How much of an RPG should be the 'Main Quest'?

[Night Goat]

Less than half, side quests have a lot more potential to be interesting than the big generic save the world plot.

 

[Zombra]

Less than half, side quests have a lot more potential to be interesting than the big generic save the world plot.

I think we've touched on something more fundamental to good story design here.

 

[shihonage]

There shouldn't be a main quest. There should be a cohesiveness and interconnectedness to the gameworld and all its quests.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

A recent example where I actually don't think side quests help is Witcher 3. They're well written and all, but there are essentially two stories in that game: one of a professional monster slayer who wanders the land taking contracts and collecting coin; and one of a father figure trying to save his loved ones in a world gone mad. You have to intentionally blow off one story to see the other; the side quests and main quest don't complement each other at all. So why even have side quests? Well, because they were told to make an open world game full of side quests like Skyrim.

A recent example where I actually don't think side quests help is TES V: Skyrim. Not merely because they're poorly written, but there are essentially two stories in that game: one of a wandering bandit who kills everything in the direction of the quest compass and steals their treasures; and one of the heroic Dovahkiin on a quest to save the world from an invasion by dragons. You have to intentionally blow off one story to see the other; the side quests and main quest don't complement each other at all. So why even have side quests? Well, because they were told to make an open world game full of side quests like TES IV: Oblivion.


Morrowind, and to a lesser extent Daggerfall, offered justifications for the player-character taking time to complete assorted quests unrelated to the main plot. However, writers are generally lazy and therefore can rarely be bothered either to develop a main plot with more subtlety than saving the world from imminent destruction or to develop side quests that tie in to the main plot.

 

[aweigh]

I would substitute the word 'lazy' for 'bad'.

 

[gaussgunner]

Darklands proves that you can make a good RPG that's 95+% side quests and random encounters you run into while doing side quests. Obviously not every game should try to be like that, but side quests are a good way to hedge against the possibility that the main quest sucks. Even a pants-on-head retarded main quest like the one in Mass Effect 2 can at least be endured if there's enough good side content.

Darklands is notable, but what you call "good" is exactly what I dislike. You're entitled to your opinion. I prefer the "combat+adventure" RPG formula where I'm playing a role in a big story, with major characters and designed encounters and shit. Not too much story, not too linear. Some choices 'n' consequences. But I definitely do not want to play a life simulator with hundreds of banal sidequests completely unrelated to the MQ.

If the MQ sucks, the game sucks.

 

[Darkzone]

Less than half, side quests have a lot more potential to be interesting than the big generic save the world plot.

I think we've touched on something more fundamental to good story design here.

The thing is that the side quests should introduce the player to the world and paint its details, while the main quest should be quite oblivious about the world, beside a gereral thing that should be the motive for the hero's journey. And that is what makes the side quests more interesting than the main quest, because through them you learn the interesting things and characters.
In Fallout 1 the main quest is to find the water chip and take it back to vault 13 within 150 days, while everything else is a side quests. One could debate if the killing of the master and the destruction of the military base is a part of the main quest or just side quests.
In Fallout 2 the main quest is to find the GEEK and its gets extended by the Enclave incident, but everything else could be called a side quest.

 

[DragoFireheart]

GIVE ME SIDE QUESTS OR GIVE ME DEATH!

 

[Au Ellai]

Main quests shouldn't even be a thing, the sidequests and explorations should be the core of the game, with a on overarching story/plot/goal slowly coalescing as you go through the game. I think it was Might and Magic 3 that did this to great effect. Ideally, you should just be unleashed into the world to explore, and as you explore, you start finding out information about the current state of the world/area, and as you're gaining power, you start understanding how you can affect the current state of the world/area, for good or evil or for yourself or whatever. If a dev _really must_ have a main story/quest, they should tie it into side-quest and exploration-based milestones. After gaining x rep with y faction or getting 15 power mcguffins from ruins/dungeons/whatevs, something happens and you're either given a quest or information about a new unlocked area or something. The above people are absolutely correct, as the current state of side-quests and main-quests essentially makes for 2 story lines which have a near-100% chance of conflicting.

The worst is that since devs feel the need to make the story quest something that people can go through while ignoring the rest of the game (mostly because games journalists are still a cancer yet to be cut out of gaming, and if the devs don't do this, the cancer will aggressively attempt to harm and destroy the dev), if you do any side content, you're always overpowered doing the main story stuff, yet they put the most design effort into the main story stuff, so you end up having the best designed content being the easiest with the worst rewards if you even dare to touch the side-quests. It's a terrible state of affairs that shows no pattern of changing, and it's 100% guaranteed the next big rpgs will operate that way until a breakout game does it differently.

