Game Mechanics Improving the feeling of exploration and quests

Presentation and context

Hello, before starting the lecture of this thread, I would like to give you a brief presentation about my person and why I'm making this suggestion. I'm a pretty old casual player of Wynncraft who as been around since VIP town was a thing. I play from time to time on the server and right now could say that I have touched every aspect that Wynncraft can offer. So this is why I'm here today writing this thread, which is about one of the aspects of Wynncraft that I liked the most and that I would like to see more of it implemented in the core mechanics of Wynncraft.

To introduce the subject, I would like to share with you, one of my most pleasant experience I had on Wynncraft. It was a couple years ago, while the Gavel update just dropped. I was going around and trying to seek new things with my highest level class (at the moment) which was a level ~55 warrior. While on the wynncraft map website, I notice an area called Skiens Island, which I never heard of it in any quests and had no signpost on the map. This really captured my attention, as I was going to explore new land without the game actually telling me to go there. Once arrived on Skiens Island, I was on my own; there was no npc, quests lines or tracker beam to show me what to do or what to expect on this island. After a while of exploring the castle, I came into a secret passage which required a code, something I discovered and had to figure out on my own. I was really invested; and at the end, I end up killing General Skien and finally getting the item to unlock the Altar of Sanctification. Wow, the gratification of having access to the Altar of Sanctification was really high.


Exploration and quests

So this is where I'm going with my experience on Skiens Island; it was more rewarding in terms of feeling and accomplishment than most of classic quests coming from the quest book.
The feeling of exploring lands and structure that feel undiscovered is one of the most pleasant aspect of Wynncraft I had. This comes from the aspect of actually have to use my brain and analyze my surrounding to actually make progress. I have a bit the same feeling while exploring the world and founding discoveries on my own, the only problem is that discoveries have really poor reward in terms of gears and progress.

This type of exploration and quest are less present and important in basic quests of wynncraft because of the quest book and sky beam that show you the next location (P.S I know that the beam can be toggled off). For now, there is actually no reason to be aware and analyze your surrounding while pursuing a quest because everything you have to do is to follow what your quest book says; You don't have to read any of the dialog to actually complete a quest. Also, you always know when a quest starts and when a quest finishes, which remove a bit of the mysteries of things, but we will come back to this feature later.

So my goal here is to suggest a couple of changes into the core mechanics of Wynncraft's quests and exploration to make steps in quests less linear, less direct to follow, to give more freedom to the players creativity and exploratory feeling, and to reward players for using analytics skills and for being more curious.

I can totally understand that this is not something everyone actually like, some will find totally pleasant to just go around without any stress, and just do quests without thinking too much about it, so this is why I'm going to cover a couple of suggestions that should satisfy everyone. And this is why all my suggestions are going to be optional setting or having a low impact on base players which doesn't like particualy this type of gameplay mechanics.


Suggestion 1: Adding a new type of quest

In the idea of our goal, a new type of quest could be added that would enterely be based on exploration, mysteries and analytics skills. The new type of quest could be called side-quest. The main idea of this side-quest would be that they wouldn't be written in your quest book, their restrictions would be a lot more based the players skills gears than on artificial restrictions (this means that no side-quest would be locked by levels or a restricted area until a certain step of the quest). Side quests would be the perfect mix between discoveries and quests. To better grasp and understand the concept of side-quest, here a little example of how it would work;

A player is going around in the town of Nesaak (Since Nesaak is a level 40 area, the side-quest would be for a player in range of level ~40), exploring houses and structures. He found himself leading to a tavern, which while talking to random NPCs, one of them talk about some rumors about a hidden treasure that is hidden into some old mines near The Great Bridge but the entrance was blown up. (There is no quest book update, no information gave on where to go next or what to do. The player in enterely on their own if they want to seek the treasure.) Once the player has taken a look around The Great Bridge and found a suspicious area that look like a buried entrance, what does he do? Using deduction, he should blow up the entrance to reveal the path. And now, depending on his class, what he can do next is different; if the player have a spell that can cause an explosion, like bomb arrow from the Archer class, he can easily open the entrance and proceed. Else, the player would have to find a TNT Merchant, which one could be found in one or two towns. Once he bough the TNT and blow up the entrance, he can also proceed. The idea of giving the players various choices is to stimulate their analyze and creativity skills to overcome an obstacle while also not making things too linear. This means that the players could have blown up the entrance while never talked to the NPC in the tavern, there is no restrictions on how he manage his side-quest, just like discoveries) Once entered, the player could face a little dungeon which at the end he could meet up an NPC that was a prisoner of this place. Once saved, he could give you a proper reward (Some xp, emerald or special item), as well as now being a new NPC to talk in Nesaak. (The idea there is to give the player a certain reward for doing things on their own, and while this quest isn't necessary for the story or give any access to certain area (Like a new dungeon), it's still there, waiting to be discovered. So there would be no update on this in the quest book.)

