5punk

I want entirely sure where to put this, as it covered all things with quests/missions in them, not just MMO's or p&p RPG's.

Anyway...

The thread about WoW and it's flaws in the MMO forum has got me thinking about how quests are handled in games in general, and I thought I would share and see what you think.

I'll start of with the bad, the rubbish quests that no one really likes. You know the ones: "kill 20 rats" "collect 10 bears bollocks" "go over there and press the talk button on that guy". They are by themselves uninspiring rubbish, and need the way the game is played to be joyous in order for the game to get away with it. Anyone who has played any MMO ever will be aware of them; CoH was almost entirely made of them, WoW at it's launch was riddled with them and even EvE has them in the form of agent missions almost nobody does. It's obvious why games designers include them: they are easy to make filler content.

But when I thought about it more, I realised that most RPGs have them, not just the massively multiplayer ones. They are often less obvious, but they are still there. For example, let's say you are given a mission in Dragon Age to clear a castle of darkspawn. When you boil away the voice acted cutscenes and the excellent writing, it's basically a "kill a number of dudes" quest, just without telling you the number of dudes before hand. Some quests are more complicated than this, but when you strip away what p&p gamers would call the fluff, even the more complex quests in these kinds of RPGs are essentially just collections of the basic MMO quests. It's "kill x of y THEN talk to bloke z".

But then, thinking about it further, the same could be said about p&p games. Strip them down to the basics and even the most complex shadowrun game or the most dramatic d&d game essentially boils down to a collection of talking to men and killin fellas. So what it is that makes p&p or offline rpg games generally have far better quests than MMOs? Partly, I think it might be the obfuscation. MMOs tend to be straight up front with the go here, kill this number of things, wheras other games make more effort to hide that. Because you don't realise that the quest you are doing now is essentially identical to the last few quests, it's less annoying. But I think it'd possibly more to do with not so much what you are asked to do, but the way you can do it. In a computer game, you have a limited number of options based off what the programmers have written in. Some games have more options than others, but there is always a finite and relatively small number of them. Compare that to an rpg, where responses from the players when asked to kill x number of y can range from straight forward face-stabbing to exotic and intricate traps, to "let's try and talk to them instead" all the way to the players saying "no!" (often followed by a panicked gm).

Of course, there's no way you can put that sort of flexibility in to a computer game, and it's been proven time and again that hiding the true nature of the quests in an MMO actually makes things worse, not better. So this raises the question, how *could* MMO creators make their games less shit? Could they drop the idea of quests entirely maybe?

Joose wrote:So this raises the question, how *could* MMO creators make their games less shit? Could they drop the idea of quests entirely maybe?

No, not unless they completely removed all progression.

In fact, Almost any game where you have a level and progress, ultimately is (in some way), go to X, do Y of Z.

Be it collecting bear arses, killing dudes, driving round a track. Basically, any game with some idea of level/progression requires you to do something repeatedly, effectively grinding Z to get shiny cookies.

Take wow for example, if you decide not to quest, these days you can Kill stuff for XP, Gather stuff for XP, Do dungeons for XP.

I think if you want progression in a game, you need something to earn, in the case of most MMOs, it's XP. In CoD it's Points (from kills etc). In most racing games it's Money.

You can add layers of crap between the primary goal, but you can't get rid of the goal if you want the game to last.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:Almost any game where you have a level and progress, ultimately is (in some way), go to X, do Y of Z.

This is true, however it does also raise the question: do you really need levels in an MMO? A lot of p&p games are moving away from this model: Shadowrun doesn't have them at all, and SLA's SCL's are not really levels in the traditional RPG sense.

I think its totally possible for an MMO to do away with levels, and even possibly experience as an abstract amount of points for doing a thing. Take that Wurm game for example. Its pretty shabbily presented, and has all the polish and finesse of a freshly expelled turd, but it doesn't have quests. You can go off and kill things, and you will get better at killing things, or you could go off and make wooden huts and furniture, and get better at that. No one tells you do go and do anything (starting tutorial quests aside).

Then, of course, there is a bigger question: MMO just means massively multiplayer online. People associate levels and character progression, loot, crafting etc with them purely because that's what they have always had before. Make any game where a lot of people are in the same instance all and once and you have an MMO. Doesn't have to be an RPG.

Taking it back to the original question though: ok, so a traditional, level and experienced based MMONG needs quests. So how could they do that without Badger Arse Collection Quests and the like?

