Quests; What you want and don't want to see.

[Loranc]

I personally am tired of the thousands of filler quests flopped into games these days. While having some adds to the enjoyment of the game, companies seem to go above and beyond that limit these days.

 

What i'd like to personally see is more quests that impact the world that our characters live in, the companions that we travel with, and various npcs that it would have an impact on. Not just the simple, I joined with the brigands so now the town hates me kind of thing. I'd love to see more hardcore consequences for quests. You know the really tough decisions that make you alt tab and google search before you decide. I'm tired of finding what I'm looking for and reading 'doesn't matter what you choose'. It makes me wonder to myself, why give a choice in the first place if it has no impact on the game. I guess what I'm really looking for is less choices that have no impact at all, and more choices that do impact the game whether in a small or large fashion.

[Volourn]

"I personally am tired of the thousands of filler quests flopped into games these days. "

 

These days? Filler quests have been around for a long time and are part of hardcore RPGs forever.

[FlintlockJazz]

While I like to see the consequences of my choices, not everything should be world changing. It'd be nice to see that the world doesn't actually revolve around the PC and that some things he does doesn't result in nations rising or falling. The Nameless One made changes in others lives, but most people never even heard of his existence.

[Loranc]

"I personally am tired of the thousands of filler quests flopped into games these days. "

 

These days? Filler quests have been around for a long time and are part of hardcore RPGs forever.

 

I never said they were only in newer games. I merely was stating that there's an over abundance of them now compared to before. With how much you can do with games now compared to what you could do in the past, you'd expect to see more thought out quests instead of just blank fillers.

 

 

While I like to see the consequences of my choices, not everything should be world changing. It'd be nice to see that the world doesn't actually revolve around the PC and that some things he does doesn't result in nations rising or falling. The Nameless One made changes in others lives, but most people never even heard of his existence.

 

I never meant to imply that all quests should have an impact on the world. I just want to see more quests that impact something in someway. Baldurs Gate always did a good job with making quest choices affect most of your companions, same could be said with; Kotor 1 & 2, NwN 1 & 2. I just want to see 'more', now that could mean 1-2 more quests that have impacts than the standard Crpg these days or it could be 10-20 more. I expect that Project Eternity will have similar impacts that the for mentioned games had, but I'm just hoping to see more .

[Monte Carlo]

I want lots of quests. Side-quests, NPC quests, faction quests, critical-path quests, for-the-sake-of-it-quests. As long as each one has something going on (a cool battle, funny / meaningful dialogue, some treasure, reveals lore or new areas, introduces a new NPC the list goes on).

 

Not having them leads to dull rail-roading.

[Infinitron]

Baldurs Gate always did a good job with making quest choices affect most of your companions

 

??? Baldur's Gate was fedex quest central.

[diablo169]

Filler quests are fine in smaller proportions, make the fluff behind them interesting and its all good. You cant change the world with every bandit scalp collected.

[Karranthain]

I'd love to see far-reaching quests such as the Siamese Twins from Arcanum. Now that was a load of fun; particularly because it's never fully resolved...

[BasaltineBadger]

I wouldn't want quests where only opposition is trash mob. Ideally there should be an unique combat encounter between you and your destination (preferably skippable by using sneaking or persuasion). The only exception should be quests based around some adventure game like riddle. Finding a hiding NPC or discovering which items should be combined to achieve some effect for example.

[FlintlockJazz]

I wouldn't want quests where only opposition is trash mob. Ideally there should be an unique combat encounter between you and your destination (preferably skippable by using sneaking or persuasion). The only exception should be quests based around some adventure game like riddle. Finding a hiding NPC or discovering which items should be combined to achieve some effect for example.

 

Yeah, I'd even go as far as to say I wouldn't want trash mobs at all: everyone should have a point. Not to say that each guy I kill should have a backstory, family and social life (though it would be funny to do a Austin Powers sequence of showing the orc family getting notification of the death of the father orc at your hands and saying "No one ever thinks of the family of an orc..."), but I don't want monsters just seemingly being in a room for no reason.

[Haerski]

Usually when I play an RPG and NPC says something typical like "Hey! Could you help me with something?" my first reaction is "Oh no! Not again!" I'd like to see that change in Project Eternity. Quests should not feel like work or punishment.

