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 would very much like to see:
A) Branching quest chains (long chains with different sub-quests depending on a decision point). This doesn't have to be extremely sophisticated - Castles 2 and the recent King Arthur both do a decent job of accomplishing this with text (i.e. do you support the pope or help the followers of the old faith, with different rewards/consequences for each.
B ) Ability to select from a list of rewards for very difficult quests, where appropriate - adds a bit more customization and control.
C) Ability to view the history of accomplishments for each hero, possibly with cool titles if there's anyway to do that (i.e. "slayer of kill target T," "defender of rescue target Y," etc.) "I am the guest of eagles, the luck-wearer, ring-winner and barrel-rider!"
Frogboy, while quests spanning across the map are good.
Please please please have text-style adventures also, like Space Rangers 2 and King Arthur - A roleplaying war game.
These types of quests add a lot more oomph than the typical "fetch this" "kill this" type of quests exampled in the first opst.
No matter how much I like Space Rangers 2, I hate those text adventures. A few are fine but the rest are just too random. I could never win that mecha tournament. The quest about the Maloq ambassadors was quite cool and fun though.
Here's something that I'm surprised no one has commented on. When given a quest, all the examples have the quest's location popping up on the map automatically. What ever happened to "Far to the west, beyond the Shining Sea, and under the shade of the mighty Dragon's Peak"?
We already have a great mechanism for exploring and uncovering fog of war. Sometimes (often) we should make the player search for a location, not give them a road map.
If you can manage to get quests like this in it will take your game to the next level and make it something really special. If you really want your game to be "the best 4x game ever" then do stuff like this in addition to your normal raid a crypt or kill this guy type of quests. These are some very interesting quest ideas.
I believe that the best way to maintain cohesion in Elemental is to focus all quests on the player's relationships with the other players and/or the overarching "cataclysm story." Either the quests should be focused directly on rival factions, or the quests should be significant enough that multiple players will be involved in the same quest, either competing for a goal or working together to resolve a problem.
The example quests do not follow this model, but let's see if we can tailor them to be more appropriate for a grand strategy game. First, the rat quest does little to benefit the game. Its only function is to give the hero a slight experience boost and does almost nothing to change the dynamics of the game. The quest amounts to "creeping" and shouldn't even be a quest, for the player can "creep" just fine on his own. The rats can be replaced with different units to better unify questing with Elemental's other aspects.
1. Without any replacement, the quest system can be more closely related to the city-building aspect of Elemental by indicating that the rats have arisen from the city's poor sanitation. This specific den of rats could be the city's major rat breeding-ground, so the upon completion of the quest the player will be rewarded not only with experience but also with a slightly healthier city.
2. The rats could be replaced with creatures that serve as omens for some bigger threat. For example, they could small demons that would serve to warn the player that some larger threat lurks over the match, such as an invasion from Hell or whatever fits the Elemental storyline.
3. The rats could be replaced with a small band of spies from a nearby faction whose relations with you are poor. The villager living in the house could have discovered their presence and discreetly come to warn you. The purpose of this event could range from simply reminding the player that his relations with faction X are poor, or some advanced mechanics could be developed where the player could take the men prisoner and ransom them back or even torture them for information.
Similar modifications would work for the other two example quests. For example, upon rescuing Princess Guenica she could reveal to the player that the marauding bandits were actually defectors from a rival faction, causing her father to demand war with the faction. Then the player would have to accept the consequences for either going to war or snubbing her father.
The Dragon egg quest has enough fluff to make it reasonably interesting, and the reward is highly valuable and unique since dragons in Elemental are very rare. However, it too could benefit from some "tightening up." The witch's quests for some arbitrary ingredient is not interesting because it has no relation to anything you will experience. You are simply doing her an irrelevant favor (much like clearing out a house full of rats). It would be more interesting if this ingredient would allow her to gain some evil power that would come to haunt you after you had completed the quest (especially if this evil power had a relation to Elementals' overall story).
Now I know Elemental is written by some external writers, so it may turn out to be interesting. However I will not expect it to be much fun. I do not want to attempt to take some city just because the story demands it or something like that. I do not want to fetch some artifact because it supposedly has mythical powers. I want to play this game in my own way, and quests that are not fun in the sandbox are not interesting for me.
What I would like would be quests that are initiated by some event like travelers coming back from a certain region babbling about the horrors they have seen. Upon investigating, you notice that others are pursueing the exact same quest that you are doing as well. It would be fascinating to have wars started over these quests. That way it will be more than just some minor detail, it will be truly epic. Upon capturing the city from another nation, you hear what the other nation knows about this quest, so that you get another piece of the puzzle...
That is pretty much what I would like from the quests, epic stuff that goes well beyond grinding and creeping. I want epic, meaningful quests that are open for everybody and while you should not be forced to engage in them, you should be at least tempted to participate. Even if you plan in not completing them, preventing your next door neighbor from completing the quest should be a goal in itself in some quests.
In the end, there should be more options to get ahead than just questing. Pursuing these quests should be challenging and costly. You should always be challenged to think what you need more, to clear that forrest and prevent that band of bandits or monsters from raiding your trade routes, or to go all out to pursue some quest that you may never finish.
Agreed, but is that really a reason not to have higher hopes for Elemental's campaign? It would need to be a remarkable improvement over GC2 to make me play it through even once, but I still kinda hope it happens. The 'much fun' trick might really depend most on how the code development and story development processes interact, and so far I've not seen a hint of public discussion about that.
I've been typing and hoping along these lines pretty much since I heard the term 'quest' in connection with this game project. The quests need broad and deep connections to a given map that go beyond the raw geography to include exactly the sort of event log info you describe here. It's not enough to have a map with Fancy Mountain on it mean that you get the Fancy Mountain quest; the quest needs triggers based on whether and when a given faction has seen Fancy Mountain outside the fog of war, et cetera.
What I dislike so much about these missions is that it highly railroads you in terms of what you should and should not do. This railroading is present in pretty much every strategy campaign that I can remember. This is why I stopped playing campaigns in general because I want my games to have no single restriction whatsoever. I want to train whatever units I can train, research whatever and conquer whom I will. I do not want to be held back in choosing my allies and enemies just because the story demands the tree-hugging nations be allies and the baby-eaters be enemies. I want to have the option to ally with the baby-eaters, even if I never would.
Let us hope however that the story is higly dynamic, but I fear that it is not. What I hate about these games with supposedly good stories - like DragonAge:Origins - is that the decisions you make influence a tiny sphere around you, and that other missions or instances hold no relation to that whatsoever. The only thing that carries over might be that some character eyes you funny, but that would be it. The story does not change dramatically based on my actions.
In the end, that is what I want. I want to direct every single game, even if the AI gives me hell while doing it. I want to calmly decide who to side with, what I would trade and what I should research while planning ahead as far as I can. Then I want to see where I can take that game and how to make best use of my turns. In that respect I hope this game is like Civ where the Ai will give you a challenge on deity, even after being a veteran for years. This challenging AI should also plan towards victory and should not just be some random goofball to interact with.
In the end, I want my games to have no barred options. I do not want to be limited in what I can do because the options are fed to me in bitesizes. I want huge bites, even if I lose the first time while choking on the info. I want epic games, therefore I will play the sandbox games only.
That's not always true. In The Witcher for isntance if you decide to save a witch in Act I, she reappears in Act III. If you let her die, in Act III there's an old hag in her place and she'll tell you you can't do something because you have innocent blood on your hands, so there are some important consequences to your acts in some games. That and depending on who you side with at certain point in the game, it opens/closes certain choices later on. Same for how you manage the werewolf quest. If you let elves get weapons early on, you'll be denied a whole quest because these weapons will have been used.
But in a RPG, it's not surprising that the actions of a single individual shouldn't change dramatically everything in the world. In a game like Elemental, you're the ruler of a nation, so your actions should have much more impact, whihc makes it hard to write alternate stories given you've got a lot of freedom and power to change things.
That said, I think Galciv campaigns were boring and don't expect Elemental to be anything better.
I want the werewolves to take revenge on the elves, so that when I return to camp, the elves have all been slaughtered. Then there would be less allies to fight the blight, itr could even make it so that the blight can now move where they could not go before, so that more of the world is swarmed. This swarming forces the hand of the ruler Whatshisname. This causes the story to change in such a way that it is really branching out way beyond one single minor quest.
What you talk about is indeed facing the consequences of my actions, but I want to have my actions not only influence that one instance. Whatever I do with the elves, I will have to face the consequences with the elves and the area surrounding it. Never will anything I do there ever influence the dwarf city. It will not influence the overall story even, just the detail of the elves.
I understand what you say.
The Witcher has some consequences of an order of magnitude, but the situation remains very local, not a wide world: You can side with elves or the order and in the end, you'll be attacked by the other side. Or both if you remain neutral. There are also many changes to the endgame (like if you kill the princess or not).
I agree DA:O has no changes over the overall scheme of things, although you can antagonize your companions (like Shale if you side with Branka, Leliana/Wynn if you destroy the Urn).
I also think it's rather hard to achieve. Arcanum tried some stuff like that, namely you could get a village back into its kingdom, and bring back the right king to his throne, and these quests were done far from teh kingdom capital, but it didn't feel like the world was any different except for the talk of "what the world became" in the end.
I really like the quests in King Arthur, especially the puzzle quests. I think a mix of both killing and texts quests would be the best of both worlds.
Sorry if this has been mentioned already but I'm just getting caught up. How about escort quests? Escort this person/thing from point A to point B, maybe then to C, or back to A with all the dangers inherent in travel.
Elmo3, I am pretty sure this falls under the 'perform action Z' kind of quest. I do not think it was mentioned so there you go.
This is my first post which gives you an indication of how strongly I agree with edpfister. These kind of events help develop character for cities. Further if additional quests could be added based on lvl of guild A in your towns for additional unique buildings or unique events (revolts, Universities). Finally, perhaps if certain quests were NOT completed perhaps a besieging army attacks city or guild A gives empire B city information for said city?
edpfister's #1 idea presents a problem though. That being a City is attacked as a "whole".
I suppose you could lure the Assassin chief out of town, or catch him enroute to a job and dispose of him, effectively crippling the Guild for a time.
If Quests are going to be mainly text based you should definitely use your book writing skills and go a little Lonewolf style... Dialog is to simple and unrewarding at the moment.
Current Quests: Go to point A drop off Package. Reward 50 gildar (Currently in Beta3A Tedious-Boring)
Even simple quests should be brief dialog but with multiple options.
Bad Example
You knock on the huts door and a witch answers. "Hello deary"
A. Kill the witch and take her spoils. "Die filthy witch!" (Hard Battle: Gold, Broomstick, Gem, Potions)
B. Engage a conversation "I was wondering if there is anything I could help you with?"
C. Deceive the witch allowing her to gain your trust then when she isnt looking rob her home (50 Gildar 50% getting caught)
D. Ignore the witch and move on.
Now if you choose A. or C. maybe throw in a random chance. After looting the hut you come across a hidden staircase
A. Follow the staircase down into the basement?
B. Yell out "Anybody down there!?" (This could aggrevate whatever is down there or maybe some prisoners yell back "Help". Or Silence........)
C. Send 1 of your units to scout below (Option pick unit to go down to the basement)
D. Ignore the Staircase, and move on.
Basically a quest within a quest... Instead of millions of simple quests id rather there be rarer more rewarding quests that can randomly be more eventful than some. Keep us on edge and make the quests not so generic and the same thing over and over again. I'm clearly not a writer so hopefully my example shows you what I'm talking about.
Just an idea! I love this game and I wanna see it grow =D
You know someone said "Save the world quests" and I was thinking (this is more a MP idea.) But what if you had quests like "A huge dragonflight is about to decimate the continent and every living thing on it." Now this opens up a world quest where it is in everybodies best interest to get this done before they all lose the game.
But lets say I am already losing the game. I am in a bad way and it is just a matter of time before I am gone. All of a sudden saving the world doesn't sound so great to me, but taking it down with me... now thats the ticket. I really haven't lost the game if the world just got nuked, Everybody lost.
So know we have those who want to save the world versus those who want to watch it burn.
That would make for a damn interesting set of quests lol.
oooh I do like the idea of "multi-player" quests where everyone is doing it at the same time! It could be "Find the lost treasure" or "save the princess! (and earn a minor faction)" or whatever. That sounds great! Do that Frogboy!
I'd add to the sentiment that I'd love to see multi-part dungeon crawls to fight through. I'd love guiding my war-torn heroic band deep into a multiple floor dungeon (possibly covering a floor per day, having to either survive to the next level or wipe out everything on the level), dealing with traps, monsters and shiny things.
I'm not sure how practical this would be, but this could potentially operate with the same sort of "move around inside a map square without spending move" system, with questing units having to move around a restrictive force-zoomed map square to explore, full of various incidental quests representing the encounters of the level, all leading up to the time they can find the stairs/path deeper/escalator of glory to move to the next layer, possibly with some time limit dictating when they have to stop exploring each "day" to rest. A complex dungeon might require several turns to complete one floor.
This would make for some potentially epic major quests (fight down twelve levels into a city's sewers solving puzzles and activating switches to advance and picking up additional party members to finally face off against the evil Beholder Goblin King Jared Golem Maker. It might also make even a small quest more interesting to handle - the abovementioned "witches hut" scenario would become a mini-map square with a hut. Incidental locations are: In the forest around the hut (hide and check out the property to see if she's really a witch, possibly snipe her with an archer when she checks her petunias); Behind the hut (check out the back door to try and surprise her); Front Door (this would play out with the given example - either greeting the witch, attacking her directly.
This gives me pause for thought. There's all this talk of solving quests in different ways. Is there a plan for an alignment for a hero? A "good" hero like a paladin wouldn't sneak in the back door or murder some ol'lady/let a witch live and would presumably suffer for doing so. An evil hero would benefit from the B&E and cold blooded murder at the expense of getting caught and losing some face. Is there some cosmic measure for my misdeeds, or just how the populace sees me?
Inside the hut (through various means, which would change the internal quests - is the witch dead, alive, not really a witch?) there would be another few "quests" - sit with the old lady (not-a-witch) and have some soup? Okay, free restoration of health and taking some for the road. Search the dead witch's house? Steal from the still living witch whilst she goes and gets some soup?
The consequence could vary even if the quest for the location type is repeated. If you see an old lady living alone, maybe spying will show she's a witch this time? Maybe it'll tip her off if you hide badly and get you scolded/pelted with demonfire. Little reusable scenarios and incidental locations found randomly traipsing across the map with your units could give a whole lot of variety.
Different quests could need different headcounts. A siege of the legendary walled city of Yort might need the player to bring a besieging army along with a hero or specialist to break into it with some clever ruse involving wooden livestock, then fight some city combat ambushing enemy units with the specialist trying to reach "Gate mechanism A" to open the gates before they're overwhelmed by the larger enemy forces, which makes the formerly untouchable city pretty easy pickings for the army outside. Reward? A free, built-up, city! Failure? An angry, virtually unconqerable city that was previously busy being beseiged is now sending armies after you.
Meanwhile, a hero with only a few powerful cohorts would proceed towards realising their divine destiny all across the map on various other quests through dungeons and special locations where the extra people would only get in the way.
I totally agree that there should be more than simply "quests" to occupy a hero. An empty ruin with traps for a thief character to handle, magical wards for mages to deal with and the like with no such attached quest would be interesting too, without making it feel like you're a dogsbody for the world in general. A balance in all things is desirable, though a lot of these big quests sound great fun. Locations can appear for all kinds of reason (wandering monster trashes a town, rather than staying down, the town became undead!), and can have interesting reasons to need rid, explore, or in some cases, cultivate and protect from other players who will be trying to get rid of it (unicorn glade - nice advantages for having it next door to your city. Too far away? Someone else's city? Kill 'em for the horns and loot).
Rewardswise, I'd hope not least to discover large amounts of unique and interesting items, toys, heroic prisoners, non-heroic prisoners, fantastic creature pets and the like, as much to improve and empower the heroes running the quests (I'm not sure if it's mentioned elsewhere, but you, the ruler, have a class and properties, are you able to wander off adventuring alongside your champions King Arthur style and advance, or stuck in your tower reading Tyrant's Weekly?). The most difficult, epic and otherwise awesome quests might have some form of permanent advantage to the ruler (beyond just their abilities as an adventurer, if they are) - advancing your knowledge of magic to include new, previously unavailable spells to research, a unique "tech" advantage or resource. Even the most mundane adventurer might give the hero some trophy to remember fondly.
I really like your Ideas.
It seems a lot more realistic for a mighty Sovereign to do the kind of quests you described: these things actually matter for him.
I also really like ideas from earlier in this thread, such as the multi-option dragon egg quest.
The main thing for me here is: quests need to matter to the empire, they need to offer sensible awards up front, and need to have multiple options to choose from. Rescuing the dragon egg matters, the dragon already told you up front that he would join you - that's a good incentive. Rescuing the Princess 'might' matter - the father should promise an actual reward: for example, he could promise to support you politically (prestige bonus for a city, influence bonus for your empire, political capital) or militarily (free troops, a training facility to give troops a special ability). Rescuing the princess 'just because' is not good enough. Ok, so we played the game before and know that it might net us a bride ... but that doesn't offer game immersion - there was no good reason given why a powerful king should deal with this quest.
So, those are embedded quests - but you can also have consequential quests.
So Quest 1 gives you option A, B, or C on turn 10
Then on Turn 20, say, if you chose A, you get a quest with options A1, A2 or A3. If you chose B, it will have options B1, B2, B3, etc.
Thus, going by the above quest, you chose A - now, you have a new quest 10 turn later with the witches vengeful kin on your kingdoms doorstep (which you could kill, negotiate, etc, with). If you chose B, you now get her coming to you with a quest (remember how you asked me about help?) to accept, reject, etc. If C, and you are not caught, she comes to ask you to find the thief (accept and frame someone else, etc).
I think good short-term, medium-term, and long-term quests really make a game - especially ones that have semi-random components (ie compare "rats attack your inn" and "you learn a person from kingdom X is breeding rats in the inn" - you could just do a rat quest at some time(number of rat = 10+turns before quest started), kill the breeder (grows tougher over time), make it an excuse for some diplomacy against kingdom X, or recruit him to do the same to an opponent at cost Y (who then gets the same options, but then it's y+5, etc)), or recruit him to breed a plague-carrying rat....
Oh, then all those could have new quests - or just call them "decisions", if you think about the random choices in GC2 that occur some time after you settle planets, etc. Or for the person who said buy cats for 10g, what about a possible cat plague... but then you can buy some dogs for 20g, etc..... Thus ALL decisions have consequences... there is never a "good" or "bad" option per se.
I haven't seen mention perhaps I just didn't read where it was mentioned, but deceptive/good/evil quests. Quests where the greater good may want to take heed or find out a little more info before they wipe out everything they perceive as evil
Example
Rumors of a princess kidnapped sealed, with 4 guardians control 1 seal.
Dashing hero goes and kills 3 guardians, releases seal, goes to where princess is.
Princess is really a demoness, and has tricked you into killing her captors and then attacks you with an army of hellspawn
Now, here's where things can get interesting too. Kingdom goodie two-shoes, perhaps with high enough diplomacy can talk with the gaurdians, find out what's really going down, and banish her forever and gain prestige or magical knowledge..something. Empire folks, may wish to destory the guardians, and negotiate her to join them, and perhaps at higher diplomacy levels, marry, and have little trog/demon babies
Granted just an example and could be fleshed out more
Another example
What looks like a spider encounter (or whatever monster) talks to you(there is no indication it will talk to you until you try to attack it, or it comes up to you), asks you help it find the wizard who turned him/her into a spider (or whatever).
You can just kill the spider/whatever,
you can take out the wizard no questiosn asked which releases the curse,
-victim could be good natured, will join kingdom, can be enslaved/killed by empire
-victim could actually be evil, attack kingdom folks, could join empire ranks
- victim is just plain nuts and could attack whoever...ect
With even just the basics of diplomacy...like talking to someone, you may find out the wizard did this as an act of punishment for something...great evil/hitting on his wife/looked at him funny/took the last turkey at the grocery store..whatever
This opens up more decisions like, ok leave him as a spider/kill spider perhaps kill wizard anyway/get new turkey for wizard and he'll release the curse and perhaps with high diplomacy can hire the wizard, perhaps even high enough adventure level the wizard..or the person cursed could let you in on some treasure quest.
I could go on and on. There's a lot of great things already there, i just wanted to chime in my 2 cents
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
