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

vonAchdorf

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Trying a few more of them is one of the things I always wanted to do tbh.
They seem to be superior when it comes to storytelling.

You'll trade in the blank slate for being "orphan boy born in a remote village, raised by the elder" most of the time though.

:troll:
 

NotAGolfer

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And cringeworthy animu characters that overact dorks or badasses or sweet princesses or whatever...

And many still seem to rely on stupid save the world plots with Mary or Gary Sue main chars instead of creating down to earth characters with a limited and hopefully even selfish personal agenda fitting their place in the world.

Everything is shit.
:0-13:

JRPGs still seem to have a superior narrative structure though. And I bet that there are a few where you don't have to save the world (or the village) again.
 
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vonAchdorf

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I play JRPG and like cringeworthy emo anime characters - the dose makes the poison.
 

NotAGolfer

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I liked what SitS was doing with the main story btw.
Your ultimate goal was a selfish one, and you weren't expected to help random strangers just because. And no quest compass and shit like that. Was a breath of fresh air.
Then again there's a disconnect between player char and NPCs in this game too. I suppose it's very difficult for a team of 2 people to create complex narratives with lots of characters, so they kept it fairly simple.


But what I'd really like to see are more games where you aren't the new guy in town, a nobody disconnected from the rest of the characters. The new guy trope is certainly a convenient way to give you all these infodumps you need to get to know the lore of the game, but then again designers abusing NPC dialogues for infodumps instead of letting the dialogue flow naturally should be punished with a lifelong ban from creating any more game content as far as I'm concerned.
 
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Unwanted

GameGear

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but then again designers abusing NPC dialogues for infodumps instead of letting the dialogue flow naturally should be punished with a lifelong ban from creating any more game content as far as I'm concerned.

Or maybe just be like Fallout 1 and don't obsess over lore and dialogue dumps. Deathclaws were great when NOBODY knew what the fuck they were and NPCs just told vague stories about them.
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I think that when designing a big RPG world on a limited timetable, it can be a challenge to identify ahead of time the elements of the setting that are worth exploring in sidequests. It probably takes a good deal of intuition, experience and passion for that particular kind of setting.

So I wonder if the article writer's distaste for sidequests isn't really just a distaste for those "poorly selected" sidequests.
 

vonAchdorf

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I think that when designing a big RPG world on a limited timetable, it can be a challenge to identify ahead of time the elements of the setting that are worth exploring in sidequests. It probably takes a good deal of intuition, experience and passion for that particular kind of setting.

So I wonder if the article writer's distaste for sidequests isn't really just a distaste for those "poorly selected" sidequests.

In Bethesda's case, the side quests are better then the main quest, so they apparently know.
 
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aweigh

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I agree with Infinitron 's quoted wall of text from InternetPerson even though 75% of quoted text is almost farcically wrong simply because the person Infinitron is quoting, this James Patton person, obviously hasn't played many real RPGs.

i've said it many times before and I'll say it again: I consider dungoen crawlers, specifically Wizardry 1, to be the purest representation of core RPG mechanics. Wizardry 1 is 30 years old and features more advanced and innovative game design than almost every single RPG game released since.

The main reasons for this is that Wizardry 1 features an almost perfectly balanced implementation of truly cohesive and matured gameplay systems that are simultaneously: 1) copmletely capable of engaging the player on their own, and; 2) each system completes every other system, not just "another one". all Wizardry gameplay mechanics are a piece of an organic whole and there is no waste.

