Creating meaningful and engaging quests

Posted by user384918 on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by user384918
Published on 2010-07-21T06:50:40Z Indexed on 2012/09/06 9:50 UTC
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quests

Kill X number of monsters.
Gather Y number of items (usually by killing X number of monsters).
Deliver this NPC's package to this other NPC who is far far away.
etc.

Yeah. These quests are easy to implement, easy to complete, but also very boring after the first few times. It's kind of disingenuous to call them quests really; they're more like chores or errands.

What ideas for quests have people seen that were well designed, immersive, and rewarding? What specific things did the developers do that made it so?

What are some ideas you would use (or have used) to make quests more interesting?

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