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If not "Go here, Kill X", then what?
tehikk
Member Posts: 497
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...
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
Comments
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!!!
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.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I'll take that last part as a suggestion, and a good one, if what I gather from it is correct.
Yeah, it is a suggestion. I just tried to make it humorous. The thing is though, you can literally progress a story through quests using instances.
I still think it would be badass to have a part of a story be where you're laying siege on/defending a castle, EXCEPT, it's a personalized instance for you/your group. Everyone can participate at some time and it'd be as fun as any PvP siege if done right.
Screw dungeons, lol.
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.
Yeah, it is a suggestion. I just tried to make it humorous. The thing is though, you can literally progress a story through quests using instances.
I still think it would be badass to have a part of a story be where you're laying siege on/defending a castle, EXCEPT, it's a personalized instance for you/your group. Everyone can participate at some time and it'd be as fun as any PvP siege if done right.
Screw dungeons, lol.
Maybe more usage of the phasing technology would make quests more fun, like what they did with the Death Knight starting area in WotLK. But ya, just imagine a sort of instanced area where you are defending a castle or laying siege to it and are simply one among an entire army. Like playing Medieval 2: Total War, but rather than being the controller of all, being a lowly soldier on the battlefield or atop the wall.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
Hell, I'd even take an event where it's an ongoing battle similar to the battle of Helm's Deep in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that consists of a certain amount of players and then NPCs filling the positions of players that haven't entered yet, but for every player that does enter, they replace an NPC. That'd be interesting.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
Quests should take a free form where only a goal is indicated, the rest should be up to the player.
For example, "Stop the pirates from raiding the fishing village"
So it doesn't say kill 25 pirates, or kill the pirate boss, or disable the pirate boats, or plant a bomb in the pirate camp, or supply the village with enough weapons to fight off the pirates.
But all the same, any one of these things could complete the quest. Along the way NPCs could offer hints to the player of how to get any one of these things done. But the avenues are open to the player, to solve problems they way they want to and so quests can finally feel like a quest.
MMOs played: Horizons, Auto Assault, Ryzom, EVE, WAR, WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, DAoC, Aion, Requiem, Atlantica, DDO, Allods, Earth Eternal, Fallen Earth, Rift
Willing to try anything new
Hell, I'd even take an event where it's an ongoing battle similar to the battle of Helm's Deep in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers that consists of a certain amount of players and then NPCs filling the positions of players that haven't entered yet, but for every player that does enter, they replace an NPC. That'd be interesting.
That does sound fun.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I'll take that last part as a suggestion, and a good one, if what I gather from it is correct.
Yeah, it is a suggestion. I just tried to make it humorous. The thing is though, you can literally progress a story through quests using instances.
I still think it would be badass to have a part of a story be where you're laying siege on/defending a castle, EXCEPT, it's a personalized instance for you/your group. Everyone can participate at some time and it'd be as fun as any PvP siege if done right.
Screw dungeons, lol.
Maybe more usage of the phasing technology would make quests more fun, like what they did with the Death Knight starting area in WotLK. But ya, just imagine a sort of instanced area where you are defending a castle or laying siege to it and are simply one among an entire army. Like playing Medieval 2: Total War, but rather than being the controller of all, being a lowly soldier on the battlefield or atop the wall.
That's a good start for things. I think the main problem preventing this is mainly technology at the moment.
Short of the above then go take a look at how Demon's Souls functions as a single and multi-player game. More about the way each world (instance) functions in relation to combat and your character.
Each world is full of mobs that are challenging on their own (mostly). It require planning and a good amount of attention to get through the worlds. If you are careless and try to just bulldoze through everything you are probably going to die. Traps also add to the flavor of everything.
Going through these worlds is how you level. In fact you will end up going through the same world many, many times. This is, in essence, grinding, but because of the challenge (actual skill challenge, not a challenge to see how long you can stand being bored) it doesn't feel like one.
That was what I was trying to convey with my first post. But yes, those kinds of quests would be much more fun that the current, even though the current are holding up. What about other hidden things, such as, rather than stop them, be allowed to join them, and then, even later, after becoming very friendly with them, be given the chance to shut them down here, by doing something, or just sticking with them and not bothering to do anything. Maybe even join them on a raid.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I'll take that last part as a suggestion, and a good one, if what I gather from it is correct.
Yeah, it is a suggestion. I just tried to make it humorous. The thing is though, you can literally progress a story through quests using instances.
I still think it would be badass to have a part of a story be where you're laying siege on/defending a castle, EXCEPT, it's a personalized instance for you/your group. Everyone can participate at some time and it'd be as fun as any PvP siege if done right.
Screw dungeons, lol.
Maybe more usage of the phasing technology would make quests more fun, like what they did with the Death Knight starting area in WotLK. But ya, just imagine a sort of instanced area where you are defending a castle or laying siege to it and are simply one among an entire army. Like playing Medieval 2: Total War, but rather than being the controller of all, being a lowly soldier on the battlefield or atop the wall.
That's a good start for things. I think the main problem preventing this is mainly technology at the moment.
Short of the above then go take a look at how Demon's Souls functions as a single and multi-player game. More about the way each world (instance) functions in relation to combat and your character.
