The current questing system in most MMOs goes a little like this:
You walk into town and look around and there's usually a visual clue or a sign, perhaps a golden exclamation mark over certain NPC's heads, which says, "Talk to me! I've got a quest!"
So you talk to these specially marked people, click through the page of dialog, then note the objective. "Kill 10 Rats. Ok. Got it." Then you hit Accept and off you go to kill your 10 Rats.
While this system can be very helpful in reducing your downtime, it's not very immersive.
I'd actually like to see a game where not one person has a sign over their head. I want to mouse over everyone and see a Dialog balloon for every, single NPC. I want to be able to talk to every single person in town, if I choose, and they'll all have something to say to me. Sure, not all of them will have a quest, that's asking a bit too much. Some of them might even just say, "Hi, Cap'n. How's it going? Sorry I can't stop to talk. Got to get these cows milked."
But other NPCs might lead into more detailed dialog, as Gordo mentions on his Blog. And these conversations could allude to a potential quest, or even have the quest giver flat out say he needs your help.
Instead of a "Quest Log", I'd like to see a Notes Log, or Journal, where every conversation you have with someone of note would be summarized and recorded. A farmer milking cows is not important to warrant a Note, but a drunk whose son was killed by Bandits certainly would be, and this may result in a Note in your Journal along these lines:
"Spoke to Jenkins in Goldshire. He says his son was recently killed by bandits."
There's no blatantly obvious Objective with this Note. No sign of an "Avenge Jenkins' son by killing 10 Bandits" sort of thing. Just a note that you spoke to Jenkins and discovered his son was killed by bandits.
What you do with the information you get from Jenkins is entirely up to you. But now that you have that Note in your Journal, speaking to Farmer Jed might elicit more than just "Can't stop. Cows to milk."
Farmer Jed now says, "I saw you talkin' to Jenkins earlier. Damn shame about his boy, damn shame. He was a good lad. Blast those bandits, and blast them good fer nothin' Stormwind soldiers. We told 'em them bandits was gettin' bolder. Even told 'em they was camped out by the Fargodeep Mine. They didn't do nothin'. They just hang out at the Northshire Abbey, drinkin' the wine. Bah! Look at the time! These cows won't milk themselves! Excuse me, Cap'n."
Again, no blatant quest objective. No Accept or Decline button. Just an option to say Goodbye and end the conversation.
But if you look in your Journal you'll see the Note for Jenkins has been updated:
"Spoke to Jenkins, in Goldshire, whose son was killed by bandits.
Farmer Jed says the Bandit camp is near the Fargodeep Mine."
Still no objective. Still no "Kill 10 Bandits" quest. But just a little bit of reading comprehension tells you that maybe you should check out the Fargodeep Mine, so you do. If you're not sure where the Fargodeep Mine is, now that Jed's mentioned it, if you talked to him again or to one of the other townsfolk you'll have the option to ask about the Mine and get directions.
So you make your way to the Mine and there are the Bandits and they're naturally not too happy to see you. Several of them attack you but you successfully defend yourself and dispatch all but one of them. As the last Bandit's health gets to 10% (just as an example, it could be when the second-to-last Bandit is killed) your Auto-Attack turns off and the Bandit becomes immune to your attacks. He also stops attacking you (phew!) and instead of an "Attack" icon when you mouse over him you get a Dialog box.
A Dialog box?
So you click and Talk to the Bandit.
"I'm sorry," he says. "Please don't kill me!"
Had you been out here just grinding on the Bandits and not spoken to Jenkins, this wouldn't have happened, instead the Bandits would have all fought to the death. But you've got a Note in your Journal that you spoke to Jenkins, so this scene plays out instead. If you were grouped with someone doing this quest, and you'd spoken to Jenkins but they had not, this scene would have still played out.
"Please don't kill me!" says the Bandit, and the Dialog box provides you with two choices: Interrogate the Bandit, or Finish him!
Clicking "Finish him" puts you back into Combat where the Bandit is quickly dispatched. Searching his body you find An Interesting Dagger, which if you examine will discover it has the letter J carved into the hilt. Checking your Journal you see the reference to Jenkins and the Bandits has again been updated. Now it states that you encountered and slew several Bandits at the Fargodeep Mine, and you found an interesting dagger with a J on the hilt. If you return to old man Jenkins and talk to him you'll have the option to show him the Interesting Dagger. Doing so will "complete" the quest you didn't realize you were on, rewarding you with some XP and the Dagger, which Jenkins returns to you. Spoils of war and all that.
"Now if you'll excuse me," old man Jenkins says, "I'd like to be left alone. Goodbye."
And your Journal gets updated in a manner which shows that this particular story has been completed.
That's if you go the blood thirsty "Show No Mercy!" route.
