In majority of MMOs quests have low quality and majority of people doesn't even bother to read the dialogues, hopefully Pantheon will not be one of them , though certainly there will be instances where your party rushes forward, while you'd rather read the plea of the NPC before entering the battle. How to deal with it? Will wiki will be filled with quest dialogues for people to come back to and read?
Hegenox said:
In majority of MMOs quests have low quality and majority of people doesn't even bother to read the dialogues, hopefully Pantheon will not be one of them , though certainly there will be instances where your party rushes forward, while you'd rather read the plea of the NPC before entering the battle. How to deal with it? Will wiki will be filled with quest dialogues for people to come back to and read?
I have discussed this in various threads about the "highlight" system they are using for quests.
The only way to solve this issue is to take away the QoL aids and force player query. If you highlight, bracket, or use the mouse for input, you will create a means for players to "click to the key points".
There may be some other way, but I honestly think the only way to require player interaction is to force them to read by not leading or "bullet pointing" the key points. You do this with a general dialog where you make no efforts to point the player to what is relevant other than by presenting it in the context of the text.
Then, you require the player to input a text query to the NPC based on thier assessment of the dialog they read. You continue this dialog to the natural resolution of deductive process by the player to gain the key points of their objectives.
Doing this forces a player to read, think, and interact with the NPC. The fast click approach would not work and the result would naturally be much lamenting in chat as well as constant call outs to the zone asking for the answers.
It is either that... or.. "skip" "skip" "skip" "skip"
As a disclaimer, yes.. I know that text based input systems in the past had numerous problems and issues, but in today's technology with spell checkers, dictionaries, thesaurus, and AI assisted correction/suggestion, the days of mistyping a response or getting the concept right, but not the correct word can be greatly reduced. I think the "chance" of that being an issue is worth the value you get from such an interactive dialog system. The click system is shallow and limited.
I agree with Tanix on this one. With the highlighted hot link text few are going to read it, even less will think about it and assess it to figure out what next.
They (myself included) will just hit the link.
IMO it's a shame really, when I played D&D in my yoUnger days the DM never gave us the questions to ask or held up a cheat card with the key words to say. Felt great when we asked the right questions.
I do have to say, when that was first added to EQ it seemed a great QOL addition, it was soon after I started noticing what it took away from the game.
Zorkon said:I agree with Tanix on this one. With the highlighted hot link text few are going to read it, even less will think about it and assess it to figure out what next.
They (myself included) will just hit the link.
IMO it's a shame really, when I played D&D in my yoUnger days the DM never gave us the questions to ask or held up a cheat card with the key words to say. Felt great when we asked the right questions.
I do have to say, when that was first added to EQ it seemed a great QOL addition, it was soon after I started noticing what it took away from the game.
Exactly, and I don't say this because I beleive myself to be some enlightened individual who is above it all.
I TOO click through that stuff when given the chance. It is the path of least resistance. If I am given the option of reading a bunch of crap filler of a quest or simply clicking to the task, well... sorry.. going to click to the task.
I don't want to though, I want the quest to make me read it, to make me think about what I should ask. It should be like a Sherlock Holmes investigartion where I think about what I should ask next based on the context of the dicussion. That is fun, that is "adventure" in questing, and why shouldn't questing in your dialog be every bit of adventuerous as exploring a world physically? I mean, gaming was developed by they nerdy intellectuals, the abstract thinkers, so why shouldn't its game play reflect such?
Not only that, but developers need to be inspired by their work as well, so tell me VR, what excites you more? Writing out a dialog where people simply click your highlights to follow the bouncing ball to a resolution? Or...
Would you not rather create a quest with diaolg that hints at concepts, tests the players ability to deduce, to examine, to explore conversations, to make notes, follow leads and test ideas?
You are making a "world" that world is not just in the physical, it is in the dialog, the interaction, the hope and mystery of such interaction.
People can nay say all they like about the text adventures of old, but they have something NO system today has, and that is the mystery of inquiry, not having something TOLD to you. You never fully knew what might come from a dialog because you were never "instructed" as to what to think and what to ask.
