The Dos and Don'ts of Making Sidequests

[cojo965]

I was bored and just thinking about stuff and this came up as a fun topic. So lets build some dos and don'ts to making sidequests. I'll start with:

Do: If a sidequest must be hard, make it within reason for anyone to complete. Which leads into,

Don't: Make the player rely on luck to complete. Back in my Shitty Sidequests thread my example was the Ringmaster fight from Lost Odyssey. Now the right mix of skills and moves can make getting three stars much easier, but the most useful skill is still luck based as to whether it works or not. The only way I seemed to finally pull it off was approaching it with apathy.

What do you guys have to add?

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

dont: fetch quests, get your own strawberries you lazy bun!

 

[Veylon]

Make it interesting. Tie it into a character or event that the player already (maybe) likes. Sidequests should be something that excites the player.

A couple don'ts: Don't make a fetch quest and don't do the Broken Bridge thing where progress is arbitrarily barred until some arbitrary task is completed.

Though, there could be a literal broken bridge that the player could easily pass, but would vastly help out the local community were it to be repaired, which would involved clearing away some dangerous animals, cutting down trees, fetching brackets to hold it together, and some mini-game assembly. All of which would be a perfectly valid job for the would-be do-gooder to take upon himself to win local goodwill and feel good.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

Make the side quests pay off, either by revealing some really interesting information, or giving a great item. A bad example: Finding all those League of One Medallions in Mass Effect. The entry said that it seemed like the final member had escaped and was still alive somewhere. I was fully expecting to cross paths with this member once I found all the Medallions. Nope. Nothing. Nothing happened whatsoever. It was literally a boring fetch quest with no reward beyond a little bit of exp.

A good example: Final Fantasy VIII. Discovering that hidden research base that is in the bottom of the map. You get a powerful GF the first time you go there (which you are never told to do, by the way), and his fight is an interesting one because of how you have to pick the hidden answer in order to complete it. Reveals some good backstory about the research that went into making GFs and whatnot. But then, when you go back a second time, there's even more to do, with the most powerful GF hidden at the end an a sense of dark foreboding about everything that went on here. And it's all completely optional and easily missed, but is very interesting and worth it if you take the time.

 

[PFCboom]

Do make your side quests take the player to new areas or off-shoots of certain regions. Dust: An Elysian Tail features a couple dozen zones, but really only a handful are necessary to complete the game, and the remaining zones are almost exclusively for side quests. Yet another reason why Dust is one of my all-time favorite games.
Don't make all of your side quests simple "Oh, while you're there you might as well..." quests. Oh, they can be great for additional rewards and maybe some lore-building, but if I wanted to go through great wads of quests at once, I'd play World of Warcraft.

Do try to make side quests that build the characters and world at large, figuratively or literally. There's this SNES game called Terranigma, and there's a point where you come upon a town that is just a small village to start, but by progressively investing in the town - literally, you pay a not insignificant amount of cash - the place is built up into a bustling city, one of the biggest in the game.

Do have side quests of varying sizes. Chrono Cross has 42 total characters, and most of them require some kind of side quest to attain them in the first place, and then another side quest to gain their third special technique. One character, Skelly, requires that you travel the length and breadth of the world, but his third tech requires only that you go talk to one person and hear a little bit of backstory.

Don't have side quests that take too long without breaking them up. I mentioned Terranigma's city investing side quest above. It's a long quest, sure, but it happens in stages over a long period of time, and more importantly, it gives you a genuine sense of progress.

 

[Elfgore]

Easy, just go look at Fallout 3's side quest. Almost all of them are well-crafted mini-stories and some even have effects on the world. That's why there are about fifteen side-quest in Fallout 3 and about 100+ in New Vegas, Fallout 3 actually made their quests interesting.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

hmmm, don't cut and paste the same side quest over n over, only making a few tweeks (too many games to mention)

 

[Zeldias]

Don't make it screamingly tedious. In Bravely Default, the worst sidequest I've encountered is (minor spoilers)


the sidequest to open Vampire Castle. You have to go slay 6 dragons, but each of the dragons is exactly the same as every other one, but they have a different element and can inflict a different status ailment (the dark dragon inflicts dread, ice dragon inflicts stop, etc). That is stupidly boring and basically just making a longer checklist for me. I would have rather fought one extremely ridiculous dragon that shifted elements or something than 6 somewhat boring ones. Or fought through some kind of nonstop boss gauntlet.

Do give them a good pay off. I like the satisfaction of killing the deadliest enemy in the game or getting the most powerful weapons, and I also really like when sidequest narrations fold into the main story of the game neatly. Give me stuff like that (without making it some tedious pain in the ass to reach). Again, Bravely Default did that really well with the job class boss fights. I'd also say Chrono Trigger deserves a mention here.

