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What makes a quest good or bad? Your opinion needed for paper on quest design
endazil
Member CommonPosts: 6
Hi!
I am a game design student writing a paper on peoples opinions onquests in video games. Morespecific, whattype of quests people like and consider fun and what type of quests are considered less enjoyable. By doing this I hope to be able to contribute to peoples understanding of how to make quests more enjoyable. If you have time, I would appreciate if you could take a couple of minutes and answer the following questions:
1. What quests have you seen that felt really fun and rewarding (If you can remember, please give the name of the game where you found it)?
2. What exactly was it in those quests that made them good?
3. What quests have you seen that you did not enjoy? Can you give example of games where you found it?
4. What exactly was it in those quests that made them bad?
5. Do you have any ideas you would like to share on how quests could be made more fun?
If you have an example of games and specific quests that fits well into your description, please provide them too in your answers!
I am a game design student writing a paper on peoples opinions onquests in video games. Morespecific, whattype of quests people like and consider fun and what type of quests are considered less enjoyable. By doing this I hope to be able to contribute to peoples understanding of how to make quests more enjoyable. If you have time, I would appreciate if you could take a couple of minutes and answer the following questions:
1. What quests have you seen that felt really fun and rewarding (If you can remember, please give the name of the game where you found it)?
2. What exactly was it in those quests that made them good?
3. What quests have you seen that you did not enjoy? Can you give example of games where you found it?
4. What exactly was it in those quests that made them bad?
5. Do you have any ideas you would like to share on how quests could be made more fun?
If you have an example of games and specific quests that fits well into your description, please provide them too in your answers!
Post edited by endazil on
Comments
2. Interesting Story or Twists that reveal themselves in the quest not in the story Bubbles.
3. Quests that are arranged in a hub. NPC A to NPC B to NPC C standing around a water well in town A
4. Static NPCs and chained runs coming back to the same NPC at jarring intervals.
5.
NPCs that are not static.
NPCs that have agendas and try to get you to do things other NPCs won't like.
NPCs that have several quests and don't share the same quest every time the same way.
NPCs that randomize almost all loot for quests.
NPCs who go to bed at night, get sick, die, etc.
3 & 4
I really hate quests which require me to murder innocent people. Some game designers think they are being clever by trapping a player into a situation where they have no good way out and are forced to compromise their morals. I see no point in quests that make players feel dirty and unhappy. Similarly, rather than having a quest to execute 20 poor plagued monsters, I'd way rather have the choice to mi up some healing salve and then go around and smear it on those 20 sick monsters. And when I complete that quest, I'd really prefer my game client to use healthy images for that monster from then on, even if other players who haven't completed the quest see sick ones.
Also I hate quests where you have to kill more than 50 of the same monster, and quests where you have to get a very rare random drop. Those always make me feel disgusted, they are not fun at all.
5. Do you have any ideas you would like to share on how quests could be made more fun?
I like interactive story games. I like gaining faction reputation or personal affection with NPCs. (But the NPCs have to actually say different things to me as my relationship with them rises! And at max reputation I should be able to put a copy of that NPC into my house or marry them or something.) I also love achievement-like-quests, where I can earn set rewards by doing things like capturing or breeding 5, 10, 20, etc. types of pet monsters. And I like area completion rewards so I know when I've fully explored an area and should move on, or if I missed something and should go hunt for it. Finally, as I said above I like minigames and crafting (including messing about with pets and crops). I would enjoy more quests related to doing this type of activities.
I do however enjoy adventure games, which are probably the clearest example of solving problems without combat. Aside from Uru live or whatever they're calling it now, there are no MMOadventure games - do you want single-player game examples? Obsidian and Quern are the two I played this year, they were both very good.
Crafting in general is more like a solution without a problem, unless the problem is just "I want my house to be taller, darn it! And why am I missing a purple jackalope from my pet collection?" But still, crafting and sim gameplay in general is the other main type of non-combat problem solving. Crafting is probably the only non-combat activity we DO have good MMO examples of - A Tale In The Desert and Wurm are at the top of that list, though I haven't played ArchAge so I don't know if it also deserves a mention.
Minigames are more of a direct combat-alternative, even if you are just metaphorically "killing" lines of tetris blocks or "killing" other racers by winning a race. But minigames do provide a lot of opportunities for achievement-style problems that players can strive to solve within the minigames. Further, minigames can be integrated into a crafting system, which intertwines them with player-defined problems like "I want to craft a sword with better stats than the one I'm using" and "I need to collect this list of ingredients to craft that recipe" or "I want to experiment by making the same sword recipe with every metal in the game and see how the resulting swords are different." Castleville was probably the best online game I've played which had a lot of non-combat gameplay, but it wasn't an MMO, or even an MO. Similarly I've played a bunch of virtual pet breeding games and tycoon games and farming games, but none of them are MMOs, so I'm not sure how useful they would be to you as examples. But you could look at Ranch Rush, Plant Tycoon, the Cake Mania series, and the Harvest Moon series.
