Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

As a huge fan of From Software games, I don’t bother with the character quests. They are incredibly obtuse. You can ignore them entirely and still enjoy the main experience. Exploration and combat is what really counts for me.

I think From needs to evolve their approach to quest design (it hasn't really changed since Demon's Souls), but it's also an intentional design choice that much of the content of their games is easily missable.

> It’s only up to you to miss 80% of the game in the sense that you absolutely will miss 80% of the game unless you look it up on a wiki. And then when you do them it has basically no impact on anything.

....What? I mean you might miss the quest lines but this isn't Skyrim. The questlines are a teeny tiny portion of the content in a From Soft game. The quest lines are fun little bits of interactivity and current plot but the overwhelming majority of the game is just in exploring the areas, fighting the enemies, and finishing the game. You could miss all the sidequests in Elden Ring but still see almost all of the game if you were willing to just wander around looking at stuff

It just says something like "you can't go back after this point", not "this is the final mission and the end of the game". Maybe that's got an obvious meaning to a more seasoned gamer. Not that it matters, since I could just load the save game just prior and do the side missions, but it still kind of ruined the impact of the end of the game.

Keep in mind that the main story isn't all that long, so from my perspective the game was just getting going.

This sort of pacing is one of the problems with many open world games. The narrative pushes you towards saving the world and the final epic battle, while filling the world with tasks and sub plots that are trivial and non-urgent. And then the general will wait under heavy enemy fire for years as her troops are massacred and city after city burned while the character back tracks to kill rats and plow fields as part of their romantic interest's subplot. But if the narrative provides a lull in the action, you can encourage players to pursue subplots and even make that easier and more in character than to pursue the main plot. And you would have less of a problem dealing with under leveled characters who have rushed through the game in keeping with the main narrative, and over leveled characters who have dawdled through countless sub quests and DLCs oblivious to the urgency you were trying to convey in the story.

Mass Effect 3 had this same problem. The game starts off with the apocalypse beginning and there are constant reminders during the game how millions are being killed every day, but also loads you up with time consuming sidequests.

Subverted in the end by killing off everybody no matter how well you play.

Morrowind was pretty close. Clunky by modern standards, and I remember playing it on Xbox years ago and having no f-ing clue where to go or what to do -- a lot of GameFAQs helped -- but it really made it feel like a real world.

Hard disagree, cyberpunk had a fantastic story, compared to the witcher 3 that I've tried to finish about 4 separate times and failed every time - the side quests are fantastic, the main quest is just unbelievably dragged out and boring.

Everyone mentions the blood baron quest - and yes, it was great, outstanding even. I've never seen anyone mention anything after that point - it's just a mess of narrative that gets in the way of some other great content in that game.

Cyberpunk has great main quest and memorable side stories.

Some people prefer paying $60 for a blank canvas with some brushes and paint, others prefer a good book.

As someone who likes Guild Wars 2 the game makes the distinction between quests (i.e. the Story) and Events which are constantly occurring in the world.

As you wander through zones in the world dynamic events will spawn for example you might run into a merchant in need of an escort between villages or you'll run across a farmer who needs you to defend his flock or whatever. Many events are simply on a timer and some are triggered by specific actions you (or another player) have done elsewhere in the world.

The events can be simply once off events or they can be more complex with multiple states. I.e. an event can spawn where a bunch of npc soldiers want to take back a mine from monsters - players can escort them to the mine help them clear it out. If successful then later on other NPC's will move into the mine new vendors will become accessible etc. Later still the monsters will congregate and launch a new offensive to retake the mine an event will spawn to help defend the new settlement.

I like the feeling this gives the world. For me at least it makes the game world feel like it's fresh and things are constantly happening even when your character is not around the world is alive and things are changing all of the time.

This is different from my experience playing an mmo like World of Warcraft, which had static NPC quest givers in zones and once you'd done the content, which tended to be stuff like kill 15 of this enemy and then report back to me - there was little reason to revisit the zone again.

The questline in guild wars 2 which reveals the larger narrative and your characters personal story is instanced content, separate from the event system.

None of the events in Guild Wars are mandatory you can ignore all of them to your heart's content - don't feel like escorting the merchant you can walk past him on the road. Don't want to help the farmer defend his flock from the wolves - you can go right on ahead and ignore it. So it's strange you would get hung up on that aspect of the game. If you wanted to run around and explore the open world going from zone to zone as you please you can go right ahead and do just that.

OOT: You've just described my exact most memorable gaming experiences over the last two or so decades. I've been struggling to find something I liked enough of late.

Would you mind sharing what you're into these days?

This is the first mention I've seen of RO in a long long time and I totally agree. There were a lot of small stories that you could take but you never felt like you were just going from point to point in some big directed path. If you didn't like an area you could skip it and never feel like you lost much.

I've yet to find a game that got me anywhere near the same sense of freedom and sense of being part of the world instead of one of a bunch of people going through the predetermined Disney ride.

The original planetside had a similar feeling with a more shooter lens on it where you were always part of a changing world.

DF simulation goes to crazy degrees of detail, that's the fun part in it.

Even for combat where two ASCII characters are fighting they have actual physiology in play calculating hit locations and the effects of different weapons on different parts of the body and even internal organs.

All for a line of text in a combat log most people won't read.

Wow, I clearly have a different view on games than you (nothing wrong with that of course). To be honest, I thought the bucket head on NPC thing was a fantastic example of how you can interact with the systems of that world in creative ways.

I think it's more about Mike Pondsmith's vision than CDPR's vision. It's not the kind of setting where you tell stories about competent and successful characters. The main characters are supposed to be losers and misfits who often turn to crime because they don't have other options. They are good at some things and bad at others, and they have far more ambition than common sense. The expected outcome is a failure, and there are no happy endings.

It was already written and voiced by humans? I’m not sure what you want out of it. A curated experience is more valuable than a generated one.

The golden age was when most modern game design principles and techniques were established, between 1993-2005 (roughly).

My criticism is that this presentation by CD Projekt is not helpful but harmful to indie developers. It's clear in the presentation that their mindset is similar to the mobile game era of manipulation and control of the player. Ostensibly in this case to "make them want to continue".

Engagement is skinner box jargon used by companies like Zynga and has nothing to do with making a good game.

Because the presentation promotes this mindset and because it's about two games that mostly were made possible by golden age game design, and not their own innovations, I don't believe they have anything meaningful to contribute on this topic.

The quest design in Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk is neither innovative, nor very fun. It may be effective in the manipulative sense, but that doesn't contribute to the artistry of making games fun.

That's a very postmodern take on the art of gaming. So, supposedly slot machines are on par with chess?

"Just dopamine manipulation" and "glorified slot machine" are overly deconstructive and cynical beliefs, to the point where I doubt having this mindset could ever lead to creating a good game like Diablo 2. You could deconstruct all of human behaviour to dopamine spikes, but that kind of thinking usually leads to a race to the bottom; like what you're not necessarily defending but excusing.

Most of the games we love were at the very least heavily influenced by game design developed by naive artists and programmers who wanted to "make something cool".

Doom is the perfect example, in terms of both game design and tech. id Software wanted to blow everyone out of the water with that game, and so they focused on making it as fun and impressive as possible. There was no mentality of skinner boxes there, just inspired ambition and love of play.

Yes, almost all games are made to make money. That doesn't preclude artistic ambition, and good games are primarily about making something fun.