I like puzzles where the answers could be very clear, if you work at it.

Silly example:
You find a key to one of the ancient doors. This particular key once belonged to Vince Clortho. Your Journal entry reads “I have found the key of Vince Clortho, inscribed on it is the word “Vengeance”. I wonder what that could mean.” At which point you can either go door to door to see which one this key opens or you could go check out some book stores where you might find one titled “Minions of Gozer”. Somewhere in that book will be a reference to whom the Keymaster hated most in the land and to whom he swore revenge.

The GPS can be very useful if used right, while not being a way to dumb down quests as well. If a quest says to go somewhere and find something, I think it should lead you to the right dungeon, then leave it to you to find it.
If there are several dungeons, it should have a map marker to each one, but the marker should still only be a guide to the possible dungeons, not what you're looking for.

For some reason one of the most memorable quests for me in Morrowind was an early Balmora Mages Guild quest. You had to convince a rogue telvanni mage to join the Mages Guild, and were given directions to find him. No GPS. But directions. I got lost, and in the course of getting lost, I had great fun. And when I got there, I felt rewarded for finding it. Then there was a test of my character skill (you had to be able to raise the mage's disposition in order to convince him, which was a lot more stat based than Oblivion), which had a consequence of either succeeding in convincing him or having to kill him. Another sense of reward (or failure - another important thing to build in - failure other than death and reload).

Wandering around trying to find someone who could be anywhere is not rewarding. Neither is chancing it trying to find the right one of 4 doors. It just feels badly designed and tedious.

There need to be choices and consequence, both in overall roleplay and how it affects your character build, and in the smaller decisions that make up a passage of play and impact the experience and personality of your character.

It would be much more interesting if, say, you were told about 2 doors by 2 characters, and had to choose who to trust, and giving that trust and choosing which door to go through led to some unique experience in both cases that you had to deal with.

I, too, remember that quest. I, too, got lost. I can't remember if I got annoyed, tho .... probably.

The green arrow is annoying to me, personally, and won't be used in my quest. There is no possible way to make a mistake with the green arrow. In fact, in order to make the green arrow a challenge, quest design becomes harder.

I will rely on directions. I will rely on hints. You will be given several choices, but you will know exactly what those choices are (as in specific names) and there will direction as to which one is the better choice. Also, I will have playtesters who can tell me if it's too hard or two easy. In the end, if it's too hard I'll prepare a walkthrough.

But this has been a very helpful discussion. I do have a better feel for what is too hard and what not to do. Particularly, Phitt's comments helped me understand the balance better - and gave me a creative enhancement that will make that particular quest more enjoyable for the player.

Thank you all for your comments.

~ Dani ~

Edit: Actually, I just realized ... since I'm using the Oblivion quest engine with named quests, etc., I'm guessing I can't disable the green arrorw, right?

I feel the same way. It should be in the middle, where it gives you a general idea of where you're going and then you have to find it based of what you find when you're there (not handheld all the way, or given little to no detail, thus rendering the effort annoying and moot).



I too agree with how you've chosen to handle this. I like it when I enter a small town, and talk to villagers regarding a subject, and find that they have different things to say and different responses. It makes sense that only a certain circle of people would know about the drug, for example, while another circle abhors the use of it, and the rest of the people are either clueless or have heard about it, but not enough for their information to be substantial.

Then you must decide for whom you make the mod. For the connoisseurs or for the illiterates? Obviously game companies cater for the sadly much more numerous illiterates to get better sales, which is why Oblivion (or is HoMM V newer?) is the latest new game I've bought, and that only because of the fantastic work of the modders of the Oblivion community.
As an amateur you have the luxury of not having to worry about sales, though. So then the question remains "are you a ratings junkie?".
And needlessly to say, with my snooty attitude I prefer subtleness. As long as you don't overdo it, of course.

So ... if one of my characters quotes Andrew Marvell ... ?

:)

~ Dani ~

No quest arrow = I won't play your mod.

Here's why.

This is a typical day for me: get up, go to work, come home, make dinner, various house work, catch up on the few t.v. shows I follow, put in an hour's work of writing and maybe, maybe boot up the machine for 30 minutes of gaming. OBLIVION is only one of the games I play, in small increments. It is entirely possible, in fact downright guaranteed that I will NOT finish any quest but the shortest in one sitting.

