Ok I konw (still in development)

But once again crated a new char, picked Mage, went to Blood River and of course the quest is still, sorry, but a joke. Do not tell me to play with hints, I should not have to turn hints on to figure out how to progress.

Talk to scavenger, he talks about a dagger, and all he says is I don't have anything he wants for it. Not that he even would trade something for it. Something in his words should say "perhaps if you had something I might want, perhaps something left behind . . . ."

This is the same topic covered before the quests in the game (if you don't play with hints on) is nothing but a hit or miss as to how to even think about how to complete them.

I know, I know, we are working on it . . . . .

Release 30 2 until the game begins, call it whatever you want the game starts for player after release 32. I matter not one bit what you want to call it that is the start of the game for almost every player here and it is from that point words will get spread around. DO you really want it said, don't bother there is still so much being worked on just wait until December (or whenever) for the game to be actually launched. Oh and BTW if you wait those 4 or more months you are going to be so far behind that you will once again not want to bother.

Sorry but when you put a date on it you backed yourselves into a corner and it is now closing in :-(

Here is the video of me wandering around watch it is only by my knowing to pick up an item to give him that there is any chance, other than blind luck to know what I am supposed to do (without hints, no player should have to play with hints to complete anything in a game.) If that was so might as well just put them in the journal.

 

Pretty much every person I have given a copy of the game to find the intro quest system awful and without being given a helping hand they really struggle with the mechanics. The tip boxes are not good in the slightest, in fact I think they are unsightly.

The intro quests needs decent visual help to guide the player through to ensure they really 'get' how the questing systems work.

 

From Thursday.

 

I have been trying to formulate a well written feedback post in regards to questing but have struggled to put the thought together. I really do hope that questing gets some serious attention if the story quests are truly the focal point of the game.

My current status on quests is that I do not partake in them after the first couple which basically set me up with some gold.

From there... I sing Fleetwood Mac's "You Can Go Your Own Way" and never touch another quest again.

Truth be told I did not even know that the malarchy around getting into the two castles as part of the love quest was even part of a quest until I came to the forums and started reading posts from the community talking about it... and that was only after I grew frustrated about the fact that after visiting one castle... I could not enter the other. There was (and still is) nothing that indicates why that's the case unless one goes and reads spoilers. It was only after finding spoilers was I able to (I think - it's still not clear) progress the quest... and at that point... I gave up - the fun factor was gone.

It's almost as if the game wants the best parts to be kept a secret - only known to those who go read the spoilers... and follow the steps to complete.

I get that the goal was to make things more challenging - and I'm all for that... but I also believe there's a balance between challenging and inaccessible.

 

Yeah and thats about the worst of the 3, very unintuitive and has no place being the first thing a new player encounters. Spent ages working that one out, and no way out until you find the damn mirror, not well thought out in all.
Whereas HighVale is pretty straight forward, that just needs a bit more polish and its good.

 

Spoiler

You do not have to pick mirror, you can trade the statue

I have to admit I had to ask for help with this quest, because the first time I did it I was really lost.

 

I found the truth quest to be pretty cool. The first time I did it, the mirror seemed like the obvious thing he would want...Love having to think a bit when doing a quest.

 

I didn't like the Mage quest, but for a very different reason than is being discussed here. I see no reason to be stuck in a blood bathed field until I

Spoiler

dishonor the memory of people who died

there. What kind of idiot

Spoiler

holds the gates closed until you do what another dishonorable fellow demands of

you? Just makes no sense. Pretty sure it is a placeholder thing only and will be quite different/compelling or actually present an ethical paradox soon....one can only hope.

There is no choice

Spoiler

in it, no compelling reason to comply other than that you are a hostage, and other than the fact that you end up with an unbreakable and unusable blade:

no benefit.

Personally I figured it out in about 20 minutes by

Spoiler

using reason and hoping I had no need to dishonor corpses but rather just steal. That worked well as most things around were complete junk.

But what a waste of 20 minutes it felt like.

 

Need I say more?

 

Initial quests are not much but the rest of this game is unmatched for my dollar. I am a happy and continual backer at LoM2 plus many alt accounts. Why? This game is not a grinder/level game or a pay to win game (despite posts claiming otherwise) as were it so I would have won. This game is a sandbox allowing each player to play as they like. PvP, PvE, crafting or whathaveyou, all are viable play styles. I am proud to be a part of this evolving and expanding family of gamers.

 

The opening scenes *look* gorgeous, but I have to agree that the new player experience in the starter scenes has been very poor. My worst experience has always been with the healer for Gawain in Highvale. That interaction was always so buggy and bad that I felt it should be taken out of the starter scene. If they wanted to experiment with the mechanics of having to follow an NPC they could have done it elsewhere and asked players to try it out and not sacrifice the new user experience.

I look forward to updated, functional and immersive starter scenes.

