POLL: Your opinion of the NPC Dialog/Quest User Interface

How should a game based on story elements and Episodes (an important reason for a huge amount of backers!) work without a quest system?
Sounds not logical

 

Ok, it's complex, not too complex - I could do it

 

I like the keyword system - and I don't like it.
The later in localized version, since the keywords are listed for selection there as translated during the rule sets from the beginning - using all small cap, wild card characters, multiple choices allowed - instead of using the fitting underlined keywords from text as prefered choice.

*Salute*
Olahorand

 

Note: while I did answer I like... to many things, overall, I don't like the NPC dialog system.

While I love old school game style, text based chat like this is one thing that can stay in the past. On top of it, the dialog is often not very good (not setting huge expectations there, though). So I do read it all so I can know the experience Port wants me to have, but its a chore.

I usually play MMOs more for quests and lore, but in SoTA, NPCs are kind of a chore in general.

I think it could get to a good place with more iterations though, there are some great qualities that just dont work cuz theyre kind of incomplete. So I view NPCs as such, an "agile" process that might take a few years to iterate to a decent point.

 

Ironically, that demo brought me here in the first place. I'm glad it did, but it leaves me wondering, "Would I have come if they showed me the current NPC dialog UI?"

 

Heck no! Read the learning part! Feel the pain of the noob! (And then do your test, good idea.)

 

What could be most interesting out of all of this is that some people LIKE having to scroll back up to see what the dialog said.

Or maybe they are misreading it, thinking it says they like the option to scroll back up.

But really, it's talking about when you HAVE to scroll back up because it overflows the dialog window and CONTINUE misfired as usual.

If anyone answered that they like having to scroll back up, and they are reading this, please shed some light!

 

I actually had went back and re-voted for that reasons. I liked having the option... I didn't like having to.

 

I thought that might be the problem. I tried to make this a fair poll, as well as word it so that it was clear, but you know how it goes.

 

I'll not sugercoat it. The Npc dialog in this game is one of the worst ones i have ever seen in the many games i have played. It definitely contibutes to the bad questing experience this game gave me.

Haven't there been many games before this one? Why not learn from them? For mmo's i like the one they use in Eso for example. Heck, just take a look at other games made with unity.

 

I like the conversation style of NPC system. The NPC dialog writers, though, seem less enthusiastic about it. The flowing conversation should have more than half a dozen keywords. If an NPC says, "Supersonic Obsidian Butt Monkeys are coming to destroy us!" then you'd better allow me to inquire about "butt monkeys."

Many times NPCs would throw out some interesting lore words.... but say "Hmm, how interesting" when I tried to get more information.

The concept of discoverability in dialogue is really cool but unrealized. I used to try so hard to find a keyword they might respond to. I'd type 20 or 30 relevant words and get nothing. I gave up months ago.


To be honest, I don't know the story of the game. I completed it. I read the novel. I don't know how the Obsidians were defeated, for example. I don't know how the power vacuum was filled after their collapse. What happened to the great and mighty Norgard empire?

What happened to Opalis? If the Cataclysm forced people underground... and the moon shards are from the cataclysm... and the titans rebuild Opalis after the Cataclysm... then why does Opalis seem to have been destroyed by moon shards?

Somebody in the world should be able to reapond to the word "Opalis" and tell me. Maybe Vladimir of Opalis in the marketplace in Storm's Reach can respond to the keyword "Opalis" and tell the family legend of how his ancestors cleverly eluded the Obsidian siege.


IF the NPC dialogues can be fleshed out, the current system is great and unique (with some aesthetic and convenience improvements).

IF the NPC dialogues remain bare-bones work-in-progeess never-to-be completed, scrap it. If there's an aim to implement point-and-click questing, then abandoning the facade will do the most to remove frustration for new players.

ERROR: Allowance of hyphens exceeded.

 

This was supposed to be a poll about the window that we look into the story with, not really the story or the story system. I made a mistake in the way I wrote the keywords question, thus raising confusion about the whole poll I think. It should have been more focused specifically on the interface aspects of it.

