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Failing missions/quests
Orcc
Member Posts: 3,043
One thing ive never really liked in most games is that you are given a very linear story or set of missions and you must pass them succesfully in order to advance. You are given a set of guildlines and you must follow them strictly in order to pass the mission. What happens if you should fail your mission? You are simply brought back to the beginning so you can do it all over again. Why should that be? Without really knowing how advanced or capable it is, wouldnt it be cool if the Journey System would let you continue on even after youve failed a mission? Imagine your quest was to rescue a prince who had been kidknapped and was being carried off by a band of Ukar and your goal was to rescue him. Well, what if your party took too long or killed him by accident? In a normal game, you would simply fail the mission, the prince would come back to life, the Ukar would return and you would chase them all over again. Instead you would carry on your characters story but whereas you may have been given a quest or contact by the prince if you had suceeded, you must now continue with the death of the prince being your responsibility.
Now imagine something like this over the span of 50 different quests, failing and passing would each lead to a different branch in a greater story, and would be truly unique.
Obviously this would be very difficult and would require an immense amount of time normally, but would the Journey system be able to handle advanced dynamic quests like this?
Edit: One more thing is that, from a design point of view, I understand it wouldnt be fun to continuously fail missions, but it would make players think more stongly before they enter the mission, 'Is my group proficient enough? Are we suited to handle this?' I hated in Guildwars when I would join a group and see 4 warriors, 3 rangers and a mage, especially when monks are so important. People would just rush into the mission running ahead of the group and dieing, or luring a whole bunch of enemies back, etc. It was really annoying to fail a mission numerous times just because the players were too stupid to form a proper group or use the group for help. I know you said that quests would scale dynamically to suit the group, but they should still pose a significant challenge. A difficult game is better than one that you can breeze through without any problems.
Comments
This is indeed the kind of thing that the Journey System will be able to handle. Not only might you fail a quest, you might fail it in one of several different ways. Or if you prefer, not "fail" so much as "differently end"
Not completing the original quest goal may close off or even open up future story arcs. The possibilites are very exciting!
There's an idea. You're mission to rescue the prince of your province, you fail, he dies and now the whole province wants your head and the all the members of the group you were in. Hehe. That'd make for some interesting times.
I wonder if this type of thing is really possible in the game for a single character or if it even should be done.
If you take the example of what Mirrandor is talking about, you have a single character failing a quest, killing a "prince" which changes the entire world, since that Prince is now dead for everyone.
Though I can definitely see somethings impacting your character and the way that other people / NPCs treat that character, I can't see the landscape of the world changing on the quest of a single PC.
Why the hell shouldn't it? Not only does it add realism and freaking coolness, but it makes your character and your actions actually important. You ARE someone. You CAN affect the world. If you screw up, the world's suffering follows in your wake. If you succeed, the world can rejoice.
I think it would add immersion.
Technically it is, of course, possible. However, I just don't think that players want to have the fate of their world in the hands of a single player.
Now if you had "Clan Quests" which affected the entire world, that could be a different then.