Most "exciting" quest yet - *yawn*...

well its the first time ive seen it, and i am thankful for it. i forgot how much fun everquest was to simply run around the world and explore, and its probably the mmo game that got that aspect down the best. I think SotA could really use some of that influence. I really enjoy the idea of learning about the world and its culture and mechanics in an asynchronous and organic way, and the example about the ring quest in the first video is spot on.

 

Phasing was a disaster in ESO for anyone wanting to play with friends.

Best just to expect the MMO reality that everyone is a hero solving quests that never actually resolve because the NPC cannot be two places at once outside of instanced solo only dungeons.

 

Sorry to hear that. It actually worked impressively well in WoW.

 

That's not what I expect(ed) from SotA. It was said that RG had found a new way to tell stories in a multiplayer game. Stories with consequences and which are meaningful. If we go back to standard MMO quests where everyone does the same things, the evil guy respawns again and again and the murderer goes unpunished and kills again and again (the same basically already dead people) then where is this meaningful? Where are the consequences? Where is this new way to tell stories in a multiplayer game?

I played many MMOs and never had the feeling of being someone special in the world, of having an impact on the world. Nothing I did had any consequences. I slew the dragon that terrorized the village just to see that he returned a few minutes later - so what I did was for naught. This is frustrating and I am fed up with this. I was expecting something different, something meaningful from SotA.

I don't think that we need another standard themepark MMO in a sea where nearly every other themepark MMO out there is about to drown nowadays.

 

In other games, that particular NPC might become invisible for you, if you did the quest.

 

How about Tracy Hickman writing a new novel using the quests and stories as they are in the game? Would this be an exciting novel? The hero running around a city, talking to everybody. The hero delivering messages. The hero asking every villager for a password... *yawn*

 

We had this kind of quest "technology" back in the Zork days.

 

I think the dialogue system is partially to blame for this.
Nearly every quest I've tried to do I've worn out my keyboard trying to type the right trigger to get the NPC to progress the quest. Just clicking the underlined words is not enough, after trying various things and giving up I've had to refer to guides/forums to get the things to move forward. Many I've never gotten to work at all.
And then to find out that nearly every quest I've done has given no reward whatsoever? After spending hours fighting with it?
I mean, the virtue books quest gave a cool piece of deco but honestly every other quest in game I've found extremely underwhelming.

The three main issues from my point of view are:

1. Dialogue system is unintuitive and clunky. If you want to do the guess the magic word thing that's cool, but if you say 'task' or 'quest' or 'what do you need' or something along those lines I think the npc should say something that reflects whatever quest flag you're currently on instead of just saying they don't understand what I'm talking about. This is not that difficult to do. Its gotten so frustrating that each NPC I run into its a game of 'click every underlined word until it says you wrote of this in your journal' and if it never does, consult forums for magic word.

2. The quest journal is a USELESS pile of crap.
Seriously. Its horrible.
Some things in tasks I've completed, but most quests I have ongoing aren't even listed there, they are buried in the unsortable unfilterable unclean-up-able journal amidst all the mail deliveries and interesting tidbits of information. for other quests that may or may not still be relevant. I cannot use this journal to find out what quests if any I have ongoing. I spent hours wandering across the world from town to town to town as a new player carrying this dagger around and asking folks about it, never did get any sort of reward for it and can't use journal to go back and figure out what I'm supposed to do with it now.

3. Rewards are minimal or nonexistent
The only quests thus far that have been 'worth doing' were the elemental unlock quests which award 11,000 producer/adv xp. If you do them with a group early enough in your progression that's a decent little boost. Of course, by the time you could level the prequisite skills to actually use the elementals 11k xp is just a drop in the bucket.
Many of the quests I've done offer no reward at all. Spent loads of time when I started out in Soltown trying to do all of the folks' quest and I think one or two gave me a bit of XP but that was it. Following the storyline to ardoris and sorting that out I believe gave 7500 xp. And then following the love storyline into 5skull areas spanning the entire map and taking hours awarded me with...nothing? Really? I got an item that doesn't do anything that I can't display, wear, equip, or do anything with except shove in bank. Not even an xp reward. What?? Currently the ONLY reason to do the quests is if you're interested in the story - they certainly don't reward you any other way.

Suggestions for Improvement:

1. Make the system a bit more responsive; if the NPC has a task for you it should be fairly obvious. I dont want an ! over their head, but the quest triggering magic word SHOULD appear as one of the underlined dialogue options instead of sitting there playing simon says for 20 mins and getting frustrated with it. NPCs who offer quests should respond to the word quest in some way instead of saying they don't understand.

