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description=Originally a pair of views on gaming, it s now musings by Redbeard on video games (mainly MMOs), board games, RPGs, and other geeky hobbies.;

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a letter think of what is behind such a simple quest the ability to read in a sf or modern setting the assumption that everybody reads or reads well enough holds but in a medieval setting that is not likely the case if you re middle class or upper class then yes but if you re lower class the amount of trust the quest giver has in handing you the letter this kind of goes without saying but someone who just shows up and is given a letter to pass along sounds a bit fishy would you entrust a letter to a relative stranger would you simply stop a passerby and give them a letter to deliver or better yet deliver tidings to the king if you are truly a loyal subject of the king why would you trust a delivery to someone who you may have fought a few battles with but before that nothing was known the ability to even deliver the letter in the first place it may be one thing to finally reach a destination and deliver a letter to a tradesman or a merchant but quite another to deliver a letter to a member of the nobility a tradesman may see you directly a merchant may make you wait in an outer office room before delivery to a secretary or bookkeeper but a noble it s must more likely that you ll deliver the letter to a minor functionary who will in turn hand it over to a courtier or advisor and then the letter will be delivered to the noble and if it was going to the king the king would likely not receive the delivery in public and if he did he certainly wouldn t read it in public all that means is the simple delivery quest has the potential to be completely wrecked by reality before you say hey redbeard you re missing the point the entire point is to advance the plot and move you up the chain in the circle of nobility i get it before you snort and say hey you re supposed to be the chosen one or whatever yeah i understand the why behind it but to me the end isn t as important as the journey itself if you re going to deliver a letter to a noble and you re not a formal courier the noble s handlers aren t going to let you close to said noble if you re as dangerous a person as you re supposed to be it would be a short matter for you to assassinate a noble if you had that in mind and believe me the nobles know that ah mel brooks you put it so plainly besides there s the divine right of kings and even in a fantasy environment especially so given that the gods can be pretty active and direct in a fantasy setting that means the nobility believe they have the supreme right to be where they are and that anybody not of their ilk had better remember that okay so what s the point well the point is that a game s story can be better than what it is right now just because you don t get to meet with the king directly doesn t mean that the plot is shot to hell i d argue that because you have to navigate the bizarro world that is the nobility a story can be made much richer instead of deliver a letter to the king who sends you out to deal with the next item on the plot how about something like this because of xxx the courier has no choice but to give you the letter to deliver along the way someone tries to kill you or steal said letter once you arrive you re a not believed and you have to try to prove you are who you say you are b believed but you re sent to a room to be cleaned up and presented to a minor functionary who then makes you wait via cutscene and he provides you with a quest in return if you perform a few quests right you re granted an audience with a higher member of the nobility maybe that person likes you and maybe not but more quests are given instead of the king doing it directly what this does is provide that obscuring layer between you and the king you don t know if you re truly acting in the king s interest and the minor nobles say so but what if they re the ones plotting against the king couldn t they be setting you up to take the blame if their plot fails and the ire of a nation if it succeeds maybe you have to find a way to meet with the king without them acting as a go between just to make sure or should you even trust the king at all does he have the interest in his kingdom at heart or is maybe your mind playing tricks and you were the bad guy all along all of these little interesting plot points add to the richness of a story and allow the paranoia and class arrogance of the nobility upper class to improve the story beyond the basics of deliver a letter to the king in the end i suppose money is the critical part here all of this extra work in a game means extra money spent on development and software companies have to choose between plot development and extra time spent on enriching a story if more time is spent on the main quest line does that mean the side quests suffer perhaps that s why in eso at least the side quests are frequently better written than the main quest line in a zone but another reason the way quests are is more a matter of fan service some people want to play an mmo to see some of the key npcs in action a lotro fan wants to see aragorn or gandalf or elrond an elder scrolls fan wants to see vivec a warcraft fan wants to pal around with thrall or khadgar and for those fans the more interaction the better i guess that there s no truly easy answer here but still i d at least like to see things a bit more realistic than the current state of quest design although they are frequently separate in modern times in prior centuries the leader of the military was also the leader of the country empire sure in the us the president is also the commander in chief but i can t think of a president after washington who led troops into battle as president or in a barbarian campaign where there is no overlord for barbarian clans your clan chief is pretty much it as far as leadership goes it kind of goes without saying that includes gods goddesses primal dragons