Quest Descriptions

[Dralion1221]

In future versions there should be descriptions of what you did on the quest so far. I have a lot of quests that I can't complete because I don't remember what I'm supposed to do and I never write it down in the notepad it should be automatically be put in.

[Mordraugion]

did you try looking in your logs?

Windows: In the user home directory, usually in "Document and Setting\Username\Application Data\PlaneShift
Linux: ~/.PlaneShift
Mac OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/PlaneShift

[neko kyouran]

In the elder scrolls RPG series, Oblivion coming to mind, as you do a quest, in the little journal thing you get, it keeps track of all the conversations you have had with the npc's while working on the quest, as you have them.

It's simple idea.  Once the quest is obtained the entire storyline of the quest is put into the journal, but everything that your character hasn't "unlocked" remains hidden.  Course, since it's a single player game, you can cheat and unlock all the text bits right from the start, but that takes out all the fun of the game.

This overall idea has been suggested to be incorporated into the PS questing system, and with the recent changes that are being developed to overhaul the whole questing system, something similar to this idea could very well be part of the new system.

[Candy]

For now, though, there's a feature where you can take notes that, personally, I've found quite useful.

[LigH]

I play across several computers in different locations. Keeping track of quests is very complicated for me, if I forget the state once, because I also need to remember on which computer I solved the last part of the quest...

Automatic notes might be useful. Yet, manual notes will do, although they are saved locally.

[Mordraugion]

Unfortunately online quest notes for nearly 300 quests over 1000 active players would rapidly fill the poor database on laanx

[firiban]

however, it would be nice if there was some kind of extra logfile for (uncompleted) quests, and ingame access to them. crawling through megabytes of logs with a text editor isnt that funny.

[Prolix]

Sounds like it might be a good use for google documents.

Some finer control of logging might be useful, npc tab exchanges, guild chat or group chat all being logged to a separate files would be helpful, having system messages  logged is generally not useful but is not completely configurable. For example the 20-odd "you don't see a good place to dig" messages from my prospecting macro. Perhaps that is a bug that needs to be reported, or maybe I just don't see how to change it.

[weberprime]

My take on the current converstion:
Yes, the descriptions ought to give players a clue to what needs done to accomplish a quest and the description ought to change as the quest changes. Better descriptions represents the best solution to the problem.

Automatically adding relevant parts of conversations to the notes might work as well.

Do you not think that implementing a solution to this issue makes the game less frustrating for the average player?
Do you think that implementing a solution to the quest issue alleviates the need for help via chat?

A partial solution to the quest issue:

Provide a 'Hint' button (in the quest window) that prints to the Quest notes what needs said, to who, or the next action to take in the quest. Assess a cost to the 'hint' button.  If you give the player a hint on for example: what to type to an NPC to continue a quest; you give the player an example of how to properly communicate with NPC's and the player did not need to communicate with anyone else (e.g. the help channel, on chat, remained blissfully blank [sigh]).  Do you not think that if implemented: this helps to keep players playing with less consultation or dependence on the help channel and with less of a learning curve to communication with NPCs.  Providing hints to what comes next on the quest (i.e. who to talk to or who to give an object to) gives players the ability to continue a quest on there own and allows for some fault tolerance in the case when a player's quest notes get erased or in the case when quest notes never get written because of disconnects or laziness.  Assessing a cost in experience seems fair and in the spirit of the game.

Thanks

[modified message: corrected some grammar errors:)]