Quest system; basic ideas suggestions

[Megacrafter127]

Before handling details, such as what quests will be available, one must set up a framework for it all, and here I am displaying(and collecting) ideas and opinions on ideas regarding the quest-system itself, and not the quests within it.

First, I'll structure the OP into three parts:

1. Quests
   1. EtP quests
   2. PtP quests
   3. PtS quests
   4. EtF quests
   5. FtF quests
2. Quest-related mechanics
   1. Direct quests
   2. Shops
   3. Faction-quests
3. End of post

Spoiler: Sidenote to fancy people

Each of the leaves of the content-tree has an anchor, they can be referenced by using the [IURL] tag. (If you read the BB-code helppage)
The anchors:

1. -
   1. #etp
   2. #ptp
   3. #pts
   4. #etf
   5. #ftf
2. -
   1. #dqs
   2. #shop
   3. #fq
3. #end

So, I suggest 3 major quest types, which are completely unrelated regarding the actions required in order to complete it.

Environment to Player Quests

These are everyone's standard quests, handed out by an NPC or the environment itself. The player(s) have no control over them, apart from accepting, rejecting, abandoning and/or completing them.
These quests would be available from NPCs, NPC-stations, NPC-ships, tutorial(s) [?], and in general may come from everything not belonging to a player or being under the control of one. They can have the full spectrum of possible quests and ingame rewards. The game has to make sure any of these can be fullfilled anytime, if special locations are involved, their coordinates(or a nearby coordinate) has to be attached too.​

Player to Player Quests

These quests are made and posted by players, utilizing the Direct Quest System, their own Shops, or (if they are permitted) their faction. A player to player quest can have any ingame reward, that players can exchange between each other. There are 2 kinds of PtP quests "covered" and "speculative":

• if a player offers a covered quest, the rewards are removed from the player's possession on the quest's creation. If the quest is not completed and removed (DQS abandon, quest-giver takes quests out of a quest-board[shop/faction]), the reward is added to the quest-giving player's inventory, or spawned in next to the player. (In case a direct quest was abandoned, the player may choose when to be repaid the reward).
  
  
• if a player offers a speculative quest, he doesn't have to pay the reward in advance; when the quest is completed, he recieves the unabandonable rewardless quest to hand the other player the reward

Unlike EtP quests, PtP quests cannot consist of finding a specific structure.​

Player to Self Quests

These quests usually serve as memos, or quick resource calculators/tutorials. As the questgiver is always the one to complete these quests, they may not have any reward, and there may not be any failure conditions*. Typical PtS quests are:

• Acquire N of item Y(this quest will automatically split into subquests for crafting materials)
  
• Fly to X,Y,Z
  
• Destroy N structures belonging to faction Y*
• Kill N players of faction Y*
• Kill player X
• Acquire N credits
• A queue of any of the above quests

* a quest marked with an asterisk will be failed if the referenced faction disbands, as that quest then becomes impossible

Environment to Faction Quests

These quests will be offered by NPCs, NPC-shops, and other NPC-structures to faction-leaders and members of a faction, if their rank allows them to accept faction-quests from NPCs. Their only other difference from EtP quests is, that FP may be a reward, and that member-count or diplomacy(allied, neutral, hostile to faction Y) may be requirements. When accepted, and a requirement from a EtP quest comes up, the requirement is fullfilled if ANY member of the faction fulfills it(failure requirements however require all active members of the faction to meet them in order to fail a quest) Rewards, that may not apply to the entire faction(item rewards e.g.) Are evenly split among the member, priorities/limits may be imposed on a per-rank basis​

Faction to Faction Quests

These quests are like EtF quests, except a faction may limit which of their members can offer them by rank. Rewards, which a faction cannot own without a member [items e.g.], will have to be paid by whichever player creates an FtF quest for his faction to offer.

​

Direct Quest System(DQS)

Like the current mail system, the DQS allows a player to send a quest directly to another player. The recieving player may then choose weither or not to accept the sent quest.
​

Shop's quest-boards

Shops should have a quest-board, on which the shop's owner(s) can put quests for any bypasser to take on. When a quest is taken, it is no longer displayed on the board, until the quest is either completed or rejected. NPC-shops will offer EtP quests, player-shops will offer PtP quests.

​

Faction quests

These quests are accessible from the faction interface, and ar only visible for members of the faction. Who can accept, offer or see them can be limited by rank. Faction to Faction quests are also managed by that interface.​

End of post

Opinions? Questions? more ideas?​

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Awesome stuff! Very comprehensive

why not have an option to allow Crew members to be quest givers? I can understand that its faster/more efficient to have a menu based quest list but it just seems to me that not allowing players to talk to the NPCs just makes them even more useless.

don't get me wrong, getting missions from menus is the best method for a number of reasons. however when i think of getting quests i think of going to talk to someone then returning to that person after its done. But if X Rebirth has taught me anything its possible to make the simple task of acquiring the quest tedious and annoying.

at least giving us the option to make one of our NPCs the person you report to allows for more emersion.

