Problems with finding Questgivers ?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Paladin Michael, Sep 4, 2017.

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  1. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    As a lot of times asked, like here for Arie and Resolute, is the problem to identify the quest(giver) ...
    I have a few thoughts about better ways to find quests:

    I. Status before
    There was 'definitive not an !'... the blue glow of Persons was a good thing to catch the questgivers faster...
    A lot of players don't wanted it because of the statement about "!"

    I don't know if this can be switched on in the settings?
    I think it would be a good possibility to get all quests while running around for players who like it

    II. Status quo
    Now we have a soft wave from Questgivers and a blue Head at the compass and I think that's enough to give attention to us.

    What would be very helpful to all of us:
    Showing the Amount of Questgivers in the City and on which we are still working, and those we've done.
    This connected to our Journal - a great dream of every Adventurer...

    This could be by visiting the ORACLE... (or in citys without an Oracle Confirmation the Town Crier).

    If someone should know, what's happening in each City, it's the Oracle :) Another good Reason to visit her!!!
    So no one receives Spoilers, but people who don't want to run around finding questgiver's, could simple ask her:)

    And a further proposal:
    Let the ORACLE just show the side quests (mainquests are really good imbedded in the dialogues from beginning to the outskirts) .
    So all of us would know, what quests are at this place (and which quests are necessary to do the mainpath).

    Another possibility:
    ORACLE just shows the mainquests,
    Town Crier shows the quests in this City ...

    As we all know a lot of new quests in different towns and places will come in the next months and years,
    it would be good to know:
    Is there a quest?
    Is it necesary for the mainpath, I am on?
    Have I done the quest (before)?

    What are you thinking about, dear Avatars?
     
  2. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    Well my first thoughts on your proposal are no. For one thing Quests were never meant to be something you just finished like that and ran through them imo. They were meant to be savored and thought about giving choices and consequences from doing them and different paths in the journey of the avatar.

    It should be that the avatar does not solve the quest lines for some time and is lead astray to many side adventures on the way. Perhaps they mistake the meaning of what is said by some during the quest and get caught up with some evil a long the way. Surprising twists and turns should have been the way. I think people doing Quests should carry them around for awhile and not be able to complete them until they do other things. In the meantime the game should offer a lot of tasks and achievements in the path.

    Once quest lines are completed some will move on. Longevity ideas from us and the development team are important at this time. I would love to hear ideas about that. Not how to beat the game faster.

    @Lum the Mad
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2017
  3. Lord_Darkmoon

    Lord_Darkmoon Avatar

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    What I don't get is: Why is it possible in other games to find questgivers rather easily. In other games I don't have such problems and I don't use any quest hints, this usually is something I turn off immediately if available. So why is it such a problem in SotA?
     
  4. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    So what is your idea for this? I read what you said about Quests on another thread. Unfulfilling in what way? What would fix this? If Quests take you in interesting directions and give choices and consequences then how would that look for example? I do respect your ideas.
     
  5. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Judging from other games SotA does have a big problem in terms of cities. They have been designed for housing reasons and not for story/design reasons. In other games it is much easier finding NPCs because the mostly small towns use distinct designs with distinct areas. In SotA the cities are way too big with too many confusing looking houses. Finding my way through Ardoris to find one specific NPC is really hard and not satisfying as the city doesn't look interesting and has nothing interesting to offer. I just want to get to the NPC as fast as I can to continue the quest but I can't because of the way the city is designed.

    Another thing is, there are way too many filler NPCs walking around. Now, I was the one complaining about the devs removing NPCs for performance reasons but the balance isn't right. The cities are way too big. Too big to find NPCs and too big to just house a few NPCs. It is a paradoxon, something I haven't seen in any other game yet.
    Then the NPCs don't look unique so that we could distinguish them from other filler NPCs. And we don't know if we have found the right NPC until we have talked to him for quite some time. There are so many obstacles in the way of just having fun with quests. Just finding the right NPCs is a chore and will ultimately lead to people not wanting to do the quests.

    I don't know if this can be fixed anymore.
    Basically we would have needed NPC-only towns without player housing. This would have solved so many problems the game has. Those towns could have been small with a unique and interesting look with just a few distinct NPCs living there. This would have been the solution. But we cannot get this anymore. With NPC only towns we could have had visible and lasting consequences to our choices and actions, too.
    But housing was more important and now we have to pay the price - a subpar story/quest experience. And this will definitely have a negative impact on the reviews...
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2017
  6. majoria70

    majoria70 Avatar

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    That's terrific. It would have been great if housing was on the outskirts like UO. I'm sure it would be easier to move the NPCs than move the housing. So maybe we should see some of this happen. What ever helps the game in ways that are doable. I agree housing bogging down a city is a mess. I love the housing aspect of this game but it was not well thought out. Who wants to go to the huge cities and get lost forever. We don't have buildings that are easy to identify. Signs are only mouse over and not real signs which makes it difficult to find things.
     
  7. Numa

    Numa Avatar

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    re: getting lost in cities

    The town crier should be able to give directions to major points of interest/vendors in the city. He already does this for lots - why not for other things?

    And he doesn't have to be that specific with regards to quest givers. A hint or two should be enough.
     