I know this is a divisive issue but I respectfully disagree with Tanix and do not want to have to manually type/input text to advance quests. If someone wants to skip through the quest flavor text then that is their choice. In the past I never read quest text but definitely plan to on Pantheon. But I still want to be able to avoid the typing/guessing. Just my two coppers....
urgatorbait said:I know this is a divisive issue but I respectfully disagree with Tanix and do not want to have to manually type/input text to advance quests. If someone wants to skip through the quest flavor text then that is their choice. In the past I never read quest text but definitely plan to on Pantheon. But I still want to be able to avoid the typing/guessing. Just my two coppers....
Nothing wrong with wanting the abilty to completely dismiss all concepts of such game play in favor of a "click and fetch" system, but keep in mind thart such a desire results in that limitation. While you are happy to "read" the quest, it doesn't change the fact that all you are doing is "Reading", not thinking as the "highlights" are doing the thinking for you. You are simply "following a bouncing ball" of story, not questing, not adventuring, you are merely reading and following directions.
Even without highlights it doesn't mean someone has to read the text given to them, all one has to do is quickly scan for key words. Failing that those who don't care about the lore can look it up online and likely skip talking to the NPC to begin with, only showing up with what they desired in the first place without even talking to them.
Iksar said:Even without highlights it doesn't mean someone has to read the text given to them, all one has to do is quickly scan for key words. Failing that those who don't care about the lore can look it up online and likely skip talking to the NPC to begin with, only showing up with what they desired in the first place without even talking to them.
That is called reading Iksar. One has to "read" to discern what is relevant and what is not. Just because they have the abilty to speed read using such techniques does not mean they are ignorant of what they read. The entire point of speed reading is developing the abilitiy to identify key words and concepts quickly while dismissing the filler in order to get to the context of a given dialog.
That is not the same as a person who literally ignores all text while their eyes go straight to the bouncing ball and clicks to the next sequence.
In fact, if we were to test this, I can promise you the speed readers would test at a very high reading comprehension rate and the "clickers" would be ignorant of all the text aside of the clickable key words.
It really isn't a comparable thing.
I don't like the idea that what makes a quest good or bad is the how one inputs the dialog. (I personally liked SWTOR the best in this aspect) What makes a quest good or bad is how it adds to one's story, the the quality of the task performed. If there wasn't a single kill x amount of y, or kill x till z drops style quest I would be happy. I would much rather have fewer quests that were alot higher quality such as a quest to investigate merchents disapearing along a forest road, you get there then you find a broken down wagon with tracks leading deeper into the forest. You follow them only to find a crude and hastely constructed fort against a cliff face, you climb a tree to get a better look, and you see orcs using what appears to be the merchants as slave labor leading them into a mine. You take your findings back to the quest giver and they then ask you to gather a party to go rescue the captured men. You round up some partymembers and you either find a way to sneak in or fight your way in to get to the captured men. You escort them to the town and you are handsomely rewarded for returning the men home safely to their loved ones, but all is not ok. The shaman that was leading those orcs had apparantly found the artifact they were looking for and had taken it to some fortress deeper in orc country, and it's only a matter of time till they unlock it's secrets and use it against the realm of man....
I would rather the content creaters spend several days or weeks creating 1 memorable experiance than spend their time creating 20 or more quickly forgetable/meaningless quests in a day. We've all done those quests in countless other games. I don't think most players want more of that.
I'm going to play devils advocate here, just because...but, I get that we each want the experience we want the way we feel it should be experienced. Why though, does everyone have to enjoy that experience the same way?
If player A wants to skip what the npc says and click, but player B wants to really embrace the storyline and lore they both have the ability to enjoy it the way they see fit. Why should player A have to experience it the way player B wants to experience it?
I understand a ton of work gets put into the lore, storylines and dialogue but maybe that just isnt player A's cup of tea. I think people should be able to enjoy that experience how they see fit. Player B is impacted in no way by player A clicking through and skipping the storyline.
Again in my opinion, how they do the quests themselves is a 100x more important than the interaction UI. If I have to carefully read over 5 to 6 things of texts for keywords to click on to progress the dialogue only to get a task to kill a couple wolves standing 20 yards away; I will hate it. They will have succeeded in making a stupid aspect of dumb mmo's worse than they already are. If on the other hand they the quests are always delivering fresh content, delivering attention grabbing storylines, and unique experiances then I will advidly read them even if it was a WoW style dialog box.
In regards to party members running ahead while you are trying to read a quest of perception thing maybe there should be a notification to the other party members that such and such is currently observing something. Or Party member 3 stops to have a conversation with NPC X. Then the party members will instantly know that onw of their party members is busy and will stop to wai for him.
