Flagging Quests vs Finding Quests

[Denmo]

Please read the post/thread in entirety before you make a response. At the very least, skim. LIKE IF YOU AGREE! THAT'S WHAT IT'S THERE FOORR

Thesis (TL,DR): If we could complete quests and get rewards from them without having them flagged, Questing (in terms of WoW) would be optional, and Exploration would be King.


I'm not sure what MMOs do their quests like this. If they have, I haven't heard of it yet. I'm talking about the way the Elder Scrolls RPGs - Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind - handle their quests. Very similar to the way MMO's do them, but I can see one key difference:

Even if you don't have the quest flagged, you can still complete a quest.

Let's say you're out and about, exploring the wilderness for no particular reason, and you happen upon a Beastman camp. You're feeling awesomely awesome and decide to wipe the suckers out. Oh no! Their leader pops out of his hole and suddenly you've got a boss fight on your hands! You didn't plan on this at all. It's a really tough fight, but you pull through because you're awesome at your job. You loot the bodies, poke around the camp for anything cool, and then move on.

In WoW/MMO's/modern quest system (also 2.0/ARR's, to my knowledge), if you do this, you often get nothing of importance, only later to find out that the boss was indeed a quest mob, and there's actually 3-4 quests involved in that camp that you would've completed had you flagged them. Wow! You just wasted your time by exploring and poking your head around without having quests flagged! You feel really bummed and realize that you should just quest from now on, or you might miss out on some cool stuff. You never go out exploring again, (unless it's achievement related.)

In Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind's quest system, if you were to do something like this, you get the loot and clear the quests in question regardless - you just don't know it yet. Only when you head in to town and talk around do you realize, "Oh hey, that boss you want me to kill? Already did that. Reward please." You feel pretty awesome about this happy accident. You endeavor to go exploring more often. Who knows what you might end up finding?

Were FFXIV:ARR to allow for this, IMO, the whole necessity of simply doing quests in succession would fall apart. Questing would become optional. Players could go and do what they wanted, and if they needed some direction, THEN they would grab quests. But trekking out into the wild blue yonder would be an adventure and just as rewarding.

Or think about it this way. You grab one quest that says to kill 5 squirrels, not knowing that there's also a quest to kill 5 crabs, who happen to be intermingled with the squirrels. No biggie! You're killing both them anyway, so you complete both quests. User-friendly! MAGIC!

And to top it off, doing something like this wouldn't be that difficult to implement. Right?

Why don't MMO's do this? What could be the downside to such a system? (serious question, I can't think of any)

Is there an MMO that does already? How does it play?

[Zenaku]

I think that be pretty but to do they have to add a system or redo all the quest to make work. Maybe they can find a loop hole to make this idea work but i just don't see it happening anytime soon. Most of quest in ARR are mobs that spawn from tree and such by the look of the low level one.

Let's hope they add this idea seem pretty cool and be pretty awesome going in a dungeon and you still can turn in the quest without flagging it.

[Atoli]

I don't really like it.
What's important in quests is the story behind it, not the reward.
Sure, your way you'd get the reward for something you did without knowing it had to be done, but you never actually experience the story behind it.
Looking at it from a logical side:
Why would anyone reward you for killing that boss?
If you have the quest flagged, it means you are the "chosen" one to go and kill the beast.
If you return, people have a reason to reward you.
But why should they reward you for killing it if they haven't even asked you to kill it in the first place?


What I'd actually DO like is having to poke around to find quests.
As in no signs above the head, no "search quests" option in the questlog. But I'm not seriously gonna propose that because I know most people hate it

[Denmo]

I don't really like it.
What's important in quests is the story behind it, not the reward.
Sure, your way you'd get the reward for something you did without knowing it had to be done, but you never actually experience the story behind it.
Looking at it from a logical side:
Why would anyone reward you for killing that boss?
If you have the quest flagged, it means you are the "chosen" one to go and kill the beast.
If you return, people have a reason to reward you.
But why should they reward you for killing it if they haven't even asked you to kill it in the first place?


What I'd actually DO like is having to poke around to find quests.
As in no signs above the head, no "search quests" option in the questlog. But I'm not seriously gonna propose that because I know most people hate it

That's a valid point.

But I feel that if it's done right, there could still be story. It'd just be a little bit more anti-climactic on your end.

Wife: "OH WOE IS ME! My husband was killed by the Ukgingthar! A foul spider-like creature with porous skin and oozing nostrils! (Beware its paralyzing kneecaps!). WHO will help me and avenge my husbands death??"

Option 1 (Did not kill):
Me: "YES! I will go do it for a damsel in distress, ANY DAY! Now stop crying, fair buxom lady!" *dashes out*

Option 2 (Already killed):
Me: "Oh, Ukin-magoozin-fart? I killed it on my way here. He was kinda in the way."

Wife: "BRAVE SOUL! YOU HAVE DONE ME A GREAT SERVICE! MY HUSBAND MAY REST IN PEACE, AND SO WILL I!"

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing.

And I do think some quests should require that you flag them first. Particularly the important ones. But it's the run-of-the-mill quests I'm referring to.

[Warlock]

At first i thought this was another thread complaining about NPCs having the orange (!) on top of them LIKE IF 1.0 DIDN'T DO THAT BUT INSTEAD WAS A WHITE CLOUD!!!...anyways i guess this could work

[Atoli]

LIKE IF 1.0 DIDN'T DO THAT

When 1.0 started, it had no such clouds actually :3
They were put in much later, like patch 1.19, because people complained they couldn't find quests without it

On-Topic:
I thought you meant for real quests, OP.
I wouldn't mind it for 'normal' quests, like someone sending you to gather 12 marmot fur and you can be like "yeah ehm..I already have them." But I'd absolutely hate it for quests involving a real story.

[Mjollnir]

It would perhaps make repeatable daily quests (should ever such a thing be inflicted on this poor game) not viable. Which is a good thing.

And yes, I agree strongly with your idea Denmo. It's not irregular that you end up at a quest hub, do a ton of quests, return and hand them in, only for one of the follow-on quests to send you back out to where you had just been to kill some things that you had just killed for someone else. I'm looking at you Alpha, but this happens in most questy MMOs.

[Phe]

another way could also be that items that you happen to find while exploration can trigger quests.

like in the OP scenario you get some document (rare/ex) after killing the boss containing references to a quest.

[Klefth]

That'd be a pretty good idea for the simple and shallow exp. quests, I guess. I like it.

another way could also be that items that you happen to find while exploration can trigger quests.

like in the OP scenario you get some document (rare/ex) after killing the boss containing references to a quest.

This would be pretty cool, too, but people would then cry for the exact item and the location of said boss to be pointed out for them in obvious fashion (gigantic golden markers, anyone?), completely defeating the purpose of your idea. :/

[Phe]

That'd be a pretty good idea for the simple and shallow exp. quests, I guess. I like it.



This would be pretty cool, too, but people would then cry for the exact item and the location of said boss to be pointed out for them in obvious fashion (gigantic golden markers, anyone?), completely defeating the purpose of your idea. :/

could also be a random drop. escpecially in areas that are not so frequently visited.