Complaints for Richard Garriott and his polish pass

I was just watching the video of Dragon Con and in it Richard said that people should complain to him about the part of the game that has already undergone the polish pass from him.

So I thought to start this thread in direct answer to his call. So maybe we can post our complaints about why we think some elements of the part from Solace Bridge to Ardoris are not yet what we expect from this game. What we think is still missing.

This is not meant as a way to bash the game or Richards polishing work but maybe we notice things @Richard did not or maybe he can tell us why he does want some things the way they are and does not want to have other things in the game.

Solace Bridge:
Basically I think that this a very polished part of the game. What I think is still missing:
Better models and animations for Charlotte and Edvard. Edvard just stands in front of the gate while undead are around him. Maybe he should already be fighting them when we open the gates. Also Charlotte should cower in fear in the corner of the house. At least Edvard should look better, his model is not very detailed.

There are too few things to discover on the map. After defeating the undead on the bridge at least I want to explore the area a bit. There should be some places were there could be something hidden. For example how about a chest under the bridge near the boat? There could be a crate floating in a pond or what about this small valley in a corner of the map? Walking there takes some time but then there is absolutely nothing there... This is very unsatisfying.
In the Ultimas there were always interesting things to discover on the maps.

Soltown:
Soltown is a bit tougher. It's the first scene in which we basically would see consequences to our actions. This starts with meeting the mother of Charlotte. Although we arrive in Soltown directly after Solace Bridge, Charlottes mother already met her daughter and sent her away to Ardoris without even going with her. This is very strange and diminishes the achievement of having rescued the child.
Generally there are no consequences to the things we do in the village. The farmer never returns to his farm house although we got rid of the undead there. The arsonist is never punished for his crimes...
In the Ultimas we always saw the consequences to our actions. Alagner was murdered in U7, the banes in Serpent Isles destroyed the cities.

Somehow the NPCs still lack personality and a purpose. Soltown doesn't feel like Paws from U7 for example. In Paws every NPC had a purpose, they knew each other, related to each other, talked about each other. This made the village feel alive. NPC schedules helped a lot. In Soltown the NPCs act as if they live alone in the village.
Also people are saying the same things over and over. Entering the tavern the same discussions are going on over and over. This makes me feel as if the city is full of robots instead of people. The same goes for the dialogues. Aside from the IRC chat look, the NPCs are repeating the same sentences over and over, just like robots. Also it is very hard to find the right keywords to continue quests. Aside from that they are not reacting to some keywords which gets even more apparent in Ardoris. They are maybe talking about some woman having been thrown out from home but asking them about this, they don't know what I am talking about. This is very frustrating and doesn't make me feel as if I am talking to a "real" person.
Do NPCs have their own homes? Where do they live and sleep? This makes a village or city even more believable.

Again there are way too few things to discover in Soltown. The area is big enough for some hidden things there or maybe even a small cave or dungeon. Also missing is the interactivity of U7 with objects being movable etc.

The "main quest" in which we carry a letter to Ardoris is very straighforward. Also we already had such a quest in which Edvard wanted us to carry something to Soltown, which creates a feeling of repetitiveness but ok. But why not spice this quest up a bit? How about an encounter on the way to Ardoris? Someone is stealing the letter from us, we have to track the thief down and recover it? With the upcoming roving encounters this could be very interesting when following the thief across the overworld map to his hideout.

Maybe others have more ideas about this part of the game. Next would then would be Ardoris at another time.

Please see this as constructive feedback, I don't want to bash the game. I want it to be great!

 

To add to what @Lord_Darkmoon said, the more complex and rewarding quests should be a test of the totality of each avatar. We all have combat, magic and crafting trees - why not have special quests that give you special recipes that will require you to fight/enchant/craft the individual components in order to assemble the object or item necessary to fullfill that quest?

Successful completion not only means gaining experience points, gold or even a new recipe but also a better reputation with that NPC character/community that gave you that quest in the first place.

