So long as its just for the experience and none of the drops. I can see players just making guests like kill the rabbit for 120 gold. Then spawn it right next to them but I would be stoked to see custom quest design making a thieves guild quest line would be fantastic.
I don’t think Cfrk meant player created quests, but a tool to make it easier for AGS teams to add them.
If we could make out own quests though. It would mean significantly less basic go here and kill or collect 5 things. Unless thats the only tool they have in their disposal which would explain a lot.
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They’d have to find a way to prevent it from being game breaking (in terms of mechanics and integration) and also abused. If it’s just for story, it might work. If there are any sort of rewards, hard pass. Folks will just create easy mode ‘quests’ that will be farmed over and over for xp/loot.
I honestly don’t think it’s a good idea.
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But if there was no reward other than to experience the story in of itself. This could open doors to interesting opportunities. I cringe at the idea of a twitch streamer making meme quests but thats probably better than what we have now. But if thats part of the growing pains we have to deal with in order to get other people to learn the functions than i cant argue with the end result being interesting npcs with adventures who may or may not double cross you during the experience.
This is an interesting suggestion!
How could this be implemented? Is there a certain milestone a player should meet prior to being able to make quests? What sort of quests would you like to create?
I look forward to everyone’s ideas!
I did mean for AGS’s internal use, BUT I would absolutely be open to player driven quest lines as well.
the main challenge would be moderation, and reward management.
For moderation, there would have to be a strict curation system or something.
For rewards, players could provide the rewards.
Yea that would be awesome
So you find a note in a chest that says hidden treasure (tier 1) you take it to the town steward and they translate it and a location sets on you map towards an elite area with a time limit of 2 hours. With some simple context that you better get it before some other adventurer finds it. A boss spawns over the chest based on the tier of the hidden treasure note being able to spawn a large boss like an elite alpha wolf, a brute, a lion, spriggon or lamia upon finding the box it spawns from the ground and traps the players in the area.
A player can commission other players to join the group for a flat rate at the town board or trade post. Thats how you make a repeatable open world adventure. People hunting for these notes and possibly selling the notes for a lesser cost but the rarity being tier 1 1/30 chance, tier 2 1/60 chance, tier 3 1/70, tier 4 1/100 and tier 5 a 1/150 chance that you find a note would make them an alluring curiousity.
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that sounds fun af
You go to the tavern and you see a sea crewman in tattered and soaked to the bones, shaking, crying and clinging onto his ale for dear life.
You say to the man, are you okay, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. He looks up and launches out of his chair and jets to the nearest corner, terrified holding his cup like its a weapon. He looks around and tries to calm down. Taking deep quick breaths. “You didnt see it” none of you have" “i was in a fleet of ships to the new lands, weeks went by and we got lost in the fog, the skies went dark and a storm blanketed the skies, the water went pitch black and from the depths was a bright red glow. I thought we were going to die right then and I wished I never watched but the red glow. It blinked! It wasnt just some black magic. It was a monster. These things jumped on the deck of our ship and attacked. I did everything i could but these spires had risen up from the depths and with a beam of light our mast was cut down and nearly crushed me to death. The ropes pulled me into the water and all i saw was massive teeth and I blacked out. The next thingI know is im on the shores and being attacked by another one of those things. My fellow crewmen, not right in the head trying to drag me into the water, I kicked and screamed but no one helped. I died, now im back, woke up and ran, I ran and I ran and I ran. I saw this place and Im not leaving! My friends. They say they are lost, I couldnt describe it better myself. But there was this other thing it was inhuman, and the teeth, it was one of those that took over the ship, it took my life, my weapon,… my being. I need help, I need my blade, I need retribution! Sniff Im a shadow of myself and I cant go on like this…I know you dont owe me anything but as god as my witness I will see that you are rewarded for your service will you help me?”
Where is the ship?
“I cant quite remember but i do remember some caves and alligators then rabbits. Well you help me on my travels?”
Accept and gain a follower
[Pathing along rabbit island] “I remember this. Hey, I wanted to thank you again, i never introduced myself did I. Im Shavezz but my crewmen used to call me Shave for short…How do they survive out here with no fresh water?”
[Pathing along the shoreline near the caves] I heard some horrific sounds as I ran past here. Shhh, look up there, that man must have succum to a similar fate as my crewmen, poor souls."
