Convenience can be the enemy of interaction

Arclan

Vanguard was a phenomenal game, and, I imagine, the quests were super interesting.  BUT, no one read them that I know of.  
1. Click on NPC
2. Scroll to bottom of quest text, sometimes numerous pages
3. Click accept
4. Pull up quest journal for itemized collect/kill/harvest tasks.
5. Complete quest for monty haul xp rewards

I'm hoping quests in Pantheon require the user to interact (type) with the NPC such as was done in Everquest.  And hoping quest xp is not so monty haul such the only thing anyone cares about it completing their quests.

Arclan

Can't edit my post?  At any rate, I also felt the quests in everquest were more epic; Other than the big ticket items, quests were something done mainly for fun and change of pace; not regularly.

Amathe

I believe they have a perception system, in which you will engage in dialogue with quest NPCs by choosing from among multiple response options. It's much better than how I am describing it. 

I wish I could say I carefully read quest information, but after 14 years of collecting acorns I really only do so when when I can't locate the acorns. 

TwoTubes

No one really interacted with NPCs in EQ either, all most people cared about was typing the correct response word. While there is a small difference between it and VG, it was still the same in that most people didn't really read all of the quest text.

...and actually, I think being more involved with the NPCs is something that is better in theory than in reality.

The last thing I want is to have to read a lot of text or listen to a lot of spoken dialogue that is keeping me from going out and actually playing the game.  I don't want to have to sit there and be delayed for multiple minutes.  I want to get out and start the adventure...

 I think reading NPC text is something that some people like, but that is definitely not me.

This became very clear in SWToR.  For the first 20ish levels or so it was fine to listen to voice quest dialogue but after a little bit of time it becomes very old.  I ended up space barring through the voice over quest dialogue about 90% of the time after about lvl 20 or so.  It definitely wasn't something I appreciated.  It is another thing I would count as "fluff" that shouldn't be a priority.

TwoTubes

I do agree with your thoughts on Monty Haul quest rewards and I think VR has heard this complaint before.  Quests should be challenging and mean something, not give you a big exp bonus for killing 10 rats.

Dullahan

I definitely remember reading the quests more in EQ than games after it. I'm not so sure players just scrolled past the text, as it would almost definitely mean you did not understand what to do. At least early on, where few quests were well documented outside of epics, reading comprehension was actually important.

Like @Amathe said, they are taking a different yet more classic approach to quests with their Perception and Conversation Paths systems.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/1006/feature/10902/Pantheon-Rise-of-the-Fallen-Feature-Spotlight-Perception-System.html

delete5230

I was always a fan of short dialog,

Definitely more players than not don't read or care, speed read at best.

I'm still playing Vanilla World of Warcraft and you have to read all three paragraphs to understand the objectives.  I find myself speed reading to get the general idea and it helps that I've done close to all of them in the past.  I'm not a fan of this, same with my several friends that are playing.

All my friends download addon quest helpers.  I'm not a fan of this option, so It would be nice if games were built smarter to have something in between. 

Easy, yet no need for addons !

Guildwars 2 had area objectives that can be clicked on to give an idea of what's going on over all.  Still I quickly clicked off of them.  However That's not a bad idea for most ! 

Vrika

Quests should be done so that you must read the dialog or you won't know what to do, but in a group-centric game I think that should be it. We should be interacting with our group, not with the NPC.

Archlyte

I think that having quest information be presented in different ways would help because it seems to me that most quest text gets skipped over because players want to get to the playing. 

I think that a quest can be a lot better if it has some context, but the best way I have seen that presented is in a bubble that comes up with an NPC talking to the player whether they are standing there or not. It's essentially a media res approach where the character is on his quest but the flashback gives you the context.

The "Stand and Talk" method should be reserved for NPCs with which the player is likely to want to have a scene. 

svann

Quests shouldnt force anyone to read.  If people dont read the text that just means you failed to provide interesting text.

Arclan

Vrika said:

Quests should be done so that you must read the dialog or you won't know what to do, but in a group-centric game I think that should be it. We should be interacting with our group, not with the NPC.

