Quests/Missions In Games

[Bazooka]

It is seemingly harder to make quests/missions in games with more variety these days, a common complaint against modern games is fetch quests. I'm not sure there is any less variety in quests/missions than there once was, there are just more of them alongside the main game where as before it was finish the level or beat a boss to proceed.

Lots of sandbox games like Infamous and Spiderman, Farcry games etc where you can go around a city, makes the game seem massive but you just go to markers and beat up 50 thugs, or collect 10 of this item, wash rinse and repeat down a different alley way.

I play a lot of J-RPG's, which often the majority of the quests are kill 15 ice snakes and collect 10 green herbs, or sheep fluff etc. This isn't so bad sometimes if the game acknowledges you have already met the requirements before you receive the quest. I.e you have slain 127 goblin commanders by the time you get the quest to kill 10 goblin commanders,or you have sold all the diamond berries you had before you get the bring me 6 diamond berries quest from the villager ,some games are bastards and don't follow this rule.

[Glebe]

I play DC Universe Online, this little side mission is a pain in the arse but thankfully you don't have to do it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIxpeSO3Bu4

[asids]

Problem is, there's only so much variety you can really have. I get the complaints about fetch quests and the like and I do agree there's too many, but you can only wrap up these side quests in a few actually different ways. Everything inevitably comes down to kill x, get x, talk to x, solve x. Unless you spend so much time on your side quests and treat them in a similar fashion to the main quests, like in Bethesda games.

[samadriel]

The first Witcher game had a mission where you had to track down information to solve a murder, working out how they brewed the poison etc. It required taking down notes, or at least a very good memory. I thought that mission was quite innovative, shame Witcher 2 didn't have anything like that (I still haven't played Witcher 3, so I don't know if that has anything particularly clever in it).

[Mobius]

I'd love to know how many bears pelts I've collected over the various games I've played in my lifetime. Thank god I don't play WoW or Dark Age of Camelot any more. Just a bit of Elder Scrolls: Online on the PS4...

The Witcher is probably as good as it gets. Some of the dialogue choices during quests were genuinely emotional. I used to go to bed miserable because I'd fucked someone over. And a lot of them had ramifications, and carried some weight at the end of the game. There usually wasn't a clear right or wrong thing to do. In stuff like Infamous the quest outcomes are 'help someone' and 'be a cunt'

The thing that annoys me is that if they're going to be unoriginal and bland quests, at least make them efficient to do. In Destiny you travel at FTL speed to planets and fight aliens with laser guns and have a little robot mate that speaks every language and can download a computer in seconds. But you have to physically fly to a specific place and run to an NPC to pick a quest telling you to go Mars and kill a Hive Wizard. Like fucking hell, can't send us a text?

Mass Effect: Andromeda had some of the most boring quests ever. Skyrim's Radiant Quest technology that was hyped up turned out to be shit as well.

[hewantstolurkatad]

It isn't inherently fetch quests that are the issue, it's a combination of environmental issues and lazy implementation. With walking simulators and shit like that, I think there's a huge amount of value in some very very very fucking basic gameplay just to make you feel more immersed, but it cannot be used to pad out the time, it cannot run the risk of being misinterpreted, etc



I'd consider Firewatch and Life is Strange to be the two extreme ends of the spectrum.

Firewatch is basically nothing but fetch quests, but between making the map feel a lot larger than it actually is (i.e. ensuring quick traversal), the things being very easy to find and it all making sense within the narrative, it works fine.

Life is Strange, on the other hand, had tons of them where it involved finding things in the correct sequence with no clear guide beyond scanning the room for things that highlight. Dealing with a fairly complex control system in very small heavily textured places, I found it at times to be incredibly claustrophobic. There was far too much noise going on for you to be assured you're not going to miss something obvious.
Especially bad points for me were the five beer bottles task in the junkyard where it was kinda hard to tell which parts you had already checked, and checking David's garage for some shit*

*_{iirc, there was a clue inside the car where when you selected an item you had to turn a page, I missed the prompt that there was more than one page and spent a good half hour pacing up and down the room)[/sub}

[Delete Delete Delete]

The way you make fecth quests a bit more bearble is if the thing you actually collect is useful initself rather than some you have to trade to something to unlock  an invisble wall. Minecraft is essentially fetch quest the game, but its dosnt feel like it because everything you get is of some use same with games like Zelda. 

[Bazooka]

The way you make fecth quests a bit more bearble is if the thing you actually collect is useful initself rather than some you have to trade to something to unlock  an invisble wall. Minecraft is essentially fetch quest the game, but its dosnt feel like it because everything you get is of some use same with games like Zelda.

In many rpg's they work as a way of making the grind more bearable, i.e you get xp or money for gathering 12 scrotum's or whatever, where as if you skipped all the side missions the bosses will KO you.

[Captain Poodle Basher]

The worst one I've ever experienced was Two Worlds on the Xbox 360. There was nothing to prevent you from selling quest items. What made it worse was that you could be picking up quest items without realising it and then selling them before finding the quest giver days and days later with no chance of ever completing the quest.

[TheWoodenSpoon]

Fucking Phantasy Star is the worst for endless fetch-quests. To make it worse you absolutely have to stand around and grind on multiple occasions to get your party in any acceptable condition before progressing to the next fetch-quest else you just get fucking obliterated by the next bunch of monsters you run into.

Typical old-school JRPG, in other words.

[Mobius]

I hate when games don't allow you do delete quests either so if it's bugged or fucked it's there forever.

[Bazooka]

I also don't get it when some games only allow you to have so many quests active at once, it's not as if they all cause 10,000 enemies to generate on the screen, it will rather be gather 8 bear skins.

[Blue Jam]

The side quests in Prey (2017) are quite fun, even the fetch-quests as you get rewarded for completing them, either with useful items or with new bits of information which flesh out the main story or add interesting sub-plots.

I don't know if they count, but I really can't be arsed with collectibles in games. Doom (2016) has little toy Doomguy figures scattered about the place, usually on ledges which require little detours to get onto, while Titanfall 2 has pilot helmets which you have to do complex wall-runs/jumps to get to. You may be able to unlock achievements and XP by collecting them but in any case I really cannot be fucking arsed.

Prey has an achievement for finding and reading every volume of "The Starbender Cycle", the in-game series of trashy sci-fi novels, but someone clearly had a lot of fun writing all that hilariously bad sci-fi and I used to smile every time I found one, so that one was a joy to complete. That was a nice variation on the collectibles concept, do any other games do anything similar?

[Cerys]

The Celestial Weapons in Final Fantasy X.  Some aren't too difficult - but the sheer tortuousness of lightning bolt dodging and chocobo racing has prevented me from ever getting the full set.  Annoying.