= key hunts, NPC hunts, item hunts turn what little gaming time I have into busywork.

I don't mind having to look for a key, lever or person. What turns me off is the deliberate use of vagueness. THERE IS NO WAY I myself could fail to find a person in a small Tamriel Town, *especially* if that person is a newcomer (newcomers stick out like sore thumbs in small medieval towns.)

Now if *I* can easily find anyone, or clues to that effect ("Yeah, I did find the backdoor to old Timmy's place unlocked the other day. Might peculiar, that!") but my 25th lever HERO OF CYRODILL with personality of 90 cannot, that's not "immersive" - that's just contrived and stupid.

NOW this is what *I* don't understand. ANYONE who doesn't like the quest arrow can ignore it by making it point to a different quest. ANYONE who doesn't use the quest arrow can install a mod that removes it.

Why not put it in? Is this some kind of macho point of honour? "Hey I made a mod and got 300 requests for hints! Woot me!"

AGAIN: if anyone doesn't like the quest arrow DON'T USE IT! Those of us who need it appreciate it.

Best of luck in your modding.

Then you have overdone it, 'cause I've never heard of Andrew Marvell.
But it depends on the quote I guess. If the quote refers to some specific real life reference in a book, and you need to be familiar with that reference to solve the quest, then it's too subtle.

Sorry I have a small mini rant with this topic ... sorry but I can't help but to reply to the critique of Blood and mud and that got me thinking about several aspects of games/mods that bother me.

Regarding Blood and Mud - the first half was great the second was, imo, sloppy and short. Where it showed strength was that it did not give quest markers and the clues were not to be taken literally, but figuratively. Where this failed was in guiding the player to this conclusion. But this lack of guiding the player to the method of solving puzzles is everywhere in video games.

Many of these stories and creatures and settings come from great works in literature over the past 2 to 3000 years. Greek myths were rife with the idea that gods and monsters were part of being human. That the story was meant to beguile the innocent and instruct the wise. That they were multi-layered stories that had different levels of meaning depending upon how one read them. One scheme I was taught in understanding this is the http://www.yashanet.com/studies/revstudy/pardes.htm (Paradise) structure of interpretation.
P - Here the lowest interpretation is the simple literal one.
~Medusa is a creature that can turn one to stone - literally.
R - Next comes the level of hints that lead to the use of metaphors.
~Being turned to stone is a lot like feeling frozen.
D - Next comes the level of insight from the metaphor (the dots become connected) - sometimes a moral or ethic is then created.
~Being turned to stone is a symbol for being frozen and unable to act. One should avoid that
S - Next comes the level of allegory (the pattern reveals itself - the spirit known).
~The medusa is a symbol for the things that traumatize us. Handle the trauma of the past by seeing it boldly for what it is (be the mirror to reflect it) then the traumatic agent is frozen (in the mind) and the person becomes free of being frozen. Admittedly this level is the most difficult to describe and can fill volumes.

JR Tolkien is the death of this kind of interpretation. Orcs are real, Ents are real, the ring is real. In the Arabian Nights epic turning invisible was a symbol of transcending the self -seeing though one's own desires and fears. In LotR it is only becoming unseen. He and most of the other fantasy writers of the last 100 years killed allegory. Flattening 2000 years of myth and allegory down to level 1-2 interpretation and contributing to the idea that all these stories are just childish fantasies. All it took then was Gygax to add math and the modern D&D nerd was born.

Still there are hints of level 2 interpretation in games (like Witcher) but they never go much deeper than that. I think of Simyaz Tears of the Fiend - it tried to go deeper, but the problem was that it mixed metaphors and was sloppy in its execution of them so the final result felt like a made up ramble of a story. Blood and mud went there, but more in terms of trying to describe the city and history of Bravil.

So when modders and game makers attempt to go deeper they often don't have a map to go by to create an intense and psychologically interesting story. Then comes the next problem - mixing metaphors. So like with Blood and Mud when you are supposed to follow the dragon path and find out it is actually a path of flowers - there was nothing there to say 'hey dummy stop thinking about it as whatever it was you thought and look for the colors and flower types." So most go to the hint guide. Then it was compounded by the fact that deciphering it only meant you found a dungeon. Ehh :shrug:

What I find most problematic with flirting with obscure hints is that there needs to be a way to guide the person to what level of interpretation and that means was it a literal, figurative-metaphor, or symbolic kind of clue we are looking for.