A wider range of social interactions that NPCs can participate in, like accepting bribes and information, and a wider range of non-combat actions that players can take, like eavesdropping and seduction, could help make any rpg feel more like a virtual world. When I was playing a Druid in WoW I always felt that the useless of animal forms in interacting with NPCs was very artificial and immersion-breaking. Not too many games have played with making NPCs more universally interactable, but you could look at dating sims in general, or one of those RPGs with a lot of interactive dialogue, like The Longest Journey, and of course the Fable series and Skyrim again, or the faction reputation aspects of WoW, though those sure were not developed as far as they could have been.
As far as the best and the worst quests, usually both are found in the same game. Because games which don't have any good quests have either all bland perfunctory quests or no quests. The game with the quest where I was forced to kill an innocent to get out of being trapped in a building is from Skyrim, which mostly has quests ranging from pretty good to excellent (but again, is a single-player example). The one where I was asked to exterminate junkies used to be one of the low-level Blood Elf quests in WoW, though I think they got rid of it for Cataclysm.
Well, I think I will sum up my thoughts about quests like this: there is more than one kind of great quest, and it's ideal for a game to have a variety of quest types. Quests can be great if the do one or more of the following things:
1. Contribute to the player's immersion in the virtual world. This can be a tutorial affect, if the quest teaches the player about the NPCs' culture, or actions the player can take within the world, or what ambitions the player can have for the future. Or it can be a storytelling affect, developing a specific NPC as a villain or a victim, or developing a specific current event ongoing in the world, as well as explaining the past and the worldbuilding (e.g. the "magical physics") of the game world. Some kinds of players will inevitably be bored with this kind of quest, but basically that's their loss. For those of us who actually like reading, it's just important to tell a good story which is consistent with the rest of the lore and worldbuilding, emotionally involving but not emotionally manipulative, and not overly stereotypical or predictable. The most important part of writing good quests of this type is having multiple writers involved and tasked to revise and improve each others' work.
2. Orient the player by giving them choices of specific goals, so they aren't floundering in a potentially overwhelming array of options. These include quest chains, breadcrumb quests, kill quests, race/class/faction advancement quests, crafting quests, and achievement-style quests in general. This type of quest may as a side affect pace the player's experience or lead the player on a walking tour of all the interesting-looking places in an area. This type of quest is easy to do n a boring or arbitrary way, but when done well they provide structure and motivation to help players feel invested and excited by the progress they are making and the ambitions they are working to achieve. Players who feel lost and aimless are players who are going to quit playing.
3. Enable the player's self-expression and self-identity development. Players can feel very fulfilled by expressing their personalities through choices in dialogue or choices about how to solve a problem in a game, as well as choices of which NPC factions to ally with and which to fight against (but only if each faction actually has a distinct philosophy, and the player can gain rewards which make the faction NPCs really feel like allies. These rewards can include material objects like faction tabards, tattoos, mounts, and crafting recipes, or services like healing and armor repair, and they can include more metaphorical items like a wearable title or faction icon or faction UI scheme, and they can include story rewards like verbal expressions of attraction or admiration from faction NPCs. Self-identity development doesn't have to be limited to faction involvement at all; normal quest rewards can include all sorts of appearance customization items, whether in the form of crafting recipes for clothing or dye or house pieces, unlocking new hair style and color options, or consumable items which can be used to dye an item or apply one item's appearance over another item with better stats or for a different class, or consumable items which are required to breed pets with hybrid appearances or alternate colors. (Many games waste the opportunity to do this by making almost all of their character customization options available before the game even starts. Tsk.)
1.) Kill: Kill X amount of things until you fulfill the quest requirements.
2.) travel: go from A to B and so forth.
3.) Exposition: read, watch, or listen to quest/story exposition.
5) "Spend 'X' amount of gems to speed up the process."
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
. . .I don't, therefore it does not exist in my reality. . .
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
http://themess.com/gaming/game-dev-blog/engaging-missions-auto-assault/
There's also a video of the mission in that link, as well.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
- Discovery (ex: Asheron's Call Hoary Mattekar Robe)
- Choosing a story/plot/character path (ex: Asheron's Call Gelidite Heart Quest)
- Escort/caravan (ex: UO's Escort Quests)
- Puzzle/minigame ( ex: EVE's Hacking or GW2's jumping quests)
- Player interaction (ex: join/start a guild, organize a group)
In Discovery, the objective is the hunt, not necessarily the kill, although the kill may be challenging, too.
In Escort, the objective isn't reaching the destination or surviving the trip, but in making sure a particular object reaches its destination.
Quests in MMO tend to be a shell of themselves due to persistence, static spawns, the need for replayability, and their usage as a means to an end, not necessarily and end in or of themselves.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I agree with all NPCs being equal, though certainly an NPC who is the leader of an organization or the owner of a mansion is more likely to want to employ you than a green recruit or a housemaid. Fewer NPCs, more deeply developed, is my motto.
Lord of the Rings Online has a set of quests that I think is near Staddle where you are simply running back and forth between the same 3 houses about 5 or 6 times. It's busy work, with little lore value and not much down the line of rewards other than XP.
