Something Irrelevent: LaTale

So for the past few days or so I haven't been playing MegaTen. Instead I've been trying my hand at another MMO Aeria is going to pick up, LaTale. However, instead of playing Aeria's version (I wasn't invited to CB anyways...) I headed over to OGP's version.

This game is essentially like Maplestory. 2D graphics, one plane, horrible amounts of grind etc.

Now what I wanted to talk about was LaTale's quest system. Anyone that knows me knows that I have horrid stamina to long periods of grind. Which explains how the farthest I got in Maplestory was level 23, which is pretty fail if you never played the game.

The same goes LaTale as it follows the same principles as other MMOs:

1)Grind here
2)Level up XX times
3)Move onto next area
4)Repeat

Still, I enjoyed LaTale much more than Maplestory even though they are both grindfests. One thing I have to hand it to, is the amount of quests LaTale offers over Maplestory (though I only made it to level 23 so I have no say about it).

The quests in LaTale are the standard "Talk to so and so guy and kill so and so monster so and so times" but what OGP did with the quests is interesting. In the JP and KRN version they follow the same follow the same outline, but what OGP did was that they took those quests, divided the things you needed to do and rewards earned by three. Then, they made it so you can repeat the quest three times, ending up with the same experience as intended.

The way OGP dealt with this was interesting to me as there was less emphasis on grinding because when you start off you can already accept one or two quests, and then repeat those three times. You'll also probably level up while completing them and then you can accept more quests even though you still haven't finished the quests you started with. So even though you are grinding you end up spending more time running around to complete the quests. Yes, it does feel repetitive but it gave me a small sense of accomplishment, no matter how trivial it was.

I'll relate this to Megaten since this is supposed to be a Megaten blog.

When I first started Megaten what probably drawn me in was that there was a story and that is was presented through Acts that actually had variety to it. Oh, and instanced dungeons but those are a dime a dozen the more I actually looked at MMOs.

tl;dr Questing, even if they can be repetitive, as long as they have decent rewards will prolong my grinding and stay with the game.