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I’m done with "Running Around Inside a Circle To Find Something" quests

N

Nev

Banned
That's why I don't play open world games anymore and avoid any kind of game with forced quest/xp/scavenge/upgrade bullshit.

It's funny because 5-10 years ago I'd look for open world games and games with that kind of things. Now I loathe anything that isn't a linear game with tight gameplay and story. I just can't deal with that crap anymore. Why would I want to waste time gathering flowers in an offline, "story driven" game like TW3? If I have to go through unsufferable fetching quests I'll do it in WoW.

MMO quests in offline open world game is an immediate sign of avoidable trash game for me. No thanks, "goty".
 
B

Blobbers

Member
I wholeheartedly agree, OP.

Also this reminded me of another mechanic I can't stand that's present in both the Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy XV. When an enemy notices you you can't pick up items/open chests. Please don't strip control away from me like that. It's so jarring in open world games where freedom of movement is like the main element.

I just wanna run past the level 30 basilisk, loot the chest on the beach and run the hell away. Stop unsheathing your sword and entering "combat movement" mode, Geralt.
 
wapplew

wapplew

Member
Way point and quest circle, kill exploration.
Recently play witcher 3, if not for the narratives I don't think I can continue.
 
M

maximum360

Member
Timeaisis said:
You all know what I’m talking about. It’s in a lot of games, not even necessarily RPGs. You get a quest to go find some glowing stones somewhere. You get there, a large circle pops up on your minimap indicating the “search area” and then you get to run around in said circle for upwards of five minutes looking for some random quest items. Joy! Find five red roses to lay on the grave of whatshisface to get some EXP. Woo. How compelling.

This trend is getting tiring. Sure, it’s been around forever, but it’s become increasingly popular the last few years because of the rise of open world games. Not only that, it’s a completely boring, time wasting activity. It’s not engaging at all, and I often find myself just literally running around in said circle for multiple minutes looking for the 5th and final red rose or green frog or whatever. I have no idea why this quest design exists other than filler, and not only is it not particularly good filler, it’s actively bad, boring, frustrating filler. Like, it’s not neutral like some other filler quests. It’s that I actively hate what I’m doing.

I almost quit The Witcher 3 for the amount of stupid run around this circle area quests it had. It felt like every other quests was essentially that. It doesn’t help I’m color blind and had trouble seeing the “highlighted” bits when you got near them. Still, after the color blind patch, at the end of the day you are still running around in a circle for multiple minutes to find a few items. Who thought this was fun? FFXV has them, too, albeit less than TW3, but they are just as aggravating when they pop up. Open world games love these things for some reason, and I have no idea why. The sad part is the developers could have just made, with very limited effort, some damn icons on the map telling me exactly where to find the red rose of whatever, but nooo we need a challenge as gamers, right? Who the hell cares if it’s not challenging? It’s not challenging in the first place, it’s just damn quest busywork. Let’s not pretend that having completely obvious collection quests would somehow be less fun than slightly more obtuse but infinitely more frustrating ones (which aren’t fun to begin with).

It feels like an active waste of time, and it is. I’m tired of games completely disrespecting the player’s time, and this is the poster child of that trend, as far as I can tell. Take your player’s moment-to-moment enjoyment seriously, for fuck’s sake.

There's probably plenty more games that do this, too. Thoughts, GAF?
Click to expand...


I hear ya. I love Skyrim because you can just mindless explore but on the other hand some of the fetch quests to move the story along are just down right painful...and seem unending.
 
G

ghostjoke

Banned
I found the problem is that this kind of "gameplay" tries to pretend there's exploration, but then it limits the exploration to tiny areas, making it unrewarding.

Turn off the minimap and bread crumb trail markers, then the exploring and discovery actually becomes exploration and discovery and not diluted versions. Witcher 3 has surprising amounts of detail in the questlines if you pay attention. World map is still needed on occasion, but when you get used to where things are, you can get from A-B with nothing more than basic intuition. It actually feels like a world and that you're a Witcher hunting down monsters. You also get the benefit of not feeling the need to examine every little dot on the map and when you come across something, it feels like genuine exploration, not obeying the gameplay loop. You're no longer mindlessly exploring and checking off tick-boxes, you're learning the land and working out how things connect - there is a logic to most of The Witcher's world that compliments this.

