My feedback on the quest system *spoilers*

!!!MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!


I have just recently completed the last of the three main quest lines and thought I’d give some feedback on the system from my experience.


Quests have enhanced the game greatly already. After grinding for months, the quest chains gave welcome relief and brought me back to the concepts and stories woven into the game world.


Overall the quest system does seem very confused; I still have a journal with 12 active quests in it relating to chains I’ve already completed. The Love Path was by far the worst offender, although Courage is not too far behind.


For instance, Siranto and Khasi lack suitable communication skills and understanding to have risen to such positions of prominence! They are unable to respond correctly – or at all sometimes – to the prompts around the death of Min Liang Tan, I have had to kill him twice for each of them to come to terms with his death. The evidence was perhaps some of the books and papers I picked up from the room of his death than finally made them see sense? I’m not sure if this was fact, but I was glad to finally be able to move on!


POINT 1

Give the players ALL necessary information for each quest stage – if they need to pick up objects from nearby, tell them. Or have the necessary items on the corpse or really obviously nearby. Not in a dark corner.


Now, I’m still not sure why Khasi wanted me to go to the Necropolis, because she was uncommunicative once I had been (about six times) before I worked my way through the garbled quest chain dialogue to move on to the next stage (only thanks to information from a guildmate).


POINT 2

Linear clarity is essential in communicating these quests, I know perhaps the system is supposed to be a bit ‘loose’ so players can work things out themselves, but in my opinion it’s far too 'loose'.


So, during my impasse at the Necropolis I tried out other quests, major and minor. Pretty soon my Journal was a confused mess of notes and I couldn’t remember which note related to what quest, especially the minor ones.


POINT 3

I think it would be really useful if the Journal notes could be ‘Chapterised’. Basically a new chapter for each quest, so as not to have confusion and provide greater assistance to the players – especially if we are getting a lot more quests in the future (I hope!)


Sometimes it’s quite difficult to complete an aspect of a quest chain because it’s so… well, daft.


For instance: Purchase ship passage from Harvest. Now that sounds easy, so easy in fact that I just get on a boat from Harvest to the destination requested. There was no quest giver/receiver to interact with me to get that part of the quest completed and removed from my journal. I pressed on with my quest in that case and completed the chain. However I still have this quest cluttering my journal.


This happens regularly and most of the uncompleted quests in my journal are stray debris for issues like this.


POINT 4

If you give the player a task make sure that the quest chain takes them to the solution. If you want the player to be able to innovate and find other solutions, ensure that somehow old quest stages don’t remain ‘active’ in the journal.


So, I think that’s about it for now, apart from my disclaimer!


Disclaimer: I followed the quests in what appeared the most logical way to me, I may not have done things correctly, or even in the right order. If that’s the case and I have somehow gone astray, then that too is an issue that may well need addressed.



A good quest system will really set this game alight in the world of MMOs – I do hope you can get it functioning as intended!

 

You may try feedback here, as this is our quest creator's feedback thread of what he's been working on.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...andom-discussion-about-lums-daily-blog.88764/
You may find it interesting to follow Lum's blog of his activities and what he's working on.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/lums-daily-work-blog.88762/

~Time Lord~

 

Ah, didn't see that thread

 

Don't feel bad at all. I can't even keep up on all the different threads anymore Maybe I have too many I follow now or something, but I come up on one every week where others have been posting for 2 weeks or more.
No problem at all @Almar ~Time Lord~

 

Outstanding! Seems that this questing extends beyond the game and into the forums itself. What valuable nuggets hide among these pages? What interesting characters will you meet?