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Quests - What's wrong with people?

Discussion in 'Release 26 Feedback Forum' started by Lord_Darkmoon, Feb 2, 2016.

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  1. HoustonDragon

    HoustonDragon Avatar

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    The Fellowship thing at night was in Britain, one to meet with Batlin, and later if you happened to be following Patterson the mayor around a bit :D
     
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  2. Spoon

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    Just to point out a missing piece here.

    In R25 this was indeed terribly confusing. Even veteran Ultima players stumbled. The key wasn't on the body in the beginning but only after you had taken the amulet. There were a few bugs as well. Etc.

    While in R26 all that has been fixed. The dialog with the dying knight explicitly says that Tracy gave the key to the Bard.

    Move along people there is nothing to see here.



    Psst my personal opinion is that the starter quest should be an obvious A-B-C thing.
    BUT that if you dig into the conversation and explore the scene you should have multiple options and some Easter eggs for your effort.
    So easy for the TLDR crowd while rewarding for the made the effort crowd.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2016
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  3. redfish

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    Yea, true, but the residents of Trinsic still attended Fellowship meetings. :D You learn a lot about what's going on in the world by attending. Plus, you also get used to the idea of NPC schedules. They also tell you about Batlin, I believe. Then, when you get to Britain, you apply this knowledge there. ;)
     
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  4. redfish

    redfish Avatar

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    Btw, all of the quests in every city also re-inforce the fact that the Fellowship is corrupt, and this is an important part of the story, even though a lot of the quests aren't necessary to complete the game. That's one of the point of the quests in Paws. Also, of the Patterson quest in Britain.
     
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  5. Lum the Mad

    Lum the Mad Developer Emeritus Dev Emeritus

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    This is the plan for next release.
     
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  6. StrangerDiamond

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    Thanks Lum ! We know you are working hard but we REALLY appreciate when one of you chimes in to put our hopes up :)
     
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  7. Ristra

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    Prepare for your ritual beating that comes after one's hopes are up.
     
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  8. Traveller13

    Traveller13 Bug Hunter

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    With regard to the situation in the original post, you don't need the key to get out of Highvale.
     
  9. StrangerDiamond

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    I'd rather skip that part, if I hide next to the oracle am I safe ? :p
     
  10. rune_74

    rune_74 Avatar

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    So...interesting thread.

    You know it's not that the quests are hard(they aren't) it's the presentation is horribly bad. It is very hard to read details in the MMO chat window(Right @Lord_Darkmoon ?).

    That's one problem, the other is it tells more then shows. If anyone has written before for post high school education I'm sure you have heard the terms show me instead of telling me. It doesn't feel like you are part of a quest, instead it feels like they are telling you what to do. I'm concerned that the way it is presented right now that it is way far from where it should be.
     
  11. smack

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    Part of the problem is that the player at this point has not been trained (or retrained) to perhaps write things down. The new user experience at this point should have recorded this fact in his journal for him and told him that not everything will be recorded (but why he'll wonder). There needs to be consistency as to what should be recorded in the journal and what we should be writing down ourselves. I haven't played this particular path in some time, so I don't remember if that was done for the player as part of the very first quest/task.

    This was my biggest beef with this type of quest mechanic: a magically appearing key on some container (body) that you thoroughly searched just moments earlier. I found it bizarre that the key would only magically appear if you triggered the response/keyword from another NPC first. So sure, they changed this quest, but I hope they also don't do this without some reasonable explanation on future quests. I mean, at least offer some reasonable explanation why something wasn't there the first time you searched that container/body/whatever.

    Awesome, looking forward to it!
     
  12. Phydra

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    TL;DR version? Portalarium - Get yourselves some HCI/usability expertise, stat. Barring this, at least have some in-depth blind testing of completely new players to guide you. At the VERY least, open your UI to the community and let us help you get there.

    I begin this post by saying that I'm about to make a statement that I know will bring me flames or accusations of living under a bridge. But I am certain that will last only until those chucking them grasp that what I'm speaking about isn't the game being mentioned as such, but the underlying care given to the communicative systems of symbolism, color theory, consistency, and overall usability in both UI and language. These are the things that make it easy to understand and intuitive to play. Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT a simple thing by ANY stretch of the imagination and there is a good reason that it is the domain of its own science and specialization pretty much everywhere outside of gaming (and in considerable places inside it) today:

    World of Warcraft has one of the best designed, most holistically intuitive interface and mechanics presentation systems in modern gaming; this, more than anything else, is what led them to be a mainstream darling (much to the angst/ire of we, the "old school" brigade).

    I'm not talking about "the quests" or "the mechanics" or "the simplicity"; even as what I AM talking about runs through all of these. I'm speaking strictly about an almost subliminal level of organization around the use of symbol, color, presentation, consistency of phrasing, even of "ethinic" and linguistic oddities, all of which are carried seamlessly through abilities, skills, families of effects, ethnicity and dialectics resulting in intuitive, understandable foundation within which the mechanics and core systems operate.

