I still love sandboxes for not having predetermined quests. Quests should provide fun, not rewards. Maybe a little look into lore. OR MAYBE DEVELOPERS CAN FINALLY USE INSTANCES LIKE THEY SHOULD BE USED AND MAKE PERSONALIZED EPIC STORY QUEST INSTANCES. GRAAHHHH!! HULK SMASH!!!
I'll take that last part as a suggestion, and a good one, if what I gather from it is correct.
Something different? That's easy. Some dude is walking around, protect that dumba$$ mofo from w/e the developers want to throw at you.
I suppose you could just take some RTS missions and incorporate them into an MMORPG and that would make for some decent questing.
Escort Quests? No ty.
What is an RTS mission that would work in an MMO too? "Build 3 gold mines"?
All OP asked for was an alternative; I gave one.
Look at stuff in Starcraft, for example. You need to take out the cerebrates, deliver 4 medics to the Overmind, etc. Now, turn that into a server-wide thing that requires an immense amount of co-ordination and the co-operation of everyone on the server, and that could work wonders. Now, obviously, people need motivation, so do something like half the people will die if the 'Overmind' is not stopped and all monster levels will be decupled. Of course, by 'people' I mean 'players' and by 'die' I mean 'delete'.
The thing that bothers people is that quests are repetitive. Then again, there are only so many types of quests, and they've all been done in some way, shape, or form. Like OP suggested, we need dynamic quests. Although nearly impossible simply because of modern technological limits, what we need is for no two people to experience the same storyline.
Originally posted by tehikk A lot of people complain about how they hate how quests are all the same. "Go Here, Kill X", but they never suggest a solution. And after thinking about it, I can't really think of anything to suggest either. When looking at quests, there are three quest types: Kill Quests = Must kill X amount of said creature. Gather Quests = Must gather X amount of said item. Travel Quests = Go here, talk to this person. Now, I dare you to think of a type completely unique from those three. In fact, I welcome any new type that makes sense, but I know, that even new types will eventually be considered the norm and boring. The only solution I can see to this problem is by making the job more unique, the world more unique. Make it so when I go to kill X amount of said creature, something fun could happen, add in hidden quest elements. For instance: ""John heads over to kill five goblins, upon killing three for the quest, a giant Orc bursts through the nearby trees. Quest objective has now changed from kill five goblins, to slay Orc Ambusher."" Another example could be: ""John heads to collect twelve berries from a berry bush. Upon arrival, he notices another creature picking through the berries. John must now choose, will he kill this creature and take his hard earned berries, pay said creature, or just sift through the bush on his own.""
I myself have no problem with how quests are, but I would like to improve them either way. Now, if you'll excuse me I seem to have spilled my tea all over myself...
Actually there is no problem with those type of quests aslong as you can make them advanced enough..As in you example with the orc..But you cant aslong as most players doesnt like instancing
"Go nearby 'here' and convince Y that X is gonna pillage their town and rape their women and convince them to kill X for you!"
WoW has lots of quests like that, unfortunately it boils down to "go GATHER these items that will make it look convincing" or it's just a line of talking to different people. Nobody pays attention to the fact that the quest might actually be interesting story-wise, because they're just using it to get to max level and not because they want something fun to do. The quest could say "derp derp derp derp derp 6 sunflowers derp" and most people wouldn't care, they'd just do it for the exp without reading it.
Because designers shy away from the idea that a players avatar can have any differences from one of the same class and race, quests are very limited. You can’t even raise reputation with one npc clan, while lowering it with another these days. That was a choice for you, which clan would you pick to help?
Quests could be used to send your character on their own journey. Ok if another player picked the same twenty options as you did he would be identical to you. Quest lines could define your crafting recipes, your armour and weapons, your powers and skills. But this would make many players think their choices had nerfed them, regardless or whether they really had. Designers don’t want players to think they have been nerfed, in fact they don’t want there to be any reason that you might give up on their game. That is the sad reality now, all differences between avatars have been ironed out to maximise the player base.
A lot of people complain about how they hate how quests are all the same. "Go Here, Kill X", but they never suggest a solution. And after thinking about it, I can't really think of anything to suggest either. When looking at quests, there are three quest types: Kill Quests = Must kill X amount of said creature. Gather Quests = Must gather X amount of said item. Travel Quests = Go here, talk to this person. Now, I dare you to think of a type completely unique from those three. In fact, I welcome any new type that makes sense, but I know, that even new types will eventually be considered the norm and boring. The only solution I can see to this problem is by making the job more unique, the world more unique. Make it so when I go to kill X amount of said creature, something fun could happen, add in hidden quest elements. For instance: ""John heads over to kill five goblins, upon killing three for the quest, a giant Orc bursts through the nearby trees. Quest objective has now changed from kill five goblins, to slay Orc Ambusher."" Another example could be: ""John heads to collect twelve berries from a berry bush. Upon arrival, he notices another creature picking through the berries. John must now choose, will he kill this creature and take his hard earned berries, pay said creature, or just sift through the bush on his own.""
