vjek said:...Whatever you say for "super vague" will be "leading them by the nose" to someone else.
Yeah, I totally agree. I guess that's why a wide range would be good in my opinion. And...I'm not going to attempt to give you a good example lol...I suck at writing and I'm not very creative.
vjek said:What amount of "I don't want so many details" would be put into the Book Interface, in-game, that wouldn't be leading them by the hand, or leading them by the nose?
The point Renarius (and I) make is that the journal should simply record dialogs you have and not indicate which of them are associated with a particular quest at all. It should leave the investigation and conclusion up to the player, though give tools to help you keep organised, like letting you highlight and annotate your journal entries. The dialog itself should be the thing giving hints and direction, not the journal interface by sutomatically summarising and making obvious what is important or pertinent and why.
I don't want to meet a villager, talk to him about his brother disappearing, get a load of colourful, immersive background info about his brother's activities and the local region and rumours and then have the journal automatically fill in: - "ORC BANDITS: Travel east down the river and kill the orcs that ate the villager's brother". That's for me to work out.
Questing should be treated similarly to combat and to exploring. Should players be told what monsters are in a region and all their weaknesses, powers and loot tables otherwise combat is too difficult? Or be given detailed maps of the whole game otherwise travel is too difficult? It's for the players to work out. It's half the fun.
I would like to see a quest journal, a beastiery and a mapping feature, but none of it needs to lead the player, it just needs to enable the player to do things that might otherwise be beyond them. Not everyone has a great memory and cataloging and artistic cartography skills.
And if players are still too lazy to work things out or ask others players who are more experienced, then they will almost certainly be able to look it up in a Wiki once a few other players with more patience have, I suppose.
vjek said:So, disposalist, what entry would you put in place for an Objective, in the example you've cited?
I think they are saying there doesn't need to be an objective? Just have the dialogue saved from the interaction with the quest npc and let the player figure out what to do with it.
philo said:vjek said:So, disposalist, what entry would you put in place for an Objective, in the example you've cited?
I think they are saying there doesn't need to be an objective? Just have the dialogue saved from the interaction with the quest npc and let the player figure out what to do with it.
exactly,
For an example here is an entry taken from one of those spoiler sites that I will be frequenting a LOT and hopefully able to contribut to as well....
Solomen says 'Unfortunately, I don't have time to speak of such things right now. But I could use your help since you are here. I have here an envelope that I need delivered to one Camin Rah. You can find Camin in the wizard tower in the city of Erudin. He is a sage like myself whose knowledge rivals my own. Do you [agree] to undertake my task?'
philo said:vjek said:So, disposalist, what entry would you put in place for an Objective, in the example you've cited?
I think they are saying there doesn't need to be an objective? Just have the dialogue saved from the interaction with the quest npc and let the player figure out what to do with it.
Yep. You don't need the 'game' to tell you your objective or even tell you the dialog you just had is significant. If you couldn't work it out from what the NPC said or from initial investigations, you can think harder, you can look harder, try related things out and see if it leads to anything, ask someone else what they did, do something else entirely and come back to it later or, if you get really stuck or lazy, go to a Wiki and look it up.
I don't want the game handing me quest hints and summaries automatically, though. It's like forced spoilers. Working those things out or just discovering things by random exploration is much more fun.
I very basic example to make it utterly clear: When the villager says "My brother has been missing since [yesterday]" and I say "Oh? What was he doing yesterday?" and the NPC says "He trades with a nearby village" and no more, my journal should read: -
villager said: My brother has been missing since [yesterday]
You said: Oh? What was he doing yesterday?
villager said: He trades with a nearby village
You said: Where is that village?
villager said: I don't know any more
Then I go ask the tavern keeper for rumors and he says "This village is quite [remote]" and I say "Isn't there anything near this remote village?" and he says "There is another village, but it's a long way down river". My journal should read: -
Bartender: This village is quite [remote]
You said: Isn't there anything near this remote village?
