Is there an RPG sidequest formula that doesn't get shat on?

Is there an RPG sidequest formula that doesn't get shat on?
Do people even know what the fuck do they want to do in quests in RPG's?

As the game type suggests, roleplay.

Lots of options

Speaking as someone from /tg/ who actually has a regular game night with a stable group... What does 'roleplaying' really mean to you, within the context of a video game?

How many? If it was tabletop, well there's infinite options, but sadly, a computer can't think like a GM yet, so there needs to be some limits.

Anything that isn't a generic fetch quest like look for 5 X

lots of those
they get shat on all the same

Sidequests are supposed to be trite.

I like sidequests that come with a unique minigame, sidequests that FEEL like epic progression is happening, and sidequests with meaningful rewards.

>Side quest is exactly like a main quest but it doesn't advance the story.
There you go.

Oh, another obvious one I missed - Sidequests where you get to learn more about character/party members and their backstory.

What would you do instead?

but main story quests are 100% just sidequests that advance the sotry already
you either have to go somewhere and talk to someone, get something or kill something

People are fucking frustrated with all of that shit but they don't come up with any attractive alternatives

I want sidequests that have variety, are interesting, offer choices and logically fit within the gameworld and the games themes.

Anyone that played RPGs in the golden age knows exactly what they want to do in sidequests in RPGs.

There was a time when sidequests looked something like this. You'd get a cue from someone in town. It wouldn't go in a quest log and you'd have to remember it. This wouldn't be impossible because the game wouldn't have 5000 pointless quests. If you go to the right location, you'd get an actual dungeon. Not a 5-minute long dungeon. Not a copy-paste outpost with an exclamation mark in the middle of it. A long-ass, difficult dungeon that could take an hour or more to clear. It would have unique music, unique monsters, a unique boss, some carefully placed, meaningful loot that you couldn't get anywhere else, puzzles to solve, and even some cutscenes with optional plot.

This used to happen *all the time.* I want those days back.

Something like BG2, where a lot of them are massive and have unique areas.

I like sidequests that have dialogue and cutscenes and a choice of some sort. Even better if they end up having some impact on the main storyline.

Basically Witcher 3 did it best and set a new standard for RPGs.

With my sidequests, I'm thinking of gameplay that matches main quests, but takes away or adds a new element. Like delivering 'pizza' in a zelda-like game, and you have to hold the 'pizza' so you can't use any of your abilities, so you have to navigate the overworld to deliver the 'pizza' using a special route your learnt during the main game, one that avoids enemies and uses passages/bridges you previously cleared. With rewards being uniqe items that can be used in the regular game.

Story wise I think a side quest should explore a new character or group, or 'another side' of existing ones and have their own self contained story that has meaningful development and conclusions.

> learnt

Yeah, whatever, Cletus.

be aware that I'm actually taking notes here, so no , you're not talking to the wall here

I really liked the downloadable post-game sidequests in Dragon Quest IX. Gameplay wise they weren't anything special, but a good portion of them expanded the backstory of a couple locations and NPCs you met ages ago. So maybe that, have the events and outcomes of sidequests feel like they could actually be part of the main game and have some weight to them.

Sidequests should be like quests in runescape.

>Basically Witcher 3 did it best

Urgh....

oblivion thief sidequests

Your game would fucking bomb if you did Gothic 2 quests and map today.
An I'm saying this as someone who has still Night of The Raven Installed.

Side quest should be like Chrono Trigger.

That's an interesting point you made, OP. I hope this thread develops into a nice discussion.

IMO, there isn't one formula, it all depends on the setting, the kind of game, the mechanics available to the player etc. What I personally want from quests in RPGs, however, is:
1. For them not to be excessively repetitive. Ideally every quest, even if very similar to other quest in regards to mechanics necessary to complete or whatever, should have a little, unique story, motivation, reward, twist. This doesn't need to be some huge, excessive shit, just a little bit of differentiation in every single quest.
2. Grinding should be minimized. I want to fight some monsters and encounter some obstacles while doing a quest, but I don't want a quest to focus solely on any of these activities, like murder 100 bears to bring me 12 bear furs.
3. I want them to inspire (not necessarily force) me to explore the world, experiment with gameplay mechanics and interact with new npcs.

Runescape's are amazing. Never seen it adapted to a singleplay game though.

This lad knows his shit

Fuck yes, i always look forward to doing the pre-Lavos sidequests every run.

Name 10 games that do this

so basically we can't have good things because the masses are drooling idiots?

gotcha!

I don't remember gothic 2 having shitty side quests.

