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[Fast Jimmy]

Howdy do, BSN.

I'd like to start a conversation about Quest Gone Wrong.


In Dragon Age 2, we are introduced to a lovely character named Sister Patriece.

Sister Patriece is a member of the Chantry. She recruits us by putting herself in harm's way purposefully and used the robbers she attracted as both bait and a test for our character to prove their worth. She then tells us this, point blank and then proposes a job for us. Everything about this chick says "I am not someone to trust, you really would do best to just turn around and head the other direction." Instead, we are forced (since this is a Main Quest plot, for reasons that don't become clear until Act 2 of the game) to do her quest, despite EVERY red flag possible that we should not. This happens again in Act 2, where interacting with her winds up causing a mini-war to break out.

Some people are just trouble. And... sometimes quests are, too.

What I am wanting to discuss in this thread are bad ideas for quests. No, not stupid fetch quests, but quests which, by doing, bites the character in the proverbial ass. Quests that can seem to offer huge rewards, but wind up making things worse than ever. Quests that make us wonder ig we even made the right decision waking up in the morning.

We do see these quests in games at a pretty regular basis. But they are often tied to the main plot - you take them because you must, they are disastrous because you have to have the disaster happen. But what I wanted to talk about is OPTIONAL quests, side quests, which can blow up in our face. 

So, with that in mind, let me start outlining some ideas of what I am talking about.

How Did I Wind Up In This Mess?

This quest type is where the character enters a quest that seems fairly straight forward and yet, before too long, they realize they are in the middle of something they had not anticipated at all.

This doesn't neccessarily have to always be a "bad" quest. For instance, farmer Joe can ask you to find out why his missing sheep are disappearing. Examining his field, you hear a rumbling and wind up falling into an underground cavern, where you must fight through an entire giant ant colony. After battling your way out, bloodied and bruised, you go to the farmer and tell him his problem is solved and that he shouldn't worry about his sheep anymore. The farmer gives you your reward - a free 5 GP. Laddy-freaking-da.

This type of quest can be beneficial, in the fact that it offers up more content and more XP. So its not a total waste for the player to do, but from our character's perspective, they just went through hell and high water totally unexpectedly and for next to nothing as a reward. And that's fun. Well, if you're a player who's into that kind of thing.

I Should Have Never Trusted Them...

An NPC approaches you about doing a task. Things look shifty from the start - the quests seem odd or too easy and the quest giver is on the sketchy side. But you accept the quest anyway. And it turns out that this was the wrong thing to do, as you have just done way more harm than you had anticipated.

An example of this is the Fighter's Guild questlne in Oblivion, where you are asked to spy and infiltrate a rival group, the Blackwood Company. As your initiation, you are sent to kill goblins and are given a special potion to help your prowess in battle. Turns out that the potion is a hallucinogenic and the band of goblins you killed was actually an entire town of innocent viallgers.

This quest is pretty brutal in that, by your actions, you have actually ruined (and ended) the lives of innocents. In the very next quest, you use this information to take the organization down. Still... the fact that the game gave you the option to take the quest makes it questionable if you should do it at all. After all... that village would have remainied alive if you never activated that quest line...

The problem with this type of quest is that it A) involves an evil quest giver - not inherentlly all that bad and it brings nothing of real value to the table. The XP gained from killing these "trolls" is negligible, as is the monetary reward. It is part of a quest that helps you complete the Fighter's Guild questline, but that in and of itself doesn't bring a lot to the table except an extra rank, a small monthly sum of gold and a completionist's peace of mind. So have we really done anything worthwhile? Its a debatble question.

Some Quests You Just Shouldn't Do

Now here is the real kicker idea. One I'm not sure I've seen a game do before. 

Have your character offered an optional side quest. Listen to the offerer of the quest. Decide if you want to do it or not. And, if you do complete the quest, you are worse off then you were before. 

Say the quest giver stabs you in the back and robs you blind - with no recourse to hunt the traitor down. Say the quest itself destroys a high-level item of yours and offers no compensatory loot at all. Say the quest causes a permanent damage to stats or attributes, with no cure or remedy.

Now... why in the world would anyone ever ask for this to happen?!

