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Let’s say you were grinding out some faction rep in an open world game. You’re doing a series of quests with multiple steps that yield “faction points” with a group called, I dunno, “Sons of Buttered Toast.” Each step in the quest chain rewards you with a specific number of faction points and you can bounce between the two quest chains. Of course, completing the last step in a questline closes it out.

Say you go to the quest vendor for the SoBT and they present this list of your current options:

Questline A step 3 of 6: Procure salted butter. Reward: 100 faction points

Questilne B step 3 of 6: Polish the butter knife. Reward: 130 faction points

Assume both tasks are equally difficult and would take the same amount of time. Which do you think you would choose next? Probably the second one, which gets you a bigger reward, right?

Now imagine that the options were like this:

Questline A step 6 of 6: Procure salted butter. Reward: 100 faction points

Questilne B step 3 of 6: Polish the butter knife. Reward: 130 faction points

The only difference is that the step in Questline A is now the final step in the chain. I bolded that bit for emphasis. You don’t get any bonus for completing a whole questline, just the 100 points advertised for the last step. NOW which questline would you pursue next?

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