Character Conversations

@Carillon- couple things.

First there is a huge difference between Zork, Muds or Lucas Arts adventure games and typing a key word in conversations only. HUGE difference. No one is suggesting w.w.w.n.u.sw.s.e.ne.say "Oddeysseus". We are suggesting that conversations be created by you, the player, and not a choose your own adventure path where the only correct path is "all of them".

Next: "my time is important to me." Seriously? Yes, that extra few seconds adding to immersion will really cut into your productive quest time. If the conversations are nothing but a chore for you, then just go kill creatures randomly in the woods and skip them all together. That seems like the most efficient use of your time.

Gaming isn't gaming if there is no game. If it's 'click to move forward' and no thought or challenge put into it, it isn't a game. A game should provide some level of effort from the player, and if conversation, story, mystery and puzzles are part of the 'Game', then giving them an 'auto-pilot' option isn't playing.

As for less clicks the better, I do agree with that, provided those clicks are used to reach a goal of immersion not completion. If you really want minimum game clicks, wait a week, then go to youtube and/or and search "Shroud of the Avatar - Beaten". Someone will post the video and you can get on with your day.

@PrimeRib they've mentioned in the Dev chats that they're working on ways to randomize bits of things for each player so fan sites will be flawed. You're going to have to actually figure some stuff out.

I think part of why you find quests as filler in most games is because they are. You're not really involved in solving them. You just play Simon says until a reward pops out. They go so fast, and require so little effort that they make up for it in volume.

Which is why I'm so adamant about things that ratchet up player involvement in the process of playing. I don't want WoW/Rift/GW2. I want to go back to when a game was something that caused me to lean forward and get involved. Challenged me, and didn't apologize for it. Required me to play it, not watch it.

In the next breath, I'm not looking for a Dwarf Fortress either. Somewhere between that and WoW a balance lies. From the sound of things, they've got it headed in the right direction.

 

I'd prefer the typing in items, although a hybrid would be ok as long as it didn't give anything away. There are casual gamers out there who just find the quest icon, click away at each conversation option pops up in their quest log, and then follow the dotted line or whatever to the quest end. This world is promising to be much more immersive than that, and hopefully won't be trying to hold your hand the entire way through. If the entire game can be automated through a basic script then its not really a game. With luck we'll get the puzzles, mysteries, and thought that were put into the previous Ultimas, maybe with some user specific randomization built in so it's not as easy to Google the solution.

Historically LB's games have been a challenge - there was an entire alternate language that required translation for any written items, there was no walk through at the beginning. Quests actually seemed to have a purpose (at least in some of them).

I did play WoW for a while, and it was a very pretty game, but it was silly to run up to have 10 different people all grinding away to gather 20 ears from something that apparently has some horrible birth defect that causes 80% of the species to be born without ears (but they were damaged during battle! I'm sorry, but if I'm fighting hundreds of these things to try and gather ears, I'm going to make damn sure I'm aiming low). Then, you get in line to hand this guy ears - what the hell does he do with all the ears?

If you want to take a quest, make it seem like completing it is meaningful. Make it so the player feels they actually accomplished something. Finding Dawn, the hot air balloon, or

I'm also an advocate for making it so players can stab themselves in the back. If they piss off the wrong NPC, or kill them, either make that NPC ignore them or dead to them - requiring amends just to talk to the guy (or questing for the items that resurrect them - a quest with a point). One of the biggest things I learned from Ultima was to respect NPCs because your actions actually had consequences. In an online game it would be harder to do, but I think is still possible.

While I'm sure it would be nice to have a game that attracts millions, in order to do so it has to simplify itself to the point where it becomes mindless. And while there is definitely an audience for that type of game, I think RG is targeting a group that doesn't manage their entire gaming career through Facebook or require a cross hair in the center of their screen at all times, and where the only story elements are told through cutscenes. He's aiming this game at an audience who likes a good story - something he's done in the past, and hiring Tracy Hickman now shows he's going even further in that direction this time.

 

Well, let me see. I'm frankly partial to just typing out keywords or giving certain responses that are in the metaphorical "chat wheel". I wouldn't be above typing news, but if the innkeeper suddenly farts and the poor character standing next to him smells it... Odd sense of humor aside, there should be some pretty fair hybrid, as was said.


Now, thats my two cents. However, if you allow any 'younger' or simply 'strange' gamer (double entendre, I am certainly aware) to type in answers all they are gonna do is call the npc something derogatory. If you don't believe me, watch Youtube... Now, this has no real effect on my personal opinion but its something someone somewhere is going to run into and try to exploit for very immature laughter.

 

If there is an option to type in text, people will inevitably type in stupid stuff - I probably will if I get frustrated enough. Since only they'll see the conversation, I don't see why it matters. Even if they record the conversation it won't matter - just a load of responses from the NPC saying "Pardon? I'm afraid I don't understand." Of course, they could also have fun with it: "Thou dost seek the droppings of an ogre? I believe thou canst find those in the southern mountains, just east of the rivers fork."

 

As long as you allow speech you're going to get the potty mouths. BTW, I suggested earlier a facility that allows one to copy from an NPC conversation into a personal journal. In future NPC conversations one can choose to either type or click on a word (any word) in their personal journal to place it into the text stream.

 

@Carillon "If we go back to the ?ask everyone what their job, name, etc? is trying to find the next person to advance the story-line or to give a new side-story quest, this game will have limited success. Why? Because that?s boring and tedious."

I'm going to have to disagree. Just take a look at BG, IWD, NWN and all of their successors/expansions that were amazing games before someone invented ADD and I don't mean Dungeons & Dragons. In those games you had to go to every building in every city and talk to every NPC. Myself and many others have played those games over and over without ever once thinking, "wow realistic adventuring is boring and tedious." Last I checked we are talking about a role playing game and interacting with the environment should take time and require thinking. Is it my fault people these days have the attention spawns of a gnat?