Since 1996, the Diablo franchise has tried its claim to the role-playing market. Although it is arguably classified as an ARPG, developers have tried bringing the player deeper in to Sanctuary with extra side quests since the beginning. Diablo I notably gave players options for a number of alternative and rewarding side quests, lending additional lore (shown in in-game, audible books) and even some extra mini-bosses to the chaos of subterranean Tristram.
Though these were arguably lessened from a player standpoint in Diablo II, developers nonetheless gave an effort to add in a plethora of mini-quests that added things such as tiny bits of lore, skill points, and stat points to your character as well as special one-time privileges such as imbuing and inscribing your name on items.
Since the beginning, we have known that Diablo III will contain a goodly number of extra quests, some that are even character-driven (as noted here where Jay Wilson says that the Monk's tattoos may be affected by the storyline):
In order to accomplish this, Bashiok explained that plug-in areas of maps would serve as mediums for randomized or extra quests:
Official Blizzard Quote:
To keep some bits of random in there though we have a bunch of small, medium, and large pieces cut out of them. In those cut out pieces the game can then place the randomized "adventure" sets. They could be artistic in nature (a fountain, an abandoned cart), they could spawn extra enemies, or they could spawn quests.
Will these be improvements from the previous games, however, or will they continue along the lines of Diablo II, where most simply skipped the majority of minor quests to get through the game? How can they be made better? What would be ideal to take from the old games and enhance with the new?
From what I think I understand, the Diablo 3 side quests will be more generic than the ones in the previous two games. They will be less about lore and will be much more randomly generated than the ones from Diablo. They'll offer item and skill boosts, diversion, and maybe some atmosphere as well but won't really provide tasty tidbtis of lore.
Correct me if I'm wrong though. Maybe this isn't Blizzard's intent for side-quests in Diablo 3 and I've got it all wrong. Certainly in an ideal world, side-quests that offer everything listed above as well as lore would be great but that simply isn't possible yet in games.
So on topic, I am hoping for a LOT of random quests because I myself want to do every inch of the game and I think a lot of people found diablo to be like that, they wanted to find those side areas with gruesome sights and events. There will always be the people that speed through the game and they can just be pushed to the side. That's how they want to experience it.
Fingers crossed for a massive world and 500 quests.
As for rewards though, I surely hope they don't offer equipment like WoW did (choose from 4 reasonable items). I'd much prefer to be offered gold and be on my way with the exception of a select few quests that would offer a rare items useless to an npc. But again, not a selection of weaponry. In fact, I'd go as far as saying they should have a 1 item reward but even have that randomised to an extent (1 item from 30).
:-)
The only thing I want here is side quests to be fun, not chores. WoW is a perfect examples of what chores are.
This forum name is a misnomer, SFJake. We post stuff in here that, although it may not be news, since we all know news is scarce and can't possibly be posted every two days, we hope will generate activity and constructive conversation.
But they have pretty much explained that random quests in D3 will be the same as random quests in D1 were, with the difference being that you obtain the quests on field as well as towns, and the fact that you can now actually fail doing a quest because there will be some challenge involved.
One interesting thing about these side quests being in plug in map chunks, it seems to open up a lot of possibilities. Blizzard might be able to add plug in map chunk side quests through a patch or something. There could be map chunks containing side quests that only appear at certain times of the day / month / year, or once you've reached a certain level. I think that might be cool and fresh to the diablo series, and be a way to add exciting content and repeatability. I'm all for it.
I wonder how random they will be though? I mean will it be possible to have a quest that only happens once in a great while; or will it be if you go through an area enough you will eventually get all the random quests? I think it would be neat to be able to say, "I completed all the random quests for this area." Another part of me thinks though, maybe that would get stale quick.
With this in mind, I think that the quests need to provide these things. Instead of getting exp by doing 1000 Baal runs in a row, we would do particular types of quests. Or instead of mfing Meph 1000 times in a row we would do other types of quests. We would be pursuing the same goals, but doing it it a way that provides more variety and randomness.
simple
That idea you got of rare quests is cool enough...
I mean, Items can be rare, so why not quests? Right...
Plus that just means you won't be going through all of them in a month's time.
And with quests being randomized, I think we should be getting a couple of hundred of them, no?
Not all of them being radically different, but some being other variants of the same quests.
(that's just me wishing out loud... o_O)
Making a choice of a character and have specified quest for them is something I would like to see!
Just think about it! In Diablo 2 some of the people said diffrent to each class, but not all of them.
D3 will have interaction with more people and altso added the sidequests for each class specific. Hell, more of anything that made D2 stick out - and stil have the feeling of Diablo 1.
I need to write to understand it people, this is gonna be legendary in "ARPG".
This would be actually a large quest chain of 10+ quests that starts at low levels and only ends at level 90 or so. This quests would tell a personal goal of your character class (like monk and the tattoo thing or the barbarian trying to rebuild his home).
This would really makes the game better in many aspects imo. First it would adds more deph to your character because you're envolved in his story and all this without removing the hacking aspect of the game. Second it would adds a ton of replay (to complete all the quests of the game you must get all classes at high level).
Another types of seide quests would also be nice, especially large chains with really good storybehind. Anyway, imo Quality>Quantity. No matter if you have one million quests in the game if all are the same (get 20 monkey eye in the monkey cave, etc...).
No it isn't.
In Act III there were three completely optional quests and three mandatory ones (50/50)- the optional ones were the Golden Bird, Lam Esen's Tome, and the Gidbinn. In order, they gave you 20 health points (quite useless, really; most attacks by this stage in the game inflict way over that, especially in NM and Hell), 5 stat points (this is semi-useful depending on if you need it or not), and a rare ring, which usually, unfortunately, sucks
In Act I, all of the quests were optional but killing Andariel. You don't even need to rescue Cain- all it does is give you a ring from Akara and free identification (in all following acts, if you don't do this quest he charges 100 gold per item). So that's 5 optional quests out of six.
In Act II, Radament is the only side quest (+1 Skill Point, reduced vendor prices after you talk to Atma).
Act IV, out of the three quests the only mandatory one is killing Diablo. And in Act V the only mandatory quests are defeating the Ancients and killing Baal.
(Mandatory meaning they are essential to progress in the game.)
Besides, I refuse that any important in-game lore be out of reach for anyone that only completes Normal. I've known quite a few that never stepped in Nightmare in D2, and instead just made another character and started over (the idea of completing the game "again" with the same character, even if it was harder, was boring as hell to them).
If there are unique quests that lasts a long time, or unique nightmare/hell quests, their impact on the Lore should be minimal, or they should even be detached from it (uber tristram).
Anything permanent is worth having. 5 stat points and 20 hit points is 15 stats and 60 hit points accross all difficulties. Sure, its not a lot on its own, but no point in missing these out.
That's like saying just because every monster in Hell can drop an HR you should kill them all. Your chances are so infinitesimally small it's really not worth it if you can spend the same effort and time off doing something with greater return.
In the same way, if you can be off running bosses or leveling, getting a far superior return for your time and effort investment, then 20 measly points is nothing.
The rewards should have been scaled with the difficulty level.