PlaneShift
Gameplay => Newbie Help (Start Here) => Topic started by: Chejop Kejak on February 22, 2007, 07:27:00 pm
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Hi there folks!
First of all, I want to congratulate the game designers for assimbling such original world in a computer game. I play pen-and-paper RPG since I'm 9 (I'm 26 now) and rarely saw something breaking theTolkien-like fantasy taboo in a functional and innovative way like PlaneShift (I specially loved the world's history).
But here I am in my thrid (almost non-stoping) day of playing beng tempted to unistall it. Why? The game is frequently testing his player's patience. Yes, I know the game is pre-alpha and we are all playtesters, the graphics bugs don't bother me, nor the untrainable skills, but the "enter your speech to NPC here" it's totally unfunctional to newbies and foreign playes (like me). Discovering the way to assemble a sentence for finishing a quest is a nightmare, specially for someone whose grammatical english is flawed. There's a lot of posts in the foruns asking for the right way to ask a NPC for something, most of them are ansewerd by a "ask in game". I asked a lot in the game, but most of the time people just ignore me, even when I roleplay those questions (I try talking OOC only when helping others, never when asking for help).
My suggestion is: try to broaden you point of view to gain more players. My country, Brazil, is the 4th country in nunmber of MMORPG players.and the second place (or first, the fonts diverge) speaks cantonese/mandarim. I know the official language of the game is english (and of the internet, comercial world, etc), but please, make it simplier for us from the "outside world".
By the way, where are the advisors? Every time I ask for help nobody answers me (even with adviors online).
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Yeah, quests and talking to NPCs are a big problem in PS. Possibly THE most frustrating thing about it. You'll get used to it after a while. I find offering a monetary reward for information can help get you answers faster, if you have the funds...
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Yeah, quests and talking to NPCs are a big problem in PS. Possibly THE most frustrating thing about it. You'll get used to it after a while. I find offering a monetary reward for information can help get you answers faster, if you have the funds...
Possibly?
Its the most annoying aspect of the game, after playing for nearly a year I have completed very few of the available quests, even if I have access to all the guides, in the main its not worth the trouble. when there is a decent reward, a glyph for example, il try and do the quest on my own, then after a couple of hours il look for guides. Asking ingame IC is just stupid, can you imagine someone wanting 2 apples about a million times to different players realistic? thats an obvious example but its true, also, how can a certain NPC have so many energy glyphs that he wants the same thing to get and the give away the glyph.
The only advice I could give to foriegn players is to join a guild that provides spoilers if you want them, other than that someone who has poor grammar in english will never figure out the key phrase.
How about making the quests respond to a variety of different and occassionally grammatically incorrect phrases
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The only advice I could give to foriegn players is to join a guild that provides spoilers if you want them, other than that someone who has poor grammar in english will never figure out the key phrase.
That's some pretty good advice. Specifically joining one of the many guilds dedicated to helping newbies is always beneficial.
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True, it's always useful to have some guildmates around when you're playing "guess the right sentence".
It makes it not so bad.
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True, it's always useful to have some guildmates around when you're playing "guess the right sentence".
It makes it not so bad.
My advice, don't waste time with quests. Most of them only offer useless rewards and aren't fullfilling at all, lacking anything that really is interesting. And btw the winch is pretty empty to waste your time learning the language spoken by the NPCs: "Dumbenglish".
The best hope are the Community-made events or some GM events.
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Way to insult our hard-working Settings team ;)
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Way to insult our hard-working Settings team ;)
I think they realise they suck at this point :P
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Karyuu's post also applies to your post, emeraldfool.
Normally you're pretty funny, but recently you've become offensive too. Great progress.
And for your information, the current limitations in the quest system are caused by limitations in the code.
The Settings team doesn't have anything to do with it. The settings team is great.
Let me declare hereby that I love the quests, despite the sentences being hard sometimes.
Yes, I said LOVE!
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I think they realise they suck at this point :P
You've become no better than the rabble of n00bie complainers we are here to belittle.
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Ahem, I was being sarcastic.
That was my way of saying "People are always complaining about quests. The Settings team are no doubt used to it by now."
I have nothing against the Settings team. In fact, I've been seriously considering joining the Settings team, just to help out with writing NPC scripts and the like...
But I'm not going to lie, and say I currently enjoy the quests in-game, when I very much don't. And I don't think anyone should be insulted just because I point out flaws in their work. The NPC communication system needs work, and the quests could use better, more interesting backstories than just "Go do this 'cause I'm too lazy to do it myself".
And I was never inoffensive :P
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Way to insult our hard-working Settings team ;)
Not an insult, a straight and honest point of view. I guess the Settings team probably already have an idea on an epic-range and lenght quest but it isn't appliable on Planeshift current stage :( . It would be great having quests as interesting as the ones found in great CRPGs like Planescape Torment. Still there's something good, some of the GM Events were quite interesting ;).
The best hope are the Community-made events or some GM events.