 

[HalfTangible]

Do: Make everything you encounter either interesting or hilarious.
"You see an old man, grinning broadly through yellowed teeth from the other end of the bridge."
"Ugh, another elementalist in diguise? Really? We just did that!"
"One, for the eighth he wasn't an elementalist. And two, actually, when you look closer, you think it's the same old man."
"...But... we cut his head off."
"You don't see any sign of your previous beheading of an innocent old man."

Do: Give a good payoff

Don't: Make the enemies mimes.

Don't: Repeat the same enemy with no variation more than three times. It's okay for groups, since those are very easy to make look and feel different without really changing much, but for individual units, don't do it. Especially if they're supposed to be different people.

Don't: Ask me for advice. I've screwed up every attempt I've ever made at DMing/GMing.

 

[War Penguin]

Easy, just go look at Fallout 3's side quest. Almost all of them are well-crafted mini-stories and some even have effects on the world. That's why there are about fifteen side-quest in Fallout 3 and about 100+ in New Vegas, Fallout 3 actually made their quests interesting.

Whew! I was the only one who felt that way about that game. Glad to see I'm not.

Anyway, yeah, what this person said. Just keep in mind that quantity does not equal quality. You could do what Skyrim did, though. I liked how that game separated "Quests" from "Tasks." You could still have arbitrary little fetch quests but not labelled as actual quests. That makes a surprisingly big difference!

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

do's:

1) If you're making a simple fetch quest, either make it something I can get along the way to my next goal, or make me travel to a new and exciting location.

2) If it involves random drops from an enemy, please make it reasonable. If I have a 75% chance of getting 1 of the 5 bear asses I need from a common enemy, that's fine. Or, you can make it a conditional drop that makes it drop 100% of the time. Ice core from a slime that I can get by killing it with ice? Perfect. As long as there's some clue that this is the solution.

3) Make the quest make common sense or at least have some kind of context! Don't make me grab 10 bear butts from enemies and then I get a sword in return from some faceless NPC with no further reasoning. Make me CARE about why I'm getting them. Tell me that the 5 bear butts are needed to make a blanket for a former warrior with a fever, who will gladly give up one of his old swords in exchenge, now that he can no longer use them. Hell, it can be as simple as "Bring me 4 gelatin from slimes and I'll make them into Healing Salve for you!" which gives you context for WHY I need to get the stuff (second example is taken from a game I'm working on right now).

4) PLEASE give me some way to track who is giving me the quest and who I need to return to to complete it. Sometimes I'll finish a quest and woops, I can't seem to remember who to turn it in at and then I spend hours looking for them.

5) Connect some to the characters and plot! Helps to flesh them out and make them feel more important!

DON'Ts:

1) DO NOT MAKE THIS !@#$ TEDIOUS. If you're going to force me to grind for a half hour, or go back to some old dungeon 20 minutes away, or stuff like that, I am going to stop doing sidequests.

2) Do NOT oversaturate me with requests! One of the MANY reasons I stopped doing sidequests in Xenoblade was the sheer MASSIVE volume of them!

3) Do NOT make sidequests randomly disappear! I hate completing a quest, or going back to begin a quest I missed, and due to story reasons, woops, the NPC or the village in question is GONE and the quest no longer doable. Xenoblade did this too and It maddens me!

That's all I got for now.

 

[Tassit]

Make the side quests pay off, either by revealing some really interesting information, or giving a great item. A bad example: Finding all those League of One Medallions in Mass Effect. The entry said that it seemed like the final member had escaped and was still alive somewhere. I was fully expecting to cross paths with this member once I found all the Medallions. Nope. Nothing. Nothing happened whatsoever. It was literally a boring fetch quest with no reward beyond a little bit of exp.

A good example: Final Fantasy VIII. Discovering that hidden research base that is in the bottom of the map. You get a powerful GF the first time you go there (which you are never told to do, by the way), and his fight is an interesting one because of how you have to pick the hidden answer in order to complete it. Reveals some good backstory about the research that went into making GFs and whatnot. But then, when you go back a second time, there's even more to do, with the most powerful GF hidden at the end an a sense of dark foreboding about everything that went on here. And it's all completely optional and easily missed, but is very interesting and worth it if you take the time.

I agree! I loved that fight lol

 

[mrdude2010]

Don't tie our success to the health of an NPC: Escort quests are just awful.

 

[The Squid King]

Do:
- Make the sidequests relevant to the world, current scenario and quest giver. If a war effort is happening then make sidequests for it.
- Include optional areas, enemies or something else that you wont run into repeatedly in the main story.
- Quality over Quantity. Xenoblade had so many mundane sidequests that most of them were left alone. Final Fantasy games often have very few sidequests but the ones they have often feature unique mechanics and interesting boss battles.
- Make the payoff worth it. If a quest requires extensive farming then give the player a powerful weapon or something rather then a key item symbolizing the fact that you've wasted over fifty hours (looking at you FFX).
- Give us a means to find the quest giver after completing a quest or (even better) just give the reward on completion and forget the backtrack completely like in Xenoblade.
- Give an indication that the sidequest will be uncompletable later in the game (again like Xenoblade).

