Add diversity in mission/quest design

[LegateLaniusThe2nd]

Add diversity in mission/quest design

All quests in the Witcher 3 boiled down to go here, witcher senses, follow a trail, fight, go back. This is pretty lazy and lousy quest design especially when you make me do it for 100 hours. No more of this in Cyberpunk long open world games especially need attention and care in terms of its mission design to not feel stale. Something like GTA 5 different options to approach to heists was good but i'm just spitballing here.

 

[Suhiira]

Ummm ...
If you're talking about most of the "Witcher gets hired to get rid of local monsters" quests ... well ... yeah. Get the job, find the general location, track the critter, deal with it, collect pay. What else would you expect from this type of quest?

As to the other few hundred in the game ... very few were of that type. You did play the game ... right?
http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher_3:_Wild_Hunt_-_Guide_to_Main_Quests
Which of those quests was as you describe?

 

[Zagor-Te-Nay]

As a mechanic it was overused, definitely, though "All quests"?...this is typical example of Internet " I must make a point!!!" hyperbole.

For a game of this size and a sandbox, I prefer gameplay mechanics designed to be as open and interactive with the environment as possible ( Deus Ex/DOS), instead of approach with classical rpgs like New Vegas.

 

[Sneky]

All quests in the Witcher 3 boiled down to go here, witcher senses, follow a trail, fight, go back. This is pretty lazy and lousy quest design especially when you make me do it for 100 hours. No more of this in Cyberpunk long open world games especially need attention and care in terms of its mission design to not feel stale. Something like GTA 5 different options to approach to heists was good but i'm just spitballing here.

I think in terms of quests they should only follow their previous games because they are doing it the best in the industry right now imho, at least in AAA market for sure, i dont find anything interesting or revolutionary in terms of GTA quest design, not only they are linear, without any dilemma and consequences but also pretty boring compared to Witcher 3,Witcher 2 or some other classic RPGs. Ofc different story is Witcher Senses which u are using not only in quests but also when exploring and finding new stuff, it's game mechanic designed for casual gamers to help them not get lost in the world. They should make something totally different for CP2077, something less intrusive.

 

[WalteriusMaximus]

All quests in the Witcher 3 boiled down to go here, witcher senses, follow a trail, fight, go back. This is pretty lazy and lousy quest design especially when you make me do it for 100 hours. No more of this in Cyberpunk long open world games especially need attention and care in terms of its mission design to not feel stale. Something like GTA 5 different options to approach to heists was good but i'm just spitballing here.

Your evaluation of Witcher 3 quest loops are completely inaccurate. Show me a single game in existence that includes full voice-overs, an open world and fleshed out characters with more variety in quest progression, I dare you! Almost 99% of games rely on pre-defined gameplay loops around which quests are built. This is simply not the case with Witcher 3. Instead, gameplay loops have been custom built to accommodate the stories they want to tell.
Of course there are things like Witcher contracts that will exhibit a similar pattern because that is the nature of Witcher work: accept a contract, investigate, find clues, kill the monster.
You can't expect quests or activities in a Witcher game that is out of character with the game world.

 

[CodeJBDA]

I think the OP is right, the missions

 

[CodeJBDA]

I think the OP is right, the missions were recycled, but they made sense and I didn't care. I mean, when it comes to hunting monsters, down, you'd probably have a method and that method would be used continuously as it worked. Where the witcher 3 wins the day is in how much detail and care CDPR put into them, there was rarely a mission that didn't have something at stake for someone and that for me gave the missions a lot more purpose than other games. I'm all for having more variety, but only if that variety FITS in to the illusion of the world. I don't want to have to do a mission because it sounds cool. Make it work in the world.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Witcher 3 did feel repetitive questwise (it did highlight the better spots, though). That and every time (after the first few) I saw the prompt "use your witcher senses to win" I uncontrollably yawned out loud.
Some of the reasons it took me a year to finish the game.

Some mechanical and narrative diversity would be a welcome sight in CP2077.

 

[Meccanical]

My hope is that for Cyberpunk2077, the fact that their will be different roles your characters can play alone will make for far more variety than in the Witcher.

The Witcher was fairly limited by the fact that you were locked into a very set role, Geralt of Rivia, a witcher and nothing else.

 

[NewVigiL]

Wow people, so how complex exactly do we want these missions to be? Oooh I know? Let's have a side quest where we find out Freddie prinze Jr was cloned and he lost his wallet so we need to scour the cloning facility with a full on investigation and ask numerous npc's if they've seen the creator of the clone program anywhere , this leads into multiple story threads involving strip poker, murder investigation, illuminati conspiracies, and then comparing different types of leather too determine if his wallet is a unique expensive brand.

 

[Suhiira]

Witcher 3 did feel repetitive questwise (it did highlight the better spots, though).

This is sort of an inevitable side effect of an open world game.

You want a big open world to game in it needs content or it's just empty space.
To create that much custom/unique content would be nearly impossible unless you want a $200 game with a 10-year development cycle.

