[MUD-Dev] Congratulations Horizons...

[Mike Shaver]

On Jan 09, Marian Griffith wrote:

> But then, almost everything you and I do in reality is also just
> another form of fed-exing.  (e.g.  you fed-ex food from the shop
> to your kitchen to craft-skill a meal... if you want to reduce it
> that far)

For me, a "FedEx" quest is one that has virtually no interesting
player choice associated.  When FedEx couriers something for me,
they'd better pick it up at the one place I tell them about, and
they'd better deliver it exactly where I tell them it's going.  I
don't want them deciding that my customer would _rather_ have some
other product, because they know what he's integrating it with, or
that they could pick it up from somewhere else cheaper.

When I FedEx food from the store to the kitchen-forge and
craft-skill out a meal, there are a huge number of points at which I
can make decisions.  Am I just hungry, and anything'll do?  Do I
want to make something special for my wife's birthday?  Maybe try a
recipe a friend recommended, or find some way to use an interesting
ingredient I ran across at the store.  (Diet, allergy,
what-did-I-have-for-lunch, match a wine, etc.)

FedEx tasks always seem to be like an exam question to me: "do X
with Y and Z".  If, instead of "bring reagent X to NPC for shiny and
exp" there were more goals exposed (perhaps the NPC is working on a
project that needs a few pieces, or would even be interested in a
better "recipe"), I think we could move away from the
quest-on-a-rail problem, and instead trade it for a massive
content-generation one. =)

Mike
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