Rejuvenation's quest system is SEVERELY flawed. Here's why.

[lqsx]

Note: I’m gonna say “walk” a lot when referring to moving from place to place. I know there’s a run button and a speed up button. You don’t need to tell me.

 

I've tried to get into Rejuvenation multiple times, but I've ended up dropping the game very early each time. I'm currently not very far in the game at the moment, I think the Help Center system in this game is SEVERELY flawed, but before I start trying to tear it apart, there are a few very big benefits of the system over Reborn's "unlisted" sidequests:

1. The Help Center prevents the player from missing out on or forgetting about meaty side content just because they missed some random NPC in a house they didn't check.

2. Quest Exclusivity allows for more frequent complicated quest design without leading to too much player confusion with a dozen overlapping quests, which allows for denser worldbuilding.

3. The quest list telegraphs the potential rewards from a quest beforehand so you don't, for instance, miss Reborn's EXP share that's locked behind the "find all the furniture that disappeared" quest.

4. It can telegraph a quest's potential difficulty probably with something like a recommended level or opponent type specialty at the acceptance screen (though this isn't implemented), which allows overlevelled quests to exist without the unintended consequence of surprising players wandering the overworld and making them go "welp, guess I'm blacking out" or resetting.

5. It allows for different instances of certain areas to appear based on quest status, decreasing the likelyhood of unexpectedly running into sudden difficulty spikes while keeping the encounters accessible at a time when they would be real significant challenges.

 

And here's the bad:

1. The Help Center is horrible waste of the player’s time.

   • Here's what you do in the simplest "Save Starly" sidequest:

     1. (optional) Talk to the questgiver in Gearen Lab that tells you to go to the Help Center

     2. (optional*) Complete previous quest because you can only accept one at a time. A quest this simple would normally be a trivial diversion you could go through without

     3. Walk to the Help Center, (abandon previous quest), accept quest

     4. Walk (back) to the questgiver in Gearen Lab to learn where the Starly is

     5. Walk to the docks to confront the gang members. 

        1. If the encounter is too difficult to get through (probably not true for this one in particular but will be true for multiple others), and you want to try out another quest instead of grinding/resetting:

           1. Walk back to the help center to give up on this quest and start on another*

           2. Once you’re at an appropriate level, walk back to the help center once again to re-accept this quest when you think you're prepared (and you could totally guess wrong and have to give up the quest again))

     6. Walk back to the help center to get the reward and start the next quest despite the fact that some questgivers are closer to where the player is than the help center is
        
        *You technically can't do this in this instance since it's a required tutorial
         

   • I shouldn’t have to say this, but walking isn’t fun, engaging gameplay. In a game like Reborn without a dedicated quest system, this is how the quest would go:

     1. (Optional) You find the questgiver in front of some dead-end alleyway, maybe "panicked" pacing to grab your attention (or a persistent "!" bubble if Rejuv's UI is used).

     2. The gang members are a few tiles past the questgiver down the alley, and give dialogue that gets us up to speed regardless of whether or not you talked to the questgiver, something like "You here to 'save' that little girl's precious Starly? Too bad! It's ours now!"

     3. Immediately after beating the gang members, the "story" cutscene plays, followed by the questgiver walking the few tiles towards you and giving you a reward.
         

   • Note that the questgiver can't be too far from the gang members. If the player doesn’t see the direct connection between the questgiver and the gang, they would see the questgiver taking away the overpowered bird friend they were about to make and be very sad at the comparatively worse reward for the quest. 

   • Cutting out the physical Help Center location saves us MINUTES OF WALKING and forces each quest to be tighter and more immediately understandable since the developers won't have a "where do I go next" NPC to use as a crutch for bad objective conveyance.

   • I'm sure there are waaaay better sidequests later on the game. I don't doubt that. You could very easily make the argument that this is a bad sidequest that should be skipped (though you still can't, since it's a prerequisite for future sidequests and has what looks to be a major character intro). The "if it's bad just skip it" argument is also really dumb since it doesn't take into account a player's first blind playthrough where they won't know what is and isn't "worth doing".

   • To address the positive point of the Help Center being used as a tool to prevent the player from missing good content, this could have also be done by having a visible "!" expression bubble above the head of each questgiver and a quest log on the Pokegear. The player not seeing everything the game has to offer isn’t really a huge issue anyways given the extremely hardcore target demographic that will actively seek out everything there is to do.

   • Since all the "important story" content will be conveyed to the player, there's less of an incentive to talk to all the NPCs scattered around the town because surely the developers wouldn't want to lock important things behind some random dude only a small fraction of players will talk to… but you get a fishing rod and coin case by talking to some NPCs that aren’t telegraphed as important, so you end up having to talk to everyone anyways.

2. Quest Exclusivity allows for more frequent complicated quest design, acting as a band-aid over tedious and convoluted quests that would otherwise be extremely difficult to follow

   • Each NPC in a quest has to explicitly tell you a very specific place to go next (otherwise the quest exclusivity would make re-talking to a bunch of NPCs and seeing if any of them have a different response areal annoying chore), further exacerbating the feeling of railroading and checking off each box one by one.

     1. The haircut quest had you walking back and forth between haircut clients and the girl at the shop, with some clients not repeating the "where to go next" dialogue when talking to them again, so if you forgot it… rip. You might also just walk to the next building in search for the next haircut client, but NOPE you gotta walk back to the daughter first for some quick remarks before the correct NPC will advance the quest.

     2. In the love letter quest I talked to the wrong guy and thought I was stuck. Turns out it was a different guy with a similar sprite in a position that the unrepeatable (unless you walk to the help center and restart the quest, I assume) cutscene before it poorly indicated.

   • I would rhetorically ask "how did this stuff get past testing", but the answer is pretty clear; the audience of the Reborn/Rejuvenation fangames are generally either:

     1. The extremely hardcore Pokemon audience that's willing to look past the horrendous pacing for some good battles to test them, and are generally open to reading guides if it helps them with their team minmaxing

     2. Literal children (like me when I got into Reborn) that don't value their time and are willing to accept grinding, EV training, and talking to every NPC when they get stuck on a quest because they take the meme of "git gud" seriously, holding themselves accountable for their perceived failures rather than calling out bad encounter and quest design.

3. The Quest List transparently showing the list of sidequests and their rewards can have one of two outcomes:

   • Player Indifference: The player knowingly skips content they would have enjoyed otherwise because they tunnel-vision on the rewards. I really doubt that most people playing Reborn/Rejuvenation fall into this category until at least their second playthrough, where they’ll probably know what is and isn’t worth doing, so I won’t spend much time talking about this.

   • Player Passivity: When the player is presented with a list of objectives, they just start ticking off the boxes one by one. Rather than exploring the world at their own pace, they railroad themselves into a quest, then another, and then another. While it’s good that players are likely to do all that there is in a game, there are some problems:

     1. There’s no parallel progression, since as mentioned earlier, quest exclusivity is a thing. Parallel progression is what makes games like Breath of the Wild and Reborn so fun. In those games, there’s always another interesting thing right around the corner and the player has the choice to either explore the little diversion and get some marginal statistical benefit and some extra variety in gameplay or continue with their current objective. Rejuvenation doesn’t give you this choice. The player just has to make a beeline for the next step in the chain since you’re locked out of progressing in the other quest until you’ve finished (or abandoned) the one you’re currently on. Then you’ve gotta walk back to your the Help Center and walk back to the objective that would in theory have been in the player’s path 20 minutes ago but was artificially locked away because the quest wasn’t active. This makes every run-through of a quest feel effectively the same and extremely restrictive in a meta-progression sense. The game has to rely on branching paths/dialogue choices for the illusion of novelty, which take more time to develop than just letting the player do what they want on their terms. For a game that’s (at least in theory) designed to be replayed with different choices, this is really bad.

