38 réponses à ce sujet

[Sylvius the Mad]

Back in the olden days, there was no in-game journal.  If the player wanted to keep track of in-game information, he needed to keep notes himself.  Some games were sufficiently complex as to make this effectively mandatory.

Then, as a labour-saving device, the in-game journal was born.  This kept track of information automatically so the player wouldn't have to.  It typically stored quest descriptions or relevant pieces of dialogue.  This wasn't new information - this was all content the player first saw in the game proper - but saving it in the journal saved the player the trouble of keeping his own notes.

That is where I think the journal should stop.

Now, however, we're seeing more content in the journal.  Quest details the player can't get anywhere else.  Notifications of quests of which the player would otherwise never know.  This is, I think, a misuse of the journal.  The journal can store information, but it shouldn't provide information.

Is the journal supposed to represent a storehouse of information available to the PC?  Or is it for the player?  Is it merely keeping track of information the game has already provided, or is it providing brand new information that cannot be found elsewhere?

Since a roleplayer should be making in-game decisions in-character, he should not then be considering information that is not available to the character.  Knowing what the journal is, in in-game terms, will help resolve some of these difficulties.

[MichaelStuart]

I believe it is for the player.

[thats1evildude]

Nonsense. If there's one thing casual players love, it's having to take their own notes.

[Sylvius the Mad]

MichaelStuart wrote...

I believe it is for the player.

That's what I always thought, but then I should be able to ignore it and still play the game.  But that's not the case.  DA2's journal provides information that isn't available elsewhere, and its information on which the character is expected to act.

If it's for the player, then it's like the plot helpers, and those are things we are expected to be able to turn off without it negatively impacting the game.

[Direwolf0294]

When a journal offers this additional information you're talking about, the PC would normally know this information, it's not just being pulled from no where. Just because it wasn't brought up in a conversation doesn't mean the PC wouldn't know it. There's two examples I can think of to explain this.

1: The PC, having lived their entire life in this fantasy world, naturally has information available to them the player wouldn't. Think about all the information you can just recall off hand. All the stuff you learned at school growing up. The locations of places, the names of important people both alive and dead, basic maths and science etc. The PC would have access to a similar pool of information about their own world. When you get handed a quest to go kill ghosts and some extra information about ghosts and the surrounding area pops up in your journal it's because your character's heard about that sort of stuff before, just as if you were told to go kill bears in the American wilderness you'd have some idea of what's up. If a player gets a quest and the journal pops up saying they should go talk to a certain character it's because they know who that character is and that they should be able to help them, similar to if you uncovered a plot by aliens to take over the world you'd know to go talk to the President. Having characters have to repeat this sort of information to your character is in its own way really role breaking as it paints your character as an idiot with no life experience at all. I know I feel like an idiot in an RPG when I load in and have to ask a character who the leader of the country is, even if I don't know that information my character should. It's much easier to present this sort of stuff through a journal the player can read then have it presented through ingame characters telling you. I mean there are going to be cases where your character won't know what's up and it's appropriate to have them asking questions but there's also a lot of times when it's not. Also having it in a journal that you can refer back to makes sense from a memory point of view because the player character, who actually lives in that world, would remember that stuff but you, who lives in our world and probably only has a few hours of experience in the fantasy world, can't possibly be expected to be able to recall this sort of information off the top of your head.   

2: It provides information your character would notice but you wouldn't due to gameplay limitations. If a note pops up saying that a quest is available because your character noticed a crack in the wall or something but you can't actually see a crack in the wall it's because it would be too hard to implement that detail in the game itself and even if they did there's a chance you wouldn't notice it because of the different perspective you have on the world. It's much easier to say that your character with their first person perspective noticed some detail about the world then it is to include that detail and hope you, the player, notices it in a third person perspective of your character with your camera possibly zoomed way out so everything looks tiny.

If it really bothers you that much though you can always just not access the journal.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Exposition that doesn't fit in dialogue already has a place in the codex. There's no need to clutter the quest journal with it.

I have already asked QA to test the quests while ignoring the journal to see if enough information is provided to the player.

[Alexander1136]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

Back in the olden days, there was no in-game journal.  If the player wanted to keep track of in-game information, he needed to keep notes himself.  Some games were sufficiently complex as to make this effectively mandatory.

