I won't pretend this is something new, in EQ everyone looked up everything, allakhazam was used all the time. Part of the issue in Everquest is that quests would be extremely criptic. If you did your epic without looking up your quest fights most people would be pretty annoyed with you, looking up information was a requirement.

The issue wasn't really that it was too hard , it was just the fact that in EQ the quest giver would say something like

"the dranik loyalists have hidden a gem amongst them",

so the only info you get out of this is the fact it drops in a zone where there are dranik loyalists, which could be a handful of zones and a handful of mob types, what mob actually drops the item isn't clear until a few thousand people killed the mobs and found a gem, the issue is not that no one understands the quest, the issue is that it's criptic

you could argue that you could find out this stuff on your own after a few weeks, but the item could be extremely rare and you purposely not looking something up keeping your guild waiting would mean you would not get any help

What is different now is that raids are explained online in videos and the likes, in EQ people purposely withheld information to keep an edge on other guilds.

Originally posted by mikecackle

Originally posted by korent1991

Originally posted by mikecackle

Originally posted by denshing
It's an implausible question because it's impossible to not be able to google for quest help.

in old school games yes, but sometimes a new system may evolve where that might not be possible... ;)

Such system will never exists, unless quests will be randomly generated and never repeat. You're forgeting that people are the main factor in this. People are posting "quest objectives", solutions, places, etc. on the most different places on net so it's kinda impossible to prevent it.

Is it really impossible? I challenge your statement and provide few answers

1. random quest name

2. random npc names that spawn

3. random locations for npc

4. random objectives

What could you possible google if such system above created quest? What could you chat about in public chat even?

Didn't he just say "unless quests will be randomly generated and enever repeat"?

And i bet even if it is true, someone will do a statistical analysis (not unlike those done on D3 random items .. wth range and max and what-not) of the randomness of the quests.

Puzzle games cannot be competitive unless they are randomized nowdays unless they are designed to: only be solved once or to use google to assist.

Making content to only be completed once does not make much sense in an MMO and using google intentionally kinda breaks immersion (unless its something like TSW, but even that still breaks it for me).

That leaves randomized......yet most "randomized" things in games still have set parameters. The guy you need to find will be in one of 4 locations and he will need to be returned to one of 3 places. It is effort not well spent.

In short, puzzles do not offer competitive challenge for multiplayer games.

I'm never going to understand people who complain about this.  Expecially when they need "help" to keep themselves from looking up solutions.

How about a little self control?

It depends how well the quest description / hints were written, really. Some of the quests back in the early days of WoW were just mind-bogglingly confusing, simply because the descriptions were so vague. Ashenvale back then was a certifiable nightmare because of this.

One quest I remember told you to go northeast and look for a doohickey. Well, I searched and searched to the northeast, couldn't find a damn thing. Must have been at least an hour, a few deaths, and a LOT of frustration later that I finally caved and looked up the answer online. The quest objective... was to the southwest. Rage and a somewhat curt bug report followed.

So yes, if I couldn't look up anything outside the game for help, I would play the game IF the quests were properly written. Unless they were like LOTRO quests, screw that crap.

Quest 1: Kill 10 Grognards!

Quest  2: Go back and kill 10 more, then take the Magic McGuffins they carry!

Quest 3: Go back again and search the Piles of Stuff around the Grognard area! Oh, and kill about 30 more of them.

Quest 4: Go back to the same area again and light Grognard outhouses on fire!

Quest 5: Go back to the same area again and BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH

/quit

/uninstall

Originally posted by MindTrigger

I'm never going to understand people who complain about this.  Expecially when they need "help" to keep themselves from looking up solutions.

How about a little self control?

How about just give in and look it up? We are talking about games here. It is not like taking drugs and you need self-controls to keep you becoming an addict.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by MindTrigger

I'm never going to understand people who complain about this.  Expecially when they need "help" to keep themselves from looking up solutions.

How about a little self control?

How about just give in and look it up? We are talking about games here. It is not like taking drugs and you need self-controls to keep you becoming an addict.

Puzzle games are not fun if you just look up the answers.

The problem with google and its relation to puzzle games is puzzle games cannot be competitive anymore. If there is a puzzle involved and there are multiple people in competition to solve something (such as a quest for quick leveling) and it can be looked up then it will be and it is foolish not to.

An example of a puzzle based system destroyed by information technology: Tapers in AC has certain combinations that would unlock spells. Once the forumlas were figured out it was foolish to not look up the spells rather then burn up countless mats in experimentation. Would you really grind for hours to get the materials so they could be consumed as you try to figure out the recipies for your next tier of spells?

Myself, as someone who likes to be competitive and enjoys puzzles will never again be allowed to fufill both desires at the same time. Which is sad.

