Re: [Adonthell-devel] Quest map

[Kai Sterker]

On 05 Feb 2003 14:18:45 +0100 Alexandre Courbot wrote:

Just as an interesting aside, although highly personal experience:

Yesterday I've installed Planescape Torment and continued playing where
I had stopped 1.5 years ago. I dimely remembered some things, but had
forgotten about many others, including what use some items had. (There
are some really strange items!). Anyway, what helped me quite a lot was
the structured quest log:

I does list quest related information sorted by quest and is further
divided into open and closed quests. Scanning the TOC of the questlog
alone brought many memories back, without even having to read about a
certain quest. One sentence quest summary was already enough.


That's quite similar to your idea, Sasha, except that it is text-based.
And it's probably quite close to what I would have wanted for Adonthell.


> I have a quite mitigated feeling about this idea. Sure, it would be a
> great reminder. But on the other hand, wouldn't it be a spoiler as
> well?
> 
> Let me explain. In the game, there will be tons of events happening.
> Some will be important for one quest, some for another one, some will
> be purely anecdotical. What might happen is that every time one event
> happen, the player will look at his quest maps. "Ah, so this event is
> related to this quest", or "It doesn't appear anywhere - guess it's
> not important then".

I don't know. I rather believe that it often is quite clear to what
quest something belongs. I.e you know when you have been sent on a
quest, and if you go about solving it, then you know that whatever you
did most likely belongs to this quest. For those cases, most people
wouldn't look at the quest log unless they get stuck or haven't played
in a while.

Then there's the situation where an event seems unrelated to a quest,
but isn't. In that case, I think it shouldn't be added to that quest
(unless it becomes finally obvious). So we'd have a general log, where
all events end up that might be of relevance, but are not (yet)
associated to a specific quest. That way, people couldn't "cheat" by
dividing events into important and unimportant. 

Besides, just because something does not belong to a quest, it might
still allow you to gain some advantage. Or, the otherway 'round, the
point of the journal is that only information that matters is added. So
everything is important to a certain degree.


> Doing so will totally unveil the internals of the
> game. If done properly, the quests should give the impression that
> they are totally integrated to the world, and having a so direct
> rendering of them would kill the magic, I think.

Hm, if it looks like the main character's sketchbook, then it wouldn't
change much. And if the contents are chosen with care, it wouldn't tell
the player anything he doesn't know already. For example, I could
imagine the following:

If a quest requires to talk to several people ("How might know something
about that?" - "The smith perhaps, and also the apothecary. ..."), you
could have a little sketch of each of them, and once you've talked to
them, they get crossed out. But if you click on their icon, you'd be
taken to a little summary of the dialog.

The same is true if you had to aquire several items. Then you had icons
of the item, and a click on them would bring you to all the information
you've collected about that item. Once you find it, it gets crossed out.


What you would get is a very structured diary/journal, where you can
find desired information quickly without reading pages of text. What you
don't get is a means for cheating, as it will show nothing that you
haven't learned, experienced or explored yourself. So you'd still be
forced to take the game world seriously, and to watch carefully.


> Also, isn't it the purpose of the game to force the player to remember
> and analyze what has happened around him? Wouldn't it do this task?
> While I'm not at all against reminders in the game (i.e. the
> characters reminds you of the events when you talk back to them, so
> you are never out of an important information), this way of doing
> sounds a bit too direct (and assisting) to me. What do others think?

Of course most people would remember things while play and wouldn't need
any reminders. However, if you have many different side quests going at
the same time, you do not always remember all the little details. And if
you haven't played for a couple of weeks, it's a good thing if you get a
quick idea of what was going on. Because sometimes, you can't return to
NPCs to talk to them again, and if an event was unique, there's no way
in repeating that experience.

So we would need a quest log, I think. And the more convenient, the
better. A very bad example is Morrowind: there my diary is about 250
pages. It happened that I reached a remote town and thought: "hasn't
somebody asked me to do something here, some weeks (of game and
realtime) before?" What now? Do you really think I'd leaf through the
last 100 pages of diary or so to search a little side quest? I think
not.

But if I could browse the list of open quests, memory would surely come
back. And if the quest then reads: "I should talk to X who lives here
and to Y who lives there" that is quite convenient (but destroying the
atmosphere of the game, I think. Running around in search for X and Y
would be. Of course, if I forgot to ask whom to seek, bad for me! But
people that are just forgetful shouldn't be punished.). And if I then
click on the character name or portrait and read "A told me that X is a
liar and B said that he likes cheese" then I have even more information
I can use to my advantage. But nothing is really new.



Finally, a few words to your suggestion, Sasha:

I too do think that it is sort of the wrong approach. If I look at your
example, then I become quite curious what the individual icons mean, and
I'd click on them out of curiosity. That's spoiling the game somewhat,
as Alex said.

The quest log should work the other way round: I half-remember that
there was something, so I take a look at the quest log to find the exact
information. Well, at least the information I collected about that topic
during gameplay so far.

The quest log shouldn't invite people to browse it out of curiosity, it
should just be an aid to people that have forgotten something. I think
that's your intention too, isn't it?

Kai