Suggestion: Persistent/No-Contention Quest System

k9burn · Post by **k9burn** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:18 pm

I do understand that NWN2 is still being heavily patched...so this suggestion may be a long way off. With that in mind...

...if any of you played on City of Arabel (http://www.nwncityofarabel.com) they had a unique quest system that was based on Vulcano's scripts. I am unable to determine if Vulcano made this freely available on the vault (perhaps someone could enlighten me).

Essentially quests were somewhat persistent, even through server resets, but in the interest of allowing players to run quests more than once, they did reset themselves every 24 hours (or whatever time is deemed appropriate). Otherwise players would run out of content quickly...

More imporantly, once a quest was 'acquired' by a party, no other party/individual could acquire that quest while the first party was working on it. Essentially the entrance point to the quest would require a key, password, NPC guidance...etc... you name it. If you don't have the quest you can't get in the area. If you do, you can. This has the added advantage that while you are doing a quest, no other party could interrupt your hard-earned progress and run right past all the traps you disabled stealing the loot or taking the special quest-needed item. Contention issues are solved in this way.

I believe the quests had a timeout if the party logged off...and possibly a time limit, but I'm not sure about those details.

Another bonus was, that this quest script (in conjunction with many other scripts im sure) would reset all doors, traps and treasures when the quest was acquired. And since no more than one party can have the quest at the same time, there was no issue with abuse here.

It would be nice if Dasaria was able to implement something like this, but I realize it may be some time. I'm not requesting that the developers design this from the ground up, but instead, look into Vulcano's past developments (and future) to see if they can leverage what already exists into Dasaria itself.

So to sum it up:

1) Persistent, control of the DM's to set how often a quest can be retaken
2) Contention avoided by locking out the quest area to one party
3) Quest areas are cleaned up, so each time its taken its as if no one was there before

Opinions?

thedork · Post by **thedork** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:24 pm

according to the DM persistent journals are in the making - as for running out of content, you simply create more content. no fun repeating the same thing anyway. thats how an online game progresses.

Kazak · Post by **Kazak** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:28 pm

I believe you missed his point. I think k9burn is trying to say that if you accept a person who hasn't done the quest you are doing, that person gets "caught up" to the point where you are at and can finish the quest very easily by hanging out with you. By ninja looting the quest item.

I see the validity in k9burn's argument, I would support that idea. No clue how hard/easy it is to implement in the current content.... the decision is really for devs to make.

k9burn · Post by **k9burn** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:34 pm

thedork wrote:according to the DM persistent journals are in the making - as for running out of content, you simply create more content. no fun repeating the same thing anyway. thats how an online game progresses.

As to the repeatability of the quests...thats really up to the DM's/Creators. I'm merely suggesting a system that has the capability to capture persistent data and use it in whatever way it pleases.

However, this is only one aspect of what I suggest. The other two points are really what I think is missing...inter-party contention and content resetting.

BeyondRedemption · Post by **BeyondRedemption** » Tue Nov 21, 2006 11:41 pm

And you think the bumrush to the quest NPCs is bad now...

EdCase · Post by **EdCase** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:44 am

A system like this would negate the "Ohhh! server reset..run for the cellar and grab the unique only appears once items" scenario so prevalent now.

Mensha Khaine · Post by **Mensha Khaine** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:46 am

once Das expands a little you'll find it easier to complete the lower level quests without running into half the server.

k9burn · Post by **k9burn** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 2:12 am

I'm sure alot of things will change as Dasaria grows, but even so, this kind of system would really make things run more smoothly. No matter how many quests, players or level differences we have....sooner or later there will be contention for the same quest item/area/boss/loot.

This kind of solution solves that problem. Its just a matter of research and leveraging existing scripts. I'm 99% sure they are developing this for NWN2.

Coasty1981 · Post by **Coasty1981** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 11:56 am

While this idea would eliminate the rush what about since only 1 person/group can have the quests what if person a logs in and gets the first 10-12 low level quests and begins doing them but doesn't turn them in till all of them are done. Resulting in the first 10-12 quests locked for the other 5-8 people waiting to do those quests.

Essentially you'd end up having people sitting around quest NPCs waiting for the quest to become available which really isn't fun.

BeyondRedemption · Post by **BeyondRedemption** » Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:25 pm

Yeah, this really is only an issue because all of the content hasn't been rolled out yet. It wasn't a problem in Das 1 so I just say give it time. I'd much rather see the DMs spending time getting new content up rather than trying to adapt some new system with its own inherent flaws. They've done an excellent job so far and I can't wait to have them actually interacting with us through the DM client.

I disagree in principle with the system proposed but also and more importantly I disagree on the timing of this. This is something that you build around from the ground up; this is not something that you hack on after release.