For example, "get unique item X from top 10 player Y". It would be interesting if the top players had to deal with hordes of lower players after their loot.

This could be turned into an interesting mechanic. Instead of making it the top 10 players, you could assign a number of GM's to act as semi-pc's. Their characters would react as an NPC when a player clicks on them, and they can modify or rotate the quests they give. At the same time, they move around and level with the players. You could have some of them at the max level, and others assigned to restart, level up new characters so there are always these semi-pc's at many of the levels.

Furthermore, you can tie storyline/faction warfare/whatever into this. Make helping the semi-pc's level up, or just helping in general get buffs/bonuses for whatever team helped them.

I think i'll answer your question with another question. Why does everyone feel the need for so many quests anyways? We all agree that quests are boring and repetitive so why are we trying to fix the boring repetitive parts of the game and try to make them interesting? Why can't we just get rid of 80% of all quests? The ones that are left are purely optional to the player with huge rewards. I think its a great idea to make the quests puzzles and with more lore but if the quest doesn't have something rewarding at the end then nobody will be motivated to do it. In the early days of EQ quests were very special the rewards were unique items that either looked really cool or had special non-combat uses. Some examples were a pair of boots that make you run slightly quicker, a shield that made you invisible, items that allowed you to return to you're bind location. At higher levels classes got excellent items for very difficult quests that could take weeks and weeks to complete.

By turning quests into a leveling mechanic instead of an optional game play feature you force the player to play the game through the eyes of a developer. Now you don't even have to explore the world, I find myself looking at the map half the time playing to make sure my character is running to the right place where the items are marked on the map. To make quests more interesting... get rid of all the filler quests that are just there for experience. Work hard on just a few quests and people will love them.

I'm not saying that there has to be quests and wasn't necessarily saying that quests are a must, but quests are just a way of getting a reward for what you would normally do anyways. Just with a story and objective. Every game needs some sort of objective system whether they are labeled as quests, missions, tasks, etc. it doesn't matter. One big reason they make so many filler quests is to keep the player playing the game. If you were to take out all the filler quests from Skyrim or any MMO the game would be over before you knew it and also leveling would take much longer and players would need to "grind" much more to reach level up. What I wish is that we would be able to fix quests by creating new ways of accomplishing things by adding new game play and mechanics. Not just adding a small short detailed story on why we should "go to some cave and kill the trolls living there" or "finding the sacred herb to heal the sick person". There will always be filler quests in RPG's and MMO's because the developers want players to stay playing their game longer, while not having the time to make every single quest amazingly epic and awesome.

I totally agree that having filler quests just to keep people occupied is ruining a lot of games and looking at the map is something I do a lot also, even in new games like Guild Wars 2. They need to find a way to fix stuff like that. One things GW2 is doing right, is that they make the player want to explore the world itself, while having fun doing so and not going to an area JUST to finish a quest.

[quote name='bwight' timestamp='1347726864' post='4980418']
I think i'll answer your question with another question. Why does everyone feel the need for so many quests anyways? We all agree that quests are boring and repetitive

Uh, we do? Personally, I think quests are a system of directing the player's gameplay, framing it with story to make it more meaningful and the world more real. Well-written quests are not at all boring or repetitive. If quests are boring and repetitive that's either because they are badly-written, or because the player is of a type who doesn't like reading or having their actions within the game directed.
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Quests are only repetitive if the game play is repetitive. You can dress up any quest by giving it an amazing storyline and choices, but the game play is what makes the player coming back for more or getting bored. Skyrim was an awesome game, but even they have quest after quest with repetitive game play. Most of them being go to cave and kill the monsters. I've played games before where the only reason I kept playing was the storyline was interesting, but the game play just got boring and repetitive. Thats just sad to make a game like that.

Repetition is only boring if there is no sense of meaningful growth/change (an increase in stats is a sad excuse for progression). A character shouldn't be mindless killing machine, they should start out different from how they end up. They should grow into fighters but even fighters should have a breaking point. Everyone has those psychological walls that keep them from physically accomplishing what matters. These characters would matter more and the quests the choose would matter more to player's if the moments that defined them were apparent. Moments where a character just doesn't quite play how you need them to with gameplay systems requiring the player to snap them out of these mental blocks, based on moments in the game's story/gameplay that have shaped the character.

For example, if the character the player is using watched the orphanage they grew up in, burn to the grown with all their orphan friends in it, a childlike banchee enemy boss fight would be a hard enemy to face off against. Demanding the player work through not only the gameplay puzzle of defeating a boss, but also working out how to snap the character out of reliving that moment and focus on fighting the enemy. The same character that watched the orphans rise up in jealousy and murder the only adopting family that the character would ever have had, would not only cut down that banshee but be fueled with images of the faces of those terrible children on the body of the banshee. Those early game situational choices/story should effect the late game character, thus making quests more meaningful.

