Thursday, October 16, 2008

Missions in the WAR Overworld

While I love Warhammer so far, it really feels like the PVE portion of the game was sort of tacked on. Scenarios and PQs are a blast, and RVR is fun, but the PVE quests themselves are disappointing, mostly because they offer nothing new. It's still designed as a collection of quest hubs that send you from one to another, collecting kill X badger quests in your Tome of Knowledge, and then rinse, repeat ad nauseum.

What I would like to see instead of static quest givers standing around perpetually in search of their lost coin purse is a sort of mission system. It should provide a PQ style set of objectives to a party, but not be tied to one location. The various objectives could even be tied together. For example, add an NPC to war camps that asks for supplies. A party of players could ask the NPC for a PVE mission which sends them to caves to mine or a spider-infested forest to collect wood. When they turn it in, they can repeat the same quest. However, every time one group turns in a batch of supplies, it allows one other party to pick up a quest to deliver those supplies to a Keep or some other location.

Perhaps more complicated missions (even competitive ones where a party is sent to talk to a spy while an opposing group is sent to assassinate him) might even be possible.

While there are "collect X supplies" and "deliver X supplies" style quests in game right now, what I'm looking for is for them to gain a more dynamic aspect and make some kind of (temporary) change to the world. The quest givers should stop asking for supplies when they get them, and stop asking people to deliver them when they run out. One group might collect supplies while a braver band of players might deliver them into dangerous territory. There should be an effect on the game world and the community at large based on how many of these quests are being completed (if enough of your side's spies aren't killed, you might see nearby enemy movement on the map, for instance.)

Missions could also reward Renown (if they involve travel into the RVR lakes) as well as XP and coin and should be repeatable. Anyone in the party will be rewarded when it's completed based on their contribution.

What I want to see a mission/quest system created that is somewhat dynamic (if no one is collecting resources, then no one can get the mission to deliver the supplies), tied into the RVR system, has aspects that PVE players can still get involved with, is tied to the combined efforts of multiple parties over time, and, most importantly, takes place in the REAL WORLD where all other the players are, and not locked away in an instance, so the world feels more alive.

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