NeoGAF

Originally Posted by Alvarez

Unfortunately, in both games, they are lackluster.

In FF14, FATES are self-contained. If you don't kill that pack of enemies over there, ... nothing will happen. No one will be in danger.

there's like...one fate i can think of where you have to protect a fort in quarrymill from invaders. if you fail, the next time a fate occurs there it's to take back the fort. it's not much but i found it interesting.

if it was that easy though, it already be the case, right? but it's not, so I'm just trying to discuss why it has been this way, and why it's slow to change, since i've spent a lot of time with mmo devs in betas and i know a bit about the process.

i assure you, i'm not justfying it. i've written this exact post a dozen times probably since 1997. i agree with you. my point is that if it was this simply, or if obviously so many people would prefer otherwise, then why isn't it the case? there's reasons for that and they're not related to design philosophy or that someone on gaf is the first person to ever consider quality over quantity in a mmo ;p

a bit OT now but gnomeregan being hated back in the day? lol, when, post-vanilla? that was tigole's pride and joy. beta loved it. gnomeregan and scarlet monastery were probably by far the two best received pre-60 dungeons in beta. if it was hater later it was once it was poorly placed in the leveling curve and it become trouble for pugs trying to cruise through to to SM too quickly and it not being as linear and straight forward as places like early DMines. but beta where it was mostly properly gear EQ guilds? we loved it.

Originally Posted by Morrigan Targaryen

Oh wow, that is a brilliant metaphor. I'm totally stealing that in the future. :)

This almost makes too much sense.

Originally Posted by thetrin

From a dev standpoint, he easiest way to handle it would be to localize the repercussions of a quest. Let's say a band of raiders has been ransacking towns in a single region. If you take on the quest, you can defeat them, and the area will prosper when you visit the next time.

If you ignore the raids, buy your goods and go on your way, you could return to that region to find that a town is now in shambles, has burned to the ground, and the shops that were once there are no longer there. On the other hand, less savory folks have now set up a black market trading post in the area, meaning you can now get certain goods you couldn't before.

That would present a really interesting moral dilemma.

That would be a cool setup - but how often could you do it in the game, and could you ensure enough variety that it didn't become as dull as the fetch quests it replaced? It would either result in a hugely reduced number of quests (the other positive of the type of quests the OP laments is how easy they are to generate), to the point that you'd still need some alternative quest structures, or you'd end up with Dream Team Bros syndrome. I started off enjoying that game until realising that every. single. new environment was going to have the same 'get the puzzle pieces as you advance' structure. A game like you describe above would have to work hard to avoid 'oh, here's the part in this area where I decide whether to save or sacrifice with later repercussions' fatigue.

Originally Posted by Alvarez

Love it. It could be way better, but it's already such a contrast to the typical awful WoW daily questing that it's great.

I spent 4-5 hours on that island the first day it came out just exploring.

See, for me it didn't take long to become not much more than a grind with a different name. I was still killing mobs near daily, only instead of being told to kill them by some questgiver, I was being told to kill them by some player who had an addon that broadcast any rares' spawning and where they were.

Any truly random content worth doing is something that will be camped or otherwise abused by the playerbase. WoW vanilla had randomly spawning Nightmare Dragons and randomly spawning Elemental Invasions. One offered awesome loot, so it was camped and farmed by high-tier raiding guilds. The other offered crap, and went ignored.

At least in the Mass Effect series they counted for something, even if they were fetch quests. They helped build up the lore and could affect a character's future and so on. They were a tad annoying in ME3 though, what with Shepard eavesdropping and all.

Originally Posted by Seanspeed

Numbers don't pop out of people's heads when I hit them, either.

Then you're not hitting them hard enough

Originally Posted by Deadpool727

At least in the Mass Effect series they counted for something, even if they were fetch quests. They helped build up the lore and could affect a character's future and so on. They were a tad annoying in ME3 though, what with Shepard eavesdropping and all.

Mass Effect at least had the decency of dressing up the Kill X for Y or fetch quests as SUPER SECRET BLACK OPS MISSION THAT ONLY YOU CAN DO!!

