Turning down escorts/quests

[Infinitum]

Why is this even an option? Losing a quest due to misclicks (easily done if navigating using the mouse) is highly annoying, and has caused me to restart a fair few characters (most notably due to missing the randart mercant). The Dark Crypt/Trapped quest could spawn the PC on a set of stairs for players wanting to opt out.

[SageAcrin]

Part of the design for Dark Crypt/Assassin Lord's place is that there's a risk/reward to entering at all-if you get a fast escape, that's removed.

Having said that, yeah, I don't see a real purpose to refuse options for anything else besides those and quests that auto-teleport you to locations. At most, refusing quests should let you come back to take them later.

It's not a big deal, in my opinion, to have the no options there... but there's simply no purpose to them.

[Infinitum]

Bumping this for emphasis. Just accidentally turned down an escort and the lumberjack quest by attempting to move when the conversation prompt popped on an otherwise excellent character.

It's the - worst.

[jotwebe]

Maybe turning down escortees could spawn the quest again one level deeper, with the same type of escortee. This would help a bit with ridiculously deadly starting situations. It could replace or "push down" any further scheduled quests in the same dungeon.

[Amphouse]

But it wouldn't make any sense.

"Hey can you go ahead without me, I'll catch up to ya on the second floor, ok?"

"Sure thing, I'm totally capable of - OH GOD POISON IVY TO THE EAST AAAAAAAH!"

Then again, they don't make much sense in the first place. How these guys even manage to get into Dreadfell and Reknor I will never know.

I will reaffirm that accidently turning these guys down/picking the wrong reward is a serious problem and extremely annoying, especially for people who use WASD for movement like me. Something should be done.

[HousePet]

Why are you moving around on a floor without looking first?

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

But it wouldn't make any sense.

"Hey can you go ahead without me, I'll catch up to ya on the second floor, ok?"

"Sure thing, I'm totally capable of - OH GOD POISON IVY TO THE EAST AAAAAAAH!"

Then again, they don't make much sense in the first place. How these guys even manage to get into Dreadfell and Reknor I will never know.

That's easy to explain. Narrative imperative. Adventuring heroes need someone to rescue, so a mystical force of the universe causes these otherwise sensible individuals to suicidally rush into a dungeon for inexplicable reasons, and causes creatures to stay away from them, until you approach.

Similar logic dictates the placement of gold chests in unusual locations, it's all part of the magical loot you are destined to find, as payment for saving the world. You're just collecting it in advance.

[tylor]

That's easy to explain. Narrative imperative. Adventuring heroes need someone to rescue, so a mystical force of the universe causes these otherwise sensible individuals to suicidally rush into a dungeon for inexplicable reasons, and causes creatures to stay away from them, until you approach.

And AM adventuring heroes need someone to betray?

[Infinitum]

Why are you moving around on a floor without looking first?

I play on a laptop without numpad and use the mouse for navigation, meaning that sudden "do you want to miss out on game content y/n?" prompts can go either way unless I deliberately slow down in advance. Anyhow, some proposed fixes:

*Don't spawn players directly on the exit when switching maps; the > and z keys are periliously close and having to reload due to not paying attention gets old fast. Always taking a step off the stairs before autoexploring is a good habit to get into, but not very intuitive nor user friendly. Loot despawning and some maps not being reenterable is just added insult. Alternatively add a prompt for exiting levels that haven't been fully explored.

*for the Dark Crypt/Assassin Lord/Lumberjack quests spawn the player in a small outdoors map containing the entrance to the instance, giving the player the option to manually move to either the stairs or opt out. This would make them functionally identical to the current implementation and would minimize the risk of accidentally clicking away the sudden prompt.

*Either move the Shady Cornac man from Derth or have him somehow survive the Elemental assault (maybe respawning after the area is cleared). The player having to know that the quest exists and has to be completed before character level 14 requires metagame knowledge, which is odd given that the game is decently transparent otherwise.