Bartender: There is another village, but it's a long way down river
So now I do some thinking and realise that if I put together what the bartender and the villager said, I might realise that the villager's brother probably went downriver, so I go that way. On the way out of town that way a traveller tells me "Be careful, I've heard rumours of [orcs] in the area", I say "Are the orcs wanderers or organised?", the traveller says "They might be from over the river or the mountains to the north". My journal just records what has been said as before.
Now I might head north, or I might cross the river or I might continue downriver (which is actually south). The implication is that if orcs waylaid the villager's brother they aren't the ones from the mountains to the north or might be ones that crossed the river...
Anyway, hopefully you get the idea. The journal just logs the interactions. It's me who decides what to do with the information and, if I turn up nothing from following my intuitions and reasoning, I look back in my journal and follow another lead.
In the case above, I might continue south down river, but I'll be looking out for tracks in the river mud for orcs that have crossed over. If I see no tracks and no evidence of the villager's brother before getting to the next village, I might head back and north to the mountains, or maybe the whole orc thing had nothing to do with the villager's brother.
Either way, I have plenty of information giving me direction to my adventuring without being lead by the nose. I feel more invested in the world. More immersed. Less like I'm just playing a game.
VR have gotten rid of the exclamation marks and glowing lines. To make the journal effectively hand you quest directions would be a shame.
Zorkon said:philo said:vjek said:So, disposalist, what entry would you put in place for an Objective, in the example you've cited?
I think they are saying there doesn't need to be an objective? Just have the dialogue saved from the interaction with the quest npc and let the player figure out what to do with it.
exactly,
For an example here is an entry taken from one of those spoiler sites that I will be frequenting a LOT and hopefully able to contribut to as well....
Solomen says 'Unfortunately, I don't have time to speak of such things right now. But I could use your help since you are here. I have here an envelope that I need delivered to one Camin Rah. You can find Camin in the wizard tower in the city of Erudin. He is a sage like myself whose knowledge rivals my own. Do you [agree] to undertake my task?'
Yeah I mean that one is very straight-forward, really, but the idea with a non-hand-holding journal would be for it to just store the whole "Solomen says" dialog and let you highlight and categorise the bit you think is important for yourself. It's pretty obvious you should head to the city of Erudin and look for or ask about Camin Rah, but it'd be nice if you could note that *yourself*, not just have that handed to you as a summarised instruction so you didn't have to actually read the dialogs in the first place, just wait for a quest instruction to turn up in your journal.
Add journal note: "Look for Camin Rah in Erudin for Solomen"
It's one of those things I always promise myself in every MMORPG I play: This time I'm going to READ all the dialogs and TAKE THEM IN, not just press the Skip button until the summary goes into my quest journal. And even though you know it will help you enjoy the game more, you don't...
The answer? Don't have a quest journal that summarises and hints and hands you "the quest" at the end of a dialog. If you rush or skip a dialog, guess what? You won't know what the hell to do! Good!
I suppose maybe it's subjective. The important part of my statement above is: "you know it will help you enjoy the game more".
I truly believe most people will. I suppose some people skim read books and skip to the end or fast forward "the boring bits" in films, but I'm pretty sure most people would enjoy them more when actually paying attention.
disposalist said:It's one of those things I always promise myself in every MMORPG I play: This time I'm going to READ all the dialogs and TAKE THEM IN, not just press the Skip button until the summary goes into my quest journal.
I used to say that to but I have come to the conclusion that I'm just not that person. I only care about the relevant info. I'm not going to fight it. I've accepted that I'm ok with skipping through what I consider to be "fluff". I know others are big into the lore and the background info and that's good for them.
I think this also relates greatly to the huge potential social aspect of talking to others about quests.
I can understand people not wanting to talk to every NPC in town every time they go there just in case there's a quest.
So? What do you do? Go straight to a Wiki? Yeah I suppose you could... OR you could, when you get in a group near there, ask "Hey, anyone know of any quests in the area?" "Oh, yeah, how did you work that out?" "Who did you talk to to get that info?" "Is there something that lead up to that or can I help now?" etc etc etc.
Maybe people will not have the patience to tell you *all* about it, but all they have to do is give an NPC name and a location and there you are: a quest to chase and maybe a friend made.
