Design a game, and you are bound to find plenty who don’t like it. They might hate the art style, or the gameplay mechanics, the story or the cutscenes. Now you can take your game and respond proactively to criticism by adjusting the design. Little by little it will transform into a bland average of the favourite games of your critics. To improve game design you can’t just clip back all the bits the critics hate – no, you have to carefully prune and nurture them into something worthwhile.
I’ve been working on mission design this week, starting with the simplest of mission types: Goto, Fetch and Kill. If you listened to the critics bashing these simple missions in RPGs and MMOs you would think that players hate them with a passion and yet they provide the basis for generation after generation of game. There is certainly a strong critical emphasis on boring, pointless and repetitious quests that are necessary to advance. But what would these games be like without mirco-quests to encourage the player to roam, fight and explore? Well, probably a grind-fest on random encounters between boss battles. But the situation is not much improved if questing itself becomes a grind activity.
However as the care taken over these quests increases, when they become integrated into the larger gameworld, more complex in length and twists, and most importantly of all if they offer choices of how to achieve or even rebel against the quest goals – then they they can become an enriching part of the game rather than a cynical length booster.
Another alternative is to clearly mark the micro-quests as optional activities, and let the player choose to use them as an opportunity to advance. For example in role-play Sim games you often have to choose what activity your avatar takes each day, and the choice will result in a fairly predictable outcome of money or stats improvements. The choices are the same each day, and it becomes more of a meta-strategic game choosing a good mix of activities than a test of how well you perform each task.
In Spice Road, there are three kinds of mission. The first is a veiled hints system – so if you are bewilldered by the scale and opportunities available in the sandbox, the hint mission will find you a suitable trade route, or exploration area – nothing you couldn’t have done on your own, but adding structure for those who need it. The second covers reactive and progressive missions to protect and advance your companies towns and trade routes. For example, if a bandit camp is reducing the safety of one of your caravan routes a mission is generated after a caravan is lost urging you to seek and destroy the bandits. Or if your building requires a skilled workman to progress a mission might spawn to help you find one. Lastly there are tactical missions to progress the causes of the nations and guilds. These are more complex nested missions trees that offer useful rewards in the way of new units, skills and access to new parts of the map – however you must pick your allegences carefully as many missions are at the expense of other factions.
Fortunately as a true sandbox, you are not tied to any set of missions and can achieve the same results through your own cunning, persistence and might. The missions are there to compliment the gameplay.