I guess that is my main point. If you change the level of hints to match a different level of interpretation then let people know. Maybe even give multiple hints. Or even use the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6406 mod as an example - with this mod you could turn the hints and arrows off.

[edited for clarity ... I hope]

Noted.

~ Dani ~

Unless you find something else at each of these places that pushes the plot along and makes it interesting. Like not being able to fast travel to get to a destination means encountering what the game is going to generate anyway.

I'm coming late to this... but I did read the whole thing. Interesting discussion.


Like Phitt (?) said, you have to determine who you're making this mod for. You can't please everyone - it's physically impossible. At one end of the spectrum, there are people who slavishly rely on that little green arrow, and at the other, there are those who go so far as to remove their own marker from the map. As with most things, the majority of players fall somewhere in the middle - they follow the arrow sometimes (maybe even most of the time) and don't like to think too hard. They want to have fun.

Now, I'm not speaking for myself here. I use COBL, which has a function to turn the markers off. I set it to "Sometimes", because if I get stuck or lost, I can pull it up and find out where I'm going. I have a brain; I like to use it. I like puzzles too - I've spent many hours poring over Ervvin's riddles, the maps from http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11616 (great mod, BTW), and other mods. I get a great sense of satisfaction from figuring out a riddle, as I'm sure a lot of other people do.




Yes. Having to search for something/someone with no clues whatsoever isn't immersive, it's annoying. Someone should know this guy. Similarly, if you're searching for a dungeon, there should be clues somewhere - even if they're buried in some dusty old tome you have to buy at the First Edition. You might disagree, but walkthroughs are a player's friend (and a modder's too - it eliminates a lot of stupid questions). Just about every major quest mod out there has one. If you do build this mod for people who enjoy not having a marker (you can disable them), who enjoy using their brains to figure things out and do a little detective work, that's great - just make sure that it's clearly delineated in the readme. You'll lose most of the "where do I go next?" crowd, but I think people are more appreciative of a well-made mod, no matter the audience. Just don't go too obscure.


No offense, but this is a game. It's meant to entertain. If I want to look for deeper meanings, I'll read Jane Austen. I have an English degree, but I hated Interp Lit in college. Maybe it's because I tend to take things at face value. *shrug*


Good point, that. I agree fully.

None taken - and just so you know deeper meanings in Jane Austen is about as alien a thing as I can imagine my ramblings might seem to you. She is about as level one as it gets in my book.

I was merely replying to the critiques of Blood and Mud and pointed out why it didn't work well (not that it should) and how different levels of interpretation often do not translate to games and mods.

If one were to take a symbol as a hint in a video game that features mythical creatures then why does the symbol interpretation end with the hint? Which means mixing metaphors and confusing folks.

Heh, then you have missed the point. The Ring symbolizes Power and how Power corrupts.
Tolkien stated that he hated allegory, but if you look hard enough you can find them.

Well his hate for allegory shows as he takes creatures and stories of myth and makes a morality play out of them draining them of mystery for the sake of a child's story. He could have easily made a sci-fi story or even a story about the nazis and the power of religion and made the same point about corruption.

Tolkien though is a perfect example of one major split in modern story writing: plot versus character. His was a plot driven story the characters had their roles to play. Mostly they did not question their own roles they exist to move the story and tell it. Conversely most modern stories that are considered 'mature' or realistic are character driven with the main character and sometimes even an ensemble of them spend a great amount of time examining why they are what they are and/or why they exist.

I propose to you that old stories (like the classics) had that element of questioning existence but the start was with the fantastic - as if the monster one sees is unrecognizable and fascinating and as the story goes on it is the mirror and we then see components of ourselves that we had not at first glimpsed.

So the fantastic myths that Tolkien appropriated serve as nothing more than props and as these critters and mysterious beings and powers once stood to tell us something about ourselves now serve as hooks to tell a morality play - and quite a long one. Morality play being at best a third level (using that map above). Self-realization being the 4th. Take enough symbolism and shoot it at a wall and certainly it would be hard not to see something.

