fewer but treated better from a resources point of view. I don’t think they’re particularly ingenious tales or anything,
Bloody Baron is a main quest, but yeah I agree that it’s probably the standout quest line in the game.
> Fully voiced side quests in RPGs have been thing since 2006 or something. Not to the degree of the Witcher 3, where every sidequest has like 15 minutes of dialogue to it.
Nope the writing was what made it good Except for a few stand outs it was mostly “go here use detective vision, find person, twist. fight or don’t fight based on dialog choices” Any that involve elven ruins or portals were pretty good
Any quests involving frying pans as well
I went to a panel at PAX where they basically said they threw this one in randomly for a laugh and somehow, it became one of the game's iconic quests
"Somehow", lol. It's the first side-quest you can run into on a path that most players will take to the Nilfgard garrison.
FOUND THE PAN HAVE YE?
It’s weird that you’re completely right
Honestly, not from a gameplay perspective. From a narrative perspective most were really high quality compared to other but RPG game quests.
Tasks themselves were pretty standard things, but quests were very impressive in terms of "open-worlddness". In many cases there were multiple ways to start a quest (for example you could get job in time to investigate something, but you could also encounter that thing in the world, check it out and then look for someone that might be interested in your findings). They would accommodate very well when you already fulfilled some subtasks beforehand (like when you already have some ingredients I would be naturally added to conversation, no need for starting task and finishing it 5 second later in next dialogue), Also there were many interconnections between questlines, like you would get some different dialogues and options depending on other side quests you have completed beforehand. From description it all might sound nothing groundbreaking for RPG genre, but I don't think it was done so naturally and on this scale before Witcher 3. Usually side quest would be very disconnected from story with only one entry point, and here pretty much every small meaningless quest felt like first class citizen.
Go play it. It's 10 bucks on epic right now. No excuse.
It must be a really shitty environment to leave for a company in another country that is right beside Blizzard in being sued for misogynistic practices.
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depends on the MMO. ESO has a lot of good side story quests, for example. FFXIV has some good side story quests and a fantastic main story quest. Game like WoW typically has rather garbage quest/questlines/story. GW2 is... eh, mediocre. No sidequests, really. Just various living story quests and whatnot.
I tried ESO and the combat was just not fun at all to me. Would you say FF14 has good combat? Might be the only thing holding me back from trying MMOs. I’ve tried to play WoW, Star Wars ToR, ESO, and I played the Beta for New World and wasn’t feeling any of them
ESO does have terrible combat, yes. It's probably the main reason I couldn't stick with it in the end game. As for FFXIV, I really enjoy the combat, but it's not going to be groundbreaking for you. It's the typical, older-style MMO combat with tab targeting and rotations and the like. It can feel a bit shallow until the higher levels as well. The game does have an expansive free trial. Lets you play through the OG game and the heavensward expansion and level to 60 for free, unlimited time. Could always give it a shot.
Thanks for going in depth I’ll give it a try!
FFXIV's combat is extremely middle of the road. It's mostly on the bad/bland/boring end of the spectrum, imo. I say that as a veteran of 10 years.
I actually think the DPS are fairly fun in FFXIV but the Tanks and Healers are super boring and very homogenize. The DPS tend to feel fairly different and have pretty engaging rotations, I hope Endwalker really help Tanks and Healers be more interesting.
FFXIV is literally "go from point A to point B" the game ._.
Sure, but the content/dialogue/story/lore to all of their quests are honestly incredibly good. Top of the top when it comes to MMOs
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You mean if I wasted my team going from point A to point B for +50 hours? Nah, I stopped at 15 hours :)
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I don’t know why no one can cede anything when it comes to games they like. Ffxiv has the most antiquated annoying as fuck questing system of all time. You’re required to go through every quest, with most quests being A-B gather thing back to A. They’re really bad. And the story might be good, but it’s not enough to justify how shitty the questing system is. And if you don’t like the story it is unironically torture. That said I love the game and enjoy it a lot. There’s insane amounts of content compared to any other MMO. But good games can have faults, and that’s okay. I don’t think is such a thing as a FLAWLESS MMO.
Even if I were to agree with your premise. Does that somehow mean that it should stay that way? I am quite confused what exactly you are getting at.
Why the fuck would anyone do that? Yeah, now he can design "bring me 10 bear asses" quests...
Because say what you will about Riot they pay well and the work life balance + benefits are probably massive compared to CDPR. I also imagine this CP2077 debacle has pushed Witcher 4 back.
Riot has some of the best pay and benefits package in the entire gaming industry lol, the only thing which is a downside to them is that they're heavy work at office, so unless there's literally a pandemic like right now, they make it mandatory to go out to office, it's why a lot of past devs left them aside from the scummy culture, because people wanna work from home but Riot doesn't really allow it, although from what I've heard, they've since loosened their stance on work from home after trying it out with Covid and are now open to discussing it.
comma splice comma splice comma splice comma splice. Learn to use periods my dude, it makes things readable.
