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Engaging & Impactful Quest & Open World Content Design
Sengarden
Member
As Intrepid’s showcases display an increasing amount of questing and moment-to-moment narrative content design, I’m left feeling a little disappointed in how generic and outdated much of it seems.
I’m looking to see if others feel the same way - if so, do you care? Or do you prefer this sort of daily open world bread & butter content to be simple, ‘game-y’ checklists and isolated random events that have little effect on the surrounding world? How would you like this content to look and feel? What are some games you love moment-to-moment content in?
Personally, my favorite example of moment-to-moment content in an MMO is GW2. I was hyped for dynamic events for months on end leading up to the game’s release, and though I didn’t end up sticking with the game for too long afterwards, I think it did a lot of things right. One of these was the way every player got a customized personal story that built up and developed over the course of your leveling experience based on your character’s race and chosen role-playing attributes. More importantly, the other was the game’s Dynamic Event system and world design. There were flaws in its execution, but it was a huge moment for MMOs and could absolutely be improved upon all these years later with modern technology.
Enemy factions in each zone had very real places where they built up strength and spread out from. If they went unchallenged for too long, they would begin spreading into local residential areas and causing their own unique forms of havoc. Depending on how much time or interest they had in pushing the baddies back, players could choose to push further than a single event after some time had passed, going as far as the enemy’s base and dismantling the core of their operations. Sort of a tug-of-war content system.
These chains of events that actually impacted the way the world looked and functioned around you provided the sort of immersion that didn’t inundate you with written exposition, because it was part of the world. It was the way the environments were designed, the attention to detail, the way NPCs (friend and foe) were programmed to engage with you and their environment like actual inhabitants of it rather than robots, the way the story unfolded in real time with pieces of voice acted dialogue to help guide you towards an understanding of what was happening and what was needed of you in the moment without needing to stay glued to the UI to understand what was happening.
I really hope we see these systems evolve over the course of A2. The game is going to need more players than just those who have a neurodivergent hyper-focus on artisan skills and working the economy, the willpower to sacrifice the time and energy required to excel in PvP, or the hardcore devotion to beating the hardest open world dungeon and world boss content. It’s going to need people who just want to feel swept up into the world and the various tales of its inhabitants while doing an hour or so of casual open world content, a bit of light artisan work, some social interaction, and perhaps the occasional PvP encounter. If that ‘casual’ open world, moment-to-moment content isn’t dynamic, engaging, immersive, and, well, not stuck in the early 2000’s, or doesn’t provide a sense of purpose through impactful consequences to players’ success or failure, I think the game may have trouble staying afloat.
To paraphrase a YT video that circulated recently, “There’s no way the next big MMO is going to have a quest to ‘Kill 20 Goblins’.” I know we don’t need Ashes to be ‘the next big MMO,’ but I think the point still stands. Eventually, these systems will become outdated enough to noticeably impact the player base. I think that time is now. What do you think?
I’m looking to see if others feel the same way - if so, do you care? Or do you prefer this sort of daily open world bread & butter content to be simple, ‘game-y’ checklists and isolated random events that have little effect on the surrounding world? How would you like this content to look and feel? What are some games you love moment-to-moment content in?
Personally, my favorite example of moment-to-moment content in an MMO is GW2. I was hyped for dynamic events for months on end leading up to the game’s release, and though I didn’t end up sticking with the game for too long afterwards, I think it did a lot of things right. One of these was the way every player got a customized personal story that built up and developed over the course of your leveling experience based on your character’s race and chosen role-playing attributes. More importantly, the other was the game’s Dynamic Event system and world design. There were flaws in its execution, but it was a huge moment for MMOs and could absolutely be improved upon all these years later with modern technology.
Enemy factions in each zone had very real places where they built up strength and spread out from. If they went unchallenged for too long, they would begin spreading into local residential areas and causing their own unique forms of havoc. Depending on how much time or interest they had in pushing the baddies back, players could choose to push further than a single event after some time had passed, going as far as the enemy’s base and dismantling the core of their operations. Sort of a tug-of-war content system.
These chains of events that actually impacted the way the world looked and functioned around you provided the sort of immersion that didn’t inundate you with written exposition, because it was part of the world. It was the way the environments were designed, the attention to detail, the way NPCs (friend and foe) were programmed to engage with you and their environment like actual inhabitants of it rather than robots, the way the story unfolded in real time with pieces of voice acted dialogue to help guide you towards an understanding of what was happening and what was needed of you in the moment without needing to stay glued to the UI to understand what was happening.
