Spoilers: Path of Rage Quitting

Discussion in 'Quests & Lore' started by Poor game design, Sep 7, 2017.

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  1. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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  2. Myrcello

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    Yup. The Reddit User Post of Baron asked for it.
    He should have just left his first post.

    But he basically called it out.
     
  3. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    We all got some serious cabin fever. Time to get this game released for good or ill.
     
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  4. Myrcello

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    1000% agree. Get this over with.


    Judgement day!
     
  5. Myrcello

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    Lum did an outstanding awseome job with the system, the base concept and resources he was given.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
  6. kaeshiva

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    The thing is, there's already example in Sota of an immersive, interesting quest type thing that we stumbled across by sheer accident.

    A letter found in a building invites players to a follow-the-clues style treasure hunt throughout the zone requiring the player to recognize cryptically named landmarks, count their steps, and really look around. There's no glowing NPC to speak to, or keyword nonsense to do, just a discarded piece of paper that you stumble across by accident. No fetch this, deliver this, none of that - just a scrap of paper like a thrown gauntlet. Four of us ran around for a couple of days turning over every rock trying to find the next part of the puzzle until eventually through cooperation and teamwork, we did. The reward was a handful of coins and a congratulatory letter from the mysterious author, which I have proudly displayed in my house. That was probably the most satisfying quest-like experience I've had in the game to date, and it was pretty simple. The reason this worked for me was you got incentivized each step of the way by finding the next piece of the puzzle. You didn't have to fight anything or wonder if you read the quest narrative right or missed something, you just had to explore and try to unravel the clue. You didn't clutter up your questlog with random crap that can never be got rid of, either. Yeah, the reward was kinda meh, but it was something unique and we had fun doing it.

    So while I appreciate there are some technical limitations, I argue that immersive questing is completely possible, and would even go so far as to suggest that a player-involved quest committee could really benefit the quest writing process. Some of us have invested thousnads of hours in the game and are a great resource for weighing up rewards vs. time investment and such. Experience and gold aren't the only things we'd find rewarding. Anything unique - outfits, titles, decorations, etc - acquied through a quest is a pretty good carrot. People don't want to waste their time for pennies, though, and can't really blame them. Some of us have a ton of ideas, some of us have run roleplaying campaigns for 20 years and can come up with all sorts of things and suggestions. And as long term players of the game we have an idea of what's available to work with.

    Just as a random example, there's a lot of unique looking urns, crockery, dishes, etc. that aren't craftable/stealable/etc. A questline where you could fetch materials, and learn to make these items along the way, rewarding you with a bit of crafting experience, some recipes, and perhaps as a reward unlocking an NPC shop or something to buy additional related items, would be great. It'd also be a use for this clay I keep picking up. Alternatively, there's lots of textiles laying around (assets already exist) that we could do the same sort of thing. Learn to make all the different rugs that are on the deco vendor, perhaps by performing a multi-step quest for one of the many tailor npcs somewhere. Not everyhting has to be about burn fight kill and not everything has to be about XP. There's plenty more than could be done, and I think the main questlines would benefit considerably from these sorts of advancement steps instead of 'go here, fetch this, cna't find it, go to forums, ask in guild, brute force way through quest, get lackluster reward."
     
  7. Earl Atogrim von Draken

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    Asking for a quest writing contest for ages for pretty much the same reasons.
    Strongly support this notion.
     
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  8. 2112Starman

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    I told you more then a year ago that this game was heavy in development and that they were just going to get to the point where they would start building the story in the dev cycle. You were extremely harsh on it (overly in my opinion at the time) and to give them a year. I also told you that if the story was bad in a year I would be right there screaming with you. The devs sold it to us the same way.

    Well, you were right. A year later I can honestly say that I am shocked at how bad it really is and that there has been 4 years to build this story line. This group has a team of 30+ people. I had a *FAR* larger and complex story in my own Never Winter Nights Persistent module and I was the only person building it for 4 years (working a normal job for 50 hours a week as well). They have had multiple people for multiple years building story and this is what we have at the near release.

