I can't tell you how much I need a better-organized quest journal

[kierun]

 

Personally, I do like (current) quest markers. I have a limited time to play games, and remembering a dozen quests lines over weeks is just not feasible. I do get that some people hate it 'cause immersion and to be fair, a walk through will have a map with a marker on it.

 

Ehh... it's not really about immersion. That's more of a side effect -- immersion being broken I mean. The main problem with default quest markers, at least (it's fine if there's some "I don't have time for this" mode/option you can turn on if you want everything indicated perfectly for you) is that you have the game presenting you with a challenge of "Find such-and-such," and it's pointing right at it, so you're not finding anything. The game world is telling you that your characters don't know something, yet the person controlling them gets to know it, straight from the game itself.

 

Now, if your character speaks to someone and they say "Oh yeah, you're looking for Recluse Reynard? He's up on the mountain. Here... I'll draw you a map and/or elaborately explain exactly how to get to him, so you'll know where you're going," THEN I'd say "Okay, there's no reason my character shouldn't know where to go now." Even then, I'd kind of rather the character say "This is the tree I'm supposed to take a right at," etc. instead of just having a marker off in the nothingness that my character hasn't yet seen. Partially for immersion, sure. At this point, it doesn't much matter, objectively, as your character knows how to reach their destination. I just think it might be more interesting if they intuitively followed their directions rather than just knowing the exact GPS coordinates of the destination.

 

Toward that end, it'd be even more interesting if people would actually lie to you, or provide crappy descriptions, in some instances, and the markers that the game gave you (because of the knowledge your character has) are actually incorrect. Sometimes, I mean. Not like "every single person in the game lies to me!"

 

 

Look, stop reading  my mind right now! This is not funny⸮

 

This is indeed a good system and balance between the two. If I need to find The Pouncing Pony Inn in Bree, then it is fair to assume that I can ask anyone in Bree about it. Whereas find the lost tomb of Fred… Well, clearly it's lost! There is no point in having a marker there. Unless you get hints that it could be over this hill or by that river…

[Wormerine]

This is indeed a good system and balance between the two. If I need to find The Pouncing Pony Inn in Bree, then it is fair to assume that I can ask anyone in Bree about it. Whereas find the lost tomb of Fred… Well, clearly it's lost! There is no point in having a marker there. Unless you get hints that it could be over this hill or by that river…

At moments like this I think back to Thief&Thief 2 and appreciate the way Looking Glass Studio used map as a world building and storytelling tool rather than UI. Ahhh... those times of wild creativity.

[Sedrefilos]

 

 

 

Whereas find the lost tomb of Fred… Well, clearly it's lost! There is no point in having a marker there. Unless you get hints that it could be over this hill or by that river…

Well, that's what happens when you trust tombs to Fred. He loses them :D

[kierun]

 

This is indeed a good system and balance between the two. If I need to find The Pouncing Pony Inn in Bree, then it is fair to assume that I can ask anyone in Bree about it. Whereas find the lost tomb of Fred… Well, clearly it's lost! There is no point in having a marker there. Unless you get hints that it could be over this hill or by that river…

At moments like this I think back to Thief&Thief 2 and appreciate the way Looking Glass Studio used map as a world building and storytelling tool rather than UI. Ahhh... those times of wild creativity.

 

 

Hey, there's Bloodorne way of doing quests… No log, no markers, no indication when a quest starts, updates, or ends.

 

To be fair, there's only half a dozen or so of them and they are all quiet short if spread over time.

[Sedrefilos]

DOS2 has a similar quest system. Markers are placed on your map only after you've discovered a location by your own or someone knows where it is and points it on your map.

I really like when there are no quest markers from the start. In single player games at least. In open games it becomes very immersive and I believe with the openess of Pillars 2 it'll make explroation more exciting.

[Lephys]

 Hey, there's Bloodorne way of doing quests… No log, no markers, no indication when a quest starts, updates, or ends.

 

See, that works, IF your character doesn't already know where to go. If the game's having your character do fancy sword attacks that aren't directly Surgeon-Simulator-2K13-ishly controlled by the player (because your character possesses the skill and knowledge of how to do them), then there's no reason for the game not to have your character know however much they know.

 

Almost every game either pinpoints everything for you (you, the player, are omniscient for some reason), OR it gives you no information at all (i.e. "Travel back to the home in which your character has lived their entire live, save for the last 2 years. But GOOD LUCK FINDING IT! HAHAHAHA!"

[Goddard]

I remember playing Zelda in the regular Nintendo days and we created our own maps.  In some older D&D/Strategy games you would also keep your own journal.  While these things might not be for everyone it would be awfully fun to compare journal notes on the first go'round with a friend.  

 

Anyone actually ever used a real map to travel in real life?  It is actually pretty easy and fun although when driving solo can be hazardous.  

[Lephys]

I'm all for that aspect being in there, Goddard. I would like for some amount of auto-drawing (i.e. if you move through 4 rooms in a dungeon, the map could just gain 4 blank rooms on it), but with the ability to place markers and make notes. Maybe even have some kind of rolodex of people's names, places, etc., and have little notes you could attach to them (alongside the game's general description of your character's interaction with them, like "Bill is a farmer in Bruckington and is looking for his lost pigeon"), so that if you have trouble remembering NPCs based on their names, you could simply attach a little note that says "The crazy guy near the well in such-and-suchington."

[Katarack21]

I remember playing Zelda in the regular Nintendo days and we created our own maps.  In some older D&D/Strategy games you would also keep your own journal.  While these things might not be for everyone it would be awfully fun to compare journal notes on the first go'round with a friend.  

 

Anyone actually ever used a real map to travel in real life?  It is actually pretty easy and fun although when driving solo can be hazardous.  