Can't say the same from for other games (Deus Ex can be done without markers, Ubi games probably not), but Witcher is at it's best when throw off the shackles of modern open world design. It's a shame these UI aspects are on by default. Granted doing the above is probably even less time efficient, but the quality of that time jumps dramatically.
 
O

Ouroboros

Member
I just completed
a frog side quest
mission in final fantasy XV and it was the worst. Took me over 10 minutes to
find them all
!

I like quests where they give you a vague riddle about a item location but when they are just randomly placed in an area, I dunno, I have to agree sometimes it is cumbersome.
 
Suburban Thug

Suburban Thug

Member
I understand the OPs pain. I'm playing through Psychonauts on PS4 right now and I've reached a point in the game where I can't progress unless I farm for currency to buy an item at the camp store that is ridiculously priced. It's just busy work that completely wastes the players time.
 
ThatStupidLion

ThatStupidLion

Member
Agreed OP, this a similar takes on gameplay are part of whats making modern gaming shit....

Spent the other day running around in a circle look for "hidden loot" in the witcher 3....

Whats even more frustrating is that you have witcher senses on top of the yellow circle area marker...would have been already too simple with just the witcher snese but the yellow area markers just make it even worse.

Miss the days of actually needing to read text, use context clues, and explore to discover things....
 
M

MartyStu

Member
Nev said:
That's why I don't play open world games anymore and avoid any kind of game with forced quest/xp/scavenge/upgrade bullshit.

It's funny because 5-10 years ago I'd look for open world games and games with that kind of things. Now I loathe anything that isn't a linear game with tight gameplay and story. I just can't deal with that crap anymore. Why would I want to waste time gathering flowers in an offline, "story driven" game like TW3? If I have to go through unsufferable fetching quests I'll do it in WoW.

MMO quests in offline open world game is an immediate sign of avoidable trash game for me. No thanks, "goty".
Click to expand...

Uh, the quests in TW3 are not fetch quests. Yes, even the ones with the circles. They are mostly the 'investigate these things' quests.

They are an unfortunate medium because modern players are generally pretty lazy and refuse to apply critical thinking and will absolutely refuse to try and figure out things themselves without the map telling them EXACTLY where to go and an even triggering when they get there.

I love the the Witcher 3, but I dislike this aspect of it while completely understanding that it is for the masses mostly.

zoukka said:
Protip: don't do those sidequests in Witcher or FFXV, you will hate the games soon if you do.
Click to expand...

Dunno about FFXV, but this is bad advice for TW3. The sidequests are great.

Unless you are referring to the Points of interest. In which case I agree 100%. Turn that shit off in the settings and make stumbling across them a surprise.
 
L

lum0s

Banned
It's filler. You want a huge open world with things to do? They can't fill it all with memorable questing. It just sorta comes with the territory.

You'd probably be happier with traditional pen and paper role playing. Just find a good DM and not one that has you rolling your stats to find objects every other quest.
 
D

Duc748s

Neo Member
Wow, no mention of the way Red Dead Redemption did some side quests (treasure maps). Personally I would like to see more of that type of side quest design in games.
 
L

laxu

Member
The problem is that if you take away any quest markers etc and leave people to find things, they could just as well miss a ton of stuff. In many games with collectable objects I have walked right past them because they blend into the background. I'm playing Rise of the Tomb Raider now and would miss probably 2/3 of the all the collectable shit.

It's overall a problem of having too many collectable things and thus having to build some missions around that premise. At least Witcher 3 most of the time adds some narrative so you have a reason why you are collecting those flowers.
 
J

John Kowalski

Banned
I don't mind it. TW3 did this thing where the search area would get smaller the more you searched the wrong rooms in a house and Geralt reflected that, which i really liked. I think it's more that third person cameras are just terrible at making you have to examine objects and areas in close detail.
 
D

dlauv

Member
In The Witcher 3 I always saw it as more of a story-immersing section than a real attempt at compelling gameplay. It has problems and it's imperfect and became repetitive, but in The Witcher 3 it usually told a story along the way. And with The Witcher 3's writing, I was more than OK with it.

I feel it's just another mechanic that falls prey to open world design. They give small zones which are more focused, but it's still never on the level of an actual adventure game or anything. Much like level design and combat are usually set back in open world games in comparison to more linear ones. It's a trade-off I'm used to.

