Quest design 101

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26 January 2006

by Mike Rozak

Here are some thoughts about quest design, based on my own observations, and various books and articles that I've read.

The difficulty curve

Swords & Circuitry: A Designer's Guide to Computer Role-Playing Games, by Neal and Jana Hallford, points out that the "difficulty" of a CRPG should increase over time, but not in a nice smooth line. It should look more like the serrations of a saw-blade turned on an incline. The game starts out very easy, gets slightly more difficult, falls back to easy for awhile, gradually becomes more difficult, takes a step back, etc. By the end of the game, the final boss monster is the most challenging encounter.

There are some reasons for this difficulty curve:

• Players expect the game to get (slightly) more difficult as they progress. Breaking their expectations causes disappointment, and should be avoided without good cause.
  
  
• Player's are expected to become more adept while playing the game, and consequently able to overcome more difficult conditions later on.
  
  
• To state the obvious, having the game be most difficult at its start and then gradually get easier doesn't make sense. It will scare off players that aren't very skilled; they will get stuck near the beginning and give up. At least with the more difficult sections near the end, a casual gamer can get through most of the game before becoming frustrated by the difficulty.
  
  
• Players that are skilled (hard core gamers) will breeze through the easy stuff in the beginning (which they expect to breeze through) and start slowing down and enjoying the more difficult challenges near the end of the game.
  
  
• The "saw blade" effect encourages people's hopes that they've gotten better, which improves their enjoyment of the game. After a player defeats a boss monster for the level, a the tip of the difficulty serration, the game suddenly and intentionally gets easier. The hope is that the player found the boss monster a challenge, and the next few monsters, being significantly easier, are relaxation in comparison. The easier monsters also make the player think he's suddenly gotten better at playing the game, even if he hasn't.
  
  
• CRPGs assign skills or levels to the player's characters. Player-character levels/skills serve to augment the player's sense of accomplishment. Even if the player hasn't actually gotten any better at the game, his character has. Even though the player (and character) found it difficult to kill one orc at the beginning of the game, by the end he is routinely hacking through armies of orcs.

I'd like to point out one more thing about the difficulty curve; there are actually two difficulty curves. One is the curve faced by players that are inexperienced at CRPGs (or otherwise unskilled/inept), and the other is a lower but parallel curve that skilled (hard core) players experience. The lower curve (for skilled play) needs to exist because it occurs naturally when the game rewards intelligent actions. Basically, players who think, learn from the game, and use their own skills/intelligence do better at the game. If both curves were the same, then a player's personal skills and insights wouldn't impact the player's progress. Players would realise this and feel cheated, like older children feel when they realise there's no skill involved in Chutes/Snakes and Ladders.

Unfortunately, this means that hard core gamers, who are looking for a challenge, find any given CRPG to be easier than casual players do, and less challenging. The difficultly level cannot be universally increased, since that would make the game unplayable to casual gamers. It is possible to create a "difficulty level setting" that players can select, and most CRPGs provide for this. An increasing difficulty curve also mitigates this problem, but it means that casual players won't have the skill to finish the game.

Adventure games have a larger separation in the difficulty levels experienced by casual and hard-core players because all the skill comes from the players, not the player characters. Due to their nature, adventure games can't  effectively implement a difficulty-level setting. This means that a given adventure game is almost always targeted at either hard core or casual gamers, not both. Many casual gamers will "cheat" by downloading a game walkthrough for the puzzles they can't solve.

Sub-games throughout the game

Here are some rules about sub-games:

• Sub-games should not be used so much that they become boring. Some sub-games, like combat, can be experienced hundreds or thousands of times without players getting bored. Others, like milking a cow, might cause boredom after half a dozen plays. Adventure games rely heavily on sub-games that are only ever used once, while CRPGs have very few sub-games that are repeatedly employed.
  
  
• Sub-games should be scattered evenly across the gameplay experience. Don't make the player repeatedly play one sub-game over and over for an hour only to have it disappear from later portions of the game.
  
