Well lately i've been wondering about game play and hour to get the most out of it, both for the main story, and for little side quests.

My question to you is, how do we keep the player wanting to play more, after defeating the main story? i mean would you really continue to play just to defeat the side quests, or would you need a little more persuading?

Have you already thought of a system that allows the player to continue playing the game even after they have defeated the main story, or do you have something in mind to keep the player wanting to go through multiple endings.

So, lets discuss how we can keep the player coming back for more?

I think gameplay is key here. I would continue to play a game that has medicore gameplay so long as the story arc was keeping me engaged. As soon as thats done, I'm out.

I play most final fantasies long after I have completed the main game because the combat and skill progression is still fantastic and there are many opportunities to hone that aspect of the game and fight the uber-bosses.

I would suggest making a drastic change in the story progression. For example, killing off the main character's best friend or lover. Which would in turn change his/her personality drastically. The main character could be evil, and all that.

Oh, gameplay helps.

Well, I'd either do what Eternal Sonata did for the postgame: kill off a character mid-game then revive him/her after completing an optional dungeon-

Or have a character's backstory told through a postgame sequence.

Sidequests could be extremely fun if you work on them as hard as you do on your main story. Present a side-quest mid-game which engages the player as much as the main plot and you'll have him interested in completing more of them after the last boss. Of course if the gameplay isn't on par the player will eventually become frustrated and quit the game altogether, only an exceptional narrative experience can save a game if that is the case.

Superbosses. I made a thread over on hbg, legacy if you are interested in reading up on them. Having a big challenging boss to kill after the main story always keeps me playing.

I think side quests that give extra info to the main story motivate me more to do once the main story is complete. Example being like filling in minor plot holes through side quests/stories chrono cross did this pretty well.

What you're talking about is replay value. This can be easily researched.

Engage a player in a quest around the 3 quarters mark and make it completable only after the main story has been finished.

Add in super bosses or difficult monsters and dungeons, ones that go far beyond the difficulty of the main story.

In Jade Cacoon 1, you could continue down a deep cooridor after the main story, where you could pick up unique items and find rare creatures.

In Jade Cacoon 2, the main story didn't stop after you beat the game. There was still a lot of story left to see and more to do after the main story was "done".

It mainly involves how deep your content is. Make your content go deeper than the main story and you shouldn't get stuck creating replay value.

Oh I JUST had this experience last night. I got through the main story of Red Dead Redemption which is kind of a sandbox game. However, after watching the credits and counting how many women worked on the game (there were a few), I wasn't sure what else to do in the game.
I mean I could go for the 100% completion but to what purpose?

I prefer sidequests to allow me to get some kind of boost or bonus that will help me complete a game or if there is a multiplayer portion help me in that.

For this series, I'm glad they have an expansion pack and another storyline to follow. :3 This motivates me to do some of the extra sidequests and such. ^^

Be like me; design all your games with a certain randomness element in it, and a strong enough element to where playing the game over and over again is actually fun and worthwhile!

Something that I enjoy are multiple side-stories that don't directly affect the main plot, but are very much connected to it at the same time. With that in mind, you could go back to a village to see what sort of impact the conclusion of the main story had with the people and places of that village and the other places along the way.
For example, say at the end while you and your party are busy fighting the final boss and stuff, the final boss makes acid rain fall everywhere around the tower or whatever. Later on you would find that the farmers that just so happened to live too close to where the acid rain hit had horrible crop failures and had to sell their farms and such.
This also makes lots of material for meaningful side-quests.

Another thing that could be used is a set of secret items in bonus dungeons that power you up just enough to get your butt kicked slightly less by the uber-bonus boss or something. And you could only fight it when you had 99% completion so the game would essentially end completely after the uber-bonus boss.

Oh, you know I've seen nifty little things like when you kill a boss then leave the dungeon, there's ANOTHER section after that boss'es room or somewhere in the dungeon.

EX. In Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the DekuDeku tree has a place where you can burn the spider webs. However you get the torches to do it two dungeons after you've complete that one.

In FF8, you fight Ultima Weapon down past the area where you fight Bahamut.

You could also extend the dungeon where the last and final boss is by making it so you can return to it after the main story and find some Uber Boss inside, or something else entirely.

What? You use deku sticks on the torches to burn the webs..

For superbosses, I think the kind of people who are willing to fight superbosses are pretty much guaranteed that they're going to fight the superbosses if they get far enough to be able to. These people care about the gameplay, not necessarily the story. They enjoy the battles and the progression, they enjoy getting stronger and proving their strength. If there are bosses stronger than the final story boss, then sometimes they don't consider it the final boss at all - there are still things after it, so why would anyone stop there? To some of them the game is about fighting battles and getting stronger, not about finishing the story. To the ones who do care about the story, they care about the gameplay just as much.

