Quest Seeds Idea

[Fargull]

Quest Seeds

I believe the basic premise entered my mind through Neverwinter Nights.  Basically the core center of the NPC game world would revolve around a seed generator set of quests.  Several NPC’s would be chosen at conception to be the keepers of the seeds.  These would be selected randomly as having insight into the issues of the gameworld.  The seed would then germinate down to several other NPC characters selected at random from a pool of qualified NPC’s in the game world.  When one quest seed was completed and the resulting change in the world would generated another quest and the re-seeding would begin.  The main seed generator quests would have a forward and backward component and have a random 10 to 20 step scale to complete.  Each step can be completed out of order by any character, but the main seed can only be completed once.  The end of the seeds would initiate an internal sequence to allow the live team to provide in game dynamic change resulting from the seeds.  Unique spawns, instanced encounters, and such would be part of the make up of the total quests.  A pool of 100 generic quests would be placed into the initial seed pool.  These quests can of course be increased, replaced and controlled as need is shown.  The mundane steps to these quests would involve 2000-5000 quests, from simple hunt and fetch to build and destroy quests common to the world.

Example: Seed (A)

Town X has reported increased numbers of X creatures and are worried about invasion/ect.

Steps generated (very general)

1)Carry message X to NPC X in the nearby town of X to alert them to the threat. (given by the seed generator)

2)(if message has been given) NPC X requires someone to scout out and bring back X items showing proof that X creatures are actually around Town X   (if message has not been given) NPC requires several metal items to help supply the militia as the armory is running short with the disturbances around Town X

Similar steps throughout the chain, with dual steps such as shown with step 2 being a common theme.  After the character brings back the X items showing proof they will be tasked with the second quest, unless that one is done in which case they will need to take the finished items to one of the surrounding guard posts to resupply and at that post be asked to perform similar missions….  All culminating in having to stop or destroy the encroaching creatures near Town X, which might net a Statue being raised in honor of the character that completed the Seed quest, or group.  The end step would capture images of each of the characters that completed the seed and when the live dev team had time would load them into the world with honorific title.  Such statures would remain till another similar seed was initiated to that Town and that Seed was completed and thus the Local heroes from before would be replaced with the local heroes of NOW.

Removing the difficulty of the quest so that Character A has no clue how hard Step B is, but would have the ability to pass that quest onto a character of appropriate skill or wait till such a time as to tackle that Step unless it gets completed by another character thus adding an open community aspect to the questing.

Overall this is looking at providing a less static questing structure and a more dynamic story structure to the MMORPG universe.

Thoughts?

[daveNYC]

Tech issues asside, unless you give the players the ability to fail the quest (the foozles aren't killed within x game days) then this doesn't do much except put spoiler sites out of business.

Edit: Failing the quest would lead to the town being overrun and there actually being some change to the game world, not just some faction loss or whatever.

[Fargull]

Good point.  I would vote the route of the town being overun and that changing the game world.

[Xilren's Twin]

Quest Seeds

Thoughts?

Like the concept.  Wholly like the notion of quests arc that can change/impact the gameworld.  One of the few things Horizons had going for it was some "quests" that were goals the community could work towards that would affect things (unlocking new areas, races, etc).

Question though; are you envisioning the mini-quest steps to be given to a single player/group or available for anyone to do until it has been completed.  In other words, will the NPC who wants the message delieved give the message to one person with a time limit and thus no on else is aware of the quest, or make it available to all and the first person/team that completes it gets a different reward than subsequent groups? So you might have 10 groups all trying to deliever the message but  the first group to do so gets X, and any group after that still gets something but a lesser reward maybe scaling based on time to completion.  That way group 1 gets gold/exp and fame, groups who finishe within 1 day of them might get half of that, 2-3 days 1/4th, and beyond that not get a "thanks, but if you were any slower we'd all be dead".

I would prefer that approach simply because it allows some reusability of content without making things totally static and repeatable forever, yet still has a failure state.  Heck you could push it even further and introduce negative consequences for failed quests i.e. if you agree to accept a quest and fail in the attempt, perhaps you lose fame/reputation.  And if you tie some sort of reputation/faction level to being awarded quests you get people moving of the chain of doing more and more important tasks for the powers that be of the land.  I don't however, neccesarily want to tie the important of the quest directly to character ability.  The way I see it you would gain exp and thereby ability simply by performing the quests, and not the reverse where you want to level up in order to do quest Y for reward X.  Course, non repeatable quest for know items/rewards eliminates a lot of that thinking anyway...

Xilren
PS Pet peeve on quests from Lin2; if you're not going to award a quest to a player because they dont meet whatever requirements you have, how about you tell them that upfront before making them way thru pages of poorly formatted text eh?

[Fargull]

Question though; are you envisioning the mini-quest steps to be given to a single player/group or available for anyone to do until it has been completed.  In other words, will the NPC who wants the message delieved give the message to one person with a time limit and thus no on else is aware of the quest, or make it available to all and the first person/team that completes it gets a different reward than subsequent groups? So you might have 10 groups all trying to deliever the message but  the first group to do so gets X, and any group after that still gets something but a lesser reward maybe scaling based on time to completion.  That way group 1 gets gold/exp and fame, groups who finishe within 1 day of them might get half of that, 2-3 days 1/4th, and beyond that not get a "thanks, but if you were any slower we'd all be dead".

Both Macro Quest and Mini Quests would be opened up to all, Macro would have a few facets to the approach, while the mini-questers without the Macro quest would just have a one shot deal.  The Macro questers would all be able to repeat the standard base level Mini-quest, but the first to complete that part of the Macro quest would receive full credit and those after would just be quickly pushed up the chain to solve the master quest.

I am completely down with the idea of lowering the quest rewards to a degree, but am not sure what the backload to keep track of time stamp and completed by dates is for a MMORPG.  I am blind in that area.  The overall Arch of the quest, such as Town X being in a state of flux from the barbarian's at the gate, I can see several options.

The mini quests in that area would be basic kill quests to help keep the population of the invaders down.  I could see some sort of symetry spawning here to allow x amount of time since camp A spawns to allow for a larger camp B to spawn that would then send out Scouts.  (Allowing for a blind AI that would not know where the other town was.)  However, once the scouts meet resistance, I can see adding that point on a "warrior" patrol route from the "badguy NPC" camp to start sending patrols out, and then the cycle of scout patrol would spawn out from that new point.  Soon the constant patroling would lead to the Town X and thus the treat would be at the doorstep without PC intervention.  When the Seed bearer came to the final step, then the final Boss X would spawn in the enemy camp and if they knew where the town was, then the full push would begin, or if not, then the patrols would step up and the spawn camp cycle would increase.

Thoughts?

[Death_Mule]

Quest Seeds + Macro/Mini Quests

Using the same structure across the game, it would seem you could even get rid of time stamps and just let triggered seeds play out.  

* Thumbs up *

[Roac]

I would like to see some basic (basic) AI put in on a quest system like this.  The basic idea is this; you have entities (individuals, species, groups, whatever) that have basic needs.  These needs motivate them differently; an orc and an ogre might both have "bloodthirst", but one is driven more by that need than the other.  Needs generally go up over time; a bloodthirsty orc gets tired of sitting around, so goes on a rampage.  Once sated, he's happy for a while, until it builds up again.  Raiders have a need for gold/food/supplies, and once that reaches a point, they will attack caravans for what they want.  

Basically, needs provoke action, and that action can (or should be able) to take multiple forms, depending on, possibly, other needs, the situation, and the nature of the critter.  Even an extremely bloodthirsty orc is not going to attack a city - alone.  He'll want a clan to back him.  Raiders are usually not so bold as to attack a city, unless there is a very rich, undefended city nearby.  Even then, they probably have needs linked to the city (where do all the trade routes *go*?).  

Where are we going with this?  Well, there's been talk about players being able to affect the game world, but I think it should cut both ways - the game should be affecting the player.  Not a bunch of static or random spawns popping up, but real cause-effect.  If I'm a warlord-wannabe, and set out to carve out a slice of land for me and my new city - now I get to contend with the nearby orcs who want to use me as target practice.  I have to setup defenses not only because of players, but because the local wildlife would like to take a bite out of me.  But, I can fight back - killing their camps, reducing their number, and pushing their ability further away.  I setup forward outposts to try and help hold them back, which the orcs now focus their attentions on.  

Of course, all this requires money and other players.  The area can only support so many people cutting trees, mining, "farming", whatever.  I can try to expand, but expansion is difficult - the orcs are Out There, or whatever else.  Getting rich off dragon gold isn't an easy task.  Player merchants will want to setup shop, but their trade routes are hassled by outlaws.  All of this can create more options for AI entities, and for them to have needs; frequent raids on NPC raiders cause them to object and refuse to travel unless something is done.  Players put out bounties (missions) on the NPC raiders.  The raiders want to remain in business, and may well try to cut deals with fiendish players to help them in their tasks - but they only deal with players who have a reputation for assisting their faction.  Of course, helping outlaws doesn't earn you favor in the castle...

And of course the NPC orcs, fey, dragons, castle guards, peasants, raiders, traiders, and anyone else are trying to get a leg up in the system.  They are trying to fulfill their needs, which are usually in conflict with someone else's.  They want messages delivered, help rallied, supplies moved around, attacks made, areas defended, and on and on.

[personman]

"Looks like this is a job for Selfplex Man!"
http://www.memeticai.org/

[Fargull]

Roac,

Your suggestion fits really well into the mold I was seeing.  I was just tackling part of it with the quest seed without expounding further.

personman,

Right on the money, think that is where my initial NWN insight arose from.  Very spot on.