I'm moving some of my ideas over from MMORPG.com to see if they get more feed back here
Why quest? I quest in order to do somethign different. For those times that I don't feel like running the leveling treadmill over and over and over again. Problem is most quests are the same thing. Go kill monster x to retrieve item y, take item y to person z, and get reward. Repeat steps as necessary.
1. Robust RANDOM quest generator. (Imagine AO's mission generator, or DAOC /task generator x 100) One that would generate unique multi-step quests with a semi-decent story without being to repetetive. Also this would have to have the ability to know what quests you have done and at a later time make another quest that connects to a previous one.
2. Non-linear quests quests that can change depending on a. Specific choices the character makes, and b. The style in which the character takes on the quest. (i.e. stealth, head on, etc.)
3. Party quests- quests specifically designed for groups, not just with harder monsters but with puzzles requiring at least two people to solve, or requiring skill from two seperate classes to be completed. (example doors to get to the boss require magic cast on one, and another has to be picked....)
4. Multi-group/guild quests- quests Designed around the concept of multiple parties coordinating from completely different areas. (I.E. knocking out the shield generator on Endor so that the death star can be attacked.)
5. Quest rewards besides "uber items." perhaps standard items with a unique look, access to a skill from a different class, access to a new area, faction points.
6. Hidden quests that require research to find, and research to complete. (I.E. an ancient wizard spell that has remained forgotten for centuries. First you have to find out about it, then you have to find it)
What do you all think?
[edited by - robert4818 on May 30, 2003 9:06:38 PM]
Ideas presented here are free. They are presented for the community to use how they see fit. All I ask is just a thanks if they should be used.
I''m working on some RPG quests right now, and running into some pretty nasty brick walls. The biggest obstacle: how to avoid the "find and kill X, get item Y, take to person Z" cliche!
RPGs in electronic games generally are very combat-oriented, with a secondary emphasis on items -- which I suspect is why its so common to find quests involving killing X or acquiring Y.
So without long-winded like I usually do, I''ll just admit the fact that for once I don''t have an answer, and am in rather dire need on this precise topic at the moment.
Well here is an idea, it might fit what your wanting, but its geared towards MMO's. Definately a twist. But alot of quests in books are the opposite of RPG's its "find item X to kill Y" There just is usually more story to it.
One of my biggest problems with everquest, was that what ever you did, the world didn't change. It would grow with expansions, but the world itself wouldn't change. You can always go into the orc dungeon near the wood elves, and always find that the dark elves were plotting with them. It never changed. I started before the first expansion came out. Came back after Luclin came out, and it still never changed. Players couldn't help but feel that they had no say in the world.
What I would like to see are one-time-in-the-game quests. Large quests that require (to go back to previous posts) multiple people/parties to complete and once they do complete it it has major changes on the world and even on the game itself.
Example.
Long ago the world was split into two pieces in order to stop a massive world. It is now long past the time when the original planners had planned for the world to be rejoined, but the steps needed to do this were lost when the capital city the instructions were placed in disappeared without a trace.
Players must first find the lost city. Find and decipher the book that contains the steps needed, and then complete the quest.
Upon completeing this major lore-centric quest the world is practically doubled in size. Opening up new starting cities, new races, and new classes to everyone in the player base. The reward for the player(s) who solve this massive puzzle? None except that now thier names are in the history books of the world. (Isn't that enough with the virtual Expansion they just unlocked in the game) It would be interesting for some of the games expandsions to be opened this way also.
Now you may or may not like this idea. In a game like everquest that is strictly PVE it makes sense to me. It lets players act as actual movers in the story
[edited by - robert4818 on May 30, 2003 12:08:25 AM]
Ideas presented here are free. They are presented for the community to use how they see fit. All I ask is just a thanks if they should be used.
I absolutely agree with you about letting the player change the world. I think this is the Number One thing lacking in 95% of MMO''s.
My MMO world has a very vast complex story that involves the player characters in a very personal way, and actually relies on the players to reveal bits of the story over time. So naturally a lot of my quests will be story quests.
But right now the quests I''m working on are for a more "typical" fantasy style game, and I''m trying specifically to create interesting quests that do not make any changes to the permanent game/world state. Naturally these quests still need worthwhile stories to accompany them.
