Are Radiant Quests Having An Adverse Effect Open World Games and Unique Quests Within?

poopinasock · 5時間前

Fallout 4 would've been a lot better if random NPCs around the world provided these quests rather than the same few NPC dishing out a thousand quests. The idea is awesome, the implementation in fallout was shit. I haven't played mafia yet so I can't speak for that game.

yaosio · 4時間前

Radiant Quests is BGS' name for randomly generated quests. This goes back pretty far in gaming, Arena and Daggerfall both had random quests. The first game I personally played with random quests was Wing Commander: Privateer. It's very surprising people are suddenly anti-random quests when they've been in games, especially space games, for such a long time. I was under the impression people liked them. I was unaware Mafia 3 has randomly generated quests.

I think in Fallout 4 there's only two random quests you have to do, they occur when you first meet the BOS at the police station. This would appear to be a way to introduce the player to them, but the game doesn't indicate they are random and infinitely repeatable. There is a pip-boy image for radiant quests, but the game doesn't tell you this. I've read posts from people that didn't know the quests were random.

JTDJTDJTD · 5時間前

Padding in open-world games is something I'm torn about. On the one hand I think that tight, focused games that try to keep doing unique things for their entire runtimes are definitely "better," but on the other hand I remember barely being able to afford any games, and wanting to prioritize ones that I could make last as long as possible. And if someone really connects with the basic mechanics of a given game, you do want to give them a lot of opportunities to play around (I liked doing the all side stuff in DA Inquisition because I just really enjoyed inhabiting that world, for instance). So I don't think there's necessarily an easy answer here.

With respect to Fallout 4 in particular, though: yeah, they went overboard with the radiant stuff. I think the biggest problem is that the game treats radiant quests exactly like story quests, to the point that you might not even realize a quest is radiant until you're actually doing it. Skyrim had radiant quests too, but they all got filed under the miscellaneous tab rather than appearing as major quests in your journal, which made it a lot easier to just ignore them as you saw fit.

The other thing about Fallout 4 (and I should stress that I really like the game in general, and have over 200 hours in it) is that the factions kind of stink. Unlike Skyrim, they don't really have their own story arcs, but all get tied into the main quest instead, and so at a certain point they just kind of end and you're left with nothing but endless radiant quests until you go continue the main story. Likewise, if you're focusing on the main quest, you'll reach a point where the story grinds to a halt and you're told "Eh, go do faction stuff I guess." Never have I seen a story shoot itself in the foot as thoroughly as Fallout 4 does when you get to the Institute. So, in the absence of strong faction quests, the radiant stuff is even more grating. Hopefully they'll take the feedback into account for TES6, though.

DrakoVongola1 · 4時間前

I despise Radiant quests, they're everything I hate about RPG quests. Just pointless fetch quest bullshit that does nothing to serve the story nor does it provide interesting gameplay

LastBestHopeF3 · 4時間前

Skyrim's radiant quest system was just abysmal, and the way they talked about it in interviews made it seem like the game was going to be endless because of it. Finishing the Dark Brotherhood quest line to find out you will have random contracts generated sounded great. More assassinations and more income, awesome right? It was interesting in theory, but not in practice. I did a few of these random contracts until I assassinated the same lumberjack in the same town in the same spot, twice in a row. Randomly generated content can be pretty cool sometimes, but once you spot the seams of that system it all falls apart. Also, one radiant quest had me delivering a basic helmet to a lord for a reward of 25 gold. Why would I want to continue doing those quests with objectives and rewards as boring as that?

frogandbanjo · 5時間前

Radiant Quests are the worst of two worlds, and gamers can ferret them out in a heartbeat. They don't have a firm connection to an emergent story because they definitionally can't, and they wouldn't be an efficient system to add to a game if the Radiant Quests boasted greater sophistication than the hand-crafted quests. Again, it almost seems absurd to imagine a design environment where that could become true.

If there were such a thing as an "Open World Game Design Community," I'd strongly advise it to stop thinking about scope and to start thinking about depth - and not just hand-crafted depth, which we know is a budgetary dead end, but procedurally-generated depth.