The other thing that would make this better is having quests that DO NOT require you to visit a quest giver before you can do them.
Divinity: Original Sin did this brilliantly. If you already cut the head from a bandit and happen to have it in your bag when you meet the person who hates them (euw) then, voila, there is a dialog for "Oh, you've already killed and beheaded that *******! Thanks!". Quest done.
Anyway. I've waffled on this subject enough. I'm sure you get the idea of my preferences. I think getting rid of the overhead exclamation marks and adding the perception system has set VR on a course they should see through and a hand-holding journal would not compliment those measures.
If I understand it correctly and to put if I may put it glibly for entertainment purposes- but I would like ideas from the OP and others for these two scenarios:
the glib: Your character says "how can I help you, to help me, to help you, solve this quest with the quest journal?"
scenario one: For whatever reason, you are in a high elf city and decide to fish and there is another NPC fishing, so you knee-jerk hail. He tells some fluff about his daughter. You reply, but get nothing. Months later you fall in a trap in Najena and see a high elf in the prison cell you fell into. You dont have a key. You hail her and she speaks! her name looks familiar, triliana Parlone and she talks about her dad? and fishing? and SHE had prompts/perception queues that lead... nowhere. but she's a high elf.
- Should you be able to use the quest journal to flip open the book and sort by town and see every person you have hailed or spoken to and review their text? (going back to the High elfs fishing in town utilizes the prompts given by the girl in the prison you fell into)
- should the quest journal automatically eliminate dupicated "overheard" NPC static comments or will this be an accidental "mini game" where you have to delete duplicated messages from Guard Nash "oops I dropped a card!" or Fippy "BARRRRK! you have ruined your own lands! you ill not ruin mine!"
Scenario two: You are a meta quester, You hail everything and every one. Your bank is full of lore things you dont know what they are for. You sell nothing but instead trade lore items with other Indiana Jones inspired folks (this belongs in a museum!), like trading unopened packs of Magic: the Gathering boosters to allow for the same compounded thrill to pass through you as dicated by karma, the universe, and "Let's Make a Deal!"'s third door. and you find this THING that you may remember hearing someone say at some time.
- should it be possible to search the quest journal by word, or item, or name, and find every instance where trhat name was mentioned and by whom and where?- NPC's only.
philo said:disposalist said:It's one of those things I always promise myself in every MMORPG I play: This time I'm going to READ all the dialogs and TAKE THEM IN, not just press the Skip button until the summary goes into my quest journal.
I used to say that to but I have come to the conclusion that I'm just not that person. I only care about the relevant info. I'm not going to fight it. I've accepted that I'm ok with skipping through what I consider to be "fluff". I know others are big into the lore and the background info and that's good for them.
Surely the quest *is* the story? Otherwise you may as well just go out and kill stuff randomly?
I know it depends on the quality of the lore and the story-telling. In some games they may as well have just automatic quest summaries because the quests and stories are... crap.
Assuming they aren't, though... You really want to just skip all the *reason* you are adventuring at all? I mean there is a lot of fun to be had just mastering the mechanics and monsters, sure, but wouldn't that be missing out on a lot of the feelz? Feelz iz gud, man.
Anyway, if so, there will be Wikis *shrug*
I think I may start a hint site that does NOT give spoilers but genuinely tries to help without ruining quests, exploration, combat tactics, discoveries, etc. No quest walk-throughs, but "In Town X go talk to Barmaid Y and think twice about being rude", stuff like that. It's what I would want. Maybe I can help people enjoy games more? Maybe I'm just being self-involved hehe.
To me, one of the whole reasons for Pantheon is to pull back from how people have come to play MMORPGs, ie. dashing from glowing marker to glowing marker killing everything on the way and progressing as fast as possible. Don't we want to get back to feeling immersed in a world, not just completing a game?
Manouk said:If I understand it correctly and to put if I may put it glibly for entertainment purposes- but I would like ideas from the OP and others for these two scenarios:
the glib: Your character says "how can I help you, to help me, to help you, solve this quest with the quest journal?"
scenario one: For whatever reason, you are in a high elf city and decide to fish and there is another NPC fishing, so you knee-jerk hail. He tells some fluff about his daughter. You reply, but get nothing. Months later you fall in a trap in Najena and see a high elf in the prison cell you fell into. You dont have a key. You hail her and she speaks! her name looks familiar, triliana Parlone and she talks about her dad? and fishing? and SHE had prompts/perception queues that lead... nowhere. but she's a high elf.
- Should you be able to use the quest journal to flip open the book and sort by town and see every person you have hailed or spoken to and review their text? (going back to the High elfs fishing in town utilizes the prompts given by the girl in the prison you fell into)
- should the quest journal automatically eliminate dupicated "overheard" NPC static comments or will this be an accidental "mini game" where you have to delete duplicated messages from Guard Nash "oops I dropped a card!" or Fippy "BARRRRK! you have ruined your own lands! you ill not ruin mine!"
Scenario two: You are a meta quester, You hail everything and every one. Your bank is full of lore things you dont know what they are for. You sell nothing but instead trade lore items with other Indiana Jones inspired folks (this belongs in a museum!), like trading unopened packs of Magic: the Gathering boosters to allow for the same compounded thrill to pass through you as dicated by karma, the universe, and "Let's Make a Deal!"'s third door. and you find this THING that you may remember hearing someone say at some time.
- should it be possible to search the quest journal by word, or item, or name, and find every instance where trhat name was mentioned and by whom and where?- NPC's only.
YES! This is exactly what I mean and a good example.
You would vaguely remember you met a fisherman in a high-elf place that had a similar name. You would search your journal for the name. You would get the fisherman's dialog, you would ask other players about him or even go back to the city and ask the NPC about the daughter.
A good game would not then require you to go 'find' the daughter again just because you only now are triggering the quest. You could just talk to him and tell him his daughter is where she is and *then* he might give more info about who might be holding her (who you may have already seen) and you go questing to find a key to release her etc etc.
P.S. Oh and I think this works for both scenarios. The casual and the metaquester. The casual will simply have to do more running around after stuff once they find out what they need (and perhaps dip into Wikis a little more) and the metaquester will have to worry a lot more about bank space and categorising their dialog journal notes.
vjek said:Have they demonstrated a "traditional question system where you have to talk to NPCs" in-game, yet?
Yes. As an example, when they had the "search for the bag" quest in the Making of a City stream. Where they got the quest from one of the guards on the bridge.
EDIT:
Actually, it wasn't the Making of a City stream, now that I think about it. It was at the end of one of the demo streams where the five Twitch streamers played and the one guy from the UK stayed on and ran around for about an hour after the stream, while streaming it.
So long as the quest text give you the ability to infer, from multiple points in the dialog, what your next location and person/object is, then that is all that is needed. I pulled this phrase from the Shaman Spear of Fate quest:
"a lesser spirit says 'That is good, ______. Take this gem. It is a part of us like the clouds to the sky and is a wonderful gift from the grandfather. Take this gem to where the humans gather to spoil the land and water. Some call it a port. There you will find one of us, a shaman like yourself. Give him the gem and perhaps he will tell you more of the spirits."
The 3 points of inference are 'humans gather', 'call it a port' and 'find one of us, a shaman like yourself'. You've got 3 clues to figure out your next step.
On the other side of this, you get crap like the Wizards dealt with in their Staff of the Four quest:
"...Now head to the City of Erudin and find Camin...and him the note that Solomen gave to you to get this response:
Camin says 'So you have met Solomen, eh? He is a man with a wealth of knowledge. It is good to hear he is well.'
You say, 'Hail, Camin'
Camin says 'Go away! I have no time for you!'
You say, 'What are you searching for?'
Camin says 'Ah! A smart one, I see! If you really wish to know about such a thing, you will have to help me finance my studies. The knowledge I have acquired and researched did not come cheaply.'"
Now, from that text, does it give you any effing clue that you need to hand him exactly 1000pp? eff no it doesn't. And who ever carried 1000pp on them at any random time? Nobody. For that matter, nothing about that dialog even tells you that you need to hail him again to get the next part of the dialog. "it is good to hear he is well' sure as hell does not sound like a clue that more text is forthcoming. That type of quest dialog is plain garbage.
