What TYPE of quests do you wish to see ingame ?

ArchivedUser

So we ALL know the usual gamut of quests we find in mmos. The Kill/Gather quests, the Messenger quests, Escorts, etc. Is there a type or a 'genre' that really excites you more than others and/or how would you IMPROVE a type for AoC? Also, feel free to be creative and very detailed, invent a new type for our AoC DEVS. As crazy as it might sound, it might inform the DEV as to what might be interesting, feasible and fun in Ashes. 

~ TIMERS: Give me timer quests! Saving people from an assault, thievery, assassins, being cooked or sacrificed. Make it a rooftop race or an intense chase through the city with a possible disastrous outcome if we get there too late.
~ RACES: (Vs other players): On foot, on mounts, on one foot... Give us some friendly competition to strengthen the bonds in nodes. 
~ DUELS: Player duels or PvE Duels but with a bit of theatrics/showmanship! 
~ RP QUESTS: Where you need to socialize (Use emotes) with Emotes. 

What about you? What Quest type do you prefer or want to see more. Be 'Creative' and as detailed (or not) as you wish.

ArchivedUser

As long as timed and race quests are instanced. With the ability to attack anyone that is not in one of 4 qualifying group sets, I can see griefing people trying to finish quests as an activity that people will engage in. "Hey look, let's sit here on the path they have to take and cc them or engage them in pvp so their timer fails."

ArchivedUser

Totally agree, it's not perfect. It's an idea that would need polishing in MANY ways. I'd rather people use the thread to add their ideas vs trying to fix mine though  

ArchivedUser

i would love to see kill 1 spider quest and when you finish that it turns into 10 and then 50 and then 100 then 1000.....




runs away before he gets stabbed

ArchivedUser

Shunex said:

i would love to see kill 1 spider quest and when you finish that it turns into 10 and then 50 and then 100 then 1000.....




runs away before he gets stabbed

Prepare the pitchforks! 

ArchivedUser

Opiee said:

Shunex said:

i would love to see kill 1 spider quest and when you finish that it turns into 10 and then 50 and then 100 then 1000.....




runs away before he gets stabbed

Prepare the pitchforks! 

oOoo fetch quest's too, travel the world to get me this item i need... and then travel all the way back.... just to go and get another item from the same place....



Ok i'll stop...  

but yeah i don't really want the generic quest's if we build up a node i want quests like this mob is attacking the settlers go kill the nest... and fix up the defense's

ArchivedUser

Personally I hate timed quests.

O, and we should have go get a certain amount of things from this particular creature, but they only pop in one area, and then only a few pop where you have to wait for them to spawn again in about an hour.  Yeah, no.  

ArchivedUser

i would prefer explorer quest e.g. you find a mysterious item, a NPC in a cave / dungeon or a letter or something and this starts a quest giving some context to the world around you.
I really dont like the concept of quest hubs that offer a thousand quests that are all not really interesting. IMO its a lot more interesting and immersive to be rewarded with an interesting quest line through exploring the world!
Innkeeper and such could give you clues where to find such quests.

Not all quests should be this way of course^^

ArchivedUser

I just want// will do quests that contribute to something useful for the entire community.

I loved in this preview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9b_hp9La78g that you can choose to do quests or not- and to turn them in or not.

I hope for many quests such as this- if you turn in meat you've farmed into a tavern NPC -it converts that meat into available food buffs for players to buy The more people that do the quests the better the stock etc xD

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

As long as timed and race quests are instanced. With the ability to attack anyone that is not in one of 4 qualifying group sets, I can see griefing people trying to finish quests as an activity that people will engage in. "Hey look, let's sit here on the path they have to take and cc them or engage them in pvp so their timer fails."

World will not end if you don't finish some of your quests.

So I see no reason whatsoever why game should force mechanics to ensure you finish all your quests.

ArchivedUser

Quests with options. like an option to kill the quest giver... been through to many quests that force you down a linear path without giving options on what your character does... what if I want to kill that npc that turned into a werewolf instead of saving them?