I really hope we see these systems evolve over the course of A2. The game is going to need more players than just those who have a neurodivergent hyper-focus on artisan skills and working the economy, the willpower to sacrifice the time and energy required to excel in PvP, or the hardcore devotion to beating the hardest open world dungeon and world boss content. It’s going to need people who just want to feel swept up into the world and the various tales of its inhabitants while doing an hour or so of casual open world content, a bit of light artisan work, some social interaction, and perhaps the occasional PvP encounter. If that ‘casual’ open world, moment-to-moment content isn’t dynamic, engaging, immersive, and, well, not stuck in the early 2000’s, or doesn’t provide a sense of purpose through impactful consequences to players’ success or failure, I think the game may have trouble staying afloat.
To paraphrase a YT video that circulated recently, “There’s no way the next big MMO is going to have a quest to ‘Kill 20 Goblins’.” I know we don’t need Ashes to be ‘the next big MMO,’ but I think the point still stands. Eventually, these systems will become outdated enough to noticeably impact the player base. I think that time is now. What do you think?
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That said, you should judge the game when it is being tested in alpha 2, there we could give a clearer judgment on all the concerns that arise from the live streams.
This statement is not factually correct.
Imagine we have a game where the population of the world thinks for itself, where each individual mob has its own goal, and where groups and entire populations of mobs function in a way to further the most popular goal of the group or population. Populations have alliances and enemies, needs and wants.
Imagine also that this game dynamically creates quests for players based on what populations are doing.
Now imagine you have a gnoll cave that is expanding in to a nearby farming community because it has been left unchecked for too long. Said gnolls are raiding and pillaging, taking prisoners and just generally being a bit of a bother.
If you show up to that farming community, them asking you to kill 20 gnolls is exactly what I would expect. If there was no such quest, I would consider the foundation system that this game is built on to be broken.
What should happen that doesn't happen in most games is that if enough people take on that quest, the gnoll population should be diminished.
This is a statement I agree with - our questing should net results.
And…it should be possible for all those Goblins to leave the area one way or another and be replaced by something else.
Depends.
If you are talking to a farmer that is having his field overrun, he probably just wants you to kill enough so that they stay away from his field.
On the other hand, if you are talking to the mayor of the town, they would probably want you to take care of the whole issue.
Maybe you havent seen this:
or this:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Story_arcs
There is actual a lot of showcases and talk about how the world can develop and change through systems like nodes and story arcs.
Also i completely disagree with the sentiment “There’s no way the next big MMO is going to have a quest to ‘Kill 20 Goblins’.”
I dont think you need to leverage some fancy next gen AI NPCS with UE7 dynamic anal vibrator tech in order build the next mmo, when the current gen of mmos completely neglects building fun dynamics between the original AI´s -> that are humans.
I wouldn't call that novel - there are a number of game out there that let you do this.
BG3 obviously comes to mind, but there are many situations in MMO's where you have the choice to help one faction or the other.
It never really stuck that well, especially in WoW. Despite some of the gripping storylines, I'm now engaging with an NPC that wants me to collect 5 flowers and kill 15 baddies in the same area, and the reasoning is arbitrary to the storyline, like creating a portal to advance into the storyline, or something else that just seems out of alignment.
When it came to FFXIV, there was just an overabundance of storyline and it could stifle your gameplay if you allow it to and you're the type who is looking for more than just a cutscene every other quest step. I cannot tell you how many storylines I've just hit the escape button on because I didn't have the patience to watch the banter between a few NPCs which ends up being completely trivial to the overall arc that is unfolding (or attempting to) before the player. However, I will say that I am proud of myself for getting thru XIV's last expansion without having skipped anything - and I did enjoy the storyline... But I couldn't tell you what it was about in detail, as my memory cast it aside after some time.
Ashes is going to have some rich lore and I'm eager to see how the pantheon of gods and goddesses plays out. I would hope that the questlines for unveiling this lore are very engaging, but I also still expect the random villager approaching me, or myself going to a quest board and snagging a "Kill 20 minotaur" quests to be scattered throughout Verra, and that's okay for those who want to take that route.
