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Hot take: Players as quest givers and story arch initiators?!
Arya_Yeshe
Member
Aha! Here is a hot take, what is the difference of a quest being given by a npc or a player?
The gold always come from the infinite magical gold fauced called "the server" anyways!
So why wouldn't a player be able to open a quest and post it on the bulletin board?
It is not exploitable and not circunventable, but there is an advantage, the advantage is that the player won't be online repost the same quest 24/7 so people can rerun it again and again
So, everyday the bulletin board could have completely different quests, maybe the quest giver could get a share from the payout... the adventurer would earn less.. still it is the same amount of gold and the quest giver would spend some time crafting the quest... maybe scribing is necessary for very advanced quests.
Players who are simpletons could give simple quests: bring wood, bring iron, cut all the trees around my neighbour's freehold.
Well, woud you give quests that benefit you indirectly? You should do that, reap all the benefits, take everything and give nothing!!!
NPCs in games give the same flavorless quests everyday day for years, but nobody is benefited in anyway, just the quest runner who gets a handful of gold and a sack of boredom.
So, why wouldn't be players allowed to initiate quests?
Anyone can stop by a NPC and repeatedy run the same quest, same dungeon, same raid, same everything, everyday, over and over, for years and farm unlimited gold
Why wouldn't a player in AoC, when he reaches the highest rank in his religion, be able to initiate a very important quest or maybe even a story arch?
Why wouldn't a player, who kills 1000 players at the sea, be allowed to start a story arch at the sea where you have to fight an entire armada of ghost ships?
Why wouldn't you, as an adventurer, embody your achievements as gates for opening quests or even story archs?
The only rule would be, you can't open the same quest twice before a significant cooldown, but the more achievements you have the wider the plaetoria of possible quests you could give
If you are an amazing adventurer, with every possible achievement, you could run your own quest agency, take a cut of the payout and bring your mafia muscle to make sure everybody wins
The gold always come from the infinite magical gold fauced called "the server" anyways!
So why wouldn't a player be able to open a quest and post it on the bulletin board?
It is not exploitable and not circunventable, but there is an advantage, the advantage is that the player won't be online repost the same quest 24/7 so people can rerun it again and again
So, everyday the bulletin board could have completely different quests, maybe the quest giver could get a share from the payout... the adventurer would earn less.. still it is the same amount of gold and the quest giver would spend some time crafting the quest... maybe scribing is necessary for very advanced quests.
Players who are simpletons could give simple quests: bring wood, bring iron, cut all the trees around my neighbour's freehold.
Well, woud you give quests that benefit you indirectly? You should do that, reap all the benefits, take everything and give nothing!!!
NPCs in games give the same flavorless quests everyday day for years, but nobody is benefited in anyway, just the quest runner who gets a handful of gold and a sack of boredom.
So, why wouldn't be players allowed to initiate quests?
Anyone can stop by a NPC and repeatedy run the same quest, same dungeon, same raid, same everything, everyday, over and over, for years and farm unlimited gold
Why wouldn't a player in AoC, when he reaches the highest rank in his religion, be able to initiate a very important quest or maybe even a story arch?
Why wouldn't a player, who kills 1000 players at the sea, be allowed to start a story arch at the sea where you have to fight an entire armada of ghost ships?
Why wouldn't you, as an adventurer, embody your achievements as gates for opening quests or even story archs?
The only rule would be, you can't open the same quest twice before a significant cooldown, but the more achievements you have the wider the plaetoria of possible quests you could give
If you are an amazing adventurer, with every possible achievement, you could run your own quest agency, take a cut of the payout and bring your mafia muscle to make sure everybody wins
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
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Elite has ways to trade, but it's tedious for large amounts of money, and the people at the level I want to deal with don't need money anyway, they need things that generally take up their time either way, if anything (as you already know from your few days in the game, the economy has no sense of progression because of exploitability of some stuff).