I myself have no problem with how quests are, but I would like to improve them either way. Now, if you'll excuse me I seem to have spilled my tea all over myself...
Solution:
Make Quest more rare and make it feel that very rewarding for hard work. Have a timer for that quest if u want to repeat. Like 2-3 days or soemthing, depends. Whats the difference if you kill x and then go back to get exp reward.. you still kill anyway so why need quest? Its just annoyance. Also get rid of icon above NPC that has quest or not... if there is none.. and it force people to go up to them and read than just look for number and who then click ok accept and go without reading the other unimportant comment. Also, when you try to talk to NPC, NPC will talk to you on Chat box only, no options menu! No hint color highlight. You figure it out, makes it more fun..
The true problem is that the three types you mention are the easiest to create and they run smoothly in an open world. There are in fact a quite a few variations and in various MMOs there is some real creativity invested in quests.
One example from LOTRO I recall is that there were two enormous giants, who (if you do the quest on level) are definitely going to squish you if they spot you, but the quest is to "trick" them into fighting each other. You do so just by clicking on a loose stone in the landscape (giant no 1 thinks giant no 2 hit them or something) a couple of times while watching what happens, and making sure you approach in a way that the giants don't see you.
Someone mentioned escort quests already. That is a well used type, and I tend to enjoy those quests. There is also the planting type of quests, the opposite of gathering, i.e. poison the orc's stew pots, plant a box of nasty insects in a camp, etc. Mechanistically, they are identical to gathering quests.
WoW really surprised me one day with the quests where you are mounted, and on a set flight path, and have to throw bombs on the enemy.
Fallen Earth has tracking quests which I found to be quite fun too (the NPC you need to kill makes a run for it and you "track" them by reaching waypoints). They also have dynamic quests in the sense that they can update while you are out there and the objective changes. This effectively saves you running back to the NPC, mindlessly telling them what happened and being told the obvious thing to do next. I really like this mechanism, it adds a welcome immediacy to questing and had the tendency to draw me into the quest line that little bit more.
The session play in LOTRO, where you are suddenly playing a very different kind of avatar (a chicken, an Elf Lord, a dwarven super champion, a servant of the enemy) with appropriate skills (usually very different to your own) is quite remarkable too. Some of these involve instance play but not all. Some people didn't like to leave their own avatar even for a little while, but I loved it. In fact anyone who enjoys PvE and questing ought to try that game to expand their horizons somewhat.
The sticking point though is that good quest lines, well written quest text and creative variation is expensive. The time it takes for you to enjoy this content is a teeny fraction of the time taken to create it. Session play in LOTRO for example requires implementation of new skills. And what this means is you get a great deal of quests that are patently uninteresting and samey among the interesting quests. That's my own experience across MMOs in any case.
Killing stuff is a means of providing a risk, an achievement, and a reward all in one, so it's a win for the devs - they have much less to do to get someone engaged. Anything that provides the three factors above will do though. For instance, if you had to run a gauntlet of danger to save the day for an NPC and be rewarded for your bravery, well that gives you all of the elements.
Interestingly, you don't even have to have all three to engage yourself in a game activity. People mine all day long in Eve b/c of the rewards (which include making stuff with the ores). I just spent a couple hours space mining in another game just to experience how it worked. It wasn't all thrilling and fun, but at the end, I made 30% over what I spent refining, and that'll take care of a few ship upgrades, so I got achievement + rewards, and I could go build stuff with it too.
On the flip side, my fighter character in the game can kill all day long without risk (he shoots missiles and is fast enough to stay out of range of the enemy). I'm bored with him already and thinking of rolling up a more exciting combat character - one who has to play hard to win. So for fighting pursuits, risk seems to be essential for me to have fun.
There is one huge issue I see with "phasing" a world around a character in an online game. In my opinion the main goal of phasing is to see the world change around you and create a very immersive environment while making it seem less like work. Make you feel like you are making a difference, and not 1 of 5,000,000 people before you to have done that task already. How is a boss really epic if you kill him 70 times to get an item dropped? Should you not only be able to kill them once and would they not drop everything they had when they died?
Once you have advanced into the phasing arc, how do you go back to help a friend/guildie? In your "phase" you have already finished tasks 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', and 'E.' How would it make sense within that context to help out your pal in Task 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', or 'E'? You've already done them and unless you can travel through time (which again would break phasing) you couldn't do them again. I think phasing is a really cool idea, but it takes a huge portion of the community out as there is little replayability.
And that would kill realism in another major way... storytelling. For example, if in your 'phase' you kill person 'X' and that unlocks the next step of your story. Would it be possible to go help your friend/guildie to redo that particular phase? You couldn't. Otherwise the phasing is usless and you just broke your story arc. Phasing would be customizing the story for you based on the way you played, so confronting person 'X' more than once would break that continuity.
I don't see much option for doing questing the way it is, and having a plausible story to cover how it works without killing the community or replayability.
We need to keep the real "quests" and meaningless "work" separately!