Overall, side-quests can take a lot of different forms, it could also be random events that can occur, like every time you take the short cut between Detlas and Ragni, you could get ambushed underground but some mobs. As one more idea, we could also make usage of the Ancient Wynnic Transcriber that you gather from a Secret discoveries, to translate some hint toward a side-quest. So side-quests are totally free from restrictions, linear steps and would let place to analytic and creativity skills of the player. Also, Side-quests have low generals impacts so they can be 100% avoidable without drawback.


Suggestion 2: Adding a new gamemode

The idea behind adding a new gamemode would be to challenge players who seek for more self-ruling and less linearity while giving them a small benefit from it. This gamemode would completely lock away the usage of quest book and sky beam for quests. The goal of this gamemode is to make the track of quests in the player's mind instead of in the book, which would artificially force players to read dialogs, explore and figure out the next steps for quests. The restriction of the quest book and skybeam would force the player to actually find the next step to do by themselves instead of relying themselves on the questbook. As rewarding players for completing quests on their own, a bonus of 20% xp from quests could be applied.

If players are really stuck on a quest, there is always the wynncraft wiki which can help them pass rough quests. This solution isn't the best in terms of adding more freedom and rewarding players for their analytic skills, but this is the easiest and simplest solution that wouldn't change too much the core mechanics of Wynncraft's quests.


Conclusion

So overall, this is my suggestion for making the core mechanics of Wynncraft's quests and exploration to make steps in quests less linear, less direct to follow, to give more freedom to the players creativity and exploratory feeling, and to reward players for using analytics skills and for being more curious. I hope I covered all the different aspects of this subject, if there is anything else I missed, or if you have any ideas or feedback to give, I'm open to any comments!


P.S; English isn't my first language, so if there is any missspells, feel free to tell me.

Take care,
-JrAkcel

 

This is a really good idea imo, i really like the side quest idea. It would add a lot to the immersion of discovering something on your own, without the wiki or quest book. A while back i was exploring the olmic city and accidentally triggered one of the secret discoveries, that was a good feeling that seems fairly uncommon in Wynncraft nowadays. Not to say that the exploration in Wynncraft is lacking, but this would add a lot. Hoping CT will see this

 

i agree please add poll

 

Reading this reminded me of the first time I was in Time Valley. I was wandering around aimlessly, when suddenly I saw a bunch of signs talking about some type of secret treasure, and had hints on how to get to it. Using the hints, I found a mini dungeon, and beat it, which then granted me a ton of loot. The moment I found the loot was the happiest moment I've experienced in Wynncraft.

 

Hey there,

Just added the poll!

-JrAkcel

________________________________

Hey there,

I'm really glad to see that I'm not the only one who has good memories about finding things on my own, I really hope we get more of this in the future!
I've also added a poll if you are interested.

-JrAkcel

 

While I'm not sure how I feel about the exact details of this thread, overall I agree. The sense of exploration is really something I've wanted to see be pushed further in Wynn for a while now. It's my favorite aspect of the game and I'm glad to hear other people agree.

 

Hey there,

I'm happy to see other people wanting and pursuing the sens of exploration as well. If you feel a bit unsure about my suggestions, feel free to tell me more about yours, I might also add them to the thread.

-JrAkcel

 

This looks exactly like Secret Discoveries for me. No navigation, no updates, xp at the end.

I like the idea though, adding more "silence" to regular quest or just non-rewarding side/after content (e.g. Dogun Elders interactions after TBP) would be awesome.

