Ep. 2 - What would you like in a new quest system?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Vyrin, Jul 27, 2018.

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  1. Floors

    Floors Avatar

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    Just make it like the Witcher 3, Dragon Age, or one of those where you have main quests, side quests and you pick the one you want active at any given moment.

    Since I've done many of the quests in the game atm I'm more concerned with getting more content that big systems changes, I mean yeah some quests were bugged, but none of them were that bad

    even tho the writing for some was pretty bad.... But I think it's way overblown how bad it is.
     
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  2. Sol Stormlin

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    I liked the personality of the Kobold at the end of the Artifice and of course Perri. I'd love for there to be a revolution for the fauns with Perri leading them! But I agree that most of the artifice just made me cringe. I really don't like the sex slave stuff at all but that's my personal opinion, nor did I like the killing the children. Those factors made me dislike that quest immensely. Also when you finally get to where you meet the Titan, it was very anti-climactic. All I could say was just "why"? It made no sense and it left an empty feeling. Now I need to go formulate my own post with suggestions because I have A LOT of issues and ideas about and for quests that have been brewing in my mind for a while now.
     
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  3. Sol Stormlin

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    Alright here are some of my suggestions for quests. There will be spoilers of course.

    -each quest should have one title so that you are not having to flip through your journal to figure out where you left off. So if you are on a main quest, regardless of the progression and updates it should state which main quest it is. I like how it already tells you in the UI where you are supposed to go next.

    -more intuitive so that we don't have to watch everyone's Youtube channels to figure out what to do next.

    -tone down the sex slave stuff in the artifice. No killing children, or make it easier NOT to kill them. When you basically just run in there without knowing what the pressure plate is for hardly gives anyone a chance to decide if they want to. If that is a hit on your virtue, then that doesn't make sense when most of the people who run in there accidentally land on it, it's also very close to the cage which gives you less visibility on where you are walking if you are in first person view.

    -create a revolution for the fauns led by Perri. I love his dialogue. I also love the dialogue for the kobold you speak to before getting to the library.

    -during the dialogue where perri "stands up taller", have him actually stand up taller.

    -give the npcs of the main quests actual voices you can hear as they speak to you.

    -i like the dialogue that has been created for obtaining emotes, it shows their personalities and it's enjoyable.

    -more personalities. if you need help just think of all of the amazing personalities you see on the forums :D

    -i loved the new pirate treasure quest and redo of Tenebris Harbor. Digging up treasure was absolutely awesome. It would be even more awesome if there was an actual cookout at the pier at the time that it says it will happen. I had to help many many people find the last chest, needs better loot, maybe a captains hat! :)

    -the witch in the haunted house should be an actual human witch and is not easily killable. a bigger dungeon and more to the story. didn't like the weird spacey room especially when there is nothing in there to gain. Better loot for the whole quest as well like a deco reward like the girl's doll or something, or maybe a special magic wand that the witch may have used.

    -the starting areas for new players are good, more tutorials would make it better. When I first started playing I chose courage and it was not difficult for me to figure out that I needed to get to Resolute. The problem I think people are having is that they go from the starting area directly to an outskirts. They do all of the quests in there and then don't know how to or that they are supposed to get back on track with their main quest after leaving. They say, "now what?" Perhaps the NPC that delivers the reward after completing all of the quests in the outskirts, tells the avatar to return on their quest to find Brigid or whoever is next in the quest, in their closing line. Just something that refers them back to their quest journal. Maybe an additional traveling NPC that sells traveling wares and talks about the towns that are near that area.

    -quests should help the avatar build their skills so that they can progress into the harder areas of the quests.

    -main quests leading to pvp zones should have one of the main quest npcs describe the options of either venturing to their destination through murderous lands or safely through underground passages.

    -quests that send you through mazes.

    -didn't like the Grannus quest because I'm not sure what the puzzles there have to do with the storyline of the game, they were fun puzzles but it left me thinking who the heck in the world of sota, built that place and why? The riddles from the dragon was neat. Also anticlimactic when you finally reached the top.

    Alright, I will stop there because others have already touched on some things. /cheers
     
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  4. Svahn

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    Lots of good feedback has been given here by many over the years, about questing and npc dialogue as well as everything else :).
    I think the devs know what they need to do. I just hope they have the means to do it.
    I also think episode 1 is what it is and we must accept that major changes only can happen for episode 2 (though they may impact episode 1 at that time).