 

[WalteriusMaximus]

Wow people, so how complex exactly do we want these missions to be? Oooh I know? Let's have a side quest where we find out Freddie prinze Jr was cloned and he lost his wallet so we need to scour the cloning facility with a full on investigation and ask numerous npc's if they've seen the creator of the clone program anywhere , this leads into multiple story threads involving strip poker, murder investigation, illuminati conspiracies, and then comparing different types of leather too determine if his wallet is a unique expensive brand.

Indeed! People are so easily spoiled! They forget what an enormous game Witcher 3 already is and compared to games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition, the quests are definitely anything but repetitive.
And now people are talking about having even more diverse quests in Cyberpunk depending on your character's role....even if that "role" would be a choice between 2, it would necessarily mean having double the amount of content of Witcher 3 in order to satisfy people's needs? A game like that has never been created and it would probably take upwards of a decade to bring it into being.

People forget that there are actual people having to craft this stuff! It takes time and resources and in the meantime there is context to a story-driven game that needs to be taken into consideration.

I would really love to see some suggestions of what would have constituted to more diverse quests in Witcher 3. I would really really love to see some suggestions....

 

[Suhiira]

Yep ... concrete suggestion are useful ... generalizations are relatively useless.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

You want a big open world to game in it needs content or it's just empty space.

Generally speaking... Repetition is inevitable - some is acceptable, some perhaps even wanted, but too much is too much is too much. I don't even want a big open world with mostly filler content to begin with, though. It always goes bonkenrs on some level.

That aside, what I thought W3 had a problem with was... both. Kinda lame on content side (aside from some more notable exceptions) and too much empty space, consistent/realistic as it might have felt. A lot of time there was this odd feeling of "This bundle of busywork here is here because there needs to be something here because there's 1 kilometer of nothing in all directions around this bundle here".

The game would've felt a lot better if it was structure more like Witcher 2 (though with free travel between places instead of story lockdowns).

Be that as it may. This isn't the Witcher board, so I'll stop here with that line of thought before I start rambling.

 

[Suhiira]

Well, I certainly don't want Fallout 4s "solution" of a battle every 10m.
I actually thought drowners and wolves were too frequent in W3.
But, as always, we each have our own opinion on what's to much/little.

But I do agree a fast travel option is necessary, to be required to spend 15 minutes crossing empty, or already cleared map over and over truly sux.

 

[LegateLaniusThe2nd]

Your evaluation of Witcher 3 quest loops are completely inaccurate. Show me a single game in existence that includes full voice-overs, an open world and fleshed out characters with more variety in quest progression, I dare you! Almost 99% of games rely on pre-defined gameplay loops around which quests are built. This is simply not the case with Witcher 3. Instead, gameplay loops have been custom built to accommodate the stories they want to tell.
Of course there are things like Witcher contracts that will exhibit a similar pattern because that is the nature of Witcher work: accept a contract, investigate, find clues, kill the monster.
You can't expect quests or activities in a Witcher game that is out of character with the game world.

I guess you're right for the Witcher 3 but my point still stands for Cyberpunk which isn't limited to set character like Geralt. CDPR should have the a lot more flexibility and freedom on the gameplay loop in Cyberpunk.

 

[LegateLaniusThe2nd]

I think in terms of quests they should only follow their previous games because they are doing it the best in the industry right now imho, at least in AAA market for sure, i dont find anything interesting or revolutionary in terms of GTA quest design, not only they are linear, without any dilemma and consequences but also pretty boring compared to Witcher 3,Witcher 2 or some other classic RPGs. Ofc different story is Witcher Senses which u are using not only in quests but also when exploring and finding new stuff, it's game mechanic designed for casual gamers to help them not get lost in the world. They should make something totally different for CP2077, something less intrusive.

GTA 5 mission design was pretty great you had different approaches to each heist but the story was linear. This didn't really matter because it wasn't an rpg so it was fine.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Well, I certainly don't want Fallout 4s "solution" of a battle every 10m.

Nor woud I. Obviously.

That's partly why I still (likely in vain) advocate for (relatively) large hubs in an abstracted "worldmap" instead of a large sandbox map that either feels too crammed or too empty.

 

[Sardukhar]

Nor woud I. Obviously.

That's partly why I still (likely in vain) advocate for (relatively) large hubs in an abstracted "worldmap" instead of a large sandbox map that either feels too crammed or too empty.

Like a Deus Ex Human Revolution done right. And I don't mean Mankind Divided, which missed that. I mean, 3, maybe 4 really flavourful mission hubs, Night City being by far the largest with a solid 40 hours of good rich gameplay, and then a few smaller ones, with 5 hours of equally good gameplay per hub.

You want to add in another 50 or 100 hours of non-necessary gameplay and side quests, great! Just don't make it filler-stuff.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

Like a Deus Ex Human Revolution done right. And I don't mean Mankind Divided, which missed that. I mean, 3, maybe 4 really flavourful mission hubs, Night City being by far the largest with a solid 40 hours of good rich gameplay, and then a few smaller ones, with 5 hours of equally good gameplay per hub.

You want to add in another 50 or 100 hours of non-necessary gameplay and side quests, great! Just don't make it filler-stuff.

That'd do just fine.

I was thinking more that the 4 or so hubs would all be within Night City (with free travel between them, narrative interconnections and the whole nine yards) to give the sense of scope, but all the same I guess.