Does RO suffer from being so open ended compared to other MMOs?

Started by michaelsoftman, May 09, 2018, 11:14 AM

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michaelsoftman

Hello all,

I was wondering about this and would like to hear everyone's opinion.  RO is a pretty open ended game, in that if you join a server right now, you are pretty free to go to any area you'd like to level up, the game does not really guide you or force you to go anywhere.  There are things such as the Eden Quests you can do, but for the most part you're free to explore.

Compare this to other MMOs.  In WoW or Tera for example, there's a main quest (with optional side quests) that guide you through various maps and always give you a destination.  In other games, like Star Trek Online, there's a list of main missions in order that you can do.  RO doesn't really have anything like this, it sorta drops the player into the world and leaves them to themselves.

Do you think RO would benefit from having more structure to it?

yC

When RO first came out (17~18 years ago?), there wasn't the quest based type of mmo around.  It is the classic grinding type of mmo and people have no complain about it.  To be hones I don't know how I could do it at 1x and got my iRO character to level 70~80, it took many days and hours back in the days when I was a student. 

Without the guided system, it is hard to learn about all aspect of the game but that also gives a high degree of variation to gear usage and builds.  I think it has been mentioned that RO is a very complex game and it takes a lot of time to be good at it.  It's true, there is so much to learn compare to other games.  Partly because the game has been in development for almost 20 years.  You can't learn that all in a few days definitely. 

To answer your question, RO is trying to be more structured with Renewal.  Renewal is the time when RO feel they need to go attract the quest based population so they created the eden group and have the guided steps, (!) on maps to stay competitive with other newer mmo.  They also have a number of instances with 12~72 hours cooldown time to serve daily quests and rewards so to keep players login everyday.  If you say they should follow exactly how the other model mmo progresses I think it will not be a good choice because RO is unique in a number of ways with a lot of content.  After playing some games with repetitive daily quests and missions that try to keep you busy and occupied, I can't say I like the quest system type of mmo more.


Zereges

Quote from: michaelsoftman on May 09, 2018, 11:14 AM
In WoW for example, there's a main quest (with optional side quests) that guide you through various maps and always give you a destination.

Just a note. This wasn't always the case. Then WoW first came out in ~2005, there was a lot of grinding as well. The difference is, that the game evolved, apart from RO. It also targetted a bit different audience. Even nowadays asian mmos still have grinding aspect in them.

What I am trying to say is that you can't compare RO with WoW at all, it's just too distant nowadays.
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Insomnia2000

I think the answer is yes and no.

I often find myself annoyed after joining an MMO only to find out that there's literally no way around their quest system. Sure, I could avoid spamming "next" on NPCs and gather items for them, but I'd be severely slowly down my character's progress. So, I end up having to do the quests of the MMO anyway. That's why I stopped trying new MMOs.

I think RO is unique and draws players in because of it being one of the few MMORPG's that offers near 100% freedom to do whatever. However, I think RO can feel the opposite way most of the time where quests seem to just slow you down and you'd be more efficient just grinding monsters in the same time frame.

It would be nice if there was some sort of middle-ground. Perhaps some over-arching quest would help make RO more appealing as long as it wasnt' forced or so rewarding that normal methods were obsolete. It would also be nice if some of the quests actually tied in to one another. There's a lot of neat stories for the current quests, but nothing really connected. Plus, most older quests don't function properly in the quest window anyway. There's quite a bit that RO could do to make the quest system more robust and appealing to new players without harming the uniqueness of near 100% freedom it currently has.