A Question about Quests

So, i might be wrong here. But this is how I understand it so far:

-There will be 103 nodes possible on each server
-Each node has the potential (if leveled up to metropolis) to have enough quests from a player to go to max level just in that node

That begs the question: Will there be 103 different quest lines that all can take a player to max level? Or will there be a lot of copy-paste quests between towns?

If it is the first one, who will write, design and program 103 different quest lines?? That seems like an obscene amount of work!

If it is the second one, how many will be copy pasted? How different will the experience be between a player that started in the mountains compared to one on the beach?

Or are we looking at a few node-specific quests and the rest are general for all of them?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

tautau

We won't know for sure until Alpha2, or maybe the Betas. But....

I think that the odds are quite high that we will see a lot of variation is quests. I mean a LOT. For example;

- Node quests will vary by level, race, location, religion, node type, season of the year, and other unknowns
- Religions will have quests, varying by level of religion, type of religion, and perhaps other things like % of server population following that religion
- Races will have quests
- Archetypes will have quests
- Social organizations will have quests, Bounty Hunter guild, Thieves guild, Crafter's guild, Gathers guild, and so forth
- Quests opening during different season of the year
- Quests opening during special events, like corruption spawns
- Quests for ports, quests for underground Tulnar areas, quests for caravan materials, quests for weapons and armor, quests for Castles and the Castle nodes, quests for node and castle siege certificates, quests for certificates to marry, quests to level your freehold tavern/pig pen/fish farm/... to the next level, fishing quests...

What other kinds might we have?

But who will write them? IS has over 120 full time employees now and is still hiring. What proportion of them are writing quests, maybe 10%? Could be more, but if we have a dozen people working 35 productive hours a week would give us 1,680 writing hours a month. For Years of quest writing...that could be a lot of good quests.

Without doubt I am an optimist here, but I do think that they will have a lot of different quests and I hope and anticipate that most of them will be a lot of fun.

Schmuky

I would absolutely love if there were 103 different quest lines, meeting someone at endgame from a different region that had a completely different leveling experience and chat about it.

However, idk, seems like an insane burden to put on the devs: "not only we want good quests, but we want 103 quest lines"

Actually i am going to ask this at the next livestream, maybe Margaret will finally pick up one of my questions:)))

Noaani

I wouldn't expect a full quest line like we see on other MMO's.

Expect more smaller quest lines that aren't really related to each other at all.

I would also expect quests to mostly be node type based, other than social organization and religios quests. A scientific node on one side of Verra is likely to have similar quests to a scientific node on the other side.

Karthos

There's a limited number of Metros per server, and it bears to reason that there are likely only quests that are unlocked when a node gets to the level of Metro, therefore they won't need to write 103 different quest lines, because although possible, not every node will be a Metro.

Schmuky

Karthos wrote: »

There's a limited number of Metros per server, and it bears to reason that there are likely only quests that are unlocked when a node gets to the level of Metro, therefore they won't need to write 103 different quest lines, because although possible, not every node will be a Metro.

Yes it will. Or rather, the chance is very high.

1)Each server will be different, so there is one reason

2) And second, Metros won't last forever. Depending on how hard it is to get the siege scroll, its hard to imagine Metros lasting even a year, my guess is way less. There will for sure be achievements to destroying Metros, so people will go after them.

Taking that into account, I expect all Nodes to become Metros at some point. So they will need story lines

Atama

The Alpha 1 quests were a pretty typical breadcrumb set up. Quests from NPC A lead you to NPC B, whose quests lead to NPC C, etc. But so many things in Alpha 1 were placeholders that I have no idea if the quests at release will be like this at all.

I wonder if we'll have some finite quest templates, like "Mad Libs", and then the blanks will be filled in based on what node you're in.

"Adventurer, please go to ______ and face the ______ who guards the ______. Return it to me, and that will help release the _____ from servitude!"

The Perilmurk Swamp node will fill in the blanks from this array:

Muckrend Mire | Salamander King | Mossheart Amulet | Bogspeakers

The Crystalline Desert node will fill in the blanks from this array:

Sapphire Oasis | Bandit Lord | Elixer of the Sun | Sandhaven Villagers

That might cut down a bit on the writing, though it might make things feel a bit generic. (But still, less stagnant than the same static quests you will always find all the time in the same place on every server.)

George_Black

If a node becomes Metro it locks out other nearby nodes from ever becoming one (while itself holds onto that status, which could change by siege.)
The other nearby nodes will be lower and have a vassal status.