Love,
Admiral Hackett

this is not only a problem of videogames, nearly every piece of mainstream-media slaps you in the face with its "message".
other than telling, showing needs some sort of attention and concentration of the recipient and takes alot more time to deliver (altough with much higher impact).

the last time I've seen mainstream-media use showing instead of telling was in the good moments of the movie Gravity and the new zelda does a fairly good job at it too.

Originally Posted by Alvarez

When was the last time you approached a stranger and asked him to collect some oranges for you because you're hungry?

Batman: Arkham Oranges

It sounds like you should play Guild Wars 2 just to see the branching quest system.

I loved those moments in Persona 4 Golden when you just a new kid in school going to class, making friends, finding your way around. Also coming home and getting used to new surroundings. That buildup makes the rest of the game much more enjoyable than just thrusting you into a world as saviour and the "chosen one".

Basic PvE mmo quests serve the all-important purpose of not distracting players from socializing with each other, in other words: they never forget that for PvE players those games are no more than huge chat rooms dressed as 3d virtual spaces and with avatars running around.

The problem lies when single player rpgs are designed using those as a blueprints.

To be fair to World of Warcraft, the majority of those "quests" were actually cleverly disguised tutorial and guide elements. Rather than telling you, "This zone is for Lv20-30 players, you need to go to one of these zones now that you're Lv31!" the game gives you a quest when you hit Lv30 to deliver something to an NPC in the Lv31 zone. The intention is not for the quest itself to be challenging, important to the narrative, or even interesting; it's just a less "gamey" way of getting you to the level-appropriate area.

The quests inside of zones ("Collect 10 Bear Asses", "Kill 5 Rabid Cats", etc.) are devised in such a way that completing them will cause you to tour the zone in question and visit each of the major landmarks within it over the course of them. They generally have no other purpose: they're just there to show you to the points of interest.

There are obvious pros and cons to this sort of design. The game ended up being vastly more intuitive and user-friendly than prior MMOs as a result, but it created a situation where it was hard for players to recognize "real" quests where they might actually want to read the quest text and pay attention to events among the "chaff" of do-nothing "guide" quests. There are ways to improve upon it, certainly, but it's important to understand why they did it, what the benefits are, and what problems can result from not doing it moving forward.

Ok OP, what about the quests where little Billy is missing?

You walk up and a lady is going "oh nooo my son is gone, I turned around and he just wasn't there, whatever shall I do?"

How do you "show, not tell" that? It's been set up as well as can be expected. What are you supposed to show? Are you telling me that I am coincidentally there at the exact moment that Billy runs off?

And then when I run all over the world and come across Billy and it turns out he went to a dangerous area to pick fruits for his sick father, and escort him back to town, and then I get a quest to pick more of those fruits to save the guy (Billy wasn't looking in the right place)...what's wrong with that? When we find out the old guy is sick because of all the terrible mist in the area, isn't that a bit of world building?

Should I have seen the old man fall ill in order to make the quest meaningful?

It seems to me that "wolf meats" is a bit disingenuous when there are plenty of good quests out there already.

What about the guy who wants to make a necklace for his girlfriend and needs 8 pearls from the oyster monsters at the beach? He's willing to pay good money for the help, and you're a group of mercenaries. It seems like a reasonable request. People don't leave the village because it's too dangerous, and you're one of the few people who can actually do this for him. What else does the game need to show? Usually when you bring them back you get to see the girlfriend all excited to receive it, and the guy is like "my bros," and you get a reward and you learn that girls in this country like this kind of pearl or whatever.

Xenoblade had quite a bit of that sort of thing. It had plenty of world building quests. I specifically remember an early one where you help a Nopon child become friends with Hom children. So you learn that races are a bit mistrustful of each other, but all it takes is a little push to get them on friendly terms.

I don't need that epically illustrated in a voice acted scene with dramatic events unfolding. The world isn't like that either. The world has a lot of tiny, dialogue-based conflicts too.

Originally Posted by Sober

Sure but it doesn't help that world 2 is Questception 3: To the Power of Three. And halfway through that it's kinda downhill from there.

Yeah, definitely. I really loved Darksiders II and enjoyed it a lot more than the first, but the way its pacing degraded was a real shame. It even had a decent bit more content than the first, but the flow and presentation just progressively fell apart as you got further in.

