The topic is rather simple: What if a failure was a permanent end-stage for a quest? That once you failed, you cannot try again, you'd get something for completing a quest, but its not the same as succeeding. For example "The damsel died and so ends your quest. Good effort tho!"

What would that change? What problems would occur?

Originally posted by Quirhid

The topic is rather simple: What if a failure was a permanent end-stage for a quest? That once you failed, you cannot try again, you'd get something for completing a quest, but its not the same as succeeding. For example "The damsel died and so ends your quest. Good effort tho!"

What would that change? What problems would occur?

It's a good idea. Might even teach the current gen a thing or two about failure and how to deal with it.

Nothing wrong with failing if you can learn from it.

Sorry, tangent rant. I would welcome a game that offered up failure as an option.

that would be incredably annoying.. if its a quest like FO3 where the npc winds up trying to rambo 4 super mutiants and dies without you being able to stop it. 

if it just out right ended the quest it would quite frankly piss me off. as im sure it would with other people to, sure it might work in some games but a majority of mmos i dont see it being a good choice as people can and will QQ about the stupidest things.. the last thing a dev would want is to hear about a quest being too hard or some BS do to little timmy not protecting the target npc well enough or whatever

Originally posted by Quizzical
It would make wikis even more important than they are now, as you'd want to know ahead of time what was going to happen, since you couldn't just retry it if things go awry.

Bah! I didn't though of that. I guess you can make quests in such a way that the "wiki-effect" is minized. Alas, you can't really get rid of it ever. Good point, though.

Originally posted by sunshadow21
It's a great idea, but one that would be really hard to implement well since in order to do so effectively, the player would have to see persistent effects of the failure beyond, "Sorry, you don't get your cookie today, try again tomorrow." THe only real way to avoid that without completely changing the basic themepark style would be to set up multiple options for development of quests as you go through the different stages, and that is just as complex to set up as simply buidling the world so that quests and missions are helpful, but not absolutely necessary for advancement of either the character or the world story.

I don't think "throw-away quests", the like you suggest, are really what anyone looks for in a quest and I also think quests like that are one part-cause why some people hate questing. But the multiple options thing is interesting, I've been thinking about that myself too.

I was coining that it could create something for the completionists. Maybe create an ironman-culture of sorts.

Then again, if you allow players who have failed the quest previously to join players who have not yet tried it and succeed in it that way, you'd make it worthwhile to group with newbies. However, I don't know if the newbies would appreciate veterans giving spoilers. I wouldn't.

Originally posted by Quirhid

The topic is rather simple: What if a failure was a permanent end-stage for a quest? That once you failed, you cannot try again, you'd get something for completing a quest, but its not the same as succeeding. For example "The damsel died and so ends your quest. Good effort tho!"

What would that change? What problems would occur?

 Basically it can be done.  It's a matter of story.  I personally have suggested such before but usually as a branching quest option.

This would be the absolute end of pick up groups.  If the quest for the faction or item reward is one that can be permanently failed then nobody will attempt it without having the dice utterly stacked in their favor.  This means set guild groups only. 

I saw this happen in timed quests as well.  If the timer was long enough then NOBODY would do it outside of a guild.  IE you want greater wards and the quest is every 5th day?  Nobody is going to risk it with a random, ever.

I like Quizzical's thought about wikis.

The first thought that popped into my head was the "chain quest" effect. Many quests now lead into further quests along a line quests for an area. That could cause problems, but I would like the "reality" of the chance for failure. It could also lead to achievements or titles for successful completion of quests in an area.

It would be difficult in implementing and probably cause a lot of crying on message boards, but I think it would be an improvement for the good of the game.

Originally posted by AlBQuirky

I like Quizzical's thought about wikis.

The first thought that popped into my head was the "chain quest" effect. Many quests now lead into further quests along a line quests for an area. That could cause problems, but I would like the "reality" of the chance for failure. It could also lead to achievements or titles for successful completion of quests in an area.

It would be difficult in implementing and probably cause a lot of crying on message boards, but I think it would be an improvement for the good of the game.

