Let Me Erase Quests From My Journal

[ffordesoon]

Self-explanatory, really. If I don't want to do a quest, I want to be able to erase it from my quest journal, assuming there is one. This excludes the main quest, obviously (assuming the game follows a main quest/side quest structure). But everything else is fair game. Hell, as long as there's a warning that you're breaking the main story, even erasure of the main quest would be fine.

This certainly isn't necessary, and could just as easily be annoying as neat, but it might be cool to let the erasure of a quest have narrative consequences. If my party doesn't lift a finger to save a farmer's daughter, it'd be neat if the farmer yelled at my party for letting his daughter die every time I walked by. Or, hell, he could come after me at some point with a shotgun and get himself blown away. Wouldn't be Wasteland without unexpected consequences, would it?

[infestor]

i'm neutral on this one. but i really like to see 3 flags for quests. done, in progress and botched as in arcanum.

[cah]

How about you never get automatic quest notes in the first place? Then you can keep your todo lists in whatever way you like.

[ffordesoon]

How about you never get automatic quest notes in the first place? Then you can keep your todo lists in whatever way you like.

I am absent-minded and disorganized. I like quest journals, because I can go back through them and remember where the hell I am going and what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. I refuse to draw a goddamn map or write a goddamn to-do list for a goddamn video game, because it's a job at that point. I know some people feel differently, and that is absolutely their right. But I think those people are lunatics.

[cah]

Wasteland 2 is intended to be made for fanatics.

[Game_Exile]

I am absent-minded and disorganized. I like quest journals, because I can go back through them and remember where the hell I am going and what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.

Quests would be a lot easier to remember if their forseeable consequences weren't just XP gain and trivial shit like this:

If my party doesn't lift a finger to save a farmer's daughter, it'd be neat if the farmer yelled at my party for letting his daughter die every time I walked by. Or, hell, he could come after me at some point with a shotgun and get himself blown away. Wouldn't be Wasteland without unexpected consequences, would it?

Forget the amusing scenarios. Make a seriously deep and complex quest system first. After you do that, then you start putting in throwaway material like the stuff in the quote above.

[jimbo]

I don't think there should even be quests as such, the journal should simply record relevant facts about the world that the player has already discovered without neatly arranging them in individual 'quests' or 'objectives'.

We shouldn't get told what to do (much less where or how) by the journal.

[Plasmablaster]

Wasteland 2 is intended to be made for fanatics.

Uh.... no?

[TΛPETRVE]

We shouldn't get told what to do (much less where or how) by the journal.

Well, if I am assigned an objective by a NPC, then of course there should be a short note in the journal, like "Pete in Stechville asked for a convoy escort to Bartertown." After all, that's what he told you to do.

[SkyeFyre]

I think it'd be better to play out the actions than using a checkbox on a quest objective. Besides, I can see the frustrated forum posts now "I accidentally erased quest <x>! Help!".

[Hertzila]

If the point here is to keep the journal from reaching ridiculous lengths by the amount of ongoing quests the player could have, maybe an 'ignored' or 'not in progress' option a player could set in the journal that hides the specific quest from popping up without pressing a special 'show ignored quests' would work better and solve accidentally erased quests.

If the idea is to cancel quests, why not just say it to the guy's face that you won't save his daughter and be done with it? Couple this with a mention of who gave it and where to make finding the guy painless and this is solved well enough IMO.

Or if it's to avoid looking at all the quests and avoiding the slight pang of guilt for agreeing to do this or promising to do that and then not doing this or that, do it like Arcanum did it and couple it with my suggestion above: have some quests only be 'mentioned' instead of fully accepted and give the player an option to, by default, hide these quests from the main quest page (and perhaps also put in the 'ignore' option to make sure the player won't see the quest unless he really wants to).

[Nephilim]

I would put this under "Basic Quality of Life Features" that definitely need to be in there.

[cah]

Uh.... no?

Then someone has been lying about it being an old-school type game.

After all, that's what he told you to do.

Did he write it in your journal too?

[BlackGauntlet]

I am absent-minded and disorganized. I like quest journals, because I can go back through them and remember where the hell I am going and what the hell I'm supposed to be doing. I refuse to draw a goddamn map or write a goddamn to-do list for a goddamn video game, because it's a job at that point. I know some people feel differently, and that is absolutely their right. But I think those people are lunatics.

