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First of all, thanks for those who posted in my first blog with their thoughts on the idea. I must say that I didn't know the idea was already done before in some way. I'll take that in mind and continue to work on refining the concept.
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Today I am going to post another concept for a system that I think needs to be redesign - the Quest/Mission system.
So far all I ever see is the big [?] above NPCs and players go and pick up quests to do. The present quest system includes the "mundane quests" which consist of "kill x creature, bring y item back...", and some interesting quests related to either background story or character's class.
Even though it is an ok system, I think it can be improve upon.
First a question, how many here read books, novels? And how many read online novels? A related question, how many here can read Chinese? And read Chinese online novels?
Why did I ask the questions? because my idea of the Quest/Mission system is gathered through my reading of Chinese online novels.
*The general concept is the same, but here I will use a fantasy setting to get my points across.*
Many of the Chinese online novel describe a world with many nations and many organization. Thre are those organization that can be adapt into a MMO design. What I'm talking about is NPC guild that are setup to handle the "mundane quests", which I prefer to call them "missions/tasks".
So when follow this way of thinking, you can have a detail system where there can be a NPC guild for the adventurers/explorers, a NPC guild for the hunters (includes Bounty Hunter), a NPC guild for mercenaries (solo, duo, group), and so on and so forth (there will be NPC guild for merchants which includes crafters).
The system will be set up for the new players to be able to earn currency in game, and earn experience (for either skill or class/level based system), fame and reputation for different nations and factions.
Each NPC guilds will have influences in different region due to the landscape difference. But basically in major cities, towns on the major trade routes, and even some small village will have certain NPC guild there to keep the peace by offering missions etc...
There will be a place for Player Guilds, but I will get into that next time...
I have documents which show my idea in more detail (such as the different NPC guilds, what they offer as missions/tasks)
http://misterorca.webng.com/data/Doc/Ingame_Guilds.doc
http://misterorca.webng.com/data/Doc/Ingame_Guilds_Missions_2.xls
After separate the Missions/Tasks from the Quests, I believe that Quests shouldn't become a way to gain experience, but rather to gain an understanding of the history/story of the game world, and gain reputations which can give title to (i.e. kill the dragon, gain title of dragon slayer of <insert town/region here>). The following is a 1 page description to what I've mentioned so far (the NPC guild mission/task system
