What about failure ?

If you fail your quest it would be cool to have some drawback : a dragon appear, a city revolts, etc.

There could be duels (not to the death, but to win "something") ... THAT would be intersting. Basically it would be a full asault battle between two players, but the only unit in play for either side would be the Sovereign. First of all, no one would actually die or get hurt after the battle is over/ someone defeats the other one. Secondly, it would have to be goverened by a strict set of rules to prevent assasinations during this process. Possibly (and most simply) it could be done at any time, by soveriegns that are even across the map from each other. The only requirement would be previous contact and good or neutral relations.

A dual could be over almost anything. Either a lump-sum of gold, a City, an Army ... just anything worth arguing over. I would bet with my betting shoes, however, that gold and territory would be the most commonly dueled over. I doubt anyone would want to risk essence on a duel, and even allowing the betting of essence might make the game broken in certain circumstances.

Alot of the duel system I see, is for instance Nation A is wanting to restrict trade, and create a Mercantile based system. Perhaps Nation B wants trade rights. Nation A refuses. Nation B forces the matter to a duel ... and if he loses perhaps he has to pay X amount of money depending on certain factors, namely diplomatic skill. If its such "force duels" then the amount of money u have to pay for failure is less with a higher diplomatic skill, but the more game-changing the deal is the higher the base amount of money is ... so forcing someone to declare war onto someone else would cost ALOT more money on a failed dual than say ... open borders.

Of course, to keep this from getting out of hand, it could perhaps only be allowed if both parties accept .... which would primarily lend itself to both an avenue of gambling gold and land, as well as an avenue for future roleplay situations .... for instance, I defeat u in battle and u adopt my state religion.

This is something I feel needs to be in. If you accept a quest then you have accepted responsibility and if you fail that, you need to be punished.

In Age of Wonders Shadow Magic The Spirits of War/Order/Magic and Nature gave you quests and if you failed the first two or so, they told you they were displeased with you. When you failed the third one or so you got punished. I remember that I failed the Spirit of War for the third time and I was scared of having half my armies killed or my capital devastated but all that happened was a lightning storm over my capital...."Is that all that happens when you fail enough quests....?" I thought. I expected my capital to be attacked by a stack of tier 3 units or that buildings worth 500 gold would be randomly destroyed but since all that happened was a pathetic lightning storm I didn't care anymore about failing quests since the consequences were so mild.

So In Elemental, I want that if you fail enough quests from one type of questgiver (Mages for example) then for the next 30 turns, 30% of your manaincome gets lost. If you insist in failing though, the next time, your closest shard stops working for 20 turns....

I could see that one might expect a divine quest giver to pay some serious retribution, like curses, etc.., but I wouldn't expect failing some quests to have an non-proportionately negative reward.  I might expect failing a major plot to have a severe consequence (e.g. failing to keep atomic weapons out of Nazi hands, results in them using them on the battlefield), but still it should have a logic to it, and not all quests are so serious. And some quests are purely opportunistic.  

I guess it also depends on how you fail quest.  E.g. Fail completely, or just fail by giving the quest item to the quest giver's rival.

That's lovely! And there may be even an option, that after you do this, the witch says: "O no, I gave you the wrong potion! You should have drinked this one!".

Something like this was in Port Royale. There was a mission where some shady NPC character asked you to bring wine and suggar and promised that he creates the same amount of wine as the sum of those two commodities (wine was more expensive in the game). The quest had two results: you got what you were promised or you were caught by local authorities. In that case you prestige falled and the goods were confiscated. Things like this shall not happen often in the game, but if something like this happens from time to time, it may be good.

  Glad to finally see/read this post.  Tried to take it all in.  Several ideas sounded promising.  I will now attempt to come up with a few quests myself.  I might be plagerizing previous ideas/comments.  Feel flattered and not offended please.  I can see a need for a quest format with branching tree's and quest plot(s).  So what should the quest editor have?

  The quest editor should have a flagged event(s) to enact/start preliminary quest/main quest/quest outcome-effect/post quest links to other quests or events.  Each prequest flagged event(s) should have a Dialogue tree/Plot tree linked to the quest events editor. 

