Will quests be repeatable?

Will we do some quests again and again like in other MMORPGs? With the same monsters having to be killed over and over again?
At least I hope that in single-player quests will not be repeatable and killed monsters will stay dead.

 

They have to find a balance. Even if they write 100 hours of content, you'll blow through that in a few weeks and need something to do for the rest of the year. Somewhere there will be a cook who wants more strawberries every few days.

 

First come first serve basis for quests. There is only one world and only one child that can be kidnapped by wolves at a time. Granted the kid is probably special and manages to get kidnapped every night. This flies directly in the face of the SPO mode so not sure how to blend some elements of repetitive and unique quests.

 

I think the story quests should only be done once unless your helping others do it. Sidequests etc should be a mix of once off, repetable, first come first serve.

 

I think it should be random. I mean like our friends say, a cook will always need his/her ingridients. Bandits will always plunder a farm and so on. Yet I think quests should shift NPC to NPC. There's nothing wrong with repeatable quests yet same guy, wanting same thing, giving same thing, saying same thing.. it's not gonna do for us.

 

First come first served for quests is a horrible idea for online play. What do you do with people who are new, a year after release?

 

@Lord_Darkmoon - Agree, a finished quest should not be repeatable.

I would like playercreated quests and as few developer created quests as possible.

 

This is my only concern. I want to see that I'm having an impact on the world. I don't mind repeating certain quests (perhaps hoping to get loot drop, or to add replay value) but what I want from a game and MMOs always fail to deliver, is seeing the impact my questing had. If I saved a town from monsters, the NPCs shouldn't tell me the next day they're still in danger.

 

A quest randomisation system could potentially (devs?) be implemented for minor quests which would have a number of criteria (e.g. NPC X, Type = Kill / Find / Courier, Item Type, Location, Reward). If this was coded well it could give the appearance of a near limitless number of quests while significantly reducing the amount of development time / story development.

 

Oh how I LOATHE repeatable quests, really, really loathe them.

 

Agreed, but I think these developers are wise enough to know this one already lol. This topic touches on on of the huge challenges in designing a single player game with an every changing and multi-layered MP element. Personally, I don't think all of the same quests should be in both SP and MP worlds. If you complete a quest in SP and go online, that "content" shouldn't be seen by other players who haven't done it yet! I just don't see how that could possibly work.

Does anyone have any links to topics or developer vids that touch on their specific plans for that?

 

Actually i hate the word "Quests".

 

Didn't Richard say that there would be some sort of achievement system, wherein you'd get some kind of score when you completed a scene, and it would give you a reason to go back and try to find things you had missed the first time? That implies repeatable to me, but perhaps not.

For example, I enter a scene, kill all the monsters pick up loot, and exit. I get a score of 75%.
When I enter the scene again within some reasonable time, perhaps everything will still be dead, and I can take my time searching for hidden passages or whatever I missed.
If I find them, my score is adjusted.
Or, maybe I log off for the day, and return tomorrow. Now the scene is repopulated, and I have to kill everything again, but also keep an eye out for something I had missed the day before.

Would that be considered repeatable?

Or using Richard's example, once I find the lady in the red dress and ask her about pearls, I'm done with her forever. That would be non-repeatable.

Something like that. I feel like I'm not quite expressing myself adequately. Hmmm...

 

Will quests be repeatable? - Yes.

 

Source?

 

At a guess,

Repeatable events.

Progressive main storyline that you can experience as the protagonist, solo or as a group, or come back to as a member of someone else's party.

Daily quests and repeat-ables, solely for the sake of grind rather than gameplay? I do hope not...

 

A easy way to make repeatable more fun is to include a parameter that will change the behaviour of the enemies.
The first time they might be easy...but the next time they may scream: You again, they will run, call for more help faster, or will have adjusted and have better spells against your type of attacks..
Would be logic that they learn from you.. and not that hard to implend a sort of "mission getting harder after repeating system"

 

I'm personally ok with repeatable quests, so long as its not necessary to repeat them to get something or to achieve something that you can't get otherwise and is highly desirable to have.

For instance, maybe the first time you do it, you get the Big gold loot item for completing the quest. Each time you repeat it, you would not get that item again. On the other hand maybe there are some less important items that you can get from that quest or other pieces of the story that you may have missed.. but they are items that you can also pick up in other quests or from other players, etc.

This allows people that want to repeat the quest the ability to do so. Those that do not wish to do so don't have a major push to do so creating unnecessary repeatable grind for them.

Gives both types of players the options and so is a win for both and makes the game more appealing for more people.

 

I think a move away from "quests" is desirable - and by quests I am referring to the "run to random NPC, get fetch/collect/kill quest" sort of thing. They always seem so artificial.

It's worth considering what purpose they serve to begin with. If raising skills and "levels" is XP based, then they are a way to grind it (in WoW and clones for instance this is mostly the purpose of all quests), but I'd hope raising skills is use based instead. If it's just for something to do when you're bored then you don't need an NPC to tell you to kill ten rats or collect ten macguffin leaves - you can do that all by yourself. Collecting items/resources should be done because there's a demand for it, not because an NPC spits out the same quest over and over. Again it just seems very artificial.

Random events (kidnappings, attacks on farmsteads, missing family heirlooms, bandits, hauntings, Lilly of Skara Brae's missing pet mongbat, etc etc) would be more desirable, generated maybe once a day or week by the server from a pre-existing set of variables. Those variables could be influenced by ongoing player activity too.

Perhaps there could also be some kind of bounty board that generates unique NPC monsters and people to track down and kill, but once killed, they are gone forever. A sort of more indepth version of the bounty system in FF12.

Just a few thoughts of my own anyway.

 

From the way Richard Garriott has been talking about common MMO tropes, I think he's on the same page about the way quests or events are currently handled in other games.
I remember him talking about 'finishing a quest, but you may not have known you were even on a quest in the first place' kind of feel to what he wants to design.

I'm all for innovation in how these things are handled in RPG's, so this is one area where I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised by what comes out.