     2. Players’ insatiable urge to check all the boxes before moving on really pads out the game’s pacing. Yes, this game suffers from having too much content. When the player is doing sidequests, they are by definition not making progress through the main story, which is what leads to the biggest major leaps in player power, the level cap increases and area unlocks with new pokemon and items to collect. Judging by the level curves, the game isn't designed to be plowed through, main story only, in the same way games like Fire Emblem are. The player is pushed towards sidequests as a way to get the resources (EXP, early game money, exclusive pokemon) that will make the main story’s roadblocks easier to get overcome. These sidequests are significantly more time-consuming than Reborn's due to their much greater focus on plot. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but in effect, these long story quests will become padding as the player eventually realizes they’ve spent n hours without their team getting significantly stronger.

     3. The player can accept (and lock themselves into) quests in any order they want, and that’s a problem. In a mostly linear game like Pokemon, the developer has responsibility over the gameplay loop, always hoping to strike the right balance with new areas for wild pokemon to catch, fodder trainers, minibosses, dungeons, and gym leaders. Giving the player control (and locking them into the decision they make under penalty of walking back to the Help Center) will lead to them unintentionally getting into a quest type that they’re tired of at the moment and slogging through it. The quest info screen also isn’t always helpful/transparent about what kind of gameplay to expect from a quest, so there will probably be surprise appearances of gameplay segments that aren’t appealing at a given point in time.

     4. Variety in the gameplay types in sidequests is also lacking (at least in the early game). While Reborn generally has a divide between the main story’s focus on major battles and dungeons and the side content’s focus on exploration, bonus character relationships, and insane puzzles (with some overlap between the two of course) Rejuvenation kinda likes throwing a bunch of battles at the player, leading us to the next issue:

4. The quest list doesn’t telegraph a quest's potential difficulty.

   • By consolidating everything in the same sidequest list with no indication of difficulty outside of the order in which they're posted, the player is bound to unknowingly run into encounters that they're underlevelled for. Instead of the player telling themself "I'll come back later when my team is ready for this," and just walking away, in Rejuvenation, you’re locked in, so you have to walk back to the help center to abandon and get another quest to try. You also have to walk back to the help center to re-accept the quest when you think you have a strong enough team to take on the sidequest (though if you misjudged the opponent's strength, yeah guess you gotta abandon the quest again if you don't wanna lock yourself out of progressing through other quests!) NO, I WILL NOT STOP BRINGING THIS UP BECAUSE IT COMPOUNDS EVERY OTHER ISSUE

   • The level of spike some of these sidequests are in the difficulty curve is also pretty insane. Before the most recent hotfix, the only good way to grind before Venam's gym was by doing an overlevelled sidequest, levelling up, and intentionally losing so the encounter can be repeated, which is incredibly dumb. I personally think sidequests should be an escape and opportunity to power up for the crushingly difficult main game. Sidequests are often what gives the player the resources that bring them higher up on the progression curve than if they just followed the main story. When the most signposted path towards improving your team in battle forces you to face the same type of challenge you probably aren't equipped to handle just yet, that's really dumb, especially when things like the nidorans and flechlings are given out with so much less resistance in comparison.

   • Players know they won't have to complete unfair difficulty spike sidequests as soon as they get them, so the "best solution" that minimizes frustration/grinding/resetting/walking to the help center to abandon is to simply not engage with them until you have a team that's levelled to be even with or above theirs, possibly leading to trivializing encounters that might have been a fun challenge if you went at them at the right point in the progression curve. As I mentioned before, Reborn alleviates this issue by making most side content primarily exploration-based, with much of the 'difficulty' that leads to player satisfaction when reaching the goal in sidequests coming from the puzzles and exploration. The player's enjoyment of puzzles and exploration aren’t affected much by where they are on the progression curve, but the player's enjoyment of Rejuvenation's surprise difficulty spike battle sidequests definitely will be. (It also helps that Reborn puts fewer hoops in the way of leaving surprise difficulty spike sidequests and coming back later since it doesn't force the player to walk to the help center to abandon the quest and walk back to re-accept it later)

5. The quest system locks different instances of certain areas behind quest acceptance/progress, ruining the organic discovery process.

   • Changes to certain areas or NPC encounters that you might be thrilled to discover organically now only occur after having accepted and advanced the correct quest. This makes the world "feel" less organic. Instead of seeing something interesting and interacting with it, you’re just take a guided tour through all that Rejuvenation has to offer after an NPC tells you where to go to advance your progress in a quest. I understand that nothing about Reborn's overworld encounters is inherently more "organic" since each one had to be evented by the developers and all that, but I feel Rejuvenation is way too transparent with its events that blink into existence after accepting a certain quest, disappear when the quest is cancelled, and reappear when it's accepted again.

   • The “checking off boxes” problem is further exacerbated by Rejuvenation’s (early game) world design. Walk into a tall building? Guess I’ll just check four floors to see if anyone gives me anything worthwhile. Goldenwood Forest and cave are effectively a corridor with minimal exploration. Barely anything of note is obtained from going off the critical path in the sewers. While Reborn had the underground railnet entrance tucked past a forgettable part of town, the secret garden, hidden fishing pond, and the house with the espurr event before its first badge, nothing the player can do before the first badge in Rejuvenation “feels” like it was some neat secret that they should feel special about for finding. The Nidoran, Fletchling, and Buizel events are just kinda… sitting there in the open and the optional grass/bug type park to the South of the town is also just… there. Even the TMs were trivial to obtain.

   • The "go here do this to get this" approach to player direction will also likely diminish the feeling of accomplishment you get in Reborn when doing something like Route 1's Heracross/Pinsir quest or finding all the secrets in the wasteland or revisiting all the rock climb spots. The best part about those sidequests is that they’re always just waiting there for the player to discover what’s at the end, with the only thing driving the player towards them being their curiosity. They’re doing the puzzles because they want to, not for the promise of what they’ll get in return. When you discover that the Heracross/Pinsir is catchable, the player is left surprised and gratified rather than thinking, “ughhh I had to do all that to get it?”
      

Rejuvenation isn't a game that respects the player's time. It railroads the player to engage with it on its own terms with its own systems rather than allowing for real player freedom and the micro-narratives and surprises that come with it. It feels like all the content is being shoved down the player's throat, heavily pushing them to check each box off one by one until they get stuck and are forced to spend even more of their time grinding or walking. For being in a game that’s designed to be replayed, the early parts of Rejuvenation sure are a chore to go through, even for the first time.

 

---

(I really just spent n hours of my life writing on this instead of the paper that I'll probably be basing my doctoral thesis on, so who am I to tell you what is and isn't a good way to spend your time.)

 

[ZeptoCZ]

[Tikkit]

This is a certified walking moment.

[cons00mption]

can u plz give a tl:dr

i dont mean to be rude but no one wants to read a textwall

[FerrousOxide]

This sounds a whole lot of walking you are doing here for an incredibly minor grievance

[TheVentusX]

Wow.............................................the time I used up to read this could have been used for something... kinda...more useful.

 

I think it would be easier to just walk than writing a textwall about a minor "problem"

 

But I appreciate your hard work to show us your opinon. 

