What makes a quest good?

[captain_obvious]

I've seen plenty of games being criticised for having "fetch quests" where you go out somewhere, collect a certain quantity of an item then return to the quest giver for a reward. What makes a good quality quest and why?

 

[Exidous]

Importantly, virtually all games involve successfully performing tasks, but only some games consider such tasks "quests." Quests are the substance of RPGs.

I think the most important part of an RPG quest is (the illusion of) agency. The player needs to feel like they are playing the role. That they want to perform and accomplish the task that their in-game character has.

Some games provide actual agency - a huge world of mostly optional quests. Effectively, you'll only do the ones you want to.

Other games create an effective illusion of agency. Despite being linear games that force you into each quest, you want what the player character is scripted to want - you're immersed.

It's entirely possible that there is a legitimate, believable, immersive reason why you need to gather ten bear asses in the game you're playing. But the majority of the time you get one of those quests, it's just the laziest way to add content that the game designer could come up with. That sort of transparency in game design breaks the player's immersion. There's usually no (satisfactory) answer to why the quest giver wants ten bear asses, why there are ten bears nearby, why he needs to send you to get them, and so on.

 

[Veho]

Fetch quests of the "collect X castor sacs in exchange for [prize]" variety are obvious padding hidden behind very flimsy pretenses. It's a repetitive grind with very little variety and it gets boring or breaks immersion pretty soon. You are grinding, you have to retrieve an exact number of items, kill an exact number of enemies, in exchange for something that may (or may not) propel the main story forward in some way. Or you have to grind some more.

And as a player you start doing the bare minimum to complete the quest and screw the rest. It's not a quest, it's a chore. The game treats it as such too. "Our town is plagued by mutant frogs, bring back 10 frog scalps and you'll get a reward. What? Eleven? I see no reason why you would kill more than 10." You kill 10 mutant frogs and fanfare sound out and you're done. You collect the GP and XP and off you go, quest forgotten.

What would make them better? Make them more unique. More varied. Make them side stories more than fetch quests. Get a more organic way of incorporating them into the game world.
If a town is being "beset" by wargs, have a bounty on warg pelts, and reward the player for any and all they bring (until the warg population drops due to overhunting and the bounty is rescinded ). Allow the player to do as much or as little as they want or need.
Make the quest more relevant to the player and the storyline.
Invent a damn good reason why the quest giver doesn't just do it themselves.
Don't make them a barrier to progress, don't make the entire game halt until you either complete or drop the quest. Make them optional.

Think about it this way. "Fetch quests" stand out if they break the flow of the game or ruin immersion. You know what a well done fetch quest is called? The storyline.

 

[tabzer]

I've seen plenty of games being criticised for having "fetch quests" where you go out somewhere, collect a certain quantity of an item then return to the quest giver for a reward. What makes a good quality quest and why?

I liked Final Fantasy quests that didn't actually specify that they were sidequests, and the rewards were sub-story relevant unique items that wouldn't be outclassed. In FFVI, your "subquests" would unlock characters, espers, and unique relics and gear; above all, the story was, itself, the only necessary incentive and the rewards were a surprising treat. In FFXVI, the best subquests involved weapon/gear upgrades, but the announcement that it was a subquest with "x marks the spot" designations really robs the mystery/discovery.

 

[Taleweaver]

Part of the reason I it ever bother with open world games is because it only ever does three things:
1) quests about getting somewhere and killing someone/something
2) quests out getting somewhere and bringing something/someone
3) cutscenes
Okay, and 4) fancy looking landscapes

I don't want to sound cynical, but what remains if you don't count those four is pretty limited. I don't want to deny anyone their escapism, but I've seen it, played it and got the t-shirt.

To for back to the question: any quest that isn't either 1 or 2. To give a stupid example: from my hours of wasting time on assassin's creed 3,i remember one quest. At one point, two people in your party (of builders, iirc) where having an argument. You had to intervene (or not:optional quests are weird at that) and get between those. You had to use your left stick in a certain way to get A away and the right for B in order to de-escalate from an actual fight.

I'd also mention the yoga exercises from gta V. I remember it being criticized, but I liked those more than the story missions.

