KAEMPFER'S PROFILE

You've sort of hit the nail on the head, Mr. Anderson.

One of the problems with side quests is that they generally fall into two categories:
1) Generic; acting as low-quality filler
2) Interesting; something players will never pass up by choice

Which means that 1s have no place in the game and 2s are something that could easily exist inside the storyline and the player would be glad of it. There are also "hidden" side quests which I think are really the only acceptable form. If they're hidden, then they act as a reward in and of themselves, which is neat. Plus, you learn secrets about the game world. Guild missions are an interesting diversion, in theory, but having them be a mainstay in a game tends to cause the player to lose focus/interest in the main story.

For your Fundamental Concepts portion point 3 is a very important one (maybe even... fundamental) that people (including professionals) seem to overlook: Nobody wants to backtrack for three hours to Rinkydinkville to get their sweet bag of gold for slaying a troll!

post=106086
K, do you play any tabletop RPGs? You have a very GM/DM-esque mindset.

No, but only because nobody will play them with me. I'd like to get a D&D game going with some friends one day, but I don't see that happening. Or a Fallout-inspired tabletop game using SPECIAL, which would also be pretty cool. I think I would make a good DM. *thumbsup.gif*

Side quests are a pretty common things in video games. Some games, like Fallout 3, are pretty much ONLY side quests, with the main story being extremely short (~10 hours for an RPG? pff!). But... why do we feel the need to jam so many optional quests into the game?

I mean, I understand not wanting to FORCE the player to go and collect ten apples or fifteen wolf pelts or whatever other shitty side quests you can think of, but there are plenty of very interesting objectives and missions that can be totally overlooked in some games. Sometimes, these quests fill in gaps left by the main story, or offer additional details on the matter. Why are these interesting, story-related quests left out of the main arc? It seems like we, as RPGMakers, are conditioned to add side quests just... because... OTHER GAMES HAVE THEM!

Unless your game is very reward oriented and side quests are the main route to gaining more power to make the main game easier (which is sometimes the case) or the side quests are extremely time consuming and you expect players to replay your game over and over again (which is the case for Fallout 3, which I mentioned earlier) there is no good reason to not have your interesting side quests tie into the main plotline some how. If the quests are fun, then the player will be happy for the additional gameplay (who doesn't with their favourite RPGs were a little longer?). If they aren't fun, they have no business being your game, anyways.

There is another topic going on about people investigating; one thing people are forced to investigate is possible openings for new side quests. But if you just make those optional missions parts of the story, then you can rest assured the player will be seeing your story, fully fleshed out, displayed to them as opposed to hoping they are being really thorough and finding every snippet themselves.

Now I'm not saying do away with side quests; far from it. Just have those interesting side quests tie into your main storyline wherever they are applicable. Nobody really wants to be moving from Point A to Point B and get sidetracked twenty times to do stupid things, but most players like to be derailed to do something interesting on an otherwise boring leg of the story/main quest. There is a balance in here.

Western RPGs are particularly guilty of inundating the player with a huge number of optional missions which aren't really optional. Missions that you theoretically want to do, but don't advance the story. The problem is (AND THIS IS MY MAJOR POINT POORLY CONCEALED IN THE SECOND TO LAST PARAGRAPH) that you have to do them to succeed. If you don't do the side quests, you're underlevelled/out of money/embarrassingly powerless in the face of evil. I suppose you have some lee way in terms of which ones you do, but when there is an obvious correlation between Doing Quests and Being Stronger, most people are going to choose "All of the Above" when it comes to side quest selection.

It seems like an excuse, to me, to add content without bothering to actually tie it into your game properly. Anything can be fitted into a 40+ hour epic if the story is interesting enough in the first place, since it should take the player to all corners of the game world (which isn't necessarily a world, as it could be a city or a cave or the galaxy, depending on the scope of your game). What are your takes on it? Why do you guys add side quests instead of tying that content into the main story?

post=105961
I think this completely depends on the usefulness of the reward. If potions cost 1 gold and I consistently find them on shelfs, I will stop checking them and it's the same with NPCs. If their information doesn't help me in any way or tell me something interesting related to the storyline, it's not worth my time.

This is true.

Also, though, I tend to... SLAP THE PLAYER IN THE FACE with what he needs to know and a whole lot of story, sort of sprinkled throughout the game. I don't really rely on the player taking the initiative and talking to people, and I don't really reward him/her for doing it, either. Most of my NPCs won't help you in any way, but there is a still a lot of story to be had if you just pay attention to the game as it progresses. I am a big proponent of having extremely interesting NPCs who are important to the story but aren't necessarily recurring characters. I like to present information in a concise but interesting way, so as a result I don't really need a million dudes/books running around giving you interesting details on the background of the Great War Between The Good Alliance and The Evil Empire. I figure the vast majority of the players will understand and enjoy the story based on what I force them to sit through (not much) and the rest will be able to gain an understanding of the world through simple interaction with shop keepers and other NPCs the player regularly interacts with anyways.

That being said, I do search pretty laboriously in games that make it obvious there is something to be searched for. It's always a good idea to ramp up the quality of goods as the game progresses to match the player progression. A potion in the first cabinet in the game is good, but by the fiftieth cabinet in the game they should be finding something better.

I don't know about everyone else, but when I am searching for a specific thing in a long thread, I don't like having to scroll down to the bottom every time I want to change pages. Having a Page list at the top of the page would be (I assume) fairly easy to implement and would make forum navigation much easier, especially when you are trying to search through the screenshots thread (although currently we don't have one for some reason) or a good thread you like for a specific bit of advice or something.

I checked the last couple of pages and didn't see a similar topic, but if I missed it I apologize. I have been thinking this since the first time I used RMN, though!