I picked up a trial for an mmo, and the game isn't any worse than alot of others.

But I now find myself in an area I don't really know the name of, doing a quest that I haven't read and come to thnk of it I don't even know the title of.

All I did was go to someone with a certain symbol over his head, which means he's an NPC with something to offer.

i clicked on one of the texts and a long text appeared, meaning it's a quest. And sure at the bottom there is the well knwn "accept" "deny" option. I accept knowing that quests tend to do leveling up more fun and perhaps faster since pure grind is boring and makes you want to logoff.

Some arrow pops up in the minimap and of we go. When I get to the quest area, there is something shining, or blinking, or sparkling, all I have to do is pick it up. Sometimes its a monster - kill X amount of... but I don't need to read the quest cause the questtracker say " Y amount killed / X amount to go"

So here I am in the middle of nowhere looking at some sparkly things, bushes this time it seems. Guess it's a collect berry quest.

This is why easymode Imo diminish the game experience - yes I know I can read the quest description and all the names and everything. But people usually take up the path of least resistance. And although reading through a quest can be boring, the times I find myself have to doing so, I actually feel more immersed in what's going on.

Btw, voiceovers for quests doesn't help, becase if you can skip them and use a quest helper/  tracker instead, alot of people will skip it.

Sorry, when the MMORPG industry tried to offer quality content the first time (Guild Wars) everyone got all whiny that everything was instanced.  So the industry went back to cheap overworld content (because when your quests exist outside in the game world, they basically have to be.)

Honestly apart from games which significantly modify the formula (like GW), the ones with the best quest content are those which make their quests have lots of events (ambushes, NPCs fighting each other, that sort of thing.)  And voiceovers during a quest are the best way of conveying an actual story (because you're right: if its a bunch of monologuing which is skippable, it will be skipped.)

Originally posted by Inzra

I picked up a trial for an mmo, and the game isn't any worse than alot of others.

But I now find myself in an area I don't really know the name of, doing a quest that I haven't read and come to thnk of it I don't even know the title of.

All I did was go to someone with a certain symbol over his head, which means he's an NPC with something to offer.

i clicked on one of the texts and a long text appeared, meaning it's a quest. And sure at the bottom there is the well knwn "accept" "deny" option. I accept knowing that quests tend to do leveling up more fun and perhaps faster since pure grind is boring and makes you want to logoff.

Some arrow pops up in the minimap and of we go. When I get to the quest area, there is something shining, or blinking, or sparkling, all I have to do is pick it up. Sometimes its a monster - kill X amount of... but I don't need to read the quest cause the questtracker say " Y amount killed / X amount to go"

So here I am in the middle of nowhere looking at some sparkly things, bushes this time it seems. Guess it's a collect berry quest.

 

This is why easymode Imo diminish the game experience - yes I know I can read the quest description and all the names and everything. But people usually take up the path of least resistance. And although reading through a quest can be boring, the times I find myself have to doing so, I actually feel more immersed in what's going on.

Btw, voiceovers for quests doesn't help, becase if you can skip them and use a quest helper/  tracker instead, alot of people will skip it.

 

Well most people don't want immersion (as in reading quest text and stuff) and want to hack-n-slash without stopping. You are out of luck.

BTW, quest helper is an addon and by its populartiy, you know that a lot of people want to be directed. In fact, before software addons, most people us spoiler cites like wowhead. You can stop progress. If you want "immersion", you have to actively NOT use these tools.

In fact, if you are one of those who choose the path of least resistence, YOU choose convenience over immersion and you have NOTHING to complain about.

 The BEST immersion I ever had was with FFXI. Not just "click on guy with ! above head, speed down and accept, look at what I need to gather/kill, find it on map, return, complete quest, go on" kind of stuff.

With FFXI, there were animated cutscenes for quests... at least back when I played in 200...3? I felt like it made it more personal and involved.

I think games would benefit from functions like this, just so you don't seem to be another bob-in-que to grab/return a quest for quotas.

