Fixing quests

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Cherek
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Fixing quests

Post by Cherek » 18 Nov 2010 10:50

Inspired by the discussion in the "changes" topic, I decided to start my own topic about how quest could be made fun. Cleary, alot of people think questing and quests "suck" as it is. So I ask you, how could it not suck?

Since I actually like the quests and have done most of them, I would happily fix them too. Problem is I am not a wizard anymore and even if I was its all that about global domain access, etc. But in theory, if someone would say: Hey, Ill give you access to all domains, come fix our quests. I'd love to do it.

So here is what I would do.

In order of priority:

1. Check the NPC (if there is one) who gives the quest, add a few questions/answers to him. So he gives more hints if you ask about it. Semion in Khalakhor is a good example of this if I remember correctly. If he asks you to make a candle, you can ask him more details and he will point your the right way, tell you who else to speak to etc. This way you can always go back to the main NPC when you are stuck. So if I find the 'item' I am looking for, or some odd 'place' where I dont know how to find the syntax, I can go back to the NPC and ask him about 'item', or 'place', and he would tell me more. Quests who dont have a main NPC could actually get one. So you could ask the butler about the Zodiac for instance. He should know a thing or two considering how many adventurers he has seen solve it. (Obviously the orb-hint would point you to him as well).

This would be a pretty simple way of making quests way more solveable and less frustrating and all it would take from the wizard is knowledge of the quest. (Like me!). The coding skill and actual amount of code would be very little.

2. Add/fix syntaxes. We cant remove the odd syntaxes since then people with solutions would be really annoyed solutions arent correct, but we can add more syntaxes so you have a much bigger chance of succeeding. Also add stuff like. "jump over bushes" - "You look for a way to jump over the bushes but they are quite tall, however you discover it may be possible to crawl through them.". Etc.

3. Make sure the hint in the orb actually points you the right way and make more sense. Most are great but some actually point you in the wrong direction or makes little sense at the moment. Also add hints for those domains that do not have them. There is only two or three so it wouldnt be too hard to do.

4. Up the rewards for many quests. Well, a global change of quest XP in some way has been discussed a long time. But any change should be on a global scale and should affect everyone who ever did the quest in the past as well. Clearly something that isnt a "quick fix" so not something a mere typo/syntax-fixing wizard could, or should do. However, such a wizard could do _something_ for rewards. As Alorrana suggested (see I dont dislike all your ideas!) it would be easy to add a more substantial cash reward for many quests. Making money is hard as little so if finding the orc statue would give you a bunch of platinum (the Orc's latest treasure for pillaging some village) it would surely be much more interesting to solve a few more quests. And adding a cash reward is a simple thing.

5. Fix those quests that give partial rewards if you dont solve it all by yourself. The NPC in the Pelargir dock repair quest is a good example. If you happen to stumble upon a half-fixed hole in the docks and fix it, he will tell you that you havent done it all yourself and wont give you a reward. In another domain you would probably be rewarded but only get a part of the reward. This is a really odd system of course since nobody will even tell you of the lost XP. I get the idea originally was to give you less reward if you get a friend to do it all for you, thats not bad thinking. But then it would be much better to simply NOT give any reward at all until you do it by yourself. So the only reward you can get is the full one. As it is now, there is always a risk of getting "punished" with less XP just because you find an NPC dead already, or a key on the floor, etc. Being punished because you're lucky isnt good... and as someone said, not all quests seem to reset correctly which add to this "risk of being lucky". Of course, everyone who did the quests and didnt recieve full XP will not be able to get it, but there is probably not much to do about that now.

6. Check if quests reset correctly and if not have some wizard who knows what they are doing fix it!:)

7. Make quest orbs mobile. So if you wanna spend a day questing in Terel you could go to Sparkle, request to borrow an orb and bring it with you for the day. Sure you can copy-paste them all to notepad, but why dont provide this ingame instead? Actually, not everyone thinks about logging everything, especially not a real newbie. Yes, the idea is Sparkle as a hub but having to go back to Sparkle to check "Where the hell was that Butler again?" isnt fun. Its annoying. And the more experienced person do a "hint 1, hint 2, hint 3......hint 35" command and log it all so he would not need go back to Sparkle anyway. Hub is good, as long as it doesnt become a problem, which it can be when questing.