Yeah, I'll have to go with cah on this one... even though I still think he's annoying as hell. :p

But if we can have an in-game notepad that could allow us to write/edit at any point of time (even during combat/conversation), it'd solve all our problems.

Also, it'd be more realistic in the sense that, actual detectives have to record down bunch of clues and then organise them at a later date, linking them up to solve a case.

[TΛPETRVE]

After all, that's what he told you to do.

Did he write it in your journal too?

It's called "user friendliness". Albeit I'm all for a HC mode that gives you nothing but an empty notebook and an old pre-war road map which just lets you take notes ad libitum.

[WolfStark]

Hey that sounds like a cool idea, TΛPETRVE! Like Legends of Grimrock did, I think yo could print an empty map and draw the whole dungeon yourself. HC for Wasteland, not bad.^^

Back to the topic: I do like this. Of course quests shouldn't just vanish but they could go to a "reserve", "declined", "deactivate" tab, so if you accidently delete the quest, you can get it back immediatly.

[ffordesoon]

Let me clarify a couple of things, since there seems to be a little bit of confusion that there wouldn't have been if my Google Chrome hadn't gone kablooey and erased the entirety of my first draft of the first post in this thread, thus forcing me to write it again in a shorter, more confrontational way. Well, it didn't force me to write a more compact post, but I was angry.

First of all, let me explain what I'm trying to avoid here. I like how Skyrim and more recent Bioware games (yes, yes - boo, hiss) give you quests in ways other than forcing you to go up to a quest giver and talk to them about their problems, and I like Skyrim's way of doing it in particular, because it usually gives you leads to pursue instead of forcing a named quest on you right off the bat. I think those specific features are both smart quality-of-life improvements that should be standard for RPGs from now on. I know some people disagree, but I like them, and I will go pretty far in defending those features. That doesn't mean I'm unwilling to compromise, nor will I fail to criticize aspects of those features that I believe require improvement (being forced into taking the quest, for one). I'm just saying that I like those specific features quite a lot.

However, what I hate about both systems (among other things) is that once I get a quest, I have to either complete it or fail it to gray it out or otherwise make it go away. That's dumb. Skyrim is guilty of this in particular, because most quests don't have multiple solutions. I assume that won't be a problem in Wasteland 2, but still, if a specific quest is not to my tastes, I should be able to forgo it prior to completion. Killing all the Deathclaws in Fallout 1, for example, was something I did solely because I am an OCD completionist and it was sitting there undone in the journal. I'm sure this has happened to other people on this board in various RPGs. Ideally, every quest in W2 would be to everyone's taste, so there would be no need for this feature. I think we all know, however, that it's wishful thinking of the highest order to expect that. There will be at least a couple of quests that nobody wants to do in this game, and it's pointlessly annoying to people like me that we can't just cross out the things we don't do and move on. So, let us do that.

Secondly, I should reiterate that the narrative effect of erasing or crossing out quests that I proposed is entirely optional. It's basically a way to avoid the following: you see the farmer asking for help, you get the quest, you decide not to do it and erase it from your journal. When you walk by there next, the farmer's reciting the same canned line of dialogue asking for help. If you decide to take the quest again, you have to sit there and read the same spiel again.

I don't mind that, but I know some people do. Thus, the narrative effect to forsaking the quest. If you guys don't like the idea, I'll happily forsake it to achieve a quorum on the "quest erase" feature.

Responses:

I am absent-minded and disorganized. I like quest journals, because I can go back through them and remember where the hell I am going and what the hell I'm supposed to be doing.

Quests would be a lot easier to remember if their forseeable consequences weren't just XP gain and trivial shit like this:

If my party doesn't lift a finger to save a farmer's daughter, it'd be neat if the farmer yelled at my party for letting his daughter die every time I walked by. Or, hell, he could come after me at some point with a shotgun and get himself blown away. Wouldn't be Wasteland without unexpected consequences, would it?

Forget the amusing scenarios. Make a seriously deep and complex quest system first. After you do that, then you start putting in throwaway material like the stuff in the quote above.

Yes, the cliched sample quest that I used to illustrate my point was throwaway material. It's also throwaway material that a lot of people on this board have probably encountered in one form or another. It's cliched so that the mechanic can be easily understood; I'm certainly not suggesting that such a quest be included in the game.

