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I want to fail the quest, and thats okay.
whilan
Member UncommonPosts: 3,472
Throwing this idea out here for you guys to think over.
Failing quests, in most instances failing a quest just means you don't get the reward or you have to try again, but what happens if you are defeated in said quest and the quest continues down a different path, or at the very least failing at certain parts do? I should note this isn't a line back and forth thing (ala GW2) this is a split thing, and would only occur on non-repeatable quests
For example, you are told to defeat the Master Smith who lets say has gone crazy and started making armor for the enemy. (Lame reason i know but it's not really important)
If you are successful the threat is eliminated and the town is safe, and the quest giver thanks you and gives you a really good reward. Fail and it splits two ways, Fail in the first half and you are forced to fight under his will to take out the next group of adventures (PvP or PvE if you will) succeed here (easier fight if PvE) and you get a different reward (not as good as the former but not as hard either), fail and the person dies and you get a lesser reward (this is the lowest tier of rewards) for helping out but not really succeeding.
If you fail in the second half of the blacksmith fight then you at least get away, you get a meager reward and the quest continues onto the next step (this is the 2nd tier reward, not as good as full success but not as bad as the other two fails).
Or we could go another route and give you the choice to simply fail that part of the quest on purpose just to have a different version of the quest. Like you want the blacksmith to take over that area because you are that type of person and failing that part makes it so you can turn against the original quest giver and fight him for a different kind of reward all together.
What do you think of this idea? good idea, bad idea?
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Comments
It is an ideal scenario but of course it will also blow the size of quest chains out of control in general - because now for every quest there are 2 at least different paths.
Which means for every additional quest in the chain you also have 2 different paths, that 2^2 = 4. Each additional quest in the chain is an additional power of possible combination.
The quest chain will become big in size thus in only 4 quests chain:
2^1 = 2
2^2 = 4
2^3 = 8
2^4 = 16
2 + 4 + 8+16 = 30
Which means if every quest has 2 different outcomes you have to design 30 quests for a simple 4 quest chain... and 4 quest chain is considered short already.
Imagine the astronomical numbers if it was the main story quest :O
It is all a question of economics of effort in mathematics.
It doesn't necessarily have to take place in an instance or be phased. For example the failing the black smith part
If you wanted it to become a PvP encounter, then the player is flagged for PvP whenever a group enters the area of the boss, and must keep fighting until the group is defeated (revived by the blacksmith somehow?) or until the blacksmith is defeated.
If PvE, then simply a group of NPC adventures spawn that the player must now kill.
No phasing, no instancing involved.
Granted this leaves open for other players to get involved but you can't really avoid that.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
Granted it would get insane if you did this at every possible step of the quest, so you just do it at major ones in said quest and not every quest has to have this mechanic.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
That's the problem, with 10,000 people logged in how are you going to avoid a zerg rush to kill the blacksmith? lol and then in that PvP scenario you bring 20 of your friends and kill all the newbs as they try to do the quest. It's just too complicated of a system for an open world.
And how do you start the quest? Can only one person start it at a time basically? So I'm waiting in line for my turn to try the quest from the beginning, or do the zerg of 30 just have to all do it together? Does the quest only happen once? How is that done without new players wanting to do the quest. They can't possibly produce one time quests fast enough to keep up with players.
You might be able to avoid some of that I think with loop back design (that is, if you fail at some of that stages it might bring to you the same quest path as other fail results).
This as I recall was done in some games back in the 1990s I think.
However one thing to note that they are single player RPGs though (single player RPG has the advantage of not having to worry about progress in quest chain in relation to other players).
Well we wouldn't have it for every quest and you could take the quest, but do it later (most MMOs have the NPC respawn later, lore could work out how this is possible) when it has stopped being camped so much or if you happen to find a group that is doing it. Remember beating the guy wins the quest for you and completes it for the other guy (the one that failed), so at times you can have 2 people or 2 groups (say 10 people) complete the quest at once.
I'm not sure myself how the PvP encounter would work in an open world maybe only the group that tags the boss can fight the linked PC character? Remember I'm thinking of these quest as non-repeatable quests, so the PC will have to choose at the time if they want to lose/beat the quest, they can't go back and redo.
