9 Journal Styles - Vote for your favourite!

Hi guys and gals,

I scoured t'interwebz for quest journal images. Which of the following journal styles is your favourite?

1. Book-like - Realistic
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2. Heavily Stylized - Dropdown
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3. Tabbed 1
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4. Tabbed 2
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5. Rustic
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6. Functional
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7. Map Assisted
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8. Art Intensive
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9. Even More Art Intensive - Dropdown
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Astirian,

Excellent work and thank you for bringing it all together in one place. Looking at these makes me sad for our current quest journal and system.

I voted for the one I liked visually, but was distracted by wondering which is most realistic for the devs to implement.

 

Great examples.

Thanks for putting this together.

 

Hard to choose! I would like to tell quests apart from each other ie what storyline they are via color coding. And the location of the npc who gave me the quest.

 

I like the tabbed separation look.
I think the most important things for me in the journal are:
Where did I get this quest / where do I turn it in?
Good description of what I'm actually expected to do,
Keep related quest progress together: So if I do a bit of this quest, and then I can't progress it and do something else, the quest lines are kept distinct and can be referenced to see what needs to happen next.
Filters for story quest/side quest would be helpful.

Of course there's just functional stuff -like, stuff I've already finished shouldn't be in my "to do" journal.

 

I would like best of 3/4 and 7, but style of 1 (looks like our current Journal).
Tabs for example:

Love | Truth | Courage | Oracle | Virtue Items (Banner, Armor, Weapon, Statue) | Emotions | Treasure | All Current (Task list) | Knowledge (Chapters to read each path...) | Virtue Status

Inside the choosen one a radio button to select between
Main Quests Side Quests All Quests (of that tab)

Beside each Quest Information (first line) symbols for
X Abandon M showing on map (startpoint and target of quest) connected to the world map
Start and End point could be shown connected with a (colored) line.
Color of Path

And last but not least T1 - T5 information. For example:
Doing Quests in Adventure zone (Outskirts) T1 is different to some virtue banner quests (T5! Elysium Mines) or Courage Armor (Resolute Dungeon) ...

Because of spoiling:
Not everybody wants and no one must use the "M" information inside, so this information should be toggled off for the first time a player enters!

After finishing a quest, the received XP could be shown.
"Virtue Status" could show: Amount of received XP. ALSO: A small graph to show our decision for or against virtue and may be a kind of Aura showing our "white" or "dark" side of the Avatar (= Shroud).

Functional and simple

 

10. The way SotA does it

Is my vote

 

7

 

4

 

I like 4 better too.

 

What I want is an index of active tasks and an index of completed tasks. Click on the entry in the index and it takes you to the full text of the task. I also want somewhere to write notes.

 

Can you add an option for: "A Journal that actually works"?

That would be the one I would pick!

 

I'd love #7 , assuming they'll ever get maps in all scenes actually WORKING.

 

You're actually content with our current quest journal ?

 

I just want the option to keep it off my screen completely

 

Wish granted. Go into the Options window and set a hotkey for Toggle Task List.

 

None of the above: I would like some kind of Book with "Tabbing", such as Truth, Love, Courage, then: Main quest on one side and sub quests on the other or sub quest on a seperate Tab within the main Tab... I see no point to having a record of "completed" quests, either have the text drop off, and move all the rest of the text to fill in the gap or just let it be highlighted some color other than Black, Red or Grey, although I'm leaning on grey... Or just have a moving "check" mark, that shows when a step of the quest has been completed, and technically you shouldn't be able to get a step out of turn from the last step, until the last step is completed... When completed, a new entry should always be inserted to send you to a new quest... All text should have an NPC name and town name you will need to go to, to find the next step... Once in the town, the map should show their location...

Any kind of Artwork is good to have, but the text font should be readable, and NOT colored red (red is the worst color to try and read, many times it's unreadable)... I don't need an onscreen quest list, as long as I can open my Journal and have it show the last page I was on with a single keystroke, that's fine for me...

When you've completed a quest, the NPC should stop waving at you, unless you can do that quest again...

 

Yes, I am. The current journal gives me what I need to do next. I get the journal entry around where I currently am.

What I think other people want is really the ! and ? above the heads of the NPCs like WOW and ESO's marker. I was playing ESO Morrowind for free this past weekend and all I did wan just run to the marker on my compass and then to the NPC with the marker above his/her head. I never had to think.

If I get stuck, there are many online resources pointing me to the exact spot of that quest with a list of what to do. I don't think a laundry list in the journal of what to do is really needed. If I need a) goto soltown, b) see ralph, c) trade 100 pixels d) collect reward; then I am not really thinking of what I was doing, where I need to go, what I need to see, etc.

The journal is not a word processor with find/replace, table of contents, formatting, etc. To me it looks like a place where I would jot my notes on the road quickly so I it can job my memory of what I was doing later. Maybe it is too much like real life note taking.

 

Unfortunately the whole system was -and still is- confusing players. And I think, the sparkles all over the compass often increased the confusing rate
1. The Journal with at least Chapters (tabs) for each path would be very helpful to come back to the game, especially is you only can play a few hours a month.
2. A clear instruction should be readable in dialogue and not just in a task. This behaviour was a reason to use task list instead of having the clear information from dialogue/knowledge journal.

And unfortunately, too, a lot of players know those systems provided (like wow) and expecting them.
So the decision to give the possibility to toggle hints on/off is very important ...

 

That is Up to portalarium to weigh the development costs and benefits.