Am I the only one mind-bogglingly frustrated?

This is the heart of the problem for me. Everything looks so similar and the cities are just generic collections of buildings and player housing. The conversation system should be able to direct players to a general area, but as it is right now when the player gets to that area there is very little to assist them in finding the specific building they are looking for.

 

I just played a bit Gothic 2 again and in this game you always know where to go to and whom to talk to. I wonder why it is so much harder to get along in SotA... There are no exclamation marks over the heads of the NPCs and no marker that shows you where you have to go to in Gothic 2. But you still know it and you recognize the NPCs. Maybe it is because there are fewer NPCs in the world and each of them has an individual look. You recognize them by their faces, their hair and what clothes they are wearing... In SotA there are too many NPCs and most of them look the same and wear the same clothes... I wonder if this will change in later in Alphas and in Betas... But the world of the game seems to be so large that I "fear" that there will be way too many NPCs in the cities and towns etc. for everyone to get a unique look... And this will make it very hard to find the person you are looking for.

Also I think that one other thing is that SotA is a third person 3D game in which you roam around in 360 degrees. This makes it much harder to find your way in the game than in former Ultima games where you had an isometric view and where you always new that north was always "up"...

Maybe every city is too large in SotA. Too many buildings and most of them do not really have a purpose. I think Britain in Ultima 7 was a city of a very good size for the capital of the "world". You always knew where to go to and every citizen of the city was an individual that you could recognize by it's looks. But if you look at a map, Britain consisted of only around 30 buildings. This worked in the game because everything was shown in an isometric view and you could not look into the distance... In a 3D world you would think that the city is small...

 

You are safe from the ! And ? With SotA. Lord British said he does not care for that and will bring back the old school questing and adventuring approach back.

+1 to Lord British!!!

Edit: Darn phone autocorrect

 

I have spoke to every guard and used every "Key" word--still no luck. I guess Lord Enmar just does not like me. Guess I will do something else

 

Before you do, please make sure to enter in a bug report with your findings. If you are having trouble with the dialog system, report to them what you were saying and what feedback you were getting. It's the only way to make the game and the dialog system even better.

 

Absolutely

 

First of all, my first real commercial computer game was Ultima III on the Commodore 64. So I'm familiar with old school games. That said, I want to spend as little time as possible in dialog with NPCs. So I like the big green exclamation point over important NPCs. LUM has done a great job with the conversation, but since my time is valuable to me, I don't want to "talk" to every NPC in town, with all of them telling me to "Step Off!" "You're violating my personal space, Avatar!" WTF? I want to play the game. Not talk to robots.
I guess I'll just have to make use of online walkthroughs to keep the need for conversation to an absolute minimum and look for the neon "Hello my name is" name tags floating above NPCs heads...
But exclamation points would allow me to skip the walkthroughs.
I recognize everyone has their own play style. Some people spend all their time in town chatting up players and NPCs, some people forage and craft, some decorate their house, and others spend all their time questing for phat loot.
Sorry for rambling. Basically, it would be nice to give the exclamation points as a toggle for those who want it. I guess that was my point.
Edit: typo

 

I totally understand your concern and think that you're awesome for your attention to this matter. You and many others in this thread have really worked hard during these tests. You're doing good. After each release the devs sometimes post their findings during these tests and the metrics that they seem to be gathering would surprise you. In one of Lum's reports on R2, I realized that he actually reads what we've been saying to NPCs! Well after that, I stopped cussing NPCs out when I got frustrated because I was embarrassed at half of the things I called them, lol.
They're paying attention to what's going on in your game, but I think that if there's something you think they should know about you should leave feedback in the feedback section for these releases.

Thank you everyone who is putting forth the effort in navigating conversation trees with NPCs that are as derp as I am. <3 to you all!

 

I completely get where you're coming from. It's really going to be hard to strike a balance for a lot of this. A lot of people seem to like talking to NPCs in this manner. I look at it and say "Ugh! It isn't like that anymore because that is all we had back then!" Good immersion is important but I hope we can avoid a lot of the invasive drudgery. I acknowledge that we're all coming at this from different directions but I am hoping to interact and roleplay with other players more than NPCs. I look forward to the story but that wasn't the main thing that attracted me to this game.

 

Guard Michael (In Owls Head): "Where are you from Outlander"
Me: "Owls Head"
Guard Michael: "Never heard of that place"

 

to help players find the right NPCs and not waste time looking for them... LOL

 

Argh... Floating names, combat floaties, floating health bars, windows, question marks, exclamation marks... Then why not just have an UI such as this in SotA?



Oh, how i miss those days:

 

Hello Gix

i cannot speak english very well (i am from germany), so first i enter the game, i have bringing a lot of time to learn and understand the mechanic of the game. You must speak to every NPC, at Fire Lotus Tavern, the bartender is giving you two hints (undead and red sashes). Earn some money, and buy some stuff from the merchants. Go and craft yourself a weapon.

Its so easy, and it is cool, that i can explore on my own, and not like the modern MMOs with quest marker or autopath.

I think the producer of this game will add a little tutorial at start, this will help with the basics. Darkfall UW and Mortal Online did the same, it fits here too

I hope you understand my wall of text hihi

 

It just occurred to me that I am Baroness Caska Di Methyl Fumarate and I do not talk to peasants! I would have some minion go talk to the NPCs for me, do the shopping, crafting etc. Someone needs to walk their butt into the Fumarate manor and deliver to me a report as to what is going on. I'll review the report along with any missives from the local sovereign and decide what needs to be done.

No, I will not make my house servants enter all of the rooms of my home backwards but you gotta admit that would be a funny idea!

 

I agree that the player housing takes way too much focus from the non-player housing. Especially inside the city walled area of Owl's Head,. where I would expect to find no player housing at all and where I would expect the guardhouse to be one of the bigger, more official looking buildings - change name to guardshed and we're good

However I did find the guardhouse fast, cause some of the NPCs mention something with it having flags out front (in addition to being close to the marketplace)

 

I found players very helpful in common and also try to give help, if I can. So let me comment this partial sentence of yours:
In the first previews complaints have been made about the NPCs filling up the chat.
So it was introduced, that all you talk to an NPC and the NPC to you stays between him and you.
If you now have still targeted the last NPC it may well be, that the players you attempted to ask something never heard your question, so you also may have been DEAD SILENT for them.

(Or they were as clueless as you and preferred not to show it )

 

Considering that I have hard time keeping the NPCs focused/selected (even when I'm not moving or touching the mouse), I don't think that's what happened. But, yes, maybe they didn't know the answer or that they simply weren't paying enough attention to the chat window.

I like that NPC dialogue is filtered to you and you only. I just want the NPCs to be less derp