If players want "epic", I mean really Epic game play, they are looking for it in the wrong place if they expect it to come from Quests of a pre-designed nature. Even if those quest are made "custom" in some special system. You just can't get "epic" from a system.
For Epic, we need a world that's made for it, and we need a combination of player and GM interaction.
This is something I posted elsewhere, as an example, but keep in mind I am not suggesting a wide open PvP system to do this in...
But let me take it a step farther and suggest that, instead of game companies take more and more away from us players, they go the other way. They…*gasp*…give us more?
And that Trinsic invasion can be used as a good example of how to go about it. Lets take it farther. What would have happened if upon his destruction, Juo’Nar (a liche who was a human antagonist earlier in UO’s game play) “shattered” into bone pieces, that layed on the ground for players to pick up as rares. Souvenirs. Valuable in that context, as UO had a great “rares” feature.
And what if those bones of Juo’Nar could be joined together by players, a ritual or powerword spoken, and he comes back? If clues could be left in the game as to the possibility and means?
Of course, most game develpers will instantly start thinking of problems with doing that. And most of them will conclude that it “can’t be done.” But I suggest that if the game were built around this sort of thing in the first place, it can be done.
What if special things never decay, never leave the game world through quitting player’s inventories, and ongoing scenarios are built around such things?
What if it’s up to the “good guys” to seal away Juo’Nar’s bones, hide them, guard them, from the “bad guys”?
What if standard trade constructions are made via the same mechanisms. Put things “in” a workbench, “do”, and you get a thing. The same as putting Juo’Nar’s bones in a Blackrock coffin, place runes “in” it to seal it, and “do”, and presto! Juo’Nar is back. And Juo’Nar the NPC is seeking recruits for his evil, “tags”. While Juo’Nar the GM can refer to this list of such Tags and go from there.
What if a game were about the experience, the history, the happenings, the world around the players? Instead of about levels and hooks and ladders and repetition?
Let's look at another possibility. What if a player could become the lich, dark lord, or whatever?
This is the point at which most people, realizing how disturbingly insane I am, recoil in horror and back away. But why not? You really only need to have one design principle in place to make it work and everything else is details. What you need is the fundamental principle that things can not only be gained, they can also be lost.
So allow players to take on high profile roles in your world. They would have to work for it to get it but it could be done. But then also make it clear to them that nothing lasts forever. Become the Dark Lord? Fine. But eventually other players will take you down and then you lose it, you aren't the Dark Lord anymore.
Once established this design principle would open up so many possibilities. A truly dynamic world could exist because it's unfolding history is driven primarily by the players themselves.
If players want "epic", I mean really Epic game play, they are looking for it in the wrong place if they expect it to come from Quests of a pre-designed nature. Even if those quest are made "custom" in some special system. You just can't get "epic" from a system.
For Epic, we need a world that's made for it, and we need a combination of player and GM interaction.
This is something I posted elsewhere, as an example, but keep in mind I am not suggesting a wide open PvP system to do this in...
But let me take it a step farther and suggest that, instead of game companies take more and more away from us players, they go the other way. They…*gasp*…give us more?
And that Trinsic invasion can be used as a good example of how to go about it. Lets take it farther. What would have happened if upon his destruction, Juo’Nar (a liche who was a human antagonist earlier in UO’s game play) “shattered” into bone pieces, that layed on the ground for players to pick up as rares. Souvenirs. Valuable in that context, as UO had a great “rares” feature.
And what if those bones of Juo’Nar could be joined together by players, a ritual or powerword spoken, and he comes back? If clues could be left in the game as to the possibility and means?
Of course, most game develpers will instantly start thinking of problems with doing that. And most of them will conclude that it “can’t be done.” But I suggest that if the game were built around this sort of thing in the first place, it can be done.
What if special things never decay, never leave the game world through quitting player’s inventories, and ongoing scenarios are built around such things?
What if it’s up to the “good guys” to seal away Juo’Nar’s bones, hide them, guard them, from the “bad guys”?
What if standard trade constructions are made via the same mechanisms. Put things “in” a workbench, “do”, and you get a thing. The same as putting Juo’Nar’s bones in a Blackrock coffin, place runes “in” it to seal it, and “do”, and presto! Juo’Nar is back. And Juo’Nar the NPC is seeking recruits for his evil, “tags”. While Juo’Nar the GM can refer to this list of such Tags and go from there.
What if a game were about the experience, the history, the happenings, the world around the players? Instead of about levels and hooks and ladders and repetition?
Let's look at another possibility. What if a player could become the lich, dark lord, or whatever?
This is the point at which most people, realizing how disturbingly insane I am, recoil in horror and back away. But why not? You really only need to have one design principle in place to make it work and everything else is details. What you need is the fundamental principle that things can not only be gained, they can also be lost.
So allow players to take on high profile roles in your world. They would have to work for it to get it but it could be done. But then also make it clear to them that nothing lasts forever. Become the Dark Lord? Fine. But eventually other players will take you down and then you lose it, you aren't the Dark Lord anymore.
Once established this design principle would open up so many possibilities. A truly dynamic world could exist because it's unfolding history is driven primarily by the players themselves.