If you're going to make a role playing game, make a game with a role worth playing.

Yes I totally agree with what your saying, but based on people it wont work as well as you think. (Awesome that you brought up contracts because thats exactly how I picture everything. Every deal, trade, quest, etc).

Lets say I post a quest asking another player to gather specific items from a specific monster. Again this brings up "items" and with items why not just go to the market and buy it instead of paying someone to go get it and have to wait when you could get it instantly. It would only work if it was out of stock or something. Lets say a player chooses to participate in the quest. Is that the only player that can participate in that quest? Is it up to the player that gave out the quest to choose the player amount? Okay lets say the player that took the quest begins the quest and then stops halfway and logs off the game. Does the quest automatically becoming void? Will every contract need to have a time limit? Lets say that every player given quest will require a time limit. What if 3 players all fail before they finish, they player that gave out the quest will have to wait for the 4th player to finally finish to get what he wants. What if you give out a quest and a player takes it and then you find out halfway through that you don't want those items and don't want to pay the player for finishing the quest. Will you be able to cancel the quest halfway through making the player that took the quest angry that what he did was for nothing? Will the player that gave the quest just be screwed and have to pay the player anyways?

I've thought this through a lot and the only way to do it is to make it simple like I said before. A way to make it work better would be to not have an in game market at all, and I'm sure players would hate that. Even then players would just trade personally and go onto forums and the like in order to trade instead of dealing with quests.
Everyone wants instant satisfaction instead of having to wait for what they want.

EDIT:

I guess I'm not saying that there isn't a way it could be implemented in game, just that there is no point in implementing it when there are much easier and quicker ways of getting the item.

I believe here the point is make the item, and economy of the game, as coerent as possible. One fun implementation I just saw on the MMO Path of Exile, is that there is no money/gold in this game. Every piece of loot has a price in scrolls and some new kinds of items that have the ability to empower your gear. I can't say yet if that economic model works, but seems fun and true enough in a fantasy enviroment.

Another point is, quest giving and time. One game that has a fun loot system and great quest design is Monster Hunter Tri. There is no trading though, because it would make questing/looting pointless, since the only way to "get stronger" in this game is loot (there is no character level progression), one thing that Diablo 3 failed to accomplish. In MH3, for instance, quests, all of them, have time limit. Every single quest has a 50min time limit, and that feels just great. While some quests need no more than 5-15 min, many times you can fail at the time limit or finish the quest at 45-49min. And that quest design is good in many ways. When you log in to play it feels like a "round" of game, so if you have less than an hour to play you can just make some short quests. If you have an hour make one hard-long one, and you feel you accomplished something on that time.

That quest design just fits into a "player as quest-giver" enviroment and also gives players the feel of fullfillment for a short ammount of time played. I believe most MMOs fail at this point with it's repetitive quest design and grinding of level (or loot) at high levels of the game. And even if you have a good "arc" or linking between quests you can give players a feel of "campaing" (MH3 delivers that also on the single player campaing) with this time limit.

As player I even have this problem when logging out-in. Sometimes I get like "wut quest was me doing anyway?" ¬¬ Maybe that is because of the repetitive design of quests. But again I don't think the flaw is in the design of the quest anyway. I think the flaw is in the way quests can be accomplished, most item quests are designed around the kill-and-loot concept while that can be fun sometimes it becomes boring after you've done it a thousand times.

An item quest could be designed to be accomplished in various ways, that would customize gameplay. Let's think about real life for instance, If I am hungry I have several ways to accomplish that quest. I can go to a pub/snack house or restaurant. I can go to the market, buy some materials and cook my own food. I can order food at home. I can look into the fridge and eat whatever is there. That is what gives me personality and meaning, the fact that I can choose the way to do some thing. I can choose a cheap way, a quick way, a delightfull way of doing that and all of them can be fun to me for different reasons. I can even train some skills (like barter and cooking) while doing that "quest". An item quest could be designed the same way. I can steal that item from someone, kill and loot, craft it (maybe even craft a cheap version or fake version of the item), buy it from some vendor (maybe even steal it from the vendor), but all that needs to be meaningfull. If the item is too cheap in the market the quest doesn't even make sense, since in a "real" enviroment the vendor would already have reached the quest giver (or that would make the "buying from the market" option mandatory).

But the point here is giving player roles (or playstyle) some meaning on the task. What classes have your game? What kind of resources they have to accomplish the quests? In this enviroment it wouldn't even hurt to have some quests being impossible for some classes or too easy for others. While most MMOs focus on combat that quest design would give players the option to never get into battle if that is their playstyle (and that is an option I'd like to see implemented on MMOs).

