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"Sidequests and other distractions: the erosion of meaning in CRPG quests"

Azarkon

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Oct 7, 2005
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"Side quests" are a direct result of design by marketing, where developers try to achieve a certain amount of hours in order to write it on the box rather than because they actually have that many hours' worth of ideas or because the narrative supports it, or they try to have "side quests" because players demand more open world content and so they try to force it in. Bioware's games suffer especially from trying to fit side quests into "cinematic" narratives that don't support them. Obsidian has picked up the same philosophy from developing Bioware sequels and, unfortunately, many of their recent games also suffer from it.

The problem is one of structure. A game with many loosely connected quests follow a different structure than the plots that most AAA games these days want to sell. Such games benefit from having an open story that is told through gradual expansion of the game world, rather than a plot diagram. The former is the join of many different stories tied together through themes and/or characters. The latter necessarily revolves around a single story and conflict. "Side quests" are an irrelevant concept in the former because there is no "main quest." "Side quests" are an unnecessary evil in the latter because they only serve to distract and delay the player from experiencing the main story.

Examples

Open narrative:

The player belongs to an adventuring group trying to make it in the world. Through taking on different jobs and adventures, the group grows as a set of characters and as an unit. There might be a conflict that serves as the background for most of the jobs/adventures, and which eventually lead to a climatic showdown with various consequences for the group and its members, but that is not the "goal" of the game.

The player is just trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland
. Water and food are scarce, dangers lurk around every corner, and the few remaining communities have little trust for outsiders and each other. The "win" condition is just to find relative safety and stability. As such there would be many different "endings" and conditions for reaching them.

The player is trying to become a Special Person. The requirements for becoming a Special Person involve performing X amount of heroic tasks, with few requirements as to what they have to be. The player goes out in the world in search for these heroic tasks, wherever they might be found.

AAA narrative:

The player is the Chosen One and must fulfill the prophecy by performing a series of set tasks in order to set up for a climatic battle between himself/herself and the villain. The player must in theory do this before the villain destroys him/her/the world, but in practice can take as long as he/she wants.

The player's family is kidnapped and the player must find/rescue them. In the process, the player discovers that his/her family was kidnapped because they/the player are very important people, and that he/she must fight a powerful organization to get his/her family back.

The player has lost his/her soul and must get it back by tracking down the villain who took it from them. Through solving various mysteries, the player eventually finds out who and why the villain took his/her soul. He/she then has to have a climatic showdown with the villain.

It should be obvious why the "open narratives" do not have a problem with "side quests" - because the goal of the game IS to perform "side quests," and therefore they cannot be "side quests." On the other hand, in the AAA narratives, the goal of the game is an obvious and specific "main quest" that should be fairly urgent - but usually isn't in game. When progress in this "main quest" is locked behind plot-independent quests, or the game otherwise encourages the player to do these plot-independent quests in order to have a complete experience, then we have a "side quest" problem. Thus, the "side quest" problem is a direct result of bad design driven by the need to advertise large/open world experiences, while at the same time trying to have a "cinematic" plot.
 

vonAchdorf

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Sep 20, 2014
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It should be obvious why the "open narratives" do not have a problem with "side quests" - because the goal of the game IS to perform "side quests," and therefore they cannot be "side quests." On the other hand, in the AAA narratives, the goal of the game is an obvious and specific "main quest" that should be fairly urgent - but usually isn't in game. When progress in this "main quest" is locked behind plot-independent quests, or the game otherwise encourages the player to do these plot-independent quests in order to have a complete experience, then we have a "side quest" problem. Thus, the "side quest" problem is a direct result of bad design driven by the need to advertise large/open world experiences, while at the same time trying to have a "cinematic" plot.

DA:I solved that discrepancy by making the collection / fetch / kill quests "important" for the main quest organization you were in charge of. Or were they required?

:troll:
 
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Very good posts ITT. I think we won't ever see a proper exploration based MQ in AAA games again because exploration itself is dead and burried. You can't have exploration, not in the age of quest compasses, meta gamey "Witcher senses" and journals that spell out every tiny detail for the player. You're not exploring in modern open world rpgs, what you do is running around in a theme park doing random quest that can be solved without any attention to the dialogues, surroundings and in-game lore because just follow the compass and press x from time to time lol.

When I was playing Mass Effect 2 for shit and giggles I didn't know why or what I was doing for half of the time yet I could finish the game just fine. I could have been stoned for the entire playthrough and it wouldn't have made any difference at all.

Imagine playing Fallout for the first time just shitting on all npc dialogue and never thinking about what to do next, see how far that gets you before the time limit runs out.

