Much too easy to miss entire love quest series at Stanley in Soltown

In another thread I asked how to proceed with the story questline "love" after having arrived in Soltown and spoken to Stanley and was directed to the refugees and completed their quests - then what?

The answer to the above question is to talk to Stanley and making sure to accept the courier mission to Ardoris.
Which I previously didn't feel like doing, been there already and so forth.
I didn't know that was the storyline quest - and Stanley hides the story quest in this sentence: "Finally, if you are headed to Ardoris, I could use a courier".
Well I didn't want to go there for a measly courier job, I wanted to help the refugees..

And thus I fell out of the story.
So the bug is: don't let people slip out of the story questline like that.
In this situation the very minimum should be that I would have a journal storyquest entry that says something like "Talk to Stanley"

2/8/2016 3:33 PM
Title:
Reproduction Rate: Much too easy to miss entire love quest series at Stanley in Soltown
Blocker: Yes
Details: See above
Steps to Reproduce:See above
User Specs:
OS: Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (8) System RAM: 16352
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 GPU RAM: 4007
SotA.EarlyAccess.Win.64.376.Date.02.03.16
Area: Novia_R1_City_Soltown
Loc: (85.5, 31.3, 141.1)

 

@Lum
I too never know when I'm on the main quest or I'm not. This may be as designed to avoid some meta gaming, but it's a bit silly when you think about it. The argument would work like this. The NPC's that are very limited and only say a few responses, of which key words are underlined to tell the player what the will understand, can not have additional prompts because that would feel "too gamey". See what I mean?

The words that NPC's understand are underlined, and we can click on them to silicate additional response. Perhaps making the words related to the quest a different color would help? I think it would. If you see yellow underlined words, like "courier" you would know that it somehow ties into one of the three main quests.

 

Strictly speaking, this system is working as designed/intended for the moment. However, I think there's plenty of room for feedback on improvement which this thread largely seems to be about! Using my righteous QA powers in the name of good, I shall move this thread to the feedback forum for further discussion and review. It'd be a sad day to watch it disappear in the land of bugs.

@Lum for review as this thread continues.

 

Quests on SotA are perhaps too hard for a market used to... excessive feedback from quest makers. I would even suggest, if playing some other MMOs, to rename "quests" for "errands" to reflect the nature of menial tasks and zero brain required stuff. I am not happy with too many highlight, big ! yellow symbols, lightening, luminescent paths; all that stuff remove the need of understanding the quest, even the need to read what is about.

Perhaps SotA would benefit from incorporating a similar task systems, but please do not call them quests! Delivering email is not a hard quest at all, a fed-ex quest to some, but we have to read about it, discover it's importance, find Ardoris, find Cugel, talk to him, etc... not bad for an intro.

If we just get a luminescent path to Cugel and mark him with a bit yellow symbol... well, that's too easy!

There are already many quests in game, just most aren't working right now, but it seems impossible to modify them all the way you ask (yellow marked words).

However, creating an optional "errand" system to easy the migration from others MMOs, seems a great idea to me.

 

This. Unfortunately, "excessive feedback" is today's norm and I suspect some manner of compromise may be needed for the mainstream elements of the market. There has to be a common ground - perhaps a choice of quest marker that could be on or off? This would allow people to play without it, check it when they're truly stumped, or play with it all the time, depending on what they like. Hell, you could probably "sell a clue" with a VRU loaded with answers and be richer than Midas.

That's the only thing I can think of at the moment that truly WOULD satisfy each persona on its own terms - welp, right up until you get to the boundary wherein someone is fool enough to say, "I do not think there should be any leeway or nod to all these spoiled rotten whippersnappers.... make them get out of my yard before I break a hip trying to chase them down!" ~waves her cane mildly and then, collapses upon her rocker, whimpering softly, "kids these days...."~ Of course, I'm not especially fond of the smell of that rarified elitism and exclusionary preference, so I've already lost my "old school" card (which is no biggie, since it was stamped on my heart long before they made cards!), so I'm cool with whatever. (Actually, I think I'm going to spend some more time thinking of that "sell a clue" app. I'm willing to bet there is hella untapped market on this.....) ~wanders off with a thoughtful look on her face~

 

Um, I'm not finding the quests to hard at all. Most are fedex quests go here see this person then go here. Look at lord dark moons starting character thread. He literally got sent from one quest giver to another.

