Should WoW have more 'choice' quests?

[Guavasaur]

Good evening everybody! Or.. morning.

I started thinking about this while running through the Coilfang instances to grind up some Cenarion rep, and it hit me.

Should WoW have more 'choice' quests? The only one I can think of that comes to mind, and is relatively new!, is the Hallow's End quest where you chose who to return the 'mysterious' box too. I'm not sure why, but just having that 'choice' of deciding who to help was really fun for me.

Should Blizzard start adding in a little bit of a.. err, what's the word.. a consequence-system type of thing? Whichever quest you go too, affects how this npc will talk to you later on, or something like. Kind've like how ToR had the whole 'light and dark' side thing going on, and the quests had different choices on how you could respond.

I think it'd be a neat thing to add into the game!

[Illusions]

Like the Molten Front ones were at start? It ends up all same, but if you started it, you had a lot of choices.

Anyway, I thought MoP had a few dailies and quests like this, but more would be awesome. I'd like a few quests, like the Halloween one was, yet with different rewards and perhaps lore/stuff, too.

[Guavasaur]

Like the Molten Front ones were at start? It ends up all same, but if you started it, you had a lot of choices.

Anyway, I thought MoP had a few dailies and quests like this, but more would be awesome. I'd like a few quests, like the Halloween one was, yet with different rewards and perhaps lore/stuff, too.

Yeah! Or like that one early quest in Hyjal where you can choose to kill or free the harpy lady, I really liked that too! It gave me a real sense of how my character would really react, instead of pulling the constant 'I'M A NOBLE HERO OF AZEROTH,I DO NO WRONG.'

[Blackmist]

Trouble is, in these days of Wowhead, most people just pick the choice with the most benefit for them. I mean, when you picked Oracles or Wolvar, did you pick one because you disliked the others (and the Wolvar are surely dicks) or because one faction gave a better pre-raid reward?

[Guavasaur]

Trouble is, in these days of Wowhead, most people just pick the choice with the most benefit for them. I mean, when you picked Oracles or Wolvar, did you pick one because you disliked the others (and the Wolvar are surely dicks) or because one faction gave a better pre-raid reward?

Well, to be perfectly honest, I picked the Oracles because they were incredibly adorable, and they seemed a lot more friendly than the Wolvar! But the Wolvar are very cute, which i why I was glad I was able to get the orphan one, who is a whole lot nicer than his grown-up counterparts.

But you do have a point, and it makes me sad. ): It's why I wish there was like an even-ground in terms of game item reward, but the real reward would be having a choice of where your character's story would go.

[Sinndra]

i would love to see some "choose your own destiny" quests that dont really prevent you from gaining some new piece of gear or access to a vendor, but rather the "story". do quest (A) choose, answer (B) and the quest changes.. i can no longer see what happened if i woulda chosen answer (C). unless i make an alt. no gear or rewards are locked out for your toon.. its just the "story" has a different ending compared to the choices you make during the questline.

[Deleted]

would be a big upgrade for wow

[macaulay727]

Choice quests would be rather interesting in WoW, it would give your chars different possibilities doing their quests instead of always going through doing the same quest everytime. I think it would make their PVE/questing more interesting.

[transorD]

I think it could be a fun system to implement, though I wasn't really impressed with how it worked for SWTOR. They would need to tweak the idea and really make it their own.

[Zaelsino]

There's one in Hillsbrad Foothills I like. You can choose between mercifully helping the poor humans out of the ground, or smashing their faces in with a shovel. You're urged to "do the right thing," but still...

I'd like to see more of it. It makes things more personal.

[checking facts]

There's one in Hillsbrad Foothills I like. You can choose between mercifully helping the poor humans out of the ground, or smashing their faces in with a shovel. You're urged to "do the right thing," but still...

I'd like to see more of it. It makes things more personal.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=89142

Head Asplode
You might want to rethink your definition of "right."
10 seconds remaining

[Lovestar]

Yes. This sort of stuff is really fun and part of what historically made RPGs so appealing. WoW had turned it into much more of a grind machine where the outcome is automatically determined and you're just going through the motions.

That is still fun, mind, because the gameplay itself is fun. But something does get lost about the appeal of a sense of adventure in a bright, wide new world you're exploring. Having choices to make — lore choices, not "will I do this quest as Frost or Unholy" — helps with that immersive sense. Even if it's just the illusion of choice (like RPGs where you get the same end result regardless of your path through the conversation tree), it helps feel more like you're actually a part of the world instead of just chewing through on tracks.

The problem, of course, is that this is a game and doing this sort of branching stuff has exponential consequences on time investment to create things (or something, math heroes be kind to me), for an end result which is basically the same in terms of gameplay. Especially in MMOs, if you do make choices take you to significantly different places or affect character progression, then you run into the problem of splitting up your playerbase and frustrating people who just want to play.

