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Already Frustrated w/ CONVO!

Discussion in 'Release 4 Feedback' started by Hempy Do`Herben, Dec 13, 2013.

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  1. JAMorton

    JAMorton Avatar

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    I like the quest system, i like to call it a thinking man's quest system, instead of just having a marker above the head then a marked area on a map showing you were you have to be to complete the quest, you have to look at the clues you are given and put some thought into where you must go to next. Thankfully in Sota there is no rush to get raid pieces and to be server first to X-level, so we can slow down and enjoy the story content of the game, take time to smell the roses and look up at a blue sky, stop and talk to another person who is near by instead of just putting your blinkers on and steaming through the content in as short a time as possible, then standing around saying i am bored now, when is the next patch release coming out with new content lol. Too many people i see do that in more main stream games instead of taking time to enjoy the game they are playing.
     
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  2. Sunsanvil

    Sunsanvil Avatar

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    A bicycle with 2 wheels is a really old concept. Now, I could make one with 3 wheels, or even just 1, and that might be cool or useful in a different way, but the 2 wheel design still works best. Now, we have improved on it, aluminum frames, hydraulic disk breaks and the like, but its still the same 2 wheel paradigm.

    Just because something was used in 80s games doesn't necessarily mean it must have been superseded with something better. By the same token (and keeping with my analogy) we can probably make improvements to it without actually throwing the whole thing out.

    Sure the system on R4 was a mess from a coding point of view but that's pre-alpha for you. No, no one could turn in their Red Sashes, because of a simple code error on the inventory item itself! The NPC, literally, did not see the item(s) in your inventory and so repeated typings of "red sash" to him looped the conversation back to "Bring me some....."

    That said, my take on it is I think the team should look back to U7 for a little more inspiration (which they claim to be targeting in many aspects anyway). Double clicking an NPC opened a conversation (with transparent background so as not to obscure the world view). The usual conversation starter keywords were given as clickable choices, and as the conversation progressed additional keywords (relevant to the NPC and/or quest arc in question) were added to your choices. Simple. Easy. Functional. Efficient.

    [​IMG]
    ... but the font WAS ghastly! ;)

    I just don't see the need to reinvent the wheel ...but thats just me.

    A quick thought for the OP: if you really feel that strongly that 3 minutes of NPC interaction is taking away from "leveling and killing", then, and I'm going out on a limb here, this game probably is not for you. If you want quests you click once for (and dont even have to read what they are), and then spend 100s or 1000s of hours leveling and killing, I can recommend Lotro.
     
  3. StrangerDiamond

    StrangerDiamond Avatar

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    thousands of hours...
     
  4. rune_74

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    The more and more I read on here the more I see people wanting a UO style npc system. This is getting depressing.
     
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  5. StrangerDiamond

    StrangerDiamond Avatar

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    Have you even played UO ? ...
     
  6. Floors

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    Well they're not getting it so no worries :)
     
  7. rune_74

    rune_74 Avatar

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    What I meant by UO style NPC's is not in how you talk to them...but what they were for. They were very basic in comparison to the early ultimas. I wrote that last night at a very early time in the morning on watch sorry;)
     
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  8. Floors

    Floors Avatar

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    Haha, no worries

    People don't know what's good for them
     
  9. StrangerDiamond

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    ok lol I was like going to remind you... most of UO's ideas were never really implemented...
     
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  10. D A Morton

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    I don't really think that its anything to do with wanting a UO style NPC system. I think the way we talk to NPC's at the moment really is fitting to the game. I am fed up of games where you no longer have to think about what you are doing, or have to read the quest. People are either more bothered about getting to the top as fast as possible, making a vast sum of money or getting the best gear for raiding and calling everyone else Noobs because they have spent longer playing the game rather than just wanting everything to get to end game asap.

    This game is coming along just fine for pre alpha. Even now you have to think about where you are going to quest and the only reason I think UO is mentioned so much is that it truly was a game you immersed yourself into completely. There was this feeling of community which is strongly evident in this game already. I have wonderful memories of UO and I agree that something that is not broken does not need to be fixed, rather improved on. Sure there are things that need looking at (this being the map, which others have posted on already) and the above point where the quests were bugged for example the Red Sash. I have forgotten how many times I said I have a red sash lol.