I loved to stumble upon main or side quest related stuff in games that were not explicitly spelled out, just some small NPC hint here and there, a random book that you would find setting you on a trail of breadcrumbs etc. That's completely gone I can't fathom why anyone would even bother with open world rpgs these days.
 
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Siobhan

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I think that the device of an urgent plotline is a flaw resulting from heavy-handed narrative design. Personally, I would ignore this kind of structure, and would rather developers avoid introducing such urgency in the first place.
The really annoying thing is that most RPGs could easily have their story down-scaled to something more flexible without even changing the pacing or the set pieces. Take your average "you're the chosen one and must save the world". And now let's rewrite it: you're a spoiled royal brat whose dad used his influence to make you the king's emissary in tiny remote colony XYZ. Now you have to win the locals' respect (quests) if you want to get anything done. But all of a sudden another empire seeks to annex the colony and you find yourself in a conflict that could escalate into total war between two giant empires.

Still plenty of room for quests, but since political conflicts can be believably presented as drawn-out affairs spanning months and years, there's not much of a time pressure either. At least until shit really hits the fan for the big climax.
 

vonAchdorf

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I think that the device of an urgent plotline is a flaw resulting from heavy-handed narrative design. Personally, I would ignore this kind of structure, and would rather developers avoid introducing such urgency in the first place.
The really annoying thing is that most RPGs could easily have their story down-scaled to something more flexible without even changing the pacing or the set pieces. Take your average "you're the chosen one and must save the world". And now let's rewrite it: you're a spoiled royal brat whose dad used his influence to make you the king's emissary in tiny remote colony XYZ. Now you have to win the locals' respect (quests) if you want to get anything done. But all of a sudden another empire seeks to annex the colony and you find yourself in a conflict that could escalate into total war between two giant empires.

Still plenty of room for quests, but since political conflicts can be believably presented as drawn-out affairs spanning months and years, there's not much of a time pressure either. At least until shit really hits the fan for the big climax.

Sounds like a JRPG story. TiTS has partially a similar vibe, though you actually are some kind of chartered monster hunter / quest solver and side-quests are part of your job.
 

Mustawd

Guest
You can't have ecploration, not in the age of quest compasses, meta gamey "Witcher senses" and journals that spell out every tiny detail for the player. You'really not exploring in modern open world rpgs, what you do is running around in a theme park doing random quest that can be solved without any attention to the dialogues, surroundings and in-game lore because just follow the compass and press x from time to time lol.

I left gaming entirely for like 8 or 9 years. Leaving around 2002 and coming back around 2011. I dipped back in to play a bit of Vanilla WoW, but mostly I kind of stopped playing altogether as work and school took all my time away. After coming back I've been shocked at how much RPGs have borrowed from MMOs. In my view all these open world games just feel like single player MMOs. Kill ten of these. Capture 5 of these. Fetch quests are fine, IMO, when you have a linear narrative and as long as it's kept to a minimum.

But how long is Witcher 3 supposed to be? 300 hours? Really? Who is wanting this? Ten bucks that the 40th hour is identical to the remaining 260.
 
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Absolutely true, but I think what's important is the problem is not only fetch quests.

Witcher 3 supposedly has some very well written quests, but the problem is the writing, the dialogue, the lore is completely disconnected from the mechanical aspects of solving those quests. Sure you can enjoy all that stuff but you can also completely ignore it and you will still be able to solve most if not all quests.

Old games required you to pay attention to and process the in-game information that was conveyed to the player through NPCs, books, environmental clues etc. This is completely gone now because you have all those meta-game tools that do all the information processing and translate it into detailed, convenient instructions "go here, press X, use this item with that one". It's literally the stuff that your brain used to do before the advent of all those meta-tools.

Detective style "figure it out yourself" MQs a la Fallout or Ultima VII are impossible with today's design conventions.
 
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Meaningless side quests that distract from the main quest are direct results of having a massive open world.
They're more like a side effect of designing a main quest whose structure is ill-fitted for an open-ended RPG, open world or not. In general you don't want to have a huge world that encourages exploration and then give the player a super-urgent and straightforward main quest that the player character has no logical reason to deviate from.

Oblivion was horrible in that way.
Apart from uninstall.exe and OOO, the best way to enjoy Oblivion was to totally disregard the main quest. After all, the only thing in the game that hinted at urgency was the Emperor's word. The rest of the game world didn't agree with him.
I think the main problem was having to escort that whiny crybaby around everywhere.

Also, the oblivion gates only spawned after you did the first one.
 

vonAchdorf

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Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
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I think the main problem was having to escort that whiny crybaby around everywhere.

