How Hard Should Quests Be?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ม.ค. 2023
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How clear should your quests be? Should they be easy to understand with exclamation marks across the map or full of deeply hidden lore that players need to seek out? Is there a good in-between and what's best for your game? Find out in our newest gaming episode "When Challenging Quests are Controversial"
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hey, you should make one about the future of MMO RPGs and other RPGs in the context of large language models in the next few years, making traditional game development obsolete and multiplying production capability enormously. I think the potential for a much more realistic experience is on the horizon for the first time and I'd like to hear your take on the subject.
elden rings quests suck because its not about the world, its about not accidentally progressing to far/ in the wrong order.
The secret phrase is "Simon the traveling salesman"
I like the idea of having to listen carefully to dialog and think about it to solve puzzles, as long as the designers ensure there's a way to catch back up if I miss something. Nothing worse than reading a walkthrough only to discover that some seemingly insignificant piece of dialog I couldn't possibly have understood was providing crucial information that wasn't available anywhere else.
I think the ace attorney courtroom scenes take that to the extreme- its only text, visuals, evidence and people. maybe a mini game here or there, and you need to find who the murder is based off of that.
Yeah, it has to cater to people who might not be able to play for extended periods and when they get back to the game won't have perfect recollection of what happened last time they played. I like quest logs/journals for this where the important stuff is summarized so that you can refer to it to give you the clues you need to do the quest.
I've seen games where there's a form of auto-journal. It basically is a log of conversation summaries and discoveries the player has made as they progressed through the quest; with keywords highlighted to be easily picked up, and perhaps even linked to related entries. This way, clues are always there in the journal to be reviewed because you missed something, were distracted, or maybe even due to leaving the game for a 1-2 week vacation;. It allows for reading on the lore or just skimming the keywords, is usually suitably immersive, provides a tracker that helps the player without revealing anything the player shouldn't have discovered yet, and helps guide the player while letting them to most of the work, er, play - without putting a "complete quest here" arrow.
Yes 🙌 this
@@R8Spike Phoenix Wright is a game where you play as a lawyer and lawyers can't just rush through a case.
My rule is this: If it's important, put it somewhere important. If it's missable, put it somewhere missable. Dark Souls is a great example here. The Crestfallen Knight explains what you need to do and he's at the most central bonfire, he's an unmissable character in the area and he's the only other interactable thing in the immediate vicinity. He doesn't even have an exclamation mark above his head and we all talked to him. All the side quests are missable so you have to seek them out.
And you don't technically even need to talk to the Knight. Just keep killing enemies and going to places you haven't been before and you'll still eventually run into both Bells of Awakening. Talking to the Knight just gives you motivation.
Yeah, it doesn’t just depend on the game, but the quest.
I think the point about narrative games is an interesting one, for the simple "go to place and do an obvious thing" quests. If you surround a quest with juicy lore or narrative reasons to do it, then I'll be happy enough to just run for a bit to kill some enemies or push a button. Especially if there's extra interactive stuff (books, datapoints, etc) I can optionally examine in the quest location. I dislike grinding overall but love exploring, so the slightest effort at assembling my actions into a story really helps the experience along. Which means that it's a serious danger sign if *I* ever start wanting to click through quest-giver dialog like that - I'm probably about to put the game down.
Yep, I really only use them on second playthroughs and the like for games that I will continue to play. Having those options though are super important for me for games that are supposed to be replayable.
In my experience, Breath of the Wild hidden shrine quests are probably my favorite style of quest. They give you all the pieces but you have to put them together. Whether it be a character ask for an item but you have to figure out where to get it, or you have to solve a riddle to find the location. Another reason is that they’re not too cryptic to where they can’t be put in a quest log which is good for someone like me who plays many games at once.
Yeah, ultimately we’re really talking about puzzles, and it’s bad puzzle design to have pieces that are easy to miss.
There's those narrative quests that you understand and then do them only to return and unable to progress
Look up a guide and you can't figure it out. Eventually you find out you never said "goodbye" to the quest giver so it never started the quest properly
I would be much happier about quests in elden ring if it didn't become impossible to fulfill them seemingly at random. It's an open world game, so I want to walk around without having to worry what I might screw up by entering a new area.
I just started the game, but what I've seen so far of quests make me believe I'll not finish a single one in the entire game.
Or Dark Souls: You talked to somebody about Lost Izalith? NO MORE PYROMANCY FOR YOU!!!
To be fair, From Software games had something that Simon's Quest didn't have: the Internet. No, I'm not talking about gamefaqs or wiki guides (although that also helped). I'm talking about how the players could leave in-game messages to hint others on quests and secrets.
Personally I like to have the option of turning off the waypoints for quests. If the game is well designed, there will be enough clues in the dialog and the environment to make waypoints seem redundant to players paying attention to the lore.
Player messages in FromSoft games are like NPCs in Simon's Quest. Most of them are lying or telling corny jokes. It doesn't take much to realize that the "try jumping" by EVERY cliff in the game is trolling, but the "illusory wall ahead" when there's no illusory wall is downright cruel. Although I do appreciate "liar" by mimics and "try torch" by the damn wheel in Dark Souls 2.
Another point I like to add is that zero effort quests are less emersive. Games like Gothic 1 & 2 or Morrowind still stand out in my memory because part of the quest dialoge was how to get there. Compare that to magically knowing where said "lost" treasure is.
I also like to point out the ability to turn off questmarkers (or adjust their precision) to make everybody happy
It's always better to make the player struggle but not in a way as to ruin their fun. Just enough of a challenge to get them to interact with other gamers to solve it.