I'm with you on that. I've long believed that these MMORPGs should have the means to do very special, and rare, things such as becoming a liche yourself, if you choose to, and if you succeed in a very difficult personal "quest" to gain the knowledge. As in my example above, the coding can be recycled from other code that exists in the game. In this case, you'd have rituals in the game already, each one requiring their own special components, for more mundane things like buffs. From there it's just a matter of substituting the components, which would be the special knowledge the player must learn to do it. One of these compenents could be "words", and the combination could be involved enough that no one could "guess" at it.
And I agree that there needs to be a "cost" for such special things. Perma-death would be an extreme, but I like the idea. Another possible "cost" could be to start as a mere skeleton and have to build up to Lichedom. Also, NPC interaction, a liche should be something not accepted in cities and attacked on sight. A liche could also have special things involved, such as a possible disease they may spread to mortals. There's so much that could be done to not only make it exciting but to maintain the desired "flavor" of it all.
Making use of "factions" can really add to this sort of thing too. Some factions could be "liche hunters" by their nature.
A note here. Players can share what they "learn" in game over the internet. You can avoid that by marking the character with a tag as "learning" something, so it can't be shared like that.
These MMOs could be a lot more interesting and "Epic" than they are, that's for sure.
It wouldn't have to be perma-death exactly. Just--your character goes back to being an ordinary character again. But I do include perma-death in my thoughts on this. In some cases it would very blatantly be perma-death, but only for those very special and powerful characters you could unlock. In every case you would always have your basic, main character to go back to or revert back to.
Really it would have to be that way. Otherwise everyone would eventually and permanantly become some sort of demi-god like character. It would destroy the whole concept and create a situation in which becoming some very powerful character would simply be another step in a static character progression ladder. In which case we might as well forget it and just go back to gaining levels forever.
If players want "epic", I mean really Epic game play, they are looking for it in the wrong place if they expect it to come from Quests of a pre-designed nature. Even if those quest are made "custom" in some special system. You just can't get "epic" from a system.
For Epic, we need a world that's made for it, and we need a combination of player and GM interaction.
Well if you're convinced no PVE system (MMO or otherwise) can ever feel epic, there's no real arguing with that.
But plenty of players feel that there's a lot of epic experiences within WOW, and it's hard to argue against the exciting and spectacular things you end up doing sometimes (fighting a dragon while hurdling through space on an asteroid, and then the asteroid blows up and you keep fighting it on the backs of dragons.) The revamped Silverpine Forest (previously one of the dullest zones in the game) has changed into the most spectacular zone in the game -- and throughout the revamped early leveling experience there's a lot more awesome characters to interact with (Lillian Voss being one of the more popular ones.)
I dunno, here on this forum I'm always a bit hesitant to state my feelings: that the most successful formula on the market is successful for a reason. WOW's not all rainbows of course, but in this particular regard (the type of content offered) they're at the top of their game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Originally posted by Ceridith Rather than hand-code every single quest, developers could create a quest generation system, where quests are dynamically generated based on in-game circumstances that evolve over time....Dynamic gameworld with dynamic quests. It's definitely possible, but most developers are too afraid to take a chance.
Can you point me out to some functional model of mechanics you are describing? Can you at least elaborate how such mechanics are supposed to work? How you want to generate lore, the text and supply the world with generated quests to extent that it can accommodate thousands of players playing simultaneously?
I think this concept looks great as long as you don't try to implement it. It can be nice addition to the game in a form of randomly generated dungeons but hardly replace quest structure of the game.
Have NPCs who tell players about stuff. But you don't actually "get" quests from them. They just tell where you can go to find various boss mobs and the like in the region.
So you talk to one of those NPCs and he tells you that in the mountains to the east is the lair of the horrible Blargramph, a terrifying ogre chieftan. He also tells you that in the forest to the west lurks the Tainted Treant, and so on.
Ok, but you don't get a quest for any of those things, he just tells you about them. Then you decide if you want to go fight the ogre or the treant or one of the other things. Let's say you head out to find the ogre. You find him. You kill him. Ok, when you kill him you get your reward. Whatever would normally be given out as a quest reward in most games is instead given out as loot / experience at the moment you kill him.
But here's the kicker, if you never talk to the NPC and you just wander out there and find and kill the ogre on your own inititive you will still get the reward. You don't even have to talk to the npc first and you certainly don't have to return to him afterwards to get your reward.
See? Now things are much more open and the player has more freedom to choose where to go and what to do. People who can't function without being told what to do can still talk to the NPCs. They can even return to talk to them after each little adventure if they really feel they must. People who don't want to don't have to.
You might be wandering around in the wilderness and meet another player who tells you about some place / boss and you could just decide to go there right then without checking in with the NPC first (because you don't have to).
To prevent people from staking out one boss and killing it repeatedly there could be a timer which would prevent you getting any rewards from that boss for X amount of time. So you would go to one place and do whatever there is to do there and then you would move on to another place. But later, say a few hours or the next day, if you wanted to go back and kill the ogre again for the same rewards...you could.
That's an excellent example of a Content Driven MMORPG. I hope one day these Quest Driven MMORPGs would just die.
I like this idea, and take away auto-maps. You have to find your way around and make/buy maps etc and record where you go adds the exploration part to it.
