In the past few weeks I've been trying out Elder Scrolls Online (It was free on the Epic Store a month ago) as I had never tried it before, and I've also been plodding along in Baldur's Gate 3 and really enjoying myself. Of course one of the things you really rely on in these games is a good system of tracking your quests and such. This made me think about previous MMOs or Solo RPGs I've played through and how they have handled quest tracking. The things I've liked... and the things I wish were done better.
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So I thought perhaps this would be a good topic for some of the new 'easy-to-consume' content that VR is in the works developing for showcasing the games development going forward.
We know that Pantheon will have several different types of what we would normally call Quests and so I thought that maybe as VR is transitioning into new ways of sharing info with the community in 'easy-to-consume' formats that I would suggest we get a little more description on the plans for keeping track of our various Quests and Tasks and Perception Lore Keepering.
We know that 'Tasks' as Joppa has previously named them will be more in line with the general type quests we are familiar with in most MMOs. Such as 'Go out and collect X for me' or 'Please rescue my puppy from the big bad Kobalds!'.
The title of 'Quests' seem to be more about longer and more involved adventures that may require many steps and will result in much more lucrative rewards.
While 'Keepers' as they are being called will be players who want to follow more Lore based storylines that will bring adventure without really being tied to a set Task or Reward.
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So my questions for VR on this topic are as follows:
1) Will we have 3 different UI elements that will allow us to Track these 3 types of Quests?
So a Tasks Journal and a Quest Log and then a Keeper Lorebook. Or will all 3 be bunched together in a basic Quest Journal and it will be up to the player to keep them all straight?
2) Will there be limits to how many Quests you can be on at the same time?
I always hated in other MMOs there would be a Quest Log limit of say 25 quests, and if you found a new Quest but your Quest Log was full at 25 you couldn't pick up the new quest unless you Abandoned an old one that you had not finished, or you had to go back and take the time to go finish those previous quests so you cleared up your Quest Log.
3) When a Task or Quest is completed will it remain in your Journal/Log just listed as 'Completed' so that you can refer back to the steps you took to complete said Quest?
I would guess that maybe Tasks might not need to be kept logged as these are less about Adventure and more about 'living in the community and earning your keep' type of things which can earn you some coin and some faction/reputation.
Quests on the other hand I would hope you can continue to keep in your Logs so that you can remember your adventures and can refer back to when your friends and/or guildmates are looking for some help working through these same Adventures in the future.
Perception Lore stories also I would hope will have some permanence in our Keepers Lorebooks as it would be very helpful for players to be able to re-read through the Lore they so painstakingly learned through following their Perception pings to unlock the secret Lore of the world.
4) Will we be able to add our own Notes into the Journal or Logbooks next to the games entries or will the game simply add information for you as you finish steps or uncover things?
I really hope we will be able to select a Quest Journal entry and then add our own notes such as 'I think I saw that NPC he was talking about somewhere in the hills north of Availlia!' or maybe even 'This enemy almost killed us. Try again later when I'm level X'. With personal notes we can hopefully help get ourselves back on track if it's been a while since we've worked on a quest and are trying to remember things that might be important.
5) Will most (or all) Tasks and Quests be repeatable?
My guess is that most Tasks are likely to be repeatable, although perhaps I am having wishful thinking. Long extended so called 'Epic' questlines may not need to ever be repeatable since once you have the reward it will be unlikely you will need another copy of the reward. I'm thinking of the rare rewards that will be Bound and not tradable once obtained.
It's more the inbetween Quests that I'm wondering about that will result in rewards that you can collect and then sell to other players and then go repeat the quests to earn the reward again. I remember in the early days of EverQuest we used to make a bit of early coin by repeating the Bloodforge Hammer quest and selling them to fellow players.
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So do you have any more questions for VR regarding how Tasks | Quests | Keepers Lore will be tracked in Pantheon and the UI element(s) that we will be able to use to keep them all straight in our minds.
Just to start with some clarity, I'll post this quote by Joppa. I don't have a link, but I remember hearing it in a stream/DRT and was lucky to find it quoted by Disposalist in a forum post about a year ago.
"A significant amount of game content will be centered around Tasks, Perilous Tasks and Storylines. We approach Tasks as the more mundane “jobs” that an NPC might ask you to do for them if you inquire. These could result in a bit of coin, a small amount of experience, an item reward, a means of increasing your reputation, or any combination of the above. Perilous Tasks represent more dangerous quests that will usually require more than one player to band together in order to succeed. With Perilous Tasks, the potential rewards will definitely be commensurate with the risk. And finally, Storylines are unique to the Perception system, and will be a primary means through which players will progress as Keepers and unlock the vast Lore of Terminus."