"Bring me ten boars."
Player vanquishes 10 boars...
"What! I don't need pelts! I'm hunting for truffles! Do I look like a leather worker to you?"
Player casts reanimate on to boar corpses
"Uhh... I guess that works... Thanks?"
While neat in principle, the elden ring method in practice has a lot of problems. It can easily cross into being intensely frustrating for a number of players, for example those with memory issues, who can't play with significant frequency, or if quest design and writing isn't up to snuff and providing enough to go on, to name a few. There's just a ton of opportunity for somebody to just lose the plot to a degree that actively undermines their enjoyment.
It's also worth noting that quest logs, automatically placed map markers, a child who screams the solution at you as soon as you walk into sight of a puzzle, etc are mostly thing that could be made individually optional via the settings screen, thus having the exact same quest function at any level. Not to mention the possibility of player-made map markers and notes...
A quest log is a simple enough method that fits into the universe the easiest.
Assassins creed Odyssey sort of did this with different modes for that exact thing
...played god of war recently?
Definitely. Haven't got round to Elden Ring yet, but I'm playing through Dark Souls 3, and I love it... but I feel like I have to have a wiki open on my phone the whole time. "Right, so when I get to Irithyll, I need to meet Anri in the church, kill that one pillar, then head back to the Cathedral to be ambushed by Patches, meet up with Siegmeyer outside in the well, then go to the Shrine to be ambushed by Patches *again* , and only then can I talk with Greirat. If I just head to the boss, like I want to do, he'll die. On the way I got a cool miracle tome that I want to learn from, but, wait, I can't give it to Irina, or she'll die, I have to wait until I get to the Sunken City, when I can double back to the dungeons to free *checks notes* Karla? And while I'm at it, there's Sirris's summon sign at... wait, the Curse Rotted Greatwood? Why would I ever go back there?".
Etc. Etc. I want to see as much as I can in my play through, and that means navigating a series of esoteric, hidden triggers which will unceremoniously merc my favourite characters if I miss them. That means external assistance, and that means my immersion takes a serious hit.
Its a video game, not a set of checklists simulators like we often see in modern day open world game.
Obviously how one enjoy their
game is up to each person's but for those who obsessed with "ticking the checklist" just enjoy the game and let it naturally play, at least for your first playthrough.
If you don't find it worthwhile to do new game plus then it's not even worth "completing" it in the first place.
Good points. My own preference is that quests should leverage in-game abilities other than running and pressing "A" and/or "attack", and being someone who likes notes, I also want it to be clear when I have started and finished a side quest. See the quest log books in the Trails games for prime example of that later point.
I also want the lore to be available in-game. Preferably (my personal taste) as part of the narrative and/or previous side quests, but at the very least discoverable in-game.
See Mass Effect Andromeda for lore being stored outside the game.
See Halo Infinite for much of the narrative being stored in audio logs scattered around the game world as side quests. That was weird.
We played a LOT of WoW and loved the lore in that game but i'm happy we're moving away from that style of quest design. I don't have time to grind a game like that anymore.
I think the presentation is what matters. "Kill the bandits in a nearby hideout and retrieve the stolen heirloom" feels different than "Kill 20 bandits and find 1 Heirloom in this designated circle", even if they could functionally be the same. Games have only so many ways you can interact with the world, but there's a marked difference between the first level and last level in a platforming game, even if all you've been doing all game is move and jump, so reducing the problem to the mechanics used being simple isn't quite correct I don't think.
To be honest "leverage in-game abilities other than running and pressing A or Attack" is like... Perhaps the most difficult gripe of players to address.
Because they often feel like that *in games where pressing A or Attack is everything you do*, like, that's the ENTIRE gameplay, that's everything that the game has you doing at any point- How can a quest ask anything different out of you? (I AM talking about MMO questing here, which are games that are basically Just Fighting and Talking)
@@JulianSkies Yeah, this is a personal gripe of mine. I never was able to get in to MMOs much, I think, because this simple gameplay mechanic wasn't enough to interest me beyond my lack of social group. I'll put up with it if I can find a grip of friends to play with, but it's not my thing.
I feel this video conflates the 'what' and the 'how' quite a bit. As another commenter pointed out, Dark Souls does say you need to ring two bells, but I bounced off that game for other reasons. I've been playing SnowRunner recently, and that has the joy of making your missions dead simple, such as "get two crates of food to the village" but then you look at the possible routes and go "how the heck do I do that!?" and there's where the joy is.
True, the "how the heck do I do that?" in Dark Souls is much more of a feeling that the enemy might not be beatable without frame perfect MLG level play. You don't actually but IT. IS. DAUNTING.
I'm a bit surprised it was not mentioned that World of Warcraft didn't explicitly tell where to go and what exactly to do once you accepted the quest in the beginning.
This actually started as a very popular 3rd party option called "Quest Helper" that was so widely used and popular that Blizzard implemented its functionality as the default UX which actually upset those of us who were there to explore and sink into the world rather than just finish the checklist, get the thing, get stronger, max level, endgame which is what this change really pushed the game toward.
If there's one thing I've learned about the gaming community, it's that they hate actually _playing_ games and want to calculate the fastest way to get them over with.
Unfortunately the existence of players like that has led to the "pay to win" microtransaction game that has infected so much of the gaming world.
One must always keep in mind there are many types of players and many reasons people play... Any time a company decides to shift their design to favor the preferences of one group they will always be sacrificing the experience of another.
