Post from 2nd page...
I fully agree with this.
It doesn't matter how cliche or basic the quest idea is, it can still be good if it's designed and written well. Give your characters some personality that shows in the dialogue. Not like what you see in some games that go: "
NPC: Hi. I lost my sword at the house next door. Can you get it for me kthxbai."
Try to create a story around the characters that are involved in the quest, give them an interesting reason to send you on a quest to do something. But dialogue is not all that matters.
If for example you are making a quest that involves killing 10 wolves for a farmer, then have your character go up to the wolves in the area and show an event of wolves actually attacking or chasing the farmer's animals and then charge towards you to start the attack. This way a quest can feel more "alive" than your basic "
go kill 10 of these monsters that are just standing there picking the flowers until you actually engage them."
Summary:
-Let there be a decent reason for your character to actually do the quest.
-Having even just half decent dialogue can make a huge difference in how fun a quest can be. Make the dialogue matter.
-Include meaningful choices during a questline, that impact the course of the quest for adding replayability and the feeling of your character being important in making important decisions.
-Use events to show the story. Make NPC's move during dialogue scenes whenever it's needed (like excited NPC's could jump, sad NPC could face away). Let stuff happen instead of just blocks of dialogue.
-Make use of face sets. Including multiple facesets for characters to show different kind of emotions can also help a lot in making a dialogue feel more "alive".
-Create mini-games. These can help spice up the gameplay a bit, although don't make them tedious or too long/hard.
-Let the player explore. It's exciting to explore places that actually include secrets for the player to find. Find a good balance between stuff being too easy-too hard to find.