Will or should question marks above heads of NPCs make it into the game?

The Only Question Mark I want from a NPC is my Servant asking if He/She should turn down the lamps for the evening .

 

Although I do not personally like the idea of things floating above NPC's heads, I do believe it should be optional with the default setting set to off. Since it doesn't affect anyone who has the setting turned off, why not let people who do want it on have the ability to enhance their gameplay with it?

 

I don't see how this thread is relevant, not trying to say I don't understand the confusion. As I mentioned earlier we are not to know where the quests are, they are discoveries and mysteries as per RG's dream for this game.

I do understand in most games the game wants you to know where to find quests, it will just be different here. Lots of depth to it. What happens will be an individual experience depending on how you choose do the quests when you do discover them.

Given that is the design Richard wants for this game there is no need to question if there needs to be marks over an NPCs head.

Now if you want to discuss cool possibilities for how you could possibly handle a quest, or ideas for awesome quests now that is very relevant and fun.

So no offense meant by my comments just perhaps some new people don't know the design yet of quests in Shrouds of the Avatar.

****cheers community****

 

I hear you, but personally, I disagree. I don't want people to have that option. I would very much like to know that every other person I come across in game, has not been spoon fed. Even if they alt-tabbed to the wiki, that's ok. It means they're READING and THINKING. I prefer to know that no one around me has been following quest markers with Pavlovian responses.

SotA is not just a game with quests. It's a tale, an adventure. It's climbing into a book and playing the pages in a landscape that comes to life. And it would be a shame if the efforts of the story and the content get lost on someone who wants an option for the sake of convenience, because reading and thinking is dated.

 

What i want in return is a valuable Journal. Perhaps i can add to it ingame abit too. I really loved how the game Morrowind did that. You do keep the mystery, but without running around a town for one hour clueless.

 

Because they used a wiki does not prove or mean anything of the sort.

The wiki is going to have /loc on it. How is it ok they alt-tab, look to the sidebar for the loc x and y and just run a macro in-game to periodically pop the /loc of their current spot compared to the "waypoint"?

Really this is just making a case for people to macro instead of providing it in game. You are not going to know one way or the other.

While that is a great sentiment, and I will be playing that way myself, you cant tell people they can "adventure" how they like then force them into a way to do so.

Just because we might want to take our time and read every sentence (hopefully WELL WRITTEN sentences), and you may think it is a "shame" content is lost on certain people, why is your opinion or way more important than theirs?

 

What it proves to me is that they know there's a wiki. You don't find a link to the wiki when walking up to the first NPC and asking for the wiki's url. Maybe a helpful fellow player will point them to the wiki. Fair enough. They still need to navigate to the correct page for the right information. This demonstrates some level of sentience. Surely
Another aspect that I find appealing is that you'll have more than one way to complete quests and with different consequences. It won't take anyone very long to realise that it's in their best interest to start paying attention to the details.

You're right. And no, my opinion isn't worth more than theirs, or anyone else's for that matter. But it is important to me, which is why I'll voice it.

It is my opinion that quest markers will attract the kind of player that I would like to avoid. This is a rather broad and general statement, and I'm sure there are exceptions. I just found in personal experience playing games like A Tale in the Desert and Wurm Online, that the people asking for quest markers and other "silver spoon" features, were the kind of players that didn't quite fit into the community. They had a tendency to entitlement and hand outs.

 

Quest Markers

First of all, absolute NO to Question Marks over NPC heads or any other "This person has a quest" type of moniker. As it is, players can hit SotAWiki if they simply want the "walkthrough" in regards to various quests (or at least they will once the game is out and people experience the various quests and write them up accordingly). Even knowing what the general quests are for the Lost Vale in the various releases, it's been a better experience to see how the story is developing that tie the locations together rather than simply clicking through until you see "Kill X camels" and then going to the next NPC and doing the same to get "Collect Y Camel Toes", then going just outside the town to farm moose until you fill said requirements.

By comparison, the SotA quests thus far, while the majority of which will always be some iteration of Fetch/Kill/Fed-Ex/Plot Coupon tropes, are done in such a way that each area ties in logically with another.It has been stated repeatedly by the team that Question Marks and Bread Crumb trails are very ANTI- what SotA will be about. This is a good thing.

Highlighting

This one seems to be more of a mixed bag. Do doors and chests need to be highlighted? Nah, not really. Do the target of your attack or the corpse in a pile need to be highlighted? Likely. Do small objects need to be highlighted? It's helpful. I think the highlighting system is good, but it's one that should be scaled back a bit based on exactly what highlights and why. While it's a bit immersion breaking for resource nodes to highlight, as long as we have to target them before using the gathering tool on them, it's something that will probably have to stay. If the interaction code can get smart enough so that double clicking the node will perform the correct action with the correct tool, or if pressing the hotkey for the tool will interact with the closest node of the corresponding type, then maybe highlighting the node will not be as necessary.

So for this one, I'm in favor, but it needs a good bit of refining.

 

This.

Also, if the user needs options, there are other games that fulfill these needs. I equate it to style. If I play WoW, Rift, Wildstar, etc, I expect a mindless questing experience where I do not have to think or get heavily involved with the lore. I can turn the TV on and just grind. That is not a bad thing, that is just their style.

This game's style, and RG's vision I hope, is to stumble upon quests that open at various times and link together in different ways, meaning multiple ways to get the same story. Much like life, we may end up at the same place but we took different paths to get here.

When I play D&D I don't know what the NPC's role in the story is until I investigate. For example, like in SotA, I don't even know the NPC's names unless I talk to them. The DM doesn't say "The Innkeeper has a quest." I find the quest or I don't. I don't get an option to know exactly where quests are unless the DM is cutting out the 'adventure' feeling. If they really want me to talk to the innkeeper they usually have a way of steering me there anyway. While not perfect, SotA looks to be bringing the tabletop influence back.

Besides that, having quest markers at all will cause SotA to look similar to current games which will then open it up to unnecessary comparision. Changing the style of quest delivery changes the core feel of the game, resulting in "you can't really compare WoW and SotA." Yeah, they are both fantasy RPG's that have questing, combat, and crafting, but much like a helicopter and an airplane, they have two very different approaches to solve the same problem.

 

so we should not have any options because tons of games already do?

extending that hyperbolic thought process I suppose we should not have inventory, any hotbars, graphics, sound, NPCs, quests, monsters, maps, .... I think I can stop there as I am sure most people can see the silliness of that line of thought.

because someone does something is not a reason to skip or remove it, it is a perfect challenge to do it better.

If people did not like those things you find boring, or superfluous, designers would not continue to use them.

You are asking to revert backwards in an age when we should be welcoming iteration, possibly invention, rather than screaming at those kids to get off the lawn.

I have proposed a few alternatives here.

How about taking the developers own credo into account and come up with some other ideas rather than to do nothing at all.

Make the genre, and future games better, by iterating an obviously disliked feature, in a new way.


Designers, present and future, may find some good value in that and we won't look like stubborn gamers; our heads in the sand with raised fists shaking in the air at a lack of innovation.

 

Pretty sure there are new, innovating things in SotA already. The combat is a new concept, for instance. I'm not saying relive the past, I'm saying embrace it and return to it and then innovate. One does not need to simply innovate on what currently exists in a stale market. Forcing questing to take this shape makes it stand out. Niche for sure, but a lot of us appreciate that. I stand by the devs for not bowing down to the lowest common denominator.

 

I want to just have a "switch" I can turn on at will.

 

The combat is not new. This kind of combat has been done before, and was pointed out many times over the many months since it was proposed.

It does, however, iterate and attempt to innovate previous incarnations.

Just because you iterate one or two areas does not preclude design in other areas.

The market is far from stale, unless you consider billions of dollars a year in development and revenue stale?

Being niche does not preclude something from being good. Those two are not exclusive.

You seem to suggest those who disagree with your "opinion" are not appreciative of the "niche" area this game falls into.

That is a little backhanded. And, BTW, they don't bow to the LCD, they bow to the mass. Take note on:

1) Jumping not being in the original design, now it is
2) Them trying to be "niche" with the painterly 2D overland map, which is now scrapped for the original design

SO, it is not about being niche, it is them attempting to innovate, multiple areas, even if they fail, not just the parts you like.

 

I would be happy if this game is more like Morrowind than Skyrim. For me it's all about the journey, not the destination.

 

I am not a huge fan of question marks over NPC heads.

But here is a revealing question about the need for those: If I have visited 95% of all quest givers in New Britannia, how will I know that 5% of quest givers are left and which ones they are? Will I have to record names NPC names manually? Will I have to just go through trial and error?

The reality is that the question marks are a simple, albeit not aesthetically pleasing, tool to help players in that situation avoid a little frustration that otherwise could occur. It seems like a reasonable tool in that context.

That said, couldn't we have something more appropriate like an Ankh?

 

I feel having the question marks in push this to a plain old MMO.

 

That is a large pile of hyperbole.

If that was anywhere close to true, the game is already a plain MMO.

That much is already wrong since it is selective multiplayer, but the point is, a single option, for something that already exists in data, being in or not in, would not magically change its core.

Hence it would already be a plain old "MMO" if that were the case.

 

Ahhh, exlamations and interrogations symbols, they are so last year.

 

is not our distinction, it is Richard Garriotts.

He even just reasserted that in the hangout from today.

Regardless of what people think it is, no mmo allows for the social selection filtering (still in the works), nor client side hosting that we have (already in).

just because the industry doesn't have a category for it yet doesn't make for positive proof of it being something the designers say it isn't.

 

Every single thing you just said has to do with you, or your filter on the experience. There are quite a number of people who want the single player game this was sold to be.

Because you find a playstyle you enjoy does not preclude groups of people from their playstyle, especially when the game is sold that way.

If you have a problem with that choice, or the design of that option, I'd suggest you take it up with the creator of the game.