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Friday, November 16, 2007
Grinding something boring to reach the fun part
Damion of Zen of Design has an interesting article up on the economics of daily quests in WoW. The way he sees them, the quests aren't very good, and people grind through them to finance the "fun" activities like raiding. He has a very interesting point saying that the classes that are most needed for groups and raids, that is tanks and healers, have the most difficult and boring time grinding for money or doing daily quests. Quote: "So back to our tanks and healers - they desperately need cash to run raid content, but they aren’t built either to grind OR to do dailies. The end result being tanks and healers logging on, doing pointless and stupid daily quests made increasingly tedious by their gear and advancement choices. The result I’ve witnessed, perversely, is a lot fewer people running instances. Why? Because the tanks and healers try to do their dailies, end up hating the experience of feeling worthless and impotent (also, NOT FUN), and start levelling up warlock or mage alts that can act as their cash generators by doing dailies or grinding. Or they just burn out and quit. Which means that, if you’re trying to put together a pickup group, it’s becoming increasingly harder to pick up a tank or a healer. And it wasn’t that easy to start with. And you can’t run without ‘em."
I can't really confirm the opinion that the daily quests suck, I haven't done enough of them. Up to now I only did the Skettis egg bombing, which is very easy with my warrior who already has his epic flying mount, and still easy enough with my priest and his normal flying mount. I started to look into the Ogri'la daily quests, but didn't have the time to really start them. I only joined some guild mates in a repeatable Ogri'la event, where you kill four dragons, and combine their 4 scales into one random cloak. If you are lucky and get the random cloak which has the stats which are good for your class, then you get an item with quite decent stats. But obviously the chance for that to happen is low. I got a cloak I couldn't use on my priest, which I then could exchange for an Apexis Crystal at Sky Commander Keller. And I haven't got a clue yet for what I need the Apexis Crystal, the whole Ogri'la stuff appears to revolve around crystals and shards.
As I am currently not raiding (although I might have a look at Zul'Aman this weekend), getting 12 gold each from the Skettis egg daily quest for my two level 70s is more than enough gold to feed my level 21 mage. But I can see the basic truth in Damion's claim that grinding is less fun for the support classes you need for groups. Soloing my current mage is definitely more fun than soloing a holy priest or a protection warrior. And yes, I leveled them up as holy and protection, because I wanted to always be ready to join groups. But I always enjoyed playing my support characters in group. Damion's "feeling worthless and impotent" comment only applies to soloing, if like me you actually prefer groups a healer or tank is a good choice for being so needed. You don't feel worthless or impotent if nearly every LFG message you read tells you that you are needed so much in groups. The most unfun thing about my mage is the feeling that in my situation on an old, underpopulated server on the even more underpopulated Horde side where everybody is playing their level 70, I won't have the opportunity to group with players of my level for a dungeon run before I hit the Outlands. Nobody needs a level 21 mage, *that* is "feeling worthless and impotent".
But in the end the two situations of Damion and me are the same: Damion grinds boring daily quest to finance fun raids. I have to level up solo in spite of a preference for groups, to reach the level where groups exist. The common factor is needing to do something you don't enjoy that much to reach the part you actually want to play. And that seems to be a common malaise in all sorts of MMORPGs. Doing boring asteroid mining to be able to afford a good ship in EVE isn't any different. I'm not an expert of EVE Online, but I would assume that if you do a lot of PvP there you end up incurring lots of cost, which you would have to cover by doing mining or trading, which might not be your preferred forms of gameplay.
My personal solution to the problem is to not look at the final goals too hard, but to concentrate on finding the fun in whatever it is that I am doing. Okay, so my mage hasn't found a single good group yet in 21 levels. But doing the Ghostlands quests certainly was fun. And I can even imagine finding fun doing quests I already did with my previous characters, because approaching the same quest with a mage will be very different than doing them with a priest or warrior. And sometimes it is better to opt out of goals which require too much unfun prerequisites. If you find the preparation for raiding too time consuming, then why not do something else than raiding altogether? For example heroic instances offer challenging group play, not unlike raids, and are economically more balanced, especially with the new daily dungeon quests of patch 2.3. There is no way to actually "win" a MMORPG, no activity that you are really forced to do. So if you find yourself grinding something boring to reach the fun part, maybe you just need better goals. Do you really need a 5,000 gold epic flying mount to have fun in World of Warcraft? I don't think so.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:41 AM Permanent Link
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Ogri'la and the Skyguard in Blades Edge require a Questchain to be finished with 5 people.
