Cerebral/Puzzle Quests

Bansheebott · April 2014

Now, I'm only Lv. 22 and the farthest I've been is Rivenspire, but does anyone else feel ESO has an unfortunate lack of Quests that require some actual brain power?

Don't get me wrong, I find it really refreshing that ESO very rarely explicitly tells you to go out and kill X-monster and bring back Y-Body Part, but ESO quests frequently have you running through areas that are so thick with enemies that it may as well be a "Kill x of these guys" quest. This is made really clear since many quests have you go to a certain spot and activate something; the activator generally being surrounded by enemies, or the only path to the activator having several enemies along the way.

An example of a Quest in ESO I thought was really good, was the buried treasure quest on Strohs M'kai. Sure some of the clues were a bit obvious, but they still required you to think about them, and the quest could effectively be completed without fighting a single enemy. Personally, completing that Quest was far more satisfying than saving King Casimir, even if It did earn me a lifetime supply of Ale.

I think ESO would really benefit from quests that rely entirely on Brain over Brawn. A good one could be a murder mystery quest, searching for clues, questioning suspects, and crafting theories based on information. Craft skills could even be a part of these kind of quests, such as in the mystery example, a character with alchemy skill could tell if the victim was drugged with anything, which would have you assume "The Mage, in the Conservatory, with the Nightshade Potion!"

These non-combative quests would even give the game more of a Sandbox feel instead of a boring zone-to-zone progression. After all, since the quest doesn't require you to fight, you could still complete the quest, even if you're Lv. 5 in a place like Stormhaven. Heck, maybe it could even give reason for a Speechcraft skill line.

I'm kind of rambling here, but does anyone else feel this way?

ancienthero · April 2014

Stick with it. There are quite a few quests that require brain over brawn. Also there are many combat quests that require brain-power to determine your plan of attack rather then out-levelling the quest and charging in (which is a tactic I do employ - for shame).

Sorpaijen_ESO · April 2014

Be careful what you wish for, as the old saying goes.

There's an older now-free-to-play MMO called The Secret World that's set in the modern era but has magic; pretty neat game and one of its main draws was that they DID have puzzles you had to think about. Even better (or worse, depending on your tastes) some of the puzzles were SO hard you basically had to use the internet to solve them --- the game even had a built-in web browser (since it made sense from an in-game lore perspective).

While I don't really want THAT degree of puzzle-solving here in ESO, I confess to getting a little tired of the simple "match the colored lights" or pick-the-button-with-the-same-image-as-that-plaque-on-the-wall type "puzzles".

Bansheebott · April 2014

Well yeah, most people don't like absurdly difficult puzzles like what you'd find in Silent Hill with max puzzle difficulty (The Shakespeare books in SH3 comes to mind), or poorly written ones that defy common knowledge and are only difficult because you don't know what the puzzle is asking you to do.

But a quest like a murder investigation would be a lot more interesting if you completed it by talking to npcs, looking for inconsistencies in their stories, and seeing if there is evidence to support your theories, instead of a typical ESO quest which based on existing quests, would handle a murder mystery like "This guy was murdered, check the basement for clues, a journal in the basement says the butler did it, kill/arrest the butler, end quest."

columbineb14_ESO · April 2014

During the beta weekends - and possibly even now - every single time there was a puzzle in a given zone, zone chat would be full of people wanting to be told the answer or asking "how the heck do I do this" or asking where they could go to look it up.

I like puzzles, and the ones in this game are too simple (oh, hey, each of these items seems to be mentioned in the same paragraph with a constellation - I wonder which of these constellation altars THEY COULD POSSIBLY GO ON?), but I think, no insult implied, that a lot of people are simply not here to do puzzles, and find that they get in the way of what they want to do.

Perhaps a structure where there are Multiple Ways To Do It? "Sure, you could just hack your way in and it'll be a difficult fight, or you could try to solve this puzzle and finesse it."

(I agree that we don't want to go as far as TSW's master's-thesis Investigation quests. I still flinch about the one that asked you to be able to interpret Morse code *by ear*.)

Heraclea · May 2014

There is, of course, the lockpicking mini-game. There are also the various ethical dilemma quests, which few other games have, and which I enjoy.

Generally, though, I dislike math puzzles and treat them like roadblocks. If trial and error don't work, tab out and google it.

brandon · May 2014

I really liked the quest a grave matter in bangkorai, I liked having to figure out the note you get.

Rastafariel · May 2014

That was a good quest in Bangkorai.

frozenchicken · May 2014

The Doomcrag puzzle was quite fun too, though I wouldn't have minded something trickier.