[RebornHu]

Not reading lol

[Dausk]

2 hours ago, lqsx said:

Note: I’m gonna say “walk” a lot when referring to moving from place to place. I know there’s a run button and a speed up button. You don’t need to tell me.

 

I've tried to get into Rejuvenation multiple times, but I've ended up dropping the game very early each time. I'm currently not very far in the game at the moment, I think the Help Center system in this game is SEVERELY flawed, but before I start trying to tear it apart, there are a few very big benefits of the system over Reborn's "unlisted" sidequests:

1. The Help Center prevents the player from missing out on or forgetting about meaty side content just because they missed some random NPC in a house they didn't check.

2. Quest Exclusivity allows for more frequent complicated quest design without leading to too much player confusion with a dozen overlapping quests, which allows for denser worldbuilding.

3. The quest list telegraphs the potential rewards from a quest beforehand so you don't, for instance, miss Reborn's EXP share that's locked behind the "find all the furniture that disappeared" quest.

4. It can telegraph a quest's potential difficulty probably with something like a recommended level or opponent type specialty at the acceptance screen (though this isn't implemented), which allows overlevelled quests to exist without the unintended consequence of surprising players wandering the overworld and making them go "welp, guess I'm blacking out" or resetting.

5. It allows for different instances of certain areas to appear based on quest status, decreasing the likelyhood of unexpectedly running into sudden difficulty spikes while keeping the encounters accessible at a time when they would be real significant challenges.

 

And here's the bad:

1. The Help Center is horrible waste of the player’s time.

   • Here's what you do in the simplest "Save Starly" sidequest:

     1. (optional) Talk to the questgiver in Gearen Lab that tells you to go to the Help Center

     2. (optional*) Complete previous quest because you can only accept one at a time. A quest this simple would normally be a trivial diversion you could go through without

     3. Walk to the Help Center, (abandon previous quest), accept quest

     4. Walk (back) to the questgiver in Gearen Lab to learn where the Starly is

     5. Walk to the docks to confront the gang members. 

        1. If the encounter is too difficult to get through (probably not true for this one in particular but will be true for multiple others), and you want to try out another quest instead of grinding/resetting:

           1. Walk back to the help center to give up on this quest and start on another*

           2. Once you’re at an appropriate level, walk back to the help center once again to re-accept this quest when you think you're prepared (and you could totally guess wrong and have to give up the quest again))

     6. Walk back to the help center to get the reward and start the next quest despite the fact that some questgivers are closer to where the player is than the help center is
        
        *You technically can't do this in this instance since it's a required tutorial
         

   • I shouldn’t have to say this, but walking isn’t fun, engaging gameplay. In a game like Reborn without a dedicated quest system, this is how the quest would go:

     1. (Optional) You find the questgiver in front of some dead-end alleyway, maybe "panicked" pacing to grab your attention (or a persistent "!" bubble if Rejuv's UI is used).

     2. The gang members are a few tiles past the questgiver down the alley, and give dialogue that gets us up to speed regardless of whether or not you talked to the questgiver, something like "You here to 'save' that little girl's precious Starly? Too bad! It's ours now!"

     3. Immediately after beating the gang members, the "story" cutscene plays, followed by the questgiver walking the few tiles towards you and giving you a reward.
         

   • Note that the questgiver can't be too far from the gang members. If the player doesn’t see the direct connection between the questgiver and the gang, they would see the questgiver taking away the overpowered bird friend they were about to make and be very sad at the comparatively worse reward for the quest. 

   • Cutting out the physical Help Center location saves us MINUTES OF WALKING and forces each quest to be tighter and more immediately understandable since the developers won't have a "where do I go next" NPC to use as a crutch for bad objective conveyance.

   • I'm sure there are waaaay better sidequests later on the game. I don't doubt that. You could very easily make the argument that this is a bad sidequest that should be skipped (though you still can't, since it's a prerequisite for future sidequests and has what looks to be a major character intro). The "if it's bad just skip it" argument is also really dumb since it doesn't take into account a player's first blind playthrough where they won't know what is and isn't "worth doing".

   • To address the positive point of the Help Center being used as a tool to prevent the player from missing good content, this could have also be done by having a visible "!" expression bubble above the head of each questgiver and a quest log on the Pokegear. The player not seeing everything the game has to offer isn’t really a huge issue anyways given the extremely hardcore target demographic that will actively seek out everything there is to do.

   • Since all the "important story" content will be conveyed to the player, there's less of an incentive to talk to all the NPCs scattered around the town because surely the developers wouldn't want to lock important things behind some random dude only a small fraction of players will talk to… but you get a fishing rod and coin case by talking to some NPCs that aren’t telegraphed as important, so you end up having to talk to everyone anyways.

2. Quest Exclusivity allows for more frequent complicated quest design, acting as a band-aid over tedious and convoluted quests that would otherwise be extremely difficult to follow

   • Each NPC in a quest has to explicitly tell you a very specific place to go next (otherwise the quest exclusivity would make re-talking to a bunch of NPCs and seeing if any of them have a different response areal annoying chore), further exacerbating the feeling of railroading and checking off each box one by one.

     1. The haircut quest had you walking back and forth between haircut clients and the girl at the shop, with some clients not repeating the "where to go next" dialogue when talking to them again, so if you forgot it… rip. You might also just walk to the next building in search for the next haircut client, but NOPE you gotta walk back to the daughter first for some quick remarks before the correct NPC will advance the quest.

     2. In the love letter quest I talked to the wrong guy and thought I was stuck. Turns out it was a different guy with a similar sprite in a position that the unrepeatable (unless you walk to the help center and restart the quest, I assume) cutscene before it poorly indicated.

   • I would rhetorically ask "how did this stuff get past testing", but the answer is pretty clear; the audience of the Reborn/Rejuvenation fangames are generally either:

     1. The extremely hardcore Pokemon audience that's willing to look past the horrendous pacing for some good battles to test them, and are generally open to reading guides if it helps them with their team minmaxing

     2. Literal children (like me when I got into Reborn) that don't value their time and are willing to accept grinding, EV training, and talking to every NPC when they get stuck on a quest because they take the meme of "git gud" seriously, holding themselves accountable for their perceived failures rather than calling out bad encounter and quest design.

3. The Quest List transparently showing the list of sidequests and their rewards can have one of two outcomes:

   • Player Indifference: The player knowingly skips content they would have enjoyed otherwise because they tunnel-vision on the rewards. I really doubt that most people playing Reborn/Rejuvenation fall into this category until at least their second playthrough, where they’ll probably know what is and isn’t worth doing, so I won’t spend much time talking about this.

   • Player Passivity: When the player is presented with a list of objectives, they just start ticking off the boxes one by one. Rather than exploring the world at their own pace, they railroad themselves into a quest, then another, and then another. While it’s good that players are likely to do all that there is in a game, there are some problems:

     1. There’s no parallel progression, since as mentioned earlier, quest exclusivity is a thing. Parallel progression is what makes games like Breath of the Wild and Reborn so fun. In those games, there’s always another interesting thing right around the corner and the player has the choice to either explore the little diversion and get some marginal statistical benefit and some extra variety in gameplay or continue with their current objective. Rejuvenation doesn’t give you this choice. The player just has to make a beeline for the next step in the chain since you’re locked out of progressing in the other quest until you’ve finished (or abandoned) the one you’re currently on. Then you’ve gotta walk back to your the Help Center and walk back to the objective that would in theory have been in the player’s path 20 minutes ago but was artificially locked away because the quest wasn’t active. This makes every run-through of a quest feel effectively the same and extremely restrictive in a meta-progression sense. The game has to rely on branching paths/dialogue choices for the illusion of novelty, which take more time to develop than just letting the player do what they want on their terms. For a game that’s (at least in theory) designed to be replayed with different choices, this is really bad.