That's just a big issue for MMO games. When players can compare themselves to a bunch of other players, they want to zoom through to being as powerful as possible. I mean, basically every game is a sort of power fantasy, but no one is feeling powerful when they start a game and see a bunch of other players with awesome abilities and gear.
@@SgtSupaman Except there are many, many players who play games/MMOs that aren't there for a power fantasy.
The questhelper functionality that became the default functionality undermined the experience for the people who enjoy exploration or immersing themselves in a world in favor of the people who wanted to hit max level as fast as possible.
There is quite a lot of literature (including a few previous extra credits episode from a few years back) discussing the various needs and things people play games for and focusing on only one subset of players will always be to the detriment of the rest of players unless very carefully implemented.
I remember in MNOG2, there was just no reasonable way to find the water charm. Like, what player is going to go recalculate (useing information gained near the end of the game) the formula that the astrologer litteraly mumbles to you if you barge into her house at the BEGUiNING of the game and then ask the ferry woman to take you to that spot in the sea?
I like there being a quest log that keeps track of the quests you found. Maybe also with a pin to the general area of where you need to go on the map (because learning the layout of the world of a new game can be tricky).
I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 and while the world is very much alive and beautiful, it is also hard for me to separate which part of the city is what by visuals alone. Most places have a lot of trash all over the place with the same sort of advertisements and trying to navigate purely by learning where I am compared to where I need to be is too much effort for me.
Agreed - I thought Cyberpunk really missed that opportunity. Either let me navigate the world by the world alone, or give me self-driving cars/taxis, but making me drive around following the minimap and not even looking at the world is the worst compromise!
These quests sometimes bring back archaic words like "vanquish" into our language, just because the wording needed to be somewhat authentic for the setting
I like the way rhe long dark handles this. In the story campaign you'll find notes leading you to caches and while it gives you the location of the cache you in general need to read the note to know more specifically where the item is.
I'd like to suggest one more layer of quest design, "communal". A level of difficulty/obtuseness that it is almost required to solve with two or more people. Games/quests I'd put in this category would be Noita, Tunic's endgame, and ARGs (though I specifically mean the types of ARGs where everyone has the same information). If anyone has any thoughts or more games for this list do add to it.
I'm thinking about making a level that cannot be completed unless you revisit other levels and complete hidden objectives. The clues might be in the level design or dialogue, but I just want it to be challenging.
@@Hauntaku Consider checking out La-Mulana if you haven't-- it's a metroidvania that follows that philosophy, requiring return to "completed" zones with not just abilities but information gathered in later ones. It's definitely not for everyone-- many of the puzzles are *extremely* difficult to figure out-- but if that's the kind of thing you like then it's the best on the market.
Call of duty's zombies mode has "easter eggs" that are definitely communal level quests, they are convoluted for the sake of slowing down the solving process. (Maybe they aren't expressly quests but they are close enough)
I like it when games give you the option of having quest markers or not. Same goes with other HUD options and similar toggles.
One of the things I like about RuneScape is that quests are actually quests. Lore, history, the works.
I know that a lot of ppl like the click the npc and how kill 30 trolls type, but RS added daily challenges a few years ago to satisfy those types of players.
Actually, if you want to make a narrative-focused game, your quests SHOULD involve a player studying information about the world - lore, characters, etc. It's sort of like an exam that incentivizes a player to memorize information (in case it will be used later) and at the same time an indicator that lore is an actual part of the game and not just "fluff text". Of course, game designers should make those "exams" reasonably challenging but not overwhelm players with the amount of research needed to complete the quest. Like, you can have a game encyclopedia and if NPC mentions some place or another NPC, you can quickly look up that and learn where to go.
I feel like this ties back into the question you talked about in a previous video, about how hand-holdy the minimap is. (Or maybe it was that other channel that talks about game design?) Cyberpunk 2077 is a beautiful if buggy game, but I ultimately saw very little of its vistas outside of quests, because while going *to* quests I had to keep my eyes on the minimap to make sure I didn't miss a turn, especially in some of the more vertical portions of Night City. This, ultimately, is due to the game's focus on quests over exploration, despite there being quite a bit of exploration available to the player, if they go looking for it.
I believe that was Rasbuten but the two definitely feed into each other
I love the way sea of thieves does quests. They mostly are treasure hunts that give puzzles and clues to where the quest is and what to do. It's kind of confusing sometimes but very rewarding when you solve the puzzles! I love it. No hand holding, no minimap, no "go here" signs.
the map is just a sly means of teaching us how to navigate with a map
I never really felt that involved with WoW quests, "Vanquish 10 boars" being how the earlier quests were all phrased/framed meant that by the time you got to the ones that were more in depth you'd already been very thoroughly trained to blow through all the dialogue
This really explains why I could never stick with an MMO (aside from lacking social skills for the multiplayer part of it). By the time it actually got to proper story I'd already checked out on the quest repetition and narrative simplicity.
@Aideyn idk, i read all the flavour texts off everything, including the start-up areas i've already been in dozens of times before. :-)
I have different moods, sometimes I like to abnegate with some easy peasy quests, other times I like to vanquish a particularly tough or hard to figure one.
Allowing the player to make several markers of different types and notes on their map would be ideal to me.
Breath of the wild has something like that just not the notes, it’s saved me lots of time exploring personally
The main quest to progress the storyline should be obvious enough that I always know what I need to be doing if I want to move forward with the story. Otherwise I'm going to get bored and put the game down. At the same time it is nice to be rewarded for exploring and going out and looking for stuff by finding more quests to do and various Rewards and stories to enjoy. Ideally there should be both. Also, I don't want to be constantly hounded about going to meet hanako and Embers if I am intentionally not doing that because I am doing other things
I love the witcher 3 quests where you investigate and then vanquish nasty beasts 🐺
Important things that quests must have for me. A quest MUST take place at a point in the game that makes reasonable sense. A quest is basically an interruption of the main story. If the world is about to be destroyed, now is not the time for the game to have a quest marker for someone going, "Can you find my sheep?"