It doesn't take a genius quest designer to write out the full quest text in precisely the exact wording that would explain every step of it and then reduce that level of detail to require some more thought.
You got to remember that a lot of people who play games also don't read every word the NPC says or even understand what they say. I would like a questbook that auto populates what the NPCs say that tells you what to do but not exactly "go here and kill this thing then use the item drop on a shrine behind it and wait" but more of descriptions of things without outright demands or requests. So questing and such requires trial and error but also paying attention. Having a player controlled notes section would also be great. I played a game recently that had a "notes" section that saved all my key input and there was no quest markers unless i placed them. That would be cool. I am still reading and watching a lot of videos to catch up so bare with me.
Vandraad said:So long as the quest text give you the ability to infer, from multiple points in the dialog, what your next location and person/object is, then that is all that is needed. I pulled this phrase from the Shaman Spear of Fate quest:
"a lesser spirit says 'That is good, ______. Take this gem. It is a part of us like the clouds to the sky and is a wonderful gift from the grandfather. Take this gem to where the humans gather to spoil the land and water. Some call it a port. There you will find one of us, a shaman like yourself. Give him the gem and perhaps he will tell you more of the spirits."
The 3 points of inference are 'humans gather', 'call it a port' and 'find one of us, a shaman like yourself'. You've got 3 clues to figure out your next step.
On the other side of this, you get crap like the Wizards dealt with in their Staff of the Four quest:
"...Now head to the City of Erudin and find Camin...and him the note that Solomen gave to you to get this response:
Camin says 'So you have met Solomen, eh? He is a man with a wealth of knowledge. It is good to hear he is well.'
You say, 'Hail, Camin'
Camin says 'Go away! I have no time for you!'
You say, 'What are you searching for?'
Camin says 'Ah! A smart one, I see! If you really wish to know about such a thing, you will have to help me finance my studies. The knowledge I have acquired and researched did not come cheaply.'"Now, from that text, does it give you any effing clue that you need to hand him exactly 1000pp? eff no it doesn't. And who ever carried 1000pp on them at any random time? Nobody. For that matter, nothing about that dialog even tells you that you need to hail him again to get the next part of the dialog. "it is good to hear he is well' sure as hell does not sound like a clue that more text is forthcoming. That type of quest dialog is plain garbage.
It doesn't take a genius quest designer to write out the full quest text in precisely the exact wording that would explain every step of it and then reduce that level of detail to require some more thought.
Haha never did that wizard quest. Nice one. I agree that is a bit extreme BUT imagine the sense of accomplishment that the first person who gave him 1pp at a time and re-hailed him until he decided his studies were adequately 'financed'!
But, sure, even if they wanted to make it a guessing game, they could at least have had him respond with "That's not nearly enough!" or something that gave further clues, even if he didn't just say "1000pp please!"
Manouk said:If I understand it correctly and to put if I may put it glibly for entertainment purposes- but I would like ideas from the OP and others for these two scenarios:...
I think you have a good point. I don't want a journal that includes every single NPC conversation I've ever had...unless it was organized in a way that didn't make it feel massive and cluttered.
What if there was a way for the player to decide if a conversation got put into the journal?
If I hail a guard and he says "move along citizen" maybe I choose not to journal that. But if he says "let me know if you see anything suspicious around here" I do choose to journal that.
Ranarius said:If something is to be tedious, then let it be something tedious in the game world (a scripted encounter or something etc) and not a tedious time sink in a book.
I'm not really sure what you mean by this. How is a tedious encounter different than a tedious quest line? Can you give an example or be more specific? I'm just trying to understand your point.
What I mean is I dont want activities/actions reduced to menu actions. I would prefer that actions take place in the game by interacting with objects / NPC and not by clicking through menu items. Not saying that Pantheon is that way, but I've seen plenty of games over the years introduce new content that is nothing more than menu actions/activities and subsequently being stamped as content. The nature of MMO's requires some tedious processes, its just the way it works, draw out activities to keep players engaged, working towards something, etc. I get that, I just want to those activities to not be menu based.
