Nephele said:So, this may seem very silly to some people, but one of the things I actually like about text entry (vs. only having a click-through) is that I can have my character actually say something that makes sense in context of the world around them.
Maybe when a player clicks the text "link" the game can make them /say something inquiring about [topic] ?
Iksar said:Nephele said:So, this may seem very silly to some people, but one of the things I actually like about text entry (vs. only having a click-through) is that I can have my character actually say something that makes sense in context of the world around them.
Maybe when a player clicks the text "link" the game can make them /say something inquiring about [topic] ?
Welcome to modern day concept, where the player need not interact to any fasion, the game will "input" it for them.
This is why modern games are viewed as dumbed down simulators for the bored an inept.
Tanix said:Welcome to modern day concept, where the player need not interact to any fasion, the game will "input" it for them.
This is why modern games are viewed as dumbed down simulators for the bored an inept.
We get it, you despise any sort of QoL implementation. Players who don't care for reading through every single NPC chat typing word after word looking for any possible quests would do the same thing most did in EQ: look online at sites like allakhazam or the modern "wowhead" equivalent. At least with indicators for quests players are less incentivized to spoil the full questline step by step since they don't (as often) have to leave the game to even find the start.
Iksar said:Tanix said:Welcome to modern day concept, where the player need not interact to any fasion, the game will "input" it for them.
This is why modern games are viewed as dumbed down simulators for the bored an inept.
We get it, you despise any sort of QoL implementation. Players who don't care for reading through every single NPC chat typing word after word looking for any possible quests would do the same thing most did in EQ: look online at sites like allakhazam or the modern "wowhead" equivalent. At least with indicators for quests players are less incentivized to spoil the full questline step by step since they don't (as often) have to leave the game to even find the start.
I think there's a middle ground to Tanix's point, in that we don't want a game to be so easy that it goes by quickly by just finding the right npc and clicking through the dialogue. Figuring out the correct way to /say something to an npc slows down the game, creates a bit more immersion, and less of a race to the top incentive.
Iksar said:Tanix said:Welcome to modern day concept, where the player need not interact to any fasion, the game will "input" it for them.
This is why modern games are viewed as dumbed down simulators for the bored an inept.
We get it, you despise any sort of QoL implementation. Players who don't care for reading through every single NPC chat typing word after word looking for any possible quests would do the same thing most did in EQ: look online at sites like allakhazam or the modern "wowhead" equivalent. At least with indicators for quests players are less incentivized to spoil the full questline step by step since they don't (as often) have to leave the game to even find the start.
You define mainstream to the exact point I am making.
Nephele said:So, this may seem very silly to some people, but one of the things I actually like about text entry (vs. only having a click-through) is that I can have my character actually say something that makes sense in context of the world around them.Example:
NPC says: "Ugh, these [bandits] are seriously becoming a problem."
Me: /say "What's that about bandits?"
And half a dozen other people around you saying the exact same thing... seems really odd to me.
Naunet said:Nephele said:So, this may seem very silly to some people, but one of the things I actually like about text entry (vs. only having a click-through) is that I can have my character actually say something that makes sense in context of the world around them.Example:
NPC says: "Ugh, these [bandits] are seriously becoming a problem."
Me: /say "What's that about bandits?"
And half a dozen other people around you saying the exact same thing... seems really odd to me.
That's fair. That's another reason I'm in favor of having to "unlock" quests whenever it makes sense, instead of them just being there on the NPC ready for everyone. It cuts down on the crowds of people standing around individual quest givers. Even in games that don't broadcast quest text in spatial chat, it really drives me nuts when I go to an NPC to pick up or turn in a quest, and there's so many other people crowding around I can't even see the NPC.
There are no solutions without a drawback I guess :)
wehted said:I think there's a middle ground to Tanix's point, in that we don't want a game to be so easy that it goes by quickly by just finding the right npc and clicking through the dialogue. Figuring out the correct way to /say something to an npc slows down the game, creates a bit more immersion, and less of a race to the top incentive.
Just because an NPC quest giver might have clickable [quest] text to further dialogue doesn't make it much easier, it's how quests are handled beyond the NPC that make things easy or not. If you talk to an NPC and spam through all the dialogue clicking away but receive no quests like a modern MMO (Kill 5 rats and return to X) but instead your "quest" journal just updates with the NPC name and a copy of what they said to the player then that person would still need to take the time to read and figure out exactly what is being asked of them.
Or google it.
Should questing be set up as an inherently personal experience, or as a shared one?
By this I mean, should you have to go through some extra step to share a quest with your friends or groupmates so that they too can benefit, or potentially should quest completion, and the rewards from it, be automatically shared amongst the group?
I realize there are lots of details to sort out with the latter situation - but forget about all those details for a moment. What sort of experience do we want quests to be? Personal and individual, or collaborative and shared?
Click entry will lead directly to all the dialogue being skipped, just like in every other mmo. With text entry you at least have to do some bare amount of reading and actual interaction. The EQ style wasn't particularly sophisticated and should probably be improved upon, but it certainly engendered a vastly superior sense of immersion.
Nephele said:Should questing be set up as an inherently personal experience, or as a shared one?
By this I mean, should you have to go through some extra step to share a quest with your friends or groupmates so that they too can benefit, or potentially should quest completion, and the rewards from it, be automatically shared amongst the group?
I realize there are lots of details to sort out with the latter situation - but forget about all those details for a moment. What sort of experience do we want quests to be? Personal and individual, or collaborative and shared?
I don't think quests should be flagged at all. If you wanted to share a quest with a friend or groupmate you "share" by just telling them about it (maybe you can share a journal entry?). If Captain Flattop is looking for his lost wedding ring in Halnir then anyone should be able to find that item regardless of if they know the quest even exists. So in that sense I guess personal, shared if you offer to hang around to help find another drop (or ground spawn) of the ring/item(s)/whatever.
Iksar said:wehted said:I think there's a middle ground to Tanix's point, in that we don't want a game to be so easy that it goes by quickly by just finding the right npc and clicking through the dialogue. Figuring out the correct way to /say something to an npc slows down the game, creates a bit more immersion, and less of a race to the top incentive.
Just because an NPC quest giver might have clickable [quest] text to further dialogue doesn't make it much easier, it's how quests are handled beyond the NPC that make things easy or not. If you talk to an NPC and spam through all the dialogue clicking away but receive no quests like a modern MMO (Kill 5 rats and return to X) but instead your "quest" journal just updates with the NPC name and a copy of what they said to the player then that person would still need to take the time to read and figure out exactly what is being asked of them.
Or google it.
Ease of access to finding and starting quests is what is at issue here, not the contents and requirements of the quests. There is something romantic about the old way that quests were a bit hidden through certain kinds of dialogue checks, which I'd personally like to see remain in some form. However, the old systems were clunky and off putting, even to me. That's all I'm trying to say.
Iksar said:wehted said:I think there's a middle ground to Tanix's point, in that we don't want a game to be so easy that it goes by quickly by just finding the right npc and clicking through the dialogue. Figuring out the correct way to /say something to an npc slows down the game, creates a bit more immersion, and less of a race to the top incentive.
Just because an NPC quest giver might have clickable [quest] text to further dialogue doesn't make it much easier, it's how quests are handled beyond the NPC that make things easy or not. If you talk to an NPC and spam through all the dialogue clicking away but receive no quests like a modern MMO (Kill 5 rats and return to X) but instead your "quest" journal just updates with the NPC name and a copy of what they said to the player then that person would still need to take the time to read and figure out exactly what is being asked of them.
Or google it.
One is a process of investigation, the other is just being handed a task.
