It is hard to select quest by difficulty

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It is hard to select quest by difficulty

Postby Denamo on Fri Dec 23, 2011 3:42 pm

I like to do quest. The only time I haven't done a quest dungeon is when I ran out of money.
Since the quests can be very challenging I like to select the easiest one first.

This brings me to the problem: It is hard to select quest by difficulty.

The reason for this is that currently all quest details like class restrictions are only available on the tavern,
while the dungeon information like difficulty and boss is only available on the map.

The simplest solution I can think of is to add the dungeon difficulty and boss to the quest information screen in the tavern. This way I could use the flags to highlight the quest on the map.


Another solution would be to redesign the UI to be more quest oriented.
An example of a logical selection:

What do you want to do?
- Here we let the user select either a quest or a free dungeon raid.
- A free dungeon raid would let you select any dungeon. (Maybe get some % gold bonus but no quest reward)
- At this point it would be important to display the general difficulty of the quest if its known.

Where do you want to go?
- Select dungeon if the user selected a free dungeon raid or the quest has multiple possible locations.
- This is the only point that might need the map

Who should you send? (If the quest isn't locked to both race and class)
- Select race if it is not locked by the quest
- Select class if it is not locked by the quest

How should we do it?
- Select gear if it is not locked by the quest

GO!

All steps should leave a trail in form of icons or buttons.
Quest icon -> Dungeon icon -> Human fighter icon -> Inventory icon -> "GO KILL!"

If a user mouses over one of the trailed items, there information should be shown in a window similar to the in game information window. I.e. when mousing over the dungeon show the stats of the boss if they are known. This helps us prepare our selections better.
Klicking it could take you back to that selection. I.e. clicking the dungeon icon would take you back to the dungeon selection. Even if this selection is automatically skipped after selecting the quest it could show the information about the dungeon and the location on a map.

Last but not least
- Ask the user to confirm any action that would fail the quest during the dungeon. I.e. use a glyph when this wasn't allowed in the quest. Or simply about to die(in some cases there is a chance of survival but ask anyway).
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Re: It is hard to select quest by difficulty

Postby The Avatar on Fri Dec 23, 2011 3:47 pm

I think it's fine right now. If you're having trouble on what quests to pick (Based on easy through hard) you could make a 1-10 difficulty scale for all quests. Like if there was a quest in Grimm's Grotto that required you to get 6 medals, that would be much harder than just beating the dungeon. So they would have a different number.
We made an expansion and it is awesome. Really, you should check it out, especially if you're looking for some extra challenge.

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Re: It is hard to select quest by difficulty

Postby dislekcia on Fri Dec 23, 2011 4:29 pm

This is a very good set of points about quests and how players interact with them. A couple of days ago this popped up in our discussion - we're looking at quest polish at the moment - and we realised that the whole quest display side needs a rethink. So stuff like wanting to be able to view quest difficulty right off the bat is important and useful - I can make interface changes to deal with that, thanks!

Basically thinking of doing away with the Tavern's popup menu and rolling quests into the map screen and then the Tavern would become the "Go Adventuring" button - which kinda makes sense. Obviously that requires information changes, but I can do cool stuff like show multiple quest flags per dungeon, give the flags ratings (like a skull and crossbones for vicious), etc. I'm saving this thread for later digestion :)
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