Guild Wars's in-game cutscenes added to the immersion too. Not enough games employ this function.

OP: Could you please define your idea of  "Easy Mode"? If you're just refering to quests, give an example of what you believe to be better?

You are right to some degree. The worst thing I came across was the auto-walk feature of Atlantica Online. While I played it I constantly alt-tabbed out of the game to do something else while I was auto-walking somewhere. T_T

Try requirem bloodymare if you want something with less help. It has no arrows pointing you in the right direction and in general lacks information for the player. So you sometimes catch yourself reading the quest description several times to make sure you are at the right place, only to guess that maybe the thing you are hunting only shows up at night- or daytime (which is of course nowwhere mentioned either). The game is also very bloody which is fun too. Hit some horsy-thing with a lethal spell and watch it's head or legs fly off in a bloody arc and roll around on the ground.

The best immersion I ever experienced was when I was totally new to WoW in it's beta, and when I first play WAR for a while.

I think that Darkfall could be nice in that area as well, but it doesn't have a free trial so I got to wait.

One thing I came to think of now though is that in  alot of quests the only reason you click "accept" or "deny", is so that you - and the server - know that you are on a quest.

But in a lot of cases all you actually need is info of what to do / maybe where to go. So what if you clicked on an NPC and he eventually started talking about something, which actually was a quest, but you didn't have to click anything to do it. You just went ahead and used the info he gave. if he wanted you to bring him or others something you just did so, without having a questlog.

For those not interested in quests they might not even notice what was being said by the NPC, to see that there was a quest there. After all I don't think it's a good idea to force people to quest, but the option has to be there. They would perhaps not even notice it.

i think it would be better if maps weren't generally marked with questpoints/areas, but instead it was explained in words, and the only time you'd see areas on a map was if you where handed a map, or found a map.

I also think the minimap we often see in the upper right corner in gamecreens, is misused alot with all the arrows and pointers, and perhaps it should be abandoned completely.

Personally, I always enjoyed the SWG mission system, because you realized you had to grind, realized that missions added a small bonus to that grind, and gave you some sense of purpose to the grind.  Whereas WoW and it's clones tend to attempt to hide the grind through quests, but in the end not only do the quests not fool anyone, but imo the quest system makes you work even harder and less productively in the grind because you're always jumping from area to area, mob to mob, and back and forth to town and back to turn quests in and get new ones.  Frankly, it's a complete joke and I find it so humerous how many people fall for it.

My ideal game would have true meaningful Quests mixed with the SWG-type mission system.  That way quests are really quests, and grinding is more appropriately placed in the mission system.  For example, instead of collecting ten boar guts, 20 chicken eyes, two Harpie souls, and five bat livers; simply have the mission terminal give a mission for boar guts, 1 gold for each ten that you bring it.  That way you can go kill boars for two hours, waste no time going back and forth to town or other mobs, and get a good payout of gold plus the experience you gained.

The grind is gonna be required for mmos, whether it's getting from min to max level, or a gear grind, or a raid grind, or placed at the end of the game (if you use a "quick" leveling system).  There's no getting around it.  So why not just call a spade a spade and work to increase the productivity of the grind through a mission system or something similiar?

Did I get off topic?  Perhaps, but it does fit in with some of the OPs original concerns.  However, a bit more on topic, I do agree that I am sick of being pointed through the mini map and shinies to quest objectives (not boar guts, but "real" quest objectives).  God forbid that I actually have to search for something.  Oh noes!!  We can't make the player think for themselves!!

Rise of Heroes the MMO my Indie dev team is working on will NOT feature any of these tools to make the game easy in any way. We will have a Quest Journal that will have a summery of what you need to do because lets face it even the hardest core Gamers will forget what they need to do from time to time But there will be no easy mods or anything. MMO Interactive is NOT out to win any popularity contests or conform with how the Major AAA development companies are creating their MMOs. MMO Interactive is dedicated to listening to the desires of its fans with in the confines of what we are trying to do as a dev team. We are dedicated to releasing Innovative, Story driven, engaging MMOs. We ARE NOT dedicated to releasing the same old dumbed down trash that seems to be getting released these days.

