Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Do a Dallop of Dailies?

So, as most of you know, I've been playing a bit of Rift. It's a very slick MMO that is just really cool looking and fun--like "the game which shall not be named" fun. It's so cool that it takes itself a bit too seriously, but I like it! It's been a fun couple of months playing it.

I left World of Warcraft a long time ago and only looked back once or twice, but I never got to experience the daily quests in WoW. I do remember when all my friends at work started saying they were making a lot of money by just running the daily quests every day. It was a solo activity outside in the main world (there were group ones too from what I'm reading). I imagine the main complaint would be that they are repetitive . . . of course . . . everyday you run the same quest over, but that's kind of the nature of the beast, and before "dailies," people would simply farm lower level instances over and over and over for money. I used to do that with my paladin all the time. Looking for some quick cash? Run into The Stockade and just AoE everything dead. /loot! /auction house! /repeat!

Then a little after Burning Crusade was released, Blizzard gifted the players of WoW around 45 dailies, of which you could run 25 of those each day (at least that's what this website is telling me). Wrath of the Lich king introduced more.

Now that I'm playing Rift, I'm seeing the same mechanic. There are dailies all over Telera, so I'm finally getting a chance to see this mechanic in play.

I like it!

One of my favorites is called Bare Knuckled: The Return. In this quest you basically get to face off with one of 16 random competitors each day, three times a day. Each fight plays a little differently and some are harder than others. Each time you win, you are awarded with a "fighter's purse" that has a couple of scrolls with some stat enhancing buffs and a couple of mana potions. You also get some money for each fight you win. Each competitor that you down has an item on them that eventually will complete a "set" of items that you can turn in for a reward and an achievement.

Why do I tell you all this?

Wizard101 needs dailies. It would be such a perfect compliment to the spiral, it kind of freaks me out. Crowns players have to pay crowns to open up an area to play in it, right? But after you've purchased an area (especially a lower level area), it kind of feels like will I ever really be back to Firecat Alley? If you follow the game to its conclusion and never look back, never farm for reagents there, never farm bosses there, etc., then yeah . . . you might feel a bit ripped off.

DAILIES COULD BE THE ANSWER!

If every day I could return to Firecat Alley and earn some money or a get a small chance at a rare drop, then it would keep me coming back to the zone. This also gets higher level characters intermingling with lower level characters more often.

Another daily in Rift that I like is one involving an ant queen in the Droughtlands. Every day you have the chance to turn into a queen ant and spray pheromones onto other ants and lead them around. It's so incredibly awesome to see your character in a new light. Fun factor is fun!

Back to our daily quest in Firecat Alley--What if part of your daily was to run around for a few minutes in a free fire elf polymorph in which you have to fight against the plague of skeletons? Then you just have to report back to Prince Alicane Swiftarrow for your reward, who would not suck you into battle as long as you were in fire elf illusion . . . I like it!

If KingsIsle was really adventurous, they could also tie a faction system into certain zones like Firecat Alley. What if you had a separate stat where you could build Firecat Alley faction tickets that could be used to buy special unique wands and clothes with a Firecat Alley flare. Maybe you could even purchase a special Fire Elf Polymorph card and open up tiers of new badges. These items and benefits would have to be attractive to all level ranges.

I think this should be done in every world of the spiral as well. For instance:

Firecat Alley = Wizard City's daily quest zone
Hall of Champions = Krokotopia's daily quest zone
Newgate Prison = Marleybone daily quest zone
Village of Sorrow = Mooshu daily quest zone
Plaza of Conquests = Dragonspyre daily quest zone
Stormrivin = Celestia daily quest zone
Vestrilund = Grizzleheim daily quest zone

If there were daily quests in each of those zones, just imagine the traffic that would generate to those worlds.

Here's the thing about Wizard101 as well. Sometimes people will buy up to Krokotopia and then have to wait for the next allowance to come through before they can buy another area. So, in essence, they're stuck in Krokotopia for 1,000 days. ;-) If there were a couple areas these people could play in by completing dailies while waiting for the next pay day to come through, then awesome! Perfect! It would keep them coming back!

All practical realities of what it would actually take for KingsIsle to implement a system like this aside . . . What do you think?

Happy dueling!

16 comments:

spiralblogger said...

I think it would be a great idea!

Fatal Exception said...

+1 Agreed

John said...

Awesome idea I love it!
And nice stuck in Krokotopia for 1000 days nod, haha. :)

The Prince of Myth said...