     2. Players’ insatiable urge to check all the boxes before moving on really pads out the game’s pacing. Yes, this game suffers from having too much content. When the player is doing sidequests, they are by definition not making progress through the main story, which is what leads to the biggest major leaps in player power, the level cap increases and area unlocks with new pokemon and items to collect. Judging by the level curves, the game isn't designed to be plowed through, main story only, in the same way games like Fire Emblem are. The player is pushed towards sidequests as a way to get the resources (EXP, early game money, exclusive pokemon) that will make the main story’s roadblocks easier to get overcome. These sidequests are significantly more time-consuming than Reborn's due to their much greater focus on plot. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but in effect, these long story quests will become padding as the player eventually realizes they’ve spent n hours without their team getting significantly stronger.

     3. The player can accept (and lock themselves into) quests in any order they want, and that’s a problem. In a mostly linear game like Pokemon, the developer has responsibility over the gameplay loop, always hoping to strike the right balance with new areas for wild pokemon to catch, fodder trainers, minibosses, dungeons, and gym leaders. Giving the player control (and locking them into the decision they make under penalty of walking back to the Help Center) will lead to them unintentionally getting into a quest type that they’re tired of at the moment and slogging through it. The quest info screen also isn’t always helpful/transparent about what kind of gameplay to expect from a quest, so there will probably be surprise appearances of gameplay segments that aren’t appealing at a given point in time.

     4. Variety in the gameplay types in sidequests is also lacking (at least in the early game). While Reborn generally has a divide between the main story’s focus on major battles and dungeons and the side content’s focus on exploration, bonus character relationships, and insane puzzles (with some overlap between the two of course) Rejuvenation kinda likes throwing a bunch of battles at the player, leading us to the next issue:

4. The quest list doesn’t telegraph a quest's potential difficulty.

   • By consolidating everything in the same sidequest list with no indication of difficulty outside of the order in which they're posted, the player is bound to unknowingly run into encounters that they're underlevelled for. Instead of the player telling themself "I'll come back later when my team is ready for this," and just walking away, in Rejuvenation, you’re locked in, so you have to walk back to the help center to abandon and get another quest to try. You also have to walk back to the help center to re-accept the quest when you think you have a strong enough team to take on the sidequest (though if you misjudged the opponent's strength, yeah guess you gotta abandon the quest again if you don't wanna lock yourself out of progressing through other quests!) NO, I WILL NOT STOP BRINGING THIS UP BECAUSE IT COMPOUNDS EVERY OTHER ISSUE

   • The level of spike some of these sidequests are in the difficulty curve is also pretty insane. Before the most recent hotfix, the only good way to grind before Venam's gym was by doing an overlevelled sidequest, levelling up, and intentionally losing so the encounter can be repeated, which is incredibly dumb. I personally think sidequests should be an escape and opportunity to power up for the crushingly difficult main game. Sidequests are often what gives the player the resources that bring them higher up on the progression curve than if they just followed the main story. When the most signposted path towards improving your team in battle forces you to face the same type of challenge you probably aren't equipped to handle just yet, that's really dumb, especially when things like the nidorans and flechlings are given out with so much less resistance in comparison.

   • Players know they won't have to complete unfair difficulty spike sidequests as soon as they get them, so the "best solution" that minimizes frustration/grinding/resetting/walking to the help center to abandon is to simply not engage with them until you have a team that's levelled to be even with or above theirs, possibly leading to trivializing encounters that might have been a fun challenge if you went at them at the right point in the progression curve. As I mentioned before, Reborn alleviates this issue by making most side content primarily exploration-based, with much of the 'difficulty' that leads to player satisfaction when reaching the goal in sidequests coming from the puzzles and exploration. The player's enjoyment of puzzles and exploration aren’t affected much by where they are on the progression curve, but the player's enjoyment of Rejuvenation's surprise difficulty spike battle sidequests definitely will be. (It also helps that Reborn puts fewer hoops in the way of leaving surprise difficulty spike sidequests and coming back later since it doesn't force the player to walk to the help center to abandon the quest and walk back to re-accept it later)

5. The quest system locks different instances of certain areas behind quest acceptance/progress, ruining the organic discovery process.

   • Changes to certain areas or NPC encounters that you might be thrilled to discover organically now only occur after having accepted and advanced the correct quest. This makes the world "feel" less organic. Instead of seeing something interesting and interacting with it, you’re just take a guided tour through all that Rejuvenation has to offer after an NPC tells you where to go to advance your progress in a quest. I understand that nothing about Reborn's overworld encounters is inherently more "organic" since each one had to be evented by the developers and all that, but I feel Rejuvenation is way too transparent with its events that blink into existence after accepting a certain quest, disappear when the quest is cancelled, and reappear when it's accepted again.

   • The “checking off boxes” problem is further exacerbated by Rejuvenation’s (early game) world design. Walk into a tall building? Guess I’ll just check four floors to see if anyone gives me anything worthwhile. Goldenwood Forest and cave are effectively a corridor with minimal exploration. Barely anything of note is obtained from going off the critical path in the sewers. While Reborn had the underground railnet entrance tucked past a forgettable part of town, the secret garden, hidden fishing pond, and the house with the espurr event before its first badge, nothing the player can do before the first badge in Rejuvenation “feels” like it was some neat secret that they should feel special about for finding. The Nidoran, Fletchling, and Buizel events are just kinda… sitting there in the open and the optional grass/bug type park to the South of the town is also just… there. Even the TMs were trivial to obtain.

   • The "go here do this to get this" approach to player direction will also likely diminish the feeling of accomplishment you get in Reborn when doing something like Route 1's Heracross/Pinsir quest or finding all the secrets in the wasteland or revisiting all the rock climb spots. The best part about those sidequests is that they’re always just waiting there for the player to discover what’s at the end, with the only thing driving the player towards them being their curiosity. They’re doing the puzzles because they want to, not for the promise of what they’ll get in return. When you discover that the Heracross/Pinsir is catchable, the player is left surprised and gratified rather than thinking, “ughhh I had to do all that to get it?”
      

Rejuvenation isn't a game that respects the player's time. It railroads the player to engage with it on its own terms with its own systems rather than allowing for real player freedom and the micro-narratives and surprises that come with it. It feels like all the content is being shoved down the player's throat, heavily pushing them to check each box off one by one until they get stuck and are forced to spend even more of their time grinding or walking. For being in a game that’s designed to be replayed, the early parts of Rejuvenation sure are a chore to go through, even for the first time.

 

---

(I really just spent n hours of my life writing on this instead of the paper that I'll probably be basing my doctoral thesis on, so who am I to tell you what is and isn't a good way to spend your time.)

 

In this... essay, you make various valid points concerning the questing system. However, considering you list identical characteristics as both strengths and weaknesses of the system, I am unsure as to what would be a proper solution in your mind. The reality is that the help center's centralization (at least for learning about quests and receiving rewards) is rather useful to have in such a large game, since a player would be susceptible to forgetting an NPC's specific location. Perhaps an overhaul of how it works would be an improvement, but the help centers themselves are fine in my opinion. I also feel that your conclusion is rather harsh and hyperbolic for what seems to be a couple of minor problems.