This first MMO we are thinking of more as a fully playable Prototype. It will be a fully working and Playable MMO but it's main goals are to help us get a source of funding, establish a fanbase, and help us to establish a extensive and engaging lore for our Rise of Heroes IP. Once this first "Chapter" is released we will get a full team of programmers together and we will start working on our own set of tools and technology which will power the next generation of Rise of Heroes MMOs. By the time this first chapter has run its course the next chapter will be ready for release.

Originally posted by JamesP

Rise of Heroes the MMO my Indie dev team is working on will NOT feature any of these tools to make the game easy in any way. We will have a Quest Journal that will have a summery of what you need to do because lets face it even the hardest core Gamers will forget what they need to do from time to time But there will be no easy mods or anything. MMO Interactive is NOT out to win any popularity contests or conform with how the Major AAA development companies are creating their MMOs. MMO Interactive is dedicated to listening to the desires of its fans with in the confines of what we are trying to do as a dev team. We are dedicated to releasing Innovative, Story driven, engaging MMOs. We ARE NOT dedicated to releasing the same old dumbed down trash that seems to be getting released these days.

 

This first MMO we are thinking of more as a fully playable Prototype. It will be a fully working and Playable MMO but it's main goals are to help us get a source of funding, establish a fanbase, and help us to establish a extensive and engaging lore for our Rise of Heroes IP. Once this first "Chapter" is released we will get a full team of programmers together and we will start working on our own set of tools and technology which will power the next generation of Rise of Heroes MMOs. By the time this first chapter has run its course the next chapter will be ready for release.

Your new MMO sounds interesting, but why do you have to have to fill in a journal for them?

let players have their own empty journal instead, where they can write notes, store maps they find - actual maps, and draw their own maps.

The minute you start to make things more convenient and at the same time throw out a realistic/credible way of doing it you take one more step to "easymode".

In Darkfall that I'm playing, they have a journal players can write in, unfortunatley they got a map with questpoints and a worldmap.

in Mortal online as I've been told players have to draw their own map which I think is a great idea.

Originally posted by Inzra 

Your new MMO sounds interesting, but why do you have to have to fill in a journal for them?

let players have their own empty journal instead, where they can write notes, store maps they find - actual maps, and draw their own maps.

The minute you start to make things more convenient and at the same time throw out a realistic/credible way of doing it you take one more step to "easymode".

The problem is drawing the line.

• For some the game becomes unplayable without specific quest markers.
• For some the game becomes unplayable without a quest journal.
• For some the game becomes unplayable when you have to hit a 4-button sequence to make your character walk (instead of the convenient/easymode "Forward" button games have.)

Also notice that the game lost players at each step (so the most successful one is the one which had the most convenience.)

Personally I'm all about making games harder, but I'm against making them less convenient.  The challenge should be something players understand so they also understand why they're failing.

The problem is that this approach basically requires a deep combat system, and thus far MMORPG combat has been pretty shallow.

Originally posted by Axehilt

 

The problem is drawing the line.

• For some the game becomes unplayable without specific quest markers.
• For some the game becomes unplayable without a quest journal.
• For some the game becomes unplayable when you have to hit a 4-button sequence to make your character walk (instead of the convenient/easymode "Forward" button games have.)

Also notice that the game lost players at each step (so the most successful one is the one which had the most convenience.)

Personally I'm all about making games harder, but I'm against making them less convenient.  The challenge should be something players understand so they also understand why they're failing.

The problem is that this approach basically requires a deep combat system, and thus far MMORPG combat has been pretty shallow.

I got a motto for what kind of games that I prefer and that is "credible freedom".

Freedom means as many options as possible.