To go and kill ten wolfs and bring back a fur is not a quest. Atleast not when you did kill ten of something else a few minites ago.
If you were told to find and destroy the evil root to why wolfs appear from nothing, 20 meters next to you.....would be more of a quest.
I liked the way SWG did it before. You needed money? No problem! Just take a job and kill of some bugs or find a metal spawn. Those were never considered quests or anything.
Then we had big epic quests. One were just listening to a crime story from many different NPCs and decide wich (NPC) were the murderer! You really needed to think to solve it LOL
The problem is that more involved / interesting / detailed quests result in a lack of content because they require more time and resources than most developers have at their disposal.
Most new games have a hard enough time generating a few months of content with crappy monotonous quests as it is, if they used the quest budget to design more intensive quests, then its conceivable that the lesser, but better content will be over in a matter of weeks.
In a market where demand for less grind, but more content is becoming stronger I think that player generated or sandbox style content is the way to go. Let the players keep each other busy to a certain extent while the devs work on things like stability, combat mechanics, graphics, balance or whatever else.
Bioware may prove me wrong and make a theme park style game with non-monotonous, great quest content, but such games usually end up falling short in the long run due to an unrewarding endgame.
I think quests should be purely introductory and then become background tasks.
For example, when a new player enters the world - he is taught by NPCs, through quests, how to interact with the environment. Tutorial quests, you may call them.
Over time, the quests get less and less specific and greater in scope in their goals. For example, from "kill 10 rats and get a leather coat" to "kill 10000 critters and beasties and get a suit of armor" to "kill anything bad in this area for the next week and get a treasure chest" until the quests simply dissolve into "play the game however you want and get an unknown reward."
As the goals become greater in scope, the players begin to roam more of the world searching for ways to complete them. As the goals become greater in magnitude, players will search for ways to automate them. When the goals finally become great enough to cover the entirety of the game, the players will examine everything about the world and will automate all they can. The "trick" is to always have something new to discover and automate, which is a bit of a mystery in game development right now.
A mystery which is often handled by putting players in the shoes of robot slaves, forever damned to perform menial tasks until the day they grow bored and leave.
So unfortunately, a game for those with the very human desire to discover, automate, and progress creatively and indefinitely may not be available for at least a few generations more.
Uncover a conspiracy that involves a faked plague and a condemned West Ardougne (pronounced Ar-doyn), travel through a trap-ridden, evil-infested Underground Pass to kill a disciple of chaos, rediscover the separated land of elves, overthrow a (seemingly) corrupt king trying to conquer the land of elves, rediscover a Temple of Light that holds secrets to the creation of the world, and find a way to reconstruct the elven capital city... and who knows what after all that?
That's just one quest chain and it hasn't been finished yet. Do you agree that's how quests should be?
There's a reason why players in Runescape are called adventurers. They go on adventures, or quests in the truest sense of the word. Funny, eh?
A lot of people complain about how they hate how quests are all the same. "Go Here, Kill X", but they never suggest a solution. And after thinking about it, I can't really think of anything to suggest either. When looking at quests, there are three quest types: Kill Quests = Must kill X amount of said creature. Gather Quests = Must gather X amount of said item. Travel Quests = Go here, talk to this person. Now, I dare you to think of a type completely unique from those three. In fact, I welcome any new type that makes sense, but I know, that even new types will eventually be considered the norm and boring. The only solution I can see to this problem is by making the job more unique, the world more unique. Make it so when I go to kill X amount of said creature, something fun could happen, add in hidden quest elements. For instance: ""John heads over to kill five goblins, upon killing three for the quest, a giant Orc bursts through the nearby trees. Quest objective has now changed from kill five goblins, to slay Orc Ambusher."" Another example could be: ""John heads to collect twelve berries from a berry bush. Upon arrival, he notices another creature picking through the berries. John must now choose, will he kill this creature and take his hard earned berries, pay said creature, or just sift through the bush on his own.""
I myself have no problem with how quests are, but I would like to improve them either way. Now, if you'll excuse me I seem to have spilled my tea all over myself...
I always suggest a solution.
The one I mostly use is:
The princess has been kidnapped. It is not clear but it appears that it might involve a neighboring kingdom. However, the king does not want to risk all out war... 'yet'.
So you are hired to infiltrate the tower/keep where she might be hidden.
The tower has guards, traps, etc. There are also some workarounds for thieves to discover such as secret passages. Each mob/guard/whatever gives a certain amount of xp. So if your old quest said "kill 20 of x" you would then have 20 mobs strewn throughout the first lvl that you might have to kill. If you discover the workaround secret areas then that is also worth a certian amount of xp and more fo the thief. of course there will still be mobs you have to get through. Once you get to the top you have the evil sorcerer who has the princess locked up.
You and your group will have to defeat the evil sorcerer. If you do then a magical trap goes off and the princess vanishes. "Where does she go?" You discover the book that the sorcerer has and realize that this is part of a much larger plot but it is not all clear.
You bring this back to the king. He ponders and asks another task of you based on the findings in the book. This one looks like it might be a bit more dangerous...