As long as the main storyline quests reveal the lore well enough and make it feel like the player is actually enveloped in the world of Verra and doesn't feel like an outsider looking in through a screen, I'd be happy with that. I expect that NPCs will have some catchphrases also which highlight certain elements of lore, even if those NPCs are just basic in their existence. Saying things like "Oh Eterna, watch over me." and just adding lore breadcrumbs like that can really weave the immersion together much stronger.
There obviously need to be some programmable measurements to assess when “enough is enough” and the event you’re participating in advances to the next step - one way, or another. I just think there should be some more finesse with the way it’s presented to the player.
My main issue with the whole “20 goblins” thing is that the way those quests work in most MMOs just feels so game-y and unrealistic. If there’s a horde of 50, 100, 200 goblins, why are they asking me to only kill 20? What if I’m the only person there? They’re just… fine with that? Why aren’t the goblins actually doing anything? Why does the entire encounter area just feel like a bunch of standees have been placed there for me to knock over? Why can I come back any time of day, month after month, and still find them there just the same as they were the first time I laid eyes on them?
I’m not saying Intrepid doesn’t have higher aspirations than that, I just haven’t seen them comment on those particular aspects of the (I’m assuming) quick and dirty gameplay setups they’ve used to show off the story arc system so far. The way they’ve been presented, it feels like any other boring questing area in any other MMO, with the only difference being a more dynamic way of having the game world choose which boring encounters to introduce for us to run through.
What I’d like to see are more generalized objectives that require a little more player agency and teamwork to navigate. There’s word of a goblin camp forming in the hills a few miles out from town. You travel there, and peering over walls of the abandoned ruins they’re re-developing from a nearby vantage point, you see builders moving back and forth from resource piles and construction zones, priests conducting rituals with power generated from glowing idols and fetishes dotted about the landscape, warriors training with one another and performing target practice on the corpses of captured guards, a kennel master and his assistants tending to the tribe’s pack of ferocious wargs, a ramshackle collection of what appear to be primitive laboratories where goblin mechanists and chemists are creating new and terrifying weapons, a troop of worried looking goblins, weapons clutched at the ready, guarding the worn-down door to a large cave in the hill the ruins are built upon that’s been braced with all sorts of refuse and appears to be being pounded upon incessantly from the other side, and atop the highest rise of the ruins, a particularly large and important looking goblin can be seen consulting with the leaders of his priests, mechanists, and fighters, their gathering guarded by patrols, priests, wargs, and experimental weapons of war.
When you enter the POI, your UI on the upper right simply says, “Halt the development of the Goblin fortress.” A bar below it shows how far along the event is. If there’s an NPC nearby, perhaps another scout from town who’s yet to be found and captured, they can fill you in on some suggested methods. Vanquish the priesthood and halt their summoning rituals, take out the kennel master and his assistants, clear out all ground forces, destroy the laboratories and any experimental weapons, and take out the goblin leader and his head honchos. These can then be recorded in your quest log. Perhaps they could also show up one by one whenever you get close enough to any of the related items or enemies.
Taking out the goblin builders, sabotaging their resource bins, and destroying any buildings they’re working on fills the bar a smidge.
Every priest has a readable buff on them that indicates they’re receiving power from the fetishes - destroying them slowly whittles down the combat power of all priests in the area.
When you take out the kennel master, you might discover an item on his corpse that commands the wargs, as well as that all the remaining kennels are unlockable. You can unlock the kennels, free the wargs, and gain them as temporary combat followers as long as you hold the item until they’re killed or you leave the POI. The kennel master unlocks another cage during the fight with him every (x) seconds though, so the longer it takes you to kill him, the fewer wargs you get at the end.
Destroying the laboratories is one thing - but those crazy weapons? You can actually choose to wield them. Just mind that they don’t overheat and explode in your arms!
When you pass by the barricaded door and take out the goblins guarding it, you can’t quite hear what’s being said on the other side - only that it sounds mad. Half the time the event occurs, there’s a troop of captured guards inside who will help fight ground forces and priests for you. The other half of the time, the cave contains a massive troll who immediately begins laying into you and anyone else nearby. You can’t tell which is there until you open the door.
