10-07-2009, 01:03 PM
You could think of Planetside in terms of being a dynamic public quest, even if it didn't tell you so in words on your screen.
If it did, though, it might say something like:
Quest:
Capture the base.
Optional:
Destroy the generator.
Destroy the spawn tubes.
Upon completion of this quest, it opens up 1-4 other quests to do the same thing to the next base(s). It might also toss out quests like:
Quest:
Repair the generator.
Quest:
Repair the spawn tube.
Quest:
Find the enemy mobile spawn and destroy it.
Of course, in Planetside you might say these were "implied quests". They were just as real and well defined as any quest in Warhammer or WOW, but they just didn't put it up on a screen for you and tell you what to do next. You had to look at the map and understand the basic mechanics.
A good dynamic quest system should be like this, just with more moving parts and more interesting things to twiddle.
e.g., the old "broken windmill" quest. There should be a windmill and it should have an actual job to perform. Maybe it generates food which feeds an NPC garrison and if the windmill breaks, it stops supplying food and the garrison eventually leaves. It's a public quest to fix the windmill and in the public's interest to do so. Once fixed, it stays fixed until something causes it to break again. (Possibly an enemy public quest to "sabotage the windmill".)
That's way more interesting than having all 1,500,000 players fix the same windmill because it just happens to be step 3 of a quest chain.
If it did, though, it might say something like:
Quest:
Capture the base.
Optional:
Destroy the generator.
Destroy the spawn tubes.
Upon completion of this quest, it opens up 1-4 other quests to do the same thing to the next base(s). It might also toss out quests like:
Quest:
Repair the generator.
Quest:
Repair the spawn tube.
Quest:
Find the enemy mobile spawn and destroy it.
Of course, in Planetside you might say these were "implied quests". They were just as real and well defined as any quest in Warhammer or WOW, but they just didn't put it up on a screen for you and tell you what to do next. You had to look at the map and understand the basic mechanics.
A good dynamic quest system should be like this, just with more moving parts and more interesting things to twiddle.
e.g., the old "broken windmill" quest. There should be a windmill and it should have an actual job to perform. Maybe it generates food which feeds an NPC garrison and if the windmill breaks, it stops supplying food and the garrison eventually leaves. It's a public quest to fix the windmill and in the public's interest to do so. Once fixed, it stays fixed until something causes it to break again. (Possibly an enemy public quest to "sabotage the windmill".)
That's way more interesting than having all 1,500,000 players fix the same windmill because it just happens to be step 3 of a quest chain.