Let's talk about the quests of SotA

I want this thread to be a civilized and calm discussion about the quests that are already in SotA and what we expect the quests should be. We already discussed some of this in other threads but I thought that one thread with a collection of thoughts and opinions would be better.

So, SotA is described as a "fantasy RPG that combines a single player narrative with a sandbox MMO" on the official website.

On the Kickstarter site it says "Our primary objectives are to tell a story even more compelling than Ultimas IV-VII, create a virtual world more interactive than Ultima VII, develop deep rich multi-player capabilities beyond combat akin to Ultima Online, and offer a bold new approach to integrate them with “Selective Multi-Player”."

It also says "Shroud of the Avatar is infused with rich storylines, deeply integrated into game play, developed by Best Selling Author Tracy Hickman and RPG legend Richard Garriott. Players will adventure in an interactive world where their choices have consequences, ethical paradoxes give them pause, and they play a vital part in weaving their own story into the immersive world and lore surrounding them."

In a video with Richard Garriott and Warren Spector it is said: "...create a story-driven soloplayer experience that harkens back to somewhere between Ultima 4 and Ultima 7 that also has the ability to play online".

This implies that the story and quests of the game are very important for SotA.

So what do we expect from this "single player narrative"? What kind of quests and what kind of choices and consequences do we want to see?

As for me, I don't want to see many fedex quests. Not much running around, talking to all of the NPCs, searching through houses and delivering mails or packages. I don't want to see standard MMO quests in which everything we do does not matter at all. I want quests that are meaningful, that have twists and surprises. I also want quests that are created through events that suddenly happen. I want real consequences.

I want to see a murder happening, chasing the murderer through the streets. I want to have a surprise for the reason why he killed people and I want dire consequences for him.

I want NPCs to die which would make us sad. I want cities to be attacked or maybe even burned down. I want traitors to be thrown into jail or hanged. I want to see consequences of my choices. Maybe I had to rescue one NPC but this meant the death of another. Maybe I am responsible for a Lich to be able to take over a city and we have to free it again with the help of some rebels. I want dragons attacking towns , thieves running out of shops. I want to see a spell of a mage go wrong, destroying a whole area or creating an army of undead who march against a city.

I want interesting, varied quests that can change midway, that are full of action, surprises and consequences. This is what I understand when I read the above descriptions of SotA.

Right now the devs have not really stated how the quests will play out in the game, what we can expect in terms of quests and how the consequences play out. Maybe it is time to tell us. What we see as quests right now seems to be some kind of placeholder.
Maybe it is time to tell us if and how the MMO aspects of the game have an influence on the "single player narrative", the quests and the consequences.

So I would love to hear what you think of the current quests in SotA and what you expect from the quests of the game.

 

The only quest I found on my own was taking Charlotte across the bridge.
Then I manages to get through a few quests with Google / wikis.
Then those failed and the only progression seemed to be "come back when you've gained 50 levels and can hunt in a 5 skull area."

I realize that people hate flashing lights telling you what quests to be on and where to go. But, IMO, this is 100x better than having to leave the game to use a wiki somewhere.

I don't mind repeatable, dailies, or really any kinds of quests. What I have are quests where you get lost or are forced to make some decision based on no context and no understanding of the outcome.

 

I'll start by suggesting not to think the current implementation of quests is the final, or representative of what they will be in the future.

There is ALOT of behind the scenes Tech required for quests to be dynamic and interactive in unique ways.

*AI scripting/pathfinding/logic/dialog/debugging
*Tech for dynamic events/cutscenes/narritive/unique objects
*combat/economy balance - cant populate quest areas properly without more data

From my understanding they are running tests on the current quests, and laying down a general basic story line to follow once more tech is available. So what you have currently are placeholders to an extent.

I would expect to see more party/single player only scenes that can contain alot of dynamic elements to them. Puzzles/mazes/movable objects to reveal hidden secrets, alot more stuff like that is to come.

 

I hope you are right But why are we left in the dark when a single statement of a dev could clarify this?

 

Is there a quest in game that you feel is done well?

Can you provide specific examples of what type of quests you want and how you want them to work?

 

Here is a scenario I would like to see:

1) you find a letter in a random NPC building in a town. (And hopefully just one building in one town, not identical copies of random notes like we are finding now in various npc towns.) This letter leads you to speak to a certain NPC somewhere in Novia with a specific key word.

2) giving that key word to the npc triggers the quest. He gives you a key, or some sort of quest item/artifact, or perhaps a map.