The first things on the chopping block to explore that new path are voice acting, script writing (as in movie script, not code script,) and anything else that paints a veneer of human-like intelligence upon a bunch of puppets. We need to go back to basics to get the gameplay right, and then deal with the subsequent - and much more pernicious - problem of automating the veneer-painting.

wahoozerman · 4時間前

Developers seem to think that radiant quests are what gamers want with a RNG system of "Do X at Y because Z"

No developer actually thinks this. This is a result of the current trend where 'sandbox' or 'procedurally generated' gameplay is a marketing buzzword because it conjures up images in consumer's heads of a product that simply does not exist.

When the back of a box says "the game procedurally generates infinite quests" nobody immediately assumes that all of those quests involve going into one of 5 caves to kill one of 5 enemy types and find one of 5 lost trinkets. They think of an infinite number of quests that are of equal caliber to the hand crafted ones made directly by the development team. It creates the perception that a game has hundreds of hours of good gameplay, whereas the competition without radiant quests only has a dozen or so. When the reality is that the game has hundreds of hours of mediocre gameplay with a dozen or so hours of good gameplay hidden somewhere in it.

This is slowly starting to change as more and more games come out that promise this kid of stuff and people realize that the unlimited content they were promised is, at best, mediocre. Until enough people realize this though, games are going to continue being padded out like this simply because the marketing draw of throwing out huge quantities and letting people assume quality is very appealing, and is making people a lot of money.

imaprince · 3時間前

I'm actually a big proponent of radiant quests. To me, any game needs vegetables and rice to go with the meat of a game, and I think radiant quests fill that role nicely. Also as long as they aren't forced into the main storyline (that makes it awful) or are given a good reason to occur I think they work well. Take for example, the Thiefs Guild in Skyrim. You can finish the main storyline for the guild, but you have to do a lot of stealing to prove yourself as a fitting Guild leader. That's a great use of those kinds of quests.

N7_Scarecrow · 3時間前

I actually kind of like radiant quests. Obviously I'd rather have a fully fleshed out questline with branching dialogue, multiple paths to different resolutions, etc. but we can't always get everything we want.

Anyway, I like the way that radiant quests can immerse me in a job. Say I join a faction of thieves. It certainly makes sense for them to send me out to steal some shit for them, doesn't it? Not every mission has to be some epic heist. Not every mission for a guild of bounty hunters has to be some epic confrontation. It's more believable to me that I can show up to a guild, ask if anyone has some work, and be sent on my way if I choose to engage the quest. It's a nice excuse for me to spend more time engaging with the game world in my role.

In summary, I think radiant quests work best as an optional, supplementary source of activities rather than a replacement for full quests.

Captain_Freud · 2時間前

The best innovation on the infinite / Radiant Quest system was seen in Shadow of Mordor. Instead of creating never ending fetch quests, they attached consequences to the actions you perform regularly in the game.

It's all about framing. The game could have used a more traditional format: take down a set number of encampments and slowly take over the map (aka: most open-world games). But adding a hierarchy to the Orc leadership and making death diegetic created opportunities for meaningful consequences. All the rivalries and mind-controlling were still windowdressing for a pretty basic game, but it showed just how valuable continuity can be. Killing a tough boss can be fun, but killing him after he's canonically killed you a few times already and has the scars to prove it? That's awesome.

Ironically, the Fallout series already had this kind of smart design. New Vegas uses the exact same tricks with Obsidian's writing and Faction system. You weren't just clearing out bandit camps, you were impacting your relationship with a faction that could alter your narrative choices later in the game. For me, it's what makes the game better than anything Bethesda has done.

TL;DR: Radiant Quests aren't a problem if they create an interesting gameplay arc. Taking down a randomly generated group of bandits in Skyrim would be a lot more engaging if the game also randomly generated some lore about them.