    Here are a few short pointers from me for episode 2 regarding questing, npc dialogue and story (the three are related):
    *It would be nice if it were easy to find new quests and know where you are in a given quest and what the next step of the quest involves - meaning a new journal and another (faster) way of locating new quests.
    *No more typing sentences to npcs - just use clickable keywords (dialogue trees) for driving the dialogue, story and quests.
    *Npc dialogue system / window need total revamp, centered on screen, hypnotizing you to want more - without need for typing support it should become much smoother for development and player experience.
    *No npc dialogue at all in the chat window, ever..
    *Dial down the disturbing "sieges" of story related cities.
    *Don't spread out new players in e.g. 3 starting zones, gather all in one zone, control the characters leveling to match the story and minimize the need for grind in regards to following the story.
    *Don't increase the size of the world too much, quality over quantity.
     
  5. Canterbury

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    When I did it, it was so buggy I got to do both versions (killing him/not killing him), without any sort of reset. I thought, wow, this is quite buggy. This is "release"?
     
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  6. redfish

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    A couple of other things I think are worth talking about...

    Multi-player questing. For example, have a whole party of players be able to "share" a quest experience, not only by completing puzzles in a scene, but also by being able to for instance share a conversation window with an NPC. On the other side of that, having multiple NPCs participate in the same conversation might also help storytelling in some instances.

    Then, I think the devs also need to think about the "contraband" type PvP quests they talked about during Kickstarter. This concept also could be extended in various forms, where players on choosing a certain quest-line adopt a certain "role." Other players, due to their own choices might adopt either a competing role, which would lead to some competitive relationship between them either involving fighting (PvP) or on some other front short of fighting (like finding an item first, raising resources, etc). On the other hand, they also might adopt a roles that need to cooperate with each other. So for instance, two players might have two different parts of a map from their own individual quest-lines, and they'd have to cooperate in order to find the treasure. Or, in a more complicated scenario, one player might be on a "buyer" end of a trade quest, and the other on a "seller" end. There are a lot of ways to bring players together through quest scenarios, I think.
     
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  7. Tiina Onir

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    My problem wasn't that it was there, it was that I couldn't do anything about it.
     
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  8. Anpu

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    I really want to see real impactful choice and consequences for your actions. I do however understand some of the engine limitations though. But there’s several creative ways to do this.

    And such quests that are quite morally grey. Ones that really question your decision... and ones where you feel you are trying to do the right thing, but they do not always turn out to be the right thing...

    I just feel strongly about this, as it a way to make you feel really unique. It’s a great sense of satisfaction.
     
  9. Cinder Sear

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    I just want something that works, that's all. How hard should that be? It's ridiculous... and has been bad for many years already.
     
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  10. shathiell

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    I'd love an experience which doesn't block your progress/completion due to level requirements. Scaling would help a bit with this.

    Yep. Good 2-way discussions about this will be required and early testing/ feedback cycles to flesh it out a lot more.

    Yep agree. For me the best character in the game is Anapa as his background is detailed throughout the Love quest chain and I actually emphasised with him.

    I actually tried this with a NPC I named in Graff Island. I gave her a detailed backstory which can actually be touched on when you push her. You can check it out yourself if you have time (She is the main guard outside Graff Manor). It is a shame the current system doesn't allow us to develop that further.
     
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  11. Sol Stormlin

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    Yet! If they will allow us to create dungeons why not npcs for our towns?
     
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  12. Dermott

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    A few broad ideas (not specific quest ideas, but ideas of what they could involve):

    - Quest items that have use to a player, and gives the player the choice of returning the item(s) to its owner (raises Truth), or lying to the owner about not finding it to keep for yourself (Lowers Truth). Bandit encounters would work GREAT for this IMO.

    - I will ALWAYS be in favor of more locked chests/in-scene puzzles and so forth.

    - Give Shardfalls more purpose (do they have one beyond being a PvP area? Does anyone even care? I mean beyond Paladis's use at the end of the storyline) Kind of neat visuals, but no one usually around and they seem to lack purpose unless I missed something along the way.

    - A (fairly) simple quest chain for players to go alongside the Mail quests would be to take certain resources from one region to another. The quests could rotate within a certain timeframe to create the image of regions having a shortage of certain materials and calling out to nearby regions to be provided those materials (i.e. and iron shortage in Brittany, Etceter desires Graff Gems, etc)

    Functionally, the quest system has some issues, but you can still complete the main storyline, and other than Crooked Shank which seemed to taper off into nothing I don;t think I have run into any blockers that haven't been fixed. The biggest functional issues are the portions of the current Quest System that do not clear out. Now that I have my Shroud, do I need Stanley and Arabella in Soltown acting like I've never met them before every time I go into the town? (The answer is "no")

    There is also a need for the ability to abandon a quest. Fortunately, compared to level-based MMOs, you don't "outgrow" (having a character level well beyond the quest level) quests in the game, but in some cases it may be better to be able to cancel out side quests you don't plan on following up on.