That was my point.  The risk versus reward for quests in Vanguard were so out of whack that people spent all their time doing their tasks instead of connecting with other people.  Make quests more quest-like instead of becoming a job that you have to do daily to keep up with xp. 

H0urg1ass

There are multiple kinds of MMORPG gamers, many more than these two groups, but permit me to lump most MMORPG gamers into two groups for the sake of discussion.  I feel that there are those who game for the gameplay and those who game for the stories.

The first group just wants to click the exclamation point and then get back to playing the game.  They enjoy world firsts, achievements, getting to level cap quicker others and just plain being good at the game mechanics. Nothing wrong with that at all. It's a perfectly valid style and probably the predominant one in gaming.  I remember playing SWTOR and having people rage at me for not hammering the spacebar through every dungeon. I started having to preface every dungeon with "Hey, it's my first time here, so I want to watch the cut scenes so please don't get angry."

The second group is in it for the immersion and the experience.  They want to soak in the lore, explore the vistas and also play the game, but progression pace isn't as important to the story focused player.  A wall of text for them, is just more information about the game world. Although at the same time, there are those of us in the second group that would prefer the wall of text be voiced, or the lore be spread out in small, easily digestible chunks.  I love how you get most of the main quests in Witcher 3.  You go have a real conversation with someone with some back and forth.

Thebeasttt

Vanguard was awful. Few cared about it in it's prime, even less support the only aspiring emulator. Please stop lying to yourselves. The class design was the games only strength and even then they were too spammy and even worse, solo friendly.

Trying to appeal to Vangaurds 7 fans is a waste of time. Be the EQ Classic spiritual successor you were born to be.

Rallyd

Thebeasttt said:

Vanguard was awful. Few cared about it in it's prime, even less support the only aspiring emulator. Please stop lying to yourselves. The class design was the games only strength and even then they were too spammy and even worse, solo friendly.

Trying to appeal to Vangaurds 7 fans is a waste of time. Be the EQ Classic spiritual successor you were born to be.

I think that might be a bit extreme.  If we were in the desert with no water for days (today's MMO scene), Everquest would be the oasis, Vanguard would be some old watering hole the gazelle used a week ago that only has mud left... but at least there's moisture though.

tokini

LegotheHutt said:

This became very clear in SWToR.  For the first 20ish levels or so it was fine to listen to voice quest dialogue but after a little bit of time it becomes very old.  I ended up space barring through the voice over quest dialogue about 90% of the time after about lvl 20 or so.  It definitely wasn't something I appreciated.  It is another thing I would count as "fluff" that shouldn't be a priority.

thing with swtor was all that dialogue just lead to the same quest. no matter how you answered, even if you said 'yes' immediately you still had to say it again three more times while they told you how dangerous this mission was blah blah. even saying 'no' didnt matter since you could just talk to them again and get it anyway.

as i understand it, an npc in pantheon will have multiple quests, and how you answer/interact will determine what, if any, task/reward they give. and you have one shot at it, no going back to try and get a different task after the initial conversation. i also dont think quests are going to be a large part of the leveling experience. they may be important, but we wont have quest hubs or a journal with dozens of 'kill ten rats' assignments. so perhaps with fewer of them the urge to skip text wont be as strong. (as you said, and i agree, in swtor and other quest based games, the urge to just get on with it becomes too strong when you have the same interaction with every npc...and there are hundreds of them) it sounds great, and i hope they can pull it off

SavageHorizon

Thebeasttt said:

Vanguard was awful. Few cared about it in it's prime, even less support the only aspiring emulator. Please stop lying to yourselves. The class design was the games only strength and even then they were too spammy and even worse, solo friendly.

Trying to appeal to Vangaurds 7 fans is a waste of time. Be the EQ Classic spiritual successor you were born to be.

That's your opinion about Vanguard, personally I'm hoping for a mixture of both games with a modern feel but still capturing that old school feel.

svann

There really wasnt anything in Vanguard that wasnt better than EQ except the bad lag, crashes, and low pop.  And the low pop was because of the bad lag and crashes.

They had a good mix of sandbox and quest.  They had crafting that was a game and not just click combine button.  They had diplomacy which gave a choice of crafting or adventuring buffs.  They had decent combat for all classes, not just autoattack.  I really cant think of any pve game design decision that they did wrong.