Also, the oblivion gates only spawned after you did the first one.

Yes, after Kvatch, but wasn't the game mostly railroaded until then, e.g. to get rid of the crybaby? I only played the MQ once, so I don't really remember it.
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
It should be obvious why the "open narratives" do not have a problem with "side quests" - because the goal of the game IS to perform "side quests," and therefore they cannot be "side quests." On the other hand, in the AAA narratives, the goal of the game is an obvious and specific "main quest" that should be fairly urgent - but usually isn't in game. When progress in this "main quest" is locked behind plot-independent quests, or the game otherwise encourages the player to do these plot-independent quests in order to have a complete experience, then we have a "side quest" problem. Thus, the "side quest" problem is a direct result of bad design driven by the need to advertise large/open world experiences, while at the same time trying to have a "cinematic" plot.

DA:I solved that discrepancy by making the collection / fetch / kill quests "important" for the main quest organization you were in charge of. Or were they required?

:troll:

There were a lot of completely useless "side quests" in that game. The important quests that you had to do for "power" - which is what you needed to progress the main story - are all tied to the main story and are therefore just steps in the main quest. It's the individual tasks that you find in the areas that you go to that are the "side quests" of the game and they were both boring and out of place.
 

Malpercio

Arcane
Joined
Dec 8, 2011
Messages
1,534
I think DAI manages to break any record regarding the shitness of sub-quests, which it's quite an accomplishment when you think what happened to the genre in recent times.


Looks like praising TW3 sub-quests is what it's en-vogue on other forums nowadays, on other hand. TEH NEW STANDARDS OF SUB-QUESTS AND OPEN WORLD RPG.
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
You can't have ecploration, not in the age of quest compasses, meta gamey "Witcher senses" and journals that spell out every tiny detail for the player. You'really not exploring in modern open world rpgs, what you do is running around in a theme park doing random quest that can be solved without any attention to the dialogues, surroundings and in-game lore because just follow the compass and press x from time to time lol.

I left gaming entirely for like 8 or 9 years. Leaving around 2002 and coming back around 2011. I dipped back in to play a bit of Vanilla WoW, but mostly I kind of stopped playing altogether as work and school took all my time away. After coming back I've been shocked at how much RPGs have borrowed from MMOs. In my view all these open world games just feel like single player MMOs. Kill ten of these. Capture 5 of these. Fetch quests are fine, IMO, when you have a linear narrative and as long as it's kept to a minimum.

But how long is Witcher 3 supposed to be? 300 hours? Really? Who is wanting this? Ten bucks that the 40th hour is identical to the remaining 260.

This similarity in quest design between AAA games today and games that you paid by the month is precisely why we can say it's just marketing shit designed to make the gamer longer than it actually is. When developers run out of ideas/time, but still need to get a certain amount of hours, such "kill X" and "get Y" quests are what they add. It's a bad design practice taken from games where the company had the goal of making the game take as long as possible to keep the player's pay every month. Quality, not quantity, is what ought to matter. If you don't have a solid idea for a quest that fits with the narrative structure of your game, then it shouldn't exist.
 
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Daemongar

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The author misses some big points he could have made with his examples, that would have rendered some of his argument meaningless.

1. Fallout 1 had a main quest with many little quests, and there was even a time limit, but because of the shitstorm from the time-limit, RPG's have rarely instituted limits again. It's exactly because of Fallout 1 that we rarely have time limits on the main and side quests.

2. Witcher had the same problem. The non-directors cut Witcher had quests that once begun, had to be solved that night or you didn't have a chance to finish the quest. The updated DC version (ie: the only one available) has soft deadlines one can only assume because of the negative feedback.

The author says "why the nonchalant approach to quests" in RPGs when the answer is there in front of him: it appears nobody likes a time limit or it's just not worth it because CRPG players don't like being gypped out of xps.
 

Mustawd

Guest
The author misses some big points he could have made with his examples, that would have rendered some of his argument meaningless.

1. Fallout 1 had a main quest with many little quests, and there was even a time limit, but because of the shitstorm from the time-limit, RPG's have rarely instituted limits again. It's exactly because of Fallout 1 that we rarely have time limits on the main and side quests.

2. Witcher had the same problem. The non-directors cut Witcher had quests that once begun, had to be solved that night or you didn't have a chance to finish the quest. The updated DC version (ie: the only one available) has soft deadlines one can only assume because of the negative feedback.

The author says "why the nonchalant approach to quests" in RPGs when the answer is there in front of him: it appears nobody likes a time limit or it's just not worth it because CRPG players don't like being gypped out of xps.


