Conversations make my blood boil

I like this idea! If you have Names turned on, then you'll know who to talk to, without the big bouncing exclamation points that many of us hate so much. Alternatively, quest givers could use a different color instead of green.

 

IF you have names turned on... What if you don't? And what if you don't want to?
I don't want to be forced to turn names on as I hate floating names in games... And I hate combat floaties, monster names, health bars and exclamation marks in games... Such things totally destroy the immersion.

We need a proper conversation interface in the game. Something like this:



And instead of the clickable keywords at the bottom of the interface there could be a text input field where we could type in our sentences.

 

I would love a conversation system like this! I think it would make npc conversation much less of a hassle.

 

Not sure what you mean. You don't need to do quests. That's one option. You can also log on to multiplayer, go to the local tavern and ask, where do I go for some action? That's another option.

Anyway, I'm sure plenty of people will agree with you that there are some rough edges that can be smoothed out

 

I have to agree on the conversations. Perhaps some find it immersive or nostalgic, but honestly it can also make it hard to find quests or remember if you have done one.

I like what Elder Scrolls is doing with its quests. You talk to someone and it is obvious what the difference is between a story line (for those interested) and a conversation for a quest. There are also quest givers that run up to you in the wild to let you know they need something.

 

I would not mind having some quest givers go directly up to the player and asking for help. This of course would not work for all quests but it would work for some.

 

I tried to make a comment earlier but I think it disappeared into the Ether during a brief power outage. I logged back into the game and had a few conversations. As long as you stand half a room from the person you're talking to, they won't tell you to step back. I also have given up on clicking the underlined words. The clicks don't always work, and in a fast paced conversation, it can get confusing and annoying. I just type the words in the chat box. Everything seemed to go well, and I got my first quest from Lord Enmar.

Lord Darkmoon, I agree that Wasteland II is an awesome game, but it is turn based. I'm not sure how you can adapt a turn based conversation system into a real time game like SotA. Something may be trying to kill you while you are in the middle of a convo. In a turn based game everyone takes a break as you leisurely read your text and think up an appropriate reply.

 

I walked into a town tonight. Clicked on the Town Crier, this automatically makes my character say "hello" to the NPC Town Crier. The Town Crier immediately said he didn't understand.

I'm wondering if there's a way to take NPC's out of the game altogether? Maybe all NPC's should be created and maintained by players. I vote for Open Source NPC's. This would probably cut down on the development time of quests as well. There's probably a very good way to design this...I hope some enterprising developer thinks it through.

 

I like the dialogue system, though I agree it needs a better GUI/UI.

However I think the main issue is that there is literally no way to deffericiate filler NPCs from proper NPCs.

Now I'm not asking for the game to have icons, or explanations points or other sillyness : but there is quite a lot of generic filler NPCs that all says the same thing. That means we require a way for proper NPCs to stand out, because as it is now you litterally have no way when starting a conversation to know if this is gonna be an interesting unique NPC... or yet another NPC that will say the same thing. And there are so many NPCs in each of the city, that it's NOT FUN to go and talk to every NPC to see if they have something to say.

That wasn't an issue in Ultima because generally, each NPCs were unique except for guards. But if the final is to have as many filler NPCs as the pre-alpha - it needs a way to differenciate them (just say... having ther name in a different color might work) or else it's not gonna be fun to talk to people.

-Sergorn

 

Other onlinegames use conversations interfaces, too. If you are attacked then the conversation could automatically be ended so that you can defend yourself.

Does anyone know if the quests in SotA will be given through dialogues only? I would love for events to trigger quests, too. You walk through a city and suddenly see someone running out of a shop and the shopkeeper runs after him, screaming "Help! Thief!"
Or you see some Elves attacking a farm and abucting the children and you can interfere etc.

 

DS said something about a goal was to have some events linked with an automated trigger or timer within the system. I think he was answering some question of Portalarium staff or if GM ingame staffing was necessary.
~Time Lord~

 

I do like the different coloration suggestion you made, it would be subtle enough to blend into the background I believe, and could be ignored by the hardcore crowd by simply turning off the nameplates.

One could also go and use the existing prefixing system they have been using: "Peasant Bob", "Guard Ronan", "Trader Mark"

NPC with named prefixes could then be considered filler, and those without prefixes could be quest-related characters.

 

NPCs with something interesting to say have barks that appear are every so often. An examples is Morton talking about his book, Randall talking to Myra about her brother, etc. However, I think they may break after being on for a while. I was just sitting in the tavern for a while on Saturday and never saw the bark. And timing can be an issue, so triggers might work better. Not sure how glowy names and manipulating the nameplates fits into the design goal of no exclamation marks for quest givers, as its the same idea just in a different UI format as it still is like a flashing neon sign saying 'Hi I'm a quest giver, talk to me.'. That to me is more what RG is trying to avoid.

