Quests or Errands
I think since I talk about game design a lot with friends, I'll start posting my thoughts here.
The progression of the 'quest' in video games has lost its way. In the very early days the quest was immensely overarching; 'save the world', and you just did whatever on the way. This was too broad and confusing, many times new players to games like dragonquest had no idea where to go or what to do.
Final Fantasy is the first RPG I remember playing that gave the character more direct, short term goals that accumulated to a long term goal. Go rescue the princess from Garland, then go free the town from pirates, etc etc. Each goal was rather large-scale still, but still a defineable chunk. To me this is the 'epitome' of the video game quest: an advancing goal that has intermediate parts. Take Chrono Trigger for example: Rescue Marle, then Defeat Magus, then Stop the Reptites, and finally, Foil Zeal and Lavos.
Somewhere along the line they added the idea of the 'Quest Log' so you could keep track of where you were and what you were doing. Now, all these games were full of minor side jobs ... "There is a buried treasure here" or "if you bring me special rock I can make you superarmor". NPC's would mention these things but it was up to the player to do them, and they were entirely optional.
The quest log idea first kept track of your 'story' progress, but soon for convenience they kept track of the side missions too. And here, in my mind, is where things started to go wrong.
It was only a small step from here to break the main story quest up into equally small errands to make it easier to digest the quest log. The line between big save-the-world mission and optional side-run blurred more and more; instead of "stop the evil wizard" you'd now have "kill 20 of the evil wizard's minions" "find the key to open the evil wizard's tower (dropped by one of his minions)" "collect 20 teleportation stones in the evil wizard's tower" "Use the stones to go fight the evil wizard". In "stop the evil wizard" you might have done all of that too, but it was more something the player DID naturally, or something to solve in the dungeon - it wasn't spelled out in tiny step by step manners. You killed 20 monsters because there were 20 monsters blocking your way; you didn't sit outside the wizard's throne room and farm respawning monsters until you hit 20.
Eventually, especially in the Everquest/WoW/and beyond line of MMO's, the distinction vanished entirely. You can no longer tell 'story progression' apart from side missions, because both have become the same small-vision, one step at a time, report back after each step 'quest'. That's not a quest. That's an errand, a chore. I'm playing Borderlands, and I find it fun, but why not just have "Find a way to open the vault" and then the player has to figure out 1) there's a key 2) it comes in fragments 3) who has the fragments? 4) How do I get them? Instead, I'm told over three quests to go to point A, kill guys, then point B, kill more guys, then point C where a boss shows up who has the key fragment. You don't even have to change the game much, just make one quest to get the vault open, and have the /player/ figure out the intermediary steps via exploring and dialogue.
Speaking of exploring, I think this is the major reason it's become so dead. If something isn't marked as a small-step 'quest' objective (go flip the power switch to turn on the lights, then report back to me; next quest, go into the room you turned the lights on and find my car keys, then report back to me), then it's not important at all. It'd be a lot more interesting if you just told the player "You can ride my car but I lost the keys, I think I left them so and so" and the player realizes it's rather dark and they need a light source. Makes things more open-ended to multiple solutions too, rather than making the process so step by step. If you have to do all the steps exactly how the designers intended just to get the next step of the quest, there's no room for exploring to reveal shortcuts or extra objectives or additional methods to accomplish the task.
If your quest is 'kill the evil wizard' then you can give players all sorts of ways to do it from frontal assault through his minions to sneaking in, to climbing the tower, to blowing up the tower, etc etc, even stuff like 'wait till the wizard leaves and ambush him' or 'pose as a chef, get hired, and poison his food' if your game allows for that sort of simulation, but if the path is "Kill 20 minions" "open the door" "go through the door" "kill 40 minions" "turn on the elevator" "go up the elevator" "collect 10 minion scalps" "open the magic door" "Fight the wizard" then you've pretty much limited players to exactly one way to approach things no matter what technology your game is based on or its simulation could otherwise allow.
