How do you make a good traditional quest without it becoming a fetch-quest or a "go kill mobs" quest?

How do you make a good traditional quest without it becoming a fetch-quest or a "go kill mobs" quest?

You don't do a fetch-quest or a "go kill mobs" quest.

writing

and how do you do that? I always felt as though quests usually fall under either one of these

You really cant. Every game not just mmos fall into this category.

Make it so the entire point of the quest isn't to fetch something or go kill something.

Come on.

Story.

like what?

Have the thing you're questing for available from the start, send the person out to do something that requires the item or thing in question to be activated.

give one example. Reaching an area is just as bad.
How can you do it without a good story?

thief 2 has some missions like this.

you simply listen and gather intel. not really "fetching" anything. or follow someone.

Interesting characters, story, gameplay, and an incentive for the players to go about the quest.

Witcher 2 has a quest where you go on an all night bender and walk around town half naked trying to find your stuff and talking to people to find out what happened.

There is an example of a good quest. Good premise, you interact with good characters during it and it's memorable. Even better that you can keep the tattoo he gets.

That was Skyrim.

Runescape's quests

Just like this guy says, I don't really think the problem is with the quest itself but with its justification. If the players are not provided with a good reason to tackle the quest or something, it will feel stale and boring no matter what it is. Basically, the quest needs to sound entacing and rewarding.

...

it has to have a well written story

Still essentially just a fetch quest (fetching the information from the people).
Next please

what about quests where you convert people to your cause?
quests where you infect/corrupt something or someone?
construction quests where you have to build something.

you could literally phrase anything to be "fetch x" you humongous faggot

This tbqh famalama

Just make it so it isn't go and kill 10 bears, or bring me 10 bear asses. As long as the writing isn't abhorrent or forces you to go through a dungeon filled with draugr, with a boss draugr and magic word at the end it should be ok.

It's a meme but it's true; Runescape had really good quests. Some of them can get a little samey, but they are great examples of not being fetch quests. There's even a take on a fetch quest with one small favour.

Make it a go fetch cowlicks quest and you're good.

Objective: Survive

...

You can't, all quests by default even if they try to avoid it end up in a "fetch it" or "kill x" style, the issue is not that, the issue is making the quests interesting, so even if they are similar you wouldn't care about it.
Also not making 13 fetch quests in a row.

What about a quest where you have to kill 10 bears and then bring their bear asses back to the quest giver?

>Take fetch/kill quest
>add "I don't know where it/they are"
>permit the player to find it/them in more than one way
bam an actually interesting treasure hunt/assassination quest

The problem with those quests is that it is usually brainless labor. You get a point on the map, go to that point, grab item/kill monsters, then come back. You make quests better by putting in some choices and/or puzzles. For example, you go to investigate some murders, find some clues on your own, and piece together who the murderer is. Don't make the clues too obvious, and let the player decide the murderer by doing something like hanging a person of your choice. Hell, make it more complex by allowing the player to report false evidence to try and frame a murderer.

>Go somewhere and listen to someone
>Go back to quest giver
>Not a fetch quest.

I love forging stuff in Dragon's Dogma for this

that's the point of the thread

quests are always fetch this or kill that

its problematic

therefore->but sequences

depends how they do it. can i do it while i run around doing other stuff or have i been able to kill and loot bears already throughout the game? that would be ok for me. if i have to make a run to a specific area because only there the bears spawn for no reason other than the quest says so then i'd be slightly annoyed.

>what skills does the player have, or might be able to get?
>how do i make a mission out of this?

Maybe your dude can cast fire. Make him go help with something that needs fire.

Maybe be can do [thing] and somewhere someone really needs [thing] for [stuff] to happen.

>Something happens, introductory dialogue/cutscene
>Protagonist needs to do something about it because it's relevant to him
>Sends you to an aread created solely for the quest
>Enemies if any are quest enemies
>Gameplay is specific to the quest, this may include the enemies having a partiular mechanic that makes them impossible to beat in usual ways
>More dialogue/cutscenes as you advance and things happen
>The new mechanics/enemies get combined and grow more complex as you advance
>The experience was interesting
To be noted is that I'm talking singleplayer games, quests in MMOs are just an attempt to patch an already broken idea.

