In part 1, we talked about quests in general. Now it’s time to get to the heart of the matter.
Step #1: CLASSES of quests
As one player put it, quests have to be broken up into components. Think of these as the building blocks of a quest (or “bricks” as one user put it).
How are quests initiated? Here are the ones that come to mind:
1. Some tiles would contain an object that when a player enters that tile, triggers a quest event. These tiles would appear on both the cloth map and full map. We’ll call these MAJOR quests.
2. Random events. Player hits turn, and there is a chance that a quest opportunity may come to the player without having to do anything. We’ll call these MINOR quests.
3. Some tiles would have objects in them that when the player interacts with them would trigger the quest event. These would only be available on the full map (players will be able to move within a tile without using up a move on the full map because you can zoom in). We’ll call these INCIDENTAL quests because they won’t have a game-changing effect.
Step #2: MECHANICS of quests
Here we define the building blocks of these quests specifically.
Step #3: EXECUTION of quests
This is where we decide how these should be implemented. There are 3 obvious ways to do tihs.
One way is to simply code these in C++ but that eliminates modding.
Another way is to implement in XML which makes modding very easy but makes it hard for us to add additional quest types we haven’t thought of.
And finally, they could be implemented in a scripting language (Python) which makes it possible to create new quests but harder to mod.
I’m leaning towards combining the latter two. Python used to script the mechanics with XML used to provide the actual quests.
Step #4: ACTUAL quests
Quest 1: Kill the rats Type: Incidental Trigger: On main map, player can zoom in on a city and see a “!” above one of the buildings. Player can then select one of his heroes and take them there which triggers the event. Content: “Oh please help me, rats are infesting my Inn. If you can kill them, I’ll gladly give you 20 copper. Will you accept?” Execution: Player is taken to a tactical battle with rats in the Inn. Only the Hero is allowed in.
Quest 2: Rescue Princess Genica Type: Minor Trigger/Conent: Upon the beginning of a new turn, a local noble has asked you to save his daughter Genica from a group of marauding bandits who are operating out of the ruins of one of Curgen’s old fortresses to the East. Requires: Adventuring Level 2. Execution: On accepting, a fortress is added to the map to the east. Only an army with a hero can attack it. If successful, you have the opportunity to wed Princess Genica.
Quest 3: Recover the Dragon’s egg Type: Major Trigger: Dragon icon on the map, when a hero-equipped army intersects tile, triggers event Content: The Red dragon of Sythia is outraged that a manling has stolen her precious egg. Dragons only have offspring once a century or so. The dragon agrees to join your kingdom if you recover her egg. The egg was stolen by Calorax the Warlock who lives somewhere in the far north in the Pilgen mountains. Sythia does not know where Calorax is exactly but knows that the Witch of the Swamp knows someone who might know. Execution: On accepting, a hut is added to the map in a swamp nearby.
Quest 3A: Dragon’s egg part 2 Content: Upon reaching the witch, she tells you that she has a map that will take you to Calorax’s lair that she agrees to give you if you bring her the scroll of Poisoned Claws which she knows is near the bottom of the old dungeon of Harpok to the south. She points out that in getting the scroll, you will be able to make use of that spell as well. Execution: On accepting, the dungeon of Harpok appears on the map.
Quest 3B: Dragon’s egg part 3 Content: Upon entering the dungeon, you discover that a demon that fled to these deep places of the world after the cataclysm has taken refuge there. You can choose to battle the demon or exit and return later. If you battle the demon, the tactical battle screen comes up and you fight it out. If you win, you gain the scroll which you can then return to the witch. Returning to the witch gets you a map which triggers the fortress of Calorax to appear on the map.
Quest 3C: Dragon’s egg part 4 Content: Your army reaches the fortress of Calorax that you must conquer to rescue the egg. If you’re successful, you get the dragon’s egg which, if you return it to the dragon nets you the dragon (or you could sell the dragon’s egg for money elsewhere) who becomes a unit in your army.
So these are the kinds of things we’re thinking about. Please feel free to add to this and discuss.
I'd like to see some emergent quests. If your city is in the process of deforesting it's surroundings displaced animals might begin preying upon the defenseless townfolk. You could choose to commit resources to hunting and destroying the starving beasts (those wolf pelts are so warm in the winter, and that stuffed bear would look impressive stuffed in the imperial musuem), or ignore the problem, knowing the animals would eventually starve, all the while suffering various morale and production losses.
There might be quests triggered by a city's population size and specific buildings. High population, no sanitary or health codes? Find the salve of Ahd-Veel to cure your rapidly dwindling populace (don't forget to put a few of the rotting bodies into your siege engines to let your enemies share in the fun).
