Better journal entry organization

Hello everyone!

I propose a modification in the way events are written in the journal, i made a little mockup to demonstrate it:



This way:
- Finding quest entries would become easier, avoiding endless page flips and long searches for entries in the journal;
- Would give names to the quests in the game, allowing easy reference for players.

 

They designed the journal on purpose so that it was not a quest window, which you've mocked up here. I doubt they will change it so it works this way.

I do believe they are considering enhancing this but unknown when they'll do it:
- searching the journal (unknown if this is purely a search vs a search filter)
- add your own notes

Some of us have asked for a bit more usability, like:
- search filtering so it only shows what we search for (if the above wasn't also a filter)
- with adding your own notes, we can essentially tag the journal entries and combine with search filtering
- conversation grouping per NPC
- open to most recent page/entry
- go to a specific page
- bookmarking

No idea if any of that will make it into Ep1, if at all.

 

The journal, as it is at the time of this post, is already a quest window, since it contains the information about quests that are known to your character, what i'm proposing is just a more elegant, convenient and organized way of displaying this information. I'll also have to add that it MAY (i said "may" because i don't know how the code behind it looks like) improve performance, since it will only display the entries of the quest you selected, instead of all entries.

Organizing the entries like displayed in the mockup will solve the same problems that these other methods address too, although the "conversation grouping per NPC" and the " add your own notes" ideas are more then welcome in any situation, so i defend that these two are implemented to the game.

 

I love the idea of being able to add my own notes, both "freestanding" and attached to an NPC driven entry. Additionally I would like to flip to the end easily.

I think it should stay in the order added rather than organized by task. Otherwise it kills the whole skeuomorphism "notebook" thing.

Having said that, I am inconsistent in that I'm more fond of the list inventory than the bag view... so what do I know? ;-)

 

As I understand it, their design for the journal is that you're not supposed to know what is a quest or what isn't. You just have a series of conversation entries that are important enough to record and now it's up to you to decide what to do, how it fits together, how entries are related, etc. It's all very organic and natural. But your suggestion breaks that design completely and explicitly tells the player all of this. There's no discovery. The game just connected the dots for you. It's just as blatant as quest markers above NPC heads. The other suggestions don't conflict with this design.

 

Perhaps if there is a way for us to just mark and organize our own entries then, to move things we think are finished to another list on another page perhaps, or to group them under an area such as "Kingsport" so that I remember to find those three entries with stuff I want to check next time I'm in Kingsport...
Just a loose system of tags and checkboxes that we can tag entries ourselves, and then everything tagged as "Kingsport" or "Wolves" can get listed there. Something like the Steam tagged groups where you make your own tags, you put them in your own order, things can be tagged with more than one label, and everything shows up under the tags. But up to the player to organize and tag their own entries.

 

I don't know. If everything has a title, then how would you know which is a quest and which isn't? For instance, let's say the journal recorded something that isn't a quest because it was an important convo. Let's say those convos was about Elvish politics. The title of the entry could be "Elven Political Struggles" or something that suggests it COULD be a quest but it might also not be. You still have to think about how it connects with other convos, you still have to decide what to do, how it fits together, etc.

The only way you would truly know is if the only thing recorded in the journal was quests (therefore what's the point of keeping them together) or if the quests were under their own tab under the journal. But keep everything together? Then I think you keep the separation but in a way that's easier to keep track of things.

Granted, I'd also like the opportunity to then edit the title but that's just me. Or if it allowed me the ability to organize the journal to how I would do it-and allowing me to group things together. For instance, each of the "wolf" entry in the picture could be there because I created a "group" and dragged those entries into that group. That's not the game doing it-that's me visually piecing things together because I'm a visual person.

My two cents.

 

We need index at the start of the jurnal imho with hyperlinks.

We probably need dedicated page to each quest line so it is not a mix of various quests in such a mess.

We need to mark what we done and what we faile and what we have not done yet.

And I would really appreciate ability to write my own notes.

 

If the goal is to keep it realistic, in real life I would organize my own notes. I would keep entries that are related together, and cross things off when I am done with them. I would reorganize from time to time, make new lists, keep things under my own headings, and add my own details to what I may have recorded from someone else. This is why the current organization (which doesn't exist) is so frustrating. We don't want to dig through all the pages of old stuff looking for one thing we remembered seeing five days ago, because most of us would indeed organize it in real life, even if we all use our own system. So all we need is the tools to do our own organizing and notes, and removal (or really crossing out), the game doesn't need to do it for us.

 

The design i proposed doesn't connect any dots nor destroys the experience of discovery for the player. By automatically puting the entry in it's related quest tab, the game will be comunicating to the player that there's more to discover, what it is though or how the player will do it, is still unknown.

Also, by allowing the game to throw these "hints" we will be saving the player's time, since he won't be completely lost on what to do.

I've seen other people suggesting other organization methods that allow the player to do all the organization work himself, but the problem i see with this is that we would be throwing game design work to the player, and i highly advocate that the player should not be forced to do design work, but as i can see, this is more of a preference thing, since i see a lot of players not minding doing design work.

Regardless of method, the problem beign stated by me and many other players is that we need more organization in our journals.

 

I don't really get the way the journal works right now. In my opinion, there are two ways you can go with this journal:
1: You write everything yourself. You talk to NPC's, listen to what they have to say and take notes yourself about whatever you find interesting. The way you organize the journal is completely up to you. This will definitely force you to get involved with the lore/story/plot, etc.
2: The journal is an actual quest-log. The game automatically creates entries to help the player along, but not randomly. Either have autamatic organization or give the player the tools to organize with headings, own notes, index (with links?) etc.

Right now it just doesn't make much sense. More or less just click your way through conversations and the interesting parts just randomly gets added to a book which is quite frustrating to use from time to time...

 

I definitely agree with this but I disagree with turning the journal into an explicit auto-sorted set of entries, i.e. a quest log/journal.

Agreed, the journal we have is their first iteration which is just a timeline of conversation entries. There are definitely bugs where entries should be recorded but aren't and everyone should file bugs on what they think should have been recorded for you. And definitely we will have some more control over custom notes or other types of organization so this discussion thread is great for those ideas. But we just don't have clear visibility into when the next iteration of the journal will be worked on and show up in a Release.

 

I doubt the Journal will ever become that sophisticated. You're almost talking about building a word processor or note taking app into the game. Sure, I'd love to be able to write my own notes and move pieces around, but I think that's a pretty hefty undertaking. As mentioned, I think the Journal will just be a timeline of conversations and you'll need to do it the old fashioned way and keep notes outside of the game. I've already been doing that with the help of OneNote. I have a laptop next to my game rig and use the pages and tabs to take notes about the people, places and events in the game. You can link different parts of the notebooks together like you're talking about.

I know it's not part of the game and for people playing on different machines it may not work so well, but it's an easy solution to the problem. There are several other programs like AllMyNotes and RightNote that do the same thing and you can use Notebooks for iPad. I doubt the Journal system will evolve like you want, but if it does, it won't be until the very end.

 

YES, please!!!