Quests in Arm?

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

Imagine being able to walk up to the blood-haired, chubby elf every game day or so and being able to scrounge up ten hand-sized chunks of yellow sandstone for him in exchange for twenty sids. If someone else beats you to him that day, oh well.

Imagine this for people of higher social status who might want rarer and rarer items, all the way up to a noble who stands around with her guard and wants a silt-horror shell for three hundred sids, and will take one from anyone once a day.

Bartering items for other items. The black-haired, mangy halfbreed wants jasper rocks and will pay in dried lizard meat. The short, grey-skinned mul will give a random piece of leather armor for every five black silt pearls you give him. This one would also help with the lack of armor variety in Storm.

This would help give people something to do when there's no one around to socialize and plot with, and give grebbers a chance to actually greb more than once every three RL days without creating a huge surplus. Could help keep gickers from losing their minds out of boredom. The code already exists with the four-armed man who takes purple salts. Would just need to tweak it a bit and write up dialog and npcs, and keep the easy ones from handing out too much money or goods.

[Narf]

Isn't this basically salt grebbing?

There's an NPC that takes salt and hands you coin. Then there's another NPC that takes special high-end salt and gives you extra coin plus a special bonus. Come to think of it, there's actually a few of these in game. Obsidian mining, salt grebbing, tailoring (of all things), and murdering are all codedly supported professions with fetch quests.

[RogueGunslinger]

I'm all for more stuff like this. But more randomized, rotating quests that have chances of sending you out to far-flung dangerous places. As it is there's lots of incentive for players to gather rare or strange materials in order to make money off of other PC's. But what if a Merchant House put out general contacts for 5 logs of baobab in Allanak. Simple fetch quest type things that allowed for off-peakers, and people who enjoy playing solo, to do menial tasks.

Hell yeah, that'd be cool. Not everyone plays at hours when other people are online to bump into. Stuff like that goes a LONG way and wouldn't hurt anyone.

They would probably get repetitive quick unless there were quite a few though.

[Jihelu]

Having an npc out right go "Hey you look strong, go find me some cool shit up north for me pls" would be cool

[Norcal]

[Erythil]

As long as they feel natural and don't give outsized rewards, I'm all for automated things to do.  Empowering people to make their own fun is always nice.  Obviously none of us want it to feel like every npc in the game has a big question mark over their heads, but random chances for certain people to have tasks could help the world feel more alive, and also give hunters and the like a reason to break up their routine.

[RogueGunslinger]

So far I see lots of no's without a single person explaining why. Don't be shy, people.

[Riev]

To be honest, I havn't seen a MUD do automated quests right yet. Nor, no offense, do I trust the playerbase as a whole with automated quests. I absolutely love the idea of giving a goal/task to offpeakers that doesn't necessarily require (but maybe suggest) extra help but... I don't see how it could be automated.


Honestly, I'd be more for a smaller subset of Storytellers whose job it is, specifically, to design these "simple" quests and offer them out. For example, animate some well-to-do merchant who is offering 1000 coins for [various things]. "First person to bring me 10 full baobab logs cut directly from the Northlands" etc etc. Or, make it a little more interesting, and just do some simple railroad plots. Hunt the white carru again. Acquire 50 blocks of sandstone somewhere. Just... something. Something "the players could do" but actually has some staff support behind it, while not affecting the world in nary the slightest bit.

Because automation won't work and will actually benefit the hardcore over the casual, and no way will automation be anything more than a resource to exploit. We don't need master necromancers animated here, and if it were ideal? Nobody would know its a staff Quest until animations and echoes start coming in. Tell some stories!

[Refugee]

I think a series of automatic newbie quests might be a good way for new players to be introduced to the game.  I thought about this when we were discussing new player retention. 

Quests could be designed to teach how to greb, how to use a weapon, how to do basic crafting, how to use mounts, maybe some basic game tenets like prejudice and lawful rooms.  There's an overwhelming amount of stuff to learn when you're new.  While the help files here are -great- compared to other games I've played, you do have to know what to query, and it's just more fun to actually interact with the code than to read a bunch of stuff.

[Dar]

An aide walks into the Gaj and says she lost a scroll case of her employer and offers 100 sid for it.

A rat spawns with a scroll cast flagged to be heavy enough to be displayed as carried by the rat. The rat is afraid of everything and always flees.

Whoever catches it, retrieves the scroll, and gives it to the aide, gets the sid. I'll leave it up to Imm imagination to decide what is written on that scroll, should people choose to give it to someone else.

Shouldnt be too complicated to automate.

