124 réponses à ce sujet

[KirkyX]

Card mini-games, Mako racing mini-games, solving riddles like in the temple of sacred ashes in DA:O, swimming and finding the gold fish in tw3 b&w.....these are examples of not using the weapon primarily.

I had no idea how much I wanted ME: A to have a collectable card game you can play with NPCs until right this second. Omni-Gwent Go! (Or Pazaak, I guess, to stay on-brand.)

Some loose equivalent of that Gwent tournament quest at the Blooming Rose would be most appreciated, as well. It doesn't actually have to be all that similar--I just like the basic concept of doing something interesting with/building a story around the card game.

[Addictress]

I had no idea how much I wanted ME: A to have a collectable card game you can play with NPCs until right this second. Omni-Gwent Go! (Or Pazaak, I guess, to stay on-brand.)

Some loose equivalent of that Gwent tournament quest at the Blooming Rose would be most appreciated, as well. It doesn't actually have to be all that similar--I just like the basic concept of doing something interesting with the card game.

A card game might be a bit too obviously borrowing from gwent but perhaps a board game or game using chips or dice of some kind...or a GAME USING OMNI-TOOLS YES

An omni-tool game in which even more than 2 players can join.

[Gileadan]

I think first of all they need to improve their quest journal. ME3's quest journal barely ever updated, leaving you to wonder whether you picked up those dog tags and that book of whatshisname already or not. Also, their quest titles almost all had the "Location: Quest goal" pattern, but unfortunately "location" was sometimes the place where you had to pick up the target item, and sometimes the place where the NPC who gave you the quest was located, making it useless to even quickly browse the entries without reading the actual description. This abomination can use a few iterations.

 

I'd also like them to give us more variety and less quest story backgrounds that seem like pure nonsense once you pause to think about them for a moment. ME3, for example, had several quests of the type "a member of race X needs item Y to inspire their people for the struggle". I mean, what the bloody hell? In human terms, these quests would have been something like "earth is burning but before our marines can go to battle, we need the original writings of Sun Tzu and Von Clausewitz to inspire them. Scan the batarian homeworld to find the original first editions". Ehm... right. Will get to that immediately.

 

These little things alone would be a good step forward for me.

[AlanC9]

I think first of all they need to improve their quest journal. ME3's quest journal barely ever updated, leaving you to wonder whether you picked up those dog tags and that book of whatshisname already or not.

Well, in the specific case of the ME3 "Citadel:X" missions, there's never any reason to look at the journal anyway. Anyone you've got an item for shows on the Citadel map. And when you're not on the Citadel, there's no reason to look at those quests. Honestly, I think the best design solution would have been to simply delete the lot from the journal and not even call them missions.

[SofaJockey]

One of the side-content issues with DAI was that the procedural animations sucked.

Example, Bethesda don't have animations for most of their conversations either, but they zoom into exactly the right place so that you are in the scene.

 

It's much less immersive discussing the supply of Ram meat if the conversation is happening 'over there'....

 

As MEA will also be in Frostbite, I sincerely hope this is something that has been worked on...

[Zatche]

Agreed. I finished a new ME3 playthrough yesterday. Even now after having played all tw3, I was surprised ME3's side missions were actually quite good.  Even the 'dumb' fetch quest ones on the Citadel weren't nearly as bad as the Hinterlands for some odd reason... perhaps because they were all jammed in smaller Citadel floor levels and it didn't seem as much a waste of space. Also, planet-scanning and running away from reaper ships in the galaxy map mini-game was kind of... fun and addicting.... *unpopular opinion*

 

ME3's side quests were along the lines of W3's major side quests in that they were almost indistinguishable to the main plot. The category of W3's Monster Hunter quests, ME3's Citadels quests, and DAI's non-companion sideqests is almost another discussion. I honestly found ME3's Citadel quests to be the worst of the lot.

[Zatche]

I think that's fair. But Bioware has a pretty significant issue here: they have companions. And companions have very expensive voiced and cinematic dialogue requirements that take away from the same resources that would go to quests. Of course, Bioware could just invest more to create the same AAA production values generally as, say, TW3. But that might not be cost-justified. The alternative is to find ways to save costs.

 

In DA:I, they tried to do that by not having cinematic cutscenes all the time, and trying to tell more stories by way of archeology. That was a flop. This is why I think - if they're facing the same cost curve - all they can do is have better design. 

 

Would people have an issue with saving costs by just having companions just stand there during cutscenes? Only chime in where it seems really appropriate for their character? It's more or less what Bioware did pre-DAI.

[Addictress]

ME3's side quests were along the lines of W3's major side quests in that they were almost indistinguishable to the main plot. The category of W3's Monster Hunter quests, ME3's Citadels quests, and DAI's non-companion sideqests is almost another discussion. I honestly found ME3's Citadel quests to be the worst of the lot.

Somehow the well-written codex entries and war asset notifications (and war asset acquisition music that triggered) in the Citadel sidequests combined into a more satisfactory experience than collecting elf root and right-clicking a box to unload them, or herding a druffalo.

That's one of the things that depress me at the end of the day - thinking about the writers who wrote such beautiful codex entries for each collected war asset from planet scanning, but never received due praise or recognition because everyone was too busy trashing the ME3 endings.

HELLO SIDEQUEST WAR ASSET CODEX WRITERS. I NOTICED THEM. I LIKED THEM. YOU ARE APPRECIATED.

[iM3GTR]

Somehow the well-written codex entries and war asset notifications (and war asset acquisition music that triggered) in the Citadel sidequests combined into a more satisfactory experience than collecting elf root and right-clicking a box to unload them, or herding a druffalo.

That's one of the things that depress me at the end of the day - thinking about the writers who wrote such beautiful codex entries for each collected war asset from planet scanning, but never received due praise or recognition because everyone was too busy trashing the ME3 endings.

HELLO SIDEQUEST WAR ASSET CODEX WRITERS. I NOTICED THEM. I LIKED THEM. YOU ARE APPRECIATED.

The guys who wrote the planet descriptions (probably the same people) are great as well. They should really be promoted to lead writers.

[nfi42]

Yes TW3's side quests are fantastic.  The witcher contracts less so, but this was/ is Geralts job.

 

I don't care what they do as long as they don't have the same issues that DAI had.  some people don't mind collectathons or finding notes,  that's OK.  Even some insignificant side quest can be tolerated.

 

The problem to me was that pretty much all side quests were insignificant and there was hardly any main story.  That left not much of a game.

[Chealec]

I'm gonna toss out a real popular opinion.  ME2 planet scanning wasn't that bad.   All you do is go to rich planets, scan them till they drop in resource level, move on.  I'm also in favor of bringing back loyalty quests for your squad mates. 

 

 

 

Worst minigame ever... how about:

 

Shepard: EDI - scan that planet would you, and tell me if there's anything worthwhile.

EDI: That's now complete Shepard, there is an Element Zero deposit by the pole that we can colllect.

Shepard: Thanks EDI.

 

 

Done.

[iM3GTR]

Worst minigame ever... how about:

Shepard: EDI - scan that planet would you, and tell me if there's anything worthwhile.
EDI: That's now complete Shepard, there is an Element Zero deposit by the pole that we can colllect.
Shepard: Thanks EDI.


Done.

Or how about:

Shepard: So I was looking through my old Alliance codex, and it says here that weapon upgrades just need a bit of omni-gel, a small OSD and an omni-tool to create the upgrades. So instead of all this scanning, can you just get Cerberus to send us a crate of omni-gel and download some schematics from the extranet?
EDI: Certainly, Commander.

[Zatche]

I've been thinking about why DAI's sidequest and open world content was so poorly received compared to other open world games and I think it's a bad mix of a few things that I don't think MEA will suffer from.

 

In most open world games like Assasin's Creed II or Arkham City, combat is balanced in a way that if you get into a skirmish with a dynamically generated enemy, you can either run a way real quick or end the fight rather quickly. Plus, you can traverse the open world rather quickly. Or in Assassin's Creed's case, traversing the city is fun because, yay, climbing.

 

The way DAI's squad based combat is balanced with huge enemy health pools, if you run into a dynamically generated enemy, you might be stuck fighting it for 2+ minutes. Even if you're vastly overpowered compared to the enemy, it'll still take long enough that it feels tedious if you run into a few on your way to the side quest that you actually want to do. And the horse, unlike the Batmobile, only runs about twice your running speed. So, just getting to the elfroot or whatever can be annoying.

 

I don't think these issues are what caused the negative reception of DAI's sidequests, but maybe the tediousness put a bit of fuel on the fire.

 

From what little we can tell, MEA has a quicker vehicle, and if it combat is like ME3's, I don't think the repetition of combat will feel as tedious.

 

Speaking of open world games like Assassin's Creed and Arkham City, and staying more on topic, they do have obviously formulaic sidequest design, given that they have actual categories. They're less well dressed than Witcher contracts, but the variance in encounter design can be fun. I like Arkham Knight's open world stealth encounters and Assassin's Creed's various mission objectives (depending on the installment). I wouldn't mind if MEA did some sidequests like that, though I can't imagine what kind of quests those would be. But in the end, I'd rather have the combat missions with cinematic dressing that it seems most people ask for.

[TurianSpectre]

I think ME3 actually handled side quests well. All of the ones where you met former squadmates were pretty fun. Grissom Academy, the rachni one, the Ardat-Yakshi monastery. I'd like to see more of those kind of missions.

Yeah i agree those ones were pretty cool

[Zatche]

Somehow the well-written codex entries and war asset notifications (and war asset acquisition music that triggered) in the Citadel sidequests combined into a more satisfactory experience than collecting elf root and right-clicking a box to unload them, or herding a druffalo.

That's one of the things that depress me at the end of the day - thinking about the writers who wrote such beautiful codex entries for each collected war asset from planet scanning, but never received due praise or recognition because everyone was too busy trashing the ME3 endings.

HELLO SIDEQUEST WAR ASSET CODEX WRITERS. I NOTICED THEM. I LIKED THEM. YOU ARE APPRECIATED.

 

I enjoyed those, too. It was the navigating between menus and the Citadel map and planet scanning that I really, really didn't like.

 

DAI has some good codex writing, too.

[In Exile]

Would people have an issue with saving costs by just having companions just stand there during cutscenes? Only chime in where it seems really appropriate for their character? It's more or less what Bioware did pre-DAI.

 

I don't think so - I agree that it's just not worth the investment. But Bioware doesn't seem to think so, and I agree that seems a bad call.

[BloodyMares]

1) Fetch quests (or any quests for that matter) acquired through eavesdropping need to go.
2) Side quests with no plot need to explain why you need to even bother completing them. Like tie it to our position and make it our job. Motivation - money/resources or someone's support.
3) There need to be more quests that are personal for the protagonist and his squad members. Like Loyalty Missions but they don't need to impact whether your character lives or dies (It can be affected by a different mechanics like the actual training).
4) There need to be more side quests that have their own plot that is partially connected to the main story.

[Nashiktal]

Side quests are tricky to design I think.

In order for me personally to be motivated in a sidequest it has to offer me something to grab my attention. If the sidequest ties into my current main quest, I will be more likely to do it. An example of this was sabotaging the mercs in Archangels's recruitment mission. It made the fight a little easier and more interesting.

I will still do side quests that don't tie into the plot, but if they are not well written then at that point I'm only in it for the exp/reward, which makes for a dry and boring experience.

However even if the quest ties into the plot, if there is no substance is can still be awful. DA:I is an example. Technically just about everything you do is for the inquisition. The problem is why the hell is the leader of the organization stomping around to pick flowers? Why would the inquisitor waste his time fixing down every little problem ln Thedas? Finding blankets for refugees makes sense early in the game before things kick off, but those kinds of quests just made no sense later in. That is what all the soldiers are for.

Compounding the problem was presentation. In ME3 eavesdropping on sidequest was interesting the first time, but it made Shelard seem like a creeper after the fifth time I did it. In Inquisition the lack of cinematic cutscenes made me feel detatched from everything, further preventing me from investing myself into the characters.

Inquisition turned helping refugees from an emotional choice into a tick on a checklist.

I have hopes for Mass Effect Andromeda, but I'm skeptical.

[Element Zero]

Do you know what would be cool? Quest chains that are separate stories that run alongside the main plot. Say you hear about some space pirates holding some people hostage, you go free the hostages but some of the pirates get away. A couple of main story missions later you hear a report that the pirates are up to no good again. I think it would help the side quests be even more memorable than if they were completely separate from every other mission.

This is similar to my own thinking, entering the thread.

Everyone gets pissy or on edge when TW3 is brought up, but I ask you to chill for a second. There are some things, like the "Contracts", that were absolutely perfect for that setting, that probably wouldn't translate well to a Mass Effect game.

The depth of the side quests is something that would, however. Rarely do you encounter a simple, routine sidequest in TW3. There is always way more to the story than initially meets the eye. If you continue to investigate and pursue these sidequests, you may even run into dead ends, for a time, only for a lead to unexpectedly reveal itself, later in the game. The quests are unique, varied and thoroughly engaging. They did a masterful job with this. This is why the game is so highly praised, in my opinion.

Mass Effect is already my favorite franchise. It has great character interactions and combat gameplay. If they were able to incorporate some deep, investigative sidequests like these, I can't imagine how high the bar would be raised. THIS is what I hope the team truly took away from TW3 as they were playing it.

[Monk]

I've started this thread because - disastrous OP aside - the TW3 comparison thread spawned a very interest conversation about how one should design a sidequest. DA:I is an oft-cited comparison now, because ME:A will be going open world. 

 

So, in the spirit of keeping this open for discussion, what would you like to see in terms of sidequests?

 

To frame the discussion, I'll state my own view: Bioware is awful at creating "minor" side-quests. Their "minor" quests have always been very uninspired in their design, basically reducing to Kill X or Find Y. In the past, see e.g. KOTOR or DA:O, Bioware hid this design by throwing in a lot of dialogue. A great recent example is DA2 - the quests are awful from a design POV: just waves of mooks to murder, and potentially finding a random item in a tiny recycled map. But bad quest design is not one of the many criticisms of DA2, because Bioware hid it behind oodles of dialogue. 

 

Well, to be fair to BW, side quests are side quests. They're probably boring for all those involved. I imagine being made to do side quests is a sort of punishment, or more likely, akin to having to cleaning up bathrooms. Hopefully they can dedicate a little more time to the design of them and maybe, just maybe, make fun of how uninspired they seem (they might be greatly inspired… just weren't given to the most enthusiastic of people to finish up).

 

For example, they could have a quest where they meet up with an alien and while there, learn how to fire a certain new weapon and gain it, after taking out some evil "beer bottles".

[Fogg]

The difference with ME3 will be that those 'side quests' were 'levels'. Designed for that one mission. In ME:A the side missions will be integrated in the open worlds I guess, which means elfroot.

[Wulfram]

For the lowest tier of quests, I just want them to be optional. Totally optional, not "You can skip this if you don't mind getting a bad ending". Also, making it clear when the quests are of this sort is good, like when DA:O segregated them on boards.

To be honest, I'm fine with "bad" quests hidden by oodles of dialogue, particularly if they involve an interesting character and/or a nice choice. If I'd improve them, it'd be getting rid of the stuff that isn't dialogue when its not adding anything.

[MattFini]

The side quests in ME3 that involved the ME 2 team were very cool. 

 

The ones that were basically MP hoard mode maps less so. 

 

The Citadel fetch quests that required planet scanning or random battlefield pickups were bottom of the barrel, made worse by the hilariously dysfunctional journal that barely allowed you to track them. 

[AlanC9]

1) Fetch quests (or any quests for that matter) acquired through eavesdropping need to go.

You didn't need to do that in ME3 anyway, you know. The quests work just the same whether you're listening to the Citadel ambient convos or not.

2) Side quests with no plot need to explain why you need to even bother completing them. Like tie it to our position and make it our job. Motivation - money/resources or someone's support.

Where's the line between this and War Asset or Power rewards?

[AlanC9]

The Citadel fetch quests that required planet scanning or random battlefield pickups were bottom of the barrel, made worse by the hilariously dysfunctional journal that barely allowed you to track them.

I asked about this upthread. Why would you want to track them?