Dr Felix
Environmental storytelling skeleton
Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this but I'm working on a Fallout 2 mod and I'm thinking about how to make the various sidequests good, or at least not bad. I'd love some input on what factors impact how much you like doing a quest. Now I know the answer to a lot of this is 'It depends' because there are different types of quests. A short sidequest that involves talking to a couple of NPCs and a skill check for a small reward doesn't need to have morally grey branching paths and an effect on the end slides, but a large quest should involve at least some of those things. I'll give some ideas for general guidelines and see what you guys think.
I suppose there are two components to a quest's design, the idea and the execution. The idea would include stuff like the writing being interesting, nuanced, and believable regarding the characters, worldbuilding, etc and the quest being relevant to the location's outcome in the end slides, as well as multiple solutions to the quest and multiple outcomes (depending on the size of the quest).
On the other hand the execution of the quest would involve what the player has to actually do to complete it. Are the tasks tedious or too easy? Is the difficulty of combat and skill checks appropriate for the expected player level? Is the next step unintuitive or Bethesda-compass-blip obvious? Is it paced poorly? Does it involve too much travel time? Is the quest reward too small or too big? Does it have too much dialogue? Is it just boring to play? A lot of getting the execution right probably involves playtesting and balancing, since it's relatively little effort to tweak the threshold for a speech check, the money/XP given as a reward, level of enemies, etc.
A bigger picture thing to consider would be quest variety. A fully developed location should have some smaller quests (eg fetch 10 mcguffins, fix the village well), some medium quests, and some larger quests, based off the time to complete.
So some general guidelines I can think of:
-Quests that are straightforward to complete should be quick to complete.
-Quests that take a longer time to complete should have multiple paths and interesting writing.
-Big quests should be possible to complete for any character build, especially main quests.
-Quests should have different ways of being completed by different character builds, even for the same quest path, eg pick the door's lock, steal the key from the guard, talk your way past the guard, bribe the guard, or kill the guard.
-Quests where you have to figure out the next step should have hints to guide the player to at least one solution.
-Most quests should be doable for at least one path without combat.
-Quests should flesh out factions and locations, providing depth and nuance.
-Big quests should often have unique rewards, eg unique items, stat boosts, membership of a faction, a companion.
-In quests where there is a clear-cut good/evil choice, the evil choice should have a reason to do it other than just to be evil.
-Puzzle/mystery quests should be optional unless easy, since many players will get stuck.
-Quests should account for obvious solutions, eg "Just go to the police", "Just kill that guy", "Just steal the thing".
What would you suggest to add to this list or change?
I suppose there are two components to a quest's design, the idea and the execution. The idea would include stuff like the writing being interesting, nuanced, and believable regarding the characters, worldbuilding, etc and the quest being relevant to the location's outcome in the end slides, as well as multiple solutions to the quest and multiple outcomes (depending on the size of the quest).
On the other hand the execution of the quest would involve what the player has to actually do to complete it. Are the tasks tedious or too easy? Is the difficulty of combat and skill checks appropriate for the expected player level? Is the next step unintuitive or Bethesda-compass-blip obvious? Is it paced poorly? Does it involve too much travel time? Is the quest reward too small or too big? Does it have too much dialogue? Is it just boring to play? A lot of getting the execution right probably involves playtesting and balancing, since it's relatively little effort to tweak the threshold for a speech check, the money/XP given as a reward, level of enemies, etc.
A bigger picture thing to consider would be quest variety. A fully developed location should have some smaller quests (eg fetch 10 mcguffins, fix the village well), some medium quests, and some larger quests, based off the time to complete.
So some general guidelines I can think of:
-Quests that are straightforward to complete should be quick to complete.
-Quests that take a longer time to complete should have multiple paths and interesting writing.
-Big quests should be possible to complete for any character build, especially main quests.
-Quests should have different ways of being completed by different character builds, even for the same quest path, eg pick the door's lock, steal the key from the guard, talk your way past the guard, bribe the guard, or kill the guard.
-Quests where you have to figure out the next step should have hints to guide the player to at least one solution.
-Most quests should be doable for at least one path without combat.
-Quests should flesh out factions and locations, providing depth and nuance.
-Big quests should often have unique rewards, eg unique items, stat boosts, membership of a faction, a companion.
-In quests where there is a clear-cut good/evil choice, the evil choice should have a reason to do it other than just to be evil.
-Puzzle/mystery quests should be optional unless easy, since many players will get stuck.
-Quests should account for obvious solutions, eg "Just go to the police", "Just kill that guy", "Just steal the thing".
What would you suggest to add to this list or change?
