[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[Damion Schubert]

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 2:49 PM, 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 seeing a lot of disheartening misunderstanding of what good quests do
for a game.  The quote above is only one example.

Quests work, and work well, because they are directed activity.  They give
a sense of accomplishment that players long for.  They are content drivers.
Most MMOs are combat simulators, and quests give you a reason to fight.

World of Warcraft succeeded largely because their quests, at ship, were
excellently paced, and did a remarkable job of leading the player through
the world.  In a good zone, if you complete all the quests, you'll find you
have explored 85-90% of the map, meaning explorers like the quests too.
Quests can lead the player to beautiful vistas, teach the player unexpected
mechanics, and challenge the players to meet challenges in unexpected
ways.

More importantly, quests break players out of patterns - in games
with poorly paced quests, players will find the creatures that give the
greatest
exp/skill gain and grind endlessly.  With a well-balanced quest game, that
player will stop killing rats after he kills 10 of them, then go kill boars
until he has 12 foozles, then go kill 20 demons.  Which is to say, well-
paced quests can make your world feel bigger, and are one effective
mechanism to prevent players from boring themselves to death.

There seems to be a lot of outrage on this list that, if I do a quest, you
can do it later, and then its not special.  This is outrage that seems
almost
exclusively limited to game designers, in my experience.  Most players see
quests as social experiences that can be shared, even asynchronously.
Quests can be taught and hints given.  Players can take pride in difficult
quests, knowing that other players know how hard they are.  Quests
can be optimized and strategized.  THESE ARE ALL GOOD THINGS.

Quests also provide a predictable user experience to the new player.  This
is unbelievably important - players who are new to a game experience need
fairly quick validation - early goals and a quick sense of success.  Quests
allow the designer to have some control over the pace and cadence of the
game experience.  If you depend on your player grinding on rats, hoping
he'll stumble into a good guild or corps, you are effectively trusting
your customers to serendipity.

Are there WoW players who only quest?  Sure.  They're the ones who
play more casually, who don't have the time and energy to raid, to PvP,
or to do dungeon runs, and who only play an hour or two a week.  This
more casual audience is happy to simply be given objectives and meet
them.  This more casual audience is likely to be at a complete loss in
a game that demands this player to go and find his own fun, and is
unlikely to be welcomed in a hardcore guild anyway, as unskilled players
are a drain on leadership energy.

As for the hardcore, quests are not the be-all and end-all of their
game experience, they are not what games like WoW and WAR are
all about.  Hardcore WoW players focus on raiding, arenas and
battlegrounds. WAR players are more concerned with scenarios and
public quests (an entirely different animal that merits its own thread,
IMHO).  Questing in these games provide learning opportunities,
pattern breaking, direction and ambition when you can't play the
elder game you want to: there aren't enough  opponents, or your
guild isn't online, or your team sucks.  Questing is not the core of
these games - but it is the backbone.



--d