CRPG players: We want our quests to feel meaningful :rpgcodex:

Devs: Ok, well we'll go ahead and put in time limits where you must finish the quest instead of running around the world like the quest means nothing.

CRPG players: Well....not THAT meaningful. On second thought, just forget about it.
 

vonAchdorf

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Messages
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RoA 1 had a time limit on the main quest, while tossing you in an open world with side quests. Its urgency was more like the brewing war theme mentioned above and was like 2.5 years or so, so there was no immediate urgency.
 

Mustawd

Guest
This similarity in quest design between AAA games today and games that you paid by the month is precisely why we can say it's just marketing shit designed to make the gamer longer than it actually is. When developers run out of ideas/time, but still need to hit a certain amount of hours, such "kill X" and "get Y" quests are what they add. It's a bad design practice that needs to end. Quality, not quantity, is what ought to matter. If you don't have a solid idea for a quest that fits with the narrative structure of your game, then it shouldn't exist.

Part of me feels that the result is mostly out of laziness. Both in development as well as in marketing. For example, Tyranny has a short play through time (~20 hours iirc), but has multiple ways to play it. Which basically helps to increase the amount of content. But because the first words re: play length were "20 hours" people on the codex started bitching and complaining right away. Even though it follows very similar design to Fallout 1 in terms of having short multiple play throughs.

The marketing needs to be better if you want to sell a shorter game with multiple paths. At least until players get weened off the notion that something must be 100+ hours to be any good.
 

animlboogy

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A lot of this is developers browbeating players into content that reflects what they can more easily produce. I'm not saying that they don't put any effort into the content, but they're clearly balancing the scales of various design principles and coming up with a concept that favors the production side.

In shooters, you have the opposite. Often, the developers come up with the hardest way to produce the simplest feeling in the player, in part because they have fewer mechanics to fall back on, but mainly because the language of that genre in recent years pulled more from film than anything. Uncharted 4 is the most recent example of this, although more developers are moving past that approach.

For whatever reason, RPGs tend to pull from other RPGs, leading to this fucked up cargo cult vision of an RPG, while action genres drifted away from the brilliant arcade concepts from the 80's towards simply aping movies. I'd really like them to swap visions entirely. Tabletop RPG mechanics are so clearly meant to simulate adventures, and they've been bastardized in games.
 

Mustawd

Guest
A lot of this is developers browbeating players into content that reflects what they can more easily produce. I'm not saying that they don't put any effort into the content, but they're clearly balancing the scales of various design principles and coming up with a concept that favors the production side.

If devs didn't feel like they needed to fill 100+ hours of content maybe this would be much less of an issue.
 

animlboogy

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A lot of this is developers browbeating players into content that reflects what they can more easily produce. I'm not saying that they don't put any effort into the content, but they're clearly balancing the scales of various design principles and coming up with a concept that favors the production side.

If devs didn't feel like they needed to fill 100+ hours of content maybe this would be much less of an issue.

I'm all for Fallout 1 type RPGs becoming more common.
 

Dorateen

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Take your average "you're the chosen one and must save the world". And now let's rewrite it: you're a spoiled royal brat whose dad used his influence to make you the king's emissary in tiny remote colony XYZ. Now you have to win the locals' respect (quests) if you want to get anything done. But all of a sudden another empire seeks to annex the colony and you find yourself in a conflict that could escalate into total war between two giant empires.

I could see something like this happening in Seven Dragon Saga. With the concept of the "Touched", the party being emissaries for the Emperor. That might open up myriad activities to pursue in foreign lands while attending the Empire's business.
 

Neanderthal

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You know I never thought about it til now but I suppose Black Gates unformed main quest were a strength, you've got fuck all idea o whats goin on, you're headin to Britain just because all roads in Britannia lead there an theres a clue a murderer might have fled there, but really you don't know what the main quest is. What does British say when you get there, someats wrong in Britannia so live an work among people an try an figure it out. Okay you can say fuck that an just follow murder trail or EA but none o them are outright statin that you have to, an strivin to aid the people is kinda your schtick as Avatar.

Never felt I were wastin time when aidin poor in Paws, bakin bread, workin wi farmers or deliverin an order to Cove for Great Council, felt like I were doin what Avatar should.

Gotta say I thought Witcher 2 for all its faults did side an main quests well an all, all inter related an hinging on each other, wi logical reasons to pursue em.
 

Mustawd

Guest


When you have a main and important quest, side quests in 90% of rpgs, make no sense if you spend all this time ignoring the main quest. Is there a better way to do this? Some games have. Examples given are Witcher 1 and Mass Effect 2.
 

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