Also, questing wont be the way to get main class xp all the way to cap. Questing will be situational.

My guess would be that there will be lots of copy paste per climate region.

Karthos

Schmuky wrote: »

Karthos wrote: »

There's a limited number of Metros per server, and it bears to reason that there are likely only quests that are unlocked when a node gets to the level of Metro, therefore they won't need to write 103 different quest lines, because although possible, not every node will be a Metro.

Yes it will. Or rather, the chance is very high.

1)Each server will be different, so there is one reason

2) And second, Metros won't last forever. Depending on how hard it is to get the siege scroll, its hard to imagine Metros lasting even a year, my guess is way less. There will for sure be achievements to destroying Metros, so people will go after them.

Taking that into account, I expect all Nodes to become Metros at some point. So they will need story lines

Based on what?

Your wish that it be true?

Just based on the map, there are certain nodes that make little sense to make into a Metro, and based on the fact that in other MMOs, sieges don't results 100% of the time in the defenders losing, it's safe to conclude that some sieges will not result in the node changing hands.

Take into account the 50 day cool down on sieges, unless every single siege results in a win for the attackers on their first try, this 50 day cool down is going to come into effect. Considering it's been stated that the defenders have the advantage, the game is designed to side with the defenders.

So if every Node on the map takes 2 sieges exactly to take, there's the imposed 50 day cooldown, and 50 days times 103 nodes comes out to 5150 days, or 14 years.

Given, there could be multiple sieges happening at the same time, my point here isn't the actual numbers, but rather the lengthy time span that's required. Even with 2 sieges happening at the same time, it still would be 7 years. Alot can happen in 7yrs.

Some nodes may fall on the first try, but then others will take 2, 3, 5 or 10 sieges. And while those Metros exist, there can't be another one in the ZOI. Thus they block a considerable number of nodes from obtaining Metro status. PLUS the time it will take to build a new node up to Metro also comes into play. It's just going to take a very very long time for EVERY node to be a Metro, that realistically, it's an unlikely thing to happen.

There's a whole other discussion also about Node Decay that could be had, but I feel like ramming my point home over and over isn't needed.

Like I said, it's "possible" but very unlikely.

Noaani

Schmuky wrote: »

Taking that into account, I expect all Nodes to become Metros at some point. So they will need story lines

Keep in mind, Steven is significantly less interested in telling a story to players than he is interested in creating a world where players can create their own story.

There is absolutely not going to be a unique story per node.

Dygz

My expectation is that there will be similar types of quest templates with blanks for specifics that will be procedurally generated based on a variety of parameters based on region, race, stage, node type, season, which buildings have been erected and which services have been unlocked. As well as social org progression.

Every node has the potential to become a metro. Whether we will see every node become a metro depends on what happens on each specific server and how many servers we have.
One parameter that makes it unlikely that we will see every node become a server is the rampant hatred of the Tulnar.

Regarding whose going to be writing dev curated quests - I expect we might get an update on that in the next Dev Livestream.

daveywavey

Can you imagine how disappointed you'd be when, after doing all the quests in your node, your node gets destroyed and you move to a different one, only to find that all the quests are exactly the same, just with a differently-named NPC handing them out. They're going to have to have different quests in each node, cos we'll be well unimpressed to be re-doing the same ones each time we change node.

Goatrek

Yeeah... I definitely hope we will see a hefty amount of unique handcrafted quests (even if they pad with generic generated stuff). Thats prob what got me hooked with og wow and MMOs to begin with. I thoroughly enjoyed all the different small stories and surprise quest chains that suddenly turned out to be quite relevant with strong rewards or cool lore. That stuff got me hooked in the world. Anything less would be an embarrasing step back in MMO design to me.

AidanKD

I think that we can expect there to be similarities in the style of quest as there is only so much you can do.

Deliver X to Y.
Kill x Monsters.
Gather x herbs and administer medicine to y.

There is a finite number of ways to deliver, but the delivery will be the icing on the cake. I think if they can find a way to tailor to the quests to the node, so for example a winter biome will have a different overall thematic to a tropical biome. Maybe in the winter an avalanche has blocked off a trade route, could open up a dynamic quest line to clear the route, or maybe it will be a time-locked event.

Compare to the more moderate climate, we know that Winter can cause rivers to freeze and so the theme could be the same in that both have some sort of quest based on a route restriction, but the delivery can be different (and not used in EVERY node).

