I have played stellaris. Another good example of how quests can easily get repetitive and restrictive. And how it's no replacement for good writing of the factions with its randomly generated personality-devoid aliens.

BmB wrote:

Yeah, just turn off the story. Great idea. You clearly don't understand the point of this post. Which is that the story could be, but won't be, expressed in a much nicer way.

Yes, clearly me and literally everyone else are just being ridiculous here, not sacrificing what the majority like to cater to one poster's opinion. Especially when there are options to ignore the thing the poster considers wrong.

Listen, you have an entire community telling you they like the quest design. You have a developer here explaining to you why they went in the direction they did, as well as providing a video detailing at length. The AI personalities you're asking for are already in game, and don't overlap with quests. There is an option to turn off quests as a victory condition. Is it, in any manner, possible that what you're asking for is wrong for the game?

MezzoMax wrote:

(Disclaimer: I haven't played all questlines in ES2. SO there could still be "bad" quest designs.)

Let us know if you run into any. We do try to learn from our errors :)

MezzoMax wrote:

TLDR: Good quests are a welcome addition to a 4X game.  Bye good I mean quests which don't dictacte your overall strategy (like declaring war on an ally; taking over your diplomacy) and which add something to the game mechanics. They should also give multiple choices and don't detract from your strategy.

Well said. As long as quests do not take over my core strategy, I am happy with quests, especially when there are multiple choices with a range of consequences. 

Without quests, it's still great - you write your own story - but you may end up in your comfort zone almost every play through.

Quests get you out of that comfort zone, and it is realistic in that the world is often out of our control; it also improves the replay value.

Now, only if there is a way to find out what quests other empires are up to, perhaps I could sabotage/facilitate their quests - it may help with gaining political leverage.

Hagakure wrote:

Good quests // good writing are two sides of the same coin. Good writing = good quests, bad writing = bad quests.

Also, you're not stating empirical facts, Games2Gether is very good at what they do, and many people who are throwing money at their creative works are able to disable quests, ignore quests, not participate in quests.

Quests are a part of the overall narrative, they are not separate, it's a cog within the narrative machine which reinforces player choice, immersion and acts as a way to further connect with players and bring them into the universe of the creative work.

BmB wrote: Writing can take many forms...

Which is what I was getting at;

Disclaimer; narrative is not limited to solely these. 

I used the two sides of the same coin metaphor as it was simple, but obviously too easy to misinterpret as evidence from me needing to respond again; quests are not mandatory, but whether we like it or not, it's an empirical fact that they are a part of the narrative, the same way that water is wet. So good quests are an aspect of good writing, empirically.

Hagakure wrote:

This is complete and utter nonsense; you, the player are the faction leader, the narrative is there to help make you feel more of a connection as the grand leader of your peoples, as a director where one decision or whim may affect millions, perhaps billions or trillions of life forms in the galaxy. The narrative act like guide lines so they're not throwing narrative at you aggressively and demanding you role-play how you're told.

BmB wrote: You are one faction leader. The others will still need dialogue. It's like you haven't even played a 4X before. Or lack reading comprehension. In fact, the quests force you to act a certain way, reducing both freedom and roleplaying potential.

Absolutely, which is why it's done incredibly lite and could be expanded upon, what you're referring to already exists in-game, and may or may not be expanded upon, other factions may be wary, cautious, terrified or so on of your faction, there's just very little exposition with this, besides the occasional pop-up which says "Hey, stop taking pearls from Auriga, I want them, you n'wah!"

Now, the quests, the quests being a combination of (have intentionally left out the later stages);

1. Initiate quest and establish goal
2. Provide narrative on why quest exists to further ground it in the world
3. Player (the player being the faction leader) reacts to X and Y, creating more game narrative / lore

So, step three the player reacts to X and Y, let's make this easy and say X = quest objective(s) and Y = quest goal, how do you the player, you the faction leader think, feel and react to these two things? 

