I'm not sure if this could be considered on-topic, but, going off of this NPC talk we're getting into, the delivery of the quest is also important. As Servant of the Lord said, adding depth and character to our NPCs could not only enhance the player experience, but open a gateway to allow ourselves to expand upon the content of the quests and the player's immersion into the game.

Most RPGs contain several cookie-cutter NPCs that look alike and spout useless information. This is an attempt to fill space; to give an illusion of life to the scene. What if we cut this out? What if we only had unique NPCs? What if we took the time to give every NPC a personality? What if we let the character get know these NPCs and grow an affection for or hate these NPCs. Then, we have created this relationship between the player and the game that will cause the quests that they give to the player have more of an impact on their emotional state while experiencing the game. The idea of creating a relationship between in-game characters and the player is by no way a new concept, but is one that is for the most part lost in online RPGs. If you could add in these relationships, then a whole new world of deep and meaningful quests (as well as relevant to the player as he/she now feels like she knows them) will open to you.

I hope this rant helps

On the topic of player created quests:

I believe it is entirely possible. This could be carried out in contracts. Simply, you could set the type of quest - Hunt, Gather, Explore, whatever - then set the requirements then the rewards, have the player post them, and then someone would come along, accept the quest, complete it, and turn in the contract. This could be easily achieved through a central hub, such as a location in your game called something like the 'Adventurer's Guild'. Anything will do along these lines. This is only one idea, I'm sure there are tons of other options to choose from if you just sit and ponder it a bit more. I also noticed you were looking for an incentive for players to provide/use the quest service. Well, you could have a point system associated with the quest system.

EXAMPLE:

You have a quest system comprising of quests given by NPCs. Upon completion of these quests, you are given your reward and a number of what we will call Quest Tokens (QT), dependent upon the difficulty of the quest. Once you have built up enough of these Quest Tokens, you may post a quest in the Guild's Contract Board, and offer these QT as a reward. One could trade these QT for other items from this Adventurer's Guild, or for gold, etc. The possibilities are endless.'


Oh, and if you removed all story-telling elements of a quest, then it would lose its relevance to the player. There has to be a reason why the player is doing what he/she is doing. Without reason, why do?

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.

Oh, and if you removed all story-telling elements of a quest, then it would lose its relevance to the player. There has to be a reason why the player is doing what he/she is doing. Without reason, why do?

Hmm, if that's your view on it, it seems to me that you're limited by the verbs available. If your verbs are move, fight, get, put... that's what your quests will involve. I was trying to work within the typical known mechanics. You could add puzzle elements, or persuasion, or minecraft style building/destroying. For example, there could be an unkillable demon that comes through a portal on a regular basis, and the only permanent solution is to dig a channel from a volcano leading to the portal, do a puzzle to open the portal, then flood the portal with lava and use a cold spell to set the lava so the portal is permanently sealed with rock.

My view isn't that the story elements of a game need to be taken out because most games wouldn't exist without them. What I'm saying is that a lot of players would like to enjoy a game without having to put time and effort to become emotionally attached and to have a relationship with the characters. Lots of people just want to get into a game and play with friends and kill monsters and go on adventures together. I'm just trying to figure out new ways to make quests more entertaining to those types of people.

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.

My view is that not all items should be easily available on the market (I'm not sure whether you're referring to an NPC market or real money auctions or what). If the market is flooded with horns from a level 99 demon... uh, who exactly is going out there harvesting them?? I think that some items should only be available in tiny quantities in the market, or not at all. The reason could be that the source is incredibly tough, incredibly rare (e.g. a non-instanced demon), or that 99% of people would have no use for it's horns (too low level, not specialised right, don't have the recipe scroll, don't have the other ingredients).

My view is that not all items should be easily available on the market (I'm not sure whether you're referring to an NPC market or real money auctions or what). If the market is flooded with horns from a level 99 demon... uh, who exactly is going out there harvesting them?? I think that some items should only be available in tiny quantities in the market, or not at all. The reason could be that the source is incredibly tough, incredibly rare (e.g. a non-instanced demon), or that 99% of people would have no use for it's horns (too low level, not specialized right, don't have the recipe scroll, don't have the other ingredients).

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.

Yeh, then I guess in that case it would be a matter of, I believe it was mentioned before, removing the in-game player market. Well, at least that would be the simple solution.

Another solution would be to have an in-game appraisal system that will reference what monster the item came from and the difficulty of obtaining said item, cross referencing it with current economic state, and the current Supply/Demand for that item, and setting the appropriate price for the item. Let the user toggle a 5% difference in lowest/highest current market value, down/up, but let no one go below/above 15% from the standard current market value.

Just a thought.

Yeah, I've got a system similar to that with the in game market, but you brought up a nice point on how it should work, thanks.

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.

Don't get my wrong I would love to have player given quests, I'm just arguing every single problem I have though of on why it wouldn't work. If all my problems on how the system works are resolved, that will be great!

Stopping conflict

So often in the role of a fantasy character we are tasked with the role of starting or joining the fray against a threatening foe, expanding that threat until the whole realm is hanging in the balance. This is great and grand in early to mid game but once you reach that level where even the great dragons of the west take longer to get to then to take them down. We lose sight of why we entered this realm in the first place.

Merlin, Gandalf, Harry Potter, etc these are late game characters that had a purpose. In the midst of everything going down the crapper, it was the display of over whelming power that these character's that put a stopper on the needless war that had overtaken the land. Its time for late game characters to take on the same roll of "bringing peace to the land", being used as a tool by sovereigns to "little did they know" start wars, etc. These characters need to be used by higher powers. The low level threats of new character's should be prompted by the actions of late game players misdirected attempts to "save the realm".

These high level victories of bringing peace to the land will leave war bands and other threats like swords for hire wandering the lands and making even the main roads more dangerous then ever for wandering travelers and merchants. These connected events should be visible to players and divide them. Possible even banding together low level players to hunt down high level player for bounty creating new dynamic PvP situations as well.

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.