At a certain point, if she hasn’t been defeated yet, the head goblin priest performing the summoning ritual at the deepest part of the ruins will successfully summon an old world goblin deity. At this point, the entire population of the fortress ceases what they’re doing, and begins filing into ranks towards the entrance of the ruins. No matter how far along the progress bar for the previous event was, goblins of all types suddenly begin respawning very quickly to make up for who’d been lost. Once they’re all amassed, they begin the march towards the nearby node with casters, archers, warriors, siege weapons and the deity at their side. At that point, the event shifts, and the goblin forces must be completely destroyed to avoid having your node de-leveled.
Alternatively, if you defeat the goblins before the deity is summoned, the ruins are cleared out for quite a while, and several lesser, scattered goblin tribes pop up a little further away from town in various areas where they used to be before they’d banded together.
At the outset of the event, respawn rates are extremely high, and the area is very densely packed with mobs. You’d be hard pressed to get very far on your own, even with a whole group. As the bar progresses, the respawn times on the goblins, fetishes, mini-bosses, and buildings slowly go up, giving you the sense that you’re beginning to get the upper hand. Perhaps there could also be a second, smaller bar in red beneath the player progress bar that shows how far along the primary event driver is - in this case, the main summoning ritual.
Throughout the event, you get your standard rewards for killing baddies, as well as perhaps some minor rewards for doing non-combat things like destroying fetishes and buildings or sabotaging the builders and chemists supply bins. At the end of the event, if players were successful, the game tracks your contribution, and rewards you proportionately. If players failed, you still get a reward, but perhaps half the usual for whatever effort you put in, to encourage players to always participate.
That’s what I want to see. No more checklists with “let me pull a number out of my ass for how many gnolls you should kill before I let you leave and never talk to me or think about anything you did here ever again,” as a primary objective. I’ve just played that game so many times. And yes, there are plenty of systems that make ashes different from other games, but this is the system that I think the most players will spend the most time with over the course of a week.
Can there be some filler quests here and there to help people out with smaller tasks? Yes. But again, I think progress bars with various methods by which those tasks can be aided with is much better than “kill 20 gnolls k thx.” That’s the inspiration from GW2 I’m talking about.
I suppose you can read my reply to Noaani above, if you want. It’s just clarifying what I’m hoping for in these events and story arcs and what it is about typical questing systems that I find dull and outdated.
I’m more so talking about how NPCs are programmed, variety of NPCs and what they get up to while I’m not looking, variety of ways to contribute to the overall mission - both combat related and non-combat related, how objectives are presented to the player, how progress is tracked, etc.
A restyling of the content we’re used to playing through with more complex societies of foes and more intricate systems of consequences for our actions, or lack thereof.
I do need to rewatch that showcase, as it’s been a while. I remember being excited hearing about them talking about events and story arcs like the dynamic events from GW2, but then I also remember the event they showed with the caravan being attacked on the road by bandits and thinking that the scope of the event’s design was really shallow, presented poor encounter design, had all the non-combat NPCs just standing around doing nothing while their goods were on fire, and in the end, didn’t allow for much dynamic content follow-up.
The “campaign style” of the story arcs sounded interesting, like a potentially evolved, longer-form version of GW2’s dynamic events, but then when they showed the most recent story arc example on the Warrior showcase, it looked like little more than a piddly goblin killing farm. Perhaps, as I said, that was simply a quick and dirty setup to show off the Warrior rather than what they want story arcs to look like, but they did spend a decent amount of time talking about the mechanics of what they’d set up there, and I wasn’t very impressed.
So far, all that we’ve seen makes me fear that the events and story arcs operate like GW2’s dynamic events in their method of spawning, alone, and not actually in the dynamic nature of their content, the behavior of their NPCs, the presentation and allowed variety of player objectives, the smooth and immersive way that player contribution is tracked and impacts the difficulty and visuals of the event in real time, or the fast-paced chaining of cause-and-effect events in real time immediately after the players have succeeded or failed.
I’m not talking about requiring future tech to have fun. I’m talking about utilizing current tech, the same way the team has been in other development areas. “Kill 20 goblins” was standard 25 years ago because that’s all they could do. GW2’s dynamic events evolved the medium about a decade ago. Why are we going back to the Stone Age now when bronze has already been invented? With modern tech, I’m sure we could do something similar, but with greater complexity, and without overburdening developers. Most of it’s not even tech, just presentation, event design, and progress tracking methods.
