Quest feedback

I am not sure how representative the quests we have now in the game are for the final game... Are those just some quickly done quests in order to test the system?
I was hoping for more "natural" and multi-layered quests. What we have now are one-dimensional fedex quests. Find some books for the students, kill the wolves... That's not what I expect from a spiritual successor to Ultima. I wouldn't even expect such quests from any other modern RPG. Pillars of Eternity for example has very interesting quests for an indie-RPG but although those quests are really good and tell a dense story I would expect something else from a spiritual successor to Ultima. I want to find out unexpected things, learn more about the involved NPCs, discover some secrets about them, maybe be deceived or learn that all is not as it seems and have to make tough decisions.
So if the quests that are in the game now are just some test-quests in order to test the systems, what can we expect from the quests in the final game?

 

They are very much test/development and are in no way considered final. I know we keep saying this, but apparently it bears repeating: the game is in active development.

 

Please consider everything we (or at least, I) say as active feedback to your active development. Remember, we only know what you (the developers as a whole) tell us, and although you always tell us things are in active development, you also say everything is subject to change, this is an iterative process, the release date is currently sometime near the end of the year, etc..

The only thing we really know for certain is that at some point Episode I will be completed and it will be too late to ask "Is feature X representative of..." the final design goals? If our only options are to trust you guys know what we're looking for and what we're not looking for, then the forums would not really be needed for anything. We could just show up after EP1 was launched and start playing.

Thank you for the response, it always helps to know you guys are listening.

 

Thanks. Of course the game is still in development I was just wondering what to expect from the quests in the "final" game.
What I would like to know is how a "final" quest will play out so that we can get a better impression of what to expect from the quests in the game. Maybe at some time we can get an example of a quest? This wouldn't have to be an actual quest from the game for spoiler-reasons but maybe just an overview of what quests will be like in the game.

 

Sure, that's absolutely a fair question. A lot of this actually came when we pivoted pretty suddenly to moving players into Novia instead of the Hidden Vale. Which was fine in terms of getting people into our newer and arguably better scenes, but we ditched a good bit of story development along the way. Right now new players are pretty confused and justifiably so.

Richard and I are working on fixing as much as we can of this quickly; Richard is also doing a lot of the baseline story work for how you'll meet the antagonists of the game and engage with them and we want to start pulling that in as soon as possible.

As far as quest mechanics - we are limited in this because we don't have as many "buildilng blocks" for making them due to the stage of development we're in. For example we have no way to make an NPC follow you or vice versa - we're hoping to get AI support in for this soon, but right now the tools we have for quest creation are limited. That doesn't mean we can't do a better job of delivering story-driven content with the tools we have, of course.

Lastly, do NOT take "quests" like the Grand Tour and the Statue of Virtue as examples of "quest content" that we'd like to see in the game. They absolutely are very much out-of-game fun bits of encouragement that (in the Grand Tour's case) have no connection to the story at all and (in the Statue of Virtue's case) was very much wanting to simply introduce the concept of virtues.

 

If that is the case then maybe the NPCs in the Statue of Virtue's quest should talk about virtues (and chaos) even after we complete the quest.

 

I was just happy to have a decoration item to go after instead of a hat

 

Thanks for explaining this. I am really looking forward to the quests in the "final" game as I have very fond memories of the quests and stories in Ultima.

 

Well, I'd consider some quests to be a bit deeper than the rest.

- Morgan's request. Quick and especially dirty.

- Myra & Myron. It left me in tears.

- Siranto & Khasi (and the Lotus Minister). Can't wait to see how it develops at the Shuttered Eye.

- Thanatos & Nyx. And the next step. And the connection between the next step and Wolf, Kelly & Nestor.

IMHO these are from another league, compared with wolfpack leader, wrasse eggs, or Bentley's key.