    But saying that, I've never been a real story person and I still have fun with certain things in the game so I will carry on and ignore the story line like I always have.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
  9. Greyfox

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    Where are quests like the one below?

    I understand a multiplayer environment creates additional requirements. The Warlock Chain was a great multiplayer "quest" and using similar mechanics with a little lore mixed in we would have a WINNER. Put those components in 3 skull scenes and the last component on a boss like an ogre that can be soloed by an 80+ or a group.

    I recently finished playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Those quests were incredible and very much possible in Unity. The fact you would receive small rewards and incentives along the way keeps you interested. The quests actually required thought to complete.

    Richard said he despised games that made you think exactly like the Developer in order to complete. Why is this the exact type of quest we now have in Shroud of the Avatar?

    Still time guys, lots of us are counting on you!

    PS: Please limit current real world politics integration into the game's quests, or at least don't make them so blatantly bias.


    [​IMG]
     
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  10. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Thanks for this post. Yes, maybe sometimes I am a bit harsh but I think this is/was because I cared for the game and wanted the story to be good. Now we are at a point where disappointment rules :(


    I can only agree... Phasing or areas without housing/multiplayer would have helped so much...
     
  11. Drocis the Devious

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    Yet I railed about the hat quests and was a key contributor in asking that they simply stop developing them in the interest of "doing something else with their time".

    Look, I get it, there have been many times that I took a position that some of the feedback on these forums was over the top and unfair (I stand by that). There were times when some provided feedback that the quests were bad (as did I) but did not go into great detail about how they were bad or consider that the developers had not finished them. And perhaps my favorite form of feedback over the years was when players would compare SOTA directly to games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim as if they were somehow better at telling a story in a way that was any less linear than SOTA was (spoiler: they weren't, they were just better graphics and ultimately nothing you did in those games really mattered much either).

    There was occasionally specific feedback given that WAS actionable. Like the time someone said "We need more NPC's in big cities!" and so Lum and the dev team stopped what they were doing and put as many NPC's in Ardoris, Brittanny and other places in an effort to make the game more "immerssive". This was a horrible decision however, as I believe we can all likely agree that having more dumb NPC's walking aimlessly in the world, causing performance issues, and generally just reminding us of the technical limitations of Unity did not result in more immerssion, and the developers recently (FINALLY) removed some of those NPC's. Also the person that suggested that marvelous contribution to the story driven cause no longer has posting rights here - thankfully. Not just because their ideas were bad, but because they spent 100% of their time making new posts that the single player features were not up to par. Well no duh! The game wasn't even close to being finished yet.

    My point is that even using revisionist logic, the constant inactionable whine from some posters was not and did not help make it any better. There's no way to take credit for whining 4 straight years if it resulted in what I described in the OP. So why are you trying to make a distinction between my feedback (which was actionable) and others that was clearly not. Just making post after post saying the quests are not fun and Witcher 3 was better clearly didn't help anything. Yes, you can say that my feedback didn't help anything either because here we are stuck together in the same boat, however when I look back at my 17k posts at least I know I provided solutions and didn't create unfair expectations. At least I know that my feedback changed as the game was developed. Many of the posts and comments people have made about the story haven't really changed since day one of development. We get it, you wish this was Witcher 4 with virtues. Thanks for the feedback.
     
  12. Drocis the Devious

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    Agreed.

    Technical limitations aside, it appears to be possible to tell a good story and allow for multiple paths (or AT LEAST lasting consequences for single actions). That may have resulted in a lower quantity of quests. It may also have resulted in less hours of play required to complete those quests, I don't know. But this is a good example of where player expectations that are too rigid starts to impact design decisions. If the end result is not 40 solid hours of play, some people would cry foul. The crowd funding, crowd development model has been great in some ways, but the fact that Wasteland II and Pillars of Eternity never had these problems is in part because those games also didn't interact with the community and try to improve the games based off of the feedback of their supporters - for the most part they just made the games and published them as finished products. Although I do remember playing early access Wasteland II, for example, and thinking "this is the worst game I've ever played!" Yet in the end (and a great number of people will really sick of waiting by that point) they ended up making one hell of a game.