If the coding had been fixed before launch they would still be going today.

TwoTubes

tokini said:

LegotheHutt said:

This became very clear in SWToR.  For the first 20ish levels or so it was fine to listen to voice quest dialogue but after a little bit of time it becomes very old.  I ended up space barring through the voice over quest dialogue about 90% of the time after about lvl 20 or so.  It definitely wasn't something I appreciated.  It is another thing I would count as "fluff" that shouldn't be a priority.

thing with swtor was all that dialogue just lead to the same quest. no matter how you answered, even if you said 'yes' immediately you still had to say it again three more times while they told you how dangerous this mission was blah blah. even saying 'no' didnt matter since you could just talk to them again and get it anyway.

as i understand it, an npc in pantheon will have multiple quests, and how you answer/interact will determine what, if any, task/reward they give. and you have one shot at it, no going back to try and get a different task after the initial conversation. i also dont think quests are going to be a large part of the leveling experience. they may be important, but we wont have quest hubs or a journal with dozens of 'kill ten rats' assignments. so perhaps with fewer of them the urge to skip text wont be as strong. (as you said, and i agree, in swtor and other quest based games, the urge to just get on with it becomes too strong when you have the same interaction with every npc...and there are hundreds of them) it sounds great, and i hope they can pull it off

Ya, so that just leads to everyone looking up the dialogue online before they talk to npcs unfortunately.  Or many times your group will tell you how to respond.

I hope it doesn't become to much of a bottleneck.  Sounds like it might end up being even more of a delay than skipping through in ToR.

Amathe

There is a time to every purpose under heaven.

I am totally supportive of detailed quest information, puzzles, and things that require thought when it comes to questing. Provided the quest justifies that effort.

A great example would be this quest from Everquest - Earring of the Solstice/Xanthe's Earring of Nature. It was a challenging quest and they named the quest reward after the first person who solved it. Very cool. EQ epic quests are also a good example.

Not every quest has to be on that level of magnitude, to be sure. But what I don't enjoy personally is reading 5 pages of dialogue if really all it is is a rationalization to have me pick up 12 pine cones. That type of quest needs to be a much shorter read, imho. 

Thebeasttt

svann said:

There really wasnt anything in Vanguard that wasnt better than EQ except the bad lag, crashes, and low pop.  And the low pop was because of the bad lag and crashes.

They had a good mix of sandbox and quest.  They had crafting that was a game and not just click combine button.  They had diplomacy which gave a choice of crafting or adventuring buffs.  They had decent combat for all classes, not just autoattack.  I really cant think of any pve game design decision that they did wrong.

If the coding had been fixed before launch they would still be going today.

This is the best example of how delusional VG fans are. Many people gave the game another try 7 years later when most of the lag/crashes were cleaned up and F2P was still a disaster.

In VG every class could solo to 55, most of which were completely self sufficient. Mobs didn't run at low life or aggro players who were about to die. Pulling was mostly a mindless task since mobs were linked. Loot was thrown at you constantly, most of which was soulbound. The world was huge, too bad half of it was devoid of content. Somehow the animations and AI were worse than EQ Classic, that shouldn't even be possible. VG actually had less weapon graphics.....lol.

I could literally go on forever but by now you should get how ridiculous your statement was.

svann

Thebeasttt said:

svann said:

There really wasnt anything in Vanguard that wasnt better than EQ except the bad lag, crashes, and low pop.  And the low pop was because of the bad lag and crashes.

They had a good mix of sandbox and quest.  They had crafting that was a game and not just click combine button.  They had diplomacy which gave a choice of crafting or adventuring buffs.  They had decent combat for all classes, not just autoattack.  I really cant think of any pve game design decision that they did wrong.

If the coding had been fixed before launch they would still be going today.

This is the best example of how delusional VG fans are. Many people gave the game another try 7 years later when most of the lag/crashes were cleaned up and F2P was still a disaster.