So far loads of ideas to sum from previous posters eg NPC-split from quests (eg Scout system gw2), Lore, dynamic, player driven content, remove grind quests, faction-based (eg Rift)
People have probably seen this one but it goes through the history of quests: Pre-quests and... sub-Post-Quests ?!
You do not have to do quests nor use map or use all game offered features, you can just wander around, explore and grind NPC until your head explodes.
Please explain to me why the same action by a player is grinding in one case and not grinding in the other.
Ok, you start a game. There is a bunch of different mobs to go out and kill.
In the one case NPCs tell you about them without giving you any quests. So you decide where you want to go and what you want to fight. In my example I used an ogre chieftian. So let's say you decide to do that. You go out, you kill him, you get your reward in experience and loot.
In the other case NPCs tell you what you have to do and in what order you have to do it. They give you "quests" which is really just a to-do list. So let's say the ogre is the first thing on your list. You don't decide where you want to go or what you want to fight, that is decided for you. You go out, you kill him, you don't get your reward yet. First you have to run back and talk to the NPC. Then you get your reward.
The basic action taken by the player is almost exactly the same. The major difference is that in one case you made a choice of what to do and in the other case the game made the choice for you. The other difference is that in the first example you get your reward upon completion of the action (killing the ogre) and in the other case you have to go through the additional step of running back to the quest giver.
So according to you, even if the action taken by the player (killing the ogre) is exactly the same in both cases, it is grinding if the player has a choice and not grinding if the player has no choice.
So let's see if I've got this straight:
Deciding where you want to go is grinding.
Being told where you have to go is not grinding.
Killing a mob because you want to is grinding.
Killing a mob because you have to is not grinding.
Sorry, but that doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me.
If players want "epic", I mean really Epic game play, they are looking for it in the wrong place if they expect it to come from Quests of a pre-designed nature. Even if those quest are made "custom" in some special system. You just can't get "epic" from a system.
For Epic, we need a world that's made for it, and we need a combination of player and GM interaction.
Well if you're convinced no PVE system (MMO or otherwise) can ever feel epic, there's no real arguing with that.
But plenty of players feel that there's a lot of epic experiences within WOW, and it's hard to argue against the exciting and spectacular things you end up doing sometimes (fighting a dragon while hurdling through space on an asteroid, and then the asteroid blows up and you keep fighting it on the backs of dragons.) The revamped Silverpine Forest (previously one of the dullest zones in the game) has changed into the most spectacular zone in the game -- and throughout the revamped early leveling experience there's a lot more awesome characters to interact with (Lillian Voss being one of the more popular ones.)
I dunno, here on this forum I'm always a bit hesitant to state my feelings: that the most successful formula on the market is successful for a reason. WOW's not all rainbows of course, but in this particular regard (the type of content offered) they're at the top of their game.
Oh, I'll agree that WoW is a wonderfull game for what it is. But what it is is a controlled experience. While the "epic" experience you describe does sound "epic" at first, how long does that epic feel last when you realize that every player and their dog is going to do the exact same thing, by design?
Rather than hand-code every single quest, developers could create a quest generation system, where quests are dynamically generated based on in-game circumstances that evolve over time.
...
Dynamic gameworld with dynamic quests. It's definitely possible, but most developers are too afraid to take a chance.
Can you point me out to some functional model of mechanics you are describing? Can you at least elaborate how such mechanics are supposed to work? How you want to generate lore, the text and supply the world with generated quests to extent that it can accommodate thousands of players playing simultaneously?
I think this concept looks great as long as you don't try to implement it. It can be nice addition to the game in a form of randomly generated dungeons but hardly replace quest structure of the game.
Unfortunately there is no functional model currently available in any MMO yet to date, otherwise I'd probably be playing it.
Something similar was originally attempted by Richard Garriott in UO, "Artificial Life Engine". This is a quote from the Associate Producer Starr Long a long time ago when the game was still in development: "If the rabbit population suddenly drops... then wolves may have to find different food sources (e.g., deer). When the deer population drops as a result, the local dragon, unable to find the food he's accustomed to, may head into a local village and attack. Since all of this happens automatically, it generates numerous adventure possibilities.
That's the general premise of what such a quest system would be based around. A dynamicly changing game world where actions or inactions cause changes in the environment and in populations of MOBs in different areas. With this in place, a dynamic quest system could be built around such a system, where the game would track mob populations and other environment factors, and generate NPC quests depending on how the environment is evolving.
The main way this would work is that villages, towns, etc, would act as quest hubs. Each population center has it's own variables that can alter over time such as wealth, population size, resources, etc. Each of these variables are effected by the surrounding environment as well as by player interaction, and will offer quests to the benefit of it's inhabitants based on 'improving' the environment around the quest hub area.
For example, in a small farming village, the wolf population in the surrounding area has been growing lately, which has resulted in livestock being killed. In response, the town's farming guild has offered a bounty on wolves. This quest would be available until a good number of wolves in the area have been slain, which lowers the population in the area, and consequently reduces the spawn rate and size of said mob. If the overall intent of the quest is achieved, then the quest is no longer offered, until a time later on when the wolf population makes a comeback and becomes a problem again.
