Please, No Collect and Deliver Quests

I get the feeling that such 'reasoning' is the excuse after the fact. I never cared for those kinds of random drops. If you need a pelt.. grab a knife and skin the sucker. There's your pelt. So it has a couple holes in it.. that's what fur is for. Going so far in combat is an example where realism doesn't really make a lot of sense. It's just a little too much and very few people will appreciate it. I do like the idea of setting traps.. but if they're still alive when you come to collect then you still have to kill them. Leave them too long and what's the stop someone else from taking them?

Actually that might make an interesting discussion for the camping & hunting thread.

 

Regarding quest types..

Current modern PC's have two input modes. They have the mouse and the keyboard. With these, widgets in game can be manipulated with either, and the character can move. For output, they have sound and video (and sound is typically optional or not involved in quests)

That's it. That's all you've got. The player can move their character, and interact with their environment via whatever mechanisms the game provides.
This leads to kill 10 rats/players, fedex (go here, get/do that, deliver/return) and escort quests (walking with/guarding an NPC). Pretty much that's what all modern (1995+) persistent multiplayer games have for tasks/quests that players complete.
Designers do their best to change the window dressing and add side quests that provide distraction and illusion, but that's all they have to work with: Movement and clicks.

I haven't seen any logical theorycrafting that expands beyond those three quest types, yet.

 

Vjek, this my friend is why all the so-called "nefarious pks/pvpers"(<-SARCASM) are asking for open pvp w/ full loot. This mode or setting actually makes for quite an immersive adventure, upon every login, in fact!

 

That's just a simple kill quest, in my experience. Or did you mean this was a new type of quest in some way?

 

An Example:

I'm a Ranger type of character the loves and protects wolves and other wild life in my forest area. Anyone attempting to trap or kill them could have their traps destroyed or be intercepted, stopped or have the needlessly murdered animals avenged. Hunting for food (rabbits, etc.) for personal survival would be acceptable.

I'd like to see this level of detail and consequences presented into gameplay. It sure would make things interesting.

 

@wdboyd

I believe Rangers would be the talented trappers, but there could easily be two factions, split by their philosophical beliefs in their relationship with the land. Maybe, just how every virtue has an 'anti-virtue', each class could have a virtuous path and a villainous path. I suppose going this far would greatly depend on how the story is being developed, but it would lead to many situations where quests pit players naturally against each other. (Example for Rangers: one side's focus on protecting nature, the other's focus on mastery over nature)

 

I draw someone of a distinction here between the 'story' and simply interacting with the world. We're more or less talking about stuff that exists outside the main story for the game and deals more with how we interact with the world and other avatars.

This falls into the realm of 'end game' content.

When talking factions it has a similar concept as guilds.. similar mechanics. I wonder if it might be interesting to establish PvP guild-like factions.. that maybe guilds and individuals could join? You'd have to have an entire guild join to avoid having individual members joining opposing factions. hmmm Interesting thought.

 

Path choices within a single quest would be cool. Quests within quests, not side quests. The result and experience of the quest involves the path choices you make. Quests that aren't so linear and have the element of
surprise and the unexpected. But the difference being, If your on a rare wolf quest and a humanoid lizard snatches the wolf, If you decide to go after the humanoid lizard, the whole quest changes and you can't
go back and do wolf quest. So the more quests you complete in this manner the more unique your experience and path in the world. I think the work involved in creating mysterious worlds with unique paths
has been a big reason we don't see it in many games. One might think, If they void the wolf quest, then that's one part of the game the player doesn't experience and now its gonna take us more time to make
a world with tons of content. Or trend of coming up with a formula and pasting it all over the place. Making a hand crafted world, stone by stone, takes a lot more time but these are the things that make a world
less redundant, more mysterious and more encounters with the unexpected. So the question might be, How much content can we provide in this given time? or How unpredictable can we make the world in
a given time. I would rather wait and have a game handcrafted at every turn then play a game where I always know what is ahead and lose immersion once I realized the 10th quest I'm on is just a copy and paste
of the first quest with a different name. Although the creation of a formula that can be used over and over and not be redundant is a never ending goal and a good one. I'm not sure I've seen one yet that
isn't soon exposed and becomes repetitive and you lose immersion in the game. Even though its more work and takes more time I still think handcrafting every turn and making a world to fit a vision
is still way better then a world that try's to create a formula that fulfills the vision. I guess maybe its the perfect balance always sought after. But in the mean time it would be nice to have at least 1 new game
that just stuck with the good old handcraft every aspect approach. I understand there will always be formulas copy pasted all over the place in games, what I'm talking about is when its overdone. When it starts
to take away from the vision and experience and immersion. If these kinda quests ever came into being and it was a group quest. I would prefer that group members can freely break off
into another direction instead of a voting system that locks you into the choices of others.

