Early game grinding requiring you to do one thing for a couple days to build enough resources to actually get started is boring, while late game quests that require you to spam the server with a crippling number of machines and then go AFK for a week are a big F-U to the player.
Anything that needs to build up over time in the background should be achievable while the player is doing something else. If you want the player to generate large numbers, have those counters running from the very beginning and be based on production, not storage or disposal. I'd go so far as to disable the ability to AFK. Only have the chunks loaded when the player is online and has been active in the last 10 minutes or so.
Rewards don't have to be big if they are meaningful or really useful, especially early game. Like just enough material that I don't have access to yet to make something immediately useful to reduce grinding or make progress. Great, you've made me punch 20 oak trees, give me 5 iron ingots, 5 clay bricks (if I have access to a furnace, make it iron ore and clay balls), a single choice of other saplings. Then I could either make 1 hopping bonsai pot or an axe and a sword.
Add a complete the monument component, but let me design and build the monument. Hit a milestone, get a trophy for the monument, put the trophy on a display pedestal of some sort to complete the quest.
Hopefully this will inspire some different thinking about what a quest pack can be.
Anything that needs to build up over time in the background should be achievable while the player is doing something else. If you want the player to generate large numbers, have those counters running from the very beginning and be based on production, not storage or disposal. I'd go so far as to disable the ability to AFK. Only have the chunks loaded when the player is online and has been active in the last 10 minutes or so.
Rewards don't have to be big if they are meaningful or really useful, especially early game. Like just enough material that I don't have access to yet to make something immediately useful to reduce grinding or make progress. Great, you've made me punch 20 oak trees, give me 5 iron ingots, 5 clay bricks (if I have access to a furnace, make it iron ore and clay balls), a single choice of other saplings. Then I could either make 1 hopping bonsai pot or an axe and a sword.
Add a complete the monument component, but let me design and build the monument. Hit a milestone, get a trophy for the monument, put the trophy on a display pedestal of some sort to complete the quest.
Hopefully this will inspire some different thinking about what a quest pack can be.