Don't
- Give quests involving items that are very rare drops or items that have unique ways to force a drop without giving some indication of this.
- Waste time. As much as I would love to spend forever for little rewards, I have stuff to do.

 

[MysticSlayer]

Do:
Make sure the reward is worthwhile. I don't really care if I have to search high and low for hours for a single item so long as the reward for finding that item is worth it.
Make sure you know if the quest will eventually become impossible to complete.
Make sure the side-quests aren't necessary for overcoming the challenges, but the rewards can help make it easier.
As an extension of the last one, don't make it so the rewards completely break the game so that you never get challenged. The challenge may not be great, but at least make it so it feels like a fight.
If you're going to do a fetch quest, then make sure that it offers the opportunity to explore the world or can be easily obtained along the quest.
If you have a game-long side-quest, make sure that it can be completed and some scenario can't pop up that makes it literally impossible to complete.

Don't:
Make the quest so ambiguous that you may not even know you started it or when the end point is, let alone know where to find the beginning.
Force the player to talk to every random NPC just to find the next point in the quest.
Make it so the quest giver may disappear from the game for a few hours while you wait for them to finally return.

 

[PFCboom]

Got another one.

Don't have escort quests with rock-stupid and/or unreasonable escorts.

Rock-stupid NPCs: If memory serves, in World of Warcraft, in the Outlands, there is an escort quests where the NPC walks along without a care in the world, and almost completely passive. Walks along through one of the Outlands' many, many mob-infested areas, aggro'ing everything that so much as glanced in his direction. And I wasn't kidding about being passive, the ass would pull guys and keep walking merrily along. Naturally, I would try to pull everything off the NPC. As a nooblet fire mage. I remember being poor from constantly repairing all my broken gear.

Unreasonable escorts: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. There are multiple points in side-quests and the main storyline where you must transport some NPC from point A to point B. Simple enough, but there are plenty of evil things on the way that want to hurt you, including evil trains that actively try to suicide-bomb into you. And what happens when your train gets hurt/blown up? The NPC gets all snippy and demands that you drive better. Mind you, this also happens if you stop too suddenly, like if you're trying to slam into reverse to get away from a bomb train. "Hey, be more careful when you're trying to save us and your beloved train from getting blown up, you incompetent tool!" And that's why I only played through Spirit Tracks the one time.

Come to think of it, the Spirit Tracks NPCs can fit under both categories, since they would have to be dumber than a sack of hammers if they don't recognize the threats to their lives. And the WoW example, well, I'd say the programmers are unreasonable (or a bit lazy) for making that NPC that stupid.

 

[kilenem]

Please don't make me revisit the area I was just freaking in. At least give me another story mission and then I have to go back. Borderlands 2.

 

[Auron225]

Don't go the route of Xenoblade Chronicles and have fucking hundreds of them. Quality > Quantity every time. So how to make quality sidequests?

Restrict less than 10% of your sidequests to tired old models like "fetch x many items" or "kill y many enemies". I don't mind doing a couple of these but note that I will be tolerating them; not having fun. I'd rather my sidequests have unique challenges and interesting plots.

Delivering this item to that guy is not interesting.
Making these two NPCs stop fighting is not interesting.
Fighting to win a tournament? Rescuing someone from a kidnap/hostage situation? Now we're moving into the realm of interesting.

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I think STALKER Call of Pripyat has some pretty good side quests.
They are all skippable, but participating builds the world around you and they are well fleshed out with cutscenes and characters. A few of them even have some very good rewards, such as higher standing with factions, free meds or an armory full of loot.
I think a proper side quest also doesn't try to teach you new things but rather makes you use skills learned in the main story line in a different way. This way you won't miss out on techniques or game mechanics you need to learn for the main story line, and you still get challenged when playing the side quests.
For example, in a main story line section the player could get some hints from NPCs that he can blow up walls to enter buildings. Now in a side quest we present the player with a huge fortress that seems untakeable.. unless he remembers that he can create his own entrances. He'll become more proficient at using the game mechanics creatively.

I hate non-sensical sidequests. In Far Cry 3, the player often had to go out and kill pirate leaders.. with a knife. Why?! Who the fuck cares how he dies, I prefer to snipe him from 500m out and he's dead all the same. Likewise, it was frustrating that the allies that gave out those quests were perfectly armed and seemed capable enough to do it themselves.
Also high on the list are the Fetch Bodyparts missions that make no sense. If I see a wolf has a tail and I have to collect 20 wolf tails, then it would make sense to just kill 20. Instead, many games have this weird "only 1 out of 10 wolves drop their tail" shit.


So do's:
- Rewards clear from the outset
- Task is challenging, fun
- Does not require the player to learn new skills, but forces the player to use previously learned skills

Don'ts
- Grinding and repetitive tasks
- Tasks that fly against reason or have no place in the overall world/story

Captcha: Melody Pond.
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