However, my personal opinion is that the end of the story and the end of the gameplay should line up. I don't understand why you would end the story if there are still more harder bosses and areas left. The kind of people who are driven by the story will never experience part of your game.

If your superbosses are so much ridiculously harder than everything else in the game that most people who get to the end of the game can't actually beat them, then obviously my plan doesn't work. But if that's the case then I kind of wonder why they exist. The kind of people who can handle those sort of challenges will have been bored to tears with the rest of your game.

@Necrile: My bad, there is a secret area in the DekuDeku tree that's only accessable a while after you've beaten the dungeon though. I just don't remember what it is.

I agree with you. I actually never play a game after I've completed the main storyline...I don't even collect all of the pieces of heart in Zelda games
I always think that sometimes developers do that kind of things to "over extend" the game play hours that they can put in the game box. However thinking about it from the developer side you must give something to chew to the players that enjoy the battling part of the game. But if you are able to mix a compelling storyline with the side quest..well you might attract players like me

One thing that's not really been brought up. Make side quests into story arcs of their own (think the Elder Scrolls series, pretty much any of the 'guild' questlines in Oblivion or Skyrim, such as the Companions or Dark Brotherhood, and some of the better designed sidequests to, like Noone Escapes Cidhna Mine (I may have spelt that wrong)). Rather than just have generic fetch quests, or 'kill x monster' quest, if your side quests involve strong characterisation and tell an interesting story of their own, players will want to play them for a reason other than just 100% completion.

Just have more content to explore once they beat the main storyline. I'm not suggesting to continue it but so long as there is stuff to do and the player likes the game they will likely keep going.

Look at the Elder Scrolls series and see how they did it. It's really the only games nowadays that let you keep chugging past the main story.

I have multiple endings, sidequests, and a game plus. You don't need a system to keep playing the game. Just have something that teleports you back to the main map if you choose to keep playing. If you want to do a whole new story, just have the option to save, and afterward say something like "please copy your save file to the new game." Drag the .lsd file to a copied map, and change some of the other maps (the save file will play at the new map, which should now have an event that "retrieves save information" (it actually does nothing of the sort, it's already in the save file) and then teleport back to the intro map which also has different events.

So how do you keep it up? Do all of them. Make so much replay value that the player wants to play the thing a zillion times or something.

Cheers, weirdbeard!

In my opinion, his comment would probably be your best asset.

Think like Skyrim or Fallout; think like Bethesda.

Not sure about Fallout, but in Skyrim, the quests have a backstory, and have their own tale to tell.

This makes things much more believable and draws more people in.

I did in a way feel that the side quests were somewhat of equal importance than the main quest, probably because I wanted to advance my character a whole lot before moving on with the story.

Get this, I was simply at level 8 when I got to this certain point, only to find that my older brother was still at that same point and he was at level 40 (I know, hard to believe, but you still catch my drift right?)

So anyways, making your sidequests like Skyrim's might make your player neglect the main storyline, which isn't too bad in a game like that where you have complete control over everything about your character.

I was actually planning on making a thread about this: depending on what kind of game you're aiming for (whether full control, full freedom like Skyrim, or proper story you have to follow), sidequests really have a big part in whether people like your game.

*Inhales deeply*
*Exhales*

Long-winded. That's all I'm planning on saying, so...

Cheers, JJ

I think, that after you've completed the main story, a sort of mini sub-story should unlock, showing what the characters have been up to prior the events of the main story, or something on those lines. Something that ties up the 'loose ends' with the main story, as well as shows what the characters have been up to (as stated above). Maybe when the sub-story is presented, the player can choose which characters that were involved in the main storyline to join their party to take on the sub-story (it's quite hard to explain, but something like this was pulled off in Final Fantasy VI when the world plummeted into ruin. You could go to different towns, cities and places in search of the characters that joined your adventure before the events. You were given an option I believe, of what characters you could choose).

Of course, the sub-story must have some relevance to the main storyline.

As well as a sub-story to follow, a variety of side-quests should be presented, ones which could not be accessible before completion of the main storyline (like labyrinths, superbosses, stuff already stated) and chances to bring dead characters back to join the fray. As well as the existing cast, maybe a few extra party members could be unlocked also (maybe allies that the main characters have made after the events of the main storyline). And maybe, some extra gameplay to add to the mix.