*Either give the player the option to accept quests in retrospect or remove the prompt altogether, Cornelias Crypt comes to mind as one of those instances where the gameplay consists of clicking the right button for extra profit.

*Remove the dialogue trees with the Yeek Mindslayer/Water Dragon/Arena Master. If the player is antagonistic he can use actual gameplay (ie attacking) to simulate that rather than "press x not to die" (or kill the rewardgiver, whatever). This goes double for escort quests since there can be a small amount of lag on switching maps and the prompt is very sudden; again if the player don't want to care for whatever reason the escorts can sort out the dying horribly part on their own.

[jotwebe]

*Don't spawn players directly on the exit when switching maps; the > and z keys are periliously close and having to reload due to not paying attention gets old fast. Always taking a step off the stairs before autoexploring is a good habit to get into, but not very intuitive nor user friendly. Loot despawning and some maps not being reenterable is just added insult. Alternatively add a prompt for exiting levels that haven't been fully explored.

Or remap autoexplore to a different key than z? The other suggestions look ok to me, but this one is going at the problem backward.

[Mewtarthio]

*Don't spawn players directly on the exit when switching maps; the > and z keys are periliously close and having to reload due to not paying attention gets old fast. Always taking a step off the stairs before autoexploring is a good habit to get into, but not very intuitive nor user friendly. Loot despawning and some maps not being reenterable is just added insult. Alternatively add a prompt for exiting levels that haven't been fully explored.

*looks down*
Er, what sort of keyboard are you using, exactly?

*for the Dark Crypt/Assassin Lord/Lumberjack quests spawn the player in a small outdoors map containing the entrance to the instance, giving the player the option to manually move to either the stairs or opt out. This would make them functionally identical to the current implementation and would minimize the risk of accidentally clicking away the sudden prompt.

Seems reasonable enough.

*Either move the Shady Cornac man from Derth or have him somehow survive the Elemental assault (maybe respawning after the area is cleared). The player having to know that the quest exists and has to be completed before character level 14 requires metagame knowledge, which is odd given that the game is decently transparent otherwise.

That quest would be trivial if you could do it at level 20. Er, even more trivial, at any rate. Besides, it's not that hard to figure out. A new player will probably notice that Derth has a distinct, er, dearth of inhabitants after being ravaged by gwelgoroths.

*Either give the player the option to accept quests in retrospect or remove the prompt altogether, Cornelias Crypt comes to mind as one of those instances where the gameplay consists of clicking the right button for extra profit.

It sounds perfectly reasonable to just add an option that says "Oh, by the way, you mentioned something about extra favors?" alongside the "Leave" option for most of Ungrol's dialogue.

(Also, the ability to tell him about Celia would be nice.)

*Remove the dialogue trees with the Yeek Mindslayer/Water Dragon/Arena Master. If the player is antagonistic he can use actual gameplay (ie attacking) to simulate that rather than "press x not to die" (or kill the rewardgiver, whatever). This goes double for escort quests since there can be a small amount of lag on switching maps and the prompt is very sudden; again if the player don't want to care for whatever reason the escorts can sort out the dying horribly part on their own.

Removing the dialogue trees is probably a bad idea, since those trees tell you what's going on in the first place. Just make sure the nonviolent option is highlighted by default (which isn't the case for the Mindslayer).

[AlexanderR]

Er, what sort of keyboard are you using, exactly?

Probably the one like this.

2013-05-25 08.44.01_2.png (55.27 KiB) Viewed 4441 times

Just accidentally turned down .. the lumberjack quest by attempting to move when the conversation prompt popped

This one really should have no option to decline. Please help us - we all may be killed otherwise! - No I am EVIL! Beheading the messenger and erasing his traces on ground to never visit the village even by accident. Or could there be some strong cursed later in game, haunting down those, refusing cries for help of pure lumberjacks? Btw new markers appearing on map should really trigger a message in log with approximated location of place.