In King's Bounty--the one that recently came out--one strength it had was interesting stories driving the quests.  There were more good deeds for you to do than a boy scout could shake a stick at. 

Sure, sometimes you helped out some miners by clearing an area of the dungeon, or help negotiate a treaty between warring factions.  But other times a quest chain would help bring two lovers together over distance and time, whose love was never requited due to a misunderstanding between families, or help a father recover a birthday present for his son. 

You got the sense you weren't just out to empower yourself by making deals with quest-givers, but to make the kingdom a better place, from big important matters to small ones.  Of course it would have to be the opposite for the dark side, or who knows, maybe the worst tyrant could display a sensitive side occasionally.

Maybe let some of those writers at Del Rey make some up?

Although I wholly support the "perform minor task X, receive minor bonus Y" quests, and the more of those the better, the thing I'd really like to see are options for epic quests that drastically alter or even end the game. For the kinds of quests I'm envisioning creating, we'll need some interesting options that go way beyond collecting items/killing monsters/etc:

-Quests should be able to affect diplomatic relations, which should include instantly going to war with or forming an alliance with certain kingdoms, or forming alliances between several kingdoms against a common foe (such as the player), or even forming two large opposing alliances and possibly giving kingdoms a choice of which side to join.

-Quests should be able to create/move large numbers of units, i.e. bring all the armies of opposing nations together for a decisive epic battle.

-Potential conditions for completing quests should include winning certain battles (such as the one mentioned above), capturing specific cities or all cities within a given land area, defeating certain enemy kingdoms, killing specific units (such as sovereigns/heroes/dragons/whatever), and so on.

-There should be "chains" of quests, so by completing (or failing!) a given quest you are given the option (or forced!) to start a new followup quest.

-Potential rewards for completing quests (or penalties for failing them) should include gaining control of specific cities or entire kingdoms or all cities within a certain land area, destroying specific cities/kingdoms/etc, creating new kingdoms (perhaps by splintering a single large kingdom into multiple rivals, resulting in civil war), both creating and destroying units (you gain a hero by completing a quest, or your current hero that was involved sacrifices himself to complete a quest, etc), and most importantly of all..

-"You win/lose the game" should be a potential result for completing/failing a quest.

Again I don't want to take away from the many minor quests that should make your typical turn more interesting, but I see some amazing potential for 'epic' chains of quests if these options are included. Pretty much every major event that defines tales like Song of Ice and Fire, Lord of the Rings, etc can be reproduced by a quest - a last alliance of desperate kingdoms against a single powerful foe, a massive kingdom splintering into free-for-all civil war, you name it - if we're given the right options for quest conditions/effects/rewards.

@austinvn

maybe the magnitude of impact that quests can have on a game should be a modifier at the game options menu.

I'd like to see some quests that have multiple endings or ways that the goals of the quest can be accomplished. Also quests that have "Hidden Goals" the player won't know about until it's too late. For example....

A traveling merchant comes to your Kingdom and gives you a magic sword that is very powerful, but cursed. The person who wields the sword will slowly turn into a demon unless the curse is broken. You find a way to break the curse, but if you break the curse the sword won't be nearly as powerful.

At this point the player can either keep the sword and use it "as is" knowing the hero using it will one day turn into a rampaging demon, or the player can attempt to break the curse.

If the player keeps the sword, then a hidden timer will start which when triggered will cause the possessing hero to turn into a demon.

A second hidden timer goes off that tells the game to progress another Quest involving that same sword.

A female demon comes to your Capitol City and tells you that the reason the sword is cursed is because the spirit of her mate is trapped inside it and that's what's turning the swords users into demons. The female demon offers to break the curse for you while maintaining the swords powers.

Now the player has multiple options and a quest that ties into another quest.

The player can even choose not to believe what the female demon says (she is a Demon after-all) and try to kill her. The player, learning of the swords true nature, can also have the option of destroying the sword entirely and getting a chunk of Essence or Mana for destroying the item.

