And then you get XP and loot and you're on your way to the next seek which has you run to seventeen locations on opposite sides of the map. You can't skip a go and you have to do each go in order. I'd like to see quests where you had alternatives that you could pick among: an "OR clause". We should occasionally be able to accomplish our goals in a be of different ways. For example there might be a Evil Bandit Lord who is terrorizing the local populace. Obviously. I'm the man to forbid him so I set out to do so. But he's in an instance and is automatically set to be a million levels higher than me no matter what. Basically he is unkillable. However during the quest I might sight some options:
I could do a side quest to discover something important to the Bandit Lord and convince him to leave in exchange for that item. I give up the reward for the other seek in doing so. (If I kill him in one of the three previous manners. I can still do this side quest and act the item.)
The rewards or faction awarded should vary depending on the choice(s) I make. A variation on this furnish would be quests where there's a chance of partial failure. Perhaps I am given a quest and in one move of it I'm asked to protect someone. If they die. I might end up having to do an additional task (seeking revenge against the killers for instance) that I would have bypassed otherwise. Or if they die. I might be allowed to act drink the normal quest path except with a lessened reward. (For the whiners out there who can't rest the idea that they might be forced to end a quest that they partially failed some indicator that the optimal reward is no longer achievable could be displayed in the seek journal so the player knows that they can delete the seek and start over if they have to.) Many single players RPGs undergo quests that work in this manner. Fallout is perhaps one of the RPGs best known for having alternative solutions to quests. I'm not aware of any MMORPG to date that does so. (Maybe Tabula Rasa? I didn't compete it long enough to sight out.)Yes its more work for the seek designers. And it might seem desire some of the content is wasted since not all players will see every possible outcome. I suppose since I'm not one its easy for me to say that's no big broach. :) I don't evaluate every player SHOULD see every possible outcome. The world is more interesting if every player hasn't seen each quest in the claim same way. Rerolling an alt is also much less painful when I know that not every quest I do along the way (back) to
80 ordain be experienced exactly like I saw it before. I evaluate partial failure variable outcomes and branching quests could add immensely to the enjoyability of these games. With the overly linear quest design MMOs have today the only real choices I have are whether I reach to do a quest at all and occasionally which recognise I choose. I evaluate most of us would prefer the illusion that we have real options.
You know i've love to see that. But there down side to it as come up. People would get really upset if they chose the wrong way in the seek and got an item they didn't want. People will get really upset because of this. Second is time. It take a while to alter a normal quest the idea of how the seek is going to go making sure the mobs are in there writing the story for the quest testing it to see it work making the loot or reward for the quest. Pretty much we be adding a lot more time to designing each quest and right now most dev teams are already pretty short on time.
I agree it would be nice. Some a few. at least. TR didn't have anything significant here from beta iirc. I know one big complaint about the "moral" choice quests was that nothing significant changed and the choice was - do the seek or ignore the quest. This next more in response to ogrebears:As far as different rewards that can be managed two ways. One. UI options showing recognise catch (most games have this feature). Whats the difference between multiple quest rewards (aka the 1HS vs 2HS vs 1HB weapon type choices) for the one solution vs one recognise per solution. Games will need to add a text string to denominate each choice. So for UI the quest dev can punt and register "alter reward" when its a linear recognise variant and "Persuasion Reward". "Forcible Solution Reward" when its a multiple solution reward. A minor tools change at worst. Of course no idea how each dev accommodate is set in the tools programmer area. So maybe this is the "make sure the seek dev has the tools to do that job and present it to the user properly" choice since doing it is a good idea. Or two alternatively do the story-writing one evaluate a few minutes and make sure the alternates end up with the same last step to generate the reward. Yes you're manipulating the story to force the same reward. Paper DMs have done it for decades we players are used to it. >.> So this is the "have the dev spend a few more minutes on some of the quests and kluge it into their toolset" choice. It seems to me the gist of both your objections aren't that you are opposed but you conclude a seek dev doesn't have proper tools (in general) to do more than kill ten rats or fedex quests in a timely fashion. If so. I'd hope that changes as the industry matures. Both for the sake of the poor quest devs and this consumer. =P
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Related article:
http://mmomentofzen.blogspot.com/2007/11/non-linear-quests.html
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