Concern of mine raised while looking at DoD quests. TL;DR: how to balance manpower vs. vision while making quests. A few specific issues: - Questlines have been going unclaimed, historically. Not clear why this is: overwhelm or disinterest? - Yet I've heard complaints that there is a lack of singular quests open for claiming. - We still have quests that were supposed to be finished for earlier releases that weren't. This backlog is only likely to grow. - In DoD, some of the proposed questlines have 15 or more quests. - Ongoing disagreements on whether it's necessary for faction questlines in particular to follow an overarching narrative and the pros and cons of doing that versus putting together a string of relatively unrelated misc. quests.
Overall! More quests are cool. Questlines written by the same person to keep characterization intact is cool. But as per the above issues, this isn't working out so great in practice and (possibly) contributing to backlog. System failure?
I would like to: - Discuss whether it's really necessary for faction questlines specifically to follow a story or just present some common themes across misc. quests. And if a misc. model can then be broken out in multiple claims to avoid devs burning out on tackling big questlines. - Discuss whether a cap to the number of quests in a release or questline may be necessary. - Possibly discuss setting high/required priority to some quests over others for releases? I mean I feel this is a self-explanatory process, but does anyone have any objections or points to make about it? - Discuss what might be holding people back from claiming story-focused questlines and how to go about ameliorating that. - Discuss if it might be appropriate to plan a release around just the backlog quests, or otherwise just how to handle them. Currently they get lost in the hype and need for more quests to fill out new releases.
As another topic, also to do with quests: making more official the quest design -> opened quest claim process. Issue: quests being put as in Design for the claim browser. How this creates some favoritism with designs made by devs who can post there vs. ideas from everyone else in the asset browser. How some quests are getting made into designs before being fully ready or well-reviewed. How some of the current Designs are just links to the asset browser and then we've got link-ception going on.
This is the process I've been using, and the one I'd prefer to see made into our official pipeline, but critiques welcome: 1) Quest idea is posted in asset browser as a "Quest Design". Can be done by anyone. 2) Poster marks said quest design as "ready for review" once they're ready for...well, review. (Like Literature, if the poster disappears before this, the asset can still be finished by someone else.) 3) Reviewers and/or leads take a look at it. Special attention should be given to whether the proposed location or faction for the quest already has quests and if this one may clash with those. At least two people give their approval (just as with the Literature postings). Then it is marked "Ready for Merging" along with appropriate Location, Race, and Faction tags. It now sits here until Step 4. 4) In preparation for a release, or whenever the pickings for quest claims are looking slim, a lead (or other person with the right knowledge and powers) goes through these "Ready to Merge" quests and starts putting them in the claims browser. Misc. quests are opened immediately, while quests retro-fitted into a questline or otherwise was altered greatly from the original design need an additional approval from another lead/reviewer before it can be opened.
Thus, the purpose of "Design" in the CLAIMS browser would be: 1) to temporarily close an already open claim for whatever reason
2) The quest has been retro-fitted/altered and thus needs an extra approval before going live.
3) if the quest needs more feedback on particular points before opening it. Note that most relavent questions should have already been answered in the review stage and this should almost never happen!!
I can give my answer to the first one right now: No, I don't see faction questlines following a story to be necessary - especially for low level questlines. More often than not a player is coming to the guild hall for work, an odd job, something for them to do. A grand, epic storyline is great and all, but is only really necessary for top level quests (talking stuff like the quests the heads of the entire faction would give out). Outside of those; A quest with a deep, intricate storyline is more so a "nice to have" thing than it is a "must" for the questline to be enjoyable to play and worthwhile to create. Considering the scope of the project - micro-stories typically work out better for vanilla's quest system than macro-stories, hence why so many quest blocks in vanilla in the first place.
So my tl;dr answer is: Don't turn down any questline suggestions that are heavily story driven solely on the basis that it's one long story, but those kinds of questlines are unnecessary in the first place and it's perfectly acceptable to have seemingly random "oddjob" quests that fit a general narrative or theme instead.
Future Agenda topic: Jephre and his (very small) role in Dunmeri society. Or simply going through with the apparent retcon-by-omission that Morrowind did - keeping in mind that we have the Daggerfall book with a paragraph about his worship in Dunmer society in data currently.
It has been discussed a while back between myself and Gnomey on Discord (searching "Jephre" should allow for easy finding and reading), but as the general idea is that ocassional bards found in Narsis District taverns (pretty much exclusively) would venerate him, I think it'd be a good idea to get Jephre and his worshippers in Morrowind (if any) out of the way at some point would be useful since we're currently building out the Narsis District.
Brain-storming some stories/fluff for Almalexia (the godess), has come up a few times in casual discussions, maybe a meeting will produce some more concrete ideas.
A quick overview of new and updated content can be found in your dashboard. If you are interested in our ongoing development, check out the claims browser and the asset browser.
2015-09-28 20:13
1 year 11 months ago
Didn't we already discuss this, although not in a meeting?
2016-09-15 23:12
11 months 2 weeks ago
There were differing ideas on whether to keep it as a global sound. Nothing on the other parts of the topic, and no input from the SHOTN/PC leads yet.
2014-01-02 23:57
11 months 1 week ago
Agenda suggestions for the next meeting:
- where to put dreugh (it matters for low-level quests that involve crossing rivers)
- getting everyone acquainted with the state of Andothren
- carving out at least a part of Andothren that can be considered essentially done and thus ready for NPCing
- gathering Andothren-related lore in 1 thread
- brainstorming quest ideas
2016-01-19 19:35
1 year 7 months ago
Concern of mine raised while looking at DoD quests. TL;DR: how to balance manpower vs. vision while making quests. A few specific issues:
- Questlines have been going unclaimed, historically. Not clear why this is: overwhelm or disinterest?
