Where WoW went wrong! Advice for MA?
By
Carnifax,
Posted on: 2009-03-27 24:22 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Nice find. There is some good mission design advice in that article.
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I found this article on GDC where former lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan spoke about some of the mistakes they made in WoW and it's mission design.
I'm not especially bothered by WoW - but reading it I was struck by how much of this is common sense and will make great advice for anyone planning on an designing their own MA missions. Some of it's pretty good advice, so I figured it's worth sharing here.
Enjoy
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The last section is a pretty good reason why they should look at some of the older hero content -
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Bad Flow: This occurs in WoW when players are given an inordinate amount of collection quests or kill quests in a row. It gets boring and repetitive.
[/ QUOTE ]A lot of the older high-end missions seem to covet this. I was doing a mission line with Mechano one time and he ended up with 3 hunt missions in a row. By the same token I've been doing a flashback of the Vampyri arc in the 30-34 range and it's got three hunt missions in a row as well, each one with increasing number and for no other reason than to lengthen the story.
Peregrine's stories could do with a revamp too. A lot of those missions are click-the-glowie over and over again, even the high-end stuff gets a fair few hunt missions. Then we have newer content which while it does have a hunt mission or two has more character to it like bumping into Fusionette and Faultline in the RWZ and their occasional 'player' comments.
You're right Scarlet; it's definitely worth a look for budding mission writers.
Tyger (50), Mutation-Controller Mind/FF - oldest Mind/FF on Union
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Then we have newer content which while it does have a hunt mission or two has more character to it like bumping into Fusionette and Faultline in the RWZ and their occasional 'player' comments.
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Yaknow they really confused me when I did the RWZ missions for the first time, becuase I'd never seen them before and they were acting like we're old buddies. Later I did the new faultline missions and cleared that up for me, but still 
The Register has it's own typically down to earth view on this - the comments have at least three people who play City Of Heroes in them (yes, I'm one of them, but not the Anonymous Cowards).
I tend to agree with him, but only if it's written badly or part of a terrible series of quests. Sometimes, I'm just looking for well written stuff and would rather that than "Go Hunt. Kil Skuls."
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
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WAR is awful for the Christmas Tree effect, where you get tonnes of missions when you enter a new "hub". Some guys give you 3 or 4 quests alone.
Of course they did come up with PQs as well so I'll forgive them slightly.
It's not only repeat missions that are a pain in the neck. Finished an arc yesterday in Croatoa, get three mystics to a henge and protect it from attack...for 15 minutes! That may not sound like a great deal of time in the grand scheme of things but it gets very boring very quickly after what seems like 20 ambushes (but probably isn't) with more to come. You get to the stage where you just sit with your head in your hands until the next ambush...please let this be over soon...
What a shame that audio is such an artform. It is truly difficult to replace long text with audio.. now if those text reading programs were to move on apace, then you COULD put long stories in your games.
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Mission Architect 54161 - Michael Mundano, Megan Malloney and the Secret Senate.
Mission Architect 91838 - Constantinople Jones' Family Secret. A One Mission Story arc.
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It's not only repeat missions that are a pain in the neck. Finished an arc yesterday in Croatoa, get three mystics to a henge and protect it from attack...for 15 minutes! That may not sound like a great deal of time in the grand scheme of things but it gets very boring very quickly after what seems like 20 ambushes (but probably isn't) with more to come. You get to the stage where you just sit with your head in your hands until the next ambush...please let this be over soon...
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Yeah i think the croatoa arcs are an example of both the good and bad sides of how missions should be done. They all have good stories, have some interesting mission styles but there is one or two that totally spoil it for a large majority (that damned 30 fir blog escape mish!!!).
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Mystery: Mystery is a bad thing, as it means the player doesn't know what to do. An example of a bad, "mysterious" quest would be, "Somethings wrong in the forest, go figure it out." When players aren't clear on what to do, they become confused, and that provides for a bad game experience.
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Don't agree with this. I would love to see more open, smarts based quests in MMOs, indstead of the go here do that quests that treat the player like a moron. This kind of stuff is a staple of games like Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect.
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Mystery: Mystery is a bad thing, as it means the player doesn't know what to do. An example of a bad, "mysterious" quest would be, "Somethings wrong in the forest, go figure it out." When players aren't clear on what to do, they become confused, and that provides for a bad game experience.
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Don't agree with this. I would love to see more open, smarts based quests in MMOs, indstead of the go here do that quests that treat the player like a moron. This kind of stuff is a staple of games like Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect.
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Without putting words in the author's mouth, I can see where he's coming from. A bit of mystery is a good thing - but from a starting point where you know where you can watch the story unfold. But being left to your own devices and wander around in the hope you'll stumble on some kind of clue is very bad.
Thelonious Monk
It finding the clue is simply down to luck, that's bad. If you can find the clue by pure intellegence, that's good.
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A lot of the older high-end missions seem to covet this. I was doing a mission line with Mechano one time and he ended up with 3 hunt missions in a row.
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Yee-gads that story arc..."Go hunt X Crey in the Rikti Warzone" x 3 with each time the numbers doubling, went from 25 Crey to 50 Crey and then 75 Crey.
A lot of the older high end content could do with a revamp primarily because it follows at lot of the bad rules that Kaplan lays out as being stupid but were the 'done thing' for MMOs at the time.
Though the devs do seem incredibly reluctant to touch something once it's 'done' and say that people would get more out of having them develope new content than fix the old stuff...a bad choice when pre-20 zones/missions except the revamped Hollows and Faultine are of the same awful variety as the old high level stuff.
The one problem WoW has now in WotLK questing is that it's filled with gimmicky quests (something Kaplan says while a few are good, overabundunce is bad) where you have to use the 'siege vehicle controls' for various things like planes, giants, gigantic Icelandic scythe-toothed worms...basically they got the siege vehicle controls and went 'we can show this off by applying it to a crapload of quests!'
So far apart from the easy raid content, it seems to be the major complaint about WotLK at release.
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I found this article on GDC where former lead designer Jeffrey Kaplan spoke about some of the mistakes they made in WoW and it's mission design.
I'm not especially bothered by WoW - but reading it I was struck by how much of this is common sense and will make great advice for anyone planning on an designing their own MA missions. Some of it's pretty good advice, so I figured it's worth sharing here.
Enjoy
Thelonious Monk