Games that have "kill mob / fetch X" just want the game to be artifially longer, as they could be automatic as achievement, or just rebalance the game so they don't need to exist.
Furthermore they usually add fucking boring stories to them that nobody gives a shit about.

the point of this thread is good quests that aren't monotonous fetch quests, a quest involving the collection of an item is not inherently bad because it requires this. people categorize quests as fetch quests when the entire framework is the collection, when an NPC says go to this place and collect this rock. if the quest has an interesting premise, character and story to it then what's the problem?

imo pillar of eternity does this very good.
>let the player decide the murderer by doing something like hanging a person of your choice
this is good but i personally hate it if you have to decide but the decision is so unclear that it's basically a "who do you like better" decision.

Diplomacy? Like, settle a feud between two or more parties via dialogue?

You could make a quest for a Paladin or Cleric character where he has to do 10 good deeds at a day for his gods. Let him give money to the poor, heal wounded/sick people, get someone a ride on his horse, or help when someone gets attacked by bandits.

That's the problem with MMO's/RPGs, they're not immersive enough, the NPCs are bland and lack depth, just imagine all the shit that you did in the middle ages and a game trying to copy/represent the middle ages are always just yea kill that/get the super epic mega sword with 999 dmg. There's a lot of quests that could be made without fetching or killing shit, like rally a troop, persuade X to do that, breed fucking horses lol, rape the queen, you get it, too bad rpgs suck balls.

mfw prolly never will experience full body VR in middleages or shit

the problem is that the player is still just fetching something.

its boring, generic, and lazy

I have been doing that in games since I was 4, 22 years ago. I'm tired of it, think something better. 22years fetching shit, just kill me

Also the thing with fetch quests is that they feel so fucking useless and dull, the only reward being EXP and gold, why would I as a character in a world go fetch fucking flowers for a guy when theres a million things I'd rather do?

This.

Defence. Survival. Escape.
Jesus Christ.

Who the fuck is this guy?

some dude in shemale porn

Well, come up with something new and unique and share with us

Alright. I've just seen this guy quite a bit lately.

Gothic 3 is cool.

You can go in any direction and just naturally "quest"

Escort quests are highly innovative

sounds like someones been looking at shemale porn

make it interesting. give you more things to do long the way. go into this unique dungeon, defeat its guardians, solve the puzzles there, bring me the skull of the dead emperor entombed within it that I might summon his ghost and learn the secrets of my enemies. you get to keep the unique enchanted gear he was buried with'
is more rewarding than 'bring me twenty bear asses, because I hate bears. I will give you eighty gold for it. '

Majora's Mask

Lots of quests are just fulfilling life

Most fetch quests and kill quests are too similiar to jobs, if a guy told you to kill 10 wolves irl for a thousand bucks thats a job, if a guy tells you to collect 30 blocks of stone its a job, if a guy tells you to take over California thats a fucking quest

You can have fetch quests and kill quests. What modern games do is just give you a check list, the location of those items pointed on your map, and bish bash boom you're done. You don't care because you only did it because it was a quest, you got items, you got exp.

You do what this game did. It is literally a game of 100+ side quests. But the thing is, all the side quests are short, or long, stories. They all, well most are, decently thought out interesting stories that often times intertwine with each other. You care about the characters, you have to figure out everything yourself, and the endings are satisfying.

Another good example is Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Not the whole game no. Just one area. In one area you do fetch and kill quests but the reason you do them makes it interesting. First it starts out as a mystery, then it turns out there are wonky spiders. Then it turns out someone you thought trusted made a deal with a (demi? I don't remember)god. Then fight through that beings castle and resolve the quest. It was a side quest with both kill and gather quest in it but it was more entertaining than the rest of the game. The rest of the game was riddle with boring fetch and kill quests.