Then, as a labour-saving device, the in-game journal was born.  This kept track of information automatically so the player wouldn't have to.  It typically stored quest descriptions or relevant pieces of dialogue.  This wasn't new information - this was all content the player first saw in the game proper - but saving it in the journal saved the player the trouble of keeping his own notes.

That is where I think the journal should stop.

Now, however, we're seeing more content in the journal.  Quest details the player can't get anywhere else.  Notifications of quests of which the player would otherwise never know.  This is, I think, a misuse of the journal.  The journal can store information, but it shouldn't provide information.

Is the journal supposed to represent a storehouse of information available to the PC?  Or is it for the player?  Is it merely keeping track of information the game has already provided, or is it providing brand new information that cannot be found elsewhere?

Since a roleplayer should be making in-game decisions in-character, he should not then be considering information that is not available to the character.  Knowing what the journal is, in in-game terms, will help resolve some of these difficulties.

It's so after I haven't played it in a while and i pick up where i saved i can read the journal to find out where i left off...

[Dakota Strider]

I agree with the OP in theory. However since there seems to be a vocal amount of "casual gamers" around, that want everything given to them, perhaps the Journal should have toggles in the Options Menu, in which you can customize how much information you would like to show up in your Journal.

[wsandista]

The journal should only record information pertaining to quests, never provide it. Maybe if it was in a more modern setting, and the journal was an electronic device that also doubled as a communication device, would the journal providing information(rather than simply storing it) be acceptable.

[Ponendus]

I particularly loathe when journals say things like 'Go and see x at x location because there is a surprise waiting for you'. Whose journal refers to the writer as 'you'? And as the player, I don't ever recall someone telling me that x was waiting at x with a surprise?

Another pet peeve is journal entries that warn you to prepare for a quest, when nobody informed you that said quest would be particularly hard. Did God write that in there?

Sorry for the attitude, I'm normally in a better mood than this.

I agree with Sylvius. Again.

[Sylvius the Mad]

Alexander1136 wrote...

It's so after I haven't played it in a while and i pick up where i saved i can read the journal to find out where i left off...

Sure.  That's exactly what I want the journal to do.  It should record the information my character has learned to help me keep track of it.

Ideally, it would let me keep my own notes as well in case there's some aspect that's relevant to my character but was left out.

Dakota Strider wrote...

I agree with the OP in theory.  However since there seems to be a vocal amount of "casual gamers"  around, that want everything given to them, perhaps the Journal should have toggles in the Options Menu, in which you can customize how much information you would like to show up in your Journal.

I have actually asked for the ability to disable the categorisation of quests.  I'd rather the journal not tell me which quests are part of the main plot, for example.

Rojahar wrote...

I agree that Bioware has been abusing the journal and codex features.  It's part of their "tell, but don't show" storytelling problem. An example of this is some of the codex entries on what happened in the time jumps in DA2.  I thought some of them were far more interesting than scenes in the actual game.  My first playthrough, the codex painted a picture of an Anders who was seeming to "recover" from Justice due to his relationship with Hawke, but then he started spiraling.  There's a big difference between being SHOWN (like over the course of the game, not through codex entries) a romance/friendship where the person you care about is falling apart emotionally, and being TOLD it in a codex entry.

I know the Bioware response to that though: We don't have the resources/etc.  Well, if they don't have the resources to do the story they want to do right, then maybe they should write a story they DO have the resources to do justice?

I'll admit I didn't read the codex entries in DA2 at all (I just didn't find the game interesting enough to bother), but in DAO they didn't bother me.  I recognise that BioWare's decision to voice all of the dialogue means that they can't afford to provide us with all of the exposition we might want through conversation.  Rather than deny us that exposition, they give us text entries in the codex.  I'm okay with that.

But telling me where to go and what to do without the character ever having had learned those things, that's what I'd like to avoid.

Modifié par Sylvius the Mad, 22 juin 2012 - 06:25 .

[CuriousArtemis]

I love the Journal; it tells me exactly what I need to do to keep the story rolling along This ain't frigging Portal, people; I don't wanna have to figure that crap out!

[TJX2045]

Sylvius the Mad wrote...

MichaelStuart wrote...

I believe it is for the player.

That's what I always thought, but then I should be able to ignore it and still play the game.  But that's not the case.  DA2's journal provides information that isn't available elsewhere, and its information on which the character is expected to act.

If it's for the player, then it's like the plot helpers, and those are things we are expected to be able to turn off without it negatively impacting the game.

The information is not essential to your enjoyment of the story and to the main story itself.  It's extra info for people who are hardcore into the lore.

Sylvius the Mad wrote... 

Dakota Strider wrote...

I agree with the OP in theory.  However since there seems to be a vocal amount of "casual gamers"  around, that want everything given to them, perhaps the Journal should have toggles in the Options Menu, in which you can customize how much information you would like to show up in your Journal.

I have actually asked for the ability to disable the categorisation of quests.  I'd rather the journal not tell me which quests are part of the main plot, for example. 

So you want to possibly go into a completely different part of the game where you cannot go back and finish the other quests you have instead of knowing which ones are side quests and which ones are main?  That's the first time I've heard anyone ask that.

Modifié par TJX2045, 22 juin 2012 - 08:15 .

[abnocte]

TJX2045 wrote...

The information is not essential to your enjoyment of the story and to the main story itself.  It's extra info for people who are hardcore into the lore.

DA2 journal offered quests on it owns classified as "rumors" if I remember correctly.
Prior to DA2 those quests would be introduced ingame via dialogue with a quest giver and then appear in the journal.

We can argue that DA2 had to cut corners everywhere, but that's hardly and excuse when most of those quests were easily fortgettable... meaning they had no reason to exists to begin with.

TJX2045 wrote...
So you want to possibly go into a completely different part of the game where you cannot go back and finish the other quests you have instead of knowing which ones are side quests and which ones are main?  That's the first time I've heard anyone ask that.

The problem here is game design, I see no reason why the player is forbidden to visit the same place twice. If it is a secondary quest why it is only available as long as you are in ActX? Why I'm forced to do them when the developers want? It's a sencondary quests it shouldn't affect the game if I do it in ActX or ActX+1.

And easy example is BG2, there were different quests that faced you with a dragon, but there was no way to defeat them if your level wasn't high enough and had proper equipment. Back then it was resolved by allowing the player to avoid combat with them.... and allowing the player to go back later If that was his/her desire.

All in all, I agree with Sylvius here.

[Gebert]

I agree. The Journal should never have information not obtainable by the character "in-game". Really hate it when games do this.

[robertthebard]

Direwolf0294 wrote...

When a journal offers this additional information you're talking about, the PC would normally know this information, it's not just being pulled from no where. Just because it wasn't brought up in a conversation doesn't mean the PC wouldn't know it. There's two examples I can think of to explain this.

1: The PC, having lived their entire life in this fantasy world, naturally has information available to them the player wouldn't. Think about all the information you can just recall off hand. All the stuff you learned at school growing up. The locations of places, the names of important people both alive and dead, basic maths and science etc. The PC would have access to a similar pool of information about their own world. When you get handed a quest to go kill ghosts and some extra information about ghosts and the surrounding area pops up in your journal it's because your character's heard about that sort of stuff before, just as if you were told to go kill bears in the American wilderness you'd have some idea of what's up. If a player gets a quest and the journal pops up saying they should go talk to a certain character it's because they know who that character is and that they should be able to help them, similar to if you uncovered a plot by aliens to take over the world you'd know to go talk to the President. Having characters have to repeat this sort of information to your character is in its own way really role breaking as it paints your character as an idiot with no life experience at all. I know I feel like an idiot in an RPG when I load in and have to ask a character who the leader of the country is, even if I don't know that information my character should. It's much easier to present this sort of stuff through a journal the player can read then have it presented through ingame characters telling you. I mean there are going to be cases where your character won't know what's up and it's appropriate to have them asking questions but there's also a lot of times when it's not. Also having it in a journal that you can refer back to makes sense from a memory point of view because the player character, who actually lives in that world, would remember that stuff but you, who lives in our world and probably only has a few hours of experience in the fantasy world, can't possibly be expected to be able to recall this sort of information off the top of your head.   

2: It provides information your character would notice but you wouldn't due to gameplay limitations. If a note pops up saying that a quest is available because your character noticed a crack in the wall or something but you can't actually see a crack in the wall it's because it would be too hard to implement that detail in the game itself and even if they did there's a chance you wouldn't notice it because of the different perspective you have on the world. It's much easier to say that your character with their first person perspective noticed some detail about the world then it is to include that detail and hope you, the player, notices it in a third person perspective of your character with your camera possibly zoomed way out so everything looks tiny.

If it really bothers you that much though you can always just not access the journal.

It's this.  In Baldur's Gate, you could add your own notes to the Journal as well, to keep from cluttering your desk with stacks of notes independant of each and every game/save/character you might be playing at the same time.  I'm frankly surprised that a role player wouldn't know this.  There are things that a character will know that a player won't, and some of it may be appropriate for the codex, however, it has a tendency to pop up on the screen telling you a codex entry was added.  I find that to be immersion breaking as well.

Perhaps the best solution to this non-issue would be to ignore both codex and journal entries?  After all, if having information available to the player that the character should by all rights know is bothersome, why hurt your immersion by learning it?  My understanding of the codex is it's information that you glean as you go, some of which you may already know, such as entries on the Chantry, depending on who you're playing.  Not so much for a dwarf, I'd suspect.  But since dwarves don't, as a rule, follow the Maker, it's not like you need the information for anything, you'll never have to interact with anyone that does, right?  If they based your dialog choices off of whether or not players used the journal/read the codex entries, there'd be some mighty dull conversation options.

NPC:  What do you think about the commandments of the Maker?

PC:  (Who never looked at the journal or codexes, so has no idea who this Maker is.  Maker of what?  Sandwiches?)  I like tuna salad.

NPC:  OooooKaaaayyyy.

[AkiKishi]

Anyone who wants a job done should just post it on a notice board. If they are more important then they can send someone to inform you that they want a job done. This removes the need for having psychic powers and wandering aimlessly looking for such people.

The codex should basically bring the player upto speed with what the character knows. Unless the player has played previous games and or read other material they won't know things that the character should have learned.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 22 juin 2012 - 02:17 .

[Jerrybnsn]

thats1evildude wrote...

Nonsense. If there's one thing casual players love, it's having to take their own notes.

I think casual player prefer to have just a neon colored arrow pointing out the location on the map and above the character so all you have to do is click on it and your quest is finished.

"Thanks. I thought I lost that forever".

[AkiKishi]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

thats1evildude wrote...

Nonsense. If there's one thing casual players love, it's having to take their own notes.

I think casual player prefer to have just a neon colored arrow pointing out the location on the map and above the character so all you have to do is click on it and your quest is finished.

"Thanks. I thought I lost that forever".

I had to take notes playing White Knight Chronicles. Puzzles are so uncommon these days.

I think it depends on the size of the area. In Palma (an area from WKC) there are maybe 25-30 people. In Balandor (another area) there are maybe 200+. Now I don't care how unrealistic it is. I don't want to to be talking to 200+people I want to know who the job is from and have directions to them. On top of there being 200+ people, they also have routines and wander about which would make them a pain in butt to track and remember who you had and had not spoken too.

Modifié par BobSmith101, 22 juin 2012 - 02:26 .

[Arthur Cousland]

A good example is all of the fetch quests in DA2, where you pick up an item, and automatically know who is belongs to and where to find them.

I agree with Sylvius. Info on a quest should be obtained in-game, by speaking to npcs and actually seeing events unfold. The quest journal shouldn't tell the player things that they wouldn't have known otherwise.

[robertthebard]

BobSmith101 wrote...

Anyone who wants a job done should just post it on a notice board. If they are more important then they can send someone to inform you that they want a job done. This removes the need for having psychic powers and wandering aimlessly looking for such people.

The codex should basically bring the player upto speed with what the character knows. Unless the player has played previous games and or read other material they won't know things that the character should have learned.

When I took my shot at a NWN's server, that's exactly what I did, a job board.  As flags were set for specific jobs, I had it scripted to update the board on a per player basis.  It was pretty easy to do, just check flags, and every player had a chance to get every job.  If Job A wasn't done, then Job E wouldn't show up, but if Job B was independant of Job A, it would.

[Jerrybnsn]

Arthur Cousland wrote...

A good example is all of the fetch quests in DA2, where you pick up an item, and automatically know who is belongs to and where to find them.

 

Most of the time, I had no idea who they were or what I was giving them.  But hey!  25XP!

[AkiKishi]

Jerrybnsn wrote...

Arthur Cousland wrote...

A good example is all of the fetch quests in DA2, where you pick up an item, and automatically know who is belongs to and where to find them.

 

Most of the time, I had no idea who they were or what I was giving them.  But hey!  25XP!

There was a really good cartoon of the skeleton quest but I can't find it