Originally Posted by Alvarez

Here's an example scenario: It's noon in Xenoblade's first town and the marketplace is bustling. Mouthwatering aromas waft through the air--and the wild animals outside the city gates can't take it anymore. The animals burst through the gates and ravage the marketplace, goring innocents and eating everything in sight. You, the player, can choose to simply walk past the ensuing massacre--or you can help the townspeople defend themselves. There is no questgiver to tell you what you will win or lose by participating or not participating. You must make your decision right then and there, by yourself. Crazy idea, I know.

Should you help fight off the animals, you will be hailed as a hero. Should you run away, you may be considered a coward for a time. Regardless of your decision, one of your party members, Fiora, will stay and help the townspeople for the duration of this event. She will apply first aid to injured townspeople, an action that will show the player more about her personality and skills. Should the player participate in the event, Fiora will patch Shulk (the main character) up in a cutscene and give him a kiss on the cheek.

The whole industry has a lot to learn from GTAV. Even if they call their highly scripted sidequests "random" events.

This is exactly what you are talking about, on a smaller scale somehow.

Pretty cool suggestions. I do like some fetch quests and the ridiculous stories behind them, but I would much rather this way. I generally loved all the quests in Fallout: New Vegas as their was some logic behind the favours people asked of you. You being an armed soldier/tough guy in a dangerous land who can defend himself or kill a bad guy who's been raping errybodyaround here.

Originally Posted by JoeyJungle

I like in Nier where after you do a few quests a dude will be like "Don't you have anything better to do?" Alluding to the fact that most quests are a waste of time, and that in Nier most of them are pretty bad and not even remotely necessary.

Originally Posted by Alvarez

Anyone else tired of being everyone's bitch in pretty much every modern RPG? Virtually every RPG forces the "you are the Chosen One" trope on the player, and then they predictably follow it up with hundreds of "please collect 8 wolf meats because I'm hungry and want wolf meats" quests. Should the Chosen One really being participating in these trivial tasks? Many games mock how ridiculous this is... and then they do it anyway, as if mocking it excuses it.

Some people obviously like this humor where the games point out their flaws/overused tropes and laughs at them. I would much prefer to get rid of these tropes instead.

Fetch quest is easy to..."write" (at least on modern gaming fetch quest), and they are essential for MMORPG to make it more "meaty". But as for single player RPG? That's just show how lazy the writer is, especially like you said when the said quest doesn't have any purpose behind it. Fetch quest isn't inherently bad, it just the most simple thing you can add to the game as a form of goal for the player to fulfill. Well written fetch quest could be as any quest, adding background and purpose of the quest is essential. But I don't think any writers would go as far if they specifically choosen fetch quest only to fill the game.

Fable 1 was really good at avoiding this. The sidequests in that game were amazing.

My favorite:

"My child is missing. I told her/him to stay put. If you see her/him, can you please tell them to come home?"

...all while the person is sweeping their front steps. I dunno, person. Why not be a parent while I save the kingdom? It's like this reflects modern society in some sick way.

Originally Posted by Bedlam

I thought the thread title alluded to a different problem that seriously hampers my enjoyment with modern RPGs: Quest markers. Fetch quest and the like (let's face it, most quests come down to this) would be a hell of a lot more interesting if the game just gave me a description of the destination instead of flatout showing me on the map.

Also, treasure hunts like in RDR ... I want that stuff in RPGs!

This is a good point, even if the 3D objective markers were replaced with environment cues it would be a step up.

I agree wholeheartedly.

This bullshit is not acceptable anymore. It never was.

There's nothing wrong with questing, the only problem is that it is too systematic. When your graphical showcase gets more and more sophisticated, it's factors like these that can easily pull you out of the immersion just as the OP stated.

It is much better to create a system with a butterfly effect and reward you based on how you adapt to your surroundings rather than provide a checklist for you to fulfill. Doesn't matter if your open world game is as big as Daggerfall, it would feel just the same as it were a compacted level as Deus EX: HR - nothing more than a moment-to-moment gameplay zigzagging to fill some proverbial connect the dots to complete the image in the end. Period.

I WANT next-gen games to feel next gen; not a game with bigger and better graphics. As you can see, such formula does not bode well from your launch titles with critics already being harsh to such design choices.

Originally Posted by KyanMehwulfe

You write this as if it's a matter of designer preference rather than technical limitation.

