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One thing I don't like about this game
Samuraisword
Member Posts: 2,111
They are gonna have stupid icons over questgivers heads. It's such an immersion killer.
Comments
Apply lemon juice and candle flame here to reveal secret message.
I don't have a problem with approaching every NPC to see what they have to say. Wouldn't you want to do that anyways for lore and immersion? When you place icons over questgivers heads, you are saying all other NPCs other than vendors, serve no purpose, so why bother placing them in the game?
Seriously why are gamers becoming so freakin lazy? They don't want to engage NPCs unless they know for sure they have a quest. They don't want realistic travel. They don't want significant death penalties which hold players accountable for their actions and preserve the integrity of the environment. They don't want to retrieve their corpses. They are expecting double experience bonuses.
Where is it going to end? Soon we will all be logging in at release with max skill/level with all the best gear.
I'm pretty sure that after 3 days of NPC clicking, you'lle be tired of it as well. Though the "!" system is very basic. Maybe some form in between? I've used this in NWN2: Basically giving the questgivers unique names, whereas showing the non-interactive lumberjack as "lumberjack". It still makes you check out the NPC's, but you will know which persons to talk to and which not.
Its a matter of taste, but I fear for you that the majority will prefer the easy to go "!!!!!" system.
Except you Don't want that in PotBS.
Since missions for Brits in Jamaica will tip the port's balance to Brittish
and so on for each nation.
If you're a Spaniard you really don't want to be doing the Brittish NPC's quests - or you may be screwing yourself out of the port with the best prices for your chosen goods.
Begone foul WoW-centric 'collect all quests' idea (hardly a WoW only or created thing, but it seems to be fashionable to blame anything unnecessarily pervasive on WoW so...)
This I really like.
As well as naming differences.
Par example - quest related NPC's have full name and surname, while incidental NPC's have one or the other but not both? Admittedly far too late to be rewriting this now perhaps, but perhaps not.
To be fair, MxO district quest-givers had no such icon, however they were the only NPC's with actual _names_ in the world. And realistically, with or without exclamation marks, within a month or two somewhere online will be a database of all quest-giving NPC's locations. Why are we trying to pretend they'll be impossible to find?
When they first added this element to EQ2, i was like wtf, this is crap, blah blah. It helps, it avoids countless hours of talking to every npc in a town numerous times. 'Well I know I talked to that NPC before, but maybe now (two days later), he might have an update for me on ONE of the many quests Im on'....that is just not practical and serves no purpose, IMO, you need the icons.
I will say this though, I wish you wouldnt get an icon over the head of an NPC to START a quest, only ones that will advance them. This way you still need to talk to npcs to see if they have a quest for you, or just learn some lore.
Kings and Sons of God
Travel on their way from here
Calming restless mobs
Easing all of their, all of their fear
Strange times are here.
I think there should always be some sort of indication, be it on the mini map, or over the quest npc heads (or both), at very least , yeah an option to turn off such features for those that don't like it, for whatever the reason, be nice, but screw running all over tartaros looking for some damn npc that's not even illuminated, so when you do find him, you can run off all over hell again to get him a t-shirt or some stupid item. Especially in the MASSIVE MMO i use that term loosly, worlds that we are now playing in, but...
....yeah, in a single player adventure game, or rpg, i dont want those elements per say, it is more of an immersion, but in an online environment, you got people running all around you and chat screen scrolling it's not really all that immersive anyway, not like a single player game, IMO.
The absence of the ! and ? system for questgivers was really a big annoyance for me back when I played DAoC (this was pre-Shrouded Isles even). But that game allowed you to basically ask a guard where that person was in the city and they would point in that NPC's general direction. That might be the best way to please both sides.
I really don't see the OP's point. A ! or ? over an NPC's head is no more an immersion breaker than the names, guild logos, crests or other stuff floating above everyone's heads.
What's the difference?
Hahahaha!
I'lle second that!
There are similarities, granted, they both promote laziness which is a negative result and one of my gripes. Lack of proper introductions and sometimes plain rude behavior can result from the displaying of names and guildtags etc, similar to what one finds in real life when people wear name tags.
The guild names though are part of needed advertising and a sense of pride for many players to show and be seen. The individual names can also be an important aspect of commerce if you are a known tradeskiller and can also be a sense of pride for your personal history in the game world. So those are distinct differences from icons which only serve to promote laziness and dummy down the game which in turn ruins immersion.
By pinpointing which NPCs are questgivers, the developers are also saying essentially that all other NPCs that are not vendors or marked questgivers, are fluff and pointless. This compounds the trampling of immersion. Even if the other NPCs have something interesting to say, wether it be lore oriented, or a fruitful bit of information not related specifically to a quest, they will be ignored by the masses who are being taught that laziness and ease are to be rewarded at the cost of a virtual world experience.
A big immersion breaker for me is lifeless, underpopulated cities.
If an MMO were to populate a city with an even remotely realistic amount of npcs/citizens, you would be begging for an indicator.
I don't like the trend of floating icons over NPCs heads either. It's really stupid looking and does hurt immersion.
Seems to me that if you designed the fluff NPCs to be non targetable, that should be enough of a quick aid for those who don't wan't to bother talking to all the NPCs in order to find quests. Why do you also need the icons? Isn't that overkill?
-Acid
Nvm...
I've played too many games over the last 10-15 years with no idea what the next bit of the quest might be or how to progress.
There are valid points on both sides of the discussion. Quest givers typically only offer quests if you are are the right race, or level, or whatever in other games and whilst that works well, it can be intrusive for those that want to play "hard mode" or "roleplayers"...
You know that <insert fotm website> is gonna have a break down of the quests in short order anyway.
For me, its better with than without, optional would be better again and completion or followup even better.
"Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand alloys and compositions and things with... molecular structures."