(game-wide resource management from spells to hit points to character classes; unbeaten-to-this-day implementation of skinner-boxes elegantly integrated into each system; a hard focus on emergent exploration that is achieved via the combination of ALL of the game's systems such as the encounters, the battles, the "loot", the character classes, and the nigh-perfect blobber abstraction of tactical combat; ETC).

i am not against having narrative prose and complex and layered story telling in an RPG I just don't consider that a core aspect of RPG games. This is something that is NOW considered a core aspect of RPG games but it's something that was borrowed from other genres, and all genres do this now not just RPGs. I used to think the complete opposite of what i just wrote back when I had never played a dungeon crawler and it was specifically because I considered dungeon crawlers to be non-RPG's because they didn't focus on storytelling or on literary characterizations.

then I played wizardry and my mind was blown. i saw behind the veil and realized that THIS was the purest experience I'd ever had in an RPG game, or in ANY game for that matter, and I realized that storytelling in an RPG and a focus on puzzle-solving or "questing" in the modern sense is a crutch developers use because they don't know any better. However if a game were to have Wizardry-level mechanics AND on top of that art/story/music like, say, Fallout 1, then of course it would be an amazing game. Something that is _good_ is _good_. End of story.

And, btw, the reason(s) FO1 is such a good RPG is not because of its storytelling at all it is because of it's cracking good system design. Yes the writing, the quests, all that stuff makes it good but if you stripped it all away FO1 would still be better than 90% of modern RPGs.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
13602.jpg
 

orcinator

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And, btw, the reason(s) FO1 is such a good RPG is not because of its storytelling at all it is because of it's cracking good system design. Yes the writing, the quests, all that stuff makes it good but if you stripped it all away FO1 would still be better than 90% of modern RPGs.

This is a joke right?
 

Wayward Son

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Eh. I like the Fallout 1 systems, but they weren't great or anything. Quests imo were what made F1 great. It's systems required some tweaking to make some skills/stats (Doctor, First aid, Charisma) more useful. Just my opinion though. I still enjoy it's systems, so they must have done something right.
 
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*snip*

And, btw, the reason(s) FO1 is such a good RPG is not because of its storytelling at all it is because of it's cracking good system design. Yes the writing, the quests, all that stuff makes it good but if you stripped it all away FO1 would still be better than 90% of modern RPGs.
I agree with you, but you're making a mistake because you're thinking everybody wants what you want. Some players want more story, pure and simple. The wars on this forum will go on because everybody keeps posting, believing they're RIGHT. We all just have opinions. They're like flavours. There's no RIGHT way which applies to everybody.

We all need to add this to our signature: Opinions expressed herein are MINE and don't apply universally to everyone. I know this goes without saying, but I think we all get so heated we forget to remember how true it's.

How many arguments would be avoided if we stated "I think" more often?

Otherwise, great post. I agree. Content is gameplay. 90% of it, IMHO. Doesn't apply universally to everyone. And on some days I like more effort put into content which ISN'T gameplay. I'm like the weather.
 
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*-*/\--/\~

Cipher
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I think it has lot to do with the ridiculous scale of many games, with devs trying too hard to make retards feel empowered by the usual 'chosen one saving the galaxy' theme. Back when the hero was looking for his lost dog, stopping to help someone made much more sense.
 
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vivec

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Eh. I like the Fallout 1 systems, but they weren't great or anything. Quests imo were what made F1 great. It's systems required some tweaking to make some skills/stats (Doctor, First aid, Charisma) more useful. Just my opinion though. I still enjoy it's systems, so they must have done something right.
If fallout actually gave you less total xp and thus remained at overall half the level, would you like it? Also, let's say the made the useless skills useful too in the process.
 

gestalt11

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The problem isn't side missions. The problem is that in many game the "main" quest lacks any primacy or urgency and is just an excuse. In Pool Of Radiance for example the "Main Quest" was really the route to a large majority of the content of the game. There have been a lot of games where the "Main Quest" is just some thing that hangs out there vaugely; almost used as setting and context and nothing more. Open world games are especially prone to this for what should be relatively obvious reasons. In the end its just bad direction.
 
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vivec

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That's the point.

The design is fallout is not bad (except in some cases). It either lacks the content to justify itself fully or gives you way too much experience to make you op.
 

taxalot

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I am going to brag on something that I have never actually achieved, but back when I was working on my Ultima IX remake, I thought I had some good system going.
The story was based on the Bob White plot, which was in my thoughts a great storyline that could have been worthy of concluding the storyline but had the major inconvenience of being extremely linear. It involved "fixing" a Civil War, and uniting everyone against the big baddie which was the Guardian. However, in the background, was also some issue about eight columns that did some damage to the world although the extent of that damage was unknown.
The design I had in mind was working this way ; have completely different "storylines" that were connected in some ways.

