BtS Quests - Why are they missing?

[darkuss]

BtS expansion introduced several quests, such as Naional League, Holly Mountain and so on, which are granted to players randomly and demend some effort and race against other players for a quite good reward. I was suprised to find that there are no quests in ffh2 since quests seem to fit just right with fantasy/RPG envoirment.

What is the reason behind this decission? Have they been implemented at some point and removed due to bad game experience or does just minority like them so there's no point to focus on them?

 

[Brokenbone]

I've seen two such quests in FFH, one was something about "Your people demand the destruction of the Pyre of the Seraphic", which leads to a golden age on success, and more recently, some Illian event about going on a pilgramage to Letum Frigus, though the reward there seemed the same as if the Illians normally found it, which is Auric gaining the Aggressive trait.

Maybe there could be more quests though *shrugs*

One thing in BTS though is that they tended to be tied to an Era timer, right? Do task XYZ before Classical Period / Modern Period / whatever. FFH lacks that, though maybe there are other ways to create time pressure.

 

[Kael]

We prefer dynamic quests. Meaning that we have maps that show the way to distant treasure, barbarian heroes to slay, dungeons to explore, find the godslayer and use it against the new god of winter, recover the pieces of your hero and put him back together again, build a ship to sail out to those ship wrecks or get to that island with Bradelines Well on it.

These aren't arbitrary quests where the game comes up and tells you to "Do X before event Y for reward Z". They are dynamically created by what is really going on in the game. It is up to the player to decide what he wants to do, and the reward could be significant or minor, or nothing at all depending on the task.

Those are the sorts of quests we prefer. We could say "Barbarians have been raiding your lands, build 5 archery ranges before you discover engineering to protect your people". Or we could put Orthus in the game so that he really raids your lands and you can decide how to deal with him.

 

[Demus]

the events were too unbalancing, and didn't work with the changed mechanisms and unit class set-up. Also, as far as i know the team doesn't like forced quests, but rather wants the player to create his/her own (although we do have treasure maps, which is some kind of "forced quest" thingy)

edit
doh, beaten by the creater

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

BTS-style quests sucked imho, they were just random stuff popping up without any reason.

that said, I think there is room for quests in FFH2. instead of having them happen randomly like BTS, you could go the ol' good Warlords way and let Heroes and possibly high XP units "get" quests. you could go the Warlords II way and have some "Oracle" improvements spawn at map startup where you can get quests. or you could go the Warlords III way and have quests available in cities. you could then have 3 increasingly difficult levels of quests, with increasingly good rewards of course. level 1 could need a pagan temple in the city, level 2 a religious temple and level 3 a holy shrine.

setting aside ( i.e. resigning ) quests should be possible, but have some penalty associated with it.

 

[darkuss]

Yes I see what you mean and I do agree that the basic quests (build 6 buildings) are not the best there are but what I like about them is that 4 players get them but only 1 can do it.

For me properly made quests, that give great rewards but need vast amount of effort to complete could be the way to spice up the game. An example of such event could be:

A child is born in one of the Good Aligment cities (a unit is created). The prophecy says that he is the son of an Angel and posseses great power within him, the power that will help purge evil from this land.

In this moment the owner of the city recives the quest - protect the child for X turns.
All evil civilizations recive the quest - kill the wretched kid.

The good player will be rewarded if he succedes for completing the quest by recieving the child as a hero specialized to fight aggainst evil civilizations
Let's say that when the child grows up additionaly the AC is decreased - this may mobilize good civilizations to help with the defense.
If the bad civilizations manage to kill the child the AC will rise, but furthermore the killer finishes his quest and recives a reward.

And so we have what I belive you call a dynamic quest. The bad civilizations may wage war on the player to try to stop the prohecy from comming or ignore tha whole thing as not being worth the effort or simply send some assasins to do the job. A good player may kill the child himself (disband) to save himself from the wars (but then AC rises), or try to do the quest either by fortfying one of his cities and keeping the child there, or by sending him to other country which has open borders with him but doesnt trade with bad guys (will they wage war on both civilizations then?) or just puts him on the boat and sends him away hoping no one will find him. Will the good players help him to decrease the AC? What with the neutral players, will they become mercearies for any of the sides?

What is important though, that suddenly new priority appears in the game. An event that may cause you to change your strategy to take advantage of the situation. Suddenly you may be interested in waging war that normaly would give you nothing to gain.

This is the kind of quests I would love to see.

As for the chest events - it's either may bad luck or they are not worth the effort. Had it 4 times as I recall and never got anything worthawile. And it wasn't much of an effort to get it too (once it spawned on an island 10 tiles from my border). Maybe if the chest would be heavly guarded and the reward was big enough (artifact, 200-600 gold, artifact used by city (like dragon hoard) I wolud actually be thrilled by seeing a chest and feel the urge to take an effort to grab it. Now I don't even bother most of the time, unless it is really near.

This being said, I really do like the quests you mentioned before, Orthus, dragon hoard and so on. But there are so few ... I do belive game could realy use more. And especialy those that could appear in middle/late part of the game to rock the world and add new objectives and variables for players, to make them rethink theier strategy and maybe adapt it to the new events. They could have a beautiful synergy with the AC counter.

 

[Blackmantle]

@ darkuss: I whould advise you to wait for ice (likely won't all be that long now. Likely just a few month). That's when the scenarios for FFH2 will be done (take a peak at the scenarios screen if you haven't already for a neat teaser of what is to come... ).

I'm sure as heroes/world-units and wonders (might be even a rare few buildings) will be added into the scenarios at least a few of them will also make it into FFH2 on a random map (both adversaries and things for the civs) Since those are (usually) not really new features / mechanics usually the chances for that aren't all that bad...
(In fact some of the unique features available on random maps have been implemented mainly for use in those scenarios as has the Lucian world-unit the Doviello start with. So that has actually already been! happening. No need to assume it will actually stop when far more of the teams energy goes into that part...)

With a lot of luck maybe you'll even see such an event-chain like that in the process (even if its rather unlikely with what Kael has outlined. But who knows what the creators will come up. They have developed quite a habit of surprising us. All for the positive of course. ).

The Mod is not finished yet so a bit of patience might help (giving good feedback naturally is even better so nothing bad about commenting ).

Also there is always the possibility of modmods (and the modmodding community for FFH2 is quite vibrant thanks to the overall quality and success of the Game ).
Such event-chains sound like an excellent idea for a modmod going for that idea in a large-scale manner... So perhaps putting your request in the scenarios and mods sub-forum might yield better results to your proposal.
(The point i would advise you to start would be the thread of the rumors&intrigue modmod which tries to implement parts of BTS espionage into FFH2 in a way that fits the background in a better way. I even believe they have already spoken about something like this...)


Agree on the 2 chests i have found so far being not all that interesting (and i see that its rather the rule than the exception if i look up the posts about the matter here in the forums).

I did like the quasi-great merchants you gained in marnok's modmod when digging up a treasure (with trade-mission for your own cities instead of foreign ones + golden age or ability to settle as a greath merchant) much more.
It needn't be all that hefty (even though you can already find great people in lairs right now so it might! be an option / not totally over the top) but at least something in between what you get now and that might be a better idea imo...
(a good amount of gold might be the thing to go with. Some items can already be found and i find them alright... Wonder-Items placeable in cities whould likely be way over the top.)
I don't feel the risk or effort / reward for those chests is right the way its balanced now.

 

[Imuratep]

A child is born in one of the Good Aligment cities (a unit is created). The prophecy says that he is the son of an Angel and posseses great power within him, the power that will help purge evil from this land.

In this moment the owner of the city recives the quest - protect the child for X turns.
All evil civilizations recive the quest - kill the wretched kid.

The good player will be rewarded if he succedes for completing the quest by recieving the child as a hero specialized to fight aggainst evil civilizations
Let's say that when the child grows up additionaly the AC is decreased - this may mobilize good civilizations to help with the defense.
If the bad civilizations manage to kill the child the AC will rise, but furthermore the killer finishes his quest and recives a reward.

This quest is really cool and flavorful. I liked to see someday in FFH. By the way, when will 0.35 be released