A "Good" sovereign might not use the sword and try to break the curse. A "Evil" sovereign might use the sword and not care what happens to his heroes later down the road. Also a "Good" sovereign would be much less likely to believe a demon and would probably attack her on sight, while a "Evil" sovereign may offer to help her free her mate from the sword provided that her and her mate (once freed) will join the sovereign's army.

All those different options just from finding one magical sword you found in a dungeon. This also uses a short example of a "Quest chain" which I'm sure everyone is familiar with.

Reply #48

DivineWrath

• Member No.2,500,482
• Karma+11

December 14, 2009 1:21:02 AM

I'll add some quests I want to be able to do later. For now I want to describe how I want the quest system to work.

Looking at the picture in reply #6 gives me a sense of dread. This dread isn't because of the rats in the basement (which could be horrifying if they are big enough). Its because I don't ever want to be forced to deal with a quest the moment I'm informed that its available. I would like to get the message, and write it down in my journal notebook. I would like to be able to sit down and drink a cup of tea and enjoy the moment for 10 minutes. Maybe I get to go do a couple of things with with my empire before I act. Perhaps I go think about it for a couple of turns before deciding what to do the quest.

If there are going to be quests with time limits to get them done, or to accept. I should get nothing less than 1 full turn before I have to act (this turn ends when once I hit the next turn button).

I don't think I can be any more clear than to say "I don't like doing anything at gunpoint". Its a dreadful feeling that I get when looking at screens like in reply #6, or in most random events in GalCiv 2.

 

Agreed!  Consider this notion seconded.

Perhaps quests could be viewed from more than one perspective.  For example:

First Perspective, Quest type

One time quests.  These would be things like explore a mountaintop to kill a troll, kill a dragon, capture a pirate, seduce the daughter of a rival king, or any of the other great ideas discussed in this thread.  The commonality would be that you would get this specific task only one time.

Repeatable quests.  This type of quest you have the option of doing as often as you would like but they would end and have to be restarted if you wanted to do them again.  For example, the hermit who needs seaweed gathered from the merfolk, the caravan which needs an escort, the tavernkeeper who needs you to hire a band for a dance, the barmaid who wants you to hunt down the bum who insulted her 'honor' or the frog who wants you to bring a princess to kiss him.  Again, lots of good ideas in this thread.

Open ended quests.  You could have this one running all the time.  A businessman might reward you if you keep trade routes for his products open, a town may reward you if you keep their coastline free of pirates or the wood elves send you gifts if you keep the local orc population suppressed.

Second Perspective:  Reward type.

Quest rewards should be enough to encourage the player to do quests but not so much that the game is unbalanced to where a player could ignore their economy and just quest their way to wealth. 

Unique item quests.   Getting a unique/rare item should not be a trivial task.  Quests for such items ought not to be ones which are guaranteed successful.  They ought to have some real difficulty and committment and risk.  If something is easy to get then it is not valued, if we have to work for it then we care about it.  Real life examples:  graduate degrees, military medals for valor, significant recognition from community or workplace.

Character advancement quests.  These might be such things as improved stats, a new skill, a new spell.  Like unique items, these should not be trivial to obtain, especially at higher level/higher values.  Ideally, the quest and the reward ought to have some logical relationship.  For example, if we have to spend significant time hunting down Dread Pirate Robert, then (in addition to some loot from the pirate booty) our tracking or sailing skill might increase slightly.  Examples might include better leadership for military related quests, endurance for quests in the wilderness or desert, knowledge for quests involving researching and searching, higher odds of producing children for quests asking us to successfully romance beautiful ladies, &tc.

Reward quests.  Here we get the traditional monetary/fame/gear for troops type rewards for doing traditional quests.  Escort the convoy and get paid, eliminate the band of goblins and get their weapons to give your next group of recruits, subdue the hillfolk and take over their lumbermill, clean the rats out of the slums and your city's health/growth rate improves, build a new monestary and your spell research is faster.