A lot of what is considered questing now would never have been considered such years ago. For example, in Asheron's Call, things like "go forth and get me wasp wings" are Collector tasks, categorized entirely separate from Quests.
Fast forward to 2003/2004 and the busy work and filler content of previous MMOs became the standard fare of modern MMOs. The first thing you do in Lineage 2 (Human Island) is kill x Elpies. WOW (Valley of Trials), you kill x scorpions or smack y orcs, and so on.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
1. Pretty much any of the epic quests in Everquest
2. Exploring, killing, raiding, questing. They took time and effort and used almost every aspect of the game. The reward was something that felt like it was worth it all.
3. Most quests in games now. Go kill shit, go collect shit, bring me shit, go talk shit.
4. They are just filler and XP wells to speed up leveling. Very rarely any lore value. They very rarely even make sense. They are the MMORPG equivalent of participation trophies.
5. Make them engaging and challenging. Use all the game systems and world. Have multistep quests with different path options that result in different variations of the reward based on difficulty or what was done on different steps. Thus players can, and have to choose, their path and cannot get every reward. They can tailor their rewards to their character and build and not every character of a class ends up exactly the same.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I generally don't enjoy quests in computer games, or rather, I should say I don't enjoy story in computer games. Since most quests revolve around a story, it's much the same thing.
That said, GTA5 is probably my favourite game for questing.
2. What exactly was it in those quests that made them good?
The main reason I enjoyed the missions in GTA5 is that they tended to highlight the best of the gameplay that is available. Sure, you could go out and get into car chases, or find jumps, or initiate shootouts whenever the hell you wanted in the open world, but the quests tended to either add to the core gameplay (through scripted events, or simply setting up the optimal situation to exploit the gameplay) or simply guide you through the best bits of the game.
For example, Trevor's rampages. In the open world, you can obviously just open fire on anyone at any time and start some good fights, but during the rampages you have a near endless stream of people to kill, the cops are kept away and the timer forces you to push yourself. It's the same combat as usual, but in a situation that couldn't be found in the open world.
3. What quests have you seen that you did not enjoy? Can you give example of games where you found it?
Pretty much every single MMO quest, but worst game I've played for questing has been Star Wars: The Old Republic.
4. What exactly was it in those quests that made them bad?
The overwhelming majority of quests in MMOs don't add anything to the gameplay. They are forced on us and used as a way to guide us through content and control our leveling speed. They are generally wrapped up in some sort of story, but the majority of the story ends up being generic and really bad.
In an MMO, the world is created and populated. I can take my character anywhere and fight stuff, kill it, loot it and continue exploring (level permitting). The quests don't add to that. You're forced to read / watch some pointless generic story, then the quest itself just has you doing what you could already do: kill stuff, loot stuff and explore. Then you have the extra travel time going back and forth to quest givers.
Where is the fun in that?
Not only do most quests not enhance the game at all (in terms of gameplay), they force you to waste time by reading / listening to quests and the extra travel time. I cannot comprehend how we reached such a lowly state of affairs.
5. Do you have any ideas you would like to share on how quests could be made more fun?
Quests should ADD to the game - new types of gameplay, or new situations that cannot be experienced outside of the quest. I should be excited whenever I pick up a quest, eager to experience whatever new is about to come my way.
In the MMO world, my biggest request would be to remove XP from quest completion. It doesn't make sense, both in terms of how we earn experience in real life and also from a design point of view. By removing XP from quests, it means that the developers have to find other ways to allow you to progress. This forces them to focus on other types of gameplay, but also means that less quests are needed. This frees up the writers to focus on truly great stories, rather than having to come up with 1000 generic stories for the pointless quests.
The other thing I'd like to request is that stories be told through actions, rather than words or text. Too many RPGs now have ridiculous amounts of cutscenes or text to wade through. It becomes boring. It also removes the need for any imagination, which again takes away a certain amount of personal connection to what is happening.
A good example of what I mean would be Final Fantasy 7 vs Final Fantasy 13.
Due to technical limitations, FF7 had no voice overs and limited amounts of text to read during story sections. The story was therefore "optimised" - you knew what the story was, at its core, but didn't have to wade through hours of fluff to find it. You were told to get somewhere, but the actual journey itself was the story. When you reached the destination, you weren't shown a cutscene with your characters out of breath, complaining of hardships. That part of the story didn't need explaining or discussing because you, yourself, just made that journey. You already know whether it was easy or hard. Your actions became the story, FF7 just used small bits of text or short cutscenes to keep everything in context.
FF13, on the other hand, over explained everything. You were constantly taking a break to watch some new cutscene where everyone talked about their feelings. Not only was this not engaging as a gamer, but the sheer volume of cutscenes meant no room for your imagination. I couldn't pretend that lightning (main character) was cool or interesting because the cutscenes clearly showed her to be a sulky bitch. I couldn't connect with Snow as an alternative character because the cutscenes showed him to be a well mannered pretty boy. So, not only was I put off by the characters (and thus had less motivation to play), half my in game time was spent watching cutscenes so it wasn't even engaging.