So there you've killed your mobs for the day, possibly discovered some precious ores and crafting materials, some loot in the Tower, defeated a boss mob and you are then told what you need to do next... if you choose to accept.
Instead of telling people to kill x of y have them do a task where eventually they will kill x of y while discovering a more plot oriented journey to partake in.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
A lot of people complain about how they hate how quests are all the same. "Go Here, Kill X", but they never suggest a solution. And after thinking about it, I can't really think of anything to suggest either. When looking at quests, there are three quest types: Kill Quests = Must kill X amount of said creature. Gather Quests = Must gather X amount of said item. Travel Quests = Go here, talk to this person. Now, I dare you to think of a type completely unique from those three. In fact, I welcome any new type that makes sense, but I know, that even new types will eventually be considered the norm and boring.
You must play more RPG's. Most RPG's are filled with quest ( maybe 20 or 40) where almost all are different, unique and original. MMORPG seems to derive quantity > quality, so create a "quest system" for generic quest, and fill it with crappy quest. Where singleplayer RPG's try to make a memorable world, a memorable lore and memorable adventure.
A lot of people complain about how they hate how quests are all the same. "Go Here, Kill X", but they never suggest a solution. And after thinking about it, I can't really think of anything to suggest either. When looking at quests, there are three quest types: Kill Quests = Must kill X amount of said creature. Gather Quests = Must gather X amount of said item. Travel Quests = Go here, talk to this person. Now, I dare you to think of a type completely unique from those three. In fact, I welcome any new type that makes sense, but I know, that even new types will eventually be considered the norm and boring. The only solution I can see to this problem is by making the job more unique, the world more unique. Make it so when I go to kill X amount of said creature, something fun could happen, add in hidden quest elements. For instance: ""John heads over to kill five goblins, upon killing three for the quest, a giant Orc bursts through the nearby trees. Quest objective has now changed from kill five goblins, to slay Orc Ambusher."" Another example could be: ""John heads to collect twelve berries from a berry bush. Upon arrival, he notices another creature picking through the berries. John must now choose, will he kill this creature and take his hard earned berries, pay said creature, or just sift through the bush on his own.""
I myself have no problem with how quests are, but I would like to improve them either way. Now, if you'll excuse me I seem to have spilled my tea all over myself...
I always suggest a solution.
The one I mostly use is:
The princess has been kidnapped. It is not clear but it appears that it might involve a neighboring kingdom. However, the king does not want to risk all out war... 'yet'.
So you are hired to infiltrate the tower/keep where she might be hidden.
The tower has guards, traps, etc. There are also some workarounds for thieves to discover such as secret passages. Each mob/guard/whatever gives a certain amount of xp. So if your old quest said "kill 20 of x" you would then have 20 mobs strewn throughout the first lvl that you might have to kill. If you discover the workaround secret areas then that is also worth a certian amount of xp and more fo the thief. of course there will still be mobs you have to get through. Once you get to the top you have the evil sorcerer who has the princess locked up.
You and your group will have to defeat the evil sorcerer. If you do then a magical trap goes off and the princess vanishes. "Where does she go?" You discover the book that the sorcerer has and realize that this is part of a much larger plot but it is not all clear.
You bring this back to the king. He ponders and asks another task of you based on the findings in the book. This one looks like it might be a bit more dangerous...
So there you've killed your mobs for the day, possibly discovered some precious ores and crafting materials, some loot in the Tower, defeated a boss mob and you are then told what you need to do next... if you choose to accept.
Instead of telling people to kill x of y have them do a task where eventually they will kill x of y while discovering a more plot oriented journey to partake in.
That requires too much work! I have 5 kids to take care of and work 2 job! Just give me the kill X number of goats and give me a damn bracer of strangth!
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
Originally posted by Briansho That requires too much work! I have 5 kids to take care of and work 2 job! Just give me the kill X number of goats and give me a damn bracer of strangth!
The 'Players are lazy morons' stereotype might sound nice to spew out but the more likely scenario is:
That requires too much work! The deadline is nearing and the marketing people/CEO/lead dev have promised all these other features that are not in the game yet. This quest can be completed in a night but will take days to program. Better replace it with something something that can be coded fast and fills out the area or I will get fired for missing the deadline.
Originally posted by Briansho That requires too much work! I have 5 kids to take care of and work 2 job! Just give me the kill X number of goats and give me a damn bracer of strangth!
The 'Players are lazy morons' stereotype might sound nice to spew out but the more likely scenario is:
That requires too much work! The deadline is nearing and the marketing people/CEO/lead dev have promised all these other features that are not in the game yet. This quest can be completed in a night but will take days to program. Better replace it with something something that can be coded fast and fills out the area or I will get fired for missing the deadline.
I don't see how it would take any longer than to populate a regular dungeon.
What I suggest, even if you want to take out the secret doors is a dungeon with several levels, doesn't have to be any more than 20 mobs total and a mini boss at the top.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
An example game that suffers this issue is Lord of the Rings Online.
