if you impose a history that the players need to follow it just locks them down, while also making them use only on voc because of the fear of needing to do everything again, at least, that's my opinion.
Interesting problem.
However I think that's not the problem:
1. When player makes new character, they either just want to try it out or start a new over again with different play style.
Giving option to skip story, get free exp and items just doesn't sound right, just because they know it already.
2. Exploring story and doing quests are circulating between mostly between these questions: How?, Where? and Why?.
If you know all that, then you wont be spending much of your time on this part of game anyway.
@Sportacus , Once again you make nice list of point-outs. I agree with many of them expect few, where I give my opinion below.
When games have too many tasks/missions/quests, or have level doors or portals, the game guides me too much, I don't feel like my input really matters or is being tested, I'm just following a path that was already set in stone for me to go, I'm just going through the motions.
I think you are completely wrong here. Just because game has something to offer or gives you something extra to fullfill doesn't mean you are not being tested or it doesn't matter.
Quite the opposite.
Easy example:
There is table full of rubbish in room.
Task: clear the kitchen table.
In which case you would clear the table. With task or without a task?
Do you think its meaningless to clear the table, when there is task or there is not?
Missions and tasks are usually guides and hints what suggest things, what you can do.
9. No double dipping gameplay
I don't enjoy being doubly rewarded for things I was already going to do. This is why I hate 'tasks' quests, as most of these tasks are things I was going to do on my own while exploring, or taking part of a grand quest. My reward for killing 20 dragons, should be the exp of the dragons, the drops of the dragons, and progress to the areas around where I killed them. I think it is just bad game design to reward me even further by having an NPC give me more experience, money, or items, from something I already was going to do anyway. It weakens the value of getting a reward in the game, it is no longer something special that I long to get, but rather something that is thrown at me constantly, with no actual intent to achieve.
Why should I get 20k for reaching level 50 in the game? My reward for getting level 50 is... the power boosts of being level 50. Leave it as that. If you want to reward me with something, make me work for it, not give me a reward for doing something I was going to do anyway. It kills the incentive and weakens the overall values of my actions, as I have been spoiled, and will not want to work hard for anything.
Yes its feels rather heedless to reward same thing twice. However seeing where tibia comes from, it does make sense why lot of servers doing that.
However the fact you say that reward should be "that" is incorrect. The developer clearly wanted you to have double the amount of rewards. Instead of making the fight reward you like it was suppose to, they just did a "fix" which they called "task".
You say that it weakens the value of getting reward in the game. (prolly after the task) Its true, but you don't rly fight the same monster anyway, if there nothing to get from them anyway. So doesn't matter are you ging to fight dragons 20 time with task or without it. End result is still the same. When you got what you want. You are done. Once again its for developer to decide, does he want you to constantly want something from these dragons.
You say you wont work hard for anything again xD, that's bull. "task" was the thing you worked hard for. Next time the thing you work hard for will be "item" what is only dropped by specific monster. Yes you want to find the task first, but you are not gona wait for developer to add a task for it, just so you could get the double reward again.
What I'm trying to say with that is tasks are not bad things, just think trough how you implement them.
In Whi World I currently 2 types of tasks:
First is the commonly known kill x amount of monsters.
When players see that they can take a killing task, they will me notified, why are they doing it first place.
So don't make it about numbers. Give it a moral reason, its RPG afterall.
You can decide to show rewards what they get from tasks or not. I decided not to.
Now about rewards. When I first made tasks it was 9+ months ago, so I was pretty bad at coding and I use same mechanic ever since.
I wanted to make tasks give only 1 type of rewards what you get from nowhere else.
It was skillpoints. (in Whi World you don't get skills from hitting things, but instead placing skillpoints on talents, which give skill exp)
Yes I could loose the task all together and just give the player that skillpoint when he just kills the x amount of monsters. However I don't want to give players wrong impression that killing monster over and over again will constantly increase your skills. Besides I want players to interact with NPC's as often as possible, because they are part of your story.
In any case, what I wanted to say is: Give tasks an unique reward to increase the variety and that's it. (well I have reputation too, but not gona make it too complex xD)
If killing is the task, make the killing itself give its own rewards, so that player goes back killing even after task is done.
Secondly not so common task. Making player do something just for the sake of information.
There was a problem that figuring out potion or spice formulas was too hard.
I addressed that issue by making tasks for them.
Its quite simple. You show item to NPC and he hints you where you can find information about this item.
After you find the information, you already know part of the formula or maybe even full formula for something and you can choose to not go back to NPC and not tell him that.
However if you do tell NPC what you found out. You no longer have to chase hints to remind yourself of the formula.
So tasks are clever things and can be used for different reasons.
Just make sure it has purpose and meaning.