Quest for the Sidequest!

[Eclectic Dreck]

Rule of Fun in my opinion. Yeah, it would be easier to just knock down the weakest door ever, but it would a hell of a lot more boring than going through Hell and back to get it. Just my opinion though, because for some people the amount of stupidity of some side-quests is enough to break that fun. Just not for me.

While I agree with your assertion (that it should be fun), I think the larger point is simply one of character motivation. A waist high fence is, at best a mild inconvenience - I should never need a key to open a gate to get past one. A rickety door is another - why search for a key when my strapping hero can simply kick the door in? Going to the 9th circle of hell and retrieving a key from Satan's festering colon to open a barrier that has many more reasonable ways to bypass simply implies that my character is a moron.

It's not a plea for a designer to come up with a way to implement every possible reasonable solution, but simply a request that if we are sent on a fetch quest, make it clear that this quest is necessary. If we want to be frank, most game objectives boil down to one of two things: kill something or find something. When these two basic quests are well constructed and meaningful, there isn't a problem. In Fallout 3 you spend most of the game looking for your father or the G.E.C.K.. If you think about it, the entire game is essentially a quest to push a button, and all you have standing in your way is kill and fetch quests.

Most people don't complain about such quests and the reason is simple. If the core combat mechanics are enjoyable, kill quests are, by default, fun. If a fetch quest offers a reasonable progression of the story then the player gets their fun there as well.

Of course, one could also argue that we need additional quest types in our games. Other than the previous two, there are are only two others - puzzle solving and talking to an NPC. Generally speaking, the latter is simply a specific incarnation of the fetch quest. I suspect this is a direct result of the rapid evolution of games. Rescuing the princess or killing a monster are goals that are easy to convey to a player and can be implemented without much in the way of technology. The problem is, I have played games for so long that I am utterly incapable of coming up with a viable alternative and I suspect this is the problem in general. How does one demonstrate progress without killing, looting or puzzle solving?

 

[Darenus]

Simply: World of Warcraft. It has not the many tons of arbitrary key-fetch-quests so far "I" know, but there certainly are some. 2 quests also with an outhouse... the kind of which, you don't like to clean up...

my favourite: Western Plaguelands, the quest for the key for the shit-brick-house behind the 3rd or so farm you see there. Not that it's entirely unreasonable to need to find a key but just let's take into thought that the key drops more or less randomly during the quest and you have little hint towards it. Also: As a level 60+ warrior, paladin, enhancement shaman, hell, even as hunter, you really are not able to break that sweet lil' rotten lock by crowbaring it with your epic axe or shoot the mechanism with your bullets that are meant to tear through armored mobs with ease?

Yea, I know, strength doesn't scale with your impact on the world-set, only other 'beings', but still... an axe, so enourmous that He-Man would get burried underneath (just TRY to imagine holding up something like the Crystal Forged War-Axe from Outland, when a Tauren owns that axe) and it's not able to splinter wood when you beat up Earth-Elementals for your daily bread?

Long and overly silly post, sorry.

And yes, Mr. Young. The article is all tooooo true =p

 

[Trivun]

I always had it in my head that the key to Sledge's hideout was needed because it doesn't just unlock the gate, it activates the portal behind it - I have this whole theory that the portals are basically mini New-U stations that kill you off and recreate you at the exit.

The quest that pissed me off the most has to be the entire Thieve's Guild quest in Oblivion. Mainly the bit where you have to sneak through a monastery where all the monks are blind. Could I not just kill them all, then use the power of the Elder Scroll to bring them back to life? They picked me up in a jail, so they would know already that I'm fairly morally bankrupt...

That, or any survival horror door that requires a star-shaped pendant, an uncut ruby the size of a baby's skull and a three-speed vibrator to open.

Personally in Oblivion, I objected to the fact that you're expected to do all these stealing jobs for the Grey Fox, the master thief, who surely has all the skills and talents needed to be able to get off his fat fucking arse and do it himself? Lazy son of a *****, just because he's

Spoiler

the Count of Anvil

doesn't mean he can expect me to be his freaking slave...

 

[Otterpoet]

Regretably, illogical gameplay and requirements still appear to be a mainstay of game design. After recently playing - and subsequently abandoning - Secret Files Tunguska, I almost set fire to my computer in protest. Let's put aside the scatological fixation the game designers apparently have, but some of the solutions stretch the logical progression into the realm of Fox News 'reporting.'

