why theme park rides (quests) should [not] be repeatable?

glak

Moved the "make all quests repeatable discussion" from a questions for Paul Sage thread to its own thread for the community to discuss:

Why should others [not] be allowed to repeat a quest just for fun (no extrinsic rewards)?

helediron wrote: »

Gyudan wrote: »

helediron wrote: »

Could you make every quest repeatable? ... snip ...

1) Foil the bloodthorn plot
2) Save King Casimir's Life
3) Get a skill point
4) Repeat forever.
... snip ...
But if abuse issues are solved, sure, go ahead.

haha, Casimir, sure. Scratch that skill point from repeating, and yeah, that's pretty much it. Would be an alternative to hircine/scorpions and lower level public group dungeon grinding. After level-up, move to next area, save the next Casimir.

@spoqster, this is for older players, who have done everything already few times. New players can and probably will stick to the story. I, after repeating main quest five times, won't get much that achievement feeling anyway.

@randolphbenoit, dailies are already appearing. Every quest should be "daily". I remember running in other MMOs some favourite XP-quests daily. WE chose the ones we liked for that.

No one touched the worst problem, Craglorn group starving. Many would have wanted to help the people struggling to form a group for Celestiol Investigator quests, but they couldn't, because the quests were not repeatable.

Thank you for all the comments, but I refrain myself from further discussion. This is a Post Your Question thread after all.

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

Every quest being daily would make no sense at all. Will that village get invaded by goblins every single day? Will that ghost feel the need to put right its wrongful death every day? Will that ship get shipwrecked every day? Will that Khajiit need a secret shipment of moon sugar every day (wait scrub that last one ...). It will be like Tamriel Groundhog Day (maybe burrowing guar day or something).

Continue discussion...

Rune_Relic

I think the option should be there as a "share quest" tool to allow people to group more easily.

Problems are changing your history which affected your future.

But generally a story is "a" story. Once its written it never changes.

In contrast an area changes and the inhabitants of that area change.
So if sir X is held captive within this zone. Find and retrieve sir X.
That could be the same story in the same location, but the weather, scenery, fauna/ flora and enemy NPC could all change.
You might have to negotiate a hell of a random journey to get to the objective.
[retrieve item x works as well]

So I really think it depends on the objectives and topic of the storyline.
If done right I think a storyline could be repeatable and a unique experience everytime. However, when ZOS was pushed at the summit, they are reluctant to introduce dynamic content like random spawn points and such.

Nazon_Katts

This particular dilemma stems from the fact that developers insist on single-player storytelling in a multiplayer environment and keeping everyone on the exact same level (as in everyone must be able to do every bit of story and nothing must be missed).

There is no overall and shared progress in the world, the story progresses on an individual basis and can be at any given point for different people. In this context and considering that Alts already do offer the repeating of quests, people repeating quests will have the same effect on another player as they have now: none.

So if you can successfully ignore thousands of players in different times and even alternate Tamriels - who you still can meet even though they populate a different world to your own - then it shouldn't take much to ignore repeatable quests.

So while storytelling wise I don't see a problem (or rather a different, underlying one, which - sadly - won't be solvable in this themepark setting), there's of course the question of rewards and how to balance them. Easiest solution probably would be to offer additional quests, instead of reworking current ones.

All in all, repeatable low level content would be a welcome addition to the current options of just following the quest lines or grinding mobs, preferably with group versions offered as well.

In order to balance those against existing content and making them more attractive to players on the second or third play-through rather than making them first choice for everyone, it would probably be wise to offer xp rewards only and no gold nor items. That way there's still incentive to play the original content, especially for new characters.

Additionally, we certainly need something in the line of this in Vet 10+, so there's still a way to progress when there's no groups to be found.

helediron

Thank you @Glak moving this out. That was smart. I wrote a very dense question, which as a hindsight can be interpreted many ways. In an own thread, i could open it up more.

I would like to add to the original question that this was about those players, who have several alts and maybe multiple maxed alts. It was not how first timers would play. In fact some of the stories in ESO have opened up only after repeating them few times. For me this has happened by repeating with new alts.

I asked the question because of several motives:

1. Craglorn group quests have been difficult to get through. Not because they were particularly hard, but because of issues around group questing. Apart from bugs there is one big fault: You can join the quest only when you at the same phase with others. Half of players were not yet there, another half of players have dunit already. Just a handful of them are at the exact same spot. Good luck finding quest partners! Allowing those, who have done it already to repeat is a natural fix.
2. Leveling up the Nth alt is very different from first time. You know the story already. Some quests were just boring, some were fun, so what to do? Grind? Meh... Do some good quests few times? Sure Casimir! I don't think people would repeat some quest forever, but merely pick and choose. It is any way better than mindless mob grind.
3. More and more players are getting to max level and finding that the "end game" is very narrow one. So i think we should look back to the conetnt what we have already done. Instead of just repeating three trials, Arena and handful of dailies, there could be alot more to repeat. We are getting dungeon scaling, which brings back some of the old content. I would extend that idea also to questing. last areas don't even need any scaling, just possibility to repeat them.
4. Social group play is suffering in ESO. I have enjoyed in other MMOs the group play aspects, where we pick some area or story, which we have done many times earlier. Then we just go through it, talking and joking in TS. It is a social event like meeting in the same old bar.
5. Some quests simply were so GOOD i want to repeat them. I think the quests (um , most of them) are hands down the best content in ESO. With every single alt i have reserved the prime time, brewed a pot of coffee, sat down comfortable, flexed the fingers and entered tho Bone Orchard. Hello Dringold, my old friend. Let me give you a hand...

Some aspects about repeating:
- Is it daily or just always repeatable is a detail. Either way is OK. But i don't like someone is dictating that. It may be an interim step, where quests are first cleaned up for repeatibility by making them dailies. Ultimately every quest should be repeatable.
- Some thoughts should be given about abuse. The bots may come back.
- Some unique items and skill points are given only the first time.
- Every repeat should give XP.

AssaultLemming

I would rather see a bunch of new dailies than repeatable existing quests.

KenjiJU

AssaultLemming wrote: »

I would rather see a bunch of new dailies than repeatable existing quests.

This.

Something less specific, and most likely empty, similar to Cyrodiil quests.

What would be nice though is that they could give these all a faction theme. Since we can go through the whole world helping any faction, I think there's an opportunity to build community within one's own faction with quests like this.