History Main / ConvenientQuesting

* ''VideoGame/GoldenSunTheBrokenSeal'' does this, and uses the justification of chasing someone across the gameworld; any detours or sidetracks you go through are specifically because the baddies are trying to sabotage you. ''The Lost Age'' plays it straight in the early sections... before OpeningTheSandbox when you get the CoolBoat.

* The first ''VideoGame/GoldenSun'' does this, and uses the justification of chasing someone across the gameworld; any detours or sidetracks you go through are specifically because the baddies are trying to sabotage you. ''The Lost Age'' plays it straight in the early sections... before OpeningTheSandbox when you get the CoolBoat.

* Mostly played straight in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', but mid-to-high-level questing might require you to travel through several zones, and some high level zones are dangerously close to newbie zones. For example, the Plaguelands border on both the Undead and Blood Elf starting zones, and nothing keeps you from entering the zone... although you won't get far. [[note]]Behold, the Welcome Bear! A level 50ish half-zombie half-bear horror, with a clear preference for squishy level tens wandering by accident into the Plaguelands.[[/note]] Subverted in the case of Badlands. Horde players have two routes to the zone. One involves going through a narrow mountain path guarded by opposite faction [=NPCs=]. Attack one and every opposite faction player knows where you are. After that you need to go around an enemy city and avoid invisible cheetahs to reach a friendly outpost. The other route is [[WalkIntoMordor worse]]. [[note]]Depending on class, it may actually be easier to go via the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Burning Steppes]]. Yes, the high-level monsters will likely squish you if you try to stand and fight, but if you have a few good movement-impairing skills, it's easier to kite some spiders than to avoid the guards in the pass, especially since trying to slow the guards down makes you a PvP target.[[/note]]
** Several of the aversions have been fixed over the years. Horde warlocks no longer have to journey through a level 40 zone at level 20 to quest for their succubus minion. Night Elf characters once had to go through a level 30 zone if they wanted to visit the other capital cities. Now the boat goes right there. On one PVP server - where player-killing between factions is automatically on and can't be disabled in contested zones - an enterprising PVP nut called Angwe camped the port and enjoyed ganking lowbies (read: killing players many levels lower than himself). The responses to his antics were lovingly detailed on a website when Angwe then made an Alliance character on the same server to listen to the howls of rage. This was all totally within the game's rules, though.

* Subverted in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas''. The plot drops you off in enemy territory and you have to bike like heck to get back home before being filled full of holes.

ConvenientQuesting is a convention of {{Adventure Game}}s and {{RPG}}s. Your next destination will be the closest area that you haven't been able to get to before.

ConvenientQuesting can also be a way to ensure that the player gets all the required plot exposition. In [[TabletopGames Tabletop [=RPGs=]]] it can [[{{Railroading}} herd players]] through areas with no monsters or treasure but packed full of history and epic folk poems.

** Played straight in general, when you consider that absolutely anything you may need to do or find as part of the story will be located within the province the game takes place in.
*** It's especially egregious with one of the quests in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsSkyrim'':Dawnguard. You need to find a moth priest, the only ones capable of reading a scroll (because anyone else who tries goes blind). They're usually found in Cyrodiil south of the game's setting, but [[ContrivedCoincidence one just happens to be doing some traveling in Skyrim]].

* Played very straight in ''{{Wizard101}}'', where you're simply not allowed to enter an area you don't have a quest in, and will be allowed to only when sent there with one pending -- whereupon you'll get an official letter telling the guard at the gate that you have to be let through because of it.

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series plays it differently in different instances.
** Averted when it comes to specific quests. Any given quest can occur on the other side of the game world as easily as it can occur in the same area. For example, the very first mission of the main quest in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIIMorrowind Morrowind]]'' sends the character two towns over on a journey that can take upwards of twenty minutes, and that is if you don't stop along the way to explore the locations in between.

* Also somewhat averted in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' - though you are always given an idea of where to go next, it is entirely possible to stray from that path and accidentally find yourself in a midst of a group of monsters that will wipe your entire party before you have a chance to flee.

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' averts this pretty hard during roughly the middle third of the game. You have to trek across half a dozen map areas to get from Rabanastre to Mt. Bur-Omisace, only to find that your next objective is in Archades, at the far end of the map, meaning you have to go back to Rabanastre and trek across another half dozen map areas in the opposite direction. Then after Archades you have to back to Golmore Jungle in order to reach Giruvegan via the Feywood. The backtracking is limited by airship travel, but you're schlepping all over the world map.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]

[[AC:VideoGames]]

[[AC:Webcomic]]

* ''{{Drakengard}}'' follows this pretty much, except the Island Seal is ''nowhere'' near the [[CosmicKeystone Forest or Desert Seals.]] The game avoids the need to go there by having it conveniently disappear during the course of the plot after the Desert Seal. Still, you can go back during Arioch's character-specific sidestory, if you want to.
* ''PlanescapeTorment'' follows this trope for about the first half of the game.