demons whatever and their leading support staff posted by redbeard at 1 56 am 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels elder scrolls online fantasy novels lotro musings swtor wow thursday december 6 2018 maximum profit for minimal effort i was skipping around on youtube the other day going from video to video with no particular rhyme or reason to it when i came across this video from back in may 2018 by falcon on gameranx the tl dr of the video is that ea doesn t understand that people want to play different types of games and that ea is letting their own desire to promote a steady stream of monetization via loot boxes and other items get in the way of what might be really good games as examples falcon pointed to games such as god of war and tons of nintendo games that were linear in design with a definite ending yet were also extremely popular the video was partially in reaction to yet another star wars game getting the axe after a lot of prepublication buzz visceral games untitled star wars game developed by uncharted 1 through 3 creative director and writer amy henning the idea that a linear story based game wasn t going to keep people coming back to it paraphrasing ea evp patrick söderlund is what falcon believed to be code for utilizing lootboxes and other monetization methods to keep milking the player base and to be honest i think he s pretty much dead on here the concept that a story driven linear game wouldn t have people replaying it have honestly never played the uncharted series the isometric rpgs of bioware and the aforementioned god of war or nintendo games but these days it s all about the money because the business world is attuned to maximizing quarterly profits on the face of it the desire from the major software houses to jack up the monetization by dlc and lootboxes or even introducing mobile games which have tons of the cash store type of stuff is amusing after all i do happen to know a class of video games that are pretty much tailor made for this sort of thing and i m betting you do too you know this genre ah thrall will the green jesus save us with wow classic from worldofwarcraft com mmos that subgenre which is no longer quite so hot these days is pretty much tailor made to separate gamers from their money on a consistent basis mmos that subgenre defined by world of warcraft and their obsessive fans toxic world chat and the game begins at max level ethos mmos that subgenre that game studios are refusing to touch with a ten foot pole the funny thing is you can have both a satisfying linear story based experience in mmos as well as a rich wide ranging world where you can wander at will and there s always people who are willing to indulge in a cash store as for the drawback of mmos it s the development costs involved it is much easier to code the next iteration of call of duty rather than world of warcraft because mmos are so all encompassing their development costs tend to skyrocket not so much with the more narrowly defined yet highly profitable annual madden release cheaper to make than battle for azeroth i went with madden 15 because i refuse to put a steeler or a patriot on the cover from wikipedia in it s own way ea is confirming the basic business ethos build cheap sell dear the article i wrote the other day about blizzard is another pointed comment about the approach of modern software development to cut costs as much as possible and maximize profits any way you can and here is a frequently vilified software development house that chose to eliminate a game that might have sold well but didn t have the latest hotness in game design maximum long term profit potential maximum output for minimal effort this movement toward a more naked attempt minimize development and maximize costs is starting to remind me a bit of the lead up to the great video game crash of the early 80s back then in the interest of cashing in on the video game market development houses rushed games to production that were cookie cutters in design cheap to develop and designed to maximize profit the market was so flooded with games and platforms that people stopped buying new games creating the push that started the avalanche while the modern game industry has avoided a similar crash so far there becomes a point of diminishing returns particularly when gamers are going to be asked to buy new console platforms in the next couple of years eventually there comes a point where people say okay that s enough i m tired of the bs and the industry suddenly has major issues we re not there yet but eventually a course correction will happen people will eventually say in large enough numbers that we re tired of the treadmill and we want something different and immersive and something we don t have to continuously pay money for nothing lasts forever but it seems that the major development houses aren t paying attention to that credo while they re laser focused on the next quarter s results full disclosure i am one i may not subscribe right now but i do like the game and besides that comment was fully tongue in cheek because mobas are even worse these days yeah it s actually buy cheap and sell dear but the point is to create a product as cheaply as possible and sell it as high as you can posted by redbeard at 9 32 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels ea mmos musings newer posts older posts home subscribe to posts atom pages home about parallel context about redbeard contact us azeroth after dark a parallel context companion site mmo podcasts blizzard watch diablo 4 lord of hatred waiting room 6 days ago podcasts massively overpowered massively op podcast episode 563 in the name of the windrose 1 week ago twisted nether blogcast moving to youtube episodes 346 348 4 months ago battle bards the final refrain 1 year ago ootinicast a star wars the old republic swtor podcast ootinicast episode 503 1 year ago mmo blogroll massively overpowered the stream team meeting project gorgon s megaspider 9 hours ago atheren s azeroth the world of 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