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Will there by anything more that can we expect in terms of quests?

Discussion in 'Release 39 Feedback Forum' started by Lord_Darkmoon, Mar 6, 2017.

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  1. Rada Torment

    Rada Torment Community Ambassador (ES)

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    I would love to see this in SotA. I know it can be done, some Unity games has this feature and working perfectly fine (off and online).


    The basic requirements for this feature in online games are a max-items on the ground per zone/cluster (in this case scenes) at the same time, and in some cases, a time limit. But the good thing is to know that they can do it if they want.

    I'm a big supporter of games with the possibility to drop items on the ground. This is one of the small things that adds A LOT, many gameplay possilibiites and a good sandbox feature.
     
  2. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    I can understand quest frustration but we are currently in the dev. cycle that includes final content and that includes quests. We are already seeing massive content being added into the game in the past few releases and the update last Friday showed huge new things being added to the game. While we should be talking like this, letting them know we want such content, people are far to quick to "this game is a failure"... when the content is being produced. How about you keep nicely reminding them but give them a little room to finish the development?
     
  3. Burzmali

    Burzmali Avatar

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    Let me give you a sample quest that has been found in Single player RPGs for at least 30 years.
    The PC is tasked by a magistrate to deal with some bandits that have been harassing local merchant. The PC is given a location where the bandits often attack. The PC goes to the location and kills a bunch of bandits. On one of the bodies, the PC finds a letter implicating the lord's younger brother in a plot to destabilize the realm with bandits in a bid for the crown. The PC returns and collects their reward for dealing with the bandits and has the choice to either turn in the lord's brother or blackmail him. If the PC turns him in, the magistrate denounces the traitor in the lord's court prompting the trait to draw his blade and attack along with some corrupt guards and the PC gets to defend the lord and save the day.

    Simple quest, simple resolution, impossible to implement in SotA.
     
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  4. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    From what I have understood over the past many years with RG is that they really arnt into these kinds of quests. I developed these kinds of things in my Never Winter Night module. One of the staples of RPGs is the first quest "Go into the tavern basement and kill 10 rats". These are usually exemplified in games with the NPC with the "!" over their heads. A lot of the simple quests like this are kinda made fun of in the RP world now, people want more rich quests. WOW was pretty much this style on steroids.
     
  5. Lord_Darkmoon

    Lord_Darkmoon Avatar

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    Then what kind of quests do they want? Kill undead at the house of the farmer, return to him so that he can sit in the tavern for all eternity?
     
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  6. GrayFog

    GrayFog Avatar

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    There is no quest system in SotA.

    What do i mean by that?:
    Smart dev tools for adding new super cool quests are either non-existent yet or very very weak still.
    They have to manually add pretty much everything still when it comes to design/adding new cool & fun quests.

    That's how i see it. I might be wrong, but since we don't really have many quests yet and pretty much all of the current ones are just basic...
    They want to release SotA in 2017, when do they actually want to add hundreds of quests (as they advertised) and test, bugfix all of them before release?
    Nm, i should say before beta?! Because this should be done before beta!


    Like i said, i could be wrong.
    But so far i don't smell any decent Quest DEV Tools for SotA...

    Just another reason/thing along with many other things as to why i think a release for 2017 is rushed...
     
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2017
  7. Burzmali

    Burzmali Avatar

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    So they prefer exclusively FedEx and fetch quests then? Maybe a keyword quests or two for variety?
     
  8. Sir Cabirus

    Sir Cabirus Avatar

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    Maybe you wonder why Ultima veterans find the current quests so boring. I say this with big respect for the hard working devs. I know you all do a good job for a game with a small budget. Maybe some of you wonder why the heck the Ultima 7 quests are so interesting for so much people. The answer is because Ultima 7 told a very good story and puts you in a plausible world which brings you an immersive experience. No kill x of yyy, no FedEx 'quests', no bring me xxx of these blah. If you don't know the single player Ultimas, if you don't know Ultima 7, read this walkthrough to get an idea whereof I am talking. Maybe this could be also a good source of lore for the developers ;)
     
    Last edited: Mar 8, 2017
  9. Gix

    Gix Avatar

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    Isn't it what SotA is turning into anyways? Oh, it's a blue glow; my bad!
     