[Lillietea]

oh well at least you'll have lots of AP after all this.. walking

bet MC's legs are hella buff

But anyways, on a more serious note, when I first saw the title of this topic I was sceptical, but in the end came to agree with you

While sometimes it is kinda logical and real life-like when some quests are got through the Help Center, such as various quests that are "formal", be it quests from companies (the stolen cargo quest) and missing persons quests (the missing mother quest), etc., the majority of the quests have a more "informal" feel and it would have been better if they were got from the NPC's asking for help themselves

And the other issue from players checking off boxes is that they may spend so much time on the quests that it feels like a lot of in-game time (and I'm not talking about the number you see when saving, no, I'm talking about days/weeks/months that would've passed if it was in real life) have passed, despite the need to go on to the next main story objective ASAP, like, you know, saving Melia from team Xen?

And also it may happen that after so much time neglecting the main story you even forget what have happened and what you have to do (I would know, I have personally experienced this)

Overall, all your points are valid and I hope that the devs adress those issues when they have the chance (and knowing them I'm sure this isn't going to just get ignored (unlike how this seems to be the trend with another certain dev team cough cough game freak), seeing that this is probably the best time to point it out, there being a quest system overhaul and all)

[Adam.]

lol. Btw this post didn't respect my time nor did you have to insult the playerbase because YOU don't like doing something simple as a Help Quest in which you don't HAVE to do.  Like sorry you have to walk in an RPG how dare the devs make you do something that isn't linear.

[WimpOut]

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

Note: I’m gonna say “walk” a lot when referring to moving from place to place. I know there’s a run button and a speed up button. You don’t need to tell me.

 

I've tried to get into Rejuvenation multiple times, but I've ended up dropping the game very early each time. I'm currently not very far in the game at the moment, I think the Help Center system in this game is SEVERELY flawed, but before I start trying to tear it apart, there are a few very big benefits of the system over Reborn's "unlisted" sidequests:

You know, you could've atleast finished the whole game first before stating a really big opinion with how you blow it into proportions, You dropped it early but you didn't know that the Help center has it's own storyline or arc hence why all of the tedious stuff is done. The good things that you list just made it so you won't look like you are bias on reborn even though you are.

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

And here's the bad:

1. The Help Center is horrible waste of the player’s time.

   • Here's what you do in the simplest "Save Starly" sidequest:

     1. (optional) Talk to the questgiver in Gearen Lab that tells you to go to the Help Center

     2. (optional*) Complete previous quest because you can only accept one at a time. A quest this simple would normally be a trivial diversion you could go through without

     3. Walk to the Help Center, (abandon previous quest), accept quest

     4. Walk (back) to the questgiver in Gearen Lab to learn where the Starly is

     5. Walk to the docks to confront the gang members. 

        1. If the encounter is too difficult to get through (probably not true for this one in particular but will be true for multiple others), and you want to try out another quest instead of grinding/resetting:

           1. Walk back to the help center to give up on this quest and start on another*

           2. Once you’re at an appropriate level, walk back to the help center once again to re-accept this quest when you think you're prepared (and you could totally guess wrong and have to give up the quest again))

     6. Walk back to the help center to get the reward and start the next quest despite the fact that some questgivers are closer to where the player is than the help center is
        
        *You technically can't do this in this instance since it's a required tutorial

It's a side quest, it is optional. I agree that the accept and abandon quest is kinda tedious and very flawed but you aren't supposed to do them in the first place. You should do the main quest but you insisted on doing the side quest that are not even important. The only notable ones are Saving Starly cause of Karen Introduction, The Hidden Library and Novaem's quest. BTW, you could've always just save before accepting a quest and then try it if it is on your level or capability but no! you keep on bitching instead of findings ways to not do all the tedious stuff.

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

I shouldn’t have to say this, but walking isn’t fun, engaging gameplay. In a game like Reborn without a dedicated quest system, this is how the quest would go:

1. (Optional) You find the questgiver in front of some dead-end alleyway, maybe "panicked" pacing to grab your attention (or a persistent "!" bubble if Rejuv's UI is used).

2. The gang members are a few tiles past the questgiver down the alley, and give dialogue that gets us up to speed regardless of whether or not you talked to the questgiver, something like "You here to 'save' that little girl's precious Starly? Too bad! It's ours now!"

3. Immediately after beating the gang members, the "story" cutscene plays, followed by the questgiver walking the few tiles towards you and giving you a reward.

It's funny cause Reborn was tedious af and even worse, you made it look like they make amazing sidequest when it's horrible and you almost need guide on every single one of them. You also talk and WALK back to the npc on reborn when you are done with the quest, don't bullshit me with cutscenes on reborn even though those are just tiny in portion compare most side quests.

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

Quest Exclusivity allows for more frequent complicated quest design, acting as a band-aid over tedious and convoluted quests that would otherwise be extremely difficult to follow

• Each NPC in a quest has to explicitly tell you a very specific place to go next (otherwise the quest exclusivity would make re-talking to a bunch of NPCs and seeing if any of them have a different response areal annoying chore), further exacerbating the feeling of railroading and checking off each box one by one.

  1. The haircut quest had you walking back and forth between haircut clients and the girl at the shop, with some clients not repeating the "where to go next" dialogue when talking to them again, so if you forgot it… rip. You might also just walk to the next building in search for the next haircut client, but NOPE you gotta walk back to the daughter first for some quick remarks before the correct NPC will advance the quest.

  2. In the love letter quest I talked to the wrong guy and thought I was stuck. Turns out it was a different guy with a similar sprite in a position that the unrepeatable (unless you walk to the help center and restart the quest, I assume) cutscene before it poorly indicated.

• I would rhetorically ask "how did this stuff get past testing", but the answer is pretty clear; the audience of the Reborn/Rejuvenation fangames are generally either:

  1. The extremely hardcore Pokemon audience that's willing to look past the horrendous pacing for some good battles to test them, and are generally open to reading guides if it helps them with their team minmaxing

  2. Literal children (like me when I got into Reborn) that don't value their time and are willing to accept grinding, EV training, and talking to every NPC when they get stuck on a quest because they take the meme of "git gud" seriously, holding themselves accountable for their perceived failures rather than calling out bad encounter and quest design.

You are just nitpicking on the early quest but okay, the Haircut/Sasha was done so that YOU as a quest helper would inform the daughter on what is happening, you aren't just a sick bastard who do stuff on their own will and bust through the mother's free haircut session on the pier, because you are the hero. This also makes you explore the whole city if you didn't because of the main story. The whole haircut quest was to inform the player how harsh it is living while being monitored by the authorities of Gearen and how Karrina handles things. It is deeper further on the story how it went.

 

The loveletter was weird but how stupid you are not knowing who the white hair guy was? he was the only one on the telescope on the side of berry emporium. It was so clear what was needed to do. 

 

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

The Quest List transparently showing the list of sidequests and their rewards can have one of two outcomes:

• Player Indifference: The player knowingly skips content they would have enjoyed otherwise because they tunnel-vision on the rewards. I really doubt that most people playing Reborn/Rejuvenation fall into this category until at least their second playthrough, where they’ll probably know what is and isn’t worth doing, so I won’t spend much time talking about this.

