Quest (gaming)

A quest in a gaming context, especially in MMORPGs, is generally a task or series of tasks, which a player or group of players may complete in order to gain a reward. Rewards may include experience points, loot, spells, in-game currency, faction hits, or any combination of the above.

Overview of quests

Typical quests involve killing a set number of creatures or collecting a list of specific items. Some quests may take only a few minutes or hours to complete, while others may take several days or weeks. Often, the larger the reward, the longer the quests takes to finish, and it is common for a quest to require a player's character to be a certain level before they are allowed to begin.

Some games, like EverQuest, have certain quests that can only be completed by player characters of a specific class or race. In turn, the rewards for those quests are often only useable by them. Other quests are doable by anyone and their rewards useable by anyone.

Furthermore, some quests may only be completed once per character for as long as they play the game. Other quests may be done several times, and still others can be completed as many times as a player likes. A common type of quest that is allowed to be done over and over is one that yields a reward of faction with a particular group of NPCs. In EverQuest and other games, "building up" or "raising" faction with certain NPCs opens up the door or, makes available, new quests and safe passage through the lands they inhabit.

Another type of quest found in MMORPGs such as EverQuest, EverQuest II, RuneScape, or World of Warcraft involve the use of trade skills. Generally, in these types of quests the player is required to obtain raw materials (e.g. chopping or gathering wood for carpentry or fletching, mining ore for smithing, etc.) for their specific trade skill(s) and combine them together with other (sometimes "storebought") items to produce useable items to wear (clothes), equip (weapons) or to sell to other players or NPC merchants for game currency.

Questing to obtain rewards or loot is one of the main attractions to MMORPGs because it gives players a feeling or sense of accomplishment. Items awarded to a player through a quest may also be tradeable, providing a secondary financial reward when the item is sold. Some quests however restrict their rewards to the player completing the quest (no-drop or soulbound).

Side-quest

A side-quest is an optional section of a video game, usually a RPG. It is a smaller mission within a larger storyline. As a general rule, the completion of side-quests are not essential for the game to be finished, but bring various benefits to the player characters. Side-quests often give high amounts of experience points, additional or superior equipment (for example, the Ultima Weapon in various Final Fantasy games), treasures, background information, or new playable characters. Examples includes non-player characters encountered outside a town, who might ask the player to escort them to a location, retrieve a lost object or so forth.

Sometimes side-quests even unlock new characters within the game, enhancing the game experience. Some games, such as Knights of the Old Republic, include side quests that exist only for the purpose of character development, so that the player may learn more about the NPCs who have joined his party, or otherwise give the player a better understanding of the game's storyline or setting (although in this example, some sidequests provide items otherwise unavailable). Torment particularly relied on such quests, with much of the back-story exposed in heart to hearts with party members. A drawback of this approach when used extensively is that the story is obscured if too much is hidden in character dialogues the player must remember to access or even arrange to "unlock". Notable criticism of Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was levelled at what were seen as plot holes, when they could be filled in with conscious (but unobvious) player effort.

While some mini-quests are often little more than annoyances, game-designers will often use them to inject some humour, as in the case of the scroll of Icarian Flight from Morrowind. Game series such as The Elder Scrolls, Baldur's Gate, Fallout and Legend of Mana are primarily or almost entirely based on side-quests, creating many possibilities of development to the game.

Multiquest

In some multiplayer games, fetch quests can be completed by two or more player characters turning in the required items. This provides an additional dimension to questing, as players who collect rare quest pieces can either sell their participation in the quest or assist friends with completion of more involved quests. Only one player gets the reward for participating in the quest, though.

Quest chain

A quest chain is a group of quests that are completed in sequence. Completion of each quest is prerequisite to receiving the next quest in the chain. Quests usually increase in difficulty as a player progresses through the chain. The quests typically reveal a single plotline in stages that explains the reason for the quests.