[Pathing to the makeshift camps] " stranger, this is it, this is where I washed up. I have no fighting spirit in me, not without my weapons."
You clear out the area and return with a chest
"You found them! Oh thank you! You have done a great service, wait… Is that. Oh! Oh god! Its one of those things! You wont get me! Not again!
[He panics and readys his blades]
An elite abomination spawns in the waters and charges.
You kill the creatures and the crewmen respawn to aid the creature.
“This is what it does? How horrible! I will have to avenge my mates!”
[You defeat the abomination and the crew mates but shave falls to the ground.] Guess that last attack got a bit too close… Cough. I… thank you…
The quest is completed and you head back to the tavern. You see shave, clutching his cup of ale
“You, this place, its hell, this place is a nightmare! How can we live like this!? The seemingly endless cycle of life and death. Think i will need some time to get my head around it…”
Quest ends.
Coming back to see shave still there, drinking away his problems.
“I’ll…hick, I’ll go out and beat that mon, hick ster…”
You walk in the back streets of brightwood and you see a man standing leaned up against the wall. “Hey pssst, you, wanna make some money?”
You can choose to accept or decline
“I knew you would be the type, its in the way you carry yourself, not like these other town folk. I have a debt to collect and my associate wont pay, do you feel like your up for the task?”
Yes/no
“His name is floyde and the coward ran to first light if you can beat him, dont kill him or anything just persuade him to pay up and I will give you a cut.”
You can agree or disagree to the job.
If you agree you go see floyde who is hammering some siding on a house. You have a chat with him. “So jake the snake sent you eh? You dont look like much well I guess we should start with the unpleasantries.” He whistles and 8 men pop out from behind the buildings and attack you. You beat them and floyde on the ground says, “alright youve made your point. Here is the stupid bag of coin.” Tell that snake that he will get whats coming to him. You bring the bag to Jake, and he says, "you did good, very good. you have tallent. Now I could pay you but there is another opportunity here. There is a fight club where you can make use of those skills if your interested. Ill give you the password and you let me walk with the bag of coin. If you agree, he tells you, “never enough” then he teleports away.
If you disagree he says its never enough with you guys is it? And teleports away.
If you disagree the stranger will sigh. I guess you will have to do. 8 men come out and begin punching you.
You defeat them and the stranger lying on the ground says whoa whoa hey wait a second friend, you have tallent. There is a fight club where you can make use of those skills if you spare me of this little transgression. In the arena of the marauders we have a little competition. Should be fun for a person of your… Persuasion. Its there regardless but if you spare me I will give you the pass word to the ring master. If you agree, he tells you, “never enough” then he teleports away.
If you disagree he says its never enough with you guys is it? And teleports away.
Go see the ring master
Got blooded? Password: if you have been told, “never enough.”
If you have been not been told, those words stick with you… “Its never enough with you guys”
Haha, looks like that pest found another patsy well look killer, there are 5 tiers of matches and you can take the easiest challenge like a welp or you can be a beast of the ring and fight for glory against the shark tank which is a 15 on 1 fight. There is no weapons or potions in these matches so put that stuff away we fight with what god gave us. Let me know when your ready to take on a real challenge. You can also challenge one or more people you may have beef with but its 1000 gold each and you set the teams. Winning team takes the lot and distributes evenly. If you get knocked out your out of the match.
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Think im gonna not give away all my ideas as i want to see if the devs want to make some recognition on this concept first.
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There are a number of things to consider here
The devs already have a pipeline for quest creation. You assume this pipeline holds the devs back from the speed of creation that you want, but NW isn’t just new quests. Everything has to planned, prioritized etc.
We don’t have the insight to know what the blockers are. If new quest content is being held up by the pipeline then they make a call on investing in fixing that (takes time now, to save time later) etc. That depends on what long terms goals have been set etc.
So I would put your request in terms of (not saying this is what you want, just trying illustrate that saying “make a tool” isn’t helpful for AGS any more than people saying “balance the weapons”).
“2 months between updates is too long. I would prefer more frequent quest updates which don’t need to be overly complex, but give more depth to the world, expand it’s story etc. An example quest is…[insert example here]. This opens a path for sideways progression e.g. a questline could be added to over several months with a useful reward at the end.”