Well, thats about it.

Even if only number one the list would be fixed on a third of all quests, it would still be helpful. And if all of above was eventually fixed on all quests I think questing in Genesis would be fairly enjoyable. Even for Bromen or Alorrana. And perhaps we wouldnt even need to re-do our core system that much. Perhaps you would even find it fun and rediscover the game? Perhaps even wanna create a second to actually try the new improved quests?!

Thoughts? Suggestions?
Last edited by Cherek on 18 Nov 2010 19:47, edited 4 times in total.

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Alorrana
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Re: Fixning quests

Post by Alorrana » 18 Nov 2010 10:59

**
I’m not a complete idiot. Some pieces are missing.

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Kas
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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Kas » 18 Nov 2010 12:40

Integrate quests and their hints in the default ui. Then priorite to fix the nonresetting quests first, then make the syntaxes logical.

This would be a good start, but it still require some wizard capacity of a significant level.

Oh, standarize the rewards, making them static for fairness, since the quests aint repeatable, avoiding players to irreversily gimping themselves.

Perhaps it would be cool if players could directly add questhints aswell.


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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Makfly » 18 Nov 2010 16:49

Cherek wrote:..if all of above was eventually fixed on all quests I think questing in Genesis would be fairly enjoyable. ...
Thoughts? Suggestions?
What I like is a good story.

What I don't like is math puzzles or "logic" puzzles.
What I don't like is "guess the syntax" games.

Personally, the vast, vast majority of all quests in this game does not tell me a good story, or even just give me some interesting background piece of lore.
Therefore, all the time & energy you put into fixing stupid NPCs, syntaxes etc, would still be wasted on someone like me.

I'd much rather we got some new quests, that actually focuses on providing a story/lore to support the backdrop upon we all roleplay...Well, ofcourse, those that do roleplay. :o)

At the very least, detatch questing from growth.
Make it completely optional.

Still my main advice is to remove questing from growth in the game, and then focus the limited ressources we have on other aspects of the game.
Making questing appealing can still be on the to-do list, just give it a low(er) priority.
Mortimor Makfly - Gnomish Xeno-Anthropologist

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Cherek
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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Cherek » 18 Nov 2010 17:21

Makfly: Do you have an example of a quest with a good story? Personally I like the Torque quest story-wise. Allthough I think the hints in the story on what to actually do are too few. Even though it is rewarding it is too hard to solve without having someone helping you out. Imho.

Sybarus have a few good stories too. Like the bury bones quest. I actually feel sorry for Maya or what's her name is.:)

My favourite quests are the fairly new ones from Labal in Terel. They have an interesting story that unfolds the more you discover, and better yet, everything is in a very limited area so you dont have to run around examing and searching over huge areas which usually is so futile its not even worth trying in many quests unless you really know where to look.

We have been agreeing with eachothers in many topics lately, but this time I dont.:)

I do not believe in detaching quests from growth. If there is no growth reward, what should we replace it with? And again, its a taste of personal preference. I would really hate that the only way you can grow is by killing things. I think the grinding part is the boring part here. If we remove quests to grow we really need to make grinding seriously more fun. I mean you can basically quest your way to veteran or something? Then you dont need to do much grinding to get a fairly respectable rising hero / hero size. I dont wanna grind my way from novice to hero... ugh... Yeah I could join a myth for a few days and be hero in notime I guess, but thats really not a fun way of growing. It doesnt give you a feeling of actually accomplishing anything. Quests give that feeling, and doing your own grinding also give it, atleast a little bit. Thats the fundamental feeling all games usually aim for - "Yes, I did it! I saved the princess!, "Yes, I beat the hiscore!, "Yes! I finally managed to play that song in rockstar!, etc".

I think quests really have the potential to give you alot of the feeling if they just had a little makeover.

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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Makfly » 18 Nov 2010 18:04

Cherek wrote:Makfly: Do you have an example of a quest with a good story? Personally I like the Torque quest story-wise. Allthough I think the hints in the story on what to actually do are too few. Even though it is rewarding it is too hard to solve without having someone helping you out. Imho.

