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How Would You Overhaul Quest?
Vermillion_Raventhal
Member EpicPosts: 4,198
We've been stuck with quest mechanics for a while and likely will be stuck with them forever. Kill, Fedex, Collect items from dead, Escort, Locate items in area, defend area against waves, click something to activate something. I am sure they're more but it's largely the gist of it.
OK, to the question how would you modify current MMORPG quest to bring freshness to SOME has become a stale aspect of MMORPG gaming?
Comments
There must be a REASON to quest. Questing to get to the next level or get a crappy piece of armor or a few coins is going to make any quest boring. The quests themselves could do with a bit of excitement but better rewards are the very first thing that needs fixed.
Second thing to consider is the time players have to devote to questing. Some work a job and need to relax. Some are young basement blobs with all the time in the world looking to show off their problem solving skills. This speaks to me WIDE LARGE HUGE BIG ENORMOUS variety or don't bother with quests at all. Yes, some will be put off by to many options but the majority will not.
I am in favor of story line questing if done right plus variety.
What I would change: 3rd thing - the NPC's giving the quest. I don't want Farmer Bob standing there rain, sleet, or shine in front of the cottage all day looking for me to kill five wolves. Get off his lazy ass and do it himself. Really. I want to see Farmer Bob walking around, mowing, feeding cattle, wiping the sweat from his brow. I want to "watch" Farmer Bob like a stalker for three days straight and not see him recycle one single move. As he is doing this I want him to give me quests based on what he is doing and gawd let them make sense! If he's milking cows then I can ask to milk cows with him. If he's grinding grain at the mill I'll have a good idea what kind of quest I'll get out of Farmer Bob if I ask him atm.
- Chain quests. LONG chain quests that may give an item, and allow for upgrades to it via further quests within the original quest line that take you the span of the world to do so, as well as the span of your character progression.
- Quests that have impact on the world. Because of that, may be on LONG timers at random intervals. Or may show up in a different location within the world with different objectives and rewards.
- Branching storyline quests....so you aren't stuck to one direction...but may choose which direction to go which may lead to different outcomes and different rewards. Make these 1 times deals...but make LOTS of them throughout the world. I feel these types would lend to replayability for alts as well....so you can take a route you didn't the first time for a different adventure and outcome.
Quests should be just that...quests, not meaningless tasks like "Go collect 10 bear pelts because I need them" types. Although these types cannot be avoided to some degree.
Give them purpose that spans a continent or continents. They should be adventures.
WHEN LORD.....WHEN!!!
Quests are not a game, quests are simply the breadcrumbs leading you around from one area or minigame to another.
To fix quests, just ignore the quests and ask if the game is fun without them.
Quests are just excuses to go to point A to B, or defeat enemies. Why are they so much better in SP games like Dishonored? Because they are dressed up better with scripted events, voice over, and stuff like that.
So the answer is easy. Use more instances. Use more scripting. Use more VO. Dress it up like SP games.
I think WildStar is onto something by using layers(Classes,Paths,Factions,???) to make the quests have more significance. And lots of humor.
What I would do is take a big step back away from the massive amounts of quests that we have today. Instead have 50-100 really quality stories. Ones that branch out and have multiple endings or they cross paths with quests someone else has. Quests that are actually memorable stories and are fun to replay differently. Then fill in the rest with a lot of deep systems and simple jobs that can be player created.
Wasn't The Old Republic a "failure" because it was essentially a single player story game only?
But nice ideas everyone.
I would like to see dedicated GM or World Master types who could push questlines or events.
Quest that require some research. IE to solve this quest you find knowledge in the lore and manually solve the problem. Thus it may send you on adventures around the world to find answers.
I think it was Ashron's Call that had quarterly or monthly questlines and larger story arcs over time that changed the game's lore. Need more games with this outside just expansions.
I would like to see players being the ones who set up FedEx Quest for crafting materials. Player run quest in general.