 

[Falksi]

I much prefer a shit hot main quest to anything else. My fave games are around 50-60% main quest, rest side quests but most importantly a significant amount of those side-quests reveal more about the main quest & main characters.

Exploration would be great as the core game if people knew how to do it - but they don't. You only have to look at The Witcher 3 to see a game which in reality should have had the exploration element trimmed to make a tighter game, as there's fuck all of value to find exploring once you have your prefered Witcher gear.

The feeling of being on an adventure comes from far more than just exploring.

 

[Sigourn]

I think it is a poorly worded question. If the question was: "how much of an RPG should a completely linear main quest be?", then my answer is "as little as possible". But if the main quest offers a vast degree of choice, I don't really mind its size. Moreover, it also depends on how good the main quest is. Every main quest ever made just doesn't grab me and so I'm looking for other shit to do.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Come to think of it, I dislike it when there is a rigidly set 'main quest' that is stuffed in your face right away and stays with you the whole game. So many start with some generic "demons are invading the world and you are chosen to save it by finding ancient artifacts, duh" - which pretty much tells me all that will happen right in the intro and leaves me with a 50 hour skinner box. That crap should come with a spoiler alert.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I'd say this is one thing that New Vegas got really, really right. After you find Benny, you get to choose your own main quest based on faction. And while not that many of the side quests relate to the main quest, most of them relate to what the game is actually about: the conflict in the mojave.

This is what so many RPGs get wrong. In New Vegas, your story is not the same as THE story, although it converges with the real story near the end. There's much bigger stuff going on than what happens to one measly little courier. You can tip the balance in the larger narrative and even take control of Vegas, but only because the situation is balanced on a knife's edge. Even so, there are always much more powerful forces at work. Much better than the standard chosen one/save the world trope where your story is the only thing that matters. Collecting mushrooms is idiotic if you need to hurry up and save the world, but collecting supplies for the NCR army makes a lot of sense--there's a war on and they need all the help they can get.

 

[Azarkon]

What matters is not a percentage divide between "main" quests and "side" quests, but believable and consistent motivation at every stage in the game. Games where the theme is "go on an adventure, see the world, get rich" will naturally benefit from a loose narrative built up from "side" quests. On the other hand, games with strong, urgent narratives, like "I'm about to go mad and need to save myself" should, in theory, stay away from incidental distractions. These motivations don't even have to be the same throughout the game. They can change, as the narrative develops, but they should change in a believable way, and remain consistent to the character's psychological state and role.

When people complain about the loss of focus, they are usually talking about a loss of motivation, in which you lose sight of what you're even doing because your character's actions are so poorly motivated in the context of the narrative. For example, in Pillars of Eternity where you're supposed to be going after Thaos, but are instead solving random murders, searching for treasure in dungeons, and involving yourself in faction politics because you feel forced to experience the content. By contrast, in a game like Ultima where you're trying to become the Avatar, it makes much more sense that you'd be going around helping people with their random problems.

As long as they're justified, side quests aren't usually a problem. The issue, however, is developers who have gotten so used to the genre conventions, that they insert side quests into a game like robots, without ever stopping to consider what the player's motivations are at that stage in the narrative. Thus, a game feels slow, when the narrative says it should be urgent; and the player is more concerned with missing content, than with whether he's playing the role he's given. That's just poor game design.

 

[aweigh]

Darkzone

The G.E.C.K. !!!!

GECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#triggered

 

[Wizfall]

It's more a question about the design of the sidequests.
Independent sidequest that are not " big" are bad to the experience because too many of them you don't see the point, lost track and it quickly feels worthless.
However big sidequests that include small sidequests while doing them are great because while doing the smallers one you still have a bigger objective not too far away(resolving the big sidequest that for a time become a substitute of the main quest).

That the way BG2 was designed and is great, you have really huge sidequests.
At the beginning often you don't even know they are big but they keep getting bigger with plenty of small sidequests/surprise inside.
That's awesome IMO because you still have a big objective (the big sidequest main goal) to not loose track while resolving the smaller objectives.

PoE main flaw is that it does not have huge sidequests, at best medium sidequests with few surprise.
Biggest sidequest it has was the Raedric castle (with a small subplot with the animancer in the undergroung), and that a medium sidequest in my book.

 

[Teut Busnet]

to OP: depends. what kind of RPG? grind-based rpgs should have significant end game content outside of the main quest. In fact giving the main quest too much prominence can result in degenerate gameplay like it did for diablo 2.