At one point, you must listen in on a phone conversation someone is having in their kitchen. 'Obvious' solutions would be put your ear to the window (even getting a glass, if need be) or opening a window somehow. Maybe even sneak into the house! But no. The apparently 'logical' solution is to lure the man's kitten out of the house with some old pizza. Then attach your active cell-phone to a broomstick with some double-sided tape. Use your broomstick rig (which requires ANOTHER item) to stick the cell-phone to the cat. Once the cat-phone is ready, you put salt on the pizza to make the cat thirsty... so it will go to the kitchen, where the cell-phone will record the guy's conversation (because apparently up to this point, he's been talking about the weather or something). Then, when the guy leaves, you have to phone your cell-phone to make it vibrate, thus driving the cat out of the house and into a tree, where you can retrieve the cell-phone (because we all know that a cat that's indoors will obviously go outside, rather than under say... a couch!)

I mean... are they joking?!

And I though the two strands of bard-wire keeping me from moving forward in Far Cry 2 was bad

 

[Ambitious Sloth]

I wish I could remember the game but since most of the games I've played throughout my life have left me or been returned I can't find it, even so.

There was a door a fairly large one that my tiny main character couldn't hope to open and access the other side. Luckily the key was openly announced in a cut scene and after an hour of futility I decided to go and chase the key. This key was put inside a dungeon which at the time seemed logical because everything I had ever needed had been a dungeon. However in order to get to the doorstep of the dungeon I had to go and get an object disguised in a riddle. The item turned out to be in a dungeon of it own and after clearing that i returned and finally enter the place.
After clearing the dungeon of its boss I discovered via cut scene that the key was broken into pieces and put in their own dungeon which would need to be accessed with an item from a dungeon that unconnected to it in any way besides the plot. after assembling the key, and a small arsenal, I went back to the start of things and opened the great door to another dungeon... which had in itself a key split into pieces to unlock a gauntlet run to a boss fight.
I do remember the name now though! It was The Ocarina of Time.

 

[xXGeckoXx]

I always had it in my head that the key to Sledge's hideout was needed because it doesn't just unlock the gate, it activates the portal behind it - I have this whole theory that the portals are basically mini New-U stations that kill you off and recreate you at the exit.

The quest that pissed me off the most has to be the entire Thieve's Guild quest in Oblivion. Mainly the bit where you have to sneak through a monastery where all the monks are blind. Could I not just kill them all, then use the power of the Elder Scroll to bring them back to life? They picked me up in a jail, so they would know already that I'm fairly morally bankrupt...

That, or any survival horror door that requires a star-shaped pendant, an uncut ruby the size of a baby's skull and a three-speed vibrator to open.

Your borderlands theory is most likely wrong because I know a few gateways where you see what is behind them but there is an invisible wall. Sledge was the hardest quest I have done so far harder than krom's canyon because the mine key and the sledge fight combined make hours of combat. It took me 3 hours the first time mainly because I went online and did it at the tender level of 8 but it was still a reminder of how difficult a game can make itself for you through a small diversion. that was one looooong safehouse fight for a key to another looooong fight and a boss.

 

[ReverseEngineered]

I agree with your sentiment a hundred times over. It's the whole reason I refuse to play World of Warcraft: every quest is a poorly-written excuse to slaughter waves of respawning creatures to collect horns, blood, fur, gall bladders, or any of a number of other things. I'm supposed to be a hero here to save the world from demons, hellspawn, and magic run rampant, not hunting for mushrooms and slaughtering entire herds of wild beasts (for their eyeballs, of which only 1 in 10 seem to have any).

These games are little more than an excuse to farm, and they focus on farming because they want to keep their $20/month subscribed grinding until hell freezes over.

No, I refuse. I want actual content. I want a challenge, a story, something new and interesting to keep me entertained. Farming is like playing whack-a-mole in slow motion -- it's a game I've played a hundred times before and all the challenge has been sucked out of it.

 

[JesterRaiin]

F**k yeah sir !
Shamus-sensei, You named greatest stupidity in game industry since the dawn of computer games !

My share of suffering : in Planescape:Torment protagonist had to break some wooden planks (or something), but mind you, there was no way to accomplish it with use of hammers, axes, powerful magic, head of some party member. What was needed was... The Tool Of Absolute And Utter Mediocrity +0 vs anything. Yep, some f********* tool crowbar, or hammer without any importance. By the way, there were only some 2-3 such junk pieces in whole game.

Man, things like this are best excuses for cheats and save editors...

Sleep of reason begets monsters indeed.

 

[keybounce]

I have come to the conclusion that if I ever have to write a town for an RPG game, it will be set in an old railroad town. You know, a town that came about as a support location for a railroad. Naturally, that means a station, a repair house, etc.

The town would be, of course, built along the railroad tracks, and you start at one end of town.

Now, the train no longer runs through here; for whatever reason (gold mine ran out???), but there are still some people, living here, for you to interact with. They all talk about how things will change when the train returns.

