Does Radiant Story mean that, when you finish the game and all the fixed quests, the game will never truly stop because random people will come and give you new quests?
I sure hope so... ... This would really help playability aswell, because you do not need to replay. :teehee:

EDIT* I know what Radiant Story does, It makes calculations and chooses a good time, place, style, and way to give you the half-scripted quest, yes? I am just wondering if that means that after you do all of teh fixed quests are done, some new ones will crop up every now and again.

ALSO: added a "Do you want this?" question.

I think that might be the main idea behind the kit, would be nice.

Maybe.

Its not so much random, as it has the ability to pull different things together in order to form a quest in different combinations based on what you have and havent done. Never been to this cave? A quest will send ya there. Talk to this guy a lot? Turns out his kid was taken. Happen to have your destruction skill over 70? There happens to be a mage who wants a challenge.

The main thing is not to dream up some epic sweet never ending game that we all hope it to be. If it turns out to be like that...I'll be very impressed. If it just helps quests seem more personal to the character I'm playing at the moment, that's good enough for me. Don't over hype yourself, its not a good thing to do.

Yah I know, but since it chooses a point for the certain person to give you the quest, there will still be alot of this going on after you finish teh game, as for being very Impressed, I would be very surprised if I wasn't

Radiant Story isn't a quest generator. It's a tool for assigning variables to EXISTING quests.

I would think that if these random missions did continue after the main quest, even though minor details would change the missions would all still feel pretty much the same. There is really only so much randomness a game can take. So after a while it would kind of feel like the same old recycled missions being replayed over and over, just with different people and different locations. Thats just to say the missions DO continue like the OP suggests.

I certainly wouldnt mind it, a way to have the game always produce new quests so there was never 'nothing to do'...not that that was ever much of a problem in TES.

You should add a "I hope so" option to your poll

No, radiant story varies quests that are written out. There are going to be random encounters but radiant story just tailors certain quests to the player.

This poll proves that people still don't know what Radiant Story does. :shakehead:

Bethesda's games are now fully voiced. You can't generate voice. The only quests you get are quests you haven't complete yet. Radiant Story adjusts the quest to your playstyle and choices made in the game.

There are various 'random' events that would happen, I'm not sure if that's really related to Radiant Story though. Those were like random people challenging you to duels and such. I'd rather see just lots of well designed quests than infinite random ones. Unless it's very well made, even good random systems tend to get repetitive and feel inauthentic in the game world.

If you think Radiant Story is "randomly generated quests" then you misunderstand what it is.
-Pete Hines


http://twitter.com/DCDeacon/status/23821788408446977

I know what Radiant Story does, It makes calculations and chooses a good time and/or place to give you the half-scripted quest, yes? I am just wondering if that means that after you do all of teh fixed quests are done, some new ones will crop up every now and again.

Yes, but only for quests you haven't completed yet. It does not make new quests.

Yes, but there will be quests that it hasn't yet given you.

Bethesda has been very careful not to Molyeux-HYPE radiant story, and for that I applaud them.

Todd Howard explained very clearly that all Radiant Story does is allow them to tailor quests to your character.

From what he said, it'll prefer to use npc's for the quests that you've previously interacted with (for good or ill). And your playstyle will affect how some quests occur and why.

And the practical effect? It allows Bethesda to breath greater complexity into more quests with less time and effort. Nothing groundbreaking, but we might enjoy a richer complement of interesting quests than in previous elder scrolls games because of the relative ease with which they can now implement them.

It's the same as in any game. If there are quests you haven't done yet then there are still left. Radiant story won't randomly give you an encounter, you have to encounter the quest as you normally would.

I think it would take at least 100 hours to fully complete every single quest and explore everywhere fully. After that I would just make a new character and take a different approach ( stealth/magic instead of warrior )
I do not see the need for randomly generated minute tasks and there is only so much 'random' quests bethesda could program the npc's to give us so it would probably get very repetitive fast.

My hope is just that Radiant Story will allow them to build a LOT more quests, since in theory it can speed up the process of making them. I'd like to still be working on finishing Skyrim when they release Summerset (or whatever the next one is)

To be honest, this whole radiant business is one of the main reasons why I look forward to Skyrim.
I hope same happens with guilds.
It always irritated me how I couldn't continue to complete assassination contracts after I'm done with Dark Brotherhood main storyline.
I know that I'm the Listener and stuff, but I should be able to twist someones neck every now and then.

From what I'm guessing, RadiantStory will be a fancy way of saying "it can random-throw-together quests, relying on some permanent flags/settings that scripts have set." More or less, it makes a return of the quest system found in Daggerfall: you could trigger random quests by talking to people, who'd mention some NPC or other needed something, and you could go for a specific quest that was generated on the spot. (though in specific, Daggerfall quest objectives, including monsters, items, and NPCs, only spawned the moment you accepted said quest) This was actually rather nice for the game: ironically, it had a LOT of "basic quest types," comparable to the number of TOTAL quests in Oblivion; DF had 216 "random quest types," (plus 32 fixed quests for the main questline) vs. 232 total quests in Oblivion, and 437 in Morrowind.