3) possession of that quest item allows you to enter a specifc dungeon/instance/area that would not be accessible otherwise, and is instanced. This would allow full proper storytelling to take place, with proper consequences.

4) Once your character successfully completes that quest/instance, the success is permanently recorded with your character, and you can never repeat it. (important)


And another option that would be excellent is some sort of instancing/replacement for active npcs in towns which would allow for more dynamic quests without entering a full instance.

 

I know generally what this means, but specifically what does this mean? once more tech is available Does this mean they have programmers working madly on these new system techs or are they waiting for something on unity assets or another place that does it?

 

Where did you get your information on this as far as "more tech" and "placeholders"? We have been told that one of the 3 main storyline branches is 100% complete.

 

I believe the main core quests for all 3 storylines are complete, but only one has polish or any real sidequests at all.

 

I think Port. need to change their stance that a players actions won't effect the state of the Multiplayer scenes.

If they used a flag to change the state of the scene on a player by player basis they could do much more interesting stuff with the quests in these scenes, and give much more of a feeling of impact to players actions.

I know this will give situations where one player might look to be standing talking to no one to a player who has done a quest that say 'removes' a character but so what? In my mind it would be better than having completely static scenes where nothing ever changes.

I've said it a few times before, but having quest items magically re-appear in front of your eyes when you pick them up is really really annoying.

 

That is not a problem with phasing technology. The only people in your version of town after so and so dies or goes to jail would be those who completed the quest with that result. The game has to support becoming a multiverse where there are instances of shared reality. Could lead to interesting realities, maybe evil players killed all the refugees and their town the camp is burnt down, it means all the evil players are grouped together. Having soltown questing completed there is no reason to play multiplayer, you just see people running around helping people you already helped as they are still standing there and have not moved on with their life.

For single player I enjoyed ESO questing, if you took your time and read all the lore it was good stories, although doing it in group dungeons was annoying when the mobs you just killed respawn while you are reading their notes and books.

 

This is in part Lum's department. Having read a lot of what he has posted and said in hangouts, he has stated a lot of his work and quest building is limited in scope due to the tech (code) required to do more detailed and dynamic questing. A questline might be able to be 100% completed, but may not be 100% feature complete.

The other part is the programmers department. Quests require code for unique mechanics. Take for instance, the follow mechanic that Charolette does, thats a unique code that had to be written. There are some unity assets you can get for things like this, but depending on the code, may not be compatible with the server structure. So for the most part all of those type of things have to be written by port.
And right now most of their programmers are tied up with balance/debug. They have done some AI improvements, but there's still a long way to go as far as standards go. The more head way we see on the AI/programming side, the better our quests will become.

Like most facets of the game right now, they are still in elementary state.

 

I don't like the feeling that quests have no consequences, and I don't like the whole phasing aspect either. Phasing doesn't make me think there are any real consequences either, just a different visual for me. The next leap that game developers need to make are quests that are not viewed as start to finish experiences, but continuous experiences. Here is an example that worked great in Meridian59 twenty years ago (pre-UO).

Background:
There are five councilmen whose influence is sought by two competing factions - a Princess and a Duke. Each councilman will have a certain level of support for either the Duke, Princess, or be neutral. Players pick a faction to support and are free to switch throughout their career. If a faction is in power, different buffs are globally available.

Each councilman, when he's not making public policy, is fascinated with the study of a powerful artifact. The artifact, for reasons unknown, frequently teleports away from its councilman to a random zone to be picked up by a random monster there. When this event occurs, the Princess and Duke's spy network kicks into gear and they have information about where the artifact might be (this information is occasionally incorrect to add spice).

Quest:
Players can ask the Princess or Duke about the status of an artifact, and they give their follower the location of the artifact (unless their spy network is wrong). Players from both factions then converge on the zone, killing critters (or each other) to find the one with the artifact. Whoever picks up the artifact must hold it with both hands and cannot fight, and is fair game to be killed where the artifact is up for grabs. Players protect or try to kill the player with the artifact, who is trying to deliver it to the councilman in a remote location. Whoever ends up returning the artifact sways the councilman's support to one of the factions. Several hours later, on a random timer, the artifact teleports away and the quest starts all over again.


This is one of the very first "fetch" quests ever made in an MMO, and fits in much better in a multiplayer environment than many that have come about since. Players all participate in the same quest at the same time (killing critters/players to find the relic), interact with each other (protecting or fighting the helpless person carrying the artifact), the quest turn in has global consequences that impact all players (buffs of lack of buffs for a faction), and is repeatable endlessly. The "Hello player #10,382 I have lost my necklace for the 10,382nd time and need you to help find it by looking in the exact same spot that I left it 10,381 times previously" quest has no place in MMOs.