 

[Megacrafter127]

Awesome stuff! Very comprehensive

why not have an option to allow Crew members to be quest givers? I can understand that its faster/more efficient to have a menu based quest list but it just seems to me that not allowing players to talk to the NPCs just makes them even more useless.

don't get me wrong, getting missions from menus is the best method for a number of reasons. however when i think of getting quests i think of going to talk to someone then returning to that person after its done. But if X Rebirth has taught me anything its possible to make the simple task of acquiring the quest tedious and annoying.

at least giving us the option to make one of our NPCs the person you report to allows for more emersion.

I never said how EtP and EtF quests will be acquired, I only described how PtP, PtS and FtF quests would be acquired :P

 

[Kojinus]

So I'm diggin' the idea of a questing system in Starmade, I think a better name would be missions, quest sounds too fantasy-themed.

Environment to Player Quests seem too generic, I would hate to see a "Go get me X amount of Y resources 'cause reasons" quest pop up, or a "Hey go check out sector (x,y,z), I heard there's an abandoned station there. Do a thing with it", that would be a pretty big negative to me.

Player to Player Quests sound interesting, but I'm not sure if I agree with your method of handling the rewards. You would either need to set up a system where when player X creates a quest, the reward is automatically removed from their inventory so that player Y is guaranteed to receive the reward for completing the quest, OR (and I'm kind of partial to this idea) you create a reputation system. When a player completes a player given quest, there should be a system in place to determine if player X gave player Y the agreed upon rewards, maybe a "Reward" window, and if Player X decides NOT to give the rewards, their reputation automatically takes a hit, if the trade is successful then their reputation goes up. The automated handling of reputation removes the risk of a player tarnishing another players reputation even if they honored the completion of the quest.

Player to Self Quests basically sounds like an in-game notepad. I can see the benefits, but it's a glorified to-do list and we already have notepad (and pen and paper) to do the job for us.

Environment to Faction Quests sound similar to Environment to Player Quests, only on a larger scale. "Collect a million of X resource". It could expand out into "Teach X faction a lesson, no one messes with us" or something, and that could result in some game controlled faction conflict, maybe a player faction blew up an NPC faction ship and now that NPC faction wants some revenge, boom a quest pops up to take out some ships of that players faction?

Faction to Faction Quests, maybe. You'd have to have a pretty comprehensive system for handling faction and individual reward for taking on a quest like this. What incentive does another player have to complete your faction quest? Obviously if your faction is posting this quest the reward will likely be very high, otherwise you'd just do it yourself, but then say a player completes that quest, does the reward go to the faction or to the player? Is it split? By how much?

Direct Quests sound cool, but that could be lumped into Player to Player Quests, as just a feature of that system.

Shop Quest Boards sound neat, but shouldn't necessarily be first come first serve. That could open up some trolling opportunities, players log into servers and run around collecting quests in the local cluster of shops and then never log in again. Even if the quest expired after X amount of time, that's still a chunk of time in which legit players on the server won't be able to easily get quests without making a warp ship, which is fairly expensive to make most of the time.

Faction Quests sound like a brilliant way to keep your faction members active and doing things for your faction in game. Maybe earn some kind of faction-currency to buy expensive ships from the faction? Or other interesting rewards for participating in faction quests. Also a good way to potentially build up resource stockpiles for the faction to provide any rewards. I would love to see something like this as an actual feature in the game.


All in all I really like the idea of a questing system in StarMade, but due to the procedural nature of the game it would have to primarily be player controlled I think? Maybe NPCs have a much smaller capacity for offering quests, but after a while random quests get boring and repetitive. I'd say flesh out this idea with some more details and it'll be pretty solid.

 

[Megacrafter127]

So I'm diggin' the idea of a questing system in Starmade, I think a better name would be missions, quest sounds too fantasy-themed.

"Quest" is simply the most common name, so while the system isn't fully fleshed out in the minds yet, I am using that name

Environment to Player Quests
seem too generic, I would hate to see a "Go get me X amount of Y resources 'cause reasons" quest pop up, or a "Hey go check out sector (x,y,z), I heard there's an abandoned station there. Do a thing with it", that would be a pretty big negative to me.

I agree that it is the most generic quest type, but as long as there are NPCs, we'll have to live with them.

