[MUD-Dev] FedExing

[Alistair Riddoch]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 10:13:31AM +0100, Jesus Lopez wrote:

> You pointed out something interesting. In fact, most of the tasks
> a character can pursue/achieve are related more to the way it is
> completed, rather than the act of completing the task on itself.

> Some examples, like defeating a demon, gaining access to a
> brotherhood, reaching a skill level...even fedexing, all show us
> that the entertainment value is mostly related to the path the
> player follows (finding the enemy + getting the magic axe +
> receive the blessing from your God, etc).

> In short: What matters is the way you do something, not just doing
> it.

> The main problem I see with fedexing is that the player feels
> he/she is doing the same thing over and over again, because he/she
> can clasify the tasks as "fedexing quests", not because they
> really mean that the player repeats the gaming
> experience. Probably a subtle makeup of the quests would do the
> work most of the times (e.g: if an alchemist requires the
> character to retrieve a dragon tooth in order to prepare a potion,
> why not ask directly the character to prepare the potion, so the
> fedexing quest becomes embedded in the main quest?)

So the problem is not in essence what the quest is, but that each
quest appears to be the same as all the others. How can we prevent
the user from perceiving things this way? Your idea above relating
to the dragon tooth potion seems like a good approach. While the
main body of the quest is fedex-like in nature, it is concealed
behind a higher level task, and it is not until the character begins
the task they have been given that they then deduce that they need
to go somewhere and get something. If we then add to it a layer of
low level tasks which have to be solved to complete the journey,
then the fedex part of the quest is hidden. In fact in such a system
the middle level could be replaced with other tasks in some cases,
though as has been demonstrated earlier in the thread, almost all
quest concepts can to some extent be classified as fedexing.

Al
--
Alistair Riddoch
alriddoch at zepler.org
http://www.zepler.org/~alriddoch/
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev