227 réponses à ce sujet

[Rawgrim]

I've been playing BioWare games since Baldur's Gate, and *all* have been fetch quests. "Bring me my gauntlets. I think I left them in a barrel by a warehouse." Fetch quest? Yup. Go kill Basillus. Fetch quest? Yup. 

 

They don't bother me. Maybe they would if I'd ever played an MMO, but I haven't, so I don't get the reference. I don't see how collecting bear pelts is any different from collecting vials of darkspawn blood or collecting Tears of Bhal or whatever. You collect X many Y and something happens.

 

Maybe it would help if someone provided an example of something they did not consider a fetch quest. It's great to say "I don't want that," but it's better to say "I want more of this" instead.

 

The darkspawn blood was vital to the storyline. The same goes for the tears of Bhaal. That one actually had various outcomes as well. You had to make moral choices in that quest.

 

The fetch quests in question here are utterly shallow ones, with hardly any story or plot hook to them at all. Just a 5 coin reward and a thank you.

[Poledo]

I completely agree with the TC. The only thing I would have liked to see added some brief cutscenes for certain places, and some "boss" mobs to be more boss like. Let's take hinterlands for example. Reaching the mercenary fortress, there could be a brief cutscene where you see the mercenary leader barking out orders to the troops or talking about their plans with the Carta.. anything like that and it could just be brief. It would have helped to feel more involved I think.

[Gileadan]

Well, there's fetch quests like "get me 10 pieces of ram meat because people are starving". I get that, I'm fine with it. I'm here to help.

 

But I think it was the DA franchise - DA2, to be exact - that pioneered this special brand of soulless that isn't even a real fetch quest anymore.

 

It goes like this now: click on an item, get text popup. Run to place or person indicated. Click another item for another text popup, or a person for a line of dialogue.

Mission complete.

 

It's just like psychic Hawke from DA2, except that it's now mostly letters instead of the remains of Sister Plinth, which makes it a bit less nonsensical, but not more interesting.

[Al Foley]

I really think the 'problem' is with the genre, not the RPGs, but Fantasy.  Both Frodo and Bilbo had a lot of things to do that were not related to the plot in any way what so ever, and were considered pretty fetching.  

 

Also scale.  40 hour game with a lot of fetch/side quests is different then a game with 200 hours and a lot of fetch side quests.  

 

Where I think Inquisition got it right is a lot of this is a lot more integrated and cohesive.  You did not have to go run around and tell the person you did so and so for them, it just did it.  A lot of the quests were for book keeping purposes and you could just do them as you went.  And the characters, both in and out of your party, often cared for the results and would make reference to it.  

[berelinde]

So let's have an original quest idea that isn't a fetch quest. Let's see what you come up with. Maybe something for the Fallow Mire. That zone could use more development.

 

Me, if I were going to design a quest for the Fallow Mire, I'd have the party look into the plague. Yes, collect tissue samples, but then you'd have to take them to an expert in Val Royeaux for analysis. There would be two experts available, one who would do your research for free and one who would charge a hefty amount of coin. If you chose the free one, they would determine that the plague was caused by the Avvar polluting the water with dead goats. Since this quest would only become available after the Fereldan soldiers were rescued, you'd have to go to a settlement in the Fallow Mire and negotiate with the Avaar to get them to stop doing that. They would explain that its a sacrificial offering to appease the hungry god of the marsh and that they aren't about to stop doing that. At that point, you could attempt to prove to them that there is no hungry marsh god, but it wouldn't work, and you'd probably wind up having to fight someone. The more expensive expert would determine that the poison causing the plague was manufactured locally, perhaps as an experiment gone wrong. You'd have to go from building to building collecting clues (gasp, more fetch quests!) that would indicate dealings with an apostate. Eventually, you'd gain access to the mill on the eastern edge of the map, where you'd find an apostate who accidentally caused the plague. He's now working on a cure, but he needs help. You'd have to go to a few other Act 2 places (Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, Forbidden Oasis), where you would have to convince other mages to part with their research. Once either path was successful, villagers would begin returning to the Fallow Mire. You'd get a lot more loot and experience by going to the more expensive sage.

 

Mind you, the whole quest idea contains a lot of fetch quests, so it would probably still be unsatisfactory. But ultimately, everything is a fetch quest, isn't it?

[Draining Dragon]

The darkspawn blood was vital to the storyline. The same goes for the tears of Bhaal. That one actually had various outcomes as well. You had to make moral choices in that quest.
 
The fetch quests in question here are utterly shallow ones, with hardly any story or plot hook to them at all. Just a 5 coin reward and a thank you.

Pretty much this. The worst crime of these quests is the lack of a actual dialogue tree. You accept the quest or you don't. If you do the quest, you get a reward and you're done.

Compare that to the quest in DAO where an elf asks you to find his wife. After you've found her, you have a moral dilemma on your hands: do you tell her husband about her tragic fate, or let him keep thinking that there's still hope?

[Rawgrim]

So let's have an original quest idea that isn't a fetch quest. Let's see what you come up with. Maybe something for the Fallow Mire. That zone could use more development.

 

Me, if I were going to design a quest for the Fallow Mire, I'd have the party look into the plague. Yes, collect tissue samples, but then you'd have to take them to an expert in Val Royeaux for analysis. There would be two experts available, one who would do your research for free and one who would charge a hefty amount of coin. If you chose the free one, they would determine that the plague was caused by the Avvar polluting the water with dead goats. Since this quest would only become available after the Fereldan soldiers were rescued, you'd have to go to a settlement in the Fallow Mire and negotiate with the Avaar to get them to stop doing that. They would explain that its a sacrificial offering to appease the hungry god of the marsh and that they aren't about to stop doing that. At that point, you could attempt to prove to them that there is no hungry marsh god, but it wouldn't work, and you'd probably wind up having to fight someone. The more expensive expert would determine that the poison causing the plague was manufactured locally, perhaps as an experiment gone wrong. You'd have to go from building to building collecting clues (gasp, more fetch quests!) that would indicate dealings with an apostate. Eventually, you'd gain access to the mill on the eastern edge of the map, where you'd find an apostate who accidentally caused the plague. He's now working on a cure, but he needs help. You'd have to go to a few other Act 2 places (Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, Forbidden Oasis), where you would have to convince other mages to part with their research. Once either path was successful, villagers would begin returning to the Fallow Mire. You'd get a lot more loot and experience by going to the more expensive sage.

 

Mind you, the whole quest idea contains a lot of fetch quests, so it would probably still be unsatisfactory. But ultimately, everything is a fetch quest, isn't it?

 

Basic Quest idea: Kid runs up to you. Half dead. Chased by the undead. Says his dad fed him to the undead to keep them away from the rest of his family. Party arrives at the fellows home. The place is surrounded by the undead, and the party has to fight them off. The insane father refuses to open the doors. Blames the son for the recent undead attack, because he fled from them when he should have been eaten by them, and the recent attack was because of his actions. He hints at other members having to be fed to the undead instead.

 

Options: Bash down the door. Use diplomacy. Bluff. Have party members offer solutions. Threathen the fellow. Offer to take him and the family to a nearby camp for safety.

 

Once inside: Guy is clearly losing it. And is no doubt insane.

 

Options: Kill him. Reason with him. Feed him to the undead. Make him feed himself to the undead. Lots of possebilities here, really.

 

Resolutions: Take the family to safety. Let the family work at Skyhold. Combine the quest with another quest. Maybe some mother having lost her children can get these kids as a replacement?

 

Took me 3 minutes to come up with this. I am sure it sucks, but gimme an hour and I could do better.

 

 

In any case it is not a fetch quest.

[AlexMBrennan]

You never talk to anyone, and hence there is no dissonant moment when the high-and-mighty Inquisitor gets treated as a random nobody. There are exceptions, but they're few in number.

Not explicitly, but it still amounts to the same if the leader of the free world and only hope of Thedas halts an important mission to dance around a pillar - there might not be a Questgiver telling you to dance around that pillar, but it's still an immersion breakingly daft thing for the PC to do.

[roadrunnerNM]

You should play the BG games. BG1 in particular. DA:O follows KoTOR, but DA:I follows Bioware's older games. And the design isn't really all that great. It hasn't aged well; people just look to it for nostalgia. I personally am OK with it, but that's for very atypical reasons. 

Have to disagree. I didn't play the Baldur's Gate series until the Enhanced Editions came out, and I really hesitated, thinking, as you said, "It's probably just nostalgia that makes people say they're so great." Nope. Loved them. OK, I admit I'm a bit nostalgic about AD&D, but I found the BG games to be as good as they're cracked up to be. KotOR and Jade Empire were also very old games by the time I got to them. Enjoyed them both, especially KotOR.

[Farangbaa]

I think a part of the 'problem' is that most quests don't have cutscenes. Some quests are even driven by text and well, that doesn't fly with a lot of people.

What I think of that I'll leave out of this discussion.

[Nefla]

So let's have an original quest idea that isn't a fetch quest. Let's see what you come up with. Maybe something for the Fallow Mire. That zone could use more development.

 

Me, if I were going to design a quest for the Fallow Mire, I'd have the party look into the plague. Yes, collect tissue samples, but then you'd have to take them to an expert in Val Royeaux for analysis. There would be two experts available, one who would do your research for free and one who would charge a hefty amount of coin. If you chose the free one, they would determine that the plague was caused by the Avvar polluting the water with dead goats. Since this quest would only become available after the Fereldan soldiers were rescued, you'd have to go to a settlement in the Fallow Mire and negotiate with the Avaar to get them to stop doing that. They would explain that its a sacrificial offering to appease the hungry god of the marsh and that they aren't about to stop doing that. At that point, you could attempt to prove to them that there is no hungry marsh god, but it wouldn't work, and you'd probably wind up having to fight someone. The more expensive expert would determine that the poison causing the plague was manufactured locally, perhaps as an experiment gone wrong. You'd have to go from building to building collecting clues (gasp, more fetch quests!) that would indicate dealings with an apostate. Eventually, you'd gain access to the mill on the eastern edge of the map, where you'd find an apostate who accidentally caused the plague. He's now working on a cure, but he needs help. You'd have to go to a few other Act 2 places (Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, Forbidden Oasis), where you would have to convince other mages to part with their research. Once either path was successful, villagers would begin returning to the Fallow Mire. You'd get a lot more loot and experience by going to the more expensive sage.

 

Mind you, the whole quest idea contains a lot of fetch quests, so it would probably still be unsatisfactory. But ultimately, everything is a fetch quest, isn't it?

Imagine how awesome it would have been to have a toolset. I wonder how long it would have taken fans to flesh out all those empty, lifeless areas

[berelinde]

If DAI is structured anything like DAO, even a toolset would make the insertion of new content into the existing world a daunting proposition. It's possible to modify an area, adding objects to the world, but they would have to be fairly straightforward: a chest containing items, an NPC at a specific location, etc. Given the size of the areas in DAI... well, my PC groans under the strain of opening DAO areas using the DAO toolset and it's a fairly new machine. Even if they did release a toolset, I'm not sure my machine would be able to handle it.

 

But yeah, if they released one, I'd try it.

[Elfyoth]

If DAI is structured anything like DAO, even a toolset would make the insertion of new content into the existing world a daunting proposition. It's possible to modify an area, adding objects to the world, but they would have to be fairly straightforward: a chest containing items, an NPC at a specific location, etc. Given the size of the areas in DAI... well, my PC groans under the strain of opening DAO areas using the DAO toolset and it's a fairly new machine. Even if they did release a toolset, I'm not sure my machine would be able to handle it.

 

But yeah, if they released one, I'd try it.

Well there IS a toolset, but its not fully built yet modders build it and created some mods, nothing in areas but they worked hard on this texture mods  and the toolset is being worked on a lot. 

[xJLxKing]

I have a big problem when a game tries to be so epic in scope in not only map size, but combat, lore, and story, but then most quest consist of

Get me  X (High number) of items for stupid purposes

 

I never had a problem with go kill X.  But collecting elf roots, and mineral for no reason but to get power is one of the worst type of quest. Watching over your Lama or getting your Buffalo is redundant. 

 

ANYONE who tries to hide behind the, "it's optional". That's just sad 

[Thatkat09]

I think its funny. This game has loads of quests that I wouldn't consider "fetch", they just involve reading.

