Indicating Quest Availability Without Breaking Immersion

[Illysia]

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."

[Ravna]

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.

[Illysia]

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.

[Rigwyn]

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."

[Illysia]

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.

[LigH]

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.

[Ravna]

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.

[Illysia]

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.