What are the alternatives to kill and fetch quests?

[Boozahol_Squid_P.I]

@Chronos

I think what sets the good quests apart from the bad ones is that there are multiple ways of accomplishing them. Like, say, suppose that the quest is “Stop the bad guy from completing the end-of-the-world ritual”. Maybe you do that by going in guns blazing and just blast him. Maybe you do it by sneaking in and stealing the Evil McGuffin from under his nose so he can’t complete the ritual. Maybe you do it by finding the Good McGuffin that counters the Evil McGuffin, and bringing it to the ritual location. Maybe you do it by getting ahold of the ritual yourself, and modifying it so instead of destroying the world, it moves the whole world to a different dimension where it’s safe from the destroy ritual. Or maybe the game is on rails, and going in guns blazing is the only way the game will accept.

The difficulty with quests like this is that the game designer has to write and design for each one of these potential angles, balance and debug individual issues with each line that can be taken, and then update later parts of the game to reflect each decision. And 75% of the player base isn’t going to see any given line (because they chose another one) of work you’ve put in. This is an acceptable cost for a few major quests in a game, and can even make a game more marketable by increasing its playability.

The problem is how to make the quests that make up the meat of the game feel like nonrepeated filler. Even adding multiple avenues for completing them doesn’t make them feel like good quests, if they don’t have all the support to make the options feel distinct.

[DCnDC]

@Boozahol_Squid_P.I

The difficulty with quests like this is that the game designer has to write and design for each one of these potential angles, balance and debug individual issues with each line that can be taken, and then update later parts of the game to reflect each decision. And 75% of the player base isn’t going to see any given line (because they chose another one) of work you’ve put in. This is an acceptable cost for a few major quests in a game, and can even make a game more marketable by increasing its playability.

The problem is how to make the quests that make up the meat of the game feel like nonrepeated filler. Even adding multiple avenues for completing them doesn’t make them feel like good quests, if they don’t have all the support to make the options feel distinct.

This is exactly why I’ve loved the Hitman series of games so much. Every single mission in the entire series has the exact same goal: kill this person. Ideally, you want to do this without harming anyone else, but they leave that choice entirely up to the player (Absolution being the exception; I enjoyed it, but it was definitely a significant departure from the formula).

And that’s really what it’s all about; choice. There are a half-dozen ways to accomplish nearly any mission, and you are encouraged to figure out different ways to do it. Prior to the last two games, there was practically zero hand-holding; they gave you a target and a map and that’s it; you were left entirely to your own devices to figure it out. Granted, this leads to a lot of trial-and-error, which leads to a lot of quite spectacular failure, but even that’s still fun.

[Kobal2]

@Superdude

The escort mission I loathed the most was the one in Resident Evil 4. The missions with Ashley were pure torture.

C’mon, you could shove her in 100% safe dumpsters while you got to business. Ashley wasn’t that bad in gameplay practice.
The bad part about her is that the scenario writers used the whole “girl gets kidnapped, doesn’t do a thing to help herself besides yelping, falling on her ass. Save her !” again and again and again to the point where you can’t but feel she’s just too stupid to live.

[RickJay]

@Atamasama

Good quest but almost surely a copy of the same quest from the original KotOR.

Oh God. The Sunry storyline, where you have to get the old guy’s friend off of a charge he murdered a Sith agent.

The thing about the Sunry trial story is that it’s not exactly a quest, it’s a sequence of quests, and it’s the usual - go there and talk to that dude, go there and talk to that lady, invade the Sith base and kill everyone and retrieve Marsellus’s suitcase. It all adds up to a story but it’s still quests, and if you get enough of them you can click the right dialogue options to try to get Sunry off the hook.

Of course, the cool thing about the storyline is

He actually is guilty.

But it’s still just the usual quests.

[lazybratsche]

@Jophiel

Problem with explore/investigate is that they’re usually not much different than fetch quests. Go to location, [kill/talk to] NPC, return. Or go to location, find correct thing to click, return.

To some extent, sure. But the better investigate quests offer additional rewards for more thorough investigation.

IIRC in The Witcher 3, there were some investigation quests where a cursory approach will lead to failure or a poor ending. Merely following the quest markers to the first glowing red thingy isn’t always sufficient to get the best outcome. To get a better outcome you’d have to find a few more unmarked glowing red thingies, and to get the best outcome you might have to read an unmarked journal and remember it well enough to make the correct choice later on.

[wolfman]

LOTRO had a lot of historical quests done very well , which is something that universe is very well suited too. You would take the persona of someone and experience what happened to them for a bit of exposition.
My favorite was one where you play the “Last Dwarf standing” in Moria as the waves of gobbos took it over. He was just so much tougher than your normal character, a hacking lord of death against endless waves. You couldn’t win obviously, but it felt very epic and profound, and was a sweet diversion.

[Chronos]

Sounds sort of like the “In Utter Darkness” mission from Starcraft II. It’s a vision of the future, the future that would happen if you were to fail in the main mission sequence. You cannot win it; the only question is how gloriously you’ll lose. As the main character describes it in later dialog, “More Protoss than we ever knew existed, and they still weren’t enough to stop the Hybrid”, and it does a great job of capturing that feel: You start off with a full, large-scale base, with all of the tech available, and can build pretty much as much as you want… And it’s never enough.