    It is a fact that the quality of the user interface (UI) of a video game is crucial to its success and playability (Pausch, Gold, Skelly & Thiel, 1994). In fact, the citation in parenthesis deals with how games and their interfaces have contributed significantly to the HCI/UI learnings (see below for full cite).

    A convoluted or misleading or incomplete or inconsistent presentation isn't "challenging", it's sloppy usability design that focuses on pushing code over engaging users. No one can be blamed for this at Portalarium right now as, clearly, no one with a background in usability has had their hands on this game.

    I recommend this change that sooner rather than later. As for those who prefer blaming the user/"stupid users" - being unable to figure out a poorly worded quest text doesn't make you stupid. Nor, frankly, does refusing to read quest text in today's times.... game design has moved away from demanding your situational awareness to supporting the reality that the likelihood you are NOT splitting your attention between the game, a movie, the radio, your significant other, kids, supper, or other screens (i.e., a phone, tablet, 2nd computer, etc) is actually quite low indeed.

    Do I like this? No; like many of you, I yearn for that old school experience where being hyperaware and paying attention to every, little, thing was REQUIRED.

    Am I under any delusion whatever about the reality that I'm firmly in the minority with this yearning? Not for a moment.

    There are trade offs between preference and accessibility (read: intuitive, easy to understand, consistent) that are going to have to be made and I don't envy Portalarium needing to get around to making them; I'm really hopeful they get an HCI/usability specialist soon so they can avoid the pitfall of thinking that they're going to get a second chance to make that first impression (or that the first impression can be anything other than carried as a consistent element through the game).

    But if not? At least reflect on the wisdom that saw Blizzard open its UI to the modding community; they understood that letting the players help themselves is smart business, as the following paper and the below citations clearly demonstrate: http://www.gamestudies.org/1202/articles/ui_mod_in_wow

    Citations:

    Pausch, R., Gold, R., Skelly, T. & Thiel, D. (1994). What HCI designers can learn from video game designers. In CHI ’94: Conference companion on human factors in computing systems (pp. 177–178). New York, NY, USA: ACM.
    Sotamaa, O. (2010). When the Game Is Not Enough: Motivations and Practices among Computer Game Modding Culture. Games and Culture, 5(3), 239-255. doi:10.1177/1555412009359765.
     
  13. rune_74

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    User interface has been one of the major issues since the first beta...it isn't much better now. Too many clicks to get where you want, and the chat system is very hard to glean the important info out of...you will miss it.

    The one good thing about it though is the fact that your journal will help.
     
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  14. Turk Key

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    I agree the journal will help. But from the very start, clicking on the two choices on the cover is not intuitive. The text does not highlight and it is only by chance that one would click on the words to open the journal. The text should highlight when the cursor passes over. It seems like a little thing, but it lots and lots of these little things add up.
     
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  15. Sir Cabirus

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    Poor Judith :(
    @Lord_Darkmoon : thank you for this thread, I completely agree with you.
     
  16. Miracle Dragon

    Miracle Dragon Legend of the Hearth

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    I'm on your side, and want deep quests that force me to think. At the same time, I want choices and not just 'one way out'.

    It seems clear to me that they've decided to keep all the starter scenes vague, so you're stuck wondering who are the good/bad guys.. who should you help? Should you fight the elves/undead, or avoid them for now and learn more about the situation first?

    But while I'm asking myself these questions, the game isn't giving me the choices I need to be able to make. In Blood River at least, I don't have any choice as to how to get out of the ruined town. I have to talk to the bard, and even though he doesn't know anything about the gate he's standing right next to, I have to do as he says, and steal something, then bargain with the looter. Why can't i kill him? why can't i threaten him? why can't i jump the fence where it's obviously broken, or swim in the bloody water to get out?

    Ultima games were designed to be fully functional worlds first, so that as players, we would have the options of that interactive world to choose from when coming up with our own solutions to problems throughout the story.

    I expect no less from SotA.

    I guess we just need to give our feedback, and give them time.
     
  17. Lord_Darkmoon

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    It would be interesting if we could be responsible for Highvale, Soltown or Blood River to fall into enemy hands or be liberated due to the choices we make at the beginning. Our choices could determine if there are hostile elves or undead in the village when we visit the scene again or if there are guards and workers from the nearby city trying to rebuild the village.
     
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  18. Miracle Dragon

    Miracle Dragon Legend of the Hearth

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    Or vice versa.. note that highvale was an elven city, and the elves in question may have been farmers defending themselves, and not naturally hostile.. My money is on that it's like the Gargoyles all over again.
     
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  19. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Which would be even more interesting later on when we realize what we have done by driving them away from their homeland.
     
  20. blaquerogue

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    a great fix for that is for the dying guard to say "go find the bard and get the key" simple, explanatory, and you go find the bard. easy and done, and your still questing.
     
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