One thing that works is a Mission given by an NPC, which will pay 50 mil, and if I invite someone to my team when I hand it in, they also get 50 mil (yes you should always fill your team before handing these in).
I believe that if 'just money' was involved, in Elite, this would lead to some problems. Someone would 'find and turn on the biggest faucet' and then pay everyone easily. Their economy 'works' only because this is SLIGHTLY difficult.
But if I could 'set aside that 50 mil' that I received through doing the Mission, into a fund that I could then pay other people from, then I'm required to engage with those Missions (rather than just the faucet) to build up capital, forcing things back into the control of Devs more (because those missions rarely spawn under a certain condition that we have to build up).
Alright, with all that preface...
I'm fine with being able to use ingame systems to post quests. I also can see how it would be more convenient to be able to do this, rather than 'requiring me to be online', or 'requiring the other person to prove whatever for me to trade them the money'. But it needs a limit. I need to have to pay something other than Gold. Leave that sort of thing to inter-player stuff.
I do quest A, I get either a reward or a Token. The Token lets me put up my own quest with it as the reward. The person who completes that quest can then take the money.
The main problem with these systems is the exact thing you're concerned about. If two people set out to do the quest without either knowing about the other, they both fulfill all the requirements and come back, the reward will double or one person gets nothing.
The other way it would go is simply 'lockout'' where no one else can accept the quest, easily used by 'bad actors' to prevent your quest from ever actually being undertaken.
Just letting the players arrange/RP these things themselves in a Tavern or something with the Escrow system is less hassle. Node Bulletin Boards and whatnot. But the suggestion kinda 'can't be flawed' at the level you presented it. It can only really be 'infeasible' or 'exploitable' depending on implementation.
Would be the first game with nearly infinite quests
If there's a hunter achievement for a big region, then this hunter could inititate big hunting quests, he could spawn a certain beast in a random place around the whole region
Can you elaborate maybe? What would be the 'quest' here? How would it be different from what normally happens with a Forced Spawn Elite Mob? The effect on the world?
I played Elite too, but only for a couple days... the first day I learned the basics, the second day I made 200 milions just doing exploration, finding those special planets
I am into player driven content heavily for years and I got to tell you, it is pretty hard keep making the content going, it demands a team of people and some heavily dedicated people, it is very hard keep the rp and player content going. Additionaly, sometimes people are online and sometimes people aren't and there are limitations, you can't start events on the map and it is very hard to track what went down on the field
Now I will address the challenging part of splitting the payout, in EVE there's the concept of contest. The are Incursions and Observatory sites, you don't need to take missions, nobody has to start anything... whoever fleet that arrives in the site, will enter the site, will run all it's rooms and whoever deal more damage or complete the site's objective will earn the prize at full....then the winners will split the prize evenly:
- the party who completes the site's objective or deals more damage overall is the winner
- winners split the payout
- losers get nothing
- site and mobs are disbanded
- money intantly goes right into the wallet, there is no NPC to go talk to and ask the payout
This is the concept of contest, the risk reward is in rushing your fleet into an extremely dangerous site, first place wins and everybody else won't get anything.I did not play Warhammer Online, but I have been told there is a form of contest too, to be confirmed the similarities between EVE and Warhammer Online.
Two quest flags:
In Guild Wars 2 we have quest progress shared positively with all the random people around us, then you get the prize in full. So if the quest is picking two apples, then two random people can pick 1 apple each and the quest automatically is completed.
I propose that the progress is halved but when you finally finishes the quest, then you get the payment in full... if it is a 10 people party, they will have the proress halved by 10 times... but when they finish the quest then they will get 10 full payouts. Do you understand that this even out things? Time vs payout = 1, it will be always 1
Won't this result in the sort of simplistic stuff that isn't 'Quest' quality though? I'm trying to wrap my head around it.