 

@vjek I'm not arguing that mechanics are limited, I'm talking about the vision and story behind how they use those mechanics. For example pretty much every MMORPG has a variant of this type of scenario:

You walk up to Farmer Bob. Farmer Bob tells that those damn Banderlings keep attacking his farm and if he doesn't get his pumpkins to market in Holtburg his family will be in serious trouble. Farmer Bob asks you to please kill off those Banderlings that are attacking so he can get to town and bring to their scalps as proof. You accept the quest and you have a task to bring Farmer Bob 10 Banderling scalps. 2 hours later, after having run around killing endless amounts of Banderlings the RNG has finally granted you the 10th scalp and you complete the quest. As you leave the farm you look around and still see all kinds of Banderlings hanging out around the farm. You've made no real difference in the world, you've just collected and delivered some scalps.

The solution to this, in my opinion, is something WoW has started to do in the past couple of years. When you accept a quest a flag is switched on for your character and suddenly you're seeing things that other people can't. You can see other people, and they can see you, but they can't see the monsters coming in for an attack that you can see. Or similarly you go into a localized instance. You can only see other people who are flagged by the quest like you, and people not flagged can't see the ones that are until the quest completes.

In other solution you accept the quest just in time to fight off a group of marauding Banderlings as the come over a hill and descend upon the farm. You fight off a couple of waves of attackers before finally meeting and defeating the Banderling chief in combat.

In the end, same result. You killed X number of Banderlings, got Y points, of experience, and maybe some type of material reward. The difference is that the boring original option does nothing to cloak the mechanic and does not at all hide the fact that you're just grinding. But option 2 hides the mechanic within a story that makes you feel you're part of accomplishing something. And when the quest ends the monsters are gone and you feel like you really did save that farm.

 

I get that, bcxanth, but it's just window dressing on the same mechanic. Those are great innovations, but inevitably, the player/character is limited by the current interface. Put another way, I think "collect and deliver" quests are going to be used, given they are part of a very limited set of tasks a player can complete, regardless of how many innovations are utilized in SotA.

 

Come on, collecting heads of PK's and delivering them could be fun.

 

True, but like I said in my original post, I prefer the quests to have a story to them. I'm just saying don;t make a quest that is clearly just an excuse to get me to sty in one place and grind for a bit. At least make me feel like I'm accomplishing something.

 

Ok, the NPC works at a museum and is collecting heads for display there, every head you collect can have your name on a list there that you killed him.

 

Well that would certainly be amusing.

 

I rattle off a lot of Ideas but now that I think about it I could enjoy a lot of repetitive too. I was thinking about something I heard RG say when the idea was "Ultimate RPG". He said nobody has really made
a good sandbox rpg since him. And that's one thing that really excites me about this game is a kickass sandbox rpg. Repetitive isn't so bad when the results are diverse. Like swg crafting was awesome and
If I remember right, that game was made by a bunch of ultima online folks. The fact that any joe schmoe with a resource detector could find super rare resources and have a purpose or a chip to bargain with
had me running around doin click click click for hours. There was so much diversity in that game in terms of crafters and equipment. I'm hoping for a game that good but with good pve and questing also.