So then I didn't mean to try and dominate this thread - sorry GGD if it detracted from the questions. So to bring back the topic when others are asking about who you are designing the mod for. Plot versus character is a method of looking at it. Certain mods that offer unique loot or powers are often very much character driven stories. While mods that serve as fetch quests or accomplish a series of missions are plot driven stories. Of course a balance is possible and makes for an amazing story. The ability to say this is my character (I have choice) and I was able to use this character (my set of choices) to accomplish the plot.

I think for games like this we will often make up the missing half when presented with only one side. I'm playing a paladin, but have a mod like Blood and Mud or Kragenir installed - so in my head as a story I tell myself why my character has the motivation to close that gate, to find that painting, Stop that ghost. It is entertainment and mostly we do seek the tasks to accomplish then wish for more RPG as the tasks often don't allow us to be the bad guy or the truly chaotic (come to grips with the character).

Then to up the immersion and involvement we then add mods that make the world more realistic. And it further moves the player away from the character as a search for meaning.

Except he wasn't interested in sci-fi and nazis...
Tolkien was not a professional author and he wrote about things that he himself was interested in. And his works also "explains" the origin of creatures like elves, dwarves, gnomes, leprechauns etc as they were known in the real world in the fist half of the 20th century.
Calling it a morality play I wonder if you have read it at all? There is no preaching in LoTR, unlike in the books written by Tolkien's friend CS Lewis.




Yes, Tolkien wrote more in the style of Snorri Sturlason and you very rarely get inside peoples heads. But do you know why? Because the meta-story of LoTR is that Tolkien only dramatized the story based on a copy of the Red Book of Westmarch (that was written by Bilbo, Frodo and Sam, including Bilbo's "Translations from Elvish" (Silmarillion)), written in genuine Westron in which Frodo Baggins' real name is Maura Labingi. So even though the words are Tolkien's he's merely a translator and dramatizer; he's not a omniscient writer who knows everyhting his characters think. So yes, the characters rarely are self-conscious, and the reader has to fill in the blanks, but that doesn't make it totally story driven either. Much of the plot is based on the motives of Sauron, Gollum and Saruman.

Personally I love both Tolkien's works and the totally different, character driven A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin.
There shouldn't be an A4 formula for what constitutes good litterature.

Well I guess this is not the right forum for dumping on Tolkien. Not the most popular position to take around here. But I'm not at all certain how to respond to the whole Red Book of Westmarch - which is a literary creation. Are you saying that Tolkien only translated a book that he himself wrote? That is just ... well it is just an odd statement. Explaining elves - by making up stories is not cutting to the source of these myths. Nor the experience of what much classic stories are about - things to meditate upon.

It is my subjective opinion that Tolkien is lacking - like most modern fantasy fiction. I'm not proposing an objective truth. That map is not a critical tool it is a tool for understanding levels of abstraction/allegory. It is ever a subjective thing - The map I gave to levels of interpretation was just that a map and like any map can only be oriented to by the personal tastes of the reader. Use it how you will, or not at all. Again a choice. I opted to use it to illustrate that fantasy fic is shallow and that this encourages games such as this to in turn be shallow and when a modder tries to bring in other/deeper concepts they are often not well received or poorly executed as is the case with TotF.

I'm totally OK that you don't agree with my anolysis - kinda expected. So just wanted to give a few examples, suggestions, tools.

I tried to read LotR, but you know ... boring. I mostly read non-fiction or post modern stuff as it is anyway.

The Red Book is fictional and within the confines of the fiction it was written by Bilbo, Frodo and Sam as their diaries and their own translations from even older elven works. The Red Book was translated by scribes in Gondor and the meta-story is that somehow one of them ended up in Tolkien's possessions. After all Middle-Earth is supposed to be the real world 6000 years ago.




You need to read The Lost Tales and Silmarillion. The Lost Tales was Tolkien's attempt to make a Mythology for England. It's much deeper and multilayered than what you think based upon trying to read LoTR. :grad: :nerd:

Got to admit that I generally hate puzzles and riddles in games. Just one example: I stopped playing Black & White after a really early quest when you're supposed to find singing stones all over the island and then play a certain melody on them. How incredible annoying. But, that said, I actually liked your examples. Generally, though, I'm quick to go for a walk through if facing "complex" puzzles in games, esp. in combat driven games.

PetrusOctavianus-
I can pretty much guarantee that I will not be reading that, but I've heard it is the most dense of his works. I've way too many other books lined up to read before that would look appealing. I do admit to getting bored with fantasy lit and really don't like escapism when I read (that is what games are for). I'd certainly rather read the actual nordic epics or Arthurian lit than a regurgitation by a least favorite author.