The solo quests are plagued with this issue. (Some bright spots though)
Allow scaling dungeons for the book quests and allow everyone access to the content.
Lower the reward to satisfy the achiever/min-maxer crowd.
The long term answers for the genre can then be explored by the answers in this thread while also including exploration, sandbox, and user generated content.
The opposition you'll have is one group that don't want others to have a fun experience.
Let's see... Uncover a conspiracy that involves a faked plague and a condemned West Ardougne (pronounced Ar-doyn), travel through a trap-ridden, evil-infested Underground Pass to kill a disciple of chaos, rediscover the separated land of elves, overthrow a (seemingly) corrupt king trying to conquer the land of elves, rediscover a Temple of Light that holds secrets to the creation of the world, and find a way to reconstruct the elven capital city... and who knows what after all that? That's just one quest chain and it hasn't been finished yet. Do you agree that's how quests should be? There's a reason why players in Runescape are called adventurers. They go on adventures, or quests in the truest sense of the word. Funny, eh?
There's a reason why 99% of people playing Runescape are immature, pre-pubescent 10 year-old kids. Funny, eh?
A lot of people complain about how they hate how quests are all the same. "Go Here, Kill X", but they never suggest a solution. And after thinking about it, I can't really think of anything to suggest either. When looking at quests, there are three quest types: Kill Quests = Must kill X amount of said creature. Gather Quests = Must gather X amount of said item. Travel Quests = Go here, talk to this person. Now, I dare you to think of a type completely unique from those three. In fact, I welcome any new type that makes sense, but I know, that even new types will eventually be considered the norm and boring. The only solution I can see to this problem is by making the job more unique, the world more unique. Make it so when I go to kill X amount of said creature, something fun could happen, add in hidden quest elements. For instance: ""John heads over to kill five goblins, upon killing three for the quest, a giant Orc bursts through the nearby trees. Quest objective has now changed from kill five goblins, to slay Orc Ambusher."" Another example could be: ""John heads to collect twelve berries from a berry bush. Upon arrival, he notices another creature picking through the berries. John must now choose, will he kill this creature and take his hard earned berries, pay said creature, or just sift through the bush on his own.""
I myself have no problem with how quests are, but I would like to improve them either way. Now, if you'll excuse me I seem to have spilled my tea all over myself...
Well, to me it is not so much how the quests are but the reason they exists.
I think that quests in general should be more multilayered and meaningful. So that you would not have to quest for quests' sake.
Take Mass Effect for example. I never felt the need to to do quests for experience reasons, but as a part of story/character development. There are some good quest lines in games like WoW as well that immerse you into the world in a meaningful way - accomplishing them is fun. However, majority of them are there just to give XP or new items.
Also, quests should not be so straight forward. They should indeed involve moral choices and such.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
What I have to say about quests is currently not applicable to any game I know of to date.
Ok, think about any fantasy novel you've ever read which involved some sort of quest. At it's core it's basically the same sort of thing you see in these games; go to X location and perform Y action. But in stories the majority of the quest is not so much what you do when you get to your destination...it's getting there in the first place. It the challenges and adventures you have along the way. Yes, the final action is important too but 90% or more of the quest is just getting there.
Unfortunately this can't translate into mmorpgs as we know them. For the journey to be the important part you would need a very large game world with no easy travel options and it would have to be a dangerous world, not a walk in the park.
I actually loved how the Runescape *gasp* quests worked.
There weren't alot of em, but doing each of em were really fun, I LOVED the fact that you had to collect stuff from places that you have to find through clues, goto alot of different places, give a story to it (as bad as it was in RS, it was still entertaining), kill a few stuff, and then reward the quest with something that is obtainable only once throughout the game and a whole lot of experience points.
Ofcourse... in modern mmos where people would swarm the quests, this isn't really a viable nor fun. But hey, maybe the phasing thing could work... or making quests unique...
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Check out the MUD I'm making!
I'll take that last part as a suggestion, and a good one, if what I gather from it is correct.
Yes that is a great suggestion
Escort Quests? No ty.
What is an RTS mission that would work in an MMO too? "Build 3 gold mines"?
All OP asked for was an alternative; I gave one.
Look at stuff in Starcraft, for example. You need to take out the cerebrates, deliver 4 medics to the Overmind, etc. Now, turn that into a server-wide thing that requires an immense amount of co-ordination and the co-operation of everyone on the server, and that could work wonders. Now, obviously, people need motivation, so do something like half the people will die if the 'Overmind' is not stopped and all monster levels will be decupled. Of course, by 'people' I mean 'players' and by 'die' I mean 'delete'.
The thing that bothers people is that quests are repetitive. Then again, there are only so many types of quests, and they've all been done in some way, shape, or form. Like OP suggested, we need dynamic quests. Although nearly impossible simply because of modern technological limits, what we need is for no two people to experience the same storyline.