* ''{{Dragonlance}}''. This TabletopGames campaign was a steady progression around the map.

* The first ''BaldursGate'' game featured a lot of pointless trekking across mostly empty maps, although you didn't have to cross the same map more than once. The second game did away with the empty maps but as a result the map felt less like a contiguous area to explore and more like a selection of randomly scattered questing locations.

* More plot-related than anything; in PuyoPuyo Fever 2, the BigBad has three "artifacts"[[spoiler: ; a bookmark, a "moon rock" AKA three day moisturizing cream, and a lamp that could negate magic(apparently)]] that are used to fuel his transformed state. Enter the three heroes, looking for those ''exact three items'', and thus avert a disaster that would've happened if they didn't need those items.

* Averted in ''KingdomOfLoathing'': most quests open up more areas to explore (or require you to find them yourself), but ''where'' they open has no bearing to your previous location. This might not apply, however, since there's practically no travel time between even the extremes of the map, beyond simply loading the appropriate page.

* Mostly played straight in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', but mid-to-high-level questing might require you to travel through several zones, and some high level zones are dangerously close to newbie zones. For example, the Plaguelands border on both the Undead and Blood Elf starting zones, and nothing keeps you from entering the zone... although you won't get far. [[note]]Behold, the Welcome Bear! A level 50ish half-zombie half-bear horror, with a clear preference for squishy level tens wandering by accident into the Plaguelands.[[/note]] Heavily subverted in the case of Badlands. Horde players have two routes to the zone. One involves going through a narrow mountain path guarded by opposite faction [=NPCs=]. Attack one and every opposite faction player knows where you are. After that you need to go around an enemy city and avoid invisible cheetahs to reach a friendly outpost. The other route is [[WalkIntoMordor worse]]. [[note]]Depending on class, it may actually be easier to go via the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Burning Steppes]]. Yes, the high-level monsters will likely squish you if you try to stand and fight, but if you have a few good movement-impairing skills, it's easier to kite some spiders than to avoid the guards in the pass, especially since trying to slow the guards down makes you a PvP target.[[/note]]

* Subverted by the MMORPG ''CityOfHeroes'' -- in many cases low-level zones are directly adjacent and connected to much higher-level zones; likewise, both train lines allow characters to go almost anywhere regardless of whether they can survive there. Characters who don't pay attention to where they're going can easily wander into an area where they are instant dead meat. Worse, the [[DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist hospitals where heroes revive]] in some zones are located ''far'' away from both train stations and zone exits, effectively trapping low-level characters unless they can get help to leave. They've gotten better about it, but in the game's early years it was annoyingly common to get a mission that was in an area where the door was guarded by enemies 4 or more levels higher than you.
* ''CityOfVillains'' keeps missions in the same zone as the contact who gives them most of the time. Hospitals are also located in areas that are fairly safe as well, often close to exits to adjacent lower level zones.

* Averted in ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series. In ''Morrowind'' the very first quest sends you two towns over on a journey that takes a new character upwards of twenty minutes on foot, and any given quest can occur on the other side of the game world as easily as it can occur in the same area.
** However played straight in the fact that no matter how epic the quest, how many wondrous one of a kind items are needed for it, or how the bigbad may be able to travel anywhere in the world, everything needed will always be confined to the province that the game takes place in.

* Subverted in ''[[VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]''. The plot drops you off in enemy territory and you have to bike like heck to get back home before being filled full of holes.

* The ''{{Gothic}}'' series averts this. Dangerous enemies who can one-shot a low-level character are just as likely to be present 30 seconds from the starting area as they are on the other side of the world.

* Mostly played straight in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'', but mid-to-high-level questing might require you to travel through several zones, and some high level zones are dangerously close to newbie zones. For example, the Plaguelands border on both the Undead and Blood Elf starting zones, and nothing keeps you from entering the zone... although you won't get far. [[hottip:*:Behold, the Welcome Bear! A level 50ish half-zombie half-bear horror, with a clear preferrance for squishy level tens wandering by accident into the Plaguelands. Heavily subverted in the case of Badlands. Horde players have two routes to the zone. One involves going through a narrow mountain path guarded by opposite faction [=NPCs=]. Attack one and every opposite faction player knows where you are. After that you need to go around an enemy city and avoid invisible cheetahs to reach a friendly outpost. The other route is [[WalkIntoMordor worse]]. [[hottip:*:Depending on class, it may actually be easier to go via the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Burning Steppes]]. Yes, the high-level monsters will likely squish you if you try to stand and fight, but if you have a few good movement-impairing skills, it's easier to kite some spiders than to avoid the guards in the pass, especially since trying to slow the guards down makes you a PvP target.]]