There are going to be numerous decisions and reactions a quest may provoke, it's not going to be a binary response such as 0 (no) or 1 (yes). You're not actually forced to act a certain way, you're urged and encouraged to respond and react and are able to completely ignore quests at your own discretion, by your own volition.

Truth be told, quest narrative can usually just function as guidelines, which you may (and can) just ignore. So, once again, that's empirically false that quests force you to act a certain way, it's not mandatory to engage nor interact with quests, they're an optional part of the game. 

BmB wrote: you are an asshole.

This is slightly true, even though we don't see in the same color scheme, I still love and respect you in these barren forums as we roll around waiting for Update 3.

I get where BmB is coming from. Roleplaying and storytelling through the game mechanics. I for myself allways thought the more sandbox a 4X game is, the better. So I can decide the course of my faction as I please. The interaction with other factions is one major point in the game mechanic department, as are also the internal affairs of your faction.

Then Beyond Earth had these little interesting quests with new technology which let you decide which improvement you would choose. This was a nice addition, since it doesn't took control and storytelling away from the game mechanics but added something to it.

The quests in Endless Legend was the next step up and I really enjoyed them, most of the time. It was interesting to flesh out a faction this way. But there were good and some bad quest designs. What I mean bye bad quest design was for example the first quest for the Vaulters in Early Access where they had to assimilate a SPECIFIC minor faction. The quest tailored with a game mechanic (assimilation of minor factions) but decided which minor faction I should assimilate, regardless of the fact if this will play into my goals or not. Worst case was that I had to asismilitate them and immidiatly overwrite the slot whith a more favored minor faction. This quest was altered during EA to just assimilate a minor factions of your choosing, which is a good way. Other major factions like the Morgawr had even better faction quests to emphasise their gameplay.

Another bad quest design was the Vaulter quest where I had to conquer a specific city in order to advance the quest. This could lead to an out all war with an ally since it was allmost impossible to trade the city via diplomacy. Gladly with the introduction of mercenaries I was able to snuck in a mecenary army and burn the city to the grounds. But still this felt bad because I had to do this to a long time ally.

So with their experience from EL and the quest system I was at first sceptical to hear that they introduced quests into ES2. I had some concerns that some similiar quests like I mentioned would arose. Which then would force me into some decisions. But gladly after playing some games I realized that they did learn from EL and improved in a good way. Faction quests give multiple choices which can lead to different technologies. These quests most of the time involve your own faction empire or some spawned pirates. So you are not forced to play against your overall goals. The quests flesh out your faction and give you some choice in the narrative. This is a GOOD implementation of quests. I think ES2 will strike the right balance.

TLDR: Good quests are a welcome addition to a 4X game.  Bye good I mean quests which don't dictacte your overall strategy (like declaring war on an ally; taking over your diplomacy) and which add something to the game mechanics. They should also give multiple choices and don't detract from your strategy.

It should never be boring to play the same faction. 4X have always had very high replay values because something new will happen every time. Even if you have 10 faction quests for each faction, you can't match that. Imagine that effort too, how many factions are there now? That's something like 80 quests. Just for the main ones. It just doesn't fit, in any way.

godman85 wrote:

Clearly one has not played Stellaris.

Stellaris is an interesting case study. The quests are the main thing that give it a true sci-fi flavor for me, because it's obvious the writers have read a bunch of sci-fi. However, the actual game mechanics still feel like a traditional Paradox game of European historical conflict, transplanted to a space 4X (including stupid War Goals). It's a bit schizophrenic that way.

What I liked about the quests in Endless Legend is the way they gave me an insight into the faction I was playing, helping to define them. Each faction in that game (and this one) has a history and a shape to its goals, and the quests can help define that. 

For all its faults, Stellaris is the better game if you want to run with a custom faction design, where the game doesn't recognize anything about your history. On the other hand, ES2 could be shaping up as a better game if you can role-play the quest system. But I agree there needs to be as much variety and re-playability as Amplitude can cram into the quests. Otherwise it's boring to play the same faction too many times.

Good quests // good writing are two sides of the same coin. Good writing = good quests, bad writing = bad quests.