After you finish those, 4 other daily quests are availlable to you:
Apexis emmanation - A 2Simon says" game, where you have to repeat a given combination of 1 - 8 "color/sounds"
and addon named Ogri'lazy helps here a lot to keep track of the played combination.
wrangle aether rays - fight 5 aether rays and when they hit 20% you can wrangle them and tie them up with a rope
Kill 15 Demons and banish thier essence.
You have to summon a portal in the Demon infested area of Blades edge and kill the demons near them.
Bombing run - This works a bit like the Egg destroing mission in Skettis, but you don't get attacked by flying Birds, but flak fire will try to shoot you out of the air.
I like those daily quests still a lot, as they are different to the normal gaming. 8and i am exalted with Ogri'la and the Skyguard)
After you finish those, 4 other daily quests are availlable to you:
Apexis emmanation - A 2Simon says" game, where you have to repeat a given combination of 1 - 8 "color/sounds"
and addon named Ogri'lazy helps here a lot to keep track of the played combination.
wrangle aether rays - fight 5 aether rays and when they hit 20% you can wrangle them and tie them up with a rope
Kill 15 Demons and banish thier essence.
You have to summon a portal in the Demon infested area of Blades edge and kill the demons near them.
Bombing run - This works a bit like the Egg destroing mission in Skettis, but you don't get attacked by flying Birds, but flak fire will try to shoot you out of the air.
I like those daily quests still a lot, as they are different to the normal gaming. 8and i am exalted with Ogri'la and the Skyguard)
"Do you really need a 5,000 gold epic flying mount to have fun in World of Warcraft?"
- Not really, but 380% versus 160% is VERY noticeable! I can see others fly by me as if I was standing still! :) And moving around faster means get quests done faster as well. Traveling in Azeroth has always been one of the things that annoyed me the most, and Outlands doesn't make it better: your reward at 70: 60% increase! WoW! (For me that was 68 with instant cast flight form!)
Sure. flying gets you to new places only accessible by mount, and also has the advantage that you don't get dismount dazed safe in very, very few places with flying and attacking mobs, but still, they could have done a slightly better job and made that at least 120/130%. In a way it's a step down from 100% mount!
As for the tank question, that's mostly for Warriors: bear tanks such as my main, only need two sets of gear as 95% of the feral talents for tanking are those for DPSing, e.g., grinding...
Healers on the other hand... When my feral druid was resto, it would be a HUGE pain leveling when not grouping! That was back before TBC, but I guess in TBC it probably hasn't changed much!
As for daily quests, I only have a 70 (my feral druid), and I've placed a few of those on hold as they have dumb group pre-quest requirements. Have to check that egg bombing one though: don't recall seeing that one!
Of course, I've never been a great fan of raiding, not that I don't enjoy downing new bosses when working with an equally skilled team of players, but because I hate that one has to do those things over and over and over to even have a short hope of a drop... Took me ages (and tons of gold back then!) back before TBC, to get even a few tier 0.5 items and what do I get on the VERY FIRST map in Outlands? Tons of green quest rewards that would beat the cr*p out of those hard earn blues! And I don't mean they would be greens "slightly" better: they were AWFULLY better! Sure, had I completed a later set instead of just tier 0.5, those would probably not be such huge improvements, but they would STILL be better in many aspects!
So, "grinding" instances (which requires a certain amount of commitment, both to your guild and in terms of time), is not fun for me. Playing alts, if I get bored I swap to another one doing different quests on a different place using different strategies; raiding, I'll be stuck there for a few hours doing basically the same thing done last time, in the same way...
So, ultimately, I'm an alt-aholic and that's my way of having fun! Doing new stuff in different ways! Now that I re-discovered macros, I'm having fun even with boring classes such as paladin! :)
- Not really, but 380% versus 160% is VERY noticeable! I can see others fly by me as if I was standing still! :) And moving around faster means get quests done faster as well. Traveling in Azeroth has always been one of the things that annoyed me the most, and Outlands doesn't make it better: your reward at 70: 60% increase! WoW! (For me that was 68 with instant cast flight form!)