The story driven gamer in me wants to say, "NOT NOW!" The completionist in me (because once the credits roll my brain says "game over, no sense playing, anymore" says "YOU STOP YOUR WORLD SAVING AND FIND THAT SHEEP!" This holds especially true if the end of the story shows the main character dying and the end game having you go back to just before the final battle...the final battle is the final battle.
Lastly, I'll say it again, Tales of Berseria had some of the best quests I had seen in a game for its era. Yes, most of them ended up being kill quests against bosses because it's a Tales of game. However, the quests ended up being very narrative focus. They involved piecing parts of the story together by going to certain areas and finding certain triggers, and they were basically small episodes directed toward a particular character, where you find out more about them. I loved the subquests in that game because they were so interesting in how they were designed.
Honestly....I want that super easy quest HUD stuff in real life....
That's called an organized calendar and living on a GPS
In theory I like the immersive style that from soft and hollow knight have but it only works if I'm really into the game and it fails apart if I take a break from the game. I definitely don't like the markers outside of MMOs. I think I like the breath of the wild approach for most games. For me exploration is a critical part of a great video game.
The earliest challenges should be the easiest, because you're learning the controls/UI more than anything else, BUT there's also something to be said for intelligent response that sees if a challenge is causing struggle for a disproportionate length of time, and then adjusting it.
It wasn't a particularly great MMO, but Secret World had some of my favorite quests out of any MMO in their....I can't remember what you'd call them...Secret Knowledge quests??? They give you no clues/hints of where to go other than something that requires you to decipher the next step. No vanquishing foes or anything, just deciphering clues. An example of one of them that I remember is where you listened to an audio file that was in Morse code. You had to essentially teach yourself how to decipher Morse to get a clue of the next steps (assuming you didn't just look it up online). I found those quests VERY fun and VERY rewarding, both in-game rewards and just personal satisfaction for solving the puzzle.
Essentially the scale of quest difficulty depends on ease of answering the basic questions: what to do, to/for who(m), where to do it, when it needs to be completed by (for timed deliveries or quests that expire after certain story events like in Xenoblade), and in some cases specifically how to do it. ('Why' is all that text you skip.) Some variations on the simple 'gather information about X' quest come to mind: FFXIV, the NPCs you need to talk to have symbols over their heads, while the map can show you either their specific locations or just an orange circle over the area. The same thing in Morrowind, you're stuck talking to literally everyone until you find the one NPC who actually knows something unless you use a walkthrough.
And of course, Simon's Quest, who can tell if anyone has anything useful to say, even the graveyard duck.
obviously, the correct answer is that "different games with different target audiences have different ideal design forms", but I feel like looking at it in a perspective from "being braindead" to "being obtuse" is a bit missing the point.
It's not like (most) players enjoy a quest being obscure. However, it is fun and satisfying to have a reasonable amount of thinking to do, so a middle point where it's reasonably obvious that there's a quest(for example, NPCs getting thought bubbles related to the quest details, rather than a fugly exclamation mark on top of their head) and the game indicates the general target area or otherwise gives clear instructions about how to find it, and once you get there you have to do a bit of thinking and/or searching to figure it out, are the most satisfying outcome. for a specific example, I feel like zelda BOTW overall absolutely nailed that middle point with it's sidequests.
Another thing of note to make is that you can make "simple" quests with engaging writing and simply ensure that people who do them, do them for that writing, by doing like FFXIV and simply giving those quests midling rewards, enough to be worth the time spent doing them but not more than you'd make from other activities; so you end up either doing them because you want their story rather than the rewards, or becoming something you do to kill time while waiting on queues, in which case there's no incentive to skip the text either.
I hope I don't mention the "wrong" game, though for me in Dead Space, the option to get the "crumb path" is immersion saving when you miss some hint in text, translation or memory (because you get to the game after some time and ust forgot some important details)
In the end whatever method I think the important part of a good quest is that it keeps you from looking it up online. Regardless of the games track record there is always is that one quest that seems broken, either the hints are dumb or it asks you to preform an action just that is only used in that one part, maybe programming in a back door could fix that.
Nothing dives me more nuts than when I'm stuck on a quest that could be easily solved if only I could ask a local NPC. Talking to the inn owner, bribe a guard, interrogating enemy, or hiring a tracker are common fantasy tropes, but are missing in video games, it doesn't even need to be that complicated, preform one of these action will narrow down your search area.
i think you should be given enough context to figure out where to go, and that changes based on age demographic. morrowind gives you geographic directions to your destination. mario lets you move left to right, so youre always going right
I would make it so that the player would be unable to finish the level without figuring out the complex way to complete the quest. TBH I kinda wanna make it difficult to finish 1 specific level in a game I'm working on and the only way to finish that level would be to revisit other levels and complete hidden objectives to get the mcguffin.
@@Hauntaku Very common in Metrovania style games, I just hope you have some interesting environments with a few simpler paths mixed in when the player returns
If you're going to give geographic directions, you need them to be accurate, as otherwise morrowind will send you wandering around an area trying to find whatever cave you were hired to clear.
@@andrewgreeb916 Another thing to note about Morrowind's directions is that East and West are flipped and, IIRC, they never tell you this or indicate it on the map. So way back when, when I was given directions to head due East to find a certain location, it took me far too long and far too much frustration, only to discover I'd been unwittingly moving away from it the entire time. Granted this was many, many years ago, before the ubiquity of internet connectivity and readily available search engines, which would make navigating the world much easier now. But the point stands, you really shouldn't need to tab out of a game and open google just to see where the quest is trying to point you, you should be able to figure it out in game.
I played a lot of Morrowind as a kid. You have to read through npc’s dialogue and listen to their road directions. They would give you directions like what an actual person would if you asked them to give you directions in real life: “Go right here, look for this landmark, turn left...” etc. You can also read back through your journal for any quest related text an npc said to you if you forget, but there’s very rarely a marker on your map and you’re mostly literally following road signs. I love this style. Once you get used to it, it’s as easy to understand as the icon-on-map approach, but it works diegetically to make the world feel a little more real.
Morrowind was one of my favorites. You had a journal, you could keep track of your quests, but you weren't given a 'this person has a quest' so you had to talk to people. And you had to actually read what they would tell you or even investigate a bit more. Read directions and all. No waypoint saying 'go here', no line on a map 'follow x'. No quest giver going 'go to x and do y' and that's it. They actually gave reason, gave directions, and made it feel like a quest and not a 'take a trip down to the supermarket will ya?'
I’m reminded of this one Wind Waker comic where Link is trying to get into Hyrule.
“You were keeping Ganondorf out of here with a SLIDING BLOCK PUZZLE?”
*cut to Ganondorf who’s crying because he can’t solve it*
Can we just all agree to never return to the Sierra era of 'dead man walking' scenarios, or quests like the infamous 'draw a moustache on the id to explain why you needed tape with cathair on it to fake a moustache for someone's id that you look nothing like' style of puzzle?
In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy text adventure game, you can lose the game right near the start, and never even know it until halfway through when you get eaten by the dog. That's some particularly evil game design.
My opinion is that the hybrid method is the best, to be more specific I think there should be in-game mechanics that help players that are stuck.
For the main quest line, there should be an automatic “go here to continue the story” map marker that is subtle, helps players not to accidentally trigger the next part of the story if they feel like they want to explore.
For side quests, they are automatically invisible and can be completed with no help needed, similar to Elden Ring.
If you interact with a quest board or some other mechanic, then you are made aware of what quests are currently available (with a vague description on where to go to start or complete said quests), similar to EverQuest.
There would also be an NPC next to the quest marking feature where if you pay a small price (something you can pay for after a few seconds of grinding) would apply the Assassin’s Creed style of markers to any individual quest.
There would also be a feature similar the Star Wars Jedi series where the player has to opt-in to being informed what the “next step” is.
The goal is to give players the choice what type of quest they want, built like Elden Ring quests, with a feature that can add them to a quest list, with an additional option to show exactly where the quest is at an insignificant price, and a feature that let’s players go “hey, I’m stuck, can you help me get past this one section of the quest? Just this section and no other sections please”.
"I think there should be in-game mechanics that help players that are stuck." They already exist to the point where your hand is held. I hope you don't need such kiddygloves to wipe your ass.
To be fair to Wow, there's some end game quests/abilities/items in Vanilla/Burning Crusade that go to the Everquest tier
They were ditched over time too, though
I love games that let me explore and go for lengthy treks through the wild. I just got into Sable this week and it's amazing. There's no combat to get in the way and the story fits with the theme of exploration (looking at you Fallout 4). Sable and Botw are by far my two favourite games in recent years simply because they let me go on MY adventure. I hold that if all you do is follow instructions and markers then you're not really on an adventure at all. Play that way if you want, happy to have you with us, but there should be an option to get a valid experience without all the hand holding, which in the case of most open world games isn't possible because the design assumes you're playing with hud and markers, and use fast travel.
I always thought of this decision as a result of "What part of our game is the fun part?" Is it the intense combat? You probably don't want to make your clues too obtuse. If the "fun" part of the game is the exploration and world building, you probably want something more challenging for the player.
I'd be interested in learning the history of quests in computer games. I know that there's at least one board game, published in 1982 by Avalon Hill, that used a quest mechanism to drive the game play, and I wonder when they were adopted by computer games.
What was the game?
It depends on how you define "quest". Akalabeth's dungeons are technically separate quests and that came out in what, '80? Ultima 1 certainly had NPC given quests in '81. Temple of Apshai in '79 also had quests but the way it plays out in game is more like separate chapters you can enter at any time from the Inn. If you don't read the manual you'll think they're just random dungeons you can select Mega Man style and you won't know they're separate quests given by NPCs.
@@stevejakab274 Wizards
I never really was a fan of mindless hack and slash games where you vanquish all that is evil but I always found I enjoyed those games when they had mystery, even when they were harder. This video explains alot.
Guides are an outside party created version of the glowing exclamation mark. If the player is seeking out a guide, the puzzle isn't entertaining them. It's more like a password they forgot and are waiting on a reset email than it is a game loop. And you can see that in the language we use when we seek out a guide - it's to "get past" something or "so I don't miss anything". You don't try to "get past" something you're enjoying, and a collection game loop with permanently missable elements is inherently contradicting the point of the loop in a way that is guaranteed to frustrate the sort of player it draws in.
One game whose side quest approach I'll champion is Xenoblade 3, mainly in how you actually get quests. There are no map markers, but there are glowing exclamation points that point to (usually) conversations you can overhear between NPCs that unlock a discussion topic for the next time you break camp. These discussion topics all further the worldbuilding and help characterize the party and their dynamics, but they can also give you interesting sidequests sometimes. But if you aren't in the mood to actively run around and learn more, the game never forces you to engage with this system.