I also think that the presentation of NPC's is also an issue for quests, for whatever reason it is cluttered and hard to follow along in that chat window.

These are really simple quests, like you would find in most single player games as filler quests. The issue isn't the amount of hand holding but the presentation of said quests.

 

No need of a VRU, though it would be handy, some web pages already list a few spoilers.

SotA quests are kind of unique, as far as I know, a bit too hard perhaps but they are rewarding. See, not even in a quest, I recently got a emote, jumpbackward or something like this, that wasn't yet listed on spoiler sites. It feels better when using it than some already spoiled and known by everyone emote. On other MMO I played about 10 days doing quests (200?) that I didn't even read what they were about, and all of them are worthing nothing to me.

I am not a game designer or a software house owner, so I don't really have to know what is better for a product. It might be copying every MMO out of there, it might me doing something different. There is a risk of course.

 

@RichardGarriott is busily going through and finding issues such as these for review this week in-game (as many can attest as they poke at him while he does so on live)

 

This is not a "mainstream" game, so please, do not give into the demands of a "mainstream" market. They can play on SoTA's terms.

This is what I was thinking. I like it this way. I like how all the glory which can be achieved in a "main quest" can begin in such a subtle manner. After all, our biggest challenges in life dont really reveal themselves until we look back and see where they began. Rarely do our quests and adventures in life come with glowing text, highlighted words, and big yellow pointy arrows.

This isnt a bad idea, have a subtle indicator, such as text, "could you run a small task/errand for me?" which discerns between the two. I dont want any change at all really, but if this holds back the demands to make it "easier," then I can settle for this .

@Lum you can tell @RichardGarriott that some of us like it just the way it is

 

You honestly like the npc chat window?

 

@rune_74 I dont have a problem with it. I also spend most of my waking hours in front of a linux terminal, and think most GUIs are for "computer impaired" people, so I might be biased.

I wouldnt mind if it supported markdown like slack, but I am more than comfortable with an IRC-like chat console.

I def do not want a click-to-win experience, I want to be forced to pay attention to what NPCs are saying. Text is text. It could be made prettier, sure, but it works for me for now. You could also mod your own console at some point I am sure. What I dont want is a bunch of images and symbols and shiny things that let me complete quests without even thinking about what I am doing.

 

You do know what I'm talking about isn't click to win. I'm talking about it spitting everything out in that garbled mess that is the chat window. It doesn't feel like you are talking to an npc. @Lord_Darkmoon had a very good mockup of a good chat system.

Console is exactly the problem with this. It's hard to read the info and it draws your attention away from the npc...

 

Ive seen his. It looks very pretty, and very "click through until chat ends, read journal, run to next step in quest" type of interface (if its the image I am thinking of that has enumerated, predefined response options...)

You can change the size of text and move the console around, does that help? I like a short and fat window with size 14 font. Id like it even more if I could adjust the alpha, and all the various message type colors. Im assuming that is on their TODO list, somewhere near the bottom. This also just gave me a great idea:

What I think they should add is a template file for the console that we can all modify, to do things like:

* alter output color of PCs vs NPCs, and perhaps even mobs, basically anything the game engine can identify as a particular class of object.
* alter output of combat data
* add formatting to every type of event, object, attribute, etc: "**A Smelly Wolf hits you for 45 damage!!**" (on detect "monster dies..." print magenta horizontal line)
* add linebreak chars and horizontal lines in between certain phases of conversation, or in between every single chat/dialogue response
* add "css-animation-like" effects like pulsing alpha when certain events trigger
* add dynamic formatting for things like timestamps, player names, variable inputs, etc (%t, %n, etc)
* stylization for all of the above
* markdown is a lot easier at this point, and becoming quite universal...
* a function in game to reset said template for when we completely mess it up

all of this can be handled client side.