    There is one certainty about SOTA. This is not a game for people who want to rush through it to the end like a lot of old and new main stream on-line games.
     
  11. StrangerDiamond

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    Such sweet words to my ears,

    if there weren't so much red tape on it... I have forgotten how many times I said I have a red tape lol :)
     
  12. Floors

    Floors Avatar

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    If they make it so entering and flagging for PvP required zones as part of the PvE quests, that will be very interesting
     
  13. D A Morton

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    Yes it would make it interesting indeed. I think they should have some quests that make you go PVP, it gives it an edge and that feeling that soon you will get your butt kicked by an expert PK, LOL good memories of Felucia.
     
  14. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Rest assured that however we incentivize PvP (and it will not involve enabling slaughter of the unwary and unskilled for the entertainment of the bored) it will have nothing to do with the mechanics of how one talks to NPCs, which is what this thread up till now has given valuable feedback on.

    :)
     
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  15. Lord_Darkmoon

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    As you seem to be the one responsible for the conversation system, maybe you can answer if you plan for it to get it's own interface. Right now it is very annoying and distracting having the text in the chat window as well as showing up in the speech bubbles. In a normal conversation one would look at the person he is talking to but as the chat distracts because the text is shown there, too you do not look at the NPC.
    I had hoped that during a conversation with NPCs the text would be shown in the speech bubble (only) and right beneath you would have the input field for your text, so that you can Focus on the conversation with the NPCs. Also such an "interface" would be more fitting for a conversation with an NPC than an MMO-like chat.

    This is how I would envision the NPC conversations to play out:
    [​IMG]
     
  16. Aegis159

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    I agree here Darkmoon, I had problems with interfacing with NPCs for the very same reason. They would also be saying one thing in the popup, but that would be old text compared to what was showing up in the chat box on the lower left. Frankly the point size on the popup conversations needs to be smaller to fit more information if that's how we're supposed to interact with them primarily.

    Honestly, if we're going to be using this kind of conversational keyword system, then either highlight the trigger phrases or just give us the options like Sunsanvil suggested. I've done work on next-gen live speech conversation systems used to train DoD and Federal agents for investigations/interrogations. The amount of ways one can come up with just to say "Hello" alone is insane. And all of those different, possible ways need to be in the system, otherwise you get an "I don't understand" response... Which is something I FREQUENTLY ran into when trying to converse with any of the NPCs in the game.
    We're not asking for the yellow exclamation point.... good God please NO!.... But if an NPC needs help, and I ask them "What kind of help do you need?" only to get "I don't understand" as a response, repeatedly, well that can be a little discouraging.
     
  17. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    Yep, that's me.

    So, there's no really good way to have seperate chat windows for every NPC appear on top of the NPC, and even the example you posted was confusing (is the NPC responding to your question or are you asking a question based on that?) not to mention a UI nightmare (where does the user focus with multiple NPCs? Where is the default text entry cursor? How do we communicate that?). We do need to have some method of seperating out conversations from the general clutter and I would like to get each NPC-directed conversation in its own tab sooner rather than later, but trying to keep the visual focus on the NPC model while talking to them is, in my opinion, something that creates a good deal many more problems than it solves.

    Honestly at some point we may just pull out the full conversations (as opposed to "Hey, come here!" style barks) from the chat bubbles as they can't display the amount of text a scrolling window can, which causes them to rapidly go out of sync if the NPC has a lot to say. The other option is to ensure an NPC can only say a few words at a time for each response and that's obviously not a good answer either. Right now they run on a seperate thread and are slowed so people have a chance to read them if they want to read the input there instead of in the chat window. I may try to do some experiments with making them sync better but that will mean that people who cannot read fast will fall behind.