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Guys, I'm not complaining about the quests. I love them, they keep the scenario alive, not something like "kill-loot-sell" that we see in so many Diablo-like games that their producers insist in calling CRPG just because you wield a sword. PlaneShift is not the first MMORPG I tried (played about 4 years of various MUDs before even UO turned into a "graphical mud" - yeah, I know, my English still sucks) and I think it is the one with the most vivid and interesting quests I ever saw. It's not something like "frag 20 bears and bring me the pelts"; here we see families clashing, lost loves, traditions changing, self-sacrifice...
It's way easyer to gain some PP by killing Rogues and diggin' gold, but _it's no fun_! (BTW, I think the XP reward for quests an incentive to quit doing them and start "making real Trias/XP").
There's a lot of toppics in the forum complaining about the system NPC dialogues, I'm not here for that. I'm here asking you to do an better advertising of your best product:a rich scenario full of possibilities. And to do it, you have to "sell" it (reach the players) in a good package (show how doing quests can be fun), have a good distribution (turining the quests into something reachable, accessible) and bring so much satisfaction with it that the client (players) that it even don't think in other products (raising reward for completing a quest, and maybe lowering it for "monster-killing").
By the way, please dont fight each other in the foruns, specially here in the "help the newbies" section. When we "n00bs" (sic) come here for advice from experienced players, we mirror on your words in the future posts and actions in game. That's no the kind of players we _all_ want for PlaneShift, or any other game.
Thanks for your help folks :thumbup:
PS: How about a sticky "foreign-language" thread (or even a section) in a forum to we foreigners help each other in our own language?
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PS: How about a sticky "foreign-language" thread (or even a section) in a forum to we foreigners help each other in our own language?
We still have to moderate the forum, and our moderators are best fluent in English :} Plus we do not want to alienate anyone from any part of the forum based on language. There is a separate forum for French players, I believe, and another for German players (there should be links on the main website, under Community --> Other Languages). The official PlaneShift forum is for the English language, however.
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Way to insult our hard-working Settings team ;)
Not an insult, a straight and honest point of view. I guess the Settings team probably already have an idea on an epic-range and lenght quest but it isn't appliable on Planeshift current stage :( .
I will try to explain the thing ThomPhoenix tried to explain again.
- You should not blame the settings team. They only design the quests and implement them as well as they can. And I personally think they are doing a terrific job. \\o//The many new quests are well thought through, and often quite funny. The settings team has to use the system that is coded, which does not allow for automatically recognizing that "a miniature stature of that dwarf" is not the same as "statue". In the new quests they try to give you a good idea what to say, for example "tell him I sent you" or "give her this letter".
- It would not be nice to blame the code team either, since they also have to solve all other problems, and have to make priorities. Would you rather not be able to craft, loose parts of your inventory all the time, crash on even more than a few spells? :)
- It is not fair to blame the players for not being able to understand what to say either. I often try dozens of ways to say the same thing, offering objects in trade in different order.
- If you want to blame someone, blame the testers. I prefer to say you are player first, tester second. Meaning that it is OK to want everything to work, but if it doesn't, don't complain but do something about it. If you check the bugtracker (log in, click on the 2000+ number on the right in the table, click on sort by date twice to have the latest changes on top) you will see that a lot of bugs related to quests have been fixed very recently. If you find something that is not working, or better find out what you DO need to say after trying for a long time, with suggestions of things that would be easier to guess, make a bugreport. Only if the report would be too much of a spoiler, make a petition with the spoiling part.
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Yeah I know what you mean. I love this game, but hate how you have to talk to NPC's... I mean my grammar sucks beyond words so I try to keep away from quests and just level my guy lol.
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It's not so bad once you get used to it.
As far as non-english speakers... sorry, but PS isn't for you. A major component of the game is talking with the characters controlled by other players. If you don't speak english, then you can't participate in that and thus don't belong.
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Typical phrases to use:
"can i help you"
"about [keyword]"
"[npc] sent me"
"[npc-FULL-name] sent me"
"can i have [keyword]"
"[npc] needs [keyword]"
When those fail, just try the keyword on their own, try giving the object (if you have one) directly to the NPC you want to give it to.
Last but not least... if an NPC sends you to another NPC, keep an eye on what they say, sometimes they ask you to specifically say something to the next NPC (which then allows you to continue the quest)
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The only advice I could give to foriegn players is to join a guild that provides spoilers if you want them, other than that someone who has poor grammar in english will never figure out the key phrase.
I'd say that they might have a better chance then someone who tries to be completely grammatical as a native English speaker, since the NPCs usually don't like "unnecessary words" such as articles, "am", "are", sometimes verbs, oh, you know, all that stuff.
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I am very good at English. I have to admit the 'artificial' intelligence that the NPC's work on is completely flawed in the Role Play sense. They fail to understand simple English, so I would have to agree with Garon, a non-native English speaker would generally have better luck with finding the key Phrase-ology to activate key parts of quests.
For this reason, I tend to avoid the quests... for I just end up pulling out my hair. And I am rather attached to my hair.. I like my hair... it is long and silky... and... well... I am attached to it!
I think until they get a more 'interactive AI' they should present you with options to say and in what manner to the NPC and the success of your speach to them altered by your charisma...
