519 réponses à ce sujet

[In Exile]

Disclaimer, I didn't read the previous 11 pages. But 55 hours into the game, I agree with the original post 100%. Of my 55 hours into the game, probably 40 are me wandering around in various zones collecting things or fetching things. Every single quest not related to the main plot is either a collection/fetch quest, or worse, a generic map pin mission with a timer. Unlike DAO, KOTOR, Mass Effect, and even DA2, none of these side quests are going to stick in your memory a few years from now. You're not going to be able to reminiscence with your friends about that one time you totally collected 10 units of paragon's luster. 

 

I don't know what Bioware did with all their writers, but yeesh, hire some back. Or at least devote some effort into the side quests. Just because the world is large and open-ish doesn't mean you need to fill it with mindless grind. 

But we totally reminisce with our friends about collecting the 5 (or was it 4?) Star Maps, or the 5 treaty allies, or the 4 leads to find Saren...

 

It's all a fetch quest. DA:I's just suck. 

[Lokiwithrope]

Breaking it down, isn't everything in a video game "Get this item, kill this person, pull this lever, talk to that person"?

[Lebanese Dude]

That you have such trouble acknowledging that the indistinct, repetitive and banal nature of some of Inquisition's ancillary quest content absolutely speaks to their quality is all kinds of telling Lebanese Dude. What is it you're having trouble understanding here?

So, your argument that DAI employs Quantity over Quality is that DAIs sidequests are repetitive and boring.

That's quite a misguided correlation to make. This gonna be easy.

First of all, you claim that the quests are boring. This is subjective. Don't reflect your tastes onto the game itself. A lot of people find them fun and no they are not a minority either.

Then you say they are repetitive and Indistinct. Ignoring the fact that they occur in different zone, objectives, and delivery styles, might I remind you that they also can be categorized into pretty different implementations right?

You have kill, escort, fetch, puzzles, collect etc...
That makes them distinct enough.

Now to the actual subject matter, where has the Quality of the individual fetch quest decreased?

The quests require you to perform some task which amounts to a fetch quest, and then provide you with a reward for your efforts.

The existence of the sidequests is the same as any side quest ever made in a BioWare game.
They are the equivalent to the Chanters Board, Collective, and irregulars quests in DAO.
All of which are quite "boring" themselves if done individually, since they are all clustered with nothing but experience, gold, and the rare new disjointed empty zone to explore.

While the fetch quests in previous games were pretty much on the way to main quests, in DAI most require you to explore beautifully crafted zones independently of the main quest. The quality of the quest setting improved. The delivery is different. The purpose is different,
One can also argue that the fetch quests provide four rewards as opposed to 2: Gold Experience Power Exploration.
You get more for the same effort.

Well....****.... I guess they are simply working as intended like any fetch quest in the series, if not better and for a different purpose.

The game is much much larger. Do you expect the quality of the fetch quest to increase proportionally with size as well?

While in previous games they were there to only fill the entire game world with scattered objectives, in DAI they are concentrated per zone and used to fill each individual zone with objectives to provide an incentive for exploration.

Imagine a Chantry Board, Irregulars Post, and Collective bag in each zone giving you quests to do if you choose to explore the area.

The Quantity obviously increased, proportionally to the increase in size of the game world. This was expected.

I havent even touched the actual implication that the story/companion/zone quests have also decreased in quality (they story speaks for itself) but I'll stick to the actual fetch quests since that's all you're capable of doing.

Expecting the ratio of Quantity and Quality with regards to fetch quests to remain static as the size of the game world expands is pretty delusional. Weve already discussed the misconception regarding resource usage and implementation in another discussion.

[Lebanese Dude]

But we totally reminisce with our friends about collecting the 5 (or was it 4?) Star Maps, or the 5 treaty allies, or the 4 leads to find Saren...

It's all a fetch quest. DA:I's just suck.

False equivalency.

You're comparing main quests to side quests.

I see this happening a lot.

[Han Master]

The side quests looks more like to get power and influence.

[Trickshaw]

Given the annoyance of what you have to go through to get your specializations... yeah, I largely agree with the OP.

 

You wanna do a stupid montage?  Fine.  Make me run around searching out very specific mobs in very specific places that have a tendency to... NOT be there... ok now you're getting on my nerves.

[In Exile]

Breaking it down, isn't everything in a video game "Get this item, kill this person, pull this lever, talk to that person"?

 

No; but RPGs often are, because they started with groups of mercenaries robbing graves for profit. To move away from that you have to pretty radically undercut the freedom or change the premise entirely. 

[Vapaa]

I'm sorry t say this but : GO PLAY MMORPG INSTEAD if you like this!

Can't you undertand that you're encouraging Bioware to make BAD offline mmorpg while it would be better to focus more on story content like in the past ?

 

I am encouraging Bioware to do this, and I'm proud about it.

[bateluer]

I am encouraging Bioware to do this, and I'm proud about it.

 

This is why we can't have nice things. 

[Vapaa]

This is why we can't have nice things. 

 

Well, I have nice things.

[Lebanese Dude]

Well, I have nice things.

 

[bateluer]

Well, I have nice things.