You could have a number of event triggered quests; drain too many swamps and your plains could be flooded. Find the mystical Shovel of Levy to protect your cities. Your citizens getting tired of the same old animals in the arenas? Capture some bizarre creatures and feed your prisoners to them for the amusement of the proletariate (remember to fireproof the stands when you finally capture that dragon).
The benefit of having situationally created quests is the concept of strategically engineering them. Want to divert soon-to-be enemy forces from an important strategic point? Start some accidental forest fires and watch the displaced wolves tear his citizens apart. Steal an egg from a nearby dragon while wearing enemy colors. Or you could raid a goblin village, loot the totem staff, plant it in the enemy's imperial palace, and laugh as the goblin declare war.
If other sovereigns can give me quests, then I should be able to give them quests as well, but why would I want to do that? If there is a valid reason for me to do that then I'm fine with it. If there isn't then I don't want AI sovs giving me quests just for the hell of it. If the AI can do it, then I should be able to do it as well, and have some sort of reason for doing so.
I definitely don't like most of Krotho's quest ideas above. They are basically just thinly disguised punishments for building your empire. The only one that seems like something other than punishment is the new animals in the arena one. I don't want quests to keep my populace from being sad or anything else that just averts a negative. I've got no problem with emergent quests in and of themselves, I just don't want to feel like I'm doing chores for my cities.
Quests should, IMO, be based on real strategic factors.
Event: The river's sylph (water-nymph) is angry because the town drains its sewege into her home.
Trigger: a river-side city has reached x level of pollution*.
Options: clean the city, fight the sylph, enslave the slyph to power your watermills etc. etc.
The interesting thing is that the quest gives the feeling of being based on real (in-game) objects, and not of just being randomed from a big quest-table like in civ4.
Idea: Frogboy mentioned that he plays Fall From Heaven II. In the mod, Kael (the mod's creator) introduced a factor called 'crime rate'. It was a hidden factor, which was used almost purely for events. Every city had a 'crime rate' rating, modifyable by buildings, which more or less dictated the likelyhood of many of the mods' random event to happen in that specific city. A city with courthouse and a dungeon is less likely to have her bank robbed than a city without.
IMO, such factors, be they hidden or not, greatly enhance the game, as they give the player a strategic ability to influance the usualy random events.
*Footnote about pollution: industrial pollution won't be a problem in a game that havn't reached the industrial revolution, but what about magical pollution? How about events and quests that revolve around your (or someone elses) irresponsible use of magic? Again, IMO, it will give a small dimention of RP-ing to your strategy-making process, since you know your actions might (literaly) come and haunt you.
If you're looking for situational quests there may be inspiration in another Civ 4 mod. Rhyse and Fall of Civilisation had a feature the designer called "stability". The calculation was largely silent, you only got an indocator saying if you're country is stable or not (several different scales there) and whether it was going up or down. I'm mentioning this because the calculation was based on close to every aspect of a country's situation and I'm sure you can glean some situations from it that could be used to base a quest.
A guide to Rhyse's stability.
http://rhye.civfanatics.net/wiki/index.php?title=Rhye%27s_and_Fall_of_Civilization_guide_to_stability
I'm not sure I particularly like the idea of fortresses and things popping up on the landscape as needed for quests. Looking at it from an in-world perspective, it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense most of the time. It's justified in some cases (e.g. an evil cult is expanding to a new land and builds a church) and can be handwaved in a few others (e.g. you discover a hidden castle in a mountain), but generally not.
Possible solution: Given that the world is rebuilding, it stands to reason that there'd be relics of the old world, yes? As such, why not plop a number of ruins and abandoned castles/temples/things about the map? This gives you a fair number of things to do:
What about AnitQuest?
The other kingdom knows you are on a quest so they send their henchman to stop you?
