Profile: fansede
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I think it is safe to say that MMO quests are designed to reward us with gear or coin as well as experience.  This method promotes gaming behavior which discourages role playing and immersion.  We take on tasks from NPCs to kill enemies, gather stuff and deliver things all in the name for coin and some gear.  While this is a reasonable trade by itself, we repeat this behavior to improve our rewards which usually means better gear. We do this until the games content is consumed and you are at "max level". Then our characters usually "grind" in raids to hope to score on a rare item from a loot table off a rare boss.

Do we really enjoy grinding or rifling through quest dialouge to simply get the task and the reward until we get to the end?

What if:

A game design caters to the characters personality/principles? Hear me out!

When WAR offers players who purchases a pre order Collectors Edition unique quests that no other player can access, I thought to myself. Well, this means unique quests can be given to some players and not all upon starting the game.

Suppose in character creation we are given the standard D&D alignment systems: lawful good, lawful neutral, lawful evil, neutral good, true neutral, neutral evil, chaotic good, chaotic neutral and chaotic evil.

These can be put in flagged criteria for players avatars to have the game code to execute certain programs or dialouges..

That doesn't solve your gear problem however.  The gear you earn is the gear you keep. Why have to toss it in a day or two after grinding to a higher level? I propose if you want a certain weapon, you choose its initial design. When you complete a mission you reward is a choice of stat enhancements, or abilities to that weapon or item. Similar to city of heroes/villians. You may also choose cosmetic features like item auras or ability particle effects. I even think we can get new abilities as a reward for doing the quest. Not when you reach level X.

Still want the challange of boss fights or rare spawns? Fair enough, make the rewards better. Offer a rare design model or an opportunity to wield that bosses weapon/ gear. Of course you get the initial benefits of that weapon at the start and as you grow in its experience you unlock abilities of that weapon or stat enhancements.

It is a method that may even remove the need for levels. Skill based gameplay has always been a favorite of these forums. However, players do want to be able to know what level of expertise their character is at any given time. So this may still need to be in place.

Player balancing is a matter of perspective. Instead of award a host of abilities when you "ding", your abiltiies are awarded as you complete a mission. Note the more difficult the mission, the better your abilities rewarded. If the game mission was simple or designed for short game time, your reward might be a slight stat enhancement. Maybe +1 to one stat (or as Age of Conan has it  +.01% - WTF is that?).

Overcome a mighty challenge and you acquire a new skill or ability. Want that ability to improve? (in other words, rank 2, rank 3 etc.) do an appropriate mission that warrants that reward.

Here would be some general guidelines to such rewards:

1. Quests that take less than 15-20 minutes -> kill x, gather x, deliver x : single minimal stat enahncement reward or cosmetic item reward

2. Quests that should take 30 min - 1 hour solo - multiple stat / resist enhancement reward  and/or cosmetic item modifier

3. End of solo quest chain - new ability award or improved ability ( rank 2, rank 3 , etc)

4. Group reward - stat enhancement and cosmetic reward of your choice

5. End of group quest chain - new ability or improved ability + stat enhancement and  cosmetic modifier

6. Epic reward - unique ability, unique item offered which provides base stat enahncements and improved ability of one of your exisiting skills.  For those player averse to raids, you can group or solo into a series of adventures to get this reward, but it will take signifantly longer to accomplish.

Thoughts?