[Qun00]

Nearly every RPG game has fetch quests and fans still whine about it everytime.

It's like complaining that ice is too cold.

[berelinde]

Well there IS a toolset, but its not fully built yet modders build it and created some mods, nothing in areas but they worked hard on this texture mods  and the toolset is being worked on a lot. 

The progress DAI modders have made is astonishing, given the resources they have to work with, but there is a huge difference between a texture mod and inserting objects and actors into game areas. I am not belittling DAI modders accomplishments! Doing anything at all with this engine is a feat, and they should all be proud of themselves. I just wish there was a way to create modded story content for the game, whether add-on or stand-alone.

[CronoDragoon]

I sort of agree with the OP, in that I think the fetch quests serve a noble purpose both in getting you to explore the zone and in developing the sense of the Inquisition slowly restoring order to the world.

 

I just think each zone needed a "Still Waters"-level story quest that develops a story within the zone a bit more. I just watched the 'Making Dragon Age' video from PAX, and they noted the Storm Coast was very close to being cut for awhile. And honestly, it sort of shows. The zone is beautiful, but the main quest (Blades of Hesserian) is very short and uninvolved, and there are virtually no NPCs to meet and talk to throughout the zone. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect at least one lengthy side quest per zone.

[Han Yolo]

My problem is that most of the "side quests" either consist of walls of text or a short boring dialogue where the only choice you have is do it or don't.

I sorely missed quests that let me roleplay. And cutscenes. I missed cutscenes.

[o Ventus]

but DA:I follows Bioware's older games.

Funny, considering all of the "I WANT BG AGAIN!" purists exclaiming that DAI is just DA2 but with prettier graphics.

[o Ventus]

My problem is that most of the "side quests" either consist of walls of text or a short boring dialogue where the only choice you have is do it or don't.

I sorely missed quests that let me roleplay. And cutscenes. I missed cutscenes.

As opposed to the old system of "Yes, I'll do it", "No, I won't do it", "Yes, I'll do it if I get paid", and "No, I won't do it and get away from me!". The white knight yes-man response, the indifferent adventurer response, the mercenary response, and the a**hole response.

 

Sure, there's 'variation' (if you could call it that), but the end result was the same regardless of which version of 'yes' you chose or which version of 'no' you chose. By limiting it to simple yes and no, they cut the fat, because the reward (or lack of one depending on the case) was always the same.

[Riven326]

... because they're not. Mostly.

They are. You're in denial.

[Han Yolo]

As opposed to the old system of "Yes, I'll do it", "No, I won't do it", "Yes, I'll do it if I get paid", and "No, I won't do it and get away from me!". The white knight yes-man response, the indifferent adventurer response, the mercenary response, and the a**hole response.

 

Sure, there's 'variation' (if you could call it that), but the end result was the same regardless of which version of 'yes' you chose or which version of 'no' you chose. By limiting it to simple yes and no, they cut the fat, because the reward (or lack of one depending on the case) was always the same.

 

Nah I meant quests like Bevin in Redcliffe or Zerlinda in Dust Town, or The Magistrate's Son. Stuff like that.

[GungaDin]

I completely agree with this topic.

The filler quests are definitely NOT mandatory for getting enough xp and goodies and if you feel some of them are out of character you can completely skip them...

Only thing I can`t agree with is with stuff on hills completely unreachable by simply walking. This kind of jumping on games like this should NEVER be essential for getting anything not an easter egg. It just gives an aspect to the game worthy of the worst platform game ever made

[Draining Dragon]

As opposed to the old system of "Yes, I'll do it", "No, I won't do it", "Yes, I'll do it if I get paid", and "No, I won't do it and get away from me!". The white knight yes-man response, the indifferent adventurer response, the mercenary response, and the a**hole response.
 
Sure, there's 'variation' (if you could call it that), but the end result was the same regardless of which version of 'yes' you chose or which version of 'no' you chose. By limiting it to simple yes and no, they cut the fat, because the reward (or lack of one depending on the case) was always the same.

It's called roleplaying. I was under the impression that was what a roleplaying game was for.