When making mods, I've often come across the problem of quest rewards: since a lot of players will already be very well-equipped when they play your mod, what can you give players that they will actually use or appreciate, without resorting to uber-powerful items?

Here are some solutions I can think of:
- Decorative / stylish items
- Items that provide some bonus without needing to be equipped
- Functional items (e.g. scripted teleports)
- Houses / storage
- Companions
- Services (from NPCs)
- Skill / attribute raises
- Reputation
- One-use items (scrolls, potions)
- Spells / powers / abilities
- Souvenirs / trinkets (collectable, but no noteworthy use)
- Gold or valuable items (limited usefulness)

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. What quest rewards have you really appreciated? Can you think of anything really unique?

Interesting question, and it does present a dilemma. The problem with giving uber stuff is that it could easily impact the players satisfaction of continuing to play. Say you give out a hammer that kills anything in one shot, Pretty soon anything combat related becomes boring. The satisfaction of having to fight through a tough dungeon is suddenly gone. On the other hand, give out nothing and the player feels cheated.

Mid point in mods I tend to reward players with potions, decent lockpicks, something along those lines, maybe gold. If gold, I try to provide at least enough to pay for the "costs" of running quests. I do try to avoid anything that has lasting impact on the game and try to focus more what may be needed to help the player along during the mod.

The problem with gold is players usually have enough, or can find more than enough by simply taking what they find and selling it. In all honesty, most of the gold a player will get is from the chest that are scattered around with levelled gold. Giving it out is more a marker of completion so the player doesn't feel cheated. Usually by level 4 or 5, I'm done looting and only take what I can use.

End rewards are a bit different, and depend mostly on the mod for me. Smaller mods, I may give out an item of note, Maybe something the player shouldn't be seeing for a level or two above recommended playing level.

My larger mods Definately at least one item of note, but usually it's a title. Best example of that was Windfall, my Oblivion mod. I tried to present the player with moral dilemmas in several quests. End rewards varied depending on how they resolved the quests. Doing things a certain way ended with being named Count of Windfall and a castle at one end, being run out of town at the other. Of course that easier done in a mod with 50+ quest and eight different endings then a simple 2 - 3 quest mod. Korobal Island, a large Morrowind mod, I gave the player an income producing mine and living quaters.

For me, from the player end, I usually don't care about end rewards. If I have a house I may place it as a trophe. I care more about the mods itself. If an adventure, give me an interesting story line, let me feel like I can affect the outcome by my actions. If a dungeon crawl, give me some mental challenges with the combat, not just a hack and slash. If a quest or faction mod, give me some areas where I have to make choices and actually live with those decisions. Harder to do on the modders side, but if done well, the end rewards can be anything, the real satisfaction comes from playing the mod.

Sorry for the wall of text, but you asked about something I actually have an opinion on. And if you figure out the magic formula of what are good rewards, let me know please.

Ed

At times I've enjoyed receiving scripted teleport items. I'm probably in the minority, but I usually find getting uber-powerful stuff as a reward is boring. Usually by the middle of the game, my char has grown attached to what he has and doesn't want to switch. From a practical POV, I prefer things that improve vision, or make travel easier - CE levitate, invisibility, feather, strength. OTOH, a spellcasting pc can make those himself if he/she has the appropriate filled soul gem.

I think one thing that might be nice would be a spellmaker or enchanter who can enchant an item or make a customized spell for you whether or not you already know that spell. That's the downside for me with spellcasting. You may have to spend several hundred drake for a spell that you can only effectively use once you pay a spellcaster to create a customized form of it that matches what your magicka capabilities are. I thinking of levitate. ISTM that the cheapest base price I've found was from the guy in the Balmora Mage Guild. Its cost to cast usually far exceeded what my char could do such that he'd have to then go to the spellcaster for a customized spell of that type.

Perhaps one reward might be a grand soul gem filled with the soul of a golden saint or an ascended sleeper. I'm not aware of any vendors selling that powerful of an item, usually at best a hunger or twilight's soul.

Souveniers and trinkets sound quite reasonable and in keeping, especially if you've got a char who likes to collect such things - remember the past threads about what various players' chars collect

If you could script it, placing player's name in the label of the building he may have acquired. I've always wished that I could identify houses or caves I take over whether by purchase or by conquest as belonging to my char. So if char evicts smuggler's from a cave, its name would change when you run the cursor over it to include char's name. Unfortunately, from what I've read that needs something like MWSE or it may not even be possible at all

It's hard to say about services and/or discounts. It may depend upon your level at the time you get the reward. I say that in the sense that IMO their usefulness diminishes the higher the level you've achieved.

Inventing a reward has always been one of the more challenging aspects of quest design for me. I think that is why I like Redoran and Legion quests since they are viewed as a duty of the player therefore not requiring a reward. Poor quest-givers lack the means to give the player a valuable reward, yet some players still expect something for their trouble. I have made the mistake of assuming the experience of playing through the quest is its reward so I like some of your suggestions:

Providing services (such as training) that otherwise would not be available

Skill raises (although the skill gain will not count toward leveling unless the player is using some character development mods)

Reputation gains (I have made this a reward for helping slaves escape)

Souvenirs (one of my favorites is a lifetime pass to all Arena events)

A few ideas not already on your list:

Information (the quest-giver gives the player a clue to discover something of significant value)

Faction reputation gains (such as in the official miscellaneous quest involving the Redguard Sason)

I like late game rewards to be largely based around social power/influence. You no longer gain new or fancy weapons what you gain is information/control. I like it when's characters evolve from adventurer to statesman/leader as the game progresses.

One of the things I've really liked whilst playing Dragon Age: Inquisition is that the world changes to reflect the actions of my character. There's an area in the game called The Hinterlands and one of the side quests involves creating some watchtowers. They don't do anything in game, there's no merchants there or what have you, there's a couple of NPC guards just hanging around. However, each time I've walked / ridden past one of them I get a nice "I did that" feeling.

For Morrowind I guess this isn't something that readily translates for all cases. But some ideas...

Clear out the haunted mine quest: Miners are back mining the Ebony ore (or whatever) and those cobwebs have been removed.
Bandits are attacking merchants: There's a merchant NPC in the local tavern saying "My gosh, I'm glad I can come back here and start merchanting again"
Fort Frostmoth gets destroyed: You see it being rebuilt. Oh wait, there's a mod for that.

So, yeah, something which shows that my PC has had an effect on the world. Could be a tangible structure, could be life returning to normal in a harried village ("Tear down the walls! We don't need them anymore"), or it could just be some NPC dialogue.

Oh, and what about a treasure map ("My grandmother made this, no-one in the family's been brave enough to follow in her footsteps. You seem like the sort of person who'd have a chance of actually finding this though"). At least it's an alternative to a quest giver being yet another retired adventurer ("Here, have my old sword Brightfang.")