Quests have objectives. You need to get 15 carrion crawler tentacles. You need to bring back a rare leaf from a cavern on Xzoriat II. You need to build a new FTL drive for your Raptor A7. Whatever the quest is it will have objectives. But what if there were other ways to complete the quest? Or additional "above and beyond" objectives that showed you "really mean it"? The merchant wants you to kill off 15 of the local monster so that they can bring in a shipment safely, but they aren't just going to take your word, they want to see the skins. But you aren't going to just kill 15. NO! YOU WILL DESTROY THEM ALL! You come back with 50 skins, not just 15. What happens? He says thanks, takes 15 of them, and gives you the regular reward. What about all that hard work? All the hunting, and killing? The epic battles with swarms of the deadly beast? Does that no longer matter? What if he took the 50 skins and said "wow, you really helped me out a lot. Here's a little something extra?" The lab assistant has miss placed the last sample of Compound 83 and his boss is going to be furious! But he has no clue what Compound 83 is! You not only have to get a new sample, but you have to figure out what it's made of and how to create it. You could ask the head tech, but the boss would find out and get mad at the assistant. Or, you could do a little recon and take the extra time to get the information you need from one of the research reports. You save the poor assistant's butt AND the boss is none the wiser. What happens? He says thanks, takes the sample you so painstakingly got and gives you the regular reward. What about the extra sneakyness and effort? All the research and sneaking around? The confused time spent pouring over the wrong report before you found the correct one? Does that even matter!? What if he took the sample and said "wow, you did all that without my boss even finding out!? That calls for a little extra reward. Here." Just a few ideas...What do you guys think?
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I'm going to agree with you... Partially. I like the idea, but as an added bonus, what if certain characters reacted to this differently... Take your first example: When coming back with 50 what if he says "Holy shit, you didn't have to go genocidal on them! I wanted my shipment safe, I didn't want another species on the endangered list". This quest giver them proceeds to give you LESS of a reward than they initially would have. It would be nice when talking with a quest giver if you could ask questions to probe deeper into their needs / wants / personality and figure out what it is that they're really looking for. THIS would make the extra effort worth it. Otherwise everyone is always just going to kill as many things as they can. This puts a little more intelligence behind it. You get an upvote, but this is how I'd like to see it implemented.
I love this idea. It would make the "collect 15 blanks" quests a lot more interesting. I would love to see it implemented into the game.
I'm always up for alternate ways of completing objectives, so I approve. I especially like how your take applies to both simple fetch quests and more complicated ones.
Dude, I didn't even THINK of it having negative effect, that's brilliant! I also really like the idea of having to "probe deeper", as you put it, to figure out what they need and cater more to that.
Here's a simple idea that's totally never been done before: 1) You talk to an avian priest (or something) with the quest after noticing the [ ! ] above their head. "You must travel to the co-ordinates [Insert nearby location here] to kill the escaped felon [Instert ridiculous space name here] and kill him/her! Bring back proof of their demise and you will be rewarded." 2) Head on down to the co-ordinates and eventually find the NPC in question. 3) He/she tells you their side of the story about why he/she is innocent and says something like "You can kill me here and now if you truly don't value innocence, or you can take some of my bloodied feathers and tell them you've killed me so I can live free." 3) Now you have a choice. a - Kill him/her. b - Lie to the priest. From here on there can be a number of things that can happen. There could be a karma system in the game, or not. The priest could either accept the evidence or accuse you of lying and then attack you. It's all in the randomness of quest generation!!
Actually, a karma system has been suggested before, as well as other suggestions for things like a reputation system or favor system (where you have different reputations with different groups based on actions or quests). I've upvoted several of those already, but this idea would combine my idea with those nicely! If you want to see this in play, see if anyone else suggested this already and upvote them! (also, post the thread here so we can upvote them too. ~_^) Thanks for the thought (and the bump!)!!
I was going to suggest the same thing, using this example: A bank clerk asks you to defend the vault from a gang of Novakid thugs because the bank got a tip-off. To do this, you need to have access to the bank vault at night when nobody is around to watch. When the robbers arrive they tell you a sad story about how much they need the money. If you refuse to let them go then try to bribe you with a share of the take. If you still refuse, they fight you while trying to steal the money. Four options: Take the money from the vault for yourself and become a bank robber. Let the robbers take the money because they convinced you that they need it more than you do. Accept the bribe and become an accomplice. Kill them and collect the bounty. Each option has slightly different outcomes and rewards. However, I suggest that each outcome for the quest gives about the same amount of reward, even if the rewards are unique for each outcome. This is because players shouldn't be encouraged to go online and look up the best outcome for the quest.
OOOOR, you could make the rewards completely random, so you won't know! Like a shell game where you never got to watch them move the shells...
