Everything aside from the main story quest. Because if they are advertised then I feel compelled to talk to that NPC, simply because it’s there in my face, on the minimap and in the world, like an eye sore, which I have to remove by taking and doing the quest. I don’t want crap to clutter my UI, or my immersion with silly signs, and MOST OF ALL, I do not want to feel like I’m a dumbass and have my hand held non stop by a game. It’s not that hard to simply talk to an NPC even if they don’t have any markers above their heads.
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Would you be happy with a toggle feature to remove the quest notifications or do you feel that having it in the game whether you use it or not lessens it for you?
I like when we need to search for npcs and stuff. It forces you to understand the story to proceed, instead of just walking, skipping all the conversation… I think it’s cooler to put our brain to work to figure out where we should go or who we need to meet. Just like some Pokemon and Digimon World games. I kinda felt involved with and made me remember the moments I passed playing them. ^^
Anyway, that’s just my opinion. m(_ _)m
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Yeah I think that’s nice too, but I also feel as though it’s implemented as a half finished product (which it is, the game was initially made with all quest markers shown but they turned them off to experiment). Alot of the time you just felt lost in where you wanted to go, which may appeal to some but not necessarily others. Also the way the npc’s are laid out and the type of quests they give all feel very linear still whether they’ve been hidden or not. To me alot of the quests where led to one after another but there would just be a minor annoyance when you tried to find the next one along your path. There was no sense of exploration in that as you where just searching for your next quest it didn’t matter whether the story was good or not in that particular side-quest as you could still skip right through it. In the end they where all still just kill and fetch quests.
I’m someone who wants to experience the game, but all the flashy GO HURR, DURRR indicators are just annoying. I am very happy that the side quests, as well as the NPCs which are not essential to your game progress, are not shown on the map. This is a good feature and gives you an incentive to actually explore the world around you. NPCs and Statues not being on the map until you find them, as well as treasure chests hidden around fields add to that and also give the game a certain charm.
It might be selfish, but I don’t want a toggle feature for that. That would spoil the satisfaction of finding a hidden quest, or even a class with the option to hide quests enabled, because I’d know that anyone can just toggle the option and go directly to the NPC.
You mentioned repeatable and daily quests, if you read the quest completion text, it actually tells you that “they need more”. This is an elegant solution compared to just showing a glowing flag in your face. So once you found and talked to an NPC, you will know that a) there is a quest and b) after finishing, you will know if the quest is repeatable.
As such, I think the current system of only showing the main quest is all we need.
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The reason I feel compelled to flag dailys and repeatable though is because of there significance, by missing these you miss out on a large boost of exp and it could cost you a a few hours of needlessly grinding. Some might say it servers them right for missing it rather on purpose or accidental. But I don’t really see that as being fair or good to the player base. And yes I do agree that special indicators such as statues, chest and boss summons should all be hidden even if they decide to go full visibility mode. Also I can understand you disliking the toggle feature as the thought of it being there I feel would lessen the reward from finding it yourself also.
But as it stands I still feel as though it’s a poor implementation of quest hiding as in the whole grand scheme of things it changes little in regards to freedom. And it’s still peoples choices whether they feel they want to read the quests or ignore them. I personally had the distaste for quest markers telling me an important NPC as I would still talk to every NPC available to get snipets of lore for context. It’s more so the thought of me missing an NPC and side quest that bothers me also as at heart i’ma fullblown completionist.
I guess I’m one of those “serves them right” people, but look at it like this: you have the choice of either grinding or looking for quests. What you are proposing would merely change that to either grinding or doing quests, taking one step out of the process.
It’s not like hiding the quests stops people from doing them, so I don’t see the unfairness aspect in it. If you miss them, it is in fact, your own fault. But you can always go back and look for them again. Quests also give you more exp at once, so I feel a bit more effort of getting them is justified.
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But we’re used to mmo’s giving us exp, it’s more of expectation than a gained reward so I don’t really see it as something players will be by any means excited about when the get an exp boost. Also excluding it for the people that may not even know that these types of quests exist seems more so unfair, though I guess a decent tutorial explaining that there are quests like these could be the solution for that. Either way hidden or not it’ll be mostly down to what the majority think, so far I’ve got a few people saying they want quest to be hidden and a few saying they want a mix of both like me. I generally like to go for the middle ground as i feel that’s the most fair but I don’t this sample size is a good representation of the player base xD. But again the fact that there aren’t many threads discussion this could mean that most are ok with it, or it could also mean they’re too busy discussing exp rates, archer nerfs and pvp Lol.
They may as well add quest markers for one obvious reason;
Every NPC in ‘battle’ fields is a quest giver. No exceptions. What’s the point of making quests hidden when it’s blatantly obvious where they are since every NPC outside of towns gives quests?
Like I said, those who miss the quests can go back to them. And those who don’t know about side quests will eventually find out - either by stumbling upon a quest from another NPC, or by asking the usual “why are all mobs way over my level, did I miss something?” and get educated by one of the players. A tutorial could be a solution as well, but I’d want it to be integrated into the game. For example, the guard NPC that stops you in that first village gives you the choice of going to Klaipeda directly (for people who don’t want the quest exp or don’t want to do the tutorial) or doing the tutorial. I believe he also advises you that talking to people along the way and helping them should they have any troubles is part of his speech. I might be mistaken, though, but I certainly remember reading such a line from an NPC.
