Josh Sawyer on Quest Staggering and why BG2 might have had it right

[Hormalakh]

I don't think Sawyer is talking about the number of quests in general, rather than the fact that they were all concentrated in Athkatla. The city overflows with things to do whle the approach to other areas is more linear.

 

Chapter 2 does kind of work nonetheless, imo, because of the idea of raising money to follow Irenicus; you're still working for a sensible goal as you roam the land looking for things to do. It's not the greatest plot, but it does the job. The money is raised rather too easily though.

 

Right, and I think the fact that you had a plethora of quest choices in itself was what made Chapter 2 awesome and why I disagree with Josh. I believe I understood Josh's reservations and I have tried to respond to them.

 

My main issue - and I have noticed this with many games - is that developers will sometimes try to "dose" the fun for you by giving you nuggets of fun and spacing them for you as if you wouldn't be able to handle the whole world at once. I guess it does make sense from a story perspective that you'd want to keep the quest coming in at a staggered pace and to tell your story in some sort of organized fashion, but then what happens is that the world feels very linear and people tend not to want to replay those game again.

 

Take BG2 for example: pretty much everyone who plays that game hates Irenicus's dungeon. It's a great dungeon and it's fun the first, oh maybe three times you play it. But then after a while, it just acts as a stop-gap before you can go out and explore the world. Not even do quests - you can't jump from area to area (in other words, explore). You have to fight your way out of the dungeon before you can "really start" playing the game. I bet you that if Irenicus's dungeon was another "module" that we would get to play through in the game, people wouldn't hate it as much.

 

This is all really just more a matter of story flow and area design over changing the number of quests. I would ask Obsidian to look at the Zelda games, the Assassin Creed games, the GTAs games, and other "open world/sandbox" games for inspirations. These games could have very well told their stories in linearized fashions (and many of them do - in a way) but they allowed the players access to a big part of the world immediately and players could get lost in just exploring. I don't think we need sandbox P:E, and when I think Zelda, I don't think "sandbox game", but there are specific methods of telling the story that really stand out as superb and non-restricting.

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A lot of good points were brought up in this thread. Thanks for everyone who has shared so far.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Hormalakh

[Gumbercules]

Interesting thread, but I don't see how what you're saying adds up overall. You say that the other chapters of BG2 were inferior to Chapter 2 (and could therefore be improved?), but if Chapter 2 were to remain the same, then the other chapters would need further quests added to them in order to improve them, right? But BG2 is already a huge, long game, and to make it longer would probably make it flabbier and more boring. Plus, PE will have two big cities, not just one, so either it will be even flabbier still, or Obsidian will have to do a better job of balancing quest distribution and pacing.

 

I think that as long as they still make both cities large, free to explore, and full of interesting details and characters, they can get away with having fewer quests available at once than Chapter 2 of BG2. I do still want to have multiple quest choices at all or most times, but I haven't read anything so far that indicates that this won't be the case.

[mstark]

The one possibility they will have by introducing a second city (which will, presumably, turn up at some point halfway through the story... but that's utter speculation) is to allow it to act as the second tier quest hub. Allow me to explain...

 

In BG2, if you kept doing Athkatla quests, they would become quite trivial towards the end due to the party being far more experienced and having attained more loot. This was mitigated to some degree by the fact that the best gear in the game wasn't that much better than what you find right at the start (this is certainly not a bad thing). Either way, due to the majority of quests being available from the starting area, they all had to have a fairly similar difficulty level. Again, I don't see this as a bad thing, and it was nice that the difficulty level throughout BG2 was relatively fairly flat, since that allowed the PC's strength to remain fairly flat. Challenges were made more trivial due to your own actual experience playing of the game, and less so by the gathered experience points of your characters.

 

What could be done with the introduction of a second major city is have it serve as a hub for harder quests. You're halfway through the game, and maybe you expect to find harder challenges. The potentially negative effect this can have is that if you ever return to earlier content, it might seem trivial in comparison, losing some of it's fun due to no real remaining challenge. If the game is designed with "staggered quests" in mind, I'm afraid it might lead to an over emphasis on growing your characters strength while progressing through the quest tiers.

 

I guess I'm trying to say that I'd like to gain levels, and with them a wider range of abilities, but I wouldn't necessarily want to out grow early in game content (at least not in the first PE game). I'd gain new ways of tackling content, but overall, difficulty (in the sense of monster damage and hitpoints) wouldn't scale too much through the game. This has been thoroughly discussed in another thread, I can't remember its name or I would link to it.

