If possible you should have the non-epic quests earlier in the game and the epic quests later in the game. I think it's good to have both though.

hmm...

there really is no "earlier" vs "later" in the game, unless you measure it by number of days alive, or total skill exp, etc. there's no over-arching storyline where mundane tasks might appear early on (like tote shields for the companions in skyrim) with more epic undertakings later on in the story.

both quest and random encounters are scaled to party strength, the difference being that quests range from a single 1st level opponent on up, while random encounters have a minimum of one and a max of num_appearing for that animal type. but you might still encounter a single 10th level animal while at 1st level (so to speak). so random encounters may be imbalanced with a weak party vs a single strong animal (sabertooth! time to run!), or they may be imbalanced between a strong party and a small/weak herd (rhim gazelle! time to hunt!). quest encounters are carefully scaled to always provide as close as possible to, and no better than, 50-50 odds in favor of the player's party.

almost all quests are "random encounters" that can occur at the shelters of friendly bands: "the cavemen here tell you of a great treasure... go for the treasure? yes, no.", that kind of thing.

i was thinking that mundane tasks/jobs might make sense from both gameplay and immersion standpoints. its more stuff you can do that might have occurred in the real world. and given the random encounter driven design of the game, from bushwhackers to sabertooths to catching a cold to montezuma's revenge from drinking dirty water, even a mundane fedex or escort mission might turn into quite the little adventure.

it could potentially almost double the number of quest types possible, such as escort quests with and without a special quest encounter. tasks/jobs for those who want them, and epic challenges for those who seek that. between the quest and random wilderness encounter scaling for party strength, both jobs and quests would be appropriately challenging. about the only challenge in implementing it would be determining the proper reduced reward for jobs vs quests. maybe start at 1/2 quest treasure levels and adjust as necessary.

Both days alive and total xp seems like fine ways to measure early vs. late game. But how are you handling tutorials if all the quests are random encounters?

But how are you handling tutorials if all the quests are random encounters?

from the main menu you can start either a (new) tutorial or a new (non-tutorial) game. continue and load work with both tutorial and non tutorial games.

the tutorial game causes popup messages to appear from time to time, telling you how to play. it covers everything from finding water all the way through your first successful hunt.

takes 1-2 hours, but most folks stretch that to 4-5 cause they're having fun. the tutorial game is the demo for the game. in the full version, you can keep going after you complete the tutorial. you might be able to load saved games from the demo as well, can't recall offhand. that way they can play the demo. save the game, get the full version, load up their save game, and keep going.

In some games, the term 'epic' for quests (or campaigns of quests) is used for those that more closely follow the games main story (Lord of The Ring Online for example) instead of the sandbox/leveling filler quest/missions.

Such can also be used as gateways for level advancement along that story arc (or for major level advancement ex- from youngster to tribe member to chief to hero kind of skill/role shift).

I don't know that limiting your experiences to epic or "mundane" is effective.

In the strain of realism, epic experiences are naturally few and far between, a lot of realistic experiences might be mundane by nature, but by weaving immersion of this prehistoric world, you can make the most trivial events rich with depth and atmosphere.

Take a collection quest for instance, it could involve enlisting or learning from an herbalist to find an herb, exploring organically to find the herbs native habitat, some battle with a particular species that gathers around that herb, and returning it to the requestor, not to hand it in for a reward, but for a lesson in creating curative, which brings you into a crafting subgame.

Afterwards you have the experience to find and create curative more efficiently, and perhaps establish searching and crafting mechanisms for the game.

Weave in quality character dialogue and atmosphere into the experience, and you have a "mundane" task which weaves community and society into your game while establishing organic exploration and atmosphere.

I think the measure to consider most is quality quests rather than epic or mundane. You can make some irritating quest with trivial dialogue and a quick follow the markers to retrieve an object for a trivial reward, or you can use quests in an organic way to teach players the game and introduce rich features like quality exploration and crafting.

Consider something like having a camp wolf, trained by the herbalist, lead your character to the intended herb. It leads toward the target, shirks danger prompting you to defeat obstructing foes, gets lazy when it wants a treat, than continues to your destination.

No silly HUD markers and artificial exploration. You'll later want to acquire your own camp wolf to lead and track down animals and herbs without a loan, you'll find traces of the intended target to get them on a scent, and train him to bring you to the proper objective instead of humorously incorrect objects.

Making the experience feel organic will improve immersion for a prehistoric experience, quests and all.

Take a collection quest for instance [snip]

unfortunately, as with any game, the quests / missions must work with the existing rules of the the game. some of what you describe could work, some probably not.

the game can already do the following:

you can trade for herbs, but you can't hire someone to gather them for you (at the moment at least).

you can learn herblore skills from anyone with more herblore experience than you.

you can explore to determine what types of herbs are found where.

medicinal herbs increase chance of success at learning healing skill. but medicinal herbs are automatically used directly if carried while healing, not as a crafting ingredient.

every item in the game is craftable by anyone at any time (well, at least you can try). so no crafting to unlock. also, poison may the the only craftable item that uses herbs, unless you count spices for cooking. the game only has 10 kinds of "herbs": medicinal herbs, sacrificial herbs, cooking spices, poison plants, and 6 kinds of spirit plants. i think you have to make poison first from poison plants, and then you can use that to poison a weapon. the rest of them are used directly, except spices, which are a cooking ingredient.