• Player Passivity: When the player is presented with a list of objectives, they just start ticking off the boxes one by one. Rather than exploring the world at their own pace, they railroad themselves into a quest, then another, and then another. While it’s good that players are likely to do all that there is in a game, there are some problems:

  1. There’s no parallel progression, since as mentioned earlier, quest exclusivity is a thing. Parallel progression is what makes games like Breath of the Wild and Reborn so fun. In those games, there’s always another interesting thing right around the corner and the player has the choice to either explore the little diversion and get some marginal statistical benefit and some extra variety in gameplay or continue with their current objective. Rejuvenation doesn’t give you this choice. The player just has to make a beeline for the next step in the chain since you’re locked out of progressing in the other quest until you’ve finished (or abandoned) the one you’re currently on. Then you’ve gotta walk back to your the Help Center and walk back to the objective that would in theory have been in the player’s path 20 minutes ago but was artificially locked away because the quest wasn’t active. This makes every run-through of a quest feel effectively the same and extremely restrictive in a meta-progression sense. The game has to rely on branching paths/dialogue choices for the illusion of novelty, which take more time to develop than just letting the player do what they want on their terms. For a game that’s (at least in theory) designed to be replayed with different choices, this is really bad.

  2. Players’ insatiable urge to check all the boxes before moving on really pads out the game’s pacing. Yes, this game suffers from having too much content. When the player is doing sidequests, they are by definition not making progress through the main story, which is what leads to the biggest major leaps in player power, the level cap increases and area unlocks with new pokemon and items to collect. Judging by the level curves, the game isn't designed to be plowed through, main story only, in the same way games like Fire Emblem are. The player is pushed towards sidequests as a way to get the resources (EXP, early game money, exclusive pokemon) that will make the main story’s roadblocks easier to get overcome. These sidequests are significantly more time-consuming than Reborn's due to their much greater focus on plot. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but in effect, these long story quests will become padding as the player eventually realizes they’ve spent n hours without their team getting significantly stronger.

  3. The player can accept (and lock themselves into) quests in any order they want, and that’s a problem. In a mostly linear game like Pokemon, the developer has responsibility over the gameplay loop, always hoping to strike the right balance with new areas for wild pokemon to catch, fodder trainers, minibosses, dungeons, and gym leaders. Giving the player control (and locking them into the decision they make under penalty of walking back to the Help Center) will lead to them unintentionally getting into a quest type that they’re tired of at the moment and slogging through it. The quest info screen also isn’t always helpful/transparent about what kind of gameplay to expect from a quest, so there will probably be surprise appearances of gameplay segments that aren’t appealing at a given point in time.

  4. Variety in the gameplay types in sidequests is also lacking (at least in the early game). While Reborn generally has a divide between the main story’s focus on major battles and dungeons and the side content’s focus on exploration, bonus character relationships, and insane puzzles (with some overlap between the two of course) Rejuvenation kinda likes throwing a bunch of battles at the player, leading us to the next issue:

Imagine not enjoying the story and all the crap the devs made and heart and soul they pour on the side quest, the rewards don't even matter. Side quest are just mostly to pass time or do other stuff if you aren't keen on doing the main quest. Rewards are like bonus, the real thing are the story on the side quest and how they connect on the main game. You are talking about parallel progression when reborn's quest are all over the place and you won't know what the fuck you're doing until something finally happens or you search for guides on it instead of doing it yourself and places riddled with hard puzzles that removes the freedom on doing that quest until you solve tedious puzzles and all that crap.

 

Also, you can do everything on your own pace, what the fuck are you spouting. The only problem that I agree with you was you are lock on that quest if you don't abandon it, but that only applies on HELP CENTER SIDE QUEST not the other side quests which are more free to ignore and continue which you clearly don't know. 

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

The quest list doesn’t telegraph a quest's potential difficulty.

• By consolidating everything in the same sidequest list with no indication of difficulty outside of the order in which they're posted, the player is bound to unknowingly run into encounters that they're underlevelled for. Instead of the player telling themself "I'll come back later when my team is ready for this," and just walking away, in Rejuvenation, you’re locked in, so you have to walk back to the help center to abandon and get another quest to try. You also have to walk back to the help center to re-accept the quest when you think you have a strong enough team to take on the sidequest (though if you misjudged the opponent's strength, yeah guess you gotta abandon the quest again if you don't wanna lock yourself out of progressing through other quests!) NO, I WILL NOT STOP BRINGING THIS UP BECAUSE IT COMPOUNDS EVERY OTHER ISSUE

• The level of spike some of these sidequests are in the difficulty curve is also pretty insane. Before the most recent hotfix, the only good way to grind before Venam's gym was by doing an overlevelled sidequest, levelling up, and intentionally losing so the encounter can be repeated, which is incredibly dumb. I personally think sidequests should be an escape and opportunity to power up for the crushingly difficult main game. Sidequests are often what gives the player the resources that bring them higher up on the progression curve than if they just followed the main story. When the most signposted path towards improving your team in battle forces you to face the same type of challenge you probably aren't equipped to handle just yet, that's really dumb, especially when things like the nidorans and flechlings are given out with so much less resistance in comparison.

• Players know they won't have to complete unfair difficulty spike sidequests as soon as they get them, so the "best solution" that minimizes frustration/grinding/resetting/walking to the help center to abandon is to simply not engage with them until you have a team that's levelled to be even with or above theirs, possibly leading to trivializing encounters that might have been a fun challenge if you went at them at the right point in the progression curve. As I mentioned before, Reborn alleviates this issue by making most side content primarily exploration-based, with much of the 'difficulty' that leads to player satisfaction when reaching the goal in sidequests coming from the puzzles and exploration. The player's enjoyment of puzzles and exploration aren’t affected much by where they are on the progression curve, but the player's enjoyment of Rejuvenation's surprise difficulty spike battle sidequests definitely will be. (It also helps that Reborn puts fewer hoops in the way of leaving surprise difficulty spike sidequests and coming back later since it doesn't force the player to walk to the help center to abandon the quest and walk back to re-accept it later)

You keep repeating your nonsense ideology. You can clearly save scum and try other stuff that let's you skip all the boring things for you. besides, that is your fault if you do side quest first instead of dealing with the major plotline, you are bound to be in a pain if you keep insisting on doing help center quest when you clearly aren't forced to. 

 

You can clearly train on the rooftop of Hotel before the hotfix but clearly you insist on the only way was the side quest amirite? You can even train a Dustox and sweep Venam, most of the available mons like Butterfree works like a charm too. There are many ways. Grindy? Yes compare to V12 but I myself didn't even grind from side quest just played the main quest and made the level cap before venam fight.

 

Besides, like the Pyroar sidequest, I was underleveled on that one but beat it easily. Imagine hating on something cause you can;t beat it and then blame the system for it.

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

The quest system locks different instances of certain areas behind quest acceptance/progress, ruining the organic discovery process.

• Changes to certain areas or NPC encounters that you might be thrilled to discover organically now only occur after having accepted and advanced the correct quest. This makes the world "feel" less organic. Instead of seeing something interesting and interacting with it, you’re just take a guided tour through all that Rejuvenation has to offer after an NPC tells you where to go to advance your progress in a quest. I understand that nothing about Reborn's overworld encounters is inherently more "organic" since each one had to be evented by the developers and all that, but I feel Rejuvenation is way too transparent with its events that blink into existence after accepting a certain quest, disappear when the quest is cancelled, and reappear when it's accepted again.

• The “checking off boxes” problem is further exacerbated by Rejuvenation’s (early game) world design. Walk into a tall building? Guess I’ll just check four floors to see if anyone gives me anything worthwhile. Goldenwood Forest and cave are effectively a corridor with minimal exploration. Barely anything of note is obtained from going off the critical path in the sewers. While Reborn had the underground railnet entrance tucked past a forgettable part of town, the secret garden, hidden fishing pond, and the house with the espurr event before its first badge, nothing the player can do before the first badge in Rejuvenation “feels” like it was some neat secret that they should feel special about for finding. The Nidoran, Fletchling, and Buizel events are just kinda… sitting there in the open and the optional grass/bug type park to the South of the town is also just… there. Even the TMs were trivial to obtain.

