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I think there are pros and cons to having baseline quests. From a high level, I think they’re cool and good for the game, but have be used very sparingly because they very heavily control what that hero wants to do until the quest is completed, which can easily warp gameplay in a negative way.
In my mind, the pros are:
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Games with baseline quest heroes tend to tell better stories and have more variety. Since the quest is done at a different point in each game, there is a feeling of success or failure depending on how well the player does, which makes those games more interesting.
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Having a clear moment of a power spike feels good.
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The change in mentality for the player and their opponents of a quest-compete vs. non quest-complete version of a hero can make them feel a lot different to play with and against, which adds more variety to those games.
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It feels good as an opponent to deny quests from being completed. It adds a mini-game that isn’t present in “normal” games.
Cons:
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Baseline quests heavily warp gameplay, and having too many of them on a team can cause the game to change in weird ways. As an example, a hero with a baseline quest that wants to hit enemy Heroes is much less incentivized to help their team take Mercenary Camps, even if it’s the right thing to do timing-wise.
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They can feel unfair to play against, particularly if the questing hero does well, since the power spike given to the questing hero isn’t available to every hero in the game.
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They’re often a relatively selfish mechanic in a game that’s heavily based on team play, which can cause issues in team cohesion.
Since we first started putting them in we’ve pulled back a bit. Our bigger fear is that having too many of them on a team too often will warp the game in weird ways, so we try to use the mechanic sparingly. That being said, I still think they have a place in our game. I really like playing heroes like Alarak, Medivh, and The Butcher precisely because of the high highs that they offer.