2. Fix the journal. Tasks should show the next destination for active quest flags and some indication of who has asked you to do it. The 'journal' bit should be finished things for reference. Easy and simple.
For example:

Tasks:
[Town Criter] Bring mail to Desolis
[Bob] Go to xx town to investigate the whatever

Journal:
I delivered mail to etc and was awarded 50 gold.
I delivered Stanley's note to Ardoris and the captain sent me to see Bob in xx town.

This way you could review what you've done but have a clear indication of what you're supposed to do next rather than playing the guessing game.

3. Rewards

Seriously, rewards.
I'm okay with the Soltown Refugee stuff being trivial 'cause they are for new players getting to know the game. No problem.
But every other quest I've done has been about the same. No exp, no cash, no point. If someone sends you on a trek across the continent through 5 skull zones etc. there needs to be some incentive to do so. The story may be interesting but its currently couched in so much unrelated information and dialogue frustration that this doesn't satisfy the reward component in any meaningful way.
Long, involved story arc quests should give you some satisfaction when you complete them instead of leaving you baffled.

Good rewards:
Experience
Gold
Unique wearables
Unique decorations
Unique titles/emotes/etc.

Any of these would be great. Too often it seems that quests are just a waste of time.

 

In the example of the refugee camp arsonist I would have expected him to try it again. That he sets fire again during one night and that we see him, have to follow him, run after him trough the night but he escapes. Then we have to find new clues which suddenly shed a new light on everything. Was he forced by someone else to do it? Is there more to it?
In the end I would have expected a consequence. Him being thrown into jail or him setting himself on fire because of the guilt he feels. Something like that. Something with a twist, with a real consequence at the end, with a bit more action and variety instead of just looking in every house for clues and talking to every NPC until we finally find the man...

 

... deja vu ... except your screen says '91... I gave up playing text adventure games by early 80's (Colossal Cave, Scott Adams Adventures) and I was hoping that by now we'd be past 'guess the key word' style of games. Nostalgia is great, but it does not mean you need to keep doing something that way, there's a reason technology has moved on... Having the feel of an 'Ultima' game does not mean we should use the same tech. If I have to spend 20 minutes trying to get some NPC to tell me something important by throwing random words at him... that's a failure of design.

 

If it would work flawlessly then it could be interesting and good, but right now it doesn't. It is a pain talking to NPCs. Also having the feel of Ultima for me means that there should be more to quests than running around, talking to NPCs or delivering letters. And we still don't know what to expect from the quests at "release".

 

LOL you expressed my feelings Exactly on quests .... I am so disappointed in them, they are boring as all hell. This really is the first game I have played where I dread doing the quests , and only do them when i need exp... no real reward for completing ... I am a quester by heart, always was a quester and explorer ... and both are not fun to me .... I really worry about this ....

 

Some Quests being easy is not the issue i believe, it's that they are BORING .... they can still be easy, and FUN, but they lack variety and interests ...

 

I swear sometimes when I'm talking to the NPC's I'm talking to Abbott & Costello...

 

I just LOVE everything you said, and agree with it ALL .....

 

Good stuff. I'd just like to hit this point. A reward doesn't even have to be material to be meaningful. In Ultima VII, I complete many tasks for no reward other than changing someone's life for the better. And that's where Lord Darkmoon's point comes in. If you we can SEE that we have changed the world, quests gain meaning. If nothing changes, then.... why bother?

 

@kaeshiva The sad part is that they won't acknowledge that the dialogue system is crap. They'll revisit the UI for the dialogue but even that's been lowered in priority.

I think that's the thing that sums it all up: nearly every tasks we do aren't fun. Gathering, Crafting (?), Combat, Dialogue, Questing, Leveling/Grinding, etc.

ESO's launch was a catastrophe but the system worked alright once they fixed it. The LFG tool simply doesn't work, though.

 

I think I missed this. Where is this?

 

A seamstress in fancy red dress, dark skinned (forgot her name), she hangs around the Adoris market is how I got the killed children quest. Then I did the obvious and went and asked the guards about said dead children and they had nothing to say. I searched the quest sites and it was not listed. Any keyword NPC hints to proceed would be appreciated, questing is wack the mole and see what hits on what the developer's mind was thinking when they wrote the keyword logic, combined with long responses in the tiny chat window - questing is not doing it for me. And I am someone that loved the wordy questing interface in Elder Scrolls Morrowind.

Natural language processing only works if you are Amazon or Google with a neural brain massive cloud network on the back end. I don't know how you can tell a story with consequences if you do not have phasing. Selective multiplayer itself is not unique, many MMOS let you choose to solo or party or public an instance.

 

Maybe we could as plaers on our chosen virtus paths help build houses for the poor and even an entire town. Then have the scene come alive with more and more npc's and a whole growing town is built up by players which then can spawn a few lots for players to live in along their NPC friends and family.