• The "go here do this to get this" approach to player direction will also likely diminish the feeling of accomplishment you get in Reborn when doing something like Route 1's Heracross/Pinsir quest or finding all the secrets in the wasteland or revisiting all the rock climb spots. The best part about those sidequests is that they’re always just waiting there for the player to discover what’s at the end, with the only thing driving the player towards them being their curiosity. They’re doing the puzzles because they want to, not for the promise of what they’ll get in return. When you discover that the Heracross/Pinsir is catchable, the player is left surprised and gratified rather than thinking, “ughhh I had to do all that to get it?

 

The progress is beautiful if you know what the fuck is happening, you clearly don't care about it by the looks of it. They aren't less organic, you ain't just paying attention. And here we you are comparing reborn again. I love Reborn, I played it like a lot, I mean a lot even more then Rejuv, The choices you make on the Reborn are what matters not really the side quest. The sidequest are more or less just tedious stuff because you don't have anything to do and you obviously looked up on forums on how to solve certain puzzles on sidequest which aren't even worth doing besides the rewards. They don't hold consequences unlike on Rejuv with the connecting side quest and major arcs and storyline which you clearly don't know.

 

I do wish we could do multiple help center quest(Also every help center on a town is different so you can do other side quest on multiple center) though (I remembered back on past versions you can do multiple, like on V10 cause I used to do that but they removed it, I maybe wrong on that cause that was like 4 years ago). Your point on the walking and tedious abandon and accept is flawed, Save and F12 gg

[Cad]

3 minutes ago, WimpOut said:

You know, you could've atleast finished the whole game first before stating a really big opinion with how you blow it into proportions, You dropped it early but you didn't know that the Help center has it's own storyline or arc hence why all of the tedious stuff is done. The good things that you list just made it so you won't look like you are bias on reborn even though you are.

It's a side quest, it is optional. I agree that the accept and abandon quest is kinda tedious and very flawed but you aren't supposed to do them in the first place. You should do the main quest but you insisted on doing the side quest that are not even important. The only notable ones are Saving Starly cause of Karen Introduction, The Hidden Library and Novaem's quest. BTW, you could've always just save before accepting a quest and then try it if it is on your level or capability but no! you keep on bitching instead of findings ways to not do all the tedious stuff.

It's funny cause Reborn was tedious af and even worse, you made it look like they make amazing sidequest when it's horrible and you almost need guide on every single one of them. You also talk and WALK back to the npc on reborn when you are done with the quest, don't bullshit me with cutscenes on reborn even though those are just tiny in portion compare most side quests.

You are just nitpicking on the early quest but okay, the Haircut/Sasha was done so that YOU as a quest helper would inform the daughter on what is happening, you aren't just a sick bastard who do stuff on their own will and bust through the mother's free haircut session on the pier, because you are the hero. This also makes you explore the whole city if you didn't because of the main story. The whole haircut quest was to inform the player how harsh it is living while being monitored by the authorities of Gearen and how Karrina handles things. It is deeper further on the story how it went.

 

The loveletter was weird but how stupid you are not knowing who the white hair guy was? he was the only one on the telescope on the side of berry emporium. It was so clear what was needed to do. 

 

Imagine not enjoying the story and all the crap the devs made and heart and soul they pour on the side quest, the rewards don't even matter. Side quest are just mostly to pass time or do other stuff if you aren't keen on doing the main quest. Rewards are like bonus, the real thing are the story on the side quest and how they connect on the main game. You are talking about parallel progression when reborn's quest are all over the place and you won't know what the fuck you're doing until something finally happens or you search for guides on it instead of doing it yourself and places riddled with hard puzzles that removes the freedom on doing that quest until you solve tedious puzzles and all that crap.

 

Also, you can do everything on your own pace, what the fuck are you spouting. The only problem that I agree with you was you are lock on that quest if you don't abandon it, but that only applies on HELP CENTER SIDE QUEST not the other side quests which are more free to ignore and continue which you clearly don't know. 

You keep repeating your nonsense ideology. You can clearly save scum and try other stuff that let's you skip all the boring things for you. besides, that is your fault if you do side quest first instead of dealing with the major plotline, you are bound to be in a pain if you keep insisting on doing help center quest when you clearly aren't forced to. 

 

You can clearly train on the rooftop of Hotel before the hotfix but clearly you insist on the only way was the side quest amirite? You can even train a Dustox and sweep Venam, most of the available mons like Butterfree works like a charm too. There are many ways. Grindy? Yes compare to V12 but I myself didn't even grind from side quest just played the main quest and made the level cap before venam fight.

 

Besides, like the Pyroar sidequest, I was underleveled on that one but beat it easily. Imagine hating on something cause you can;t beat it and then blame the system for it.

 

The progress is beautiful if you know what the fuck is happening, you clearly don't care about it by the looks of it. They aren't less organic, you ain't just paying attention. And here we you are comparing reborn again. I love Reborn, I played it like a lot, I mean a lot even more then Rejuv, The choices you make on the Reborn are what matters not really the side quest. The sidequest are more or less just tedious stuff because you don't have anything to do and you obviously looked up on forums on how to solve certain puzzles on sidequest which aren't even worth doing besides the rewards. They don't hold consequences unlike on Rejuv with the connecting side quest and major arcs and storyline which you clearly don't know.

 

I do wish we could do multiple help center quest though. Your point on the walking and tedious abandon and accept is flawed, Save and F12 gg

This was better than reading the one above. 

[andracass]

so, like, i don't want to tell you that you wasted your time on this, but updating the quest system is something that was pushed out to v13.5.

that said, i'd still like to congratulate you for taking a molehill and turning it into mount everest.

2 hours ago, FerrousOxide said:

This sounds a whole lot of walking you are doing here for an incredibly minor grievance

i'm with this comment.

[Gastronely]

I... What did I just read? Sounds like you REALLY dislike changing your character's position in a map. And what's up with insulting the playerbase anyway?

 

3 hours ago, lqsx said:

(I really just spent n hours of my life writing on this instead of the paper that I'll probably be basing my doctoral thesis on, so who am I to tell you what is and isn't a good way to spend your time.)

 

 

I wholeheartedly agree. Could've spend that time in something more reasonable and less nitpicky

[chamomomile]

i uh, wow, good luck on that thesis mate

[Lillietea]

This may be offtopic, but wow, how much negativity

You don't pull your punches, do you?

Not to take anyone's side, but while most of you say that this post is nitpicky, the first thing I thought was "Hey, this is so well thought-out, the person who has written this must have thought and cared about it a lot!"

And where is the "insult of the playerbase"? Because honestly I can't see any..

Also about quests being optional, well...

You didn't need to read this topic or write something about it

..Not very nice to read this, right?

((hot damn the world must be ending if I'm being the positive one))

[cons00mption]

39 minutes ago, alisekoroleva said:

This may be offtopic, but wow, how much negativity

You don't pull your punches, do you?

Not to take anyone's side, but while most of you say that this post is nitpicky, the first thing I thought was "Hey, this is so well thought-out, the person who has written this must have thought and cared about it a lot!"

And where is the "insult of the playerbase"? Because honestly I can't see any..

Also about quests being optional, well...

You didn't need to read this topic or write something about it

..Not very nice to read this, right?

