User Based Questing

JagerMichael

In one of my discussions/rants with a co-worker about the state of MMOs I stumbled upon an idea and thought I would share it here. I haven't a clue if it's already been implemented into a game and if it has, whether it was successful or not.

The basis for my idea is founded from Star Wars Galaxies and what I consider to be one of the best economies and non combat fun to be had in an MMO. Granted it's not quite as good as it once was in the early days, but that's another discussion entirely.

What I always liked about SWG was that the limited character slots per server forced people to seek out other players to achieve goals. Need a house, find an architect. Need a gun, find a weaponsmith. And it wasn't as simple as just creating another character on the same server, grinding out his profession and then making all of your own items. Beyond the basic examples, you could be a successful businessman without mastering any of the crafting professions. You could mine resources and sell them. You could raise your ranger skills and become a hunter and sell those resources. You could even raise yourself to surveying 4 and sell the coordinates of new resource spawns.

My point, you were forced to interact with the community in ways other than just grouping for combat or joining a guild. The community was truly intertwined and you could gain fame by becoming a well known and respectable business person. I had an architect and was allowed the priviledge of providing the components for several players cities. And let me tell you, there's nothing quite like driving through a city knowing you created the buildings being used.

That all being said, my idea was to take it to the next level and add player created quests into the game (I use SWG only as an example as I am familiar with it. Any other game or setting could be used). For instance, if you are a tailor there may be a special leather hide you need to make one of your items that can only be gotten through a quest. The trick is, you yourself can not do the quest, it must be assigned to another player. So aspiring rangers can come to you, receive the quest, and upon completion they get the hides. Depositing the hides on your vendor result in the ranger gaining XP and maybe a small reward for doing so. Or maybe it's a choice, it could be a reward or XP. That way experienced rangers would still have a reason to complete the quest for you on a regular basis.

You could take it to the next step as well. Say you're a slicer or chef that needs illegal spice. You hire a smuggler to get your spice for you on a quest that only a smuggler can do and a quest only you can give. The smuggler goes to do the quest but comes into contact with Imperials on his way to drop it off. He can decide to fight it out, make a run for it or dump the spice. If he dumps the spice he aborts the mission which sends you a notification. You then have the option of putting a bounty on his head, which then opens another line of questing that involves a Bounty Hunter accepting the mission.

You could also add in a rating system perhaps. So if the mission is completed successfully, both the quest giver and doer can rate the other. This way you can gain respect as a person that is worth questing for or giving quests to.

There's obviously some holes that would have to be filled in, but I think it's a fairly workable idea. Thoughts? Critic? All is welcome.

Oh, and sorry for the length.

toastngravy

I like this idea quite a bit, and some games actually do have things like this around.

I'll use runescape as an example (I know i know..runescape ew..but It's been a while since I played so shush), Any way, one of the quests, you had to get a player from another group, like an npc organization type of thing, and do this quest. Each person had to do a certain thing to get past the quest, it was pretty nice.

 

Though personally, this could cause some problems due to lack of certain people, but it would be nice. Say, you don't need NPC's, give the players the quests (well you need NPC's for some quests and shops etc.) but that would be nice. Most of the quests are from the players, you don't need to go around to an npc, as a player.

 

Someone needs to hop on that idea right now before someone takes it first haha.

Woopin

Ryzom Ring?

 

Thats user made quests.

Lodeclaw

I had this idea as well, but without the whole quest aspect. I would be happy if players could make contracts that would dictate what must be done and how long they have to do it. It's a lot like how missions are used in EVE-Online.

Unknown

Yep Ryzom Ring had this.  Not sure how successful it was though.

 

Also Eve has commissions from users.  Although that isn't really a quest per se.

 

Another thing to think about is that most MUDs were coded and administrated by former players of the MUD.

Souvec

Yep Ryzom Ring had it all really.  Nice features, tools and settings.

This was great... until they were bought out, development stopped on the Ring, as well as advertising for it.  Its too bad because it was really offering the community a way to creatively add content to Ryzom.  Now that Ryzom is yet again facing bancruptcy, I doubt anyone will be able to truly see its potential.

Czzarre

I like the idea a lot. Interaction between the players is what this genre of games is all about.

