I find it interesting that the devs saying they think their perception system is cool means that they have some cazy revolutionary system that is going to just blow your socks off and they should have the whole thing for you to know everything about right NEOW. Sometimes doing something completely new isn't what is needed, simply refining the process is all that they need to do, which is pretty much the mantra of this game. If you are so unsatisfied with this system, please lay out your plans for a better questing system that would make the process of aquiring a quest just THAT MUCH MORE INTERESTING. As long as you realize that you are complinaing about what the window dressing looks like as you work towards the same result, which is aquiring quests and completing them which is core to this style of game. There are only so many ways you can jazz up : Meet person. Get quest. What are you expecting exactly?
I guess it's just a stylistic thing. As a previous poster mentioned in one of their ideas from several months ago, wouldn't it be far more interesting and gratifying to actually stumble upon an item (without a prompt!!) and think "that's odd for a yellow shoe to be here in the dungeon", and not until later after actually talking to others or reading, seeing a poster, etc that said person has been missing and if you retrieve their remains a reward shall be yours. Think of how much more accomplished and proud it feels to have solved this riddle yourself! This type of interaction is a far cry from being assaulted with a quest dialogue simply because, well for one, it's incredibly immersion breaking.
Furthermore, it was mentioned that these interactions with "perceptions" would be saved in a sort of log. Yuck. The automatic computation of quests and the such ruin the manual and fun way of playing RPGs. The quest-log actually becomes a to-do list whether you consciously realize it or not and I don't know about other players but RL has too many to-do lists. This is why it's so appealing to many that there are no maps (let people create them), no tracks to be followed upon (let people forge their own!), no crafting recipies (let people buy them from vendors, trial and error, what-have-you).
In order to really believe that you are really playing within a living, breathing, virtual world any sort of excessive use of a heads up display, quest log, or rail-system takes away from this and has a very insipid, yet potent deteriorating effects on immersion.
Valith said:Furthermore, it was mentioned that these interactions with "perceptions" would be saved in a sort of log. Yuck. The automatic computation of quests and the such ruin the manual and fun way of playing RPGs. The quest-log actually becomes a to-do list whether you consciously realize it or not and I don't know about other players but RL has too many to-do lists. This is why it's so appealing to many that there are no maps (let people create them), no tracks to be followed upon (let people forge their own!), no crafting recipies (let people buy them from vendors, trial and error, what-have-you).
As for a quest log becoming more of a to-do list has more to do with the amount of quests available to you at a given time and the purpose of said quest. In WoW and EQ2 it very much felt like a to-do list, but that is because you got so many that it became a the default means of leveling. WoW made it worse by making the quests the best way to gain exp, with each area having a regurgitated list of the same quests as the last.
Personally I hope to have quests be far and few in between, with the quests that are in the game being more significant. Imho exp should be gained by exploring the world and fighting its inhabitants, not collecting 20 goblin eyes for a turn in. I think there is a place for those repeated turn in quests, but more in the line of faction grinding. I would much rather have the typical quest be about gaining access to some place, learning some skill or working towards something beyond the normal.
I guess I think quests should be so spread out that you really never have a list of quests to run through. If you do have multiple quests in your log, that should be because they are long and you have not been able to proceed to the next step. Beyond the sheer number of quests, I think the journal should be written as if you were writing notes to yourself, not a go to point B, talk to NPC z.
Right now, at this current point in time, the perception system is simply another way to do quests. In its final form it could very well be used for much more than just questing, maybe it could be used to complete puzzles in a dungeon, or maybe it could be used to interact with items and unlock their powers, or even your spells and/or abilities. Who knows, it is just too soon to know.
But at the moment, it is mainly used for questing and I believe this is for two reasons 1) to create a questing environment that behaves more similar to how it would work in the real world(because the devs are trying to create a virtual world for us to live in) and 2) it removes all those big flashing icons from your screen and allows you to enjoy more of the beautiful art direction that is within the world.
In its current state, it does seem to just be text popup instead of big icons to indicate a quest giver. But I like the potential it has. Now mind you, ultimately it is what it is, and that is a quest system. I don't know why all the expectation with the perception system when it's still questing, you come across a quest giver, you get the quest, and then go do the quest. This is how quests work since the beginning of time. But the perception system changes HOW you do this...a little.
