You're assuming the traders/factions/whatever has the same survival state as the player. They clearly won't - the player may need a cement mixer, forge, certain type of seed, etc. and the other party clearly already has it. "You do my mission which supports my needs, and I'll give you something you need, which I have plenty of."
That's exactly the situation I'm trying to avoid - where you have all-powerful traders/factions/whatever that are clearly surviving the zombie apocalypse fine, but rather than being part of them (or, since you're the protagonist,
leading them) you're stuck outside sleeping rough, having to defend yourself, and going cap-in-hand to them doing odd jobs for handouts that you need to survive, then still not being part of the community.
Don't forget, we're talking about needing to do quests because, to quote the post that I was responding to:
The reward either has to beA) So amazingly good, it'd be foolish to say no
B) Necessary to further your survival - if you don't do it, your odds of surviving are lower.
I never said anything about forcing a player to take a mission. Make it so it's significantly worthwhile to do so. If *you* don't want the cement mixer reward being handed out, fine - don't take the mission. Keep searching for your needed parts, and skilling up to get the perk. But if the rewards are going to be 300 dukes and 5 shotgun shells, I doubt I'll bother. Don't confuse what I'm saying with the old system where finding the very rare forge book was the only way to progress...
To be fair, you were talking specifically about quest rewards being "necessary" to further your survival, not just letting you get access to something a bit quicker than you would scavenging for it.
Yes it's a game. But the more realism you are able to inject into it - i.e. "If I'm going to risk life and limb for Rekt, I better get some good stuff out of it" - the more immersive it is.
Realism is what I'm after - the realism of people working together and co-operating, rather than a gamey quest/reward system where NPCs are merely quest dispensers in ivory towers.
(Not to mention the anti-realism of the quests often involving "dungeon" POIs with "bosses" at the end of them!)
TLDR;I'm pushing to make mission rewards tantalizing, to entice players to do them. You are arguing against this... for why?
-A
Because you're pushing way too far. I'm happy for there to be optional quests that the player can do if they like that sort of thing or can ignore if (like me) they don't like that sort of thing.
But you're pushing for the rewards to be either - in your words - so amazingly good that you'd be foolish not to do the quests, or necessary for survival.
The thing is, for people who would enjoy doing quests anyway such an extreme carrot/stick approach isn't necessary. And for people who don't want to do the quests they have to either "foolish"ly miss out on the "amazingly good" rewards, forego rewards that would be "necessary to further [their] survival", or begrudgingly do the quests that they don't enjoy just to get the rewards.
