I'm a big fan of autoquesting. Just going to put that out there. I was thinking about it yesterday, when I was playing New World. After a flurry of enthusiasm, my re-ignited interest has dimmed a little, not because I've discovered anything I don't like but by comparison with the other mmorpg I'm playing these days, Noah's Heart.
On the face of it, the two games seem nothing alike, one being an almost self-consciously gritty, over-intellectualised, would-be grown-up take on the genre, the other more like something a bunch of slightly nerdy, anime-loving, over-enthusiastic middle-schoolers might throw together as a class project. Under the hood, though, they're basically the same game, as are virtually all mmorpgs.
That underlying similarity makes it hard not to notice and compare certain points where the moving parts of each game create friction. In Noah's Heart it's the mostly the spotty English translation and the occasionally glitchy code; in New World it's the dead-eyed voice acting, sucking the very soul out of almost every quest and NPC, along with the endless trudge from here to there and back again.
Even after the huge changes to travel in New World, it still takes forever to get anywhere. Yesterday, just trying to do a simple kill quest took me nearly half my allotted GeForce Now hour, with the nearest shrine a few minutes jog across the sands and a similar trek back for the hand in.
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You're up next, Jennie. Prepare to eat a lot of curry! |
What happens in Noah's Heart varies according to how much exploration you've done. When you click on the quest-tracker in the upper-right corner of your screen, assuming you've opened a teleport point anywhere near the location of the selected quest or hand-in, your character runs a few paces, then teleports to that portal. On arrival, depending on how far it is to the exact spot, your character either completes the journey on foot or summons a mount and rides there.
For destinations that are deemed too far from a previously visited portal stone, your character will sometimes mount up and ride the whole way. If there's no valid path, for example if you'd have to cross the sea to an area you've never visited, then the game will throw up its hands and ask you to follow a highlighted trail.
It's at that point Noah's Heart briefly aligns with New World as you follow a marker on your HUD, letting autorun do most of the driving except when an obstacle briefly requires human intervention. After more than three months of this kind of service, I'm finding much of the enjoyment I used to find in New World's slow travel increasingly elusive.
Since this is something of a volte face for me, having been a life-long advocate of slow travel both in games and real life, I took the trouble to stop and think about what might have changed. Perspective, probably.
Travelling slowly, stopping to admire the view, resting for a while, then moving on, often with no clear idea of where you're going; that's a pleasure all its own. When we talk about enjoying the journey that's the kind of journey we most likely mean, a journey to nowhere in particular, for no better reason than to be moving through the world.
A new mmorpg is like that for a while, maybe a week or two, perhaps as long as a few months. Everything's fresh and different, wonders waiting around every bend in the road. New World was like that for a couple of months last year; Brimstone Sands, too, for a week or so.
Noah's Heart, for all I've been singing the praises of its comprehensive autoquesting, has been very much the same - when I've not been questing. I've spent a good deal of time sailing the seas in search of undiscovered islands, cimbing to the tops of mountains then launching myself into the sky with my jetpack. The scenery is fantastic and there are all kinds of oddities to search out in the most obscure places.
When I'm following the storyline, though, something that frequently involves travelling from town to town just talking to people, the option to skip the roadwork is a godsend. I think back to my days in Final Fantasy XIV, which had a similar propensity for cross-continental treks, and I can only wish the same facility had existed then and there.
Last night, I completed a goal I've had in Noah's Heart almost since I began playing: I finally maxed my Affection with Charlie Babbage.
It's been a long haul. There are twelve tiers of Affection, the first taking just 100 points to fulfill, the last 18,000.
It was obvious right from the start that I'd have to pick one Phantom and stick with them if I was ever going to reap the rewards that come with making imaginary friends in the game. I picked Charlie mostly for no better reason than she was one of the first Phantoms I acquired but even though she's rated as one of the weaker choices I quickly developed a genuine affection for her beyond the eponymous game mechanic.
Charlie is a hardcore introvert, who prefers machines to people, as she repeatedly tells anyone who tries to strike up an acquaintance with her. She struggles with the whole concept of friendship, which makes successfully befriending her somehow more satisfying.
Other than the existential glow of simply seeing it happen, there are tangible rewards to becoming BFFs with Phantoms, not least of them the excellent titles you pick up along the way.
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This passes for small talk in Charlie's world. |
I should probably do a whole post about Titles in Noah's Heart, where they seem to play a considerably more important role than in any other mmorpg I can remember, but to do that I'd have to understand exactly how they work, which I very much do not. For now, I'll just stick to talking about the titles as they display above your head in the gameworld, which is truly something to behold.
