"I proved I will do absolutely anything if an NPC asks me to"

Man, I knew buying land here was a con...

Interesting post over at Tippa's blog - kind of two topics blurred into one, but the second topic is interesting - a quest where you bring an enemy NPC in for...torturing. And the NPC kills himself rather than divulge the information.

The problem I'd see is that this is presented in the gamist format which doesn't give a crud about your morality, it instead demands the most efficient choice from you. In a narrativist format...we'll, I'll quote what I wrote in the comments...

I think the only bad thing about the torture quest is that if you bail on it, you get no XP. I think a game that actually grasps problematic issues in a narrativist vein will give you an equal reward for either torturing him, or bailing on the whole thing. Because for narrativism, it’s about what your character would do and not about choosing an optimal path.

Frankly it sounds like you could do with more quests like that – albiet in a narrativist framework, instead of the psuedo gamist one where you did it because that was the shortest path to advancement.

Guild Wars 2: One step forward...now how about the other foot as well?

Care Bear Stare!

Some press release on guild wars 2 over here at mmocrunch

Taking a quote from it

Johanson spots another flaw in the basic quest design used in traditional MMO’s, “what the quest text tells you is happening in a quest is not actually what is happening in the world.” Johanson mentions that often times the events you are supposed to alter, say slaying a group of goblins that are attacking someone’s farmstead, actually don’t effect the game environment. By slaying your 20 goblins you are supposed to kill, you won’t actually save the farmer’s home, those same goblins will simply respawn, ready for the next adventurer to take the quest, thus, in the game world, perpetually putting the farmstead in danger. Johanson says that this is an unacceptable form of questing. With the new Dynamic Events System, if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.

However, look into this further information and you find things are actually cyclical

I wrote the following comment at mmocrunch and thought it'd make a good post here, starting with quotes from the press releases:

“if you don’t stop those 20 goblins, they will destroy the farmer’s house, or oppositely, if you defeat them, they will be gone and the farm will truly be saved.”

“These events change the world when they occur, but it isn’t a change that lasts forever in the persistent world”

So the farm is saved for twenty minutes, or half an hour, or something?

And their example of Skritt? It makes it sound like you have to go through Skritt, somehow, to get to the ending. Like it’s B in A, B, C and D, where D is the game end. In other words, the bigger picture is linear, no matter how many ways you can approach Skritt.

That said, even with that critique, they still seem to be taking a giant stride ahead of other mmorpgs!

And the non subscription plan seals it for me – I’ll buy it. But I really think this is just a giant stride ahead. In the end, that farm is still put back into danger.

If they could procedurally generate new farms, or have player built ones somehow, and after being saved X number of times that particular version of a farm is permanently saved, that’d be taking the next big step.

The step to actual world persistancy.

But beyond dismantling their missuse of the word 'persistancy', it sounds fun in itself and buying it will help fund actual development of mmo's into something new. Unlike a certain company who, from the millions they make each month after expenses, developed a...sparkle pony. And needed $25 from millions of customers to recoup the massive R&D involved, of course. The guild wars team seem slightly more ambitious than that...bless 'em!

Kill ten kobolds...in a row

Here's a thought experiment - what if you took the 'kill ten kobolds' quests and made it's count reset if you 'die' before compleating it?

Arguably one could say you might die and die and die on a single kobold, thus that's about skill. But on observation your chance of death come from multiple encounters in a row, so really if you can beat one you will eventually get the whole ten.

But NOT if your quest count resets on death. Maybe your not good enough to do ten in a row?

Or atleast there's more tension there as you get to the end, rather than the usual feeling of 'Almost done with this crap'. Or atleast that's what I feel.

And here's an interesting side thought - what if A: if you get the ten and die before turning it in, your count doesn't reset Vs B: If you get the ten and die before turning it in, your count does reset.

I think they both say very different things about play. With A you've just got to beat the ten. Turning it in is just paper work, so to speak. While with B getting back to the quest giver is vital - though with the traditional mmorpg model, it's typically an anti climax as there is very little conflict on the way back. It'd be like beating a big bad ogre...but then you have to step on a half dead gobo to get the treasure - and stepping on him takes several minutes.

Anyway, I think a reset would add more tension to play. It'd probably also alienate people who want mmorpg 'play' to be like work, boring and predictable reward to look forward to. But I don't like to encourage that anyway.