Never played Ultima Online, then? It was probably the first major MMO and had no quests and no levels - the fun came entirely from hanging out with friends and dungeon crawling, and character development was purely raising your skills and stats through their usage. It was also amazing and no MMO will ever rise to its standard

I'm just going to focus on one point while the gears whirr and I generate my thoughts, but I'm actually not too bothered about the "Collect 10 bear pelts" quests IF they've got a decent reason and a progression about them.

The way I like to see them presented is for them not to be direct gathering quests, but with more freedom maybe in terms of crafting or perhaps trading.

Eg, it's never mentioned that you actively need to go off and collect 10 bear pelts, all that's mentioned is that you need to get a bear fur lined coat for winter for the NPC (or for yourself) to complete the quest. The aim being that getting the coat can be done multiple ways:

1) Killing the bears yourself and crafting the coat
2) Buying the pelts and crafting yourself
3) Buying the coat from other means.

In my view it's much more interesting to give a quest with a wider reaching scope than to be specific and go "Go to the bear woods, kill 20 bears, bring 10 pelts to NPC".

I suppose that boils down to giving the player a bit of choice. If you let them choose how to do the objective, then it's a much more involving process. That's the real problem with the "rubbish" quests, they're static and forced.

The only quests that really piss me off are the ones where there is a drop rate. I remember when I first picked up WoW and there were some leopards that I had to kill to collect their hearts and only 1 in 10 actually had a heart, made me do a

Buzz has a point there. Setting a quest as "Do X" is fine, setting a quest of "Do X, but only by doing Y" is tedious. Oblivion felt like it had masses of potential by creating a living world and having you complete objectives in it. Unfortunately the living world was actually very scripted and the objectives were still pretty set in how you completed them. It's a step in the right direction though. Similarly, p&p games may well have a set objective but there's plenty of options to get there, and that's the appeal.

The other thing about p&p games is your actions influence the game. Maybe not by much, but you know that anything you do could potentially be significant. In an MMONG with hundreds of people on the same server that's less likely (Eve being an exception, and very popular for it).

I think the future may be less MMONG and more co-op RPG. You and your mates are the group of heroes, but cities aren't rammed with other similar heroes doing the same thing. I've also said before that player-created content that can provide advantages to the creator if rated highly is a concept worth exploring. CoH has delved into this a little.

buzzmong wrote:stuff about variety

I like this. If your end point is inevitably Z, then why not have A through X as means to do Y and thus complete Z.

This truly opens the scope of characters as well. Trade it, steal it, grow it, get someone else to kill the bears or whatever. The same static quest with a few more options as to how you complete increases the replay value immensely.

I always liked the idea that you're not some special bad ass hero type, but if you spend a bit of time bashing things with sticks, making armour or trading stuff and so on you could be renowned in game for it and get cool stuff as a result.

I wouldn't label it obfuscation, its a great word for it but engenders a somewhat negative feeling for me, instead I would call it depth and variety, richness er, verdant, luxurious or whatever.

To me the mmo's are too easily stripped to the basic components, the story often being a thin veneer over the X/Y/Z quest. An end result is good, but if you can have a great time getting there, such as in more singleplayer oriented rpg's or p&p then you care a hell of a lot less about any grinding it takes.

So-called "Fedex" quests. Cheap filler and thinly disguised XP grinding.

Didn't Conaids have the player built towns? That concept to me sounded brilliant (although I never played it). The idea of having a defined strategic goal - "Design & build a castle" and together, you have to collect and craft stuff to do it (player driven '"quests"), which in turn creates the content for other players (trade or fight with your town).

In the same vein as the winter furr lined coat mentioned above, the dragonscale armour in DAO was an example of a lateral thinking quest. Not actually a quest in itself, but the option was there and of you voluntarily trotted off to hunt down dangerous beasties for that shiny reward.

Perhaps this is what makes Minecrack SMP such an attractive idea?

The problem for me in these multiplayer MMORPGs is that it kinda feels like I don't and will never have any impact on the world. In single player RPGs, the quests and such is obviously being done by thousands of other people in exactly the same way. The story is unfolding and even though I'm not the only one who bought the game it feels more personal than if I had to run through a zone with thousands of others to get a speech bubble that I can probably ignore if I want to.

Also RPG quest designs, especially on video game RPGs is incredibly hard to do well. How do you design a quest that can be solved by a player through any means necessary? At best (Deus Ex) you can give a half-dozen different paths to solve the problem, but any way you cut it, you're going to limit the player to doing something you set up. For this reason, I can forgive a lot of the kill n rabbits and fedex quests.