A journal shouldnt contain everything every NPC utters. There should be conversations that are just throw away ("move along citizen") which never get recorded. Anything that directs a player to complete a task should get a concise entry in the journal.
For example the example given above:
The knowledge I have acquired and researched did not come cheaply
Should be followed up with something along the lines of "How much do you see your research costing you?"
I guess 1000p would cover my expences.
These details could be entered in the journal as "Camin asked for 1000p to cover his expenses before he could continue the research."
I know a lot of players skip conversations and look for the bare minimum (or nothing at all) to progress a quest, but if it was listed in a story kind of format, this would cause people to pause and read what was required and why it was required. Quest requirement lists are just that, lists. The above is way more interesting than "Shaman Spear of Fate: Give Camin 1000p."
The more immersive the better.
Vandraad said:So long as the quest text give you the ability to infer, from multiple points in the dialog, what your next location and person/object is, then that is all that is needed. I pulled this phrase from the Shaman Spear of Fate quest:
"a lesser spirit says 'That is good, ______. Take this gem. It is a part of us like the clouds to the sky and is a wonderful gift from the grandfather. Take this gem to where the humans gather to spoil the land and water. Some call it a port. There you will find one of us, a shaman like yourself. Give him the gem and perhaps he will tell you more of the spirits."
The 3 points of inference are 'humans gather', 'call it a port' and 'find one of us, a shaman like yourself'. You've got 3 clues to figure out your next step.
On the other side of this, you get crap like the Wizards dealt with in their Staff of the Four quest:
"...Now head to the City of Erudin and find Camin...and him the note that Solomen gave to you to get this response:
Camin says 'So you have met Solomen, eh? He is a man with a wealth of knowledge. It is good to hear he is well.'
You say, 'Hail, Camin'
Camin says 'Go away! I have no time for you!'
You say, 'What are you searching for?'
Camin says 'Ah! A smart one, I see! If you really wish to know about such a thing, you will have to help me finance my studies. The knowledge I have acquired and researched did not come cheaply.'"Now, from that text, does it give you any effing clue that you need to hand him exactly 1000pp? eff no it doesn't. And who ever carried 1000pp on them at any random time? Nobody. For that matter, nothing about that dialog even tells you that you need to hail him again to get the next part of the dialog. "it is good to hear he is well' sure as hell does not sound like a clue that more text is forthcoming. That type of quest dialog is plain garbage.
It doesn't take a genius quest designer to write out the full quest text in precisely the exact wording that would explain every step of it and then reduce that level of detail to require some more thought.
This more clearly states my feeling as well. I don't need the objectives bullet pointed but there has to be a way to infer what needs to be done. On a side note, if this is all we had, I hope there is an ability to highlight text and add player made notes in the journal.
I never understood how someone can just skip all dialogue in MMOs. Unless they are only there for one specific type of combat. I personally like reading/listening to npcs when they give dialogue cause I need to pay attention to the game. Cutscenes are okay but if I want to play a RPG with good story I would play not-mmos. If we are going to lock players into cut-scenes players should be frozen if they skipped it. Same with text dialogue. Or just remove all lore and narrative from group quests if no one likes it. I feel if they try to cater to the players who never read a word in a quest and just do what the checklist says and the players who read everything it will come out all broken and horrible. Or have an option to turn off all dialogue and cut scenes for those players who don't want to listen but they are stuck in a small staging area while other players finish getting the information. I imagine with all the lore and such from Pantheon forums the quests and npcs will have very important info that will be a clue to completing dungeons/trials/raids.
Counterfleche said: @Raezel, I like the idea of freezing everyone for the time it takes to read dialog / watch a cut scene since, without that, there is pressure to skip the content to not keep the team waiting.
The problem with that is we all read at different speeds. I would be annoyed beyond belief if I read through it and was still locked for another 20 seconds. Sure, I could read it again, but I'm not even a fast reader so I'd feel even worse for those that read faster than me.