RNG Quests and Rewards !! Good idea or no ??

Lucioon

so imagine this

You arrived at a village, some guy asks you to help him out, 3 Random solutions appears, you choose one and you are given a lead into a cave where you decide to help the captured villagers or help the Huge Boss and receive RNG Gold/Materials...etc

Your friend arrived at the same village, the same guy gives him 3 random solutions, he picked the same one you picked but this time it leads you to another village, to do other things requested by the Quest giver.

Another person arrived at the same village, picked another solution but this time it leads you to the same cave as person 1 but instead of the two choices, the quest requests him to set up traps in the cave ...etc

RNG Quest lines, RNG Loot , RNG events

everyone gets different story, different experiences

No more walkthroughs ( or rather huge and long walkthroughs to cover every situations )

Will that work in an MMO of today ??

Atlys

Though it sounds pretty cool, I think this sort of thing would be more suited to single player games. My only real reason is that you and your friends would be going two different paths, and if you wanted to quest together, you couldn't as you would be working in two completely different questing areas. You wouldn't have the same quests, so you couldn't really complete them together.

I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a workaround for that, like a quest share feature or something similar.

Lucioon

If you are in groups, it would be different, everyone in that group would choose like in SWTOR, every person picks and who ever choose the most wins. ^^ with tie breakers and everything.

Unique experiences for each player. And unique experiences for each group of players.

It makes for wonderful story telling for each player in the Universe.

maplestone

I've long believed this would work and produce content more efficeintly than static quests because of higher replay value.

My only hesitations are that it might take a few experiments to make sure the system didn't start to feel too repetitive and it might be a little harder to maintain/debug as you expand the system with new verbs.

Alumicard

imo, one way could be to try different approaches to a quest.In the cave-boss example,

1. solution - offence: put down traps to kill the minions or weaken the boss then the next person/group who talks to the NPC gets the task to kill the boss. Maybe even solo player kill the lower boss and groups get the task to kill the big guy.

2. solution - neutral: you help but dont get involved in the fighting. NPC sends people to different towns to get ressources so the damage done by the boss/its minions can be repaired. Maybe even craft traps that are used in the 1. solution.

3. solution - diplomatic: NPC sends you to talk to the boss or one of its minions to pay ransom for the villagers as an example. But it would also open up the possibility to join the dark side and get some cookies.

Basicly you would need to view a quest as an event. Which means more work which means more cost which means to much risk for most companies so I guess it would be a niche, kickstarter, founders pack, meh kind of game.

 

edit:format

SpottyGekko

Indeed, it would make the actual gameplay while levelling more interesting, because there would be no more "L1-L50 speedguides" posted on the net.

 

But it would probably also lead to a sharp rise in the price of pre-leveled L50 characters on ebay, especially in MMO's where PvP is a significant endgame activity. 

Wizardry

There is still going to be walk through's,so nothing changes there.I can't speak for what others want out of a role playing experience but i want my world to at least feel realistic,i do not want it to operate like scripted PC code.

I want ALL npc's to be moving as well as creatures.I want the creatures to act like a real ECO system,they should attack and feed off each other.I expect players to need food and drink,perhaps if a npc is going to be stationary,he only comes out at a certain time of day but won't always be at the same spot.I expect resources and mobs to not regenerate every 5 minutes,perhaps more along the line of once a day or better only once a week.

I would like to see other realistic role playing experiences like weather matters,your fire spell should be extremely weak during rainy weather,your fire arrows should do significantly more damage during hot sunny days,your run speed should be slower going up hills and faster down hill.

I do not want to see anymore of that WOW type linear questing,it is not realistic in sense of a role playing game.I don't even know what it is,more like a paint by numbers game or connect the dots because the quests are not even designed realistic,they are designed to have you follow them in order as you level.

As for random number generators,that is the ONLY way to create a sense of realism.If you were in a fight,you would not hit every time or do the same dmg or take the same dmg every time.Your accuracy would also be different all the time.

As for rewards,there are several ways to do it,i just don't like the trend of making the best rewards require that RAID or large group,there is no reason for it what so ever.I do however want to see mobs ONLY drop items they actually have on them,not some magical random drop from a loot list of 50 items.

Quirhid

First, it won't get rid of walkthroughs. Whichever way you want to implement the RNG, those quests, those options, those loot tables, those pieces will be documented in a walkthrough somewhere eventually.

Second, it is very hard to implement while keeping the illusion intact. Too often with such RNG features you can recognize the mechanics behind them fairly easily. People will play and exploit the system when they figure it out.

Third, it is bound to get repetitive. There's no avoiding it.

Scalpless

Anarchy Online had randomly generated quests as both solo and group content in addition to static quests and dungeons. They were fun enough.