“Procedural Questing,” I only learned about this term today & I learned it from another game. According to that game procedural questing is as such,
These quests will present you with new objectives and rewards, giving you dynamic goals to pursue as your story unfolds.
This comes across as one of the ol’ “Twist-a-plot,” books Gen X had as teens. Would something like this work in game? Or will it drive data miners insane? Would you like to see something like this in WoW? ((Sorry Metzen))
so live save 10 npc when you are on the quest type of thing?
if so it can not be hidden like the legion dk achievement for wiping out the red flight in that instance
… but really, they’re a bastardization of the term.
Nothing “procedurally generated” is going to ever carry any narrative weight. Hell, I’m reluctant to call “world quests” their official name, they’re just a semi-randomized rotation of WoD’s bonus objectives with semi-randomized rewards attached.
A quest is an adventure, a STORY.
And to make one of those right, you need to actually put some honest human effort into crafting it from start to finish. Not setting up a random-number-generator to periodically spit out an objective list.
The only similarity between the two is the objective system, which is a means to an end for a proper story about a quest. It can be done by other means, but the system works for that. But you can’t tell a computer to write an actual story that people will care about.
… then again, I guess the shinies at the end of the objective(s) are enough for most WoW players.
They’ve tried this in the past several times but never really followed through and players often rebelled at these choices.
A couple of examples are from BFA. Horde was able to follow Sylvanas or Saurfang. Everyone was able to cleanse the eye of N’Zoth or keep it. Neither choice really led anywhere.
A big example is Shadowlands and the original Covenants. People really hated that their choice may have permanent repercussions through an expansion. Though balancing and Blizzard’s ability to weave these story lines probably had a big effect here as well.
Don’t we already have this with campaign quests? Any ancillary quests usually provide you gold and can sometimes bequeath you pets and whatnot. What would you like to see differently that campaign quests don’t already provide? Also, with this expansion Blizzard put in the “important” purple triangle quests. This alerts you to that quest chain and usually leads you to even more important tasks.
So, again… what are you looking for that isn’t already there?
This is already in the game i believe it started in vanilla and has been used more and more with every expansion.
It is still present in all aspects of the game. To be honest if you are just reacting and assuming meaning from slang and developer speak as a layman, your understanding is going to be wrong like 99.9% of the time.
Dynamic quests or procedural generated would correlate to quests adjusting dialogue to include class, character name etc. We have seen this since vanilla with quests acknowledging horde v alliance from neutral quest givers.
Additionally by most assumptions world quests are psuedo procedural. They generate a quest and it generates new quests on a timer or refresh. I.E. the logic details some parameters like; in a refresh only do distinct/unique quests, try to spread out the location or reward types or quest type. Essentially dont refresh world quests and pick 1 quest to spawn 12 times in one zone.
So the real question is, do you enjoy these? They’ve always been here and im sure even in your referenced game it doesnt operate the way you are thinking it does. Inherently your definition provided of a “choose your own adventure book” is not what a procedural quest would be. That would be a standard RPG system that we colloquially call a “choices matter” system. That is not a game tag that works in multiplayer games. None of us can choose to be evil and side with xal and the old gods we all push to the same end goals of killing bad guys and collecting loot.
Id put money on this: whatever game you are referencing has less “procedural” coding in quests than WoW.
Also, gen x is not solely owning of choose your own adventure books and stories those have been around since the 900s in chinese storytelling and are still being published today.
Sounds like a single player RPG? I don’t see how that would work on an mmo with a shared linear canon. Other than just annoy and confuse people.
The Loyalist vs Traitorfang quests were a nice bit of flavor, but they end up with the same conclusion.
You could tell which ones the Devs wanted you to pick because one got a Toy for the toy count and the other didn’t.
To this day, my account is unsullied by that foul jail house rag toy of Saurfang’s. I guess I will always have one less toy than those who chose Blizzard’s preferred option.
Soooo… Oblivion’s Radiant Story system from checks 19 years ago is new?
That isn’t dynamic questing, that’s just ‘placeholder text’ changes. Dynamic questing would be more whole new quests being generated unique for your character’s journey, not just the text - but the objectives, quest giver, flavour text, everything.