Quests can be more organic by having a poacher ask you to collect wolf pelts for X gold a piece, each wolf has a pelt, and has to be killed and "salvaged", or skinned basically, to collect the pelt, he poacher doesn't reject the pelt because you only bring one, he may pay extra for special pelts, and cap off at a certain amount as his needs fit. This besides which you can do for money doesn't need to be chained or lock off content. It just exists as an option to make money while your there.
Beyond that, its an MMO, quests need to stop being about hero's and individuals, and be more about ongoing struggles and warriorS, specific on the plural. Even in an instanced setting, it makes more sense when events take place due to the actions of many, and the challenge is ongoing, not an event which doesn't rationally repeat itself. This could be defending a stronghold vs various invaders. Ambushing enemy caravans. Participating in a battle to an inconclusive war.
Heroic deeds are not heroic if their typical. It's easier to make a regular battle deep and heroic than make overblown events meaningful. It's an MMO, a world that invites immersion, if you want to slay the gods of Olympus, play God of war, an MMO should pit you in events of warriors, battles, and adventurers, in a setting where your a figure in a world of other players. Maybe thru a dynamic event players overthrow a neighboring tyrant, and your party of the ARMY who defeated him, not the specific guy who dueled him for victory. The later may sound epic, but its really just cheesy, and in an MMO, depth is a medium for success.
Dynamic events could also play out multiple outcomes, success, failure, unexpected detour, complete overperform, minimal success. Quests should not be, complete or not.
There are many more ways quests can improve, and many ways they have been improved, my main expectation is that MMO quests fit an MMO world and MMO story, not be some single player exclusive instance which does nothing to immerse you in the world and place you as a participant among many.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
After giving this very question a lot of thought, I have come up questing for your class skills, abilities, and spells. WoW used to do this a little bit, and I loved those quests!
Hunters had to quest to learn how to tame animals. Druids had to quest to learn how to shape-shift. There was a 16th(?) level Mage spell I had to quest for. I enjoyed these quests. Their sole purpose was to make my character better at what he did.
Other kinds of quests that I find fun:
- Mystery Quests, or solving murders
- Quests for lore
- Sneak Quests for Rogues
- Spell use quests for spell users
- Quests for religion based classes about their religion
- Quests for crafters about learning more about their craft
- Mapping quests
- Puzzle Quests
- Interesting collecting quests
That's a start, I guess.
For me, mini-games are not that fun. I have trouble making sense of why my character is playing a mini-game.
So many other ways to get the players involved that are not used. I think if devs/publishers would look away from "Combat! Combat! Combat!" for a couple of moments, they may discover these hidden and forgotten gems.
[EDIT]
Forgot to add quests for evil players. It seems that a very large portion of quests are all about being good guys and helping NPCs in need.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
The best thing I could see happening to questing would be to reduce the dependence on questing for progression. As it is, quests are little more than cheat codes for XP.
I think questing should make your character change Quests to advance in skills, even crafting, would be more appropriate. A Rogue for example might get big increases in stealth skills by doing stealth quests. Maybe even go so far that if a Rogue doesn't do the quests, they would be significantly inferior in stealth.
Second, do away with specific levels for quests. EQ2 does this with Lore and Legend quests. It's effective level matches yours as does xp for completing it. Run off % of level and scale the reward up. That way anyone can group with others and don't have to spend half your time figuring out who needs what.
Third is that xp needs to be balanced with mob kills. Some games already do this but the turn in should only be worth about another 1/2 what the mob kills got you. In a perfect world if I was grinding and the guy next to me left to turn in the quest, in the time it took him to get there I should have killed enough mobs to equal the turn in xp.
But all that quest content you listed in your post is just a collection of minigames.
The quests are just a trail of breadcrumbs providing motive to move from one to another. That isn't a game, it's a story. I'm not saying that's bad or being critical of you as a player focusing your attention on it, I'm just saying that from a game design point of view, focusing on the story and then filling in the gameplay to fit the episodes to the story feels backwards to me.
