Quests aren't very fun

[Vengeance]

Having worked a lot on the quest system in PS and in the NPC dialog system that underlies questing, the numerous and steady complaints about how our quests suck are particularly noticeable to me.  The whole team has noticed the complaints of course, and we have put a ton of work over the years into adding alternative phrasings, making the dialog filtering smarter, etc. etc.

But the simple fact is that questing is still a guessing game of endless variations of "obvious" word combinations, or a quickie set of quest walkthroughs on private guild websites as players try to route around the problems.

That's all about to change in the next version of PS.

Since I came back to PS in October, I've been working almost the whole time on a new way of doing NPC dialog and quests in particular.  Here are some particulars:

a) Double-click on an npc to talk to him.
b) If he has any quest-related dialog for you, a menu of things you can say to him will popup.  No cheat websites required.
c) Select the thing you want to say with your keyboard or double-click it.
d) The "right" phrase gets sent on the first try, every time, to the npc.  No more endless guesswork.
e) The NPC will respond back.  Some NPCs will have audio voicing as part of their dialog, so you will see AND hear the NPC talking.
f) If the popup menu option was to give the NPC something or a combination of things, selecting that option will make you give the right things, every time, to the NPC.
g) If there is more dialog, you may get another popup automatically, or you may need to double-click the NPC again to get the next menu.
h) If the NPC asks you for a secret, a password or a riddle, the menu item may popup a box for you to type your answer in.

I'm intending to make a video of this experience shortly, so everyone can see how it will work.  In the meantime, rest assured that quests are about to get more interesting, less frustrating and more immersive.  I am very optimistic that these changes will allow thousands more new PS players to enjoy the years of effort that Settings has put into quests much more deeply and enjoyably.

Coming soon...  :-)

[Oomi]

I've seen (from afar) the work that Vengeance has been putting into this, and I am impressed and pleased. I hope everyone will enjoy the results as much as I have enjoyed watching this concept come together. This development has given me many more options that help flesh out quests. It is a great tool to make them feel less rote and more real. I firmly believe that questing will only be enhanced by this development. Thank you, Venge.

[player_of_games]

It sounds very professional.

I was thinking that, ah such a shame, no more ridiculously hard to get phrase-guessing
and then that feeling when you get it right...

Actually, what may make it so rewarding to guess right at the moment, is probably the frustration
of trying for a long time beforehand. In other words the relative difference makes it feel so special.

Typing sentences yourself has a great charm. If your are an English native speaker or pretty proficient
at the language. And even then for some of us it may just be tedious. So yes, change happens.

I wager questing will on the whole be more fluid, less tedious and make playing more enjoyable.
After all there will be less time consumed by interacting only with console. Thank you!

[Nibbor]

I've been waiting for this to happen vor a while now. This can definitely improve the entire questing-experience.

[Rennaj]

 Having done a large number of quests in my time, I feel this might be a step backwards. Yes it was frustrating to figure out what to say, but a pop up with answer there sounds like all other games, hard work done for you, all you have to do now is find the right NPC to talk to.
  A suggestion to make it a bit harder is one go at answer with a cool down time of getting quest again, possible 1 month. also similar choices, by that I mean all possible choices to be a plausible answer.
 Having said that, I hope I am wrong and it works out, as I agree with it being too hard at times to guess the right phrase.

P.S. Still think my Idea of trigger words is way to go, as long as the word is in what ever you say to NPC it will respond.
Example
 A. The BALL is RED.
 B. The colour of BALL is RED.
 C. It is a RED BALL.
 D. It's a RED BALL.

[Minks]

Voices 

but...

Aside from the bad phrase parsing, I actually like using my brain in NPC dialogue and talking to them like "real" people. 

[Lanarel]

P.S. Still think my Idea of trigger words is way to go, as long as the word is in what ever you say to NPC it will respond.
Example
 A. The BALL is RED.
 B. The colour of BALL is RED.
 C. It is a RED BALL.
 D. It's a RED BALL.

That is how it is working now. Or it is not, because it is never as simple as your example
In this case, the required answer would be "red ball". Someone might answer: "Hi, I think it is a ruby ball". This would first be parsed, replacing words with a standard synonym, removing general words (like it, is, a), into for example "Greetings think red ball". This then is compared to the required keywords, and accepted as correct. Yes, it is that good. Answers may even have more optional keywords, added when someone complained an obvious thing did not work, so "sphere, blood" may also work. However, all players together can guess more correct answers than the settings team and a thesaurus can predict, and that is why it sometimes gets annoying.
I will miss the guessing game. However, I also already saw a working example of the menus (anyone can try in svn), and it is really fun. Don't believe Oomi when she says she watched this from afar
Vengeance in his google talk said something like: 'I can code in an hour what brings months of work to the settings people". I think this is a good example. Except that Venge spend more than a few hours on this, and it may be even more than months of work for the settings team to make all quests work with the new system. And maybe for those of us who liked to guess, some really difficult riddles could be added?

[khoridor]

The added ergonomy will not hurt, on the contrary.
Now, the 2 thinks I like about the PS dialog system is that:
- you can have proper riddles
- you can say something wrong, or irrelevant.
Obviously, you took care of keeping an input box for riddles, so that's the major good thing.
As for the second part, having preset answers doesn't stop quests from offering wrong answers, leading to quest failures. For example, a list of colours when you have to name one.
All in all, it may be more work for the Setting to port existing quests, but it will certainly be less work for future quests and dialogs implementations.
And I'll especially appreciate the double-clicking, even more so if a box automatically closes when a dialog is over.

[Nykolai Raskaniov]

Excellent news! Will this be backward compatible with the old version? Can we toggle it on/off?

That way folks can choose which quest mode they would like to use.

[Mordraugion]

Unfortunately its not backward compatible, as we have to cut the triggers to just one and every menu item now requires a response to be composed and not the generic "blithering mud dobbler" etc.

[Vengeance]

On a side note to Lanarel's note, it took me and Xordan about a week to get quest voicing working.  It's going to take Settings years to voice the hundreds of pages of dialog that now can be voiced.  :-)

[Dajoji]

Sweet. Let's start casting voices, hehe. Oh! I know, get Patrick Stewart.

[Vannaka]

Can I be a voice!

[Nykolai Raskaniov]

I think anyone can.  Just apply, and provide a sample.

[enderandrew]

I intend to offer some voice work myself.  Time to bust out the community theater skills.

I have enjoyed the concepts behind quests, but I find myself frustrated when I can't come up with EXACTLY the right phrase.  I think most players will enjoy these new features.

I assume quest dialog options will still check for flags, so I can't give the solution phrase to someone, until I have gotten the requisite information from another NPC first.

I also assume that riddles won't be pop-up answers either.  I think there are a few cases like this when making the user enter text is still necessary.

And this is just my two tria, but even with the frustration of fighting with the parser at times, I find quests to be the most enjoyable aspect of gameplay so far.