    Finally, whatever new system the put in place, they need to make sure that ALL quests are updated for the new system. Right now, I believe that the original EARLY Release quests on Hidden Vale use some different and not all the time apparent terminology to get them to work
     
  13. Curt

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    I would like the journal to be more of a 'loose blade system' if that's the right word.
    When in a town I would like to easier see all pages related to that town.

    One part favourite for things you marked as interesting.
    One part diary
    One part divided into regions and them into towns.
    Able to make own notes.

    One part with notes over what mobs we seen and impression of them.
     
  14. Floors

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    Easy, people will create inappropriate NPCs. The manpower to oversee and vet all the submissions, make sure there not stealing from other intellectual property, etc, would be onerous.

    No such issues with dungeons.
     
  15. Kara Brae

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    I find the quests themselves to be ok for the most part. What I don't like is the implementation of dialogue and the recording in the journal that is done on the progress of quests.

    • I don't want to have to take notes while I am playing, so I want a journal that records each quest in its entirety from beginning to end, so I know per quest exactly what I have done, what I have learned and what I have to do next. In Episode 1 I had to keep jumping from one quest line to another because of the increasing difficulty of the scenes, and the journal was no help at all in keeping the quests fresh in my mind. Everything is all mixed up and buggy, and there is no reliable way to figure out if I have embarked on a quest and if so, what progress I have made.

    • I want the dialogues to give clear instructions and have fewer bugs. In Episode 1 I failed in my attempt to take Samael with me to the Necropolis. He never gave me a clear acceptance of my hiring of him. So in the end I had to take Kardan, and missed a part of the story because of it. Dialogues keep ending suddenly of their own accord. Just today I was talking to the big Oracle thingy to get the Shroud of the Avatar quest and the conversation ended just when I was getting instructions. The chat window had recorded that I said "goodbye", but I hadn't. Luckily I was able to continue the conversation. In Artifice I made it all the way to the library and the faun told me to go back to Hephaestus. I did, but he didn't react as he should have. I had to close the conversation and re-open it twice to get Hephaestus to acknowledge that I had done what he had asked me to. (This happens to me all the time with quest-givers. ) Then he said he would "open the gate" so I could leave, but he didn't mention where this gate was. I went all the way back to the surface level looking for it then went all the way back down and finally found an exit in the library. This was not fun.

    • I want the dialogues to tell me everything I need to know. Too often, I get a clue in a dialogue and a chat message appears saying that I am making a note in my journal. When I check the journal entry there is often much more information. For example, an NPC may tell me something like "go talk to Charlie". When I check the journal entry it says "go talk to Charlie. I should be able to find him in the magic shop". Why did I write the location down if the NPC didn't tell me that?

    • I would like quest givers to be recognizable as such. I just did the Artifice quest and sparklies seem to have disappeared. Other people may love it, but I hate having to ask hundreds of NPCs the same thing over and over again when only a handful react to one of these queries in a significant way.
     
  16. Womby

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    Here are some suggestions, using examples from a completely different (but extremely successful) game:

    1. Severely restrict the number of valid responses, so that all permutations of user input can be fully tested before release.


    2. Make it about the player - where appropriate let their response say something about their character.


    3. Provide a quest log that allows you to choose the active quest, and clearly shows you your progress in the quest.


    4. Flowchart quests before implementing. Provide multiple paths and different possible outcomes. Here is the flowchart for one quest from Fallout New Vegas:

    [​IMG]

    5. In the above example, there are three outcomes. In such cases make the location of the quest (in this case the Ultra-Luxe Casino) its own forced single player scene, and set a flag on the player to determine which version of the scene they see. This would only be possible where quest outcomes can be limited to specific buildings, allowing the building interior to be its own set of alternate scenes.
    A more modest approach that doesn't require scenes would be a quest outcome resulting in different NPC dialogue and/or garments/weapons/etc. That could be controlled solely through player flags.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2018
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  17. Womby

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    There are complete solutions available on the Unity Asset Store. Here is one:

     
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  18. Svahn

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    That was a nice flowchart.
    I'm not a software developer, but it makes sense to me to use such for quests.
     
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  19. Brian4

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    Just to work with no bugs
     
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  20. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    I don't hope this was already in use? ;)
     
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