Player to Player Quests
sound interesting, but I'm not sure if I agree with your method of handling the rewards. You would either need to set up a system where when player X creates a quest, the reward is automatically removed from their inventory so that player Y is guaranteed to receive the reward for completing the quest, OR (and I'm kind of partial to this idea) you create a reputation system. When a player completes a player given quest, there should be a system in place to determine if player X gave player Y the agreed upon rewards, maybe a "Reward" window, and if Player X decides NOT to give the rewards, their reputation automatically takes a hit, if the trade is successful then their reputation goes up. The automated handling of reputation removes the risk of a player tarnishing another players reputation even if they honored the completion of the quest.

There are 2 kinds of PtP quests "covered" and "speculative":

• if a player offers a covered quest, the rewards are removed from the player's possession on the quest's creation. If the quest is not completed and removed (DQS abandon, quest-giver takes quests out of a quest-board[shop/faction]), the reward is added to the quest-giving player's inventory, or spawned in next to the player. (In case a direct quest was abandoned, the player may choose when to be repaid the reward).
  
  
• if a player offers a speculative quest, he doesn't have to pay the reward in advance; when the quest is completed, he recieves the unabandonable rewardless quest to hand the other player the reward

Speculative quests SHOULD definetly be indicated

Player to Self Quests
basically sounds like an in-game notepad. I can see the benefits, but it's a glorified to-do list and we already have notepad (and pen and paper) to do the job for us.

While PtS quests are essentially useless because they can be replaced by pen&paper, the crafting quests also do some automated integrated calculating. And again, in the future, maybe paper and pens will be rare
Also, most of the inspiration for PtS quests came from "SkySaga", which features them(for crafting only though), and they are IMO a great feature, as they are essentially an uninvasive miniature tutorial for crafting specific items.

Environment to Faction Quests
sound similar to Environment to Player Quests, only on a larger scale. "Collect a million of X resource". It could expand out into "Teach X faction a lesson, no one messes with us" or something, and that could result in some game controlled faction conflict, maybe a player faction blew up an NPC faction ship and now that NPC faction wants some revenge, boom a quest pops up to take out some ships of that players faction?


Faction to Faction Quests, maybe. You'd have to have a pretty comprehensive system for handling faction and individual reward for taking on a quest like this. What incentive does another player have to complete your faction quest? Obviously if your faction is posting this quest the reward will likely be very high, otherwise you'd just do it yourself, but then say a player completes that quest, does the reward go to the faction or to the player? Is it split? By how much?

Please read the section about faction-quests again, everything you asked is either answered there, or irrelevant, as the quest's missions in particular aren't of importance here[except stating unique features or impossibilities][/QUOTE]

Direct Quests
sound cool, but that could be lumped into Player to Player Quests, as just a feature of that system.

[snip]

Faction Quests sound like a brilliant way to keep your faction members active and doing things for your faction in game. Maybe earn some kind of faction-currency to buy expensive ships from the faction? Or other interesting rewards for participating in faction quests. Also a good way to potentially build up resource stockpiles for the faction to provide any rewards. I would love to see something like this as an actual feature in the game.

Please read the structure I intended for the post at the beginning of the post, you should see that these aren't quest-types, but mechanics allowing PtP and FtF quests to be distributed. They have nothing to do with the distributed quests themselves. Also, for FtF quests, I am basing everything only on what there currently is(in case faction-vaults won't be a thing).

Shop Quest Boards
sound neat, but shouldn't necessarily be first come first serve. That could open up some trolling opportunities, players log into servers and run around collecting quests in the local cluster of shops and then never log in again. Even if the quest expired after X amount of time, that's still a chunk of time in which legit players on the server won't be able to easily get quests without making a warp ship, which is fairly expensive to make most of the time.

That can be combatted by allowing anyone to take the quest, but only the one who finishes it first recieves the reward(or maybe allow a "perpetuus" flag to be set, so the quest will always be available[until taken down by the giver, and turned to "speculative" once the covered rewards run out{but also allow the questgiver to restock the rewards?}]

All in all I really like the idea of a questing system in StarMade, but due to the procedural nature of the game it would have to primarily be player controlled I think? Maybe NPCs have a much smaller capacity for offering quests, but after a while random quests get boring and repetitive. I'd say flesh out this idea with some more details and it'll be pretty solid.

This is a thread to collect ideas, so time will flesh this idea out, as long as the thread doesn't die.

 

[Kojinus]

Haha, that's what I get for typing up a post when I'm tired. My bad man, I misread a ton of stuff you wrote, rendering almost my entire post useless. >.>

I still hope something like this makes its way into the game. It'd really add a lot to the replayability of StarMade. :D

 

[Dark-life]

(necro I know) Mega will you be pushing for this now that you are a council member?

 

[Megacrafter127]

Mega will you be pushing for this now that you are a council member?

I will not use my position as councillor to push for this, to maintain fairness between the suggestions.