 

What I'm trying to say is that far too often "quest" means you have to run to the other side of the map to fetch some Helm of Pure Awesomeness from Ancient Ruins of Hurr-Durr filled with skeletons and zombies only to get few hundred coins and maybe some experience as your reward when you finally get back. I think every quest must have interesting story to tell or they are not worth adding in the game. If you can't think of decent story then just give me the money and exp and let's get on with the story.:D

 

Also in almost every RPG the most memorable and fun quests have been those which don't involve any hostility: You don't need to kill anything and nothing is trying to kill you. Those moments where you can take a break from merciless grinding and just enjoy the story and use your brains. Best example is Planescape: Torment where charismatic character could solve most of the quests just by talking. (EDIT: I also second everything BasaltineBadger said in his post earlier. Riddles, puzzles and other creative quest designs are always welcome)

 

My last request is that enemy encounters should be few and far between, but in counter have more "substance" in form of difficulty and variety. I hate nothing more in RPGs than huge dungeons where every inch has been filled with low and average level enemies. My dream quest would be 70-80% about story and exploring and only 20-30% about fighting. Especially exploring part is often overlooked. Finding cool stuff in dungeon can be fun even without having to fight 1000 orcs while doing so.

Edited September 30, 2012 by Haerski

[Monte Carlo]

And herein lies the rub...

 

My last request is that enemy encounters should be few and far between, but in counter have more "substance" in form of difficulty and variety. I hate nothing more in RPGs than huge dungeons where every inch has been filled with low and average level enemies. My dream quest would be 70-80% about story and exploring and only 20-30% about fighting. Especially exploring part is often overlooked. Finding cool stuff in dungeon can be fun even without having to fight 1000 orcs while doing so.

 

Because for me, and many, many others the opposite is true.

[Delterius]

And herein lies the rub...

 

My last request is that enemy encounters should be few and far between, but in counter have more "substance" in form of difficulty and variety. I hate nothing more in RPGs than huge dungeons where every inch has been filled with low and average level enemies. My dream quest would be 70-80% about story and exploring and only 20-30% about fighting. Especially exploring part is often overlooked. Finding cool stuff in dungeon can be fun even without having to fight 1000 orcs while doing so.

 

Because for me, and many, many others the opposite is true.

 

Well, I'd like less filler combat myself. Rather spend a few hours trying to solve a few encounters than kill 50 goons followed by a anti-climatic 'boss' battle.

Edited September 30, 2012 by Delterius

[Loranc]

I wouldn't want quests where only opposition is trash mob. Ideally there should be an unique combat encounter between you and your destination (preferably skippable by using sneaking or persuasion). The only exception should be quests based around some adventure game like riddle. Finding a hiding NPC or discovering which items should be combined to achieve some effect for example.

 

That's an excellent point and speaking of puzzles and riddles.... I am curious to see how they are implemented into this game. We all know PST as well as BG 1 & 2 had puzzles and riddles in the game, and I actually really enjoyed them. I would certainly love to see some thought provoking puzzles in Project Eternity and some fun riddles to try and figure out.

 

So far I am pretty excited for this game and can't wait to see it start getting further developed, the more details we begin to see, the more excited I'm going to get.

[LadyCrimson]

I'd like (some) quests that can't be completed in one fell swoop. That is, you don't just run a dungeon, find an item, bring it back, you're done. Instead you start the quest, do something, then you can't finish the questline until later in the mainplot for some reason. So...more layers/tiers to quests. Or something. Not all quests should be like this of course, but it'd be nice to have a few of them here and there at least.

[BasaltineBadger]

And herein lies the rub...

 

My last request is that enemy encounters should be few and far between, but in counter have more "substance" in form of difficulty and variety. I hate nothing more in RPGs than huge dungeons where every inch has been filled with low and average level enemies. My dream quest would be 70-80% about story and exploring and only 20-30% about fighting. Especially exploring part is often overlooked. Finding cool stuff in dungeon can be fun even without having to fight 1000 orcs while doing so.

 

Because for me, and many, many others the opposite is true.

 

Well, I'd like less filler combat myself. Rather spend a few hours trying to solve a few encounters than kill 50 goons followed by a anti-climatic 'boss' battle.

 

I believe that you should spent the majority of the game fighting unique and difficult opponents.

[Starwars]

I think what I *don't* want to see are the most simplistic form of fed-ex quests.

 

I have no problem with the idea that there are simple quests to "off-set" the more complex ones, it makes the world feel alive in a way. Sometimes you get smaller jobs. But ideally, even if you get a quest that is seemingly very simple, it'd be nice if there always was something there that made it interesting. If it be writing, or the fact that it turns out to be something much more complex than what I believed.

Basically, none of the Skyrim Radiant AI quest rubbish, none of the Dragon Age "job-board" stuff. It's just completely uninteresting in every way.

 

But yeah, other than that it'd be great to have some of those really big and complex quests, with different entry-points, several layers to them and them spanning over a large part of the game.

 

And ideally, having many options on how to solve quests of course.

[Haerski]

I wouldn't want quests where only opposition is trash mob. Ideally there should be an unique combat encounter between you and your destination (preferably skippable by using sneaking or persuasion). The only exception should be quests based around some adventure game like riddle. Finding a hiding NPC or discovering which items should be combined to achieve some effect for example.