[Balance]

Kill the Foozle: There’s a foozle over in that tower/dungeon/penthouse, and you must kill it. That specific foozle, not just any old foozle.

Slaughter the Rats: There’s a bunch of rats (or other relatively non-threatening critters or people) somewhere around here. They need killin’, whether it’s to thin the numbers, send a message to the survivors, or because someone needs their duodenums for some daft reason. Mysteriously, in the latter case, only a small percentage of them actually have duodenums. In some cases, only the rats in one very specific location will do.

Follow the Breadcrumbs: Something–a trail, a mysterious letter, a bombshell who gives you a Significant Look before slipping away, whatever–leads you to a new area.

Touch Base: Meet a contact. If it’s a new contact, you may Follow the Breadcrumbs to them.

Rescue the Princess: Find and free someone (actual royal blood optional). The good news is that once they’re loose, they can make their own way home.

ESCORT the Princess: A whole different kettle of very smelly fish. Follow the very, very stupid, danger-prone princess as she wanders slowly and aimlessly through dangerous areas, getting beat up on her behalf, until she becomes someone else’s problem. (More on this later.)

Fetch the MacGuffin: Go get the thing. You know, the superweapon/secret documents/magic ring/boss’s lunch.

Deliver the MacGuffin: FedEx quest. Now that you’ve fetched the thing from Place X, take it to Place Y.

King of the Hill: This location (despite its utter lack of hardpoints, choke points, or any other point to suggest tactical value) must be defended against waves of attackers. (Good point defense missions actually give you those points, and/or the means to construct them.) Also, sometimes you are the Hill, and you’re just trying to survive the waves where they’re coming after you.

Face the Champ: Engage in a contest with the local champ and beat them at their own game. Single combat, a race, a drinking contest…

Explore (the Fog of War): Go to a place and look around. Frequently turns out to be a different quest type in disguise, but sometimes it really plays out as reconnaissance.

Infiltrate the Base: Sneak in someplace and do sneaky things sneakily. Frequently involves a Foozle or MacGuffin, but sometimes it can be free-roaming sabotage or general burglary.

Now, as to escort missions…hoo boy.

In fairness, I will say that they can be done well, for values of “well” approaching “less annoyingly”. Some City of Heroes escort missions weren’t bad, since the escortees mostly followed the player, rather than going on their own predetermined path. You generally couldn’t leave them in a hiding spot and go clear a path, but you could hide with them on a side path while a patrol passed. Giving some of the escortees powers and perception stats provided more personality, too. (I found myself liking Fusionette for her zippy, gung-ho, suicidal behavior, because it was a refreshing change from the plodding, dumb, suicidal behavior of other escortees.)

The single most annoying escort mission I recall was in LotRO. Lalia Holeinherhead (or somesuch) was lost in the Barrow-downs, and you had to go save her. The fact that she is ostensibly terrified does not stop her from moving at a very slow walk, insisting on searching for her cloak, or plodding straight into ambush after ambush until you have walked every inch of this place of death. The only thing dumber than Lalia is the player character, who knows the way out and could just pick her up and walk straight out with her, but inexplicably indulges her. Also, she was out there looking to pick up a guy, which is saved from going beyond Goth to outright necrophilia only because she’s too dim to realize that her celebrity crush is long dead.

[Headrush042]

@Atamasama

For quest variety check out The Secret World. Investigation quests that include looking stuff up on the actual web are interesting.

I love the missions in The Secret World. The writing and atmosphere in that game really are top notch, particularly the “Emma” series (I walk into empty is probably the best quest series I’ve ever played in an MMO).

TSW has players solving puzzles and riddles of all sorts (word, number, cryptological, spatial, etc) in addition to all your standard fetch/kill/escort/etc. I will say though, that translating from Arabic and Romanian without being able to use copy/paste (presented as images, not text) was a huge pain in the ass.

The old-school style MMO quests where these tropes really took off were pretty awful, though (EQ, vanilla WoW, etc). Go collect 30 bear asses (end up having to kill 80 bears)! I’m more concerned with why over half the bears I’m killing out in the world don’t have asses – that’s the real mystery here!

[Superdude]

@Atamasama

I brought that up in post #15.

:smack:

[Chimera]

@Chronos

. Like, say, suppose that the quest is “Stop the bad guy from completing the end-of-the-world ritual”. Maybe you do that by going in guns blazing and just blast him. Maybe you do it by sneaking in and stealing the Evil McGuffin from under his nose so he can’t complete the ritual. Maybe you do it by finding the Good McGuffin that counters the Evil McGuffin, and bringing it to the ritual location. Maybe you do it by getting ahold of the ritual yourself, and modifying it so instead of destroying the world, it moves the whole world to a different dimension where it’s safe from the destroy ritual. Or maybe the game is on rails, and going in guns blazing is the only way the game will accept.

Or maybe you sleep with the 15 year old virgin, like in the movie Cast a Deadly Spell.