WoW has lots of quests like that, unfortunately it boils down to "go GATHER these items that will make it look convincing" or it's just a line of talking to different people. Nobody pays attention to the fact that the quest might actually be interesting story-wise, because they're just using it to get to max level and not because they want something fun to do. The quest could say "derp derp derp derp derp 6 sunflowers derp" and most people wouldn't care, they'd just do it for the exp without reading it.
Because designers shy away from the idea that a players avatar can have any differences from one of the same class and race, quests are very limited. You can’t even raise reputation with one npc clan, while lowering it with another these days. That was a choice for you, which clan would you pick to help?
Quests could be used to send your character on their own journey. Ok if another player picked the same twenty options as you did he would be identical to you. Quest lines could define your crafting recipes, your armour and weapons, your powers and skills. But this would make many players think their choices had nerfed them, regardless or whether they really had. Designers don’t want players to think they have been nerfed, in fact they don’t want there to be any reason that you might give up on their game. That is the sad reality now, all differences between avatars have been ironed out to maximise the player base.
Solution:
Make Quest more rare and make it feel that very rewarding for hard work. Have a timer for that quest if u want to repeat. Like 2-3 days or soemthing, depends. Whats the difference if you kill x and then go back to get exp reward.. you still kill anyway so why need quest? Its just annoyance. Also get rid of icon above NPC that has quest or not... if there is none.. and it force people to go up to them and read than just look for number and who then click ok accept and go without reading the other unimportant comment. Also, when you try to talk to NPC, NPC will talk to you on Chat box only, no options menu! No hint color highlight. You figure it out, makes it more fun..
Kain_Dale
The true problem is that the three types you mention are the easiest to create and they run smoothly in an open world. There are in fact a quite a few variations and in various MMOs there is some real creativity invested in quests.
One example from LOTRO I recall is that there were two enormous giants, who (if you do the quest on level) are definitely going to squish you if they spot you, but the quest is to "trick" them into fighting each other. You do so just by clicking on a loose stone in the landscape (giant no 1 thinks giant no 2 hit them or something) a couple of times while watching what happens, and making sure you approach in a way that the giants don't see you.
Someone mentioned escort quests already. That is a well used type, and I tend to enjoy those quests. There is also the planting type of quests, the opposite of gathering, i.e. poison the orc's stew pots, plant a box of nasty insects in a camp, etc. Mechanistically, they are identical to gathering quests.
WoW really surprised me one day with the quests where you are mounted, and on a set flight path, and have to throw bombs on the enemy.
Fallen Earth has tracking quests which I found to be quite fun too (the NPC you need to kill makes a run for it and you "track" them by reaching waypoints). They also have dynamic quests in the sense that they can update while you are out there and the objective changes. This effectively saves you running back to the NPC, mindlessly telling them what happened and being told the obvious thing to do next. I really like this mechanism, it adds a welcome immediacy to questing and had the tendency to draw me into the quest line that little bit more.
The session play in LOTRO, where you are suddenly playing a very different kind of avatar (a chicken, an Elf Lord, a dwarven super champion, a servant of the enemy) with appropriate skills (usually very different to your own) is quite remarkable too. Some of these involve instance play but not all. Some people didn't like to leave their own avatar even for a little while, but I loved it. In fact anyone who enjoys PvE and questing ought to try that game to expand their horizons somewhat.
The sticking point though is that good quest lines, well written quest text and creative variation is expensive. The time it takes for you to enjoy this content is a teeny fraction of the time taken to create it. Session play in LOTRO for example requires implementation of new skills. And what this means is you get a great deal of quests that are patently uninteresting and samey among the interesting quests. That's my own experience across MMOs in any case.
Killing stuff is a means of providing a risk, an achievement, and a reward all in one, so it's a win for the devs - they have much less to do to get someone engaged. Anything that provides the three factors above will do though. For instance, if you had to run a gauntlet of danger to save the day for an NPC and be rewarded for your bravery, well that gives you all of the elements.
Interestingly, you don't even have to have all three to engage yourself in a game activity. People mine all day long in Eve b/c of the rewards (which include making stuff with the ores). I just spent a couple hours space mining in another game just to experience how it worked. It wasn't all thrilling and fun, but at the end, I made 30% over what I spent refining, and that'll take care of a few ship upgrades, so I got achievement + rewards, and I could go build stuff with it too.
On the flip side, my fighter character in the game can kill all day long without risk (he shoots missiles and is fast enough to stay out of range of the enemy). I'm bored with him already and thinking of rolling up a more exciting combat character - one who has to play hard to win. So for fighting pursuits, risk seems to be essential for me to have fun.
There is one huge issue I see with "phasing" a world around a character in an online game. In my opinion the main goal of phasing is to see the world change around you and create a very immersive environment while making it seem less like work. Make you feel like you are making a difference, and not 1 of 5,000,000 people before you to have done that task already. How is a boss really epic if you kill him 70 times to get an item dropped? Should you not only be able to kill them once and would they not drop everything they had when they died?