If on the otherhand players do not participate and help adequately, the village suffers... livestock is lost, resulting in a drop in wealth and food output -- needed to maintain the population. Farmer NPCs begin to take it upon themselves to try to deal with the wolf problem on their own, but not being hardy adventurers that the players are, there are casualties. The drop in wealth, population, etc, reduces trade to the village, which causes shops to have to reduce their inventory or close down all together.
But say that the wolves were dealt with. The town is safe, the people content and prosperous. The over the next while (few days of real time?) the town grows and does well in trade, their profit growing. But as a result, they've caught the eyes of a band of brigands. These brigands setup camp in the woods outside of the village and setup ambushes on the main road outside of the village. Similar to the wolf situation in that players can drive them off, and if they don't there are consequences... but in this case the consequences might mean the brigands musting up the force to attack and pillage the town directly, killing townspersons and possibly damaging or destroying certain structures.
That's just a very basic example of how the system would work. All the while with this going on there would be several other things potentially happening in a town. For example if the town was growing they might request players bring them building materials to expand, which gives the crafting oriented player something to do. The resulting success being the town actually growing with additional buildings -- NPC houses, additional shops of new types, service buildings (i.e. a bank), etc. Bigger towns would be able to field their own basic guards, but they might also attract bigger, badder, and/or more enemies, which also gives players more to do.
Everquest tried the concept of letting players do something that made a permanent change in the game world back when they were still the top of the MMO heap (releasing the Sleeper in Sleeper's Tomb resulting in a script that made a permanent change to that zone, including the loss of some unique items and the introduction of some others). Guess what? For the most part, players were pissed off by it. While they appreciated the concept, the implementation was too much for people to take-gamers are too selfish (as a group) to accept that there is something in the game world that they will never be able to accomplish because of the actions of other players. Until you can change basic human behavior, a system like the one you're talking about will be doomed to long-term failure.
As for good quest systems, I think Sony did a decent job with EQ2-you have plenty of the "mission" type quests-go kill 10 snorks and bring me their tails-but they also have some nice over-arching questlines like Heritage quests that tie into the lore of Everquest 1 and Signature quest lines that provide the overall lore of each expansion and run across dozens of individual quests and result in pieces of decent armor and unique gear and house items along the way as well as usually having an overall timeline (or two or three) in each zone that tie the mission-type quests into a cohesive story. While I think they often do too many of the mindless mission type quests, the Heritage and Signature lines are especially fun to do if you have the group/guild support needed to complete them.
Oh, I'll agree that WoW is a wonderfull game for what it is. But what it is is a controlled experience. While the "epic" experience you describe does sound "epic" at first, how long does that epic feel last when you realize that every player and their dog is going to do the exact same thing, by design?
Frankly all I care about is whether *my* experience is epic.
The other type of epic emerges naturally when I game anyway -- simply through familiarity with what types of game events are rare vs. common. When I save the party from a wipe in a dungeon through skilled play, that's epic. When I survive a fight with 1% (or less) health, that's epic.
But this type of "natural" epic happens regardless -- and if a game's linear experiences aren't also epic, it's simply missing out on a lot of potential fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think all kill X number / gathering quests should be gotten from mission boards where regular townsfolk would post jobs to be done.
Quests from NPCs should be the meaningful ones.
I like this idea to an extent, but then again where are you more likely to get a quest to go pick a dozen roses (example) from a guy who needs them for his girlfriend? Or is he more likely to post up a message on a local message board saying "Hey can someone pick some roses for my girlfriend? It's a surprise? I'll give you like 10 silver for it".
Originally posted by CeridithUnfortunately there is no functional model currently available in any MMO yet to date, otherwise I'd probably be playing it.
There isn't any and probably won't be for quite a time, if ever.
What you have described isn't helping anything, imo. Because the issue remains the same - game world persistency. The mechanics you described isn't evolving the world, it isn't 'shaping' the world based on player activity, it is a concept of repetitive quest content ala EVE, just taken a bit further. The direction still isn't good though, it won't make quests deeper, more 'epic', more complex. It will be the same 'Go there, kill/bring X and come back'.
Surely the mechanics is interesting but not really addressing the issue discussed here.
I think all kill X number / gathering quests should be gotten from mission boards where regular townsfolk would post jobs to be done.
Quests from NPCs should be the meaningful ones.
I like this idea to an extent, but then again where are you more likely to get a quest to go pick a dozen roses (example) from a guy who needs them for his girlfriend? Or is he more likely to post up a message on a local message board saying "Hey can someone pick some roses for my girlfriend? It's a surprise? I'll give you like 10 silver for it".
Not sure if you have ever seen the anime ' Fariy Tale ' ( dang good show ) but the idea is from that.. Say each player can join a NPC guild of sorts ( Mage , Warrior , Paladin , Thief..ect ) and each of these guilds would have job boards that contain any sort of job a player could do ( Player guilds could purchase these boards for use inside guild houses for ease of access ) ranging from plain delievery quest to gathering to exterminating to escorts..ect. When completed you just return to the NPC Guildmaster to get the reward which could be Coin , Item or both. Course there would be group missions available also.
Each NPC Guild board would have unique quests based on what guild it is ( to go with the normal jobs posted ).. So each one would get their own thing. Adds a little bit of replayability.