 

This is complete speculation, and doesn't necessarily have to happen at all. Just wanted to bring up the point.

[Hormalakh]

Interesting thread, but I don't see how what you're saying adds up overall. You say that the other chapters of BG2 were inferior to Chapter 2 (and could therefore be improved?), but if Chapter 2 were to remain the same, then the other chapters would need further quests added to them in order to improve them, right? But BG2 is already a huge, long game, and to make it longer would probably make it flabbier and more boring. Plus, PE will have two big cities, not just one, so either it will be even flabbier still, or Obsidian will have to do a better job of balancing quest distribution and pacing.

 

I think that as long as they still make both cities large, free to explore, and full of interesting details and characters, they can get away with having fewer quests available at once than Chapter 2 of BG2. I do still want to have multiple quest choices at all or most times, but I haven't read anything so far that indicates that this won't be the case.

 

Basically what mstark said. If I were to change BG2 I wouldn't add more quests to chapters 3-7. I would allow greater accessability to the Athkatla quests further down the line. I would make "limitations" on accessability more organic. For example, in BG2 your party could mosey on up to Fiirkaag pretty early in the game. But the nice thing that they did was that they limited your progression into th dungeon based on the difficulty of the enemies. There never was an invisible wall that said "you have to wait until chapter 6 to finish this quest." and when you get to fiirkaag, you get one last chance to turn around and come back when you're at a higher level.

 

that is my point, really. give access to the whole world (like Fallout!) at the beginning and then create organic barriers to entry. Then allow access to everything in the beginning so that if my party keeps failing at a certain avenue (like killing Fiirkaag) I can go back to a quest hub and work on something else for a while until I can figure out what to do about Fiirkaag.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Hormalakh

[mstark]

Just a though: I'd love if the second quest hub/city, assuming it shows up later in the game,  would introduce new types of challenges/quests, rather than more difficult ones.They'd be more difficult because of being different, rather than being harder due to more enemies with more hitpoints and higher damage.

 

It might be hard to pull off, and I can't think of any examples right off the bat.

Edited May 9, 2013 by mstark

[Gumbercules]

Basically what mstark said. If I were to change BG2 I wouldn't add more quests to chapters 3-7. I would allow greater accessability to the Athkatla quests further down the line. I would make "limitations" on accessability more organic. For example, in BG2 your party could mosey on up to Fiirkaag pretty early in the game. But the nice thing that they did was that they limited your progression into th dungeon based on the difficulty of the enemies. There never was an invisible wall that said "you have to wait until chapter 6 to finish this quest." and when you get to fiirkaag, you get one last chance to turn around and come back when you're at a higher level.

 

that is my point, really. give access to the whole world (like Fallout!) at the beginning and then create organic barriers to entry. Then allow access to everything in the beginning so that if my party keeps failing at a certain avenue (like killing Fiirkaag) I can go back to a quest hub and work on something else for a while until I can figure out what to do about Fiirkaag.

 

 

Ok, that makes more sense. My point was mainly that I doubt that PE will have more quests than BG2, and that they'll have to be distributed differently spatially just due to differences in the world maps (larger(?) area, two cities instead of one).

 

That said, I came across a suggestion on the Torment: Tides of Numenera forum that I thought had some merit:

No feeling of "depleted" areas/cities

I think it might make the world feel more alive if areas changed over time, so that instead of meeting every character and receiving every quest right at the start, then having everyone stand around twiddling their thumbs when you finish the quests, some people can leave and others can arrive, and circumstances change creating new quests. I guess it depends on how many times the developers want us to visit each place, but for areas that will be visited often, it might be good to freshen things up every so often.

 

tl,dr: Open the world as much as makes sense, but stagger the quests and characters to keep things fresh.

[mstark]

As long as it doesn't cause PE's quest system to feel as piece-meal & chore like as that of PS:T, I'm happy for 'older' areas to refresh when it makes sense (but do we need that, with a second city to find? They've also said the Stronghold will likely act as a [third] quest hub).

 

It might be hard for gamers to catch on to fresh NPCs popping up here and there without obvious pointers, since I believe most gamers expect to be able to complete an area and not look back. It might end up feeling quite artificial if the player will need a figurative, blinking, neon green arrow pointing in the direction of updated areas. It might work well in a smaller place that you return to often (Stronghold?).

 

I'm hoping that PE will stray more in the direction of BG2's approach to quests and pacing, while T:ToN will stray in the direction of PS:T. I'm looking forward to both of them, and I hope they will individually improve upon the proven recipes of two distinct classics in their own way.