The best part? If you bring three or more MOBS into the area, the following will happen:
1. The speed of the MOBS drop.
2. The tracking range of the MOBS goes way up.
3. As you go past buildings, everyone flees, yelling "Run! The train is here", or something like that.
(1 and 2 permit you to go through the town, and actually read what all the people are saying, without being attacked by the mobs, without losing them as you run through the town.)

And, 4: After this, any place where the people ran away will have all doors unlocked, all items unguarded, etc.

 

[Elcaro]

In one of the Runescape free quests you have to find 3 keys to unlock a wooden cabnit and get a sword to kill a demon, because normal swords don't work.
Key 1. Guy lost it down the drain, pour one bucket of water down, the breifly walk through the sewers. Simple, and easy
Key 2. Talk to a mage that is crazy and find out that you need to get some simple things for him because he put the key in a chest and then sent the chest into another diminsion. Kinda pointless, but he is crazy
Key 3. Walk up the equilivent of a big hill and talk to some wise oracle guy, who will give you a riddle to solve. Most of the riddle is easy, for example, "A cage to catch lobsters"= Lobster pot, but the hard one is something along the lines of, "Worms thread, turned to sheet"
or to us normal folk, silk. Gather all of those items and find a door he said was "down below" open said door, get 3rd key. Why would you want to make it that hard to get the only thing that can save your town? I mean, the demon that currently threatens you town's survival was only buried under a really big rock.
Except when I first did it the sword was in a glass display case and I spent five minutes clicking on my hammer, and then the case, and only getting the message "Nothing interesting happens."

 

[mrx19869]

i cant remember the game.. but this is the deal

You had to go get this key. and then when you brought the key to the door that was once locked, you find it to be unlocked and now ya have to fight these stupid badguys..

what i never understood..

there is a locked wooden door.
i have to go get the key
why cant i just take out my shotgun and blast the hinges off the door?

 

[onlyAname]

incredible machine, that's a trip down memory lane...
had to go on an incredible search trail to find a download for it too...

 

[TitsMcGee1804]

good article, very well written

shows your frustration while also looking at it from all angles

 

[John Smyth]

Some great ideas for my next campaign because being a DM is just an excuse to annoy all your players. My current campaign has the characters following the orders of a hallucination of one of the PCs, they don't know this yet lets just hope none of them read this article.

 

[Joshroom]

For me the game would have to be Dark Chronichle. Yea, yea, I know it technically is a dungeon game and thats the entire point but the fact that in 20 indentikit dungeon rooms you'd be discovering the same shiny red stone that opens the same random circular door started to grate. And the fact that you never knew the enemy that had said shiny red stone so were forced to backtrack and find the small elf monster cowering in the corner near where you first entered.
I also agree with the comments about Oblivion. When my characters a fully powered theif, with enough magic power to level a city, being halted by a wooden door with the sign "unpickable" really breaks your stride. And your looting

 

[aarontg]

This is something I really hope developers aknolege, I think its somthing that could make the next mmo the next world of warcraft.

 

[cynicalandbored]

First of all, great article, well written and to the point.

I really can't stand all the pointless and frustrating key finding quests. They add nothing to the overall game experience. Oblivion I found was guilty of this to a huge degree with the guild quests. Most of the guild quests (killing the rats/goblins/necromancers in someone or other's tomb/basement/dream sequence to get an item or spell identical or nearly so to one that you already had, only yours is slightly better, so that you can go up a rank) could have been avoided if the members of the guild actually took care of the rats/goblins/necromancers themselves as you would assume they're supposed to do and didn't keep losing their items in alternate realities or on top of high mountains, instead of sitting around on their arses drinking tea and talking about themselves to each other in the third person. And even once you've done all the quests, become head of all the guilds, and amassed all the items and spells that you'll never use because yours are better, nobody in the game knows who you are! So not only frustrating, but pointless.

Also, let it be said that if the Mage's Guild had sent me to fight ogres in order to retrieve the magical rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle so I could get to Hook Island, then I wouldn't be complaining right now.

 

[Proteus214]

In Eternal Darkness, Anthony's chapter was one giant fetch quest for the key to a door right next to the start that could easily kicked down by an able bodied young man with a sword. Not to mention that inside is the king and some potential assassins. I think he should have been capable of more considering the urgency of the situation.

Spoiler

And to cap it all off, by the time you find the key, you've turned into a zombie and the king was assassinated anyway. Yay for you.

 

[Drakey]

" I'm Basch Von Rosenberg of Dalmasca! "

 

[salbarragan]

I love the section of the article where you alphabetically list all possible "keys"! Cracked me up to no end! Great article as usual.