I would personally like to see 'quests' closer to what is going on in the world, not just the repeat this, kill x of those.
If there's a battle, either fight, heal or support (your choice) and not have x being the number of enemies you kill or allies you heal. Let it flow, hell have defeats as well. Not simply pushing forward and winning and move on. Let the defeat sink in while you lick your wounds and put your efforts elsewhere for the cause or go back to grind it out (again, your choice).
Not saying it should be like GW2 where it's repeated but if it isn't instanced where you see the changes you've accomplished then have it ongoing and you can decide to stay and help further or move to something else. Let crafters make stuff for the fighters in the battle to bolster the line be it weapons or armor, or even cook food for them. Why not?! Give players the options to do what they wish in the world.
Nope. TOR is a failure because it is not SP enough. Look at KOTOR games. Bioware obviously know how to make SP RPGs. TOR is much better off as a SP Game.
The failure is the MMO part.
Someone mentioned dishonored, and I think it's the freedom that really makes the quests fun.
If the quest said, "Go to the tower, kill 20 guards and the regent and then come back to the boatman" it probably wouldn't be such a good game.
But what they do say is, "The regent is in the tower, find him and kill him." Then they put a bunch of guards in your way and you have to find your own way through. Use the rooftops, go in guns blazing and kill everyone, use the sewers, stealth kill everyone, do the whole thing without getting noticed at all, swim through the water, mix n match.
That's really the primary difference between fun quests and usual MMO style quests. Options and variety.
Now the real trick is . . . how do you implement that type of freedom onto an open world full of other players doing the same quest as you? And that's why MMO's have what they have. It's a tall order to ask for freedom when they have to provide it to everyone simultaneously.
Let's take that dishonored example and put it in an MMO. 10 people get the quest to kill the regent. You decide you want to go in guns blazing and have fun. Well, you just ruined everyone else's fun - the person who was trying to ghost through the level without getting noticed doesn't have any amount of challenge laid out in front of him anymore - you're killing the guards and he can just walk past.
Same goes for the people who were trying to sneak through the sewers and over the rooftops, there's no puzzle work for them to solve if all the guards have left their guard posts. No threat, no need to sneak by. Then you get to the regent and guess what? There's a line of people waiting to kill him so you have to wait your turn until he respawns.
many people playing simultaneously + quests = shallow quests.
Unless you're going to phase or use instances - which people will also complain about because they want it seamless - it's a very difficult thing to do.
You rolled a Warrior... and like *poof* you know all there is to be a Warrior... you're just questing to gain levels and gear.
What they should have done is made your quests about learning your class... quests that reward you with skills that you learn from the master. Tasks should be relevant to practicing the skills. Once you have proven your worthiness, a new skill is undertaken. The skills you study are directly related to your talents you wish to have when you complete your training. You can't just magically acquire a skill that you haven't studied. Perhaps you chose the path of a tank... your options are focused along the lines of tanking, etc.
Faction specific or race specific quests intertwined within. You're Horde, you're supposed to despise the Alliance and try to destroy them whenever they cross your path. Avoiding combat with them makes you a coward. Cowardess results in negative training... what Warrior is afraid of battle. Same is true for race... your race is Ogres... they have their own rituals and history... you must be worthy of being a Warrior for the Ogres... prove yourself in battles and tasks only an Ogre could complete.
I think quests ARE the game... the fact that developers turn it into something simplistic is their own laziness. Dungeons and raids are by far the most simplistic concepts to design for. A complex questing system on the other hand is far more time consuming... especially if there are possibly 1000 quests to choose from for any one class but only 100 are necessary to complete their training.
You spend countless hours on realistic worlds that seem to be alive, but you populate them with cardboard characters whose only purpose is to top some damage meter in a raid. Shallow design, very shallow design. Give us characters to build, not merely drive around an amusement park.