Those of us really into design could just post some default schemed templates on our websites, and people could just download them and use them for their own client. They could even come up with a community contest to derive like 5 basic default schemes for people who dont want to mess with such things but do want pretty features for the console.

Consoles are usually a lot more powerful than people think, in terms of conveying information beyond just text and a background color. Companies like Microsoft and Apple have nerfed everyone's perceptions of the machines they hold, they belie the true power behind pretty rounded corner buttons that accept one or two types of input.

 

No I don't think that helps. I think it still looks and operates like a client. It would feel as if we are going back the day of MUD's.


How is the layout in Darkmoons mockup any different other then separating NPC dialogue from the UI it is in now? You still type in words....it displays the NPC response...no different other then presentation.

It focuses the conversation box on the npc and isn't a side panel with all kinds of noise skipping through(like other players and whatnot)

Consoles maybe powerful but they also have zero soul. They come across as functional not interesting.

I'm not saying to get rid of them, just to open a new dialogue box when you talk to an NPC which is centered on that NPC. Everything including interaction would be the same.

Being pretty doesn't mean easy. Even Ultima 7 looked a lot better then it does here.

 

During the R26 Hangout, Chris mentioned in IRC that he would love to expose a LUA interface for us to mess with. I doubt that's going to happen any time soon, but at least he sees the need for it. And I think the community would go crazy with it and create some really cool things.

If nothing else changes, at the very least I'd like for this ability to pull a chat tab into its own window that remembers its position and only appears when talking to NPCs in conversation mode.

But for the time being, I dedicated one of the tabs to only NPC dialog and filtered out the rest, so that I can scroll back and see all of that even after the convo is done, just in case I missed anything without having to sort through all that noise.

 

I get that you can do that, but you shouldn't have to set that up....it is not very customer friendly.

 

Yeah, I agree with you. I was suggesting a short term solution using the existing UI until they polish everything up or expose the interface for us to muck with, which I'm hoping is sooner rather than later.

But that deserves its own thread, as this one is about quest coherence, for which I agree with the OP. Quests still need tons of work, they lack the connective tissue that binds them. Does anyone even realize what their primary motivating purpose is in the game, to even do any of the T/L/C story lines at all?

 

I actually have no idea heh.

 

Let's look at it from the perspective of someone who is interested in the story and wants to be immersed by it.

I begin the game and see Arabella and want to talk to her, so I start a conversation. The first time the chat window opens it is in a very awkward position at the corner of the screen and the size is also strange.
So the very first thing I do during my first conversation is move the chat window around to find a proper position for it. After that I have to resize it so that it displays enough text without looking too big and clunky.
Then I realize that the text is displayed without formating, without spaces or paragraphs or any structure which makes it hard to read after a while, especially with longer texts.
After the conversation the next thing I realize is that the chat window pops up every time I reach an interesting area or something is written into my journal. So I have to fumble around to find a way to disable those messages. Then I realize that the window is still popping up as I have to do this for every tab!
During the next conversation I realize that it is unfortunate that the chat window is transparent. When I talk to an NPC who is standing by some fire the flickering is seen through the chat window which makes it even harder to read the text. So I have to move the window around to another position. Then I realize that this position is not very good for the next conversation and I have to move it again...

Basically this is the point where I don't want to talk to NPCs anymore.

So I just want to be immersed in the story and read dialogues but this is impossible as I have to move around this window, resize it, change the properties, move it around again and still it is hard to read as it is transparent and there is no formating to the text.