Also, you're not stating empirical facts, Games2Gether is very good at what they do, and many people who are throwing money at their creative works are able to disable quests, ignore quests, not participate in quests.

Quests are a part of the overall narrative, they are not separate, it's a cog within the narrative machine which reinforces player choice, immersion and acts as a way to further connect with players and bring them into the universe of the creative work.

Establishing a discussion from the talking point of "just say no to quests in 4X games." is embarrassing; why do we want more and more cognitive dissonance? You'd be much better received if you were more coherent; I.E "The narrative aspect of 4X games, quests and how they've evolved over time and may be better improved." or something similar.

"Whatever effort goes into writing quests would be better spent writing unique responses that faction leaders can have to the players actions. (Or any kind of dialogue for heroes at all.)"

This is complete and utter nonsense; you, the player are the faction leader, the narrative is there to help make you feel more of a connection as the grand leader of your peoples, as a director where one decision or whim may affect millions, perhaps billions or trillions of life forms in the galaxy. The narrative act like guide lines so they're not throwing narrative at you aggressively and demanding you role-play how you're told. 

To what degree is a player the faction leader though? It's your gameplay experience; headcannon it yourself, the same way you would a P&P game with friends and some beers. You have the power of choice to dictate what degree of X and Y.

"The problem with quests is basically this: They are trying to tell a fixed, linear story"

Nice opinion piece portrayed as empirical data again, quests; an aspect of narration.

But what is narration?

Narration, noun; the action or process of narrating a story.

What story?

You pick your faction and get your intro cutscene which acts as the prologue for your narration experience, your story; your choices and experiences with Exploration, Expanding, Exploiting and of course Exterminating are all integral parts of your experience, of your game experience narrative, quests are but a mere cog of that experience.

I don't mean that; I mean quest A tells me to collect 10 crabs and only 10 crabs everytime.

Even then, quests are chosen from a pool, the same way the Parley objectives in Endless Legend can have different objectives to one you performed earlier.

Quests create gameplay dynamics such as;

• Do I need to adjust several systems in order to accomplish this quest?
• Is concentrating on this quest even sensible? Will I end up being destroyed by my neighbour(s) if I drop everything for this quest?
• Are the rewards for this quest worth the time investment? Are they worth the risk?

Then you have the quest itself;

• How can I complete this quest?  How can I increase or decrease the magnitude of diplomatic impact with empire X or Y with my approach to this quest?
• Will I need extra ships to blockade other systems to make it more difficult to fail this quest? Can I afford the upkeep for all these ships? Do I need to Expand or Exploit science more heavily?

Not forgetting you'll have players who'll do any and all quests just for the sake of increasing immersion in an effort to make the game experience feel more like a living, breathing organism that's in constant flux.

"Trying to read page after page of lore in the middle of a timed multiplayer game, not fun."

Honestly it's pretty strange that it's even included in your thread; communicate with your friends / peers, express how you feel about timers, don't read lore, possibly disable timers, improve your social skills with your friends, speak up, be respectful and respectable, <insert motivational quote here>.

All in all, I believe it's safe to say we've arrived at a very nice conclusion that a better thread title would be;

Cognitive dissonance in 4X game forums: just say no.

Clearly one has not played Stellaris.

It is not so hard to please one persone but it gets much harder when you have 2 persones and each of them wants opposite thing;)

Asides from philosophy that you just can't please all the players In mine opinion quests are Intresting and adds alot of good flavour to the game. It adds linear elements to the game but also gives alot of specific taste to factions.

If you have 12 minutes and want to see some stuff about how and why we do the narrative the way we do, here is an interview I did with Gamereactor at EGX last year. There are longer clips as well if you really want more :)

Basically we agree that 4X is not an story-driven genre like RPGs or action-adventure. But we learned from the first Endless Space that without some narrative, the game feels sterile and empty. The question is how to balance that for each player when there is such a range of different preferences. We'll be working on that question forever...

Yeah, just turn off the story. Great idea. You clearly don't understand the point of this post. Which is that the story could be, but won't be, expressed in a much nicer way.