  Here is an example quest.  Soverign Magicke is going about the day to day maintenance of running his City-State of the Ars Arkanix.  The prime city is called Gesh.  In the throne room a messenger has arrived from a trade outpost on the outskirts of the City-State.  As this messenger is a royal messenger he advances as protocal dictates and say's with a sweeping bow, "My liege; a caravan has been attacked at Boighnton on Frostgoot.  It was completely destroyed, plundered with murderous result!  I asked the stablehands to be prepared with a fresh mount my liege.  What message should I take back?"

  Now Magicke has to make a decision.  I think there should be several options   for how a quest can start.  For now lets say this quest is randomly generated caused by a length of time in game.  So, an "attack" would be a threat or war event.  There should also be a defence event, find event, reward event, translate event, manage event, messenger event(like the example, which was generated through a predermined script/event tree after so many turns/rounds{which could be variable but still have predefined conditional timers}, etc.

  Magicke says "Take some refreshment squire", while I ponder my decision.  A list of decisions should be available to pick from.

A.  "Tell the local militia I will be sending reinforcements forthwith"

B.  "Tell the local militia to expect reinforcements, and, one of my personal Knights Excelsior to take charge.

C.  "I cannot be bothered with this, other matters are more urgent."

D.  "I will personally see to this!" Looks into Mystical Orb surrounded by dark blue velvet.  The Orb flares into a weird, throbbing motion of dark images and colours.  Magicke excercises a portion of his essence through the Orb and reveals the culprits of this nefarious deed.  Of course there should be some limitations on the Orb so it cannot be used exclusively.

E.  "Squire, see what you can do.  We have no spare troops at the moment."

F.  Use the attack in a propaganda campaign against one of your opponents.  Links to Diplomacy and Prestige.

  If the answer is B.  Then Magicke sends one of his Knights Excelsior -in this case Sir Corwine de Lancet - to Boighnton on Frostgoot.  Sir Corwine, then moves there with a company of Arkanix Archers and Cavaliers.  Soon, they encounter some murderous cut-throats which they quickly dispatch.  In the wreckage of the battlefield, Corwine finds evidence leading him to believe that a Cult of some evil deity is nearby.

  They continue to scout the area of suspicion and within a few turns find a little used trail heading towards a swampy area.  Most of Boighnton is farmlands(grape vineyards and dairy farms).  The River Frostgoot sits along Boighnton's northern boundary.  The trail sir Corwine and his troops find heads eastward into a region that has yet to be civilized or patrolled.  Soon, Sir Corwine comes a across a multi-tiered Temple of the Frogking. 

  What are Sir Corwine choices?  The obvious one is to explore the Temple.  Maybe we can make multiple choices, say pick A and C.  Or A, B, and D.

A.  Explore

B.  Loot and Pillage

C.  Find clues to Trade Caravan destruction

D.  Leave Area

E.  Post Sentries and request reinforcements

F.  Post Sentries

  Sir Corwine decides on course A to start.  He also decides to post sentries.  While exploring the Temple, Sir Corwine slays a Frogpriest and gets another clue.  The Frog Cult is actively worshipping Grribbbdit, a bulbously fat Demon of ugly squat features with slimey skin and grotesquely bent arms.  Gribbbdit is ravenously in love with cheese and demands it as tribute.  His followers were just following orders.  Boighnton becomes a battleground in which Gribbbdit makes an appearance with severall followers. 

  Sir Corwine has been effective as a "officer" and recieves a commission.  New title conferred with appropriate bonuses.  Company of Archers and Cavaliers both receive promotions.  Sir Corwine now uses a Pendant that Magicke gave to him before embarking on this mission.  Magicke now takes direct part in Gribbbdits downfall and transfers the demonic energies into a "banked pool of energy".  The battle didn't end up taking very long.  That demon wasn't very powerful after all.

Break...

Yea dats cool. I also like the Dungeon Quests/ a la Calebethon/ where its an underground (smaller) minimap. with Quests and enemies within the minimap. Such dungeoneer quests should probably be much more rare than the smaller or more land-map based quests, especially considering that the "Dungeon Quest" itself has several smaller quests contained within.

I really want a quest where my daughter is captured and take to a remote tower by an evil fallen. Upon vanquishing the fallen lizard creature I would search for my precious daughter only to find a hastily scribbled note:

I am sorry sovergn but your princess is in another castle.