I'd like to see the list of possible triggers much expanded. Most of them should be combined with a degree of probability such that they only a appear a small fraction of the time that one of the following things happen:
Also, to make triggers more interesting, we should be able to combine triggers or create sub-triggers/additional required conditions, for example:
I have to agree with some of the other users, i´d really like to see quests that support the idea of a dynamic and living world and which also offers the player interesting strategic choices - but without major locations like fortresses "popping up" out of thin air.For example, how about a "dragon egg" quest that works like this: Due to a random event (or possibly the fullfilment of a quest?), a faction you´re at war with, "steals" the egg of a dragon, which then gets placed within a particular city of that faction. The Sovereign of this faction threatens to destroy the egg, if the dragon doesn´t do his bidding. So the faction orders the dragon (maybe still as a neutral unit and not under direct control of that faction) to rampage the land of the player, who then gets a quest offering that could play out similar to what Frogboy laid out in the orignal post.The player would therefore have a number of chioces what to do next. Does he - try to kill the dragon, - wage war against the enemy faction and conquer his cities in hope to find the egg or - does he follow the questline to get the eggs location?One could go even further with this and give the player the next time the opportunity to turn the tables:He could steal the dragons egg from his lair (due to a powerful stun spell or by getting the dragon to leave his lair unprotected for a short time or something like that) and then - the dragon still a uncontrollable Unit - give him simple commands like "attack city x/ faction y" "defend City Z" and so on. And - as Frogboy statement seems to imply that AI factions can also solve quests - a enemy faction would also be able to try and bring the dragon egg back to the dragon, who therefore would join that faction.I´d really really love to see quests in the game that offer that kind of flexibillity and interaction with the game world.
It would be really interesting to have quests that 2 or more players carry out together.
Following up on your idea of the dragon, perhaps one player meets the dragon and decides to steal the egg, player 2 decides to help get the egg back, etc... we could turn quests from something each player does on his/her own into story-telling function carried out together by players.
I'd like to see that too, but I've not yet seen a TBS AI that could do a halfway decent job of participating in a military alliance, much less something with the potential complexity of 'you take parts B, C, and F, while I take A, D, and E.'
Or were you maybe thinking of something like the player and an AI both contributing units to a questing group, with only one sovereign having field command?
I know the author of this blog, and he is a native english speaker. I did not think I was being rude, so I apologize to the author if he felt that I was in fact rude. I made a statement, and there was no implied personal attack embedded in that statement, it was just meant as a heads up.
Even better: player steals the dragon's egg and then gifts it to another faction (or hides it in someone else's city), thus framing them for the theft. Then you offer to help the dragon recover it and get in its good graces.
And the dragon, being ten x smarter than you, sees thru your little ruse and eats you.
Thus the skill/stat check to determine if you're cunning, charismatic and lucky enough to bluff the dragon.
I believe this shouldn't be a random quest at all. Why would the faction get a bonus dragon egg out of thin air and not you?
Why wouldn't they use it if they get it?
I'd say a faction (anyone, including the player's) could either get an offer to buy a dragon egg from an adventurer that just stole it, or get a map to where an abandoned dragon egg is and have a small window of opportunity to steal it before the dragon comes back.
Then the dragon can bid to get his egg back, like serve the player's faction for X turns...
But the main point is a random event shouldn't give a dragon to any faction. It's supposed to be way too powerful. The faction should pay for it, either by fighting the warlock, buying the egg in a bidding, or something else.
Come to think of it, it would be great to have bids. I mean, "Dragon Yglaur is selling his services. Whoever pays him most will get him to serve for 3 years." Then bidding session can start, and you know if not who, at least, the highest amount bid, so you can bid more if you like. This might not be a "quest" per se, but it could be fun so adventurers who found magic items or mercenaries could open bids. Or even channelers themselves: If you just built a great magical sword or want to rent some units as mercenaries, you could create an auction and all factions could bid for it.
Under quest requirements, add "avoid"; several units are spawned across the map, and move randomly (or towards a destination). Having these units come within X squares of your units results in failing the quest. If the spawned units successfully reach their end destination or number of turns, you win. Nothing throws a wrench into strategically placed units like the wandering bull in a china shop.
Winni
Looks like a good design plan to me. I'd just suggest making as much of it as dynamically generated as possible, to avoid formulaic game play. Kill Foozel is classic formula, and if the same Kill Foozel quest always comes from the same trigger, then that will put a damper on replayability. But make the quests dynamically generated, so that Kill Foozel is a part of a more complex, dynamically generated quest, and I think it'd be a fresher game experience, and more replayable.
I'd also expand on step 1 and take a look at how a quest enhances or details the over-arching plot of the game. (And kudos if such is dynamically generated, so each game has a truly new plot-line to it. ) Breaking up the quests as presented---major, incidental, and minor/random events is a good step towards that, but the major quests might have relations to each other that define the major and minor parts of the story. E.g. a web-structure where one quest might be the over-arching theme for the particular game (e.g. destroy all evil/good), another quest could present the starting chapter of the story (e.g. players have just been made a demagogue of the people and given and army, players are a recently resurrected Liche, etc...), another quest representing the middle chapter, and a third quest being the means to the game finale. Then a web-structure could relate other quests as the sub-plots of the chapter.
That'd make the a story/quest victory (is that still one of the intended victory options?) completely fresh for every game (in more ways than merely the the sequence of events), though some balancing issues might exist between games (e.g. particular set of quests being relatively too easy in one game vs. another game).
On the quests as strategic factors, it would be interesting for some quests to represent strategic operations---for instance a set of generic battle plans to be triggered by being at war with another civ. E.g. a WW2 example. England at war vs. Germany. England receives a quest to develop a particular technology (e.g. paratrooper) and to attack a bridge system in the middle of Germany's army (a la Operation Market Garden).
I have an idea for something similar to quests, prophecies. They're basically quests, but with a certain structure.
A Prophecy can be triggered at the beginning of a game, or after specific events, like conquering a town, defeating another player, discovering a monster lair, or similar things.
Like any prophecy, it will foretell the coming of a hero, or of a great evil, or something similar. It can give a precise date, a vague date, or it can specify an event after witch the prophecy will take place. Unlike a quest regular quest, the player does have ample time to prepare, or to try and interpret what it meant if it was to vague. Perhaps some for of researcher can be assigned to make sense of it, by spending some money.
Another difference from regular quest would be that a prophecy implicates a larger portion of the game. For example, the same prophecy can foretell the doom of a player, and the success of another. Meaning that when it begins, one player suffers a loss in some area, and another one revives an advantage, depending on what role they play in the prophecy.
When the time of prophecy finally comes, the player could help fulfil it, if it is beneficial for him, or try to stop it from happening. Each outcome would have an effect, fulfilling a beneficial prophecy would grant that player the reward promised. Failing to fulfil it could bring disadvantages, or maybe delay it.
Now for the fun part. A player could have the possibility of melding in the prophecy of another player. Let's say the prophecy player A receives calls for a hero to defeat a great beast and consume it's power to become a great champions. If player B kills that hero before he kills the beast, he would have stopped the prophecy. This would not earn him a reward directly, but it may bring the wrath of the gods upon the player A, and ensure he looses what was promised to be a great and powerful champion.
I'll give an example of what I am referring to. I'm using Master of Magic as a template.
Prophecy text and commentary notes:
"Beware great king, for when the savages of the wilds besiege your city(first city is attacked by neutral raiders), and the power that feeds your empire is snuffed out(mana shortage, all nodes stop producing power), a great evil(neutral and very powerful enemy, like a dragon) will arise in the south(general location of said evil). It shall descend upon your kingdom and wreak havoc. Powerless you will be to stop it, and great suffering will come. (dragon doing that it's best at)
But fear not my lord, for one shall arise to stop the evil. A child born from the shadow of stars(hint to the name of the hero, Darkstar) will come to you and pledge his loyalty. Guard him well, for when the time is right, he shall send the evil ravaging your empire back into the darkest depths from which it spawned.(doing what a hero does best).
(now comes the reward part)And when the evil is vanquished, the land shall be full of life, and for five seasons your harvest shall be bountiful and the envy of all other kingdoms.(for certain duration of time, food production sky-rockets). But be warned my king, should you fail, the evil shall have it's drink of your kingdom, and one day it shall return for your life.(in case of failing to kill the dragon, it will run amok, leave, and return after a few years to do it again)"
Prior to time of prophecy:
Hero Darkstar offers to work for the player. If he is accepted the prophecy can be fulfilled, if not, it is still can be, but to a lesser extent. They player could be able to kill the dragon without the aforementioned hero, but doing so will negate the harvest bonus.
Time of prophecy:
The dragon appears and starts to attack player controlled villages. The player can then send Darkstar to deal with the dragon. If he succeeds, the prophecy is over, good ending. If he fails, the dragon lingers for a few more turns doing bad things, then he leaves and returns after a few years. At that point there won't be a hero of prophecy any more, so the player would have to deal with the beast himself.
This was a small scale example. Like I said, a prophecy could implicate other players, and if the children of the sovereign are controllable units like he is at the beginning of the game, they could be part of a prophecy. The complexity of prophecies would be largely determined by the skill and dedication of whoever writes/codes it. At the high point we could end up with a retelling of Baldur's Gate in Elemental. And the rewards for prophecies would not be things that you can get from normal quests. For example, one of your heroes could become a demigod, an island filled with riches could rise out of the sea, a comet could strike your enemy, and other things that could effect the game on a large scale.
Because of this, prophecies could be optional, as in they could be toggled on or off at the creation of a game. And in the game, they would not come around very often, but each player should experience one every few hundred/thousand years.
I hope I managed to explain my idea well enough for it to be understood.
PS: A Time Travel spell would still be awesome.
1. Have a low percentage chance of each game for a huge world-wide natural disaster that, if occurs, radically changes the entire game. Say an earthquake comes through and wipes out a lot of land, population, and income or an asteroid hits and does the same. Maybe a plague sweeps through and wipes out the population... just some form of game changing cataclysmic event that could really do loads of damage to everyone.
2. Have the disaster foretold as a prophecy or whatnot to all factions via their soveriegns or leaders or mages (anyone really, just so long as everyone is forewarned of the looming event via plot and story).
3. The emininent disaster could be diverted if a series of gigantic quests are completed to either stop the prophecy from happening or make sure it does happen (whatever works best plot-wise).
4. Factions would then be forced into a huge hasty and uneasy alliance that stops all warring, research, trading, building, farming, etc.
5. Each part of the quests that are completed could give certain bonus rewards.
6. One aspect of all of this is to see if all factions would ultamately pull together to complete said quests. Would they use intrigue to stop certain factions and former enemies from suceeding (I wouldn't want my enemey getting certain bonus rewards), or in the name of self intrest would they grudgingly work together (I also wouldn't want my people dying or my farmlands and mines destroyed, etc.)? Would some factions actually want the disaster to come because they were losing and therefore get what is tantamount to a "redo"? I mean if a disaster swept through and everyone gets whacked, well, that may beenefit those who weren't in a good game position...
I dunno, I think someone sort of mentioned a similar idea earlier. Just thought it would be interesting from the diplomacy aspect. At any rate I wouldn't want this sort of thing for every game, hence having a low percentage of it happening, plus you could also have something like toggling "end-of-the-world" quest event on or off before gameplay.
Just my two cents. Apologies for any typos.
I second the idea that questing should be an optional path to victory. A bit like it "settlers of catan" if you have no space for expansion, you will focus more on development cards.
Maybe if you have a small empire and cannot expand more, for whatever reason, you are more likely to focus on quest. If you have a large empire and do a lot of conquest, you might do little questing because each little event might be banal to you.
If you have a large empire and don't want to bother about questing, it could be a good opportunity to give quest to other players. Pay any body X gold to solve this problem in my kingdom. It saves you the ressources and the managements. But a smaller empire player, which probably have less things to manage, might be interested to put some time to do the quest.
"Your people, while examining ancient texts concerning[research] camme accross clues that [description of quest]."
It sems to me that looking into the secrets of adventuring should bring up clues about ancient adventures, researching civilizations should give hints about pre-cataclysm civilisaitons, researching warfare should leave hints regarding the fate of ancient generals and so on.
Yea, except the devs are still sketching or still not sharing any back story details about just how serious the Elemental cataclysm was. Is the study any sovereign-hired scholars do based on recovering past knowledge, building knowledge again from scratch, or some combination of the two?
Even if they aren't ready to talk about it to us peanut gallery folks, I kinda hope they've already made a fairly firm decision there and are working the research UI with that in mind, instead of just boldly building research trees and putting off the explanations for them until its too late to consider how story and functionality might interact.
I believe you should have triggered quests, quests that are triggered by player action. This may not be a 100% but a scale of 1-100% chance to trigger when certain action is made.
For example: Quest triggered when you build a certain building or unit in a city. Such quest may direct you to build more of such unit or building and upon completion you get a reward, usually an upgrade to such unit/building.
Quest triggered after a major victory or defeat.
Quest triggered after building a city.
Oooh, this coming across hints of quests is actually quite a cool idea. It would be cool if you could just read some description of a ruin without getting the feeling that this actually is a quest. Then later, as you find another pieve of the puzzle, you start scratching your head as somethings sounds quite familiar... Then you as the player will need to puzzle the pieces together, find missing clues and eventually be rewarded for your curiosity.
Of course not every quest should be a scavenger hunt like this, but to have a few of these would be very nice.
I also like the idea of having different possible solutions for quests. What I do not like however is knowing how a quest will end. To that end, I would like to see a mechanic that ensures rewards are randomised. SO if you decide to keep the dragon egg - to get back to the example on the first page - you will sometimes be punished by mommy, sometimes mommy never finds out, sometimes you will be rewarded with a baby dragon that grows stronger as time goes by and sometimes break the egg.
This randomised reward system makes it so that it rewards role playing in such a way that you are free to do what you want to do because every course of action - even the 'evil ones' - can have it's merits and you will never know what will pay off. This way whatever course of acion you pursue is viable in such a way that it may or may not be rewarding.
Along the idea of global quests...
Imagine that elemental nodes themselves offer a quest once in a while. Perhaps attacking an ice node and somehow diminishing its' strength, makes the fire node you already control stronger.
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