Heavily story based ones (IE: torment, bg2, pillars) should mostly be focused on the main quest, no more than 50/50 split.

large epic open world rpgs should have lots of content for every power level. a 80/20 or even 90/10 split in favor of side quests is much more appropriate, although you can work more of it into the main quest if the main quest is decentralized (IE: M&M series, where the main quest often was a bunch of unrelated shit eventually leading to the endgame plot) and if you don't have the funds to do it properly no world changing main quests. bethesda is notorious for underdelivering on this front (IE: oblivion "invasion").

Yes, I should have excluded open world RPGs. You can also argue that exploration there IS the 'Main Quest'.

I used DX: MD as an example because it felt like a) the scale was tipped so heavily towards 'Side Mission' unrelated to the story and b) there was never a time for exploration - when you go and explore you get constant calls from your boss to get on with solving the terrorist case - and he was absolutely correct. It seemed to be pretty urgent and had I really 'roleplayed' I would have ignored everything else.

 

[Darkzone]

Darkzone
The G.E.C.K. !!!!
GECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#triggered

Yes you are correct that it is called G.E.C.K in english, but some mistakes on my side are on purpose, besides most of the spelling errors.
G.E.C.K ( Garden of Eden Creation Kit). GEEK (Garden of Eden Ejaculation Kit). Ejaculation standing here for the brain cum, that was the result of imagining of such an absurd device and using it as a plot device. And naturally in german it is called G.E.E.K (Garten Eden Erstellungs-Kit) and since i played it in german first it will always remain for me GEEK.

 

[anvi]

Wow my comment really separated the

from the newfags.

 

[ntonystinson]

I just want more games like Mount & Blade Warband and Crusader Kings 2 where the story is what you make the story be and the world can go on about it's business without my presence. Complete Player Autonomy. That's the only reason am following Archmage Rises

 

[anvi]

That would be great.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

I just want more games like Mount & Blade Warband and Crusader Kings 2 where the story is what you make the story be and the world can go on about it's business without my presence. Complete Player Autonomy. That's the only reason am following Archmage Rises

Too much like real life. If you want to feel like your actions are meaningless and insignificant all you need to do is get a job. Cheaper hobby than games, too.

 

[aweigh]

In DX MD because I couldn't make several different builds where each one required points to be allocated to relevant Skills which were derived from Primary Attributes. WTF??? WHY??

In my RPGs I LOVE games where you can just pick up a Rocket Launcher without any character development that is relevant to Rocket Launchers the game still allows you to use the Rocket Launcher and blow stuff up!!!!

It reminds me of games like DOOM where that stuff happens all the time because DOOM (DOOM being one of the classic RPGs I love), but dude, in these other non-RPGs there is an underlying system of fundamental role-playing in the form Attributes/Skills affecting the player's agency in the game world's conflict resolution! wTF?

WEIRD!

Instead... instead you can just always do stuff! Like, without the game even needing the player to have agency in how to develop the character's combat prowes!!!!

It's like DX MD is some sort of game where power progressoin and conflict resolution is directly tied to a player's skill in playing first-person shooters and an inherent quality I think some call "twitch reflexes" instead of being tied to an abstracted template of Attributes and Skills which stupidly eliminates the necessary RPG "twitch" skills.

Instead, in these other non-RPGs, the focus is placed on the manipulation of resources such as Levels, Skill Points, Primary Character Attributes and these in turn dovetail into forcing the player to use the bizzare and dubious "skill" of abstracted resource management which requires thoughtful planning of long-term effects for the player's agency in conflict resolution!!!

I DUNNO JUS SAYIN

 

[ntonystinson]

I just want more games like Mount & Blade Warband and Crusader Kings 2 where the story is what you make the story be and the world can go on about it's business without my presence. Complete Player Autonomy. That's the only reason am following Archmage Rises

Too much like real life. If you want to feel like your actions are meaningless and insignificant all you need to do is get a job. Cheaper hobby than games, too.

Your actions are significant in those games, you just don't control the world.
I wonder why other games don't follow this template than the same rehashed formula

 

[Parsifarka]

Ideally, 100% -there should be a single category. As Au Ellai said, early M&M design is superb in this regard (WoX the most impressive due to the logic sequence covering two whole overwolds), pushing you towards the great ending by doing apparently secondary quests, while retrospectively you realize all that was indeed main quest: nothing is superfluous. That's not to say regular main/secondary quest structure is an invalid option in a game, but it's inherently inferior to such elegant design, being thus the mark of pleb developers.
The first Witcher kinda followed that approach too, particulary remarkable in the outskirts of Wyzima, and was quite satisfactory. Also, Grimoire does it, so it must be incline