Idea: Remove of quest markers and inclusion of detailed journal.

[Dray Truoc]

Detailed info as default is nice, but there needs to be an *option* in settings for hints (point in the general direction) and flat out point to the location/place/item/person/etc for those situations where you either forget what you were looking for, or you just cannot find it and don't want to search the net for a walkthrough/help.

 

The above is fine...caters for all types of players. BUT as someone mentioned before, it needs to be designed with the more hardcore adventurer in mind. Quests need to be written as if there were no map markers, otherwise stripping out map markers out won't leave you with enough to go on.

 

That being said, I love the idea of having to work a bit to complete quests.

[Hassat Hunter]

The mod that allowed you to add markers was the greatest thing invented by the hand of man.

I am pretty sure vanilla Morrowind allowed that.

Unless marker is something else than I think it is...

[Zu Long]

For me personally, just give me the quest marker. I like reading as much as the next guy, but frankly it's damn boring to have to navigate through a War and Peace sized journal to figure where in this ginormous labrynth of a dungeon is the door that goes with the key I just found (Pool of Radiance, I'm looking at you). So yeah, I'll take skipping the tedium in favor of getting on with the story.

[Justinian]

I think there should be a variety of "natural" directions and subtle indicators instead of the modern waypoint for everything method.

 

Sometimes directions will be vague, other times specific. For example, in the cities, there should be some kind of street and numbering system. That way they can be both specific and require the player to look for them. Out in the wilderness, directions can reference landmarks or general areas.

 

A huge part of the fun of these expansive RPGs is using your common sense and wits to orient yourself and give the world a true sense of place.

[Lusankya]

for those situations where you either forget what you were looking for, or you just cannot find it and don't want to search the net for a walkthrough/help.

Then you just need to go back to the questgiver and ask... right?

I don't think adding a "just show me the damn location" button works, that's kinda what we don't want in...

Going back would be stupid, too. Just give a detailed summary of what the quest giver said in the journal.

[Jojobobo]

I liked Arcanum's format for a journal, which gave the bare bones of what you had to do for a quest and then often had a more detailed section in a more generic notes part. With these sorts of games, and the map they are going to implement map markers would be completely ridiculous so there's next to no chance of that being a problem. I would like the journal to be a bit more sortable (having some sort of search function - even a CTRL + f style one - or letting you make your own subsections for notes) and maybe attach relevant notes to relevant quests (but only when they are overtly relevant - the journal shouldn't make intuitive links that you the player wouldn't be able to).

[Shoeless Joe Jackson]

I'd really rather not have ! quest markers.

 

I want to play the game for exploration, not to be told exactly where to go and who to talk to every single time.

 

If the quest-giver supplies reasonable information and the journal keeps a good record of this, then so long as the game is well made then you should find what you need to do or who you need to talk to anyway. But at least it made you find it yourself!

 

I wouldn't be adverse to the locations of major inns/taverns/shops etc being marked on your main overhead map, but, only when you've been there at least once. The first time you explore anywhere, you should have little to no information on it and the the fog of war should be back too!

[Hassat Hunter]

Going back would be stupid, too. Just give a detailed summary of what the quest giver said in the journal.

Yeah, that would be great. No-one opposed that. Something the above posters said about a quest being written as "what to do" and have a button to review the conversation with the questgiver again would be great. I definitely don't want a 'mark it easily'...

but frankly it's damn boring to have to navigate through a War and Peace sized journal to figure where in this ginormous labrynth of a dungeon is the door that goes with the key I just found (Pool of Radiance, I'm looking at you).

I would definitely want a seperate journal and questlog. So you can easily find what you need (which quest? Okay, I'll look at these entries, not the rest) without any difficulties. Kinda like Morrowind with expansions but with larger chuncks of text

[Micamo]

Its also the modern "gamer" getting to lazy to actually play the damn game.

its hard to really pin it on one side. Did writers get lazy because gamers weren't reading what they wrote or did gamers stop reading what they write because the writing got lazy? I'm sure its a lot of each.

 

It's partially because of the rise of fully voiced dialogue. Voice acting, especially professional voice acting, is really, really, really expensive. Explaining directions is a lot of extra lines, and most importantly directions are the lines most likely to change. Let's say a quest NPC wants you to get the Amulet of Plot Device that rests within the Forest of Elvenbath. Then the developers decide they want to put the Amulet of Plot Device at the bottom of a dungeon, the Ruins of Narn. But the line explaining where the amulet is has already been recorded, so now they have to bring in the voice actor/s for another session and have them record the new line. When you're making dozens of changes to the game every day, re-recording dialogue gets expensive fast, especially because most games now have full 3D cutscenes to coreograph around the dialogue, for which the dialogue needs to be finalized before production on this can even begin.

 

Costs for this should come way down, however, once speech generation software comes around. It's not quite perfect yet, but it's getting there. A lot of exciting possibilities open up when this gets good enough to be an acceptable alternative for a human voice.

 

 

 

The another reason is the switch to full 3D environments. Making a clear, easily navigatable 3D level is actually ridiculously difficult, especially in a video game where we only have sight and sound to help us figure out where we are: The other tricks we humans use to get by in the real world don't work when deprived of most of our senses. This is part of the reason why 2D platforming is so much better than 3D platforming, and why first-person platforming flat-out fails. Artificial visual aids, like floating arrows and top-down minimaps, are easy and extremely effective solutions.

