I am so insanely excited for Glimmerwick. I’m loving these dev videos. I don’t even want to be a game designer, I’m a writer but seeing a small team so sound of mind & creative intent is inspiring. It is so easy to get distracted by industry mandates that are divorced from the creative process. You guys are such a breath of fresh air.
Number one is indeed a real thought-provoker... clearly quest length isn't directly associated with quality, as many repetitive bland MMOs will attest to. Yet a quest that by its very nature is interesting enough to require more stages might be a quest that gives players' brains more to connect with. As a D&D campaign runner, there's an additional challenge of trying to provide content that fits well into the campaign session framework - and in that environment, the most memorable moments are often serendipitous and player-driven. I think there's still value in recognizing that players deserve interesting, longer-running challenges. I suppose as prep-work it's most valuable to bring quality ideas to the table, and then during play, to allow any quest elements the players are engaging with to fill more time and space.
Haven't felt so invested in a particular studio before. I really feel inspired and more appreciative with each video from this channel. Hope they continue even after the release of Glimmerwick.
I’m happy to see the amount of research and knowledge the maker of a highly anticipated game has made and acquired. I look forward to seeing all of this implemented in Songs of Glimmerwick!
My favourite quest scenario is the "not going to plan" scenario. Where you're setup with the quest with a plan that spells out what you should expect to happen, but then something goes wrong and the direction changes into something desperate. This is a key part of the 'heist mission' (e.g. GTA5), or 'first mission' that takes the player from an ordinary existence to being part of extraordinary events. Anyway, I really liked the drummer mission, but for me it was the following of the music and the sudden shock once you find the source.
What I loved about Eastshade's quests is that none of them felt fetch, even though the stories of those quests could theoretically fall into that category. But the delivery of the quest: character's logic, motivation and even personality made it more believable. And when thinking about Eastshade's world, I think of it as a livable place, not just some gameplay placeholder Also liked your take about new area being a kind of reward. Didn't think about it that way, but it's definitely true, and I wish more developers would use it. I remember when I got a boat in Eastshade and was finally able to travel to a new part of the island, it was one of the best moments!
Hey rock on thank you! Regarding fetch quests, most of the quests in Eastshade can not theoretically be called fetch quests. We've had a number of reviewers say that and it makes me feel like gamers call basically everything a fetch quest, without really knowing what a fetch quest is! A fetch quest is where the only verb in the quest is acquiring an item through an easy means (like merely finding an NPC who will give it to you), and turning it in somewhere. - locating an owl based on sound and painting it is not fetching - solving a mirror light puzzle is not fetching - solving a riddle with time of day and sun alignment is not fetching - locating night drummers based on time of day and sound, getting a secret message from one, making a particular painting for him, and visiting his people's village is not fetching - finding and catching a certain fish is not fetching - inquiring around town regarding toxic tubers is not fetching - creating a poster and finding a populated place to post it is not fetching - figuring out where to use mudwillow's tincture is not fetching I could go on an on. But basically all the quest verbs in Eastshade are very mixed. We worked reeeaaally hard on that. If there is merely an item exchange that happens in the quest, that doesn't automatically make it a fetch quest. If this was the case then virtually all quests ever made would be considered fetch quests. Even kill quests would be fetch quests, since typically the quest giver asks for something from the body. As long as there is at least one verb in the quest that is not "fetching" then it's not strictly a fetch quest. And if there are multiple verbs, or the MAIN verb of the quest is not simply fetching, then it is SUPER not a fetch quest. Feathers for quills (where you collect feathers for Yunus) is a super simple 3 stage quest. BUT IT'S STILL NOT A FETCH QUEST. That one is technically a COLLECTOR quest :)
@@eastshadestudios8335 Oh, thank you for pointing that out! I agree, in gaming community the meaning of a "fetch quest" becomes blurrier, and I fell its victim xd. I wasn't trying to oversimplify Eastshade quests by any means, what got me confused is the narrative scale? Because in triple-A games simpler stories are often used in the actual fetch quests, which can be seen as poor writing. Eastshade, on the other hand, is full of those day-to-day stories, and they feel real and immersive - that is the comparison I was trying to make, and messed up the terms :D The more I know!
