Fixing quests
Posted: 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?
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?