This is How You Fix RPG Sidequests

[sageoftruth]

I think if you're going to have idle party members questing for you on quests with choices to be made, the most interesting way to do it would be to have them make the choices one would expect them to make as characters.

Then when your pal, Ogdoff the barbarian, destroys half the village to drive out the thief, you can slap your forehead and go, "Drat! I knew I should have sent Harry the bard for this one!"

Not only would it encourage you to carefully pick who to send, but if you're a joker, you could send Dandof, the elf-hating dwarf off on a diplomatic mission to broker peace between the elves and the trolls, and then laugh as you find out what happened.

 

[teh_v]

I think that is a good way to handle side quests, especially open world Bethesda style games. I get so incredibly annoyed when "I, the great dragon born savior of Vault city, etc, etc," get stopped in my Daedric power armor and asked to go help Timmy get out of a well two towns over. I'm like "DO YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK I AM" but still I have to go help little Timmy or the near by village will hate me forever.

I would love it if this system worked a bit like the DA:I scheme. Where you meet the villager, they go "Help Timmy" and if you are high enough level you get an option "send companion". Clicking that it brings up the various companions along with some sort of indication on how they might deal with the problem. A simple example could be "Brawn- "I will go down and carry Timmy out of the well on my back" Cunning "I will fix the hoist mechanism and send down a bucket to get Timmy out." Diplomacy "I will ask the villagers near by to come with me to the well with rope and together we will lower someone down to get Timmy."" Which would be all options you could pick if you went to do the quest. Then after some time they would come back and you could either have a voice over or quick text box telling you what happened along with the rewards given and a quick indication on if their choice went over well with villagers. I think this would work best with obvious fetch quest and grind quest who's only purpose in the game was to give your character more chances to level. Side quest that are super plot heavy should just be grayed out.

It might also help if I could have an option once you are high enough level to tell someone to "fuck off". Not just, "don't accept quest" but a literal, "This quest is beneath me go away". Than again, I get annoyed because Bethesda doesn't let you really play a jerk character.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I hate these "imaginary quests" myself, especially in my playthroughs of Metal Gear Solid 5 The Phantom Pain. How often I kept losing soldiers to missions with 80+% success rate made me pine for an option to JOIN my dumbass DD cultists on their missions to either do them myself or just be there as inspiration and give orders or something.

 

[normalguycap]

"If so, please feel free to tell them to someone who gives a shit."

Well, I bid thee a pleasant day as well.

For real. That was rude of him. I don't feel like participating now.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

This was actually implemented in Pillars of Eternity, not that it was really fleshed out. A nice option, but didn't really feel like it added much to the game. Perhaps this'd work better in an open world game.

I'd say not including crappy fetch quests is still a better option, though. With a bit of careful level scaling and/or XP curve adjustments, TW3 would probably be the closest thing to a perfect sidequest system.

 

[inopinatus]

Alternatively one could let the player play the quest himself as the party member, which might give further insight into the strengths and mechanics of that party member (since many players seem to concentrate on their own character whenever possible).

That just ruins the point of it all. If you have to do the quest regardless you might as well just do it, instead of delegating it in the first place.

Not so. I think it's a good call. Doing the side-quest as another party member, or even as a some other minor character:

1. Increases player emotional attachment to that character;
2. Levels up that party member/character, perhaps making them more useful in some future final battle;
3. Can change a future story outcome;
4. May even be essential, or simply much easier, due to some element of that character's backstory, or their specific abilities;
5. Solves the immersion-breakage problem that Yahtzee is actually talking of, wherein your glittering world-saving hero is tasked with collecting pumpkins;
6. May allow you to play with a different alignment, which is fun for a player who is otherwise being roleplay-consistent in their alignment choices (c.f. Mass Effect paragon vs renegade where there was a strong incentive for consistency)

Not an RPG, but one of the things I really enjoyed about Lego Star Wars (2005) was the ability to switch character. If I remember correctly it was even necessary for some puzzles.