Oh yeah fuck drop rates, don't make a tedious task way more tedious by making me do it 8x longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay

there isnt enough of this in games

I think there was an option in Ragnarok that let you play a trader class. Final Fantasy Online may have done it too. I always yearned for it in Warcraft - a way of progressing that didn't involve battering things, but creating things and selling them. Of course in Warcraft you can't sell anything you make because everything you make is shite, and anything that's only barely shite is also being sold by a million other people.

oh yeah an example i just thought of for the emergant gameplay would be portal, which despite being neither an mmong or an rpg (although its debatable that all games are in one way or another an rpg) is the first thing that came to mind when thinking about it

it was full of puzzles with ways to get through it that the person designing it would have thought of specific solutions to, but due to the nature of the game mechanics most of the time you would be able to find an alternate solution or bypass parts of their solution using the game mechanics set infront of you

now im not saying doing the puzzles in the way that is set out for you isnt fun, but having the ability to solve problems in creative ways that no one else may have thought of before is much more fun, its more open and exciting

the problems with this are that firstly i would imagine its extremely difficult the create a scenario like this for games, especially electronic ones, you need to create a simple and easy to use mechanic that can be manipulated/manipulate the environment around it in ways that you arent going to think of, and secondly making something like this that isnt going to break

scenarios can be made with multiple predefined choices put infront of the player, but that route is still not giving you the same amount of freedom, your still going to know that these are all actions put infront of you with no freedom within themselves. Say your put infront of a door than can either be opened through picklocking or killing a guard and taking the key. you then might want to be able to pickpocket the guard, if that feature is available, you might just want to be able to bash the door in, if you can do that, you might want to be able to somehow get the guard to think he needs to go in there and unlock to door for you unwittingly

creating that kind of freedom is difficult, moreso depending on the type of game, i would think creating it in a game like WoW would be a tremendous challenge of creativity and then implementation especially given the current game mechanics

I tried to be a trader in FFXI, played it for about a year and never left Windurst. It was possible but not that much fun. Eve's a good example where you can be what you want to be - trader, manufacturer, scientist - unfortunately the ways at getting any good at those are long, repetitive ones. In both you're just a tiny cog in the leviathan world machine.

WoW is what it is partly at the behest of its players. It represents a smorgasbord of all the asked-for features in other MMOs and caters to a type of player who isn't really roleplaying at all. The typical player doesn't want abiguously-worded quests when you have to figure out what to do, or be creative - they want to know how many, and where, give cookie now. They don't even read the quest notes.

Deus Ex to a degree and Oblivion more so are great examples of entertaining quests which can be done a number of ways. Of course every possible outcome has to be scripted, but both games are quite prepared to let you fuck yourself over by killing the quest giver.

Take Glarthir's little quest chain in Skingrad - the suspicious elf who wants you to spy on his neighbours, during it you can at various stages:
- spy on them as he asks
- lie that they are watching him
- steal his key and rob his house
- grass him up to the guards
- take the money off him, then kill him anyway
- sneak into the suspect's houses and stare at them as they sleep until they wake up and attack you so you can kill them without getting a criminal record
- live in his house and use his hollowed-out corpse as a container for your items

Of course, it's a little different in an MMO. Quest-givers can't ask you to "clear out an area" unless it's a private instance and the shops would all go out of business if you could just rob them. Even the main story-arc quests where you witness something big happening seem a little fake when you realise they put on the same show for the next hero that comes along.

Oblivion has some ideas that could translate, crafting is pretty much crap in all the MMOs I've played - even if you master it, you still get to make the same list of items anyone else could make. There are some rare recipes and high-level things that fetch good money, but again the path to making these is paved with tedium, not your imagination. In Oblivion you could create custom spells, combining effects and you could enchant items not just with a number of spell effects, but with varying levels of power, range, duration and charges.

Of course with so many players in an MMO, someone would quickly work out the the "optimal" enchantment, people would cry about imbalance and the bottom would drop out of the market for non-optimal combinations. That's pretty much how the skill trees work out, it's just a shame there's not a wider use for crafted items.

User-created content would be interesting. Why not add some element of customisation to how you character looks, furnishes their cave, pimps up their horse or decorates their spaceship? The Sims is an obvious example, but Forza Motorsport also included tradeable paint jobs built using the rather clumsy and limited tools in the game.