Demiansky

Join Date 03/2008

+59

[Suggestion] Infinite quests

So I've probably mentioned this before in other threads some time ago, but I thought I'd bring it up again. I think that one thing Elemental needs to keep it interesting and replayable is an infinite number of unique quests. What do I mean by this?

I mean that a player should never encounter the same quest text twice. When a player encounters the same quest twice or three times or more, the concept of questing gets stale very quickly. Now obviously it would be cost prohibitive to have a bunch of stardock-paid writers coming up with new quests. However, I think it's safe to say that there are plenty of capable writers who are going to buy the game that will be interested in volunteering their time to consistently write new quest text and design new quests. All Stardock would need to do is pay a part time editor to sift through the quest text and quest skeletons and decide which ones are worthy of making it into the game. Each quest would have a unique serial number, and it would be tagged on a player's machine every time they encountered it. The process would follow as such:

---Stardock creates a quest modding system (probably already been done.)

---Stardock hires a fluent writer as a part time editor (I wouldn't mind a job like that ).

---Editor puts out a call for "auditions." Elemental players send sample quests that they have written.

---Editor decides who amongst them are qualified to make quests and continues to take auditions from new players whenever they are sent.

---The qualified volunteers then continue to send in new quest text and skeletons whenever they have time/inspiration.

Now, there would be different kinds of quests with varying levels of complexity and varying levels of difficulty. The editor would regularly send messages to the volunteer writers telling them what is in high demand. For instance, they might need early game, low level difficulty quests with non-gold rewards.

The possibilities are endless!

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Darkemperor

I'd settle for very unlikely to repeat anyway. Just a random generator that chooses everything from enemy type, to quest goal, to background, reward and location seems like it would be good enough. As long as there is a lot of possibilities. Every update should also include more.

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Quoting Dsraider,

reply 1

Agreed.

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The random generator idea sounds similar to an attempted Feature That Must Not Be Named for GalCiv2. I suspect that we're still a long way from seeing that sort of thing able to produce 'quest packages' that both read decently and present interesting game challenges. I'd be turned off more quickly by Frankenstein-prose than I would be by getting the same quest a few times.

We know that Brad is working with a big publishing house on the book, but I haven't caught any hint of an editorial member of the dev team. It sounds like a very good idea to me, and one that would fit well with the general plan for content-sharing (I'm pretty sure they are at least considering some sort of tagging to identify 'canon-kosher' mods).

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I'd prefer Living Lairs to an excess of monolithic events. I suppose "multi-path" layers are similar, and of course most actual "questing" has to be monolithic, but if Living Lairs could really be implemented (I guess kind of like a small settlement/band of independents ... only monsters not people?)

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The random generator idea sounds similar to an attempted Feature That Must Not Be Named for GalCiv2.

I think it would be easier to write a quest generator compared to the GalCiv2 feature you are referring to. Why? In case of generating a random quest, almost everything can be generated without constraints. In the GalCiv2 feature, they tried to generate something with a lot off constraints (Everything that had gone before...).

Hmmm... Trying not to clearly name that specific feature makes it a bit hard to express what I mean... Oh well, I wouldn't want to raise the wrath of certain Stardock programmers now would I...

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Oh well, I wouldn't want to raise the wrath of certain Stardock programmers now would I...

And one must not forget the position this programmer has in the Elemental dev team

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Personally, the only way I see somthing like this working, is if these quests are randomly generated. But, thats not to say that there couldn't be pre-created quest 'themes' and flavor/desription text. But personally I belive examples are best given:

Your soverign gets a quest. the Quest is randomly titled:

WAR-DUCKS

This is based upon a pre-scripted theme. This theme could be entirely random, or based upon current events within your kingdom. In this case, its random. The theme is 'War Animals' (for humorus effect).
War- is a preset prefix for the quest. Then a random animal is taken from a database. In this case ducks. Perhapse a tag is attached to this, for reward, and quest reasons.

* will indicate that this is determined by the chosen animal, or its elemtal tag.
** indicates a random variable, perhapse depentant on the turn, or level of your soverign

The Quest description reads:

***A Strange magic is corrupting the *ducks of the nearby land! You must save us, or the *ducks will destroy all we have worked so hard for! Defeat all the nearby *ducks within *2 turns.

***This text also could be a variant of 2-3 different options, or not.

The result:

**4 *Ducks appear nearby. They are reasonably powerful.

This is perhapse dependant, again, on either totally random variables, or ones that are influenced by soverign level or other factors.

You defeat the Ducks, and return for you reward.

The result:

You gain **400 gold. (and probably some other, generic reward.)

And maybe some kind of reseach or magic bonus in water (or whatever the closest one is), because the animal was a duck, and it had a water (or equivilant tag) on it.

Just an idea.

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I think available quests should definitely have something to do with how your empire is faring. Random quests I would not want to take over 100% (maybe 50% or LESS). Whereas a lot more trigger quests (pre-seeded) and of course pure scripted quests.

What I mean is, that pre-seeded trigger quests would mean that say you have 120 trigger quests, and 70 of these have been seeded into the game, at a max instance of happening twice during the game. (but only once to a particular player-Usually).

Then, of course, the scripted quests which are decided upon during the map-making phase of the game.

As for Lairs ... I think both Lairs and Independent nations should be run with Similar AI/functionality. Both organically grow, try to expand like a player, both try to gain new territory as they are overburdened with population (pop increase could be a low constant or dependant on outside factors) ... I don't see this happening for Animal Dens like Griffon Weyr or Eagle's Roost ... however I do see the possibility that a Giant Spider or a Giant Snake would settle a few tiles away to make another nest. A giant spider, eventually, could probably cover every tile of every forest with a spiders nest, and pre-existing spider's nests should slowly get stronger up to a "max capacity" cap.

For some, (dark elves) taming Spiders comes naturally, and so this is potential for a powerful mounted force, however the Spiders know something about politics, so will leave your nobility alone but will snack on the peasantry (forced lower population growth for nearby spider nest, stack-able). Max effect, however, is 0 pop growth, spiders wont start eating your peasantry an FASTER than they are added.

Perhaps certain other dangerous mounts could have a similar pop-growth penalty for nearby cities, like Manticores(demon) and Scorpions(another bug). For some reason I have the feeling like over-populated Snakes will be more likely to eat each other's young than human peasants. And Drakes, like Griffons and Eagles, won't expand.

As for more intelligent (but still not human) independent monsters ... they could have a villiage that slowly grows in population ... and once they reach a certain size they will start attacking (or something) ... anyways, the ability to grow, expand, and move their base should all be possible (imho) ... while expandable animals should be able to make new lairs by settling a Roving band (on proper terrain).

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