Sure. flying gets you to new places only accessible by mount, and also has the advantage that you don't get dismount dazed safe in very, very few places with flying and attacking mobs, but still, they could have done a slightly better job and made that at least 120/130%. In a way it's a step down from 100% mount!
As for the tank question, that's mostly for Warriors: bear tanks such as my main, only need two sets of gear as 95% of the feral talents for tanking are those for DPSing, e.g., grinding...
Healers on the other hand... When my feral druid was resto, it would be a HUGE pain leveling when not grouping! That was back before TBC, but I guess in TBC it probably hasn't changed much!
As for daily quests, I only have a 70 (my feral druid), and I've placed a few of those on hold as they have dumb group pre-quest requirements. Have to check that egg bombing one though: don't recall seeing that one!
Of course, I've never been a great fan of raiding, not that I don't enjoy downing new bosses when working with an equally skilled team of players, but because I hate that one has to do those things over and over and over to even have a short hope of a drop... Took me ages (and tons of gold back then!) back before TBC, to get even a few tier 0.5 items and what do I get on the VERY FIRST map in Outlands? Tons of green quest rewards that would beat the cr*p out of those hard earn blues! And I don't mean they would be greens "slightly" better: they were AWFULLY better! Sure, had I completed a later set instead of just tier 0.5, those would probably not be such huge improvements, but they would STILL be better in many aspects!
So, "grinding" instances (which requires a certain amount of commitment, both to your guild and in terms of time), is not fun for me. Playing alts, if I get bored I swap to another one doing different quests on a different place using different strategies; raiding, I'll be stuck there for a few hours doing basically the same thing done last time, in the same way...
So, ultimately, I'm an alt-aholic and that's my way of having fun! Doing new stuff in different ways! Now that I re-discovered macros, I'm having fun even with boring classes such as paladin! :)
# posted by 
: 16/11/07 12:13
: 16/11/07 12:13
Oh, and the Apexis Crystal is currency for some nice stuff once you get the needed REP: Rewards from Apexis Crystals...
# posted by : 16/11/07 12:17
: 16/11/07 12:17
As the game matures - e.g. more and more talents come into the game - the baseline DPS for every player rises, with the gap between a full specced pure DPS class and a pure support class getting bigger and bigger. We already saw this with BC, where quest mob HPs take a huge jump up in Outland compared to the old 58-zones from the original release. When Wrath launches, expect this to go even further.
They have to design those HP numbers toward a basline DPS number. The further we go with expansions, the higher this number will be, only that pure support classes basicly do not gain DPS increases. I penalize myself for the leveling/grind game, if i spec for support. A more elegant solution would be to average the baseline DPS number for wich quests are designed to. Give pure DPS classes only an advantage if they group up with others, but keep the solo environment averaged, to not run into the situation we have now, were non-dps classes cripple themselves for huge parts of the content.
By now we should have learned that your classic holy-trinity-setup for multiplayer content and solo-content on its side, is a dead end. Speaking of tanks, expect this situation getting a nice little fix with Death Knight being introduced. You will see very viable tanks with above average DPS, to what paladins and warriors have now. This will be feral druid 2.0 mixing two roles into one tree, probably the most well designed class Blizzard has come up with yet.
So either average DPS requirements for solo content - penalize DPS classes or support non-DPS-classes - so both have to grind the same amount of time, or design all pure pve-core trees, the way feral for druids ended up.
They have to design those HP numbers toward a basline DPS number. The further we go with expansions, the higher this number will be, only that pure support classes basicly do not gain DPS increases. I penalize myself for the leveling/grind game, if i spec for support. A more elegant solution would be to average the baseline DPS number for wich quests are designed to. Give pure DPS classes only an advantage if they group up with others, but keep the solo environment averaged, to not run into the situation we have now, were non-dps classes cripple themselves for huge parts of the content.
By now we should have learned that your classic holy-trinity-setup for multiplayer content and solo-content on its side, is a dead end. Speaking of tanks, expect this situation getting a nice little fix with Death Knight being introduced. You will see very viable tanks with above average DPS, to what paladins and warriors have now. This will be feral druid 2.0 mixing two roles into one tree, probably the most well designed class Blizzard has come up with yet.