I think it is likely that we will have 2 UI elements for this info. IMO Tasks & Perilous Tasks will show up in our Quest journal. I am used to all quests disappearing from a quest journal once I complete them, though I agree it would be nice to have the option of a record of all quests completed - even if it's only the names. I can also see the value in choosing to keep the details of the more involved Periless Tasks for future reference.
I expect that some quests will be repeatable and some not, based on the ability to be exploited. I hope those not easily exploited are repeatable.
As far as our Perception pings and the Storylines they lead into, in a 2016 stream with Cohh, Joppa said "Everyone who becomes a Keeper will receive a Tome of Keeping" and it will contain "all of the quest information, the dialogue, some of the keywords & phrases. All of that will be kept for you." https://youtu.be/c-VljOeRfis?t=3599
Hopefully that is still the plan for whenever Perception gets into the game.
@Jothany Thanks for your contributions to the topic. I think you are correct that it's quite likely that some quests will need to not be repeatable.
As for the UI elements, you may be right that 'Tasks' and 'Perilous Tasks' (aka Quests) will simply use the same UI Quest Journal, but since we don't know exactly what VR has planned I hope that they will take the time to answer our questions.
My hope was that this thread could centralize questions people may have on this topic so that VR could use it to create one of their future 'easy-to-consume' youtube videos they have planned for more transparency to the player base in the coming months.
But perhaps maybe I'm one of the only ones interested in hearing more about what VR's plans are for quest and perception UI's. Either that or my 5 questions are already covering what other people were wondering.
One wonders if maybe I should start this as a Thread on the official Discord as well, as maybe most people are ignoring the forums these days.
Hypothetical - VR actually meant what they said on the topic of art when they focused on increasing speed, reducing cost and appealing to a more contemporary audience. Perhaps even to the point of setting an internal timeline for alpha, beta and release and being willing to sacrifice any objectives, however dearly held, inconsistent with meeting it. Would this be good or bad? Let's not derail the thread by going there.
Implications. More focus on quests and tasks, however named. Including repeatables and even (lowers voice to a whisper) dailies and weeklies. More focus on solo play to draw in a contemporary audience and get them hooked on the game before hitting them with a lot of content that *requires* groups. Lower priority to things that are "nice" but not necessarry. Which may mean less fleshing out of the keeper system and more focus on getting the world, the classes and the combat system ready for each stage of development.
If this happens, and it may or it may not, it will directly and significantly impact both the topic of this thread and many others.
Mine is less of a question and more of a request.
I like the idea of UI helping keep track of quests, tesks, lore, whatever they are called. I'm totally fine with the UI tracking all that stuff. What I do not like is when the UI interprets the information for players. If I talk to an NPC and that NPC gives me a bunch of dialogue I don't want the UI to boil that down to "Go find X in location Y" as a single line in my to-do list. I'm fine with the UI capturing that dialogue so players can re-read it as many times as they like and try to figure out what they should do as a next step. I'm also fine with players being able to highlight, underline, circle, add their own notes, etc, into the UI of that dialogue.
In short, the problem solving and critical thinking shouldn't be done for the player.
Ranarius said:What I do not like is when the UI interprets the information for players. If I talk to an NPC and that NPC gives me a bunch of dialogue I don't want the UI to boil that down to "Go find X in location Y" as a single line in my to-do list. I'm fine with the UI capturing that dialogue so players can re-read it as many times as they like and try to figure out what they should do as a next step.
I do agree that the game shouldn't extrapolate the data for you. I know in Baldur's Gate 3 the Journal will summarize things you learned during dialogs.
So maybe if the UI took an entire conversation and then broke it down to like: "Soandso told me that a note was left in a knot on a tree somewhere to the south west of a Statue found in a swampy area." This wouldn't totally boil it down to exactly where to look, but rather just give the basic gist of what the NPC told you during the conversation.
You should then be able to select that 'Summary' and choose 'More Info' which opens up a popup with the entire Dialog history so you could read through it all again in it's entirety.
Ranarius said:I'm also fine with players being able to highlight, underline, circle, add their own notes, etc, into the UI of that dialogue.
Vandraad said:For a journal, I'd like the option to add my own notes right into the text. Think along the lines of putting notes in the margins. I could put in descriptions of the location, information on the NPCs nearby (class, levels, etc)
I like this...
Imagine if you could like highlight a word or phrase in the UI and then right click it and select 'Add Note' and then type in your personal note. Once saved, that word or phrase would change color (similar to web page links) to denote that there is a note attached to that word/phrase. So now the note will pop up as a tooltip whenever you Hover or Click (could be optionally toggleable) that highlighted word or phrase again.