Map based quests and POI significance

[Khulkhuum]

Hi All! I'm here with a brand new suggestion that popped into my head today, something that may be plausible to work on, but even if it's not possible, surely something interesting to talk about.

 

MAP BASED QUESTS

 

What do i mean about that? Let's start from the beginning. First and foremost, quests should lead to some kind of resoultion, influence the world and leave a mark on it. It is suggested both in quest descriptions, but also how they are structured so far. Surely the questing will be updated to have more interesting ideas put into them, but i'm looking for something totally different.

 

A MAP INSTEAD OF A LIST

 

When you talk with the trader, he opens your map and you can see all the POIs you've seen or visited. This would take into account only places eligible for certain tasks. I don't expect a "Clear Zombies" mission on a ruin of a building or on a corner of a burned down one. Each such POI will have a short information on it for example:

- I heard there is a hidden cache there. Sounds promising to check it out.

- Looks good for a survivor camp, but needs clearing. See if you can clean the place up.

- Scouts seen a survivor move in and out of that place. Perhaps he would like to join a bigger community.

- This looks like a great source of resources. Find me some things from there.

- There are reports of survivors inside, but they went silent. Go check if they need help.

 

This could not only give more value to specific POIs, but also explain why you need to wander here and there. Additionally, you could choose where you want to go, spread your range of influence, slowly build up your base of operations or whatever you wish to call it. Most important thing is that it would allow introduction to the topic of the thread - POI based quests and POI significance

 

YOU MAY NOT SUCCEED

 

Each POI will have a chance for the situation to be resolved successfully. If you're looking for a cache, it might have not even been there. The building seems unstable to make it a survivor base. The survivor might have died quite a few days before you came in. The place seemed fine from the outside, but the inside was ransacked and not many resources are in or you simply wasn't able to find what the trader wanted. The survivors were overwhelmed by a wandering horde and all of them joined their ranks (perhaps even in gear).

 

On the other hand, the cache might provide valuable resources, the trader might divide between the two. A survivor camp will start building (a new mechanic, where you provide materials perhaps, not gonna go into detail about it), which will aid your exploration, providing another trade point and a new purpose. The survivor will join the trader, until it can find a suitable camp to stay in. The place you looted was full of resources or already ransacked, but you luckily found what the trader wanted. You find the survivors barely making it through and help defeat an incoming horde (a new mechanic, where you arrive at a point and need to defend it/kill all Zs before they reach a certain point, not gonna go into detail about it).

 

POIs CHANGE OVER TIME

 

If you choose to clear a POI through a quest or do it without it, the place will stay as "CLEARED". This could change with introducing the event system, where wandering zombies might in low numbers stay at various "visited" POIs, explaining how some places have zombies again.

 

If you create a survivor camp somewhere, at some point you would get a quest to defend it, because some scouts seen a huge horde incoming (starts shortly after you arrive, dependant on your level or camp size).

 

Add vairables to POIs, which would sum up the number of non-empty containers inside, making it possible to start "find X for trader" quests. As you clear the place, you will never be able to loot it again (unless the loot magically respawns, which i'm against).

 

Having enough survivors by a trader will allow building a survivor camp in a "CLEARED" and suitable POI. This will start a series of quests for bringing resources to the trader to initiate the build, while later on to strengthen the camp. Additionally, survivor camp defense could be initiated at some point.

 

SUMMARY

 

I may have went a bit overboard with the sole idea, but i hope you get what i mean. Don't simply choose a quest, pick a POI where you want to do "something". Stop POIs respawning loot, zombies and themselves, but make them a part of the world that you can also influence. It could start from simply "Clear a POI", "Find item X in a POI" or "Find a hidden cache", not go all professional with survivors and bases.

 

Is it possible? Is it interesting? Is it worth pursuing?

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

My issue with the cache, is that you just know where it is. Never have i had issues finding a cache. Now, what would be interesting is if they sent me out to rendezvous with the courier. This could go one of several ways:

 

The courier could not be there so you have to find them: check out all pois near by.

 

The courier is dead/now a uma zombie: kill zombies, bring back bag.

 

The courier is dead clearly has been shot: Hunt down bandits.

 

The courier is dead, but a bandit is disguised as the courier: you will get shot/robbed.

 

You meet the courier, then bandits/horde show up.

 

You meet the courier and get the stuff.

 

For pois, i would like them to have a purpose. Like clearing the hospital. After you do that, you get the radio, call a trader, and then an ambulance shows up carrying a very wounded survivor. You know have to defend the hospital for 8 days. Better hope you started that quest before horde night. Not only do you have to defend the hospital, but you also have to make sure that everyone can get out alive and pathfind their way out.

 

Now things might get even harsher: after you do this, you may be tasked with turning the hospital into a viable location, you may get tasked with turning other pois into viable locations. Think the fallout 4 settlement system but not ♥♥♥♥. I guess the best way to do this is a settlement block? you place that in the middle of the poi, and everything inside that square counts as settlement. But unlike traders it is not indestructible.

 

There are a few benefits to this: you get supplies, you get food, in single player it will attract the airdrops. The downside is that they will attract hordes and each bloodmoon one will be picked at random to be attacked. I see this becoming more of an end game thing, but it will get rid of those damn repeat quests that i hate getting.

[Khulkhuum]

I think the simplest way to make POIs be reworked is to allow changing them into other POIs.

 

Let's say you have a few big house POIs. Create alternative versions that house survivors, have a few work stations, defenses, etc. Now simply allow to change the first POI into the alternative version upon finishing a quest. We already have a kind of "reset" when starting a quest, why not shift it into a new version? Similarly as it is now, you approach the marker with resources needed for the upgrade and it's done.

