> Specifically keeping track of what are available for the character efficiently along with the event system to flag quests as completed, etc.
This is not necessarily that difficult, at least the first part. A lot of games will have quests be given out by a 'quest giver' character of some sort, or they will activate at specific interaction points on the map. You can do some cheap 'has-player-finished-quest' type of checks to determine if for example the quest giver has some sort of UI to indicate they have a quest available that activate when the quest giver first comes into view range. Quests with more initial conditions can hide their checks behind the interaction with the quest giver.
Doing quest progression can be a bit more challenging. You need to determine when to do the checks for progress, and also how comprehensive you want them to be. The more complex the check, the less often you can run it without affecting game performance. I've seen designers use all sorts of tricks depending on the specific quest. Interaction volumes that run checks, periodic ticks, on entity flash messages..etc.
> Then, every event can practically just be brute forced across your pending quests to see which ones get progressed
This only works for games that have a small number of active quests and not a lot of events. And with MMO's, you really need to be considerate of the accidental quadratic performance problem.
This is not necessarily that difficult, at least the first part. A lot of games will have quests be given out by a 'quest giver' character of some sort, or they will activate at specific interaction points on the map. You can do some cheap 'has-player-finished-quest' type of checks to determine if for example the quest giver has some sort of UI to indicate they have a quest available that activate when the quest giver first comes into view range. Quests with more initial conditions can hide their checks behind the interaction with the quest giver.
Doing quest progression can be a bit more challenging. You need to determine when to do the checks for progress, and also how comprehensive you want them to be. The more complex the check, the less often you can run it without affecting game performance. I've seen designers use all sorts of tricks depending on the specific quest. Interaction volumes that run checks, periodic ticks, on entity flash messages..etc.
> Then, every event can practically just be brute forced across your pending quests to see which ones get progressed
This only works for games that have a small number of active quests and not a lot of events. And with MMO's, you really need to be considerate of the accidental quadratic performance problem.