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Incline Quests which you would like to see in RPGs?

thesecret1

Arcane
Joined
Jun 30, 2019
Messages
5,847
Have a game with a rival adventure group and get quest to sabotage it. Just fuck with it like how they tend to fuck with you in these games. Example: Sneak through an entire dungeon completely undetected, all the way to the MacGuffin your rivals want, but you don't give a shit about. Then wait. Eventually, half dead, beaten up adventuring party arrives after slaughtering its way through the dungeon. Then make an appearance, snatch the McGuffin, do a pompous dialogue with a lot of mustache twirling and boisterous laughing, then make quick escape while the rival party watches. Proceed to pawn the MacGuffin off to the local crime lord and laugh at the pain in the ass your rivals will need to go through to get it.
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
Fuck quests, goal-based gameplay rules.

Sounds interesting, please explain to me what that means as if I was twelve.
I assume they mean something like this:
Consider Fort Joy in DOS2. You're given the goal of getting out, but not told how to do it. There are multiple ways to get out and you're set loose to figure it out on your own.

This goes hand in hand with TDTTOE(The DevTeam Thinks Of Everything) design
Not quite, DOS is still very scripted.
Think more Dungeon Master, Dragon Wars, or (most of) Ultima Underworld where "quests" (=things you need to do) just emerge naturally from exploration, without some NPC giving you a task.
 

buffalo bill

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
Messages
1,009
How about a quest for a mcguffin that doesn't exist?

E.g. the king says "we need item X to quell the forces of chaos at our gates!", knowing that X doesn't exist, and that it is the belief that X is out there somewhere that maintains the king's power and order in the kingdom (like if the overseer were to know that there is no water chip, but sends you out to look for one so the people in the vault don't freak out). When you discover that X is made up, you face the choice to either reveal that X is a fiction and upset the order of things, or go with the lie to maintain peace
 
Joined
May 31, 2018
Messages
2,554
Location
The Present
I like investigations. Real investigations like in Sigil of PS:T, Skinners Murder in BG2, and the murder in Cyseal of D:OS1. Not just being shuffled through maps for a late reveal like in PoE. Conversely, it might also be fun to execute a murder in an RPG and try to get away with it. I can't think of any cRPGs were the player has to deal with ramifications of their assassination work. Being framed for murder in BG1 and dealing with that was really cool.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
Dec 28, 2011
Messages
1,679
Location
Core City
Obviously, quests that have multiple ways to solve involving different aspects of gameplay - combat, use of skills, finding a certain item, exploring a certain part of the scenario, etc. Possibly and probably, a combination of these things. And it's okay that some of these quests are based on shades of grey, as long as they are not always the same shades - after all, once in a while something is almost white or black in life. There are good people, and assholes/psychopaths. Eventually you'll find some of them.

That said, there are some kinds of quests I'd like to see. Some of those I've seen in games in the past, but nothing wrong with repeating a structure that worked well, right?

Quests that only appear in places you have visited after you have completed quests in other places. I like the idea of an RPG where the "density" of quests from certain places is somewhat constant, so instead of having 40 quests available right at the start in a certain city, you have 12-15 of them, and the others will gradually appear as you progress in the game doing things on your own or in other places. They do not necessarily form a "chain" as they do not have to be literally linked with the same theme, but are indirect consequences of each other. Let's just say you did a quest where you killed a group of raiders in one place. Well, the raiders actually drove a group of wolves away from the nearby town and now the cattle are being attacked by these wolves. Things like that.

A quest where you have two characters mutually accusing each other of the same thing, but depending on your choices you find different evidence pointing to the guilt of one of them; but on mutually exclusive paths where you could never get 100% of the evidence in a single playtrough so you would have to go with your gut.

If it is a realistic or futuristic game, a quest where you need to visit a place that is apparently connected to the deaths of several people, and when exploring the place things happen that you can never fully explain as natural events but that are subtle enough that maybe there is a non-sobrenatural explanation, but that nothing is really explicit in the end and you are left without an answer.

In fact, I like quests that stay open-ended, and you never have the answer whether what you did was really good or bad thing, or whether it will make a difference in the long run. (And let the consequences stay open even at the end of the game).

Quests where you have to prepare a place to suffer an enemy attack, but you can really influence the place in an interesting way, creating artificial barriers (perhaps destructible) at certain points or setting traps to then face the attack.

Quests where for a specific period of time you control a different group of characters (who may have attributes or equipment derived from the choices you made previously in the game) whose choices you make with them during the quest will interfere with the end of the quest when you take back control of your characters.

Quests where you will compete with another group of characters "equivalent" to yours, being able to interact with that group in several points or even simply kill everyone if it is your choice.

Etc.
 
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FriendlyMerchant

Guest
I would like a quest where you invent and sell illegal gadgets while avoiding the city tax officials who try to hit you for income tax evasion.
 

AdolfSatan

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,890
A quest where you have two characters mutually accusing each other of the same thing, but depending on your choices you find different evidence pointing to the guilt of one of them; but on mutually exclusive paths where you could never get 100% of the evidence in a single playtrough so you would have to go with your gut.
Expeditions Viking has a quest that pretty much fits your description. It's a nice game marred by rather simplistic combat.
 