Sybarus have a few good stories too. Like the bury bones quest. I actually feel sorry for Maya or what's her name is.:)
I am honestly having a hard time to think of one off the top of my head. The first one that sprung to mind was the one with the Infidels in Sybarus. Reason being that you learn that there are a group that rejected the whole idea behind Sybarus and that they've gone into hiding. But the actual story element is kinda weak too, I guess.
But the bury bones you mention is probably a better example.

Also I'm sure there are better story-related quests out there, that I just haven't found yet, as I usually just ignore quests and accept the fact that I'll never join the legend/myth crowd. :)
Cherek wrote:I do not believe in detaching quests from growth. If there is no growth reward, what should we replace it with? And again, its a taste of personal preference. I would really hate that the only way you can grow is by killing things.
I just didn't express myself well enough, I guess.
I do not think that quests should not growth your character.
But as I've suggested tons of times before - Get rid of Quest-Xp and just have Xp. So you can gain your Xp through killing or questing, whatever is to your liking.
That would remove questing as an absolute roadblock that you have to overcome if you wish to grow in the game, and make it entirely optional.
Mortimor Makfly - Gnomish Xeno-Anthropologist

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Cherek
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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Cherek » 18 Nov 2010 19:04

Makfly: The problem is that our current XP-rewards would be fairly useless with that system. Even though I enjoy the questing, if they give me as much progress as killing two orc and no brutaily gain not even I think it is worth it. So we need to up the XP reward alot then.

Which then would mean we would increase the sizes of many current players by quite alot. I am not sure if that is good either?

Do you also mean we should remove the edge of not being able to lose quest XP when dying too? If all types of XP is the same, you can lose it all I suppose?

I dont think its a BAD idea, I am just worried of the consequences.

I still think questing is optional as it is, you just become more brutal. How big can you get without questing would be interesting to know... any idea? Since you say you ignore most quests, whats your mortal level and brutality?

I remember Cherek probably didnt even do half of the quests around and he was still easily able to compete with the other champions in the realms, and not overly brutal either. I have a feeling the huge increase in mortal sizes is a big part of this problem as well. When people had "old champ" sizes there were actually no need to finish all quests to have an acceptable mortal level and size. I think people feel they _have to_ quest now because without the brutailty edge you'll simply become too brutal to have a chance to reach legend or myth? As I mentioned before, I think smaller players would solve alot of problems, perhaps even this one.

Anyway, either way quests still need to be updated and improved and I think it should have a high priority. Even if they are going to be more optinal than today they still have to be more solvable, more logical and more fun to do. Or we could just remove them completely since very few seem to appriciate them as it is, which I personally find is pretty sad...

Greneth

Re: Fixing quests

Post by Greneth » 19 Nov 2010 09:49

I personally always found the Qual Elves Quest to be a decent one story wise and well worth the risks. It's also one of the few that I know of that where sure you can use the standard quest doc to get your reward but you lose qxp if you don't properly follow it like you would if you were to actually do what someone in that situation would do.

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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Sharn » 29 Nov 2010 13:37

Cherek wrote:Makfly: Do you have an example of a quest with a good story?
My favourite one of all them is the entrance quest for the Secret Society of Uncle Trapspringer (OCC kenders).
I am not sure if I remember it correctly...been some years.
What I remember is, I had hard time finding the right place to start the adventure.
Once I started, it was pure rollercoaster type of fun. (I love rollercoasters :mrgreen:)
The story was great, kender themed, I did not notice any kind of syntax struggle.

Not a good story example (IMHO) but solid example how genesis quests could be is newbie land quest.
Easy, no syntax struggle, fun. The story is a bit too silly for me, but other then that, solid quest.

An idea comes to my mind...We could have some survey / review for the quests.
Could probably try to fix quests based on the results.
Problems
- I hardly remember most of the quests.
- Even if I do remember...the quest could have been fixed / changed since I have done it.

Bromen
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Re: Fixing quests

Post by Bromen » 30 Nov 2010 13:03

How about having a 150% quest experience week for Christmas? Even I would try to make a shire pie.

B

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