Credible means that it have to make some logical sense. In example, having a bag that can carry endless amounts wouldn't be credible, unless it was affected by some magical spell or futuristic sci-fi technology. But just having an endless bag for free isn't really credible.

So that's what I think of as a fine line. I guess there will be people that don't give a heck about immersion, like there's people that don't give a heck about MMO's, then you got all shades within those who do.

That's one of the reasons why I'm going for the realistic setting in MMO's, cause then all you have to concentrate on is "does this really make sense".

• For some the game becomes unplayable without specific quest markers.
• For some the game becomes unplayable without a quest journal.
• For some the game becomes unplayable when you have to hit a 4-button sequence to make your character walk (instead of the convenient/easymode "Forward" button games have.)

Ok, but how would it look in real life? Do we necessarily see quest markers? Especially back in the medieval times, if we play medieval games they probably didn't have a minimap in the upper right eyecorner and no markers pooping up, neither on NPC's heads nor on maps out of nowhere - alot of games comes with a worldmap without no explanation as to where you got it and how a marker ended up on it.

the questjournal is just lazyness Imo, as long as quests are an option we don't have to do it, but usually it helps leveling up in a more fun way + you get rewards and money for it. That could be inspiration enough to make some notes on your own i think.

A four button sequence to move forward I'm not sure what you mean though, if you refer to musclegroups I don't think we need to get that detailed since most people just think "Walk" and start walking when they want to walk somewhere.

It's just brain sets forth command "walk" and the body follow orders, without analyzing every muscle and nerve move, so it's similar to pressing "forward" and char move forward.

Not trying to attack anyone/thing with this post tho, just trying to explain how I see things.

Originally posted by Inzra

 

Your new MMO sounds interesting, but why do you have to have to fill in a journal for them?

let players have their own empty journal instead, where they can write notes, store maps they find - actual maps, and draw their own maps.

The minute you start to make things more convenient and at the same time throw out a realistic/credible way of doing it you take one more step to "easymode".

In Darkfall that I'm playing, they have a journal players can write in, unfortunatley they got a map with questpoints and a worldmap.

in Mortal online as I've been told players have to draw their own map which I think is a great idea.

I wont play a game that that requires me to copy text down by hand. A 10 year old with an elementary school education can do that. There is no challenge, just stupid boring work. If I want to copy text, I will sign up to be a scribe in a monastary.

And there is NOTHING wrong with easymode. These are games, supposed to be entertaining, not tedious and boring. If you like to copy stuff, do it anyway. No one is stopping you.

I guess I wont be playing MOrtal online then .. draw your own map .. if it were 1980s. I can draw .. just don't want the headache.

Originally posted by JamesP

Rise of Heroes the MMO my Indie dev team is working on will NOT feature any of these tools to make the game easy in any way. We will have a Quest Journal that will have a summery of what you need to do because lets face it even the hardest core Gamers will forget what they need to do from time to time But there will be no easy mods or anything. MMO Interactive is NOT out to win any popularity contests or conform with how the Major AAA development companies are creating their MMOs. MMO Interactive is dedicated to listening to the desires of its fans with in the confines of what we are trying to do as a dev team. We are dedicated to releasing Innovative, Story driven, engaging MMOs. We ARE NOT dedicated to releasing the same old dumbed down trash that seems to be getting released these days.

 

This first MMO we are thinking of more as a fully playable Prototype. It will be a fully working and Playable MMO but it's main goals are to help us get a source of funding, establish a fanbase, and help us to establish a extensive and engaging lore for our Rise of Heroes IP. Once this first "Chapter" is released we will get a full team of programmers together and we will start working on our own set of tools and technology which will power the next generation of Rise of Heroes MMOs. By the time this first chapter has run its course the next chapter will be ready for release.

You are confusing between CONVENIENT and EASY. Make your encounter challenging. Making the game tedious is not going to get you fans.

For examples, I do not really want to talk to every NPC in town to find all the quest givers. It is just tedious work. There is no challenge working around to talk to everyone. Provide an option for people who want the tedium to toggle the quest mark off.