ArchivedUser

My two favorite quests of all time were:

1. The prismatic quest from EQII where you had to learn to speak to the giants, then gather rune fragments from all over the world to learn the dragon language then kill a raid boss.
2. The hunter class quest from WoW where you had to kill 4 demons in different parts of the world using all the hunter abilities and all your skill.

So I guess I enjoy immersive quests.

Basic kill/gather quests have been rehashed so many times, they don't hold my attention any more.

ArchivedUser

I most enjoy the long distance chain quests. Where you hear a rumor, talk to an npc, investigate, learn something new or find an item , investigate, etc. until you finally reach the end of the chain. They keep you moving through an area or world and incorporate "crime scenes" to tease the sleuth side of questing. 

ArchivedUser

I don't mind what task I'm told to do but what I would really like an MMORPG to do would be to actually give a bit more focus on the actual RPG aspect of the game.

By this I mean actually having multiple branching story options to choose from. Give players options in what it is they want to do.

GW2 original storyline "somewhat" allowed this by having you choose to go to a Church(?) or Hospital; save the few or save the many and choosing factions to represent. These were all good ideas but I feel they could have been executed better. It would also have been nicer if there were more options like this.

I'd really enjoy it if there were side quests which gave players options to branch out and really make their character their own. Nowadays most MMO quest chains are generally just tedious tasks with story tacked on for the sake of it. It would be interesting to see quests which are all individually crafted to give players hard decisions for what it is that they want to do.

ArchivedUser

I would love to have that kind of freedom in a MMO as @Fanzhon suggests, but programming that for tens of thousands of players would probably be a programmers nightmare.  Perhaps the day will come in the future...after all, we did get the Star Trek Communicators.  

ArchivedUser

I'd like to see a mechanic/quest where the 'quest' is: YOU actually hand out quests to NPCs. A bit like a puzzle where you have to gauge the npcs experience vs capabilities and assign quests to them. 

EXAMPLE: You're given 3 quests to assign; 
1. Hunt the rabid wolves in the northern grove.
2. Gather ingredients (Many) for a Venison pie.
3. Train the new recruits that just joined the camp. 

And now, in front of you, 5 candidates to which you can ask questions and have a conversation with. Then you get to decide who you're sending on which quests and it might take a few hours to get the results, which can be varied. 

The soldier you sent to kill the wolf had no tracking skills and you misjudged that, thinking she'd be the strongest but in fact, she didn't find the wolves. 

The young excited man DID find all the ingredients for the venison pie. 

And the old man you assigned to train the recruits tought them mostly how to fish and hunt. Which is great for the garrisons kitchen but not awesome for guard duty... 

Stuff like that. Just an idea that could probably be very much improved hehe

~ V

ArchivedUser

The kind that don't reward experience. This was something that was never in Final fantasy 11 and I never really got used to. Items, gold, permissions and titles are kool but if your going to get xp it should be from what you have to do from the quest. The monsters you killed ect, not just a glob at the end for no reason.

ArchivedUser

DevonMeep said:

The kind that don't reward experience. This was something that was never in Final fantasy 11 and I never really got used to. Items, gold, permissions and titles are kool but if your going to get xp it should be from what you have to do from the quest. The monsters you killed ect, not just a glob at the end for no reason.

The journey is the experience kind of thing?

ArchivedUser

Vhanz said:

I'd like to see a mechanic/quest where the 'quest' is: YOU actually hand out quests to NPCs.

Will you also be giving out rewards to them? And out of your own pocket?

1. I don't see why NPCs should do the work, and you get reward in their place.
2. If you are not getting reward, I don't see why people would do this quest in the first place.

ArchivedUser

Ninja Shadow said:

DevonMeep said:

The kind that don't reward experience. This was something that was never in Final fantasy 11 and I never really got used to. Items, gold, permissions and titles are kool but if your going to get xp it should be from what you have to do from the quest. The monsters you killed ect, not just a glob at the end for no reason.

The journey is the experience kind of thing?