So either average DPS requirements for solo content - penalize DPS classes or support non-DPS-classes - so both have to grind the same amount of time, or design all pure pve-core trees, the way feral for druids ended up.
# posted by : 16/11/07 12:28
: 16/11/07 12:28
As far as there not being enough low-levellers around to group with, Douglas on Elitist Jerks had what I think was a very good solution: http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t17649-design_mentoring_system/
The upshot is to allow higher-level players to nerf themselves down to an appropriate level to do low level instances. The potential mechanics of this were discussed in great depth on the forum. Some posters had some very good ideas on how this could be done simply.
This is in the category of things-Blizz-will-never-do, of course ;-)
The upshot is to allow higher-level players to nerf themselves down to an appropriate level to do low level instances. The potential mechanics of this were discussed in great depth on the forum. Some posters had some very good ideas on how this could be done simply.
This is in the category of things-Blizz-will-never-do, of course ;-)
One of the fun things in WOW is that once the level cap has been reached, the non-DPS classes can - with good (Arena/Raid) gear- outperform DPS classes. My favorite is one of our druid guild players, he does not really need to roll an alt. He changes talent builds several times a week if need to be. His gear supports feral (tankbear/cat), boomkin and healer and he excels in all three roles. That gives me (hunter player) the creeps.
Re the daily quests:
Sometimes, these are the only things that actually keep me in the game. The Netherwing faction rewards you with a nice mount, the Skyguard has good exalted rewards too. There is a nice cooking quest that rewards you with new recipes. If you want to, you can easily fill 2-3 hours a day just with the daily quests and make more money than mindlessly grinding those horrible prime element reagents.
I think these daily quests are the future of an MMO, designed to last. It ist much easier to create this sort of "Everquest" design than always putting in more / new content, so expect to see some more of this in WOW.
Re the daily quests:
Sometimes, these are the only things that actually keep me in the game. The Netherwing faction rewards you with a nice mount, the Skyguard has good exalted rewards too. There is a nice cooking quest that rewards you with new recipes. If you want to, you can easily fill 2-3 hours a day just with the daily quests and make more money than mindlessly grinding those horrible prime element reagents.
I think these daily quests are the future of an MMO, designed to last. It ist much easier to create this sort of "Everquest" design than always putting in more / new content, so expect to see some more of this in WOW.
I have a 70 prot warrior and a 70 shadow priest.
I will say that the Skettis egg bombing is somewhat easier for the prot warrior because the birds rarely knock him off his flyer; but grinding is slow, with low DPS and stops for eating or bandaging.
Grinding is *far* faster and easier for the shadow priest, who can grind just about any mob nonstop.
IMO, the improvement in WoW's approach to "grinding" is the widening range of choices, such as:
- I can do dailies (and now you can pick up some gold from the PvP daily as well)
- I can grind for what I need
- I can grind something others need and sell or trade it
- I can play the AH
- I can craft things that others need (I include selling cool-downs, and crafting & lockpicking for tips under this)
- I can gather; including not only the obvious like mining and herb-picking, but sidelines like fishing and gas-extraction have become viable too
- Do regular quests (until you run out, which takes a while)
- Sell services, such as instance run-throughs
They've even introduced "grinding gear", such as the Sporeggar mana mushroom.
I don't know if I'm just on a lucky run or if drop rates have changed, but in the last three months or so I seem to have had a spike in getting rare world drops, which give a corresponding spike in income.
I will say that the Skettis egg bombing is somewhat easier for the prot warrior because the birds rarely knock him off his flyer; but grinding is slow, with low DPS and stops for eating or bandaging.
Grinding is *far* faster and easier for the shadow priest, who can grind just about any mob nonstop.
IMO, the improvement in WoW's approach to "grinding" is the widening range of choices, such as:
- I can do dailies (and now you can pick up some gold from the PvP daily as well)
- I can grind for what I need
- I can grind something others need and sell or trade it
- I can play the AH
- I can craft things that others need (I include selling cool-downs, and crafting & lockpicking for tips under this)
- I can gather; including not only the obvious like mining and herb-picking, but sidelines like fishing and gas-extraction have become viable too
- Do regular quests (until you run out, which takes a while)
- Sell services, such as instance run-throughs
They've even introduced "grinding gear", such as the Sporeggar mana mushroom.
