Quest Step-Ladder

[Suno_Regin]

I've heavily gotten into questing since I started playing again, I love how they're setup and how they progress, but there are so many that have been bugged, I think this idea might really come in handy.

Alright, somewhere in the quest description, we need something I'm calling the "step-ladder". This would be a list of how many steps you've completed in a quest, above the list being the quest's name. Say you're on step 2, and it bugs on that part...if you click back on step 1, you can go back and redo that step in the quest, the items you gave to the NPC before the quest bugging being restored back to your invintory upon doing so. If it bugs on step 1, you can click the quest's name and it will "reset" the quest, making it possible to either read missed text, or simply give it a nudge so it'll take the correct answer you've been trying to give it. I think this would end a lot of problems people have been having with quests (I know it definately would me), and speed up the testing process for quests by a pretty fair amount.

[Jeraphon]

Sounds okay. How are the quests "bugged" exactly though? Are you referring to how they break during a crash?

[Suno_Regin]

I'm referring to how, take Gregori's unreadable page, for example...I gave him the page, and the correct phrase I'm supposed to tell him after that doesn't work, he just says something like, "I don't understand you"...therefore, resetting the step, would return my page, allow me to give it to him again, and retry it...the step-ladder sort of refreshes the quest so that I don't have to make an alt and completely redo the quest to get another page.

I've had a similar bug like this with many quests, another example is Emporium Raid, and Kilas' Test of Knowledge...resetting the quest with the step-ladder would help a ton.

[Duraza]

the step-ladder sort of refreshes the quest so that I don't have to make an alt and completely redo the quest to get another page.

Just make an alt like everyone else 

I actually think this would be one way that whole quest problem could be fixed. However there has to be a way that the last step isn't refreshable. If it is one can get the quest reward over and over again by refreshing and doing nothing but possibly giving the NCP an item and saving a special phrase. In other words make sure that once the quest has been completed you can't refresh. Its pretty obvious but I just thought I'd say it anyways 

[Suno_Regin]

The last step won't be refreshable, because in order to get the reward you have to finish it...by that time, the quest is out of your log.

Edit: I'll rephrase that...the last step is refreshable, but you can't keep getting the reward because the quest is already out of your log by the time you get the reward, it'd be impossible to refresh by then.

[bilbous]

Well to put it another way you would want the ladder only to be present in the unfinished quest pane and not once it has been moved to the completed quest page. It may be that a buggy quest will have to remain unsuccessfully complete -- finished but failed -- but that should be acceptable in a test environment. I would suggest that further to the original idea all "resets" are logged to a file particular to the quest to aid in debugging. It would indicate which quests were problematic, good ones would have small or no log and broken logs would have significantly larger files. As well it will inform the dev team who might be exploiting bugs that might have unwanted effects. Finally I would suggest that the "reset" be a limited number of times regardless of the final outcome. If you are having a particular problem you might be able to work with a developer who could possibly extend the default limitation but that would by no means be guaranteed to all players.

[khoridor]

I just would like to:
1) Keep that idea fresh
2) Know if it has a chance to be implemented.

It's the best wish I've ever read.
If it's done, I'll definitely play PlaneShift again.

Cheers.

[Garris Shrike]

this would be GREAT.
I've had that problem with Garris :/

also, I can't seem to find any of the handy sites PSers have made for quest help....

[Rizin]

I worry that the situation described in the initial posts leave room for exploits. We do have something in the works for the future that may be similiar enough to this thought process to fulfill this wish. Please do not ask for an ETA, as I cannot give one. I can say it's been discussed and agreed on though so now we just need dev-power and dev-time.

On a secondary note, we have made advances in the ability to keep players from losing their progress (giving items to npc's etc) and a lot of this can be seen in the newer quests. However, some of the older quests do still have flaws that need to be updated (which we are working on). What you can do, if you run into an issue where the quest is to blame, is find me on IRC - I can help in the cases where old code causes the issue. By doing this you help move quests to the top of the stack for updating as well.

Keep the good ideas flowing and let me take this opportunity to shamelessly recruit.

[khoridor]

I have noticed that some of my quests have been regressed indeed. At least those that lead to conflicting dialogs. That's really great. I'll try later to see if lost objects can be re-obtained as well.
Thanks a lot guys. A lot.
Back on tracks...

[Tontow]

I worry that the situation described in the initial posts leave room for exploits. We do have something in the works for the future that may be similiar enough to this thought process to fulfill this wish. Please do not ask for an ETA, as I cannot give one. I can say it's been discussed and agreed on though so now we just need dev-power and dev-time.

Some suggestions

- You can only go back one step

- If you got a reward, it is given back (should quest items be given back?).  You get back what you gave the NPC.  I don't know if there is a flag that is set after items and rewards are exchanged, if there is the take back should be based on that flag.  If you don't have the items, you don’t repeat it; this is to prevent getting 2x reward.

- Some quests only give you one chance to answer certain steps, you cannot redo these steps without the help of a GM to deal with a quest bug.

[Rizin]

I worry that the situation described in the initial posts leave room for exploits. We do have something in the works for the future that may be similiar enough to this thought process to fulfill this wish. Please do not ask for an ETA, as I cannot give one. I can say it's been discussed and agreed on though so now we just need dev-power and dev-time.

Some suggestions

- You can only go back one step

- If you got a reward, it is given back (should quest items be given back?).  You get back what you gave the NPC.  I don't know if there is a flag that is set after items and rewards are exchanged, if there is the take back should be based on that flag.  If you don't have the items, you don’t repeat it; this is to prevent getting 2x reward.

- Some quests only give you one chance to answer certain steps, you cannot redo these steps without the help of a GM to deal with a quest bug.

Sort of combining your first and second bullet, plausible, but again concerning. Even going back one step, what if that step gave an item, and the item was lost so there's no item to give back? or what if it goes back to a step where an important decision was made, the person could opt to take an alternate path.

Again, I'm not saying it's a bad idea, it would just need a lot of solid work.

For the last bullet, this is already something that exists regarding the ability to not redo steps.