Queue:
Proposed Agenda
Quests
Tamriel_Data
- Glow in the Dahrk support: more opinions gathered? Consensus imminent?
Andothren
- How is progress on Andothren?
- Andothren, continued exterior/mansion discussion.
- The Andothren MG and also the general MG plans, particularly if someone with a good general idea of afterlife-, dreamsleeve- and soultrap-related lore is around
Cross-Province questions
- Faction integration, cross-provincial
- Armor and weapons: sorting out stats, expanding or restricting vanilla sets, special cases
- Wolli's asset removal and deprecation tracking list
Worldspace Implementation
- Firemoth archipelago
- TV2 and TV3 wilderness interior planning
- Propylon index placement
Quests and Dialogue
- The "characters" of towns like Kartur
- Organizing quest designs for DOD by spreading them out across the map, moving them into the claims browser, and setting them unclaimed.
Administration
- The Handbook needs attention
- Discussing Thal's idea in detail, and finding volunteers for handbook writing: https://www.tamrielrebuilt.org/forum/division-labor-regards-lore-world-building-and-quality-managment
Preparing Template Meetings
- Clambering Moor
- How should the Kartur section be expanded?
- Do we want to make an exterior claim for the inner sea bordering the big CM island, akin to the Idaverrano seabed edits?
- House Redoran
- Othreleth Woods
Meeting Summary
Quests
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.
The quests for a given storyline shouldn't be completely random; they should fit into the general faction framework, if one is present. But they don't necessarily have to be part of a common story either. They should not clash with the character of the faction (for example, a Thieves' Guild quest shouldn't ask you to kill innocent people, because that's something the MW Thieves' Guild doesn't do). A questline can have leitmotifs (e.g., the Mystery of the Dwarves coming up every once in a while in the vanilla Mages Guild).
As exceptions prove the rule: if the questline breaks out of the faction framework, this must be a plot point. It would be good if alternative solutions exist that stay true to the faction ideal (for an example, see the Percius Mercius questline of the Vvardenfell Fighters Guild).
For a good middle ground, check out the Old Ebonheart Thieves' Guild or the Akamora Guild of Fighters. If a faction has a nemesis, it should have several quests about dealing with that nemesis. If a faction has a moral code, its quests should not violate that code without reason and explanation. Foreshadowing and consequences are generally good in a questline.
Discuss whether a cap to the number of quests in a release or questline may be necessary.
A cap should not be necessary. The Old Ebonheart model, with defined "Minimal Viable Product" quests that are absolutely necessary for release should be employed again. What this means for future content releases precisely needs to be discussed in detail when the issue arises.
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?
Minimum viable product quests are to be set to critical.
Generally, we have been following this logic for a while:
- Bottleneck priority: NPCing claims, and MVP quest claims
- High priority: Optional claims for the release
- Medium priority: TR_Mainland backlog
- Low priority: Future releases
Discuss what might be holding people back from claiming story-focused questlines and how to go about ameliorating that.
From the discussion, it is clear that we need to spell out and write down a code of conduct that says “it's okay to change quests this much, and if you drop your claim, you accept that it can be changed this much and no hard feelings are permitted".
It is now clear that there are two very different kind of quest developers: these who want detailed questlines and those who want vague ideas to build their own things around. The detailing of questlines will hamper the second type and the lack of details will hamper the first.
As such, while we should keep to the general questline writeups we have now, we also need more quest/questline claims that are not incredibly detailed, only listing the characterization of NPCs, the general idea, and the main plot points.
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.
It is not appropriate and, when tried with the mainland quest pack, did not really work out.
Quest workflow proposal
- Conceptualization: This can happen either in the asset browser (quest design assets) or on Discord. People discuss potential edits to the original concepts and arrive to an agreement at some point.
- Claim Design: Quest designs in the asset browser "graduate" to design claims. Ideas from Discord can bypass the asset stage and move straight to design claim.
- Implementation: After a second review by a lead / meeting, design claims are opened for claiming in their final locations (MVP+quest density discussions)
Glow in the Dahrk support
It seems to be official that we will be going for native GitD support. All interior and exterior window meshes should support this - a tutorial is available in the GitD download and will be copied and pasted on our website in due time.
We will discuss implementation with Melchior Dahrk, the mod author, at a later date, particularly as he currently includes meshes for TR (but not the PT mods) and sunbeam and no-sunbeam versions.
Dominions of Dust NPCing
Some general notes on NPCing: NPC claims ideally come before and are completed before Quest claims. No unfinished quest hook (e.g. NPC says “I sure wish someone would take care of my rat problem…” but then there’s no way to do so) should go in NPCing claims, and preferably no full quests in NPC claims (instead put these in the Asset Browser in separate file).
NPCs in NPCing claims are understood to be background actors and may be axed or changed as needed for quests. An NPC's usage in a quest and general personality/motives/etc should be put as a ;comment in the Background topic. (This goes for both NPCing and Quest claims).
After this, NPCing commenced and was moved to the #questers-campfire Discord channel.
Next Template Meeting
March 14th/15th for House Redoran.
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!!