The only one I have so far involves NPC members of a particular guild. One NPC guildsman sends the player character a note asking for help, and the PC learns that another guildmember, who was once a kind, compassionate soul, has begun to manifest sadistic, even evil tendencies... and most recently murdered another member of the guild. Naturally the player has to get to the bottom of it. There are dark forces involved yada yada. You see the problem? Its story-based, its sorta kinda a li''l bit original, but its terribly uninspiring.
quote: What I would like to see are one-time-in-the-game quests. Large quests that require (to go back to previous posts) multiple people/parties to complete and once they do complete it it has major changes on the world and even on the game itself.
Gotcha, but this is only a brief part of it that I''ve planned:
For quests in a MMORPG i think two solutions could work:
1) For small - medium sized worlds you could make the game flow dynamic - i.e. have background events running to which the A.I. would react. This could go from simple chnage of rhetoric between diplomats of two factions that would make the quests geared up towards possible war, or a large scale event like climate change due to some magician''s meddling with reality. Each of the quests would then have an effect on the outcome of the major event ( a PC character get''s caught spying - the tensions increase) And this could lead to a more "living" world. Of course the game master would have the final say in the outcome - sort of like deus ex machina when things get too bad and would lead to a catastrophy. If you wan''t i can further elaborate on my ideas concerning the AI required.
2) for huge worlds, where the workload of keeping up with the background data would be to large - you could implement a quest template based system - it would function much like the Kill X, get Y system but could be made to facilitate a wider range of objectives - this would require more scripting but would lessen the load of keeping a lot of data at hand which might, but not necesserily will be used.
quote:Original post by robert4818 1. Robust RANDOM quest generator. (Imagine AO''s mission generator, or DAOC /task generator x 100) One that would generate unique multi-step quests with a semi-decent story without being to repetetive.
Not easy. How do you envisage "random" and "semi-decent story" as coexisting?
quote:Also this would have to have the ability to know what quests you have done and at a later time make another quest that connects to a previous one.
Do you have any ideas on how to do these ''follow-on'' quests? That sort of thing is generally done more effectively by linking things to the back-story, which follows on by definition.
quote:2. Non-linear quests quests that can change depending on a. Specific choices the character makes, and b. The style in which the character takes on the quest. (i.e. stealth, head on, etc.)
Examples? "Non-linear" is a bit of a vague buzzword.
quote:3. Party quests- quests specifically designed for groups, not just with harder monsters but with puzzles requiring at least two people to solve, or requiring skill from two seperate classes to be completed. (example doors to get to the boss require magic cast on one, and another has to be picked....)
Personally I''m in favour of this, but a lot of players don''t like extra constraints on who they group with, especially since finding decent people can often be tough.
quote:4. Multi-group/guild quests- quests Designed around the concept of multiple parties coordinating from completely different areas. (I.E. knocking out the shield generator on Endor so that the death star can be attacked.)
The more people it requires, the less easy it is to organise, therefore the less likely it will take place. Or at least it will take place less frequently. For this reason, I think many developers are loathe to invest too many resources into uberquests.
quote:5. Quest rewards besides "uber items." perhaps standard items with a unique look, access to a skill from a different class, access to a new area, faction points.
The item appearance thing is usually possible through various crafting skills anyway. The rest is fine, although I don''t like the faction point abstraction personally.
quote:6. Hidden quests that require research to find, and research to complete. (I.E. an ancient wizard spell that has remained forgotten for centuries. First you have to find out about it, then you have to find it)
And once one guy does the research, it gets put up on the web for everyone to read and then complete. It would only work if you combined it with point 1 above.
Tilt your head, squint a little, and look at it all like this:
Every objective, even in the real world, basically resolves down to, "Get Object(s) X to Position(s) Y". They can expand from there by having conditions attached (which can resolve down to " making sure that object(s) Z don''t end up in position(s) erm... A and get all this done before/within time T"
So, for scripting purposes, it can get pretty simple. Using the model above, you can pretty much describe any ''quest''.