I think for me, the measure of a good mmo is how well the world fosters diversity in equipment, experience, skills and so on. Versus a game where everyone who hits rank 30 is walking around waving the same
sword. It terms of quests it would be nice to see the conversation changed from, "Have you done this quest yet?", to , "I've never heard of that quest and may never do it because I chose a different path".
And ultimately have a potential place for the many diverse builds of people. For instance, this guy might not have the horn of thunder, but to my surprise the pocket knife of poison he has is very useful
in this situation. A game world that is over everyone's head and you find that working as a body of people is extremely helpful and humbling.

 

Yeah, I seriously gotta admit, these grinding quests are straight from hell.
I really don't feel very valiant as a knight less alone Avatar if my glorious quest is all about working as a pest control or collecting some flowers to some lazy bum who could perfectly well do it by himself!
"I need you to kill ten chickens for me"
What for!? They instantly respawn back anyway so quests like these feel pointless as a hamster running on a spinning wheel.
This is just a pointless busy work, I'm a damn hero not a flower boy or slaughterer of thousand chickens.

 

No Collect and Deliver Quests should be Daily quests for the city, posted on the town hall bulletin board.

 

I think quests of this nature should be approached as:

NPC has its own schedule in which NPC goes about daily business (in this example Granny, goes to the orchard every morning to pick apples) and this happens from alpha to beta to launch and you the player as well as any other player has never seen Granny complaining or offering a quest dealing with her apple picking.

Maybe for a week, a Portalarium employee (acting as a Dungeon Master) decides to activate a group of animals from that locale's ecology which chase off Granny and prevent her from picking apples thereby prompting the quest.

You, the player and every other player who has been passing by Granny's apple stand since alpha and having heard nary a word from her before except for the hawking of her wares suddenly discover her to be boo-hooing about her business and you go over to investigate. For the first time ever, you hear her mention that there are creatures who have invaded her orchard and asks if you will deal with the situation (open ended).

You decide to take on this quest to help Granny out. You could:

a) kill all the troublesome creatures you see in the orchard (bringing back proof)
b) kill the creatures and hunt them to their lair (bringing back proof)
c) You could burn the orchard down (no creatures, no apples, and she yells at you every time you pass her stand)
d) You could offer Granny to pick apples for her for a fee on a daily basis (bring back apples for the lifespan of that quest's availability)
e) You could find another orchard for her nearby (exploration or negotiating a deed trade to an NPC trapper who may want a steady income from creature pelts from Granny's orchard)
f) You could tell her to sell pumpkins instead (in which she yells at you whenever she sees you)

After that quest's lifespan is complete, Granny returns to her regular schedule although she may 'remember' whether you helped her out or screwed her over.

Quests become enjoyable when they show up as a surprise, offer multiple solutions, and give you an opportunity to pat yourself on the back for being clever. I especially think that might be possible given the proposed conversation system.

The standard grind quests are only important for obtaining XP for levelling with the 'inconvenience' of losing time doing something mundane. Quests are better served as being experiences players enjoy and can give feedback to the Devs about how they solved the situation so that more of these sorts of quests can be made available to players. If we're really just levelling skills what do we need player levels for? Let us have fun.

 

FWIW, I think SWTOR did a decent job of trying to add enough story elements with fully voiced (unlikely to impossible with SotA) and fully blocked scenes with NPCs that made typical quests feel atypical.

 

I don't really seem the harm in having some of these quests as some have said you can choose not to do them. The developers could just mark these type of quests as daily rewards quests so one can tell the difference between quest types. That should fix it for you. I personally would like a quest like this as preparation for a harder, more detailed quest. I am going to need those 20+ health apple pies just to survive the quest I am going to do next.