Actually, chaining a series of quests together into a complete quest tree would probably be the easiest solution. If you succeed quest A, you get quest B from the same NPC; if you "fail", you get quest C from some other related NPC. This continues until you reach the final quest in the chain, which everyone would get, but different individuals may approach with different goals, motivations, and possibly even different sides. This makes it so that "failure" doesn't stop you from moving on, but it might mean that instead of having 2 quests to get to the final one, you have to do 3 to reach the same point and/or end up approaching it from a completely different direction. You could tie different rewards, achievements or titles to the different available paths; the completionists would scream because then they wouldn't be able to get all of the rewards/achievements/titles, but it might make others actually care about those systems because they would actually highlight meaningful differences. It would still take work, but it wouldn't require any new subsystems or structures to be built into a game and might make that series of quests more interesting. It would also keep the wiki effect down since each individual experience would be different even if the series as a whole is entirely wikiable; just make the rewards semi random to avoid the development of an "optimal" path. This also gives vets a good reason to go back and help newer players; seeing the different paths would give new rewards/titles/achievements and experiences and the newer players would not necessarily be able to simply follow the older player around because the overall experience would still be different.

Yeah would easily work in single player games, where the whole story and world can change according to your success or failure.

Not going to work in today's themepark MMO's though, because the worlds are static and player choices and actions have zero impact on the world.

Originally posted by Quirhid

The topic is rather simple: What if a failure was a permanent end-stage for a quest? That once you failed, you cannot try again, you'd get something for completing a quest, but its not the same as succeeding. For example "The damsel died and so ends your quest. Good effort tho!"

What would that change? What problems would occur?

What do you see as the value to the player or the developer to have such a system?

Modern day questgrinding mmo quests it wouldnt work with. You could have larger community events though.

I once played a game where a beloved merchant npc was kidnapped and there was an event to go rescue him. Everyone participated but alas we failed and he died, permanently.

This works well with various randomly generated quests and dynamic content. Theoretically, even a bad player shouldn't run out of quests and have to run in circles killing mobs. Randomly generated quests take care of this, since they never run out.

Open world events like the ones in Guild Wars 2 and Firefall are another good example of quests you can fail, although you can still repeat them later on. Defend fortress -> fail -> retake fortress -> succeed -> defend fortress -> succeed. Then again, not being able to retake the fortres wouldn't make any sense. Firefall's quests are also randomly generated, so technically failing one sometimes means you won't be able to try that particular quest again, although you'll come across others like it.

You know, the easier way to keep people from having to run around in circles killing mobs...

Is to up the spawn rate.

I already play a game with quest failure (Mabinogi).  It depends on what caused the failure and if that quest leads to other more important quests.  If the failure was because I was tired and had a cold maybe no big deal.  If I need it in a quest series for something more important than the stupid quest itself then I get mad.  Usually those type quests have a come back and retry when you get godly stronger, more knowledgeable of the game dynamics, or a bigger party (tho most fail quests are solo).  It is frustrating.  My reaction is to leave off that kind of quest and never come back.

You were talking about never doing the quest again ever.  If I incorporated that into a game I would make it applicable to those repeat daily quests for game money.  I would not tag that to some important quest chain.

I like the idea a lot but I can't see it ever getting widespread support.

If you wanted to be nicer you could make the players put up collateral for each mission.  Then they can repeat it as many times as they want but it will cost them.

I wrote a well known, very difficult mission in Vendetta Online that only gives you 5 chances to pass. If you fail all 5 times, the mission goes away forever. The secret is that the outcome for failing the mission as far as the tree is concerned is identical to passing the mission; the only difference is the reward not being given the player for failures. In other words; the player can succeed once and advance through the tree, or fail 5 times and advance through the tree.

Another example of an interesting mission structure is one where failing a mission actually is a requirement for a future mission becoming available, like another user mentioned. I have a live tree in VO that uses this structure, also.

edit: an interesting fact about the first example I gave is that, as far as I can tell, most players will not fail the mission all 5 times, and thus very few actually get to the end of the tree.  In other words, the fear of permanent failure is so great that, even though there is a "safety net" built into the tree, players will not risk losing the mission the 5th time when in fact the outcome would be exactly the same as far as the tree is concerned.