Does that mean I should settle for it? Well, ideally no, I should keep demanding better; but, if I'm still enjoying an open world game more than a linear adventure game, then I'd say the trade-off was fine. You often hear the term "better than the sum of its parts" for these bigger, Jack of All Trades games.
 
Fbh

Fbh

Member
Agree 100%

Playing FFXV right now and while I'm really liking the game, the amount of side quests with this formula is really disappointed.

Just yesterday I decided to sidequest a bit and 3 out of the 5 quests I did were like this. One had you looking for frogs, another for some part for your car and another for traps. All the same execution, no enemies or anything else, just you moving around in circles looking for shit (at least the one with the frogs had really nice scenery).

Seriously, if you need filler quests just put some enemies or something in there. Even the "Kill 3 of this type of enemies" quests are better.
 
D

DemWalls

Member
I tried to use the witcher senses mechanic as little as possible, and honestly it wasn't that bad. Certainly helped in making these quests somehow less pedestrian.
 
S

Servbot24

Banned
ghibli99 said:
So, Souls games basically.
Click to expand...

That's an example, yeah. I didn't want to mention specific examples though, because then people get the idea that I think all games should be like a certain other game, which is the opposite of what I want. There are tons of creative possibilities that don't involve quest tropes as they are now.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
BleedOrange said:
I'll admit it here: I'm part of the problem. I bought the $1 cheat code DLC for Forza Horizon 3 which shows the location of all Destroyable Signs and Barnfinds on the map.

My shame is unbearable.
Click to expand...

I was quite annoyed by that. I bought it to highlight signs (which are bloody annoying when they're hidden away on the very edges of maps up long rivers). I didn't realise it also exactly pinpointed barn finds - I'm happy to drive around in those circles. Would have been nice to have the option to turn off individual bits of the map
 
C

CertifiedFP

Member
Neoleo2143 said:
I hate these quests because they don't really test anything despite being lucky. Observation isn't really tested when it's the task presented here.

Zelda: BOTW's Koroks do this a million times better because they're all about figuring environmental inconsistencies or going to really cool places.
Click to expand...

Ooooh a time traveler. How's the Switch version compared to the WiiU version? Third party support good in your time?
 
T

Timeaisis

Member
HK-47 said:
FNV has like over 100 quests.
Click to expand...

Sure, but compared to some other games, 100 isn't a whole lot. Besides, NV has a lot of quests chains, where it's like 10 individual quests chained to one coherent line. They are meaningful. Meanwhile, FFXV is essentially 500 stand-alone meaningless quests, and a handful of story ones. Sure some are "chained", but that essentially just becomes "thanks for getting me X, now get me Y".

wapplew said:
Way point and quest circle, kill exploration.
Recently play witcher 3, if not for the narratives I don't think I can continue.
Click to expand...

Yup, it forces you to look at a little minimap instead of the environment, which is entirely not the point of open world games.
 
W

Weltall Zero

Member
tuxfool said:
That is because Souls games get away with keeping scales and traversal constraints at manageable levels. Their entire structure would fall apart in a more open environment.
Click to expand...

Which leads me to my next point: "open environments for the sake of having them are unnecesary". But if you do have them, then perhaps it's because your players want to explore them at their leisure, without arrows and circles in their minimaps.
 
G

GonzoCR

Member
A Link to the Past said:
I like those quests, especially in inFAMOUS, where you see a picture of what you need to find and need to use visual clues to narrow your search.
Click to expand...

This. inFAMOUS games nailed those missions. I don't hate the "search for stuff in a circle" stuff on principle, but in the Witcher 3 it just becomes "look for the red thing" in a really ugly-looking environment (seriously, Witcher vision is ugly).

In general I haven't been too impressed with the Witcher 3's sidequests so far (some 12 hours in, just got to Novigrad) on the gameplay side of things, though the writing around them is pretty entertaining.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
More_Badass said:
Witcher does a good job at defining Geralt's character through gameplay (no classes here, he's a sword-slinging mutant badass) and story/writing, but the "tracking" is very weak. It isn't tracking. It's "examine the necessary objects then follow the markers to the next objective you unlocked"

And you could do more with it. Ideally, I'd wish the monster hunting was more like Dragon's Dogma where the creatures and big beasts aren't mainly found in just quests, but roaming the world.