I am assure you that many wont touch a game without modern convenient features.

---

Originally posted by Inzra
Ok, but how would it look in real life? Do we necessarily see quest markers? Especially back in the medieval times, if we play medieval games they probably didn't have a minimap in the upper right eyecorner and no markers pooping up, neither on NPC's heads nor on maps out of nowhere - alot of games comes with a worldmap without no explanation as to where you got it and how a marker ended up on it.

---

Features like that are usability.

If you put your game through usability testing (and it will be an eye-opener if JamesP puts his product through usability) without conveniences like a map, customers flat-out fail to have fun.

Every feature like this results in a statistically significant portion of players being capable of having fun in a game. Does a map make sense for all games? No, of course not. But if a game world isn't filled with so much content that interesting stuff is happening around every corner (and no MMO is) then you need some way to figure out where the interesting stuff is happening -- otherwise players simply won't get to it.

You'd be surprised the number of usability participants who fail even with these features.

Again, it's a big eye-opener when developers see the first usability test on something they've poured hundreds of hours into creating, and watch some real world player utterly fail to figure out how to play their game (like not being able to locate a quest's location.)

---

A four button sequence to move forward I'm not sure what you mean though, if you refer to musclegroups I don't think we need to get that detailed since most people just think "Walk" and start walking when they want to walk somewhere.
It's just brain sets forth command "walk" and the body follow orders, without analyzing every muscle and nerve move, so it's similar to pressing "forward" and char move forward.

---

Okay, how about some less convoluted examples then:
1. Your character must rest if he runs for too long, or you can choose to slowly walk to places.
2. You don't get UI for what your health and stats are. Because menus for such things aren't "realistic".
3. You spend 50% of your game time slaving at a farm to afford food so your character doesn't starve.

At some point every player realizes they'd rather have convenience than worry about making the game a simulation of real life.

 Having to draw you own maps or take notes does NOT make a game more difficult.  Having to talk to every NPC in the hopes of finding one that actually has something worthwhile to say is also NOT difficult.   All this does is force people to use FAQ sites again.  Personally I never used any quest helper mods.  I did go to some FAQ sites to track down some of the really out of the way quests in WOW.  The basic game always gave you just enough info to figure everything out yourself without marking EVERYTHING like newer MMOs are doing.   The quest helper mods really do stupify the game.   Having every tiny thing marked does remove a lot of the mystery.   Having to ask a guide NPC where something is was perfectly acceptable.  LOTR blew everything up making the maps like Christmas trees with all the colored dots;)

Any new MMO will basically have to offer the option of "help", because thats what most people want.  Just allow people to toggle it off so at least people can control their immersion.  NOT offering it at all is just a recipe for niche status.  Also, purposely making controls unintuitive will make me /uninstall within minutes.   I've long ago lost all patience for developers that can't make an intutive game. 

The thing is simply: the easier the game, the higher the possible user base.

A game that can be played by a 3 year old can theortically also be played by a 30 year old.
A game aiming at people in mid twenties upwards can not be played by a 3 year old.

Add to that that most people who in theory have a brain to use are often incredibly lazy in MMORPGs. If they once in a while have to read a quest, they don't do so but spam all channels shouting for help or search for an addon that helps them to understand the quest.

Originally posted by maji

The thing is simply: the easier the game, the higher the possible user base.

A game that can be played by a 3 year old can theortically also be played by a 30 year old.
A game aiming at people in mid twenties upwards can not be played by a 3 year old.

Add to that that most people who in theory have a brain to use are often incredibly lazy in MMORPGs. If they once in a while have to read a quest, they don't do so but spam all channels shouting for help or search for an addon that helps them to understand the quest.

Exactly!

The best games are simple to learn, but have game depth (take a long time to master: hence the axiom.)  Playing the game should be easy.  Playing it well should be the hard part (and games should offer a spread of challenges so that players of all skill levels can find enjoyable content.)