Love how you approached the research on this - Inspires me to dive into it myself! I do feel like it makes sense that number of quest stages is most important. I find that my favorite quests immersed me in a journey, where after completing it I felt like: 'Wow, what a detour I just took' and remember all the different moments I experienced.
Looking forward to the new game so much! Eastshade has become one of my favorites in the past couple of years and I am definitely looking forward to some more tranquil gaming
A good example of why quest size is important would be the Anju-Kafei quest in Majora's Mask. It has a lot of steps, which if you miss any one of them, force you to start back at the beginning. So there's a lot of tension, especially in the final hours. And it's something that intersects with a lot of the other areas, people, and systems in the game. Besides the main story quest to beat Majora and recover his mask, it feels like the main thing you're meant to be doing to help the world. It also has tremendous impact not just for the player, but for a lot of the characters in the game. The actual item reward itself isn't mind blowing - at least not compared to something like the Fierce Deity Mask, but it at least does something valuable and emotionally impactful in resolving the mayor's quest. In contrast, a good example of why reward is important would be Hestu's quest in "Breath of the Wild" and "Tears of the Kingdom." For the monumental effort of getting all the Koroks, the final reward at the end almost feels flat out insulting as it's literally just a golden turd that does nothing apart from being a badge of prestige to show you did the thing.
The amount of love you put into these videos, from simple dev logs to videos like this, it shows how much you care about the games you create, and it's wonderful to see and experience
Best game dev video I've seen in so long! Quest design is fascinating and not that often talked about. Would love to see something similar on what you guys learned about writing and dialogue itself :D
i thought about this a lot. what makes a game good? in the end it really boils down to story. getting new weapons for the "game loop" is only engrossing to children. the only thing in a game that is really durable, that draws in people of all ages and demographics, is a good story. even riven is not really a puzzle game but a game whos puzzles you solve, largely, by unraveling the story of the island. the story. also, i think that the visual artwork of a game can be timeless and rich but that is rarely the case with any game. and i think for artwork to be truly timeless, it has to compliment peoples lives rather than be unpleasant, confronting. timeless artwork is a companion for life, something pleasant. so i think the best games possible would be light puzzle games, maybe not even fitting into the current category of puzzle games, based on environmental story-telling, featuring more direct story-telling through quests as well, all based on a bitmap art style where the visual aspect of the game is more controlled, exposing the player to visual artwork that is pre-arranged and pre-determined enough to have a timeless quality rather than the random spasms of first-person mouse-look -- notice that this does not necessarily mean point-and-click as we know it and that there could be innovative solutions still waiting to be implemented for this. and while im here i should mention this idea i have for a game since there are developers here and i am too busy to implement it myself. it would be cool to make an mmorpg that was pre-rendered. imagine a game where there is an mmorpg sandbox with all players globally in the same sandbox -- please just read on. the world is 3d but the way the players move through space, interact with the world, objects and other players is quantified like a strategy game. all movements and actions are discreet. once per hour or once per unit time, players are allowed to submit their actions to the server. the server takes player inputs, computes results and renders the new viewport for each player: the view of the player character that is a result of executing the submitted actions. this would allow for many interesting things. the realism of the renderings could be scaled up or down based on player subscription levels or globally. it would allow a much broader player base than real-time game demographic. it would allow much larger numbers of players to play at once in the same sandbox, regardless of ping. it would be much cheaper to operate. it would make it much easier to preclude cheating. and other things i cant remember right now. the main conceptual problem is that there would be boring parts like walking across vast empty areas. but i think if you could design the game to be paced by meaningful events rather than a physical simulation of movement, this could be overcome.
I'm wondering if you're planning on analysing player's painting and scoring them somehow, taking various rules into account, like composition, rhythm. contrast and harmony, if it depicts models that could also have hidden scoring? I think it could be a nice mechanic, rewarding players that put more thought when choosing a frame.
Have you tried incorporating LLMs into any of your NPCs. If you havent seen what is going on with AI and player interactions with LLM powered AI, it is incredible. Working with a friend of mine helping to build custom GPTs for his game. Its funny and unreal at the same time.