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I think until they get a more 'interactive AI' they should present you with options to say and in what manner to the NPC and the success of your speach to them altered by your charisma...
Exactly!
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@ Zanzibar
I would just like to say that I dont think anyone is refering to people who speak no english, ive had a couple of run-ins with people who apparently speak no english and I think the biggest problem for them would actually be learning to play the game and actually getting to talk to people in open chat. People can speak english that is entirely understandable to a native english speaker even if their language isnt entirely grammatically correct. Th problem is that while it may be possible for a human english speaker to understand it is nearly impossible for an AI to understand these things. If you use the incorrect tense when communicating with an AI then it is very unlikely to understand you unless it has been speciffically given multiple versions of the same word to try and decifer what you are attempting to say.
Im no expert in the field, but I would suggest that whoever is responsible for the NPC AI take a look at some of the other AI chat bots on the market and see how they work out what you are saying and coe up with a response. They are generally quite simple entities run from text files containing various conversation fragments. This may not help non-native english speakers too much but it would make the chat more realistic.
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I don't really want to debate the limitations of the NPC speech parser again; been there, done that.
However, just one thing I'd like to address:
"[npc] sent me"
"[npc-FULL-name] sent me"
This should be fixed. In most cases both the full name and the first name will work, in some just the first name, but there should no longer be any where only the full name works. If so, it's a bug and should be reported accordingly. Thanks, and enjoy questing.
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Yes, very disappointed too about the same and thinking strongly in uninstall the game. And I think it has nothing to do with my level of english as I have survived in my travels with no problems so far. Premade options would be easier to everybody, in despite if english is their mother language, I bet it would be easier even for the programmers of the game.
When in character, I can't help but think that NPC are retarded, and it makes no fun...
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Yes, very disappointed too about the same and thinking strongly in uninstall the game. And I think it has nothing to do with my level of english as I have survived in my travels with no problems so far. Premade options would be easier to everybody, in despite if english is their mother language, I bet it would be easier even for the programmers of the game.
When in character, I can't help but think that NPC are retarded, and it makes no fun...
I would give it some more time if I was you. The Devs have been very kind recently and added things like 'Tell Levrus I sent you' or 'Just ask him about carrots' at the end of all the stuff they say. I think things are signifigantly better than they were a while ago.
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I guess the Settings team probably already have an idea on an epic-range and lenght quest but it isn't appliable on Planeshift current stage :( .
::| I take it you have never spoken with a dwarf by the name of Lorytia? If your looking to do laps around Yliakum, that would be a good place to start. :D I don't want to imagine a quest more lengthy than that one.
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Giving away locations of quests? Shame on you :P
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I don't want to imagine a quest more lengthy than that one.
I do. But imagining quests is in my job description. ;)
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Possibly?
Its the most annoying aspect of the game, after playing for nearly a year I have completed very few of the available quests, even if I have access to all the guides, in the main its not worth the trouble. ......
Wait... do I understand this correctly? This game has been out for nearly a year and yet is still basically being beta tested? Or did I misunderstand that statement. Any clarification would be appreciated :)
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This game is a hobby project run entirely by volunteers in their free time :) Thus:
1) We have real lives and real jobs or education that often comes first,
2) Development is not as fast as it would be for a commercial game.
PlaneShift has been out in 3D form since 2002, I believe, but recently updates have been pushed to a release schedule of every two months, so we're getting content out faster and in a more organized manner. But considering that this is only a hobby for the members of the dev team, I think it's very impressive that so much has been created already, and of such quality.
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We are still grateful for all that we get though, well, most of us are, some still seem to love complaining about such things.
MorraKiree was shocked by the game being beta for a year, I wonder what they think now they know its 5 years :)
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In all truth the game will never be truely 'finished' and will always be in a testing sort of state. It's like asking a person when their stamp collection is complete. There are always new stamps to find and new ones made everyday. We don't have the traditional 'ok the game is finished and lets move on to the next one now" cycle.
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but there is always the version 1 target.
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We are still grateful for all that we get though, well, most of us are, some still seem to love complaining about such things.
MorraKiree was shocked by the game being beta for a year, I wonder what they think now they know its 5 years :)
lol! I am flabbergasted! :P It's a beautiful game and I will enjoy getting to know it better - but I was surprised that even after being out for all this time, in the character creation portion, half the species dont even have their own rendering. I don't expect a game like this to ever be truly finished - the fun is coming up with new and exciting content! I was excited when I read through the species list - what a deverse population! What a chance to chose an avatar that fits my play style! But I was dissapointed to find that most of the species (especially the females) were just (for now) look-a-like copies of another species.
But please don't get me wrong - I completely understand this is a free game and more of a hobby for the devs. I salute them for the hard work and dedication they have put in. :thumbup: I just hope the cake is cooked properly before the frosting and sprinkles go on!
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In all truth the game will never be truely 'finished' and will always be in a testing sort of state. It's like asking a person when their stamp collection is complete. There are always new stamps to find and new ones made everyday. We don't have the traditional 'ok the game is finished and lets move on to the next one now" cycle.
The problem isn't that the game isn't complete. Their problem is that the game feels like there are holes in it.