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Idea: Immersive Questing
ArRashid
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For all ye roleplayers out there, as well for those fascinated by SAO/Log Horizon and things like that..
What if there was a toggle in settings, allowing you to shut down the quest windows? Instead of staring at a wall of text (or an NPC's fine new mouth movement), you'd just walk to a questgiver, push [E] to talk to it. Nothing happens. But NPC starts talking. You stand around till NPC finishes talking.. if you haven't left ~15m radius around NPC till it finishes talking, you'll get options (just like when accepting group invitation or something) to [E] Accept / [X] Decline quest (or, for interactive dialogue options, you get a list of choices with buttons assigned to each.
PROs:
- not that disturbing
- immersive
- if you didn't understand the NPC's speech (may happen with a few Khajiit or Argonian NPCs
), you can still check the full quest in Journal
- togglable in settings = people can safely ignore the option, they're not forced to it
CONs:
- a lot of standing around is a price to pay for immersion, as you can't just very well kick the NPC's shin to make him "skip the chitchat"
- won't ever be "totally" immersive, unless Zenimax pays voice actors for all the player voices to voice thousands of lines of dialogue to make player's character actually answer back to NPC
What if there was a toggle in settings, allowing you to shut down the quest windows? Instead of staring at a wall of text (or an NPC's fine new mouth movement), you'd just walk to a questgiver, push [E] to talk to it. Nothing happens. But NPC starts talking. You stand around till NPC finishes talking.. if you haven't left ~15m radius around NPC till it finishes talking, you'll get options (just like when accepting group invitation or something) to [E] Accept / [X] Decline quest (or, for interactive dialogue options, you get a list of choices with buttons assigned to each.
PROs:
- not that disturbing
- immersive
- if you didn't understand the NPC's speech (may happen with a few Khajiit or Argonian NPCs
), you can still check the full quest in Journal- togglable in settings = people can safely ignore the option, they're not forced to it
CONs:
- a lot of standing around is a price to pay for immersion, as you can't just very well kick the NPC's shin to make him "skip the chitchat"
- won't ever be "totally" immersive, unless Zenimax pays voice actors for all the player voices to voice thousands of lines of dialogue to make player's character actually answer back to NPC
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spoqster✭✭✭✭✭Interesting idea. I have spent quite a few thoughts on this question myself. A similar idea occured to me when I did the veteran Crypt of Hearts dungeon for the first time AFTER already having done the associated quest. CoH is set up in a way that the original quest giver still appears and she follows you and talks to you, telling her story, while your group is running through the dungeon. This mechanic is zero intrusive, because it does not force you to interrupt your natural behavior (to stand and wait and read). And at the same time it adds a lot of immersion compared to not have this at all.
I think if more quests were constructed in a way that the player is not forced to stand and read, but instead gets 90% of the quest content via talking npcs that follow him around, the whole questing experience would be better. That way the quest dialogue would be perceived as a positive element that decorates your natural behavior, as opposed to it being perceived as a negative element that disrupts your natural behavior.0 -
ArRashid✭✭✭✭Interesting idea. I have spent quite a few thoughts on this question myself. A similar idea occured to me when I did the veteran Crypt of Hearts dungeon for the first time AFTER already having done the associated quest. CoH is set up in a way that the original quest giver still appears and she follows you and talks to you, telling her story, while your group is running through the dungeon. This mechanic is zero intrusive, because it does not force you to interrupt your natural behavior (to stand and wait and read). And at the same time it adds a lot of immersion compared to not have this at all.
I think if more quests were constructed in a way that the player is not forced to stand and read, but instead gets 90% of the quest content via talking npcs that follow him around, the whole questing experience would be better. That way the quest dialogue would be perceived as a positive element that decorates your natural behavior, as opposed to it being perceived as a negative element that disrupts your natural behavior.
Yeah, though unfortunately, NPC following you around would require instancing that NPC to each player (/party), which would put additional strain on server.. not that they wouldn't do it anyway with a lot of NPCs (Lyris in tutorial, Jakarn in first 2 DC zones, etc)0 -
Gidorick✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭✭✭While, as someone who loves the RPG aspect of ESO, I love this idea.... As someone who respects ESO as a TES game, I would have to say this wouldn't work for ESO.
The NPC conversation method is deliberately designed to be like other TES games. Ever notice how it's only ever you and the npc taking, three way conversational trees don't exist? It's always just you and them. That's because that's how conversationsin the Elder Scrolls work. Changing this would go against the franchise.
I like the way you're thinking though!What ESO really needs is an Auction Horse.
That's right... Horse.
Click HERE to discuss.