Edited May 9, 2013 by mstark

[Woldan]

Having a bajilion quests doesn't make the world feel alive. Quite the contrary, it makes it feel even more fake as every Tom, **** and Harry on the continent seems to wait just for you to get s*** done.

Everyone else is incompetent.

Having lots of quests means its a world which is alive and where lots of work needs to be done. What is it that makes you think that the quests which are offered your character are the only quests in that world? You never really met other characters in an RPG who were on a holy mission or mercenaries who were paid to kill other NPCs etc? Those weren't quests for those characters?

Edited May 9, 2013 by Woldan

[alanschu]

Having lots of quests means its a world which is alive and where lots of work needs to be done. What is it that makes you think that the quests which are offered your character are the only quests in that world? You never really met other characters in an RPG who were on a holy mission or mercenaries who were paid to kill other NPCs etc? Those weren't quests for those characters?

 

It does mean that there's a lot of work to be done, but it also typically means "the only person that can do that particular work is the PC, regardless of time."

 

Lots of quests means that, while I was out doing 20 other different things that took who knows how long, some other NPC just let his giant rat problem in the cellar of his tavern go unchecked for that entire duration of time?  It may work from a gameplay perspective, and may be the best solution for an RPG, but it doesn't do much to make the world seem alive as far as I'm concerned.  It's one of those "video gamey" moments that explicitly reminds me that I'm in a video game, and as such I can exploit the rules of the game around certain video game conventions.

Edited May 9, 2013 by alanschu

[Hormalakh]

the obsidian devs need to place a random number generator in the game where random npcs pop up throughout the world and mention something to the effect of, "oh hey! you're an adventurer? It would have been great if you were here maybe ten days ago. I had a huge rat problem I needed solving. But I just had someone else take care of it. Anyway...you're late." that would totally screw with us players. we'd be trying forever to get to that quest earlier and earlier and never "get there in time."

Edited May 10, 2013 by Hormalakh

[Gumbercules]

the obsidian devs need to place a random number generator in the game where random npcs pop up throughout the world and mention something to the effect of, "oh hey! you're an adventurer? It would have been great if you were here maybe ten days ago. I had a huge rat problem I needed solving. But I just had someone else take care of it. Anyway...you're late." that would totally screw with us players. we'd be trying forever to get to that quest earlier and earlier and never "get there in time."

 

I figure you're probably joking, but I genuinely like this idea! Random fake quests that you can never solve because you were too busy with other stuff. There could even be rival adventurers who solve some of the quests before you get a chance, kind of like Bart and Lisa's rivals/doppelgängers Lester and Eliza on The Simpsons.

 

[Rostere]

Well, you're all giving quite bad examples of quests.

 

For example, take the werewolf island in BG:TotSC. Dont' you think that one is likely to remain in it's current state for at least a year or so without the PC's intervention? All quests - or whatever you want to call them - are not quick errands regarding unstable situations that is available to anyone.

 

Furthermore, you could have a timer starting from the first time you've heard of urgent issues such as the "rat problem" so that if the PC ignores an urgent quest it is botched, but any time they first hear of the quest happens to be the precise moment where the rat problem makes the innkeeper's life hang in the balance. Plausibility is retained.

 

Once again, I don't think most quests are so urgent that the need to be completed in under half a year, or whatever is the typical timeframe for a RPG. Even if that happens to be the case in current RPGs, they could easily make only low-urgency quests with no harm done to the story. A lot of dungeons also come with the remains of earlier unlucky visitors, taking care of the issue that the PCs seem to be the only adventurers around.

[mstark]

Quest timers = big no no.

[JFSOCC]

Just a though: I'd love if the second quest hub/city, assuming it shows up later in the game,  would introduce new types of challenges/quests, rather than more difficult ones.They'd be more difficult because of being different, rather than being harder due to more enemies with more hitpoints and higher damage.

 

It might be hard to pull off, and I can't think of any examples right off the bat.

why would you arbitrarily restrict that? I'd rather have all quests be diverse in nature. And I'd be cool with having challenging quests in either city.

 

I think the bottleneck approach with chapters is a nice marker from which each chapter simply adds new quests to all known areas and opens up some new areas

 

Because this way, you go to BBC1, (again, not the broadcasting corporation, I really need a better acronym) you do some 70% of the available quests. Then you decide to proceed with the main quest, advance in chapter, and new content opens up in the location you know, while you can now also move on to BBC2.

