Hand-holding or initiative?, The style of a your quests Options

[Lena Wolf]

Now that I've released a large quest mod (TWMP Skyrim Alive) with several quest lines, I am getting questions from users who get stuck, and not because of bugs. This got me thinking back to all the various games that I played and how they handle quests and quest lines, how much hand-holding they provided and what I found fun and what not so much. Given that most people on this forum have already played a game or two I thought we could discuss this.

I'll start with a comparison of Morrowind TES3 and Oblivion TES4. In Morrowind you start on a ship, arrive in a strange land, get a package to deliver fully expecting to be thrust into the thick of things... and what does Caius tell you? "You're no good to me at level 1, go off, do stuff, come back when you're stronger." Huh? In Oblivion on the other hand, you do get thrust into the thick of things straight away, and with great urgency - just like in most other games I played.

The first time when I played Morrowind, I got discouraged and confused. What do you mean - go off and do stuff? What am I supposed to do..? But now, so many years, games and playthroughs later, I absolutely love this approach. And it continues like this throughout - Caius never puts any urgency onto his requests, he's a typical fellow who speaks softly and carries a large stick. And with that we arrive at the topic of quest markers, etc.

But it's over to you now. What approach to quests do you like or dislike? Do you like it structured or do you prefer to be told to go off and do stuff?

[ghastley]

I would distinguish between a “find� quest and a “fetch� quest. Find implies the challenge is in tracking down the location, whereas fetch implies the challenge is reaching the known location, e.g it is known to be guarded. As long as the game tells me which type this is, then I am happy.

Quests also need to be designed for failure, which many forget. A maze puzzle needs a way to give up and go back to the start, a switch puzzle needs a reset lever, and the boss monster needs to have a tether, so you can run away.

In-game ways to ask for help, such as books you pick up and can re-read, also let the player determine how they want to play, without contacting the author. One good example in Skyrim is Katria’s journal, which you can combine with another dead adventurer’s notes to solve a switch sequence puzzle. You can choose to read them, or not, and the puzzle is simplified if you prefer that. Failure there is spawned mobs each time you get it wrong, which resets it, and you try again. A lot of players still use google to solve it.

Skyrim also has radiant quests, where locations are chosen when the quest runs, and these may or may not be places the player already knows. Markers can be the first clue that a place even exists. For Oblivion, it is possible to do something similar, placing an item to fetch at a location randomly selected from a list, the difference being that the mod author has to provide the list. Skyrim’s method lets a mod added dungeon become the location for another mod’s treasure. I have had my quest to gather the Wainwright’s tools for Khajiit Hearthfires place them in caves added by DLC’s and other mods. However, the quest markers point to the right places, even though I didn’t know about them when I created the mod, and so I could not have provided any other clues. Since this is a sequence of fetch quests, markers don’t affect the challenge.

Find quests are best suited to background collections, like Barenziah’s crown. You know what constitutes a complete collection, and the challenge is finding them all. No markers for the units, but a marker for where to take them at the end. Again, a lot of players want a list of locations, rather than let serendipity do it. My opinion is that such a list should exist outside the game, somewhere the player can find it only if they want it.

Asking for directions means giving extra dialogue to a number of NPCs, and you open yourself to complaints if every randomly spawned character from someone else’s mod can’t tell you. I prefer to avoid that.

My build your own homes mods for Skyrim get mostly complaints that building is too much effort, and they want them ready-made. The same players probably consider googling for cheat codes is how you “beat the game�.