I always read the quests these days. They aren't all winners, but man the lore in this game can actually be pretty great sometimes.
And I put instructions in that "lore" then people go "This is bugged and doesn't work." Did you read the instructions I put in game? Yes, sometimes I am vague, because I don't want to insult the intelligence of our players, AND I want to leave things for players to "solve." Sometime I DO hand feed every step, in the "lore" you want to skip, and still get "This is bugged and doesn't work." Did you read the instructions? And the most annoying bug? Is when people read a helper sight with a quest walk-through, and don't even follow that, do something out of order and break their quest. Computers are not good at guessing your intent, and need things done "by the book" I spend twice as long trying to devise ways to keep players from breaking quests and screwing themselves over than I do making quests. Because players REFUSE to read what the NPCs and quest text tell them to do.
Idiot proof/better idiot. Nothing will make you hate humanity more than being forced to save them from their own choices.
Please feel free to insult my intelligence any time it applies to in game quests. I think what you really need to ask yourself is whether based on player actions (as you say skipping stuff) whether lore in the quests is the best way to make it available to players. Instead of commenting on how players don't seem to read the quest info in quests I would probably think about better ways to present it. Now I guess if it is only a timer percent that is having problems by not reading things nothing needs to be done but if you are getting this enough to comment on it some rethinking needs to be done. Like some others I read the lore on a site like Zam/Fanbyte or EQresource. But I also read everything I need to to do the quest though usually these sites highlite that stuff. Lore I read on a casual basis but it is much easier to read on a website then it is in game (for me at least). I think the vast majority of players either use third party sites for quest info or ask others in game who use third party sites for the info. But I could be wrong on this. Just going from my experiences over 21 years of playing. I guess my question is how many players are enjoying the act of figuring out everything all for themselves by reading the quest lore and info in game. How much bang for your buck are you getting in making things not super obvious so you don't insult our intelligence? I really suggest an in game poll asking folks where they get their quest info from. If things go on as they have been it doesn't really matter to me I think it gives third party sites material to show added value. If the third party sites stopped providing quest walkthroughs THEN I would probably be far less happy. Now don't get me wrong I enjoy exercising my mind. I an an avid reader and watcher of things regarding quantum physics, astrophysics, geology, biology, nature, evolution etc etc.... I just don't come to eq to stretch my mind except when it comes to the people management in running a guild. Obviously some do come to EQ and enjoy the brain work involved in providing the info to write up quests for the rest of us. My question is whether the size of your audience is worth the extra time in thinking up ways to not insult our intelligence. I don't have the answer to that.
I'm not sure why, but I'm one of those people who never reads the lore. Being who I am, an avid reader of fantasy, you would think that I would care about it. But I don't. It's really a shame, since I know that the developers put effort into it and it is undoubtedly interesting. Of course, often I'm in a rush, with everyone in the group just wanting to get the quest done, so we all line up at the NPC, say the magic word to get the quest, and then head out to do it with no concern other than, "what do we have to do?". On my second monitor, I bring up EQ Resource and/or Allakazam and just follow the steps listed there. Part of the reason is that holding up the rest of the group while I read the lore is not optimal. But most of it is just I don't want to spend the time. Which is a shame. Are there some internal lore documents that Darkpaw creates and then makes the quests around them? If so, how about releasing them to us (put them in everquest.com/lore/expansionname). Or just post them somewhere and I know that there will be those who host them (including myself). Having to go back and do the quests again just to learn what they are about would be a huge chore if I decided to try to learn the lore. I don't think it is a "spoiler" to have online somewhere, "Quest AlphaBravo is about convincing NPC Bob (head of the efreeti from the Plane of Fire) that you want to help them. Therefore, as part of the war between efreeti and FactionZ, Bob asks you to find out what FactionZ is doing in Mearatas". Of course, I probably still wouldn't read it. You can lead a hobbit to lore but you can't make him read it.