 

[Deleted member 571007]

the biggest thing for actual quests for me, is when there's multiple ways to complete it resulting in different paths / interactions from NPCs (even better if they add different rewards based on your actions). It gives you the choice to complete the quest however you want, and allows you to feel like your choices impact the world around you a bit more. It's also amazing for if you want to roleplay your character.

 

[FAST6191]

Does it add to the story, does it add to the character (or even reflect upon the player if some moral conundrum is afoot, games being able to be defined as a series of interesting decisions), does it add to the world building? Better yet does it do more than one of those at once?

Anyway if it does none of those in any other medium you are going to be told to cut it as it is boring for the reader/watcher/listener and yet some act surprised when it fails in games. Games might also get the test of skill and knowledge option added to it -- it has been many years since I played Zelda Wind Waker on the gamecube but I still remember the bonus mission when you return to the starting island despite it being so much basically boss rush/enemy rush.

 

[Veho]

Part of the reason I it ever bother with open world games is because it only ever does three things:
1) quests about getting somewhere and killing someone/something
2) quests out getting somewhere and bringing something/someone
3) cutscenes
Okay, and 4) fancy looking landscapes

I don't want to sound cynical, but what remains if you don't count those four is pretty limited. I don't want to deny anyone their escapism, but I've seen it, played it and got the t-shirt.

I mean when you get right down to it, don't most games boil down to that? Go there, kill someone. Go somewhere else, find something (or kill someone for it), go to the third place and kill someone else with this new thing you found. Everything else is just decoration.



It's true that open world games ("walking simulators") inform quest design and emphasis is placed on exploration instead of railroading the player through level design. And peppering the open world with fetch quest hooks is a very simple way of (p)adding content and extending gameplay.

 

[Taleweaver]

I mean when you get right down to it, don't most games boil down to that? Go there, kill someone. Go somewhere else, find something (or kill someone for it), go to the third place and kill someone else with this new thing you found. Everything else is just decoration.



It's true that open world games ("walking simulators") inform quest design and emphasis is placed on exploration instead of railroading the player through level design. And peppering the open world with fetch quest hooks is a very simple way of (p)adding content and extending gameplay.

Not sure about "most". For every AAA-title, there's a dozen indie games who don't have the budget to create a what I'd like to call "OMFGHHHHHUUUUGGGGGGEEEEMMAAAAAPPPPP!!!!!!".

Heck...I've once read something saying that about half the effort of creating an open world AAA-title is...actually creating the map. Yes, that sounds very obvious from the way it sounds, but it means just filling that whole world takes as much effort as the engine tweaking/making, character creations, voice acting, menu options, sound and music, mission design and who knows what else COMBINED.

So yeah...if I had to spend multiple hours creating a wide open landscape of sprawling mountains with a nicely animated waterfall in between...you freaking BET I want to make sure the players have a reason to visit the fucking place to begin with.


But let's get back to what I really wanted to do: check my list of played games this year and see if I can find something from those.
...to be honest: not much. I play mostly puzzle games. Bonfire peaks and Patrick's parabox, for example, have some brilliant level designs to them. But it's not exactly as if a level is a "quest" somehow(1).

My time at sandrock is kind of stardew valley in 3D. A focus more on gathering, crafting and building, but not much outstanding. The most memorable are detective intervals, in which you gather clues about pieces from the story. I like those: they're not fetching or killing, and make you care more about the story (there's a sort of bandit in town and you want to figure out why he's doing what he's doing). Still kind of linear, but I'll cite that as an example.

The other game I have to mention is glass road. This is a digital board game adaptation of a Rosenberg game. Meaning: you gather resources, convert those somehow, build stuff...and there's some not-quite-direct-but-not-indirect-either interaction with your opponent(s).
At the start of the game, you only score points for having glass, brick and sand at the end of the game. But the bulk of points come from setting up buildings that directly give you points and/or give you some sort of goal (eg: points for your longest lake). These quests are good - and I mean REALLY good - because you pick them yourself AND they force you down an unique road to scoring. The game is relatively short for a board game (4 rounds of iirc 5 card plays each), so picking too many objectives is a certain failure. But setting yourself up for success (or rather: setting yourself up NOT to fail) is pretty darn tough.


(1) bonfire peaks a small bit: each solved puzzle gives you a box in the overworld, and you need those to stack up to get to the next area.