Let's talk about the quests of SotA

I understand what you are saying and as one who kills the dragon 50 times well in a group. This isn't necessarily what we want to do but it is what there is to do at the moment. We kill Troll at least 8 times to give everyone a chance to loot in the party and 16 times if they want to loot twice. We had several new players playing with us and this is so fun for them to see the dragon and troll in the game. I agree with a lot of what you say in your writing and it is important to get the depth and reasons to play in the game and to not have it all be about Boss Kills but to clarify this is the state of the game at this moment and I hope as you say it is not the ultimate goal. It is fine to have boss kill days but I agree that longevity to keep us staying with the game will take much more depth, content, and reasons to play than that.

 

Yea, when I read that Starr said that, I felt like saying "Don't lawyer me bro."

Because it sounded a bit of a legalistic way to defend the idea that they were going according to the Kickstarter vision.

 

I'm really not expecting much to change in terms of the MMO aspect of this game, but if they focus more on the narrative side of this game for the single player offline mode (ie. bringing quests such as the one above to a logical conclusion with the appropriate outcomes and consequences), and making the single player offline potion of the game feel more like a single player experience similar to some of the older ultima games such as ultima 7, then I would be quite happy.

 

Its about the same as far as I'm concerned. Its more convenient to have it in game, sure, but its basically like having a wiki page in-game. Maybe without some of the spoilers.

My thoughts on this, though,

- The journal isn't really helpful at all. The way it is right now, I might as well be writing down my own notes, like I did in the earlier Ultima games. At least then, they'd be organized in a way helpful to me, and I would be paying attention to more of the conversation. Revamping how the journal works would be great.

- Even so, I've found that the extent that I need to rely on notes or a journal depends greatly on the storytelling and also the way the game UX facilitates the storytelling. If the dialogue/quests/narrative are memorable, and the game encourages me to remember them, then the less I forget, and need to fall back on notes. A lot of things could be said in this regard. I don't think underlined keywords necessarily help, unless they're limited, because it encourages you to skip them. One of the problems is that words are flagged when they don't have anything to do with the main thrust of the information the NPC is giving you, simply because they matter to some other conversation. (The word menu is a bit better than the underlining, at least) The NPCs spamming too much text at once doesn't necessarily help either. I think it would be nice for the NPC conversation interface to pause the flow of text, with a prompt for the player to continue, if it exceeds the size of the box... like we would see in U5, U6. There are also bunch of other things they could change that would bring it more in line with how a single-player RPG would work which would help the way the player pays attention to the story.

 

While I understand why you think so, the issue is bigger than mere convenience and more a matter of principle.

You either display the information in the game or NOT AT ALL; it influences fundamental design decisions. If particular information isn't displayed, then it cannot be required to know said information.

Look at World of Warcraft, for example, the moment they implemented a "quest helper" built-in the game, they stopped bothering writing quest dialogue that gave you directions to how to complete them. So now you have to rely on the "optional" feature.

Same thing happened with Skyrim. You practically can't complete any of the quests without the "optional" quest marker. Not because quest markers are bad, but because it renders the developer lazy as hell. Oblivion, while having a quest marker, had proper NPC dialogue that gave you verbal directions as to where to go... it just lacked the ability to turn off the quest marker.

I stoppped questing in SotA a long time ago because I couldn't ask NPCs for directions. I mean, SOME of them were able to tell me approximately which area another NPC could be found... so long as both NPCs were in the same scene and so long as both of them were related to a quest.

Ever tried asking a Soltown NPC where Ardoris is? It can't be done (well, maybe now, I haven't bothered to check recently), even if you ask the dude who sends you off to Ardoris! It's not like you have a in-game world map either and the maps themselves are just layouts of the local area.

The game shouldn't rely on external sources to be playable. Ever.

The whole idea behind the game is to live within a virtual world, yet it's like the devs are cherry-picking which rules with no regards to the fun factor. If you're not going to give me information because "realism" then I should be able to ASK people like any regular human. If you can't pull that off, then you can't pull the "realism" BS on me either... because it skews the problem-solving process that any regular human being might have.

 

I think its both Quest markers are bad, and it also makes the developer lazy Ideally, if the information you needed was presented in the game well enough, you wouldn't need quest markers, and you wouldn't need to go to a wiki page either.

I feel the same away about a whole bunch of other convenience features. From fast travel to the list inventory. We see how the fact that the list inventory is in the game has created an excuse not to make the bag inventory work well. So many people would rather use the bag inventory, but the way its implemented is pretty poor, so they're forced to go to the list inventory. Its the same thing with gameplay. When you make easy grinding possible, everything is going to center around grinding. Also, I think global chat would greatly detract from rp gameplay.

So they have to figure out what the game is about and not be afraid to hold the line on their vision.

 

Maybe there could be some way for quest items, in-game notes, pieces of paper, etc could be linked to journal entries. Maybe it could be done through the oracle.. I could trade a note with the oracle and it would highlight sections in my journal that are related to the note.