WoW in particular is nearly a decade old game in a very gameplay-limiting genre that was specifically tasked with quantity over quality. "Quests," in particular, is sort of a matter of semantics, too -- call them errands, if you want. But it's not an apt comparison to any modern RPG. I mean, thousands of MMO gamers have been writing this exact thread for over 15 years, and dozens of MMOs have tried. And, slowly, they are succeeding. But it's not a matter of preference or needed to read a quest rant -- it's about technical limitation, and balancing the need to offer an epic adventure with the need to give millions of players thousands of hours of content. Single-player RPGs that last less than a day's worth of hours struggle with this, so you can imagine the technical hurdles a MMO aiming for a year's worth of hours must face.

It's easier said than done. I've seen a thousand posts like this on EQ, WoW, etc forums, and countless developers agree. It has nothing to do with design and everything to do with development limitations. Do you think Blizzard sits down and thinks the opposite of this? It doesn't take a random quest observation on GAF to be acutely aware of this for anyone that is trying to make epic fantasy adventures as their livelihood.

Why do MMOs as they are now exist though? Why invest all this time, resources and money on thousands of quests? So they can make a monthly fee justifiable? Would it be impossible to make an MMO with 30-40 meaningful quests that impact the world, or its perception of you at the least? I think the obsession with level grinding for the sake of level grinding is dumb. It is a waste of time. Why not concentrate more on crafting interesting events and characters, a more lively world, more and more loot. That's why action rpgs are more fun to me, sure they have awful quests most of the time, but the quests are ancillary to the over-arching storyline. I think a game like Diablo, that offered real choices could be amazing. Like say in your game you could choose to protect a town from a raid, much like the op example, when you go online you could visit someone elses version of the town to see what rammifications their decision made.

I think an over-abundance of choice in these games hamstrings this kind of design. I'd like to see a MMO in this style that gives you just one character slot, and you have to "finish" the game before you can make an alt. So instead of being able to just re-roll and see the alternatives to your choices you have to live with them for a while. A lot of people would hate that though.

I liked the quests in SMT IV since it gave opportunity to give some roles, even if minor, to many random demons, with many of the quests referencing their original mythology and such.

The whole quest system also is a big part of the setting, with hunter rankings and quests generally registered at guilds (although there are exceptions), and normal people didn't leave underground districts due to demons, so searching for the help of a hunter/samurai was justified.

Mechanically though, most of them besides a few exceptions were very basic, I guess, but they at least fit into the logic of the setting and used the mythological roots of the game's creatures.

You make a good point there, and I hope to see more people think about such things when they design their games in the future.

I agree with the OP but has he thought about the fact that those menial quests are there for the sole purpose of helping the player "grind"? That's why they're so simple.

Majora's Mask nailed it in this regard like never before. The game is packed full of side quests, to the point where they outshine the main story for a lot of people. But nobody sits there and tells you to go do something for them. You have to re-live the days again and again observing what happens, and what problems people are facing, and act in order to help them. For most of the quests, the people you're helping don't even know you helped them by the end.

Originally Posted by Alvarez

This thread is more aimed at new single player games, where there is no excuse to have so much filler.

That said, there is also no excuse for MMOs to have so much filler. WoW and other MMOs could easily downsize to 10% of its quest content and focus on dynamic, group, and raid content instead.

Or just have some people players or employees actively directing the baddies. An us vs them MMO where some people play grand scale evil would be interesting.

Originally Posted by Randy Monk

I loved those moments in Persona 4 Golden when you just a new kid in school going to class, making friends, finding your way around. Also coming home and getting used to new surroundings. That buildup makes the rest of the game much more enjoyable than just thrusting you into a world as saviour and the "chosen one".

Actually, they thrust you into the game as a "savior" early on, emphasizing the importance of you as the Fool Persona user and how important it is for you to find the "truth". You also become the leader of the Investigation Group as soon as its formed.

Strangely enough, FF10-2 probably has the kind of quest structure that the OP would find ideal.

