The game looks stunning, the quest system legacy destroys it all

[Kourvith]

I was completely astounded by the visual quality of BFA. While watching the panel, I had to pause the vid and imagine how I could move inside every bush, behind every house, climbing every hills, to tell myself I was not in a beautifully handcrafted Disney movie, but in a living handcrafted Disney/Pixar movie. These environments are by far in my top3 digital wonders ever.











And then I watched gameplay streams.



Queue a 20 lines long excuse as an objective, search the thing to click, reach the monsters to farm, click on corpse, fedex to question mark. Rinse and repeat. I even switched to several other streamers to have a bigger picture on different personalities and potential enthusiasm : not a single one looked excited to do the above.

Think about it, we've been doing this precise routine for 13 years. At the time it was good, the concept of progressing through objective choice was kinda new. But now it all feels so linear, so passive, so rigid ... we're in 2018 ffs.

We gamers have now experienced so many richer systems, multipath dialogs, full voiceovers, secondary quests expanding into whole stories, conversations, in games that we remember as witcher 3, AC:Origins, Deus Ex, Divinity 1/2, and more ... Even shooters are putting some efforts in how interactive the storytelling should be.



Blizzard voiced a high priority on storytelling during the what's next panel, only to discover what ? That we're still bound to a point and click adventure like we were in 1980, while genociding monsters like a pest patrol. I really feel the whole potential prowesses are chained to a rusty 15 years old core engine, completely disregarding the evolution from artists and designers.

On a more positive note, it seems like AIs are a new gamedesign axis (warfronts, island expeditions), but it's stuck to what the engine can do : fighting and validation boxes. I really hope Blizzard is aware of it, and even if a richer npc experience means less quests, then be it. Because right now most players are not doing objectives out of excitement, they're mechanically executing a todolist because they have to.

What's you opinion on the current state of NPC social/storytelling aspect ? on dialogs ? etc ? Don't these 13 years long of incredible lore deserve better ?

[Deleted]

As someone who also plays GW2, the WoW system is outright boring. I don't know how they managed to not copy dynamic events in 5 years.

[ro9ue]

I agree with your overall sentiment, but WoW IS still build on a 13 year old foundation. And while that doesn't make your point any less valid, I think it's important to point out they are still doing a great job keeping it fresh.

Legion had by far the most voice acted dialogue by a long shot. And while we haven't had a ton of choice like your example, they did at least seem to test it.

There was a Halloween quest this year (maybe we had it longer but I just noticed it this time) where you had 2 options on which NPC u wanted to turn an item into based on the story, and each option gave different results.

[Fayenoor]

It depends on time investment and reward for it. A WoW expac lasts like 2 years on an average. Out of that, you spend hardly 50-100 hour questing (max across all toons). Rest is spent on other repeatable contents (raids, dungeons, arenas, WQs, battlefronts, scenarios, battle grounds etc). So it makes sense to allocate more resources to develop those repeatable content than on your 20 hr of questing experience.

Single player RPGs focus on the leveling experience since that's most of the game for them. A $60 AAA RPG will have around 50-100 hours of gameplay.

This is absolutely nothing in terms of days played compared to what a MMO like WoW delivers in terms of sustainability.

TLDR -- dont fall into the SWTOR trap: Excellent and mindbogglingly good leveling experience followed up with nothing to do at max level.

[haxartus]

Queue a 20 lines long excuse as an objective, search the thing to click, reach the monsters to farm, click on corpse, fedex to question mark. Rinse and repeat. I even switched to several other streamers to have a bigger picture on different personalities and potential enthusiasm : not a single one looked excited to do the above.

Blizzard is making billions of dollars form this game each expansion, and we don't even have things like full voice acting on quests. And WoW doesn't have 10 000 quests, it has more like 10 unique quests.

It's not Blizzard's fault that they are greedy though. Their fan base has turned them into some kind of a religion, even paying thousands of dollars each year to attend what is basically an advertising session, so they know on what to spend even more dollars during the year.

Stop creating cult like followings for gaming (and technology) companies, it doesn't help anybody and it makes them lose focus on what made them an industry leader.

[zlygork]

There was a Halloween quest this year (maybe we had it longer but I just noticed it this time) where you had 2 options on which NPC u wanted to turn an item into based on the story, and each option gave different results.

Yeh, I also noticed that quest this year and was utterly surprised. Hopefully we will see more of that in BfA

[Icechaosss]

Blizzard is making billions of dollars form this game each expansion, and we don't even have things like full voice acting on quests. And WoW doesn't have 10 000 quests, it has more like 10 unique quests.

It's not Blizzard's fault that they are greedy though. Their fan base has turned them into some kind of a religion, even paying thousands of dollars each year to attend what is basically an advertising session, so they know on what to spend even more dollars during the year.

Stop creating cult like followings for gaming (and technology) companies, it doesn't help anybody and it makes them lose focus on what made them an industry leader.

What? With how rabid this playerbase is, if this was something they really wanted, we'd have 50 threads with 1000 pages each on them (See Flying).

Literally nothing to do with "greed" here. The playerbase wants what they want. Blizzard is company and they'll give them (though often times, begrudgingly) what they want... sometimes.

[Evaddon]

As someone who also plays GW2, the WoW system is outright boring. I don't know how they managed to not copy dynamic events in 5 years.

GW2 is boring and its "quest" system isn't better at all

[ro9ue]

As someone who also plays GW2, the WoW system is outright boring. I don't know how they managed to not copy dynamic events in 5 years.

I've also played GW2 and I don't see any major differences between each games questing. I haven't played GW2 in a while, has something changed?

[ReVnX]

Did you actualy expect this to change?

If that's the case you are simply delusional

[Super Kami Dende]

If you like all those things in other games. Go play those other games. People that start playing a game that has a very set system and has done for years and then ask to change that system to another games are one of the worst types of gamers.

- - - Updated - - -

I've also played GW2 and I don't see any major differences between each games questing. I haven't played GW2 in a while, has something changed?

It's because it isn't a major difference. The quests in GW2 are all click or kill quests as well. The Story is actually quite horrible. The "dynamic" events aren't dynamic since they are just a repeating circle of events. SO is WoW's but they don't try to mask it as something it isn't

[Swalload]

I agree with your overall sentiment, but WoW IS still build on a 13 year old foundation. And while that doesn't make your point any less valid, I think it's important to point out they are still doing a great job keeping it fresh.

Legion had by far the most voice acted dialogue by a long shot. And while we haven't had a ton of choice like your example, they did at least seem to test it.

There was a Halloween quest this year (maybe we had it longer but I just noticed it this time) where you had 2 options on which NPC u wanted to turn an item into based on the story, and each option gave different results.

If by 13 you mean 18. Maybe less, let's say 17 or 16, the prototypes for WoW were made with the WC editor, yes, the map editor.

[Arewn]

Welcome to 2012 graphics?

I mean, I don't want to shit on your fun, and it's great that WoW's graphics are steadily improving with each xpac, but top 3 digital wonders is quiet the exaggeration. Try some new releases.

[madokbro]

Is quest design anywhere related to how old the game is? Are we positive that, if they wanted to implement real time narrative events, or simply something out of a contemporary rpg, they could plausibly do it without wasting way too much development time?

[Cryptoriana]

Lappy is this you?

[Sethrak]

A lot of people only had a limited time to play this (I heard 20 minutes) so you'll have to forgive them for not spending half of it just standing around looking at the scenery. You mention that the streamers didn't care about the environment but of the 3 videos I've watched of the quest experience every single one of them looked up at the giant blood moon with souls pouring into Bwonsamdi's liar.

Have fun trying to reinvent the wheel because the current quest system is so much better than Vanilla, in my opinion.

[Eurhetemec]

As someone who also plays GW2, the WoW system is outright boring. I don't know how they managed to not copy dynamic events in 5 years.

Extreme determination? It is pretty surprising.

Hell, GW2 didn't even come up with that system - WAR did (though GW2 improved on for sure!) - and when WAR came out, I remember they had Kaplan or Chilton or one of those guys commenting that they were really impressed with WAR's "public quests" (think an earlier version of GW2's dynamic events) and people were pretty sure they'd add them to WoW. This was in 2008...

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Don't see what the visuals have to do with questing.

But yes, what you are seeing is a resistance towards removing leveling and questing outright.
I expected it to come with Legion or some major change to how we level in general but it didn't.

Luckily its nothing anyone who plays the game for more than a day needs to worry about. You do the quests only once but the visual splendors can be looked at and explored all day if you'd like.

[Gallahadd]

Lappy is this you?

Did you really just quote a huge post, complete with SEVEN large images, only to post 4 words at the end? Words which didn't even further the conversation at all?

If I was a mod, that would be a bannable offense.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I've also played GW2 and I don't see any major differences between each games questing. I haven't played GW2 in a while, has something changed?

Isn't GW2 questing essentially WoD Apexis questing, you go to a zone, randomly contribute towards a progress bar and go home afterwards? If that is still the case then I'd rather stick with WoW's quests.