Personal Quests

[Warren]

Something I loved in Morrowind and have not really seen since then, was the disappearance of the dwarves. No one knew what or why it happened, and finding out wasn't really a proper quest. The only way you could find out was by stumbling over the, apparently useless, books in the dwemer ruins and bringing them to the correct people more or less by accident. 

 

All you knew was that you had these crazy looking books from mysterious ruins and you really needed to know what they were and what was going on. This created a kind of self-motivated detective/archeologist scenario where my mage (who obviously cares about these things) travelled the width and breadth of the land searching for long lost knowledge and collecting strange arcane artifacts and wisdom along the way. And of course, when I finally found out, that knowledge was incredibly rewarding.

 

This was the first and last time I have ever seen something like this in a game. Oblivion came pretty close with the Aylied Statues but there was no real mystery there, and it wasn't a personal quest: it was built in to the whole objective/waypoint questing schema that is so common now. It is difficult to get invested in discovering something if my hand is being held. Similarly, most of the supposedly fulfilling things you do in games now (get a big house, get a big sword, master skill X) are all routinized. There is very little mystery or discovery other than opening treasure chests.

 

I want a game where collecting scraps of information can lead to understanding bigger game themes. I want a game where I can explore a series of dungeons and pick up clues to the location of a bigger/better dungeon. I want to compile copies of burned books and put them together to find a lost fire spell. 

 

I have to give some credit to Skyrim and New Vegas where they both try to a certain extent to recapture the mystery. In NV there is the shared history between the various NPCs that can be gleaned from obscure conversation options and paper scraps. In Skyrim you can learn master spells and collect dragon masks. But neither of these things really come close to the disappearance of the dwarves. My hope is that there will be some (preferably several) elements like these in project eternity. 

[okkoko]

there where some impossible quest in sky-rim like the master spell quest i could not find the locations  well with the help of puzzling words to find out where to go to

 

then her where other simple one where you just had to go forward i remember one expansion i was acturly  all over ewry inc of a map just to find out all about it lol

[Micamo]

The problem with making exploration rewarding is that there are two conflicting requirements that are hard to balance.

 

First, the player has to be constantly led to interesting content. If the player has run out of locations they are aware of and want to explore and their only option left is to pick a random direction and hope they run into something cool, the exploration stops being exciting and starts being a chore. You need to make sure the player always has a hook for a place to go next.

 

Second, the player has to feel like they discovered the interesting content on their own, without feeling like the developer led them there. If you give the player directions to the mine, then the player goes to the mine, then getting to the mine doesn't feel like exploration, it's just legwork.

 

An easy way to do this is through incidental discovery. The Elder Scrolls games are amazing at this sort of thing: You'll be walking from A to B on some stupid fed-ex quest when you'll find a small, unused path that leads away from the main road (to your destination). You follow the road for a while and it leads to this ruin hidden behind a waterfall. You head into the ruin and it has this really interesting piece of environmental storytelling inside, that's the *real* reward of the quest. No one told you to go there, in fact you got there by ignoring what you were told to do.

 

(Incidentally, this is why time limits on quests are a terrible idea in this type of game. If your fed-ex quest had to be done within an hour, you'd probably have ignored that side path and missed out on the ruin because you didn't want to sacrifice the loot and XP reward.)

[Lephys]

I wouldn't say that an unknown destination suddenly makes exploration a chore. Heck... exploration, by its very nature, involves uncovering unknowns. I think the important thing is to give you interesting things to find along the way, and lead you via clues. You don't need a road to everything (a literal direct line to things), but you also don't need to have absolutely no clue what's anywhere at all.

 

That's kind of part of the fun of exploration: Going somewhere you don't need to, that's a complete mystery, and discovering useful/interesting things there. I think there's something beyond just unknownness that's required to make it a chore.

 

I do think exploration's a lot more fun when it's not so simple as "If you cover enough ground, you'll find shiny things about." When it's more about exploring possibilities and uses/interactions than it is purely burning away fog of war. Uncovering secret/hidden things, rather than just uncovering already-uncovered-but-currently-out-of-sight things.

[Micamo]

Well, that's sortof what I meant. The part where it becomes a chore is when you're given a blank wilderness map with 800 hexes on it, plopped down onto a starting location, and told to pick a direction to explore. If you don't at least have a hint as to what kind of content lies in each direction, it's not a meaningful choice which direction you pick.

 

A good approach is to give some broad outlines of "regions" on the map where the player knows what sort of thing to expect when they go there. Here's the haunted forest ruled by an evil faerie prince. Here's the mountains dotted with entrances to old dwarven ruins. Here's the swamp settled by (peaceful) frog-people.

[Grotesque]

I want a game where collecting scraps of information can lead to understanding bigger game themes. I want a game where I can explore a series of dungeons and pick up clues to the location of a bigger/better dungeon. I want to compile copies of burned books and put them together to find a lost fire spell. 

 

 

 developer : I want more money

Edited August 13, 2013 by Grotesque

[Chrononaut]

Well, that's sortof what I meant. The part where it becomes a chore is when you're given a blank wilderness map with 800 hexes on it, plopped down onto a starting location, and told to pick a direction to explore. If you don't at least have a hint as to what kind of content lies in each direction, it's not a meaningful choice which direction you pick.

 

A good approach is to give some broad outlines of "regions" on the map where the player knows what sort of thing to expect when they go there. Here's the haunted forest ruled by an evil faerie prince. Here's the mountains dotted with entrances to old dwarven ruins. Here's the swamp settled by (peaceful) frog-people.

That is the joy of exploration, to find out what's there. "Telling you what to expect" is sucking the mystery out. There's no reason the player should be given this information. Wandering about the wilderness and finding something you don't expect is fun.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Chrononaut

[Naurgalen]

I know most of the people on this forum wont agree, but I liked Baldurs Gate 2 exploration FAAAAAAAAR more than BG1.  Ofc that BG1 let you explore in a less linear way, but letting me explore desert plains is not my idea of fun. I liked far more exploring what was the problem in Umar Hills, or how to escape the deadly underdark. I had a reason to explore, and the locations were all memorable and with little-to- medium history's in them.

Edited August 13, 2013 by Naurgalen

[AGX-17]

Something I loved in Morrowind and have not really seen since then, was the disappearance of the dwarves. No one knew what or why it happened, and finding out wasn't really a proper quest. The only way you could find out was by stumbling over the, apparently useless, books in the dwemer ruins and bringing them to the correct people more or less by accident. 

 

All you knew was that you had these crazy looking books from mysterious ruins and you really needed to know what they were and what was going on. This created a kind of self-motivated detective/archeologist scenario where my mage (who obviously cares about these things) travelled the width and breadth of the land searching for long lost knowledge and collecting strange arcane artifacts and wisdom along the way. And of course, when I finally found out, that knowledge was incredibly rewarding.

 

This was the first and last time I have ever seen something like this in a game. Oblivion came pretty close with the Aylied Statues but there was no real mystery there, and it wasn't a personal quest: it was built in to the whole objective/waypoint questing schema that is so common now. It is difficult to get invested in discovering something if my hand is being held. Similarly, most of the supposedly fulfilling things you do in games now (get a big house, get a big sword, master skill X) are all routinized. There is very little mystery or discovery other than opening treasure chests.

 

I want a game where collecting scraps of information can lead to understanding bigger game themes. I want a game where I can explore a series of dungeons and pick up clues to the location of a bigger/better dungeon. I want to compile copies of burned books and put them together to find a lost fire spell. 

 

I have to give some credit to Skyrim and New Vegas where they both try to a certain extent to recapture the mystery. In NV there is the shared history between the various NPCs that can be gleaned from obscure conversation options and paper scraps. In Skyrim you can learn master spells and collect dragon masks. But neither of these things really come close to the disappearance of the dwarves. My hope is that there will be some (preferably several) elements like these in project eternity.

Explain to me how an atmospheric/lore choice constitutes "personal quests."

 

You couldn't be a dwemer searching for the answer as to the fate of your people in Morrowind (even if you could, every other race would be able to do the same thing, which makes it irrelevant,) it was just lore/design justification for comparatively "high-tech" dungeons. The player had no personal connection to, well, anything in Morrowind or Oblivion. Or Skyrim, for that matter. Being wronged by the authorities as an introductory plot hook has become such an overdone cliche in TES that it has no value in narrative terms.

[mcmanusaur]

 

Something I loved in Morrowind and have not really seen since then, was the disappearance of the dwarves. No one knew what or why it happened, and finding out wasn't really a proper quest. The only way you could find out was by stumbling over the, apparently useless, books in the dwemer ruins and bringing them to the correct people more or less by accident. 

 

All you knew was that you had these crazy looking books from mysterious ruins and you really needed to know what they were and what was going on. This created a kind of self-motivated detective/archeologist scenario where my mage (who obviously cares about these things) travelled the width and breadth of the land searching for long lost knowledge and collecting strange arcane artifacts and wisdom along the way. And of course, when I finally found out, that knowledge was incredibly rewarding.

 

This was the first and last time I have ever seen something like this in a game. Oblivion came pretty close with the Aylied Statues but there was no real mystery there, and it wasn't a personal quest: it was built in to the whole objective/waypoint questing schema that is so common now. It is difficult to get invested in discovering something if my hand is being held. Similarly, most of the supposedly fulfilling things you do in games now (get a big house, get a big sword, master skill X) are all routinized. There is very little mystery or discovery other than opening treasure chests.

 

I want a game where collecting scraps of information can lead to understanding bigger game themes. I want a game where I can explore a series of dungeons and pick up clues to the location of a bigger/better dungeon. I want to compile copies of burned books and put them together to find a lost fire spell. 

 

I have to give some credit to Skyrim and New Vegas where they both try to a certain extent to recapture the mystery. In NV there is the shared history between the various NPCs that can be gleaned from obscure conversation options and paper scraps. In Skyrim you can learn master spells and collect dragon masks. But neither of these things really come close to the disappearance of the dwarves. My hope is that there will be some (preferably several) elements like these in project eternity.

Explain to me how an atmospheric/lore choice constitutes "personal quests."

 

You couldn't be a dwemer searching for the answer as to the fate of your people in Morrowind (even if you could, every other race would be able to do the same thing, which makes it irrelevant,) it was just lore/design justification for comparatively "high-tech" dungeons. The player had no personal connection to, well, anything in Morrowind or Oblivion. Or Skyrim, for that matter. Being wronged by the authorities as an introductory plot hook has become such an overdone cliche in TES that it has no value in narrative terms.

 

Largely irrelevant criticism aside, I think the OP calls them "personal quests" because they feel like instances in which your character really decides their own personal objective, and can naturally progress toward that objective (naturally in the sense that it's outside the usual hand-holding, in-your-face quest system). I think this is actually a much more concrete example of the kind of "self-motivated quest" that people were suggesting in this thread.

[Lephys]

Well, that's sortof what I meant. The part where it becomes a chore is when you're given a blank wilderness map with 800 hexes on it, plopped down onto a starting location, and told to pick a direction to explore. If you don't at least have a hint as to what kind of content lies in each direction, it's not a meaningful choice which direction you pick.

 

A good approach is to give some broad outlines of "regions" on the map where the player knows what sort of thing to expect when they go there. Here's the haunted forest ruled by an evil faerie prince. Here's the mountains dotted with entrances to old dwarven ruins. Here's the swamp settled by (peaceful) frog-people.

It definitely doesn't need to be a completely separate aspect of gameplay. Like a minigame, almost. "Here's the stuff in the actual world, OR you can just roam around in this black fog and find things." Like, you can play the game, OR take part in an easter egg hunt. The exploration should fit within the actual world, complete with clues and potential motivations for exploring a given area, in a given direction. Sure, sometimes a little area's going to be a complete mystery, but there should still be rumors (however inaccurate, are generally based on SOME truth), notions, etc, as to what you might find and roughly where you might find it.

 

Basically, "there's probably something interesting and mildly pertinent to the immediate world around you over here, in this unmapped area," rather than simply "this is a video game, so the more square footage you uncover, the more monies and XPs you are going to uncover, serving only your advancement and being essentially disguised as actual world content, on the technicality of it being loosely styled after the game world's lore."

[Micamo]

That is the joy of exploration, to find out what's there. "Telling you what to expect" is sucking the mystery out. There's no reason the player should be given this information. Wandering about the wilderness and finding something you don't expect is fun.

I don't mean just flat-out spoiling it, you just give enough of a hint to make the choice between broad types of content rather than just directions. Evil faeries, dwarven ruins, or frog villages? The point is there's still plenty of surprises to be had, like, the evil faerie prince was actually killed several decades ago and replaced by a green dragon (and nobody has made it out of the forest alive to report the change in leadership). Those dwarven "ruins" are still very much active settlements, the dwarves living there just dressed up the exterior as ruins to keep their existence there a secret. The frog people have all mysteriously vanished, leaving their villages empty with no signs of conflict.

Edited August 14, 2013 by Micamo

[JFSOCC]

I don't know why I forgot the disappearance of the dwarves. Morrowind was the first, and one of the very few games for my Xbox (very much a PC gamer) and I remember extensively searching for any information about what happened to the dwarves after I first got introduced to the mystery. Same thing with the vampires of vvarvendel.

 

Self motivated quests are rare because it is hard to predict for a developer which ones will get any attention. As long as they don't worry about this and like to add to the mystery of the world, I think we'll be all right. Adding things to discover, with only hints of more, but no actual handholding is going to make the world a richer place, and I hope to see much content lacking exposition, or having only subtle exposition. (IE, rather, than "this happened", I'd like to see "Something clearly happened")

[Kjaamor]

I don't necessarily have any issue with the OP's suggestion, although I would suggest that P:E - a party-based tactical rpg - is less able to provide such things than Morrowind - a fantasy walking simulator with rpg elements.

 

I don't think exploration (in the non-linear sense) is necessarily something we should expect a huge amount of from P:E. Looking at its IE forefathers, BGI had by far the most exploration - and while it certainly had its moments most of the revealed places were disappointing for the time put into them. WSs like Morrowind or F3 handle this sort of thing far better by virtue of their gameplay and, to be honest, budget.

 

WSs lend themselves to incidental discovery for the simple reason that the vast majority of their games consist of incidental things. While none of us are after utter linearity, I'm sure most of us are still after a game with enough content that we aren't spending the vast majority of our time mundanely trudging up and down the same old roads. I think I can see Micamo's point regarding timed quests, but the simple fact is that a lot of the quests in Morrowind (and tES generally) are so bloody dull that walking off is a relief from them. I remain hopeful that P:E will not walk that particular line.