That way NPCs could be free to have long chain quests dedicated to story.
Unfortunately there is no functional model currently available in any MMO yet to date, otherwise I'd probably be playing it.
There isn't any and probably won't be for quite a time, if ever.
What you have described isn't helping anything, imo. Because the issue remains the same - game world persistency. The mechanics you described isn't evolving the world, it isn't 'shaping' the world based on player activity, it is a concept of repetitive quest content ala EVE, just taken a bit further. The direction still isn't good though, it won't make quests deeper, more 'epic', more complex. It will be the same 'Go there, kill/bring X and come back'.
Surely the mechanics is interesting but not really addressing the issue discussed here.
What I described was the tip of the iceberg. A basic example of how to let players actually impact the gameworld instead of simply run static quests that are always there, and never have an effect on the game world. Quests wouldn't be the only way players could have an impact, as they could just go around hunting a particular MOB if they wanted, collect resources, build their own town, etc, which would still have an effect on the gameworld by altering the game environment. Over-hunting a particular MOB would effect the 'ecosystem' and cause it to no longer spawn in that area for a time, harvesting resources might 'damage' the environment and as a result alter the ecosystem regarding what MOBs inhabit an area. Making a new town out in the wilderness could give players a safe haven and place to restock and rest in an otherwise hostile area, etc.
I don't see how any of the above isn't allowing players to shape and evolve the world. It is in fact the very basis of how it would be possible to allow players to do so, unlike the majority of other MMOs out today.
As per making quests "deep" and "more epic" or "complex"... you can't have quests like that if you want to make a meaningful virtual world where players have an impact. If you want a deep and complex quest it needs to be made by a dev, which means they won't want it to be throw away and want everyone to be able to do it. This is a huge problem if you want a quest to be epic, because even if your quest means 'taking on an army and winning' or 'defeating the big bad guy in the game's lore', it loses it's epicness from the fact that everyone is going to do it. When everyone is performing "epic" tasks, then they aren't epic tasks.
I think all kill X number / gathering quests should be gotten from mission boards where regular townsfolk would post jobs to be done.
Quests from NPCs should be the meaningful ones.
I like this idea to an extent, but then again where are you more likely to get a quest to go pick a dozen roses (example) from a guy who needs them for his girlfriend? Or is he more likely to post up a message on a local message board saying "Hey can someone pick some roses for my girlfriend? It's a surprise? I'll give you like 10 silver for it".
Well, the quest you used in your example can be build upon to make it even more involving and where it becomes meaningful for players to do them. (By that i mean to make it into a quest where you get from the actual NPC instead of getting from the mission boards or NPC guilds that run as mission hubs.)
For example:
The town has two warring families, and both the heir is trying to impress the same girl, so each has a quest to have players to help out collecting flowers, and let's say one won the affection and the other lost, then the one who lost would then maybe want to harm the guy who won (such as kill the guy) so he can take the girl away, while the other guy might have people who found out this plan and is hiring players to protect the heir. And if the heir who won the girl's heart is successfuly assassinated by players, then the family would then put out a contract on those players involved for X of time. Or if that was unsuccessful, the heir who won would put out contract for the other heir, and so on an so forth.
In the end, one single idea of quest to pick flower can be build into creating a branched and complex quest where there are multiple facet for the quest story to take place. And the end result might mean destruction of one or both warring families. This can create even more branches where it will affect the town development.
This type of quest design and mission/task design might be overwhelming and takes a long time to design to make it functional, but it actually would make the player's gaming experience more involved and epic (for some, for other it might be boring and pointless.)
In general, it's an idea that would build on the present quest system but to make it flow more fluently with the game world. This, I believe, would help to make the game world an evolving one rather than static one.
I think all kill X number / gathering quests should be gotten from mission boards where regular townsfolk would post jobs to be done.
Quests from NPCs should be the meaningful ones.
I like this idea to an extent, but then again where are you more likely to get a quest to go pick a dozen roses (example) from a guy who needs them for his girlfriend? Or is he more likely to post up a message on a local message board saying "Hey can someone pick some roses for my girlfriend? It's a surprise? I'll give you like 10 silver for it".
Not sure if you have ever seen the anime ' Fariy Tale ' ( dang good show ) but the idea is from that.. Say each player can join a NPC guild of sorts ( Mage , Warrior , Paladin , Thief..ect ) and each of these guilds would have job boards that contain any sort of job a player could do ( Player guilds could purchase these boards for use inside guild houses for ease of access ) ranging from plain delievery quest to gathering to exterminating to escorts..ect. When completed you just return to the NPC Guildmaster to get the reward which could be Coin , Item or both. Course there would be group missions available also.
Each NPC Guild board would have unique quests based on what guild it is ( to go with the normal jobs posted ).. So each one would get their own thing. Adds a little bit of replayability.
That way NPCs could be free to have long chain quests dedicated to story.
Japanese anime/manga in general has some great ideas in term of functions, due to the fact that when they describe the world in the anime/manga, they are given a very detail setting where if it were taken into creating a game, the functionality is very clear.
