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Do you think players should be allowed to issue quests/missions to other players instead of NPC's?
l2avism
Member UncommonPosts: 386
Imagine completing quests that actually serve a purpose.
Lets say that you needed to craft an entire Army's swords. You could hand out quests to new players and pay them to gather resources.
Or lets say you needed the head of a certain deadly creature to mount on your wall in your player owned house. You could pay someone to do that for you.
Comments
Fallacy 1)
Just because the quest are player issued does not make them to serve any more purpose than the quests we have now.
Fallacy 2)
"You could hand out quests to new players and pay them to gather resources." - that is what auction house is for... Same goes for other "gather this, bring this, do that", etc.
This is what you get for thinking that math skills do not matter...
What purpose does killing 10 wolves that have been harassing Farmer Joe's cattle actually accomplish besides netting you a quest reward? Is farmer Joe actually going to go out and DO anything now with his safe cattle? No. There are still 10 other wolves attacking his cattle that the next person who talks to him needs to kill.
On the other hand, if I were the main crafter for a large guild that was preparing to go to war over some territory controlled by another guild and I issued quests to several other players to go out and kill a bunch of wolves and skin them for materials that i need to make armor sets for our upcoming battle.... Completing that quest served an actual purpose that had an impact in the world by allowing me to supply better gear to my guild and give us the upper hand in the battle and the territory now being under our control.
Now, could I instead just use an auction house and purchase that stuff instead? Sure. But that isn't as interesting, and also wouldn't net questers possible additional rewards such as XP.
In "The Repopulation", players can post "work orders", which function exactly like EVE's "buy orders".
That's just 2 examples I know of, there may be more.
Of course, it would be impractical, to allow players to construct quests like "go kill 10 rats and the game will reward you with 100 gold". That will instantly be exploited to epic levels...
On the political side you have things like whether or not you will offer your quests to certain types of players or players in certain guilds. You could also set many other things into motion through these seemingly simple acts. For example:
Setup a quest to get a rare material from some rare mob that has a very long respawn time. Offer that same quest, in secret, to 2 know enemies, knowing that they will both be going for that rare mob spawn at the same time. Will they fight eachother so that whoever wins can get the quest reward? Did you perhaps follow them there, or have some allies follow them there, in order to set an ambush and kill them both? Did you send them both there knowing that tensions were high between the 2 guilds and hope to incite an all out war between them.... and from there perhaps while they are all busy fighting eachother, have your own guild flank them and just wipe out both of their forces from behind. Or maybe you were lying in wait nearby one of their territories, knowing that a battle was about to break out and as soon as their forces moved out to that location you quietly snuck into their territory, murdered anyone remaining, raided their resources and destroyed their buildings with no opposition.
Or perhaps, you're a double agent who is friendly to one of those guilds on the surface, but secretly allied with some members of the other. Your "secret" alliance wants to go to war with the other guild, but their leadership doesn't want to without provocation. You just provided the perfect excuse for them to demand war. After all they were "just going on a quest" when someone from the enemy guild showed up and "attacked them for no reason". Now they want vengeance. Now you get to grab some popcorn, sit back, and watch a war ensue which you helped start.
These are just a couple of quick scenarios, but there is much much more that could be done along those lines with such systems in place.
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Interesting? Maybe on paper when you do not think about actual implementation...
We can just go grind mob A then B then C for XP and loot right? What's the point of any quests or lore at all?
I think most would agree that adding something behind the reason for doing things, whether it be dev or player created quests, makes it a bit more interesting even if it is just superficial. The end result is the same sure. You killed X amount of a certain mob, or gathered X amount of a certain resource to trade to someone else. But did you just mindlessly go and do it and then click a button or 2 to trade it, or was the player you were doing it for perhaps a big RP'er who provided you with an interesting story and some entertainment and (as long as you were willing to go along with it) sent you on a series of quests that they had devised? Or perhaps you were helping fuel the efforts of a warring guild who later on became very dominant and offered additional rewards, or safe passage, or assistance with various things to those who had completed quests for them.
It's mainly a layer of personal interaction, influenced by a game feature which acts as sort of an ice breaker for further socialization that you might not otherwise encounter because you're all busy posting random stuff on an AH or spamming trade channels. It might not matter or appeal to some, but I could see the appeal of it to those who desire more of that type of interaction.
I do believe quests can be improved a lot by removing various helpers tools and making the quests in game simple enough and enjoyable enough to complete without said tools. The other issue would be to reduce the sheer amount of quests and focus on making a few really interesting ones.
I agree with the premise, but the devil is in the details.
Rewards for experience points and leveling up would be difficult to implement - and might end up fostering exploitation, if you care about that sort of thing. How many XP do I give for x? y? z?
Rewards for cash or items would be easy to do, but I could see some sort of "quest item inflation" take place. Why should I kill 10 goblins for you when the guy down the road is going to give me a better reward for doing less?
In the end, players have (and have always had) this ability to some degree- when game mechanics allow it (limited by NO TRADE, NO DROP items). There is nothing stopping me from commissioning others to get some item from the world for me, and then paying them for it. When someone in WoW offers to buy stacks of copper ore for 100 plat, are they, in essence, providing a quest?
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Taking it beyond just rewards for doing someone else's work (glorified barter?) is things like CoX's Architect, Neverwinter's Foundry, amd EQ2's Dungeon Maker.
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Performing the action should give an amount of exp relative to what the kill earned.
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There would have to be tight controls on it for sure, but I think it would have the best impact in crafting. For instance, if your crafting a crafting-level 15 sword but it requires you to craft level 5 steel, but that's mundane, boring, and profitless, you could pass that on to a newbie willing to do it because he'll gain crafting skill/exp, or because he farmed the mats himself, able to profit.
Kind of a reverse AH: Rather than listing obscure mats, hoping they'll sell, you can farm/craft an obscure mat that someone has requested. It could cut down on some shout/trade spam. Shout a couple of times and if noone replies, list the job on the board, as well as the price, and go on about other game activities.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
There are a lot of wrong implementations possible, but those don't automatically make the idea bad.
It's like asking "Can you walk across this field?" to which the answer is "Yes, if you very carefully avoid all the landmines it is possible." (Which perhaps paints a harsher picture than I intend, since most aspects of life involve hundreds of ways to fail for every one right way to do things.)
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Just make the player created quest transfer XP and gold instead of making it appear from nothing.
But I don't think the PVE should be for rewards like xp or gold. They could be used for world altering quests like building a bridge or killing a super world boss.
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