Let's talk about the quests of SotA

Discussion in 'Quests & Lore' started by Lord_Darkmoon, Sep 1, 2016.

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  1. Baratan

    Baratan Avatar

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    There's quests in SotA???
     
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  2. Sir Cabirus

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    Some argue that ;)
     
  3. Teralitha Tokomi

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    I thought the quests in the original "everquest" were pretty epic. Many of those quests would take days/weeks/months/ and even years of playing the game to complete(like each class's ultimate) Giant multipart quests and multi item quests that you needed guilds to help you complete. As I said... epic. To describe it in a sentence would be impossible. When you brandished your class epic weapon around, people noticed it. It was a major accomplishment for some classes to achieve those epics. I dont think any game since has ever been able to duplicate that epic questing experience. The chat\keyword dialogue system is the same, so the style of quests could also be similar... making you have to pay close attention to all the dialogues you read from many NPCs for clues to hidden quests. having to ask some certain nps about a certain subject, but there was no keyword for it... you just have to figure it out on your own or try guessing at the keywords to trigger a hidden quest.

    The problem with that in this game though is that all items decay, so quest rewards are never going to be anything that lasts, unless its furniture/decor, OR... faction status. Gold and possibly obsidian currency. I mean you could have gear as a reward, it just would decay eventually, but it might have extra durability since it was a reward.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2017
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  4. Jens_T

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    Yes, they are just not leaving lasting impressions outside your journal :)
    Yet! (I hope)
     
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  5. Lord_Darkmoon

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    I started anew and I can't help myself but the moment we leave the tutorial scene the whole single-player narrative breaks apart.
    It hurts the game so much that basically nothing is happening. That nothing happens to the murderer in Ardoris or the arsonist in Soltown. That I cannot bring Charlotte and her mother together again. That all of the scenes are so static. NPCs cannot leave or enter or die etc. The scenes cannot change. My deeds are not really recognized.
    Doing the quests in SotA right now feels like processing an Excel sheet. I work through the tasks and get my reward. No one cares, nothing happens, nothing changes.
    Sorry to sound so negative but in terms of quests and the single-player narrative, SotA simply isn't fun right now and I cannot see how this will change until release.
     
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  6. MindBlast

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    Reading that makes me kinda sad. I haven't played the game yet but that doesn't give a feeling i want to, i am mainly waiting for the single player story.
     
  7. majoria70

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    Ahhh sorry you haven't played MindBlast, don't be disheartened by the discussions, it has to be talked out and an amazingly amount of things can get added in before launch, so we have to say what is not working as we would like now. If you ever decide to jump in multiplayer on line, I promise I would help you anyway I could and show you around. Truly there are some amazing things to see and still lots of work to be done. :) I am Majoria in the game btw;)
     
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  8. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Let's take the murder in Ardoris quest as an example.

    Possible spoilers for all who haven't played the quest yet

    A mother told me that her son had been killed. We now have to ask around for clues and learn that more children had been killed by an archer who uses black arrows. We talk to a farmer who saw what happened and who tells us about a tower where he believes the arrow was shot from. In the tower we find a suspicious note. We accuse an archer and can tell the guard captain that we think he did it. Afterwards we can tell the parents what we found out. End of story.

    The quest is basically about running around in town, talking to NPCs, reading a note. The overall premise of the quest is great. A mysterious murder, exciting. But how the quest plays out is plain boring - sorry. We just walk around, talk and read. We don't see a murder happening, we don't find a corpse, we can't bring the murderer to justice who is never punished for what he did.
    And this is not the only quest that plays out this way. In many quests that gameplay is the same: Walking, talking, reading, sometimes a fight. That is all there is to many of the quests. How is this meant to be exciting? How can this stand up to other modern RPGs? How is this a single-player narrative?

    As I said in the original post: "I want to see a murder happening, chasing the murderer through the streets. I want to have a surprise for the reason why he killed people and I want dire consequences for him."

    The way the quests play out right now is just not exciting. It's more of a chore if we want to experience the story and I believe many won't even bother doing the quests because doing the same things over and over and not having any impact on the world, not seeing consequences and not getting any feeling of accomlishment make the quests redundant.
     
