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

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

#21

Post by blargey »

XorNot wrote: post #14

This is right on the money for games which are impactful for me, and I noticed the writing being on-point in CP2077's decisions entirely: there were plenty of moment in my playthrough where I didn't have to stop and think about what a dialogue option was, it felt entirely natural to hit one of the prompts the moment I saw it because the way I was playing my character, that's what they would've done. That felt great ,…

Interesting, I felt the opposite - consistent mismatches between the expectation and reality of Cyberpunk’s dialogue choices. A lot of optional dialogue was just cues to make the NPC roll their eyes and explain obvious “subtext” to the biggest dork in Night City, instead of a cue to play out two inhabitants of this world just naturally discussing and elaborating on a point of shared understanding. V’s lines in mandatory dialogue weren’t much better, though, so perhaps it’s a problem with CDPR’s rigid vision of what “V” is supposed to be like - simultaneously a cyberpunk native and a fish out of water. Either way, I had to politely ignore and headcanon most of it to get any actual role-playing satisfaction.

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

#22

Post by snozolli »

I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them.

So yeah, pretty great story scripting, voice acting, and character animation, but it was heavily undercut by some core mechanics in my opinion.

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

#23

Post by tekla »

snozolli wrote: post #22

I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them. S…

The game warns you before the final quest though no?

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

#24

Post by fauxpause_ »

Barrin92 wrote: post #20

>" Be sure to make your consequences clear and visible. When consequences are too subtle, players won’t see them. Bring back stuff from earlier in the game at the least expected time. Design for the visibility of consequences; investing in something not telegraphed well is mostly not worth it. Figure out how to the player visibly see what the consequences will be." Disagree with this and I think interestingly enough…

Yeah count me as someone who thought Elden Ring’s quests sucked hard. 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.

Like… you could have been able to do something really light touch like ask the merchants if they’ve heard any rumors on where characters are.

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

#25

Post by snozolli »

tekla wrote: post #23
snozolli wrote: post #22

I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them. S…

The game warns you before the final quest though no?

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.

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

#26

Post by bigger_cheese »

Dalewyn wrote: post #10
uejfiweun wrote: post #2

To tell you the truth, playing these games taught me that I really don't care for quest-dependent games. I feel like CDPR games have no way to interact with their pretty worlds outside of the heavily scripted quests. You can generally just go anywhere you want, take anything, even loot the entire office of the captain of the army, and nobody even reacts. Contrast this to Bethesda games, where the entire game is an el…

I realized this rather spectacularly with MMORPGs. I've long been a fan of open world MMOs with basically next to no mandatory quests. Think Runescape, Ragnarok Online, MapleStory, etc. Loved them, and Ragnarok Online is to this day still among my top favorite games of all time. One day, Guild Wars 2 dropped to great hype and fanfare and I bought it to try it out. Good fucking god damn hell in a shit basket, I fuckin…

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.

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

#27

Post by the__alchemist »

Barrin92 wrote: post #20

>" Be sure to make your consequences clear and visible. When consequences are too subtle, players won’t see them. Bring back stuff from earlier in the game at the least expected time. Design for the visibility of consequences; investing in something not telegraphed well is mostly not worth it. Figure out how to the player visibly see what the consequences will be." Disagree with this and I think interestingly enough…

Alpha Protocol was another good example of doing this well.

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

#28

Post by TriangleCoconut »

Dalewyn wrote: post #10
uejfiweun wrote: post #2

To tell you the truth, playing these games taught me that I really don't care for quest-dependent games. I feel like CDPR games have no way to interact with their pretty worlds outside of the heavily scripted quests. You can generally just go anywhere you want, take anything, even loot the entire office of the captain of the army, and nobody even reacts. Contrast this to Bethesda games, where the entire game is an el…

I realized this rather spectacularly with MMORPGs. I've long been a fan of open world MMOs with basically next to no mandatory quests. Think Runescape, Ragnarok Online, MapleStory, etc. Loved them, and Ragnarok Online is to this day still among my top favorite games of all time. One day, Guild Wars 2 dropped to great hype and fanfare and I bought it to try it out. Good fucking god damn hell in a shit basket, I fuckin…

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?

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

#29

Post by Aeolun »

gambiting wrote: post #6
Isinlor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like simulation-like open world games, but Witcher 3 was one of the very few games with a good story. To be honest I think the only one that I cared about. Especially the bloody baron questline was amazing storytelling. Heart of Stone was also great story based on Polish ballad Mr. Twardowski. Cyberpunk is unfortunately nowhere near as good in terms of the story as the Witcher.

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…

> memorable side stories

I struggle to remember any aside from the cowboy detective (because he was so unimaginably annoying) and the magic taxi.

Magix taxi was fun, but the ending was fairly unsatisfying.

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

#30

Post by freeone3000 »

nxpub wrote: post #19
rossmohax wrote: post #16

I thought Witcher 3 had a good story until I played Disco Elysium.

I can imagine Disco Elysium with ChatGPT instances per skill/object (for those who didn’t play DE - every thing, including skills according to their points, speaks with you and this gameplay mechanic is amazing)

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.
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