That enhanced reputation can ripple through additional or related quests so that we have a changing quest dynamic where what the involved NPCs say depends on your standing with them. Then you can truly be the hero (or villain) of a particular area

 

Yes, I hate it when the NPCs tell me about something but have no idea what I'm talking about if I respond with a question about it. The dialog system as it stands today is the only really disappointing part of the game for me so far. I sincerely hope that there will be an overhaul.

If NPCs are only meant to respond to underlined words, the dialog shouldn't scroll quickly out of sight. I'm forever scrolling up and down in my chat window to find all the underlined words. A system where the NPC responds to both underlined words and some words that don't appear in the dialog only leads to frustrating trial and error and the impression that the NPCs are morons. The game shouldn't pretend that there is an intelligent dialog system where you can enter what you want when this is not the case. Even a system like in Ultima 7 is better where you had to select a response from a list of possible responses.

 

You have to consider that the game exists in a multiplayer reality where NPCs have to be consistent for all players so returning Charlotte in person would look odd with numerous players completing the quest at the same time or you return her to find her already there not having been sent away, likewise for the other side quests.

 

That is certainly a limitation but could be somewhat "solved" with individual invisibility flags or i.E. multiple children where on NPC takes Charlotte's name or not.
In MMO there is no perfect solution to this but at least some workarounds to ease the pain

 

The solution is called phasing and was used in Elder Scrolls MMO. It does require limiting actions that have such consequences so that the server instances do not explode into a multiverse. But in this case once you saved the girl you are only placed into instances of Soltown with people that also saved the girl.

This phasing technology already exists in the game! It was used to remove Charlotte from the bridge scene and update the NPC dialogue there - it is also intended as the starter resource grinding place after the girl has left. You do not replay the save Charlotte every time you go there.

The problem is that it has been stated by the devs that they do not have the technology to have phasing in scenes with player housing with them because then all variant NPC state of scene instances need to stay in sync with player yard decorations. But not sure why that is a problem since the scenes already update across instances as players change things in their yard, since the entire point of it being a sandbox is seeing other players actions.

The solution if indeed that is a real restriction was never to have placed player housing in NPC story towns, bit late for that now. But the technology most certainly could be used to polish adventure scenes that do not have housing. The reason why it has not is this is a grindy MMO rather than a story MMO, in a story MMO there would be nothing to do in a scene once you have completed the story you are not allowed to grind it by repeating content.

 

No, instancing is not a solution here, for the reasons you note. Instead, NPCs (and indeed, items and buildings even) should be flagged and appear differently to players with certain flags. This could lead to better quest conclusions, like Charlotte only being present if you save her, or a building being burned down if you don't stop the correct arsonist. This only involved swapping assets client-side, and should have next to no repercussions for multiplayer (except people reacting to things you can't see, which should be minimal).

 

I agree.

I think that the idea of using a "parser" input system in this day in age is not necessarily a bad one, but I definitely feel like the current implementation is clunky and primitive. Hell, to be painfully honest, it feels more primitive than most of the infocom games from the 80s. I realize, of course, that this is not an adventure game parser; but if we as players are encouraged to input questions and other "normal" english sentences, then the NPCs should understand a lot more than they currently do. I am currently working under the assumption that the dialog system is still being improved and developed.

Fingers crossed.

I agree with this as well. Other players seeing different character or location states than I do is a small price to pay for the additional impact and dynamic-ness that it can provide, especially considering the popularity of SPO. I do think that for a group, the states should be based on the group leader and shared between group members.

 

I believe this is more setup as seperate scenes. First time you enter the scene you get part 1 with Charlotte and every time after you get part two with the house already burned.

As for player housing the burden on the server to keep all instances, single, friends only and multi in sync is probably massive. Now in affect possibly doubling or tripling the scene counts based on single, fiends only, multi based on what part of the story you complete would be a massive burden added on to already slow load times and lag.

 

I was part of a team a very long time ago that were tasked by Lord British, to document every object that we thought should be interactable, but weren't. I never seen or heard anything else about this after the test pass that myself and many others (in various locations) reported. What ever came of this, was anything changed?