 

That would suggest that every unique NPC is a quest giver - which I don't think is what they are aiming at. So having them set apart by UI difference, would not be much of an issue in this case. There are NPCs in the Alpha that don't give quests, but are nice just to talk to, that's what I'm looking for in an Ultima-ish game.

Of course IDEALLY, we wouldn't HAVE filler NPCs and only unique ones just like most Ultima had (where generally only Guards were generic NPCs), so knowing which NPCs would be interesting or not would be a moot point. But with the scope of SotA I'm sure this is doable alas.

The thing is just going to every single NPCs while most of them are just sprouting the same filler dialogue is... NOT fun IMO. And this actually brings terrible memories of the earlier Elder Scrolls games which were exactly like that, and that stuff killed all immersion.

You know that's actually not a bad idea, and better perhaps that my color suggestion. If we can't have unique NPCs only taht seems like a good compromise.

I hadn't noticed about the barks... but I'm not sure how I feel about that : some of them already sounded rather repetitive.

-Sergorn

 

@Gracekain: Why didn't you use this one?

 

So... The conversation system is still a work in progress. We can expect it to be changing quite a bit. -Lum leaked some info to the Dev+ backers.

I was involved with the early discussion on whether or not to have typed in conversations. I was for it. But: my expectation was very different from what we have.

I expected most NPCs we wouldn't converse with, you can double click them and they'll say something, but there would be no reply box. The only ones you could talk to would be Quest givers - or relevant to a quest. Once they no longer have any quests for your or no new information to give you there will no longer be a quest/chat dialog box, just their response.


I think they went a bit too ambitious with this conversation system. I think it's too open and leads to too much confusion. They need to work on closing things off and having a less open system.

I'm sure there will be some disagreement with that idea, in particular from Lord British. But from a gameplay perspective it is only fun for a select audience of people who enjoy talking to all the NPCs. I don't want to talk to NPCs that don't have anything to offer.

The thing I really don't like is the chat box being used for NPC conversations. we should have those separate and when you are having a conversation with an NPC it(dialog box) should be centered around you and the NPC.

 

I think a lot of people can agree that the conversations need work. As it stands, the UI is a bit clunky and it looks almost like a MS notepad dropped into the game. Perhaps something to make it more visually appealing, as well as making it a little more user friendly? I don't know if they've done away with the old school commands to whisper to other players yet, but in this day and age that type of thing shouldn't exist.

As far as knowing which NPC's are important to talk to, that is something I don't want! I want to have to find names, dig for info and discover that for myself. For me, that is part of the role-playing adventure fun If I knew who I needed to talk to everywhere, why would I bother speaking to anyone else? I just hope that getting the information we actually need from NPC's will flow a bit easier over time.

 

Just because you can't converse with them doesn't mean they don't have something important to say. check them all, read what they have to say, move a long. streamline that adventure a bit. I hate trying to dig for information that isn't there. Most RPGs, there are tons of people without exclamation points to talk to, and you don't have to talk to them, but if you do you get clues/hints about all sorts of things. Regular NPCs can be used for atmosphere and clues/hints, special npcs could be conversed with. I just don't like how time consuming it currently is.

Dragon Warrior 1 was my first RPG. I never Had to talk to others, but I got a lot of clues, like where to find a fairy flute, and that the golem guarding a town will fall asleep if you play it music. Things like that. I could have just leveled up for a very long time and beaten the golem with out it.


-also the dialog doesn't have to be about quests either, they can just be giving you ethical choices. Tests of virtue.

 

The conversation system isn't completely hooked up and I do agree that some of the responses don't make sense just yet, but overall I like the conversation system. Yes, there are a lot of NPCs and while most of them won't give you a quest I don't really like the idea of distinguishing important characters from filler characters. That seems to go against the idea of not using the Exclamation points over the head. I have no doubt that as you get moving in the story you'll get the names of the people you need to talk to in order to keep the quest moving. You want have to talk to everyone and can ignore most of the people wandering the streets and markets.

As an example, in Kingsport, you're lead from Anton, to Lauren, to Wycliffe, to Normal and Halber (or whatever his name was). I fully expect that is how the conversation system is going to work in the final release. You will be guided to the next destination so you don't have to talk to everyone, but if you do talk to the filler characters, as Mishri said, you'll get background info, perhaps a few hints to make things go smoother and faster and where to find worthwhile items. I hope we keep things the way they are and just refine how the NPCs respond. Once I got into the swing of things, I had a good time picking and choosing characters to talk to.