-The "main" storyline followed Bob White's plot to the letter. It was ultra linear. However, if you followed it, you'd go through all the towns of the game world and in these towns you would hear about....
-The "second" storyline, which is the eight columns. The eight columns would feel like eight big sidequests that involved Dungeon crawling, talking to NPCs, overworld exploration. They were completely non linear, could be done in any order. They were not sidequests, though, as they were compulsory to reach the ending of the game ultimately. In total, it was equally long to the "main" storyline.
-There was to be another shorter storyline which involved regaining the godlike powers you somehow lost at the beginning of the game. It was half mandatory/half linear, which meant you could theorically complete the game without, but it was a pretty good idea to do most of it for story purposes and for the final battle of the game which would have been extremely tough without it.

I thought this was enough content for that to be considered a full game. There'd be plenty of other NPCs, but the unrelated to the main plot sidequests would not have been that much numerous, only being there for greater world or story building, considering there was plenty of content to go around already.
 
Unwanted

GameGear

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That's the point.

The design is fallout is not bad (except in some cases). It either lacks the content to justify itself fully or gives you way too much experience to make you op.

FO1 is a single character RPG. Even with Tycho, Dogmeat, Ian and Katja, you're still doing the heavy lifting and it makes sense you have to be OP.

My only real problem with classic Fallout is Endurance, and all they needed to do was give you a decent physical resistance to damage the higher it is.
 

Siobhan

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I like taxalot's idea since it provides the option for side quests that organically grow out of main quests without the player even noticing. RoA 3's mage tower is a nice example of what I have in mind: Strictly speaking, you're only required to free the dogs that the wizard captured. You do that before even setting a foot in the mage tower, but once you're there you're not gonna turn around and leave, you want to know what's going on in that tower. And that's the beauty of it: no quest entry on some to do list, no NPC pushing you to check out that tower, the player's curiosity is enough to get them to explore purely optional content.

The standard approach of NPC quest dispensers is so rote and boring in comparison. Just imagine what Deus Ex would be like if every minor nook and cranny came with an overt NPC request and journal entry attached: "steal aug canisters from VersaLife lab", "Jock wants the sniper rifle from his apartment", "there's a lot of money in a safe next to the Lucky Money"... way to cheapen the exploration.
 

animlboogy

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But what I'd really like to see are more games where you aren't the new guy in town, a nobody disconnected from the rest of the characters. The new guy trope is certainly a convenient way to give you all these infodumps you need to get to know the lore of the game, but then again designers abusing NPC dialogues for infodumps instead of letting the dialogue flow naturally should be punished with a lifelong ban from creating any more game content as far as I'm concerned.

You should have a look at the last couple pages of that Chris Avellone interview thread.
 

NotAGolfer

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But what I'd really like to see are more games where you aren't the new guy in town, a nobody disconnected from the rest of the characters. The new guy trope is certainly a convenient way to give you all these infodumps you need to get to know the lore of the game, but then again designers abusing NPC dialogues for infodumps instead of letting the dialogue flow naturally should be punished with a lifelong ban from creating any more game content as far as I'm concerned.

You should have a look at the last couple pages of that Chris Avellone interview thread.
I did.
Was pretty funny. :lol:
Would read again.

Don't feel like adding anything though, you guys have it under control. :salute:
 

Severian Silk

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I am playing Morrowind now and it is pissing me off. So many quests... and nearly all of them are shit. Deliver this... kill that. It's just meaningless busywork!
 

Jaesun

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I am playing Morrowind now and it is pissing me off. So many quests... and nearly all of them are shit. Deliver this... kill that. It's just meaningless busywork!

What in the fuck were you expecting?? :lol:
 
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