This is not how I imagine conversations with NPCs to play out like. I want to have a proper, atmospheric looking dialogue window which is in a position where the focus still remains on the guys I am talking to. The window should be there right from the beginning in a proper size so that I don't have to move anything around or resize it. The text should be formated with spaces and paragraphs and there should be structure to it so that it is easy to read who said what. Also the window shouldn't be transparent so that the background doesn't make it hard to read the text.

 

A lot of arguments against the console are very subjective, while being argued as fact. Its like saying shoes arent real shoes because theyre not Reebok (yes I used that brand on purpose ;-) ). All I am saying is I value freedom to customize and modify over a one size fits all experience that caters to mass appeal. The mass appeal really becomes apparent when everything is compared to contemporary trends in game UI design, which I find to be inexorably limiting and banal.

The current state of the console cant really be critiqued to hard, as its not really a major focus of getting the whole game world and all the quests and other features working properly. It works, and it allows the users to interact with the world in the most base way that the developers want. Adding the needful bells and whistles to the console takes developer and QA time that is better spent on getting the game engine and world ready for the final wipe.

Saying a console doesnt have soul is like saying your guitar has no soul because it sits in your corner and you never, ever play it. You get out of it what you put into it. If you accept the defaults for things, then you get a default experience. If you put your soul into it, you get soul out of it. So yeah, having a template file with which to stylize and add functionality to consoles adds as much soul as you yourself have to put into it.

Even in this early access state, you already can filter this stuff out. I have about 4 tabs with various filters for that exact reason. I cant imagine having to read combat and speech text in the same tab, and apparently the devs cant either.

I completely disagree, and this is the sort of subjectiveness I am talking about. I think its very not customer friendly to pigeon hole the experience into a static interface with designs based on market trends. McDonalds might be a successful business, though that doesnt make it a good experience.

That, again, is so subjective. I like the position. I dont want it in the center of my screen, thats annoying. I want it off to the side. I can, well, go to all the trouble of moving my eyeballs to look at the bottom left corner and read it. If I dont like it there, I can to the extreme heavy lifting of clicking on it and dragging it to the (very awkward) center. I could also go to the trouble of resizing it too.

This is editable in your options. Ive never played a single game in my life where I diddnt, first thing, edit my graphics, controls, and other game options. You could call it fumbling. I call it clicking into 2 different windows and scrolling and reading available options.

I would bet my avatar's savings that they plan to allow setting alpha/transparency for windows at some point (and understand if this is at the bottom of the "nice to haves" in the priority kanban board). Until then, you might have to click your right mouse button and move a few pixels. Personally, Id say its far worse to have a completely opaque window anywhere on my HUD.

So really, what Im fighting here, is avoiding a watered down, simplified, one-size-fits-all experience because some voices expect every interface to follow the trends set by every other interface in the industry for a given period of time. Everything I read just sounds like people want a 3d video cutscene to just tell them what to do, instead of having a vast range of possibilities from processing the complex data in spoken language. Its widespread amongst the current generation of computer users to shun any interaction with a computer that causes thought, and to praise interaction that zips through experience with no thought required. This is why I loathe most RPG games being designed for a console controller first and a keyboard/mouse second - everything ends up designed so you can just click the same button and get the expected result from all dialogues. This was ESOs biggest failure, imo. and the console version diddnt even get released until a full year after the PC version, so we PC users all had to suffer the fisher-price interface for no good reason. I have all the confidence that the devs at Polatarium wont nerf the experience, though I do worry that enough cries might cause a compromise that results in loss of freedom and customization.

I introduced this game to my girlfriend over the weekend. Shes not really a gamer, but seems to really enjoy this game. The thing that fascinated me the most was her love of typing full and complete sentences into the console. I kept telling her "you can just click on all the words to progress through this dialogue..." assuming she wouldnt be interested. Instead, she was interested in typing a full conversation out with the NPCs. I felt like a turd for assuming she wanted the McDonald’s experience. You wont get a richer experience than with a fully functional console. You will get one-size-fits-all experience with some formatted, fixed UI.