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by Inzra

 

Your new MMO sounds interesting, but why do you have to have to fill in a journal for them?

let players have their own empty journal instead, where they can write notes, store maps they find - actual maps, and draw their own maps.

The minute you start to make things more convenient and at the same time throw out a realistic/credible way of doing it you take one more step to "easymode".

In Darkfall that I'm playing, they have a journal players can write in, unfortunatley they got a map with questpoints and a worldmap.

in Mortal online as I've been told players have to draw their own map which I think is a great idea.

 

I wont play a game that that requires me to copy text down by hand. A 10 year old with an elementary school education can do that. There is no challenge, just stupid boring work. If I want to copy text, I will sign up to be a scribe in a monastary.

And there is NOTHING wrong with easymode. These are games, supposed to be entertaining, not tedious and boring. If you like to copy stuff, do it anyway. No one is stopping you.

I guess I wont be playing MOrtal online then .. draw your own map .. if it were 1980s. I can draw .. just don't want the headache.

 

But leveling a character, grinding, travelling, gathering - all of that can be boring work.

If we're not gonna have progression of the character in skills or levels then we only got a first person shooter.

If we don't have the option to grind we got les freedom for thos who don't want to do quests.

Without traveling, - like dungeon runners, where you can instantly spawn at your group - there is no need for mounts and you miss out on thee feeling of being in a complete world.

Without gathering the materials would be way less worth in player economy.

All of these things increase the value of what is being done, you can pay someone else to do it, because it requires time and perhaps effort.

First of all you don't have to draw or write anything, if you have a good memory you can just use that. Though most probably won't

Then if you want to write down, you don't have to write everything, just the essentials like, " Kill X, return to Y"

It makes the quest "harder" to do yes, or at lest more cumbersome, but it does increase the immersion and for some it means they wont be able to figure it out while others will.

And that's a big difference, the easier the quests are the less valuable they are. But if you do a quest and get a reward not everyone have it makes you more unique.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

You are confusing between CONVENIENT and EASY. Make your encounter challenging. Making the game tedious is not going to get you fans.

For examples, I do not really want to talk to every NPC in town to find all the quest givers. It is just tedious work. There is no challenge working around to talk to everyone. Provide an option for people who want the tedium to toggle the quest mark off.

I am assure you that many wont touch a game without modern convenient features.

But how did people get "quests" in the medieval times, they didn't go looking for people with floating question marks over their heads. But I'm pretty sure if they had that option, EVERYBODY would have been using it, because it would be more convenient.

If the quests aren't easy, that can make the questreward more valuable. So having to put some effort in just finding hte quest to begin with adds to the effort you have to put into getting the reward.

Originally posted by Inzra

But how did people get "quests" in the medieval times, they didn't go looking for people with floating question marks over their heads. But I'm pretty sure if they had that option, EVERYBODY would have been using it, because it would be more convenient.

If the quests aren't easy, that can make the questreward more valuable. So having to put some effort in just finding hte quest to begin with adds to the effort you have to put into getting the reward.

So where do you draw the line between adding realism at the expense of fun? Personally, I wouldn't want to everything to be real in my game and rather have certain things convenient. These games were never meant to imitate real life, they are supposed to be fun to play and these conveniences help many people in getting involved within the game fairly quickly.

Sure, I cannot disagree that people have been over-relying on these mechanisms, but no game design is going to be perfect and more power to those that do want to play that way aimlessing bouncing to each '!' and '?'. I am not one of those, but I would rather keep those in the game for convenience sake so I can move on with the game.Who honestly wants to spend an extra 1-5 minutes per quest in the game just to get a reward after putting forth the time already to completing the task.

Honestly, I don't want anything resembling anything real from the medieval times within a game and I don't think many people really acknowledge what they are asking for when trying to compare fantasy games to realism in medieval times. Those people should honestly read some medieval fantasy books and see how painstakingly hard and simple life was back then in settings resembling those times.

I like challenging content in games.

I don't like unnecessarily complicated timesinks disguised as challenging content.

