http://penny-arcade.com/2012/02/27/tera-beta

He liked it (and not everyone I've shown Tera has), but he correctly points out that the questing system is crap.

My guess is that he'd like it a lot more if EME could move the BAM experience sooner.

Sounds like IoD could use a BAM or two to show people the real reason they're going to be loving this game for a while to come.

Read it before. While I enjoy Penny Arcade's comics from time to time (as in, I check every 4 months, read anything new and don't come back for the next 4 months), it's just another example of people with voice that are too fast to talk.

Now, he's not saying anything wrong and it's definitely not another case like those breaker guys, and obviously everyone's entitled to their own opinion and to express it whenever they want, but it strikes me as irresponsible to do so when he clearly has little base.

Definitely, though he has a point. The quests are VERY basic. Some variety plus an optional BAM in the Isle of Dawn would help a lot.

Quote: Mushimushi on 2012-02-29 17:09:20 UTC - view

His 'base' was his play experience from 1-12. If the quests at those levels are not representative of those throughout the game - why not? My reasoning as a new player would go thus: the first few levels of your game are your one and only chance to hook me. I therefore have to assume that what I'm seeing - while not covering the whole breadth of the game - IS representative of the best of what the game has to offer.

To put it another way: starter armour and weapons are naturally less fancy than epics, but nobody in their right mind would make them low-poly with low-res textures on the grounds that it makes the higher-level items look nicer by comparison. Players would take one look at them and quit.

Peeling is absolutely right. The newbie island is pitiful at best. The game doesn't begin to get exciting til about lvl 20. For the western market, BHS made a HUGE mistake by making the newbie island a pos.

With that said, the rest of the game is EPIC!!! bams are fun and the dungeon bosses are fun as well. questing is still lame but at least we have something to numb the sting of boredom.

I don't think I have ever played a MMO where the started zone was something grand to remember...

I am still trying to figure out when the old style quest system became the most hated thing in the world. Just look at other genres. Skyrim is filled with quests like this. Putting aside the voice acting it was literally go to the waypoint and kill everything. It did mix it up here and there but most of the quests were the same thing rolled up in a different outfit. I really stopped caring about that poor guy in every town who lost his precious heirloom in the bottom of a nearby tomb.

Kingdoms of Amalur is an amazing game. But the quest system is exactly like your basic MMO. Collect this, kill that. Nothing new but it doesn't bother me.

So I guess the only issue is everyone wants fully voiced quests and the illusion of interaction in dialogue. Right? Can't be about going out and killing things since it works everywhere still...

@Gezodiac I actually loved Age of Conan's starter zone. It was very well done imo. Too bad as soon as you left it became a rotten pos game.

"Maybe I’ve been spoiled by SW:TOR and its fully voiced and interesting quest chains."

Stopped reading there, interesting? "go click on/kill this and come back" repeated ad nauseam with a really [filtered] Shuttle to space port to ship to space port to shuttle system shoe horned in is interesting but kill/collect quests are boring?

Fully voiced? I dunno about that there are queite a few quests you pick pup form random terminals that have to be read and I'm not sure I would classify a game where the PC response start repeating so much you can set you watch to them as "FULLY" voiced

Maybe the problem is me, but if you strip the carefully layed and very expensive quest dialogue and voiceover in SWTOR, the quests are still the same go there and kill x, now over there and collect y from z mobs. Now go to this specific room and use item x, pick the right option and come back to me.

Which, is, the same old, same old. After playing the beta in SWTOR, and having a second playthrough on the same class, I found myself skipping dialogue and finding a very common MMO down there.

I didnt play for long after that. And talking to friend that continued playing, they told me about the light side/dark side grind - now you need to play the dialogue right and not build a character like you wanted, because you NEED those dark/light side points asap. lol

Srsly, give up on quests on MMO altogether. This is about killing stuff. The players are the world, not the quests. Every single time they try to revamp the quests, we get layer over layer of gimmick.

But don't listen to me, im a grumpy old player and kids these days are all about bells and whistles and voiceovers and repeated animations.

whats issue with what he said? he's right ya know questing in tera is terrible! he didnt even hit on poor enchanting system or how crystals break when you die(btw not so much that is a death penalty as forcing us to buy a ton of crystals because if they break we get boned pretty much) or stupid slow regeneration of hp at campfires ect ect game has so many flaws BUT they are small flaws that i think most people can live with.

But he hit nail on the head with questing comment because tera has one massive flaw and that is terrible quests and even just design of the quests are bad!