Am I the only one mind-bogglingly frustrated?

It feels like I'm the only one who's COMPLETELY LOST while trying the play the game... This has been going on since the first release!

I like the fact that NPCs have key words underlined so that I'm not at a complete lost as to what I'm supposed to say to them but, even with that, NPCs never seem to be able to give me a straight answer!

Ok! I talked to this one dude who suggests that I talk to this Enmar guy. Great, something to do! Where is he? The guardhouse? Where is the guardhouse? North of the market? Ok

Talk to a merchant NPC :
- "is this the market?"
- "No", she replies.
- "where is it?"
- "Of course! Where do you want to go?"
- "The market"
- ...
- "You stupid !@#$%!"
- "is me being stupid make you feel better?"
- "NO! It makes me sad! I WANT YOU TO BE SMART AND GIVE ME DIRECTIONS!"
- "Of course! Where do you want to go?"
- "... The guardhouse..."
- "it's north of the market within the city walls. Look for two guards."

Ok.. I kind of already knew that... Let's looks around for two guards. I find a pair of guards:
- "Hi"
- "Greetings, outsider!"
- "Is this the guardhouse?"
- "No."
- "Where is it?"
- ...
- SIGH "Where is the guardhouse?"
- "it's north of the market within the city walls. Look for two guards."

Anything that might resemble a guardhouse is player housing! None of the NPCs can give me a clear answer and the players that roam around are DEAD SILENT when I plea for help!

I've been going in circles FOR AGES!!! I never been outside town, I never been into combat, I never really managed to get a weapon much less try to look into the housing system. I figured it wouldn't be a good idea if I can't manage to get some decent information from the NPCs. This has been happening for 6 alpha releases already!

Am I missing something? I'm trying REALLY, REALLY hard, here! I want DIRECTIONS! I've never played an Ultima game before and I'm desperately trying to communicate with these aliens in this town!

I never been so lost trying to play a video game!

 

I just assume that the training wheels aren't on yet and it will be fixed at launch. I agree that it's not really playable in it's current form.

 

In R5, spent an hour looking for Firelotus Tavern... it was a fun hour, gave me a reason to explore Owl's Head... weird... never got frustrated or annoyed talking to the NPCs... most of the time I find them funny with their nonsense replies... ^_^

 

Well, it can be frustrating, but if you hit a dead end, try another path. If you had asked the two guards standing by the building facing the marketplace, "Where can I find Enmar?", they'd have told you that he can be found upstairs.

In this case, the guardhouse looks like all of the other buildings.

When I get frustrated, I start going door to door and checking every room, and talking to every NPC.

 

now, that's going old school... hehehe... ^_^

 

Well, you know. I'm old. Plus, I want to explore.
And when I stick my head into a building and everyone inside is dressed like a guard...

 

yeah, I miss the old school style as well... today, every NPC has a freaking question mark or exclamation point above their heads... some new ones even has auto-pathing or auto-routing features... the sense of exploration is gone... all you have to do is click a freaking link and your character runs to it like magnet... heck, even some has built-in auto-botting features... WTF....

hoping that Shroud of the Avatar won't fall for that pit... but I can see it now, some, if not many players specially those who are used to hand-holding will complain about not having those convenient features... T_T

 

You have to be a bit more declarative in your statements to get it to work well.

Currently you're relying on the other person to "understand" and your requests are a bit too short.

Instead of this :

Talk to a merchant NPC :
- "is this the market?"
- "No", she replies.
- "where is it?"
- "Of course! Where do you want to go?"
- "The market"

Try this:

"I want to go to the market" or "where is the market ?"

Try in single player online mode, it works better. It's actually better than and deeper than most people give it credit for.

 

This. My theory is that younger gamers have been spoon-fed easy to win games for so long they forgot how brutally difficult old games were; hence us old farts actually have more patience for this stuff.

I had this conversation with an old lady who was a cab driver earlier, she was complaining about the youth of today.