    There's still time for us, but only if we provide actionable feedback, just like you did in the quote above. That's helpful. When others make posts that just pile on and say "the quests suck" that's not helpful. It doesn't do anyone any good, and we now have 4 years of evidence to prove it.
     
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  13. Drocis the Devious

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    Yes, but all the game modes are unfortunately joint at the hip - seemingly forever because it's core foundational component of what was pitched during the Kickstarter - Selective Multiplayer.

    I would LOVE to see single player online and friends only mode decoupled from multiplayer. It would solve a lot of multiplayer balance problems. But it would also create a new problem, that now the developers would have two games to finish instead of one. So when we look for solutions we have to consider the impact of both the multiplayer experience and the single player experience together.

    I for one believe they should remove some of the single player technology that doesn't work well in an effort to cut their loses and focus more on telling the story and not so much on trying to use "cool tech". For example, there are scenes where the NPC's walk around and you're supposed to follow them. They're comically executed, the NPC's get stuck on things, they move very slowly, if you don't stand right next to them they restart. Yes this is something that was added long ago during the highvale scenes and yes many people including myself gave feedback that this was bad at that time. However it was assumed that this feature would get better over time. It hasn't. It's maybe even worse.

    But that's the kind of feedback that could result in better solo play because that's happening in solo only scenes. There's no multiplayer in the scenes that have that technology.
     
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  14. Drocis the Devious

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    Look, multiplayer isn't meeting my expectations either. But they're not failing to provide me with what they sold anymore than they're failing to provide you with single player features that they sold. There was never a time when they said 100% of the people will enjoy this game. They can't make promises like, and as customers we can't expect that. There's a reality that has to be used to benchmark how well they're doing or not doing, and that's not as easy as just saying "they sold us what I expected". Because that's not true. Your expectations and my expectations were not sold back to us.

    Only you can prevent forest fires.
     
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  15. Daxxe Diggler

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    I just wish the entire quest line was in a "complete" state much sooner. The fact that it can be completed only now, so close to the upcoming "official launch" is bad because many people waited for this stage before even attempting the whole quest line.

    I'm not sure why people waited for this stage though. I mean, we're all here to test the game as it's being developed. I believe that if more people (especially those who give constructive feedback like @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos ) had started sooner and finished what they could as it was added... maybe they could have had more time to change things and make them better.
     
  16. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Imagine that at first the devs didn't want to let players test the quests and storyline at all for spoiler-reasons...
     
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  17. Lord_Darkmoon

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    Maybe the whole system wasn't really thought through from the beginning.

    I am not a game designer but my approach would have been different:

    Every player would have gotten his own private instance of the world (single-player online mode). In this instance the story takes place with deep quests and choices with consequences. Actions can have an impact on the world and its inhabitants etc. This mode would play like a single-player RPG.

    Every player could invite others into his instance for cooperative play, doing quests together. Maybe five other players at a time to have the classic number of party-members. Players joining would have to accept to see the instance of this player and the changes he did to "his" world. The same for me if I would join another player in his instance (friends mode).

    Then there would also be a peristent MMO version of this world which everyone can enter and meet strangers. Here player housing would take place, trading, PvP, social activities etc. But there would not be story-related quests, maybe no quests at all.

    I think that this would have worked much better.
     
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2017
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  18. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Love it Koldar! :D

     
  19. digriz

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    If you had spoken up while it was being developed, perhaps it wouldn't of gotten to this point. Why have open development, if not to be a part of it? It makes less sense now, when its almost done. IMO.
    Its like repainting a house, after its almost completed, Rather than telling the painter the color you wanted to begin with.
     
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  20. MrBlight

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    Hate when i agree with BDF.
     
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