I agree though that if they rebalance exp, so that questing and dungeoning aren't the end all and be-all of efficient questing, then we can expect the other activities, mob grinding, life skills etc. to be sufficient for levelling up and so the NEED for the amount of questing we are accustomed to in other games won't be as high. The wiki seems to imply that they might balance this exp distribution more.

Happymeal2415

They've mentioned quests and tasks as being 2 different categories. I'm assuming tasks will be very generic and repetitive whereas quest will have more of a narrative and be unique

Dygz

AidanKD wrote: »

There is a finite number of ways to deliver, but the delivery will be the icing on the cake.

Damn it! You made me go buy cake!!

Jahlon

tautau wrote: »

But who will write them? IS has over 120 full time employees now and is still hiring. What proportion of them are writing quests, maybe 10%? Could be more, but if we have a dozen people working 35 productive hours a week would give us 1,680 writing hours a month. For Years of quest writing...that could be a lot of good quests.

So this right here is the danger when people who don't understand how organizations work start trying to use the facts they have to fit their argument.

120 full time employees do not ALL write quests. The art team..they do art. The engineering team they do engineering. Not everyone jumps in and writes quests full time. That's part of, you guessed it, the quest writing team.

So while you did indicate maybe 10%, you have no idea if it is that much, or less, or more. Please don't give people this random bullshit number of 1,680 man hours a month of quest writing.

This is how horrible rumors about Ashes get started.

Atama

Yeah, it seems like the idea of 10% of an entire studio's staff devoted to writing quests is crazy, especially a game that's not based around a scripted storyline.

mcstackerson

I think this old quote answers the OPs question:

We’re going to be breaking up what is traditionally called ‘questing’ into three different categories: Narratives, Events, and Tasks. We want to avoid going down the path of trying to force narrative into gameplay where it doesn’t really fit (ie: filler stuff that doesn’t really relate to what’s happening in the world).

A lot of events and tasks will most likely be activities that can be copy/pasted across nodes with minor tweaks. Not everything you traditionally do as a quest will be given a narrative so quest writers won't need to waste time coming up with a story for every filler quests.

Schmuky

I get the idea of having Tasks and stuff...

But for me personally, quests (or main quests if you want) are the main immersion system. Meeting NPCs that have different jobs and give us the opportunity to help them out.

As an example, let's take the Captain of the City Guard. In the first stage of a Node, we meet him as a random NPC, that is still deciding if he want to stay in this place. And slowly, the node progresses and his story goes forward. Maybe he has a kid, so wants us to help build a wall around the settlement so he knows the kid is safe.

Maybe his favorite past-time is fishing, and there are some monsters that appeared next to his favorite spot, so asks us to clear them.

If you spend a lot of time in the same node, you will learn a lot of stuff about him. He is the one that gave you all your quests, xp and rewards. You defended the city side by side with him. So when he eventually dies in a Monster Siege, it's going to be heartbreaking.

We've seen this in other MMOs, my worry right now, is that instead of each node having a character (or a few tbh) like this Captain that are different and want different stuff, its going to be the same Captain with a different name.

I don't think each city should have an epic storyline to follow, but a lot of small unique characters that you won't find anywhere else.

George_Black

Schmuky wrote: »

I get the idea of having Tasks and stuff...

But for me personally, quests (or main quests if you want) are the main immersion system. Meeting NPCs that have different jobs and give us the opportunity to help them out.

As an example, let's take the Captain of the City Guard. In the first stage of a Node, we meet him as a random NPC, that is still deciding if he want to stay in this place. And slowly, the node progresses and his story goes forward. Maybe he has a kid, so wants us to help build a wall around the settlement so he knows the kid is safe.

Maybe his favorite past-time is fishing, and there are some monsters that appeared next to his favorite spot, so asks us to clear them.

If you spend a lot of time in the same node, you will learn a lot of stuff about him. He is the one that gave you all your quests, xp and rewards. You defended the city side by side with him. So when he eventually dies in a Monster Siege, it's going to be heartbreaking.

We've seen this in other MMOs, my worry right now, is that instead of each node having a character (or a few tbh) like this Captain that are different and want different stuff, its going to be the same Captain with a different name.

I don't think each city should have an epic storyline to follow, but a lot of small unique characters that you won't find anywhere else.

Do you think that mmos should focus on that?
Do you think that AoC should offer the same experience as all the current "top" mmos?
Dont you think that you should be playing more single player games, instead of trying to live amongst npcs in a massive multiPLAYER game?

Child Item