  10. 2112Starman

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    You cant blame the dev's based on the massive feedback from new players.

    This is just an evolution of the MMO, people need to be coddled and if they arn't... Then they slam the game for being terrible (not them being terrible gamers)... go figure.
     
  11. Burzmali

    Burzmali Avatar

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    Sure, blame gamers for being coddled when quests like the Black Arrow are completely ignored by everyone not involved directly in the quest, no one in the quest will comment about anything out of order, even when you are holding evidence, and the resolution involves no change in NPCs.
     
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  12. Elfenwahn

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    What he said! (@ Rada)
     
  13. Gix

    Gix Avatar

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    THEY'RE the ones making the damn thing. Every decision they make is ON THEM.

    See, it's that kind of mindset that actually puts the game in the ditch in the first place.

    Like @Burzmali says, the game is filled with quests/moments where the devs go "Yeah, we intentionally made so that the players will need to take the time to think" but the problem is that the devs don't take half a second to realize that, when you build a world that's supposed to act like a real place, it's REALLY HARD for players to find the ONE solution.... because there are millions potential possibilities and the game doesn't lift a finger to narrow that down.

    And then we end up with a developer who said "I'm not that great at writing a parser". I personally don't give a damn, they wrote themselves in this corner. Having someone else tell me that I'm a "terrible gamer" doesn't help make the game any better either.

    We have NPCs that glow blue because the devs think we can't find quests... that's not the problem! The problem is that there's hardly any TO FIND and most of the current ones are horribly scripted... like the Black Arrow quest in Ardoris.

    We're all here because SotA is a cool concept... but you have the balls to blame the players when they say it's not holding together that well?
     
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  14. yarnevk

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    You clearly misdirected his point, which was a staple of the RPG is a quest with consequence, picking a side and sending on or the other NPC on their way. That has nothing to do with killing ten rats, and is indeed a quest that is not possible not because the devs do not want to do it, they have already stated they do want to do them. They cannot do it because their hands are tied in that consequential quests cannot be done in housing towns because of their engine limitations. They could do such a quest in an adventure scene, but the players that bought housing in NPC towns to harvest quest traffic do not want the story moved out of town. Other MMOs absolutely can do these quests because they can take full advantage of instancing and phasing

    BTW one of the first quests is indeed go kill a bunch of zombies, it was later thinly disguised as go find my lost ring by killing a bunch of zombies. If something happened to the scene by returning the ring, then it would be interesting but it is boring because indeed it is nothing more than go kill X zombies, with the quest giver standing there telling all the other heros to go find her ring by killing zombies.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2017
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  15. 2112Starman

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    Oh I fully agree, I read his post wrong as a "FedX" quest. My point was still on topic that people dont like FedX quests which is why I used the example I did.
     
  16. Leinad Laurelwreath

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    I'm thinking maybe today's telethon is a great chance to bomb the devs with questions on what are they really planning to do to improve quests in general and story-driven quests specially.

    • 4:30 PM: Story Deep Dive (Lum, Richard)
    Maybe 4:30 PM @Lord British and @Lum the Mad will talk about it? Sadly i lost all interest in the last telethons...
     
  17. 2112Starman

    2112Starman Avatar

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    Absolutely I blame the gamer in SOTA 100%.

    Im going to go back to the fact that you press a button when you log in every single time to this game that says "This game is in development" and if there is one ABSOLUTELY clear thing the devs have said for the past 3ish releases is that major content is create and they are now working on the final 20% which is *CONTENT* like quests and bug fixes. In fact, quests are the #1 thing they have talked about being worked on, Richard Garriott himself in stand up notes and video feeds says he is working on quests. Making the claim that they are completely ignoring it is ridiculous, over the past 15 months I have seen these dev's read just aobut every post and act on them when needed.