Faction/character quests.  These might be specific to the faction you play and ongoing.  They could influence various civilization wide characteristics and might also be tied into the character customization screens.  In other words, as you create your character and determine the kind of person s/he is, you might also be opening up quests which would encourage you to play consistently with your character.  The rewards would also be consistent with your character's traits and the quest.  For example:

 - Choose a 'good' type of character with a merchant's background (probably not undead).  You could have two quests you could take.  The first, dealing with your 'good' characteristics, would improve the loyalty of your population and armies as long as you released prisoners (rather than killed them), grant mercy to monsters you vanquish on quests, and treat ladies gallently.  In other words, if you act according to your traits, you get additional bonuses beyond the character stats.  If you don't, you would then get penalties.  Continuing the example on the character's mercantil background, if you build marketplaces, establish trade routes, suppress bandits and do other pro-business actions, your tax revenues would increase even more than your merchantile background would give you as a base stat.  If you don't, you would have a penalty. 

So these quests would be ones which the character could take, at their option, and which would enhance their character traits but also bring the risk of negative consequences if not followed.

I love the idea of trying to build in some apocalyptic history into the quests.  For example, what are the archmages doing at the end of the apocalypse?  Some of them are probably trying to hunker down and survive, with plans for coming back later (shades of Fallout and the vaults here).

1) The archmage is still there, disembodied or undead.  If undead, and the heroes fail to kill him, then he starts a new (extremely tough) faction.  If disembodied, maybe he possesses the hero, who then becomes a sovereign.  Even worse, maybe he possesses one of the other sovereigns, and the player all of a sudden is having to deal with, say, one of their allied kingdoms abruptly falling apart as the sovereign becomes an undead horror and his vassals split down the middle, plunging the kingdom into civil war.

2) Could do something like in Master of Orion II where one of the archmages is hiding in a pocket dimension.  If the heroes poke a hole in it trying to find out what's inside, then the archmage can start getting out and will show up in random raids all over the map, getting stronger and stronger, until someone finally goes into the pocket dimension and sorts it out.

A lot will depend on how quests are implemented, and there's no reason that there has to be only one form.  For example, Space Rangers and the old King of Dragon Pass both used text quests.  Darklands did both text quests and graphical dungeon crawl quests.  I like both, and would enjoy seeing both.  Some quests fit one approach better than the other.  Exploring dungeons is probably better done graphically.  Espionage, diplomacy and more story driven things are probably best done by text.  Some can also be done in the main game, of course.

Another thing I really like about King of Dragon Pass is that choices you made in quests early on had profound impacts on later events that were not immediately obvious.  For example, early on you a single woman shows up with a baby.  By the cultural norms of the game, accepting them into your tribe is problematic, and there are good reasons not to do it.  In fact, if you do it, it causes you problems for a while, stretching your resources thin.  However, the kid grows up to be a fantastic hero and opens up whole new lines of quests.

So I'd love to see series of quests, where the choices you make in one start you down a branching tree.

Yeah, I watched "Lion in Winter" on AMC this weekend as well.

The Spirit of Martek

The spirit of Martek Mage Most Magnificent rises and requests that his remains be found and returned back to it's proper burial site.

Failure results in the place becoming haunted, and slowly corrupting the land around it and releasing various undead around the area.

Success grants the hero and/or Soverign a spell not normally available on his list.

Other possible rewards.  Location becomes a beneficial site, offering healing to units (or buffs).  The ability to summon a new type of creature.  A new hero becoming available for hire.  The technique to create a new "unique" type of unit. A World affecting type spell cast by the spirit on behalf of it's champions.

