Talking to NPCs

[skaldinho]

The system of talking is terrible. Yes, it is good idea, but it isnt ready. For example - i am doing "get grimal out of retirement" quest, i have to tell grimal's son, that his father wont join sunshine squadron again. So i tell "Grimal stays in retirement" - it wasnt working, than i tried "Grimal will not join sunshine squadron" - and again it wasnt working. I tried many versions (i am trying it for two days), but i cant find right phrase  . I think, that you should add more possibilities to this system. => i want to do quests, but i cant. Oh and one question - what damn i have to say to Raerul!!!

[Idoru]

Yep, this has been said about  a hundred times before. The NPC dialogue isnt great. It often is very hard to come up with the correct phrases.

But, no one will tell you the correct phrases on these forums. They are classed as spoilers, infact, some would consider some parts of your post a spoiler. Ask in game for help and im sure if someone knows they will tell you.

[Nurahk]

Note:

Complaint Department

Not

Venting House

A complaint should include alternatives, feasible ways to improve, intelligent questions and the like.  Otherwise, I imagine this forum will quickly become the laughing stock of the Dev Department.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

[ThomPhoenix]

I'm sure there's someone out there who knows where the mistake in your sentence is, you just have to find them

[Garon]

A complaint should include alternatives, feasible ways to improve, intelligent questions and the like.  Otherwise, I imagine this forum will quickly become the laughing stock of the Dev Department.

It's not already?

I suggest a larger dictionary with numerous synonyms for the NPCs, so that when you ask something it will change it into what needs to be said if it somewhat resembles what should be said.  And a thing that lets it remove those "unnecessary words" itself, without humans having to.

Easier said then done, though.  But I thought I might as well randomly suggest something to prevent this from going further downhill.

[Zan]

Actually I noticed the NPC communications improving enormously. I'm managing to complete more and more quests without even saying a wrong sentence. It just takes some experience to learn which are the 'magic sentences' but as soon as you know those you can practically finish each quest. Also the parts where the questgivers explain themselves clearly are a great help in solving quests.

Though I have to admit there are still one or two quests I can't seem to solve, this example included. Maybe it would have been better to report this specific quest on the bugtracker or to a GM so they can make it easier to find the right phrase.

[Gharan]

I agree with Zan, i've done ALOT of quests very recently including the one you refer to in your post and have been able to complete all of them. Fair enough the NPC's only accept certain phrases and now and again you can spend an hour giving the right phrase but who said quests are suppose to be easy? And for a system that's the same system that ran only 6 quests and now is closing in on 100 i'd say it ain't doing too bad bug wise. The only pet hate I have is all the running involved and the fact only one or two phrases work, but i'm sure even the devs want to see this improved on. You just have to remember this is a work in progress and that most of these quests have only been added recently so there will be problems.

Keep up the good work devs. 

[Shangreloo]

I agree with Zan, i've done ALOT of quests very recently including the one you refer to in your post and have been able to complete all of them. Fair enough the NPC's only accept certain phrases and now and again you can spend an hour giving the right phrase but who said quests are suppose to be easy?

Quests should not be easy, but communicating withan NPC should not be the most difficult part of the quest. The frustrating part of a quest, and the part that requires thought, should be the puzzle.. not communicating with NPC's.

To refer to an exact phrase one needs to say to an NPC  as a "spoiler" is sort of silly if the player has already solved the puzzle and only needs to speak with an NPC to complete the quest. A spolier is something along the lines of: "Take the apple and feed it to the tefusang, then kill the teffie and gut it. After you gut it, loot the stomach, cut it open, and ..voila!.. applesauce." Telling a person the exact phrase to use with the cook to get the apple is not a spoiler -- the person has already figured out who to get the apple from. "Give me an apple." should work. "I need an apple." should work. "Do you have an apple?." should work. "Can I have an apple?" should work. And so should any other similar variations.

Also, not all quests seem to be working for all players. Because one person has completed a quest doesn't mean that everyone will be able to. I tried to do one quest a couple days ago, got to the last step in which all I had to do was return to an NPC with a message. The NPC didn't understand what I was saying. I asked a person I know who had completed it, and he told me exactly what to say to the NPC ..no luck. The other person even double checked his logs to make sure he was telling me the correct phrase, he was, but the quest would not work for me. To say "I know it works because I did it" doesn't take into account that not everything in the game always works the way it's supposed to work.  I think "alpha" is the phrase used.

[Jeraphon]

Actually I noticed the NPC communications improving enormously.

Why thank you. 

Best advice: when in doubt, go back and check your logs and look for phrases. No, it's not always obvious, but most of the time it is.

[bilbous]

Also often if you are requested to provide several items you need to hand them over one at a time.

[Drtungbo]

Talking system with fixed phrases is really bad and not professional for DEV.
As I guess, when player talking with NPCs then on the server side what player talk will go through "checking process", if the phrase is match - it means you say "correct phrase". This system is inflexible and makes people like solving quest really stress. Not only that, people not very good in English almost can't do this. And almost "correct phrases" is in the form "about ...", it's inflexible, not fun and not like Role playing at all.
My job is DEV, so I know how to make talking system more flexible: just let what player talk to NPCs go through "filtering process" before "checking process". DEVs can create a dictionary which contains words suitable for each quest. For example: to get a bottle of tannin you have to talk to Rayla exactly is "about tannin" or she can't understand, how about "I need a bottle of tannin" ---> this phrase is correct, really is Role play but it won't work. With "filtering process", everything come out with two example phrases above will only be "tannin" and both of them will work.
If you say filtering process will slow down your server, you totally wrong. Why? Because time for players talking with NPCs about quest is very short, almost no effect with all game system. And when "filtering process" is active, they only have to talk to NPCs several times, only takes several seconds, not hours now, reduce a lot of work for "checking process".

Sorry, my English is not very good, too 

[drah]

Ugh.. this thing again...

Well, they should just make it more flexible... literally just requiring a keyword or two and a state.

If someone is doing a quest for 'X' and are sent to 'Y' and asked to get item 'Z'... but NOT told to use a specific phrase... they should not need to guess exactly "X sent me" or specifically... "X needs Z".

anything containing:

"X" ... "sent"
"need" ... "Z"
"have" ... "Z"
"X" ... "Z"
"Z" ... "X"

should be valid.

If this could be applied to the system easily it would alleviate the problem many players have with the NPC dialog system.  I know it would allow grammatically incorrect phrases... but even that would be a vast improvement over the guess-the-exact-phrase frustration that many suffer.