Quests Are a Book, not a Chapter!

[Note: this is a thread I intend to post on the RSOF]

Hello. My name is Dark Avorian, and I'm here to talk about quests, the decline of the quest, and some other details.

Part the First: What is Required

One of the most important things in any quest are the requirements. To a large degree these are used as an exclusion mechanism. If every quest were to have low requirements than many of Runescape's best areas, items, training grounds, shops etc. would be available to almost anyone. Nowadays however there is a tendency towards arbitrary and unused requirements.

Jublex employees seem to want to push the envelope in regard to required levels, but don't seem to feel it necessary to think more than a few seconds about the quest. In fact, if we compare recent quests to old quests it's pretty self evident that nowadays challenges are designed around requirements, whereas back then challenges/puzzles/ dungeons were designed, and appropriate skill was designated as the required one and a level appropriate to the quest difficulty was chosen.

Examples

Nomad's Requiem

The reqs were so obviously chosen before the challenges, and the mod's put little thought into how to best utilize said requirements. I mean seriously...the corruption room, a river and some slabs, and barrels of explosives in front of a machine...once one has the concept of the machine and those reqs I think most game designers pressed for time would come up with something similar.

Within The Light

Ooh...elves are agile rangers who live in a massive wood...Woodcutting, Agility, Fletching, Ranging! Now how can we incorporate these into a puzzle...erm...ballistae at target...cut a crystal tree and fletch it and some spiky things on some high up platforms!


Example of Good Req Use...

WGS: In this quest there was obviously something like this going on in the head of the developer. Hmmmm... so i want them to give Surok a truth serum, but what if they need some extra herb to make it...so they'll have to grow it and i can use farming and herblore *adds to list of reqs*





Part the Second: Book, Not Chapter

Recent Quests seem to forget that a quest should have a a story and instead follow the theory that they are but chapters in the book that is a quest line. However, for a long time quests have been more like books in a series. Most of the time the books in a series have an internal plotline but also add to a larger more complex one.

Amen brother!

I second that! I ranted the same thing on the forums. The only thing some J-mod could hear was "I can do better, your content suck" so I didn't get anything out of that. Ooh yeah, and apparently foreshadowing something is fine in itself, who cares about story? The bad guy escaped, the next quest, which will be epic, will make this one soo much better!

Sorry for that, what were you saying?

KITTY!

Anyway... I haven't been on RS enough lately to notice this, but I know it's true.

I guess you do have a point there. I even sometimes have a thought list of requirements to somewhat aid me, but as I am writing the quest I change them as needed.

You're right about having each quest should have a thorough plot in itself, however I cannot possibly do either quest; I personally think they were just rather impatient about creating another master/grandmaster quest. Jublex, as you should know, sells out to its fan-base especially for those recent ones. Anything with a huge, sweet, and imaginative boss battle with a weak plot will be satisfactory, if not glorious in today's community- which absolutely sucks, in my opinion anyway.

Lol, I think it was on RuneScapes's wikipedia page that RuneScape has been described as having the worst community for newcomers - in the sense of being the least welcoming, the most foreboding, etc. I wasn't sure what to think when I read that.

Rune Mechanics has to have been the most pointless they've released recently. Even that Phoenix one has something to do after, even if the quest itself was appalling. I just don't see what Rune Mechanics was for. To teach us something that has been in-game for like three years? Member's don't need tutorial quests! They don't work. The target audience doesn't exist!

I'm gonna do that quest now.

Rune mechanics was a perfectly decent novice quest, also...who knows what it was truly hinting at? Some real use for combos? Making Essence Armour?

I thought we didn't like preluding quests?

Besides, I only didn't like it because it lacked anything. Well, aside from an awesome little puzzle thing, which I actually liked. The rest of it.... shrugs. Combination runes have been out for years, it's a bit late for a tutorial. And tutorial quests don't work for member's anyway.

preluding quests are good...but they also need to have a functioning internal storyline.

I think the rune guardian is cool... at least.

Yeah, he's cute!

Lol, I know

He says funny stuff...i just hope him and the hellcat don't fight

I seriously thought that the new quest was filler. But combination runes are in the first place members-only. I never made combination runes unless I absolutely had to, mainly because the talismans needed were too expensive, and that there is a chance of failure in making the runes. I seriously doubt it that anyone else made combination runes on a daily basis either.

I also think that Jublex was trying to wane people from buying runes to making them themselves because people have grown a bit too dependent on buying these days. (Mining pure essence at 67/66/65 mining is like 30 secs to mine a full loaad of 28 essence btw.)

The reward was a joke- literally. The guardian kinda irritated me about the humor (sorry Dark Avorian ) it said. However, I love walking around gloating that I have a pet like that, even though pretty much every member has a Rune Guardian by now.

I was also rather irritated that we had to mine regular essence- just make the requirement 30 mining! lol

It took me a while to figure out the puzzle, but it was fun.

This quest better be a a pretty good prequel to some pretty good quest!

This quest would've been a better prelude to the second part of a quest... not a separate quest.

you do have a point there.... the plot was like okay do this. *we did this* Yay! We're done!

What would be cool, would be if the creation of the dude was only half or one-fourth of the quest. Possibly, the creation of the Rune Guardian could have gone horribly wrong making you find a unique way to keep him from destroying the Training place. After the dude is quelled, you must analyze the text where the young wizard found the information on how to make a golem. Then, you realize that you used the wrong ingredients and go on this search for the proper recipe, then when you make the guardian, he apparently is defective and you keep him. The end!

psycho would you prefer cook's assistant be a prelude to RFD?

No, but that's a classic.

why are you grading new quests on a different system?

EDIT: I am not arguing that you can bash the idea of releasing such a novice quest, jsut don't say the quest was in and of itself bad.

No, the quest was good. I am not bashing the quest itself. I found the puzzle fun and that little rock thing is sooo cute! But... okay, the Bank Robbery wasn't a quest. Why can't we have more content that has some sort of a story without being a quest? If Rune Mechanics was a Free-to-Play quest than it works... the idea of a novice/tutorial quest fits in what is basically the tutorial/demo to the game (regardless of what the crowns say about it being independent). Once you get into the membership realm, aside from the odd straight-to-member player, novice quests of a tutorial-calibre don't work. In my opinion. Thinks like Monk's Friend just shouldn't exist. The Cook Assistant can... but only because it's sentimental. Sheep Sheerer... not so much, but I suppose it provides a valuable lesson to the newbies.

yes, and we aren't newbies as well. Unless Jublex wants to make combo-runes free, it'll stay members only.

Monk's Friend I think came out in 2002, when most of the members WERE newbies, by the way.

We're not the target audience, but we kinda have to complete them anyway because whenever a quest comes in, we kinda have to complete it for ourselves and the "new" and "exciting" knowledge of the game.

I suppose we only have these opinions because we are mature players... but, I think, most member's don't appreciate such novice quests. The majority of first-time member's mastered or played free-to-play a lot before upgrading. Or is that just something that used to be the case?

I wish everyone was at that "new" stage again.

I'm kinda pissed they used that puzzle idea for a novice quest...

Yeah.

I love the subtle chess theme.