[MUD-Dev] Interesting EQ rant (very long quote)

[Jeff Freeman]

From: "rayzam" <rayzam at home.com>
> From: "Jeff Freeman" <SkeptAck at antisocial.com>

>> It isn't the "system", it's the quests.  They are single-player
>> quests in a multiplayer world.

> What do you consider a multiplayer world quest then?

Quests that can *plausibly* be done any number of times by any number
of players.  Quests that cycle back to a beginning point rather than
simply "resetting".

As an example:

  Good Quest: Npc Joe hates orcs.  Kill the Orc Chieftan and and bring
  his head back to Joe.  This makes him happy.  He'll never stop
  asking people to kill the orc chieftan.  There will always be an orc
  chieftan (since as soon as one is killed, the orcs are just going to
  declare some other chieftan).  Point is, it won't be the *exact*
  same Orc Chieftan that you just killed 10 minutes ago.

  Bad Quest: Npc Joe hates Bob the Orc.  Kill Bob the Orc and bring
  his infamous Hammer of Bob back to Joe.  It's a single-player game
  quest: In a solo game, once you kill Bob the Orc, then Bob the Orc
  is dead, and Npc Joe will stop asking for you to go kill him and
  return his unique Hammer, since you already did that.  For a
  multiplayer game, the "solution" is to make Bob the Orc respawn,
  sometimes without a Hammer, and to have NPC Joe keep asking for that
  specific Hammer over and over, even though you just gave it to him
  10 minutes ago.

**

  Good Quest: Npc Joe sells stolen paintings.  Go to the museum and
  steal their most valuable painting so that he can sell it on the
  black market.  Now, Npc Joe is never going to stop asking for stolen
  paintings, the museum is never going to run out of paintings, and
  the museum is always going to have a "most valuable" painting.  So
  he can plausibly offer this quest over and over.

  Bad Quest: Npc Joe sells paintings.  Go to the museum and steal the
  Mona Lisa so he sell it on the black market.  And then mysteriously,
  the Mona Lisa will re-appear in the museum periodically and Npc Joe
  will ask for you to steal it *again*.

**

Cyclical quest:

  Npc Joe sells stolen paintings.  Joe sends you to steal the Mona
  Lisa from the museum, and he sells it on the black market.  Npc Joe
  stops offering this quest.

  Npc Bob works at the museum.  The Mona Lisa has just been stolen!
  Steal it back from the Jake the art collector.  Once the painting is
  back, then Bob will stop asking people to recover it for him.

  However, at this point, NPC Joe will again begin offering his "Steal
  the Mona Lisa"-quest.

**

  Bad Epic Quest: Kill Thor and take his hammer.

  Good Epic Quest: Defeat Thor in combat (and/or do some other
  Impressive Stuff) and he'll be so impressed that he'll loan you his
  hammer for, say, a week.  After which time it'll fly back to him.

**

That's just off the top of my head.  Someone who is actually good at
designing quests could do a MUCH better job of it, with more steps in
the cycles, for example, branching quests, and so on.

> It's easy to harp on the single player quests in a multiplayer
> world, but I'd like to hear an alternate suggestion. Or is this
> really just, remove quests from multiplayer worlds.

See above, and nope.

> So though it may not be wonderful for everyone, there's a portion of
> the population that truly enjoys questing for various reasons.

True, but quests can be a lot better designed than the "A to B to C
and here's your cheese"-model which periodically just "resets" back to
"A", implausibly, and for no good reason.

> Without an alternate 'multiplayer world' quest, you're just removing
> those players from your game.

Well, I'd come up with an alternate 'multiplayer world' quest, then.
But I definitely wouldn't stick single-player games' quests in a
multiplayer world with no better excuse than, "I can't think of a
better way to do it."  Really, I don't think there's anything
especially difficult about it.

On an almost unrelated note: I think it's more appropriate for MUDs to
have npcs drop components which can be assembled/enchanted (with other
expensive components, which must be purchased) by players into The
Sword of Doom, rather than having the Sword of Doom drop on Mob X who
appears in room Y every 16 days.

Also, I think that the single-player game quest in a multiplayer world
works "ok" on a text mud with a smaller user base.  I think it's
mostly a disaster when you get 100,000 or so players - that's when you
get websites that are like online catelogs, players look up what they
want and click to see how to get it.  However, I don't think the
single-player game quest is altogether appropriate even with a small
userbase (and no spoiler sites) - multiplayer world quests fit
multiplayer worlds better.


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