Okay, I promise this is the last one of these I'll start ... today

How involved do you like side quests to be? What sort of side quests do you like? How much time do you want to spend traipsing around doing things for people, rather than just getting on with the game? If you're playing a game that has a strong sense of urgency, do you think having side quests available to do takes away from that sense of urgency?

"Fetching" quests are nice for a quick detour and a small reward. But I find quests more fulfilling if I have to follow a few steps, talk to several people, in order to complete it (with an appropriately better reward at the end).

What about side quests that are very involved, and those that are interrelated? For example, getting the golden frog in TLO - you had to get the quest to find the real golden frog, trigger the baby stealing quest so you could get thrown into jail, release Rat, join him in Tyobi to get the frog, then refuse to give it to him. A lot of interrelated quests, with a lot of decision points, and making the "wrong" decision at any of those points could see you unable to complete the quest. Personally, I loved that one, but unless you wanted to replay several times, or had the steps in front of you, it would be VERY easy to make a wrong decision.

What do you think about quests that are only available if you have a certain party member, who you may or may not choose to join you? What about those that must be completed by a certain point in the game? If you don't complete it in the allotted time, should it be removed from your journal (maybe causing confusion)?

If there is a sense of urgency in the game, then I don't like there to be too many side quests.

If there isn't a sense of urgency in the game, then I'd rather the quest be involved. I like having quests that are interrelated and one wrong move could mean you can't complete it. I also like the fact that you only have a certain amount of time to complete the quest.

I like the idea of a quest being removed, or maybe marked different in some way, to show you didn't complete it and can't complete it anymore.

I don't like having side quests that have no relevance to the game's storyline- unless its completion gives you very powerful skill/experience/fame/money you would very much need to complete the main quest.

Quoting KTC from Gamer's Club discussion board:

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I believe that pretty much summarizes how I would like the side quests in my game.

Side quests like in the old fairy tales even written ones like "King of the Golden river" where turning aside from the main quest to complete the side quest is actually important in getting you help at the end, like helping the ants and then they help you gather all the grains of wheat, or giving your last drop of water to a person dying of thirst and then the holy water is provided for you whereas the wicked older brothers who tried before all got hanged, or their heads chopped off, or turned to stone because they didn't turn aside to help others in need.

I thought the golden frog one was a bit unfair in one way because how did a stolen baby get in there, although I can see the point of meeting a "jailbird"...

My favorite one of all was the one where the lovers got split up early and Mel & co help them find each other, delivering letter etc and if you did it right they are happily together in the house in their old age.

I love side quests but only if the reward is worth it and the quest isn't absolutely ridiculous. Another thing I'd want in a side quest is that the reward be something you can't obtain otherwise and is stronger than what you should have at that point in the game.
One type of side quest I hate would be the, go to 8 different places which you've been to before and have no reason to go back to and get scraps of items. This quest is great if we get it before going to the places

I don't mind having to have to travel all over the continents completing side quests only if the rewards are worth it. However, going back and forth between two locations far apart from each other just to get a slightly expensive potion (like an elixir), or a few gold pieces, is not okay.

I actually think the reward should always be something you can't obtain normally. Even if it's slightly better than the weapons you'll have or the armour you'll have at that point, it would still be better to get original stuff instead of Gold or something you can buy.
Which is why in Build B, the whole collect paper quest was fail since you could buy it. Why search then?

I like 'em to have interactions with all of the party members. Also that the members actually have something to say regarding the sidequests, not just the protagonist (which most rpg does sadly).

Like (again) in TTHW, one of the party member left because he'd rather 'drink in the pub than do something that's only gonna earn me chump change', which matches his personality. Most of the RPGs fails to deliver the members' dialogues and interactions and seem like they'll follow the protagonist no matter what, and that's BORING. No one likes people that are too meek. >;/

I'd like a good amount of sidequests, not too much as in in every 2 towns you go you get one. Also sidequests that aren't too 'obvious'. *coughs at casino sidequest in TTHW*

Fetch quests are bo-ring but acceptable in early stages in the game especially if your party is only level 4 or 5 and you need quick cash. Also, if it's in the middle/late stage of the game and the reward is only cash and the members have little interaction, I won't probably bother with it.

