Name! Job! Bye! Questing In Shroud Feedback (There Will Be Spoilers)

And here we are at Release 12. A little personal history first, Ultima IV was my second ever RPG, back in 1989 for the Sega Master System. I loved it then, and will always remember it fondly until the day I die; I still have all my little notebooks tracking the NPC conversations from the games as I played them over the years, and can still raise a smile as I flip through and remember little vignettes from discovering them. And what with still using a pen daily in those days, I can actually read my own handwriting from then! I can't these days...

So I should be the exact audience Portalarium are aiming for with Shroud; however as it currently stands, modern technology has raised issues just like it's turned my handwriting into a spidery finger hurting mess.

The first is the freedom of data size. Early Ultimas were tighter than an ant's corset due to limited memory size. As a consequence, I can't recall a time over nearly a decade of playing through every game where it wasn't clear what plot thread I was following when I found one; Shroud is in Alpha acknowledged, but I straight away found a pretty glaring example where conversation trees overlapped and NPCs would start in the middle of a conversation and thus made no sense;

Being dragged into an ambush, I fought of some wolves. As did about 4 other people dragged into the same instance. I got credit for a quest, although I don't know if they did, and I and many others got pulled into my now empty instance a few times again later. But I at least could see this;



In Braemar itself however there are at least 3 separate threads which are triggered by the keyword "wolves". There is the discussion of a failed hunting expedition and a missing husband. There are farmers being attacked by wolves around the city, and Bodan the NPC will pay you for animal hides. Because "wolves" is placed in the middle of the expedition plot you would get text from the middle of it's explanation; but the farmers know it as the start of their woes, and Bodan knows it as both the start of the expedition, his own pelts quest, and the end of a quest line. However no one seems to respond to "Valeway" (location of the attack, although it appeared for me closer to the swamps).

As a result my journal got very messy very quickly and someone without my experience will struggle to make sense of it all.

Possible Solutions; Textually, you can avoid this by making the keywords specific strings, which only trigger a response if the prior step of the conversation has been learnt. I believe early Ultimas did this. But specific in the sense of "wolves on Valeway" rather than just "wolves"... Ideally, you'd be able to Bookmark a conversation at it's end, and get a little tab in the journal which said "Emily talked about wolves attacking Braemar". When you next spoke to an NPC, you could click that bookmark to ask the current NPC about that specific note, "Emily tells me wolves are attacking Braemar, what do you know about this." Ideally I'd like them to visually be little animated paper bookmarks in the journal, so you could move them about and group them together as if your avatar was really taking notes... but the Sega Master System, which didn't have a keyboard of course, handled it by unlocking conversation options as they were discovered;



I'd rather not see a conversation style wheel in game, but it absolutely does need a tighter structuring at the moment.

Now the next issue; notice how cleverly Ultima IV above handled line of sight in the video above? And one benefit of an overhead perspective is that it gives you a great sense of your surroundings, to the point that major plot points could be discovered just by accidentally being in the right place at the right time; I remember fondly NPCs coming out for mysterious midnight walks when others were sleeping, and somehow getting into the walls of Jhelom.

Unfortunately first or third person view games struggle with this. Shroud is struggling quite badly too; In the above quest, I guessed that Bodan was the NPC I'd have to hand it in too, as everyone had him down as a wolf hunter. The barman in Braemar even said he was close by, although other NPCs seemed to suggest he was in the woods outside the city, and the NPC part of the city is only 4 buildings; but it took me nearly 30 minutes to find him. In the end I had to give up and ask the players constantly if they'd seen him. He turned out to be walking behind the building opposite the taven, the one where the Skills Trainer stops to stand next to a beggar girl.



Notice by the way the quest is handed in with "wolf" not "wolves"... but more frustratingly it was dark by now. As dark as it gets. If the player hadn't led me too him, I likely would not have seen him at all, and I must have ran past him plenty of times without realising.

Solutions: Give the NPCs torches at night, at least! Who wanders about without illumination anyway? And then we'd be able to spot more naturally mysterious gatherings of people at night...

Here's a great example of how much more atmospheric, and noticeable, simple lighting makes random discoveries; I'M WATCHING YOU FROM THE HILLS, PLAYERS! MUAHAHA!



But during the day? We desperately need a simple, roleplay way to orientate. May I suggest that we have a *cups hands to ears, then turns to face the direction of the nearest human sounds* skill? You could have it so that points spent in it make the direction finding more accurate (everyone can get within a screen of where the nearest npc is is without points, experts are pointing right at it when they turn) Thus leaving it so you still have to triangulate and locate the npc in general (and move about to make sure you're not listening for one you've already found)... it could also help in combat, a turn-towards-sound system would be auto tracking without being an immersion spoiling radar-system?

The realistic colour palette isn't helping Shroud in this sense either; non mobile NPCs are incredibly hard to pick out against scenery even during the day light; it took me an hour or so to locate the Tour Guide in the Forest scene, to the point that I wasn't even sure I was in the right scene (and no one was answering that I was.) In the end I located him by trying to think logically and work out the Dev's own logic in where he'd be placed...

Spoiler

He was indeed on a hill but hidden from some angles by being behind a tree. He's equally hard to find in the dark though; notice how the spell light doesn't illuminate him much...

And when things get really busy, you don't have much time to look around and look for NPCs against the backdrop! Somewhere in the Shuttered Eye lies the second tour guide...







I eventually located him by getting them all jammed against the scenery long enough to pause and look around. But on the way down...



There are a few issues with ghosts; firstly players don't have any way to help each other when dead I believe? And whilst I like the model as a whole, when it's viewed from behind there's a visible chin which throws the perspective off so you're not sure which angle you're looking at yourself from. The above image is how the ghost should appear all the time, no chin when viewed from behind.

It's possible to resurrect by walking off the scene, but as the exit for this part is a door, you're trapped in instant spider death until you can physically get to it and open it.

There needs to be something to do whilst being dead too, as I found myself just staring at the screen here waiting to run the instant I spawned. We should be able to rattle nearby chains and make chairs creak most alarmingly as a ghost...

Indeed questing feels pretty basic for now too (alpha acknowledgement etc) as there's nothing to unlock or discover at the moment. In UIV your knowledge slowly led to opening up the Stygian Abyss. Here there's no sense of actual accomplishment as yet. I slowly started to enjoy the old style gameplay again, learning about the stories and lives of the NPCs... but remember I'm the perfect audience; the game is going to need a lot of polish to appeal to a wider audience yet.

I'll leave this here for now, but will try and add more thoughts as I do more adventuring over the day!

 

I don't have a problem with the conversations by typing words or clicking them. But I hope that quests won't just be done with dialogues.
I hope for some events, too. A thief running out of a shop and the owner yelling for help. A dragon swooping down, grabbing someone you then have to rescue. Guards entering a tavern looking do someone and dragging him out of the building with you being able to interfere. An army of undead suddenly attacking or some prisoners suddenly rushing out of the prison attacking the guards. Quests that are started by observing something or by being pulled into something that happens around you, instead of having to talk to NPCs every time to get quests.