Nortar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Sep 5, 2017
Messages
1,415
Pathfinder: Wrath
Funcom's the Secret World, despite being an mmo, had some of the most complicated and interesting quests when it was first released.
Doing those quests took some research both in and out of game.
I still remember having to download a morse-code translator app on my irl phone, to record and decode an ingame transmitted message to advance just one step of a quest.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
Patron
Joined
Sep 25, 2012
Messages
28,370
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Nix to quests, give me a smart adversary capable of interfering with my attempts to thwart him, and capable of acting and reacting to my actions. Also capable of putting up a good fight.
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
Developer
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
Messages
3,110
Location
デゼニランド
From the top of my head, some stuff I barely see but could be interesting to explore:

1. Expeditions to uncharted regions. You could find a small isolated village with unique flora and fauna, gain the trust of locals, see if there's anything that might warrant a trading agreement. Or end up on an island full of cannibals and try to get home alive.
2. Searching for rare & unique items. Could work well as a long-term quest and something you keep in mind while visiting various shops and areas around the world.
3. Being a guinea pig for an alchemist.
4. Posing as a mage's apprentice to learn the secret behind his powerful magic.

Ideally, I'd rather not have 'quests', but 'goals' that can be achieved using existing game mechanics with muh story events working more as rewards (along things that affect the game world) rather than a thing you get showered with on every corner.
 

Theldaran

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 10, 2015
Messages
1,772
I would like for a merchant NPC to tell me about their trans problems. This is a serious matter and wouldn't feel shoehorned AT ALL!
 

Ihavenoidea

Educated
Joined
May 12, 2020
Messages
80
Any quick gain resulting in a much bigger problems later is good.
Generally evil quests should have better gear/more exp at the expense of being less of them since you're not really helping others with them.

For a more quest'y example hunting for rare meat seems interesting and makes more sense than standard 20 wolf skins. Evil players get thinking races to kill, or maybe a trip to a zoo equivalent. Beyond the Beef in New Vegas was a really good example of similar premise.
 

Darkzone

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2013
Messages
2,323
A heist quest would be cool. Assemble a crew, do the legwork, plan and execute - everything dependent on your skills and choices. And play "Green Onions" as you make away with the loot.


This was a pretty interesting heist simulator, it's a sort of an adventure/tactics hybrid, there's more of the planning/execution gameplay in this video:


If you list all the heist-related systems you'll see that technically most of them have actually been implemented in numerous RPGs (there's party building, guard patrols, stealth/sneaking, stealing, breaking and entering, lockpicking, disabling alarms, fencing stolen goods, and so on), and you're interacting with these systems all the time, but you never quite have the feeling you're doing a "heist quest" because it's not presented as such.

Nothing else to say than "They stole a milion":
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,593
Location
Nottingham
From the top of my head, some stuff I barely see but could be interesting to explore:

1. Expeditions to uncharted regions. You could find a small isolated village with unique flora and fauna, gain the trust of locals, see if there's anything that might warrant a trading agreement. Or end up on an island full of cannibals and try to get home alive.
2. Searching for rare & unique items. Could work well as a long-term quest and something you keep in mind while visiting various shops and areas around the world.
3. Being a guinea pig for an alchemist.
4. Posing as a mage's apprentice to learn the secret behind his powerful magic.

Ideally, I'd rather not have 'quests', but 'goals' that can be achieved using existing game mechanics with muh story events working more as rewards (along things that affect the game world) rather than a thing you get showered with on every corner.

Have you tried to include any of these in any of the game's which you've developed dude?

(apologies, I'm not familiar with the games you've sprouted)
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

Graverobber Foundation
Developer
Joined
Nov 21, 2015
Messages
3,110
Location
デゼニランド
Have you tried to include any of these in any of the game's which you've developed dude?
No, or at least not yet. What I've been making up to this point and what I'm making now follows a design philosophy that is fundamentally incompatible with most of the ideas listed above.

I'd like to try something that could utilize these ideas at a later date.
 
Joined
Apr 10, 2018
Messages
6,842
Location
Mouse Utopia
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
Trying to impress an edgy philopshical granny only for her to be disappointed anyway.

I think my favourite RPG quest is the ending quest of Avernum 1, where you assassinate Emperor Hawthorne. There's so much leading up to it, in terms of remote locations, powerful figures such as Archamge Erika and dragons disclosing secrets, and so on. And there's the thematic aspect, which is that after spending the game in caves the Empire cast you down into, you now climb a lofty surface-world tower, in a spiral upwards, to fight the Emperor.

I'm honestly fine with FedEx and Kill Bad Guys quests, they should just have some cool story attached, as well as a lot of buildup finding secrets and unlocking things through dialogue, looting keys, passwords, special spells or Fallout's Science skill, etc.
 
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Alphons

Cipher
Joined
Nov 20, 2019
Messages
2,579
I really liked the statue project and negotiations with Caladon quests in Arcanum.

I'd love to see something like this, but more expanded. Research the other party through various sources (not one book given to you by a questgiver)- depending on your skills bribe, blackmail and steal to get sensitive information or just do your research with a financial ledger .

During the negotiations knowledge you've gained, but also your skills give you various options. You also have to be mindful of various pitfalls. You wouldn't want to annoy someone by accident. On the other hand you might want to annoy someone on purpose, making them less prone to notice the smaller details.
 

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