 

This ensures that an area doesn't suddenly become devoid of content (that barren feel so many areas have when you're finished with them)

because you've done all you could there. (at least not until you finish the game)

This is what pacing is all about. Don't set it by location, set it by narrative timing.

 

(IE,

Early chapters, you join organisations and learn about the world. after doing some you gain some gear and a better position in these factions, you've become comfortable with the area you're in.

Mid chapters, you've gained standing in the factions you work for and have gained some renown, meaning others contact you for more delicate assignments, some take you outside of the city you know.

Mid-late chapters: the factions you work for ask you to establish business in BBC2, while some trouble is brewing at home. You know your home, but also have to explore new places. The challenges you get mean you have to move around a lot, but you're certainly getting a feel for the world. You even have established your own stronghold at a strategical location.

Late game: most places you've been have some content, but the majority of the content is pointing you towards the exit, it's time to finish up and move on.)

 

This strategy means that no location you find will become irrelevant as the game progresses, which I always think is a terrible shame.

[Gumbercules]

Quest timers = big no no.

 

The idea isn't about quest timers, but rather about "fake" quests that you can never complete, in addition to all the regular ones that you can. It's not about denying people content, it's about adding a bit of extra dialogue here and there that gives the sense that characters had problems and challenges before you arrived, and will continue to have them after you leave.

 

edit: I just realized you were replying to Rostere, not Hormalakh and me. I too would prefer to avoid quest timers unless they're rare and done really well, and even then I think bottlenecks are generally a better way of keeping the game flowing if absolutely necessary.

Edited May 10, 2013 by Gumbercules

[Rostere]

I don't know. An IE- type game centered around quest timers (in- game time, of course) does not sound so interesting, but it could be added here and there for realism's sake.

 

But I'd most of all like to say that I don't think most quests in RPGs have a relative urgency calling for timers, and even if they do, they could easily have been designed otherwise. Personally I think it would feel very immersive if the game made you feel it's POSSIBLE to actually botch a quest by being too slow, though it's not a central mechanic. But maybe that kind of realism is a bit too hardcore for some of you?

[mstark]

 

Just a though: I'd love if the second quest hub/city, assuming it shows up later in the game,  would introduce new types of challenges/quests, rather than more difficult ones.They'd be more difficult because of being different, rather than being harder due to more enemies with more hitpoints and higher damage.

 

It might be hard to pull off, and I can't think of any examples right off the bat.

why would you arbitrarily restrict that? I'd rather have all quests be diverse in nature. And I'd be cool with having challenging quests in either city.

 

I didn't intend for the idea to sound like a limitation, but rather to function similarly to how you proceeded to describe it in the rest of your post, different "types" of quests could be as simple as:

 

(IE,

Early chapters, you join organisations and learn about the world. after doing some you gain some gear and a better position in these factions, you've become comfortable with the area you're in.

Mid chapters, you've gained standing in the factions you work for and have gained some renown, meaning others contact you for more delicate assignments, some take you outside of the city you know.

The intention behind the idea was to allow the game to refresh itself once the PC is somewhere around halfway through (reaching city #2, assuming it will act as a "second tier" quest hub). I wasn't intending it to sound like Chapter 1 will be fetch quests only, and Chapter 2 will be limited to rescue quests. Rather something similar to what you described, that you reach a new stage within a quest line, one in which you will have to tackle presented problems in a new way.

Edited May 10, 2013 by mstark

[mstark]

I don't know. An IE- type game centered around quest timers (in- game time, of course) does not sound so interesting, but it could be added here and there for realism's sake.

I think BG2 actually had quest timers, where certain party members would leave your party if you didn't attend to their matters? Or maybe they just threatened to do so. I can't remember.

[Nonek]

The companion quest time limits worked well enough in BG2 and I liked them there, they were well highlighted by repeated warnings and gave a comfortable amount of days wriggle room to the protagonist, made you think about who you'd pick up and when among the companions. Gave the gathering of your party and the quests undertaken a nice air of strategy, so that your wandering was a bit less aimless. That said could a cunning player with a silver tongue extend that period of waiting, through persuasion of the companion and perhaps a gift of money or equipment?

Edited May 10, 2013 by Nonek

[mstark]

The companion quest time limits worked well enough in BG2 and I liked them there, they were well highlighted by repeated warnings and gave a comfortable amount of days wriggle room to the protagonist, made you think about who you'd pick up and when among the companions. Gave the gathering of your party and the quests undertaken a nice air of strategy, so that your wandering was a bit less aimless. That said could a cunning player with a silver tongue extend that period of waiting, through persuasion of the companion and perhaps a gift of money or equipment?