The old way was, you travel the world and come across an NPC with a big icon above their head and click on them to get the quest. EVERY time. Look for the big icon, click on quest giver, do quest. Look for icon, talk to quest giver, do quest. Rinse and repeat. Over and over. Look for icon, click on NPC, do quest.
With the perception system, if they can make good on their idea, you travel the world and receive all sorts of different types of clues directing you towards points of interest. This might be text pop-up, or audio cues, or graphical cues, etc etc. Now instead of looking for that icon you are doing quests a little bit different. You are still doing quests, but are engaging them in a more cerebral manner. Today it was simply a girl crying iirc, you hear her crying and then go near her and get text pop-up that she seems troubled. Big deal right? Instead of a big icon above her head and then clicking on her to find out she is crying and blahblahblah, you get text pop up. But with the old way, obtaining a quest is done in the same manner each and every time, look for that icon, click on NPC, etc.
With the perception system obtaining a quest is a little different each time. You are no longer looking for that icon and are now paying attention to the world which in return makes the world and/or surrounding environment more alive. You hear the girl crying, you smell smoke, you see someone bloodied and hurt, you get a bad feeling about something, you find a mirror that pulses with power, etc. Whatever it may be, the perception system seems to get rid of always looking for that next icon and simply enjoying the world around you and paying more attention to it.
NoobieDoo said:Right now, at this current point in time, the perception system is simply another way to do quests. In its final form it could very well be used for much more than just questing, maybe it could be used to complete puzzles in a dungeon, or maybe it could be used to interact with items and unlock their powers, or even your spells and/or abilities. Who knows, it is just too soon to know.
But at the moment, it is mainly used for questing and I believe this is for two reasons 1) to create a questing environment that behaves more similar to how it would work in the real world(because the devs are trying to create a virtual world for us to live in) and 2) it removes all those big flashing icons from your screen and allows you to enjoy more of the beautiful art direction that is within the world.
In its current state, it does seem to just be text popup instead of big icons to indicate a quest giver. But I like the potential it has. Now mind you, ultimately it is what it is, and that is a quest system. I don't know why all the expectation with the perception system when it's still questing, you come across a quest giver, you get the quest, and then go do the quest. This is how quests work since the beginning of time. But the perception system changes HOW you do this...a little.
The old way was, you travel the world and come across an NPC with a big icon above their head and click on them to get the quest. EVERY time. Look for the big icon, click on quest giver, do quest. Look for icon, talk to quest giver, do quest. Rinse and repeat. Over and over. Look for icon, click on NPC, do quest.
With the perception system, if they can make good on their idea, you travel the world and receive all sorts of different types of clues directing you towards points of interest. This might be text pop-up, or audio cues, or graphical cues, etc etc. Now instead of looking for that icon you are doing quests a little bit different. You are still doing quests, but are engaging them in a more cerebral manner. Today it was simply a girl crying iirc, you hear her crying and then go near her and get text pop-up that she seems troubled. Big deal right? Instead of a big icon above her head and then clicking on her to find out she is crying and blahblahblah, you get text pop up. But with the old way, obtaining a quest is done in the same manner each and every time, look for that icon, click on NPC, etc.
With the perception system obtaining a quest is a little different each time. You are no longer looking for that icon and are now paying attention to the world which in return makes the world and/or surrounding environment more alive. You hear the girl crying, you smell smoke, you see someone bloodied and hurt, you get a bad feeling about something, you find a mirror that pulses with power, etc. Whatever it may be, the perception system seems to get rid of always looking for that next icon and simply enjoying the world around you and paying more attention to it.
This 10x over! Well said Noobie.
Its a bit early to be so disgruntled about the system i think Martel, though you not getting it is completely understandable, I think your expecting a bit much and there isnt much to get.. yet. But its probably worth holding onto a little bit of optimism given the system is in VERY early stages and we know very little. I dont think you should expect to be knocked over by the perception system being a ground breaking feature (who knows i could be wrong) but i think it is aimed to give us some subtle direction in exploration and questing (if you choose to use it) in a game that is likely to very much let you get lost from the moment you start and doesnt hold your hand to take you to your next location / npc.
I like their description during the stream of it being about making the environment talking to you instead of clicking on everything with a ! on it, at the very least in its simplest form it is nice for immersion.
I am keen to see how it evolves!
