[crossfire] Quests with multiple outcomes

[Mark Wedel]

On 03/29/10 10:25 AM, Brendan Lally wrote:
<snip>
>>
>>    Rather than having the stopstep, for each step, would it be
>> possible/better to have a keyword there to not that the quest is done?
>>
>>    What I'm thinking is that for complex quests, there could be
>> several paths, and it would seem clearer to me that for one path,
>> maybe steps 20->25 dictate one path (with 25 being the finish point)
>> and for another one, steps 30->38. For a map developer, it would be
>> easier to have all steps for one path be together - better than
>> having to go from step 24 to 40 to note the quest is done.
>
> The design of quests as things stand assumes:
> * Quests only progress forwards, not backwards

  Random question - is that a fair assumption?

  I could imagine cases where there are many steps, and there could be cases 
where due to use of items (which are consumed) that a quest could go back a step.

Something like:

1 I need to talk to foo about X.
2 I found that foos lives in scorn in soandso house.
3 I need a baz to get into soandso house.
4 I'm in soandso house - now I need to find foo.
5 I found foo and talked about X (quest completed)

  If one got to step 4 (using up baz to do so), and then for some reason left, 
they may now be back to step 3 (need to find baz again).  This itself may not be 
a perfect example, as baz may be something with a known location.

  But one could imagine alchemy quests, where the quest is to properly make some 
recipe.  And parts of that quest are to find the necessary ingredients, and for 
some things (like orc livers) it may just be random luck.

  If after getting all the ingredients, the actual alchemy failed (bad roll), it 
may be that the quest goes back to finding ingredients if the character doesn't 
have any extra.

  Now I don't consider this a big deal, but it just seems to me that there may 
be many quests (especially those related to items) where the character may take 
a step backward by selling/trading/whatever the item needed.


> * Once a quest is completed, then it is not un-completed (although may
>    be restarted).

  That makes sense - completed is completed.  And I'd imagine that for 
restartable quests, the state would revert.

  Random question 2:  For repeatable quests, is there any record that the 
character is repeating a quest vs it being their first time?  Likewise, would it 
be worth it to note how many times a character has done a quest?

I'm thinking that in some cases, one may want to make the secondary reward not 
as good (or perhaps different).  Eg, the lord sends player out to kill some boss 
creature.  On first attempt, they get one item, on second attempt, something 
different, etc.



>
> quests:
> 1) ....
> 2) ....
> 3) Down to the docks:
> 	a) Port Pass
> 	b) Scorn Password
> 	c) The Hero of Scorn
> 4 ...
> etc
>
> and then the info section would say:

<snip>

  Yes, that makes a lot of sense - it sounds like the solution to what I said 
above was to do sub quests, but I'd really not want to see a huge list of quests 
which are really subquests and have no value on their own (in my example above, 
fetching a baz only makes sense as part of talking to foo).


> During the next release cycle I'll be wanting to look at more
> sophisticated client side support to make this a bit slicker, something
> like a dedicated 'quest journal' screen which would collapse or
> shade these properly (I know Nicolas is after something similar to this
> also)

  Makes sense.  Whenever there are issues about organizing/present data to the 
user, providing the information to the client and let the client figure it out 
is the way to go.  There is only so much that can be done on a basic text interface.

>
> All of the wording, etc is up for debate, as well as things like the
> level of detail in the quest texts (my inclination has been to go for
> lots of detail in the text for the low level quests in scorn because
> these are probably the ones that will be played within the first couple
> of hours of picking up the game - I'd be more inclined to have vaguer
> descriptions of high level quests that players won't find until they
> have played the game for a few hours - but this is a discussion for the
> maps list)

  Yep.  Some quests may also be vague just by their very nature - some locations 
are supposed to be somewhat hidden or not well known, so at least on first pass, 
a detailed description of them doesn't make sense.  However, as the character 
learns more information, maybe that gets filled in.