Small suggestion for quests

[sully9088]

I notice in a lot of games that it is possible to trigger quests that you haven’t even started yet just by walking into a particular area at the wrong time, or speaking to someone at the wrong time. This happens in almost all the adventure games I play, and it sucks. For example, in Skyrim you venture into a cave and find an artifact, then BAM it says you completed a quest, and a message pops up that says “return the artifact to Joe Blacksmith to receive your reward”. Meanwhile you have no idea what just happened, and you’ve never met Joe Blacksmith before. You bring the artifact to Joe Blacksmith and he says, “Wow thank you, I knew I could count on you!” At this point you are reminded that you are not really the Dragonborn on a quest to save the world, but you are simply a man/woman playing a video game in your living room. Immersion/experience killed. Another example is you walk up to a random NPC and start a conversation, and the main character and the NPC start to talk about stuff that have nothing to do with anything you learned so far in the game. You think to yourself, “Wow I have no idea what they are talking about. My character and the NPC haven’t even met before!” You feel like you missed something in the storyline, but then you realize that this conversation was supposed to be part of a quest that didn’t even start yet. This just happened to me an hour ago while playing The Witcher.

My suggestion is that you guys try to avoid this as much as possible. I’m very confident that you guys/girls are going to do an amazing job. I’m not 100% aware of how difficult it is to make a game with quests because I’ve never made a game before. I am pretty sure though, that it is a very challenging endeavor, and to have zero cases of this in any game would be extremely difficult. There are probably a lot of loops you need to close in order to keep a quest from being “unstable”; probably a lot of “if/then” statements in the code. I just wanted to make sure that this sort of thing wasn’t overlooked. I noticed it a few times in the mini-quests in the tech alpha. I am confident Warhorse is going to deliver an amazing game. I just hope not to be sideswiped by the whole quest glitch thing too many times in this game. Thanks everyone!

[Blacksmith]

For example, in Skyrim you venture into a cave and find an artifact, then BAM it says you completed a quest, and a message pops up that says “return the artifact to Joe Blacksmith to receive your reward”. Meanwhile you have no idea what just happened, and you’ve never met Joe Blacksmith before. You bring the artifact to Joe Blacksmith and he says, “Wow thank you, I knew I could count on you!” At this point you are reminded that you are not really the Dragonborn on a quest to save the world, but you are simply a man/woman playing a video game in your living room. Immersion/experience killed.

I fully agree with you. I don´t like this kind of “betrayal of secrets”…

What I hate in Alpha 0.3

A new subject: Quest Items! >Flute, Blacksmith´s Hammer You can´t drop it! (Alpha 0.3) You can sell it or put it into chests, but not drop… That´s not realistic! > I have not the (full) control over my inventory! Or is this a bug??? wink Marking of Items as quest items You find an Item and it is marked as quest Item. --> Attention, don´t sell me, i´am special feature! This information comes from nowhere… It would be okay if I could mark objects as quest items, or I get this info…

“Wow I have no idea what they are talking about. My character and the NPC haven’t even met before!” You feel like you missed something in the storyline,

They have really improved since alpha 0.21. Look at this topic.

Quest has a dialogue-related bug

Pretty to simple to do: Don't talk to anyone before talking to the innkeeper. When you do, choose the option "What happened between you two?" and Henry will ask: "What happened between you and Jerry?", although that person was never mentioned before. It also happens on other occasions, where the name is actually never mentioned, yet Henry, who doesn't know anyone, comes up with the name. I don't know if that's already implemented but the triggered dialogue text should depend on the informati…

But they can even better!

[Phaidon]

@sully Fully agree to your points. Don’t forget to mention that you propably get rewarded with an object far ahead of your level that will be useless for the next gaming hours /days blocking the limited space of your inventory.

The problem with sidequests is that most gamers (except the hardcore rpgamers) behave during the game different then they actually would in real life (medieval european). I mean, a wanderer didn’t spend time by leaving the path /road and jumped in bushes /dungeons/ rotten mansions for adventures, he choose the safe road and headed directly to the inn once in a city. Not only to get a warm meal or resting place but also to get all the information about happenings /errands in the village /city or county. Of course the local herold or board provided additional information. So, if most people would be forced to behave more realistic, I am sure they wouldn’t have problems with sidequests appearing to early, but then of course it would be to real and there would be no reason to play a game nowadays most npc’s are scripted to talk to you after you have earned a certain amount of experience or you have solved a pre-required errand. This ofc means you need to talk to them more then one time. I personaly think That it would be great if some npc would behave more human by getting angry when asked (clicked) to many times resulting loosing faction and with this loosing the errand and only by increasing his favor towards you will again unlock an errand option. Like in real life, I mean you wouldn’t trust a stranger with all your matters right
However, I am looking forward to play many hours this promising game.

[sully9088]

Maybe this game will be different as far as “jumping in bushes” and wandering around everywhere. Not to get off-topic, but its kind of silly how we can wander into every NPC’s home without them getting upset about it. We can also trample around on their garden and run through their property. It would be cool if the NPCs get angry with us temporarily if we do something stupid to them. Maybe temporarily blocking conversation until they cool down.

[ProkyBrambora]

yea, if you stare several minutes at a bosom of a merchant’s wife, you will probably get punched in the face.

You just ran with your horse over a harvest ready field? how about a foot in your arse?

Did you try to milk another’s cow? yea, here you have some flogging that goes nice along with your cup of milk.

Oh hello stranger, did you notice that you just ran me over with a horse? No worries mate, just go sit in that corner… of your cell.

You see, this is my garden, you cannot stand here for two days. Would you please accept this kick in your gutt, please?

You know these where my cakes i was selling that you just kocked over. Would you mind… you know… pay for the damage?.

[bi3mw]

@sully9088 As you said, avoiding broken ( i.e. false triggered ) dialogs in complex RPG’s is a very hard task. On GDS 2014 Daniel Vavra talked about the problem finding usefull software for this job. At the end he decided to write his own ( SKALD ). It was shown here ( 31:30 ). -No doubt, WH will do it right.

[sully9088]

Thank you my friend!