Quest / story design: How to avoid the "Am I the only one who does things?" - feeling?

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

Good evening everybody!

 

I am currently working on a "custom worldspace mod" that will also have it's own 'main quest' and some side quests.

But I am currently facing a huge question:

 

How can I avoid the feeling that "the player character is the only one that gets things done"?

 

Because that's what I feel when playing Fallout 4 (or Skyrim for that matter).

It feels like the player-character is the only one who ever does stuff and gets things done.

 

And I want to avoid that.

Because it makes the world feel very "static", like everything that needs to be done "waits" for the player character to show up and nobody else "takes initiative" and does stuff.

I mean that is fitting for "generic people" like settlers who have enough to do already with just "keeping the place going".

But for more "interesting characters" (people that play an important role in the story) it feels weird that they would just "wait for the player to show up", then do their part, and then go back to beeing "static" (in terms of story).

 

 

I once played around with the idea of having multiple playable characters, kind of like in GTA5, but I couldn't get it to work.

Something like that would have been an interesting solution for this problem, but like I said, it didn't work, sadly.

 

 

So, does anybody have any other ideas on how to solve this problem?

If so, let me know here!

[PJMail]

When I tried this it seemed to me that the game had been built this way, probably because it limited processing requirements for lower end PC's and Consoles so widened their audience.

When NPC's '3D unload' (when player leaves the cell) they all freeze, so NPC scripts and AI only seem to function 'when the player is around'.

I found I could 'prod' an NPC to continue their action while unloaded via playidle, but this required timers and was only suitable for very limited activities.

I suspect you would have to do something like Sim Settlements and 'compute' the stage your NPC's are at so you can set them up to have seemingly 'progressed' to that point while you were away. The memory etc allocated to NPC activity and scripts is very limited so I would not try increasing 3D load area to cover the entire game!

 

No doubt you know all this - but others who read this may not.

If you solve this (even just for people with better PC's) we would all enjoy this game much more!

Edited February 2, 2021 by PJMail

[SKKmods]

The principle issue with 3rd parties getting things done is "so what, and why should I care" user experience.

 

Consider settlement attacks that resolve off screen, one of the most hated functions in Fallout 4 which I explored developing settlement attack system:

 

 

A [ The settlement successfully defended itself ] = meh, whatever nothing to see here, zero user experience.

 

B [ The settlement successfully defended itself, but stuff was damaged ] = now I have to take responsibility to clean up someone elses mess.

 

C [ The settlement failed to defend itself and you lost control ] = now I have to take responsibility to clean up someone elses mess. again.

 

 

So there is no good user experience for processes that can have [ good | neutral | bad ] outcomes. Yes you can automate cleaning up the messes, but that just makes them all like case A. The player has to do something to be engaged and that is either pointless make work aka GRIND or actually getting things done.

 

For single/linear state outcomes like sim settlements actors "building" their own plots, super clever stuff but the user engagment is similar to assigning a farmer to a plant and making mutfruit appear in a workshop. Is that "getting things done" ?

 

If you have a use-case that could work, lets consider it.

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

I am not talking about settlement stuff ...

I am talking about "quest design" ...

 

In the vanilla game, it is set up the way that the player character is the only one that CAN do quest-relevant things (because he/she is the only one that has access to the institute, for example).

When I said "all events seem to wait for the player to arrive and thus the world seems static" I did not mean settlement attacks.

I meant quests. For example, you will never encounter an NPC in the vanilla game that says something like "hey, I am on my way to <insert place> to do <insert something quest related>".

 

I don't really have any "vanilla quest" example of what I am trying to explain here, because there is no "use case" in the vanilla game for this concept.

(Except maybe Preston going out to help settlements instead of sending you all the time, that would be something like I what I am talking about)

 

I know that this would make it "less exciting" for the player, but it would make it feel more "real", in my opinion ...

 

 

I don't want to implement things like this into the vanilla game, that would just be too much trouble.

But if I ever finish my worldspace mod that I am working on, it would be cool if it had things like this in it ...

[NoCashNoExp]

There's actually a very cool mod called Minutemen (Radiant) Squads that allows you to assign squads to the minutemen quests. The problem with these kinds of mods honestly is that it's just a couple of button clicks on some UI. There's no player interaction at all. In the case of this mod, it's actually fixing an annoying issue in vanilla FO4 in a nice way.

