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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2016 23:30:57 GMT
Since Afara has risen the issue, it seems good to have a thread devoted to it, so that all builders will be on the same page, as the quests in game and the way we do quests as builders and players is likely to evolve sooner than later.
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As I understand it, we will modify / remove quests which feel 'forced' as in collecting and killing arbitrary numbers of items / monsters. To cultivate the sandbox style gameplay, it would not serve to have a system of tasks (e.g. quests,) that a player feels like they must do to progress their characters. Would it be good for us builders to think of quests as little stories within the world of Domaria -- sets of content which ties zones, npcs, and lore together in a fun or interesting way. Ideally these quests might cause a character to take different sides of the laws and cause factions to change --> making the faction system more relevant and another layer of strategy for gameplay.
Quests that are mysteries (explore, search, interact) and/or adventurous (planned out (scripted) battle interactions and terrain movement skills,) would be very fun and put us above a countless number of other games with a 'quest' feature. There's an old game called Where in the World is Carmen San Diego. You have to travel around the world, go to places and ask people for clues to find the criminal. Domdaria mechanics would easily allow us to make a similar quest thread of investigating troubles of our NPC characters.
One last note: with more quest development it may be good to not let certain details be easily accessible -- if only to prevent people from spoiling the surprises; we may even want to have a specific rule for players to not do exploitive quest leading or publishing quest walk-throughs. Due to the effort of our minimal staff, it would suck to have someone spoil years of work in a few hours. Hopefully our players will resist the urge to lookup answers to riddles and things like that, but we can at least try to help keep anyone from spoiling the fun of solving quality-made quests. We could make the builder's board staff-only again for example, if we must talk about quest specifics. What do you all think?
Once there is a concise method for how quests will work for user experience, I will add it into the builder's guidelines.
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Post by Afara on Jul 24, 2016 10:49:56 GMT
I agree.
Repetitive quests will be improved or changed into simple "turn 5 of these in and get x as reward" (can be done via conversations) or simply removed.
Quests should be more "epic" in nature and probably also probably take "a while" to complete.
I don't think we should actively try to prevent players from writing guides, as a matter of fact I could even be open to allow it on our wiki (rather than having some "criminal" site hosting it). If a player wants to solve something himself he can easily avoid checking the wiki or whatever.
I have more thoughts around itemization and stats that I want to change as well, but more on that later.
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Post by Afara on Jul 24, 2016 11:42:07 GMT
Also I want to remove the advertised quest system. Do you agree? The intent is to make it more interesting to explore and speak with NPCs.
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Post by doulos on Jul 24, 2016 14:28:30 GMT
I think this is a really good idea. It's also a significant change from what is currently in the game and will involve a rewrite of a lot of quests. A lot of work.
In regards to people finding out quest info, it's going to happen for the most part, no matter what regulations you put in place, but by putting some rules there it will cut down on it significantly. At least that has been my experience in the past at places that have quests. If the place becomes popular enough then there will be resources online for players to solve quests. It happens everywhere.
I like removing the advertisements from quests, but there probably should be a balance. A way of players at least knowing the rough idea where some quests starts, or a list of what quests they have not done yet. I'm not sure what the answer is exactly. For explorer type players, and completionists, they want to know what they have not done yet. Perhaps there could be 80% of the quests publically available in some way, and then 20% that are more 'secret' quests that players will only find if they chat with NPCs and explore the world.
This is a pretty fundamental change to the game and would involve a lot of work, so we would only really want to do it once I imagine.
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Post by Afara on Jul 24, 2016 17:53:08 GMT
I don't think it necessarily has to be that much work. I think we can remove some quests (easy), change some quests to simple "give x of these to y" which should also be kinda easy since the dialogs for giving what today is a quest should already be written.
The advertisement I think can partly be done as we partly already do today with Boram giving hints on where to look for stuff to do. But mainly it will encourage player interaction where when can share information on where to find quests and complete objectives.
What I want to achieve with these changes is more of a sandbox model:
- The player chooses what he/she wants to do - not feeling forced into the quest grinding that we are close to fall into and which I dislike.
- Encourage exploration and player interaction
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Post by Zim on Aug 1, 2016 17:33:15 GMT
Exploration, interaction. If we could change the way they are "advertised" it is better; a NPC hailing a player makes sense, and we could even have it be a little dynamic, like if something triggers it to want to get the attention of a player that could give us our beloved orange dot. This would mean that not always a NPC hailing you would actually have a quest, it may not even be totally useful when they want your attention. This would make the NPCs a little more life-like, but not completely overpowering to players.
In the way we have been setting up the systems in the world, we are going for an open world / pseudo sandbox character progression, with some story / adventure quest plotlines interwoven in a more-or-less voluntary game advancement processes, is it not? I'll make a list of those Landmark rooms unless Afara has a crafty tool to find them all in the zones. That will be a good way to use previous work on exploration locations into the revision. Would be nice to see abilities a little more mysterious (maybe even not showing up unless being given access to (like studying a spell from a teacher or a scroll over time, making the icon less transparent until you will be able to cast it easily -- could be funny to have abilities fade away over time if your character doesn't use them, they forget them. get back the skill point. haha that would be fun, and give a reason to get drunk -- "I need to forget 2 abilities so i can get that group spell ! guess i'm going to the dirty dwarf!"
With a working interactive economy, could moving resources and inventory of products be connected to our new quest vision, as in user created(by simple popup menu) quests / missions (is a different term better) -- which would allow the owner to profit from the noble actions of a player who actually accomplishes the goal. Player run shops could also be similar in having quests offered. Ideally such a user generated quest system could be added to guilds and clans (paid for out of their bank accounts) and keep people playing to build up their guilds, and competing with roleplay to wrestle the top guild spots for "operator" commands and rights to guide the guild's development in the game world.
Sorry to just blurt all that out, but the idea just came to mind right now.
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Post by Afara on Aug 1, 2016 20:04:00 GMT
Hehe, great ideas as always Zaimus.
NPC:s hailing players sounds like fun but hard to implement. If you both prefer keeping the orange/yellow dot on the map I think we should keep it. One other idea is to only have it in the room and not the map, then you have to walk around the areas to find NPC:s with orange dots if you want quests, not only look at the map.
I'm a bit indecisive on this one. There is no clear way for me here.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2016 17:15:33 GMT
Right! Maybe a slight misunderstanding: the orange dot would basically mean the NPC is "hailing" a player, that is to say, trying to get their attention. This would replace the methodology / idea that the orange dot is merely advertising a quest.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2016 18:39:49 GMT
Titles -- a title system could add to the quest system, as some titles could be awarded by a quest (these would be like the end of a long chain of quests, to make them a really cool thing for players to attain.) prefix and suffix would be nice.
Only name and suffix would show in a room (?) , but full title (prefix name suffix) would be displayed on the Who list and any Top player lists, etc., and maybe property (having a collection of swords with your different titles as you progress coudl be a cool collection, or having to pay a smith to change all your inscriptions as you get a new title, would be a very big show of wealth.)
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Post by Afara on Aug 2, 2016 20:04:47 GMT
Ok. So only hail/advertise in room and not in map then.
A title feature would be really cool and "should" not be that difficult. This is something that I think has kinda high prio.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2016 20:47:09 GMT
Maybe have an NPC or quest flag which can override to display orange dot in map. There could be an application where we would want that, if otherwise able to be operated through specific script.
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