The Future Of Quests

[Novato]

I didn't participated in many quests, I know. But, I miss some kind of quests that were done not so long ago. I don't want to be rude and I sorry if I look like that. But, I want to ask, it's only me or you fell that the MD quests in general (not all) are ever time more and more geek style. If you think so or not tell why. It's is good or bad?

[Darigan]

define geek style

[Burns]

It's simple, we run a kind of quest, and then we get bored of it.
Then we run another kind of quest for some time, until we get bored again.

Usually, somebody leads the way, and everybody does similar quests for a period, and then it's over, until somebody figures out a new style again.
In time, you get every style, but it takes patience, and determination, because quests with a known pattern will be solved by the people who already solved them before, because they know the pattern.

[Chewett]

I had a massively long post about Geek Being bad and Nerd being good and such, but then Internet Explorer decide to commit suicide... then again i had been using it for almost 5 minutes...

All in all i dont think the balance has changed. I think there are less but the balance hasnt changed

[Kafuuka]

[quote name='Burns' timestamp='1282749204' post='67028']
Usually, somebody leads the way, and everybody does similar quests for a period, and then it's over, until somebody figures out a new style again.
In time, you get every style, but it takes patience, and determination, because quests with a known pattern will be solved by the people who already solved them before, because they know the pattern.
[/quote]
There's only three types of quests that are recurring afaik:
- Find the next person/clicky through a very vague description.
- Write an essay.
- Break the code.

The first one is often done in conjunction with other puzzles. The essays seem to get worse, nowadays people even put in a required amount of words. The codebreaking is only a problem if people keep using the same binary switch system.

If we look at current quests, there are:
A question of time - Kafuuka - this might look like a codebreaker to many but the binary switcharoo is definitely the wrong approach
Funnels - Zleiphneir - does anyone even dare saying this is a standard quest?
Lost path treasure quest - Fyrd Argentinus - finding the clickies is not the hardest part although some of them gave me considerable trouble
Diamond of Misery - Metal Bunny - there's no words for this one; there's only a picture and I never seem to find bunbun's trail if he put up new hints
Teaching the Principles of Magic Quest - Yrthillian - an essay quest; someone is going to love this comment

Recent quests I remember:
A Quick Quest - Sasha Lilias - not standard, although ridiculously easy and therefore was solved by dozens within less than an hour of being put online
The Whole Kit and Kaboodle - MRD - essay with an insane word count
Yoshi's Memories - Yoshi - a mixture of puzzles and riddles
Define Existance - Granos - imo this was a logic quest, not an essay

Even a worst case judging leaves more than 50% of those quests as pure originals. And I'd like to refute in advance that no new style has become dominant because nothing stood out. Some quest designs can only be used once. Kinda like how 'the sixth sense' fails to surprise you the second time.

[Metal Bunny]

No words? Thanks?

And yes, if you check my quest page, there will be a chronological list of all the quest I have created or helped in. You can see how it evolves, simply because doing the older style isn't fun anymore and gets too easy for the participants.

[Darigan]

I'd like to mention that while it may not seem like much of a quest I did and will be holding more fighting tournaments of different sorts in the future that will have rewards just as if you'd had a quest and also have a few quest ideas in mind that have very little to do with major puzzles and more to do with bringing interest to different aspects and people within the realm

[Udgard]

Though I miss some of the old quests, at least we don't get the "get me x adepts/worshipers or get me x credit" quests anymore..

[Novato]

[quote name='Darigan' timestamp='1282746914' post='67025']
define geek style
[/quote]

Ok, geek style is one kind of style that you only enjoy if you also like to study, specially if you enjoy the standard school disciplines, like math, poetry and others.

[Burns]

First of all, thanks for reminding me to put my quest back in the quest-list, i forgot that it expires in one week, not two xD

Other than that, i'm afraid that far more than half of the quests, both current and all-over, can be tagged in few groups:
find, write, decipher, and fight.

Some quests mix things a bit, some are plain, some spice things with questions (which are unfortunately always ridiculous for vets and mind-disturbing for the newbies), but in the end, almost everything goes under those headings.

And when there are 'more' quests, like, 12 at a time like it was back then, they all go in one direction. It's search and destroy, search and answer, answer, sometimes even just search at times, or it's poetry, half-novels, short stories, or it's ciphers, self-made codes, even 2-3 layers of different coding over the plain text, or it's win, victory, beat.
There are hardly any questmakers who get over those categories, and the few who do don't make a lot of quests due to the nature of them, it's simply extremely exhausting and time intensive to create quests outside of the scheme, as you, Kafuuka, know very well.

