[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[John Buehler]

Cruise writes:

> I started with the problem mentioned by John Buehler in his reply:
>  >My primary problem with questing in games is that there is no purpose
> to it.
>  >Backstory supposedly explains to us why my character is supposed to
> kill
>  >another five whatevers but as we all know that doesn't change
> anything.
>  >Another five whatevers will be killed by the next character.
> 
> The question for quests always comes back to why? Why is the player
> doing this? The question before that is, "Why is the NPC asking them to
> do this?"

I'm not sure that any advanced programming is needed on that front.  I get
the impression that these NPCs are asking PCs to do a variety of tasks that
can be knocked out in an hour or a day.  That's classic quest stuff.
Consider instead that what players really need is to be cut loose.  Players
need big tasks that they can work on with other players.  The multiplayer
aspect of questing just hasn't been developed.

To return to EVE Online as a source of examples, the tasks that players have
before them are ones that some motivated player came up with.  In my case,
our corporate CEO has us in 0.0 space as an industrial corporation.  To
exploit that, we have to set up structures in space, figure out the
logistics of transport, develop the appropriate skills and acquire the
necessary equipment to maintain our presence there.

Take that same magnitude of task and have NPCs hand them out.  NPCs are just
the voice of the developers, so clearly the developers are handing them out.
Now make sure that the developers have an overarching story that the players
are supposed to follow.

Once upon a time I used the example of Babylon 5 for this general notion.
That is a storyline that produces some large scale activities that players
could be told is available for them to tackle.  A player organization signs
up to build a battleship.  Solo players sign up for exploration missions.
Small teams establish and tune automated mining outposts.  When war breaks
out, qualified pilots get to hop into the available ships and go blow stuff
up (or get blown up).  Other players man guns in the big ships.

The important points here are that

1. The players are given large tasks to accomplish that they then break down
themselves into smaller work units.
2. The overall game has a storyline that the developers are following.

The hour-to-hour and day-to-day tasks should be obvious to the players and
they should be able to know what to do.  The week-to-week and month-to-month
tasks are the ones that the NPCs should be getting the PCs to deal with.
EVE Online does this today, except that the big stuff is handed out by
players.  Replace the players with NPCs (the voice of the developers) and
you're off and running - without the need for difficult programming in NPC
intelligence.

JB