I'm finding it quite a limitation in my current play through of BG2, but I guess I should just hurry up and get to their matters quicker

[Rostere]

 

The companion quest time limits worked well enough in BG2 and I liked them there, they were well highlighted by repeated warnings and gave a comfortable amount of days wriggle room to the protagonist, made you think about who you'd pick up and when among the companions. Gave the gathering of your party and the quests undertaken a nice air of strategy, so that your wandering was a bit less aimless. That said could a cunning player with a silver tongue extend that period of waiting, through persuasion of the companion and perhaps a gift of money or equipment?

I'm finding it quite a limitation in my current play through of BG2, but I guess I should just hurry up and get to their matters quicker

 

 

I think you get quite a lot of time, my only issue was that Jan's quest was impossible to complete because I had accidentally one of the key NPCs

[sparklecat]

 

In BG2, if you kept doing Athkatla quests, they would become quite trivial towards the end due to the party being far more experienced and having attained more loot. This was mitigated to some degree by the fact that the best gear in the game wasn't that much better than what you find right at the start (this is certainly not a bad thing). Either way, due to the majority of quests being available from the starting area, they all had to have a fairly similar difficulty level. Again, I don't see this as a bad thing, and it was nice that the difficulty level throughout BG2 was relatively fairly flat, since that allowed the PC's strength to remain fairly flat. Challenges were made more trivial due to your own actual experience playing of the game, and less so by the gathered experience points of your characters.

 

They didn't all have a similar difficulty level, though; there were certainly quests that were incredibly hard, if not impossible, to complete if you just wandered in and tried to take them on before gaining a couple of levels and improving your equipment.  Which, speaking of things that make the world feel more real, I loved.

[mstark]

 

In BG2, if you kept doing Athkatla quests, they would become quite trivial towards the end due to the party being far more experienced and having attained more loot. This was mitigated to some degree by the fact that the best gear in the game wasn't that much better than what you find right at the start (this is certainly not a bad thing). Either way, due to the majority of quests being available from the starting area, they all had to have a fairly similar difficulty level. Again, I don't see this as a bad thing, and it was nice that the difficulty level throughout BG2 was relatively fairly flat, since that allowed the PC's strength to remain fairly flat. Challenges were made more trivial due to your own actual experience playing of the game, and less so by the gathered experience points of your characters.

 

They didn't all have a similar difficulty level, though; there were certainly quests that were incredibly hard, if not impossible, to complete if you just wandered in and tried to take them on before gaining a couple of levels and improving your equipment.  Which, speaking of things that make the world feel more real, I loved.

 

It certainly had some difficulty spikes, but generally never in the direct path of the quests, as far as I can recall. Either way, I also like it when there are sudden spikes that can't be overcome without particular skill or item combinations only attainable in the later game.

[mkreku]

Does anyone remember the old Goldbox game Pool of Radiance? It was a story about a continent overrun by evil monsters, and the game begins when the good guys has just managed to get a foothold in one block of an old overrun city, New Phlan. As new adventurers, you're immediately assigned to clear out the remaining blocks surrounding the city from monsters.

 

After you've done that, the world opens up. But the quests do not. Instead, you get a call from the mayor of New Phlan. He sits in the town hall (naturally) and assigns you a new quest and tells you that subsequent quests will be handled by a clerk inside the town hall. There were also posters giving out quests on the town hall walls.

 

I thought that system was superb! Of course you could find random quests while exploring the world, but having this grand plan that you were following and always reporting back to the same place felt great. The town hall reacted to your progress and different people within had different quests for you from time to time. It gave you a great feeling of accomplishment to advance the story and see the fruit of your hard work this way.

[mstark]

I didn't play Pools of Radiance, so I'm not going to comment on the game, but I would like to say that I really liked the feeling of being my own master in Baldur's Gate II. There was never that one person I had to attend to, no set of required errands needing completion, in order to reach the end of the game.

 

During the game people would want both good and bad things from me, but it was always my own choice which direction to take, if any.

 

Through the entirety of Baldur's Gate (II) you are a victim of circumstance, but at no point are you not your own master (unless you choose to join, say, the thieves guild and get sent on missions). Most of the missions, including the main quest, are pursued by your own free will (arguably).

 

What we've heard so far of the story in PE, it seems we will be a victim of circumstance again. Bodes well!