Fairy Tail (the actual title of the anime/manga) is a good story. There are some interesting ones that somewhat related to this type of quest/mission system that we are discussing here. One of it is Hunter X Hunter, the guy who drew is very slow in the story development. He's the same guy who did the Yu Yu Hakusho manga/anime. Yoshihiro Togashi is the name of the guy. You can check it out the anime/manga for Hunter X Hunter.
Anyways, that's getting a bit off topic, but I would say there are a lot of things in novels, anime, manga, and even movie/tv that can be use for inspriation for game mechanic design. We just have to open minded to think about those...
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Let's look at another possibility. What if a player could become the lich, dark lord, or whatever?
This is the point at which most people, realizing how disturbingly insane I am, recoil in horror and back away. But why not? You really only need to have one design principle in place to make it work and everything else is details. What you need is the fundamental principle that things can not only be gained, they can also be lost.
So allow players to take on high profile roles in your world. They would have to work for it to get it but it could be done. But then also make it clear to them that nothing lasts forever. Become the Dark Lord? Fine. But eventually other players will take you down and then you lose it, you aren't the Dark Lord anymore.
Once established this design principle would open up so many possibilities. A truly dynamic world could exist because it's unfolding history is driven primarily by the players themselves.
I'm with you on that. I've long believed that these MMORPGs should have the means to do very special, and rare, things such as becoming a liche yourself, if you choose to, and if you succeed in a very difficult personal "quest" to gain the knowledge. As in my example above, the coding can be recycled from other code that exists in the game. In this case, you'd have rituals in the game already, each one requiring their own special components, for more mundane things like buffs. From there it's just a matter of substituting the components, which would be the special knowledge the player must learn to do it. One of these compenents could be "words", and the combination could be involved enough that no one could "guess" at it.
And I agree that there needs to be a "cost" for such special things. Perma-death would be an extreme, but I like the idea. Another possible "cost" could be to start as a mere skeleton and have to build up to Lichedom. Also, NPC interaction, a liche should be something not accepted in cities and attacked on sight. A liche could also have special things involved, such as a possible disease they may spread to mortals. There's so much that could be done to not only make it exciting but to maintain the desired "flavor" of it all.
Making use of "factions" can really add to this sort of thing too. Some factions could be "liche hunters" by their nature.
A note here. Players can share what they "learn" in game over the internet. You can avoid that by marking the character with a tag as "learning" something, so it can't be shared like that.
These MMOs could be a lot more interesting and "Epic" than they are, that's for sure.
Once upon a time....
It wouldn't have to be perma-death exactly. Just--your character goes back to being an ordinary character again. But I do include perma-death in my thoughts on this. In some cases it would very blatantly be perma-death, but only for those very special and powerful characters you could unlock. In every case you would always have your basic, main character to go back to or revert back to.
Really it would have to be that way. Otherwise everyone would eventually and permanantly become some sort of demi-god like character. It would destroy the whole concept and create a situation in which becoming some very powerful character would simply be another step in a static character progression ladder. In which case we might as well forget it and just go back to gaining levels forever.
Well if you're convinced no PVE system (MMO or otherwise) can ever feel epic, there's no real arguing with that.
But plenty of players feel that there's a lot of epic experiences within WOW, and it's hard to argue against the exciting and spectacular things you end up doing sometimes (fighting a dragon while hurdling through space on an asteroid, and then the asteroid blows up and you keep fighting it on the backs of dragons.) The revamped Silverpine Forest (previously one of the dullest zones in the game) has changed into the most spectacular zone in the game -- and throughout the revamped early leveling experience there's a lot more awesome characters to interact with (Lillian Voss being one of the more popular ones.)
I dunno, here on this forum I'm always a bit hesitant to state my feelings: that the most successful formula on the market is successful for a reason. WOW's not all rainbows of course, but in this particular regard (the type of content offered) they're at the top of their game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Can you point me out to some functional model of mechanics you are describing? Can you at least elaborate how such mechanics are supposed to work? How you want to generate lore, the text and supply the world with generated quests to extent that it can accommodate thousands of players playing simultaneously?
I think this concept looks great as long as you don't try to implement it. It can be nice addition to the game in a form of randomly generated dungeons but hardly replace quest structure of the game.
I like this idea, and take away auto-maps. You have to find your way around and make/buy maps etc and record where you go adds the exploration part to it.
So far loads of ideas to sum from previous posters eg NPC-split from quests (eg Scout system gw2), Lore, dynamic, player driven content, remove grind quests, faction-based (eg Rift)
People have probably seen this one but it goes through the history of quests: Pre-quests and... sub-Post-Quests ?!
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
...of asian grinder.
You do not have to do quests nor use map or use all game offered features, you can just wander around, explore and grind NPC until your head explodes.
Please explain to me why the same action by a player is grinding in one case and not grinding in the other.
Ok, you start a game. There is a bunch of different mobs to go out and kill.
In the one case NPCs tell you about them without giving you any quests. So you decide where you want to go and what you want to fight. In my example I used an ogre chieftian. So let's say you decide to do that. You go out, you kill him, you get your reward in experience and loot.
In the other case NPCs tell you what you have to do and in what order you have to do it. They give you "quests" which is really just a to-do list. So let's say the ogre is the first thing on your list. You don't decide where you want to go or what you want to fight, that is decided for you. You go out, you kill him, you don't get your reward yet. First you have to run back and talk to the NPC. Then you get your reward.