 

Let's say your new mod will allow Piper to complete some side quest on her own, how would you implement this? Do you have to go talk to her and tell her to do this quest? If that's the case what's, it's still some UI button click and the quest is magically done after some time. In that case, it's best just to leave the quest uncompleted because the player didn't really care about doing the quest in the first place so they clicked a couple of UI buttons to get the quest done. She just goes and does it on her own? How would you represent to the player that Piper did a quest on her own? There needs to be some kind of visual change in the world to indicate the quest is done instead of sending a boring Debug message "Piper finished quest X". What if the player wanted to do that quest themselves? There's really a lot of headaches and issues that spiral from this concept.

Edited February 3, 2021 by NoCashNoExp

[SKKmods]

Kindof a forlorn hope, but here goes.

 

Just because my example involved settlement quests does not restrict the issue of "I dont care about stuff I dont do" to settlements, its a fundamental design psychology which appiles to any activity which you can wrap up in a quest (or other task based game mechanic).

 

If you dont have a "use case" in mind to test your theory against then there is no case to prosecute. M'lud.

[PJMail]

Your points are undeniable, but I wish there was a middle ground, between the current 'player does/initiates everything' style and 'click the button and sit back' (Sim City) style game...

It would have to be on a case by case basis - example is Sim Settlements works because people do not want to have to micromanage everything (and want to feel things happen without them).

Personally I would like that sort of thing extended to the entire worldspace (New settlements spring up, Gunners setting up bases and terrorizing an area, settlements destroyed) so that you actually felt that 'go and defend xxx' was actually important - if you didn't then everything will eventually to turn to shite.

I know - go play multiplayer you will say... Middle ground. Things happening (perhaps not quests) in the background to keep it 'real'-ish.

I like seeing those caravans on the road - a simple thing that isn't necessary (they could appear at settlements), but adds to the realism for me.

Even attacks not waiting for you arrive - and actually progressed as if you were watching (perhaps get a random amount of 'actual' progression before you arrive, definitely no 'roll the dice' resolution) would add to the feeling the world happens without you around...

[SKKmods]

Another actual experienced based observation based on my random encounter manager which can spawn hostile teams which "fight" each other to add action and ambiance in the world.

 

If that fight is allowed to do damage as soon as the cells/actors load at 10K player range, it will usually be over by the time the player gets there with either a hostile or friendly team left standing, plus a bunch of dead bodies for free loot. In UX testing the feedback was "thats really crap and pointless".

 

So I added a mechanic that they only start doing damage to each other when they are visible to the player and the feeback was mostly "meh". But that had to persist as allowing the player to wander through the middle of an endless gunfight is also dumb.

 

So I added a mechanic that they only start doing damage to each other when the player gets involved and lands a hit on one of the actors. The UX feeback was totally posative, which concludes that unless the player is involved, it doesnt really matter.

 

And, yes I put more time and effort into UX research for my solutons than the tech development.

[YouDoNotKnowMyName]

I just realized that we already kind of have something like I described:

 

The "random encounter system"!

 

It's not really something "quest related" but it gives the player a feeling that "other stuff" is going on in the "world" ...

(I completly forgot about that beeing a thing, because I have almost every single "random encounter location" memorized from playing the game so much, so they don't feel that "random" any more ...)

 

 

As for "quest stuff":

There would be the feeling of "the clock is always ticking" ...

If the player chooses to do quest A, then "not doing quest B" at that time would impace other things in the world ...

If the player instead would to quest B, (and not do quest A right away), that would have a different impact on what is happening ...

 

The player is just one person! They can't do EVERYTHING in time.

They would need to set prioritys, decide what is more important, and those choices should have concequences ...

 

I don't mean that the player should be like Preston and do nothing at all and still "be able to 'complete' all quests".

Edited February 3, 2021 by YouDoNotKnowMyName

[PJMail]

Wow SKK, that is some serious testing and effort!

That explains how you developed those quite flexible encounter systems in your Combat Stalkers and Settlement attack mods!

I had your Settlement attack system disabled while I was off modding (it was too effective when you are distracted) and promptly forgot about it - my bad.

I must be one of those rare people who would have been happy for a settlement attack to play out when If I didn't get there in time - as long as it happened 'for real' (used the defenses I set up rather than 'roll a dice').

Did you ever consider using a 'failure to respond' (and resulting settlement attack) as a trigger for your 'hostile workshops' mod? Seems logical to me...

 

YouDoNotKnowMyName - did the Combat Stalkers mod not resolve your issues with the existing 'now not so random' encounter system?