Don't think this is the type of game were people will be able to just rush ahead and blaze through mobs without the person on the quest, they will wait.
I hope the game will not have many quests.
or at least limited log book ( ~no more than 5 quests at a time?)
the game should not be a task list going from quest to quest. the quests that should exist are long, alaborate quest chains with dungeon delves in between and these quests are integral parts of the local lore.
Well...a possible solution is not having a quest book, or something that stores all the quests that you are on that you can look back to. This would force people to read and write the quest down, atleast in the beginning. After that, there will be online sheets of quests people can dl and look over and do, but atleast in the beginning it will be more or less trying to remember the quest.
Ghool said: Tania called out the problem with a text input already - all it will result in is spamming of OOC or Shout for the answers. I see that as a bigger problem than having players click through text. Don't get me wrong, when I designed my own stuff, I used text input as much as I could, but it was also tricky to get it working because of spelling and other small hurdles. But I also didn't use it everywhere because it's not always the best way to implement quests. For puzzles and things that require investigation and thought on the part of the player are a better use of text input. As an example, the local innkeeper has a quest to explore some ancient ruins close by. After a couple of clues that take the player to the entrance of said ruins, the player/party is then forced to deduce what the 'magic words' are to open the ancient ruins and they can enter. All of which could be gleaned from the dialogue clues left by the quest NPC's. I feel that a mix of both is probably best depending on the situation.
I don't think you shoudl not have something because some players will act dumb and shout. Fact is, those dumb players are going to do that unless the quest is a bouncing ball with directions anyway (and even then they will still do it). You can't design around that, you ridicule it with the community which was done in LoTRO.
As for your suggestion. That is akin to what LoTRO did. You provide just text info, no highlights and the player reads and figures out what there is to do.
It will work, but you have to remove all interaction with the NPC. So, players just click, read the text and figure out what needs to be done.
If I had to choose between having the bouncing ball hilights or that, I would go with the just reading with no hints. At least in that I still have to think and deduce a solution.
I just miss the old EQ style text input system (and those of the old adventure games), so it would be nice to see that again, but if they go with the bouncing ball, I will be disappointed.
MyNegation said:I hope the game will not have many quests.
or at least limited log book ( ~no more than 5 quests at a time?)
the game should not be a task list going from quest to quest. the quests that should exist are long, alaborate quest chains with dungeon delves in between and these quests are integral parts of the local lore.
See. that is why I liked text input and why EQ worked well in this area. People think there were few quests in EQ. This is false, there were TONS of quests in EQ, it is just that they weren't sitting there with markers over their head. Even if you talked to them, you were not sure if there was even a quest there. A lot of the quests had to be pulled out of the NPCs using information from other sources (drops, NPC chat in another area of town, etc...). This is also why there are still quests in EQ that have yet to be solved. That creates long term mystery in play and encourages people to explore dialog with NPCs when they don't feel like exping or exploring out in the world.
Tanix said:MyNegation said:I hope the game will not have many quests.
or at least limited log book ( ~no more than 5 quests at a time?)
the game should not be a task list going from quest to quest. the quests that should exist are long, alaborate quest chains with dungeon delves in between and these quests are integral parts of the local lore.
See. that is why I liked text input and why EQ worked well in this area. People think there were few quests in EQ. This is false, there were TONS of quests in EQ, it is just that they weren't sitting there with markers over their head. Even if you talked to them, you were not sure if there was even a quest there. A lot of the quests had to be pulled out of the NPCs using information from other sources (drops, NPC chat in another area of town, etc...). This is also why there are still quests in EQ that have yet to be solved. That creates long term mystery in play and encourages people to explore dialog with NPCs when they don't feel like exping or exploring out in the world.
Many people also rushed through quests and when you mention did you do this quest? response was i dont know ill have to look. Never remembering even doing it before.
You tube videos helped with that, quick run throughs get past it and move on. Avoiding majority of text that really didnt matter to people unless it was the lore that players loved to follow.
Crazzie said:Many people also rushed through quests and when you mention did you do this quest? response was i dont know ill have to look. Never remembering even doing it before.
You tube videos helped with that, quick run throughs get past it and move on. Avoiding majority of text that really didnt matter to people unless it was the lore that players loved to follow.
I think part of the issue was also the number of quests in recent games (although most I would call tasks, not quests).
