PlaneShift

Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:12:33 am

Title: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:12:33 am: Psychotria raises a valid point in his PS review about the inability to find a quest for someone who skips the tutorial. There needs to be some way to indicate that an NPC has a quest. In the past things like a little indicator over the head was sorta frowned on as immersion breaking, but something is needed.

My first inclination would be that NPCs with quests would greet passing players that can do quests for them perhaps even adding in a special quest emote text. However, after thinking about it, a one size fits all greet probably won't work for every NPC. After all, how many crooks are going to wave down players to tell them about their probably illegal schemes?

If quest availability can be indicated with emotes, perhaps it will work if they are broken into categories. I was thinking along the lines of military, civilian, criminal, monster, etc. So that NPCs don't need individual emotes but that they still have ones that fit.

What do you think?
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: MishkaL1138 on December 13, 2016, 04:38:44 am: I'm all for a huge, 3D, golden, shiny, bouncing, rotating exclamation sign on top of Harnquist's head. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make and implement KAs that pop up whenever you come too close? Probably not that hard, but very time consuming. Take into account there are about 500 quests in PS, one KA per quest... It ought to be tiresome.

So, maybe a <Quest Available> below the NPC name could be PS's way of showing that. Like the guild tag, it'd be just as OOC as a label dangling from your name indicating your guild. But that's none of my business.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:52:45 am: Ah yes, you reminded me of something I should have added above. The emote would need a lockout timer, so the NPCs aren't spamming a player constantly.

However, I'm not talking about something to attach to each quest. I'm thinking of a standard, categorized "I have a quest" emote that triggers if the NPC doesn't give the "They don't have a quest for you" message. What I am talking about is something aside from tracking which quest is available. Further, it should be much easier to add in a new emote than new art based indicator. PS doesn't have a dedicated Art Dev right now.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Rigwyn on December 13, 2016, 05:34:45 am: I propose a she-bang: #!

Why?
1. It's original ;D
2. It's a Unix thing ( one if the nice/unique things about PS is you can run it on Linux or Unix )
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Emaline on December 13, 2016, 08:48:00 am: Might be annoying for those that don't like to quest however to have their NPC tab always flashing with I have quest for you when they walk by an NPC. I guess I just don't fully understand why it's so hard to click on the NPC and the lips to see if they have a quest or not.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Sirial on December 13, 2016, 10:41:58 am: Quote from: Emaline on December 13, 2016, 08:48:00 am
Might be annoying for those that don't like to quest however to have their NPC tab always flashing with I have quest for you when they walk by an NPC. I guess I just don't fully understand why it's so hard to click on the NPC and the lips to see if they have a quest or not.

Is very annoying yes.
A lot of NPCs (Mostly guards that already have a proximity phrase) do change their KA to say something that hints to them having a quest available.
Regarding the NPC tab being littered by NPCs asking for help it could be a good having the lockout and maybe also a shorter range for the KA to trigger.
Perhaps implementing more gossips from key-NPCs like bartenders might solve this reducing the need for KAs.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Venalan on December 13, 2016, 11:36:00 am: Adding a proximity based greeting when an npc has a quest available would be possible with the current code base. But it would have to be done quest-by-quest npc-by-npc as the server has no 'HasQuest' flag we can check for so can not have a generic catch-all. Which means me adding in hundreds of them which would take ages.... (and I'd rather not).

Proximity triggers also do not trigger each time a player is in range of them. The server has to check the position of every character and if it is in range of a proximity trigger it triggers it, to stop this from using up 100% of the server CPU there is what I understand to be list of KAs + people which are allowed to trigger a KA. so only a subset of possible people and KAs can be triggered.

A few updates ago I added in support for asking bar keeps about gossip. They have logic checks for all quests in that city (for which it makes sense they might know about) and if you have a quest(s) you can start in the city the NPC picks one of them and hints you towards it.

The on screen text can easily be changed. I'll look at it.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:06:12 pm: Alright, I wasn't really sure how Allelia's gossip quests really worked. Maybe a gold man window directing players to check the nearest tavern if they wish to quest may help.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Ravna on December 13, 2016, 04:27:14 pm: I believe the "golden man" is part of the tutorial, which means it would (given the current settings) only appear on a players first character. Changing this to appear on other character would better fit in the other discussion topic.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 13, 2016, 04:33:25 pm: I'm pretty sure the gold man predates the tutorial but there's nothing to say that he wasn't changed over time.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Eonwind on December 13, 2016, 06:19:18 pm: Quote from: Venalan on December 13, 2016, 11:36:00 am
A few updates ago I added in support for asking bar keeps about gossip. They have logic checks for all quests in that city (for which it makes sense they might know about) and if you have a quest(s) you can start in the city the NPC picks one of them and hints you towards it.

