PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Grey on January 30, 2003, 05:10:27 pm
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The problem with all MMOGs out now is not anything to do with cost or programming (although that often sucks, too), it has to do with the eventuality that a bunch of obsessed and particularly geeky players will learn everything about the game until there is nothing left unexplored and no secrets untold. All things eventually fall into a groove of camping and routinely killing spawns, and if I wanted repetition, I would not go to a place where imagination is to run wild and merriment is made: I would go and do my Calc. homework. The key to happiness is newness and adventure in these games, and the focus seems to be moving away from such a conclusion. Therefore, I propose a movement to program a randomness into quests. Quests are fun in other MMOGs when they are new and you don\'t do them 1000 times just so you can get faction, or whatever the system. I envision a quest where you join a group with intent to go on a unique quest in a unique place with a unique set of mobs. My vision of this is that the players meet at a tavern or such and decide to join together to do something meaningful that day. They then ask the bartender for news on any kind of quest that may come up, and the bartender (after randomly generating such a quest based on level of ability, or profession, or such. In fact, it does not need to be completely random, but picked from a large bunch of quests, some good, some not so good, or easy.) relays a quest to do. \"In a castle northeast of here lays a weapon of unfathomable strength, guarded by....\" OR something from a thieves guild like \"A local well-to-do merchant has just come into possession of a rare artifact and must be parted from it, his estate is guarded by many men and the only way to get in unseen is....\" would be incredible to see on my screen. The best part would be that they could be hard for the group, but not impossible to accomplish, and ones that require large groups of mobs could be designed almost as a dungeon crawl. After the quest is give the mobs in the castle or field or wherever would spawn from a random chart based on the quest as per the fiend folio\'s random encounter charts. The questers would be given directions to the local of the deed and given any items needed or told where to find them; items such as keys and passwords and supplies like torches and lockpicks. After completion the questers find their way, bruised and bedraggled, back to the tavern and enjoy their new found items (and quest experience), and review their adventure in revelrie over a few rounds of beer... on the house.
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First: You sound like you have been playing to much of the d&d stuff judging from your idea of a quest.
Second: How do you propose having an infinite amout of genuine quests for people who could be playing this game for hours at a time daily, while not giving the devs a heart attack? Fact is you can\'t. Unless they put a quest in to solve a random number generator. You could guess 1+. Only problem is the answer to the random number generator is always 0 (so its not really random, just fixed :D ). That would give you an infinite quest, granted it would be only one quest, but you wouldn\'t have to worry about going on the same quest a million times. :P
Third: And i take joy in being an overly zealous geek :]
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me so stupid....swoosh!
right over my head clover, right over my big, brainless head.
on another note
I think endless ages is the game for you grey, but yah have to pay ( +100 ryhme points!)
they had something like that, but the quest weren\'t randomly generated, just numerous. this is far more fun and realistic than a \"random\" rpg game. If your looking for that type of monotonous crap i think maybe a title called \"Metal Dungeon\" for Xbox is the game for you
http://www.xicat.com/games/metaldungeon.html
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DAoC has a very good system to not only alieviate camping but to keep quests from becoming pradictable. Each quest has steps to it. As in bring the NPC this piece to get that piece that unlocks this item to get that item to be returned back to the NPC for the final yield. In games like EQ these type quests would just be a camp fest. People would find out the steps and just go do them. In DAoC they have a quest log. You can\'t do step two until step one is done. If you are even killing the thing that drops step 2, it wont even drop until step one is finished. Also not only do you have to follow the steps, the NPC might give them in different orders. Two people could go to the same NPC and get the same quest but by the time both are done, they took two different paths. Friend one took steps 5,1,3,2,4 and friend two had his quest go in 1,2,3,4,5. I think this is surely the way to go to eliminate camping as well as keepiong people guessing on the quests.
Oh and one last thing, with the quest log, you do a quest to completion and you can no longer do it again.
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By no means did i mean to insult your geekiness, be proud in your path in life. :] I am by no means a master programmer, but I can\'t see the tables as hard to define at all. It makes logical sense to me that there would be enough people here to write, say 5 quests for each group of amount of skill. Lets say the total \'levels\' of the group member is x-y in a range. The random generator would pick one of the 5 quests and send them on it. Spawning at the start of a quest is not difficult to program, and has been done before on many mmorpgs. The problem therefore, lies in randomizing spawns and treasure and making them correlate with the quest at hand. It would be difficult, but not impossible, and a noble pursuit at that.
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That would be awesome, but almost impossible if you want the quality of quests you had mentioned. If only...
Perhaps there could be \"quest areas\" where you can go every week or so and do a quest (no re-doing them) and as you do so, unlock more of the area. For example.
A big castle surrounded by mountains everywhere but one spot lies 100 miles from town. You and your friends travel there, and find the entrance. A big gate is next to a signpost. You read the signpost and a little window shows up, says:
\"Quest A\" - Find the hidden chamber, destroy the evil badguy, yadda yadda yadda...
You have to go and win Quest A before you can play Quest B. Half of the doors you see are locked on Quest A, but when you do Quest B more are opened, and so on until... well, until the dev\'s feel like not making anymore quests. Then when you get bored or run out of quests, you go somewhere else. These quest areas could be hidden away and keep being made as more updates go along.
That deals with most problems except that people will still be writing documents and walkthroughs for them. Perhaps random monsters and treasures could be generated.
Ok, maybe too hard to do, but its an idea.
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Well i don\'t know too much about all of this but i do know about Daggerfall. They had a system which generated quests in it\'s own special way. Basicly what it came down to was that allthough you did after a while frequently got the same quests, they always took place in a different randomly picked place.
Yes this was a single player game but the idea could work here aswell.
This would keep it somewhat more interesting.
Though i don\'t know if this could work in a mmorpg or not, but it just popped up in my head.