The progression of the 'quest' in video games has lost its way. In the very early days the quest was immensely overarching; 'save the world', and you just did whatever on the way. This was too broad and confusing, many times new players to games like dragonquest had no idea where to go or what to do.
Final Fantasy is the first RPG I remember playing that gave the character more direct, short term goals that accumulated to a long term goal. Go rescue the princess from Garland, then go free the town from pirates, etc etc. Each goal was rather large-scale still, but still a defineable chunk. To me this is the 'epitome' of the video game quest: an advancing goal that has intermediate parts. Take Chrono Trigger for example: Rescue Marle, then Defeat Magus, then Stop the Reptites, and finally, Foil Zeal and Lavos.
Somewhere along the line they added the idea of the 'Quest Log' so you could keep track of where you were and what you were doing. Now, all these games were full of minor side jobs ... "There is a buried treasure here" or "if you bring me special rock I can make you superarmor". NPC's would mention these things but it was up to the player to do them, and they were entirely optional.
The quest log idea first kept track of your 'story' progress, but soon for convenience they kept track of the side missions too. And here, in my mind, is where things started to go wrong.
It was only a small step from here to break the main story quest up into equally small errands to make it easier to digest the quest log. The line between big save-the-world mission and optional side-run blurred more and more; instead of "stop the evil wizard" you'd now have "kill 20 of the evil wizard's minions" "find the key to open the evil wizard's tower (dropped by one of his minions)" "collect 20 teleportation stones in the evil wizard's tower" "Use the stones to go fight the evil wizard". In "stop the evil wizard" you might have done all of that too, but it was more something the player DID naturally, or something to solve in the dungeon - it wasn't spelled out in tiny step by step manners. You killed 20 monsters because there were 20 monsters blocking your way; you didn't sit outside the wizard's throne room and farm respawning monsters until you hit 20.
Eventually, especially in the Everquest/WoW/and beyond line of MMO's, the distinction vanished entirely. You can no longer tell 'story progression' apart from side missions, because both have become the same small-vision, one step at a time, report back after each step 'quest'. That's not a quest. That's an errand, a chore. I'm playing Borderlands, and I find it fun, but why not just have "Find a way to open the vault" and then the player has to figure out 1) there's a key 2) it comes in fragments 3) who has the fragments? 4) How do I get them? Instead, I'm told over three quests to go to point A, kill guys, then point B, kill more guys, then point C where a boss shows up who has the key fragment. You don't even have to change the game much, just make one quest to get the vault open, and have the /player/ figure out the intermediary steps via exploring and dialogue.
Speaking of exploring, I think this is the major reason it's become so dead. If something isn't marked as a small-step 'quest' objective (go flip the power switch to turn on the lights, then report back to me; next quest, go into the room you turned the lights on and find my car keys, then report back to me), then it's not important at all. It'd be a lot more interesting if you just told the player "You can ride my car but I lost the keys, I think I left them so and so" and the player realizes it's rather dark and they need a light source. Makes things more open-ended to multiple solutions too, rather than making the process so step by step. If you have to do all the steps exactly how the designers intended just to get the next step of the quest, there's no room for exploring to reveal shortcuts or extra objectives or additional methods to accomplish the task.
If your quest is 'kill the evil wizard' then you can give players all sorts of ways to do it from frontal assault through his minions to sneaking in, to climbing the tower, to blowing up the tower, etc etc, even stuff like 'wait till the wizard leaves and ambush him' or 'pose as a chef, get hired, and poison his food' if your game allows for that sort of simulation, but if the path is "Kill 20 minions" "open the door" "go through the door" "kill 40 minions" "turn on the elevator" "go up the elevator" "collect 10 minion scalps" "open the magic door" "Fight the wizard" then you've pretty much limited players to exactly one way to approach things no matter what technology your game is based on or its simulation could otherwise allow.