 

Not really. 

[Fandango]

So, your argument that DAI employs Quantity over Quality is that DAIs sidequests are repetitive and boring.

That's quite a misguided correlation to make. This gonna be easy.....

Good grief, what's wrong with you? Do you think you make any great point when you say that the degree to which people find entertainment entertaining is subjective? I mean, are you expecting those people who found the ancillary quests of Inquisition to be somewhat repetitive and dull to put it in a test tube and prove it to you? Do you somehow think that your talk of asparagus, cheeseburgers and the rest resonates with those people who want to make a straightforward point about their experience with the game?

Golly, how very embarrassing for you!

[hangmans tree]

Dude, I ain't got time for that noise. Cullen and Leliana farm resources for me now. I'll occasionally pick up elf root in the field but F the rest. Also, if I need a bridge built in the desert or a cave excavated, I deploy troops.

I ain't nobody's field agent.

 

No time? Considering there is not much else to do in this game, what are you so busy with? Is DAI playing on autopilot now?

 

So, your argument that DAI employs Quantity over Quality is that DAIs sidequests are repetitive and boring.
[...]

Expecting the ratio of Quantity and Quality with regards to fetch quests to remain static as the size of the game world expands is pretty delusional. Weve already discussed the misconception regarding resource usage and implementation in another discussion.

This is pure rhetorics, and demagogy btw. Most of your points are invalid, you should have change the tone and point of wiev when engaging a conversation.

 

[ORTesc]

When the same threads with the same opinions are being created and the same people rush in to defend the game with the same throwaway arguments... there's probably some truth to what's being said. The game is wrapped in low quality fetch quests. It's trying to be a singleplayer mmo.

[Shockwave Pulsar]

It is, and it's really sad. I'm enjoying everything in Skyhold, I like the characters but the parts where I actually have to "play" are tedious and incredibly repetitive. The areas are huge but there's nothing interesting to do. Claim landmark no. 612, close rift no. 745, find 5 letters, give to random NPC for one line of dialogue and some shitty XP. What is this? It's lazy game design. I feel like I'm wasting my time with this crap. Make the areas half as big but fill them with better content, interesting quests and unique enemy encounters. Due to the repetitive nature of this game I don't see myself replaying it any time soon. I never played Dragon Age for the gameplay or the combat because, I'll be brutally honest, these elements of the game simply aren't all that great. I played for the role playing elements, the characters, the story, trying out different choices and outcomes and these terrible fetch quests and huge areas with nothing interesting to do are getting in the way of that. It feels like I'm forced to play a huge, lazily designed MMO every time I leave Skyhold. Thank God I did the Empress ball quest when I got really tired of it, it was a welcome change, if I hadn't done that quest at that time I might have stopped playing.

[ORTesc]

It is, and it's really sad. I'm enjoying everything in Skyhold, I like the characters but the parts where I actually have to "play" are tedious and incredibly repetitive. The areas are huge but there's nothing interesting to do. Claim landmark no. 612, close rift no. 745, find 5 letters, give to random NPC for one line of dialogue and some shitty XP. What is this? It's lazy game design. I feel like I'm wasting my time with this crap. Make the areas half as big but fill them with better content, interesting quests and unique enemy encounters. Due to the repetitive nature of this game I don't see myself replaying it any time soon. I never played Dragon Age for the gameplay or the combat because, I'll be brutally honest, these elements of the game simply aren't all that great. I played for the role playing elements, the characters, the story, trying out different choices and outcomes and these terrible fetch quests and huge areas with nothing interesting to do are getting in the way of that. It feels like I'm forced to play a huge, lazily designed MMO every time I leave Skyhold. Thank God I did the Empress ball quest when I got really tired of it, it was a welcome change, if I hadn't done that quest at that time I might have stopped playing.

 

I agree completely. I've played Origins countless times. Trust me, it wasn't because I loved the combat. The story, roleplaying, seeing different outcomes. That's what makes Bioware games cool. This industry needs to stop catering to drooling console gamers that bash their head off the controller playing halo. Stop turning my rpgs into mindless shoot em ups!

[dlux]

The Urn quest is one of the worst quests in DA:O. You get a gold star for enjoying it, but your subjective rhetoric like "wonderful atmosphere" is just that. 

 

The Urn quest is incredibly linear, with one major decision branch and companion quest triggers at a specific point. 

 

The quest always starts the same way: you get told in no uncertain terms that you have to get and fetch the ashes. You then begin your wild goose chase in Denerim. And the entire quest is literally a line until you to that moment, besides the backtracking with Weylon. 

 

[...]

 

This is a fetch quest. There's lots of dialogue as part of the fetch quest. And you get to side with two different people in the mid-to-late part of the fetch quest (depending on what you count Kolgrim) but it's nothing more than an extended fetch quest. 

 

The problem with DA:I's quest isn't that they're fetch quests. It's that they're **** fetch quests. 

The untraceable quest in DA:O is a fetch quest. You gather 10 pieces of garnet and return to the quest giver. It is a very simple quest for a trivial reward.