- Yet I've heard complaints that there is a lack of singular quests open for claiming.
- We still have quests that were supposed to be finished for earlier releases that weren't. This backlog is only likely to grow.
- In DoD, some of the proposed questlines have 15 or more quests.
- Ongoing disagreements on whether it's necessary for faction questlines in particular to follow an overarching narrative and the pros and cons of doing that versus putting together a string of relatively unrelated misc. quests.
Overall! More quests are cool. Questlines written by the same person to keep characterization intact is cool. But as per the above issues, this isn't working out so great in practice and (possibly) contributing to backlog. System failure?
I would like to:
- Discuss whether it's really necessary for faction questlines specifically to follow a story or just present some common themes across misc. quests. And if a misc. model can then be broken out in multiple claims to avoid devs burning out on tackling big questlines.
- Discuss whether a cap to the number of quests in a release or questline may be necessary.
- Possibly discuss setting high/required priority to some quests over others for releases? I mean I feel this is a self-explanatory process, but does anyone have any objections or points to make about it?
- Discuss what might be holding people back from claiming story-focused questlines and how to go about ameliorating that.
- Discuss if it might be appropriate to plan a release around just the backlog quests, or otherwise just how to handle them. Currently they get lost in the hype and need for more quests to fill out new releases.
As another topic, also to do with quests: making more official the quest design -> opened quest claim process.
Issue: quests being put as in Design for the claim browser. How this creates some favoritism with designs made by devs who can post there vs. ideas from everyone else in the asset browser. How some quests are getting made into designs before being fully ready or well-reviewed. How some of the current Designs are just links to the asset browser and then we've got link-ception going on.
This is the process I've been using, and the one I'd prefer to see made into our official pipeline, but critiques welcome:
1) Quest idea is posted in asset browser as a "Quest Design". Can be done by anyone.
2) Poster marks said quest design as "ready for review" once they're ready for...well, review. (Like Literature, if the poster disappears before this, the asset can still be finished by someone else.)
3) Reviewers and/or leads take a look at it. Special attention should be given to whether the proposed location or faction for the quest already has quests and if this one may clash with those. At least two people give their approval (just as with the Literature postings). Then it is marked "Ready for Merging" along with appropriate Location, Race, and Faction tags. It now sits here until Step 4.
4) In preparation for a release, or whenever the pickings for quest claims are looking slim, a lead (or other person with the right knowledge and powers) goes through these "Ready to Merge" quests and starts putting them in the claims browser. Misc. quests are opened immediately, while quests retro-fitted into a questline or otherwise was altered greatly from the original design need an additional approval from another lead/reviewer before it can be opened.
Thus, the purpose of "Design" in the CLAIMS browser would be:
1) to temporarily close an already open claim for whatever reason
3) if the quest needs more feedback on particular points before opening it. Note that most relavent questions should have already been answered in the review stage and this should almost never happen!!
2017-10-30 13:01
2 months 4 weeks ago
I can give my answer to the first one right now: No, I don't see faction questlines following a story to be necessary - especially for low level questlines. More often than not a player is coming to the guild hall for work, an odd job, something for them to do. A grand, epic storyline is great and all, but is only really necessary for top level quests (talking stuff like the quests the heads of the entire faction would give out). Outside of those; A quest with a deep, intricate storyline is more so a "nice to have" thing than it is a "must" for the questline to be enjoyable to play and worthwhile to create. Considering the scope of the project - micro-stories typically work out better for vanilla's quest system than macro-stories, hence why so many quest blocks in vanilla in the first place.
So my tl;dr answer is: Don't turn down any questline suggestions that are heavily story driven solely on the basis that it's one long story, but those kinds of questlines are unnecessary in the first place and it's perfectly acceptable to have seemingly random "oddjob" quests that fit a general narrative or theme instead.
Rawr.
2017-10-30 13:01
2 months 4 weeks ago
Future Agenda topic: Jephre and his (very small) role in Dunmeri society. Or simply going through with the apparent retcon-by-omission that Morrowind did - keeping in mind that we have the Daggerfall book with a paragraph about his worship in Dunmer society in data currently.
It has been discussed a while back between myself and Gnomey on Discord (searching "Jephre" should allow for easy finding and reading), but as the general idea is that ocassional bards found in Narsis District taverns (pretty much exclusively) would venerate him, I think it'd be a good idea to get Jephre and his worshippers in Morrowind (if any) out of the way at some point would be useful since we're currently building out the Narsis District.
Rawr.
2016-01-24 22:04
1 month 18 hours ago
I have a few points to discuss regarding Foul Murder, and I think Why mentioned he wasn't fully satisfied with the current plans too.
2018-08-13 09:52
6 hours 30 min ago
Brain-storming some stories/fluff for Almalexia (the godess), has come up a few times in casual discussions, maybe a meeting will produce some more concrete ideas.
"Nomen album delenda est" - a great man
"Forum sigantures suck" - the same great man
2016-01-24 22:04
1 month 18 hours ago
Regarding Foul Murder, I'd like to discuss the placement of the mural in Necrom.
2015-08-10 20:50
3 weeks 17 hours ago
Sounds good to me. (That is, I'll add it to the agenda).
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