As I played through the ME3 Omega DLC again last night, I started thinking about why I am willing to play single player games and DLCs over and over again, but have such a distaste for daily quests in MMOs. I don’t want to hate daily quests or reputation grinds. I want to love re-occurring events like the current Rakghoul event in SWTOR, but after a while I just can’t stand them. I want things to do when I’ve “finished” a game. I have yet to run across end game repeat content that can keep me entertained for very long. This makes me sad.

One of the reasons why I have two of each class in SWTOR is because of the dialog in the game. There are funny lines and companion interactions that a single play through doesn’t show me. I play through games like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect because there are hidden gems of humor or epic story that reveal themselves with different choices. Light side versus dark side, even female versus male reveals different content that I haven’t seen before.

I think that is the key to making repeat content more palatable for me; give me dialog and humor that I haven’t seen before or tell the story from a different perspective, then I’m happier doing it again. It is the major failing in repeat events and daily grinds. They don’t adapt. None of your choices really change them. There are no more surprises to uncover. It would be very interesting if new dialog, new humor, or new outcomes could be cycled in to repeat content. When an event that is intended to be re-used is created, it would be nice if different NPCs could be written in and then cycled in as the main POCs on a rotating basis. You could still create the event once, but make sure you had a way to present it from new angles. Or just inject some random humor here and there when it shows back up again. It might make it easier for me to swallow.