[MUD-Dev] MMO Quest: Why they're still lousy

[David Kennerly]

Byron Ellacott wrote:

> There's five pieces of information conveyed about a task: Where,
> What, How, Why and When.  "Story crap" would be Why.

Succinctly said.

> However, this emphasises that too many quests provide the What and
> the Why, but do not provide the Where or How.  The When is only
> important if a quest must be completed in a certain timeframe.

Amen.

> I suspect flavour text would be less offensive if the more
> important information was also present in every quest. ;)

Personally, the flavor text would be less offensive to me if:

    1) If the length is brief.
    2) The writing is at least as functional as in a B+ movie.

I use the movie, instead of novel, metaphor, because the narrative
in a videogame is more similar to a movie than any textual
narrative.  Granted, I've excluded text MUDs from this scope.  (I'll
happily read a post that discusses narratives in non-video games.)

Final Fantasy XI delivers entertaining dialogue in some of its
quests, so I actually enjoy reading the flavor text.  Whereas, in
Lineage II, I barely scan the (sometimes) three screens of bland
flavor.

In City of Heroes and World of Warcraft, I might not enjoy the
language and humor as much as in Final Fantasy XI, but the text is
concise.  Most World of Warcraft quest screens are only about 50
words.  That's artful in itself; it is the narrative equivalent of a
haiku.

> Where players must fight to maintain status quo, you also need to
> consider what will happen when players are not available to fight,
> or are not interested in catering to the world's needs: will
> essential services be cut off, potentially putting players in the
> position of eternally running the same task(s)?

Yes.  There are two problems with quests that change the world:

     1) No one completes the quest, so the world does not change.
     2) Someone does complete the quest, so the world does change.

Okay, so there's only one problem.  :)

When the world changes, what happens to the quests that only made
sense when the world was in its previous state?  In computer science
lingo, if Quest B has precondition X, then if Quest A changes the
state of the world to condition Y, then Quest B cannot fulfill its
function.  Since writing a quest is labor intensive, it's a
nontrivial dilemma.  When the state of the world changes, what
benefit offsets the labor cost of replacing the newly-invalidated
set of quests?

> As a player, I know I hate quests where I'm not given enough
> information to do the job; I hit up the spoiler sites as soon as I
> realise I'm going to have to hunt around a large region for a
> small target.  The problem is the quest, not the spoiler site, so
> as designers, it is my opinion that we should be attempting to fix
> the quests, not make the spoiler sites harder to use.

Ditto.  I avoid reaching for a walkthrough, but when I do, it
reminds me, as a designer, to avoid situations where a player would
feel the need to reach for a walkthrough.  In my opinion, each time
a player reads a spoiler, the designer has failed to make that part
of the game comprehensible.  But that's also partly because, in my
opinion, the player is always right; only the designer can be wrong.

> Quests offer short term achievable goals.  Exploration and
> discovery is a good reward for Explorers, but not for Achievers.
> The reason to explore in WoW is because you enjoy exploration.
> The reasons to quest are because you enjoy achievement, and
> because you want the shiny experience points and/or loot.

I think it would be wise to consider activities and player
psychological types which are more refined and applicable.  As a
sample of one, I do the quests because (in addition to the rewards)
participating in a narrative entertains me.

A preference for narrative doesn't necessarily map to any Bartle
type.  Enjoying a good story is a different psychological mechanism
entirely.  And it is one that has no special connection to massively
multiplayer games, either.  When I play Spider-man 2, I loathe the
hero points requirements for a chapter but enjoy the mission
requirements.  Likewise, in Neverwinter Nights I loathe plotless
monster bashing, but derive delight from advancing the plot.  I
succumb to the lie, penned by a skilled writer, that my actions are
accomplishing a worthwhile goal.  :)

Who knows, maybe one day narratives in videogames will encourage
players to accomplish worthwhile goals.  The rumor that I read for
young Albert Einstein goes that as a preteen he hated math.  Then
his uncle told him that solving a math problem was like an
investigator hunting for a crook who had hidden inside of city block
of buildings.  Apparently the uncle's metaphor got Einstein
interested.  When Einstein took the exam for university, the only
subject he passed was mathematics.

After witnessing the enormous amount of work that players go through
to solve MMO quests, I've thought aloud a few times: Wouldn't it be
noble if there were an MMO quest whose solution was isomorphic to
the to the proof to an open problem in mathematics, or to the cure
for a disease?  MMO quests could certainly solve nobler problems
than: How do you keep an idiot occupied?

David
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