Clicking "Interrogate the Bandit", however, opens up more dialog (which I can't be bothered creating) but you basically reveal that you're there because of Jenkins and his dead son. The Bandit confesses that he killed Jenkins' son and says if you spare him, he'll turn himself in. Now you have the choice of killing him, or letting him go. Killing him results in the above situation occurring with you finding the Interesting Dagger, blah blah blah. Sparing his life will result in the Bandit running off towards Town. The next time you're in Town the Stormwind Guard stationed there will tell you that Jenkins' son's killer has turned himself in. He'll offer you a reward, which in the interest of fairness will be a monetary amount equivalent to the vendor value of The Interesting Dagger that you didn't get because you didn't kill the Bandit. This will complete the Interrogation side of the quest you didn't know you were on, or maybe you did ;)
Whenever possible, this is how I'd like quests to be done. No looking around for golden exclamation marks. Just talk to everyone. And if a quest appears vague or lacks information, talk to other people. Some NPCs will have quests, of sorts, and some NPCs will offer additional information to help you complete those quests.
If you're a Skinner or Miner (for example), talking to an Armorer or Weaponsmith might result in a response like "Sorry, Cap'n. I'm a little flustered right now. I've got a big order from the Guard and I'm running low on supplies."
Looking in your Journal you see a note stating the local Armorer (or Weaponsmith) is running low on supplies, and perhaps you can be of assistance.
If you hit the forest now and kill some critters and skin them, or go Mining for Ore, your Journal will get updated to reflect this.
"The Goldshire Armorer is having trouble filling a big order. I've got some animal skins he could use, but I think he'll need more."
So you gather more mats and your Journal updates itself, until it reads:
"The Goldshire Armorer is having trouble filling a big order. I think I've got enough animal skins to help him out."
When you return to him you get the same message, "Big order, low on supplies." but now there's an option to offer him the Skins, and doing so naturally completes the quest.
Sure, some people would still just click through every NPC's Dialog then look in their Journal to see what's there, what needs to be done, etc, but with this system the objectives will not always be clearly spelled out for you. It requires reading comprehension.
A quest system like this would help to promote immersion within your gaming world, and really make you feel a part of what's going on. Unfortunately it may not be that popular, because most of today's Instant Gratification Gamers just want to know what to kill, and how many.
Rats? Okay. 10 of them? Consider it done.
Really. How much fun is that?
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4 comments:
This is, of course, the RPG element missing from MMORPGs these days.
The "I want to really talk to the characters, not be told what to do".
As a long-time roleplayer and an especially strong advocate of Immersive Storytelling, I really like this approach.
But, I can see all sorts of problems.
Firstly, it does require that your journal be as uncomplicated as possible. In past games and even tabletop roleplaying, sometimes journal notes just clutter up. What if, in your example, Fargodeep Mine wasn't mentioned, but a mine was mentioned. Would you go to every single mine looking for these bandits? Or would you turn to Thottbot to get the easy answer?
Secondly, sometimes even with the gold question mark indicator, I lose track of who is handing out what quests. Imagine how hard it would be looking for a particular npc in Stormwind to get an update to a particular case.
Thirdly, what happens if you don't follow up these cases? Do you carry those notes in an uncompleted format? That would really, really bug me, simply because it means somehow I've failed to live up to an immersive world.
I think there's a lot of give and take with how questing is done with MMORPGs in general. I do think the current system of MMO quests are incredibly dumbed down, and I would like to see more continuity in the quests at lower/higher levels.
The big question is how to get players to move in a particular direction without being obvious about it...
Good post and I think I would enjoy a system like that for my first character. For all the alts I would probably use a system like thottbot to skip ahead.
The questing in titan quest ran along the lines you mention here, but sadly, the NPCs still use the ! system.
WOW proved that to make a product successful, it has to be appealing to the lowest IQ denominator which is one of the reasons so many guilds are downright terrible once endgame hits. Endgame is not easy, leveling is.
Questing in my ideal MMO would be the style used in oblivion where a player is given a quest journal, but it doesn't spell it out. I would also incorporate an "easy mode" that can be toggled on or off at the players will should they get lost and frustrated. Easy mode = ! and ?, reg = what you described in your post with a detailed quest journal.
Great post and great idea. It would go so lovely with my craving for creating your character's story and growing the character from zero to hero in the game. Not by counting the levels but by seeing the growth as a fictional character.
As every discussion could have several options, all options would yield some sort of reputation or alignment which could help you or hinder you later on. This would create a completely different playing experience with all the alts you might possibly come up with, as you would be skipping some discussions and prefer others with later characters.
And your actions as that one character could direct you to the other side, too.
Of course, it's a wet dream at the moment. But it's a nice one.
Very nice idea. I also think there should be a differentiation between the simpler Quests, let's call them "Tasks", and the by now rare epic Quest chains, that are related to world events and are quite lengthy. Think of the now abandoned Onyxia Questchain in WoW.
A good approach would also be to allow players to do more with items and the environment in general, more dynamic environment (sounds complicated eh) and getting away from purely combat driven gameplay.
I just wonder when designers actually will do this, rather than to be safe and very slowly evolve the quest system. I might be dead before it takes an evolutionary leap, eeks.
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