If you are glad that everything it can be looked up its because you either dislike puzzles or you had some bad design thrown at you where it was needless complexity. But please be able to see it from the other side that puzzles basically cannot exist anymore.

Why would you ever need google to complete mmorpg quests?!?! 

They are all mindlessly easy, go kill/collect X of X. go talk to this npc etc. The only mmorpg I can think you might need a guide to complete quests was some of the quests in runescape.

Maybe secret world has some interesting puzzle quests down the road, but all I played was the same generic kill/collect quests.

Originally posted by Consensus

Why would you ever need google to complete mmorpg quests?!?! 

They are all mindlessly easy, go kill/collect X of X. go talk to this npc etc. The only mmorpg I can think you might need a guide to complete quests was some of the quests in runescape.

Maybe secret world has some interesting puzzle quests down the road, but all I played was the same generic kill/collect quests.

Not "need" .. but it is faster than searching blindly. Easy != not time consuming. It is pretty easy to find stuff if you just want every inch of the zone. Few wants to do that.

Originally posted by Consensus

Why would you ever need google to complete mmorpg quests?!?! 

They are all mindlessly easy, go kill/collect X of X. go talk to this npc etc. The only mmorpg I can think you might need a guide to complete quests was some of the quests in runescape.

Maybe secret world has some interesting puzzle quests down the road, but all I played was the same generic kill/collect quests.

Go look up some of the key quests in EQ or the AQ scepter quest line in WoW or the taper system from AC. There are absolutely some things in MMO that if you look up how to complete them can have significant cost/time savings. Your right, not every quest has enough complexity to look up online.

Originally posted by Consensus

Why would you ever need google to complete mmorpg quests?!?! 

They are all mindlessly easy, go kill/collect X of X. go talk to this npc etc. The only mmorpg I can think you might need a guide to complete quests was some of the quests in runescape.

Maybe secret world has some interesting puzzle quests down the road, but all I played was the same generic kill/collect quests.

Do you remember when NPCs did not have exclamation marks on top of their heads and you didn't even know where to get such quests for starters?

Originally posted by Mardukk
I'm not sure how far you could get with some of those EQ1 quests, without the internet.  It would be impossibly time consuming guessing the right phrase to say to some of the NPC's involved in epic quests.

Actually it was pretty simple and usually just involved repeating part of the npc statement back to the, begin it with a what, where, why... and end in a ?

The irritating part was gathering some of hte components for the epic quests especially if they were foraged, could go weeks/months and not find it.

Retruning to EQ and trying tro find the quest with only the hint the NPC gave you, which you had to participate in the quets diaklog as well to get the information... god i miss that. 

Once you start googling for information about a quest, you ruin the immersion of the game right away.

Originally posted by mikecackle

If it was possible to make a game, where GOOGLE would be no help to your questing or any website for that matter, to look up information on what you needed to do or where exactly to go... Would you play that MMORPG? Or would it be too hard or boring for you?

You're working on the assumption that people google info because the game is hard or boring. In AC, I used to look up the quest info because my goal was to lead people through the quest. The discovery aspect was for them, but I needed to make sure we got through safely or that I had the information ahead of time to throttle the experience as required based on how the group was dong. Quest info on the net helped me create a more engaging experience for the followers in my monarchy.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by MindTrigger

I'm never going to understand people who complain about this.  Expecially when they need "help" to keep themselves from looking up solutions.

How about a little self control?

How about just give in and look it up? We are talking about games here. It is not like taking drugs and you need self-controls to keep you becoming an addict.

You are missing the point.  I'm referring to people who blame "the internet" because people post the solutions to quests and puzzles online.  I personally don't care if people use them, and I don't think the internet ruined games.

Originally posted by nariusseldon

Originally posted by mikecackle

Originally posted by korent1991

Originally posted by mikecackle

Originally posted by denshing
It's an implausible question because it's impossible to not be able to google for quest help.

in old school games yes, but sometimes a new system may evolve where that might not be possible... ;)

Such system will never exists, unless quests will be randomly generated and never repeat. You're forgeting that people are the main factor in this. People are posting "quest objectives", solutions, places, etc. on the most different places on net so it's kinda impossible to prevent it.

Is it really impossible? I challenge your statement and provide few answers

1. random quest name

2. random npc names that spawn

3. random locations for npc

4. random objectives

What could you possible google if such system above created quest? What could you chat about in public chat even?

Didn't he just say "unless quests will be randomly generated and enever repeat"?

And i bet even if it is true, someone will do a statistical analysis (not unlike those done on D3 random items .. wth range and max and what-not) of the randomness of the quests.

 

Yes, and I say i can repeat them... how are you going to know what and just cuz its repeated don't me its where