Want more crazy ideas? Check out my Concept Repository!0 -
PKMN12✭✭✭✭✭Would also likely require a major change in teh game code, not somethign they are going to do.0
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CadenceRowan✭✭✭I have the opposite problem - I wish there was an option for more captioning in the game. I have hearing issues and trying to read NPC dialog in the tiny text of the chat box is not fun. I would never want to turn off the quest text boxes. But I get where you are coming from too.0 -
Severia✭✭I would like this too. I hate subtitles in games because I find I can't help but read them and then find I am 'ahead' of the person speaking. With ESO's quests, I find I can't enjoy the NPC talking to me because I already know what he or she is going to say. It would be much better to be able to switch the accompanying text off.
Having said that, the voice acting in the game is pretty woeful, so maybe it is best to skip it altogether.1 -
ArRashid✭✭✭✭I would like this too. I hate subtitles in games because I find I can't help but read them and then find I am 'ahead' of the person speaking. With ESO's quests, I find I can't enjoy the NPC talking to me because I already know what he or she is going to say. It would be much better to be able to switch the accompanying text off.
Having said that, the voice acting in the game is pretty woeful, so maybe it is best to skip it altogether.
Well, yeah.. having a small team of mostly inexperienced voice actors dub about thousand or more NPCs is not really great to begin with.
There are times when I literally facepalm when NPC starts talking about how everyone's getting slaughtered and such while reading it like newspaper without any actual "acting", I dunno why they call themselves voice actors. It's ridiculous. Though even Lyris (Jennifer Hale) reading dialogues like that makes me feel that it was actually a condition from some of the higher ups.. coz how the heck can commander Shepard be so "meh".. oh god.0 -
Severia✭✭To be fair to the voice actors, I suspect they were given their lines with no context at all. Often you hear them stress a particular word in a sentence, changing the meaning from the obvious in context response to something completely different.1
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ArRashid✭✭✭✭To be fair to the voice actors, I suspect they were given their lines with no context at all. Often you hear them stress a particular word in a sentence, changing the meaning from the obvious in context response to something completely different.
Well the overall feeling of the voice acting is /salute to most of dem cats and lizards, and /slap to most of the rest 0 -
Mettaricana✭✭✭✭✭
✭✭✭I would like un-failable quests that actually just keep evolving based on if this npc died when they weren't supposed to but if they did someone else will direct the quest in a direction kinda like the bleakrock quest line in EP. help one party the other dies etc but doesn't stop the story. or in DC if the queen dies rather than have it restart just have some alteration in the story someone else steps up in her place and gets more screen time and progresses the quest further or in a slightly different direction that way every play through would be truly different outcomes on characters and what you experienced.0 -
ArRashid✭✭✭✭Mettaricana wrote: »I would like un-failable quests that actually just keep evolving based on if this npc died when they weren't supposed to but if they did someone else will direct the quest in a direction kinda like the bleakrock quest line in EP. help one party the other dies etc but doesn't stop the story. or in DC if the queen dies rather than have it restart just have some alteration in the story someone else steps up in her place and gets more screen time and progresses the quest further or in a slightly different direction that way every play through would be truly different outcomes on characters and what you experienced.
Well.. that's kinda extreme example.
If the queen dies, Veiled Heritance gains the throne, Dominion breaks apart and so on..0 -
Tamanous✭✭✭✭✭I have to admit the text is extremely distracting. It takes up far too much space and the npc is to far to the left of screen and isn't focused in our line of sight. The npc should center stage and optional text (with ability to change font size) should be beneath and perhaps to the right a bit. It matters not if the wording overlaps the npc.
As it is I find I ignore the npc far too much.0 -
PKMN12✭✭✭✭✭Mettaricana wrote: »I would like un-failable quests that actually just keep evolving based on if this npc died when they weren't supposed to but if they did someone else will direct the quest in a direction kinda like the bleakrock quest line in EP. help one party the other dies etc but doesn't stop the story. or in DC if the queen dies rather than have it restart just have some alteration in the story someone else steps up in her place and gets more screen time and progresses the quest further or in a slightly different direction that way every play through would be truly different outcomes on characters and what you experienced.
NEVER going to happen in an MMO, simply not possible.0 -
ArRashid✭✭✭✭Mettaricana wrote: »I would like un-failable quests that actually just keep evolving based on if this npc died when they weren't supposed to but if they did someone else will direct the quest in a direction kinda like the bleakrock quest line in EP. help one party the other dies etc but doesn't stop the story. or in DC if the queen dies rather than have it restart just have some alteration in the story someone else steps up in her place and gets more screen time and progresses the quest further or in a slightly different direction that way every play through would be truly different outcomes on characters and what you experienced.
NEVER going to happen in an MMO, simply not possible.
Well idk but wasn't something similarly done in Shadows od Mordor lately? But yeah, doing that in single player game is one thing, but doing that in an MMO would be a collosal undertaking.. we'd be talking sci-fi like Sword Art Online already 0
