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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Removing Waypoints During Questing: A More Immersive Exploration?
MajorGeraldX
Member, Alpha Two
Hello everyone,
I wonder if it would be interesting to remove these automatic waypoints to encourage players to truly explore and pay attention to the details of the surrounding environment. This could make quests more challenging and strengthen the connection with the game's world.
any thought on this ?
This is how mmorpgs worked before and it was much better.
I wonder if it would be interesting to remove these automatic waypoints to encourage players to truly explore and pay attention to the details of the surrounding environment. This could make quests more challenging and strengthen the connection with the game's world.
any thought on this ?
This is how mmorpgs worked before and it was much better.
9
Comments
What if the quests were more detailed? Could you find your way by reading these?
This is why i'm asking the question, "Do you need a waypoint to find your way and prevent yourself from getting lost?"
I'm trying to figure it out
For some quests related to investigation where you aren’t told to go to a specific location, then no automatic waypoints should show up. The player should however be able to mark their own waypoints on their map associated to the quest through exploring and searching for clues.
For quests directing you to go to a specific location, why not have the waypoint added automatically by the quest?
As for questing, a lot of players will use multiple waypoints to determine what area to head to during a session. So they tend to work multiple quests at the same time.
what he said...
One thing I would certainly say is a marker who has a quest in the first place would be great and I think that citizens of religious Nodes or players who have a shrine in their freehold could get a clearer indicator seen from further away to find the starting points of quests. (This is under the assumption that religious nodes' "theme" is "PvE" and quest activity).
As for quest goals, I think area marks are enough, if certain objects are necessary to progress the quest, I'd suggest a "twinkling" indicator that activates automatically after a character spends a certain time in the quest area. e.g. after 30 min (maybe even make this dependent on the Intelligence stat of that character?) looking for the components of the Toy Soldier in the Oakenbane Castle ruins, getting near a mob that drops a part of it triggers a 2 second twinkling effect that indicates a point of interest, same could be done when passing by the grave where you ultimately have to lay down the completed toy soldier.
But routing indicators on the map are too much, I found myself looking a lot at the map in games that have that and when something ended up not being marked on the map despite me being there before I realized I had no idea how to get there or where exactly that place was - that is not good for an immersive game.
Great idea
But what I know for sure is that I'd rather spend 5 hours stumbling about while actively engaged in figuring out what to do than 3 hours ticking off tasks by following exclamation marks with my brain entirely shut off.
If I don't want to think, I can go farm overland map monsters or an easy dungeon. I don't need quests for that.
If the lack of directions make quests take substantially longer, you can offset that by also adding more encounters to complete them, and then rewarding them with more XP, and then you also keep dev time equal by designing fewer, but more challenging/engaging quests.
Yes, it’s possible to get lost. But that’s where you might stumble upon a side quest, such as ‘Escort @Caww to safety.’
I laught
Same as always,
i think the best Option People can quickly settle for - > is that certain Tools of "Help" during Quests are completely optional.
That You can choose for yourself if you want to see for example a "glowing/marked Region" on your Minimap, which Points You into the right Direction of a Quest You saw for example on a Questboard.
During the Times of good, old Gothic 1 and 2 - on the Island of Khorinis - i could find my Quest Objectives always and i truly mean : ALWAYS - without anything that would help me - besides the Questgiver giving me a description of where to go.
It was the best.
Absolutely the best.
Sometimes extremely dangerous for my Character - but that made fulfilling the Quests only the more worthwhile and worthy.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
it also made me stumble on to a lot of different things while I was out in the wild exploring. if they can bring some of that wonder to ashes then I am all for it.
This is actually something you definitely couldn’t do, because Ashes is a competitive game, even with some of the questing. If only X people can complete a quest (such as with particular gathering tasks) then the people using the UI pointers is going to get it done faster.
It’s gotta be one or the other, either we have the waypoint guidance for everyone or, for no one during any given quest, otherwise it just ends up punishing the people who don’t use the Point-Me systems.
Did I get lost already??? I knew it...
This would have a vibe of the rpgs from the 90s, before Blizzard ruined everything with their yellow exclamation marks etc
... ... ... i still don't see any Reason why dear Intrepid should deny People this good and nice Choice to either give themselves a bit of a Handicap,
or if they want to leave the Option for a bit of U.I. Assistance on the Minimap on to see -> in Case they might need a bit help and are a bit disadvantaged compared to other Players.