    I know "MMO-style chat" is an instant turn-off to some people and a political issue (for lack of a better way to describe it) but as long as we are developing a game where you talk to other players, well, we have to account for that. I think the best use of our time right now is to make the chat interface more useable, not try to architect something that is less useable.

    I'll take that down some and see if that helps.

    I'm glad you understand some of the problems here. :) We do already highlight trigger phrases (called keywords internally, though in fact they are phrases) and the current internal R5 build has them clickable as well as an option. (an OPTION, we will have the ability to turn that and trigger phrase highlighting off entirely).


    Since we're not adding that much new content for R5 as opposed to systems (better combat/AI/etc) our goal for conversations/quests is to ensure *that doesn't happen*. A lot of why this is currently happening:

    - barks (what NPCs say when you approach) have been really badly bugged ever since R1. It's some of the oldest code in the game (it predates my coming on board last year, in fact) and it's been patched repeatedly to make it do what we need to do, and by R3-R4 it just fell over and died much of the time. Re-architecting that has been a big part of what I've been working on this past week; now NPCs should actually say things that prompt further discussion, when we want them to.

    - many key phrases were simply buggy with many NPCs, we're testing through those. Also, many paths to the key plot that NPCs were supposed to communicate were too hard/unclear to get to.

    - many players don't understand that every NPC has key phrases they respond to. In addition to "name/job/health/bye" (which come on, we had to support for obvious reasons) along with various phrase synonyms for those, there is also the one I call "rumors" which has a good many phrase synonyms: to wit

    what do I do
    what should I do
    what have you heard
    quest
    what tidings
    help
    quest
    quests
    help me
    can I help you
    rumor
    rumors
    news
    work
    gossip
    adventure

    This is where, for most NPCs, they say what they want you to do for them, if they do have something in that vein. Ideally this will be prompted by NPC barks as well (especially NPCs talking amongst themselves, which we plan to do much more of) but an NPC should ALWAYS respond to that phrase set. This should really be introduced to new players as a tutorial/first conversation, so they know that is always an option.

    Keep the feedback coming, it's helpful!
     
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  18. Lord_Darkmoon

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    If we have multiple chat windows how do you know with whom you do speak? Especially when there is no focus on the NPC. There are no names displayed above the heads of the NPCs (thank God!) and if you stand in the middle of a crowd and some are talking, how do you know what NPC is saying what text?

    I think I get what you try to do. Conversations with more than one NPC and overhearing what NPCs around you say. I believe that it is very hard to implement into a conversation system.

    If I am correct, what you try to do is you click on an NPC and talk to him/her in the chat window. And you open more than one tab when there is another NPC chiming in.

    Hmmm... I still think that a special conversation interface would be better as you could focus more on the person(s) you are talking to. One can not follow every conversation around him in real life, too. I don't know if this is doable but cameras could help here. It would create a more cinematic experience which would support the story aspect of the game. If you say something, the camera focuses on you, if the NPC is answering, the camera shifts to him/her. The same when a third person chimes in. What is said around you could be shown in a seperate chat window.

    With a special NPC conversation interface you could also separate the chats with players more from the chats with NPCs which would also draw you much more into the story experience.
    Also having only MMO-like chats gives the game more of the vibe of an MMORPG when it also wants to be a SP-RPG, imo.
     
  19. Mishri

    Mishri Avatar

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    There are already tabs you can sort different conversations into, I didn't check it in this last release so I can't remember what the options are but an NPC conversation tab is all you need.

    There is another option though, open up a dialog box when you start a conversation with an NPC, make it pretty and easy to read and obvious what you said and what they said.(This is different fro m the main chat box for player to player talks). Close it and that conversation gets saved to your conversations book, which has a list of every NPC you've talked to.

    You could even make it so the NPC's head appears in a chat box to the left, your's to the right and left/right justify the text. if others join in their heads pop up too. Left if they are talking to you, Right if they are talking to the NPC.

    I enjoy the conversation system, I don't care for the current implementation, and I think a lot of it has to do with the minimal ui/presence chat box.
     
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  20. Chripsy

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    Well Said !!!
     
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