Namakemono
Member
Note, this isn't actually a guide but a message to all players of Custom Quests. It's just a play on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". So please, don't bother moving the topic because this is a more opinionated subject matter that revolves around things such as pride, worth, etc. The most I would expect from this topic are other players' opinions and their agreements and disagreements.
So getting right to it, Custom Quests are without a doubt quests that were not made by SEGA but by local players who also enjoys playing PSO. Vanilla Quests tend to stick to a certain pattern and expectation, such as monster count, lore friendly stories, etc. Recently, Ephinea has brought us quests from other servers for us to enjoy which is great. I love this. I feel like quests are one of the most important aspects of PSO. It turns the one track roller coaster ride into something with more potential and depth to offer.
What I'm going to discuss here today is the mentality of most players. I am not here to belittle, shame, or ostracize certain demographic groups, but to shine a light onto prevalent things that exists. Most of us have come from the console days where most of our journey consists of SEGA's storyline. Things such as Rico's message pods, dialogue from wandering NPCs, the VR links you see in Episode 2, all of these things contained some sort of story or info that you could read and it is never shoved in your face unless you play something like Blue Star Memories or Seat of Heart. But personally, I am more of a fan of the type of quests that allows the player to discover the story on their own. That's not to say I dislike cut scenes, they are great too and require a significant amount of time and effort to make. Much like one abandoned project I made some time ago. But back to the point, all of these things are very key to sending important clues and messages to the player, yet they are ignored all the time... Why is that? Well, I have a theory. When people played SEGA quests back in the day, they knew what to expect already. They've metaphorically made a new line of code in their programming to always ignore these things because stopping to read them will only set you back when your team is running ahead of you. Not only that, you won't be getting much of anything out of these messages. So is it perfectly logical to ignore this? Unfortunately, yes.
But I want to shine some light onto this controversy. Custom Quests are NOT the same as Vanilla Quests. SEGA only did what they were required to do, but a loving fan can go above and beyond. Recently, I did Revisiting Darkness with a few peeps. It was a fun quest, but it was the thing that ultimately led me to create this topic. It's not a mastermind at what it does, but it does execute the important parts to a certain extent. In one of the first rooms, a VR link will warn you ahead of time before entering that "pressing switches isn't always a good idea", giving you a very strong hint. So the moment you hit the switch, it will spawn Gizonde traps that will constantly appear and shock the player. From this point on, VR links will be your main source of anticipation. After hitting that switch, it gave my co-hunter a sense of wariness for every single switch he pressed, making him more mindful about what he did. Ultimately, the quest was a bulldog quest and the VR links were his only source of trust, not trusting anything else. This is a basic example of good quest design. And I'm not giving the credit to only Revisiting Darkness, but there are other quests that are out there that does a good job. Granted, not ALL Custom Quests will do this. You do have to keep in mind that some Custom Quests are not all that quality and just quantity... *coughmascough* But that's yet another thing. Everyone has a different style or way of making quests and this should be respected. If a quest begins saying "ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE RED RING RICO?" and start you off with fifty Hildetorrs surrounding the spawn point, then fine. That's just your style, man.
I'm going to start here with a personal opinion of mine. When I create a quest, most of my passion is behind the scripting. Scripting does NOT include things like enemy placements and the like. Scripting is the most versatile and what makes a quest unique from one another. Just put yourself into a quest developer's shoes. When you make a quest, you make EVERYTHING. The NPCs, the things they say, the VR links, the Rico message pods, terminals, etc. Everything you see that you can interact with was specifically made by the creator and is a unique part of the quest, unless that quest is strictly an edit of another quest, namely a Vanilla Quest that became an Edited Quest. (sidenote, Edited Quests are worse than Vanilla Quest imo) Now you might be thinking, why should we care? Well, you DON'T have to. It's completely optional. If you're here on Ephinea, playing quests for the sake of how much EXP you can gain or how practical it is for hunts, that's completely fine. But this is a personal opinion of mine: When I pour majority of my time into a quest with its scripts, and the ONLY thing they compliment is how practical it is for hunting or grinding, I'm kinda disgusted by that end-game/meta-game mentality of sorts. Don't get me wrong, I know that I'm not always going to get genuine, well-thought out compliments, and I still appreciate the fact that you're even playing my quests to begin with, but there is a lot that you're potentially ignoring. But still, I'm not going to bite your head off when I log on in-game and be like "so how ya like the quest?" and you say "oh yeah, I love how much Merlans spawn in that quest" I'm not going to say "HOW DARE YOU NOT APPRECIATE EVERY SQUARE INCH OF MY QUEST".