Each world is full of mobs that are challenging on their own (mostly). It require planning and a good amount of attention to get through the worlds. If you are careless and try to just bulldoze through everything you are probably going to die. Traps also add to the flavor of everything.
Going through these worlds is how you level. In fact you will end up going through the same world many, many times. This is, in essence, grinding, but because of the challenge (actual skill challenge, not a challenge to see how long you can stand being bored) it doesn't feel like one.
Challenge can make a grind, less of a grind, and more of a goal.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
"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!"
I absolutely love the way DDO did quests. Granted the game lacked the open world goodness of other games, every meager goal was met with an interior tailored to make kill X things far more interesting. I have a feeling ToR will end up under the same lines, where the world feels claustrophobic, but damn if the events during the common quest interior won't melt faces (initially). I really think that instanced interiors make for more interesting events, simply because it's logistically easier to run scripts focused at a single player or group, but without the mindless wandering of a zone to milk respawning wolves or somthing - it becomes less of an MMO.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Lies can cause wars, that is, not all lies, are actually lies, so that wouldn't make them lies in the first place.
That would make them... truths!
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
I have some quest idea's related to dungeons.. Kinda like an exploration/kill this/collect this type thing of the dungeon given by a NPC that has been traveling and exploring and learning about said dungeon. Kinda like he was the dungeons "historian". Maybe he gives hints to hidden treasures or mobs within the dungeon.
Maybe if they could somehow combine the to, seemless world, interactive quests.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
They should get rid of them all, all quests.
I'd rather not have to be burdened with pointless quests of any form, it's more fun to just explore the world and do what you want without having to do retarded quests
That is your opinion.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
Maybe if they could somehow combine the to, seemless world, interactive quests.
"logistical nightmare"
scripted events run predominantly off something called a "trigger volume" that a player walks into, it's like a giant invisible cylinder that once breached by anyone, triggers an event. In the open world people will be tripping it all the time, so naturally you put it on a timer, then people will figure out where they are, and how often they spring - and you kill the magic of it. Of course you can start to "see it coming" once you've done an instance a ton of times, but applying chance and various locations to spring something will parse out that feeling far more than it would on the surface-type worlds. The closest thing they have come to this kind of thing is WAR's public quests - and you can see how they run on timers, etc, to make the damn things work correctly. Even they are not all that amazing imo.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
A good suggestion.
"The question that sometimes drives me hazy: Am I, or the others crazy?" - Albert Einstein
That is your opinion.
And he's entitled to it, though it is a bit misplaced in this thread.
Check out the MUD I'm making!
These threads are always interesting. In a game genere all about killing things, collecting stuff, and going places, people seems to dislike quests where you have to kill/collect/deliver.
The word sandbox gets thrown around usually, ignoring what these games would be without linear progression and quests...standing around in afeild of mobs killing stuff for xp. They got those already and they are free to play.
User generated content? Like the players make it? Id rather a profesional handle my gaming rather than player XxNOOBxX, thats just me though.
Even with some super complext, entangled storyline and quest tree, all that effort will be overlooked by a community that tends to go the fastest and easyest route to endgame, where there better be some good pvp or its goodbye.
We often forget, and perhaps developers also, that these kill X / fedex quests are meant to direct a storyline and progression within that storyline. For those who just want to grind, well most games still let you kill the mobs for xp.... At least you have the option to quest or not follow the storylines, which not too long ago wasnt an option (before mmorpgs there were rpgs).
The problem is that the percieved "want" from mmo gamers, quick quests with no linear progression. This is why we get 500 npc's that want whatever mobs is nearby to die/needs drop...then thats it end of story move on. People dont want an epic linear progression because its too long to be following a questline for 6months, so they break it up or add a final epic questline that everyone does. This leaves a lot of "it doesnt matter" and filler quests.
So instead of showing players the ropes with these quests they have become fillers.
Its not the questing in mmorpgs thats the problem, its how its implimented. Lots of boring filler so they can say "we have content 5k+ quests" but only include a few interesting storylines.
Even if they made it interesting the entire run though, people would still complain about the quests. Perhaps mmorpgs arn't your thing.
That is your opinion.
And he's entitled to it, though it is a bit misplaced in this thread.
People are definitely entitled to their opinions, but without some kind of experience with what you propose it falls flat. I am going to use Wurm as an example here, because people who think questing is stupid and want to explore for a fight soon realize they either love it or hate it, when before [experiencing] it they really had no clue. Only when you play a game where it could take 20 minutes to find a mob, and you feel the reward in doing so was worth it, or not, you can't really speak on it - it's just a fancy idear. Personally it works for me, because I saw a fair execution of it.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
If you view fighting as the usage of skills, then "Go here, kill X" is a specific form of the quest, "Go Here, Perform Skill X".
Simply think up quests that rely on skills other than fighting, and you'll have a huge number of other types of quests.
The obvious choice that has been around for a while is the crafting quests. "Go Here, Craft". And really, crafting is many many things by itself. Besides craft, you could have "Use Diplomacy", "Steal", "Use Magic", "Dance"...
It's all in presentation and game mechanics. Super Mario Bros was one quest: Defeat Bowser. It was interesting due to game mechanics. Starcraft was "Defeat the zerg". It was interesting due to how complicated that objective actually was.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
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"?
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture