Re: Quests, quests, quests...
@Mata I agree that manamon could have used to some improvements on the grinding, especially when experimenting with different manamon to see which can work.
@Caccio, I can definitely agree with you about how good exploring is, however for me quests give me a reason! to explore and something to do whilst exploring rather than just wandering around and seeing character stats increase.
A perfect example of this is alteraeon. This is an online game with full scale interesting combat. There are no doors or restrictions or locks on what areas you can go to, though of course walking into a higher level area before you've got tough enough to survive is not advisable. The game even rewards you for exploring areas directly with exploration points.
However if all there was to do in the game was just combat and progress watch your character improve as you slay things there is no reason! to go exploring.I 've always found myself that simply going down into the goblin caves to slay goblins for no reason or just to grind stats holds little fascination, but being told to go and get something or kill the goblin king or given a task to do is a different matter entirely.
It seems you got my concept of "exploring" wrong.
By that term, I don't mean merely wandering around, without any plans or goal set for myselfs,but right the opposite of that:
My aim while exploring is finding new, so far unseen areas, meet, and engage new, so far unknown NPC creatures or human players, loot some cool stuff from those I kill on my way, or even just find them randomly lying on the ground, visiting so far unvisited places, towns, sites, talk to so far unknown NPCs, and yes, accepting their offered quests as well, after all, if I happem to complete some of those during wandering around, even if unplanned, they will still mean unexpected rewards for my cha
racter...
So no, exploration-centric gameplay doesn't have to automatically exclude accepting and completing quests, those 2 elements can be combined just fine...UNTIL those quests won't restrict our movement over the game-map in any way.
And yes, I do dislike when games have their areas adjusted to player's skill-levels either, since that results in actual limitations of lower level players again, after all it wuld be quite foolish for them, to venture into realms with let's say 50 level higher/stronger monsters, so they would in matter fact still be restricted to areas adjusted for their current level.
The kind of games I like the most feature areas with totally mixed types of creatures/monsters, of totally different level, plus NPC characters offering quests to players of various races and levels, so that it is worth to any player, at any current skill level, to venture into any of those areas, since everyone of them will, or at least can fin d something suitable for himself, meaning things to do,like sites to visit and explore, actions to perform, new monsters to encounter and fight, NPCs to talk to, quests to complete, stuff to loot or find, etc.
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