Re: Risk, Reward, Difficulty & FUN: What Intrepid is Missing

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

It depends on what those 6-8h are comprised of. If it's running, reading and pixel-searching - no, to me that's not the type of stuff that I'd personally consider "content". If it's puzzles, mobs/bosses and some form of world interaction (be that pvp or economic) - to me that'd be content. But at that point "quest" has barely anything to do with the content in question.

Quest is just a pointer to the mechanics themselves, and then those mechanics are what I consider content.

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

To me it adds nothing though. If that content simply existed in the world I woulda found it at some point and enjoyed it the same way I do if I find it through a quest. If anything, for me quests are a wall that stands between me and content, because I need to go through some text, or running between npcs or reading books, etc.

I'd rather just have the content itself.

Ludullu wrote: »

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

To me it adds nothing though. If that content simply existed in the world I woulda found it at some point and enjoyed it the same way I do if I find it through a quest. If anything, for me quests are a wall that stands between me and content, because I need to go through some text, or running between npcs or reading books, etc.

I'd rather just have the content itself.

I'm surprised for that, do you not 'care about' the context of things in Genshin, for example?

Even if Quests are not 'content' for some, good quality ones are at minimum, context. RP-ers benefit from these in Fantasy games, where the player is often insular and the world doesn't change as much. This might be your L2 bias again (I have a matching FF11 bias).

But the effort to 'give you a context' can transform a normal activity.

Azherae wrote: »

I'm surprised for that, do you not 'care about' the context of things in Genshin, for example?

It's a difference of approaches. I play solo games like the ones from Mihoyo for their worldbuilding, lore and story. I read all books, do all quests, go through item and character details, etc. In open world games like Elden Ring or GTA, I usually just explore and do literally everything EXCEPT for the main story. And only once I'm fully finished with everything else and literally HAVE to do the story - I'll get to it.

One of the bigger examples of this in somewhat recent history was in Metro Exodus. There's a location deeper into the game where you can follow the main quest or go a slightly different route. I obviously went to that other route and after several hours of exploration I came to a location that was supposed to be deeper in the storyline.

But devs accounted for my playertype and it the game just flown as if this was completely fine, even though I missed several fairly important character interactions and exploration points on the other route. I LOOOOOVE when games can do that, because it directly tells me that my playstyle is not just viable, but seen and is accounted for.

In more linear games, like AC6, I mostly enjoy the minute-to-minute gameplay. I'll still usually explore everything and go through text/audio logs and I will find them interested overall, but I mostly do that due to my completionist nature and steam achievement whoring.

But in pvp games (and I attribute mmos here, because those are the mmos I wanna play) - players are content. And in a PvX game like Ashes or L2 - players AND mobs are content. I added puzzles to that list, in my original response to Noaani, mostly cause Genshin created a certain love for them in me, so if there's some interesting puzzles in the world - I'll see that as content as well.

But as I said, if my preferred content is locked behind quests in an mmo - I'd rather if it wasn't. Though, on that note

Azherae wrote: »

Even if Quests are not 'content' for some, good quality ones are at minimum, context. RP-ers benefit from these in Fantasy games, where the player is often insular and the world doesn't change as much. This might be your L2 bias again (I have a matching FF11 bias).

But the effort to 'give you a context' can transform a normal activity.

I'm more than fine sitting through text or npc walking or whatever, because, as I'm sure both you and Noaani know, I'm all about middlegrounds. If all that additional stuff keeps more people in the game - better for me, because the world will feel more alive, and I play mmos for that kind of world.

I was planning on making a video (and still might, though who knows when) about early stage player markets in Ashes, in the context of L2's newest trendy server. Here's me running through the markets in a few starting towns. Server was 3 weeks old at this point and in terms of player progress, I'd say even the hardcorest dudes are somewhere around "lvl20" (in Ashes terms).

But markets are huge, ranging from starter gear all the way up to "lvl20" stuff. And a shiiiitton of materials trading, with ranging prices of "people buying for cheaper in starting towns, while buying for noticeably more in higher lvl ones".

I start showing stuff in the Elven starting village and go up to town where lvl10-20 people hang around. Didn't show lvl20+ town cause its market is way smaller, and also I kinda forgot about it in the moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcfVdMpaIIE

But to me THIS is also content. Playing the market, participating in it, simply benefiting from it - all of that is just "players are content", as, imo, it should be in a pvx game (Xness comes in from the fact that all of those items are from mobs that can be/have been contested).

I kinda treat PvX mmos like I did dota. There's mobs, there's players, there's secret/side shops - all of them are content and player-driven content happens around them.

