Handholding In Quests

Hey, long time no see. Unfortunately I no longer exist, but that’s cool.

This is just a quick poll thread, hope that’s chill. I wanted to ask, do you as a player generally prefer quests that have a lot of hand holding, have a bit, or absolutely none? Here’s some examples:

Hand holding:
- Every stage of the quest has the coordinates marked in your book for you.
- You have to do very little thinking for yourself outside of basic puzzles

Medium hand holding:
- Some quest stages have coordinates like if they’re far away
- Others require you to find locations by describing the area

No hand holding
- You never receive coordinates for the quest, except for the ones to start the quest
- Everything you find / go to must be by your own sense of navigation, paying attention to signs, and listening to the advice of nearby NPCs

I personally prefer quests that have absolutely no hand holding... Hell I’d even like less! I think it would be awesome if you had to physically write things in your own quest book, by reading quest dialogue and actively paying attention to instructions. I also feel like it’d be cool if other NPCs could give you information you might need based on your current tracked quest. Like if you talked to an NPC while tracking a quest, they might give you some instructions on how to get to a location if you’ve forgotten and didn’t write it down.

Was just looking for some opinions so yeah.

Kthxbyenow

 

a challenge mode I would actually do.

 

That’s a great idea! Like, you only get the first quest thing, the rest of your book is yours to fill out on your own?

 

Note, that this is purely my own view of the topic:

Coordinates themselves aren't bad. In fact, I think every stage should have them as an option, apart from sections which are located entirely offmap. This'd compliment the game's open world design, in the sense that you could stop any quest at any phase, and come back to it later at your own pace with proper context, without the game expecting you to continue right from the former step. It'd also make sure that no one gets completely stuck, if they encounter an issue. The real problem with coordinates is, that sometimes they're the only way to make progress, which is indeed an extremely unintuitive system. However, another thing to mention is giving players information within the quest book that's never mentioned during NPC dialogue, which I'd say is just as bad.

The only "proper" way I can imagine good quest progression would be something, where you're given instructions that're complete enough to guide you to the destination by the NPCs, but leave the execution up to your own thinking instead of having a single preset path. Meanwhile, the questbook would contain a short recap of the NPCs words, with no added information or pre-done interpretation, apart from coordinates for aforementioned reasons.

Seeing as you posted this on Wynn's forums in particular, and how this applies to the game, the thread feels like a direct jab at the ways Wynn tends to handle these things. While it's far from perfect, and the execution can be sloppy at times, Wynn is kind of forced to remain open for a wider audience, instead of focusing on niche playstyles. While the concept of memorizing and piecing together everything, and writing that down on your own is a great challenge for those looking for one, it'd completely close the doors for people wanting a more relaxing experience from the game.

To become a working "write your own quest book" challenge mode, the design for a lot of quests would need to be changed first, since the dialogue doesn't actually point out where to go or what to do at all times. Even then, there wouldn't really be a point to it. To compare, the current challenges physically limit your ability to do certain things without a workaround. Meanwhile, this challenge would instead lock an entire new feature behind a specific mode. Anyone could get an easy extra badge by checking youtube or the wiki for instructions, unless those were suddenly made bannable. At that point, it'd purely be a case of your own will towards the challenge. And, if that was the case, the challenge could just as well be completed right now via purposefully refusing to look into your questbook, and writing your observations down on either a real or a virtual note.

 

Hand holding is pretty lewd

 

Interesting opinions.

While I wasn’t suggesting a change, nor I wasn’t planning to as this is merely a poll thread, the thoughts are much appreciated.

 

I like having coordinates in the quest book, but I think the rest of your idea is good!

 

Imma just bump this cause I still want other valid opinions.

 

The most egregious example of hand holding IMO is the part in the deja vu quest where you're supposed to save Asher. it goes from a puzzle to just a "follow the line" type of quest and makes the quest less fun tbh

 

i dont think coords given in quests are bad, sure it could be considered lazy but eh, idc

an example of hand holding that is absolutely terrible, would the be intro quest. it encourages no exploration, forces you ton where you need to go, and in general isn't fun at all to do

i think its better when the quest lets you figure things out then assume the player is just actually retarded

 

A bit of hand holding is okay; like instructions that will give you a good idea of what you need to do. Being entirely left on your own to figure out everything yourself on difficult puzzles can prove bad, for example, ???.

 

How are coordinates any different than the in-game quest tracker every other quest in every other RPG has?

 

Sometimes I start a quest and decide to go do something else. So when I go back to the quest and finish it and the quest book tells me to go back to an NPC, I might not even remember where it is. I also tend to forget important details that the NPC says that aren't in the quest book.