Yes this is how it should be, but paying someone to find it is just the same as buying it at the market no matter how rare an item is. Also if everyone can post quests there will be thousands upon thousands of quests available probably with many of them being very similar.

I belive this comes around the character customization you can deliver in your game. Even if the game is designed around item hunting (what would make players quest giving easier) there could be several stages to accomplish that. An armor is different from a dragon scale, and if someone will craft the dragon armor he will need tools and a forge. So these tools can be hard to find too, and the forge extremely expensive. A player with a forge will need wood or coal, fresh water and lots of resources and time so he can manage to build up his dragon armor piece.

Finding the dragon scale can be a very fun quest too, players could go around some dragon's lair to pick them scattered on the ground (but very few of them at a time). The dragon could have some kind of behavior, like getting out to hunt once in a week (what would give players some 30 min to get into his lair and get his scales there (the greedy ones would want to steal his gold/treasure too) but on a very danger management kind of play, with a very time consuming dungeon to explore. But some gnomes or goblins npcs could be on that business too, selling those scales at a very expensive price. A good party of players could even try to lure the monster out of his lair, while another party enters it (what could give players dungeon crawling the exact 30 min). (so here you have two quests in one) So a quest like this would be a vey complex one, needing lots of player skill and coordination, character improvement, teamplay an even some luck. That would be fun... ^^ Would be fun even to do some thousands of times maybe (needed to complete the full dragon scale set). The killing the dragon quest could be an entirely different quest, hardest one ever, needing some traps setting, magic management, a very well balanced and level capped party.

[quote name='MichaelRPennington' timestamp='1347679140' post='4980276']
I'm not saying it would be easy by any means. Something like this would be extremely complex, and balances would have to be put in place, but as it says in my signature, nothing is impossible. You can always find a way to do something. I know the way I posted it was kind of restrictive and lack luster, but it was just an example.

Oof, I don't know how to make it any better for people that don't want to get involved in the game at its core... I've always been one to get immersed.

Yeah there is ALWAYS a way. Just saying why do an action that takes 30 minutes to get a specific item when you could do a different action that would only take 1 minute with the same end result. Paying for something in the market would also probably be cheaper than paying someone to take the 30 minutes to go out and find it.
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Just eliminate the non-players market for that item because then every player will need that 30 min to get that item (even the seller so the item will be "30min" expensive), but then a player can manage to get that money in other ways if he wants to. Every way to win a quest needs to have its pros and cons. I believe here you should think your design of the game backwards. What is your game about and what you want your players to accomplish? What is the hardest ever quest you want a "maximum size" party (or groups of parties) to accomplish? You have to think on that limit and limit every economic issue and character development into that. The game must have an end, after that maybe you can have a PvP or something like that, but the game needs an end that makes the game fun and nice.

Back to player given quests though. Even if the in game market is removed like I said before people will just resort to player to player trade and people will set up forums to post items and prices instead of taking the long route and questing for it. Also if you really want something in game wouldn't you just go get it yourself since it would take up the same amount of time for you minus the expense. People will almost always go for the fastest route to get things done.

No my friend people will look into the most fun way to do it (I would). Giving several options is not about giving a mandatory one or a easy and a hard one, but giving lots of fun ways to do it.

You need to think on money sinks and economic issues too. The economy needs to work as this: the income of an adventurer needs always to be = 0. Means that the difficulty level of the game needs to match the player income at the level he is. So his gear (and repair) and items (like potions/scrolls/food) needs to be as expensive as the money he gets. Maybe a little more, a little less, depending on playstyle. Money on these games needs to feel as another way of character improvement, so a player that does not goes into combat don't needs to focus on lvling (because money by itself is a kind of xp). You can't have a balanced gameplay if the players who want to be traders/crafters get "phisicaly/magicaly" stronger as well as they progress. So here you will have three kinds of progress: xp, money and crafting skills. And all those three can revolve around item/loot design.

Thanks Xoyo for replying so much . It's nice to talk about these kinds of topics.

I do agree with a lot of what you have said. One thing though that I still have to argue with is the fact that yes, the player that choses to take a player posted quest might have a lot of fun going through the quest. It won't be fun at all for the person posting the quest though. The only way to get around that would be to give the players incentive to create quests, but in a way that is forcing them to do that in order to have the full game experience. It would be much better to find a way to create player quests that would coexist with many of the basic game mechanics in games today instead of removing a lot of game mechanics just to get one mechanic to work. I think thats why this type of system doesn't exist yet, because no one can find a way of placing it in the game without making it worthless, unless they get rid of some other game mechanic.