    People here are making accusations about a game relating to quests when they are sitting in the *prime* development time for them. That is insane.

    This game is still under development!!!
     
  18. yarnevk

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    Even kill ten rats can be interesting if it has consequence, maybe you went into the basement and killed the rats. Only to find the rats was there because they was eating a pile of people corpses, then you find a mcguffin that you need to follow leads to discover what the corpses was doing there. Not all consequences need to require a change of scene, they just need change of dialogue state.

    The issue is SOTA is not doing that many of those even though they could. For example every town has underground dungeons that are interconnected. Where is the story for all this? The dungeons are only there for some traditional dungeon grinding, they are nothing more than fodder for my XP (not even treasure hunting as the loot tables are really really bad)

    The complaint everyone has is that the Love story has proclaimed as done, and so it absolutely can be held up as an example of what the writers limitations are, it is very good indication how the other stories will finish out. While the devs are aware of the lack of consequences that lack of phased instances has caused, and acknowledged it as a story telling problem, what they have not done is made any commitment to how that will change in the remaining months before consumer release. This is why people are giving negative but constructive feedback during development, because they know it will be a disaster if it releases with the existing limitations that prevent good storytelling.
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2017
  19. 2112Starman

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    I agree with you 100%!

    If in 6 months when this game is released and quests are still not up to par (giving them the fact that they are still a small dev group so take that into account), I'll probably complain about it more then any of you. I still think everyone who has issues with quests complain constructively about it exactly like you did here, with examples of what we would like to see. I may be the white knight in this thread, but I guarantee you I probably have a rep with the dev's as being harsh on the game... only because I want it to succeed and I always try to do it in a constructive way tempered also with how much I think a small team like this can do.
     
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  20. yarnevk

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    It has nothing to do with it being a small team of writers, plenty of Elder Scrolls modders are able to write quests of consequence as a part time hobby. Though cumbersome to use their conversation system is pretty good at managing states, both for further dialogue and changing the scene.

    I also don't give them a pass for lack of software engineers that can write that dialogue tool, that is why they chose Unity, surely someone has written a conversation/scene state machine that can fix the problems. In fact we know they have a tool because consequential scenes and consequential dialogue already exist.

    The issue is what are they doing (and when) to fix it's major limitation of not being able to do it in NPC towns because of story vs. housing, and furthermore what compromises are players with houses in those towns willing to make in the interest of getting a better game story? The reason you see continued posts on this topic is that this issue has never appeared on the episodic features, nor the quarterly schedule, nor any monthly patches.

    My idea has been to divide the town into housing vs. NPC instances, so that you are essentially in single player offline mode when questing, to workaround the issue of inconsequential questing. Make every house like a basement instances by fencing it in, instanced housing does not have to mean shared housing like ESO; it just leaves the writers free to run rampant on the town. You can still leave your gate open to everyone to show off your yard sale, so it has no impact on merchants. The only concern with that is loading time is horrible, but that is supposed to get fixed.

    Last I heard the devs have said June release, having blown past their 2015/2016 EOY promise. This time I actually believe them because they are trying trials and click ads and key promos, and they would not be doing that if they was not planning on releasing months later.

    The fear is we are without a development commitment to not release until the issues are fixed. The only update on quest technology is the patch to add the 'Blue Glow AKA Not a !' - which to me says there is no time to fix the complex writing states we cannot have every guard and bartender and vendor aware of every quest state that everybody is on to properly direct them, so lets punt instead.

    Which is why this is a fair thread, as even the proclaimed 'white knighters' are now acknowledging the problems now that the devs themselves have acknowledged it, mostly because of the consistent posting by the OP despite attempts by others to get the topic banned. So now that we have moved past this type of post being an issue or not, the question is what is being done about the questing state before release, and how willing are the devs to slip release plans to fix it?
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2017
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