Why ER's quest system is so good compared to hand-holding games

[Explorerbeyondthemap]

I think I understand, at least to an extent why many ER players have complained about From's vague way of handling its quests.

There seems to be two distinct types of RPG players. Well maybe, two types of video game players in general.

One wants to experience the game, take in the views and amazing sights, enjoy and appreciate the environment for the environment's sake. Truly immerse one's self in the gaming world, and then go off and try to succeed at progressing in the game. The experience of discovery and travel is a reward in its own right.

The other views a new game as one to be "consumed." What I mean is, everything is a transaction. Their goal is to get through the game as efficiently and quickly as possible, seemingly because they need to get to the next new release as soon as possible. A kind of gaming version of ADHD if you will. If they spend x amount of time defeating several mini-bosses and then a major boss, and the reward they get for it doesn't seem to equal the time and effort involved, it's a total loss and waste of time to them. The game let them down because the transaction wasn't equitable. They didn't "get enough" in gear for what they put into it. (I still cringe at the forum posts that appeared as early as FEBRUARY 26th, FOUR DAYS after release, that some players were posting with all sincerity they were "finished" or "almost finished" with the game, and asking for advice on "what to do next".) WTF? A+ for efficiency. Ummm, but F- for literally skipping 90% of the game world content.

And so the quest system for some needs to have 100% clarity and guidance and hand-holding, with mechanisms in place that allow you to quest as fast as possible, to level as fast as possible, with no excessive obstacles to achieving that. Reading the actual quest dialoge doesn't matter because you don't care what the quest actually is about. Skip, skip, skip, skip. You just want to know where to go to finish it so you can "complete the transaction."

I'm not necessarily judging or praising either way of playing. You buy the game, you have the right to play it how you want.

However, I am asserting that ER's quest system is absolutely amazing for someone who wants to immerse themselves in the world, and that it's how an RPG should be structured.

Why? Becasue this is the first game I've played in a LONG time where I wasn't given everything on a platter. The quests in this game feel REAL because often times things DON'T make total sense. Quest dialogue often DOESN'T consistently help you forward. NPC's have their own biases and personality quirks. They might say things where they are more telling you how they feel about something, but it doesn't give much or any actual direction to the player.

But think about it! Why should an adventure always be a neat, 1,2,3 process where you just mindlessly follow markers? Unless that quest system is only there to facilitate leveling. Mindless grind questing for nothing but levels.

Well, that might be efficient, but it sure as heck isn't inspiring or fun. Look at WOW, ESO, or even a game like Skyrim. Yes, those games have a lot good elements, but their quest systems are in reality not even real quest systems. They're just mindless, ultra-guided tasks where you are told exactly where to go, exactly what to do, and exactly what you'll get.

Again, efficient but where's the real adventure in it?

What I think ER does so well is precisely because its quests are so vague. You talk to an NPC, get asked to deliver something somewhere, and then after a long time you forget you even have the item in your inventory. Then you talk to another NPC far, far away and then they suddenly ask for it and you get the option to give it to them.

Well that's what would happen in a real adventure!

I love the surprises and organic feeling of quests in the ER world.

And for people complaining that "they have no clue what to do, who to talk to, or where to go in the game", I think you're missing the entire point.

Often times, all you really have to remember to do is to talk to NPC's MORE THAN ONCE when you are near them. Don't assume they only have one set of dialogue. Most times if you talk to them a second or third time, they will only give you the quest or new information on the third try. If you leave too hastily and only talk once, you completely miss their quest.

And that's all I really do in this game. Make sure I talk to NPC's thoroughly, and then just go and explore. Eventually you will run into the NPC that concludes the quest, just a matter of time.

[GoreTiger]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Noeat:

Ursprungligen skrivet av GREW50ME:

What?

it was pretty common in older RPGs
for example, when you turn into werewolf (or was it vampire?) in Daggerfall, you cant finish game, because you cant be cured due a bug in quest about that cure...
there you NEED guide

but fact that you are not so clever and you need guide for everything doesnt mean that guide is needed.. it means you need guide, because your incompetency

Or the game itself just has a terribly built quest structure (like ER does) in which a guide is needed. Match that with the bugs and known glitches regarding the questline and, yeah. ER has one of the worst quest structures I've seen in gaming.

[Elegnaim]

I've completed a few quests, or at least quest steps, without realizing it or even intending to. Which isn't very... satisying to me?

I like puzzles. I like things you can *solve*. My favorite kind of quest is the one where you get a concrete goal but it's up to you to figure out how to achieve that goal. Ultima 4, for instance, is really cool to me because the game's very up front about your goal -- become the Avatar! -- and everything that happens in the game is just this big puzzle box you're teasing apart to figure out *how* to reach that goal. Dragon Quest 1 kinda works the same way -- you can see the final dungeon from your starting town, you know *where* you need to go, and the entire game is a question of *how* you get there. Most open world RPGs don't do this, and this isn't super relevant to Elden Ring -- just laying some background on what I like.

(As a side note, GTA game missions being super linear checkpoint-to-checkpoint tasklets feels utterly antithetical to the rest of the open world design in those games to me. Witcher 3's witcher sense stuff annoyed me for the same reason).

Elden Ring's quests to me have just felt like... things happening. I don't know *how* I completed the first part of Roderika's quest, it just kind of finished itself? I don't know how you're supposed to reason about finding the Shabriri Grapes. I did the stuff with that southern castle and the rat tailor guy out of order and I'm not sure what the game *wanted* me to do there. I don't really have a good... overarching sense about *why* I'm supposed to be killing things to get stronger so I can kill more things. I'm going roughly in the direction the bonfires point me because they're very clearly pointing me in a direction, but I'm also not sure why I'm doing this.

It's not really about the presence or absence of handholding. It's more about... a feeling of disconnect between what the player does and how the game responds. I don't want constant feedback and quest rewards and things telling me I'm doing a good job and putting me on the right path to the next quest target or whatever -- that's boring! But if I do something and that causes a quest to advance, I want to feel like the connection between what I did and how the game reacted is discernible.

Elden Ring's got areas that have this kind of solvability to them, in the map design. Like you see some item that's out of reach, or some locked shortcut, and you need to figure out how to get there, through exploring, or piecing together how the map should hook up, or engaging in some creative platforming. And dealing with enemies as kind of puzzle to be solved is... just a very central thing to Souls-ish games, and it's very much present here. So I suppose I'm just... thinking it's a shame that you can't really think through the quests in the same way.

Ursprungligen skrivet av GoreTiger:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Noeat:

it was pretty common in older RPGs
for example, when you turn into werewolf (or was it vampire?) in Daggerfall, you cant finish game, because you cant be cured due a bug in quest about that cure...
there you NEED guide

but fact that you are not so clever and you need guide for everything doesnt mean that guide is needed.. it means you need guide, because your incompetency

Or the game itself just has a terribly built quest structure...

Daggerfall quests randomize quest targets and occasionally sub-events. This doesn't work very well though, so you get quest objects spawning in places you can't feasibly reach, or some quest steps just... not firing, ever. It's not really an issue with the quest's being /obscure/ -- they're all very simple fetch quest/go to place X and kill Y things. It's more they... just don't work right.

And then story quests mostly trigger automatically when you hit level thresholds and you don't have to do much to start them.

It's one of the only older PC RPG that really works like that and isn't a very good frame of reference for comparing other open world games against.