 

 

 

The final problem is, yes, the "dumbing down" but I think this buzzword is thrown around too much without really understanding what's going on or the reasons behind it. In order to make enough money to turn a profit with a multi-million dollar project you need to have a really broad appeal. The issue is not, I repeat, not that most people are stupid, but that people have different tastes, and even people with the same tastes play games for different reasons. People like to talk about "Gamers" as if they're this nebulous thing you can pin down, but that is not the case. Some people are the type of people like to lock themselves up and binge on games for weeks at a time, others like to play for an hour or two on the weekends. Some people like listening to/reading lots of dialogue and lore, others like to just skip the talky stuff and move on to the action. These categories are in no way mutually exclusive, by the way. A game that has to make that much money has to somehow appeal to all of them.

 

It's like trying to write a comedy intended to appeal to people who get angry when they hear jokes. It's not that anything's wrong with them, it's that the only result you can come up with for a problem like this is something that comedy lovers will hate. When you make an RPG for the masses, of course RPG lovers aren't going to like it as much.

 

 

EDIT: That said, I should add I do think there is one very positive thing that comes from having quest markers, even for us RPG-lovers: It exposes awful quest design.

 

Think about the complaint someone made earlier that in Skyrim almost all quests are just "Go here, kill this, loot this, take this to there." Most of the quests in the old IE games were exactly the same. The quest markers change the way the content is presented but doesn't change the actual content itself. Quest markers expose the boring, formulaic structure of these quests and forces the designer to make quests more varied and interesting to make up for that.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Micamo

[paradox-fi]

When Adam was answering questions in the Kickstarter comments section perhaps a couple of weeks ago, he confirmed that PE will not have quest arrows. The exact quote is hard to find among the tens of thousands of comments, but it can be found via google:

 

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22quest+arrows%22+site%3Akickstarter.com+inurl%3Aobsidian+inurl%3Acomments

 

"We want to make the game feel old-school, so we won't be including quest arrows that point you exactly in the direction to go next."

 

I was very happy that this was confirmed. Quest journal is much better and suitable way to record directions to important places.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Nice find, Paradox-fi! Now I'm happy!

And a warm welcome to the forums!

[Wombat]

Wonder how to react. I don't like the intrusive quest arrows. However, while I always play FONV with hardcore mode (and Sawyer mod now), I have to confess that I'm glad there are some conveniences for the players such as fast travel system/quest locator. I'm not good at directions and I don't like to spend my time on circling around same places in vein. I tend to go back the player house before quitting the game since I don't like to start the game with inventory management. Just like reading books, when I quit, I like to put a bookmark so that I can begin to read it again whenever I'm free/inclined to do so. You know, I have life and other things to do. While I want the game to be challenging, I don't like to spend my time on some nuisances. Just my opinion, though.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Wombat, good point. Hopefully, they can make it optional. I love to search for myself, but my sense of directions is then of course otherworldly, or should I say stellar? *cough*

[Hassat Hunter]

I don't think you need to do much cirling in a map-based environment instead of a full sandbox.

 

Even on the biggest IE maps you could quickly get to edges and find another area. Or just use the overhead map and see exactly where you are.

The only time you really had to spend a bit of time searching is when they wanted you to, because of hidden quests and items.

[Badmojo]

I don't think you need to do much cirling in a map-based environment instead of a full sandbox.

 

Even on the biggest IE maps you could quickly get to edges and find another area. Or just use the overhead map and see exactly where you are.

The only time you really had to spend a bit of time searching is when they wanted you to, because of hidden quests and items.

 

There are areas that are really huge that it is easy to get backtracked and lost even with map. Woods/wide open spaces/repetative areas, etc for example. You end up scratching your head going, did I go there? Did I miss anything...etc. It is very frustrating to go to a place and leave, then find out you forgot some very important item or flat out walked right beside it and did not notice it, then you have to backtrack all the way to get it. Oh, lets not forget the mega dungeon they are making. I have a feeling it will be very easy to get lost or miss things in it.

 

Like I said, have it default to no quest markers, but give an *OPTION* for those who want them. I do not see the problem if its optional, besides some people lack of will power to not abuse them. Otherwise all it will do is make people go online to look up walkthoughts and spoil themselves which I think is worse.

[Hassat Hunter]

There are areas that are really huge that it is easy to get backtracked and lost even with map. Woods/wide open spaces/repetative areas, etc for example.

Examples? Can't recall such places myself.

 

Then again I heard many people having issues with the layout of Hengshai in DX:HR too, which I could navigate easily too. Maybe I'm just easier in mapping in my head than others (which would make me a very poor judge on wheter an area would be too confusing or not )

[ArcaneBoozery]

Quest arrows/compasses are terrible and really ruin the exploration aspect of RPGs. The ideal way to handle this is as many people pointed out is to have detailed text entries in the journal for every quest/tidbit of info, and then allow the player to use that to find these location themselves. This introduces a whole new layer of enjoyable exploration to the gameplay and brings a sense of satisfaction after finding what you were looking for, as opposed to following arrows on rails in a mindless manner.

[Krios]

Maybe remove quest markers in the expert mode. A detailed journal integrated with info from the almanac, and allow players to make and edit notes in it will be awesome. The map too can be integrated into the journal as a fold out graphic.