Mangler said:
So everyone wants QUICK rpgs!
Yoda Stories
Indy Desktop game
I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that those are two of the greatest "lunch-break" games ever made. There's nothing wrong with a little diversion now and then; everyone's had one of those dull half-hours before they have to such-and-such; everyone's felt like their brains were dripping out of their ear after a particularly long day at work.
Now, as for his "thesis statement" in that article...
Long, open ended, epic style quests can certainly be a good thing for an RPG. As long as they are written well, and serve to draw the player into a compelling, deep, rich and satisfying game world. However, such long quests can also serve to alienate, bore, or otherwise 'put-off' some players, including the "casual gamer' crowd. Aside from including long, grand-sized quests, there needs to also be an alternative side to the game(play) which can be accessed quickly and easily, and also put aside quickly and easily for when there is limited time (or motivation) to play.
I'm with him until halfway through. Yes, long quests -can- alienate and bore players. In the case of Oblivion, many alienated me because of their "roller-coaster" nature. Lady tells you to go here, script fires, msgbox("You are where the lady told you to go!") and you either fight there or some other person tells you what to do. Yes, any game can be broken down to this level, but the big O rarely seems to make any attempt at hiding this framework. It's like those FPS that shout "press action button to plant the bomb!" as you walk up to the transparent yellow bomb model that waits patiently to be textured... it's very much a psychological thing.
On the gameplay end, by building quests so rigidly you hamper the ability for a player to set their own goals within the framework of one of these grand, epic quests, and you can easily find yourself building a game where the systematic, emergent gameplay requires less attention before you have a "finished" product. The result is a talking checklist that constantly shouts "you aren't done yet!" and a world that offers little alternative. If this gigantic quest just told me what I needed to do to complete it, didn't bark at me at every step, and the rules handled the rest, "I'll get through the mountain pass for now," "better case the joint a little before the big heist," "I'll stock up now, so I can dive right in when I have more time" and other short-term player-set goals are no longer invalidated by comparison to achieving each predetermined checkpoint.
I think the player would feel more like they were working toward something, making progress at whatever pace they choose, possibly amusing themselves with whatever worldly distractions along the way. If you try to chop the quest up into chunks on the development end, you are, perhaps unwittingly, dictating the denominator for that quest... at which points the player "makes progress" and when they should feel rewarded.
Heh, I think I got off on a tangent from the author's point, but whatever. I don't think chopping down quests is the way to solve the problem. Big,
open quests are very symbiotic with gameworld interaction.