Ehh, when instructions are text in a chat window you run the risk of 5 other people spamming hails and you miss it. If its important its gotta be in the quest log. This is a multiplayer game so you gotta expect and account for that.
This is not a quest issue. We see the same lack of willingness to read among the player base as a whole.
Actually it could be a UI breakdown. Many of us long term players have adjusted our chat so the messages that matter show up in one window, and 'spam' goes to other windows. Does the default UI do that when you launch a toon? These people could be missing every relevant chat message just because they don't know better. (and chatting with them doesn't work as you would have to find them somewhere they were away from spam)
Maybe because of the way the text is formatted on EQ? A wall of text, in a small chat text box, is not really sexy. This format is old and rusty, sometimes hard to read without scrolling back and forth. I'm not especially a big fan of WoW, but one of the best thing they've added was a separated window for quests (a simple one, not like EQ Quest Journal, which is always too small, or too large, and where you always need to resize something ). With a fancy parchment background, it's way better, and maybe more immersive Add something equivalent on EQ, and it'd be easier to read, follow, and keep track of the current questlines.
Part of it is UI, part of it is time constraints, and another part is that the game world doesn’t reflect story changes. It’s difficult to invest the time into a story, where the visual elements don’t match up. Plus, the quests are a “forced” path of gameplay, which leads them to be treated more as something that needs to be done versus something that needs to be explored.
A better UI would be a good start. For the world not reflecting the changes, it's pretty much unsolvable, as it would require a completely different technology. And honestly, I'm ok with that, my imagination fills in the blanks, exactly the same way as I imagine the characters and NPCs voices, in my head. On WoW, they've tried to reflect the changes ... and it's a huge mess. A giant pile of crap with instancing, layering, group desync, impossibility to join some friends who are not at the same step, etc etc. EQ world is static, yeah, but at least it's not a gaswork with stacked layers of annoying, half broken, and failed «technological tests».
As a man, I feel it would be going against the laws of nature if I actually read instructions before I did anything.
95% of the time I do. And some people don't read that either. From time to time I do want you to see what the NPC said, but I usually include pertinent instructions in the "quest log" (the bottom right panel) There is that trope as well!
It sounds so much like my hubby «Ok, let's assembly this new IKEO furniture.» 2 hours later, and still sitting in the middle of a pile of ... stuff. «Ever read the leaflet, honey?» «Are you silly ? Read ?!?!? And read what ?!?!?»
A drill and a box of screws fixes everything when it comes to assembling furnature according to my grandfather (poor deceased tim-the-tool-man-taylor type of man) Things may not fit together perfectly, after some power tools it's close enough.
Personally I think SoE got themselves to blame, at least a bit, why ? Happened when TDS got out, there you had to press space up to 15 times on some steps. And the missions had time limit on for achievement, I basically just pressed there to get through the text, because 90% of time it said nothing relevant. And well that is not in expansions after, but still stick with it. Another is a RL example. You handed a paper, it has 20 lines of instructions, which you told to follow, and you have 10 min to do this. A lot of people kind of "skip" or overlook first few lines, dont know why (maybe time preasure). They see line 3 which if type this 50 times IF they had followed the instructions properly they would have seen line 2, you can write your name at top and relax, you done. .
1) would love to have an option where quest lore pops up in its own wimdow, like /tell 2) I have a gina running, that reads (most) the text that NPCs say. It is not pretty, but it is better than nothing’ 3) would love if there was an addon, that parses the log, like gamparse and gina, and had a lot of different open source text-to-speech voices, amd a db where people could configure which NPCs uses which voice. This could really bring another layer of player-driven content emhancement, amd it could be fitted to work with classic content. It is not voice acting, but even with only one Gina-voice, it brings the quests to life in a different matter. If this became a thing, we might be able to request that some additional tags be added to the npc-text, to help the voice parser. 4) be very careful with skipping quest text:
