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During a lull at the Notting Hill Carnival yesterday, there was a comment in the conversation about quests in games and how unoriginal they generally are. Whilst MMOs were the broad topic, this runs through pretty much all game genres that have such concepts such as RPGs with side quests, RTSes with multiple objectives and FPSes with missions.
Quests/missions ostensibly exist to provide gameplay variety and as a source of rewards but from various chats I've had over time, player opinion seems divided and runs the gamut from from those that thrive on goal completion to those that would rather uninstall the game than kill another 10 bloody rats. Games designers too seem to be divided on the subject, if the wide range of implementation I've seen is anything to go by: some games have side quests tacked on almost as an afterthought because it's needed to tick some obligatory box or other, whilst others tie the progression of the game to a questing system to such an extent that you cannot avoid the majority of these objectives.
It's rare that I find a truly innovative or original quest in a game. The current height of quest system design is one that allows for a successful completion of objectives by following more than one path, and where your choices in doing this have repercussions later on. MMOs have been very slow on the uptake here whilst RPGs and first-person games have led the way, a classic example of which is the Deus Ex series in which you can choose to sneak and hack through the game rather than kill and destroy all that you see.
So, I'm curious as to what people think about the topic. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Game makers? Game breakers? Couldn't give a flying monkey's?
Oooh what's over here?
Personally, I see quests and missions as a means to an end rather than a thing to focus on in and of itself. I'm a great explorer of game worlds and maps, and I like to see what's over this hill or in that hidden bunker. I like to click on items that look interesting and potentially clickable just for the hell of it. I'm insatiably curious about how the settings work and where the boundaries of what I can do are set. Quests are a way of getting things done while I'm indulging in my exploratory nature. I reason that there's now a good excuse to travel across the map to a part I haven't visited yet and poke around because in doing so I'll end up killing things and picking up objects and I might as well pick up extra credit and advance the plot/unlock new areas/watch new cut scenes while I'm at it. Whether I read all the text associated with the objective or even care about it depends a lot on how the story of the game has grabbed me. Generic fantasy game #1634 will have me reading only the bolded bit where it lists the mob name I nave to slot or what zone to travel to to follow the waypoint on my map. Something intriguing like a plot twist centred around a character I'm interested in will have me paying attention and eager to see what comes next. Another thing I consider is that because I am very easily sidetracked by exploration, timed quests are horrible for me and as a rule I loathe them.
Going off into new areas often means I find myself in situations which wouldn't normally be encountered until much later and this can often be rather lethal. If I've been given a specific task to in an area at a certain point in the game, it hopefully means that what I'm likely to encounter on the way is appropriate for my current in-game capabilities. Of course this isn't guaranteed, as anyone who's ever run a mission in Anarchy Online knows all too well, where low level characters end up having to travel through areas containing much higher level mobs to get to their low level destination...
All of this does mean that when I'm done with an area and want to move on, if I keep getting sent back to old territory with missions then I'll get annoyed and either sod the mission until a later point or, if I can't do that, I'll sod off and play a different game for a while. Endless back and forth between the same areas on errands gets to be tedious. Tedious tasks put me off, and thus the dichotomy of the quest question continues.
Quests/missions ostensibly exist to provide gameplay variety and as a source of rewards but from various chats I've had over time, player opinion seems divided and runs the gamut from from those that thrive on goal completion to those that would rather uninstall the game than kill another 10 bloody rats. Games designers too seem to be divided on the subject, if the wide range of implementation I've seen is anything to go by: some games have side quests tacked on almost as an afterthought because it's needed to tick some obligatory box or other, whilst others tie the progression of the game to a questing system to such an extent that you cannot avoid the majority of these objectives.
It's rare that I find a truly innovative or original quest in a game. The current height of quest system design is one that allows for a successful completion of objectives by following more than one path, and where your choices in doing this have repercussions later on. MMOs have been very slow on the uptake here whilst RPGs and first-person games have led the way, a classic example of which is the Deus Ex series in which you can choose to sneak and hack through the game rather than kill and destroy all that you see.
So, I'm curious as to what people think about the topic. Love 'em? Hate 'em? Game makers? Game breakers? Couldn't give a flying monkey's?
Oooh what's over here?
Personally, I see quests and missions as a means to an end rather than a thing to focus on in and of itself. I'm a great explorer of game worlds and maps, and I like to see what's over this hill or in that hidden bunker. I like to click on items that look interesting and potentially clickable just for the hell of it. I'm insatiably curious about how the settings work and where the boundaries of what I can do are set. Quests are a way of getting things done while I'm indulging in my exploratory nature. I reason that there's now a good excuse to travel across the map to a part I haven't visited yet and poke around because in doing so I'll end up killing things and picking up objects and I might as well pick up extra credit and advance the plot/unlock new areas/watch new cut scenes while I'm at it. Whether I read all the text associated with the objective or even care about it depends a lot on how the story of the game has grabbed me. Generic fantasy game #1634 will have me reading only the bolded bit where it lists the mob name I nave to slot or what zone to travel to to follow the waypoint on my map. Something intriguing like a plot twist centred around a character I'm interested in will have me paying attention and eager to see what comes next. Another thing I consider is that because I am very easily sidetracked by exploration, timed quests are horrible for me and as a rule I loathe them.
Going off into new areas often means I find myself in situations which wouldn't normally be encountered until much later and this can often be rather lethal. If I've been given a specific task to in an area at a certain point in the game, it hopefully means that what I'm likely to encounter on the way is appropriate for my current in-game capabilities. Of course this isn't guaranteed, as anyone who's ever run a mission in Anarchy Online knows all too well, where low level characters end up having to travel through areas containing much higher level mobs to get to their low level destination...
All of this does mean that when I'm done with an area and want to move on, if I keep getting sent back to old territory with missions then I'll get annoyed and either sod the mission until a later point or, if I can't do that, I'll sod off and play a different game for a while. Endless back and forth between the same areas on errands gets to be tedious. Tedious tasks put me off, and thus the dichotomy of the quest question continues.