Here's the main point I'm driving, anyway. When you play a quest made by someone, a person, not a corporation (Sonic Team), it deserves a more thorough look around. Not merely for the sake of finding something to compliment, but something to give a genuine opinion formed by an individual. Sometimes, these quests are going to require more than just a glance, but an analysis. Using your brain, in other words. The way I like to encourage this is by not necessarily punishing them, but making them feel a little bit loss, such as "Why can't I progress? Did I forget to talk to someone?" It will encourage them to read and find out WHY they cannot progress and perhaps even more secrets that the quest hides from them without reading beforehand. Knight of Coral (Ep1) has a very simple example of this. When you go into the main teleporter, you'll warp in forest near the dome and you'll see it being blocked by these fences. There's nothing you can do, so you just walk back and talk to the client once again. When you actually "read" his borderline riddled speech, you'll say "Oh! THAT'S how I begin the quest!" But when I make a quest, I try to get deeper and immersive with things. One of the things I have in ALL, or no, ALMOST all of my quests is the Quest Board. My goal is to make the Quest Board feel like it's a part of your inventory, a part of your character, something you need to be informed of what you have or what's needed to be done next. A quest that has many clues human beings can put together with their natural ability of seeing patterns. You get what I'm saying, don't you?
In closing, Custom Quests have more than just enemies and experience. If you actually read all my bullshit, that alone means you care to some extent, so thank you. I think I had something else to close with but... I forgot.
So getting right to it, Custom Quests are without a doubt quests that were not made by SEGA but by local players who also enjoys playing PSO. Vanilla Quests tend to stick to a certain pattern and expectation, such as monster count, lore friendly stories, etc. Recently, Ephinea has brought us quests from other servers for us to enjoy which is great. I love this. I feel like quests are one of the most important aspects of PSO. It turns the one track roller coaster ride into something with more potential and depth to offer.
What I'm going to discuss here today is the mentality of most players. I am not here to belittle, shame, or ostracize certain demographic groups, but to shine a light onto prevalent things that exists. Most of us have come from the console days where most of our journey consists of SEGA's storyline. Things such as Rico's message pods, dialogue from wandering NPCs, the VR links you see in Episode 2, all of these things contained some sort of story or info that you could read and it is never shoved in your face unless you play something like Blue Star Memories or Seat of Heart. But personally, I am more of a fan of the type of quests that allows the player to discover the story on their own. That's not to say I dislike cut scenes, they are great too and require a significant amount of time and effort to make. Much like one abandoned project I made some time ago. But back to the point, all of these things are very key to sending important clues and messages to the player, yet they are ignored all the time... Why is that? Well, I have a theory. When people played SEGA quests back in the day, they knew what to expect already. They've metaphorically made a new line of code in their programming to always ignore these things because stopping to read them will only set you back when your team is running ahead of you. Not only that, you won't be getting much of anything out of these messages. So is it perfectly logical to ignore this? Unfortunately, yes.