Unit88 · 3時間前

Pad out? There are not nearly enough radiant quests for me to call it padding out, especially since they're just random meaningless side things you can do to farm some rewards if you feel like it. There's a few for each faction and that's about it. The worlds are still full of interesting, compelling and important quests.

secantstrut · 2時間前

Nah, radiant quests is a good idea when used right. They just dont have good interesting gameplay or variations of it.

heretoxploityou · 4時間前

Not necessarily. It simply depends on the execution. Basically all the quests in Mount and Blade Warband are radiant yet they don't feel like chores and are tied up to the game world

jlange94 · 5時間前

It's a good way of generating XP in any game but that's it. They're too repetitive and break immersion immediately when they start cycling through ones you've already done. I would honestly rather have unique quests and then one large, overarching quest of doing tasks and finding items that actually ends instead of radiant quest after radiant quest.

dontthrowmeinabox · 3時間前

Imagine a Zelda game with Binding of Isaac style generated dungeons with bonus items that had a one time use (but a duration of at least 20 minutes in game).

lukeLOL · 3時間前

I agree, especially with the recycled radiant quests in Fallout 4.

No RPG has done such varied and interesting quests like SKOTR. Damn, now I gotta go install that game again.

xdownpourx · 2時間前

It killed Fallout 4 for me. I got to a point 50 hours in where my only quests were the main story and 10 radiant quests I had no interest in doing. Minutemen radiant quests, Brotherhood of Steel radiant quests, etc. I despise Bethesda's radiant quest system in F4 and Skyrim. Skyrim though felt like it had a massive amount of unique quests though. Fallout 4 didn't.

omegashadow · 2時間前

Do the Rockstar miniquests/encounters count? Red Dead Redemption managed to make those feel like part of the world even though they were very repetitive and GTA V had some really cool ones where the actual task you had to do was trivial but you would get some novel dialog from the NPC as you drove them home.

MumrikDK · 1時間前

Honestly, it's a very straight forward "yes" to me.

They never feel like more than MMO quests, and those make me want to drop the game.

Nevek_Green · 1時間前

It is not so much that the idea is bad, but the implementation is often done lazily to extend the longevity of a game. If done properly with a connection to the consequences and outcomes in the world then it could be particularly enjoyable.

Example: working for a faction and hearing that they need help defending a camp/town/outpost. Ignoring this quest results in casualties at best and the outpost being overran at worse.

Example 2: NPC asks you to kill some hostile entities at location x so they can scavenge there. If you do so, the local economy does better, if you don't do so desperation forces the NPC to venture their on their own and you could find their dead body.

Having consequences and the world being altered as a result of radiant quests, even if it is as simple as I need X and having a small boost in productivity or happiness, make the quest feel like it has meaning. Typically it is go there kill this, retrieve that and get reward, rinse repeat. It's fun to an extent as it gives you things to do, but isn't that rewarding.

flipdark95 · 23分前

Not really. Radiant quests maybe need a bit more care when it comes to placing them with NPCs. For instance having some such as saving a random NPC be given by a random NPC from your faction or just friendly to you would be great.

And personally I think the radiant quests in Fallout 4 are a huge step up from what they were in Skyrim. A lot of radiant quests in Fallout were related to the faction you were supporting, and they gave great incentives for going out and exploring locations and seeing new parts of the map.

The idea is great but the implementation still needs some work.

I also find it odd that people think radiant quests were put in place of more handmade quests. They weren't. They even work on a completely separate system from handmade quests.

PsiloCybinPunk · 18分前

You mean that thing that was in like 2 or 3 games, all by the same developer?

Maybe in their games (and even then, only arguable Fallout 4). Open-world games as a whole? No.

Slothbrothel · 10分前

I don't think the Witcher is a good example of radiant quests but Skyrim definitely is and it had some pretty copy and paste quests, however these quests would come from random villagers and inn keepers, members of your faction, and such. This really helped create more of an open world and allowed you to be more immersed. Mods definitely helped keep this game relevant and by no means are these radiant quests unique after the 20th time you've completed one.

iwishiwasEtho · 1分前

I'll throw in a dissenting opinion and say that when done right, I think they can have a tremendous benefit. My favorite example, and I think the one that popularized it in current games, is Skyrim. Skyrim had a pretty sizable world to explore. There were dozens of fairly detailed, well structured quests scattered trhoughout it to just stumble upon that would send you across the map to some fantastic locations, but at the end of the day the number of locations far outweighed the number of those well-structured quests. To compensate, Bethesda created Radiant quests that would specifically target locations that you hadn't visited yet, lending a helping hand to finding more secretive and hidden locations that might be difficult to stumble upon in such a large world. SKyrim's world design so well-done that it took some time for them to feel as repetitive as they really were just because you might be engrossed in the area itself or the potentially emergent storytelling.