[Skywatcher]

@Kron

Borderlands 2 has a quest where a there is a dead body and four suspects- you need to question the witnesses and then accuse the appropriate suspect of the crime.

Fallout 4 has this as well, in Far Harbor. Except the body and suspects are all robots.

[Balance]

@Headrush042

I will say though, that translating from Arabic and Romanian without being able to use copy/paste (presented as images, not text) was a huge pain in the ass.

Still easier than the “Love and Origami” mission. I still have the fish I made for that mission somewhere.

[Martini_Enfield]

@TimeWinder

And the answer to those is often “off” in both directions: the almost stereotypical “kill a rat in my bar’s basement in return for roughly eight years of bartender wages” bothers me more than the cheapskates, actually.

Fallout 4 has entirely too many quests where the financial reward doesn’t even begin to cover your ammunition or stimpaks, or even your time to head to wherever the thing that needs dealing with is.

As in “Hello Mr or Mrs Wasteland Lord, clad in your ultimate power armour and armed with an experimental laser rifle that can disintegrate military robots - could you go and clear out some feral ghouls infesting a factory nearby? There’s 47 caps in it for you if you do.”

[gnoitall]

@Skywatcher

Fallout 4 has this as well, in Far Harbor. Except the body and suspects are all robots.

There’s some doubt whether one of the more interesting quests in that game wasn’t ripped off wholesale from a Fallout New Vegas mod.

As often happens, when you can’t hire creative people, rip off one. :rolleyes:

[bump]

I’d much prefer having multiple ways to skin the cat than “find some unique item at the top of a multi-level building where you have to fight your way up the building” type quests.

Tom Clancy’s The Division has one of the better ways to do it- there are quests that involve finding things within a time limit, there are out-and-out fighting quests (go protect the goods, go break up the drug deal, go kill so-and-so gang leader), there are information gathering quests, and there are others to fix/turn on various things. A fair number don’t involve fighting, although most do. I might like a bit more skill-challenge type non-combat quests, but I think I may be unique in that regard.

[Lemur866]

@Martini_Enfield

Fallout 4 has entirely too many quests where the financial reward doesn’t even begin to cover your ammunition or stimpaks, or even your time to head to wherever the thing that needs dealing with is.

As in “Hello Mr or Mrs Wasteland Lord, clad in your ultimate power armour and armed with an experimental laser rifle that can disintegrate military robots - could you go and clear out some feral ghouls infesting a factory nearby? There’s 47 caps in it for you if you do.”

Also, the Blood King is preparing his song that will end the world, and it is nearly ready. I know it’s super-important to stop the end of the world, but could you find my lost stuffed squirrel? I know I left it somewhere in the ruins over there, it shouldn’t take more than a few days travel and then scratching through the ruins for the squirrel, and then you can get back to saving the world. In the meantime, I’m just going to stand here staring into the middle distance. If you bring me back my squirrel, I’ll give you this irregularly shaped pebble you can vend for 47 copper.

[Hoopy_Frood]

@Lemur866

Also, the Blood King is preparing his song that will end the world, and it is nearly ready. I know it’s super-important to stop the end of the world, but could you find my lost stuffed squirrel? I know I left it somewhere in the ruins over there, it shouldn’t take more than a few days travel and then scratching through the ruins for the squirrel, and then you can get back to saving the world. In the meantime, I’m just going to stand here staring into the middle distance. If you bring me back my squirrel, I’ll give you this irregularly shaped pebble you can vend for 47 copper.

A bit off topic, but this reminds me of the old JRPG trope.

The end of the world is nigh. The heroes are going to fight the big bad boss behind it all. They finally make it to the shop that has the best equipment in the game. If they lose this battle, everything is finished, including this shop.

Of course, they find the shopkeeper is still charging outrageous prices for everything. Because, economy and such.

[Jophiel]

Not much different for Western games.

“Hey, the New California Republic is about to fight Caesar’s Legions for control of the dam that will determine control of the entire western United States. We need you to take a special point role in winning this fight for the NCR. But bring your own bullets; this ain’t no charity.”

[Martini_Enfield]

@Lemur866

Also, the Blood King is preparing his song that will end the world, and it is nearly ready. I know it’s super-important to stop the end of the world, but could you find my lost stuffed squirrel? I know I left it somewhere in the ruins over there, it shouldn’t take more than a few days travel and then scratching through the ruins for the squirrel, and then you can get back to saving the world. In the meantime, I’m just going to stand here staring into the middle distance. If you bring me back my squirrel, I’ll give you this irregularly shaped pebble you can vend for 47 copper.

Oh god, yes. The fate of the world hangs in the balance and some of your holdout weapons can destroy the very souls of your foes and yet someone has misplaced their kid’s toy and could you please go and get it because otherwise she won’t eat their vegetables?

One of the things I liked about the Fallout games is they were some of the first to acknowledge a lot of fetch quests were things the questgiver really could go and do themselves at their leisure, and started incorporating reasons why you had to do them - or lampshading the fact they were things the questgiver could probably do themselves on the way home from work.