Strikes a real fun balance between "this game is okay with you missing its side content" and "this game will help you seek out and complete its side content"
Surprised the Morrowind -> Oblivion -> Skyrim quest mechanic evolution didn’t make it into this discussion. I was so fascinated by having to literally follow directions in Morrowind, and loved every minute of it!
I think the hybrid style doesn't need a continuously updated money engine. Just a well crafted world. Obvious thing quests create an easy incentive to go to places. If skipping all that crafted interaction is a design problem, stick those in something more impersonal, like an adventurer's quest board where you don't have to actually interact. The meatier lore and exploration based stuff should be the reward when you explore said region, or opt to consult with the requestor in person.
I think you just described Final Fantasy 12.
It's a good thing that my games don't have tutorials and that if I was to implement quests, it won't be obvious. I want players to discover things for themselves.
Think of any quest or challenge as a puzzle, are you solving it as soon as you get to it or are you looking for pieces just to say "Finally, I can open the door now!" A good puzzle gives you all knowledge and pieces up front and all you need to do is find how they fit. Some games are fun where they don't announce there is a puzzle but you are looking for pieces that fit together in some way, and there is some joy in a simple jigsaw puzzle where you're just slowly finding parts that fit from a complete picture. The worst quests will feel very pointless or repetitive like fetch-quests, go talk to someone then come back to me, actual busy work. People talk about grinding random monsters because it feels so pointless or you don't get the item you need at a high frequency, if it has more context to it or opens up another quest in a chain then it can feel more interesting, but sometimes there are just jobs like reduce the population of goblin woodcutters in an area or track down enemy rogues for one that's carrying a special message, anything more than kill 10 rats to collect 5 rat tails which makes players want to skip any lore going on. Better yet Elden Ring and Dark Souls have a pretty neat idea of questing where you get a hint to what you need but it's up to you to do it, you decide you need to grind for items rather than the game saying you can only proceed if you do it, or just how oldschool rpgs let the chips fall and wouldn't hold your hand.
This could also be representative of how much of the cognitive load of the quest is on the player vs the character. It could be interesting but difficult to have an advanced hybrid style, a game where your character's intelligence or perception or other stat determines how well-marked the quests are, and/or more-well-marked quests that add additional markers to less-well-marked quests, because the reward is a clue your character understands. Quest log quality and how clear any options to review a conversation or event are could also be based on a memory stat. Perks like eidetic memory (review is perfect, bonus to quest log quality) go from minor bonuses to major benefits.
Just Horse 'in around and enjoying more great extra credits content
Too often quests rely on knowledge that you might not have, I'll know exactly what I have to do for the quest but have no idea how to do it. I recently played through Raft, and I got stuck on a quest that required some explosive powder, I knew exactly what I needed to do for the quest but there was nothing in-game that told me how to get explosive powder, I had to look it up online. I wish games would provide more information about the things in the game or at least some kind of hint system where you could ask NPCs about a specific thing so you don't need to leave the game to find out about it.
Agreed, unless it's a game like The Secret World, which explicitly tells you that some of its puzzles will require you looking up info on the internet (often on web sites the developers have set up themselves).
Sryth despite being nearly all a one man effort has a variety of quest complexity. You have the formal adventurers which you just click the "have this adventure" button. Semi formal adventures where you either start them formal then have to manual move your character to finish them and ones where going to all the places and going all the things (which is clicking all the links since it is text based) unlocks a new formal adventure or has something happen. Then their raknar's mad were you have to navigate a 40 floor dungeon where each floor have its own puzzle between formal adventures, which can also have puzzles.
Another thing that sets it apart is that adventures have longer lists of prerequisite's then level, location and maybe one quest. More requiring more to complete several separate quests arcs. A few times I've seen games where there's an intimating huge list of quest available and when you play them you have no idea who any of the people are, what they are doing, where you are and it spoils other quests, then you die quickly. Setting up longer prerequisites also gives the feeling of discovering there is even more game for example in Sryth completing the caves of westwold unlocks about 30 new adventures after you invested enough to care and you know those adventures could be a hour of handcrafted content long
All I could think of when I saw the thumbnail was "Well, that one's easy. It clearly goes in the square hole."
My problem with the FromSoft style is the sort of randomness of it. You can miss a quest because you went left instead of right at some point or you explored too far into one area. Even if you could argue for a reason that it happens in-game, as the player you are given little if any indication that it would lead to that outcome.
Also, I wish Elden Ring just had some kind of like quest journal or something. The fact that some quests need to have you go back to some random area that you've already explored to finish a quest that you don't know isn't finished is just bad.
Fromsoft games *are* the games I play when I want to sit back and relax. You can play them ignoring the quests, just kill enemies until you hit a boss, and then repeat when the boss is defeated. That's a cool thing about them; they can be played casually, or deeply if you want to find all the info about the world and characters.
pretty strong dependency on the player though; I genuinely cannot play those games casually because the lack of immediate context makes the experience uninteresting.
There's also giving the player photos, names, and other clues without giving them an objective list (sounds like it's more than Fromsoft gives us). But I suppose it's only mystery sandboxes that do that (like the Genesis version of Shadowrun).
Pathologic has wild quest design, even moreso in Pathologic 2
I really enjoy the quest design of Kingdom Come. The markers are good enough so that it doesn’t disrupt the narratives which are so essential to the game, but the quests are open ended enough that you still have a enough freedom that you don’t feel dragged along.