Obviously some realistic things like (why can't I attack that player if hes attacking this group) would have to be sacrificed in the name of somewhat fair gameplay.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
MMORPGs don't generally mix as well with the RPG part as singleplayer games does. I'd say that it is because of a lack of media to tell a story through. It turns into the most linear game ever with little to no choice. I'd say that it might turn into something that people will min-max their way through, but personally it would give me a reason to play through level 1-Cap again just to see what "Could" have happened.
In short: Great idea.
Really MMO's can do this, it's not limited to single player, its just so much harder to do.
I'm actually doing something similar to this for my game, I want to get away from the typical static/chain questing systems, I also looked at the storybricks system that's going to be used for EQnext but really that kind of a system will just produce static user made quests(I'm not saying that's not cool, it's cool when in a diverse sandbox environment).
But my approach is to integrate a AI NPC generation system combine with multi dimensional quest trees and chain diversification, available dependent on NPC context, environment, player to NPC communication and player to NPC attributes (yeah you need to talk to my NPC's by typing)(similar to talking to an "semi intelligent" IRC Bot but with context keyword and sentence definition).
There's so much more to this, such as cross context NPC to NPC root quest to node conformation and extended Quest chain generation etc... It's not going to be easy but I think it's worth it.
Yeah I can imagine the logic/decision tree to this will be very complex. Just thinking of the overlapping lines of the quest trees makes my head spin :O
I'm not a game designer myself but I was a mathematican/analyst and I've done decision trees before and I can already imagine the many level of complexities that you've mentioned in that.
The problem with implementating that in MMO as well is that MMOs are complex closed systems - it is a closed system however it is also multi-layered and have many different intersecting aspects/spheres, so I can imagine the difficulties of implementing such type of quest chains.
Decision trees are not the only option for tracking the state of a world and assembling stories (if stories are your thing).
Chapter 2 of your story is about a man, a woman and a wombat.
Chapter 1 of your story has a variety of plots involving finding, helping and/or rescuing men, women and wombats. You can fail any number of chapter 1 quests, lose any number of NPCs in unfortunate accidents as long as somehow at least one of each survives. Then the story engine picks one of the surviving men, one of the surviving women and one of the surviving wombats and slots them into place. Presto, chapter 2 ready to go no matter the outcomes of the 100 quests in chapter 1..
I wish.
I'd be happy with decision trees like the the "Pick Your Own Adventure" books though. I can see why developers don't do this, the number of branches and leaves gets ridiculous very quickly. But I'd still be happy with it.
** ** **
One thing you can do to alleviate the size of the branches is what you've setup there. Have the branches merge periodically, so that you don't have branches with branches with branches with branches.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Part of the problem with MMORPG's trying to be single player games with quest.
Either you get quest hubs, theme parks or you get repeat quest.
Oh come on. You know you read those books keeping note with folded pages or your fingers where the last 3-4 decisions were in case fell off the cliff and died at your next one
But ... but that supposed to come across as my point ... the role-slot type approach I suggested has much lower complexity - there are no branches you need to track.
Oh come on. You know you read those books keeping note with folded pages or your fingers where the last 3-4 decisions were in case fell off the cliff and died at your next one
I remember suffocating on a dead Earth a lot. I'm not sure why that seemed to happen so often.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Off topic, I don't know what story you are mentioning above but it sure sounded a bit kinky :P
Well, yeah, but I'd actually prefer a linear story line with branches. I can see how the system you described would work, but I don't know if it would feel as meaningful to me if I wasn't supposed to rescue a specific wombat. I don't know which is "better", only the type of thing I'd prefer. It probably is, as was mentioned earlier, because I read those books when I was younger.
I don't think the two methods would be mutually exclusive though. Yours would be more of an open world type setup, and the choose your own adventure would be more of a theme park type setup. Both could co-exist in the same game.
** ** **
Also, I had no idea wombats were so cute. I am amazed they haven't shown up in more games.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Back on topic, I think one of that problem with that methodology though to solve the problem with decision tree is that it is not true "Butterfly Effect" though - ie. at the end of that day what you do is not truly affecting the outcome of future quests / character's story - it is more like a pseudo branching.
It is kinda like throwing a stone into a river, it may create a ripple but the ripple will quickly subsidies.
So in a sense in that methodology what you do is utimately futile, and will seem futile if the player figures out that is how the game character's story ultimately works. Also the problem as well is the OP seems to be looking for true cause-and-effect questing mechanic, which this isn't really the case, while it is a reasonable solution.