((hot damn the world must be ending if I'm being the positive one))

i think this is what theyre talking about:

4 hours ago, lqsx said:

I would rhetorically ask "how did this stuff get past testing", but the answer is pretty clear; the audience of the Reborn/Rejuvenation fangames are generally either:

1. • 1. The extremely hardcore Pokemon audience that's willing to look past the horrendous pacing for some good battles to test them, and are generally open to reading guides if it helps them with their team minmaxing

     2. Literal children (like me when I got into Reborn) that don't value their time and are willing to accept grinding, EV training, and talking to every NPC when they get stuck on a quest because they take the meme of "git gud" seriously, holding themselves accountable for their perceived failures rather than calling out bad encounter and quest design.

 

it isnt even much of an insult imo

[lqsx]

3 hours ago, andracass said:

that said, i'd still like to congratulate you for taking a molehill and turning it into mount everest.

Games like Sonic '06, Anthem, and the Kingdom Hearts PS3 collections are generally considered to be significantly worse (or at least less enjoyable) games than they otherwise would be because of their loading screens. While all games have loading screens, their length and frequency has a big impact on the player's experience. They harm the pacing of the game by forcing the player to wait through them in between the sections of the game that the player is there for. If complaints about those games' loading screens are considered valid, I think my complaints about Rejuvenation's early-game walking should be valid for the same reasons.

 

Rejuvenation's quest system makes the trek to each sub-objective similar to a loading screen. As a result of quest exclusivity, each quest has to tell the player where to go to a very specific extent, and the player's agency during a quest is minimal since they're locked to a single quest. They're walking sections with no challenge through areas the player is likely to have explored and cleared of trainers. You know how Sonic '06 sometimes has back-to-back cutscenes that are just a few seconds long with loading screens in between them? That's what something like the haircut quest feels like, except it's done four times in a row, and the player can't just sit back and watch. They have to actively navigate to the correct location and find the right NPC to talk to in order to get the next objective. I probably would have been more actively engaging with the story and characters if I didn't have to internally repeat the next location in my head as I navigated to it for a minute each time a sub-objective was cleared.

 

Different players have different levels of tolerances for different aggravating factors. Some people can't stand playing games they might otherwise enjoy because they can't vibe with the art style. Some people stray away from fighting game characters that would otherwise fit their playstyles because they find their voice clips annoying. I play my RPGs with battle animations off and a speed up button if possible because I'm in it for the long-term progression and story, so I'm particularly sensitive to long loading screens and walking sections. Just because the self-selecting demographic of people dedicated enough to the game to post on forums about it are fine with it doesn't mean it's not offputting to others.

 

This is completely anecdotal, but the only other two people I know irl that have played Rejuvenation have told me they stopped playing for the same reasons, which is why I went and wrote this post in the first place. You're not going to see them on this subforum because they already decided the game's not for them. Feedback from people that aren't already superfans of the game is incredibly valuable because they can point out where it can be improved the most in ways that the small subset of people here are unlikely to care about. Hearing about what got them to put down the game gives you, the developers, the pathway towards the game retaining more passionate players.

 

In the same way that reducing the length and frequency of loading screens is a net good for basically all games, reducing the length and frequency of walking sections in sidequests would do wonders for improving Rejuvenation's pacing. I hope that quest system revamp helps with this. I'll personally probably hold off on playing through the game until my grievances become less of an issue. I wish you guys the best in making the best game you guys can.

[Clearly Sus]

I really seems like you don't want to play a game, you want to watch a movie

[lqsx]

13 minutes ago, Clearly Sus said:

I really seems like you don't want to play a game, you want to watch a movie

The difference between games and movies is that games allow give the player agency to make choices at any given moment; I can finish the objective I spent the last few minutes on OR help this guy right in front of me with his problem. Rejuvenation strips this option away from the player. When you're doing a help center quest, you can't do much other than follow the objective marker because you're locked out of all other quests. It's Rejuvenation that's stripping away the game and only leaving a movie, and that's exactly what I've been arguing against.

[WimpOut]

2 hours ago, lqsx said:

When you're doing a help center quest, you can't do much other than follow the objective marker because you're locked out of all other quests

Wrong, I get were you are coming from but, you are trying way too hard on dissing help center side quest. There are other side quest besides the help center quests. For example on Gearen You can do the Buizel side quest, helping a guy by buying expensive pokeballs, saving an Old guy's granddaughter, helping an Old woman search for her cinccino, zumi's side quest,doing venam's secret code, you can even do the ap achievements to gain ap for useful items, etc. while doing help center side quest. Then sheridan you can help someone from getting destroyed by a Solrock, showing someone he's favorite pokemon on route 2, helping Karrina fight of enemy faction etc, this are only on the first early game parts and there are lot more fun other side quest down the line which are fun and story worthy unlike Reborn's tedious puzzle like the Devon corp and a whole bunch of quest from reborn. The help center quest are your choice but you can still do a lot more besides them ffs.

[andracass]

4 hours ago, lqsx said:

Different players have different levels of tolerances for different aggravating factors. Some people can't stand playing games they might otherwise enjoy because they can't vibe with the art style. Some people stray away from fighting game characters that would otherwise fit their playstyles because they find their voice clips annoying. I play my RPGs with battle animations off and a speed up button if possible because I'm in it for the long-term progression and story, so I'm particularly sensitive to long loading screens and walking sections. Just because the self-selecting demographic of people dedicated enough to the game to post on forums about it are fine with it doesn't mean it's not offputting to others.

so here's the thing, right

i'm not here to say that you're wrong. the system isn't the most effective.

i'm here to say that this is not worth dedicating an essay to.

for one thing, this is optional content. 

moreover, and i think this this is what some of the others here are saying, the extent that the system is inconvenient is not worth a dissertation.

some quests involve excessive backtracking. it's frustrating that you can only take one quest at a time. progression is occasionally unclear.

there we go! i summed up your entire post in one line. 

4 hours ago, lqsx said:

Feedback from people that aren't already superfans of the game is incredibly valuable because they can point out where it can be improved the most in ways that the small subset of people here are unlikely to care about. Hearing about what got them to put down the game gives you, the developers, the pathway towards the game retaining more passionate players.

you're sitting out here arguing like there's a case that has to be made and that the person who has to make it is you.

i am, i suppose, one of your so-called "superfans" (which, from my perspective, seems to just be someone who enjoys the game, but i digress) and i have misgivings about the current system. you can enjoy things while acknowledging that they are not perfect!

as i said already, we already had plans to work on this, but they were pushed back because we haven't released anything in ages and really just needed to put something out.

there's a lot of noise in this thread and none of it is worth the time. the system isn't perfect; it is incorrect to say otherwise. however, to say that it kills the entire game and puts the content on a level akin to sonic 06 is equally incorrect.

[Arthesia]

In the time it took you to write that essay you can probably do every single quest in the Gearen Help Center.

 

[0 SPD Slowpoke]

I'm mainly here to say that Team Anti-assist feels like blatant padding, it feels like there was some perceived obligation to meet some quota of help center quests, but there was only so many good ideas for quests. So anti-assist was cooked up.

[Tikkit]

4 hours ago, 0 SPD Slowpoke said:

I'm mainly here to say that Team Anti-assist feels like blatant padding, it feels like there was some perceived obligation to meet some quota of help center quests, but there was only so many good ideas for quests. So anti-assist was cooked up.

For blatant padding, and an arbitrary obstacle in some quests that didn't really need them, they are kinda hilarious as a concept to me.