1) allow people to opt-out of the text filter. I suppose I can imagine know why 'mouth' and 'lips' are considered bad words, but when I ask my friend to meet at dragon mouth cave... it's difficult. If you could allow people to opt-out of the text filter so that only others who have opted out are allowed to see banned text it would be good.
2) There is a glitch in the minigames where when I finish a game and I get the drum roll sound, it doesn't go away until I log off, quit, and log back in.
3) Sunken City is practically a waste of time. Sidewalks are useless, NO way one, even level 20 character can get in a fight there and hope to win. I have to tap drum on my keyboard to get around without drawing attention (for some reason). This is a time eater.
4) Colossus Boulevard seems designed to burn as much user time as possible; as a fan of MMOs I'm sensitive to that and dislike it immensely.
5) Enough with the collect x barrels and defeat y creatures quests... that's so World of Warcraft.
Whether "kill x of y" quests are problematic depends on the value of x. If x = 40, then yeah, that's WoW-style quest grinding. I'd expect that x may increase some as the game goes along, but through the end of Krokotopia, the largest value of x I've seen is 12--and most quests are well below that. Even that 12 was for a type of mob that is pitifully weak compared to you by the time you get the quest.
I haven't tried Sunken City at level 20, but by level 28, it is readily soloable, even if you do die and run back a few times.
One common thing I seem to see a lot is how people complain about certain quests and "errands." I mean, L O L.
Certain people, especially people like me, like to grind. That is something I enjoy the MOST in mmo's. Actually in any RPGs, mmo or not. I think that is the whole point in rpgs and mmos. Grinding. That will either make or break a game.
Wizard101 is quest oriented, so, grinding unfortunately is not an option for me, and that in the end bums me out a bit. I still enjoy the game of course, but knowing I would have been able to grind instead of doing nothing but quests, I would have enjoyed myself a whole lot more.
Besides, is that not what end-game basically is? A long, continuous grind fest in order to receive loot and accomplish events with groups.
Even though many quests send you out to kill certain amounts of stuff, the XP received is insignificant, and pales in comparison to what the XP reward is upon quest completion. That simply makes it so you would want that quest over with as soon as possible. A chore.
Now, as far as collecting barrells go, or defeating a certain number of monsters.... Well. This is an mmo rpg. In an rpg, you advance through the storyline and grow in levels by working/grinding/completing quests. Live with it.
I want to see a rpg, mmo or not, in which you can instantly complete any quest by hitting an optional "Complete the quest" button. I also want to see a rpg, mmo or not, in which you can instantly fight and defeat a monster by hitting the "Find and defeat monster(s)" button.
grind·ing n. 1. Doing something stupid for the sake of leveling that you wouldn't consider if it didn't level you. 2. Something that many companies add to their games to slow players down and make them pay the monthly fee more times in order to do the same amount of content.
Grinding is a bad thing.
Shiningfantasia wrote:
Wizard101 is quest oriented, so, grinding unfortunately is not an option for me, and that in the end bums me out a bit...
Even though many quests send you out to kill certain amounts of stuff, the XP received is insignificant, and pales in comparison to what the XP reward is upon quest completion.
That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Killing four of these and six of those and then going somewhere else to kill a boss and then four of something else is a lot more interesting then staying in one spot and killing 50 of something. That's why people make bots to do the latter in some games.
Shiningfantasia wrote:
Besides, is that not what end-game basically is? A long, continuous grind fest in order to receive loot and accomplish events with groups.
The endgame is what the company gives you to do after you've already done everything in the game worth doing, in order to try to get you to keep paying the monthly fee even after you ought to cancel your account. An endgame has to consume huge amounts of player time, but minimal game development resources. The reasons why that is unlikely to be fun are self-evident. Indeed, a game with no endgame at all has an above-average endgame.
Shiningfantasia wrote:
I want to see a rpg, mmo or not, in which you can instantly complete any quest by hitting an optional "Complete the quest" button. I also want to see a rpg, mmo or not, in which you can instantly fight and defeat a monster by hitting the "Find and defeat monster(s)" button.
If you would press those buttons, isn't quitting the game the rational thing to do, since you dislike the game enough that you want to skip everything?
I want to see a rpg, mmo or not, in which you can instantly complete any quest by hitting an optional "Complete the quest" button. I also want to see a rpg, mmo or not, in which you can instantly fight and defeat a monster by hitting the "Find and defeat monster(s)" button.
Quizzical wrote:
If you would press those buttons, isn't quitting the game the rational thing to do, since you dislike the game enough that you want to skip everything?
As for the last comment in your reply: Then why complain about fighting this and that, and finding this and that? Well, YOU didnt say anything, but the creator of the post certainly did.
Grinding is bad for people who dont like to grind. Concept of grinding is basically the same concept of end-game. You just mentioned it yourself. Thing is, I am not saying to MAKE players grind. But certainly make grinding an available OPTION.
Take WoW for example. While 90% of all people seemed to do nothing but quests after quests after quests, I didnt do ANY of them except the quests you took that introduced you to levels 1-10.
Of course, its arguable which path, grinding or questing, granted you faster exp, but in my opinion, the difference was insignificant, and did not bother me. What I may have missed out on, were the more powerful quest rewards, which I would have easily replaced as I had leveled up.
