Quest failure that isn't from mutually exclusive quests/killing important NPC/run out of time?

[deuxhero]

I don't see quests you can actually fail a lot, even in older games, that don't fall into one of the three categories in the opening (or the escort/hostage you were meant to save dying, but that wouldn't fit). Any well handled ways to fail a quest you can think of?

The three I can think of off the top of my head that I liked are:

In New Vegas the quest Legend of the Star is always marked as "failed" when completed. This really underscores how crappy the "prize" for all that effort is.

Also from New Vegas is a quest you have to find a mole. After getting information that may lead to the mole you can tell it to the guy who turns out to be the mole and the quest will have a bad ending. Good way to punish player for being stupid.

In Arcanum there is a murder mystery in the elf town. It's possible to just turn in the obvious suspect and the quest will be marked as completed. You are never told you just doomed an innocent man because you didn't bother looking past the obvious.

 

[Absinthe]

The Witcher has a few quests you can botch this way. So does Age of Decadence.

And I'm pretty sure you botched the Legend of the Star quest. There was a better reward than a handful of bottlecaps.

 

[epeli]

I'm pretty sure this sort of game design (generally having failure as a possibility, and especially making those failures non-obvious) is not popular because it triggers casual gamers hard.

Underrail has a few good examples, particularly in one questline concerning a certain secretive mercenary group. Minor spoilers if you don't know what I'm referring to.

tl;dr

Fairly early on in the game there is a simple case. You meet this creepy fuck who wants to ask you some questions about a secure facility you had a chance to visit earlier. Doesn't matter what kind of bullshit you feed to him, you still get paid the same. You can also rat him to relevant authorities, but that line of action leads nowhere. But should you give him real information that he needs to proceed with his plans, he will later on offer a couple of quests inside that facility. And if you did, the creepy fucker's group will offer you three more quests a long time afterwards. Unbeknownst to you, they're still just testing your skills. If you handle these trials sub-optimally, the quests are still marked as completed and you get rewarded as usual, but the guys just fuck off silently and leave you wondering who they even were. But if you performed well in all of their trials, you get to join this mysterious group.

One of those trials is not particularly interesting as far as failure states go. You have to expose a fraud who's selling dangerous street drugs. The client tells you very clearly what he wants done, so I doubt any player would fail this without trying on purpose.

Another one is, similar to Arcanum, a murder mystery case where you can finger a wrong suspect. But that results in some chaos when your client goes on a drunken rampage and (tries to) kill the guy you fingered. Quest completed, but the near-immediate consequences might lead players to think that there is a better way.

Then there is a jailbreak job, this one is the best. An associate of this group is jailed in a local high-security prison. Your job is to make sure he hasn't ratted the group out and try to get him.
Depending on your character's skills, you could do anything from lying to the prison warden, arranging a meeting with the prisoner and persuading him to suicide with poison you smuggled in. Or break in to the prison cell area and assassinate the prisoner yourself or just have a chat with him to learn more about the case. Or discover an old half-finished escape tunnel, dig it out and let the guy escape that way, leaving the entire prison and town guard on high alert. Or you could work for the town's judge to gain his trust, help him with the case the prisoner is involved in and eventually convince him to release the prisoner on the grounds that there is no evidence to keep him in. Or some mix of these. The opportunity space is very wide here, and that is easily misleading. Players have a tendency to tunnel-vision towards the first solution they saw/thought of. Only getting the prisoner out legally counts as as full success.

 

[Cross]

I'm not sure if this counts as failure, but it's quite common for quests to have two broad resolutions: an 'easy' suboptimal resolution and a 'true' resolution, the latter being more profitable and rewarding, but requiring more effort to reach, like passing a skill check or having the right item. One example that comes to mind is a quest in Kotor 2 where an NPC in Dantooine asks you to retrieve some atmospheric sensors he lost. If you have Bao-Dur in your party when you find those sensors, he'll point out they have a secret purpose and the quest can go in a different direction. If you don't have Bao-Dur with you, it just remains a fetch quest where you get rewarded for returning the sensors.

New Reno in Fallout 2 has quite a few of these types of quests (though more intricate than the above example):
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Find_out_who_was_responsible_for_Richard_Wright's_overdose
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Recover_your_stolen_car

 

[laclongquan]

Fallout Tactics has a quest where a casino master hire you to deal with a freelance trader, Ma Baker. In return he paid a few items, nice, worth the effort, but not that special.

Turn out Ma is a BOS agent. Your rank got demoted for that stunt~

How would you know to avoid it? Well, she's the most friendly NPC among a pile of neutral or slightly hostile pile of NPC in the town. Plus her inventory got a small amount of BOS scrip money which is a rare sight to see outside of Quarter Master barter screen. So if you dont care about a friendly mysterious trader and just straight up and kill her, business as usual, you got screwed.

If you dont kill her you dont get demoted but no items.

 

[Scruffy]

And I'm pretty sure you botched the Legend of the Star quest. There was a better reward than a handful of bottlecaps.

no, the quest always fails, and then you are given the quest "a valuable lesson"

 

[Mark Richard]

There's some games where you can choose to fail (perhaps in exchange for a bribe) and the quest will be marked as failed in turn, but gradually questing have been... reclassified? Like, if a merchant hires you for protection and some local thugs pay you off, technically you've just failed that merchant's quest. So now the quests have shifted beyond the perspective of the initial quest giver to encompass the whole situation. Meaning if those local thugs pay you off, the quest is marked as resolved.

 

[Jokzore]

There's plenty of games both old (fallout) and new (witcher3) that have quests you can botch somehow or outright fail.

The reason most games won't let you do that is also the reason why most modern AAA games are sheit. Developers don't trust you to be an adult or think for yourself. They need to hold your hand and carefully guide you through the ''experience'' they've constructed. God forbid you attempt problem solving by yourself!

Also, everyone must have the SAME experience, having choice and consequence in your game could breed inequality and inequality , as you're well aware, is the source of all evil and all of our life problems.

To answer your question though, Dark Souls is kind of an interesting one, it doesn't have any quests per se or at least not in the traditional ''updated my journal'' sense but there is plenty of mistakes you can make that will result in NPCs storylines being cut short and precious loot being missed.