I HAVE THE POWER
Many players quest in a zone only until they are high enough to move on, while some clear every available quest before progressing and yet others simply grind away the hours. The Power Gamer looks at all of these options and thinks, "Which path will get me to the level cap the fastest?" In earlier MMO's, with games like Final Fantasy XI giving no quest experience at all, the answer was frequently just grinding mobs. Later games, such as World of Warcraft, increased quest experience to such an extent that grinding quests became more advantageous then grinding mobs alone.
Players began to notice many objectives overlapped, and, by acquiring every related quest in a zone, they could knock them out in large chunks. While some players continued to read and enjoy the stories and lore included in these quests, the Power Gamers realized they could go much faster by ignoring that all together. Most MMOs in recent years have followed this example and allowed players to bypass story in the pursuit of levels, however Star Wars: The Old Republic is aspiring to buck this trend.
"One thing we don't want to do is NPC Pez dispensers, as I call them -- go over there, dispense a quest, and then go 'vacuum-clean' a zone. We want to make sure you listen to NPCs, because choices matter. And that's really important." - Rich Vogel
The Old Republic appears to be forming a triple threat to combat this form of questing with in-depth voice over work, multiple dialog choices and alignment based powers. The idea being that a player will need to pay attention to the voice overs so that they make the right dialog choices. These choices will effect their characters by leading them down one of the three possible alignments. Finally, each of these paths (dark, neutral and light) then have skills and abilities only accessible to characters of that specific alignment. The only problem being that BioWare may be supplying workarounds that allow players to beat them at their own game.
The first kink in BioWare's armor was revealed in our dissection of Video Documentary #3.
"I am as apathetic about the story as I am about your death"
BioWare is wisely adding the ability to skip dialogue; making it much easier for players to level up secondary characters of the same class as well as giving fast readers the opportunity to move the conversation along. However, this also lets power gamers simply speed by voice overs without paying them any mind. It may take a bit longer for them to accept or complete quests compared to other MMOs, but they will still be able to skip the story.
Next, we have the second phase of BioWare's protection against this play style: dialogue choices. If a player has bypassed all of the conversation then they might have a difficult time choosing their desired option using the Mass Effect style dialogue wheel. Once again, BioWare may be providing gamers will all the information they need to fully thwart the story, as can be seen in a recent interview with Sean Dahlberg we posted earlier.
"One of the things we want to do is be very transparent against it, you know. Unlike Kotor or other, Mass Effect, there was no save and restart or something in case you made a choice you really didn't want to. So at the end of the day we don't want to fool the player, going, 'Hey, I just saved the, uh, kitten,' just to to find out later it gave you a bunch of dark side points because the kitten was evil, and you didn't know that. Uh, we'll make the choices fairly transparent so it doesn't destroy your game..." - Sean Dahlberg
In order to achieve this transparency, BioWare will need to include some functionality within the chat wheel so that players will not be confused. Two ways to do this, both of which have been used by BioWare in the past, are placing the choices in the same order every time (light on top, neutral in middle, dark on bottom) or color coding the answers. These will also let the Power Gamer easily pick whichever answer pushes them down the desired path without ever needing to read a word. Which, in turn, then assures that these gamers will receive the exact powers they want while completely side stepping story.
Who cares why I'm killing you, force lightning rocks
By using systems that are likely to be in the game, Power Gamers will still be able to play the way they want to, regardless of BioWare's goal. While there are some other systems that could inhibit this play style, such as only having long quest chains and minimal quest log slots, the basic act of skipping content will still be there. There is a lot of time between now and release, but it seems this may be one battle that goes to the Power Gamer.
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Posted 9/23/2009 11:21:00 PMIt would be nice to limit the "race to the top", but if limitations are placed, then the people with the time on their hands will find ways to beat the system. Too bad there won't be a "If you listened to every single voice-over that we slaved over to get into the game you get "Insert weapon or armor name" of Doom +1" Either way, I'm quite anxious to see how it all plays out in the end. Great article.
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Posted 9/22/2009 4:04:32 PM"We believe in story, and we believe in the fans that like story. But if you don't like story, you're going to be able to play the game at your own pace the way you'd like to play."
You'll definitely be able to power level if that's your thing.
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Posted 9/22/2009 3:44:46 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/22/2009 5:59:23 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/22/2009 8:18:06 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/22/2009 3:35:46 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/22/2009 3:35:16 PM- View User Profile
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Posted 9/22/2009 3:14:32 PMWhen all else fails, i've heard some friends in WOTLK consuming alot of RedBull during their leveling :D