Now, for the random questing stuff, that''s pretty easy. Every quest is basically an objective given to you by someone who can not achieve that objective on their own. So... you need to build in a motivation system. For example, all Wizards of a particular alignment have a 20% desire to possess the orb of blithering. It doesn''t matter where the orb is, the fact that a Wizard is prepared to reward you for attaining it is a de facto quest. Where the orb is (in a dragon lair, in the possession of another player, in the hands of another wizard), is entirely game-world dependent and can change depending on the evolution of the world.... a player could get it from the dungeon, and then get bored of it and sell it to another player, who looses it in the swamp, etc. etc. etc.
So... by having NPC''s that ''desire'' unique game-world objects on a chance basis, you can set up random quests that more or less make sense. If the object moves around, you can have NPC''s that provide information about its location (as in, "Last heard that it was in the NE swamp"). The reward would be dependent upon who offers the quest (a wizard, a politician, a barman, a merchant... whatever), and the value of the reward would increase depending not on how difficult it was to attain, but on the number of people who wanted it and the number of people who were prepared to accept the quest.
Arg. It''s actually very late, and I think that I maybe had a good point or two in there, but I''m really losing the plot. Sorry to fizzle out.
Always prey on the weak, the timid and the stupid. Otherwise you'll just get your butt kicked
For a tortoise, this is extremely hard to do, but when you get it right... the expression on their faces ...
I see what youre talking about and it would be nice to have but theres a problem with these one-time-only quests in MMORPGs. One a one or a few at most can do it. You can''t have every single person saving the world from the exact same fate over and over again, it gets old and becomes like every other quest out there. You end up having a really big quest the beta testers solve and thats not available to new players. So you have to make new unique quests for all these new unique players and that means LOTS and LOTS of content creation, implementation, and everyone spends all their time downloading new patches and never get a chance to play.
Yah, but let''s say that the world can be destroyed (or overrun, or dominated by an evil sod) in a number of different ways. All of those ways require the massing of a number of different things.
For example, a wizard may seek a powerful, lost amulet. A warlord may try to amass troops (but needs an ancient treasure to ensure success). Or perhaps lots of combinations of things... can''t think of fantasy analogs right now so "You can get biochemical weapons, nuclear stuff, diplomatic agreements, economic dominance, mind-controlling hypnobeams, or whatever" All of these things result in amassing enough stuff to dominate your opponents.
Now... with this in mind, and using the desire thing I hinted at: If you have some characters in the game that seek world ruin/domination, they would be able to achieve it by following one of several paths. The quest of stopping them would then naturally follow, and would be different depending on what type of character was trying to go for WD, as well as where the things were left the last time.
So, a wizard needs the wossname of eternal thingy and sends a gullible adventurer off to get it. Once the wizard has it, he uses its influence to start amassing an army. This prompts another character to offer a quest to destroy the wizard. Once destroyed, the wossname of eternal thingy falls into the possession of someone else. And so... the cycle continues.
But, if you have the cycles out of synch with eachother then you get the impression of a constant ongoing struggle, with major quests cropping up all over the place.
Other than defining the objects and what they do, the ways in which a character can attempt to obtain an object, and a reward scaling system, you''d have to do nothing but sit back and enjoy.
One way to handle this would be to have roaming characters that do nothing much, unless they come into contact with a particular thing which sets them off down a WD path. This would introduce a randomness to the game universe, because the desires are not always in play. Think of it in terms of brownian motion. When a character bumps into a trigger object, he/she will then follow an agressive path to WD.
This could result in a single megalomaniac at a point in time, or perhaps even many with conflicting requirements (i.e. both sides needing the wossname of thingy), forcing a player to choose an side.
I wouldn''t see the AI for all this being too difficult. It''s pretty similar to a game of solitaire. (using a card metaphor...) Imagine that the victory conditions for WD are met when the a particular suit is clean and correctly ordered. The character bent on WD, would then try to sort and clean the suit. If defeated, the cards would become reshuffled back into the world, waiting for the next character to hit the trigger that sends them off on a mission to clean a suit of cards. If you had 10 suits...
Well. This kind of makes sense to me. But I think maybe I''m not explaining it too well.
Always prey on the weak, the timid and the stupid. Otherwise you'll just get your butt kicked
For a tortoise, this is extremely hard to do, but when you get it right... the expression on their faces ...
I'm moving some of my ideas over from MMORPG.com to see if they get more feed back here