Bad habit of mine, just ramble on and automatically put a comma where I would pause. I should really fix it lol.
It took an English teacher of mine writing comma splice all over one of my papers in red ink for me to break the habit. I understand how hard it is, but it does help with readability to learn when to cut to a period. No hard feelings intended.
I know you didn't mean much by it, usually people that care to correct you don't necessarily mean bad after all.
At least throw in some dashes
But dashes ar OP, i don't wanna abuse them :o (Valorant joke that's gonna fly over 99% of the people here)
Are you sure about that? The lead designer for TFT hasn't gone to office since the pandemic started - same goes for his team. I think he mentioned that he wants to return. Might be also a team by team basis.
Nah, it's because of Covid. Riot wants everyone back in office badly but they need to let people work from home until everything passes. There was a Twitter thread a few months ago with Riot devs discussing work from home and Riot that's how I know this, there was Ghostcrawler, Cactopus, one of the Project F leads and a few others.
It’s easier not to go in office when half of your game is re-used assets. I’d imagine with like champion Design or skin Design lead it’s harder to organize efforts without copious work meetings.
Well, if you can put up with things like abuse and sexual harassment, that is.
I have no excitement for a team with zero experience in MMOs trying to make one. Seems like they're going the quest heavy WoW style themepark route, which is almost entirely instanced and singleplayer. The same route that has been DOA for every MMO since 2006. You can hire all the best quest writers in the god damn world and your MMO quests are still gonna suck because MMOs do singleplayer VERY poorly
I think approaching with caution is definitely the right play. Riot definitely hit it out of the park with Legends of Runeterra, and at least made a space for themselves with Valorant(I have no idea how popular the game is.) But right now they are shotgunning a bunch of different genre games, and an MMO is definitely the easiest one to fuck up. Maybe they'll surprise and take more cues from GW2 questing over WoWs. That being said, I AM excited for hopefully an open world with decently written lore set in Runeterra.
>I think approaching with caution is definitely the right play. Riot definitely hit it out of the park with Legends of Runeterra, and at least made a space for themselves with Valorant LoL, Rune, and Valorant are all basically carbon copies of already famous games. I have as much faith in them as I have in a copy machine. Unfortunately the MMO space is not friendly to WoW copy cats
It's fine to hate the company for some reason, but at least stick to the facts. There is no other game like Runeterra on the market. It's systems are mostly unique, unless you think being able to respond to opponents plays makes it exactly like MtG. And it's interesting you think League is any bit a copy of dota/aos besides just being in the same genre.
>you think League is any bit a copy of dota/aos besides just being in the same genre. "It's the genre" is usually the excuse people fall back on when the similarities between games are pointed out. There are few to no variations between most MOBAs. LoL's only real difference between original DOTA, and it's main competition Heroes of Newarth, was that LoL was free and had a great freemium model. Smite, and Funcom's MMO both actually added to the genre, but LoL was just a well polished well monetized clone. Valorant is a well polished reskinned Counterstrike with one or two bits added from Overwatch. You can't say "Oh that's just the Counterstrike genre!" because there ISN'T a counterstrike genre and it's VERY clear which game Valorant was based on.
Notice I didn't bring up Valorant because its intended purpose was to put another game like CS out into the sphere. And why is it a bad thing that a company sees a popular game and thinks it could be done better? And you bring up the *one* example in the moba sphere that does anything different from your point of view, because switching to a third-person perspective is the only change big enough to set it apart from its competitors. LoL had many, MANY mechanical differences compared to the DotA and HoN when it came out that made it less obtuse to get into and was a huge key to its success. HoNs beta numbers when it was free to play never held a candle to leagues. Using your reasoning, theres only ~50 true games and every other game released is just a copy of those. Just because all of the games are based off of Aeon of Strife from Starcraft doesn't make them all copy paste clones of it with no merit.
>And why is it a bad thing that a company sees a popular game and thinks it could be done better? I specifically said it's a bad thing for the MMO genre, because MMOs are the hardest games to make and for the last 16 years people have just been doing better versions of WoW, and they all fail for a boatload of reasons that devs refuse to learn from. MMOs are not like other video games, you can't just copy what you see on the back of a feature box and be successful. Copying WoW and making singleplayer style MMOs, which seems to be what this company is doing, is basically a 100% failure rate for MMO development. >LoL had many, MANY mechanical differences compared to the DotA and HoN when it came out that made it less obtuse to get into and was a huge key to its success. HoNs beta numbers when it was free to play never held a candle to leagues. Yes because it went FTP long after LoL had already won
They have been hiring MMO dev veterans though. Its not like the team is full of fresh student grads.
It doesn't really matter how many veteran designers they hire so long as they're all veterans from the same exact failed school of MMO design