Originally Posted by Mechanized

Why do MMOs as they are now exist though? Why invest all this time, resources and money on thousands of quests? So they can make a monthly fee justifiable? Would it be impossible to make an MMO with 30-40 meaningful quests that impact the world, or its perception of you at the least? I think the obsession with level grinding for the sake of level grinding is dumb. It is a waste of time. Why not concentrate more on crafting interesting events and characters, a more lively world, more and more loot. That's why action rpgs are more fun to me, sure they have awful quests most of the time, but the quests are ancillary to the over-arching storyline. I think a game like Diablo, that offered real choices could be amazing. Like say in your game you could choose to protect a town from a raid, much like the op example, when you go online you could visit someone elses version of the town to see what rammifications their decision made.

So far, the only MMO that meets this requirement is Eve Online. And that is because most of the game is player driven which is why the players' stories are so fascinating to listen.

Originally Posted by Mechanized

Why do MMOs as they are now exist though? Why invest all this time, resources and money on thousands of quests? So they can make a monthly fee justifiable? Would it be impossible to make an MMO with 30-40 meaningful quests that impact the world, or its perception of you at the least? I think the obsession with level grinding for the sake of level grinding is dumb. It is a waste of time. Why not concentrate more on crafting interesting events and characters, a more lively world, more and more loot. That's why action rpgs are more fun to me, sure they have awful quests most of the time, but the quests are ancillary to the over-arching storyline. I think a game like Diablo, that offered real choices could be amazing. Like say in your game you could choose to protect a town from a raid, much like the op example, when you go online you could visit someone elses version of the town to see what rammifications their decision made.

I think an over-abundance of choice in these games hamstrings this kind of design. I'd like to see a MMO in this style that gives you just one character slot, and you have to "finish" the game before you can make an alt. So instead of being able to just re-roll and see the alternatives to your choices you have to live with them for a while. A lot of people would hate that though.

No doubt I agree with, the fewer better quests, but you can't do major effects on the world, without massive phasing or instancing, even phasing is limited as while what you see and and another player see's may be different within an area they can't be drastically different without sectioning off an area.

You could do temporary world changing content like gw2, but then you have a player that complains by all the content they missed by not playing the game.

Without making the world player driven making what you want and keeping it an mmo is ridiculously difficult. Better and fewer quest design will go a long way but people should keeping their expectations in check.

I don't remember most of the bear ass collection quests being a real thing until the rise of MMOs.

I may be wrong, but in most of the JRPGs of my youth, the actual quests (limited as they often were) were almost all directly related to the actual story. Instead of stupid quest givers, most of these games relied on the need to grind enemies in random encounters to avoid getting horrible murdered by the next higher level story quest.

People grew to hate this, and I think the "Collect X of Y" quests started slipping back into single player games from the MMO world to pad out the length and still require a "grind" but trick people into it by making it a quest.

I don't mind it all that much, but I think it largely comes from the need to make every RPG 60+ hours long.

I feel that a large-scale game with nothing but these kinds of "random" quests would be incredibly hard to actually make, especially if they were all to be quests that affect the world. I mean, even with the kind of simple, more or less fixed quest design, it can cause problems when stuff gets glitchy or if the devs want to add depth into the quests. A more dynamic approach to quests would probably just add more complexity and thus games would be even more glitchy.

Not to even mention people DO like to have some form of control over their RPG experience, so if everything just happened (seemingly) at random, it could get annoying after a while. People want to be able to choose "this is the moment when I'll decide to stand guard and protect the village from raids, which will be the pivotal fight against the bandits who've been pestering the citizens of this region for years", not having to be forced to do this while they just want to visit the local shops for some replenishments and are on their way to do another quest.

So... yeah, I feel this is more of a limitation of games as a medium. It would require huge resources to pull something like that off without it all breaking down into a glitchy, unfun mess.

The bear ass quest model arose to disguise the blatant exp grinding of earlier MMOs. I'd assume everyone else has adopted it since because they're way easier to make. Runescape of all things actually has spectacular quests, but they take a long ass time to develop and the rest of the gameplay is unabashed "stand here and whack stuff for hours".

I agree with you, I'm all about interesting, real "quests" as opposed to filler, but I think the issue lies with development cost vs gain. It takes a lot more effort to create a whole new scenario around a certain quest, like the one you described at the end of your post (which I think is pretty cool, by the way), however it's a lot easier for developers to just give you a kill 8 Aurochs -- that way, they have to do little work, and they've still occupied an hour of game-time. In RPGs, especially open world ones, it's gotten to the point where it's all about filler. It's not "epic" if the story doesn't span more than 40+ hours (or 60+ hours if you do everything). The funny thing is, as you bring up, collecting wolf meat isn't epic in any space of the imagination.