But in an ideal sense, yes, I would absolutely love to have all sorts of freedom in deciding how to handle and respond to the game world (while still progressing forward).

Yeah! Or like that one early quest in Hyjal where you can choose to kill or free the harpy lady, I really liked that too! It gave me a real sense of how my character would really react, instead of pulling the constant 'I'M A NOBLE HERO OF AZEROTH,I DO NO WRONG.'

I spent about 2 minutes spamming the "Punch her" option with hypnotic pleasure, then set her free.

I'm a harsh, but merciful, mistress.

[Matt0193]

You see, SW:ToR tried this and all it ended up doing was changing the way small things happened in your own story (For example, the Jedi Consular Act 1 choices allowed you spare your targets, or not).

If you chose to save them, you performed a ritual that was supposed to "take a portion of your spirit and power", and in the story you were supposedly getting weaker and weaker with every ritual. Queue the end of the first act and the guy mocks you for being weaker than him because you've saved them all, you then proceed to beat him. If you chose to execute the targets you had the same fight, regardless.

Point being, for making such a big "choice" in the story, it didn't actually change the consequences at all, which is exactly the way it would pan out for WoW. I'd personally love a more consequence-based questing regime, with no "massive" changes to the end of the chain. Obviously if you need X alive for something later on, you can't choose to kill him off in an earlier zone. It'd probably involve a ton of phasing, which alot of players seem to hate so I doubt we'll ever actually get this. It'd be nice to change smaller details while we're questing, like who ends up leading a town, or who gets in put in charge of an attack for a quest, each giving a different style of fight, to vary the leveling process.

ToR did one thing right, at least. In Flashpoints (Instances) you were often posed with Light and Dark Side decisions (Good and bad, respectively). These only had a lasting effect for the current flash point, which often was simply the difference between how you go about doing a portion of the area. Esseles was a good example of this, if you chose the dark side you jetissoned a bunch of scientists out of the airlock in order to save the ship, if you chose the light side you deactivated some stuff and saved them instead. Overall it had no bearing on the end of the Flashpoint, the only result was a "Good/Bad" choice, and a slightly different experience between one run and another. Maelstrom Prison was a slightly more profound example, as you had the choice to tell the Jedi who was commanding the fleet of ships outside of the prison to engage the enemy, to buy you some time (And he'd die), or tell him to evacuate with the fleet. Again, nothing changed the way the Flashpoint ended, but it killed off an NPC in one version but not in the other.

It's a shame really, ToR made a step in the right direction but because it fell short of expectations I doubt it'll ever be expanded on.

[Frolk]

Id love "good/evil" choice option for quests like "save NPC and receive bit of gold/rep or kill NPC and take his weapon but no gold or rep" like in SW:ToR, i really liked it :>

[Zxzas]

To the Oracles / Wolvar scenario people we discussing earlier...

I chose the Oracles because they gave me a mount?

[Matt0193]

The point is that the choices have to matter otherwise what is the point? Then players just feel short-changed.

The problem with that is that; unless it's a temporary, such as a daily decision or an instance lockout, then it creates ramifications which inevitably lead to players min/maxing. Now, remove the min/maxing part and you're left with some different story endings that have little/no end-game values. Take a look at the Aldor/Scryers situation. For Early expansion, casters went Aldor for the Staff as it provided a huge bonus upon hitting 70, after clearing the Aldor quests There was no choice, even though it did matter, purely because of the min/max mindset for players.

It'd be nice if we could have these decisions, but unless there is no material benefit (Ie, a benefit that directly influences gameplay beyond cosmetics (Wolvar/Oracles is a fantastic example of this, as the only thing to gain was the Wolvar brew and the Green Proto)) there will never be a "choice".

I still think it would be better to go down the "Daily/Instance Choice" route, not quite as full of dialogue as the ToR Flashpoints were, but to still have those choice moments between "X boss and Y boss, both give items from the same pool, one will have one mechanic, another will have a different one". Another example of how it is already in WoW is Dire Maul Tribute runs. You passively decide whether to kill off guards or not, sacrificing loot for every guard to give up but gaining better and better loot from the end (Potentially an Epic 2h Axe) boss.

[Deleted]

Obviously the answer to OPs question is ''yes'', variety is always good, but the question is what kind of 'choice'? As others said, there is the variant to have the ''illusion of choice'' type, where the result is always the same but the method varies. I think these can also be implemented nicely, for example:

Objective -you have to get the battleplans from some well guarded castle/keep/something other.

Method 1 - infiltrate it from the sewers, having to fight a single powerful elite crocolisk (which has a few special mechanics/abilities), coming out at the back of the keep and entering the ''courtyard keep entrance'' to climb up to the main hall directly.

Method 2 - full frontal assault (possibly with some NPCs) and fighting against the Captain of the guard and 15 other guards/priests/mages, following a ''cannon miniboss'' (where the canons are on the walls and you are in the front courtyard) when you have to grab some gunpowder kegs and place them beneath the cannons while at the same time evading their blasts and fighting some guards, and afterwards you enter the keep main hall.