It's just going to be 20 Goblins because an individual player is not going to be the one to truly end the problem with the Goblins. Because it actually is a game that has limitations.
Ashes does have an Events system.
As always I'll just bring up...
https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Background_Simulation
I know Dygz isn't saying that the 'limitations' are technical, I'm just informing the unfamiliar that, for the most part, such 'limitations' are not technical.
It might take multiple quests, but there's no reason why you can't have one player/group resolve a situation other than the call-response problem where the game 'informs multiple players of an issue and as soon as the first person solves that issue, the others aren't needed'.
There are ways around that 'feeling too weird' too.
If my faction has a security issue because an NPC brought down a ship and took hostages, and a hostage rescue mission is generated, if I take it and complete it, that little interaction is done.
I guess the way I imagine it in my mind is that a single player is definitely not going to be the one who finally steps up to the plate and tells the goblins in that situation to piss off. I imagine this event could provide maybe 48 hours before the ritual is completed and the node siege begins. And players would only be forced into it if they ignored the growing goblin threat across the ZOI for too long.
I’m imagining the zones generated by these story arcs to be heavily loaded with tough enemies, somewhat like an overworld dungeon in a way. You will absolutely need to go in with a group to survive fighting in such densely populated areas, and maybe coordinate with other groups to do mini-boss and end-boss story arc completion goals. As I said with respawn rates, the more players contribute to the overall goal, the slower the enemies will gradually respawn, making it easier for players to reach the end objective and send the enemy back down the totem pole of the event’s evolution. But to actually finish them off, even if that progress bar is nearly filled, you’ll still need multiple groups going in to defeat the main bosses, stop whatever horrible thing is happening, and then kill off the stragglers as they run for the hills.
Is this less concrete than, “you have x number of days to do the 15 varieties of ‘kill 20 goblins’ or equivalent quests to maximize your chance at getting this fancy reward before the event is arbitrarily ended”? Yes. Does it sound way more fun and memorable to me? Also yes. Does it sound impossible to build? No, not really. More difficult, yes, but not impossible. It’s barely an evolution of GW2’s dynamic event system, but with content that isn’t piss-easy, is actually possible to fail at, and larger in scale with longer event periods.
@Dygz tell me if I misunderstood what you meant by limitations. I assume you mean gameplay limitations based on the fact that it’s an MMO and I’m talking about traditionally single-player-game content. I do think there’s a way to make them mesh though.
I haven't played Elite Dangerous.
The devs for Elite Dangerous do not call it an RPG.
I think I would prefer to play NMS. (Also not an RPG).
I also expect I would prefer to play Light No Fire rather than Ashes. We'll see.
I just now played GW2 to Level 6.
It's basically the same thing as Kill/Destroy XX Y.
Difference is that you fill a bar instead of looking at numbers.
But, it was still 10-20 of Y to fill the bar.
In Ashes...
Story Arcs will be run by the Events system.
There's also the Commisions on the Commissions (task) Board.
And there's also Quests given by NPCs.
There's going to be a bunch of mobs populating an area.
Quests just make what would be grinding a more interesting by adding a bit of story and a bulk of xp and some monetary and/or item reward for grabbing a batch of whatever it is - mobs or Resources.
It's a fairly typical job - if you give me XX of Y, I will give you Z.
I don't necessarily care about a "fancy reward".
I want stuff to do...hopefully where I can use my Character Skills... and something in return/exchange would be nice (especially some xp that will get me closer to the next Level so I can learn some different Skills).
And, yeah, batches of 20 - that can be completed in 10-20 minutes will be better, and feel less tedious - rather than batches of 100+.
Is it a PvX or a PvP game? Because it has no PvE servers...
I agree that quests in GW2 feel bad too. Very bad doing those hearths on each map.
But on some maps added later by expansions, the dynamic of a map goes from a state to another state. It is like pushing the NPCs back as the general story is about a war against evil factions. If players would push them to the limit, the map would have a short peace period and then the map would reset (the NPCs would invade again).
In AoC, this concept could be larger, with more NPC factions, some friendly some less friendly which we could try to attract or push away from our nodes. Some would love smaller nodes some the higher level ones... I would go with 6 bigger NPC factions (4 friendly and 2 less friendly) and 16 smaller ones (4 friendly, 8 aggressive and 4 neutral). Their level of friendliness or aggressiveness could oscillate too.