I'm going to bring up probably my favorite RPG of last generation -- Fallout: New Vegas, because I think, for the most part, they did quests right. Sure, they had Kill X Y just like everyone else, but it didn't feel like literally every quest was a fetch quest. They had some interesting scenarios and sideques with excellent writing that really helped the quests mean more than the sum of their parts. Even if developers don't have the time and energy to concoct interesting and fun scenarios like the one you describe in your original post, at least they should be able to write a decent sub-story for individual quests to make it interesting. New Vegas didn't have any cool quest set-pieces, it just had interesting writing, so the quests they presented didn't feel as menial as the one's I played through thousands of times in Skyrim.

Overall though, you are right about quest-givers. I think we could all imagine a true open-world game with no quest-givers and just things happening all around you, eliminating the need for one-dimensional quest-giver NPCs that require 10 calf skins. But, as I say, this is a lot more effort for a lot less play-time. And it seems developer's are counting the quality of the game (for open-world RPGs, anyway) on how long it lasts. Sadly, I don't think this is going to change anytime soon, even though I'd much rather a memorable 20 hour story with interesting sidequests and characters than a 60-hour bloated quest-fest. I'm not trying to belittle Skyrim here (I really do like the game, honest), but the success of that with the inordinate amount of filler it had kind of sends a message to developers that we don't care about interesting sidequests, just lots and lots and lots of them.

Originally Posted by Substandard

I don't remember most of the bear ass collection quests being a real thing until the rise of MMOs.

I may be wrong, but in most of the JRPGs of my youth, the actual quests (limited as they often were) were almost all directly related to the actual story. Instead of stupid quest givers, most of these games relied on the need to grind enemies in random encounters to avoid getting horrible murdered by the next higher level story quest.

People grew to hate this, and I think the "Collect X of Y" quests started slipping back into single player games from the MMO world to pad out the length and still require a "grind" but trick people into it by making it a quest.

I don't mind it all that much, but I think it largely comes from the need to make every RPG 60+ hours long.

A lot of quests even now aren't bear asses, like I was saying above. It's people who have lost a pendant and don't have much hope of finding it, but ask you to keep an eye out for it anyway. It's a group of monsters that's been terrorizing the village, strangely organized. Or if it is bear asses, it's an old guy doing alchemical research and he's too old to gather materials himself anymore.

I have a feeling that a lot of the quests in old games would upset OP, too. I am specifically thinking of the Dragon Quest series, where you have stuff like the town statue stolen by some bandits, and you go get it back, and walk to the next town...

Yeah Xenoblade is really a bad offender of this as much as I liked the game, at least they let you stack them up and you don't have to return to the NPC to complete most of them, but I guess that's not the point.

I feel that The Last Story had some good sidequest, it had some fetch ones, but couldnt really find that many, I think I only did about 3. It did however had 4 Side Chapters that were either related to the story or its characters.

Man I really want a sequel to the Last Story.

In all honesty, these fetch quests in RPGs take almost no time at all to implement by the developers. If you got rid of these quests, they wouldn't replace them with high quality quests (which take drastically more time & money to create), you'd just have less quests.

It is just a mechanic that will be exploited with microtransactions. These chores are tedious, unnecessary and bring the fun factor way down. Devs are just getting us to accept them as a part of games so they can turn around and sell wolf meat on the market place.

Meanwhile stupid gamers everywhere will be breathing a sigh of relief while opening their wallets and thinking, "i sure am glad I don't have to deal with these fetch quests, thanks to the devs, its awesome that gave us a way to skip this!"

Games are gonna suck balls for a while guys.

Originally Posted by Robert at Zeboyd Games

In all honesty, these fetch quests in RPGs take almost no time at all to implement by the developers. If you got rid of these quests, they wouldn't replace them with high quality quests (which take drastically more time & money to create), you'd just have less quests.

And this would be fantastic! I don't want to spend 5+ hours legitimately bored and wondering why am I wasting my time just to get to the next fun and relevant part of the game. High quality quests are not more expensive anyway, just less lazy.