Method 3 - entrance via shadow realm, where you get shifted to the voidwalker (or something else appropriate) variant of the keep to just sneak past, where you have to enter the mage tower(connected to the keep directly)/keep library and use an orb (or something else appropriate) to shift back to the living world. Something goes wrong when a greater voidwalker appears and disables/steals/eats the said item, so you have to scour the tower basement to find something else to weaken the empowered greater voidwalker, which happens to turn out as a fairly large (underneath the whole castle/keep) crypt/laboratory, after which you fight the greater voidwalker in the main hall. After his death, you use the item he drops/belches out to shift to the living world and you're in the main hall.

Everyone ends up in the main hall regardless of the path you take. So now that you're there, you have to get to the battlemaster/command room and you can have another choice to make:
All the doors are magically locked/have some sort of a barrier.
Method 1 - Go to the armory/guard quarters to get some grappling hooks. Going outside from the back entrance you can use the grappling hooks to target a balcony and climb up with a small minigame - either shaking off/fighting off vultures or the like, or evading the guards at the balcony that are shooting at you (like the boulder minigame in the new Zul'Gurub). Enemies = warriors/guards

Method 2 - Go to the mage tower/keep library and collect some kind of magic residue (or something else appropriate) to combine them into 1 item which, when used at the door, blinks you to the other side. The residue is found in chests which can be opened by lockpicking or by getting the keys from the guards in the armory/guard quarters. Enemies = wizards.

Method 3 - Go the the prison where you have to fight a single powerful warrior (with some special mechanics/abilities, perhaps something like Herod from Scarlet Monastery). Defeating him you set the prisoners free, one of which is a mage, who opens a portal that teleports you to the battlemaster/command room upstairs.

A rough sketch would look something like this:
[IMG][/IMG]

So you see, even with the end result the same it can be designed to be far more fulfilling than the usual/standard quests. I would personally love if they implemented a couple of quests/areas like this, regardless if it is designed as a one-time quest or with some dailies. If it would be done with dailies, they could range from:
1. Obtain the battle plans from the battlemaster/command room
2. Destroy their weapons and armor inside the armory/guard quarters
3. Rescue the prisoners
4. Kill the powerful wizard leader at the top of the mage tower
5. Obtain a book from the mage tower
6. Release the captured gryphons from the stables (there could be a minigame to try to handle the gryphon similar to the Vashj'ir seahorse quest and use it to enter the battlemaster/command room)
7. Find out what kind of experiments were done in the crypt/laboratory and destroy any specimens (could be an elite abomination boss)

Regardless what the dailies should be about, the most important thing would be not to hinder the path you take, or in other words - the dailies must not give you the ''obviously i have to enter from here'' thought. Make the top mage tower locked in a similar fashion as the main battlemaster/command room and you could have the grappling hook minigame up the tower as well.

This could all be done with game mechanics that are already in game. Hell, I could make a simple model of a keep/castle with that layout myself, I'm sure it would take Blizzard's designers almost no effort. If there were only 4 areas like that in the whole game, I think it would greatly enhance the playing experience (preferably not all of them bunched up at the endgame, why not put one at 60/70/80/85/90 level, so each expansion gets something, or just scattered across the whole game)

[Yig]

I think part of the future of MMO quest systems is going to be a choose your own adventure multiple branching quest system. Seeing a few finally adopted in Cataclysm was nice.

I think each quest should have about 3 different endings, with multiple ways of getting there. Endings that make you feel your choices matter in some way.

I think it would make leveling alts a lot more fun, and it would make your story feel a lot more tailor fit.

[Deleted]

I think part of the future of MMO quest systems is going to be a choose your own adventure multiple branching quest system. Seeing a few finally adopted in Cataclysm was nice.

I think each quest should have about 3 different endings, with multiple ways of getting there. Endings that make you feel your choices matter in some way.

I think it would make leveling alts a lot more fun, and it would make your story feel a lot more tailor fit.

I completely agree with you. Well said.

[Guavasaur]

Oh wow, I'm glad to see a good discussion came up on this little post!

@Lovestar
Well, I don't think they should add in quests that will split people apart, or do any huge drastic changes, just a system that allows for you know, a choice of how you personally think your character would go.
I know that with my Troll, he chose to kill the harpy instead of free her, because he's mean and bloodthirsty. My elf, however, decided to free the harpy, because she feels the need to let all things live.

@Yig
Yeah! A three different ending system sounds really nice.

@Frolk
Also a type of system like this wouldn't be too bad, so long as the weapon wasn't super-mega upgrade powerful, or that the rep-goldgain wasn't super high.

I think if they would have used this system for more of their 1-60 quests, it wouldn't feel as linear as it does now. Linear and.. easy-peasy, I mean.