[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[Christopher Lloyd]

--- On Wed, 5/11/08, Ricky C <ricky28269 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

I'm reminded of the system used in the Morrowind game (Why that game was never made multiplayer, I don't know, as it could have been a fantastic success, but anyway...).

In that game, killing NPCs gave you... Nothing. There was no experience point system, and killing random monsters really didn't do much for you. Instead, the game engine had a system that would randomly increase your skill level after frequent uses of that particular skill. This was open to much abuse of course (Want to improve your jumping skill? Jump everywhere! Want to improve your defensive skill? Stand next a rat and let it hit you for an hour!), but it did make the questing side of things quite different.

In Morrowind, there was no incentive at all to go monster-bashing. In fact, it because something of an annoyance later in the game when trying to navigate around the vast game world. At the most, killing a random NPC might get you an uncommon commodity that would be used in making potions. Killing particular scripted opponents (almost always humanoid) would allow you to loot their corpses and take their armour and weapons. 

Most of the quests in the game were the standard Fed-Ex type ("Fetch me the widget from this cave"), which was the primary driver in the game. The game itself was a long series of mini-quests, designed to get the player to travel around the game world and experience as much of it as possible. The fact that along the way, various NPCs would be trying to stave the PC's skull in was, really, only an inconvenience.

When I used to play Acahea, I remember one player complaining to me that that "the game world doesn't feel empty any more". I know what she meant - The game world hadn't expanded linearly with the size of the player base, and the outlying wilderness locations which once had been generally deserted, were now just as crowded as the cities and towns, as players moved on from quest to quest and killing ground to killing ground.

It's already been mentioned that allowing player content is one way of expanding the game world easily (and cheaply).

One suggestion is to develop a semi-dynamic NPC population. Lets say you have a mine system full of dwarves. Eventually, some evil PCs manage to bash their way through them all and finally kill the King Dwarf (who should be pretty buff and surrounded by bodyguards). After that, no more dwarves respawn, and the normal loot from the dwarves becomes rarer and perhaps more valuable.

The mines are left untended, but the goblins move in. Goblin NPCs are different to dwarf NPC - more numerous, perhaps, with different weaknesses. Extra tunnels are added to the mines to explore. Eventually one day some players will clear out the mines, killing the Goblin Chieftain and ending the goblin rule. The loot from the Chieftain is unique and valuable, making killing that uber-boss far more interesting (and rewarding) than any old NPC. 

The mines fall into ruin once more, and the spiders start to arrive...

This system takes some planning by the game designers, but allows the designers to advertise for player input ("This month, we're looking for ten new scripts for goblins. Email the admin with your submissions").

C.
 

-- 

Christopher Lloyd

Email: crl199 at alumni.soton.ac.uk
Tel:   +47 90 98 90 37 (Norway)