No offense but I would have liked it if you spent the whole ten minutes explaining the number 1 quality, I felt like you just brushed over it and didn't really get into any details
@@eastshadestudios8335 Well for example I never played the game you referenced so I had to google the quest you talked about. Maybe you could have gone deeper into how that quest works and compared it to other games with quests of that size and maybe talk about how can a dev approach making a quest like that on their own. Loved the video btw but I left wanting much more
@@articulo2658 from what I can tell, the ultimate takeaway with the "quest size" point is really how much of a full story one may try to do with the quest, as a quest with a big size, even if short, is a quest that a lot of effort has been put into, where many things happen and you're in for the ride. That's mostly what I gathered though. Perhaps just trying to do an interesting enough story that will lead to the quest being a little more complex and long may be something to try yourself. Though I realize that's the difficult part.
@eastshadestudios8335 to me its not obvious what a stage even is conceptually. You mention log entries, so when does a log entry happen? You showed a tree structure, so how branched are these stages? what are the conditions to go from one stage to the next? are some exclusive to one branche? If that Oblivion quest has 15 stages in total, how many will the average player see? all of them? In general: how is having more stages adding to the qualitiy of the quest? To me it sounds like going from A to B to C to D to E to F ... to M to N and having one NPC waiting at each location who says a couple lines, that would be like a dozen stages and therefore somehow good? But I dont understand where you see the quality in there. So either I'm not understanding what a stage is or I'm not understanding how the stage-quality relation works.
I think it'd be great for you to make a video where you dig further into your own quests and explain how you applied these principles
I am so insanely excited for Glimmerwick. I’m loving these dev videos. I don’t even want to be a game designer, I’m a writer but seeing a small team so sound of mind & creative intent is inspiring. It is so easy to get distracted by industry mandates that are divorced from the creative process. You guys are such a breath of fresh air.
Number one is indeed a real thought-provoker... clearly quest length isn't directly associated with quality, as many repetitive bland MMOs will attest to. Yet a quest that by its very nature is interesting enough to require more stages might be a quest that gives players' brains more to connect with. As a D&D campaign runner, there's an additional challenge of trying to provide content that fits well into the campaign session framework - and in that environment, the most memorable moments are often serendipitous and player-driven. I think there's still value in recognizing that players deserve interesting, longer-running challenges. I suppose as prep-work it's most valuable to bring quality ideas to the table, and then during play, to allow any quest elements the players are engaging with to fill more time and space.
Didn't even realize who posted this video when I clicked - now I'm very excited to see what you've got to say!
Haven't felt so invested in a particular studio before. I really feel inspired and more appreciative with each video from this channel. Hope they continue even after the release of Glimmerwick.
I’m happy to see the amount of research and knowledge the maker of a highly anticipated game has made and acquired. I look forward to seeing all of this implemented in Songs of Glimmerwick!
My favourite quest scenario is the "not going to plan" scenario. Where you're setup with the quest with a plan that spells out what you should expect to happen, but then something goes wrong and the direction changes into something desperate. This is a key part of the 'heist mission' (e.g. GTA5), or 'first mission' that takes the player from an ordinary existence to being part of extraordinary events.
Anyway, I really liked the drummer mission, but for me it was the following of the music and the sudden shock once you find the source.
What I loved about Eastshade's quests is that none of them felt fetch, even though the stories of those quests could theoretically fall into that category. But the delivery of the quest: character's logic, motivation and even personality made it more believable. And when thinking about Eastshade's world, I think of it as a livable place, not just some gameplay placeholder
Also liked your take about new area being a kind of reward. Didn't think about it that way, but it's definitely true, and I wish more developers would use it. I remember when I got a boat in Eastshade and was finally able to travel to a new part of the island, it was one of the best moments!
Hey rock on thank you! Regarding fetch quests, most of the quests in Eastshade can not theoretically be called fetch quests. We've had a number of reviewers say that and it makes me feel like gamers call basically everything a fetch quest, without really knowing what a fetch quest is! A fetch quest is where the only verb in the quest is acquiring an item through an easy means (like merely finding an NPC who will give it to you), and turning it in somewhere.