If I want to do a quest that involves killing 10 wolves:

Finding the quest: <-- I want this to be easy and intuitive.
Finding the quest objective: <-- I want this to be easy and intuitive.
Killing the 10 wolves: <-- I want this to be challenging.
Recovering after success/failure: <-- I want this to be fast.
Finding the quest turn-in: <-- I want this to be easy and intuitive.

If it takes forever to find a quest and you have to go around clicking every NPC; that would bore the crap out of me.
If the quest isn't clear about where I'm supposed to go .. dullsville.
If I had to write down the name of the quest-giver so that I could find him again afterward .. similarly boring.

You get the idea.

Personally I find that questing is just as bad as grinding.     In most MMO's the quests are so numerous and so simple.  I don't want those quests to be any more complicated.   I don't know what to say. I hated "quest grinding"  games went from  mob grinding to quest grinding.   I don't recall doing many quests in EQ1.   How about just having no quests.  Make players explore the world for gear and stuff.   Sorry I am biased.    I am a sandbox MMO fan so I really don't like questing and of course I don't like mob grinding. I do enjoy killing mobs to clear a dungeon to get some cool gear ect. I think MMO's are too lvl based. If we can take away the reason to rush quests then maybe they can be of better quality and harder?  

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

I like challenging content in games.

I don't like unnecessarily complicated timesinks disguised as challenging content.

If I want to do a quest that involves killing 10 wolves:

Finding the quest: <-- I want this to be easy and intuitive.
Finding the quest objective: <-- I want this to be easy and intuitive.
Killing the 10 wolves: <-- I want this to be challenging.
Recovering after success/failure: <-- I want this to be fast.
Finding the quest turn-in: <-- I want this to be easy and intuitive.

If it takes forever to find a quest and you have to go around clicking every NPC; that would bore the crap out of me.
If the quest isn't clear about where I'm supposed to go .. dullsville.
If I had to write down the name of the quest-giver so that I could find him again afterward .. similarly boring.

You get the idea.

Everything you say after your first sentence contradicts your first sentence.  If you want challenge, then there must be the risk of timesinks in some form (be it making up for experience penalty from dying or having to grind through a dangerous dungeon to get that important and rare quest item).

Without timesinks, easy-mode MMO gaming might as well be "Chutes and Ladders".

You and I have different interpretations of the term "challenge"

Having to click every NPC to find a quest to start with is not challenging.
Having to wander aimlessly (or check a wiki) to find a quest objective is not challenging.
Sitting for 5 minutes after each fight to regen health/mana is not challenging.
Having to click every NPC to find out where to hand a quest in is not challenging.

I've no objection to quests taking a reasonable amount of time to complete, providing that the time is spend doing (what I consider) challenging things rather than daft stuff like the above.

Originally posted by Ilvaldyr

You and I have different interpretations of the term "challenge"

Having to click every NPC to find a quest to start with is not challenging.
Having to wander aimlessly (or check a wiki) to find a quest objective is not challenging.
Sitting for 5 minutes after each fight to regen health/mana is not challenging.
Having to click every NPC to find out where to hand a quest in is not challenging.

I've no objection to quests taking a reasonable amount of time to complete, providing that the time is spend doing (what I consider) challenging things rather than daft stuff like the above.

Just a POV really.

I on the other hand would simply like to walk into a little town and talk to the people living there. Listen to their interesting stories. They tell me what is happening in town and some of them even ask me, the mighty warrior,  if i can help them with a "problem".  They explain their problem to me and i go off to help them.

So, i didn't need an exclamation mark over a person and also no minimap marker as i actually listened to the guys story and directions. I actually became part of the story.

Or, you play the other game ... run to exclamation mark .. run to minimap marker ... run back to question mark.

Whatever is more fun to you or is more challenging ... i leave that to your personal taste.

If you have the feeling that you are  "having to click every npc" ... then i think you misunderstand the concept of an rpg ... or I do.