Thoughts on Quest Systems
Designing reward systems, or quest systems, as they are normally called, has become much more than the process of doling out reward and punishments within a video game. It is a useful tool to tell the story in bite-sized amounts that drive the plot from rising action, to climax, to falling action, and finally to resolution. Good quests give the player direction without seeming like a chore.
Quest systems consist of the tasks or quests that the player is asked to do in-game. These can be one or more of the following: go get something/someone, follow the player, escort the NPC, eliminate a specific number of enemies, etc. For my experience with making video games, we will focus on thinking of them as a vehicle to assist in telling the story. The key to these missions is to make them memorable to the player, and never a chore. It is another way to communicate with the player without pulling them out of the game world. The way you feel while playing the game and the emotions that it evokes in players requires so much thought. Quests can have a large part in giving the player a good game experience. So, what would be a good quest system?
According to Jesse Schell in his book The Art of Game Design, rewards are a way for the player “to be judged favorably” while fulfilling the desires of the player. To truly create the reward part of the quest system — one needs to know what the player wants in the game. This means you need to look at the character that the player is controlling in the game and, through that, figure out their deepest desire. Each main quest that the player goes through must in some way further their journey towards this desire.
Any good game should be a balance of struggle and reward, so rewards and punishments need to play a part in a quest system. The kinds of rewards and punishments inflicted on the player can vary from game-to-game, but generally, rewards are things that the player receives by completing things successfully, such as getting loot from winning a boss fight, and punishments are the opposite of this such as when a player is burned when they fall into fire. So how do we fulfill the reward side of the quest system as well as the punishment side?
If you reward the player too much early in the game, they may decide to put the game aside because it’s too easy. There are people who may like this sort of easy reward system, but most people would prefer a game that has some degree of challenge to it. However, you don’t want to go too far in the other direction and over-punish the player. Games are supposed to be fun. So what is the solution? Create a balance between the rewards and the punishments. Don’t make the punishments happen at random all the time. The first time a player encounters an obstacle, maybe you can randomly punish them, but show them how to get around this obstacle and use it as a learning experience. Use the early phases of the game to teach the player and then you can remove the training wheels later.
Looking at this more deeply I am re-framing how I regard the quest system because it seems like a chore list and who enjoys doing chores? I am, for my own growth as a game designer, calling it a reward system. So, now that I am looking at it as more of a reward system, how do I give the player a top-notch game experience without making it boring? My answer would be with a reward system that helps the player grow and potentially make it to the end of the game and keep coming back for more.
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