In one of the game play videos concerning this, the player clicked a highlighted word which directed them to the task. The player needed no intelligent interaction with the NPC, no thinking about what the NPC was asking, they simply clicked the bouncing ball (aka highlighted text) and it progressed the dialog.
This is no different than the "skip" video someone posted here. Players will not read the NPC dialog, they will click the highlighted text as fast as they can, get to the end where the update is and then do whatever that end dialog states and move on.
If there is no highlighted text, the player will be forced to critically read the dialog, and interact in a way that will query for further information. Even if the player was simply entering "key words", they will STILL be required to first read and understand what is a key word by the context. Highlighted text avoids the need to read at all, you can just look for something colored and click it till you get to the end where it tells you want to do. This is also why I don't want auto-quest logs, rather the player should have to read, think, then take notes on what is relevant.
So yes, highlighted text IS easier because it does not require critical reading in the process of interacting with the quest giver. It doesn't matter if the task itself is difficult, the dialog interaction is dumbed down different than a "?".
The benefit of no highlights and text input is that the player has no idea if the NPC even has a quest or if they are even important. They have to read and consider the context of the discussion, then inquiry about it to find out. With this type of sytem, all you need to do is run up, click all the highlights and then check your quest book to see if there was a quest. In fact, you don't even have to read a single thing to get the quest, just go from NPC spamming all the highlights, then move to the next, spam them, next... so on and so fort, then check your quest log/book/list and go do it. Modern dumbed down questing!
Almost all of that critique isn't critique of keyword or dialogue tree-driven NPC conversations at their core, but only of a lazy implementation.
If you've got a dialogue tree system and the entire conversation consists of a sequence of single answer queries (or multiple answers that lead to exactly the same thing), then you're right it really doesn't matter what the player does and a single click on the NPC giving all the necessary log updates would have the same net result.
However, if you've got multiple keyword options that drive you down a certain path with no way back (as mentioned before by others), then it's no longer a matter of 'clicking the bouncing ball' because you're going to have to think about what you want to click. Having branching dialogues with parts that do NOT loop back or give second chances when the conversation is started anew is the way such a system should be implemented.
A simple example would be having an NPC X that questions the player's loyalty to NPC A or NPC B of a certain faction, and if you give A as your answer they will not disclose additional information. Through reading in-game documents or speaking with other NPC's who know NPC X, the player could figure out whom NPC is loyal to and answer accordingly (B).
The only argument that stands is that text input and no clicky parts forces players to search for keywords instead of having them marked. But whether that's a truly engaging puzzle or just busywork is very much debateable. In my opinion hidden keywords are best used only to find 'secrets' in the game and not for general conversations.
Kaeldorn said:Almost all of that critique isn't critique of keyword or dialogue tree-driven NPC conversations at their core, but only of a lazy implementation.
If you've got a dialogue tree system and the entire conversation consists of a sequence of single answer queries (or multiple answers that lead to exactly the same thing), then you're right it really doesn't matter what the player does and a single click on the NPC giving all the necessary log updates would have the same net result.
However, if you've got multiple keyword options that drive you down a certain path with no way back (as mentioned before by others), then it's no longer a matter of 'clicking the bouncing ball' because you're going to have to think about what you want to click. Having branching dialogues with parts that do NOT loop back or give second chances when the conversation is started anew is the way such a system should be implemented.
A simple example would be having an NPC X that questions the player's loyalty to NPC A or NPC B of a certain faction, and if you give A as your answer they will not disclose additional information. Through reading in-game documents or speaking with other NPC's who know NPC X, the player could figure out whom NPC is loyal to and answer accordingly (B).
The only argument that stands is that text input and no clicky parts forces players to search for keywords instead of having them marked. But whether that's a truly engaging puzzle or just busywork is very much debateable. In my opinion hidden keywords are best used only to find 'secrets' in the game and not for general conversations.
That is possible, but unless there is a direct consequence to such, most players will simply click through each branch without reading until they hit a branch end that produces a result (I have actually played games with this type of system and fast clicking to an end result is actually quite effective if you don't want to read). I mean, you could make it where if the player goes down the wrong branch, the NPC will no longer talk to them for a bit, or it could be something that reduces faction with the NPC so if players dumbly iterate through highlights they can eventually damage factions.
As for "busy work", critical reading is never "busy work", the player has to read, figure out the relevant context and then query for it. Granted, if you design your conversations in a very simplistic form, hunting for the relevant topics (ie keywords, phrases) might be very easy, but then that would be the fault of the writer, not the system. Even the most complex highlighted system really is just a branch of hyper texts that result in an end to that branch so someone could essentially just click through without ever reading and get to an end branch.
Another thing to consider is how query information can be referred to indirectly in a quest dialog. You don't have to "dumbly" list the exact trigger phrases with the NPC, in fact it would be better to hint at things in many quests, forcing the player to deduce what the keyword/phrase might be. That is, your trigger word might not be listed at all in the actual text, but fairly obvious when you evaluate what the NPC is discussing.
You could for instance have a shady NPC who is indirectly asking you to steal an item for them, and in their dialog they have all but outright stated they want you to steal it. You could implement a trigger with the word "steal" (or like word) which causes them advance the conversation and admonish you for using that word, claiming they don't "steal", they prefer to think of it as reducing people of their physical burdens.
The point is, triggers can be hidden and numerous approaches to dialog can be made to hide concepts in the interaction where the player has to critically read to figure out what is really being asked. Some quests may be very easy with simple word concept associations, others might be very subtle hints to only the careful eye in both reading and maybe paying attention to the NPCs nearby surroundings. An NPC may not even trigger any useful conversation until you ask about a particular situation. That is, the NPC could be standing next to a window, looking nervous and paranoid. The conversation trigger could have nothing to do with the NPCs conversation, rather it would need to be a trigger that is initiated by the player as it concerns the NPCs situation and location. You could even have the trigger be something that happened or was learned in an entirely different area from the NPC, but by providing the correct trigger, the NPC starts a specific dialog. None of this can be done with highlighted systems.
The point is, with a text input system, the player must read, look, think, and inquiry while click systems really are just bouncing balls.
Would this make questing much harder for the average player today, It depends… but… it would be quite fulfilling in play as it would actually be more akin to D&D where you had to play the detective in the story and actually figure things out.
Tanix said:
Another thing to consider is how query information can be referred to indirectly in a quest dialog. You don't have to "dumbly" list the exact trigger phrases with the NPC, in fact it would be better to hint at things in many quests, forcing the player to deduce what the keyword/phrase might be. That is, your trigger word might not be listed at all in the actual text, but fairly obvious when you evaluate what the NPC is discussing.
You could for instance have a shady NPC who is indirectly asking you to steal an item for them, and in their dialog they have all but outright stated they want you to steal it. You could implement a trigger with the word "steal" (or like word) which causes them advance the conversation and admonish you for using that word, claiming they don't "steal", they prefer to think of it as reducing people of their physical burdens.
The point is, triggers can be hidden and numerous approaches to dialog can be made to hide concepts in the interaction where the player has to critically read to figure out what is really being asked. Some quests may be very easy with simple word concept associations, others might be very subtle hints to only the careful eye in both reading and maybe paying attention to the NPCs nearby surroundings. An NPC may not even trigger any useful conversation until you ask about a particular situation. That is, the NPC could be standing next to a window, looking nervous and paranoid. The conversation trigger could have nothing to do with the NPCs conversation, rather it would need to be a trigger that is initiated by the player as it concerns the NPCs situation and location. You could even have the trigger be something that happened or was learned in an entirely different area from the NPC, but by providing the correct trigger, the NPC starts a specific dialog. None of this can be done with highlighted systems.
The point is, with a text input system, the player must read, look, think, and inquiry while click systems really are just bouncing balls.
Would this make questing much harder for the average player today, It depends… but… it would be quite fulfilling in play as it would actually be more akin to D&D where you had to play the detective in the story and actually figure things out.
it's fine if the quest takes more time to figure out. the psychological issue you are dealing with is instant gratification and majority of players just want it now. SKIP. SKIP. SKIP. complete quest. kills next closest npc and runs off.
Part of the goal of Pantheon is to avoid the instant gratification mindset and have a game with what by today's standards is agonizingly slow progress.
Having quests where you need to actually read the text helps inculcate that mindset early in the game and I hope they do it.
dorotea said:Part of the goal of Pantheon is to avoid the instant gratification mindset and have a game with what by today's standards is agonizingly slow progress.
Having quests where you need to actually read the text helps inculcate that mindset early in the game and I hope they do it.
more like reintroduce delayed gratification. i was reading this article about how to use instant gratification as part of your marketing scheme in order to increase sales. you'd have to do some serious everyday life changes to solve the societal issues.
Iksar said:Nephele said:Should questing be set up as an inherently personal experience, or as a shared one?
By this I mean, should you have to go through some extra step to share a quest with your friends or groupmates so that they too can benefit, or potentially should quest completion, and the rewards from it, be automatically shared amongst the group?
I realize there are lots of details to sort out with the latter situation - but forget about all those details for a moment. What sort of experience do we want quests to be? Personal and individual, or collaborative and shared?
I don't think quests should be flagged at all. If you wanted to share a quest with a friend or groupmate you "share" by just telling them about it (maybe you can share a journal entry?). If Captain Flattop is looking for his lost wedding ring in Halnir then anyone should be able to find that item regardless of if they know the quest even exists. So in that sense I guess personal, shared if you offer to hang around to help find another drop (or ground spawn) of the ring/item(s)/whatever.
Thanks Iksar.
The reason I asked the question is that I think a lot of us sort of have this preconception about what the experience of a "normal quest" should be. Whether we love them or hate them, the idea of a quest, for most of us, has come to mean some sort of individual task or objective. Maybe it takes some people helping us to accomplish, but the objective and the rewards are still individual ones.
I wonder if Pantheon shouldn't turn that idea on its head? What if all normal quests were actually quests for your group. Meaning that only one person would need to pick up the quest, but that when it was completed, the entire group that completes it would share in the rewards. How would that change the way we play? How would that change the social dynamics in game? We all have that one person we've known who was a lore fiend or who had to go find and complete every single quest in the games we played. Does their slightly neurotic and silly habit in previous games now become a valued gameplay style in Pantheon?
The reason I bring this up, is that if Pantheon were to take this approach, quest "hooks" could be made much more obscure and difficult to enter into and progress. Essentially, to get a quest in the first place, and figure out how to complete it, a player would be required to pay attention to NPC dialogue and bone up on story, lore, local geography, etc.
I just wonder if we were to reframe what "normal quests" were trying to accomplish, could we in turn end up with a much more fulfilling and social experience for players in general?
Full disclosure. Nephele is a lore fiend and has a compulsive desire to complete every quest that he finds. In every game. Ever.
SoWplz said: I'm still not understanding how a text system is much different then a click a response system. It is 2019, if a player wants to "skip " a quest and just look up what they have to text they will do that. I understand that doing that it is not implemented in the game and can not control if a player goes to a website to look up quest. But saying that IF you make it typed text it makes the game deeper, I dont see it.
It isn't about those who cheat, it is about those who don't. It is the same with maps. Some players are going to go out to sites, look up all the info on maps, locations, drops, etc... and cheat the game. You can't stop that, but you also shouldn't design the game dumbed down because some people will play the game dumbly.
So, if you put in an intelligent system where you have to read, pay attention, think about your responses and query for solutions, then you create a system that is full and enriching for those interested in playing a game.
Typing is "deeper" exactly as I have argued. The fact that someone runs out and cheats, doesn't change that fact.