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2017
  9. Teralitha Tokomi

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    In an MMO, there is little chance any player will have an impact on the world. But such things could have an impact on npc reactions if there is a robust faction system like in EQ. The more a faction likes you, you might have better merchant prices, or gain access to resources, or access to bigger quests and rewards. There was a faction quest in EQ to gain access to the iksar city, where you had to to collect 10s of thousands of a certain type of bone and turn in it to an iksar guard numerous times while hiding just at the NPC's talking range while invisible, because the guard would attack you if he saw you, but as long as you were invisible you could turn in the bones to the guard and doing this many times would eventually raise your faction level enough that you could enter the city freely, at least in the entryway part of the city. More faction gains were needed to be able to go through all of the city. People did this because inside the city in a hidden underwater area was part of the shadowknight epic quest. I played as a mage, and this gave me the ability to go in to the hidden underwater passage, and teleport people in to me. So I had spend the time to collect all the bones and get my faction up with iksars so I could help shadowknights in my guild do this part of their epic. And in turn, they helped me with mine in parts where their character abilities were necessary. I spent weeks and even months collecting the bones in the iksar lands, and even paying iksar noobs to sell me their bones, or in exchange for my conjured weapons and armor and supplies and fire shields in exchange for the bones, as it took turning in over 10,000 bones just to be safe around the guards and enter the first part of the city. It was worth it for other reasons of course. Access to merchants for uncommon crafting materials,(It was a long way to travel to restock casting reagents otherwise, like... having to travel to another continent.)More quests, but it was also a kind of status achievement, because it was rare that a non iksar was seen in the iksar city. Very rare.

    Will we see that level of faction and quest complexity here? I dont know... but I hope so. The more I play, I have encountered some semi complex quests. Not so much faction complexity though.
     
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  10. Insinious FizzleThorpe

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    Those questing days are long gone my friend. I played a SK on Vazelle server myself. Ran a large guild called Shadows of the Ebon Moon. Was a semi RP guild that ran for about 3 years topping at about 90 active members.. We had in game meetings where at any given time there was 50 real players there discussing guild topics.. VOIP wasn't really an option back then. There were no global chat channels. At best you had ICQ to contact folks and say hey were having a meeting in 1 hour head that way.. sometimes that wouldn't even be enough time, because it took you over an hour to walk from some places.. Todays gaming industry would not or will not support that. they want a successful game. Maybe 20% would be willing to walk for 1 hour or more of their life to get to someplace. Give up VOIP and lose the convience of oh **** guys help me Vallo is killing me again in deep ravenswood!. not going to happen. Quests like the one you mentioned were just tips of iceburgs.. maybe another 20% would do the quest to only get the result 3-4 months later. A large population of our gaming society has just gotten lazy. Or used to hand holding convenience, and some of them have no idea what EQ or anything that complex really is. That is MY opinion on why you wont see complex quests like before in todays game. As for Darkmoons struggle to have real consequences for the actions he takes, would require either multi instances with flags for progression. or phasing.. Are either able to be done using Unity? Who knows other than the tech savy or devs.. And really I don't need to know, I just know what type of game I am looking for and what type of game I'm playing.. The question we all have to ask our selves? Is this it. One can hope.. one can use the it's not ready yet, its in alpha or one can defend it saying they love it.. It is all a personal opinion that we have. I chose to take a break from SOTA and frequent the forms. I have been here since the beginning and will continue to be here till the end. Will I play? Yes once official launch has been announced I will try it again, I paid for that and so I will try it and see. Will I play again before then, not a chance.. to many letdowns that have been discussed many times over till the thread was locked deleted or the person got a temp ban. Some things got better some got worse..

    Here till the end and hoping for the best.
     
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  11. Teralitha Tokomi

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    Im afraid you may be right. It seems to have gone out with that generation of game developers. EQ is still around, but the game unrecognizable now with all the changes and new developers...
     
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  12. Armar

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    Yes, there need to be better directions on how to find quest related NPCs as they may sometimes be asleep which may give you an additional run around town. For new-school players there should be an _option_ to show an arrow/path to the location of the quest character highligted/selected in your journal.

    // Armar
     
  13. Armar

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    It should be designed/coded in a way that all NPCs who are supposed to know where character X is located automatically adapt when char X is moved?!
     
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  14. Lord_Darkmoon

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    But that is exactly the problem. When has SotA become a MMO?
    Read the Kickstarter page. There it says in the FAQ: "Though Shroud of the Avatar won’t be a massively multiplayer online role playing game, it will be a multiplayer game."
    Also it says: "Shroud of the Avatar is infused with rich storylines, deeply integrated into game play, developed by Best Selling Author Tracy Hickman and RPG legend Richard Garriott. Players will adventure in an interactive world where their choices have consequences, ethical paradoxes give them pause, and they play a vital part in weaving their own story into the immersive world and lore surrounding them."
    On the website and in the trailer it states "single-player narrative".

    So I think it is legitimate to expect more than regular MMO quests.
     