But I want to shine some light onto this controversy. Custom Quests are NOT the same as Vanilla Quests. SEGA only did what they were required to do, but a loving fan can go above and beyond. Recently, I did Revisiting Darkness with a few peeps. It was a fun quest, but it was the thing that ultimately led me to create this topic. It's not a mastermind at what it does, but it does execute the important parts to a certain extent. In one of the first rooms, a VR link will warn you ahead of time before entering that "pressing switches isn't always a good idea", giving you a very strong hint. So the moment you hit the switch, it will spawn Gizonde traps that will constantly appear and shock the player. From this point on, VR links will be your main source of anticipation. After hitting that switch, it gave my co-hunter a sense of wariness for every single switch he pressed, making him more mindful about what he did. Ultimately, the quest was a bulldog quest and the VR links were his only source of trust, not trusting anything else. This is a basic example of good quest design. And I'm not giving the credit to only Revisiting Darkness, but there are other quests that are out there that does a good job. Granted, not ALL Custom Quests will do this. You do have to keep in mind that some Custom Quests are not all that quality and just quantity... *coughmascough* But that's yet another thing. Everyone has a different style or way of making quests and this should be respected. If a quest begins saying "ARE YOU A BAD ENOUGH DUDE TO SAVE RED RING RICO?" and start you off with fifty Hildetorrs surrounding the spawn point, then fine. That's just your style, man.
I'm going to start here with a personal opinion of mine. When I create a quest, most of my passion is behind the scripting. Scripting does NOT include things like enemy placements and the like. Scripting is the most versatile and what makes a quest unique from one another. Just put yourself into a quest developer's shoes. When you make a quest, you make EVERYTHING. The NPCs, the things they say, the VR links, the Rico message pods, terminals, etc. Everything you see that you can interact with was specifically made by the creator and is a unique part of the quest, unless that quest is strictly an edit of another quest, namely a Vanilla Quest that became an Edited Quest. (sidenote, Edited Quests are worse than Vanilla Quest imo) Now you might be thinking, why should we care? Well, you DON'T have to. It's completely optional. If you're here on Ephinea, playing quests for the sake of how much EXP you can gain or how practical it is for hunts, that's completely fine. But this is a personal opinion of mine: When I pour majority of my time into a quest with its scripts, and the ONLY thing they compliment is how practical it is for hunting or grinding, I'm kinda disgusted by that end-game/meta-game mentality of sorts. Don't get me wrong, I know that I'm not always going to get genuine, well-thought out compliments, and I still appreciate the fact that you're even playing my quests to begin with, but there is a lot that you're potentially ignoring. But still, I'm not going to bite your head off when I log on in-game and be like "so how ya like the quest?" and you say "oh yeah, I love how much Merlans spawn in that quest" I'm not going to say "HOW DARE YOU NOT APPRECIATE EVERY SQUARE INCH OF MY QUEST".
Here's the main point I'm driving, anyway. When you play a quest made by someone, a person, not a corporation (Sonic Team), it deserves a more thorough look around. Not merely for the sake of finding something to compliment, but something to give a genuine opinion formed by an individual. Sometimes, these quests are going to require more than just a glance, but an analysis. Using your brain, in other words. The way I like to encourage this is by not necessarily punishing them, but making them feel a little bit loss, such as "Why can't I progress? Did I forget to talk to someone?" It will encourage them to read and find out WHY they cannot progress and perhaps even more secrets that the quest hides from them without reading beforehand. Knight of Coral (Ep1) has a very simple example of this. When you go into the main teleporter, you'll warp in forest near the dome and you'll see it being blocked by these fences. There's nothing you can do, so you just walk back and talk to the client once again. When you actually "read" his borderline riddled speech, you'll say "Oh! THAT'S how I begin the quest!" But when I make a quest, I try to get deeper and immersive with things. One of the things I have in ALL, or no, ALMOST all of my quests is the Quest Board. My goal is to make the Quest Board feel like it's a part of your inventory, a part of your character, something you need to be informed of what you have or what's needed to be done next. A quest that has many clues human beings can put together with their natural ability of seeing patterns. You get what I'm saying, don't you?
In closing, Custom Quests have more than just enemies and experience. If you actually read all my bullshit, that alone means you care to some extent, so thank you. I think I had something else to close with but... I forgot.