The idea behind this is that taking jobs from any random person who is asking for help is awfully naive. The motives behind the person hiring are not always pure. The risks involved are not always understood. And the rewards can often be MORE than overstated. If racking up riches, gold and powerful equipment were just as easy as standing around town and listening for someone to complain, the adventuring business would be BOOMING in every gaming world I've ever seen.

The question is - if quests are going to result in a cost that will be undoubtedly bad, why the heck would anyone do them? 

Two solutions to that.

One, you mix in the good quests with the bad, where a player will never know if they do X side quest, it will result terribly, or if they do Y side quest, it will pan out. A flag being set that has things ending up good or bad, where on one playthrough, the quest turns out fine and you get your reward, but in other playthroughs, things hit the fan and it winds up hurting you in the long run. This can seem a little arbitrary, but it would certainly make people hesistant to do every quest just to be a completionist.

Two, you accomplish some in-game good. Sure, your Epic Sword of Pwnage that cost you a quarter of your total gold is destroyed... but those orphans are sure glad their home isn't being closed down! Or, you helped freed the slaves... its a shame that blood mage cursed your soul and now you have 10% less health. 

This could make the quests being done have some type of tangible benefit. Maybe even these are companion quests which make your companion more powerful, but the main PC weaker/broker/less well equipped. That would certainly bring into question whether or not you'd want to complete every companion's personal quest story, wouldn't it?


TL;DR:

Games can be predictable with quests that have us come in, save the day and rack up the gold. But quests that we can choose to do and which still may have unexpected outcomes or even just downright bad things happen are a good way to break up the monotony. Sure, its a little sadistic (or is it masochistic?) to enjoy seeing our characters struggle, but if it keeps us as the player on our toes, constantly second guessing our actions, then doesn't that lead to a more memorable and intriguing game then just the same old humdrum?

What do you think, BSN? Do you like quests that fall apart?

Modifié par Fast Jimmy, 09 février 2013 - 05:28 .

[Allan Schumacher]

I'm keen on betrayal type of stuff, but I am not sure if most are.

Depending on the level of emotional investment one ends up putting onto the particular story section, knowing it ultimately turns to betrayal and or really bad things down the line, can make people feel very, very, very jaded.

For instance, I'm totally up for the idea of having a romance (or two) character end up actually using the character and outright betraying the character. In mentioning these ideas, I have had people directly respond saying they would hate stuff like that. Even the idea of one of the romances in ME3 leading down this way was complete utter outrage for some people.

I think Sid Meier put it best, in that in his opinion gamers tend to be paranoid. They like to accept the positive consequences as being a result of their strong game playing, but when bad things happen, especially unpredictably and unexpectedly, they tend to feel the game is being unfair and is out to get them (he had a ton of fantastic examples involving Civilization that showed how gamers do not behave rationally).

By default, the "fail" quest pretty much *must* be able to be recovered in some way I think (I think denying retribution would not be well received), and there'd be considerations for whether or not metaknowledge should allow a player to alter the outcome.

Leandra's death is something unavoidable, and arguably a quest gone wrong. Much of the criticism is simply that it cannot be avoided. Other criticism is that there's no option to try to do something about it. If those options DID exist, yet still resulted in Leandra's death, would it be more palatable in general?

[Allan Schumacher]

And what if, as I stated in my original post, there was the option where sometimes a quest goes bad, sometimes it goes fine? That a flag can randomly be put on it to determine if it would have negative consequences or not?

I think this feeds into Sid's gamer paranoia. Random chance can be very, very frustrating for people.

Think like the original Diablo's quests. Sometimes when you went in, you
ran into The Butcher and had a corresponding quest. Other times, you
ran into devilkin who had stolen the Inn Sign. In the system I am
suggesting though, instead you would always be offered all the quests,
but sometimes it would have the good outcome, sometimes it would have
the bad. That way, each time you play the game could be a different
combination of experiences.

This is a bit different.  Content is randomized (which is a staple of the original Diablo especially), but the player's success is not.  It was also a criticism of Diablo and Blizzard went away with it in future versions.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 10 février 2013 - 07:13 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Just to nitpick:

Escapism doesn't mean without substance. It just means that it's a story that lets us escape our own realities for a bit. It doesn't mean that nothing bad or significant will happen in it.