The major problem for me is, like you said, people expect to get everything handed to them, because games nowadays pamper their players. Going all hardcore like MMOs of the old is not the way to go, but I think ToS has managed to hit the middle ground on in that aspect.
That may be true for the early content that was presented to us, but I have explored the map further, and there are actually some npcs that actually don’t give quests.
The two field sentinels in east sauliai woods down the stairs from Aras don’t give you any quests, nor the two guards at the very start of the game, so I don’t think your argument works. If anything, I’d say the opposite; “why bother with quest markers if it’s plain obvious all NPCs have one?”
Though I have no proof (tbf neither do you), I believe the reason you weren’t getting any quests from them probably had more so to do with being under leveled and not having access to them quests yet. Also alot of NPC’s require you to do a previous quest line in order to unlock there continuation of that quest so they could all very have a questing purpose just like @Skendya stated.
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Underlevelled, and some NPC’s don’t seem to give the red ‘scroll’ (I think it’s a scroll?) popup that tells you required level.
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Later quests may not be implemented yet.
I do have proof, I recorded all my quest xD, it needs some editing though, but pm me and i’ll send you links to the raws (they are with lot’s of spanish comments from my friends though, teamspeak was ON when I was recording)
That argument could be debunk when you think of it as a check list. If all NPC’s had a quest and you missed one, how would you know which one you missed? You would have to go through them one by one repeating the same dialogue to find that elusive quest giver. Also yes there are the occasional guards that I’ve seen who’s only purpose is aesthetic but for the most part every person who isn’t a guard and is wandering (actually stationary mostly Lol) about the open wasteland is 99% of the time gonna give you a quest.
I do not believe displaying all the quests is a good direction for this game to go. Quests are an optional way to experience the game, and not a requirement. Being led to all the quests would make the game more of a directed experience, and ruin the open gameplay aspect.
This would make the game more like WoW, which I’ve played through 3 different times, and never really enjoyed. The entire experience is ‘go here, do this, go here, do this, go here, do this’. I will admit I did kind of enjoy their last expansion, but I in no way want ToS to take direction from WoW’s form of gameplay. This is what makes ToS unique.
I know it may seem silly to you, it just looks like an improvement that can be attached onto the game. Like ‘hey, here’s where these things are, a convenience’. However, it changes the way people play the game, and how people view the purpose of the game. It leads people to think “I need to do all the quests, that is my objective”. Some people in the beta were also assuming this too, speaking in all chat saying “I’ve done all the quests, what do I do now?”.
It’s the open exploration aspect, and finding your own way to enjoy the game, without a directed lead by the game itself, that makes this game ( and also with RO ) fun for a lot of people, and it’s a different type of fun. I do admit, ToS could certainly do a better job in the earlier zones of allowing more freedom to explore, and different places to go for the same level. I don’t think marking all the quests and making your map into an objective list will do any good.
I do think that the quests should be changed a bit, perhaps the main storyline quest could still offer exp cards of some sort, but the side quests should be more oriented around unique items as rewards. I dislike quests being tied strictly to character progression as far as exp goes ( although this play style is still somewhat fun too ), and think they are better designed when they can give specific bonuses. This would encourage you to seek out quests for special items, and make the experience more unique, rather than having a task oriented form of gameplay - where the objective becomes “find all the quests and complete all of them to progress efficiently”.
2 Likes
[quote=“Jowdan3006, post:36, topic:36589”]
That argument could be debunk when you think of it as a check list. If all NPC’s had a quest and you missed one, how would you know which one you missed? You would have to go through them one by one repeating the same dialogue to find that elusive quest giver.
[/quote]That is, if the quests were buried in the dialogue. Currently, all you have to do is speak to an NPC and the first thing you see is the list of quests it has, if any, or if there is only one, you land directly in the quest dialogue. Not debunked.
As for NPCs not having quests, here are another two, they are in low level area, and don’t give any quests:
So it’s not being underleveled or missing a prerequisite. Or has someone gotten a quest from these two guards?
But you still act as though you have an actual sense of freedom. This game is very linear hidden or not and all the quests are either fetch quests, kill quests, or a mostly disappointing boss battle. As someone pointed out pretty much every npc you’ll meet in the open world will give a quest, be it before or after a certain quest line. It just makes things overly complicated when you have to remember which npc’s you’ve talked too and which ones you haven’t. That’s not to mention the quests that open up after certain progression points and require some back peddling through npc’s to find again. Like i’ve said before also this game was designed around quest indicators being shown and they only made a decision to test hidden quests for this beta as an experiment. Hence the reason for the poor implementation and a long road of tweaking if they want to make it any more than a half arsed ‘feature’. That’s my 2 cents anyway.
Again I’ve stated that there are indeed some NPC’s that are there for aesthetics and mostly revolve around guards. But most of NPC’s you see around the open world areas will infact have a quest sometime during the game.