Why should it interfere with the competitive Nature of the Game at all when the competitive Part is completely voluntarily ?
You can play as whatever you like.
You can be an innocent, honest and hard-working Plant-gatherer in the Forests and Woods,
you can be a savage Pirate on the Seas,
you can be a LITERAL Murder-Hobo outside the Nodes, (lol)
there is no need to compete with anyone if You choose not do so so.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
Then came the yellow exclamation point. It somehow changed games in a way, where now it gets extremely frustrating when you cannot find something within a couple minutes.
I wouldn't be against not having quest markers, or as also mentioned an indicator that may flash or sparkle once you are close by.
What I would not want this to become.
1). The go help the villagers to the West escape from behind the wall. Please make finding the villagers easy to find. As in, they are not tucked away in some secret garden nearby the west wall. That has a single corridor to the secret garden that can only be found by facing one specific direction. It is bad enough to admit you failed and need to go consult the world wide web. It's a whole other thing when the zone chat is a constant spam or yells "LF Villagers" "Can someone tell me WTF to find the villagers" "looking for help with finding villagers."
2). Sending me off on a wild goose chase. Going back to the forgotten realms reference. Being told to go east towards the mountains. And you have traveled east to the edge of the map. Went all the way back west in a grid pattern to the start. Then back east again in the grid pattern. You finally decide forget it and start going north up the edge of the map, run into some mountains, follow those around and whoa... There it is. Why couldn't the quest just say go Northeast until you find some mountains.
So I agree that not having obvious quest markers and waypoints on the map would be good for interesting gameplay. It takes a time balance and lots of development work in the details of each quest to make sure that it doesn't actually create a massive frustration factor for gameplay.
While immersive, it's very counter productive, anti immersive, and frustrating to need to tab back and forth between your web browser and the game just to figure out where in the hell is the green slime that dude wanted me to collect.
Wiki's should be banned but that another topic
Today players want to progress fast.
Wki should be made by developers so they can control how much they spoil.
Who want very detailed hints, can find other sources, probably youtube videos.
Who want no help at all, can avoid looking.
Example of general directions given in the wiki:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skyscale_Scales
With the points marked like that it was fun to find the exact location on the map, as it involved a lot of climbing
I don't really think it's a generality. It's true that if the content between levels isn't relevant, players want to get to the top level as quickly as possible. But if players take pleasure in discovering relevant zones and have access to content at each level, that would surely be different. If it's too quick to go from one level to the next, players won't be able to regroup between levels or look for gear stuff & so .
On the other hand, instead of using the wiki all the time, it might be a good idea for the developers to incorporate a channel /help with a connected AI to help with quests if no one answers on the channel. This would give an impression of communication rather than a simple alt+tab.
IF - there is the Quest written - on the Wiki.
Or maaaybe - People just look attentively at the Questdescription for Ten to Twenty Seconds.
✓ Occasional Roleplayer
✓ Guild is " Balderag's Garde " for now. (German)
@TopWombat Wouldn't you say the suggestion in my comment addressed that? If the quests take longer for the average player, you make them that much more rewarding.
1) Wikis will fill a lot slower in a game with quests of the same level spread across the whole world, because a lower percentage of people will be doing the same quests.
2) I think that's fine. The lack of 3d markers ingame will still mean you spend more time actually thinking about what you're doing, even if you use the Wiki to tell you what it is. It's just still substantially less automation.
It's just not true that because we some games decided "the players will just use the Wiki, so we can just give them quest markers," the experience of running the quest with the help of a Wiki would be the same as running the quest by following exclamation marks and map markers.
In a game where the quest tasks are handheld, it's absolutely true that people will get impatient when a quest requires finding the correct next task yourself because there's a subtask that doesn't point you to the thing you have to do (usually because it's in your inventory, or some sort of riddle.)
But in a game where that's the norm with every task, people are going to be more willing to think along the steps all the way, because that's the expectation, and all other players have to do the same thing.
That way you could make the big quests where you need to keep track of where you have to go and what you need to do long and rewarding, while the handheld quests grant very low rewards and mostly serve as incentive to go out and kill things.
Might sound obvious, but most games have no distinction in the amount of handholding, or worse, inconsistent handholding, guaranteeing that players will get impatient with the low-handholding story quests.
If it's a consistent design philosophy, players know the effort and reward associated with unique versus repeatable quests.