The counterpoint is usually interpretive stories, which are typically considered to have the reader take something away from the story and the reader/observer reflect on reality in some way, after experiencing the story.

[Allan Schumacher]

Now, I'm obviously biased (cf. my last post) but I think it's not about paranoia - it's just about frustration. Quest outcomes are scripted, instead of about skill/chance combinations like Civ games are (where the interplay between CPU/CPU/Player actions can be complex and lead to effectively stochastic outcomes).

Sid's talk was more general than just being applied to Civ games. It's the idea that the game is "out to get the player" when things happen unpredictably. I think we're discussing the same thing though, since it's the frustration of uncontrolled things happening that leads to the gamer suspicion.

[Allan Schumacher]

nightscrawl wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

If those options DID exist, yet still resulted in Leandra's death, would it be more palatable in general?

YES!

Lets go even more extreme.  Would it still work for Mass Effect 3?

[Allan Schumacher]

Sure thing. Here it is.

It's interesting to hear about his recounts of how people would respond to information presented.

[Allan Schumacher]

I disagree. The remake of Pirates is excellent with tons more character (I have played every version of Pirates), and Civ IV is probably the best game of the franchise.

Thing is, people still said the same things in the original Civ (I once had a battleship lose to a 1/1/1 militia myself), even though by the rational rules it's not actually surprising. Just rare.

[Allan Schumacher]

The odds of 1 winning against 2 is only 16.7%. Not 33.3%.

You'll have to fill me in on the specifics for this, since it's been almost a decade since I took stats classes.

EDIT: I know odds = (1-p)/p but that doesn't get your probability.  (If we say the odds of winning are 2/1 with your example, then rearranging the equation is still going to get a probability of 1/3)

Unsurprisingly using your number gives me 5:1 odds

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 10 février 2013 - 01:25 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Let's consider the case of three tanks, completely equal in technology and skills. Two blue, one red. Blue vs. red.

The odds, for the first tank to hit an opponent, being blue, is 2 in 3, 2/3. Blue wins.
The odds for the first tank to be hit being blue, and the second tank being hit being red, is 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/6. Blue wins.
The odds for the first tank to be hit being blue, and the second tank being hit being blue, is 1/3 * 1/2 = 1/6. Red wins.

Ah okay. I was stuck thinking odds, but yeah with some conditional probability.

Civ4 actually does do something similar to that.

It really depends on what the attack/def power measures and the specifics of how your combat resolution works.

I disagree with the notion that the resolution must play out the specific way that you described. There's several situations that can be designed where winning 1 against 2 is not 16.7%.

The obvious example: take two units, one that has twice the chance to hit of the other, and receiving a hit is a loss, then it's back to 33%.

This is why the evolution of Civ games eventually had hit points added to it, and eventually in Civ4 they removed the attack/def values and simply used a power score, with combat resolution being a series of attacks where the relative power affected how much damage could be done (continuing on until a unit is dead), with each unit having 100 hitpoints and damage reducing the relative power by the percentage of health remaining.


Yours is just one way of resolving combat, but it's not the only way.
(A full breakdown of Civ4's combat is here if you're curious). It takes into account both the ratio of the powers as well as the difference between powers. You get something similar to what you describe, but not quite. ).

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 10 février 2013 - 01:57 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Foolsfolly wrote...

I just beat Telltale's The Walking Dead game (bleeding fantastic. Although I don't think I have the emotional fortitude to replay it for some time) and in that game there were a few choices I made that bit me in the ass. I didn't think the game was out to get me for it.

What gives?

Is it the setting? The characters? The sheer amount of bleakness anyway in the game? I mean some choices I made seemed to decimate the group and others I'm entirely unaware of how my choice helped anything.

The setting itself probably does contribute.  The Walking Dead is definitely not a warm and fuzzy setting where bad things happen to good people all the time.

Still, it's tough to gauge an anecdote.  You didn't mind, but were there other people that got upset?  I remember some people getting upset because some characters seemingly just went insane and started acting "out of character" (it was on this forum actually)