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Re: Preventing players from repeating quests (Was: Re: CF: Alternate proposal: MARK the power crystals)



Raphael Quinet wrote:

> I don't think that we should worry about small quests.  Usually, these
> are low- to medium-level maps that do not contain any great reward.
> So going through these maps several times does not give an unfair
> advantage.

 It is also the matter of defining a quest.  So far the suggestions I have seen
so far have special squares and objects inserted to denote a quest has been
completed.  For maps without any great reward, there is probably no reason to
put these special squares, so they won't really start as quests.

> 
> > How about multi-player situations, where some in a party has been
> > through the map, but others haven't? How would we enforce this rule
> > for them (and should we bother to enforce it in this case)?
> 
> Indeed, there could be some problems with multi-player situations,
> because only the player(s) entering the treasure room would be
> prevented from re-doing the quest later.  In this case, some members
> of the party would have to stay near the entrance and wait for the
> others to finish the quest.  If the number of players that are allowed
> to enter is decreased by one every time, then the potential for abuses
> is rather limited.

 One thought on this is for the marking object to give some benefit in addition
to just marking the quest is completed. How good the benefit may depend on how
good the quest is.  The benefit could be something like +1 cha, or a minor
protection or the like (or maybe just a 10k exp reward or something).  Nothing
earth shattering great, but good enough that the player would actually want to
hit that space.



> - By linking quests to each other.  Solving one quest would allow you
>   to enter another one, and at the same time would prevent you from
>   repeating the one that you just solved.  The quests would be
>   increasingly difficult, with increasingly great rewards.  In order
>   to enter the most interesting quests, it would be necessary to prove
>   that you are worthy by having solved some simpler quests.  This
>   would effectively prevent a freshly created character from entering
>   a high-level quest just after it has been cleared by the high-level
>   player(s), because the new character would not have the mark of the
>   previous quests (and chances are that most maps in the previous
>   quests would have been reset in the meantime).

 I think I would rather enforce this by mininum level requirements or something.

 I can see some quests requiring completion before going on (because they are
logically connected.)  But other maps might sort of be standalone.  The dragon
cave for example - nothing really leads up to it, so I wouldn't really want to
force a high level character from completing some other quests before completely
something else.

 A level comparison works pretty good.  Even if you are fairly generous (for
example, a 30'th level quest, let 20'th level players in).  This requires
players to be fairly serious about cheating.

 And if players really want to cheat, chances are they can find someway to do
so.  So to try and get too complicated to prevent this is probably just
extra complications.

> 
> - By making the poweful artifacts instantly attuned to the player who
>   picks them up first.  <snip>

 I don't really like this idea.  I could see the situation where a party is
working together, finish up, and the fighter is first to wander into the
treasure chamber.  He gathers everything, and when they get out of the dungeon
and figure out what everything is, they realize that this amulet would be much
more useful for the mage, and so on.

 Now a more acceptable method would be to perhaps have more marking objects. 
Perhaps at the start of the final level, you run accross a marking object, and
you need to have that marking object in order to use the items found at the end.

 This at least makes is so that users of the item have to get to at least the
last level.  This doesn't really do anything to prevent cheating however.

 A possible more interesting/clever idea is to tie the marking object to the
quest object in question.  So if that axe of biff is given to another player,
that player can not complete that quest now.  And if that player gives it to
someone else, same for that new person (the marking object is not removed when
the player gets rid of the item).

 This makes it difficult to cheat (unless no one wants to use that object (in
which case, who cares about cheating), they will have defacto finished the
question.

 In order to make this too harmful, that tag could perhaps be used just before
the treasure chamber, so you could still go through the dungeon to gain exp, but
not gain the treasure.
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