Example:
If I gather enough Items to trigger an Instanced Battle (FFXI) or receive a special high difficulty group Mission option (Elite) there's not much 'storyline' to this, but it is content that I can trigger. I can then 'ask someone else to go do it (Elite only).
This is common in other games, right? The thing that separates a Quest from a Pirate Hunt or a BCNM is the post-success impact, isn't it? If you 'just get Gold' and no one provides context or 'Story', it isn't immersive enough to be a Quest, is it?
So I don't see 'Kill 30 Crew of Morommo Pirates' as a Quest, even in a game where just succeeding at it will have an actual impact. So are you asking for the ability to write Quest dialogue and put it into the game itself? To receive options for environmental/behaviour triggers that you can put as your quest rewards? That's what it sounds like you're talking about, not simple stuff like 'Take this item that I have because I am Top Hunter of this Region and go lure this Mob out and kill it'.
Well, have you ever been in boss trains in MMOs? I have, people get 40 people and kill all bosses around the world, by teleporting the entire party since everybody knows when each boss will spawn, so these huge parties rotate around the map killing all bosses
In the system would be different is that spawns would be randomized not just on time, but maybe even location, it would also prevent people from doing boss trains, other minor things would change too.
This wouldn't be just for bosses or mini-bosses, it could bring a group of champions to a random area where people never saw them before and other thing too
Yes, it is very common in games, this is the rule of thumb in Guild Wars 2, this is why even tough GW2 world is static it feels alive
What could happen is this, let's say an area will spawn an elite after killing 20 low tier mobs... this is done by AoC server... but if you launch your quest then maybe the next event could be your event instead the standard event
So the world could feel customized and alive, but then if there's no players handling the quests and events, then the server would resume in giving their generic stuff
In GW2 this is how people actually farm stuff, they run the same map everyday for hours... nothing new happens
I believe that player quest could run side by side the standard quests and maybe even tweak the standard quests... let's say you could double the amount of champios in a quest! This could be a cheeky thing to do
I'm not familiar with this because of the games I come from, as you know.
FFXI's fast Travel was more limited than Ashes is intended to be for a long time. BDO and Onigiri have none. Elite basically doesn't either.
So this is another 'standards' problem. You're definitely suggesting stuff that I enjoy, it's just also 'what I have or expect already', so I assume you mean more than that.
The game would be way less repetitive, but the train would not derail... the story would still go in the same direction
Ah, got it, so just Campaign Ops/Besieged Assassinations then, but with slight Player Modifications.
Honestly I don't feel like this is worth the extra effort it would take to elevate it from where FFXI/Elite currently are.
This is because of something else you said earlier. Without randomization, it's hard to keep up with the RP context, right? Things become stale. But those games (and hopefully Ashes) have the 'randomization' built in. So they don't need it. Just natural player interaction layered on top of the random flows of the world would generally achieve this goal. I've got no issues with players being given additional ability to alter some things, but it seems like a lot of work that might just result in annoyances more often than not anyway.
About this part that I didn't address yet.
In GW2 the world feels alive with no dialogue, you are adventuring and visiting places and quest pop up everywhere and you start killing and manipulating objects and puzzles around you, it is a marathon
At the same time, there are NPCs that are the quest owners, they don't need to give you the quest tough, they are there in the corner just to give contextualization
The main idea is that players who have a lot of achievements could start quests/events or modify the standard quests/events, no day would be the same when it's started and completed by players
Yeah but 'no day is the same' already, and players contribute to that already.
Whereas if you have this system, then you run into the 'problem' where 3 different high-achievement players can all trigger the same quest, or have to negotiate which quests they can and can't trigger due to cooldowns, and all that.
Randomization handles that already. Maybe this will make more sense if I bring an FFXI example again though. Remember what Intrepid likes to say about their design ideas? Here's what I'm used to.
Gulool Ja Ja is the leader of the Mamool Ja Savages, usually arriving in Besieged in the final wave with the Mega Boss. Only appears when the Mamool Ja Savages are at level 5 or higher, and if they are still active in Mamook.