Once you have advanced into the phasing arc, how do you go back to help a friend/guildie? In your "phase" you have already finished tasks 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', and 'E.' How would it make sense within that context to help out your pal in Task 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', or 'E'? You've already done them and unless you can travel through time (which again would break phasing) you couldn't do them again. I think phasing is a really cool idea, but it takes a huge portion of the community out as there is little replayability.
And that would kill realism in another major way... storytelling. For example, if in your 'phase' you kill person 'X' and that unlocks the next step of your story. Would it be possible to go help your friend/guildie to redo that particular phase? You couldn't. Otherwise the phasing is usless and you just broke your story arc. Phasing would be customizing the story for you based on the way you played, so confronting person 'X' more than once would break that continuity.
I don't see much option for doing questing the way it is, and having a plausible story to cover how it works without killing the community or replayability.
We need to keep the real "quests" and meaningless "work" separately!
To go and kill ten wolfs and bring back a fur is not a quest. Atleast not when you did kill ten of something else a few minites ago.
If you were told to find and destroy the evil root to why wolfs appear from nothing, 20 meters next to you.....would be more of a quest.
I liked the way SWG did it before. You needed money? No problem! Just take a job and kill of some bugs or find a metal spawn. Those were never considered quests or anything.
Then we had big epic quests. One were just listening to a crime story from many different NPCs and decide wich (NPC) were the murderer! You really needed to think to solve it LOL
The problem is that more involved / interesting / detailed quests result in a lack of content because they require more time and resources than most developers have at their disposal.
Most new games have a hard enough time generating a few months of content with crappy monotonous quests as it is, if they used the quest budget to design more intensive quests, then its conceivable that the lesser, but better content will be over in a matter of weeks.
In a market where demand for less grind, but more content is becoming stronger I think that player generated or sandbox style content is the way to go. Let the players keep each other busy to a certain extent while the devs work on things like stability, combat mechanics, graphics, balance or whatever else.
Bioware may prove me wrong and make a theme park style game with non-monotonous, great quest content, but such games usually end up falling short in the long run due to an unrewarding endgame.
I think quests should be purely introductory and then become background tasks.
For example, when a new player enters the world - he is taught by NPCs, through quests, how to interact with the environment. Tutorial quests, you may call them.
Over time, the quests get less and less specific and greater in scope in their goals. For example, from "kill 10 rats and get a leather coat" to "kill 10000 critters and beasties and get a suit of armor" to "kill anything bad in this area for the next week and get a treasure chest" until the quests simply dissolve into "play the game however you want and get an unknown reward."
As the goals become greater in scope, the players begin to roam more of the world searching for ways to complete them. As the goals become greater in magnitude, players will search for ways to automate them. When the goals finally become great enough to cover the entirety of the game, the players will examine everything about the world and will automate all they can. The "trick" is to always have something new to discover and automate, which is a bit of a mystery in game development right now.
A mystery which is often handled by putting players in the shoes of robot slaves, forever damned to perform menial tasks until the day they grow bored and leave.
So unfortunately, a game for those with the very human desire to discover, automate, and progress creatively and indefinitely may not be available for at least a few generations more.
Let's see...
Uncover a conspiracy that involves a faked plague and a condemned West Ardougne (pronounced Ar-doyn), travel through a trap-ridden, evil-infested Underground Pass to kill a disciple of chaos, rediscover the separated land of elves, overthrow a (seemingly) corrupt king trying to conquer the land of elves, rediscover a Temple of Light that holds secrets to the creation of the world, and find a way to reconstruct the elven capital city... and who knows what after all that?
That's just one quest chain and it hasn't been finished yet. Do you agree that's how quests should be?
There's a reason why players in Runescape are called adventurers. They go on adventures, or quests in the truest sense of the word. Funny, eh?
I always suggest a solution.
The one I mostly use is:
The princess has been kidnapped. It is not clear but it appears that it might involve a neighboring kingdom. However, the king does not want to risk all out war... 'yet'.
So you are hired to infiltrate the tower/keep where she might be hidden.
The tower has guards, traps, etc. There are also some workarounds for thieves to discover such as secret passages. Each mob/guard/whatever gives a certain amount of xp. So if your old quest said "kill 20 of x" you would then have 20 mobs strewn throughout the first lvl that you might have to kill. If you discover the workaround secret areas then that is also worth a certian amount of xp and more fo the thief. of course there will still be mobs you have to get through. Once you get to the top you have the evil sorcerer who has the princess locked up.
You and your group will have to defeat the evil sorcerer. If you do then a magical trap goes off and the princess vanishes. "Where does she go?" You discover the book that the sorcerer has and realize that this is part of a much larger plot but it is not all clear.
You bring this back to the king. He ponders and asks another task of you based on the findings in the book. This one looks like it might be a bit more dangerous...
So there you've killed your mobs for the day, possibly discovered some precious ores and crafting materials, some loot in the Tower, defeated a boss mob and you are then told what you need to do next... if you choose to accept.