Which means the PvP can be ignored.
You can ignore them, just like you could ignore the deep ocean and go around it.
But AoC is more PvP because the caravan system, guild vs guild, node wars, sieges on all over the map.
Your guild can be forced into PvP if another guild declares war to it. That should worry peaceful players more than the ocean.
Lets see how the corruption is balanced. Maybe even that will not protect much and then this entire PvX was just for advertising, to sell us the game.
Some prefer sandbox games, which does not mean that there is no story. Your character could have it's own specific story based on each decision. I would see a theme box something with many small story pieces which combine to create a bigger server wide story, specific to each server.
I would say the limitation is how much potential content developers must do, which might never be triggered, to create the illusion of freedom.
I would question if you tend to read quest dialogue with such quests or not, to be honest.
Most games don't tell you outright what an NPC's motivation is, but it is usually fairly easy to understand that someone that spends their life in a field cares mostly about that field. If there is an issue in their field, they probably don't even know that it is an issue that extends any further than that - they are concerned with their field, and want you to work on clearing it out for them.
If you continue to read the dialogue, this character will then often send you on to someone that they think would be more interested in what you found while you were clearing their field - they aren't interested as they want to get back to working in said field. Then that person asks you to perform a task in line with what they want, and so on.
In this path from starting out with clearing the field and then moving on up, you often end up scouting the enemy out, finding their source of power, working out their heirachy etc, and then are given a plan for killing them.
This is all what you are talking about in your post above - it exists in many games, but many players just skip over it and then complain that it isn't there.
The only part of what you talked about above that most games do not have is in relation to there being a change at the end. This is something I would like to see.
However, there are issues with this as well.
If you put in a goblin population that every 2 days (or 2 weeks, or 2 months) will spawn that deity if their numbers aren't thinned out, you may look at that now as being "cool content".
In reality, what that would be if you were playing that game, is an obligation. A chore.
This is what Rift found with their rifts - people enjoyed them to start off with, but they got bored of them really quick. They needed to alter them so that undefeated rifts spawning in low level zones didn't have the zone wide negative impacts they initially planned.
Players just weren't interested in logging in to the game to perform chores.
So, any content with any similarity to what you are talking about here needs to be implemented in a way where there are no major consequences if players aren't successful - because the assumption needs to be that there will be times when players just don't want to do that chore. The argument then becomes - if the consequences are that low, is it still meaningful? If it is no longer meaningful, is it worth having?
Based on the above, I am obviously not of the opinion that there are any inherent technical limitations to what you are talking about. To me, the issues are all design based. That does mean that someone may eventually come up with a way to make it work - but that will be a game that is content first, rather than conflict first which is what Ashes is.
As someone who loves questing, I really hope the A2 quests get a notch up in quality. I am completely fine with the commission system having simple quests, but non-commission quests better be much more interesting and with quality writing/dialogue and interesting encounters that aren't just kill/gather/fetch, or I admit I am going to be a little disappointed.
Right, as I said, it’s mostly an issue of presentation and styling of the content. Obviously there has to be a defined number of xyz things that are to be completed before your reward, but at least in GW2, you can usually contribute to the same progress bar by doing different things, you don’t have to pick up a quest before you jump into the action, and NPCs/Enemies will generally be acting and behaving more dynamically than in most MMOs. They’re attacking villagers, starting fires, pillaging places, etc., rather than just standing around (that part of it could’ve been taken to a further degree, but like I said, it was an imperfect system from over a decade ago).
I do agree though that these simple “do ten of this and come back” quests will have a role, it’s obviously not beyond the realm of belief that someone asks you to do something like that from time to time, especially on something public like a bulletin board.
I just hope the mid-to-high-complexity level content is less rigid and more free flowing and dynamic in how to enter the engagement (not having to talk to someone in order to figure out that fires need putting out or bandits need killing), how to help overcome the challenge (kill bandits, fill a bucket with fire and put out fires, escort villagers out of burning buildings, etc), more immersively tracked (progress bars over clairvoyant checklists), and more visually expressive (are the bandits actually running around throwing Molotov cocktails and attacking villagers, or just pacing around a 3 ft circle? Are citizens even trying to put out the fires themselves? Are any of them running around like chickens with their heads cut off? Or are they, too, just standing around somewhere?).