So right away we have a mob that only spawns based on a World condition, and that world condition can be influenced by other players doing other actions that limit the level of the enemy forces, so no one can know for sure when this mob will spawn.
If seeking the title, "Shining Scale Rifler" for mythic weapon, Gulool Ja Ja must be engaged before the Mamool Ja Savages attack Al Zahbi. He will depop otherwise only to reappear 1 hour after besieged ends, this assumes he wasn't killed during the battle. If Gulool Ja Ja was killed during besieged the repop time is unknown.
If the 'living world' Siege starts, this mob becomes unavailable in the dungeon (Mamook), you can't fight it because it's marching to attack the city. If he's defeated in the City, that's it, who knows when he'll reappear.
Spawns behind the Mahogany Door on map 3, requires a Mamook Tanscale Key, a Mamook Blackscale Key, and a Mamook Silverscale Key to open it.
Just getting to him is a dungeon navigation challenge, and technically without at least doing part of it, you couldn't (for a while) even have a Ranger check if he was actually there at all.
Defeating Gulool Ja Ja here in Mamook prevents him from appearing at the next level 5 or higher Mamool Ja Besieged battle.
If you do defeat him, he doesn't march to the City, so his respawn time is now completely unknown.
In this case, what would the related Player Quest be like? He already spawns based on a dynamic condition which other players are constantly slightly influencing, could be killed by someone else once he DOES spawn without you knowing, and you can't pinpoint his respawn time if no one does that before the Siege but he dies in the Siege.
And nearly no one rushes off to kill him because his only drop is a Chestplate that only has the purpose of being deconstructed by a Master Blacksmith for a CHANCE at a good item, and a Ring that is nowhere near BiS for anything other than the Siege content.
Sure, a Master Blacksmith could start a Quest for someone to go kill Gulool Ja Ja, but what would change, in your mind, in those scenarios? If they start the Quest and he is defeated in the Siege, would it force a respawn for the Quest Takers? Let's assume that Blacksmith really wants that Imperial Wootz Ingot.
No.
Neverwinter Online's quest/dungeon creator was a disaster.
EQ2 on release had around 5,000 boss mobs.
Each expansion added about another 1,000.
Good luck running a train on all of them. People would do similar in a localized area - but that is about it.
As to the suggestion in this thread, any content that players can create will be exploited by players. No idea how it would happen in this case, but it would happen.
If 3 high level achievement players call for 3 quests for killing the same boss, then the next 3 time times the boss spawn, it would take their setttings in... it would not spawn 3 bosses altogether. If it is a boss who spawns every 4 hours, then along 12 hours this boss would follow their settings. Then the 4th time the boss spawns again it would be the standard settings again.
All these paragraphs about this boss are very interesting, I think AoC will have something like this.
There will be also the quests started by the mayor.
Still, can you imagine the amount of work for a dev team to program bilions of scenarios, if there were many possibilities for many quests like that?
They can't do it, only the community can achieve great things, there's games where you can create your own quests with quest editors and in certain games it is quite easy doing it... it all boils down to the game's architecture... sometimes the architecture is just right for this kind of thing
Instead of having the issue of not having enough man power, the only issue that could turn this prohibitive is the project architecture, sometimes the project is just right for it and sometimes it is not
Neverwinter Online was the shittiest game I played in my life, the grind was unbearable, I felt my IQ dropping on every click, there is no freedom in Neverwinter Online
This game was designed by Jack Emmert, same horrible designer who created shitty games like Star Trek Online and City of Heroes, games unbeliveably grindy and lacking freedom. I played Star Wars Online too and gave up for it's grindy and no freedom design
No game from those people is good, they are not a reference for anything other than a reference for bad games
The most incompetent people on Earth in regards of freedom and player content should not try to make a quest editor, they never showed any chops for this kind of thing