The basic action taken by the player is almost exactly the same. The major difference is that in one case you made a choice of what to do and in the other case the game made the choice for you. The other difference is that in the first example you get your reward upon completion of the action (killing the ogre) and in the other case you have to go through the additional step of running back to the quest giver.
So according to you, even if the action taken by the player (killing the ogre) is exactly the same in both cases, it is grinding if the player has a choice and not grinding if the player has no choice.
So let's see if I've got this straight:
Deciding where you want to go is grinding.
Being told where you have to go is not grinding.
Killing a mob because you want to is grinding.
Killing a mob because you have to is not grinding.
Sorry, but that doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me.
Oh, I'll agree that WoW is a wonderfull game for what it is. But what it is is a controlled experience. While the "epic" experience you describe does sound "epic" at first, how long does that epic feel last when you realize that every player and their dog is going to do the exact same thing, by design?
Once upon a time....
Unfortunately there is no functional model currently available in any MMO yet to date, otherwise I'd probably be playing it.
Something similar was originally attempted by Richard Garriott in UO, "Artificial Life Engine". This is a quote from the Associate Producer Starr Long a long time ago when the game was still in development: "If the rabbit population suddenly drops... then wolves may have to find different food sources (e.g., deer). When the deer population drops as a result, the local dragon, unable to find the food he's accustomed to, may head into a local village and attack. Since all of this happens automatically, it generates numerous adventure possibilities.
That's the general premise of what such a quest system would be based around. A dynamicly changing game world where actions or inactions cause changes in the environment and in populations of MOBs in different areas. With this in place, a dynamic quest system could be built around such a system, where the game would track mob populations and other environment factors, and generate NPC quests depending on how the environment is evolving.
The main way this would work is that villages, towns, etc, would act as quest hubs. Each population center has it's own variables that can alter over time such as wealth, population size, resources, etc. Each of these variables are effected by the surrounding environment as well as by player interaction, and will offer quests to the benefit of it's inhabitants based on 'improving' the environment around the quest hub area.
For example, in a small farming village, the wolf population in the surrounding area has been growing lately, which has resulted in livestock being killed. In response, the town's farming guild has offered a bounty on wolves. This quest would be available until a good number of wolves in the area have been slain, which lowers the population in the area, and consequently reduces the spawn rate and size of said mob. If the overall intent of the quest is achieved, then the quest is no longer offered, until a time later on when the wolf population makes a comeback and becomes a problem again.
If on the otherhand players do not participate and help adequately, the village suffers... livestock is lost, resulting in a drop in wealth and food output -- needed to maintain the population. Farmer NPCs begin to take it upon themselves to try to deal with the wolf problem on their own, but not being hardy adventurers that the players are, there are casualties. The drop in wealth, population, etc, reduces trade to the village, which causes shops to have to reduce their inventory or close down all together.
But say that the wolves were dealt with. The town is safe, the people content and prosperous. The over the next while (few days of real time?) the town grows and does well in trade, their profit growing. But as a result, they've caught the eyes of a band of brigands. These brigands setup camp in the woods outside of the village and setup ambushes on the main road outside of the village. Similar to the wolf situation in that players can drive them off, and if they don't there are consequences... but in this case the consequences might mean the brigands musting up the force to attack and pillage the town directly, killing townspersons and possibly damaging or destroying certain structures.
That's just a very basic example of how the system would work. All the while with this going on there would be several other things potentially happening in a town. For example if the town was growing they might request players bring them building materials to expand, which gives the crafting oriented player something to do. The resulting success being the town actually growing with additional buildings -- NPC houses, additional shops of new types, service buildings (i.e. a bank), etc. Bigger towns would be able to field their own basic guards, but they might also attract bigger, badder, and/or more enemies, which also gives players more to do.
Everquest tried the concept of letting players do something that made a permanent change in the game world back when they were still the top of the MMO heap (releasing the Sleeper in Sleeper's Tomb resulting in a script that made a permanent change to that zone, including the loss of some unique items and the introduction of some others). Guess what? For the most part, players were pissed off by it. While they appreciated the concept, the implementation was too much for people to take-gamers are too selfish (as a group) to accept that there is something in the game world that they will never be able to accomplish because of the actions of other players. Until you can change basic human behavior, a system like the one you're talking about will be doomed to long-term failure.
As for good quest systems, I think Sony did a decent job with EQ2-you have plenty of the "mission" type quests-go kill 10 snorks and bring me their tails-but they also have some nice over-arching questlines like Heritage quests that tie into the lore of Everquest 1 and Signature quest lines that provide the overall lore of each expansion and run across dozens of individual quests and result in pieces of decent armor and unique gear and house items along the way as well as usually having an overall timeline (or two or three) in each zone that tie the mission-type quests into a cohesive story. While I think they often do too many of the mindless mission type quests, the Heritage and Signature lines are especially fun to do if you have the group/guild support needed to complete them.
Frankly all I care about is whether *my* experience is epic.
The other type of epic emerges naturally when I game anyway -- simply through familiarity with what types of game events are rare vs. common. When I save the party from a wipe in a dungeon through skilled play, that's epic. When I survive a fight with 1% (or less) health, that's epic.
