Smaller goals

[Underfot]

I've attached an example of what I have in mind, but seeing as it's a bit messy, I'll try to summarize here as well.

I would love to start seeing some minor stories/quests in this game.  I understand any story-telling requires hand crafting, so I have a few ideas for extending the use of a limited resource:
-Formatting stories in the form of 'nodes' - each node is a bit of dialogue or journal entry and tells a part of the story.
-Multiple paths through the nodes - some nodes lead linearly to each other, some branch to multiple possibilities, and some require a player decision to choose the next node.
-Multiple start and finish points - you won't uncover an entire story the first time through, although many parts could be the same.
-Reusable nodes - many of the nodes could have generic instructions or events and could be reused in completely different stories.
-Player submissions - there seems to be a good set of map-makers around here, I'm sure there are story-tellers as well.  If there was a tool for formatting stories properly, we could build quite a library.

Quests would happen every 3-6 civ levels and would be indicated by a 'goal marker'.  If you entered a new region, one of the chunks would have the marker on it, when you enter that chunk, a building or character would be marked.  Reaching the marker would initiate a dialogue and start the quest.
Potential quest rewards are limited at this point, but I expect that will change once multiplayer is working.  I made a few suggestions in my example as well.

The summary:  'Choose Your Own Adventure' set in Environ, with some of the choices being random for maximum re-usability. 

[Ixiohm]

I made a sugestion similar to this in Matis http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=5133.

But you flesh it out more here, great ideas

[TNSe]

I would like to see more use out of Dust, Ores and Gems.

Either through turn in => gives some kind of permanent reward or additional rarer commodities as quest reward.

[Dizzard]

The devs are probably aware of this....but I hope the quests won't all be like:

"defeat these monsters"
"kill this overlord"
"collect 5 walnuts"

Those kind of quests really grate on me. For one thing, I intend to kill overlords anyway regardless of a quest. (although I wouldn't mind a large quest that included the killing of an overlord as part of the storyline) If collection/mob killing quests have to be included...I hope they're included in an interesting and sort of abstract way. It's boring to just be told "Oh help us there are bats terrorizing our farm, please go kill 10 of them for us!"

It would be interesting if there could something like the quest system Skyrim has. Skyrim is supposed to have unlimited quests. I like underfot's idea too.

[Underfot]

I hope there's space for set items as well; that would probably the simplest small goal to implement.  This was been discussed in Mantis as well; completing a set could give you a stat buff or resistance for a certain number of civ levels.

[Cyborg]

I'm not sure that looting Old Republic, skyrim, and Diablo is the answer. Not that I would mind some of these.

[Dizzard]

I'm not sure that looting Old Republic, skyrim, and Diablo is the answer. Not that I would mind some of these.

I really don't believe it's a negative thing to take influence from other games. Most people seem to look upon it as a negative but I think it's fine as long as it all comes together as something new and fresh.

You don't ALWAYS have to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it.

[Cyborg]

I'm not sure that looting Old Republic, skyrim, and Diablo is the answer. Not that I would mind some of these.

I really don't believe it's a negative thing to take influence from other games. Most people seem to look upon it as a negative but I think it's fine as long as it all comes together as something new and fresh.

You don't ALWAYS have to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it.

As I said, I don't mind some of these mechanics. I'm just not sure it's what's going to elevate the game.

[Dizzard]

I'm not sure that looting Old Republic, skyrim, and Diablo is the answer. Not that I would mind some of these.

I really don't believe it's a negative thing to take influence from other games. Most people seem to look upon it as a negative but I think it's fine as long as it all comes together as something new and fresh.

You don't ALWAYS have to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it.

As I said, I don't mind some of these mechanics. I'm just not sure it's what's going to elevate the game.

Not sure how randomly generated quests can't be anything but a good thing...

[Cyborg]

I'm not sure that looting Old Republic, skyrim, and Diablo is the answer. Not that I would mind some of these.

I really don't believe it's a negative thing to take influence from other games. Most people seem to look upon it as a negative but I think it's fine as long as it all comes together as something new and fresh.

You don't ALWAYS have to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of it.

As I said, I don't mind some of these mechanics. I'm just not sure it's what's going to elevate the game.

Not sure how randomly generated quests can't be anything but a good thing...

Maybe we have a language barrier problem? I wholeheartedly say that there's nothing wrong with these features. But, you could say that about any feature. What if we make the whole thing three-dimensional? Yeah, that's a great feature, but does it elevate the game? Look, you can have all the features in the world that are ripped from various other games, but a lot of the time it's just a lateral move. Maybe something is a nice feature, but if it's just the same as some other game, you might as well get that other game.

For example, let's consider Diablo, one of the heavy inspirations for the above comments. If you want to go monster hunting for shiny new equipment, Valley isn't the first game I would pick to scratch that itch. Or how about story driven gaming? Skyrim or any RPG does it better. But now let's take procedural world generation and dungeons, and Valley actually does it better than other games. It's something that is their strength.

I would like to see the killer feature be something that works from that strength-because they do it better- rather than trying to copy somebody else and give us something we already have. It's a strength of AI war as well (procedural), and in that game they use that feature to create some very interesting AI that you can't get anywhere else. If I'm a developer, I would love to have these features that were mentioned (if I had the resources), but I'm very sure I would use my positions of strength to create something you can't get anywhere else. Honestly, that's where I think arcen should go with this IP next.

[Gallant Dragon]

cyborg here has a point.