Post by Azherae on 2021-05-13 05:14:49
Quest Design has about four parts that depend on the game type you're making.
They're a little hard to explain but if you look at quests within games and then parallel to what I say here, it might make sense, depending on the game (a lot of modern MMOs are poor at quest development, but I believe that most of the time, you can see how the quest 'feels less good' by comparing the same principle)
Part 1: Timeframe
Since players often just skip through quest dialogue, and partially skip it because of the immersion failure, the actual first thing you probably look at in a nonlinear game is 'what is the player's experience at the point where they encounter this quest'. How many different player pre-experiences can you manage to get into the quest line?
e.g. A farmer has lost her prize chicken and needs you to find it, your reward is some eggs.
This sort of thing is usually intended as an early game quest, and built around the feeling of a new player, but there are lots of ways, through just dialogue, to make this more engaging. The main thing here is 'how can I get a level 50 player to care about helping this farmer?'. Even if you succeed at this, the resulting feeling won't really be 'overwhelming' to a level 2 player, unless you go too far and mess up on...
Part 2: Communication of Difficulty
Sometimes it's hard to be immersive with communication of how difficult something is, because the quest-giver 'shouldn't' have the knowledge themselves. But most quest-givers live within their world, and they should have at least enough information to know this. For repeatables this is easy, just have them imply that they got help from someone before, or "I need X again... oh, hi, can you help me with the X task today?' And then go into that. Long narrative single shot quests, usually you should just make it as clear as possible. Use another NPC in a conversation moment or reference one, which lets you have more realistic communication. Some other person 'scolding the quest giver' for 'always bothering adventurers with simple tasks'. Or the opposite 'don't ask random people for difficult things, you could put them in danger'.
Part 3: Branching and Timeframes
I think games have mostly done away with 'quests that expire because you didn't clear them in time', but it's still important to think about this sometimes because it helps you sort them into 'quests that the player should realistically do quickly and therefore have close access to the target' (usually nearby culling quests) and 'epic quests to find special items'. If you never do this, it ends up dry and the NPCs seem less and less immersive, which I believe leads to players eventually just not caring about quests or at least the 'emotional' or 'narrative' content of quests. If you want your quest to branch in terms of the choice you make at some point, this becomes really important, because of Part 2. Players might lose their immersion and just pick whichever branch sounds faster. And usually that is the 'kill nearest enemy' branch.
Part 4: Salience of Rewards
Salience in this case means 'how does the quest giver communicate the value of the reward?'. Most of the time, in a game where you can get standard exp for leveling your adventuring class just by doing this, you don't care that much, but it depends. Certain games have entire guides on 'how to quest to 60', etc. When you don't have this, and the game is full economy base, the rewards are often a little more complicated. The main point is to have the quest giver or situation do better than 'I'll pay you well'. You never know what anyone will think that means. Even the 'nicest' player will remember 'getting nothing' from doing something helpful, and your quest has to carry a lot of 'feel good vibes' at the end if you want to just give people a sword or something, because of Part 1. Reputation can be worse than even that.
I've definitely gone on long enough, so I'll give you the breakdown of the one written:
First part of quest passes Part 1 requirement easily. You helping Jack has nothing to do with what you've done before, only the type of person you are. Part 2 is passed if the danger of the woods is communicated or if the player is likely to already know it. Then it fails part 4, your reward is... another quest? One that makes a specific type of player feel too greedy and unlikely to continue the questline, and another type of player go 'this is giving me the runaround' and discontinue. It then fails part 2, because even if it's interesting narrative for the cow to be cursed and all that, the player's probably losing interest or building up a memory around this quest that doesn't make them remember it fondly.
It then proceeds to pass part 1 again, you meeting the traveler eventually has nothing to do with what the player's done before other than this quest. Part 2 is failed because even if someone didn't already know this story, trading one cursed item for a random magic item that they don't know how to use, is something they will definitely do, but not care about enough to go further. This might result in instantly throwing the beans away unless you communicated the effect, or the cash value.
Passes part 3 by default, you get a choice, climb or chop, but fails part 2. No difficulty is communicated other than 'the size of the beanstalk'. If it says 'you will need to gather multiple people to cut it', then this decision is made already, and if this quest is not Unique, it will never reach the point where most players help out after the first time, pushing most players into climbing it, and probably triggering the Giant anyway. In an MMO this is 'worse' because of too many reasons to go into.
In the end, the result is that it fails part 3 after all, and completely fails 4. Why either climb OR chop it? Sure, most people will climb, but in an MMO, most saner people will just 'ask what happens if they climb' and the whole thing gets weird.