We could do the same with the main NPC belonging to a faction (smiths, magic circles, etc.): if there is quest available for their faction they could ask for help (at least ofr relevant quests).

Also we could add a golden man to the barkeepers (proximity KA) so the players are informed about this very useful gossip feature.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Venalan on December 13, 2016, 06:24:21 pm: I'm stealing that idea for barkeeps proximity gold man popup and I'm going to add it.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Venalan on December 13, 2016, 11:44:49 pm: I implemented eonwind's idea. There will now be a one time gold man pop-up explaining the ability to get pointers the first time you approach any tavern (assuming the proximity trigger triggers) in the next update.

We've also made it so all new characters spawn in the tutorial. However old returning characters will still spawn w/e they logged out no matter how long ago.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 14, 2016, 12:27:55 am: Thanks Venalan.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Venalan on December 14, 2016, 10:07:24 pm: So the server message is currently - "This NPC has no quest for you, but might have other things to say."

Two new ones could be,

"This NPC has no available quests. You could try talking to them with the free text box." Could make this green as well

"This NPC has no available quests. Why not try asking at the nearest tavern for hints for people to help?" Make this green, and would also require us to be 100% sure barkeepers will tell players about open quests.

I cant really think of anything better right this second, if anyone has suggestions....
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 14, 2016, 10:34:39 pm: Here's some suggestions.

"This NPC has no quests for you right now. Try asking a local barkeeper for help."

"This NPC has no quests for you right now. Perhaps you need to speak with someone else first."

"This NPC is not ready to talk to you right now. Try asking around at the local tavern."
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Ravna on December 14, 2016, 11:54:50 pm: Another possible option I thought I'd just put out here would be to just remove the message entirely.

It was originally there to avoid anyone talking (there was only the text input box) to an NPC for ages only to find there really is nothing the NPC has to say. Now, with the menu's and the text balloons, any quests an NPC has should be right up there on your screen, so maybe it doesn't really add so much anymore to have a message saying "there are no quests". Maybe it's just time to retire that message completely. :)
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 15, 2016, 12:52:29 am: I disagree. Messages saying why the thing you are trying to do doesn't work is a staple of game design. Something needs to be there.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Rigwyn on December 15, 2016, 01:43:59 am: It could be done by just having the NPC reply via chat bubble and text box in a natural way. ie. have a set of saved responses for each npc. It would satisfy the need to let the user know what's wrong without "shouting" at them with huge red letters.

THIS NPC HAS NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU, NOOB !

vs.

"Have you finished doing what I asked?"

or

"I'm as bored as you. I don't need anything right now, thanks."
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 15, 2016, 02:36:08 am: That would be nice but would too much work for the size of the team. That would require each NPC to have a personalized response.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: LigH on December 15, 2016, 08:58:40 am: I wonder if it would be suitable for an NPC to address a player character verbally when passing by. Like soliloquizing about some deeds they have scheduled and could hardly manage alone. There would not even be a need to mention a player char's name in public chat, but instead just displaying a casual sentence in this character's NPC chat, if that is possible (because it would require to check if this character has not already solved all available quests).

Just brief thoughts like Harnquist ranting that "working all day makes me hungry" or "this delivery is overdue". Just ambiguous enough to raise interest without telling half the quest in advance.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Ravna on December 15, 2016, 07:12:18 pm: Well, what Rigwyn suggests could perhaps be done if it can be 1 generic text to be used by all NPCs instead of the current big red text (an NPC would then just have a text bubble saying "NPC has no quests at this time" or something similar).
While Ligh's suggestion is certainly nice, it would require a whole host of different messages (which we do not have), and in addition, the potential for getting spammy is certainly there. So that one would probably not be viable to implement right now.
Title: Re: Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion
Post by: Illysia on December 15, 2016, 07:51:35 pm: If the text across the screen is bothersome to people maybe the text can be isolated to the system messages, although I do believe a gentler looking message on the screen would be better as not everyone will know to look for a system message.