Yeah that would be epic!!! That thing about buying up to Krookatopia is exactly what happened to me.

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http://theprinceofmyth.blogspot.com

Diana Wildheart said...

That will be interesting to keep us activities in game instead do this or that make them so boring. Why not, Kingsisle?

Fin and Quinn said...

Personally I think this is a very bad idea. Dailies are always something that appeared in more "hard-core" MMOs, ex. you won't see them in Free Realms. When you end up releasing extremely wanted rewards from them (looking at you, WoW) they become really, really, really repetitive and grindy. Wizard101 doesn't want that. The game is already almost exactly the same every time you play it through. Kingsisle should add things that move the game AWAY from repetive not towards it.

I've farmed dailies before. They get boring pretty quickly. Even the cool ones, like "Turn into a Wolverine and Smash Some Pumpkins" (just made that one up lol). After the, idk, 50th time, it gets boring.

Often, also, dailies go hand in hand with raids so they aren't pointless the 17th time you do it, and you get rewards besides the main reward (I believe that is the case in LotRO, and I know that in WoW you need to do quite a few dailies to get a good enough standing in a faction to unlock the raid, though they might have gotten rid of this). In that case, the only dailies I could see that might actually be added is when Kingsisle released 8 or 12 person raids (one of the problems they have discussed before was there being no in game boss fights, they will HAVE to turn to Raids eventually.

Well, I guess that's all I have to say. Tell if you agree or not!

-Quinn

P.S. The idea is overall good, but probably not so good for a already terribly grindy MMO like Wizard101. It's not like you can choose to do completely different zones if you want a change of pace.

Anonymous said...

I agree friendly! I got bored with w101 I found a new game called champione online F2P wich is free to play and I highly suggest this superhero based game to to you and all you readers. sorry for getting a bit off topic but CO F2P has some missions you can do up to five times a day which is pretty cool

Random said...

@anon

what is WRONG with you? you got bored of W101?!?! thats not even possible!! did aliens suck your brain out or something???? gosh man something is not right!

Anonymous said...

I think this kind of thing would be ideal for one of those (hopefully) yet-to-be-opened areas, like Barkingham Palace in Marleybone or the mysterious crypt in Northguard. However, with regard to the repetition, I can see how that would get annoying. Maybe the rare drop that you mentioned could rotate each day, or, like the clothing items from the Mega Cards, the stats of the drop could be selected for different levels? Also, because high-level players tend to form groups for instances (and subsequently get incredibly distraught when they are placed with lower-levels), either this kind of thing should be individual, as you said it was originally in other MMOs, or there should be a requirement for the levels of players entering. For example, maybe a few could be individual/group-optional, but some of the more challenging ones would have to take an Initiate, a Magus, a Master and a Legendary in a group together. This could provide some good bonding for players of all levels, as you said. Thanks for bringing up this topic, by the way; it's a really great idea, and I hope KI takes it into account!

flash333 said...

Interesting, I like it.
If KI does implement this into the game, they'll probably have a separate zone for it so it doesn't affect the rest of the game all that much (kinda like side-quests).

Seth Hunter said...

i was thinking KI would add like a bounty system spin (similar to your idea) like farming a boss repeatedly for an item or just kill something say 2-10 times as a bounty quest.

Garrett HawkFlame said...

I like that idea. I have the Rift game downloaded on my computer but I haven's had time to even play it. But what you said made sense and I hope it'll happen.

Nice idea friendly ;)

Stingite said...

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

@Fin&Quinn: Well, something is better than nothing! I gotta have trust in KI that if by some crazy chance they actually implement dailies, that they would design them better than say . . . the pet pavillion games? I think they've learned from that mistake.

Flame Dancer said...

I think this would be awesome! But wait until next expansion so we can all get experience from it ;)

Unknown said...

I think that would be amazing! I for one am a crowns player and I'm stuck in right before Big Ben right now. This would give me a little use for my highest level character!

I think they could even work to do it without the exp, then nobody would be getting less (ex. Legendaries)

Anonymous said...

FRIENDLY, WIZARD101 IS THE BEST GAME EVER! no other game can beat it! but you should try out this new game called Grand Fantasia, please play it, try it, even if you play for the first five minutes and you hate it i will be satisfied, its really fun if you learn how to play it, please decide to play it, even for an hour, if you hate it you can undownload it and never have to look at it again, try it try it try it try it try it try it!!!!