 

[FullMetalFox]

Environment to Player Quests, Player to Player Quests

I really like this idea, especially the classic EtP and PtP, PtP alone could be used for various things, ranging from trade to bounties.
But i would also suggest a Faction to Player category, meaning Faction Owners/Officers could create quests for their factions members and maybe even outsiders (depending on setting).

On how those quest are aquiered, well im no sure on that right now, i think the GUI needs some revamping for usablity anyways, and a quest board/log would be a good addition, this could display quests from various sources, say display all quests that are available in your faction, all in the region, and offers other players have send to you.

Ill give this some more thought after im back home.

 

[Ithirahad]

I agree with everything here besides the Direct Quest System... While it sounds good in theory, I'd rather not have players be able to simply mail each other quests. A player should have to physically travel to the other player's location to pick up a quest, in which case the other player can just set up a "quest beacon" station specifically to grant the other player that one quest.

 

[matheod]

I think shop quest should allow bulk quest. I.e. I could offer to exange X block for Y block, and allow this quest to be completed Z times.

 

[HerrColonel]

http://starmadedock.net/threads/custom-npcs.5677/#post-84420
Do you remember this guy? It would be great if the game included missions and quest the way he did so we can add any/edit them if we want

 

[Visitor]

I like the first two groups but find less of a point for the rest of them, especially since they're mostly covered by the second category. I don't see why player should have additional quests if it's the thing they want to do for themselves anyway. It should be completely up to the player what actions they'll undertake and for no additional reward than the one stemming directly from their actions and the consequences of such.

I also don't think we need quests that are targeted at factions in particular. Concentrating on tasks players can post a notice about together with a reward and on ones provided by the NPC will be fine especially since those will cover factions as well if the difficulty of the quest will be high enough.

In general though, I am unsure about quests right now. Currently, the balance is all over the place and being adjusted plus not only factions but single players, with how available ships and their components are without any work - just some shopping - have only marginally harder time in building a big, powerful warship in comparison with some small fighter.

While one could consider quests being procedurally scaled to the ships players undertaking a quest have, it can easily be worked around with help of acquaintances or simply switching the vessel. We first need proper scaling of difficulty in actually getting, maintaining and upgrading the ship - and that may be tricky in itself since I am sure most people treat StarMade as somewhat sandbox-ish ship builder and they will not appreciate having it harder to build dreadnoughts nearly from the beginning (even though they'd still have such ability setting up their own server, trading, asking admins for help etc).

Without it being harder, however, I see quests, sadly, as hardly working well with the game beside tutorial scenarios. Things like 'You wake up in an shattered part of the ship crashing on a planet. The atmosphere is breathable but there's no edibles.' that could introduce a few quests and guides regarding building a ship, piloting it and so on - and that only after we will get proper survival mechanics, like limited suit's oxygen supply and ship life support, hunger etc

Don't take me wrong, I'd like to see quests in this game, but it has to be first developed enough and in the direction that makes them make sense. In a world where every somewhat skilled player can get nearly any practical item after an hour or two of gameplay, quests would be just an amusing gimmick rather than something of real value.

 

[zigyzigy]

This is definitely a necessary addition to the game in order to provide some kind of objectives.

The thing for me is making sure that the mission objectives do not turn the game into an MMO grind-fest and therefore will require a great deal of creativity, especially if they are going to be randomly generated...

For EtP quests:

On that note I think there could be a cool 'designing quest' where the player has to design a ship for a faction that achieves certain stats, e.g a mass thrust ratio of 5:1 or is capable of outputting 'x' DPS or has 'x' amount of shields or costs under 'x' amount or all of the above.
After completing the quest that faction would then integrate that ship design into the fleets that it spawns, allowing the game to dynamically update the ship catalog it uses. So you could have a very rare 'design a titan' quest that has a large budget and the player has to get high stats over a million shields or whatever. but you could also have more common 'design a scout' quest that just has to be fast and equipped with a radar jammer or something.

Obviously this suggestion assumes that the faction ship spawning mechanic of the game will be vastly improved on what is currently implemented, for example by having different categories of ship that spawn based on how rare they would be in a fleet e.g 1 titan to every 100 or so fighters. And each category of ship would have multiple designs that have a different chance of spawning so you could have more 'common' titans and more 'rare' titans as well as more common and rare fighters and scouts etc.


Anyway coming back to the OP yes this is a great idea in principle but the execution could be anywhere between amazing and awful so its probably important to have a thorough discussion before implementing anything.

 

[Ithirahad]

This is definitely a necessary addition to the game in order to provide some kind of objectives.

The thing for me is making sure that the mission objectives do not turn the game into an MMO grind-fest and therefore will require a great deal of creativity, especially if they are going to be randomly generated...

The trick with this is that unlike MMO quests which are basically required for progression, SM missions would ideally be just be another thing to do in the game, probably about as profitable as manufacturing or killing pirates.