- locating an owl based on sound and painting it is not fetching
- solving a mirror light puzzle is not fetching
- solving a riddle with time of day and sun alignment is not fetching
- locating night drummers based on time of day and sound, getting a secret message from one, making a particular painting for him, and visiting his people's village is not fetching
- finding and catching a certain fish is not fetching
- inquiring around town regarding toxic tubers is not fetching
- creating a poster and finding a populated place to post it is not fetching
- figuring out where to use mudwillow's tincture is not fetching
I could go on an on. But basically all the quest verbs in Eastshade are very mixed. We worked reeeaaally hard on that. If there is merely an item exchange that happens in the quest, that doesn't automatically make it a fetch quest. If this was the case then virtually all quests ever made would be considered fetch quests. Even kill quests would be fetch quests, since typically the quest giver asks for something from the body.
As long as there is at least one verb in the quest that is not "fetching" then it's not strictly a fetch quest. And if there are multiple verbs, or the MAIN verb of the quest is not simply fetching, then it is SUPER not a fetch quest.
Feathers for quills (where you collect feathers for Yunus) is a super simple 3 stage quest. BUT IT'S STILL NOT A FETCH QUEST. That one is technically a COLLECTOR quest :)
@@eastshadestudios8335 Oh, thank you for pointing that out!
I agree, in gaming community the meaning of a "fetch quest" becomes blurrier, and I fell its victim xd. I wasn't trying to oversimplify Eastshade quests by any means, what got me confused is the narrative scale? Because in triple-A games simpler stories are often used in the actual fetch quests, which can be seen as poor writing. Eastshade, on the other hand, is full of those day-to-day stories, and they feel real and immersive - that is the comparison I was trying to make, and messed up the terms :D The more I know!
@@telateeaa no no all good! I just love talking about quest design lol. Thanks for the kind words and cheers!
@@eastshadestudios8335 it's inspiring to see such passion in the industry! Hope Songs of Glimmerwick will get recognition it deserves!
Love how you approached the research on this - Inspires me to dive into it myself! I do feel like it makes sense that number of quest stages is most important. I find that my favorite quests immersed me in a journey, where after completing it I felt like: 'Wow, what a detour I just took' and remember all the different moments I experienced.
I loved Eastshade so much, the world is so amazing and the quests were so fun.
Looking forward to the new game so much! Eastshade has become one of my favorites in the past couple of years and I am definitely looking forward to some more tranquil gaming
A good example of why quest size is important would be the Anju-Kafei quest in Majora's Mask. It has a lot of steps, which if you miss any one of them, force you to start back at the beginning. So there's a lot of tension, especially in the final hours. And it's something that intersects with a lot of the other areas, people, and systems in the game. Besides the main story quest to beat Majora and recover his mask, it feels like the main thing you're meant to be doing to help the world. It also has tremendous impact not just for the player, but for a lot of the characters in the game. The actual item reward itself isn't mind blowing - at least not compared to something like the Fierce Deity Mask, but it at least does something valuable and emotionally impactful in resolving the mayor's quest.
In contrast, a good example of why reward is important would be Hestu's quest in "Breath of the Wild" and "Tears of the Kingdom." For the monumental effort of getting all the Koroks, the final reward at the end almost feels flat out insulting as it's literally just a golden turd that does nothing apart from being a badge of prestige to show you did the thing.
The amount of love you put into these videos, from simple dev logs to videos like this, it shows how much you care about the games you create, and it's wonderful to see and experience
Best game dev video I've seen in so long! Quest design is fascinating and not that often talked about. Would love to see something similar on what you guys learned about writing and dialogue itself :D
Hooray that's wonderful to hear! Thanks for the kind words and thanks for watching!
I think regional transformation is key. Like a dekorating a grey room with colorfull stuff to improve the mood of npc.
This is also great advice for RPG campaigns
And as always, this video is so full of insights and knowledge. I really like that you choose to share all this, thank you! :D
I wish I can reach this level of quality analysis, I would love to have a mentor like you brother
Even in something like quest design am I reminded of the fact that yes.. size matters
Im so stealing this list when making quests for my game!😎
i thought about this a lot. what makes a game good? in the end it really boils down to story. getting new weapons for the "game loop" is only engrossing to children. the only thing in a game that is really durable, that draws in people of all ages and demographics, is a good story. even riven is not really a puzzle game but a game whos puzzles you solve, largely, by unraveling the story of the island. the story. also, i think that the visual artwork of a game can be timeless and rich but that is rarely the case with any game. and i think for artwork to be truly timeless, it has to compliment peoples lives rather than be unpleasant, confronting. timeless artwork is a companion for life, something pleasant. so i think the best games possible would be light puzzle games, maybe not even fitting into the current category of puzzle games, based on environmental story-telling, featuring more direct story-telling through quests as well, all based on a bitmap art style where the visual aspect of the game is more controlled, exposing the player to visual artwork that is pre-arranged and pre-determined enough to have a timeless quality rather than the random spasms of first-person mouse-look -- notice that this does not necessarily mean point-and-click as we know it and that there could be innovative solutions still waiting to be implemented for this.