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That's an interesting point OP.
I guess that quests shouldn't be linear, or/and guided.
I prefer when you've to talk to people or to inspect items to get hits, that can be added in a hint journal. I also like the way the ABC Murders deals with hints, when you've to create a map with your hints to find a new solution.

I also think that there must be different kind of quests. About materials, about helping people. All depends on what your game can provide and can reward the player with.

For the bosses, I don't really like the idea of dungeons with systematic end bosses. Bosses should appear in random places, even in dungeons. All depends on how you design the dungeons/quests, but I don't really see why you can't continue a quest after killing a boss, until you get what you want (item, person, power, event..)

Yakuza 0. It uses a different approach to the same old quests by including degenerate quest givers and Lifetime movie situations.

Developers in 90's and early 00's didn't give a fuck about babies and weren't held at gunpoint by owners/publishers who only care about sales and market share
If you wanted to beat a game you actually had to get fucking good at playing it. Today everyone is fucking shitting himself if the game doesn't make you a walking god with GPS and clairvoyance installed in his head within first five minutes.

They weren't shitty but there weren't any gps darts or magic bread crumbs and the map only shows your position and nothing else AND you actually have to GET a map before you can use it, for example you were told that bandits were seen dragging a girl towards Sekob's farm.
If you don't know where is Sekob's farm that's too fucking bad, you will have to find it.
Once you get there, the only clue you get is that bandits passed by on the road around the farm and then veered off to the forest, and you actually have to find their camp. Once you kill them, there is a note nearby which is a farewell letter from the girl.
If you are a casual shitter you may not even find it and that's where the quest ends for you, but if you find it and deliver it to her boyfriend, the quest still doesn't end, it just ties to another which spanse several chapters.

also Gothic 2 had interesting sidequests in that once you became somebody people actually stopped giving you menial tasks like "go harvest 20 turnips" (which is an actual quest earlier in the game)

(Literal) magic bread crumbs appearing in a quest would be cool tho, as long as they would be limited to this exact quest or a limited number of quests

Quests that evolve with the status of the player (known in the world) is pretty cool.

I wonder if there is a game in which the quests do evolve with the status of the player, but not for groups that don't know about the increase in player's status

Could a game use the two systems?
A GPS one or a hint one, depending on the player?
With more quests/rewards for the hint system, for example.

I'm not exactly sure how well it works with Gothic 2, I noticed it once I became a member of City militia I the farmhands at Lobart's farm if they needed help with anything, the guy literally told me "a man of your standing wouldn't want to get himself dirty on the field", but they are affiliated with the city
meanwhile I ran across a hunter in the woods and asked if he would teach me his trade, he still told me to get him some food if I wanted something from him

Gothic 2 has all kinds of interesting little things, like the guy on Onar's farm who collects old coins. The coins have literally no monetary value with any other merchant, but this guy will - through a completely trivial dialogue reveal to you that he collects them. First he wants to simply pay you one gold for each or as he puts it "the same as they were once worth", but IIRC you can jew him pretty hard if you actually try, I think I got him up to three gold per coin, but you have to try several times and he will tell you to fuck off at first, there is no speech check like in New Vegas for example. You have no idea you can do it until you actually try doing it.

Enough for most stats to be viable but they should have different consequences imo

That's awesome! (with jewing the fuck out of the guy) I honestly didn't know about that, when I tried to negotiate a better deal and got told to fuck myself I just agreed for the standard deal.

Gothic was truly ahead of it's times, it'll never cease to amaze me.

It's not even that as much as it comes down to eventually insulting the player's intelligence. People can read and have rudimentary spatial awareness. You don't have to make think follow magical trails or GPS compass all the time. I remember there was a huge outrage on Steam forums when Divinity Original Sin actually expected you to pay attention .

>I remember there was a huge outrage on Steam forums when Divinity Original Sin actually expected you to pay attention .

Unfortunately that is the reality we're currently trapped in.

>You have no idea you can do it until you actually try doing it.

I think this is really the biggest problem today - everything has to be so overt and transparent for player's benefit because he needs to see how the wheels turn underneath. In a sense it's overcompensation for games of old where you'd basically get the "it's all in the manual faggot, go read it" treatment. At some point modern players grew to despise trial and error as bread and butter, and expects to finish every game without failing or loading.

I want quest and chapters made like a movie, with a presentation of the area/city/chapter, and travelings, ala MGS.
And I like GPS quests, they're better for kids and speedrunners. The real adepts will search and talk with people instead.