Instead of telling people to kill x of y have them do a task where eventually they will kill x of y while discovering a more plot oriented journey to partake in.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
You must play more RPG's. Most RPG's are filled with quest ( maybe 20 or 40) where almost all are different, unique and original. MMORPG seems to derive quantity > quality, so create a "quest system" for generic quest, and fill it with crappy quest. Where singleplayer RPG's try to make a memorable world, a memorable lore and memorable adventure.
I always suggest a solution.
The one I mostly use is:
The princess has been kidnapped. It is not clear but it appears that it might involve a neighboring kingdom. However, the king does not want to risk all out war... 'yet'.
So you are hired to infiltrate the tower/keep where she might be hidden.
The tower has guards, traps, etc. There are also some workarounds for thieves to discover such as secret passages. Each mob/guard/whatever gives a certain amount of xp. So if your old quest said "kill 20 of x" you would then have 20 mobs strewn throughout the first lvl that you might have to kill. If you discover the workaround secret areas then that is also worth a certian amount of xp and more fo the thief. of course there will still be mobs you have to get through. Once you get to the top you have the evil sorcerer who has the princess locked up.
You and your group will have to defeat the evil sorcerer. If you do then a magical trap goes off and the princess vanishes. "Where does she go?" You discover the book that the sorcerer has and realize that this is part of a much larger plot but it is not all clear.
You bring this back to the king. He ponders and asks another task of you based on the findings in the book. This one looks like it might be a bit more dangerous...
So there you've killed your mobs for the day, possibly discovered some precious ores and crafting materials, some loot in the Tower, defeated a boss mob and you are then told what you need to do next... if you choose to accept.
Instead of telling people to kill x of y have them do a task where eventually they will kill x of y while discovering a more plot oriented journey to partake in.
That requires too much work! I have 5 kids to take care of and work 2 job! Just give me the kill X number of goats and give me a damn bracer of strangth!
Don't be terrorized! You're more likely to die of a car accident, drowning, fire, or murder! More people die every year from prescription drugs than terrorism LOL!
The 'Players are lazy morons' stereotype might sound nice to spew out but the more likely scenario is:
That requires too much work! The deadline is nearing and the marketing people/CEO/lead dev have promised all these other features that are not in the game yet. This quest can be completed in a night but will take days to program. Better replace it with something something that can be coded fast and fills out the area or I will get fired for missing the deadline.
The 'Players are lazy morons' stereotype might sound nice to spew out but the more likely scenario is:
That requires too much work! The deadline is nearing and the marketing people/CEO/lead dev have promised all these other features that are not in the game yet. This quest can be completed in a night but will take days to program. Better replace it with something something that can be coded fast and fills out the area or I will get fired for missing the deadline.
I don't see how it would take any longer than to populate a regular dungeon.
What I suggest, even if you want to take out the secret doors is a dungeon with several levels, doesn't have to be any more than 20 mobs total and a mini boss at the top.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
An example game that suffers this issue is Lord of the Rings Online.
The solo quests are plagued with this issue. (Some bright spots though)
Allow scaling dungeons for the book quests and allow everyone access to the content.
Lower the reward to satisfy the achiever/min-maxer crowd.
The long term answers for the genre can then be explored by the answers in this thread while also including exploration, sandbox, and user generated content.
The opposition you'll have is one group that don't want others to have a fun experience.
(This being the achievers/min-maxers)
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
There's a reason why 99% of people playing Runescape are immature, pre-pubescent 10 year-old kids. Funny, eh?
alternative
GO DIE and be looted:)
the funniest part i found some eve fans in that thread
EVE is about RL money make you e-peen bigger
Well, to me it is not so much how the quests are but the reason they exists.
I think that quests in general should be more multilayered and meaningful. So that you would not have to quest for quests' sake.
Take Mass Effect for example. I never felt the need to to do quests for experience reasons, but as a part of story/character development. There are some good quest lines in games like WoW as well that immerse you into the world in a meaningful way - accomplishing them is fun. However, majority of them are there just to give XP or new items.
Also, quests should not be so straight forward. They should indeed involve moral choices and such.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
What I have to say about quests is currently not applicable to any game I know of to date.
Ok, think about any fantasy novel you've ever read which involved some sort of quest. At it's core it's basically the same sort of thing you see in these games; go to X location and perform Y action. But in stories the majority of the quest is not so much what you do when you get to your destination...it's getting there in the first place. It the challenges and adventures you have along the way. Yes, the final action is important too but 90% or more of the quest is just getting there.
Unfortunately this can't translate into mmorpgs as we know them. For the journey to be the important part you would need a very large game world with no easy travel options and it would have to be a dangerous world, not a walk in the park.
I actually loved how the Runescape *gasp* quests worked.
There weren't alot of em, but doing each of em were really fun, I LOVED the fact that you had to collect stuff from places that you have to find through clues, goto alot of different places, give a story to it (as bad as it was in RS, it was still entertaining), kill a few stuff, and then reward the quest with something that is obtainable only once throughout the game and a whole lot of experience points.
Ofcourse... in modern mmos where people would swarm the quests, this isn't really a viable nor fun. But hey, maybe the phasing thing could work... or making quests unique...
shrug, who knows who knows.