and while im here i should mention this idea i have for a game since there are developers here and i am too busy to implement it myself. it would be cool to make an mmorpg that was pre-rendered. imagine a game where there is an mmorpg sandbox with all players globally in the same sandbox -- please just read on. the world is 3d but the way the players move through space, interact with the world, objects and other players is quantified like a strategy game. all movements and actions are discreet. once per hour or once per unit time, players are allowed to submit their actions to the server. the server takes player inputs, computes results and renders the new viewport for each player: the view of the player character that is a result of executing the submitted actions. this would allow for many interesting things. the realism of the renderings could be scaled up or down based on player subscription levels or globally. it would allow a much broader player base than real-time game demographic. it would allow much larger numbers of players to play at once in the same sandbox, regardless of ping. it would be much cheaper to operate. it would make it much easier to preclude cheating. and other things i cant remember right now. the main conceptual problem is that there would be boring parts like walking across vast empty areas. but i think if you could design the game to be paced by meaningful events rather than a physical simulation of movement, this could be overcome.
I love your videos! You are doing very good job 👏
I'm wondering if you're planning on analysing player's painting and scoring them somehow, taking various rules into account, like composition, rhythm. contrast and harmony, if it depicts models that could also have hidden scoring? I think it could be a nice mechanic, rewarding players that put more thought when choosing a frame.
Too many video games have too many boring quests. But I’m sure it’s a lot of work to come up with a lot of interesting content
Have you tried incorporating LLMs into any of your NPCs. If you havent seen what is going on with AI and player interactions with LLM powered AI, it is incredible. Working with a friend of mine helping to build custom GPTs for his game. Its funny and unreal at the same time.
Random but what is the font for the video thumbnail called? 😂 its beautiful I love fonts
Referencing morrowind in a good quest design video is based.
No timestamp given :O
@@ruolbu it was given. Its an info card in the top right.
a non fiction novel? you mean fiction novel?
Rats! Yes I did. Thank you for the catch!
No offense but I would have liked it if you spent the whole ten minutes explaining the number 1 quality, I felt like you just brushed over it and didn't really get into any details
I don't even know what else I'd say about it! What were you curious about?
i think he summed up the quest chain/size part perfectly if thats what you're talking about
@@eastshadestudios8335 Well for example I never played the game you referenced so I had to google the quest you talked about. Maybe you could have gone deeper into how that quest works and compared it to other games with quests of that size and maybe talk about how can a dev approach making a quest like that on their own. Loved the video btw but I left wanting much more
@@articulo2658 from what I can tell, the ultimate takeaway with the "quest size" point is really how much of a full story one may try to do with the quest, as a quest with a big size, even if short, is a quest that a lot of effort has been put into, where many things happen and you're in for the ride. That's mostly what I gathered though. Perhaps just trying to do an interesting enough story that will lead to the quest being a little more complex and long may be something to try yourself. Though I realize that's the difficult part.
@eastshadestudios8335
to me its not obvious what a stage even is conceptually. You mention log entries, so when does a log entry happen? You showed a tree structure, so how branched are these stages? what are the conditions to go from one stage to the next? are some exclusive to one branche? If that Oblivion quest has 15 stages in total, how many will the average player see? all of them?
In general: how is having more stages adding to the qualitiy of the quest?
To me it sounds like going from A to B to C to D to E to F ... to M to N and having one NPC waiting at each location who says a couple lines, that would be like a dozen stages and therefore somehow good? But I dont understand where you see the quality in there.
So either I'm not understanding what a stage is or I'm not understanding how the stage-quality relation works.