Saturday, December 8, 2007

Non linear questing

Recently I talked about interaction and briefly about quests. In order to create a new experience for users the quest or task based systems should be non linear and should be story driven. But how can we accomplish this with the time and resources available. I feel firstly that most quests involve killing and/or collecting of items as a main focus. This will not expand our gaming experiences in any way. Exploring new options like helping to rebuild a colony, fulfilling a job in a certain town I.E. serving as a smith or fisherman for example, conquering and ruling your kingdom and many other paths. If we open up our minds and view anything as possible we can make it happen in our own virtual worlds. I aim to include as many non linear or unique quests in my project Mystic Dream as possible but I also give my users the tools to create experiences that I couldn't even imagine. Let me know your thoughts and feelings on this.

3 comments:

Izak Flash Man said...

hmmm, Collecting fish sounds like collecting things still. Forging your kingdom also sounds like a bigger take on the killing monsters thing.

Perhaps discovering areas on the map? Bit like the whole professor oak, collecting pokemon data thing I guess.

Either way, sounds good.

Hayden said...

With the kindom element I was thinking more political and/or actually helping or directing the construction of certain structures and features. Acting as a fisherman that serves a town or area is some what more purposeful than just going and collecting items of food. At least the user has some direction.

Izak Flash Man said...

ooh, A political take on things would be cool. Lots of reading to piss off all those people who just want to kill stuff. But they can always do that anyway if they like. Thats what its all about in the end. Try and please everyone by giving so many different choices on how they play.

True true! Collecting food once could feed em for a week, but if you gave them the means of catching fish themselves they can feed themselves forever. Crap. Im being kicked off, Ill say something else later which is hopefully more indepth. lol.