That part in the beginning where he cuts the griffin and then follows the blood wouldn't be scripted, but an actual gameplay tactic you could do. Or have special crossbow bolts that drip glowing liquid/visible smoke.

Monsters could have certain diets (just like they have weaknesses) and you'd have to hunt specific animals or buy herbs and chemicals to make bait to lure a monster out.

Stuff like that
Click to expand...

Witcher 3 actually does have significant monsters in the open-world outside of quests. You can wander around and run into basilisks, griffins, drakes, lechesn, etc.

I do think the tracking is a bit too "automatic" though. I actually tried to use it as little as possible since some of the clues are visible without the tracking if you look hard enough. Personally, I would have had those hunts and other quests just feel more like adventure game puzzles in terms of the challenge. Witcher 3 could have been sort of an open-world detective game.

The problem is what Witcher sense is supposed to illustrate Geralt's superhuman senses. These clues are supposed to show things normal people can't see. I guess they could have just had some things always show up in normal gameplay and imply that other characters can't see them.

ghostjoke said:
I found the problem is that this kind of "gameplay" tries to pretend there's exploration, but then it limits the exploration to tiny areas, making it unrewarding.

Turn off the minimap and bread crumb trail markers, then the exploring and discovery actually becomes exploration and discovery and not diluted versions. Witcher 3 has surprising amounts of detail in the questlines if you pay attention. World map is still needed on occasion, but when you get used to where things are, you can get from A-B with nothing more than basic intuition. It actually feels like a world and that you're a Witcher hunting down monsters. You also get the benefit of not feeling the need to examine every little dot on the map and when you come across something, it feels like genuine exploration, not obeying the gameplay loop. You're no longer mindlessly exploring and checking off tick-boxes, you're learning the land and working out how things connect - there is a logic to most of The Witcher's world that compliments this.

Can't say the same from for other games (Deus Ex can be done without markers, Ubi games probably not), but Witcher is at it's best when throw off the shackles of modern open world design. It's a shame these UI aspects are on by default. Granted doing the above is probably even less time efficient, but the quality of that time jumps dramatically.
Click to expand...

I tried this with Witcher 3 and just couldn't do it a lot of the time. There are too many quest that don't give you any location description at all. Some do, but it doesn't seem to be a uniform thing. Deus Ex is much better about this.

I turned off the question mark POIs and breadcrumb trail, but had to lave on the mini map and waypoints. Maybe I could have turned that stuff off it the game let me use the compass by itself. That's what has pissed me off about a lot of open-world games -- the compass and mini map are fused together. Witcher, Deus Ex, and Far Cry all do this. Skyrim surprisingly doesn't. I know Witcher 3 has a Skyrim-style compass mod but I'm not sure I like the look of it.

Edit: I wish I could leave the in-game clock up there by itself too. Basically, open-world games need their UIs to be much more customizable. A weird thing about Mafia III is that when you set a waypoint it actually gives you AR-style arrows on the road to tell you where to turn which is pretty cool... but you can't actually turn off the GPS or mini map.
 
Mexen

Mexen

Member
I like to do other things in the circle besides the quest itself. So I might consider trying out a new weapon or collecting items prior to actually completing the task at hand. Circles with a timer though? Now that's just evil LOL
 
K

Kieli

Member
Fetch quests, escort missions, and collect "x" items are all shit-tier quest design.

Pillars of Eternity almost forgoes all of the above, which made it so awesome in my book.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
Kieli said:
Fetch quests, escort missions, and collect "x" items are all shit-tier quest design.

Pillars of Eternity almost forgoes all of the above, which made it so awesome in my book.
Click to expand...
No, bad escort missions are. The Last of Us, Brothers, Ico, and The Last Guardian going by the recent impressions are examples of the escort concept done well
 
N

Neoleo2143

Member
More_Badass said:
No, bad escort missions are. The Last of Us, Brothers, Ico, and The Last Guardian going by the recent impressions are examples of the escort concept done well
Click to expand...

I would hardly call Last of Us an escort mission done well since it basically makes Ellie into a non entity. I would suggest Resident Evil 4 instead, you even get unlocks that can change the gameplay escort wise.