>take over California thats a fucking quest
>kill 10 politicians so you can have a chance to take over Cali
>rig 3 events to win over the civillians
>win 4 debates

etc. etc.

It's just one long quest of doing X

Miniquests generally end up screwed up on this sense because they're too small. But in essence the general idea is to make the quest's goal not the highlight of the quest.

Example, If anyone's played the Exile or Avernum series from spiderweb software. There's a campaign in path of exile where your goal is to find out why a valley is dying.

You explore the valley, find out that in parts of the valley the river is toxic, and in other parts the water is just fine, so you track down and figure out there's an abandoned wizard's school in the way of the river and then you get strong enough to go inside and fight your way downward to find out old badly stored refuse was poisoning the water.

The quest could technically be a wow style miniquest where it goes
>HEY THAT WIZARD TOWER IS GUNKING UP THE RIVER, SO TURN ITS AUTO CLEANING SYSTEMS ON

Where you run somewhere and press a lever to fix it.

Or it could be
>Guys, this fucking place is dying, go find out

and you have an adventure, finding out everything along the way on how to resolve it.

My concepts for games always encourage players exploring and learning on their own, rather than being told.

Yeah after I did this quest I realized how shit the game was and quit before I made it to the next area.

Make it so it doesn't have an objective marker. Have it so that either the player was listening to how the quest goes and places to get hints how to do it OR just dump the player into the quest relying on their knowledge of the game world at that time.

Like the bear ass thing, make it so the player has to think to themself "Where is the best place to get bear asses?" then put something in the mot likely location to reward the player for thinking of going there.

If you want quests that don't require your character going to [place] to do [thing], you're kind of shit out of luck because that is LITERALLY the definition of quest, you retarded motherfucker.

Yes but that's how real life is, its an RPG still so you have to roleplay. I think what really destroys rpgs is the lack of reward, when you finish a quest and get like 500 exp it doesn't feel fulfilling at all, also the npcs sucks most of the time so theres that

Yeah I fucking despise that, why do you have to know where to go with the help of a marker, this kills rpgs for me 90% of the time, its like "if you wanna forge this sword you have to visit the dwarf bla bla, but he's been missing for 80 years, btw ill mark on ur map where he is bb", neat

Not to mention you literally explore the entire valley beforehand, seeing the effects the river is having on the world and the changes along the way.

So it feels like you fixing the problem has an impact. Quests dont feel like you've impacted anything in most games.

And the one in Fremmnink Trials too.

I was contemplating an MMO in which npcs and resources don't respawn.

Then your fetch and kill quests would have an actual impact on the world.

require reading and problem solving without a huge arrow pointing where to go

the quest arrow ruined singleplayer games for me

you're right. on the other hand, it's like the formula for a movie. yes it's the same boring mcguffin over and over again. but the quality of characters and setting and etc make the same formula amaze. same with quests. the best quests don't feel like a quest because you're immersed in a story.

Here's another question:

How do you eliminate the desire or capacity to grind from players without trivializing the game's difficulty and or making fights seem pointless?

make those same quests but allow them to be completed in different ways that affect the world and the player

Bring 5 Boar Dicks:
>actually just kill 5 boars and rip their dicks
>lie with high CHA you already gave him 5 dicks
>enchant 5 bear dicks to look like boar dicks
>steal 5 boar dicks from a vendor or another adventurer
>bully the quest giver into giving you money or xp without doing that dumb shit

Good progression design. Give more reward for quests than just solo killing. Fighting won't be pointless because fights need to be completed for quests.

How do we evolve or improve the HP system for combat?

It feels like a "build a better mousetrap" kind of quandary.

Also have a nice journal. Like,
>man needs bear asses he was located in bunny district, he was upset with bears raping his wife. he told me that there's been a local bear gang hanging around outside of town

Then you go explore out side of town and come across them in some cave or something.

But now we have
GET 10 BEAR ASSES
>select active quest
BEARS R IN CAVE GO KILL

Limb based HP

Make it a fetch-quest or 'go kill mobs' setup in a way that you actually care (ie Cook's Assistant in Runescape, or Whodunit? in Oblivion)

>Shoot dick
>Shoot dick
>Shoot dick
>Shoot dick
>Shoot dick
>Shoot dick

>Not shooting each finger

Stop replying to the mong idiot

Make the world an actually living environment.

Sort of what I do in my D&D campaigns. The world keeps moving forward so if you stop trying to find the devil, the devil will find you, or will find a nearby town and tear it apart.

the plot must always move forward

I'd give heavily diminishing returns to xp rewards for random fights based on what type of enemy you're fighting and how many you have killed so far, and balance it so the majority of XP is obtained though questing over pointless fighting, and giving equivalent rewards to avoiding combat over killing everything.

Oblivion's thief guild after stealing required amount to get in was great. You ended up having to steal a bunch of random junk. It turns out that junk is so you could infiltrate the most guarded thing in the world.

Then you have skyrim's thief guild quest which is nothing but the worst part of oblivion's thief guild quests, getting admittance to the guild. Oh and a long excursion through a cave that has nothing to do with thieving.

In the first real level of Deus Ex HR if you just wonder around the office the hostages in the next mission all die. Stuff like that?

Most runescape quests manage to avoid this trope pretty well adding in puzzles, story, exploration and all kinds of shit.

Also to help with fetch quests, when appropriate, have a time limit on them and a consequence for failing it.

For example, if you don't hunt the ten bear asses for the guy in time, the knights guarding that place take the guy since he didn't have enough payment for them. This results in the town not having a shopkeeper or whatever.

Yeah. Go slowly forcing the players to move forward as staying where they are gets increasingly more dangerous.

I've been playing Divinity OS with a friend these days and there is a good variety of quests, and most of them are fun and engaging. I think it's the nice mix of storytelling, puzzle/mistery solving and battle. There is this main quest where the party must solve a murder case, and investigating the city for clues, sneaking into prohibited areas, interrogating NPCs and going outside the city to find proof made us feel like detectives. Boy that was fun.

Reward players who don't grind somehow.
I don't think a lot of people liked timed things. It cuts people out of content or gives them anxiety because they feel rushed. It's why some people won't even give the atelier games a try. Even if it's a lenient time limit. In table top games it's okay because there isn't a set content to explore or complete. In video games it is.

>Reward players who don't grind somehow.
Be specific dork.
>I don't think a lot of people liked timed things.
I think a good balance is have timed things, but giving players breathers between timed things so they can take it easy. That is to say, have missions that must be done ASAP, but also have moments in the story where the player can suitably fuck off to do whatever from an RP/story perspective.

depends on the videogame.

quest based games like monster hunter work fine

Deus ex isn't a big clock on screen. Sarif constantly tells you something bad could or is about to happen if you keep just wondering around. When it does you don't fail, the hostages are just dead

well you can implement merchants smiths and shit, just buy material from players and craft swords and sell equipment to other players so he doesn't have to grind

Dude. Nigger.

All oblivion quests were interesting af. Like the one where you explore a mysterious village where everyone is invisible. Or the one where you have to kill people in a house discreetly and get them to kill each other.

ect ect

make something like the quest in fallout 2 new reno where you had to find out who sold the drugs to the wrights son

Did they do that? I remember dicking around a long time and none of the hostages died.

I wasn't thinking of MMOs, and in MMOs what you describe will require grinding for money from the players anyway.

Yes.

I still don't understand how everyone misunderstood op

You make the quest interesting/memorable/engaging and important.

Doesn't matter what it is when you break it down to it's core, what matters is how invested you can get a player into it.

A poor example of fetch quests is MMOs, there is zero emotional investment and nothing is retained anyways.

A good example is having a fetch quest with multiple outcomes and have it play out different ways depending on what you do.

2hard indie devs can't do something of such scale, that requires good writing.

well you can do it in sp games as well? take a loan from kikes and do the same shit if it ever were like that