Over at MMORPG.com, cmagoun makes a case for what he calls dynamic quests - Dynamic Quest System (or Life Without !?!?!?!?).

Our system will provide excitement by giving the player a fresh experience each time he logs into the game. We will tie the character’s actions to events in the game world and he will see the results of his actions as it affects NPCs, game locations and even his fellow players (albeit only temporarily). Instead of dryly telling the game’s backstory in flavor text, our quests will give the player a story to tell each session of play.

Sounds great, but where do we find this awesome questing system?

Much of what cmagoun’s asking for is the topic of discussion at Visual Purple. When building training simulations in virtual worlds much of what’s traditionally been done with quests in MMOs just isn’t going to cut it. As I like to say – we’re not building Lord of the Rings here, we can’t rely on lore and fantasy to draw the player in. We want to use more contemporary storytelling techniques, many of which would be empowered by the same things cmagoun is asking for.

Doing Instead of Getting: A friend of mine once said “RPGs are about doing cool things and getting cool stuff.”  I agree. I also think that MMOs have the “getting cool stuff” part down pat. We’re here to work on the “doing cool things” part. For that reason, I am not focusing on the reward aspects of the system just yet. Of course quests will have rewards, but the focus is on what the players do as opposed to what they get.

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of doing what’s been done before and probably more importantly, been successful before. I think most quest designers think only in terms of making it difficult to collect something. We need to open this up, especially in training simulations. We’re always throwing around the term – learning objectives. The keyword here being objective. That can’t always be to collect an item.  A lot of the training we do is higher cognitive, like how to avoid an HR issue from escalating into a legal issue – what are you going to do to make that happen? If your successful you’ll get nothing but satisfaction.

Quest Flow Is Not Set: Another departure from PQs. With Dynamic Quests we should have the option to change the results based on the actions of the players. A quest designer could base the flow of the DQ on the success or failure of the players involved, or he might have the progression based on what levels of characters participate, or even change the quest flow randomly so that players who experience the quest more than once don’t know what to expect.

This is something we pay special attention to as replay value is a core aspect of training simulations. The objective isn’t simply to “get through”, but to learn. Playing through again but taking a different path is a core part of training.

Quests Have Natural Mechanisms For Getting People Involved: So, instead of quest icons and arrows leading players by the nose, DQs will have to find ways in the game world of getting players to the action. Alarm bells might sound because of an impending goblin invasion. Players might be stopped by a crying street urchin. A gigantic fire and plume of smoke might alert players of something amiss in a nearby village. Players that talk to town NPCs will be rewarded with rumors about nearby DQs. Heck, we could even go as far as to have conversation skills players could train (much like gathering and crafting skills found in other games) that made this process easier.

This one is a pet peeve of mine. A question mark above an NPC can certainly help to know what to do, however it also hurts the level of immersion. With training simulations we’re always trying to make them more true to life to enhance the immersion to increase the engagement to maximize retention and achieve true learning.

Let’s continue with the HR simulation. Sometimes we overhear things at the water cooler that could be an HR issue. If a player’s role is that of an HR manager, hearing such stuff should prompt them to act. Of course you might be asking – In a virtual world how would the player know to venture over to the water cooler without the question mark? I think of that as more a problem of pathing and design. It’s also a problem I’d like to have. Disneyland uses all kinds of tricks to direct visitors – obvious and not so obvious and they entertain you while they manipulate you (lots do the former, few manage the latter). At times its worth it to be obvious, other times it diminishes the level of immersion and they go for a more subtle guide.

Another benefit of the subtle approach is that we can better evaluate the player’s performance. If the player chooses to do nothing with the information he overhears, we could quickly correct them on their error.

Question marks and and more obvious guides also alert the player that something needs to be done. When in doubt the player just clicks from one signal to another without paying attention to the progression of the story or what is being taught.

All this isn’t to say that obvious guides shouldn’t be used, it depends on the project. It would just be nice to see other options in assigning quests.

Quests Have an Impact on the Game World (for a while anyways): Based on the results of the DQ, the game world will change. If a village is razed because players could not stop the dragon… the village is razed for an hour or so. If the players save the village, they are lauded as heroes and can expect gifts from the villagers, or lower shop prices for a similar period of time.

What cmagoun is really asking for here is interactive story. It’s a tall order and one that I have yet to seen done in a satisfactory way. But it’s what I think we all want.

Conclusion

Like cmagoun, I would love it if quest systems supported these features today, but to a large extent they don’t.  So me and the others at Visual Purple must experiment and try to build them. Unlike MMOs we can’t rely on the game aspect to keep the player engaged. How many people want to go to school and sit through class? It’s more likely that players of training simulations don’t want to be there. However the better we can draw them in with the story the more they’ll learn and retain the information. And if we had cmagoun’s dynamic quests that would be a whole lot easier.