Display titles vary from simple text to vast, neon signs suitable for tacking onto the side of a 1950s motel. When a bunch of players come together it's sometimes hard to see anything but their titles.
Normally I like to keep such visual clutter to a minimum but when it's so obviously a cultural norm, opting out starts to feel churlish. For a while one of my favorites was the title I got when I hit Affection Level 8 with Charlie: Mechanical Geek, but although I appreciated the sentiment, the visual presentation was, perhaps appropriately, understated.
Somehow I just didn't seem to be hitting the kinds of markers to trigger the super-flashy overheads and I was feeling the lack of a suitable personal bilboard. Then Charlie and I reached Affection Level 11. Level 10 had given me the pleasant enough Mechanical Friend but eleven went way more than one louder with the enigmatic Upside Potential, complete with substantial yet equally gnomic iconography. I've been sporting it ever since.
The final payoff for maxing affection with all Phantoms is you get to dress like them. I know, right? There's a whole term paper in there. Charlie has a great look (Most Phantoms do. They all have amazing fashion sense.) so I was very excited last night when I handed her the final meat curry that won her heart (Don't ask...)
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UI removed with
SnapEdit. Thanks,
Tipa! |
You don't just get handed one of your phantoms old outfits, of course. You get given the pattern and then you have to make it yourself. I've been working on my Tailoring so I had the skills. What I didn't have were the materials.
And that's where we come back to autoquesting (Admit it, you thought I'd forgotten what I was supposed to be writing about for a while there, didn't you?) or, in this case, autogathering. After fifteen weeks you'd have thought I'd have realised it was a thing in Noah's Heart but, like much in the game, it had somehow managed to pass me by until I tripped over it by accident.
Noah's Heart may have next to no web presence, nowhere you can go to look things up with any hope of finding what you need, but in-game it's one of the best-documented mmorpgs I've ever played. Everything offers up a concise, clear and accurate tool-tip when moused over or right-clicked, including every icon used within those explanations.
I was quickly able to click through the pattern to the components to the
source of the materials and then - the bit I didn't already know - to the
closest location on the map where those materials could be gathered. Click on
that and autopathing runs you there, stopping only to teleport you most
of the way to save you the trouble of running.
It was joyous! In no time I had the hundred and fifty flax I was missing. I only wish the autonomic controls went so far as to gather it all for me, as well. I'm not convinced I gained any enjoyment from having to move a few pixels and press K every couple of seconds in a vague simulation of the gathering process.
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See that dye? Only available for Shells, the currency you get from
the World Boss. I need one more kill for the rest to buy the second.
Should get it tonight, I hope. |
And there's the problem. How much automation is too much? How many keypresses can be dispensed with before the game ceases to become a game at all? (Or, I guess, becomes an Idle Game, which is something else again.)
There's clearly no simple answer, even for individual players. The exact, same things I relish one day in one game I may revile the next in another. As usual, it comes down as much to how a function is implemented as to what it actually does.
Autoquesting in Noah's Heart (Which, I should mention, is entirely optional.) somehow manages to hit a sweet spot for me. Now I've become used to it, I find myself missing it in other games. Activities that used to be pleasurable are starting to take on the texture of chores. As I began by saying, it's no co-incidence I'm already slipping away from New World; even after the makeover, it just takes too long to get to the fun parts.
Although, to be strictly accurate, I think Noah's Heart just has more fun parts for me right now. The bright colors, the cheery characters, the overall goofiness (The lead villain in the current story Season is Sigmund Freud, ffs!), the ever-proliferating yet always seemingly-achievable targets... it's the kind of bright, light-hearted nonsense that makes dark winter days feel lighter. New World, even in the harsh, desert sunlight, might just be a little too heavy to fit my mood at the moment.
I'm about as sure as I can be the pendulum will swing again. I'll be here, soon enough, no doubt, to rescind this post while making claims for the joys of doing everything the old-fashioned way, by hand. I'm sure of it.
For now, though, I'm enjoying not having to do all the grunt work. Let's let
the AI take care of that. It's why we invented the damn thing, isn't it?
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I've played (briefly) more than one MMO where everything was automated. Literally everything. Your character went and did the thing, and when it was done, you just had it do the next thing. It'd do all the traveling, killing and looting. Obvs Noah's Heart isn't like that, but for those games that were, I didn't see why it needed players at all...
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