Quest-based leveling?

Hello.

I'm wondering whether it'd be nice or not to have some "main quests", maybe 
related (like Scorn's nobility quest), that would enable a player to level 
through them.

The idea being that instead of leveling, one would do the quests, and level 
almost like a side-effect.

Of course that'd require quite some work to rebalance things, and write many 
quests.

Especially since one can imagine quests forbidding to do others, variations, 
and thus.

How does that feel?

Regards

Nicolas
--

-- 
Mon p'tit coin du web - http://nicolas.weeger.org

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Re: Quest-based leveling?

> The idea being that instead of leveling, one would do the quests,
> and level almost like a side-effect.

So what you propose a player would only gain exp when the complete a
"milestone" in a quest - such as recover an item, slay a specific
monster, etc.?

Instead of gaining exp for all the monster slaying, item
identification, and other skills - it would only be when the quest
objective is reached?

I had a brief experience with a game system like this.

The things that made it not very enjoyable (in my experience) was some
of the following:

Would need to find a group to solve a quest, only to have a person
leave early or a bad member/player and the whole group would not
achieve the objective - thus no exp.

Server crash in the middle of a quest (especially a multiple hour
one), would have to start over with no exp gained yet.

Could not just quickly log in for a few minutes or hour or less and
make progress after level 5 (might have been 10?)  Would have to set
aside multiple hours in order to play in order to accomplish something.

This game also made changes so that money and item rewards were only
obtained when quests were completed.  Side tangent, but just an FYI.

Re: Quest-based leveling?

> Hello.
> 
> I'm wondering whether it'd be nice or not to have some "main quests", maybe
> related (like Scorn's nobility quest), that would enable a player to level
> through them.
> 
> The idea being that instead of leveling, one would do the quests, and level
> almost like a side-effect.
> 
> Of course that'd require quite some work to rebalance things, and write
> many quests.
> 
> Especially since one can imagine quests forbidding to do others,
> variations, and thus.
> 
> How does that feel?

It sounds like an intriguing way to bolster the game play experience for 
people who aren't as much in to the hack/slash/grind.  It also sounds like a
lot of work, though probably not the kind of work that makes balancing the
rest of the game harder, so probably not a big deal.  Conceptually this kind
of thing could feed a class... dunno... bard, adventurer, or something, and
the class could make one of the less used races more valuable by having
pluses to questing (vs fighting or magic, etc.).

Then again, I'm not sure the recent half-way done "balancing" and adding
new features is the way to go with crossfire. There seems to be a lot of
new code but little follow through that may not really do much for the
game.  There seems to be a huge split in whether people actually want to
play "trunk" over "branch".  It might do the project good to figure out why

Re: Quest-based leveling?

On 03/18/12 02:39 PM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
>
>
> I'm wondering whether it'd be nice or not to have some "main quests", maybe
> related (like Scorn's nobility quest), that would enable a player to level
> through them.
>
>
> The idea being that instead of leveling, one would do the quests, and level
> almost like a side-effect.
>
>
> Of course that'd require quite some work to rebalance things, and write many
> quests.
>
> Especially since one can imagine quests forbidding to do others, variations,
> and thus.
>
>
>
> How does that feel?

  Many other games do include experience as a reward for quests.  That doesn't 
necessarily make it a good approach (nor bad), but does imply that others have 
thought of it and considered it an OK approach.

  What is not clear from the above (and some followups suggest this confusion) 
is whether these exp reward are in addition to the exp one gets from killing the 
monsters, disarming traps, etc, or if this is basically replaces the way a 

Re: Quest-based leveling?

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 09:25:13PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
> On 03/18/12 02:39 PM, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>
>> I'm wondering whether it'd be nice or not to have some "main quests", maybe
>> related (like Scorn's nobility quest), that would enable a player to level
>> through them.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>
>  What is not clear from the above (and some followups suggest this 
> confusion) is whether these exp reward are in addition to the exp one 
> gets from killing the monsters, disarming traps, etc, or if this is 
> basically replaces the way a characters gets experience.
>
> [...]
>
>  A middle approach could be taken - the exp one currents gets from 
> killing monsters and other tasks is reduced by some amount (exact amount 
> hard to say) because a character now gets exp from the quests.  The 
> amount of reduction and the reward for quests would likely be determined 
> based on the targeted mix for quest vs non quest exp.  For example, if 
> the target is 50% quest, 50% non quest, then exp from monsters, etc is 
> reduced by 50%, and the reward for the quest is 50% of a level (presuming 
> 1 quest per level - 25% of 2 quests per level, etc).
>

Reducing exp from monsters in general might scare away those players that do
like hack&slash over questing.

Re: Quest-based leveling?

Hello.

> So what you propose a player would only gain exp when the complete a
> "milestone" in a quest - such as recover an item, slay a specific
> monster, etc.?
> 
> Instead of gaining exp for all the monster slaying, item
> identification, and other skills - it would only be when the quest
> objective is reached?

Sorry if my proposal was not clear, apparently some other people felt that 
confusion :)

What I had in mind was not to change the experience system, stop gaining exp 
for slaying monsters, quite the opposite.

I'm proposing to add quest "lines" that would let a player through enough maps 
to gain some levels.

Imagine you start a new character, and do the beginner house. Then you end in 
Scorn, search around, hear about a quest ("grandpa Malone lost his walking 
stick"). While doing it, you explore some specified maps, obviously kill 
monsters, and when you finish the quest, you realize you gained some levels 
because you killed monsters.

Right now we have a "kill all monsters, loot treasure" game, mostly 
hack&slash. I'd like to add the option (option only :)) to plya like "futfill 
quests, and because you kill monsters and use skills, gain levels, unlocking 
other quests".