 

I like the beginning of Solace Bridge with Charlotte yelling for help and that we have to escort her to safety. I also liked the beginning of the Blood River Massacre where we had to find the mirror to get the dagger.
I like the premise of many quests. For example the idea behind the arsonist quest is really exciting but it is the execution that is lacking. Just running around, talking and looking for clues is not very exciting. Also the quests after Solace Bridge... we are a delivery boy. And even if we have to deliver some items, why not spice this up a bit? Why not have us ambushed on our way with someone wanting to steal the package from us? Maybe he even succeeds and we have to track him down, fight him to get the package back. Something that adds a little bit of variety and danger to the quests. But everything is so straightforward... We have to find someone and we find him - end of story. We have to deliver a package and we do so - end of story. You know what I mean?

 

I maintain that sending you to a 5 skull zone (regardless what you are supposed to do there) early in a quest is not polished. And finishing THAT step and having the game tell you the next step isn't implemented DEFINITELY isn't polished. (I accidentally finished the entire love chain because I saw the lich say malice...so i went to malice and finished everything..skipping whatever else I was supposed to do (and they added a non-PVP way to get to one step..how am I supposed to know that).

The entire quest system is a mess, I love quests, but I cant be bothered to do any. First its a pain to find them (a situation that applies to commerce as well, seriously most of the quality of life mechanics for WOW made the game better). Maybe the solution is to have the town crier point you to people who have quests..I dont know, but this has to change.

The quest-in-chat system basically involves clicking keywords until the guy finally advances the quest and tells you everything you want to know...not following along and making decisions.

 

Here is something interesting about quests:
http://www.polygon.com/2016/9/2/12759134/the-witcher-3-saved-its-best-trick-for-last

I am NOT asking that we get cutscenes like in the Witcher 3 with super special effects. With the budget of SotA this would not be possible. But interesting, multi-layered and branching quests full of twists, surprises, moral dilemmas and choices that have REAL consequences should not be asked too much.
I mean how will this "story-driven" game with a "single-player" narrative be judged if the story and the quests take the backseat and are not very interesting because of limited game mechanics?

 

I agree that there isn't much progression with the difficulty of the content, though I can only hope that adding a bunch of side-quests will improve that.

 

I expect SOTA quests to improve greatly and interface with the virtue system. Its just an early work in progress in the development cycle still, that is all.

The story-driven UI also needs something that compels the player into the story more. The story will not succeed if it is buried beneath countless vanilla NPC chat text making it hard to find.

 

@Lord_Darkmoon I think it's a mistake to stick to the Kickstarter word for word. While I do believe we're on the same page when it comes to story and quest design, game often (if not always) change over time. So, while you can still be strict say "this sucks" or "this part is good", I'd suggest anyone to let go the whole Kickstarter thing.

With that said, I got to say that there's nothing inherently wrong with Fed-Ex quests. They're like each individual fries to a meal; you can eat a few as a distraction and they can taste good but that's about it. There's so many potatoes right now that I feel like I'm eating a dish with nothing but plain mashed potatoes... and the butter available is some off-taste margarine.

No.

That's pretty much the gist of it. Where my concerns are, however, how the quests and dialogue are being handled. When you leave players confused as to what is an actual quest or mere gossip and have the entire thing buried underneath an awkward keyword system (something that U4 did way better, because it kept things simple)... and, on top of that, you have a developer call it "working as intended", it really doesn't inspire confidence.

And this is after a "polish" pass too; because the dev team felt like we should have a better idea of what we'll have.

The current state of affairs isn't really encouraging especially when you consider that other aspects of the game are lacking as well.

 

I still think that if a game is announced with a crowdfunding campaign then the game should stick to this vision. People give money for the design that was announced and not for a game that is very different in the end. And if it doesn't then the devs should say honestly that it changed, what has changed and why it has changed and then offer a refund for those who do not agree with the changes.

As for quests, Fedex quests can be intersting if they are not just done "take letter, walk to NPC, deliver letter". There could be more to a Fedex quest. We could lose the letter, someone steals it, the NPC we have to bring it to is missing, we read the letter and find out that that we better not deliver it... I hope you get the picture.

And yes, talking to NPCs is really a pain right now, making even the simplest of quests frustrating. If the devs said that it is working as intended then I fear for this game even more...