It's a matter of what's custom. People don't like change and it will always be painful. Now it is customary for games to be handholding babby fests so people chimp out when a game requires a player to use their brain. If it is ever to chage, the custom has to change. Games need to require thinking and attention from players. At first it will cause outrage, but once players get used to it, they will treat it as a norm.

i liked how the sidequests were given organically in persona 4. unfortunately a lot of them were fetch quests.

>given organically

Care to elaborate?

Problem is games will never, as the mainstream sees it, regress to olden days. Once you introduce full VA into your game there's no going back. Same with general game design - once you accustom people to hand holding and basically just "being there for the experience" it's very hard for them to go back to actually being involved on more than simply emotional level. It's why, for example, fans of Telltale games aren't necessarily fans of P&C adventures as well.

Well, for example FFXV had two good sidequests. The first good one was when you fought the Behemoth because it actually felt like you'd hunt it and that it was a threatening beast. The second good guest was when you had to get the first gem for Dino because it actually felt important that you didn't wake the giant bird because it would fuck your shit up.
All other quests sucked. Every single one.
There really isn't much except kill beast x, get item y or talk to person z to do in quests but it's just cheap when you don't even offer any kind of reason to do them except "habitat destruction" when it comes to monsters. It's cheap to tell me to go to a random boring places and get parts for my car, why are they even there? Check fucking pipes in the city because I can't do that right now, wtf?
Good sidequests give life to the world and aren't chores you do for money and points. Witcher 3 did it right pretty often.

Witcher 3 had amazing sidequests for a game of its scale and considering open world games have fuck all as far as good sidequests go, but I think Mankind Divided had even better sidequests

you had to talk to the people in the world after certain days and there wasn't any permanent quest-givers, just random people in the town that needed shit that they'd tell you about. the quests themselves were shit mind you, but I liked that the giving of them fed back into the small town vibe and the time management.

MD was sadly forgotten way too fast.

Sounds pretty cool.

care to mention some specific examples?

>Well, for example FFXV had two good sidequests. The first good one was when you fought the Behemoth because it actually felt like you'd hunt it and that it was a threatening beast. The second good guest was when you had to get the first gem for Dino because it actually felt important that you didn't wake the giant bird because it would fuck your shit up.
Funny, I hated both of those because I knew they were scripted segments I couldn't fuck up.

Examples won't help his point because as he says, they are all shitty side quests.

What he liked was that they took characters who would otherwise be wall dressing NPCs, people who stand around and say one line when you talk to them like in most RPGs and eventually had them ask you for help.

It helps the random nameless NPCs feel more alive and like this is actually a world you're in and that stuff goes on that you aren't seeing.

Contrast this with FFXV which is filled to the brim with character models you can't interact with in anyway and set quest givers who seem to follow you wherever you go next int he story to give you quests.

pretty much this.
it helps that their dialogue constantly changes too.

if people are moanin and groanin about having to kill something in a game then theres a deeper problem which is that fighting something isnt fun

ff12 has really good sidequests

Star Ocean 1
Star Ocean 2
Suikoden 1
Suikoden 2
Suikoden 3
Suikoden 4
Suikoden 5
Wild Arms 5
Dragon Quest 7
Dragon Quest 8

the reason that (go there, kill thing) and (go there, pick up thing, bring it back) get panned is because they aren't developed enough to register as anything but a time waster
BG2 is a good example. Some guy in a pub tells you to go there and kill thing, but he's a dragon who has brainwashed you and now you have paladins breathing down your neck unless you can prove your innocence by saving a hostage and doing a dungeon (optional dragon boss fight)
Sidequests should have impact that goes beyond 'slightly more money for player character'
Basically, more runescape, less wow

Quests and bosses were pretty cool in Tomba. Some were hard as fuck to understand/finish, but they weren't linear nor boring.

I never considered runescape to be an example of good quest design

But complex quests are easier to develop/code since they provide less elements to the players.

Really I think any sidequest can be considered worthwhile if the game manages to make it feel like there was a reason for the quest instead of just wasting your time for more loots/exp.

A quest where you have to go murder X things could work if done right even if it's the archetypal shitty quest. Like if you were killing things so that some settlers could set up a house there and if you visited them later in the game you'd see other people settling nearby into a small village. Or maybe if you were hunting something that was overeating all of the birds in the region, after you kill it you start to see birds returning and chirping along to the background music.

>runescape
This, runescape's quests can take hours and have everything from puzzles, to combat, to exploration.
They're ACTUAL quests, proper adventures, not kill bears for bear noses.
They have their flaws, but they're the best quests in vidya to my knowledge.

Speaking as a casual rpg player, runescape is the only game I enjoyed quests in. Everything else felt like I was filling out a checklist