 

That's an excellent point and speaking of puzzles and riddles.... I am curious to see how they are implemented into this game. We all know PST as well as BG 1 & 2 had puzzles and riddles in the game, and I actually really enjoyed them. I would certainly love to see some thought provoking puzzles in Project Eternity and some fun riddles to try and figure out.

 

So far I am pretty excited for this game and can't wait to see it start getting further developed, the more details we begin to see, the more excited I'm going to get.

I agree to every word.

 

One other form of non-violent quests I would like to see are the detective mysteries, which have been used in many RPGs lately. It can be traditional crime story or maybe you need to find someone who doesn't want to be found etc. These are great especially when there are multiple ways to solve the case: Charismatic character could be effective interrogator, fighter could beat the truth out of people, sneaky character could be best at finding physical evidence or spying on other people. Possibilities are endless.

[SqueakyCat]

I love quests -- all kinds of quests.

 

Does anyone remember the creepy guy in BG2 that skinned people and you had a choice to kill him or have him make you evil skin armor? Or the quest for Edwin to find a particular tome that would make him powerful, but instead turned him female, and had your companions remarking on his cup size? (It's been years, so I hope I'm stating those correctly.)

 

It's the quality, not the quantity, of quests that have deteriorated over time, in my opinion.

 

I would love to see alot of quality and creativity in the quests in PE. It's been done before and can be done again.

[Jasede]

The more the merrier as long as the quality is there. If they're even half-way decent more optional and, to some degree, mutually exclusive quests do nothing but increase replay value.

[PsychoBlonde]

"I personally am tired of the thousands of filler quests flopped into games these days. "

 

These days? Filler quests have been around for a long time and are part of hardcore RPGs forever.

 

Yeah, how many quests in Baldur's Gate consisted of you finding a weirdly named but otherwise unremarkable item and then hunting around until you found the NPC that lost it? MANY.

 

I don't mind this sort of thing. I don't mind fetch quests or fedex quests too much. What I would like to see is a return of the older-style quests where you could get involved in the quest in a number of different ways instead of them all being this linear "talk to person with ! over their head, hear their tale of woe, go get them their shiny, get reward". I hate that. It is BORING. Even in simplistic cases like that, I prefer it where you can stumble upon the shiny by accident.

 

It's even better when the quest is more complex and you can burst in around step 14, get TOTALLY THE WRONG IMPRESSION, then run about doing steps 3, 9, 18, 4, and 6 getting more and more baffled until you suddenly figure out what's going on and go slaughter 9/10th's of the people involved from sheer bloody-mindedness. That's fun. I miss being able to do that.

 

Also, it is much, much, MUCH easier to build these sorts of complex multi-directional multi-branching quests when you don't have to do VA and animation for every word that comes out of anyone's mouth.

[fkldnhlsdngsfnhlsndlg]

The problem with having every quest being some world-spanning epic is that it can also lead to the feeling of a rather dead, drab and empty world. Just like getting rid of "filler" combat and NPCs entirely, you can easily end up with a game where content is doled out in too restricted a fashion, to the point where gameplay can feel almost on-rails because the player doesn't have anything to do outside of some very core quest lines.

 

You need smaller, quicker quests to give the feeling of a living world. These don't have to be bad. A fetch quest can still be interesting if it has a few neat choices to make along the way, or says something insightful about the game universe. Not everything has to be profound or complicated - sometimes it's just good to have something to do on the way from point A to B.

 

Otherwise, you end up with a game like Age of Decadence, where, while the core quests are awesome and have a million cool choices to make, the gameplay itself is sparse and often uninteresting once you have exhausted that content... and teleporting from location to location is used because there isn't enough additional content, either in quests or "standard" gameplay, to justify the space it all takes place in.

 

You still run the risk of running out of things to do, of course - that happens in any game with finite content - but it can be minimized significantly just by giving the player a few extra side-quests in existing areas which pop up each time the main plot progresses.

Edited October 1, 2012 by sea

[rjshae]

I like seemingly ordinary side-quests that come back to play a surprising part much later in the story, whether for good or ill. The reprise adds to the drama by making the original effort feel more significant.

[GhostofAnakin]

No fetch quests. Or at least make the quests have a bit more story behind them than "get eggs for farmer and get paid 50 gold and 50 XP to do so".

[dlux]

Baldurs Gate always did a good job with making quest choices affect most of your companions

 

??? Baldur's Gate was fedex quest central.

No, that would have to be Skyrim actually, the king of fetch quests.

 

Anyway, a few fetch quests are ok, just not 80% of the game. Just do the exact opposite of what Bethesda did with Skyrim, then it will be fine.

Edited October 1, 2012 by dlux