I agree that the fun of quests, even the ones where the story is relatively simple or uninteresting in the grand scheme of things, is giving you license to use your skills and feel like you have some level of mastery over who you are as a character in the world. That’s why I want most opportunities for open world content (breaking from the confines of what we normally consider MMO “quests”) to feel visually and mechanically dynamic, and organically surfacing and resolvable.
Typically, I do, actually. I try to appreciate the work that the quest designers do, even if the mechanical limitations of their games prevent them from writing more dynamically and creating more organic storytelling environments than “here’s a bunch of exposition, now go do the thing.” I recognize that they usually try to frame these simple quests with a basic story purpose, and it certainly helps the pill go down easier, especially if the quests are all chained together on a huge story campaign.
At the end of the day though, I think most storytelling needs to be done more organically. Rather than me showing up to a farm overrun with gnolls just standing around not doing anything interesting, having to wander around until I find the farmer, listen to him talk to me about how the whole thing got started ages ago, and how he’s always had trouble with them, but it’s never been this bad, and how he’ll scratch my back if I scratch his, then finally letting me kill, let’s say, 15 of them (despite the fact that there are 30 up at a time and they don’t go away after I get my reward), why can’t I just see that a farm is on fire with loads of gnolls running around killing farm animals, stealing crops and loading them up in a wagon, throwing torches into the burning barn and farmhouse, and having altercations with a couple of passing guard patrols, then spring into action like the Good Samaritan I am, choosing whether to kill gnolls, destroy their wagon, take a bucket by the well and start putting out fires, or healing/buffing the fighting/downed guard patrols in order to make the progress bar advance until either I, or enough other players working together overcome the challenge crush the gnoll forces, put out the fires, and get the guard patrols back on their feet? To me, that would play out as a more interesting story happening in real time than whatever the farmer is likely to tell me. And if I want more flavor, I can always chat him up if I want to, but maybe not while his livelihood is being destroyed right in front of us.
As for the comparison to Rift, I totally understand that. I think that’s why GW2 made their dynamic events fairly inconsequential, but it made engaging with them fairly boring, cause you knew it was always so easy to win, and even if you lost, it wouldn’t mean much to you. I think an event like the huge open world dungeon style goblin encampment that I described that results in a node siege upon failure would be more like something you’d only see every 4-6 months. If you failed, but perhaps then won the siege encounter, it would be something awesome you’d talk about for months after. The ritual would be timed purposely to end right at whatever that server’s prime time is, giving players every possible opportunity to know that it’s about to happen.
The majority of the events would be more like the farm getting attacked that I just described here - something that can be taken care of in 15-20 minutes and comes up again fairly regularly. I suppose the impact of failing would be that the remains of the farm become a gnoll outpost where passing pedestrians and caravans get attacked in large numbers if they don’t want to take a wide detour, and prices for cooking ingredients at the local node go up a bit or something like that. If you win, then the farmer gives you the flavor text about how it all got started and he tells you where they like to hold up in. Then that can become the more challenging open world dungeon - esque event to engage in with multiple groups of people for a while, kind of like the goblin one.
I think a better way to get players engaging with the events would be unique item drops only available at certain stages of event progression, actually fun and dynamic gameplay environments that make you feel like you’re part of a story happening around you rather than just clicking static targets until you get to 20, changing the world visually upon success or failure, affecting nearby product prices or availability/accessibility of valuable gathering nodes, giving access to vendors, creating or destroying enemy outposts that’re likely to attack caravans near choke points, etc. Things that are noticeable, but not absolutely ball-busting. If the economic impact is subtle but noticeable, the visual impact on the world is high, and the impact on accessibility for trade and resource collection is substantial, then I think it will be just enough to prompt players to get involved, but not feel overburdened if they simply don’t have the time or inclination at that particular moment.
For clarity, the section of this post that makes specific claims about Ashes, comes from your 'insider' knowledge, right?
The reason I ask is pretty simple, if what you describe is the goal of Ashes design as it's been stated to you by a Dev you know, rather than what you desire, then I should 'adapt', but if not, there might be some small benefit to sharing my design experiences on the matter.
I appreciate any 'time you can save me'. Thanks.
I just played it to try to understand how GW2 Quests are different than "Kill 20 Goblins".
The main difference is the use of a progress bar rather than a numerical counter.