Quests that are only available with certain members is perfectly fine and understandable. Makes the game more realistic too. Same goes to interrelated quests.

For me, the cash quests are no problem in TTHW since you always need cash. 25GP is valuable even at the end of the game. But in Aveyond, where you easily have in thousands of GP when items are about 20-50 GP, cash is useless as a reward

Yeah, TTHW is an exception.

I like side quests that can contribute to the main story. Also, the reward must be promising, of course, if it isn't related to the main story. It doesn't feel right to just do it for the sake of doing.

I like sidequests with big rewards, like special equipments and so. Sidequests that's fun, challenging, and has moral value are also great.
Speaking about characters, wouldn't it be nice if sometimes the chara can attend to a sidequest by their own? Maybe some NPC wants them to play waitress? Anything fun should do

Early in the game, when you presumably have little or no gold, then I'm fine with gold being a reward, but later on when you have more gold, then I want the reward to be something else, preferably something you can't get in the shops (first time I played AV1, I had already bought the Lightening Storm Spell when I finished the book page quest, so the reward was completely useless).

I HATE it when sidequests can't be solved except through the aid of a walkthrough or through sheer dumb luck. In other words, if solving a sidequest requires doing something the player would almost certainly not think of, then it feels like cheating the player.

I like interconnected quests, where a reward for one quest helps you solve another (like the restore Lionel/uncurse the city/get a ghost for the vamprie quests are connected in AV1).

I like there to be a lot of them - when a game has few or no sidequests like Deadly Sin it's a bit disappointing. However, I don't want there to be SO many sidequests that they take over the story (coughcoughLaxiusForce1coughcough).

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What about where it can only be solved through a series of correct decisions - where you might have to play through a few times, choosing a different decision each time, until you get it?

I suppose the quest you quoted is like that - you could give the Lionel statue to the squirrels, then you wouldn't be able to solve either of those other side quests.

Well when a quest has different outcomes depending on your choices, that's all right with me. What I mean is say, if there's absolutely no indication that a quest can be solved using this or that (like if your characters have to be wearing a specific suit of armor or something) and yet that's the only way it could be solved, and it's something that you wouldn't ever think about.

For example, there's a quest in A Tale of Two Kingdoms (yes, I know that's not an RPG, but this really drove me crazy) where you must use a certain object on a character in order to solve it (and said object gets destroyed fairly early in the game) and there's absolutely nothing to indicate that you must use said object, so unless you're obsessively-compulsively using every object on every character, you'll likely fail the quest unless you've got a walkthrough.

I see sidequests as a great opportunity to get the player more involved with the game lore. I like sidequests when they deal with some local legends, history,... I think it is very important that sidequests are part of the story and not just a sidetrack. If you are given a quest to hunt down a werewolves who killed several people areound the country, it makes no sense if only the questgiver mentions him.

Also, its nice if the world changes a bit after you finished the quest, some new dialogues, minor changes in the maps, a new character,....

I like my sidequests to be optional. Not because I don't want to do them but because I like them to contain additional content and items that would otherwise be unattainable. Then you are rewarded for completing them rather than just something you have to do to continue the game.

Less grinding...more finding!!

Dawn's light sets an awesome example on how to do sidequests well. You have to solve puzzles to complete some quests, others are interlinked with the main quest, and there are even "subsets" of quests like delivering letters and fishing for exotic fish. Throughout the game, you encounter letters to deliver and spots to go fishing, and you get rewards for delivering letters and catching certain numbers of fish.

Oh, and something that seems obvious but I've seen quite a few RPGs that don't do this - if you have a lot of sidequests, then DEFINITELY have a journal of quests available. Sometimes I forget about a quest until the journal reminds me of it.