Um... hope this helps?
They're a little hard to explain but if you look at quests within games and then parallel to what I say here, it might make sense, depending on the game (a lot of modern MMOs are poor at quest development, but I believe that most of the time, you can see how the quest 'feels less good' by comparing the same principle)
Part 1: Timeframe
Since players often just skip through quest dialogue, and partially skip it because of the immersion failure, the actual first thing you probably look at in a nonlinear game is 'what is the player's experience at the point where they encounter this quest'. How many different player pre-experiences can you manage to get into the quest line?
e.g. A farmer has lost her prize chicken and needs you to find it, your reward is some eggs.
This sort of thing is usually intended as an early game quest, and built around the feeling of a new player, but there are lots of ways, through just dialogue, to make this more engaging. The main thing here is 'how can I get a level 50 player to care about helping this farmer?'. Even if you succeed at this, the resulting feeling won't really be 'overwhelming' to a level 2 player, unless you go too far and mess up on...
Part 2: Communication of Difficulty
Sometimes it's hard to be immersive with communication of how difficult something is, because the quest-giver 'shouldn't' have the knowledge themselves. But most quest-givers live within their world, and they should have at least enough information to know this. For repeatables this is easy, just have them imply that they got help from someone before, or "I need X again... oh, hi, can you help me with the X task today?' And then go into that. Long narrative single shot quests, usually you should just make it as clear as possible. Use another NPC in a conversation moment or reference one, which lets you have more realistic communication. Some other person 'scolding the quest giver' for 'always bothering adventurers with simple tasks'. Or the opposite 'don't ask random people for difficult things, you could put them in danger'.
Part 3: Branching and Timeframes
I think games have mostly done away with 'quests that expire because you didn't clear them in time', but it's still important to think about this sometimes because it helps you sort them into 'quests that the player should realistically do quickly and therefore have close access to the target' (usually nearby culling quests) and 'epic quests to find special items'. If you never do this, it ends up dry and the NPCs seem less and less immersive, which I believe leads to players eventually just not caring about quests or at least the 'emotional' or 'narrative' content of quests. If you want your quest to branch in terms of the choice you make at some point, this becomes really important, because of Part 2. Players might lose their immersion and just pick whichever branch sounds faster. And usually that is the 'kill nearest enemy' branch.
Part 4: Salience of Rewards
Salience in this case means 'how does the quest giver communicate the value of the reward?'. Most of the time, in a game where you can get standard exp for leveling your adventuring class just by doing this, you don't care that much, but it depends. Certain games have entire guides on 'how to quest to 60', etc. When you don't have this, and the game is full economy base, the rewards are often a little more complicated. The main point is to have the quest giver or situation do better than 'I'll pay you well'. You never know what anyone will think that means. Even the 'nicest' player will remember 'getting nothing' from doing something helpful, and your quest has to carry a lot of 'feel good vibes' at the end if you want to just give people a sword or something, because of Part 1. Reputation can be worse than even that.
I've definitely gone on long enough, so I'll give you the breakdown of the one written:
First part of quest passes Part 1 requirement easily. You helping Jack has nothing to do with what you've done before, only the type of person you are. Part 2 is passed if the danger of the woods is communicated or if the player is likely to already know it. Then it fails part 4, your reward is... another quest? One that makes a specific type of player feel too greedy and unlikely to continue the questline, and another type of player go 'this is giving me the runaround' and discontinue. It then fails part 2, because even if it's interesting narrative for the cow to be cursed and all that, the player's probably losing interest or building up a memory around this quest that doesn't make them remember it fondly.
It then proceeds to pass part 1 again, you meeting the traveler eventually has nothing to do with what the player's done before other than this quest. Part 2 is failed because even if someone didn't already know this story, trading one cursed item for a random magic item that they don't know how to use, is something they will definitely do, but not care about enough to go further. This might result in instantly throwing the beans away unless you communicated the effect, or the cash value.
Passes part 3 by default, you get a choice, climb or chop, but fails part 2. No difficulty is communicated other than 'the size of the beanstalk'. If it says 'you will need to gather multiple people to cut it', then this decision is made already, and if this quest is not Unique, it will never reach the point where most players help out after the first time, pushing most players into climbing it, and probably triggering the Giant anyway. In an MMO this is 'worse' because of too many reasons to go into.
In the end, the result is that it fails part 3 after all, and completely fails 4. Why either climb OR chop it? Sure, most people will climb, but in an MMO, most saner people will just 'ask what happens if they climb' and the whole thing gets weird.
Um... hope this helps?