Linear = boring? Halo, Dishonored, Deus Ex, and a thousand highly popular, highly fun SP games disagree.
In fact, TOR needs more freedom in how to complete a quest (like Dishonored) but LESS in the quest progression (less running around in an open world).
This kind of gameplay is extremely fun, but can only put into an instance. It won't be fun if there are 100 Corvos running around.
BTW, i think it will be as fun if the quest is "Disable or kill the 20 guards so that xyz can escape". You can decide how to take them down.
I was about to point out the same exact thing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think traditional quests are not an MMO-like concept to begin with and should go. People tend to focus on GW2's events not being meaningful enough, repeating too often, etc. while forgetting the most important change:
GW2 made quests multiplayer.
That's a good start, but most of GW2's events are too simplistic. There's not enough variation and the events are way too short. A Centaur siege shouldn't last two minutes. It should last over half an hour, with you getting rewarded for participation even if you only participate for a few minutes. Events should consist of smaller events, like a surprise attack happening in the middle of that siege and being a separate mini-event. Most importantly, events should incorporate more random elements and be more player-driven and sandboxy, so that each repetition of an event is a bit different. For example, GW2 has some nice siege equipment that's used almost exclusively in WvW, even though letting people build siege engines in PvE could be great.
For example, you could have players build mining camps in the world. Said camps would attract monsters and players could defend from those monsters by building various structures. Firefall does something like this with Thumping, but unfortunately Firefall sucks in too many ways to affect anything.
How would I overhaul quests?
Well I should start by pointing out quests don't need an overhaul. Fundamentally every game is going to have a set of goals, and quests are simply the way those goals are presented.
But the way to improve quests significantly is to export as much of the text-blocks as possible into the game itself. Reading a block of text inside a world which is otherwise fully-realized visually is an immersion breaker. (A fully immersive game would only involve as much text as your character actually reads.) So instead of reading about the bandits who raid caravans, there are actually caravans which you can follow and see being raided, as well as evidence of previously raided caravans along the road, and tracks into the forest where they're raiding from.
Granted, a "fully immersive" game might be very difficult to make cost-effectively, since the desire for better questing is weighed against the desire for enough quest content (and the latter is typically more important.)
Also this is mostly just an optimization suggestion for existing quest systems (some, like SWTOR, have already come quite close to what I'm suggesting, even though the route for improving upon a voice-acted storyline is to have more of that story appear during gameplay instead of in "conversation mode" where there's no gameplay.) It doesn't hit on the many different paths (of which GW2 is one example) for completely innovative questing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You meet the mayor of Rumsford. "Good Afternoon, gentlemen", he exclaims.
[Refer to journal entry #38]
The above is my personal opinion. Anyone displaying a view contrary to my opinion is obviously WRONG and should STHU. (neener neener)
-The MMO Forum Community
MMORPG are not "supposed" to be anything. They are just another genre of games.
I much prefer quality (fun quests) over quantity (long time). If MMOs have some good story instances (anywhere close to dishonored), and you can finish it and move on .. i don't see why not.
I am in the camp "games should be fun". There is no reason for a virtual world if it does not add compelling fun.
Making them optional, repeatable and not necessary for character progression. To answer "Doesn't that leave just grinding?" on that last point, the answer is Yes and No. If the game is nothing but just murdering crap for levels and gear, then Yes. If the game has a wider range of gameplay, then No.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Quests are too easy and too rewarding these days.
Quests should require some thought as to how to complete them; they should not be one-clickable tasks with a compass indicator, and the rewards for them should not be overly generous as they are now. Quests should be something done once in a while, not several times a day.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
To say that as a generalization flies in the face of common knowledge and hard data points which indicate the opposite is true.
To say that games should additionally include some thought-provoking quest content and that perhaps players should be empowered to engage in that high-difficulty content at all times, that would be fine. But that content would be in addition to the existing low-tier questing which provides filler content for players to experience.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver