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Thursday 16 February, 2012 at 12:32 am / 0 comment

Not-so-intense scrutiny of questing

I know questing in MMOs has its share of debates, but I've always liked questing. Without trivializing the work that already goes into quest-design, I don't think any major complaints associated with quests in MMOs today originate from any notion that quests outright suck. I think it's that no ones trying to improve the quests.

For all the complaints that may arise over improving questing, game design doesn't seem to be intensely focused on making a better quest. Right now, it's about finding other things to do besides quests. Even in an MMO like Lord of the Rings Online, where I think questing is given a little extra tender loving care out of a deeper respect to the story, the quests are largely what they've always been: kill ten whatchamacallits, fetch a whatchamacallit or help an NPC get to whatchamacallit.

Apart from the work and care it already takes to make the quests we see littering the MMO landscape, is it really that hard to come up with a better quest? Or, is it just that no ones trying to come up with a better quest?

I think the industry and players are boxed in, due to how questing affects (or gets in the way of) other parts of gameplay. I’d love to see quests treated more like a minigame. Make them like actual tiny adventures or… quests. Throw in a little, old-fashioned, retro-console game-design, combined with bringing dungeon concepts out into the persistent world. A quest could be akin to a miniature level from a single-player game. It would be expanding on world-events, like what Runes of Magic does.

RoM has a pretty fun series of events tied to five daily quests in Aotulia Volcano that send you through phases of a tiny adventure filled with special NPCs and dialogue. You start off helping fire-elementals fight off a small wave of Naga. It’s exciting to watch all these cool-looking NPCs swarm into a spectacular little battle, while you fight alongside them. Once phase one is repelled, you fight a boss on a bridge before escorting a squad of soldiers down a path to kill another boss, before heading back to base. It’s fun to watch and be a part of. It immerses you into a quest, instead of sending you out to complete a chore.

If that concept were expanded to get you from 1 to level-cap, I think I’d love that. Maybe that’s what ArenaNet is pushing more towards with Guild Wars 2, but I can’t help but look at the teasers and be underwhelmed. It doesn’t feel revolutionary. It just prompts me to say “It’s about time”, but it’s still a really good thing.

I think quests have a really hard time getting permission to be better, when an MMO has to appeal to play-styles that encourage or require getting past quests as quickly as possible. That’s a little weird, to me, because quests look like they already occupy a pretty big chunk of MMO game design. I’d prefer that such a large part of MMOs get a lot more attention as the focal point for providing fun and not being so much a path to getting to other fun or something more fun.