All the non-PvX mmos I treat like story games. When I played a bit of WoW classic and FF14 - I read all the quests, interacted with pretty much every npc I saw, explored the world as much as I could and did every quest I could find.

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

And that's exactly why I said that not everyone views them as content. I didn't say that they weren't content.

If mobas suddenly started having quests during matches, I'd imagine that a lot of people would complain, cause they'd get in the way of the game's content.

If you're craving a burger, come to a burger joint and order a burger, the icream that the establishment sells won't be all that interesting to you. It'll factually be food, but you didn't come to that place to have an icecream. You can still go to an ice cream place, get an ice cream and enjoy it to the fullest there, but when you've come to a burger place cause you want a burger - having to eat an ice cream before that would not be pleasant.

And like I said, I'm fine with having both in one place, but my personal preference would be to just have the burger.

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

It's a philosophical question akin to "if a tree falls in the woods with no one around - did it make a sound?"

If a person doesn't touch a single quest in the game, would they consider quests content? Cause you can easily do that even in the current Alpha. It'll potentially be even easier on release.

So how would those people consider quests content if they've never cared/interacted/tried said content? The sound might be there, but there's no one to hear it.

We have not received permission from RonDog98 to share the quoted post.

Sure, but relative to the thread (and to the post that brought up Quests), it's still kinda valid.

That poster said most of Ashes' issues can be solved by adding content (in the form of quests).

We have not received permission from RonDog98 to share the quoted post.

Most people also like Toggled PvP flagging and instanced content. Every aspect of a game needs to fit with the rest of the game and to some extent with the intended audience of that game.

I'm not arguing against quests or anything, I think decent/great quests are a no-brainer if you have the manpower for them (which Intrepid afaik does). But this is a game where 'adding a lot of quests' isn't necessarily going to fix most of the problems in your original post, and the reason for that is 'the percentage of the audience that isn't interested in that content'.

EDIT: Technically I guess it's moreso them combined with the number of people who will use quests as a pointer towards other players to kill in order to stir up conflict, which to them is the content.

Alright, well, just in case I'm not around then for the discussion, I'll try to make my 'stance' as clear as possible.

I just mean that there are more people like this:

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

In the audience. (Also Arya and Ludullu already indicated two other potential 'demographics').

I believe that people like quests. I also believe that people who play 'hardcore' Always-on PvP MMORPGs with a heavy focus on larger groups have a lower percentage of people who like quests.

We have not received permission from RonDog98 to share the quoted post.

Nowhere did I say to not have quests. I simply responded to the statement that "most of the issues brought up can be solved by adding quests" (alongside content in general).

If Intrepid add some text and pointers to mobs/puzzles/bosses, none of that will make those mobs/puzzles/bosses better mechanically. Mob AI is still trash. Mob skillsets are still poor. Artisanry is still in its infancy, so economy can't really be as deeply intertwined with everything as it should be, and minute-to-minute artisanry is literally pressing a button>waiting>running to another place>repeat. Weapon skill trees are basic as fuck. Weapons themselves barely differ from each other. Node interactions don't exist. Node-based mob lvling doesn't exist. Node currency trading is useless outside of a single case, and even that is poorly designed. PvP events don't exist because they've been nerfed to the ground. PKing doesn't exist cause it's been nerfed to the ground. Mob training still exists (afaik) cause mob AI is still shit. And we've now come full circle w/o even mentioning, like, 60% of all the other mechanics that were promised for the game.

Quests would address none of that. They would just add a distraction from testing the systems that should be getting added into the game. Hell, we can't even properly test proper quest hooks or M O D U L E S - cause node-related systems are not in. How do npcs spawn when a node falls or lvls up? How do quest hooks respond to that, if at all? Do commissions respond correctly to those changes? What about M O D U L E related changes to the world? Monster attacks on nodes that might disable buildings or kill npcs? Boss awakening due to a node lvling up and npcs responding to that in a proper manner, and ideally giving us quests related to it?

What would quests solve here exactly? I simply do not believe we're in a stage where adding quests would do anything truly good to push the game's testing forward. Well, outside of proofreading the text, telling Intrepid that their font is still shit and should be customizable and that AI voice is trash. Though we did all of that back in P1 already.

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

Being resonable?


And also, my answers to all of those questions is yes When asked about what's content TO ME, I'm gonna answer that direct question. I still acknowledge that others might do it and I'm fine with that and with that stuff existing in the game for them, but TO ME it is not content.

And yes, I am that self-absorbed and have the inflatediest sense of self importance, because I do not speak for other people and only speak for myself. And to me that is not content

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

Except I can and I have. And I will