When you could, and will most likely, do 10,20,30 quests in a play session, you just lose interest in what they are.
In Early EQ, quests were quests, sure there were some task type quests, but the many of the quests were long drawn out, mutli-level journeys. They also didn't tell you where to go, but would give clues (all solved quickly these days with an internet search).
I'd rather have 2-3 multi-level quests in my log and be working on them, than do 10 mini-quests every day.
This type of system also seemed to provide me with objectives even before logging in, so I wasn't logging in with no real plan.
Sunglare said:In regards to party members running ahead while you are trying to read a quest of perception thing maybe there should be a notification to the other party members that such and such is currently observing something. Or Party member 3 stops to have a conversation with NPC X. Then the party members will instantly know that onw of their party members is busy and will stop to wai for him.
Don't think this is the type of game were people will be able to just rush ahead and blaze through mobs without the person on the quest, they will wait.
I agree, that was and is always a problem with Quests. Grouping in a dungeon or staying in a camp for exp, resources or item loot is one thing.
Questing with a group, however, gives me some pressure to rush or my party gets bored, because I want to follow and get involved with the queststory.
I know this is mostly a problem with random groups, but some times even with RL Friends or Gildmates, cause we canot progress at the same speed.
Would love to have a note within the chat or "chat bubble" over the chars head, to see that this char is in a conversation wiht an NPC.
At least we all hope that Pantheon will be the group driven and social experience we all seek since EQ. It stays and fals with us players, hope to make the right joyce with the server :)
I don't see any benefit to forcing players to read text. I myself am the type of player that just wants to know where to go to kill X and gain the XP I need for the next phase in My adventure, I don't need NPC’s for this in sandbox games, but In “theme park MMO’s” that use Quests as a means of XP gains ill just grab as many as I can because its required, and go hunting but really I couldn't care less about those half baked stories, that likely have nothing to do with the main story.
For me, Side Quests/fillers are the biggest reason I skip. Id rather farm orcs.
That said, when Quests aren't mandatory for leveling purposes I will read them because, IMO they’re usually not just a bunch of fetch/kill/escort ect.. Trash. At the end of the day though,. The only story I care about is my own, the one I'm writing with each paying hour in game.
HemlockReaper said:I don't see any benefit to forcing players to read text. I myself am the type of player that just wants to know where to go to kill X and gain the XP I need for the next phase in My adventure, I don't need NPC’s for this in sandbox games, but In “theme park MMO’s” that use Quests as a means of XP gains ill just grab as many as I can because its required, and go hunting but really I couldn't care less about those half baked stories, that likely have nothing to do with the main story.
For me, Side Quests/fillers are the biggest reason I skip. Id rather farm orcs.
That said, when Quests aren't mandatory for leveling purposes I will read them because, IMO they’re usually not just a bunch of fetch/kill/escort ect.. Trash. At the end of the day though,. The only story I care about is my own, the one I'm writing with each paying hour in game.
sounds like you'd enjoy bdo ^.^
stellarmind said:HemlockReaper said:I don't see any benefit to forcing players to read text. I myself am the type of player that just wants to know where to go to kill X and gain the XP I need for the next phase in My adventure, I don't need NPC’s for this in sandbox games, but In “theme park MMO’s” that use Quests as a means of XP gains ill just grab as many as I can because its required, and go hunting but really I couldn't care less about those half baked stories, that likely have nothing to do with the main story.
For me, Side Quests/fillers are the biggest reason I skip. Id rather farm orcs.
That said, when Quests aren't mandatory for leveling purposes I will read them because, IMO they’re usually not just a bunch of fetch/kill/escort ect.. Trash. At the end of the day though,. The only story I care about is my own, the one I'm writing with each paying hour in game.
sounds like you'd enjoy bdo ^.^
Nope. Never played it. I did enjoy SWG though.
If there is any kind of click/fetch quest system, players will skip content, and some may even be peer-pressured into it (especially with the perception system) because of some players being impatient. There are a few MMOs that force players to go through cinematics during important quest lines but I understand that this is an enormous undertaking... but those games are typically games that people become immersed in and stay with for a very long time, because nobody likes skipping cinematics unless you've seen it numerous times.
To address the O.P., I believe that there will be times where players are "rushed" through several quests, especially if they require more than a couple of mins of reading for people like myself that has to basically silently enunciate each word to really understand the context. (Very jealous of some of my friends that can speed read).