It had the side benefit of feeling a bit more like adventuring as well. Not every location had some large intricate quest and legend with a powerful narrative attached to it, which gave them more opportunities for the storytelling through environment that Bethesda is (sometimes) so good at, which helped the world feel more fleshed out and alive, while also making the larger designed quests feel more significant and important. I think most importantly, they were never the crutch or core of any storyline or gameplay. The primary quest lines were all more carefully plotted and purposefully designed, while most radiant quests served as afterthoughts under the "miscellaneous" tab for simple grinding, exploring, or time-filling after the primary questlines had been finished, or as a clear aside from more important things.

I think where they fail right now is that theyre too linked to primary narratives, so the simple repetition and lack of a crafted narrative actually hurts quest lines, or the environments aren't detailed or unqiue enough to distract you from the raw simplicity of the systems. It's just lazy design using a decent tool poorly.

Wb14245 · 4時間前

Witcher 3 is guilty of this every quest in that game is the same. "Help me get this thing oh no it's cursed." EVERY TIME. oh i forgot people are still crazy biased about this game and still think it has no problems.

Paul_cz · 5時間前

Any kind of generic randomly generated quests are pure time wasting filler bullshit and and designer who insists on putting this into games should be fired on the spot. Was that harsh? Maybe. I don't care. I hate this bullshit. Give me handcrafted quests and missions (Mafia 1/2, Witcher 3, Fallout New Vegas, Gothic 1/2) or fuck off.

I absolutely abhorred this stuff in Skyrim, Fallout 4 and DA:I. And I am dreading starting Mafia 3 after I read how many of its main story missions are repetitive repeated BS.

k8faust · 1時間前

Pretty sure if we just get rid of the quest log/journal, devs will start to design better, simpler, and richer quests.

thatsthesoundofthepo · 1時間前

Radiant quests suck but they are just a small part of a bigger trend towards padding gameplay hours and amount of content, which means less focused writing and level/quest design. Mafia 3 for instance doesn't use radiant quests but it certainly feels like they do. Side missions are all super basic, simple, and repetitive with little setup, and most of the main missions are still repetitive but at least have a little bit more set up with the story and cutscenes.

One of the things I loved about Oblivion and FO3 was that all the quests were hand-made, unique, and interesting (let's not talk about oblivion gates...), and there was still a lot of them to do.

I think being able to easily fill up your game world with repeatable filler content makes devs less encouraged to provide those more interesting hand-made quests and overall makes their game worlds seem a lot less engaging and a lot less memorable when such a large percentage of it is just repeatable filler content that you want to avoid.

When I think of Oblivion I remember things like the DB party quest and the troll painting quest. When I think of Skyrim all I can remember is running around in the snow and in crypts and slaughtering a bunch of skeletons and bandits. Not saying that Oblivion and FO3 were picture perfect and only had amazing quests, or that Skyrim/FO4 didn't have any memorable quests, but those games overall were a lot less memorable and fun to me because they lean on filler content so much.

I think Bethesda should go back and focus more on depth in their quests (whether that's mechanical or story depth) instead of pushing radiant AI and questing so much and trying to make it "good", because by its nature of being randomly generated, it will never be good, you just can't randomly generate a story or quest that is focused and deep enough to be interesting.

Dusty8 · 4時間前

Radiant quest are the worst thing that ever happened to open world games. They're being put in place of actual, interesting quests just so studios can say their game is "endless".

Even worse is the fact that they're sometimes unmarked, there should be a big "REPEATABLE QUEST OF SHIT QUALITY" warning so I don't start something that is absolutely not worth my time and I can follow quests that were made by people and not fun hating algorithm.

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