But this type of "natural" epic happens regardless -- and if a game's linear experiences aren't also epic, it's simply missing out on a lot of potential fun.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I think all kill X number / gathering quests should be gotten from mission boards where regular townsfolk would post jobs to be done.
Quests from NPCs should be the meaningful ones.
I like this idea to an extent, but then again where are you more likely to get a quest to go pick a dozen roses (example) from a guy who needs them for his girlfriend? Or is he more likely to post up a message on a local message board saying "Hey can someone pick some roses for my girlfriend? It's a surprise? I'll give you like 10 silver for it".
There isn't any and probably won't be for quite a time, if ever.
What you have described isn't helping anything, imo. Because the issue remains the same - game world persistency. The mechanics you described isn't evolving the world, it isn't 'shaping' the world based on player activity, it is a concept of repetitive quest content ala EVE, just taken a bit further. The direction still isn't good though, it won't make quests deeper, more 'epic', more complex. It will be the same 'Go there, kill/bring X and come back'.
Surely the mechanics is interesting but not really addressing the issue discussed here.
Not sure if you have ever seen the anime ' Fariy Tale ' ( dang good show ) but the idea is from that.. Say each player can join a NPC guild of sorts ( Mage , Warrior , Paladin , Thief..ect ) and each of these guilds would have job boards that contain any sort of job a player could do ( Player guilds could purchase these boards for use inside guild houses for ease of access ) ranging from plain delievery quest to gathering to exterminating to escorts..ect. When completed you just return to the NPC Guildmaster to get the reward which could be Coin , Item or both. Course there would be group missions available also.
Each NPC Guild board would have unique quests based on what guild it is ( to go with the normal jobs posted ).. So each one would get their own thing. Adds a little bit of replayability.
That way NPCs could be free to have long chain quests dedicated to story.
What I described was the tip of the iceberg. A basic example of how to let players actually impact the gameworld instead of simply run static quests that are always there, and never have an effect on the game world. Quests wouldn't be the only way players could have an impact, as they could just go around hunting a particular MOB if they wanted, collect resources, build their own town, etc, which would still have an effect on the gameworld by altering the game environment. Over-hunting a particular MOB would effect the 'ecosystem' and cause it to no longer spawn in that area for a time, harvesting resources might 'damage' the environment and as a result alter the ecosystem regarding what MOBs inhabit an area. Making a new town out in the wilderness could give players a safe haven and place to restock and rest in an otherwise hostile area, etc.
I don't see how any of the above isn't allowing players to shape and evolve the world. It is in fact the very basis of how it would be possible to allow players to do so, unlike the majority of other MMOs out today.
As per making quests "deep" and "more epic" or "complex"... you can't have quests like that if you want to make a meaningful virtual world where players have an impact. If you want a deep and complex quest it needs to be made by a dev, which means they won't want it to be throw away and want everyone to be able to do it. This is a huge problem if you want a quest to be epic, because even if your quest means 'taking on an army and winning' or 'defeating the big bad guy in the game's lore', it loses it's epicness from the fact that everyone is going to do it. When everyone is performing "epic" tasks, then they aren't epic tasks.
Well, the quest you used in your example can be build upon to make it even more involving and where it becomes meaningful for players to do them. (By that i mean to make it into a quest where you get from the actual NPC instead of getting from the mission boards or NPC guilds that run as mission hubs.)
For example:
The town has two warring families, and both the heir is trying to impress the same girl, so each has a quest to have players to help out collecting flowers, and let's say one won the affection and the other lost, then the one who lost would then maybe want to harm the guy who won (such as kill the guy) so he can take the girl away, while the other guy might have people who found out this plan and is hiring players to protect the heir. And if the heir who won the girl's heart is successfuly assassinated by players, then the family would then put out a contract on those players involved for X of time. Or if that was unsuccessful, the heir who won would put out contract for the other heir, and so on an so forth.
In the end, one single idea of quest to pick flower can be build into creating a branched and complex quest where there are multiple facet for the quest story to take place. And the end result might mean destruction of one or both warring families. This can create even more branches where it will affect the town development.
This type of quest design and mission/task design might be overwhelming and takes a long time to design to make it functional, but it actually would make the player's gaming experience more involved and epic (for some, for other it might be boring and pointless.)
In general, it's an idea that would build on the present quest system but to make it flow more fluently with the game world. This, I believe, would help to make the game world an evolving one rather than static one.
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
Japanese anime/manga in general has some great ideas in term of functions, due to the fact that when they describe the world in the anime/manga, they are given a very detail setting where if it were taken into creating a game, the functionality is very clear.
Fairy Tail (the actual title of the anime/manga) is a good story. There are some interesting ones that somewhat related to this type of quest/mission system that we are discussing here. One of it is Hunter X Hunter, the guy who drew is very slow in the story development. He's the same guy who did the Yu Yu Hakusho manga/anime. Yoshihiro Togashi is the name of the guy. You can check it out the anime/manga for Hunter X Hunter.
Anyways, that's getting a bit off topic, but I would say there are a lot of things in novels, anime, manga, and even movie/tv that can be use for inspriation for game mechanic design. We just have to open minded to think about those...
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)