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Complaint Department / Re: bad memory = uncompletable quests
« on: August 25, 2008, 02:05:16 pm »
I don't know why anyone would think that a poor text parser interface would be enjoyable. It's lame and unintuitive. It isn't more advanced or clever in any way, quite the opposite actually. Some pompous "elitists" seem to think that an outdated interaction system somehow means it's "realistic" but that isn't the case at all. It's more of a newbie approach. After playing some text adventure and MUD games before and after solving their quests, it didn't make a text parser system any more appealing than a more intuitive dialogue-tree approach. And their key word/phrase database was a lot better than PlaneShift's. There is nothing "natural" in typing robotic phrases to dummy NPCs who do not understand you half the time because of their limited vocabulary. It's neither natural nor interesting.
Every NPC still has to be pre-programmed with a specific choice of trigger words/phrases and responses, so you are still making a choice by guessing. If you guess a pre-programmed choice (woopie!), you get a response. If you don't, there isn't anything amazing or interesting that happens. The only thing you get is some boring and irrelevant "Could you rephrase that?" line, which isn't a natural conversation. A dialogue-tree system affords much more natural dialogue choices instead of robotic phrases, and you know they'll work and always have a relevant response.
The point is you will never be able to pre-program every possible word or phrase combination for NPCs, especially not being a commercial team, so they will never sound natural but their "Could you rephrase that?" line will sure remind you of the fact that you're talking to a wooden lifeless dummy.
Also, instead of having to exit out or alt-tab out of the game to read through a boring quest log text file every time you need to remember what was said, some sort of in-game quest journal that automatically keeps a record of your dialogue would be better. Plus, a dialogue-tree system would simply start off from the last conversation you had with an NPC, giving you relevant choices.
Having said that, it seems that PlaneShift team would rather be stuck with an outdated and boring system than listen to player feedback.
Every NPC still has to be pre-programmed with a specific choice of trigger words/phrases and responses, so you are still making a choice by guessing. If you guess a pre-programmed choice (woopie!), you get a response. If you don't, there isn't anything amazing or interesting that happens. The only thing you get is some boring and irrelevant "Could you rephrase that?" line, which isn't a natural conversation. A dialogue-tree system affords much more natural dialogue choices instead of robotic phrases, and you know they'll work and always have a relevant response.
The point is you will never be able to pre-program every possible word or phrase combination for NPCs, especially not being a commercial team, so they will never sound natural but their "Could you rephrase that?" line will sure remind you of the fact that you're talking to a wooden lifeless dummy.
Also, instead of having to exit out or alt-tab out of the game to read through a boring quest log text file every time you need to remember what was said, some sort of in-game quest journal that automatically keeps a record of your dialogue would be better. Plus, a dialogue-tree system would simply start off from the last conversation you had with an NPC, giving you relevant choices.
Having said that, it seems that PlaneShift team would rather be stuck with an outdated and boring system than listen to player feedback.