Types of quests

Fetch quest

The fetch quest is a somewhat derogatory name for a common sort of quest seen in many video game role-playing games (RPGs) and adventure games.

There are several highly recognizable stages to the standard fetch quest:

Your party is told to go find an item, usually rare, usually obtainable in only one place.
You must travel to and through that place, which is more often than not a dungeon. You'll probably have to fight a boss to escape with the item.
You must return the item to the person who assigned the quest, or take it where they told you.
You are usually rewarded, in addition to the experience points, in some way: either a power-up, money, access to a new area in the game, or an item for another fetch quest.
- Optionally, the party can choose not to fulfill the quest, but keep the item. The party may decide that the item, being usually a magic weapon, armor or amulet, is more valuable than the quest reward. In some cases, breaking the quest agreement may be a more appropriate course of action for the party's alignment. The player will lose the reward but will benefit from the item's powers.

Sometimes fetch quests nested within fetch quests describe the entire plot of a game.

It is notable that in relatively recent adventure games, when fetch quests had already established themselves as clichés, the protagonist seemed too bored and tired of them, replying to characters he met like 'Oh not again, I knew it. Don't tell me you want me to go and bring you something in exchange for this ^*, will you?' somehow self-satirizing the game itself.

Fetch quests are ubiquitous in RPGs because they are a plausible way to force the player to explore dungeons and advance the story. However their universal use has caused annoyance with some gamers, particularly the simplistic case of Fetch quests, sometimes known as Fedex Quests

Fedex quest

(also known as an Errand-boy Quest) A Fedex Quest is a common or slang term for a type of mission in a computer role-playing game. It is named after the company Fedex, based on the task at hand.

In a Fedex Quest, the player is essentially given one of two options:

Go to Place A, find me Object B and return with it.
Take Object B to Place A, and return to me.

Sometimes, a FedEx Quest can be the beginning of the game; a simple quest which is interrupted by events which will lead the player character through the main plot.

Reactions to FedEx quests

Some gamers feel that the simple nature of FedEx quests - or over reliance on them - is a sign of a poor role playing game. Instead of formulating interesting ways for a player to explore the game world, these gamers say, the developers instead use Fedex Quests in order to get the player to explore certain areas.

It is argued that, without simple quests such as Fedex Quests, a great deal of time is wasted in-game.

Common examples of FedEx quests

In the Orc campaign of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, the action begins with the main player being asked to deliver a note to a town leader. The note itself is never mentioned again in the game, and only exists to provide a reason why an otherwise solitary character would enter a town moments after badmouthing civilization.

The popular computer role playing game Morrowind uses this form of quest often. Most notable is a quest where the player must return with items in order to be considered worthy of a title. Like many of these quests in the game, the player is allowed to keep the items he finds.

The RPG-satire program called Progress Quest is filled with a great deal of Fedex Quests, even though the player literally does none of it.

Collect the pieces plot/quest

A collect the pieces plot is a stock plot in which the objective is to reassemble some item (which usually has mystical powers) which has been broken up in some fashion. A common object in a collect the pieces plot is a crystal. The "collect the pieces" stock plot is particularly useful for creating a long, segmented story such as those found in serials and video games, because each segment brings with it unique challenges as the story's characters attempt to locate a single piece of the puzzle. The protagonist(s) are given this overarching plot as the initial quest, and collecting each piece becomes an additional quest. Usually there is some penultimate quest at the conclusion of collecting all the pieces.

There are two main forms of collect the pieces plots:

Total recovery: A total loss of the item, which results in many sub quests for the pieces. Each sub-quest can have a completely different storyline to it, although each ends in a recovery of one of the pieces.

Examples: The Triforce in The Legend of Zelda series, the Star Maps in Knights of the Old Republic.

Partial recovery: Only part of the item is missing, but the whole still cannot function without the missing portion. This is differentiated from a fetch quest as the objective item is missing and needs to be replaced, as opposed to retrieving an item that was never in possession.

Examples: The water-chip in Fallout.

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