 

But that is what the restriction is, they cannot hide the NPC and make that state specific for each PC. They can only have conversations with states. Apparently NPCs are not treated differently than decorations, the changes are sent to all instances. This is certainly something they should have fixed before writing the story, so that the story could have consequence.

The solution is right there with the same method used at the bridge. It would be more logical if the refugee camp was outside Soltown, make it an adventure scene that once all the NPCs have moved on you can still shoot deer and bunnies and chop trees. Put the town guard there and it is even more impactful what he does, and make it so you can actually catch him in the act of arson!

The only people annoyed would be those who bought the prime noob marketplace in town that they are getting bumped into a nested scene that you have to go thru the refugee camp to get to, but if they are in the game for the greater good they will live with that consequence so that the NPC stories can have consequence.

 

I could see client-side invisibility for NPCs that should no longer be there and spatial NPC chat being ignored for conversations that have already been "heard". Would certainly make the game seem more amazing.

 

The point is that is not impossible, because ESO already has that server technology.

The trick to making it efficient is not implementing the butterfly effect, so that if it has to it can be done with scene swaps, one way or another all the NPCs will find reason to leave the refugee camp together. That is just a matter of writing and not technology. This is something ESO is good at, essentially hiding the walls and scene swaps (initial release was a mess with groups, but they eventually fixed it)

Dissapearing an NPC should be less of a burden than replicating all the crap in peoples yard though. If they want to optimize load times, the place to start is cleaning up the yards. Something as simple as forcing fences around everyone yard so that you have to go thru the gate before it loads, much like the basements, and would make towns look less like an episode of Hoarders.

 

this will never happen

imagine the clamor if no one ever saw the decorations people paid real world cash for unless they went through the main gate?

 

They have said it will be refactored, but unless people speak up and say what is wrong with it, they will never fix it right. Crossing fingers is as good as sticking your head in the sand, it does not help.

The solution has nothing to do with natural language speech processing like Google has because Infocomm proved you can do text processing back in the 80's.

But once they admit that the system IS keyword based and stop trying to pretend it is language based, then they can move forward with a UX redesign. I point to Morrowind's conversation system of large dialogue windows with an extensive hierarchical keyword window showing everything they will respond to. People love that game because of the deep conversation trees - to the point that there was a major rewrite mod that gave everyone backstories for an even deeper experience.

 

ESO is adding housing next year, I highly doubt that it will be full of yard hoarders but I expect the game to keep everyones junk inside their instance of their house because it is an MMO.

I find it odd that the SOTA map is designed to be instanced, knowing that they cannot design an open world MMO and still have performance, but yet they left the towns completely open to every players yard mess. This is a case of funding priorities getting in the way of game performance. Good fences make good neighbors.

The reality is that once they add LOD to decorations to improve town performance, nobody is going to see your detailed junk in town until it gets close anyways, so they might as well rearchitect the yard system to enablem ore consequential NPC interaction.

 

Just because some players want to show their yards no one wants to see we have a ruined atmosphere in the game by having to constantly look at very, let's call them "uniquely" decorated yards and the scenes cannot change because of that...

No visible consequences to quests, no burned down villages... The whole story, the quests as well as the atmosphere of the game are negatively impacted because some people want to show off their decorating "skills". In my opinion a very bad tradeoff...

 

Every time I see this title, I read Polish Ass lol.

 

I agree with Darkmoon on all of the above. Another thing I'd like to add is NPC vs. NPC combat. We all have seen NPC's vs. cats now, how about NPC's getting into fights like in bars and such? And in those instances, maybe we could choose a side and that would affect our virtues and story progression?

I think getting NPC's to do some of the drama makes for a rich storyline.

Edit: I have seen NPC monsters duke it out in the open world instances... just thinking towns can have some of the same with interesting consequences. Also I'd like to see guards fight defend and harrass more! Also, where is the NB Courthouse where we can have Judge Judy (the Oracle?) do some work Think Serpent Isle court proceedings against the Avatar, think Jerry Springer! This could have PVP implications!

 

Dwalin. Play nice.