Quick notes:

• Quests are interactive Events the player can influence for different results.
• Some Quests can lock other Quests as well as unlock others.
• Some Quests must be undertaken as they appear. Others can be taken later. In this last case, none of them should last undertaken forever. If after some reasonable amount of turns (depending of quest) no one has undertaken it, it dissapears/whatever.
• Quests are part of the game, not the game. They should reward (or punish) but never reach of point of being a must to be able to keep the pace in the Power Scale with other Kingdoms. (Quest Victory can ignore this).
• Quests should be anouegh and with enough varaibility that some events might not happen at all during some games.
• Some Quests can be dinamycally generated from a template when a specific situation in the game is given.
• Rewards and punishments should be meaninfull and appropiate. They don't need to be balanced between them always tough.
• Rewards for being Good or being Evil (or whatever morale compass you use) should be rewards. Both should be good enough as to have the player to want both for their benefits (that should be different but still interesting, meaningfull and not "I pick always Evil and then buy my aligment to Good/Neutral").

I'd post some Quests ideas but after my rats one, I think I need more time for more totally original and wonderfull ideas.

Okay ... so I know there are no "planes?" from Master of Magic ... but if there could be a seperate map just for one epic dungeon ... call it Plane-Shift perhaps, and call the inner-sanctum of the Dungeon the Spiritual Gates (or holy land, ect).

So from where we left off, you joined the 3 hidden gems/artifacts, you defeated the Monster (and collected the weapon from its remains), you joined the weapon with the joined artifacts, fusing a super-weapon (Titan's Sword).

This then opens The previously locked and hidden "Planes-shift" dungeon, where various unholy barbarian mobs seek destruction upon all civilization and weaker barbarians (kills trolls, grabs their land, becomes a powerful sub-nation of its own right, sends out many demonic and ghastly raiding parties on your countryside/improvements, possibly even attacking civilized cities). At first only minor (yet still powerful) demons are loosed to the country side. But if 20 turns, 50 turns pass, larger creatures emerge from the Plane-shift dungeon. If the demons form their own "nation" by capturing land/cities from other barbarians (troll cave) and players (cities), then the size of their nation could also increase the chance of an Arch-demon spawning from the Plane-shift dungeon.

Once you enter the Plane-shift dungeon, its its own map (albeit smaller). Hopefully there are portals in the dungeon that can access various rooms (can transport an entire army at a time). Here you will find both angels and demons, although mostly demons. You can choose to either help the High-Angel or the High-Demon. The High-Demon wants his sword back so that he can continue to conquer the other planes, meanwhile the High-Angel wants you to stop him. Doing quests for the Demon (within the dungeon) will eventually lead to giving him the sword, probably killing the High-Angel with the Titan's Sword, and (possibly) allowing the demons to continue exiting from the gate. Helping the Angel would involve killing the demon (obviously) and sealing the gate so that no more demons can escape to wreak havoc.

Helping the Demon will ally you with the Demonic Barbarians and allow you to recruit demons (perhaps not High-Demons or Arch-Demons though). Perhaps also Technology or Gold, or maybe its an either or, he helps you with your economy or you can recruit his minions. ( a permanent daemonic portal would be set-up in your castle, for either a constant influx of gold or a recruiting station where you can hire demons, as well as a one-time tech advance along-side the gold option). Im pretty sure, however, that the demonic barbarians will cease to "spawn" as quickly due to the Demonic Overlord needing his minions to conquer the other planes.

Helping the Angel will gain you (holy)prestige, the Angel blesses your sword (to make it far more powerful), and you get the Holy Wrath spell, which is super-effective vs demons, undead, and discorporeal beings. (if such holy spells already exist then a more powerful version and name which deals 75% damage to all demonic and undead on the battlemap). These bonuses will be granted to you as soon as the High-Demon is defeated, which will make your job of sealing the gate much easier.

(holy prestige) -> I say this because im not sure how it would be implemented in game. Wether certain star-constellations would benefit you more (all good-based constellations), or you would simply gain a vast amount of prestige (probably tied directly to the character), or your alignment would skyrocket towards good. However, if your alignment skyrockets towards good, then helping the demon would have your alignment skyrocket towards evil. If however it is handled simply by "prestige" then helping the demon gives no prestige (or prestige penalty) while helping angel grants you extra prestige. Also, helping the angel gives diplo bonuses to AI while helping demon gives diplo penalties to AI.