your herblore goes up when you gather herbs, and your healing skill goes up when you heal yourself or others, but there are no "healing potions" in the game - no curatives to create or craft. if you have medicinal herbs, the game assumes you use them in whatever manner is appropriate. you don't have to craft a curative "potion" first. there's just a single generic "medicinal herbs" that covers all natural medicines, and works on both damage and disease. the game just tracks sick/not sick, and does not have different diseases, such as "rock joint" in skyrim.

all quests are randomly generated and repeatable, not hard coded one shot disposable. so all dialog must be generic in nature. this is a major design constraint. one shot disposable hard coded quests with specific dialog, etc are reserved for the quest editor.

a separate tutorial game is used to teach the player, not quests. the tutorial has to work with many more sections of the game code than a quest does.

the game does have "camp wolves" (IE canus cf familiaris - the still-as-yet-undiscovered extinct ancestor of both wolves and dogs. genetics says its exists - we just have't found any remains yet). they are "wild dogs" that you can domesticate. but you can't train them to find herbs (yet) <g>.

the biggest thing to work around is the fact that these are repeatable generic quests, like radiant quests in skyrim: "kill the bandit leader/giant/dragon at one of about 175 possible hard coded locations chosen at random". so they can't be a single story or adventure, they have to be a type of story or adventure, a type where it makes sense that they would happen repeatedly, and a type that won't get old with replay.

also, i find that what is interesting to one type of player is not to another. some like exploration, some like crafting, some like combat. some like stealth. for "quests" in caveman, its pretty much about combat, with stealth always available as an option.

exploration for reward will be a "job" and is already on the todo list. you can craft anything at any time and trade it for other items, so no real need for "craft item for reward" jobs. that way you don't get stuck having to explore, craft, gather, or sneak when you're just looking for action. if you want to explore for a reward you can get an exploration job. if you want to craft stuff for a reward you can just make it then trade it, no quest required. if you want to gather stuff for a reward you can just gather it then trade it, no quest required. if you're looking for action - take on a quest (or find a cavern or a special encounter area with nasty critters or badguys).

that way all the different types of players (crafters, gatherers, explorers, sneaks, and fighters) have a way to play "their way" for rewards, without having to engage in the other play styles which they may not care for.

To create an interesting experience you need variety in that experience.

Epicness is relative to the expectations of the player. If all your quests are epic, none are.

As mentioned, the focus needs to be on quality of quests.

How epic they feel, is just a knob to increase the perceived quality of experience without actually changing the complexity of the content (youre just using bigger numbers and words and so on).

So you can slowly increase the epicness factor, but occasionally you need to recalibrate the players expectations so it doesnt get too crazy. I would accompany this recalibration with particularly interesting content (because obviously going from "epic" to "mundane" is not very fun, so you need to compensate). Like maybe you complete the epic quest and go back to boring life. But from that quest you got some interesting items or skills or knowledge, that keeps you interested enough to tolerate the lowered amount of stimulation for a while (epicness is just one factor of quality of experience, so you are simply switching from relying on rising epicness as a source of quality, to some other factor like new content - overall quality of experience should thus stay constant).

Consider the storytellers of rimworld. They determine how events that happen to you in the game are 'scheduled'. Rising challenge (~epicness), steady, or random.

The existence of options here means that players have different preferences. So maybe you can add an explicit option, or allow players to affect this through gameplay choices.

Maybe some players choose to go on a journey of increasing epicness, while others occasionally go on an epic quest and then return to normal life. And others get themselves in a situation where epic quests are forced on them without much control.

Epicness is relative to the expectations of the player. If all your quests are epic, none are. As mentioned, the focus needs to be on quality of quests. How epic they feel, is just a knob to increase the perceived quality of experience without actually changing the complexity of the content (youre just using bigger numbers and words and so on).

you know, we've never really defined what we mean by epic.

to me big words and numbers aren't epic. to me, in a game, high difficulty = epic. IE tough boss battles. IE epic battles. other things can contribute to a quest being epic: long time to complete, long distance to travel. at least these are the things that seem to make me think "epic".

quest battles are designed so you have at best maybe a 50% chance of winning, and at worst, perhaps a low as 40% chance to win - regardless of party strength. so they will always be tough battles - epic battles (by my definition).

what do others consider "epic"?

one man's "epic" may be another man's "mundane". to me it all seems to hinge on the challenge presented. IE how hard is it to succeed.

so even "collect 10 skeever tails" can be a challenge, if you're 1st level, and you must collect them from a cave where you encounter 30-50 at once. while this may be trivial for a hercules type, it would be epic for your average citizen / 1st level noob.

Consider the storytellers of rimworld.

In caveman you can also adjust both difficulty (difficulty in RImworld) and encounter chances (storyteller AI in Rimworld). so i think i've got that covered. this allows the player to make the world both as difficult, and as busy as they want.

Waterlimon has brought up a good point.

what do you consider to be an epic quest?

it seems different folks have different opinions on just what makes a quest epic.

perhaps with a sample of various people's definition of an epic quest we can find elements that are common to most/all people.

to me, extremely challenging combat seems essential. or perhaps extremely challenging theft in lieu of combat. long time and long distance also seem to have weight, but don't seem to be sufficient by themselves.