Two modes for Journal: List Mode and Classic.

So i've been thinking about a better way for the journals to be done. The journal from what I understand is a conversation log not so much a quest log. So basically my idea is to make it similar to the backpack there can be two modes classic mode and list mode.

List Mode: This mode would have everything sorted by Location and then after you click the location it lists it by Person and then has entries in order of when they took place. This keeps it organized so we can keep track of who said what, where, and when. It can also pull up our map of the locations we have the map for and show where we talked to each person. When you click the person on the map it would go to their entries. In addition to that it has a search function so we can look for specific entries because there will be a lot of people and locations to go through.

Classic Mode: This will be similar to what it is now in the regular book style in the order we talked to people.

Both modes should allow us to make custom journals basically we can add entries to a custom named list of entries or people. This way we can organize things for quests ourselves as we see fit but it's not holding our hand. It should also allow for custom notes on entries, people, and places in both modes.

I wish I was able to make a mockup of what I mean but I don't have the time to do it right now unfortunately maybe one of you guys can do it.

What do you guys think about this idea? How can we make it better?

 

Sounds good so far. One easy thing to make it better would be the last page as opening page not the first. It's quite annoying to go through all the pages if you got a bad connection... And how about a bookmark or two..?

 

I 100% agree that's like my number 1 annoyance with the current Journal.

 

Well I can understand why people would want this but it would somewhat defeat the purpose of it being a journal wouldn't it?

 

I would like the journal a lot more if I was responsible for writing all the information I needed to remember in it myself. It would be more work but it would make me pay attention to what npcs are saying.

Alternatively, it would be helpful if I could delete entries that I don't need anymore so the only ones that remain have relevant information.

 

The thing I would like to point out that this does not sort things by quest only by people and only what the journal already records just in a more organized fashion. Some may call oh no this breaks immersion but that's why it's optional. Both journals would allow for custom notes on entries and Eben custom entries of our own I suppose.

 

I think the Journal is a bit minimalistic... Good idea.

 

Well, I'm not strongly opposed to the idea. but I know how lazy people can be and I'd rather not feed that. I feel like it goes a little against the grain of SotA not making it too easy. Maybe I'm a little overly sensitive on that having experienced other games making it progressively less challenging to the point where there's no reward for success.

There is of course a balance to be struck. I won't cry myself to sleep over a little journal sorting. Anyhow.. don't mind me. It's a personal preference thing.

 

There was an Examiner article just posted yesterday and I saw this interesting quote:

If that is true, that's a very much needed step in the right direction to journal notes management. A ton of folks have asked for the ability to reorganize / sort their notes by location or NPC, so if they've added a filter box to achieve similar results, that would be awesome.

And yes, I'm truly a strong believer of not have an actual quest log. Just a series of journal entries...that I guess can now be filtered on by keyword.

If the game ever does any auto-organization or sorting beyond NPC and Location, or providing any more "meta-data" about the journal entries, it is solving the quest for you. It's exactly as the article suggests: reading between the lines for you, which is something I also posted about last year here in another thread about journal auto-grouping.

 

I have nothing against making the journal easier to use; right now its just pretty much a mess. But I think there are a bunch of things you can do before turning it into a searchable database.

And, I mean, barring any other improvements in the journal interface, that's the choice of modes you're suggesting: hard to use mess of a journal vs. database journal. Its kind of the same choice we have with inventory so far: hard to use mess of a free-form bag inventory vs. spreadsheet inventory. :/ For people who see the spreadsheet inventory as the solution, its no problem, but the bag inventory system hasn't been improved since they first put it in, and its still a lot worse than the bag inventory in U7 and UO.

For the journal, I mean, we could have journal sections with tabs, we could have bookmarks, we could enhance the book UI to be like a number of online book readers where you can see the book thickness and flip to any page you want. We can make it mare customization so you can enter notes wherever you want. Any number of improvements that would also be usable for any books in the game besides the journal.

So, I mean, if this is the needed solution, like Bowen says, I won't cry myself to sleep over it. But its kind of half-hearted to say players have a choice, if the developers aren't going to work to make the other choice more usable.