I said, well, for every generation this is true: You don't like your parents, and you don't like the younger ones, you only like yourselves

This had her in a fit of laughter. Must have been close to the mark...

 

Yeah it does get frustrating and yes the guardhouse looks like every other house, except when you get inside there are the guard people! It does get frustrating maby something a little more obvious, like Gallows outside in that market square or stockade! That would make it more obvious, when you ask questions like where, when and how all those should be answered, using main target as Keyword....example when asked where...it should search the base for where, and guardhouse, answer could be "its just north of here in the main market square!. Just a suggestion.

 

Heh - this can get frustrating. You probably need to remember that the genius behind this game has been making games for many years - and in the early ones there was no such thing as a mouse. The ONLY way of communication with NPCs was via text - ie, typing. In the early Ultimas you had to know and use 3 things - name, job, bye. Most NPCs were programmed to respond to input, and if you typed the right thing you'd be fine.

So this game isn't one where all the quest givers have a ! over their heads; you have to work for the quests. Similarly with locations - the word of the day is EXPLORE! Poke your nose into everything. You will eventually get to know the layout of the town etc and who everybody is. This is just how Ultima-style games work.....

BTW, if you're in Owlshead, and go up the sloping road through the archway to the "city" part of the town, you will find a market square. Look around at the doors surrounding the square. One is for an arms and armour merchant (useful), one door has a guard on either side of it. Hmmmmm. That's the guardhouse.

If you have talked to one of the guards (particularly Guard Michael, at the bridge when you enter Owlshead) he may have suggested you talk to Enmar. If you then find Enmar, (in the guardhouse, upstairs) and engage him in conversation, asking about work, you will find out what he wants you to do.

Lots of work, but lots of fun, too!

 

Well the combat was fun for me. Crafting and conversing left me bewildered when an npC merchant said he didn't want to deal with me. Stupid low rent owls head hack merchants. Hope u go out of business you snobs

 

They were all already dead in R5 at this point, so there is time

 

they just need to have a key word with an action then all would be good, all NPCs in a city should have answers about it if you ask. Just like if i asked you..."do you know where your police station is?" simple huh, key words and action words work real well! I didn't grow up with exclamation points and question marks either and it still ridiculous how the answers come from NPCs in this game so far

 

The NPCs are actually pretty smart and sophisticated for this early on, the problem is that you're expecting them to string two separate sentences together logically, and that's beyond them.

Instead of:
- "is this the market?"
- "No", she replies.
- "where is it?"
- "Of course! Where do you want to go?"
- "The market"

It should be:
"Is this the market?"
"No."
"Where is the market?"
And if she doesn't tell you then, try:
"How do I find the market?" or "Can you give me directions to the market?"


In other words, the problem was in you using "it" instead of saying "the market" again. They don't get pronouns like that, especially if they are referring to something from a previous statement.

 

just string where/market "oh its to the north"

 

Seems like avast hates SotA. Uninstalled SotA from PC to reinstall after bug. Now none of my browsers work within avast Safezonebrowser or outside so my testing rig is currently out of commission. MacBook Air can't handle anything even at lowest settings it freezes @ 50% loading when I try to set my vid settings to fastest on it.

 

Keep plugging at it and reporting back. The more information the team has, the better. Lum's working hard to get the NPCs to be "less derp." He's been saying that since R1 and feedback + testing only helps this process. It's kind of a pain in the butt to pass your time this way but that is the purpose of these events (not really for you to start playing the game early.)
Portalarium's UX guru has been part of the team for 6 months, let the man get to work but give him as much info as you can.

 

Yeah, the new shaders are pretty demanding. My testing computer is running this version kind of slow but as they gather more data about what's affecting draw times and such they'll really be able to iron stuff out like they did for R4.

 

I'm not complaining just trying to provide as much info to everyone as possible so we can get this tackled my first serious test so it's new to me and I expected tobe going thru exactly what i am. Just glad I can help. It validates my time expenditure!!

When I have issues I given as much detail on what's happening and as accurate of specs as sis oft Sandra tells me