  For example: If a game includes a "milk the cow" sub-game, and milking the cow is only expected to be fun the first four times it's played, then try to introduce milking the cow in the first quarter of the game, have it reappear once in the second quarter, once in the third, and as a final "boss" cow in the fourth quarter.
  
  
• Sub-games should include variations that players perceive as variations. As soon as a player thinks, "I have mastered milked Betsy the cow," stop using the sub-game or find a variation for it.
  
  I can think of one exception to this rule, maybe... Movement. Players have to walk everywhere in the game, and the movement sub-game is quickly mastered (intentionally) and not terribly exciting. Of course, variations are included, such as running, jumping, swimming, walking on ice, flying, etc. Even with those variations, players spend a lot of time moving. The only saving grace for movement is that players move in varied scenery, which explains why scenery is important. Just imagine how boring movement would be if the player only walked on a flat and featureless plane (or plain) the whole time.

Sub-games in quests

As I've discussed elsewhere, a quest is a sequence of sub-games wrapped within a "story". CRPGs tend to rely heavily on the combat sub-game, but many more sub-games are possible.

Sub-games should be carefully placed in quests:

• The sub-games should obviously result from the "story". If they don't, either the sub-games or "story" should be changed.
  
  
• In order to provide players choices, a quest should (ideally) allow players to complete the quest using a few different sequences of sub-games. For example: If the player is tasked with collecting some fruit from an island filled with cyclops, the player should have the choice of attacking all the cyclops (combat sub-game) and getting the fruit once the combat is done. Or, they should be able to sneak past the cyclops (stealth sub-game) and steal some fruit.
  
  
• Every quest should include a newly-introduced sub-game, a sub-game with a newly-introduced variation, or occasionally, a reprise of a previous sub-game with variation that the player still wants to master. If the quest doesn't include any new sub-games or variations, consider tossing it.
  
  
• The ordering of sub-games within a quest should also be varied. If one quest uses the movement sub-game followed by the combat sub-game ("Go to X and kill monster Y"), then try not to use the same ordering again. You could flip them, for example, and make the player "Kill monster Y, and take its head to location X."
  
  
• Quests should not include too many new sub-game elements. New sub-games and new variations in sub-games require players to learn (aka: Work) about the sub-games as well as providing a challenge they haven't mastered (aka: Frustration). Heaping all the learning and challenges into a few quests will alienate most players, and then bore the remainder when all subsequent quests are the same.
  
  This means that early quests will only have one sub-game, and they'll function as a tutorial.
  
  
• Quests should be short enough that they can be completed in a single, short session. Long quests will lose casual players who can't afford to play for hours at a time.

Stories

Some additional thoughts about "stories":

• The "stories" presented by quests should follow a model similar to the difficulty curve. Early stories should be more mundane, every-day events like milking the cow. Later stories should get more heroic (or more important in the eyes of the player), such as killing the evil overlord, or, if the game is a dating game, finally getting married.
  
  
• Don't repeat stories. Rescuing farmer Pickle's cow is one story. Rescuing Mrs. Annie's llama is practically the same story.
  
  
• Interleave story/quest arcs. Don't have the player spend ten quests in a row dealing with the goblin hoards and then never hear about them again. Have a few quests dealing with the goblins. Let the player think they're done with goblins. Then, a few hours of play later, the goblins are back and more nefarious than ever.
  
  
• Stories benefit when the player returns time and again to the same cast NPCs. The repeat visits allow players to "know and like" the NPCs, helping players become attached to the NPCs and in turn, helping players internalise the goals presented by the NPCs' quests.

Choices

Players must be given choices. As I previously mentioned:

• Players should have a menu of quests available to them at any point in time. They can tackle the quests on the menu in any order they like. Once one quest is finished, another one will appear to take its place. The menu should be kept to around five quests, ten for hard-core players.
  