But I do understand and feel your pain. I too don't know what the story is, and I really tried. But eventually interface blindness gave way and if the story is there... I just got tired of the effort to drag it through the tiny window.

They can't be, that's the problem. If you imagine a dialog tree, it looks like a tree. You can point at each tree and say "Ok, through the system we have devised the player is going to expect to go through these six conversations with this guy, we can cut this one here, this one is longer and important, it's going to be 20 sentences." That's a lot of work by itself.

But if you think of the form a keyword system takes, it starts with the number of perceived possibilities that exist in the users mind, because the user can type.

First problem, it's like playing a game of "Battleship". "Do you have a keyword at B-12?" "Miss". "Damn, that guy really should have known about Opalis (or where the bank is, or who Lord British is, etc)."

Eventually we give up on the typing. Yeah there are probably some easter eggs, but is it worth the 1,000 misses for the hit?

Next problem, when you do hit is that the conversation can't flow very well. Each keyword looks more like a tiny sphere of connected points, the conversation can jump in any direction. That removes the ability for the writers to design a flow for the conversation without ramming it all in at once and forcing us to scroll back up or using the poor (because it doesn't come at the right time half the time) CONTINUE button. And either way, it's a wall of small text in a small window with a 1990's mud look to it.

Anyway, before I got tangented back on topic to the UI, my point was that a keyword system doesn't work well unless you've got an army of writers, and even then it's difficult to get a good flow to individual conversations.

 

Thanks @Vladamir Begemot for doing what I was too scared to! You're the man, the legend.

One feels "A Good UI" should have been part of the MVP.

Even just moving it up to the center and expanding the margins would help. I did some NUE stuff last night and really noticed the constant looking down was taking my peripherals away completely from the NPC.

 

SotaWiki: Corgi Rug

 

When I was running my alt through the Isle of Storms last night, the Oracle spoke to me!! It was magical. I hope with more funding they'd eventually be able to replicate that a bit more. Just the first sentence is enough.

 

I came up with this concept a while back but it might not be for everyone...



You could use the new Fancy Shroud Font and that'd be great. For me at least.

 

The player and npc pics you used certainly makes it feel as if i am having a proper converstion with someone. A lot less cluttered as well. I would like something like this, only a bit more modern. That's just my own prefference speaking though.

 

Not a fan of the font, but the pics are great. I like the flavor text too, but it's been ruled out by @Lord British. The emotes are supposed to convey the emotions.

I hope that happens, but for it to be so the conversations have to become less disjointed. Right now emotes are triggered as the keyword is said. This leads to the NPCs looking very NPC-like.... just responding to an exact keyword.

To get good emotional flavor there has to be the ability for the designers to put moods on the NPCs. That guard doesn't have to emote ONLY when the avatar clicks a keyword. If she's beaming she should be as he approaches, open up with a welcome emote. Then while the avatar is choosing, activate other "happy" related emotes.

Dialog trees would make this a lot easier, as the emotion cascades down the tree. As it is, with the "Points in the Void" coordinate system for the dialogs, you can pingpong from light hearted to scary to happy to sad and the NPC will respond to each one as though the previous conversation didn't exist. It's like talking to Dory in "Finding Nemo". No consistent emotional state.

 

Frankly ?

SotA has one of the worse UI I've ever seen in a game, it looks cheap and amateurish (and I've seen amateur project with much better UI) and basically it feels like a placeholder UI that was never replaced with a proper UI because Porlarium never had a UI designer and that somehow has been kept because everybody god "used to it" even though it's terrible.

Trust me : I've literally seen people trying out SotA... and just quitting the game at seeing how terrible the UI is. That's how bad it is.

-Sergorn

 

That's exactly what it is.

Specifically NPC Dialog window was literally, no joke, just moved up from the bottom left corner, pulled out of the chat window, and renamed "NPC Dialog" instead of "Chat Window".

Ta da! Look what we did! And we were all like.... "You're joking right?"

But they weren't.