In VG every class could solo to 55, most of which were completely self sufficient. Mobs didn't run at low life or aggro players who were about to die. Pulling was mostly a mindless task since mobs were linked. Loot was thrown at you constantly, most of which was soulbound. The world was huge, too bad half of it was devoid of content. Somehow the animations and AI were worse than EQ Classic, that shouldn't even be possible. VG actually had less weapon graphics.....lol.

I could literally go on forever but by now you should get how ridiculous your statement was.

In VG
1. Players could solo or group and there was a lot of both going on.
2. Mobs did run at low life.  I dont know where you got that.  There was a trick to prevent it but I guess if you had someone else that always did it for you then you might not know that they do that.
3. As a bard in both EQ and VG I know that there were tricks to pulling just as there were in EQ.
4. Vanguard graphics were light years ahead of EQ.  Just look.
EQ graphics

Vanguard graphics

Arclan

Agreed, Svan.  Vanguard was impressive on many levels; going to elaborate since it is a lesson for Pantheon (albeit a lesson likely already learned)

1. innovative UI where players could see at a glance whom in their party had aggro, and where they were.
2. The autoloot rolling system was great as well. 
   
3. Quest Journal
4. Excellent 'con' system to let players know how tough mobs were
5. Enormous world (too enormouse)

But Vanguard suffered from being TOO convenient.  Many aspects of the game detracted from the type of bond forming dialogue which defined Everquest

1. Monty haul quest xp; and ease completing them meant they were all that anyone focused on.
2. Out of combat rejen resulted in next to zero down time
3. The ease with which you could outrun mobs meant you rarely had to call for help
4. Lack of death penalty and corpse runs means players never asked others for help

Beyond that, VG simply bit off more than it could chew.  They accomplished so much, some of it helped VG, and some of it hurt it; but in the end the game wasn't finished when they were compelled to release it.  A lot of people had crippling performance problems, but I had just built a powerhouse PC to play the game so it was never a problem.

Arclan

Svan that's a beautiful video; thanks for posting.  What an incredible world they'd created.   Wish I had seen even one third of it all.   I saw 99% of old world EQ and  75% of Kunark and to this day that blackburrow visit is a joy to watch.    It means something that the two MMORPGS I most cherish (EQ and VG) had Brad heavily involved.  Best of luck on Pantheon !!

centkin

You missed the good times then -- Vanguard was best in beta. 

TwoTubes

centkin said:

You missed the good times then -- Vanguard was best in beta. 

Funny you say that.  That's when I stopped playing. 

It was fantastic in alpha when there was 5-20 people online at any time (including devs) and general chat was world wide and everyone knew each other.  Then early beta came and it was still fine, still fun, but the sense of a tight community wasn't as close once they shut off world chat and made it only zone wide.

Then they opened the beta flood gates...and added ridiculous tombstones that littered the ground and seemed to clog up the world.  I know that got changed eventually, but the tombstones are what primarily drove me away.  The tombstones were horrible for awhile.  Add them to the flood of new people who had never played before who were creating thousands of tombstones everywhere.  It wasn't a good situation.

Syanis

centkin said:

You missed the good times then -- Vanguard was best in beta. 

I'd say alpha and early beta before SoE came along as the publisher. I was in VG since early alpha and was so hyped at the game and the direction until mid beta when Sigil ran into money issues and had to take SoE as a publisher who started tinkering and then ruined a game along with forcing it out early.

But on the subject there really needs to be strong rewards to basically force grouping and co-op play. In EQ, DAoC, and WoW classic their was always down time especially when soloing and EQ1 had some significant downtime when soloing. Remember /meditate so you regened health/mana faster yet being on near empty could take you 5-10 minutes to regen which pushed people into duoing because you could kill 40 monsters in the time it would take you solo to kill 10 of the same thing. Things like clarity for mana regen, regen for health regen, sow for movement speed, and so on made a big difference and even created a market for it. But the point was soloing left you to yourself but it could take you 3-5 minutes to kill 1 even con monster for many class's solo yet with a partner and even more so as a group even faster and even eliminating any downtime.

Conveinence made everything from killing to regen, to travel quick. It even made leveling quick. The benefits of a group was rewards from dungeons but what is the point when by tomorrow that item will be obsolete due to leveling.