I don't know if I'm just on a lucky run or if drop rates have changed, but in the last three months or so I seem to have had a spike in getting rare world drops, which give a corresponding spike in income.
# posted by : 16/11/07 15:11
: 16/11/07 15:11
Some of the daily quests are very tedious, but you don't have to do many of them to earn a lot of money.
The Skettis bombing takes maybe 10 minutes - that's 12 gold for 10 minutes work.
I can see shortage of money being a probelm only if you are hard-core raiding.
The Skettis bombing takes maybe 10 minutes - that's 12 gold for 10 minutes work.
I can see shortage of money being a probelm only if you are hard-core raiding.
# posted by : 16/11/07 15:44
: 16/11/07 15:44
I think some of the new dailies kind of help the issue Tobold raised. There are 2 new dungeon dailies, 1 heroic and non-heroic each day. The heroic gives 25g and 2 badges of justice + rep for the dungeon you ran. The non-heroic gives 16g. Also the cooking daily gives 7g50s and is a total non-combat quest.
So a tank could tank 2 instances, make 25g +16g (assuming some repairs i'd wager you could still make 20g?) the cooking daily, and the skettis bombing. Those 4 dailies would net someone probably an average 35-50g a day. Not to shabby. Then if you throw in the skettis escort, which I ALWAYS see people grouping for, that additional gold, plus some potions.
My opinion of dailes is they are great, because they are (in addition) money making. You get them in addition to cooking, in addition to running a dungeon. It makes alot of sense and in my opinion is a much better option than grinding mobs for cash/drops.
So a tank could tank 2 instances, make 25g +16g (assuming some repairs i'd wager you could still make 20g?) the cooking daily, and the skettis bombing. Those 4 dailies would net someone probably an average 35-50g a day. Not to shabby. Then if you throw in the skettis escort, which I ALWAYS see people grouping for, that additional gold, plus some potions.
My opinion of dailes is they are great, because they are (in addition) money making. You get them in addition to cooking, in addition to running a dungeon. It makes alot of sense and in my opinion is a much better option than grinding mobs for cash/drops.
WRT Eve Online "getting to the good stuff" for PvPers: if you aren't in a Guild/Corporation where you have more access to nice drops in 0.0 (by hunting NPCs in the mining belts) you would do combat missions (quests) to gain rep, drops and rewards to fund your habit.
Or maybe just pirate ...
Or maybe just pirate ...
Some dailies are very fun some are kill 10 foozles.
I do like the wrangle quest in Ogrilla and the simon minigames. The egg bombing runs are alright. Intercepting the netherdragon transporters is alrightish.
I do enjoy the daily cooking quests so far.
The 5-man dailies are not fun but good because they channel people on content so grouping for these becomes much more doable, which is good.
I do like the wrangle quest in Ogrilla and the simon minigames. The egg bombing runs are alright. Intercepting the netherdragon transporters is alrightish.
I do enjoy the daily cooking quests so far.
The 5-man dailies are not fun but good because they channel people on content so grouping for these becomes much more doable, which is good.
# posted by : 16/11/07 18:00
: 16/11/07 18:00
With the changes to healing = some spell damage, a lot of the healery types in my guild have commented that doing things is a lot easier now, actually, and I've never had any problems doing dailies on my holy paladin. At the very least, healing classes can do the 2 bombing runs and Ogri'la Simon. One friend of mine minimizes frustration with not having an epic mount by doing the bombing runs naked. :)
Although the basic premise (grinding sucks for healers and tanks) is true, using the daily quests as an example is a bad choice. Many of the daily quests involve little to no combat, and some of the ones that do require combat are still quite easy. There are two bombing runs (no combat) and Apexis Emanations (no combat)just to name a few. The nether ray capture quest is extremely easy as the rays have low hit points and low dps. That's four quests (worth about 45g) that can be done in a short amount of time with virtually no combat.
The rest of the points stand though. Forcing the most required classes (healers and tanks) to have a harder time financing their activities or progressing through quests is silly.