I think a lot of you are being a bit hard on the OP and a bit quick to jump on the "it's too soon to criticize the system" band wagon. I think this to be a very poor and unproductive attitude. We all know it's early in development. As one that does some low level software development for a living I can say now IS the time to give your opinions and thought on anything they show us. A lot of programming time can be saved (is saved) by me going to my people ahead of time and finding out what they "think" they want/need, sketching it out on paper, suggesting what I "think" they want/need and then coming to an agreement, and I start building. I find few things less annoying than to get no input from them, get the program written, and then them say "do this all over" on something I have duplicated for 25 areas and a part that I had a sample (place holder) to begin with and they said nothing. (or worse they say, "well yea I didn't like that in your sample but didn't say anything")
I would think the Devs would want us to tell them NOW if or if not popups are OK, not after we "see what they come up with" and they have 500 quest all implemented with popups and we ask them to do it over.
I'm with the OP on this, I think the Popup is a mistake, if the Devs agree and it's just place holder then I think they could have even done a placeholder in a simpler and more accurate way (of what I was expecting). My vision of the perception system, from reading the info they have given us so far is that I was expecting something subtle, easy to miss. Something that if not paying attention I could have run right past it, Like maybe just simply the sound of her crying that was heard. I may have been wrong in what I was expecting. I would have expected for a place holder nothing more than a simple line of text in the chat window if even that. I actually think the crying was enough, the fact she was upset enough for the Devs to attach a crying sound's tells me something is up.. at least that's what I would perceive, and with that I should hail her and ask her what the problem is.
Instead, they choose to demonstrate the "Passive Insight Skill" by having a popup telling me "She seems troubled". I could accept this as also placeholder and that they needed/wanted it to be more obvious for the CohhCarnage live stream than just the sound of her crying or "a simple line of text easily missed in the chat window" with one exception, This box had Button Controls and required a response from the player. THIS is where they lost me, this was more than a subtle message appearing on the screen, this to me was a very intrusive question mark just with a different graphic. This forces the player to choose "Embrace" or "Disregard". Bad Form!!
The way I would have liked to see this encounter happen (place holder or not) would have been
Run down the path, hear the crying and get a message in the chat window, "Anne Luca seems troubled"
I then could just run by and miss it, or ignore it, OR I could "hail" Anne and begin the quest text
Now if the Dev Team agrees, cool, then were on the same page and all is good, I just need to be very impatient and hope they open for Alpha Jan 1 2017, If they don't, or if they thought all of us would be fine with popups, well they at least know my opinion of it (as well as the OP's) and they can do with this as they will. Hopefully they will rethink this and ask themselves "can we do this without popups?"
Martell said:Klumpedge said:This game is barely half way into developement. Most gaming companies do not show anything like this at all trying to avoid the quick rush to judgement over an undeveloped tool or mechanic. As many stated above: This is Pre-pre Alpha. Give 'em a year or two before you go casting any real judgement of the product. At least let them finish it and stop begging for sneak peaks if you can't handle the idea that this is not the finished game, not by a long shot.
Thank You for your patience.
Ok, so in synopsis what you believe is "Miracles await those who have patience and do not question the Lord!"
Well, I doubt the ability of this group to deliver on anything they say.
I question their marketing-like language about features that we can't actually see.
I decry the marketing of missing mechanics found in every modern mmo, as "features". The absence of something is not a feature, get real. Even if it actually was worth something, like "Come to Springfield we DON'T burn witches here!" - still not a feature. Marketing negative space = bullshit.
If you doubt the team can deliver, then why did you donate, why are you posting? I loved the proximity based quest initiation, I have been asking myself for years why an MMO won't do this. It's simple, but it is innovative because no one else has done it. Name me one MMO made in the last 10 years that doesn't have some sort of out of place graphical indicator telling you this is a quest giver. I appreciate everything these guys are doing, which is why I donated, I believed in their vision and I believe they have stayed true to that vision.
geatz said:If you doubt the team can deliver, then why did you donate, why are you posting? I loved the proximity based quest initiation, I have been asking myself for years why an MMO won't do this. It's simple, but it is innovative because no one else has done it. Name me one MMO made in the last 10 years that doesn't have some sort of out of place graphical indicator telling you this is a quest giver. I appreciate everything these guys are doing, which is why I donated, I believed in their vision and I believe they have stayed true to that vision.
While I often disagree with Martell on most issues, he does present valid and thought through opinions. If you've ever been on a team of yes men, then you'll know that we need people in these forums pointing out issues, even if they haven't yet figured out a solution.