Assassin would be a great and interesting quest feature. I would of cousrse go knocking on doors shaft style.

What's my name!

What?

The so called 'hero' who ransacks tombs is nothing more than a grave robber. That loot or treasure belongs in a museum not at the local bazar.

Reading frog's post makes me wonder if reaching the waypoint is the quest? Then the next waypoint and the next? Seems boring to me. No matter how descriptive or creative the dialogue is, just running from waypoint to waypoint will get old. We need quests that involve risk and variety.

Quests need to be creative otherwise they will seem to be redesigned debris anomolies or random triggered choices seen in GalCiv2 repackaged as "quests" - the ones that give you a moral dilemma of choice.

Otherwise many quests will never be accepted once a player has 100+ games played  - a particular quest will recognizable immediately and the user will know if quest X is worth doing or not, a complete bore, or a chore with high risk and low reward.

That's why I propose random quests where creature or event X with X abilities and stats do X action such as invade/held captive/ransoming/spoil land/ etc - that which needs to be remedied. Therefore each quest will be something new and may side step the 'go to waypoint A ----> B ----C redundancy quests. These quests would always result in a moral choice in how you decide to remedy the situation. If you kill the kidnapper and put his head on a pike is one way, bribing is another, etc. Imagine let's say a troll with high resistance to certain schools of magic is holding captive the fair princess of a neighboring enemy kingdom. Saving her could help diplomatic relations, if you had the available strength in the Troll's weakness (which may need to be researched) - or even how you save her could help or hurt. Maybe she fell in love with Troll (weird but captives always fall for their captors) so do you bribe the troll with peasant sacrifices or just kill him? Wierd example but I wonder the possiblities. And what if this event took place in another enemy kingdom or remote area.

Also I dislike the waypoint hold handing direction these quests will take that Frogboy mentioned. Otherwise its just blind redundancy of creating waypoints. I would rather have to explore, spy, or invade to possibly complete quests. And maybe they could be completed and maybe not. Because each game is different, the map is different, the triggered events and quests are also different. Great replay value there.

Any chance the engine supports multiple "worlds" at once? I'm thinking have some explorable dungeons. Master of Magic had a whole over world to conquer, while over games like Age of Wonder simply had explorable caves that connected other parts of the map. It would be awesome to have an underground world as part of the game to explore. Of course that might be a bit much to expect of the quest system to make little explorable dungeons and not the simple popup location with a few monsters to kill on site ones that appear in the demo now.

In general though it would be nice to see the quest seem have a very robust scripting setup, kind of like Warcraft III. So you can use it to make custom senerioes where if a player enters a curtain square a trigger event happens. Allow for moving, adding, deleting, damaging, and etc individual units or whole armies. Ability to add/remove resources, constructed buildings, land features, and so on. Ability to set things on a timer either as deadlines for finishing or quest is offered after X number of turns from start, or when player does something like enters square, founds city, makes building, and so on. I think you get the idea.

Right now the beta community is small compared to what it will be like after release. Who knows what idea someone might come along with after release and getting their hands on the full game. But it'll be nice if the systems is advance enough to support all kinds of cool complex stuff. I mean who would of thought all the crazy mods that would come out for WC3 back when it was in development or that DOTA mod would be as popular it not more popular then the actual game.

I mention all this cause I know it is beta and right now the only quest I really see are randomly offered missions or inn quest. Both of which have pretty much just go to another location on the map. Sometimes you have to escort someone other times you have to have to simply go there and fight some guys on site.

It would also be nice to have branching quests. For example the dark vial quest that I often seem to get. When you reach the location the wizard tells you he'll give you a bribe if you let him go. Well the 500 gp is nice so I usually accept it. So it would be interesting if several turns later the dark wizard ends up starting to terrorize the area as the potion turned him into some kind of undead monster like a vampire or Lich. Where as if you choose to kill him you would then get the vial which you could choose to drink thus giving you some ATK/DEF boost but CHA loss. Or you could take the vial to a Priest and have it cleanensed which would look good in public eye and get a +CHA bonus.

But ya that's just a simple example of some of the potentially complex quest people could come up with. I'm sure given enough time and the proper tools people could make whole story lines involving areas that the heroes adventure in. Of course that's starting to get more into the realm of campaign & map generating tools. Though in the end I think they are all gonna have to be tied together.