Dialogue needs an overhaul

Title: Dialogue needs an overhaul
Reproduction Rate: most NPCs.
Blocker? no
Details: I'm listing this as a bug as (I'm hoping) you guys didn't intend this to happen. Talking to NPCs that have dialogue pertaining to a quest are super annoying to talk to; it's mainly due to how keywords are setup with their dialogue.

I turned on the option to highlight keywords in the dialogue in order to spare me the hassle of guessing which word each NPCs will react to. The problem is that keywords for quests overlap with keywords for common dialogue:


... and all I want is more information to help the damn Villager. This isn't an isolated issue. The ONLY keyword in this particular case that progresses the conversation is "ship":

... which isn't really helping.

No, I'm not asking you to provide more information on the (what I assume is a) quest; I'm asking you to not highlight keywords that aren't associated with the conversation. That way, I'm not completely pissed off at the abysmal dialogue system that does a 180 on me.

If your current systems can't support this, I suggest you re-evaluate it.

Code:

if (NPC.talking(Brady)) {
HighlightWord("ship");
} else {
HighlightAll();
}

Steps to Reproduce: Talk to an NPC with a quest. Odds are, "regular dialogue" will get mixed up with the quest dialogue.

 

Thank you for the feedback. I'll move this to the feedback forum.

 

Your assumption is incorrect. There has been no quest content added to the Hidden Vale for many months as we have concentrated on Novia. Thus, you're essentially gossiping with a minor NPC about his life.

 

I don't know anything about added content but it's there... maybe not as an actual quest but there's definitely something implied with the dialogue.

(the following is paraphrasing.. but it's more or less how I interpret it)

"I'm looking for something I've lost!"
lost
"It's my son, Brady!"
brady
"He took on a job on a ship in need of repairs. They went out to sea."
ship
"He might be kidnapped by pirates!"

This sounds a bit more than gossip. Gossip or not, it's very jarring to select words in a conversation expecting elaboration when the NPC simply goes on to talk about something completely unrelated. It's like the keywords aren't helping but add to the confusion instead.

 

I second that. I'm starting to lose bit of heart given its difficult to determine what is and isn't a quest, which one's are completable (not broken). I appreciate the games is in alpha, but it would be better to disable or put a warning on non completable quests.

 

I think for quests you usually get journal entries, so that might for now help to discern if there is a quest or not.

 

I agree with the OP. I think the option to highlight key words should enable a multi colored system, where if the keyword is specific to a quest, its red or blue and if its not leading to a journal entry update (Idle chit chat) it is underlined but remains the standard grey text color.

Quest conversation needs to be immediately apparent and remain consistent, meaning if there is no journal update to be acquired specific to a quest, youll never see a blue/red keyword in the opening line of an npc conversation, but if there is an eventual task or quest, the blue/red key words would start appearing immediately in the opening sentence of the conversation and reside in every followup sentence of the conversation until the journal update is recieved. That way there is no question if you're about to recieve or progress a quest or if the npc is simply jabbering on about nothing of any perticular importance to the avatar.

 

Did you look into the Post Mortem missed question topic in the announcment forum?
If not, take a look ;-)

 

R37 missed questions?

I glanced through but didnt see anything specific to quests. Is it possibly you could provide a link to what youre looking at?

 

I thought that was more about the dialouge system than about quests.
If i got that wrong i am sorry.
Otherwise: