Quest system adjustments.

I wanted to move this talk here so that it is not disrupting the other thread. If you are lost on the conversation simply click the blue box with the two white arrows in the quote and you can see where the conversation came from perfectly fine. That being said...

Quote:

Originally Posted by detlef

!'s seem like they would be a bitch to program, and I still think that using map markers would be unwieldy and difficult. I love what they've done with the Quality of Life stuff lately, but since there's already a workaround for quest issues (online resources), I'd much rather they focus on other things rather than wait a year or three while they re-jigger every single quest/mission npc in the game.

I agree, some of it seems like it may be harder to do than others, but that is the reason why I gave 3 avenues that would provide the same outcome in the end. I can see any of the 3 solutions I want to have being difficult in some way, but at the same time, I can see it being easy in some way. My 3 solutions, listed from what I think is best, to worst, to solve the problems I see with quests, are...

1. Change the quest log to have objectives listed in the description of the quest and check them off as the person goes, then add new steps to the list, so the person does not have spoilers in the story popping up nor do they have a completely vague description about it.

Why it should be easy: This changes the description of the quest, which are already there, in my mind and with what limited knowledge I have of game design at this time(want to work in the field but only have played with toys by this point like RPG Maker VX Ace), I think it should be easy enough to have 1 person go back and change all of these quests to have descriptions after laying down a basic setup format for quests that supports this design. Again, limited knowledge and idk how hard it would truly be, but I think 1 person to change the system to support this design and another to go back through each quest in the game and change them to fit it could work, would just take a bit to get all quests done, and they could easily focus on newer quests as well as the most vital quests(expansion missions) before others.

Why it could be hard: The Quest menu is from the beginning of the game, 11 years worth of stuff built on top of it makes it much harder to work with I'm sure. Also I do not know how much work would truly need to be done to get the system itself setup to support such a layout and the ability for the Quest Log to update as you progress through the quest, let alone the amount of time it would take a single person or a couple people to go back through every quest made over the years and change them to this new setup and have it functioning properly with accurate information.

2. Add a new marker category with the color Red or Blue and have these markers placed by a NPC who goes by your Quests to determine what you have active, and where markers should be placed.

Why it should be easy: The marker system already exists, NPCs which place markers already exist, dynamic markings so far as I know already exist where some things will be excluded from the map if things are not done already. If all of these are the case, then its simply a matter of adding NPCs who have their own quests linked to them and having those NPCs mark maps for you depending on your quests. Adding 1 NPC for San d'Oria quests, meaning quests tied to San d'Oria and not a mission line, a job specific line, or an add-on mission line, and allowing them to place markers for those quests and no other, would be perfect in my opinion. Other NPCs could be added for other cities, Windurst, Bastok, Aht Urhgan/Nashmau, and Adoulin, while a single NPC should be able to handle the outland areas such as Kazham, Rabao, Norg, and Tavnazia, while Expansions have their own, story Add-ons have their own, and Abyssea has its own.

Why it could be hard: The NPCs could end up being very complex, even with splitting them up among a few NPCs you still have the issue of just how many quests and missions there are in this game, and even with them split up, you are still going to end up with likely 50 to 100 quests for each NPC alone besides those who involve almost exclusively missions, that's quite a bit. Besides that, it could also be hard to make it so that markers are removed once a part of a quest is completed, for instance, if my marker for telling me to go to area A does not go away once completing the objective in area A, or it stays there while I also have my marker for me in area B, then it could get very confusing, and I don't know if markers made by the game can actually be removed like ones we place, so it may need some alterations to the system as well.

3. Add markers above a NPC's head such as the oh so common !s or ?s other games have to inform us of their involvement in a quest we can partake in.

Why it should be easy: They have changed the UI in many ways in recent times, from adding the RoE pop-up when we get a new challenge to adding entirely new menus to our UI such as the currencies menu and the RoE menu itself. Due to this fact I have to honestly wonder how hard it would really be to add a marker above a NPC's head when they are displayed if you have a quest flagged which involves them, the game knows what quests we have active and what the quest requires us to do next, the server has to send us the data that says the NPC is there, I think its safe to say it could tell the client that the NPC being displayed has a quest for us and thus, the icon could be shown.

Why it could be hard: It could be more information the server has to send the client, which could slow things down as SE always says. Displaying these could get in the way, especially if you simply do not care about the quests, and thus it would need a way to turn it off. Lastly, I think the RoE display is an altered version of the Level Up that pops up when we, well, you know, so if it is then that explains why that was done so easily, and changing the UI to have more menus is not the same as adding icons that pop up when you have a quest either, so it could very well be a totally different thing with no relation and thus, much, much harder to do.

That's all 3 of my ideas, why I think they are easy or hard, my order of preference, ideally I would love to see 1 and 2 both done as they would go greatly hand in hand, but either of them is honestly fine and provided the markers in the second are named properly it could serve just as well as the first with ease. I admit none of them would be super easy and done in a months time, but it could be done I think with some minimal amount of devs being allocated to the project much like I feel things like HP Warps or other Quality of Life adjustments are getting, I doubt they have large teams on these features which seem fairly basic at this point. If it would take to many people to do it, I can agree that it may be a bad idea to do any of these, I do not want the game grinding to a halt just to change these things.

If that ends up being the case however, the last and least favorable route to take in my opinion is to simply make an official SE site that has all of the game's info on it for quests and missions so that we can find it from an official SE source and know it is accurate. At the same time, this site should provide other information such as crafts, item effects, latent effects and their activators, and so on. I believe SE has something like this for FFXIV, Loadstone or whatever, I admit I specifically ignore FFXIV information when possible since I can not play it if I wanted to due to having no PS3 and my Laptop sucking. But, from what I hear they have something that does this for FFXIV so to do it for FFXI should be possible, they would just have a lot of catching up to do, and a lot of work cut out for the people assigned to it, though it seems much more feasibly simplistic than designing the same thing ingame on their part.

If they did this, it would be awesome to have some way to access some of this information in game or from Play Online. I know it's another big thing to ask for that could be hard, but many people I have met who play on PS2 or Xbox have no way to access the internet and thus, no way to get this information if it is only found online except by asking other players to look it up for them. If you could access this in game or via POL, it would at least give everyone some way of getting to it, and if nothing else, it might just give consoles a reason to actually have POL again!

Well as I said in the post, if it takes more than a couple people, and by that I literally do mean more than 2, maybe 3 at most, then I wouldn't say to do it anyways, it isn't worth devoting a massive amount of dev work toward, only a small amount that makes next to no impact on the overall speed of our updates and the game itself. As for the ability to disable icons, I did include that into part of what I said about it because I do believe that is a very important part of 3, and its part of why 3 is the least prefered of all.

I would love to have a dynamic quest log. I know there have been times when I've gone to knock out some things listed there, and checking against a wiki, I'm on step 5 out of 8 based on my memory of events. Instead of something that says "Talk to Bob" and never changes, it would be great to have it add steps as they are accomplished to help you keep track of what you are doing. "Talk to Bob" "Bob said he saw a beastman hanging out by a windmill" "You found a broken quadav helm at the base of the windmill" and so on until the quest is completed.

Lodestone isn't what your thinking if but their database. It is helpfull but doesn't give step by step instructions when it comes to quests or missions just who are part of the quest line and where the npc is. Or if an item is part of a synth or which area you can harvest it. Trust me I spend enough time rummaging over FXIV Pro's database more than I would like. I agree as I have done on the QoL thread that something does need to be done with the quests as it wouldn't also make them easier for new people but those of us who have a mega ton of quests started but have forgotten where we are on it.

Well, as I said, I do my best to ignore what info I can about FFXIV so I was unsure, I just know I have had many people tell me there was some form of information base provided by SE in that game, though from what I also hear I would assume quests are mostly done ingame, I figured some other information may be on their site or something such as that. In either event, a site like that for FFXI would be fantastic, they have tiny bits of info out for Trust and RoE now I think on their site, but the information is hardly explanatory in how to get many of the NPCs at all, you literally get more information from the Trust section in the update notes than you do from that site I think. So if none of the ingame options are viable, an online database kept up by them would be the next best thing in my opinion.

We players do a ton to learn about this game, I doubt any other game in the history of games has had this much effort on the community side to learn how the game works, from how damage is calculated to shield block rates, to simple effects on pieces of gear, there is a ton of work put in by the players to learn information that to a large extent I think should be simply made available to us by SE in some way. Even if not quest related I think they should make information on this game a bit more accessible, but either way, quests alone would be a great start if none of the other things are done ingame.

FFXIV does have the in-game floating minimap, and the quest log has a map button on every quest description that opens a map to the area with an icon over the location of the next step in the quest. Thus, the quests aren't laid out on a web site in detail, because the game shows you where you are going. The maps also draw themselves as you explore, so you can have a marker in the middle of a blank area if you've never been there. Zone lines also have quest icons on them in the direction of a quest in another zone, so if you have a completed quest to turn in, all zone lines that lead back to the completion NPC have a green checkmark on a shield over them on the minimap. FFXIV has a limit on the number of active quests though, while FFXI does not.