Regarding the idea of opening up quest creation to players I have 2 objections to this
- It is a curation nightmare. Neverwinter used to do it and they gave up. Copyright etc. Part of this can be handled by only allowing select players to do it (more curation), but then you create a “Why can’t I be a quest creator” (more curation) etc. This is time I wouldn’t want AGS to spend doing.
- Even if that is solved the quests are never going to be as a good as AGS. The only way to do so would be to fully open up everything i.e. make New World fully moddable (and then hope that some really talented people get involved). Otherwise there are always going to be limitations on whatever quests are created. Imagine it, you need voice acting, new skins, localised text, new rewards etc. Creating a new quest is basically all the job roles; artist, FX, programmer, designer etc.
Because of this the player created quests will be a “side gimmick”, they won’t be part of main game and that’s a direction I wouln’t want NW to go in.
“2 months between updates is too long. I would prefer more frequent quest updates which don’t need to be overly complex, but give more depth to the world, expand it’s story etc. An example quest is…[insert example here]. This opens a path for sideways progression e.g. a questline could be added to over several months with a useful reward at the end.”
This part here, totally. Adding onto quest over time would be insane.
And youre right, idk what AGS’s blockers are but the vast majority of quest arent entirely complex, and IDK what the blockers are either. What we do know is, there just arent very many qeust. Brimstone was the BIG content push after a year and it was 10 new quest for endgame.
While the front-game 1-25 was done beautifully. All the quest flowed into each other. They felt immersive, and those zones started to feel more alive.
Again, idk what AGS does behind the scenes but if adding quest were easier, then they could dedicate more story tellers to fleshing out entire areas, and they could use the Lore Tomes as a guide. Yes the 1-25 did a great deal for making the starting areas feel more alive but the world, for as big as it is, still feels largely empty and devoid of life, which is weird for an island full of immortals.
I also agree that user generated content would be a nightmare to moderate but it could be as simple as extending the townboard and fleshing out what it means to be a controlling company. What if companies could request xyz materials… what if in order to upgrade the fort you had to physically have the materials and go and build it. Or even the craft tables.
What if the ruling company could issue “hey we need a bunch of portals closed so we dont get invaded, here is some gold from our coffers for doing it”. Or “here is some items from our company bank”. Idk something.
Sure its a side gimmick but as ive mentioned before. A reward is the least of my concerns. I would be more interesting in proving that an mmo can still be more fun than simply running around and killing/collecting 1-15 things and returning to the quest giver for a reward. It would still be a good thing to add to a portfolio and get a name out for being able to make decent scenarios for game companies that could prove valuable for the overal product. This could even go as far as to expedite the process of releasing mmo games in the future as clearly there is little drive for the companies to make unique quests as they are time consuming, it would make more sense to pay a smaller rate for favorited quests than to pay someone a flat rate for a sub parr product. A bit of competition for favorited quests would push for a better over all product. Not sure why they wouldnt go for that as a business model being a capitalistic business. Im not a fan of subscription based mmos but with that function i can see it being mutually beneficial for a few content creators.
My personal gripe against the current quest designer has a problem with chekhovs gun. Going through all that dialogue and establishing a diar situation and always failing to follow through with the worst case scenario. “A group of corrupted have stolen those heart gems you stole and their summoners are going to complete a ritual we dont know what it is but with the power of those gems its going to be big and thats bad for us. Go now you have to stop them before its too late!” You go down to the ritual site in great cleave and its just another fetch quest. You collect the freaken gems and its back to the quest giver. No real conflict and no skill required. Cant even spawn a demon brute or something. That was a bad quest amongts many bad quests and so many left players wanting. At least the more recent ones played much better but that kind of mission takes a long time for them to develop and thats why this mission creator can prove to be beneficial for fans of the game.
Hey whats up guys. A mod says they want to see some action towards this post and people are letting it just slide. Are people passionate about this or is this just another instant gratification post. @Cfrk, @Tam.Toucan, lets see some of your ideas. I dont care if you think your not good. You gotta start somewhere.
Now this I 100% agree with. If you look at the 1-25 experience, it feels a WHOLE lot better. And I think eventually they are doing 26-60 as well. So some of those quest are going to improve substantially.
… I was referring to this. The mod wants to see more than a few people actually submitting some evidence that this would be used if worken on and not just a pointless gimick.