[Dar]

An enterable encampment is spawned in a random location of the gameworld where a spawn locale of Gith/raptor/anakore/kryl is valid. sdesced "remains of a destroyed caravan" Inside the encampment, raptors/gith/kryl/bandits are spawned. Inside it are dead figures of some random house, some loose mid to low price gear and a few locked chests that are super heavy to pick up/A single living NPC, preferrably a child .

An NPC shows up and tells the tale of losing contact of their houses's trading caravan. Price paid for any survivors rescued and brought home, or a special family heirloom retrieved.

To complete the quest. You either need to be very sneaky, to sneak inside the encampment, bypass whatever's inside, picklock the chest, retrieve the item, get out, and give it back for reward. Have a good strong team to assault the encampment, kill whatever's inside, use one of your squaddies picklocking ability to unlock the chest/'hitch' the npc survivor to you and bring them to the NPC to sell it to them for payment. Provided they survive the trip of course. Or ... have a combination of all of that.

Payments should be very low, but a token offered to whoever does the deed. Collect enough gratitude tokens and you can approach a PC representative of that house for some kind of favor. Oashi good quality wine. GMHs good gear. You can sell the tokens to other PCs who need to collect them for some massive semi virtual need from a house. Say buying slaves from Borsail, etc.

[Dar]

For the record. I'm against automated quests. I kind of prefer the ease of creating them on the fly for the staff would be made easier, so they could do it themselves with a flip of a finger.

[whitt]

Shouldnt be too complicated to automate.

This... is like my favorite thing ever to see.  Ideas are great, you'll catch more fish if you don't make assumptions like the above.

[manonfire]

Automated quests.. nah.

Quests orchestrated by an immortal like the one on the Allanak rumor board? Fuck yeah.

[Norcal]

That would be acceptable.

[Mordiggian]

I think this is a little bit of a tricky area, because we have players who would love to pursue a 'quest' orchestrated by a storyteller, and we have players who would much rather pursue significantly more open-ended narratives.

One of the things we're trying to do with the hinted-at upcoming Tablelands events is weave all of these elements together in a way that provides a more direct goal for those that prefer to be guided in that fashion, framed in a larger scenario with many possible outcomes and a lot of things left 'up in the air' so that the world can react to decisions players make beyond the structure of a simple quest.

[Norcal]

Mordiggian, storyteller extraordinaire.

[Riev]

At some point, didn't there used to be a list of some sorts that outlined some quests that storytellers could initiate that would not cause a high impact and could be run, for the most part, with little supervision?

[Malifaxis]

Automated quests are the antithesis of Armageddon.

If this happens, I will become violent.

[Narf]

If this happens, I will become violent.

Would you say you would become violent automatically?

Perhaps in such a way that a questing hero might need to deal with?

[Malifaxis]

If this happens, I will become violent.

Would you say you would become violent automatically?

Perhaps in such a way that a questing hero might need to deal with?

..... I love you.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

I'd just be so happy if someone would take my damn sandstone for a sid apiece in Allanak. The other stuff, I don't really see getting implemented.

[Case]

Hello, the delicate tressy maiden! In order to join The Guild and be a The Guild Scamp, you need to bring me five a tattered scalps from the poofy haired silken noble! Please make sure to OFFER them and not GIVE them, or I might forget to count them!

[Riev]

Hello, the delicate tressy maiden! In order to join The Guild and be a The Guild Scamp, you need to bring me five a tattered scalps from the poofy haired silken noble! Please make sure to OFFER them and not GIVE them, or I might forget to count them!

Haha. Legit, in Ancient Anguish, in order to become the Rogue Class you actually have to do a sort-of-secret quest like that.


+1 for "highsign" command.

[nauta]

Hey!

What if we had a player-filled position(s) whose job it was to offer 'quests', mostly to newbies, e.g., go fetch me twelve rocks, I need escru milk, and so on and so on? We can fuss about implementation -- it'd have to be seriously nerfed with loads of restrictions and expectations -- but it might help with retention of new players too. A fancy version would be to allow a certain class of players to log into NPCs in the market or at the Gaj; their only goal would be to 'hook' new players with quests.

Might be stupid, or un-doable for trust reasons (or other reasons).

ETA: Guess we already have those.  They're called nobles.  

It always frustrated me seeing new players get in game -- myself included -- and having absolutely nothing to do, with little knowledge of the world to generate good conversation, no knowledge of where to go to find something to do, and so on.  Usually, someone will tell them to join the Byn, but then they'll sit there (if off-peak) and wait for the Byn Sarge.  Then, probably, they'll just log off.  That's the player we'd like to get hooked.

How did I get hooked?  I met a half-giant who walked me around town.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

I had to get hooked by trying out the game two or three times, but the general atmosphere and setting kept luring me back.