From my perspective, it seems like some devs go with easy quests because they want the player to find all the content in their open worlds. They did not make a world players want to explore or level design that directs them, so they can't take the from software approach.
I enjoyed the some work method from everquest or runescape. They tell you where the quest starts but have to pay attention to figure out what to do is rewarding. And if players get stuck, there are guides.
Of course, it's best to have a mix of these and use them where appropriate.
1:16 ah yes, the legendary wow vanilia quest escorting the mecha chicken through nowehre
I generally like the discussion of the topic, but I feel like the taxonomy proposed is oversimplified. It seems possible, for example, to have both: quests that are easy to find the start of but then challenge the player to find where and what they can complete that objective, versus quests that are well hidden and thus hard to find, but what's actually needed to figure them out once you have is pretty straightforward. Further still there could be that are easy to start and easy to understand what needs to be done, but that itself could be hugely challenging like a really tough enemy or a puzzle that's obviously in what it is but is really hard to solve.
The other thing that comes to mind is I feel like the different sorts lend themselves to different experiences. More obscure ones requiring the player to find them to start or finish fit a game that wants the player to explore and discover for themselves, and both speak to a character willing and able to explore and maybe one who doesn't know the area, maybe is even inexperienced. Clearly marked quests meanwhile are useful when finding the quest isn't really meant to be a part of the game, or for cases where the player and/or the questgiver know and can readily point out the locations of things.
The Typical Tavern Rat Quest in Kingdom of Loathing has been a metajoke for two decades already.
or maybe the misspelling of "prossess" when you get the rib? there's an extra r in there somewhere
personally the most perfect puzzles to balance challenging and fun to do was in the first two Golden Sun games. No Moon Logic and all puzzles we very doable but not Breezy. they took the perfect balance of time and energy.
Ah, how I missed these discussions.
For me, the best quests are ones whose reward is something I already wanted, before the quest appeared. I will always help my favorite characters to get new dialogue with them. I hate doing quests for currency, or equipment, or worst of fall, crafting materials. A CGI cutscene is the holy grail of rewards for me.
I feel like finding the secret word is an example of a quest that is too difficult it becomes not fun. haha. This one being harder than the other ones feels like it's meta and done on purpose. haha
WHAT A
HORRIBLE
NIGHT TO
HAVE A
CURSE.
I'm an outlier who also loves Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. It was literally the only Castlevania game I played in its own time.
got to vanquish all them quests.
If one is working on a game that leans heavily into the "quests as problem solving" framework and you are aiming for high complexity (i.e., not the laid-back style), then I think it is helpful for quests to have characteristics of actual problem-solving. Real-world problems often have more than one solution. Usually some approaches are easier than others for specific problems, but no one approach is an ace for all problems. Some problems may require you to apply very specific approaches or combinations of approaches, with some possibly being acquired fairly late.
Plus there's a whole storytelling space to explore with how a chosen solution to a quest affects others. Does the player blaze through dialog and miss an obvious clue, thus doing a quest the long way? Program the quest-giver NPC recognize that and have it affect other quests from their associates. "My friend told me to use lots of repetition with you because you tend to ... not get things the first time."
honestly, being able to vanquish quests in an easy format is nice and relaxing, but Souls quests are cool, even though I hate permanent miss-ables in games
What is truely odd is your PCs carry any treasure they find forward to the final boss who would likely kill them and take their stuff adding what tyey bring with them to the treasure horde.
Thanks for the video :)
I'm way more of the type of person who'll play a game to learn the story, which is partly why I enjoy Castlevania a lot. There are lots of details, from the background to the enemy and item descriptions, and for the mostly part I just have to vanquish the enemies and bosses in order to progress, with backtracking being made *most of the time* clear when that's not the case.
1:17 For me the chicken quest was easy, well I guess I DID do it as a Paladin… in Feralas…
A good example of the "no effort" quest system working well in a story-based game would be Borderlands 2. You go to a spot to pick up the quest, follow the diamond to a place, kill stuff, click a button, then come back. Sometimes you go to a couple places, kill stuff, click multiple diamonds, then return. Pretty simple stuff, but as you go through each step, you get some funny, relevant dialogue to fill you in on why you're doing what you're doing, and also entertain the player as they move between combats. It's good storytelling, good world building, and good moment-to-moment gameplay all in one extremely simple design structure.
I think the best way to add quests would be making literally all quests optional. You can beat the game without completing any quest, BUT they give you good enough prizes so you want to because finishing the game without any quest is extremely hard. Like in an rpg you can level up killing monsters, but they don't respawn, you can't grind mobs all day long, so if you don't get bonus items or exp from quests you will end up quite underleveled and you can beat the game but you will suffer.
Also, there should be invisible quests. Like you find and NPC and it tells you "oh you cleared the dark dungeon, here's something for you!" even if you never got the quest, you should be rewarded if you accidentally complete it.
That would also make it interesting to make a "no quest" run as a challenge where you have to avoid doing certain things so you don't complete any quest by accident. There are plenty of ways to make quests fun.
Ah, Everquest.
That unforgiving masterpiece.
Back when it was the first MMORPG, and most of the players were tabletop players.
What a time.
I miss the days when you had to actually travel through dangerous territory and potentially get mauled by a small brownie colony or bandits in Faydark. I don’t miss retrieving corpses for lost items.
Simon's Quest was the very first example I'd come up with too for this!
But the episode was supposed to be about how quests are *designed*, and the Simon's Quest example was only a problem because of a translation error -- that the actual designers probably never even knew about. (The original Japanese includes some NPC dialogue that more or less tells you what to do, or at least hints it clearly enough).
