Yet Another Blog About Quests
by trace
Allow me, if you will, to prattle on a bit about the quests feature. I'll do my best to avoid posting this on the forums, since that'd give users every right to hunt me down and quarter me in public. A Meager Rationale Yes, quests. I complete them with no clear reward other than the self-satisfaction of finishing something and increasing numbers. I was like this while playing City of Heroes, wh...
Allow me, if you will, to prattle on a bit about the quests feature. I'll do my best to avoid posting this on the forums, since that'd give users every right to hunt me down and quarter me in public.
A Meager Rationale
Yes, quests. I complete them with no clear reward other than the self-satisfaction of finishing something and increasing numbers. I was like this while playing City of Heroes, where I worked on earning difficult badges for quite some time. I once spent a week straight draining the market of common salvage just so I could invent temporary buffs that I'd immediately delete, which earned me a badge for inventing 10,000 things. I also spent roughly a month in a PvP zone inhabited by bored people, farmers, and assholes, just to earn badges for capturing various checkpoints (or "pillboxes") and killing a specific enemy that spawned once every 45 minutes in a specific area 100 times. It should be no surprise that I'm also a bit of a completionist when it comes to Xbox 360 games.
Some people have addictions, be it nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, or illicit drugs. I think I have an addiction to petty accomplishment (and caffeine).
When the quest system hit Giant Bomb, I knew that there were going to be tough or near-impossible quests. It's the nature of such a system, after all -- making it easy to nab every achievement makes quests completely worthless, and destroys any sense of accomplishment. This leads into answering the question that inevitably comes up in some form to all achievement whores, badge collectors, or quest addicts:
Why work on quests when the levels and XP don't mean anything?
It's a valid point, but it boils down to the same reason for climbing a mountain: Because it's there. Sure, there's no breathtaking views or near-death experiences with video games unless you're on a Starcraft binge in South Korea, but these are challenges that someone has decided to put down in front of us. Somewhere in Sausalito, Ryan, Vinny, Jeff, Brad, Dave, Drew, Sean, Ethan, Mike, or that Josh guy who was yelling at Dave during the Xboxalypse created these quests, either because they want the community to challenge themselves and attain them, or because they think we can't accomplish them.
More often than not, attaining any form of achievements, especially more difficult ones, puts us through tough or bizarre circumstances we would ordinarily never care to experience. By earning achievements in video games, we take on and complete all the facets of a game that the developer wanted us to experience (barring circumstances where we skip around that to make achievements easier), and show through our gamerscore that we've invested more time and effort into a game than most would care to invest. The developer dangles the prize at the end of each experience, and we rush after it. It's a strange sign of enjoyment or love, if you will.
Quests are no different. They take us through many of the aspects of Giant Bomb, and provide us incentive to devote more time in more ways to the site. I joined Giant Bomb at the very beginning, but for the most part, my investment in the site was mostly limited to reading reviews, watching silly videos and Endurance Runs, and adding information to Intellivision game pages. With the quest system in place, I have more incentive to work on the site itself. I've started working on more game pages, created a gigantic list that required embarrassing amounts of introspection and writing, and will eventually dive into the nerve-wracking world of writing reviews.
We complete quests because they're there, and they show our devotion to the site. Is it silly? Probably. Is it satisfying? In my case, definitely. Not every quest really helps out, though. While it'd be easy to outline a few obvious problems, I'll focus on the one quest I hate the most: [SECRET QUEST] from the AV Club set.
It's Better Than Bad, It's [SECRET QUEST]!
Anyone looking through video or news post comments should have a notion about one of the newest and most controversial quests on the site. People scramble to reach each new video and make a comment that might sound pertinent had they actually bothered watching the video's contents. I argued against this quest, as did many others, but in the end we were told that it was staying in despite our quite legitimate concerns.
I seriously had a .txt file made up, and used I Love Mondays for reference. Yeah, it's sad. Not that I'd bypass an annoying quest that craps up the site's quality. You read my earlier paragraphs. I thrive on tedious and annoying quests.
I had a game plan in mind. I created a .txt file in which I'd store generic comments I could quickly copy and paste into an article. That way, even if I'd obviously not viewed a video yet, I wouldn't say anything that would necessarily earn me the ire of mods.
Then came over a week of tedious refreshing. Any time I had a spare moment (and every few seconds thereafter), I'd refresh the videos page to see if a new video appeared. I'd follow the video numbering schemes to estimate the likelihood of a new video appearing, along with watching to see if staff members were online. Perhaps Vinny or Drew would upload footage shot with a developer or a quick look, or someone else might upload a generic trailer. I paid far too much attention to any of this, and still never could jump onto a comments page without someone beating me to the punch.
Aha! This IS my chance. While the frustration mounted, and my life began refocusing on a tedious and silly task, I caught a bit of a lucky break. I occasionally look at my followed users activity feed just to see if anyone's done anything interesting. In this case, Ryan had just uploaded an image showcasing what appeared to be a video feature. I remembered reading Twitter updates not long before that where some of the staff were heralding their videos appearing on Halo Waypoint. There was only one reason you'd upload an image like that at such a time.I knew a news post was imminent.
I shot over to the home page, copied generic text congratulating the crew on a generic awesome thing, and began refreshing like a madman, furiously hoping that Ryan had all the text for the news ready so I wouldn't be doing this for ten minutes. Sure enough, the post followed not more than a minute later, I dove into the article, pasted my two cents, posted, and completed a mysterious secret quest. My long national nightmare was over.
I still hate the idea of this quest with a passion. However, after completing it, I'd be lying if I said I didn't pump my fist a few times in celebration. I'm not sure whether that was a celebration of accomplishment, or the relief that I could continue using the site without that achievement coming back to bother me ever again.
My advice? Don't let quests bother you. Easy to say, not always easy to practice. If you're like me, and there's no getting around an incomplete quest as it eats away at your very soul, I suggest you pay close attention to the site. Watch the video page. Watch the home page. Watch what the staff is up to. Have something that sounds purposeful ready to copy and paste. Obsessing over these details for some time should greatly increase your chances of a quick quest completion.
Oh, and don't say anything stupid. The last thing you want to do is fail the quest by saying a certain word and frustrate yourself in the process.