Hello soon to be fellow adventurers!
I have been meaning to start this discussion for some time and hope the community can proffer suggestions and ideas about questing to assist the devs in their devving.
I have one suggestion in mind that has been eating at me since EQI, and what I believe ate away at the player base over time.
Really difficult and complicated quests that require you to seek out the next step...it's nearly a right of passage when you succeed. Unfortunately, at EQ 1's beginning many quests were bypassed and undone, over time you ended up with a binder of pages printed out from....the internet. While there is no way to prevent people from posting spoilers and the like, and at some point in our adventure we may just want a quick answer sooo...to the internet!
But what if I am just stuck, like, you check out your journal, re-read the quest points, check your inventory and shout to the zone, where do I go now?!? Well, at this point I, the adventurer, do not want "the" answer spelled out for me from an internet search...immersion break anyone? Asking in the zone or some passerby, totally legit (zone shouting, don't care for it at all, breaks immersion, option to disable is cool). So what is my next option? EQ1 style...there wasn't one. You might go to the local pub and hope there are some RP folks there that you can converse with (which is ubber cool), but what if I could...visit a Seer, or Card Reader, or the toothless hunched over old person that mutters complete nonsense while roaming the town square...and what if "they" could for an incremental fee "look" at my journal, and ask me what quest i need help on, and then...say "oh, oh yes, yes I see it clearly now. You are in the wrong city Lassy! you need to head to the Mountains of Fear! Umm, that would be behind you. Now go, and don't you dare look back!" Poof the person vanishes and you have some direction now. So, you turn around and head in the general direction provided (which leads to other adventures in the process, such as making new friends, fishing, camping for the night, a brutal mob attack, you get the idea), night falls and you come across an Inn and realise you are parched, so a Keg of Ale it'll be! Inside you find strangers mingling and so you ask...."Anyone ever heard of the Mountain of Fear?", the room falls to silence and then erupts in laughter..."Your walking on it!". From here you take a seat and look at your journal, and a new update has magically appeared...Now find the Staff of 5 Stars.
Slightly inebriated you step outside and clear as day not to far in the distance you see a shimmering light...with 5 points. The next part of your journey has begun.
No Internet. No easy quest, no give away answers, just a hint.
There can be many quests that just don't have a hint such as this, but quests none the less should intrigue the player and be solvable without using the Internet should one choose to remain the in the "realm".
Just my 2 cents, I hope others can build on this post and offer up some unique ideas to the Devs so we all end up in a world of mystery and adventure.
Frdmlover - Wizard in Training.
I believe the perception system is intended to be something along those lines. It offers you items in your immediate area, and may have the ability to give you hints and clues for the next steps for quests you have and may have in the future.... I would also imagine as you get closer to that next step another perception hit would pop up reminding you of the quest you started weeks ago.
The organization of the perception checks is something that will be curious to me...
1. Will it stay under an unknown bucket until you get the proper quest and then organize under the quest it belongs to?
2. Will it require you to assign it to a proper quest based on your best hunch of where it belongs?
It is an interesting idea and while we have 2 pages of search results for the word "Quest" none really fit exactly what you're asking, although we have covered it in some regards in podcasts, interviews and streams.
Basically, instead of looking it up online you would like a more immersive way to find "hints" to help you progress past a roadblock in a questline etc. and while this is a nice idea, for the most part, we want there to be roadblocks and bits you get stuck on so you interact with other players, make friends, work on things together in this social and challenging MMORPG ;)
We will have a journal, that keeps track of key points in the quest, so if someone asks you to speak to another NPC and you get distracted, move onto something else completely and come back to it days or weeks down the track and forget what you had previously done, there will be a brief log to show you the history and what is asked of you to continue to quest, so you will have that available to you at all times.
Just on the point of third-party websites with information and walkthrough, we don;t support cheating or guides to give you direction or instructions to do everything without trying it for yourself but we can't stop them and we do encourage the community working together on some of the more community-friendly sites so if people want to work on them and share information that will be up to them but it is also the responsibility of the player to not look at sites like that and ruin the challenge for yourself if you don't like them, so that will be up to each player to decide if they want to play it with the challenge that we intended or ruin it and speed through missing out on the reward of satisfaction for completing it yourself. ;)
Maybe when you complete one step in the quest the next step is randomly generated by the server and the hint is given in the perception system. So no 2 persons have the exact same set of phases in thier quest so no internet help will be any good. Or maybe all the phases are completed in a different order.
But I am definately in favor of the perception system. But id help is needed maybe the quest giver can look into your journal and give a small clue as to where your next step is.
Isaya said:Maybe when you complete one step in the quest the next step is randomly generated by the server and the hint is given in the perception system. So no 2 persons have the exact same set of phases in thier quest so no internet help will be any good. Or maybe all the phases are completed in a different order.
But I am definately in favor of the perception system. But id help is needed maybe the quest giver can look into your journal and give a small clue as to where your next step is.
I see the problem you're trying to solve, but it's not worth it tbh. Not only would that be a pain to design, but it also completely removes the personality of the story and the lore from the quests. It also prevents static groups from being able to collaborate on quests if they all have different objectives.