 

If you want a settlement block, it would definitely be more flexible, perhaps work similarly to Claim Block? Additionally, it would need a minimum number of blocks or verify the strength of blocks in range to ensure it is an elligible POI/Built Structure? Apart from that, a POI refurbished can be chosen to have other buildings in range (for whatever reason), what if there are no buildings in the area (you start a camp in a forest or on top of hills)? Where should the block be placed in order for it to work?

 

My original idea is to rework how you pick up quests, shifting focus onto POIs and their importance.

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

I think the simplest way to make POIs be reworked is to allow changing them into other POIs.

 

Let's say you have a few big house POIs. Create alternative versions that house survivors, have a few work stations, defenses, etc. Now simply allow to change the first POI into the alternative version upon finishing a quest. We already have a kind of "reset" when starting a quest, why not shift it into a new version? Similarly as it is now, you approach the marker with resources needed for the upgrade and it's done.

 

If you want a settlement block, it would definitely be more flexible, perhaps work similarly to Claim Block? Additionally, it would need a minimum number of blocks or verify the strength of blocks in range to ensure it is an elligible POI/Built Structure? Apart from that, a POI refurbished can be chosen to have other buildings in range (for whatever reason), what if there are no buildings in the area (you start a camp in a forest or on top of hills)? Where should the block be placed in order for it to work?

 

My original idea is to rework how you pick up quests, shifting focus onto POIs and their importance.

 

Yeah, i derailed the subject a bit....

 

Quests need a lot of work. A loooot of work, they are a pet peeve for me right now. I think finding notes and maps to trigger quests would help. To give you an idea, i once found a supercorn recipe in dishong tower. Why was that in dishong tower? Sure random loot, but what if, what if there was a sort of stumble upon quest for that? Some sort of crazy story about dishong tower stealing research, and you pick up a piece of paper and it tells you that there are scientists working on something: a cure, legendary shotgun, super corn. And you go to certain pois, and go to a quest safe or desk to get relevant information. Then, and it becomes this scavanger hunt exploration quest where each poi looted gives a clue to super treasure.

 

Maybe have supercorn be part of some sort of black project to make a super soldier serum and grace the pig was the first test subject? So at the end of the quest chain you fight super soldier zombies in a hidden bunker to get a perk point recipe that is super expensive to make but gives a nasty 6 hour debuff every use?

 

Throw in the new advanced workbenches too, make them loot at the end of a quest chain, where you find an invoice somewhere, and eventually it leads to a truck in the road or a factory that will have the crafting station in a box as a guaranteed loot.

 

When you complete a challenge quest, they tell you to leave a drop box outside your camp, and you come back and they tell you a secret and that starts the loot quest. Or the traders give you mail and that starts a quest: find out what happened at x location, look for information about y incident. Also make these story quest items appear in rng loot as well to trigger those quests. Sorta like the triggers in fallout 4 for quests.

 

Maybe instead of a direct job from the traders, they tell you a rumor or a horror story, and that gives a different marker, a question marker that starts a quest chain in an alternate version of the poi? Lots of potential here.

[Khulkhuum]

I think the main que here is for making quests influence the world somehow. Examples you provided are good. It would require a new type of quest, where you find specific resources. This on the other hand would require a special container with that loot to be generated or some sort of mechanism to calculate the chances of obtaining the item/s in consecutive containers up to the last, where you get 100% chance.

 

Something i mentioned in the first entry, the possibility of failing a quest would be out of the window here. This is mainly for quests that are based in POIs that are very rare (like Dishong Tower, haven't seen that in many playthroughs really...), because if you have only 1 such POI in your map (at the very worst none) then perhaps you'll not be able to finish that quest. On the other hand, creating a couple of note items, with descriptions of lore and requiring them for a quest is little work from then on.

 

The building blocks for such ideas are required. New types of quests are needed. Shifting from simply picking out a quest, resetting a POI and going back to trader is not enough or perhaps it's over the top. This does not influence the world good enough for players to be invested in doing them. Like i've seen people saying that they don't do high level quests, because they're boring.

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

I think the main que here is for making quests influence the world somehow. Examples you provided are good. It would require a new type of quest, where you find specific resources. This on the other hand would require a special container with that loot to be generated or some sort of mechanism to calculate the chances of obtaining the item/s in consecutive containers up to the last, where you get 100% chance.

 

Something i mentioned in the first entry, the possibility of failing a quest would be out of the window here. This is mainly for quests that are based in POIs that are very rare (like Dishong Tower, haven't seen that in many playthroughs really...), because if you have only 1 such POI in your map (at the very worst none) then perhaps you'll not be able to finish that quest. On the other hand, creating a couple of note items, with descriptions of lore and requiring them for a quest is little work from then on.

 

The building blocks for such ideas are required. New types of quests are needed. Shifting from simply picking out a quest, resetting a POI and going back to trader is not enough or perhaps it's over the top. This does not influence the world good enough for players to be invested in doing them. Like i've seen people saying that they don't do high level quests, because they're boring.

 

So one of the mods i have mentions finding a video to start a quest, and adds dialogue at the trader. So maybe instead of finding a note, it would be something that happens out in the wild? Instead of the trader telling you to clear a place, the level 2 quests are to report to traders with places you find? And that opens the story? This gives incentive to explore and it will fix that repeating quest annoyance that is going on.

 

I had forgotten that rng is a little strange, so not every building spawns in. That needs to be fixed honestly.