The Last Guardian and Ico are definitely great examples though.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
SomewhatGroovy said:
Doesn't bother me. It's an excuse to explore which is a huge part of the adventuring experience. You're a "gameplay is king" kinda guy, timeaisis. 10 years from now, I'm not going to be arsed about mechanics but moments.
Click to expand...
I love exploring, but this isn't exploring. If it is an excuse to explore, it's a very poor one. Becaue you aren't exploring, you're playing Wheres Waldo to find an item, or you're following a glowing/dotted trail/arrow.
 
Mediking

Mediking

Member
Oh, yeah. Totally agreed. Just lead me to the spot. I dont mind. But actually searching in a circle is dumb.

.....


Witcher 3 is still amazing though.
 
C

ChronotriggerJM

Member
I think it's garbage. I hate HUDs, and stuff like that makes then necessary. I'd love for games to make searching for things much more organic, maybe using general directions more, landmarks, descriptions, etc. I'd love to need to talk to an herbalist to find out where certain flowers grow, a smithy to get details on mines and ores, have to go to a library for history on ruins, etc etc.

The Witcher sense's were so cool regarding analysis, why did they make it silly with the circles?
 
R

Roussow

Member
Collecting those fucking red frogs in that Final Fantasy XV side quest led me to stop doing the side quests. It appears I'm not the only one who was infuriated by that one.
 
C

ChosenPredator

Banned
I agree with this i was visualizing a dev making a gameplay demo of some sort of hero talking to a NPC character who request he pick up cactus of loom from the farmers guild across the street, but the Hero character ends up slapping him across the face telling him to get it himself. lol
 
U

Unknown Soldier

Member
Like the hat? said:
Asked to Find the amethyst for Dino in FFXV. Go to the circle. Look for ten minutes, constant battles. Get frustrated, look it up. It's just outside of the circle.

Get bent, SE.
Click to expand...

It's inside the circle, about 20 feet southeast of the quest marker.

I was confused too for a few minutes. Also a few of those Imperial cyborgs got my Fira in the face while I looked around. It worked out.
 
G

GlassEmpires

Member
I agree about those frog searching and trap disarming quests, but the quests to find amethyst and other precious ores are always in the same kind of rock formation that's easily identifiable. So look for those instead of watching the circle on the mini map.

Which is in line with people wanting a unique visual to alert players of their objective without needing a waypoint.
 
D

DemWalls

Member
GonzoCR said:
In general I haven't been too impressed with the Witcher 3's sidequests so far (some 12 hours in, just got to Novigrad) on the gameplay side of things, though the writing around them is pretty entertaining.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone ever has. As you said, it's for how everything is written and presented that TW3 is generally praised. Even if the task is the typical "Go there, kill this" (you're a witcher, after all), there's usually a nice little story around it.
 
B

Boy Wander

Member
To me it smacks of lazy design or trying to cram too much shit into a game.

"What else can we have them do?"

It's just about ok for a side-quest, but fuck any main quests that have you running around collecting stuff. It's just lazy, by the numbers stuff.

I still think that in gaming in general, there's too much emphasis on how big a map is, how many quests there are, how much stuff you can collect etc. There needs to be more emphasis on tight design that is integrated with a story.

My guess is that in a lot of these cases, designers come up with missions and then try to figure out how to cram them into the games story rather than doing it the other way around.
 
M

Murkas

Member
I agree, at least make it different like Infamous or GTA5 where you have to look at a picture to spot a landmark or something to help you find it.

GonzoCR said:
This. inFAMOUS games nailed those missions. I don't hate the "search for stuff in a circle" stuff on principle, but in the Witcher 3 it just becomes "look for the red thing" in a really ugly-looking environment (seriously, Witcher vision is ugly).

In general I haven't been too impressed with the Witcher 3's sidequests so far (some 12 hours in, just got to Novigrad) on the gameplay side of things, though the writing around them is pretty entertaining.
Click to expand...

One of the reasons I traded in my "GOTY" edition of Witcher 3. People kept going on about these awesome different side quests but everyone I was doing was gather something, kill someone, or find someone. Same crappy sidequests you do in your average open world RPG, that combined with the terrible combat and gameplay turned me right off.
 
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