  15. Stundorn

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    Would be great if they

    - Delete global Chat. guild Chat. Only local!!!
    - Delete Ankhs, one Bindpoint
    - make bosses harder, more rare etc...
    - if they insert question markers or guided quest i will complain
    - yes I want to seek for hours to find something and maybe i destroy my fun and exploration with Google, but I tend to don't do it.
    - i want to read things like somebody writing in the forums he found a quest a year after release no one has found yet and it leads to a hidden cavern scene..., But now he miss a key!
    - I would like people write and sell ingame books with guides and tips what you cannot find in the internet, you have to discover and players have to teach you ingame
    - I played games where you need 4hrs to get to the other end of the world, yesterday I played Naval Action again, it would take you a lot of hours to travel around, if you want to group up and maybe attack another faction you maybe have to plan and organize days before and prepare it.
    - Themenparks are fine, sandbox is something to immerse into, something where climbing the latter is very hard and takes so much time, that focussing of climbing the latter is distracting you from really playing and getting further is more about happening by the way.

    But people reduce gaming to something what have given us World of Warcraft or Elder Scrolls etc...
    Not bad in what they want to be, in fact they are very good for people who don't want immerse into fantasy world's and find their own way, it's about a guided Tour, like a rail shooter. You haven't choices really.

    SotA is a little bit mixed up. But less sandbox than I thought, but I am fine with it.
    What I don't like is the way most people play games today and therefore multiplayer or MMO aspects give great possibilities in this game, but lacking of people who really play.
    Too much talking about numbers, what isn't fun, what need to be better and things like that instead of taking it as it is and play the game immersive and not in all aspects competetive or allways seeking for the best challenge and the best outcome, the most sensefull doing etc.

    I want more people to be lost, be overwhelmed and immersed, struggling through the world, failing making Sieges, fighting bosses etc...

    The most annoying thing here is to allways read of people that can do everything and that you are not serious playing if you cannot obtain a GM in a week. Clearing sieges solo, fighting trolls 20 times in a row, killing dragons 50 times. So lame!!!

    I remember a dungeon in VSOH where we need days and hours to find the Ant Queen , died, equip lost in tombstones, mass XP loss... Some loosing levels.
    After a week we made it, my bard could find the way invisible not taking aggro, now we just need to make our way through the ants to the queen.
    After some wipes, where we need to pull every tomb single and step for step 20m to the entrance agai. to reequip and try again.
    One day we made it and...
    The ant queen was despawned. Because the way was so hard, we decide to logg out and relogg every hour to see if she's spawned.
    I got a SMS 4 a clock in the morning the other day and we fight her, getting nothing worth, but to know we did this boss and what it had taken to do so was satisfying.
    36hrs spawnrate.

    I wish we would have such experience for Dragons, Demons, Trolls...
    Hard to figure it out, hard to find the way, hard to fight , unable for one to solo etc...


    For me SotA gives something like this, it would take me a lot of time to find the Phoenix or a Dragon, to fight a Troll or the Demon.
    But what I find is are people writing, all too easy, did it all alone while choosing from 3trillion XP I am everything deck and I can do everything.
    Spoiling how to grind and exploit ( exploit = using it most effective without doing any forbidden) the system to min max everything and do it all in some weeks solo.
    Sometimes i wish I never had read about things and I would still stumble in t3 areas wondering how I ever will be able to fight a dragon if I die from a Mage in t3 scene after 7,8 month "unseriously" playing the game, but having tons of fun and challenge.

    Damn internet :D
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2017
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  16. Arya Stoneheart

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    I wish they would fix broken quests. Here is one that I wish would be fixed before launch -

    1. Kiln Cistern quest - unable to get started
     
    Last edited: Feb 20, 2017
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  17. Teralitha Tokomi

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    What ever their goal was... the game looks very much like another MMO to me.
     
  18. Lord_Darkmoon

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    I agree but Starr said in article with Polygon that they kept to the original annoucement word by word... Which still confuses me.
     
  19. Sir Cabirus

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    Me too. And with all respect, I think this isn't the truth. At least not in my perception :(
     
  20. broxen

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    This. Right. Here.

    As the OP mentioned, I too would love deeply choreographed quests with divisive and dynamic outcomes.

    But there's value in having lower hanging fruit. Especially for a player like me: I run my own business; we have a busy household; I'm lucky if I get to sit down and play for more than a couple hours a week. I can't always keep track of what a random NPC in a random village somewhere once told me about some quest line I've forgotten I'm even running. The quest journal doesn't do much to help jog my memory either.

    Maybe I'm not the target audience here, but "! quests" make it easy to progress for a casual player like myself.
     
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