I don't say there's JUST those quests, but they definitely are dominant, and they ARE recurring if you wait long enough. They get a face-lift and use better scripts, but the basis of many, many quests is still and will probably always be the same 4 points: find, write, decipher, and fight.

[Yrthilian]

One of the issue you will have with quests

yes they get repeted many times over
why?
because some people may have a great idea or concept but dont know how to make it happen
the idea does not get shared for fear of someone claiming it their idea. So for all we know
someone has a great concept to run but cant code it yet or figure out how to put it into the realm.

Back in the day we had co-op quests but they dies off quickly as it got more and more difficult to get
people online that would work together and run a quest. this is for RL reasons in most cases or diffrent time
zones.

As was mentiond by other you will find that a cycle of quest types will happen. this is goign to be the case as
in most cases thies are the easyest ones to run and take little time to run. For example my quest will be long running
for many reasions. one i gave a time line of 2 weeks per section. 2 i will be on honeymoon for almost a month in 18 days

As mentioned the quest i have decided to run is an essay style. It may seem like it will be easy. It may well be for some
but i will be judginf them harsly. If i dont feel they are upto scratch to what i feel is worthwile well then there will be no
winner. When a player runs a quest like this there are normaly many reason for it to be done. This time this is a quest related to
MD directly and not its player directly and yes i put a minimum number of word for this quest as i wanted to have good work
in saying that i may have made the word cout to low but i am hopeing that people will just use that as a guide but will do greater works.

anyways quest will go into the wash, rince, repet for some time untill someone figures out how to code or run a new concept or trust another player that can code it for them. I know from a poll i did a long while back that people would like a puzzel type quest but they can be cracked by many players this is manly why they stoped making them. As too many people cheat in thoes type of quest so untill the can be secured in a better way and the code can be hidden they may not happen for a long time.

Sorry i seem to have gone on for a bit so i will just stop

[Kafuuka]

[quote name='Novato' timestamp='1282757191' post='67040']
Ok, geek style is one kind of style that you only enjoy if you also like to study, specially if you enjoy the standard school disciplines, like math, poetry and others.
[/quote]
If you're implying that many quests are geared towards people who like to think, I'd take that as a job well done. If you're implying you need certain degrees, I'd grant you that some people have advantages for some quests. However I've never attended courses in word riddle solving - especially not in English - nor poetry. I think quest solving requires imagination foremost, and memory and pattern recognition secondly. These are also skills that are (in)directly trained in almost any scholarly discipline. And even in other games. [url="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/09/gamesfrontiers_0908"]Here's an interesting article about how children accidentally learn the scientific method through gaming and then try to refute that they learned something..[/url]

[quote name='Burns' timestamp='1282760428' post='67042']
Other than that, i'm afraid that far more than half of the quests, both current and all-over, can be tagged in few groups:
find, write, decipher, and fight.
[/quote]
If desired any quest could be argued to fall into the category 'analyse the logic behind the quest and find the optimal solution.' There's infinite possible ways to categorise quest types. If i use narrow criteria most of them will be singletons, if I use broad ones I can fit them all into one group, nl quests.
My point was that of the currently running quests few are really redundant in approach. eg Fyrd's quest is partially 'find' and partially 'decipher: word games/riddles'. I managed to solve some of the riddles, yet solving the other riddles is not an automatic result. Compare this with a type of 'find' quest from the past wherein you would get a description of a person and then had to find said person and ask for the next description. Back in the RPC days, I had links to all RPC's papers and checked them one by one versus the description. The RPCs were the most likely suspects, because including an unknown mp3 would be too hard for anyone to find and RPCs were considered more reliable to log in frequently. So there emerged a 'pattern'.
We should seek to avoid or scramble the patterns, to create new types etc. But I do not think we should discard winning formula's nor that we should complain; the only gripe I have is that it seems very difficult to create a permanent quest - with appropriate reward - that remains even if its creator left MD.

[Tipu]

Mesmerized is one of the best Quest. The other quests involving maths, riddles, poems, stories, songs can be solved by others for u if u know the right forums in net. we want to see more game related Quest and not what we do in schools, calculations and drawings..

[Harion]

i don't bother with quests as some of them are too hard or just take too much time
there are also some quests that decides winners only on the discretion of the creators
there are some quests which i suspect only lets you run around chasing rainbows

this post got me thinking.

i'll try create a quest myself and see how others like it

[url="http://magicduel.invisionzone.com/topic/7998-my-1st-try-at-making-a-quest/"]it's here[/url]