Online guides will always be treated with a "if you don't like them, don't use them" mentality. There's no point in trying to stop them from being helpful to anyone. And after all, we don't even really know how cryptic the perception cues will be, therefore I think it's a little premature to come up with ways to give hints to make it easier. I have a feeling that any sort of hint-giving NPC will be abused. It's best to keep the challenge organic imo.
Kilsin said:It is an interesting idea...
Basically, instead of looking it up online you would like a more immersive way to find "hints" to help you progress past a roadblock in a questline etc. ...
Just on the point of third-party websites with information and walkthrough, we don;t support cheating or guides to give you direction or instructions to do everything without trying it for yourself but we can't stop them and we do encourage the community working together on some of the more community-friendly sites so if people want to work on them and share information that will be up to them but it is also the responsibility of the player to not look at sites like that and ruin the challenge for yourself if you don't like them, so that will be up to each player to decide if they want to play it with the challenge that we intended or ruin it and speed through missing out on the reward of satisfaction for completing it yourself. ;)
You get it, and we get it.
Just happy my idea was thought of as interesting. Pebble in the pond and all that :)
Frdmlover
Krixus said:I was extremely disappointed to see the perception system simply be a mechanism for an otherwise completely vanilla quest. I genuinely hope the game is not littered with those meaningless little yoyo quests.
Have you seen the new video about the perception system? It's okay if you have and still feel this way, I'm just asking.
I don't want there to actually be very many defined quests. That kind of dynamic isn't extensible long term. Devs have to just keep adding and adding quests as people will consume them and be done. If the game itself doesn't draw me out into the world, if it NEEDS quests to encourage people to explore, then it's not the game for me. In EQ, playing the game was the quest. Getting your TSK to Steamfont and hunting mino axes was the quest. Making your way all across Antonica to Qeynos to sell the axes, that was the quest. Finding that tower in the middle of the OOT that sold the spell you needed, that was the quest. Breaking the spawn with the named mob with the loot you wanted was the quest. Playing the game was the quest. I genuinely hope that the go here do this come back quests do not play a large role in the content and exploration and loot of the game. Thing like long chaninig epic quests you can start at level 1 and finish at level 50? Cool beans. The go find my lost brother and return him for 16 silvers? Bleh. I'll run into that cave on my own and have my own adventure learning it and seeing what mobs spawn there and what loot drops there. I don't need this yoyo incentive to get me to play the game, if the game is good to play.
Bazgrim said:I see the problem you're trying to solve, but it's not worth it tbh. Not only would that be a pain to design, but it also completely removes the personality of the story and the lore from the quests. It also prevents static groups from being able to collaborate on quests if they all have different objectives.
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Not quite an absolute, although I see your opinion, if that's what you're expressing. Check out this post for more details. It takes almost nothing to design, the scripts are already done and/or are trivial to code. Also, static groups can collaborate just fine, as they do in many other MMO's where a group member is on a different quest and/or a different step of a quest.
Personality and Lore can exist regardless of the implementation mechanism, that's just a presentation issue. A simple example? NPC says: When I trust you enough, I will tell you more about me and the history of this place. Perform this task or however many personalized quests and I will trust you. Voila.
Krixus said:I don't want there to actually be very many defined quests. That kind of dynamic isn't extensible long term. Devs have to just keep adding and adding quests as people will consume them and be done. If the game itself doesn't draw me out into the world, if it NEEDS quests to encourage people to explore, then it's not the game for me. In EQ, playing the game was the quest. Getting your TSK to Steamfont and hunting mino axes was the quest. Making your way all across Antonica to Qeynos to sell the axes, that was the quest. Finding that tower in the middle of the OOT that sold the spell you needed, that was the quest. Breaking the spawn with the named mob with the loot you wanted was the quest. Playing the game was the quest. I genuinely hope that the go here do this come back quests do not play a large role in the content and exploration and loot of the game. Thing like long chaninig epic quests you can start at level 1 and finish at level 50? Cool beans. The go find my lost brother and return him for 16 silvers? Bleh. I'll run into that cave on my own and have my own adventure learning it and seeing what mobs spawn there and what loot drops there. I don't need this yoyo incentive to get me to play the game, if the game is good to play.
i fully agree with you, but i think quests are neccessary to get a larger playerbase. i just hope the game still plays like EQ, and not like the modern running from one quest to next, never visiting the same place twice.
I agree with letsdance. Quests are good to get people involved in the game and the exploration.
I think it is fair to have a lot of things to do that aren't quests - but quests don't interfere with doing those things so where is the harm?
I hasten to add that this assumes that quest rewards aren't excessive compared with doing other things. If the reward for turning in 10 rat heads is 100 times the experience reward for killing the rats this would be just as bad as having mercenaries or agnostic dungeons or instant adventures that let you speed-level with little effort and no learning of your class.
Personaly i LOVE doing quests and have always said "no quest too small no quest too big" i have looked abit on the last video about the perception system and i find it intriguing im looking forward to learn more about it and to try it out.
That said i allso love grinding 3-4 hours together with a group and just talk and have fun no questing involved.
But grouping and questing are both very fun and i hope there will be many opportunitys to get together a PUG find some quests, or maybe already have some quests and we group up cause of them and then go out and figure them out together.
Anyway for me questing will be a big part in keeping me interrested in the game in the long run.
And i hope there will be some achievement system i love that too :)