 

I have never been happy with the way dialogue is handled in this game, but I suspect it is impossible to change at this stage - especially with all the ongoing translation work.

Here are things that worry me:

1. It is error prone. If a dialogue is not set up correctly by the person making it, it is possible to have important information that is never revealed or actions that are never triggered unless the player types in the exact phrase (complete with typo) that the author specified. Any minor variation means that the player will get something like "I'm sorry but I don't understand" in response. Add in the lack of time for exhaustive testing, and the fact that players will never know if they are missing something so it will never be reported and, well... it's untestable by anyone but the author.

2. Nobody is a mind reader. The chance of randomly guessing the "obvious" question that the dialogue author requires is miniscule. There are countless possible ways of phrasing the same question, but only one or a very small number of these will trigger the correct response. The fact that quests are now placing in our quest logs instructions on exactly what to say to characters is tacit acknowledgement of this problem. So, players type in the standard questions that will always garner a response, then methodically click everything that is underlined, scan back over the text to make sure they have not missed clicking anything, then move on. It is the only way not to get frustrated and angry. Immersive? No, not really. The dialogue menus in Fallout 3 were more immersive, and there is zero motivation for players to try typing in anything other than the small set of standard questions. After that it's click, click, click...

3. The player has no way of knowing whether they have learned all that they could learn from a given NPC. Harking back to fallout, it was obvious there when you had extracted all available information. In SotA I feel like you could miss something vital and never know, because there is always the suspicion that not all keywords are readily discoverable. The only time I feel happy is when an entry is made in my journal. If that doesn't happen, I don't know whether I've missed an important plot point, or there wasn't one to be discovered.

*sigh*

It is usable, but it could have been better.

 

... which is why I feel like at times I've been thrown back into a time machine and I'm playing Zork, The Colossal Cave, or a Scott Adams Text Adventure ... you know, text based games that came out prior to Ultima 1. The only thing missing is having to type... 'go north'... I always was lousy at guessing the exact phrase the programmer wanted.

 

Maybe we should get the dagger automatically at the beginning of the quest so that we don't have to search for it. This worked wonders for the quest in Highvale where we had to find the key to the gates... Dumbing down quests is the way to go!!!!

And wow, the UI in your video. It reminds me of this:

 

Dumbing things like WoW is definitely not what I'm after... not sure about others, though. I don't think anyone has suggested going that way, so not sure why that would even be discussed.

Nor is this game P2W or whatever.... it's a fun game - but could be more accessible.

Both of these seem kind of off-topic in my opinion.

The quest lines aren't very accessible - that's really the bottom line in my opinion. I doubt that a brand new player who just bought this game from Steam would even have an inkling what quests were available or how to do them without help from people who are already playing the game and have completed those quests already.

 

With the Highvale quest people complained about not being able to find the key to the gate. So we now get the key automatically at the beginning of the quest. If enough players complain about the dagger, then maybe we will get it automatically, too.
And who knows maybe this leads to us not getting quests in which we have to find items anymore. Then we have a game full of simple quests so that players can concentrate on the important things like decorating their homes, dancing, grinding, playing gustball and stacking items into the sky...

 

I am all for "harder" and more "hidden" quests, but it is not a good starting quest. People need to know what to ask NPCs to get right answers out of them, and at least in the beginning people should be guided a little so they know what is expected of them.

 

In my humble opinion the intro quests should be able showing the player the basics of how to play the game. It should be very visual and so basic that a complete numpty should be able to grasp what they are doing.

What it shouldn't be is complex or problem solving in the slightest......in the time it takes a player to go through the intro quest, that player will judge the rest of the game and decide whether it is worth playing or not. Without being mean, if I was a new $45 player of this game.....based on the current introduction quest, I would not play the game.

 

Sure but instead of making the quest easier to understand and follow the whole quest was dumbed down.

Here is my problem with this. The beginning of the game should motivate the player to want to play more. It should be exciting, great. The game should show in the first few minutes why the story and the quests are great and it should engage me.
How are too simple quests representative? If I have simple quests in the beginning then I think that the other quests will be simple, too. Then I don't like it and decide that this game is not for me.

 

Sarcasm?

Yes!

I am afraid the issue is that Portalarium is still developing the game in the "old" fashion way, which is to build up the barebones all around at first and then iterate through various systems until either quality is good enough, or time / money ends. If you release your product only after the beta or v1.0, this doesn't matter since only the dev team will see various unfinished and obnoxious intermediate stages of the game. However, when you are part of the nowadays "perpetual early access" craziness, I would except more careful pre-planning and fewer iterations, as everything is also supposed to be attractive marketing material and to give some taste of the final product. Why the first scenes cannot be updated often and always show the latest technological, artistic and quest-wise quality of the game??

Portalarium has been keen and moderately successful at gathering new funding – as they also should to ensure future SotA releases – however I don't quite understand how they could have messed up such a important feature as new player experience for so long time.