Question about mmo vs singleplayer rpg questing

We have not received permission from VekoKrava to share the quoted post.

There are many MMOs with quests on the level of Skyrim.

You probably don't hear as much about them because they are old, or other strangeness.

I'll give you an example from a game that is otherwise generally 'quite bad' and doesn't even HAVE a lot of decent quests.

Black Desert Online, for whatever reason, concluded that players care about sidequests SO LITTLE, that they have an option to turn off EVERY quest but the mainline story quests.

Not turn off the MARKERS... Turn off the QUESTS. If you talk to the NPC for the quest the Quest will not be available.

And for reasons that are probably related to the metrics of player styles... this option is ON BY DEFAULT .

Someone out there has concluded 'MMO players just don't care, so don't bother unless you have to'.

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While I do like lone wolfing the hell out of multiplayer games, I want the game to push me towards grouping up. This is exactly why I loved L2, because it was exactly the same way you described, it made its players group up and become a community.

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I don't know why you think that AoC won't be like that?

Do you mean that it won't be 'efficient enough' so you won't be able to find other people who also want to play that way?

It's true that most games will not FORCE people to slow down or pay attention to complex quests, but AoC has a lot of the required bases.

MMOs are also trying to capture more of the market of players who play Single Player games. They're not GOOD at it yet, but they are learning, so maybe in a few years you will see something from one of the upcoming MMOs?

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Oh. No, it has those.

As of Alpha-1, it has those.

It also uses the system where you get additional exp rewards for the gap between your level and the enemy, rather than getting some base exp value.

So in Alpha-1 I would kill Crabs 6-7 levels above me so that I could get 500 xp per kill instead of 100.

They also don't spawn in 'packs' as often, and they use decent abilities. The PvE design is not the part of Ashes I would be concerned about, if I were in your position.

EDIT: You probably just saw a lot of players who are more used to fighting weaker enemies. Perhaps we should have made Alpha-1 content after all...

I suppose I should similarly give the FFXI/previous Ashes data but it's simpler to just explain that than link it.

This is also how it worked in Ashes Alpha-1:

The Baseline exp for defeating an enemy of equal level to yourself and 'normal' was 100.

For every level the enemy was above you, there was a multiplier, which scaled slightly differently than just '1x, 2x, etc'. Same for enemies below you.

So if you are level 10 and you defeat a level 6 enemy, you still get something (either 23 or 33 exp as I remember it).

If you are level 10 and defeat a level 14 enemy, you get either 300 or 325 (I'd have to dig up video to check).

I think the cap was something like 550, which I got from defeating level 15 enemies at level 8, I think. I distinctly remember going 'oh, there's a cap? sad', because I accidentally pulled something stronger than that and barely managed to beat it but still got the same exp, but I don't remember which test that was on.

So the system is 'defeat enemies that are stronger relative to yourself, to get more exp'. It also has the 'standard' multipliers for group that the Lineage II people know.

Best of both worlds if you ask me, but my bias is obvious.

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No matter what you do, short of 'basically making them instantly kill you for no reason' there will always be players who do this.

You're not SUPPOSED to be able to fight them efficiently, you should always group.

But some people set out to challenge themselves to do things alone or in smaller groups, that are supposed to take large groups. They might just take very long to do so, and that's the balance for it.

Just don't give them any additional rewards other than personal satisfaction, and it's fine.

You can't make mobs that the average group can fight, but the highest grade of player can't solo, without basically giving them a 'delete this person because they are not in a group' button.

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Calling this presumptuous would be an understatement

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from VekoKrava to share the quoted post.

Calling this presumptuous would be an understatement

Not necessarily, they gave an example, I probably just haven't seen the video they are referring to for Ashes.

@VekoCrnogorac I would appreciate a link to that video when you have time. If you don't want to go looking for it, maybe you can just tell me which content creator made it, and I'll probably find it myself.

If you're referring to recent videos from Intrepid themselves, I agree with you, I've seen multiple movements toward the other style since I played in Alpha-1. This is why I believe that Ashes may be losing its FFXI/EQ influence and moving more toward Lineage/BDO in terms of how it handles mobs.

I'm saying that in Alpha-1, it worked like that. If I was confusing in my example, that's a slight difference between EQ and FFXI/Ashes difficulty.

In EQ I guess you can't go even 4 levels over. In FFXI you can probably figure out how to go up to 6 levels over on a 'favored enemy' after practicing a lot and getting good gear, because mobs are not usually split by 'solo/raid' or anything like that.

But this applies to all games, I think, if you understand your build well enough. So I just offer this to consider, only in the example I gave. If average players in average gear can take on Blue enemies in EQ, then I would expect that average players in good gear can take on Dark Blue enemies, and very skilled players can take on White and maybe Yellow enemies.

Is that not how it works? I'm glad to learn about the differences between the oldschool game that I DID play and the one that I didn't. I've never thought to ask the EQ players I know about stuff like this, it wouldn't have come up. So I'm taking that chance now.

I consider a mob 'hard' when 'it will kill you in 10-15 seconds or so if your keyboard/mouse/whatever stop working mid-fight. Is that a fair definition to use, when discussing this with you?

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Oh, one of the Wand User videos?

Well, unfortunately if you are willing to disregard what I say due to that (and I don't blame you, one is evidence, one is not), I can't really do much, I didn't personally record my Alpha-1 gameplay.

That's kind of sad, because you ARE talking about the same thing I am used to, and experience, but you got the 'mage spam' version, and it's true that mages have a particularly silly effectiveness in certain parts of Alpha-1.

There's also another reason, which honestly means I should agree with you more. Intrepid has said that they specifically intend to avoid 'your abilities being scaled based on level difference'. I don't know how they intend to make a game that doesn't get cheesed while still doing this, but it is another indicator that you are going to be right, in the long run.

Mobs need to have so much HP in that system, that I don't even want to think about the balance requirements.

But an at-level mob leaving you at 50% HP is still not very different from what I'm talking about. Ashes had this, the enemies just had to be 1-2 levels above you instead. I can see how this would have 'fallen apart' at higher levels, though, specifically BECAUSE of the lack of scaling and the gear-level jumps.

So, assume I am conceding the point. Ashes open world might, in fact, either be weak mobs or mobs that are easy to exploit even if they're not directly weak. We'll have to see which design model 'wins' in the end. Given everything else about the game, I think you have better odds of being right than me.

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My only point is that FFXI works almost exactly like this, so I wanted to have OP understand that, yes, I ALSO have this same game experience.

It is, again, close to what I experienced in Ashes Alpha-1 if you put the levels up by just one or two. The systems are the same and I've been playing FFXI since I was little, basically.

But it's also true that fully geared on a solo class meant I could fight a 45 at level 40. I'd nearly die sometimes, and I'd have to tweak the whole kit and gear and never get a link, but that was the fun part.

I was able to have this same fun in Ashes, but I accept that with the whole 'We're not scaling anything' and the way Wand worked in Alpha-1, it could easily have just NOT worked like that for a level 10 wand user vs higher level mobs.

There are also situations where raw player skill DOES cause this on solo classes. So, I'm familiar, I'm just ALSO aware of flexibility and skill levels high enough for it to matter. I don't know how to confirm that without 'bragging' or 'going to play EQ2' though, I would expect to get just the 'well FFXI must have been easier' response from OP at this point.