Don't Make Me Repeat Myself

Yesterday I wrote praises of City of Heroes, with a little side note that City of Villains (when I last played it, at least) did not mirror those expectations. In the process of trying out the different character options, I completed the same introductory quests over and over. And over. And over and over. This is among the greater sins an MMO can commit, in my opinion.

Don't make me repeat myself! Quests are only interesting the first couple times. After that they become a chore. Shortly after becoming a chore, they become torture. Variety in content is absolutely necessary. In World of Warcraft, you at least get a different starting zone for each race, maybe a couple class-specific quests. When I played City of Villains, I quickly became tired of the same few quests with every new baddie I started. Ultimately, it led to a closed account.

Folks, please don't bore your players with repetitive tasks. It's really not that hard to put together a decent dynamic content generator. One that my friend Jason is fond of is one implemented in Anarchy Online: as he describes it (I haven't played AO), a machine allows players to pick and choose randomly generated quests, showing the rewards and requirements. Of course, it's much more difficult to automatically generate really immersive or involved quests, but I would imagine it's possible. In the absence of such a system, I'd settle for the AO model.

On the subject of repetition, I'll get into Ultima Online's skill system sometime.