PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,182
Playing some "more modern" RPGs now, and one thing that's really grating on me is the lack of active player participation beyond being the ultimate errand-boy/hired gun. Part of it, of course, is the infamous quest compass, which is ever so annoying. In older games, you'd actually have to pay attention to dialogue, pick up clues on locations, then search them out, consult your map, not it's just follow the damn arrow. But it goes beyond that, to something older RPGs might be guilty of as well.
The problem is that most quests have an equivalent of a quest compass built into the very structure of the quest. Instead of giving the player some relatively complex task to achieve at their own discretion, using their mind, RPGs typically break down the overall goal of the quest into small simple steps (if the entire quest isn't simple to begin with), which are then given to the player, much like the arrows on the compass. So even if the overall "quest" sounds interesting and involves something complex, for example, helping a group of people evacuate a dangerous region, the player will be given simple mindless tasks that together lead up to this, e.g. first run to place A, fetch food there for the journey, then task #2, run to place B, fetch wagon for the journey there, then task #3, clear road leading to evacuation route of monsters. Even though the evacuation sounds like an interesting undertaking, what you actually end up doing is a bunch of simple fetch and combat quests, without having to think about anything at all.
A much more interesting approach to quests would be to simply give the player high level instructions and let them figure out how to get it done. In the example above, the player would simply be told to help a group to evacuate the region. It would be up to the player to think of ways to get this done, and it would have to be designed in a logical, common sense way. Ideally, there would be different ways to achieve the goal (e.g. different places to obtain supplies, different transportation methods, and so on), and also different results from the quest based on how much work you put in. So for instance, obtaining a wagon, some food, and arming some of the group for protection during the journey would be the lowest threshold, after which you can complete the quest. But if that's all you do, they might come across a river on their route (which you didn't foresee because you didn't scout the route ahead even though they told you that's the route they are taking), and since you haven't supplied a boat or fixed the bridge on that river, they will be stuck there for a while, fixing it themselves, during which time they will be attacked by bandits and suffer losses. So even though you completed the quest, you will get that sub-optimal "quest ending" and possibly lose some NPC merchants/etc because they died. If you didn't think of arming the group before the journey, maybe they d be defenseless and completely wiped out during a bandit attack. Again you'd complete the quest but in a very different way, with very different results for the world.
These kinds of quests would be much more difficult to implement, but they would make the player really think about stuff, and be really involved in the gameplay, beyond just combat and dialogue and exploration. They would also obviously introduce a ton of deep C&C. Now, I am sure it would be next to impossible to implement something like this in mainstream RPGs, where many of the casual players would have a fit the moment they were confronted with ambiguous, high level instructions. But I would love to see either indie devs or maybe a studio like Obsidian with Kickstarter help try something like this.
The problem is that most quests have an equivalent of a quest compass built into the very structure of the quest. Instead of giving the player some relatively complex task to achieve at their own discretion, using their mind, RPGs typically break down the overall goal of the quest into small simple steps (if the entire quest isn't simple to begin with), which are then given to the player, much like the arrows on the compass. So even if the overall "quest" sounds interesting and involves something complex, for example, helping a group of people evacuate a dangerous region, the player will be given simple mindless tasks that together lead up to this, e.g. first run to place A, fetch food there for the journey, then task #2, run to place B, fetch wagon for the journey there, then task #3, clear road leading to evacuation route of monsters. Even though the evacuation sounds like an interesting undertaking, what you actually end up doing is a bunch of simple fetch and combat quests, without having to think about anything at all.
A much more interesting approach to quests would be to simply give the player high level instructions and let them figure out how to get it done. In the example above, the player would simply be told to help a group to evacuate the region. It would be up to the player to think of ways to get this done, and it would have to be designed in a logical, common sense way. Ideally, there would be different ways to achieve the goal (e.g. different places to obtain supplies, different transportation methods, and so on), and also different results from the quest based on how much work you put in. So for instance, obtaining a wagon, some food, and arming some of the group for protection during the journey would be the lowest threshold, after which you can complete the quest. But if that's all you do, they might come across a river on their route (which you didn't foresee because you didn't scout the route ahead even though they told you that's the route they are taking), and since you haven't supplied a boat or fixed the bridge on that river, they will be stuck there for a while, fixing it themselves, during which time they will be attacked by bandits and suffer losses. So even though you completed the quest, you will get that sub-optimal "quest ending" and possibly lose some NPC merchants/etc because they died. If you didn't think of arming the group before the journey, maybe they d be defenseless and completely wiped out during a bandit attack. Again you'd complete the quest but in a very different way, with very different results for the world.
These kinds of quests would be much more difficult to implement, but they would make the player really think about stuff, and be really involved in the gameplay, beyond just combat and dialogue and exploration. They would also obviously introduce a ton of deep C&C. Now, I am sure it would be next to impossible to implement something like this in mainstream RPGs, where many of the casual players would have a fit the moment they were confronted with ambiguous, high level instructions. But I would love to see either indie devs or maybe a studio like Obsidian with Kickstarter help try something like this.