The dialog of a task in Ondra's Gift is slightly bugged

[IanTheWizard]

If your reputation in Defiance Bay is major positive, then your dialog with Marceno (a young sailor in Ondra's Gift) will start with him saying something like "You're the one they're talking about...... I could use some help......"

But in the middle of the dialog, he suddenly re-started the dialog and greeted you with something like "If you've a moment...... You don't look like you're from the docks......"

Fortunately, the task itself works. I finished it.

Edited July 14 by IanTheWizard

[Kvellen]

Yup, this loop is actually intentional. A lot of conversation are actually doing this behind the scenes but have their looping points hidden. Just a case of a missing "ShowNever" on a node link.

Looks really odd, but nothing to worry about.

[IanTheWizard]

8 minutes ago, Kvellen said:

Yup, this loop is actually intentional.

Excuse me, but it looks like a programming issue rather than an intentional thing.

[IanTheWizard]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. He re-started the conversation suddenly after having some conversation with me and our conversation seemed about to end and I was about to embark on the quest. Therefore, it's clearly a programming issue.

[Kvellen]

The conversation looked something like this right?:

This young, lanky sailor is wringing his cap anxiously, sweat beading on his furrowed brow. His eyes widen as you approach, and he takes a few steps forward. 
Marceno: [Defiance Bay Positive 2] "S-say, you're the one they're talking about, right? The one helping people? I... I could use some help, as it happens. Please." 
Player: "What's the problem?"
Marceno: "Oh, thank you. Thank you." He casts his gaze skywards, briefly. "It's the captain. Or rather, not the captain himself, but his chest. Er, his sea chest."
"He keeps all his valuables in there, tucked away safe. I was unloading it with the rest of the things, what with us staying in port a couple days... and..."
He coughs. "I may have gotten a little distracted." Marceno nods towards the buildings nearby. "I wasn't gone long. Just an hour at the Salty Mast."
Marceno: "When I got back, the chest was gone." He sets a pleading look on you. "It really hasn't been that long - whoever took it can't be too far. But the shift's changed, and I'm on watch. I can't sneak off to look for it, and the Captain will kill me if he hears of it. I'll get strung up on the yardarm."
"I-if you've a moment? You're... not from around here, right? You don't look like you're from the docks." He looks around nervously. "I could use your help."

And among your possible responses were "Any ideas where the thieves might have taken the chest?" or [Leave] "Farewell."?

[IanTheWizard]

Yes. The conversation was like that.

"I-if you've a moment? You're... not from around here, right?" is supposed to be used as the opening words when you want a passerby to come to listen to you. It is not supposed to be used when you already have conversation with the passerby for a while.

Also, after he said "S-say, you're the one they're talking about, right? The one helping people? I... I could use some help, as it happens. Please.", it makes no sense that one of my options of response is "What makes you think I'm not from around here?"

Edited July 16 by IanTheWizard

[Kvellen]

Fantastic, just making sure I hadn't missed something that had broken.

So what's happening, without getting technical, is the conversation is designed to loop after starting the quest. But should hide this using text from the last line of dialogue in place of what's at the start of the loop. Though it only does this if the text at the start of the loop has already appeared in the conversation. In this instance where you have High Reputation with Defiance Bay the conversation starts differently and then feeds back into the conversation with the loop. So the original text at the start of the loop only appears for the first time when it's looped back to.

In cases such as this there's a built in function to tell the .conversation files to just override the text on the loop regardless. This is done by instructing it to "ShowNever" when linking back to the start of a loop. My guess is that this was missed due to the alternate start to the conversation being a later addition to the rest of the conversation.

Odd as it is the conversation as far as starting the quest works, but I agree this is very scuffed and it's as simple as adding a few "ShowNever"s where they're needed to.
So I've made such a fix:

1. Navigate to your Pillars of Eternity directory this will be somewhere like:
   • Steam: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity"
   • GoG: "C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Pillars of Eternity"
2. Then go to: "\PillarsOfEternity_Data\data\conversations\03_defiance_bay_ondra_gift"
3. Make a back up of the file called "03_cv_marceno.conversation", then replace the original with the .conversation file that's in the attached zip.

Alternatively if you'd prefer you can make the fixes yourself:

1. Open the file in Notepad.
2. Go to line "1352", you can get there quickly by pressing Ctrl+G.
3. On this line it'll say "<QuestionNodeTextDisplay>ShowOnce</QuestionNodeTextDisplay>", change the >ShowOnce< to >ShowNever<.
4. Do the same on line "3481". This is where you ask the Moreno "You're a sailor?", which can also trigger the awkward line.
5. Save the changes to the file.
6. Now when starting the quest the awkward line at the end of the conversation won't appear.

22 hours ago, IanTheWizard said:

Also, after he said "S-say, you're the one they're talking about, right? The one helping people? I... I could use some help, as it happens. Please.", it makes no sense that one of my options of response is "What makes you think I'm not from around here?"

This is also fixed in the file I've attached.
To do the fix yourself go to line "398" and replace the <Components /> with:

        <Components>
          <ExpressionComponent xsi:type="ConditionalCall">
            <Data>
              <FullName>Boolean HasConversationNodeBeenPlayed(String, Int32)</FullName>
              <Parameters>
                <string>assets/data/conversations/03_defiance_bay_ondra_gift/03_cv_marceno.conversation</string>
                <string>102</string>
              </Parameters>
            </Data>
            <Not>true</Not>
            <Operator>And</Operator>
          </ExpressionComponent>
        </Components>

This will hide the response from the conversation if it started with the High Defiance Bay Reputation introduction.

Hope that helps.

poe_marceno_loop_fix.zip