Also ???

I think you are forgetting about the wiki, which would make it basically free 20% bonus. Interesting idea imo, but I am not sure how I feel about it.

 

I think this is a great idea to implement. However, the reward for completing the quest shouldn't be too meaningful (more emeral/xp than normal quest) and instead should be for niche uses like a gear for specific playstyle, trophies, cosmetics. This encourage players to not intentionally look for them but rather do them when stumbled to one, which prevent youtube and wiki to become the questbook for these side quest as a norm.

 

I'd argue that changes should be made to the way normal quests work. I hate the way quest level requirements work, they're designed to work fine for the first 20 levels or so since there you usually have an excess of XP, but by the midgame and onward you're basically mandated to do quests in the exact same order every single time you do them, and completely unnecessarily, which makes the game feel much more like you're following a set of assignments in a specified order and less like you're going out and doing things of your own accord.
I'd suggest that quest level reqs be rounded down to the nearest multiple of 5 or 10 for the majority of quests, so that it feels like you have the freedom to do them in whatever order you want. Exceptions should obviously be made for certain quests that need to be done at certain levels, it makes sense to have Temple of Legends require you to be on the tail end of the 60-70 range for example (there's definitely better examples than that). Then, if you want, give quests a "Recommended Level" which is whatever their current required level is and order them in the quest book based on that.
Another thing I really hate is the constant theme of having to talk to NPCs in order to do stuff. Take Pit of the Dead for instance: when you walk up to this giant pit your instinct will be to jump in, right? Well sorry, you have to walk all the way back to Nemract to talk to some boring dude and then walk all the way back to the pit and then jump in. It even gives you some dialogue of like "it's probably not a good idea to go in there" or something, I feel like I should have control of what my own character does right? This is especially bad because as of 2.0 a lot of quest NPCs have been moved into cities and away from their previous places just outside the area where the quest happens.
What if instead of talking to Merloni first, you could, if you wanted to, jump right into the pit, go to the well thingy, and then come back, and then talk to Merloni at some point in the future and have him say something like "wow, that was what I was about to ask you to do!". This would make it feel like you're being rewarded for your exploration.
Another example would be Tempo Town Trouble. Tempo Town is located near Time Valley, which is basically on the opposite side of Wynn from Nemract where the quest starts. The quest starts in Nemract because most players are in Nemract for the level 20-30 range, and Tyko is there to make players aware of Time Valley and everything over there now being at their level.
However, what if you found Time Valley of your own accord while exploring the map? Well now you're punished for that exploration by being forced to walk all the way back to Nemract just to talk to one guy and then walk all the way back to Time Valley, which is unbelievably stupid. If you don't take this absurd walk then you're locked out of all of the most valuable loot that you can get in Time Valley.
There's no good lore explanation for this either, Tyko WANTS you to go to Tempo Town and they seem to be desperate for someone to help them out, why would they turn you away just because you haven't talked to Tyko?

(The mayor refusing to start the quest)
I really think that regular quests need to be fixed in this way. Quests should be something that spurrs exploration, not a bunch of busywork you're assigned to do by some book. I like the side quest idea though, having some quests not appear in the book seems like a very good idea.

 

Very interesting... I don't think it is possible in the current system.

Also if the quest involves more speaking you could just "start" the quest by talking with a random npc without any of the important information.

 

I'm a bit confused about what you mean by this

 

Imagine your system is in place and you can skip stuff (which is how I understood it). If you go to Tempo Town and start talking to the Mayor, you might miss some very important information for the quest.

Now, this is just an example, in reality Tyko says just "there is a monster", but what if there was more?

 

If it was important and if it made sense for it to be the way it is you wouldn't be able to skip it, otherwise you could have a different NPC say that depending on the circumstance.

I'm not saying a big change should be mindlessly made to all quests, I'm saying the attitude of always having the player do things in the same order needs to change.

 

It's already a thing in the Arachnids Ascent quest, where your quest book tells you to go to the lava springs to start the quest, but in reality you can just go straight to the infested pit entrance and start the quest there, with a slightly different dialogue.

 

overall I like the idea but I don't think the side quests should be different depending on your class