[silvarilon]

As a designer & programmer, I love repeatable quests.

Or, maybe I should say, reusable quests.

As a player, I may or may not like repeatable quests.

What I mean by reusable is that I can save on most of the coding. If I have a quest where you're asked to collect five dinosaur eggs for the dinosaur farmer, well, I can use that same underlying code to have a guard captain ask you to collect ten bandit heads. The activity the players do (sneaking into the dinosaur cave vs fighting bandits) might be very different, but the "quest code" is identical.

This ties into your comments about randomizing the quests. If I can reuse the same underlying quest code, I can put in additions that flow through the whole game. Maybe initially the quests always give the same rewards, but then I add code to give a random reward of a certain "category" - so the dinosaurs might give you a "crafting level 3" reward, while the guard captain might give you a "combat level 4 reward" - the nice thing with this, as well as some randomization where I might not get the same item as someone else, is that it provides "easy additions" - a staff member could now add an additional combat level 4 reward, which is a tangible addition to the game, without needing to design a whole quest to go with it. Or they might design a quest without needing to worry about what reward is given.

But that's also why I like the idea of repeatable quests. Not all quests should be repeatable, but maybe some should - depending on your situation. Having random quests allows some interesting chaining of quests. Imagine a boss that can only be killed with a magical sword made from ice. Now, imagine if a magical sword made from ice was one of the level 4 combat rewards. There's an obvious interaction between your quests, without needing any extra staff word - the "go kill the bad guy" has now been expanded to "To kill the bad guy, you need to bring in the bounty on these bandits, get the magic sword, and then go kill him."

But that leaves you with a problem. What if you get the bounty reward, and they give a suit of armor, or a flaming sword, instead of the ice sword. You're screwed.

Well, you could trade with another player to get their ice sword (SOMEONE must have gotten an ice sword, right?) - that's pretty cool. It makes the quest dynamic since it involves other players. But let's assume that players typically don't want to trade, due to the swords being so rare. What else can you do?
Not much. You can look for other quests that give a level 4 combat reward. That's where game knowledge comes in, and where other players can help you out. You could find out (through roleplaying) that you might get an ice sword from the guard captain OR from the cave of treasure. So you've got two chances. Or more, depending on how many quests give that type of reward. But what happens if you do all the quests, and still don't get the sword? You're stuck. If that happens rarely, then not a problem (just trade for a sword) but if it happens regularly... bad game design. And if you regularly "chain" quest rewards into other quests, it may well happen regularly.

That's where a repeatable quest is useful. If there's a repeatable quest that gives a specific type of reward, you're always able to grind it. I'm not really in favor of grinds, but they do provide a useful backup if all else goes wrong. Perhaps the guard captain asks you to do the bounty on those 15 bandits to give the level 4 reward. Then he'll give that same quest, but ask for 20 bandits. Then 25, and so on. You CAN just keep doing that quest until you get what you want, but you've got motivation to seek out a new quest that gives similar rewards.

There are other options, of course. If there are three quests giving the rewards, and three rewards, maybe the system just never gives you the same reward twice. So by the time you've done all the quests, you've got all the items. Even then, there's still problems. What if you got the ice sword, traded it to someone who needed to kill that boss, and then take up the "kill the boss with an ice sword" quest. You've lost your chance to use the sword. Ugh.

Repeatable quests are also good for the regular players to give them something to "fill time" - I can add in once-off content (and I do!) but I cannot possibly keep up with some of our regularly players. They've got more time online in the game than I have available to code, and often they can experience content faster than I can add it. They'll happily devour the unique content I add, but giving them repeatable content allows them something to do while waiting (or searching) for new content.

I'm certainly not against single-use quests. I'm just saying that both types have their uses.

Certainly.
Which is why I tend to avoid "puzzle" style quests. Or if I do have puzzles, it'll be a once-off wider game-involving puzzle (e.g. "there's a new plague, and everyone can search for clues about the cure") - there will be repeats, the plague might reoccur, but the clues from before will remain, but the often game changes from "discover a cure" to "find someone who was around last time and remembers the cure."

With that sort of setup, there's no "puzzle spoiling" since the players are all solving it together. But... there's no puzzle awaiting new players.

We haven't finished yet, but plan to do something similar. Only someone who's been in trouble with the law would be asked to do the assassination quest, only someone who's in good with the law would be asked to do the patrolling the docks quest, and so on. Most of the time, those quests would be pretty predictable, though.

I also like the idea of "hidden" quests. Imagine a quest that's only given if you are on the top of a fairy hillock at night. The average player would stumble on the quest, happening to walk up a hill when it happens to be night, so they can't really tell the other players anything more than just where it happened.
If they research in the library, they might be told what requirements they need (but still have to find the hill) - I like that players can still share knowledge, without destroying the story. Someone asking where a fairy hill is, after researching, will be pointed to the right hill by someone who stumbled onto it. Someone who stumbled onto it and tells his friends might put together the clues based on which friends found the quest and which didn't... or they might not realize until a researcher in the library tells them. Either way, it's hard to "ruin" this for another player, the worst you can do is tell them where to search for an extra quest, and players love to find out secret information like that. Yet if you don't tell them anything, then the clues are available for them to discover it organically.

Hidden quests could potentially be tied into repeating quests - what if the fairy king is going to be at a specific hillock at midnight, based on the day of year? If it's an odd day, he's on the small hillock, if it's a day divisible by 4 he's on the tall hillock, if it's...
That way even if the quest repeats, it's still a challenge to find the king, to work out the rules for the puzzle, and all that jazz. And it's easy for staff to change the rules on a monthly basis, allowing reuse of the puzzle as well as the quest that the puzzle leads to.

Or, heck, what if the fairy king follows a formula that's unique for each player. So Bob might find him on the tall hillock at midnight, while Frank finds him on the small one. Then players can let each other know that there *is* a formula, but they would still have to work it out for each individual. Now, even if the king's quest is the same repeatable boring thing, the real victory is finding him and getting given the quest.

100% agree.