When I went through CDL training, part of it was about a week just being taught all the ins-and-outs of how to use a road atlas. There's so much more to it than most people know! Each and every symbol has meaning on those things. If you know what each colored triangle means, what the code is for the interstate numbering system, stuff like that you can plot a detailed course at a glance.

[Goddard]

 

I remember playing Zelda in the regular Nintendo days and we created our own maps.  In some older D&D/Strategy games you would also keep your own journal.  While these things might not be for everyone it would be awfully fun to compare journal notes on the first go'round with a friend.  

 

Anyone actually ever used a real map to travel in real life?  It is actually pretty easy and fun although when driving solo can be hazardous.  

When I went through CDL training, part of it was about a week just being taught all the ins-and-outs of how to use a road atlas. There's so much more to it than most people know! Each and every symbol has meaning on those things. If you know what each colored triangle means, what the code is for the interstate numbering system, stuff like that you can plot a detailed course at a glance.

 

 

I had a bit of experience with that as well when I was young as a traveling salesmen, but then later in geography and surprisingly geology class.  Those maps are so very dense and interesting.  I was told and shown evidence along with pictures they had some topological markers for people that actually went out in the field and it is highly discouraged to touch them.

[Goddard]

I'm all for that aspect being in there, Goddard. I would like for some amount of auto-drawing (i.e. if you move through 4 rooms in a dungeon, the map could just gain 4 blank rooms on it), but with the ability to place markers and make notes. Maybe even have some kind of rolodex of people's names, places, etc., and have little notes you could attach to them (alongside the game's general description of your character's interaction with them, like "Bill is a farmer in Bruckington and is looking for his lost pigeon"), so that if you have trouble remembering NPCs based on their names, you could simply attach a little note that says "The crazy guy near the well in such-and-suchington."

 

Kind of fun to just take out a pencil and draw it as well.  The simulation of a real adventure.

[Lephys]

^ It is. . It definitely is. At the end of the day, though, you have to consider the game you're putting it in. If the overall game is just simulating your direct experience (like the old-style 1st-person dungeon crawlers), then mapping things is great! But in a game like PoE, it's a bit weird in a way, that you, the player, are having to perform all of the specific actions necessary for any of your characters to possess any kind of recollection of where things are, etc. For example, making notes of your own about quests and people is great, but imagine if the game journal didn't record stuff your characters already knew, and you had to hand-write every single journal entry from scratch to be able to keep up with anything. In a way, that could be fun, but it's also completely unnecessary. Why do your character in this game not have a memory at all? Why are you solely responsible for their memory?

 

It's unintentional side effects. This happens when you try to evaluate an idea in isolation, and just plug it into a game because it's cool. Like... I dunno, flying mounts! They're awesome. But slap those into the wrong game, and your entire combat/traversal system's shot.

[Sedrefilos]

I'll go even further and say that I'd like the game to require dice from me. When I attack it should wait for me to type what I rolled and it'll calculate the outcome. Then it will ask me how much health I'm left with (I must write that down too! So exciting!). If I type "0", game over.

[IndiraLightfoot]

TLDR: Quest markers okay, but restrictive, almost mesmerizing, I love games which accomodate a generous freedom of taking routes and quests in the order of my choice.

 

While I wouldn't mind if quest markers was a feature in this game, I personally find them to glaring, and my mind/OCD looks at them as beacons begging to be sought out and solved. 

I recall when Skyrim came out. I hadn't played Morrowind. Last Elder Scrolls-game for me was Daggerfall in 1996.

So, when I saw all those exclamation marks and that map marker high up on the screen indicating Points of interest, my OCD Went rampant, and I had to contain the extensive damage it did to my psyche. My solution?

 

I went out of my way, above and beyond, to never follow up a quest given/updated-by-the-game. I did my weird quest defiance slalom for like 70h plus, and I hadn't advanced the main quest at all beyond that mountain top run early on. I then stumbled upon locations, since I never homed in on location markers on purpose. Often, if I saw one, I tried to go around it or outright avoid it. I still remember that playthrough most fondly, despite my breaking several questlines. I had to download patching code to update some of them correctly , but still it was sweet, and I felt free. I didn't mind getting clubbed by a huge giant early on - I still managed to sneak by and then run.

[Sedrefilos]

Even WoW was better without the quest markers

[rjshae]

What I don't like having to do is consult the web in order to locate a character mentioned in a journal entry that I'd already met once... somewhere, a few weeks ago in RL time. At least give me a mouse-over hint.

[smjjames]

PoE didn't have quest markers, so, we can safely say that Deadfire won't have them. I like the more subtle cue of an NPC saying something since you can just ignore it.

[Katarack21]

PoE didn't have quest markers, so, we can safely say that Deadfire won't have them. I like the more subtle cue of an NPC saying something since you can just ignore it.

I don't like that subtle clue, since you can easily miss it. I like having quest markers.

[injurai]

I like a sprinkling of subtle and coy quests/opportunities. But generally I think the key is not so much whether to quest cues are subtle or not, rather that you have to do some thinking to get at their meaning. Little logic or word puzzles, where it's not so much about catching obscure details but putting two things together. Descriptions of places with noticeable landmarks are better ways for locate places of interest, rather than escaping out of in-world content in favor of mechanic handholds and billboards.

[Trogdor]

Adding some sort of filter function to the quest log would be nice, based on location/region. In Pillars II it could be linked to a particular Island or area within a larger island.

 

EDIT: Locations would be based on what your character knows. If the quest location is unknown.. it would be placed under unknown. As you uncover more information, the quest could be moved to a location.

Edited November 11, 2017 by Trogdor

[Osvir]

 

In-dialogue notebook/journal.

Edited November 13, 2017 by Osvir