Kill 10 skeletons. That is my quest. Or task as some would say, vehemently explaining that “quest” indicates a journey and adventure with greater stature, akin to seeking the Holy Grail or El Dorado. And that a task is nothing but a basic series of actions that you perform, such as getting gas for your car or shopping for groceries. But no matter what you call it, this style of offering has become common among MMOs and recently has started gaining a foothold in single player games as well.
Kill 10 skeletons. Why only 10? Why not 11 or 9? Why not 20? There are usually far more than 10 out there waiting for me to bash, hack or burn to death (except that they are already dead… but that’s a whole other question which I won’t go into here!). Wouldn’t the NPC be much happier if I killed 20 instead of the 10 he or she asked me to?
Kill 10 skeletons. Why? Because the quest-giver told me to; because he promised me experience and riches and that family heirloom he’s been hoarding all of these years. A family heirloom, likely, that he can’t wait to give to the first (but not last) hero to rid him of the accursed undead!
Does the NPC ever get upset that I sell or throw away that family heirloom when I am sick of it? Come to think of it, there were more skeletons when I ran past the same house a few days later. I thought I killed 20 of them? At the time, that was all that was in the field. Or was it? Maybe some were hiding over the hill, or behind one of the trees. Or maybe the NPC himself (or herself, or itself) has them stored in the basement, along with an unlimited number of “family heirlooms” to give to other unwitting heroes such as myself who just happen by.
What is my point, you ask? It’s a simple question that has been in my mind for a while. t I see it discussed, but never answered. Why have quests of this type become so prevalent? And what can be done to alter this trend, to encourage the use of alternative types of quests? After all, kill X and collect Y are not the only types of quests available to game designers.
Why have these quests become such a common occurrence in games? First, they are easy to create. With the rise of the mega-game, the MMO that costs tens of millions of dollars to create and tens of thousands of man-hours, but also requires a mechanism to keep the players satisfied until they reach the “end-game”, you run into a need for a lot of content. How do you populate a large world (galaxy, etc) with enough content to keep a player going for months?
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