I actually agree with some here that the pop-up seemed a little intrusive and was not what I expected based on their description. It seems like they want the perception system to be a queue that enables you to hunt for content. If the pop-up had only occured if you walked up (within a couple feet) and looked directly at the crying lady, then sure I'd be cool with it. However, it seems like the current system just notifies you when you get anywhere near an object or person of interest with no hunting around involved. That said, Kilsin recently had a spot on VoT where he said he came at the perception system as a skeptic, but found that it really worked. That gives me hope for this system if nothing else.
I'll be honest, I'm in the fangirl department when it comes to Pantheon. I've been gushing about the game almost nonstop to all my gamer friends and family.
Obviously, coming from that stance, when I read the OP's post, I had a very visceral reaction: "KILL THE HERETIC!" ...
....
So I waited a few days to post so that I could actually see what others were thinking and formulate a more useful response.
I see where Martell is coming from, but I don't share the same reaction.
The perception system in its infant form more or less functions the same as an exclamation point. More or less. I sincerely appreciate the lack of UI elements in my game world, so the simple act of not having the " ! " makes a big difference for me. It sings of that special key word we're all constantly talking about: immersion.
Furthermore, we've only seen... two (?) examples of the perception system. One in the June stream where the perception system clued the group in to finding a key which was required to unlock a door to access deeper parts of the dungeon, and one in the December stream where the party was cued in to the problems with a townswoman. The first example was actually a lot more subtle. We heard a little doodledeedoo sound and got a vague little hint. The second example was a bit more direct. We actually heard a crying sound, which was awesome, but then when the party got within a rather wide range of the NPC, we got the perception prompt which we then had to either ignore or accept.
I think most people have agreed that we'd want something a bit more subtle, and I'm in the same boat. I think I'd prefer little hints, maybe at most a text clue in our chat box, but nothing so intrusive as the scroll across the top of the screen. I'm also not a fan of actually having to accept the prompt. I think researching the clues we're given is intrinsically accepting the prompt. We don't need to click a button to say that we want to be perceptive. If you approach the NPC, you've already inherently accepted your perception prompt. It's one of those tiny small things that I believe might end up being a rather large annoyance.
The best example I have of this is from FFXIV. When you are attempting to give over an item to an NPC, you have to find the item in your inventory, then right click it, and click "Use" or whatever. Then you get a confirmation dialogue, THEN the item goes into the NPC trade window and you can click to proceed and actually give up the item. There's perhaps one extra step, one extra "Confirm?" step, but when you're regularly using the interface to give over items to NPCs, it becomes a righteous pain. So I would much rather do away with the dialogue to accept or ignore the perception cue.
Another thing that's worth noting is that I hope that there will be a large variety of perception triggers. Sometimes I'd like a crying woman to approach me whenever I come within a range of her. That makes sense, right? There's clearly something wrong, and she needs help! So yeah, makes sense for her to hail anyone willing to listen. Several people have been fairly critical of this example we saw in the latest stream, but I think we should take a step back and ponder upon whether this works in that instance. I personally think that a more direct approach works for that quest in that situation. However, a different context should mean a different level of perception cue. If I'm in an overgrown ruins area, a pillar isn't going to shout out to me: "Hey I'm interesting!" No no, at most, maybe I'll see some faded text beneath some of the ivy overgrowing the pillar when I get that close to it. Different quests should be varying levels of subtle.
The last point I'd like to make, as others have also mentioned, is that we've already been told to expect other types of cues. Things that are very subtle and cool like simply hearing a different music being to play as you approach a certain area, or actually hearing a voice whisper instead of getting text saying that you're hearing something. I'm a huge fan of this. This is interacting with a whole nother sense: hearing! If they can actually incorporate these sound prompts, I think that is what will truly take the perception system to the next level for me.
Now that being said, I still think the abrasive and dismissive attitude of the OP waters down his point. This isn't me being insulting for the sake of insulting someone with a different view than I. It's simply me stating something that we all as gamers should already be aware of: Text is a horrible medium. Tongue-in-cheek comes off as abrasive. Playful comes off as rude. When our primary medium is text, your words matter a lot more, since there is no tone, no emphasis. I think we should always take a step back from each post before we post, and read it a few times over and ask ourselves if that post coming from someone else would be offensive, or rude, or... dare I say it, trolly.
That's what I did, and I feel that my post is more substantial and meaningful for it.