Precisely. If anything quests should just be kind of a lead in to a cool area to explore or to a dungeon.

ArchivedUser

There is never enough 'kill bears' quests...arrogant furballs

ArchivedUser

I believe something called a quest should be more than just “go get a loaf of bread and bring it back”. Or “kill 10 wolves” only to have to “kill 10 slightly different color wolves”. These types of quests are both done to death and boring to those familiar to the genre. They are filler

I’d like to see more quests that require some detective work, or puzzle solving.  While I feel like DDO missed the mark as a whole, some of the quests and dungeon puzzles were better than a lot of competitors.

The best quests also continue a story.  Make sure the players feel like part of the story or situation.  Being part of the solution to a problem... or even the cause of one gives motivation to do whatever it is you are having them do.

Good luck with your quest designs. I hope I could inspire something!

ArchivedUser

Quests, quests, and more quests. Maybe I have been reading WAY too many LitRPG books lately and knowing a little about computer programming and memory space maybe this is not possible yet but how about unique quests (1000's of them?) based on Node location, time of year, race, class (or class combo), ect...
Just thinking out loud here...

ArchivedUser

I like having different combinations of quests.  I actually found guild wars 2  progessive zone quests intersting the first time you did them having an area that just had quests was kinda cool I would prefer a little more aesthethic than just the quest appearing in the window however something like a magical servant delivering a note ect.    I also like getting quests from just having converstations with different NPCs. Dont need the arrow over thier head pointing I am the quest guy. 

ArchivedUser

- Quests needs to feel and also be meaningful. 
- Rather few long questlines with great rewards than hundreds of short ones with crab.
- Quest should encourage to explore and find hidden treasures.
- Some quests should contain choises. These choises would then have influence to reward and what kind of exp the node gets.
- Lots of different kind of quests to prevent repeatness.
- Profession related quests. Gatherers, crafters..
- Class related quests.

These came up my mind atm. :-)

ArchivedUser

Gothix said:

UnknownSystemError said:

As long as timed and race quests are instanced. With the ability to attack anyone that is not in one of 4 qualifying group sets, I can see griefing people trying to finish quests as an activity that people will engage in. "Hey look, let's sit here on the path they have to take and cc them or engage them in pvp so their timer fails."

World will not end if you don't finish some of your quests.

So I see no reason whatsoever why game should force mechanics to ensure you finish all your quests.

it is called database optimization, if you have 10k players on one "server" and each one has 30 quest slots and they each keep 20 of those quests for more than 6 months in their quest log, then get frustrated they cannot take a new quest and delete/rush complete 10 of those old stale quests (that they can't remember where they got them from, and might not be able to get again), you now have 100,000 "holes" in your database, most likely on the same table, way down deep in the already optimized, hasn't changed in months, section of the table.

You can think of it like hard drive fragmentation, although that is not really an accurate representation of the situation, it makes a decent analogy.  I'm not a DBA, but I have worked very extensively in (a whopping 1 DB type) postgreSQL (I hope Intrepid is using Oracle DBs) with a backup software company, where our databases had (I don't work there anymore) the potential to have hundreds of millions of "holes" as file blocks get written and removed frequently.  

Performance can take a hit in range of tens of thousands of percent (as in something that should take 1ms taking 10 seconds instead), now that might not seem a lot, but when you consider that at 1ms a database might be handling 1000 of those operations every second, now you are restricted to 1 per 10 seconds.  That shows up in massive lag in game, especially when you start to get into hundreds or thousands of tables having the possibility of the same issues on the same server at the same time.

going back to your post

if you allow players to have too many quests at the same time, this can get out of hand fast, so most online games limit your quests to a reasonable level, unless they don't understand the possible problems this can cause, or cave to player requests to increase the quest log size...

(one last thing... when you have a weekly server maint that gets extended, it might be because of database optimization to clear these types of "holes" up... although in the backup biz those massive DB repairs take 2-10+ days to clear up everything in one shot...)

ArchivedUser

^
Wow! I had no idea.  Thanks for that post @finndo .