  
• If possible, players should be given the option of bypassing some quests. Don't let them bypass so many that they never play the game though.
  
  
• As stated above, once players undertake a quest, they should have a choice about how to solve the quest. However, make sure that players can't solve all quests using just one type of sub-game. Players will leap at the opportunity, get bored with continually playing the same sub-game, and leave.
  
  
• Players should have choices within the sub-games. Some of these choices involve preparing for the sub-game, such as the player's choice of weapons and armour for combat.
  
  
• All quests have consequences to the player and the world. If possible, the player should be presented with some choices about the consequences. See below.

Consequences

All quests result in consequences to the player, player character, and/or the game world.

• If you have a quest that doesn't have consequences, then consider getting rid of it.
  
  
• If the consequences of two or more quests are virtually identical, find different consequences. MMORPGs abound with quests that provide coin or items as consequences. This gets old after the fiftieth quest offering a brand new sword for one's troubles.
  
  
• Don't give players the consequences they expect. Give them something better.
  
  
• Upon completing the quest, players should have a sense of accomplishment and/or other rewards.

Some sample consequences are:

• The player's character is changed:
  • Rewards of coin or items.
  • New skills or abilities for the player's character.
  • The PC looks different.
  • Occasional punishments.
    
    
• The player's relationship to the world is changed:
  • New/changed relationships with NPCs.
  • New enemies (or other negative relationships) are assigned to the player.
    
    
• The world is changed:
  • The world's "story" is advanced.
  • Parts of the world are destroyed or saved.
  • New parts of the world are revealed.
    
    
• Rewards
  • A mystery is revealed.
  • New eye candy.
  • The player gets to play a new sub-game.

If possible, players should be given a choice of consequences. There are several ways to do this:

• The king gives the player a quest to rescue his daughter, the princess, who has been captured by a dragon. Before setting out, the player is told that if he rescues the princess, he can either accept a reward of 1000 gold pieces or marry the princess. The player must decide the consequences before the quest begins... This isn't a very good solution.
  
  
• Conversely, the king tells the player that the consequences are money or marriage, but doesn't require the player to make a decision until the player completes the quest... This is a reasonable solution.
  
  
• The king hints at a reward, and also hints that his daughter likes heroic men and the king wouldn't mind having a heroic son-in-law. As the player works his way through the sub-games to complete the quest, he makes choices of a heroic vs. mercenary nature. These choices ultimately enable or decide the quest's final consequences. This approach is much better, resembling the writer's adage of "Show, don't tell."

String of pearls and threaded storylines

Due to technical limitations, games are usually designed to be a string of pearls. Basically, a player enters a section of the world where they have a large number of choices (and quests to choose from), but at some point their choice in quests narrows down to the point where the player has only one quest left. Once they complete the quest, they move on to the next pearl in the string.

In a CRPG, the transitional quest usually involves killing a boss monster for the pearl (such as the bandit king working for the evil overlord). In adventure games, the transitional quest unlocks a door that lets the player into a new section of the world. In both cases, the consequence of the last quest in the pearl is to allow the player into the next pearl.

Unfortunately, by it's very nature, the "pearl" narrows down into a string, at which point the player is choice-less. You must compensate for this lack of choice:

• Provide so much eye candy to dazzle the user that the player doesn't mind/realise that he has been led by the nose.
  
  
• Design the story in such a way that the player (not just the player's character) feels that the only choice offered by the pearl is the only one they'd choose, even if there were other choices, which there aren't.
  
  
• Overcompensate with other choices. Maybe killing the boss monster gives the player a choice of loot, compensating for the utter lack of choice in "story" direction.
  
  
• Instead of one all-encompassing storyline, as is common in CRPGs and adventure games, always have several storylines threaded through the experience, perhaps in the form of Personal NPCs. Player's won't notice when one of the storylines hits the string part of the pearl (as much) if they still have choices in their other storylines.

Memes

Finally, try to include something memorable in each quest. Without memorable events, players won't recommend the game to other players.