[MUD-Dev] Quests + No Spoils (was: Interesting EQ rant)

[Corey Crawford]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> J. Coleman

> Why is it unreasonable to make the character learn the information,
> even if the player already knows? The player *is not* the
> character. This, in my opinion, is one of the most telling examples
> of RP vs. GoP players available. How many CRPG characters know
> anything about web boards? I'd be perfectly happy to have the
> character remember the secret password *once they know it*, but the
> character still must learn it in the first place.

Justin brings up a good point here.

Take the game Deus Ex (Game of the Year according to PC Gamer) for
example. You might be able to read the hint books and find out what
"quests" need to be done (though the whole game is one long quest
composed of mini-quests that lead you to the next set of mini-quests)
your character still needs the information.

Need to talk to the arms dealer over by the subway? You have to find
out the passcode before he'll let you in. You could probably just look
it up on some website, but your *character* can't. So you have to go
find someone who can tell you what the passcode is. Then once you have
that, you can get into his place anytime you want, because your
character remembers the code.

Of course, this won't prevent people from putting up guides to how to
do a complete quest ("Get the passcode from the guy at the bar smoking
pot"), but you still would have to go through the steps necessary to
complete it.

I'm not sure how AO's (Anarchy Online's) quest system works, but it
almost looks like it's not entirely unique-per-character but you do
have the added benefit that you (and your buddies) are the only ones
participating in a particular quest and don't have to camp from that
specific quest item; which is the only benefit (but a good one!).

So unless every single quest done by a character is unique to that
character alone, I honestly don't see a way to prevent some type of
spoilage. (If you see otherwise, please do share!) Of course, it's
relatively easy to create a unique quest for a character, but the
depth and creativity of the quest is totally limited to how well the
quest generator can "think".

Anyone working on worthy unique-per-character quests? One-time-only
quests?

:)

---
Corey Crawford | myrddin at seventh.net | www.seventh.net


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