From level 8+ to level 70 (I didnt bother to continue playing when wotlk was announced to come out in about half a year) I did nothing but grind. In WoW, grinding ALLOWED you to level and progress, unlike in Wizard. Since grinding was wholly possible, that is exactly what I did. Instead of picking up quests and walking here and there, I simply stayed put and slaughtered mobs. Not to mention now, the possible rare loot I got, and the gold I farmed from the sheer amount of drops.
As for everything else, all points are valid and well noted.
What I had forgotten to mention the first time I put up my reply was that Colossous Boulevard, and/or the difficulty/existence of Sunken City is simply there to "expand" the game-play.
With my Death and Myth wizard, I still have not completed Sunken City, and it does not bother me one bit. Colossous Boulevard I think is also completely optional. But regardless, they provide the valuable quest exp needed to level up. (Since grinding is NOT optional in this game.)
So, consider Colossous and instances like Kensington, Tomb of Beguiler, Sunken City, "grinding." Call it "instance hoppin'" if you like.
Point with all my replies in this post: it takes TIME and some amount of effort to get to the level cap and enter end-game. How you spend that time greatly affects game-play, but adding things that expand your options of how you level, or where/who you fight simply gives players a wider range of how to do things. Not all players will be the same.
Also, if there was such a thing as a "Complete game's story and reach level cap" button, why even play the game in the first place? Simply skip adding the "Defeat monsters and complete quest" and the "Collect items and finish quest" button, and just do a "Complete game's story, all contents, collect most powerful gear, and reach level cap" button. That way you wont even have to worry about spending time in the game, heck you dont even have to do ANYTHING. Lol. *wink.
Grinding is bad for people who dont like to grind. Concept of grinding is basically the same concept of end-game. You just mentioned it yourself.
In many games, yes. That's why the endgame in so many games is so awful. Just because a lot of other games do something stupid doesn't mean that this one should, too.
Shiningfantasia wrote:
Thing is, I am not saying to MAKE players grind. But certainly make grinding an available OPTION.
You can gain levels by grinding right now if you like. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think you mean is, make grinding a more effective option.
That, I think, would be a mistake. A lot of games have quests, but make straight grinding level you faster than doing quests. Players who do quests thus level artifically slowly. Players who don't do quests have to put up with an awful grindfest of a game.
Some quests will give experience faster than others. A company can try not to make it too egregiously this way, but it's bound to happen. If doing quests on average gets you about as much experience as grinding, then some quests will be slower than grinding. Players who do those quests thus level artifically slowly, which is simply a milder version of the same problem as before.
As far as interesting content goes, grinding one particular type of mobs for a while, then going to another one while skipping several along the way, and so forth, is dreadfully boring. Yet it's what grinding encourages, as some mobs give more experience and/or die faster than others. That's why quests that keep you moving around and fighting different mobs and give enough experience to be faster than grinding are important. Even rather mundane "kill x of y" quests are better than none at all.
Simply put, people are different, and some people like different approaches to leveling.
I guess I just like my approach to leveling the "boring way." :P Or, what others might say is "boring." And Wizard101 does not allow me to level up the "boring" way. Lol.
Either way, I am not dying, stated my opinions, respect yours, and I am overall a happy "wizard."
I don't mind the quests that have me collect 6 boxes, or defeat 10 street enemies. Those numbers are small and don't take an exceedingly long amount of time to do.
What I would mind, and what would make me leave Wizard101, is if that number became "defeat 70 of this enemy." To me, that is too much.
For example, I played Cabal for a short time. I was fine, at first, and was getting in to the storyline. For the first 20 levels or so I had to defeat anywhere from 10-20 enemies for a quest.
Fine. I can handle that.
However, when I deleted Cabal off my computer (with my character at level 47), I was getting quests that asked me to kill more than 150 of an enemy in order to finish the quest. In fact, one quest had me killing approximately 150 of an enemy that was MUCH more powerful than I was. I tried it, and after 3 hours (and only 60 of my 150 enemies killed), I realized that this wasn't the game for me. That quest is what killed Cabal for me, and made me log off...never to log back on.
While I know that every gamer plays for his or her own reasons, I don't see a benefit to adding a grinding option to a game like this. If you want to grind, there are games out there for you. Wizard101 is more based on quests and storylines and I, for one, am quite thankful that it is.
One aspect of this game that makes it feel like grinding is that you don't get credit for anything you've done prior to being assigned a particular quest. For example, suppose you kill 10 spiders on your way in to see a boss (because you ran into them on the street or because you were helping a friend). If the boss gives you a quest to prove your worth by killing 8 spiders, you have to go kill 8 more of them.
Sometimes, the running around makes sense because it follows the storyline. When you have to get the private's knife sharpened at the shop, it makes sense that you need to visit the athame shop *after* you see the private. Or when you are collecting spider eyes, it makes sense to go kill more spiders because you presumably wouldn't have known to collect their eyes earlier.
However, when there's no storyline tie-in, it just feels like busy work, or grinding, to have to kill more spiders -- or go back to "discover" the Balance School again even though you have already been there. The game would be more fun if it recognized those accomplishments out of sequence.
