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On the quest releases' problem

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Llarys

Llarys

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(cont. from previous page)

Even smaller quests, like Making History, gave rewards like the Enchanted Key, which allowed us to go on a scavenger hunt around Runescape for various rewards including the special god spears.

While I could go on forever with other such examples, my point is: in the past nearly every quest, in some form or fashion, unlocked something new for us to do, whether it was a new location to explore and monsters to fight, a new training method, or even gave us a special mini-quest that could be completed at any time, if you were feeling up to the challenge or were particularly studious (looking at you, goblin priest burial).

But quests now? Look no further than Dishonor Among Thieves. Everybody involved in the quest either disappears, or loses interest, following the events of the quest. Zamorak does little more than chastise you or praise you depending on your last action in the quest. And your grand post quest reward? A couple chests hidden in Ol’ Zammy’s lair with some exp lamps inside. Amazing. This will /totally/ be a quest people will talk about for years to come.


If Jagex wants people to play quests, and wants the quests to have some form of replayability/retention value, then they have to remember why quests in the past were as successful as they were. And I believe these kinds of post-quest content is the key to that success.
All hands on deck! Douse the sails! Batten down the hatches! There be a **** storm a brewin'.

14-Mar-2015 19:11:11 - Last edited on 14-Mar-2015 19:13:38 by Llarys

Lord Drakan
Sep Member 2010

Lord Drakan

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Problem is that lots of post-quest content nibbles away the development time of the actual quest itself. Besides, REALLY old quests wouldn't really unlock a lot. Just xp usually. :P

Oh, and I like Broken Home a lot and I'll be replaying it this or next year, but not for the rewards, although I'll have to get those eventually as well. Bizarre Boron Fusswell, scryer extraordinaire. OSRS: POH ideas & RS3 minigames & achievement ideas !

Perhaps you're half right; perhaps we can't win. But we can fight.
— Zanik

15-Mar-2015 10:39:11

Llarys

Llarys

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Lord Drakan said :
Problem is that lots of post-quest content nibbles away the development time of the actual quest itself. Besides, REALLY old quests wouldn't really unlock a lot. Just xp usually. :P


It is fair to say that the post-quest content can take away from the quest itself, but from my perspective, a lot of the time it is worth it. Would you rather the Lucien boss fight last an extra phase, but we lose access to the Glacor Caves for no real reason? Or maybe we should add fancy stealth mechanics, maybe an underground section to Darkmeyer, but now we're locked out of Darkmeyer once we're done with the quest, because Jagex didn't make the Vyrewatch citizens interactive, nor the bloodwood tree an actual, choppable tree (an NPC gave us the blisterwood weapons, obv).

A lot of post-quest content simply re-uses the assets of the quest itself, adds a tiny bonus, and boom, whole new reward/area for those who did the quest. And as a big plus, unlike quests like The Death of Chivalry, unlike quests like The Fate of the Gods, unlike quests like The Mighty Fall, Missing Presumed Death, Dishonour Among Thieves, and all these new-fangled quests: ALL THESE ART ASSETS DON'T GO TO WASTE. The tomb in DoC is great and all...too bad you can't return. The Empyrean Citadel and Yu'biusk at least have the decency of letting us return, but they're barren and pointless - also a waste.

We agree that the overblown art assets (and the low quality cutscenes that go with them) and voice acting is nickel-and-diming quests into a state of sub-standard quality, the likes of which we have never seen in Runescape before. But I definitely do not believe the post-quest content is part of the problem. It takes so little to make, thanks to the fact they're reusing resources (going back to Glacors: reused a quest location AND boss) and adds so much.

(I'll try to make a list of quests that add/didn't add content and their general time fram of release)
All hands on deck! Douse the sails! Batten down the hatches! There be a **** storm a brewin'.

15-Mar-2015 14:42:08

Llarys

Llarys

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Lord Drakan said :
@Llarys:

For The Death of Chivalry, you can go back to the Tomb of the Fallen. Some fun rewards there too.

Yeah. That's one thing I've noticed while compiling the list.

I actually just finished this morning, but at this point the list is a 4 page abomination, haha.

If you'll take my word on it: quests from 2001 and first half 2002 have no post quest, while second half 2002 to 2011 quests have post quest content as a general rule with 90/143 quests containing some form of meaningful post quest content. Meanwhile, quests from 2012 to present have 13/26 with some form of post quest content. 62% down to 50% isn't really that big of a drop, and could easily be explained away by the simple lack of quests to balance out the number.


But looking through the whole list as I have has really made me think about it, I guess. It's possibly the quality of the post-quest that's part of the problem.

Let's look at 2013 for an example:

6 quests: Demon Slayer rework, TWW, Bacon, DoC, Bot*, and MPD.

Demon Slayer: no post quest.

TWW: If you've completed (huge list of pre-req quests), you get access to Automaton dungeon.

Bacon Quest: Access to pig killing and bacon stuff.

DoC: Teleporting back to the final quest area and looting it for a 1-off reward (I don't count this as post-quest CONTENT).

Bot*: Tiny room with Chaos Giants.

MPD: Like DoC, there's no actual post quest content, you just teleport back to the quest location and loot it for some exp and items.


Then Broken Home (and continued by Dishonor among Thieves) introduced the cheap way out: the "temporal locked chests," chests that are Jagex's modern idea of post quest content of making the player come back to the quest location at a later date, once they have higher skill totals, in order to open the chests for their "post-quest prize." At least Broken Home had the mini-challenges for replaying it.


Bah, I feel like I'm all over the place.

cont:
All hands on deck! Douse the sails! Batten down the hatches! There be a **** storm a brewin'.

18-Mar-2015 20:29:35

Llarys

Llarys

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Part of the issue with the post quest content of modern quests is that it’s all built around small bonus exp rewards. Shadow over Ashdale? Refight a rather unfun boss fight for some bonus exp. If you don’t need more exp, the content is dead to you. Broken Home, ignoring the fact that the only thing that prevents you from getting the bonus rewards the first time you play it is an arbitrary condition that says it has to be a replay, only has the replay feature: which rewards*exp! Dishonour among Thieves? Skips all the preamble, and just has some locked chests with exp lamps inside. Death of Chivalry? Return to the tomb, spend 2 minutes grabbing the bonus exp, never come back.

If you look at the quests of, say, 2008 we got post quest content like: 2 cities (Oo’glog and Meirditch), the dungeon of Meirditch and all of its monsters, and Vyrewatch killing. Then we got the desert slayer dungeon and the slayer reward system (although that part no longer requires Smoking Kills). We got a mine in the TzHaar city, a new pirate thieving location, the spirit realm in the wilderness, a new firemaking mini-game with rewards, the once great training location: chaos temple dungeon, and even two high level boss monsters in the Corporeal Beast AND Tormented demons.

Compare all that to 2013 AND 2014, and hopefully my point is making a bit of sense. The automaton dungeon, pig killing, DoC exp rewards, Chaos Giants killing, MPD exp rewards, Celestial Dragon dungeon, Elder Divination/Summoning (and we still don’t know if that was actually supposed to be part of the quest reward, or quickly made in 3 months due to the criticism that Fate of the Gods had no freaking rewards, Nihils were pointless to fight, and all those art assets were going to waste), Agaroth exp reward, Priffdinas, more exp from broken home, AND EVEN MORE EXP FROM DISHONOUR AMONG THIEVES.

If we were to cut the minor exp rewards, not much would be left.
All hands on deck! Douse the sails! Batten down the hatches! There be a **** storm a brewin'.

18-Mar-2015 20:31:43

Raxxess

Raxxess

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Lord Drakan said :
@Llarys:For The Death of Chivalry, you can go back to the Tomb of the Fallen. Some fun rewards there too.

That isn't post quest content at all though. I mean especially for a quest that had so little information on the god it was supposed to cover, unless of course we are calling it more a sir owen/signature heroes quest rather than a saradomin quest then it makes a little more sense but still. Also the post quest reward was a gilded cabbage and a talk from brassica prime.

The one nice thing it did have was the ability to get a dialogue from saradomin on the naragi godwars but it really didn't reveal anything new about it.

I think having no post quest content and then being given a gilded cabbage was kind of a troll to players that wanted to know more about the centaurs or saradomin.

Consider the post quest and in quest dialogue that Fot* and DaT had that should really be the standard of post quest content
Saradomin Lore clan
- Aegis of Saradomin

18-Mar-2015 23:19:47

Syrus Coy
Jul Member 2013

Syrus Coy

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We need to, as a community, lobby for Jagex to start making 12 quests a year. They can do it if they know that is what we want first before any other update. ~
The Camel Pope
~

*Supported Zamorak WE1, Armadyl WE2, Tuska WE3

19-Mar-2015 00:47:53

Lord Drakan
Sep Member 2010

Lord Drakan

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@Llarys:

Yeah okay, I can see your point. Hopefully Myreque VI will have plenty.

@Raxx:

Oh come on - the cabbage is great! :P Still, Death of Chivalry is a great quest and, being a very low level novice quest, doesn't really need myriad post-quest content, right? And DaT had pretty much no PQD - one of the points of criticisms. Only Zamorak and, for some reason, Viggora, have something to say on the matter. Not even Daquarius, but then he nad no dialogue after Wanted! or TVSB either. Bizarre Boron Fusswell, scryer extraordinaire. OSRS: POH ideas & RS3 minigames & achievement ideas !

Perhaps you're half right; perhaps we can't win. But we can fight.
— Zanik

19-Mar-2015 07:54:20

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