I'm honestly hoping it's NOT any more ambitious than that: that'd just give the game way more places to glitch and bug up, akin to how RadiantAI was faught with randomly-induced problems in Oblivion. I don't want it generating significant, world-altering storylines, since I'd be willing to bet that sooner or later, one of them would irreversibly screw up the game world for me. I'd be fine with relatively "meaningless" quests: i.e, any NPCs killed or items used would be otherwise not found outside of said quest.

This would also provide a good means of implementing a lot of replayability in otherwise "one-shot" quests. A few examples:

• Artifact quests - This is how Arena and Daggerfall implemented them: artifacts were never fixed in spot, to be gotten at level 1 in Morrowind, or necessitating level-scaling/requirements as in Oblivion. Rather, the artifact didn't even exist until you were lucky enough to get a quest for it: whereupon its location was random, as was the quest to seek it out: the only way to find it was to actually do the quest properly. This also allowed for artifacts to VANISH as they occasionally did in Daggerfall: it'd just add it back to the list of possible ones you could find again, as the artifact had grown too tired of being owned by one person for so long.
  
• Redemption Quests - Some of us got kicked out of a guild. Maybe many times. Previously, this meant you either got ONLY a single second chance quest, or no quest at all. Random-generating the quests as in Daggerfall let you get kicked out, and then re-prove yourself.
  
• Curse Quests - Specifically, for vampirism and lycanthropy. The latter ones were particularly memorable in Daggerfall, as they revolved around a search for a cure, with the threat of a famous lycanthrope hunter coming to personally kill you. (after sending waves of his minions)
  
• Random Townsfolk Quests - Occasionally townsfolk find they have a situation where they need an adventurer. Daggerfall had plenty of these, such as http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:The_Ransom, and http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:The_Escort. Other noteworthy quests aren't necessarily tasks, but events like http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:A_Mix-Up. (the lack of creative names in Daggerfall is because the quests aren't actually named)

As has been said, people are confusing Radiant Story with Daggerfall-style Random Quests.

The quests are all still fully written out- the only thing that changes is that the people and places will change. For example, say, in Oblivion, there was the Kidnapped Dar-Ma quest. It was given by a select mother, with a select child, in a select location.

In Skyrim, there will now be the Kidnapped Child quest. It will be given by someone your character has interacted with, about their specific child, in a location that you haven't been to yet. Once you play it, it's gone, the quest is completed, and it's never coming back. It's a way to randomize the locations and actors in existing quests, not create entirely new ones on the fly like in Daggerfall.

Sort of a half-and-half, if you will- random aspects to the quest, tailored directly to your playstyle, but the quest itself is pre-written beforehand, and is a specific quest, not randomly generated.

(please note I am not employed at Bethesda, and this is my speculation, and may be 100% wrong, even though I'm sure it's right.)

Unless they to a complete about face with all the information they've given us you are 100% right. The way this poll is going there are going to be a lot of disappointed people.

A lot of people are going to be disappointed. Radiant story doesn't make new quests.

I can't see why it should artifficially stop. And yeah, I would sure like that, as long as the templates don't repeat themselves too often.

Um, that *IS* what Daggerfall does. The only potential possible difference here is that, while ENTIRELY unknown, the RadiantStory quests could turn out to be "one-shot," vs. the "repeatable" nature of Daggerfall's quests. DF's 'random' quests were fully written, with it merely selecting randomized "objectives." As an example, in the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Banish_Daedra quest, you ALWAYS must go to a dungeon, and it's ALWAYS a frost daedra, and you ALWAYS cast the exact same spell. The variance is the dungeon/location within the daedra will be, the "name" of the daedra, (pulled off of a randomized list, not unlike many NPC names) and, of course, the reward; it's ALWAYS a book, but it's selected at random. (which could be done in Oblivion simply by making the quest reward be a "leveled/random item" instead of a direct item reference)

I like the idea of this meaning quests are tailored to you rather than having infinite random quests. I think if they were infinite it would end up like Spore's space phase... what was advertised as an age where you can build an empire or Star Trek-like Federation alliance turned into a mode of play where you personally are the galaxy's only space nanny. It ended up having a set of pre-defined types of events that spammed over and over again... resulting in anyone asking for help getting mad at you if you didn't respond.

That's the worst case for this system in my opinion: one that spams you with people asking for help and treating you like a bad person if you don't drop what you're doing and help every last one of them. I hope they aren't timed. That would be horrible in my opinion.

Thankfully the last time I heard them describe it it encouraged me. It's a way to randomize parts of a quest to make them more unique... but it sounded like they could make both totally static as well as totally random events.

I would not mind random events if you only got them upon requesting them. I just don't want to feel pressured to do every single random quest. I don't mind doing a finite number of errands and such it's just if they are infinite it would get tedious in my opinion.