[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[Ricky C]

On Nov 3, 2008, at 7:00 AM, cruise wrote:

> It's too quiet round here, so:
>
> The number and quality of quests in large scale POW projects has been
> steadily increasing as each new product attempts to improve over its
> predecessor. It's fair to say this is one of the major time sinks for
> such projects. Additionally, players are becoming jaded with the  
> static
> quest system and an unchanging world.
>
> It is obvious this cannot keep on going - the manpower required  
> would be
> ridiculous. Something must change...but what? Here are some  
> possibilities:
>
> a) Nothing - Quest writing stagnates, and current popularity of POWs
> collapses.
> b) Sandboxes - EVE, and to an extent Warhammer's PvP let player's
> generate their own quests out of the world they're given.
> c) Procedural - An automatic generation of quests. This is what I'm
> working on currently.
> d) Community - CoH is taking the first towards this, by opening up  
> what
> are effectively the developers mission creation tools to the players.
>
> Please discuss, comment and criticize, in which ever order you  
> prefer :P

Well, seeing as nobody else wants to talk, I think I'll speak up.

I spent several years in a game called RuneScape, I'm sure most of you
have at least heard of it if not played it. Now, I am not a quest sort
of guy. I played RS several years back, back in the "RS Classic" days,
and it was an amazing game. It was an all-new experience to me, and I
have fond memories still of all the interactions and fun. I enjoyed drop
parties, fighting NPCs with friends, exploring the world (however small
it may be), training skills, crafting new stuff, trading... All the
different things that there are to do.

But unfortunately it got old over time. And I attribute this to the
quests. RS has been too focused on quests, ever since it took off in
popularity. Every week, a new quest, and it has just gone on too long.
Sure, quests are decent fun, but it feels like an endless cycle - you
beat one, and another couple are already there. There's no feeling of
accomplishment, everyone does the same stuff.

Now I know not everyone agrees with me - I may not even be a majority.
But I like the game itself, not the quest mini-stories within it.

I don't think this falls under the Nothing category, because I don't see
RuneScape slowing its quest production in the future. But for some
people, it's just not fun after a while. And it's natural to lose
interest in a game after some long period of time (years, in my case),
but I feel that if there was just more there, I might even still be
playing.

I like both sandboxes and community, but I'm not sure procedural has
enough possibility. From what I've heard of World of Warcraft, many of
their quests are "Kill X number of [random creature]" - I don't know
this from experience, and I would love if someone could disprove me and
give examples, but this just doesn't sound fun to me. The whole point of
having skills/stats is to inform me that I need to kill creatures; I
don't need some in-game NPC telling me the same thing, and giving me a
worthless reward for it.

cruise, can you discuss some of the breakthroughs you're making in the
procedural department? I mean, I think that procedural quest creation
can be a good thing if it is varied enough and can introduce new things
to the players (like 'Nothing' quests do), but how long can it keep
players interested before it flops?