The real issue is the respec system. A prot warrior is a terrible solo spec, but a very solid group spec. An arms or fury warrior is a very good solo spec, but not terribly useful as a tank. A holy priest is a great healer, but a shadow priest is a great dpser. Every class has the capacity to have an enjoyable solo/leveling spec, but those specs are frequently incompatible with the needs of grouping.
The simplest solution (but one blizzard swears they'll never implement) is to allow each character two specs, a solo spec and a group spec. It could even be coded in as a server side toggle - when solo you have one spec, when grouped you have another.
For example: A priest. The priest has spent 0 of his talent points. He opens up his talent window and has two additional tabs, solo and group. He spends his points in a solo shadow spec, then switches tabs and creates a group holy spec. When solo, he's shadow, when grouped his shadow talents become inactive and his holy talents become active. Should a group decide they want him to be shadow, he'd have to respec, as he can only be shadow while solo.
Purchased talent skills would be greyed out when not available, and any buffs from current talents (like Blessing of Kings) would vanish upon changing.
Its a purely mechanical fix that makes little sense from a logical 'lore' point of view, but I think it would help immensely.
Wow, I rambled.
The rest of the points stand though. Forcing the most required classes (healers and tanks) to have a harder time financing their activities or progressing through quests is silly.
The real issue is the respec system. A prot warrior is a terrible solo spec, but a very solid group spec. An arms or fury warrior is a very good solo spec, but not terribly useful as a tank. A holy priest is a great healer, but a shadow priest is a great dpser. Every class has the capacity to have an enjoyable solo/leveling spec, but those specs are frequently incompatible with the needs of grouping.
The simplest solution (but one blizzard swears they'll never implement) is to allow each character two specs, a solo spec and a group spec. It could even be coded in as a server side toggle - when solo you have one spec, when grouped you have another.
For example: A priest. The priest has spent 0 of his talent points. He opens up his talent window and has two additional tabs, solo and group. He spends his points in a solo shadow spec, then switches tabs and creates a group holy spec. When solo, he's shadow, when grouped his shadow talents become inactive and his holy talents become active. Should a group decide they want him to be shadow, he'd have to respec, as he can only be shadow while solo.
Purchased talent skills would be greyed out when not available, and any buffs from current talents (like Blessing of Kings) would vanish upon changing.
Its a purely mechanical fix that makes little sense from a logical 'lore' point of view, but I think it would help immensely.
Wow, I rambled.
# posted by : 16/11/07 22:37
: 16/11/07 22:37
There isn't a fun part, in that if you aren't having fun at the beginning, you'll work for the fun part at the end and discover that magically the game mechanics never improve!
# posted by : 19/11/07 03:25
: 19/11/07 03:25
I'm not qualified to comment on the daily quests, but I find it funny to get witty remarks on my lowly (main lv41, three alts 22-33)toon's over night profits of 40-100g from merely playing the AH (this doesn't count the loot gains from questing), when the dailies give that sort of money anyhow.
And it takes about 15 min to check the mail, post the expired, check the AH and buy the steals.
Copra (1800g net worth plus stuff in AH)
And it takes about 15 min to check the mail, post the expired, check the AH and buy the steals.
Copra (1800g net worth plus stuff in AH)
The simplest solution (but one blizzard swears they'll never implement) is to allow each character two specs, a solo spec and a group spec. It could even be coded in as a server side toggle - when solo you have one spec, when grouped you have another.
The best solution, on the other hand, would be to implement solo-PVE content custom-made for each role/class. Why are class-specific roles only valid inside dungeons?
Make solo-PVE content where damagedealers get to kill stuff, healers get to heal stuff, tanks get to protect stuff, thieves get to sneak'n'steal stuff, hunters get to hunt.
...ofc, it'd make for a much bigger quest creation workload. Conversely, developers would have much less balancing issues.
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The best solution, on the other hand, would be to implement solo-PVE content custom-made for each role/class. Why are class-specific roles only valid inside dungeons?
Make solo-PVE content where damagedealers get to kill stuff, healers get to heal stuff, tanks get to protect stuff, thieves get to sneak'n'steal stuff, hunters get to hunt.
...ofc, it'd make for a much bigger quest creation workload. Conversely, developers would have much less balancing issues.
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