[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[Lachek Butalek]

cruise wrote:
> It's too quiet round here, so:
> 
> The number and quality of quests in large scale POW projects has been 
> sreadily 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 criticise, in which ever order you prefer :P

The predominant nature of quests (and quest rewards) in modern POWs 
imply by their very nature that the player/character does not own the world:

* the quest giver / quest taker relationship is as employer / employee, and
* the quest giving NPC typically represent one of the POWs major factions.

The result is a POW where at any given time, a player will be working 
for one of the world's hardcoded, unchanging entities. The player is 
essentially a wage slave on a hamster wheel. Is s/he doing a fun, 
exciting and fulfilling job? Sure - but it's still a job. A job which 
serves no purpose other than to fill one's pockets with virtual gold. 
Thus, the primary goal of the game becomes to compare and compete with 
other employees: the overriding reason to play becomes the acquisition 
of the Employee of the Month plaque, rather than the pursuit of 
completing one's goals within the context of the fictional world. Hardly 
a heroic endeavour.

There are many, many people who enjoy this competitive nature. These 
people are not interested in exploration, or story-telling, or 
construction, or immersion, or simulation - the game is a game, and the 
measure of success is simply whether one performs better than everyone 
else. There is no reason to design a quest system differently if that 
describes your target audience.

A sandbox game like Eve Online is radically different. In Eve, there is 
a very distinct boundary between the geographical areas where one of the 
four unchanging factions hold dominion and where consortiums of players 
rule. Gameplay elements and functions are built for the sole purpose of 
supporting player ownership of the world. Such an environment breeds 
player investment and attachment to the world. It is possible, on an 
individual and communal level, to make a major impact on the world. If 
you do act in the capacity of an employee, it is typically in service to 
a greater cause which you care deeply about, rather than as a way of 
improving your personal wealth and capabilities for bragging rights.

Quests are largely unimportant in sandbox games. They can serve a 
purpose as tutorials, or design purposes like infusing currency or rare 
items (blueprints/recipes) into the economy, but they ought not to be 
central to gameplay, as that detracts from the core competencies of the 
sandbox environment.

On the other hand, the complete absence of quests can be detrimental, 
too. Having a sm?rg?sbord of quests to choose from can be a fun way to 
quickly get immersed in a type of gameplay you don't typically engage 
in. Many of the tasks players do in sandbox games can be repetitive and 
time-consuming, like resource gathering or logistics; running a quest or 
two can serve to break up the monotony.

Is there a middle ground? I think so, and I hope that's where POWs will 
eventually be going:

1. at launch, the POW will have some major NPC factions and associated 
quest givers, but they are relatively weak and on shaky ground
2. as players congeal and establish their power bases, they supersede 
the NPC factions, who become largely unimportant
3. "quests", as most people know them, are now established via 
procedural and/or user-created generation

Example of procedural generation:

In a PvP battle, an NPC farmer was killed by the area effect of a mage's 
fireball. The NPC's widow becomes a quest giver, and will offer any 
passers-by undying gratitude if they would avenge her husband (or, 
perhaps, bring her family some food, depending on her disposition).

When a quest-taker has slain the mage, the widow ceases to be a quest 
giver and the quest becomes invalid. The reward might be a title ("the 
Avenger"), Glory points, some small trinket, or what have you.

What's even better is if the completion of a quest leads to the 
generation of a different quest, and so on.

Example of user-generated quests:

Rather than simply tasking a player with the harvesting of a resource, 
the transportation of a good, or the destruction of an enemy 
installation, a player with authority in a user-run faction could use a 
game function to make this task an in-game Quest. They may open it only 
to a subset of PCs (faction ops, for example) or make it public as they 
wish. They might allow only one person to attempt it at a time 
(transportation of a good), or award rewards to anyone who completes it 
(harvesting of a resource). The reward will be put in escrow by the 
system and delivered to the player when completed.

AFAIK, Eve Online has implemented a system similar to this with the 
Contract system.

User-generated quests are only functional if the task carried out by the 
quester has an impact in the world. Quests like "Kill Five Snotpigs" 
cannot be done this way if Snotpigs respawn on a timer, as the quest 
giver would have no reason to want them dead. On the other hand, "Bring 
me five Snotpig snouts" will work fine, so long as Snotpig snouts serve 
a purpose to the quest giver.

In a POW which is primarily a sandbox, and where quests are generated 
procedurally and by (mostly high-ranking) fellow players, the world will 
actually appear to be owned by their most active inhabitants rather than 
monolithic, never-changing forces beyond the players' control, and 
agendas other than simply "competition" can be served competently.

Whether those are markets large enough to bother with, I have absolutely 
no authority to speculate on.

> _______________________________________________
> MUD-Dev2 mailing list
> MUD-Dev2 at mud-dev.com
> http://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/mud-dev2