[MUD-Dev2] The Future of Quests

[Mike Sellers]

Damion wrote: 
> Mike Sellers wrote:
> > And in part it requires that the players care about the NPCs -- 
> > they have to have bona fide relationships with the NPCs, which in 
> > turn requires that the NPCs have enough emotionality (among other
> > things) for the players to care about them.
> >
> 
> The trick for the MMO/MUD designer is that the player is that 
> the player can only track so many NPC relationships at one 
> time.  Overwhelm the player with quests, whether hand-crafted 
> or randomly generated, and at a certain point that player 
> will become simply swamped with stories and relationships 
> that he's supposed to track.  Your odds of getting the player 
> to actually care at this point are extremely low.

This is essentially the difference between plot-driven and character-driven
narrative (and also assumes designer-driven rather than player-driven
activity, which I see as more of a dynamic balance that changes over time).
If you stack up a jostling crowd of NPCs or a big stack of unrelated quests
(per your example that I cut here), the player won't care enough about any
of them to keep coming back.  Some players will want to touch lightly a lot
of different NPCs, some will want to dive deep with just a few (just as with
real relationships between people).  If you force the user into a
pre-defined arc that doesn't end for 15 levels or make them track too many
relationships, this falls apart.  At a high level, the key is keeping the
player in control of their relationships -- how many, how deep, how invasive
or time-consuming for them -- whether you're talking about NPCs or
particular tasks.

Mike Sellers