Torrential

Confetti

Originally posted by Czzarre


I like the idea a lot. Interaction between the players is what this genre of games is all about.
Torrential

Well said and great thread. This could go hand in hand with the NPC grouping thread. There's several major games out right now where you could go through level 1 to cap without having to talk to another player (just using the NPCs and NPC quests). I think games need to open up that interaction gap a lot more and force players to have to be a part of the world by actually using the chatting tool. Even auction houses have really made players distant from one another. While yes, they are probably one of the most incredible things to hit MMORPGs, they really take away from the negotiating of player interation.



But to go back to your idea, that's exactly something that MMORPGs are missing. Big time.  I'm sick of NPCs being the primary everything.

JagerMichael

Glad to see the positive reaction.

I figured it couldn't have been a 100% original idea. Though I'm glad to see another game managed to do it well, gives me hope that someone else might take note of it and attempt to impliment it.

Expanding on the idea, I was thinking you could also attach faction points to it. That way you could end up having crafters/traders that are not only well known, but could also be well known with in their own faction.

Again, following the SWG example, maybe as a Rebel I wouldn't even think of using an Imperial crafter. And while there could be neutral crafters/traders, maybe there's some sort of risk involved.

I don't want to see games go the way of having to interact with other people through every aspect. But I think economy based interaction is only a good thing. And the first step to that I believe, is limiting how many character slots you can have per server. Otherwise everyone will just roll enough characters to cover all of their own needs and never seek anyone out.

As I've said, I think SWG was one of the best games out there solely based on its economy and professions. The fact that you could be a combat person, a trader or even an entertainer was pure genius.

Taera

The problem I see with user based quests is the potential for immense frustration for some of the participants.  Say you need some spices, and I'm your smuggler on the job.  What happens if I just log off and never complete it?  Does that mean you can't hire anyone else until the timer runs out (it would have to be timed), or you could cancel my job?  Users could basically grief each other by taking quests and not doing them.

Let's say that you combat this by allowing the quest giver to cancel a job, or give the same job to multiple people.  In the first case, there's another platform for griefing...you could wait until I was almost done, then boop, cancelled!  If multiple people could take the same job, what happens if Soandso zones faster than me and completes it while I'm only halfway done?  I've just wasted my time.

A solution to this could be a rating system, and the option to approve or deny a contract.  Users could build up their reputation by successfully completing smaller missions, and players with larger missions would know how to trust.  Anyone using the system to grief would be marked as a griefer, and their missions/services would be avoided.  But then, could you grief by tanking someone's reputation?  Agh!

JagerMichael

I've actually thought about the griefing aspect and came to the following conclusion.

First, I don't think giving the quest to one player would lock that quest. In order for this to work correctly and have longevity to it, the rewards from doing the requests would be commonly needed items. Therefore having multiple people running the same quest makes sense.

I was also thinking about the different levels of quests you give. For instance, maybe as a trader you can set up a vendor in which players can get quests from without you being online. But completing those quests would build their rep with you to a point where they could get high level quests directly from you. Both of you would benefit from the system in that the player gains XP and maybe small cash rewards from vendor missions, while you gaing the items they deposit back into the vendor when they complete the quest. And then the high level quests would result in rare items for you and a higher level of XP and reward for the player doing the quest.

This could also open the door for building a relationship with someone. If you structure it correctly, the people doing the quests for you would be  people you'd be interested in forming long term relationships with. Like rangers hunting for bone and leather for tailors and armorcrafters. A person that went through your vendor quests and your high level quests would be an obvious choice for someone to hire when you need items that can be gained from basic farming.

As for griefing through a rating system, it would have to work much like eBay. Both the quest giver and doer would be able to rate the other. Therefore you don't want to risk being an idiot because it will only make you look bad in the long run. You could even have the rating system build a resume of sorts that other people can access and see comments left by previous relationships.

batolemaeus

It will work quite well, if you can call in your friends to show the griefer his "work" is not appreciated by force. If not, the griefers will just move on after making your live miserable..
And if you got to have friends in game, chances are you wont even call some other player for help, but just tell your guild/corp/whatevermate to to that quest for you.
"Hey i have to craft 15 more boradswords, make the quests for me plz"..

Nah, such a system wont work well i think. Would be nice to see something like this in a game, to really see if it works, but i doubt it.

(And no, Eve does not have "player quests" of that sort. You can form auctions, loans, item-transfers with specific conditions etc. via contracts, but the far most "quests" are made by "hey, ill pay your corp for messing with the punks in our foregarden" or "hey, can you please get your freighter ready, we need to get 1b m³ of stuff moved and need your help". Most things are freeform and can not be covered by an artificial questsystem at all)