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Most developers in the industry will attest to the fact that it’s very hard to “find the fun” in gameplay while creating games- and while most of that obviously comes from the mechanics, almost equally as important is how those mechanics are used. Oftentimes, games stumble in this area, and end up presenting players with objectives that just aren’t enjoyable in the slightest, for one reason or the other. Here, we’re going to talk about a few such objective types.
FETCH QUESTS
Makes sense to start with the obvious stuff, right? Fetch quests are the very definition of cookie cutter- they’re the lowest of the low, the most inane and meaningless, and as such, the most unengaging kind of quest we can find in a game. And yet, they’re so ubiquitous. MMOs live and die by their fetch quests, of course, but even in single player games, we see more than a few examples of these. And sure, it’s not impossible to make a good fetch quest- with the right contextualization, it’s certainly possible. The Witcher 3 has a couple of good fetch quests, for instance. But those are, sadly, rare examples- exceptions to the rule, so to speak, the rule being that fetch quests categorically suck.