Related to this and regarding quest log entries I can add that I really don't like games where I have to keep my own notes on a separate piece of paper - thinking of Enhanced Economy right now. If I'm expected to write down info on locations then why isn't my character doing that? And why can't my character ask about a person? Just don't give the answer. Pointers I can do without, but I need log entries of some sort or I may just completely forget to do the quest.

That is OK with puzzles though - then I usually will take my own notes and promptly throw it away once done.

Re: EE--go into your journal, look at the quest page for the city ("Merchants of Bravil" or whatever) and click on it. A pop up will appear with who you still have to help, where they told you to go and where you've already searched.

Personally, what I hate is when people absorb the worst of both Morrowind and Oblivion's quest systems. Morrowind had no markers, but you tended to get detailed, paragraph-long directions involving multiple landmarks whenever you have to go anywhere. In Oblivion, you just get the name of the place and a GPS arrow. Some mods cut out the arrow and then give no directions, which frustrates me to no end since I can rarely ask any NPCs about it. Lost Spires had probably my favorite implementation of the arrow in that it pointed you to where the spires were and then you were on your own to search them once you found them.

In reference to the four doors, I personally hate puzzles where the only solution is trial and error. Though to my mind, Enhanced Economy is an example of trial and error done right in that it gets better over time; your chances of finding what you're looking for go up with every container you search. As someone else said, if there were two choices: 1) Go to each door and try them out and 2) Solve a riddle/puzzle/clue trail/interrogation/whatever to reveal the location, then that'd be a lot more satisfying.

Ohh - never knew about that feature - thanks.

Well then I can point to a few Kragenir quests where you have names and contacts then the trail gets cold and no name or contact or anything to follow up on. Your own journal is useless. So that is what I meant, but EE not good example.

I had these exact same questions come up recently when I was making my quest for my town mod. I even asked here I believe. But in the end I decided to ditch Journal entries all together and have used a combination of dialog, books, message boxes, signs...etc to guide the player to next step. In fact I constructed my mystery quest very 'old school' gaming style. The player will require logic, but the next step is always the logical one.

For me it helped to think in real terms, for instance if I was sent an anonymous note I would go around asking everyone if they sent me an anonymous note. I wouldn't go around unable to ask people until I hit the right person.

If I was looking for someone in Anvil I would go around asking people if they knew of the person. A dozen may simply say no, until I hit someone who knows and maybe even tells me a little of the character and background of the person I am looking for....

'Yeah I know 'im. Works down the docks there. Got a bit of a temper on 'im, so minds what you says.'

For journal entries, I think the middle road between those two examples is good. Perhaps...

'Today I noted something has been eating the leaves of the plants in the Tiber Septim. Something ... big. I had better be on the lookout for something that can kill insects.'

I think a good way to do quests is to focus on having unique characters with interesting backgrounds, a good interesting storyline, to make the quest as realistic as possible and to round off all loose ends. But then my quest hasn't hit the public yet, so my assumptions may prove completely wrong. I know I will get people saying they can't figure it out, but this quest is created with a specific audiance in mind, old school gamers and those with patience and time to really enjoy a mystery quest, get into the characters and enjoy the 'events' that unfold. Not the hack and slash crowd, I have another quest for them.

I would always use journal entries in a game like Oblivion, if only as a reminder. The game is huge and with my current mod setup I have hundreds of different quests, locations, NPCs etc in my game, just like almost everyone else here probably.

What if I decide to stop playing your quest for a while and do something else instead? Maybe I've hit a snag and want to complete a different quest for a change or I simply want to loot some dungeons. Or maybe I've met another NPC (maybe from another mod) during your quest who gave me another quest I want to complete first. I will never get back into your quest without a journal entry. If I want to get back into it a few (real) weeks later I have forgotten most of the things the quest is about. Where did I find that book? Was it even related to that quest? Which NPCs were involved? No idea.

With journal entries that summarize what happened so far and give a clue what I may need to do now I will easily get back into it. Without I'll most likely be lost. Oblivion is no linear game and it's easy to get distracted. I have dozens of quests in my journal that I didn't complete yet and I would never know that I've already started them if they had no journal entries.