You guys should cover the DND license thing when the dust actually settles
Pleasure doing business with you, man
Realistically, it depends on the quest as well as the game. Not all quests fit into every type of game. However, there is no reason you cannot use multiple methods to get a player through a quest.
Hell, Halo used nav points when to get players to distance points, making it an in game mechanic by making it a part of the setting without overusing them.
Try to be aware of which types of missions fit into your game and consider whether it would be better just to leave a specific quest out.
A fast paced shooter may not mesh well with a stealth level where players have to find secret documents because it doesn't fit the expected gameplay loop. Then again, it might if you give the player a sniper rifle. Understand what makes your game fun!
A lot of quest markers, particularly in open world games, are used to cover up poor quest or level design.
This means quest markers are really useful when quests are not supposed to be deep or complicated.
If your game is fast paced, consider using quest markers and make any puzzles that must be solved to complete the game easier.
Quests about uncovering secrets should not hold hands as much. However, most games will benefit if there are multiple ways to get to the solution. This is something I've heard for D&D advice.
Some games are about difficult puzzles, but not all require them. Feel free to use hints, but give the player a minute or two to work on or make them optional, please.
If your game is about exploration, make sure that any hints you give the player do not cripple the sense of exploration.
One tactic you can use is having a place players can go for hints. It could be talking to a companion, or returning to the quest giver, or even a super smart character that exists in game somewhere. This puts the agency in the players hands, and prevents tou, the game designer, from wrestling control from them.
Realistically, a well designed quest should not need more helpers than description written in a journal and a map to get the player there. You can have in-journal hints.
Everything else the player *should* need should be found in game- things like map design that draws the player's eye to a location, quest dialogue, logical setting consistency (such as objects being in a place they would logically be).
That said, some players will struggle with puzzles. Its easy just to think differently from the developer.
Please use that journal. Update it. Maybe let players click on it for a hint. Its a good place to put optional hints, and a great place for players to go if they forgot what they were doing.
Anything on top of those is a bonus, and risks making things too easy or infringing on screen space or freedom. Not all games need a map, though not including one on an open world game can make it significantly more difficult.
I personally preffer a compass with directional nav points marked at the top of the screen. I don't mind normal nav points in games like Halo, but once a game has multiple quests at once navpoints need to be optional or toggleable. There is a point where screen clutter makes the game feel restrictive and a bunch of navpoints can contribute to this.
I also recommend a nav point that can be placed on the map, like in 7 days to die or elder scrolls games. This lets players mark down places they want to go. (I wish more games allowed making custom map notes like valheim).
A simple compass may not work as well on maps with a lot of small, intricate rooms. But there are games that make the compass point to the route you need to take to get to the objective rather than the final position.
Big dotted lines are generally intrusive, implying that the player has to do something, and discouraging them exploring. I recommend avoiding them. (There are places they work though, such as mariocart.)
Lastly, I personally really like finding secrets that are not marked. This makes it feel like I found something unique and special. These should almost always be optional.
Most quests can function pretty well if given some sort of quest marker, even if they just point to an area.
You can put the quest objective on the screen as well.
Realistically, while adding options to add or remove HUD options or change difficulty is good practice, players hate doing it. Aim for an experience that matches your game, then add those options for accessibility and player comfort.
Some quests just should not have quest markers. It can destroy the mystery and undermine the quest. But most should be ok with at least a region marker to point them to the right town, building or dungeon.
Thanks for reading, and good luck.
Qualifications: I'm not much of a game designer, I just play them.
This rant brought to you by some damn good garlic bread. No apologies. No regrets. No guarentees.
I think a good level of difficulty of understanding is shown by Fallout: New Vegas, quests can easily be done by just following objectives, but better outcomes and rewards are earned by paying attention and reading dialogue.
Making a quest not too easy but also not hard enough for it to feel impossible is a difficult problem to solve. Vanquishing an impossible foe feels amazing, but losing to the same boss 100 times is a lot less interesting.
It’s certainly a difficult balancing act.
One other thing to keep in mind with less obvious quests/objectives, is that the player may not start and finish a quest in one sitting.
If I start an unmarked quest, then real-life obligations have me not play the game for several days, I may come back to the game having completely forgotten about the quest, or at least what my most recent objective was in it.
Also, as the player, I find it difficult to trust that the information I need to complete a quest will be provided, if there is no quest marker. If a game spends the time to build up that trust, by effectively providing the appropriate lore necessary to complete quests without markers, then that would make for a better experience.
I'd say the trick is to have quests range from easy to Very Hard, but not FORCE a player to do a quest they don't want to.
Forcing someone to do a REALLY HARD quest when they just wanna chill isn't great, Nor is Forcing a player to engage with an easy quest when they desperately want a Challenge.
I'd say it's probably easier to make easy quests than hard ones, you can copy paste things and keep them short. While a super hard quest probably requires more development time and cost. That's probably why we see a LOT more short easy quests than the big epic world spanning hard ones.
More quests should definitely involve a horse. Extra Credits is amazing, keep up the awesome work
what is a business man, You now prossess dracula's rib (extra r), zoey floated around
Does anyone know where I might find additional reading on this topic.
Some games can get away with no quests at all. Minecraft doesn't need quests to guide the player, they're free to set their own goals, as arcane or as simple as they want them to be. The games that suck me in the most are the ones where I'm enabled to set my own goals and work at my own pace. Factorio, for example gives you the goal of creating and launching a rocket, but many players end up making a gigantic factory along the way, producing way more science and materials than is strictly necessary.
1:50 Divinity (1) would like to have a word.