  8. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    About "lost in huge citys":
    As I first played WOW I also got lost in the main city (and in a lot places, too).
    It was awful for me to find anything ;)
    And there all Guards could be asked about a lot of things.
    And of course the Questgivers had a lot of "!" it wasn't this easy to find all quests - and more important: finding quests sending me in the same direction to save time ...
    It took a lot of time for me to be comfortable with the whole system and to find out how to get from A to B.
    And in the first years there wasn't a good map system inside the game! After the integration it got better to find the way through the lands.
    So this isn't just a SotA-problem, I think. (And there was no player housing in WOW...)
    All epic games will have an amount of time to be invested in searching ...
    Because of this we need a way to receive information about where to search :)

    A better map system would solve a lot of these problems.
    I hope, SotaMap isn't the end solution at all ...
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2017
  9. Paladin Michael

    Paladin Michael Bug Hunter

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    About options:
    It was said, we can turn on the blue glowing in our option menue. I didn't found it yet.
    It's also possible to show the names of players before asking them about.
    Now we have SotaMap, too, which offers a lot of information, a user wouldn't get in this way, if the map wasn't explored before...
    And we have the blue heads on our compass.

    So there are different ways to play the game:
    make it very hard without using this comfort or use these things for a easier game play.
    A lot of people don't have the time to spend, running around and searching to find the questlines.
    For theses players it would be great to have an option to know:
    Is there a quest in this town? Why should I run around for 1/2 an hour in 2 Citys, if there is nothing to do - well, if I don't want just sightseeing ...

    Further: If quests will be implemented the next months and hopefully next years, too
    - how do I know, if a new quest can be found in
    Ardoris, Soltown, Braemar, Owl's Head, ... since I was there ???

    Should I run around each new Release all the continent to find out "ah! there is a new one!" ;)

    An option to receive the information, if there is a quest(line) there would help all players who just want to adventure ...
     
  10. Solazur

    Solazur Avatar

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    You aren't the only one getting lost. The NPC's seem lost too. Ask any of them for directions..Ha! AS IF. The only NPC that "knows" where anything is is the TOwn Crier who is really just there with a list of which players own which lots. Guards...oi another pet peeve of mine.. they walk around waving their swords and blocking your way but otherwise serve no purpose at all. Oh wait...if you happen to pick something up you maybe shouldn't (aka acquiring deco items) and happen to be noticed a guard will appear and levey you with some silly fine. You can't ask a player either as generally most towns are currently ghost towns. This makes me wonder too what will happen when there is finally a real population to deal with given the poor performance we have now. I remember a while back they were going to have a pvp event (kill a dev or something like that) and they had to nix it because of performance. Annnnd it's what. September now with "launch" supposedly right around the corner. IDk, much as I try to be positive..I don't see them being able to fix this stuff in 3 months time. Ohh but I'm ranting and digressing... but wth.. speaking of digression... I was mining in Spectral last night and on voice with a pal who was doing something else; the audible hitching.. like d d d d d d d d da (seriously.. no exaggeration there) was so flippin bad I just said screw it and logged out.

    did I roll off the topic? oh well ;p

    ok /end rant (for now)
     
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  11. Gix

    Gix Avatar

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    If they actually made the dialogue system into something that's not a nuisance to use every single time, people might be encouraged to talk to NPCs and eventually find quests from them. Not only that but questing in general would be far less frustrating too. Every single quest I've done has been a pain to complete and it's always because of the dialogue system.

    Another thing that would help is if some quest givers (maybe not all) would aggro on you and directly asked for your help.

    Every NPC within a given zone should be able to tell you something about what you're looking for.

    I think the issue is less on the cities' size but, like you mentioned, on how much interest (or lack of thereof) it generates for the player to warrant exploration. Not only are some cities like Ardoris not interesting from a visual standpoint, but they're not interesting from a mechanical standpoint because none of the various district has anything cool to offer.

    Central New Britannia, for example, has an entire dock area with a single fishing spot. The only spots of interest are the Oracle station and the market. The castle itself is void of anything worth doing. I'd talk to NPCs but... no. The system makes the process completely unappealing.

    Ardoris is flat, with hardly any colour variant and has one district worth going to. You only go to the docks because that's where you find particular NPCs for a few quests... you don't go there because you want to... you can hardly wander into the district too due to the super narrow pathways. Any visual distinction the city might have (like the towers) are over-shadowed by the 4-stories high houses.

    Aries is still my favourite city because, unlike many other cities, it keeps a simple design while spreading around the various points of interest.
     
  12. Solazur

    Solazur Avatar

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    No kidding. Another thing which doesn't help is the trees. For example in the main square.. the trees have so many low hanging branches you can't see across the square.

    Aerie indeed has an interesting layout but often has terrible lag.

    ^^^ And this ^^^, I'd given up on questing a long time ago because of this. I thought I'd try it out again a bit ago with the new Blood River Outskirts zone but it's as bad as it ever was. I simply don't have enough time to deal with all the NPC's who go clueless on you while you pull your hair out trying to figure out the keyword or w/e to get them to react. I've never been a big storyline guy but I've been intrigued this time around. I really enjoyed the book (Blade of the Avatar) and was looking forward to getting into the story in game. Maybe (hopefully) this will improve significantly and SOON.
     
  13. Barugon

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    This is something that I really hate about SotA in general, not just Ardoris. Absolutely no effort has been put forth to reduce the problem despite years of complaints.
     
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