A differnt take on how to quest, or my big idea for imersive game play.

[Zennez]

A different take on how to quest, or my big idea for immersive game play…


Note: First off I have played DDO since beta and have a lifetime sub to LOTR and Asheron’s Call from its beginning.. I am not a company hater and I am not saying there are huge problems with the game. This is just my reflections on present state DDO after paying thousands of computer games over that last 45 years.

So, I had been thinking about how the quests chains run and the lack of continuity in the sagas and how they work in DDO. The sagas in my view are an important flavor of the D&D world. If you look at the Gygax’s “against the Giants” series it is a good example. G1, G2, and G# modules made up that “Saga” leading up to the beginging of D1& D2 “Descent Into the Depths of the Earth”. I think the idea has sorta been lost in the DDO world.

The breadcrumbs between quests are spotty and scream for newbies to go google for directions. Some people have no problem with that, but it takes a lot of the game play out of the so called game. D&D already had enough technical stuff that needed to be looked up and tracked, like AC, toHitAC0, base weapons damage, armor type, yada yada yada, why add more “research” just to play a quest chain.

Someone ought to write a game based on questing by just searching google and getting experience. These are issues in most games for one extent to another and I am looking at hoping to mold the world to be more happy, social, and inviting (Read: FUN!).

When you look at the reasons for these issues in DDO, it all comes down to game design. Content is not really designed into the game world structure and it is reserved mostly for in quest expression. The hubs offer flavor and areas for vendors and utilities like mail, but foster little in the way of social interaction. Chat is usually vary sparse and limited to guildies. LFG seems like an addon and your mileage may vary.

It is all understandable to an extent, because the content is almost completely static, not much every really changes. Sure a hole gets blown in the harbor wall after the portal to the Demonweb is opened, but that’s the exception to the rule. It costs more to change the world than to add a quest both, so again it makes some sense. Breadcrumbs added to the game world for one specific quest just become annoying to everyone the more they are effected by it. Getting knocked down by the Dragon messenger in the Marketplace for instance, and that’s not even a breadcrumb.

The DDO marketplace has no hawkers, how in the world can they sell their goods? For example, if you put in a voice audio breadcrumb of a criers call in the marketplace leading to Yorrick Amanatu and the Sharn Syndicate quest line, there needs to be a control of who gets that breadcrumb or people will become annoyed and turn off their audio in the Marketplace. More sound and voice acting is better in my opine, as long as it is quality.

I am getting tired of typing and not playing so lets get to the meaty innerds of my idea!

1. Create a new class of equipable items called Quest items. These items are control items for finding and completing a quest chain. To participate in the quest it must be in a (new) quest item slot. For example, say you wanted to do C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. You might have a quest item as a map to the deep jungle, or a staff that opens a portal there, or a piece of a statute that opens a portal and during the adventure you need to find other pieces of the statue to complete it and portal somewhere else? Home? Boss fight?
2. Use the new quest item class to change the game environment, say you might get a voice audio breadcrumb from a hawker in the marketplace if you have possession of the correct quest item. You might lock in some charter traits or abilities while the quest item is equipped. Say you have some mummy wrappings that give you a disease that you must quest to cure and you only have a limited time and your total hit points and maybe movement speed go down the longer you are on the quest with the quest item equipped.
3. You can use the quest items to give some indication of others on the same quest, like you can only SEE other people that have the same quest item equipped.
4. Save the status of the quest in the quest item object. This will let you go from one changed world to another. Think like Ravenloft where you are supposed to be trapped there. If you have the quest item equipped to advance the chain but you cannot leave with it equipped.
5. so that you might even be able to sell a quest item you cannot personally complete past some point.
6. Some items might not be usable without the quest item equipped. You might get equipment in Ravenloft and use it there in that chain, but you can’t use it outside until you complete the quest item.
7. You might even be able to create actual random content using https://www.wizards.com/dnd/mapper/launcher.htm This was a real thing in some of the old D&D books and used in Forgotten Realms Dungeon Hack by SSI in 1993, the original permadeath game. To play : https://classicreload.com/dosx-dungeon-hack.html

Maybe my biggest point is that using an item to start/control a quest would allow targeted breadcrumbs and world content for that quest, and that meaning it could be presented from client side rather than world side.

Ok, my old fingers are tired now, I am sure I had more thoughts I may add later on why this is a good idea that could improve the gameplay and the way content is designed and implemented.

[Zennez]

Let me give an example….

You and your party are adventuring in the ToEE. In a chest, deep in the Airwing of the temple, you run across a chest that holds an item called “Evil Wind Chimes”

The tooltip for the item says “Equip this to your quest item slot to begin a quest line”

The description reads, “ These obtuse windchimes radiate great evil and magic and you swear you hear them making noises even in your pack. The inscribe runes seem to read, ‘Air today, gone tomorrow’”

Trying to equip the item produces a warning popup, “Equipping this item will terminate any running quests or instances and possibly have other immediate effects such as you and your entire party being transported randomly to one of the Nine Planes of Hell”

On equipping, other party members will get a warning popup and dialog asking if they want to be part of the quest items quest.

If you choose to equip the item, you and your party are transported to the “Palace of the Four Winds” on the elemental plane of Air, more precisely into the presence of Bahamut, Dragon God of justice, he has a few tasks he needs help with. The wind chimes belong to him and they have been stolen and corrupted for evil purposes long ago.

A series of quests ensue to claim more chimes to add to the original set of “Evil Wind Chimes” that allow transportation to other quest locations and finally to a way to cleanse the wind chimes of evil.


The problem with this type of scenario is that it creates gates based on possession of an item. A solution to that might be a quest item vendor that sells some common quests items for gold, but I like the idea of content that takes work to access so you might find some quest items only for sale in the auction house, or only from being found in a chest.

yes, I understand designers want their content to be seen by everyone, but if you remove the work it just becomes a monorail ride through a wildlife park always the same and hardly a dangerous adventure story DD is supposed to give you.