Zorkon said:I think a lot of you are being a bit hard on the OP and a bit quick to jump on the "it's too soon to criticize the system" band wagon. I think this to be a very poor and unproductive attitude. We all know it's early in development. As one that does some low level software development for a living I can say now IS the time to give your opinions and thought on anything they show us. A lot of programming time can be saved (is saved) by me going to my people ahead of time and finding out what they "think" they want/need, sketching it out on paper, suggesting what I "think" they want/need and then coming to an agreement, and I start building. I find few things less annoying than to get no input from them, get the program written, and then them say "do this all over" on something I have duplicated for 25 areas and a part that I had a sample (place holder) to begin with and they said nothing. (or worse they say, "well yea I didn't like that in your sample but didn't say anything")
I would think the Devs would want us to tell them NOW if or if not popups are OK, not after we "see what they come up with" and they have 500 quest all implemented with popups and we ask them to do it over.I'm with the OP on this, I think the Popup is a mistake, if the Devs agree and it's just place holder then I think they could have even done a placeholder in a simpler and more accurate way (of what I was expecting). My vision of the perception system, from reading the info they have given us so far is that I was expecting something subtle, easy to miss. Something that if not paying attention I could have run right past it, Like maybe just simply the sound of her crying that was heard. I may have been wrong in what I was expecting. I would have expected for a place holder nothing more than a simple line of text in the chat window if even that. I actually think the crying was enough, the fact she was upset enough for the Devs to attach a crying sound's tells me something is up.. at least that's what I would perceive, and with that I should hail her and ask her what the problem is.
Instead, they choose to demonstrate the "Passive Insight Skill" by having a popup telling me "She seems troubled". I could accept this as also placeholder and that they needed/wanted it to be more obvious for the CohhCarnage live stream than just the sound of her crying or "a simple line of text easily missed in the chat window" with one exception, This box had Button Controls and required a response from the player. THIS is where they lost me, this was more than a subtle message appearing on the screen, this to me was a very intrusive question mark just with a different graphic. This forces the player to choose "Embrace" or "Disregard". Bad Form!!
The way I would have liked to see this encounter happen (place holder or not) would have been
Run down the path, hear the crying and get a message in the chat window, "Anne Luca seems troubled"
I then could just run by and miss it, or ignore it, OR I could "hail" Anne and begin the quest textNow if the Dev Team agrees, cool, then were on the same page and all is good, I just need to be very impatient and hope they open for Alpha Jan 1 2017, If they don't, or if they thought all of us would be fine with popups, well they at least know my opinion of it (as well as the OP's) and they can do with this as they will. Hopefully they will rethink this and ask themselves "can we do this without popups?"
I think it's great that you are a software developer, if I see you on the streets I'll be sure to high-five you and get a good chest bump in. The OP actually wasn't criticizing the popups in his original post. He made a general/broad complaint that the system as a whole seemed "sterile and boring". So in all of your wise years of experience tell me how does this produce anything positive for the devs and their system? How does it provide any constructive criticism when nothing in particular was addressed and the OP simply continued to deride the feature with sarcasm and petulism? And I'm really not trying to get back into this whole discussion, I'm just trying to reason with your post, but if you actually go back through the comments, the OP was the one with a poor attitude and being unproductive (he has publicly apologized since and I applaud him for this) and not the other way around as you claim. If he would have stated that he had a problem with the popup message (as someone else did in response to him as well as yourself) then yeah a good discussion could have ensued because I for one agree with it being a little intrusive. But he didn't, he continued to make snide remarks as people tried to explain to him what the system was.
We really aren't in a position to criticize something like this yet. We can provide suggestions but stating that people are jumping on the 'too early to criticize bandwagon' is a bit much don't you think? We don't know all the specifics on it. We don't know that if I'm not a keeper or a certain level keeper or even a certain type of keeper that once I walk by that lady crying that I would even get a popup message. Maybe if I'm not the correct type of keeper I just hear her crying but can't help her. I don't mind the popup itself, I just didn't care for how it seemed to force the player into having to choose between 'engaging' or 'ignoring'. But until the system is a little more developed and we actually have our hands on it then we won't really be able to provide anything more constructive to it.
Again, I'm not going to get to respond to this at all. If you don't like the popups, cool, but don't adress the people in this discussion as being unproductive with poor attitudes and claim they are jumping on some form of bandwagon when in reality it was the OP who had a poor attitude and the community was just trying to help him understand the perception system.