 

The Urn of Sacred Ashes questline in DA:O is not a fetch quest, because of the vast amount of content, narrative and sidequests involved. BTW, the Sacred Ashes quest is one of the best quests in the game.

[Lebanese Dude]

 

This is pure rhetorics, and demagogy btw. Most of your points are invalid, you should have change the tone and point of wiev when engaging a conversation.

 

 

Invalid in what sense exactly? 

 

There's this huge misconception that quantity and quality in video games are intrinsically related when there are hundreds of variables to account for.

 

Deconstructing the quality vs quantity argument is exactly what I did, pointing out that

 

1) overall quality of the individual fetch quests remains unchanged

2) quantity increases with game scope

 

Therefore, quantity increases with game scope while quality of individual quests stays the same.

 

Using a "Quality over Quantity" adage implies that focus was spent on quantity rather than quality. This conclusion is drawn in a void while completely ignoring that they are not what the core plot is about. That is the province of the main quests, the companion quests, the main zone quests, and war table quests. 

 

Considering their purpose is to fill entire individual zones rather than the entire game world, they serve as exploration incentives rather than simple checklists. Their purpose is just that. They accomplish it.

 

It may not be to your liking. You may not like exploration, but that's exactly what they were going for.

 

There's a continuous assumption that cutting zones into smaller sizes would increase quality of said fetch quests.

 

This completely ignores the mission statement of DAI regarding providing a massive world to explore, while simultaneously being utterly oblivious to the fact that resources spent on the side quests boil down to an insignificant part of the overall budget. Cutting them in half would only reduce zone size in practice.

 

AT BEST, you get an extra line of dialogue per quest.

AT WORST, you just cut out half the game world and gained nothing.

So what individual fetch quest quality is to be gained by lowering quantity? An irrelevant amount that is not worth the loss.

Therefore expecting a focus on QUALITY over QUANTITY with regards to fetch quests is misguided.

 

-> Stop saying "Quantity over Quality".

 

Is that clearer?

 

You on the other hand continue the trend of calling points invalid without providing any supportive arguments.

So sit down.

[tmp7704]

So, populate it with quests that aren't **** or reduce the size of the game. What's the point of having this huge open world or "zone" when the bulk of the content is made up of mind numbing fetch quests?

They've already tried reducing the size of the game with DA2. Perhaps you remember how well it was received.

"Populate it with quests that aren't asterisks" is quite worthless as far as advice goes, because what's asterisks will differ from person to person. Something this very thread proves rather well.

[tmp7704]

The Urn of Sacred Ashes questline in DA:O is not a fetch quest, because of the vast amount of content, narrative and sidequests involved. BTW, the Sacred Ashes quest is one of the best quests in the game.

The Urn of Sacred Ashes is, mechanically, fetch quest with lots of window dressing. The window dressing doesn't change the nature of the quest, though it may make it easier to focus on the nice curtain and never bother to look behind it.

[dlux]

The Urn of Sacred Ashes is, mechanically, fetch quest with lots of window dressing. The window dressing doesn't change the nature of the quest, though it may make it easier to focus on the nice curtain and never bother to look behind it.

Killing 10 bears and returning to the quest giver for a trivial reward is a kill quest, right?

 

So killing the boss at the end of a major questline also makes it a kill quest, right? Nope, wrong.

 

Kill quests, fetch quests, fedex quests, etc. are pejorative terms for very simplistic quest design, also known as filler content. Nothing more and nothing less.

[tmp7704]

It is, and it's really sad. I'm enjoying everything in Skyhold, I like the characters but the parts where I actually have to "play" are tedious and incredibly repetitive. The areas are huge but there's nothing interesting to do. Claim landmark no. 612, close rift no. 745, find 5 letters, give to random NPC for one line of dialogue and some shitty XP. What is this? It's lazy game design.

I believe it's rather what they call "getting old" and/or "growing (overly) familiar with something". The same trivial tasks which might've felt fresh and amazing in the first few games you played are going to be little more than "same old" if you experience them for Nth time. Your first companion romance? Awesome and like nothing you knew before. Your 10th? You can practically see the change in approval points push the NPC through pre-scripted events and half of the things they say won't even register because blah blah blah been there done that.

The sad truth is, no amount of work put in the content is ever going to make you a game virgin again.

[tmp7704]

Killing 10 bears and returning to the quest giver for a trivial reward is a kill quest, right?
 
So killing the boss at the end of a major questline also makes it a kill quest, right? Nope, wrong.
 
Kill quests, fetch quests, fedex quests, etc. are pejorative terms for very simplistic quest design, also known as filler content. Nothing more and nothing less.

Yes, "kill the big bad" is at its heart a kill quest. It's the very reason the game will typically delay your facing that big bad with a number of hoops you have to jump through. Because at the end of it there's nothing but a simplistic fight, and after that fight is done, that's it.

Reluctance to apply the same pejorative term to it stems more from unwillingness to acknowledge the true nature of this game content (due to time invested in jumping through all said hoops) than some actual difference.

[Lebanese Dude]

The sad truth is, no amount of work put in the content is ever going to make you a game virgin again.

 

The things I would give if I could re-experience the ME trilogy from scratch again