I don't think there should even be quests as such, the journal should simply record relevant facts about the world that the player has already discovered without neatly arranging them in individual 'quests' or 'objectives'.

We shouldn't get told what to do (much less where or how) by the journal.

That might be interesting.

On the other hand, this:

We shouldn't get told what to do (much less where or how) by the journal.

Well, if I am assigned an objective by a NPC, then of course there should be a short note in the journal, like "Pete in Stechville asked for a convoy escort to Bartertown." After all, that's what he told you to do.

So there you go.

If the point here is to keep the journal from reaching ridiculous lengths by the amount of ongoing quests the player could have, maybe an 'ignored' or 'not in progress' option a player could set in the journal that hides the specific quest from popping up without pressing a special 'show ignored quests' would work better and solve accidentally erased quests.

That would work! Excellent idea!

If the idea is to cancel quests, why not just say it to the guy's face that you won't save his daughter and be done with it? Couple this with a mention of who gave it and where to make finding the guy painless and this is solved well enough IMO.

Because sometimes you get halfway through a quest before you realize that you don't want to do it.

Or if it's to avoid looking at all the quests and avoiding the slight pang of guilt for agreeing to do this or promising to do that and then not doing this or that, do it like Arcanum did it and couple it with my suggestion above: have some quests only be 'mentioned' instead of fully accepted and give the player an option to, by default, hide these quests from the main quest page (and perhaps also put in the 'ignore' option to make sure the player won't see the quest unless he really wants to).

We have a winner!

Did he write it in your journal too?

No, one of my characters wrote it in his or her journal.

It's amazing how some grognards are always lecturing people about the "power of imagination", but as soon as someone mentions a feature they don't like, their vaunted "imagination" dries up real quick, isn't it?

But if we can have an in-game notepad that could allow us to write/edit at any point of time (even during combat/conversation), it'd solve all our problems.

Also, it'd be more realistic in the sense that, actual detectives have to record down bunch of clues and then organise them at a later date, linking them up to solve a case.

Fair point. I certainly think an in-game annotation system where you can add stuff to the pre-generated content or type additional information you've gathered would be neat, and I definitely don't want the quest journal to be as all-encompassing as the one in Skyrim, nor do I want the frighteningly specific quest markers of that game in W2.

It's called "user friendliness". Albeit I'm all for a HC mode that gives you nothing but an empty notebook and an old pre-war road map which just lets you take notes ad libitum.

Yeah, absolutely. If people want it, put it in. I don't think that would even require a significant effort on the devs' part, would it? Just hacking out the journal?

Back to the topic: I do like this. Of course quests shouldn't just vanish but they could go to a "reserve", "declined", "deactivate" tab, so if you accidently delete the quest, you can get it back immediatly.

I have no problem with that. Also, "abandon" is the word I was looking for! Okay!

Er, I should explain that, I guess. I was trying to remember what this mechanic was called in MMOs, and I couldn't. "Abandon Quest"! Yes!

[Plasmablaster]

Uh.... no?

Then someone has been lying about it being an old-school type game.

This is like saying that only music scholars would like to hear classical music or only 80-year olds would love to try driving a Dodge Charger. Or that just my dad could enjoy "The Good the Bad and the Ugly".

Take a look at comments posted under well-known music tracks from the 70's or 80s in YouTube and you'll see there are plenty of people born in the 90s who say how much they love that kind of music and how crap the music produced today is.

There is only one prerequisite for "old school" stuff to survive through the years and stay widely popular, which is to be of top quality.

[ffordesoon]

But Plasmablaster, if that's true, then how will cah be able to lord it over all the people who like to play games from after fun was invented? Is he to simply sit in his monogrammed smoking jacket, polishing his monocle while wistfully recalling the days he spent playing mancala with illiterate heathens in the Orient? The René Magritte original he won off SImon de Pury in a particularly tricky game of backgammon will bring him no joy, Plasmablaster. No joy at all! Is that what you want, Plasmablaster!? For his brandy to taste like ashes and orphans' tears!? He's been saving that bottle for decades, and you just– you want it to taste like it's been rubbed on a poor person!? THE BRANDY, DAMN YOUR EYES, THE BRANDY!

[cah]

No, one of my characters wrote it in his or her journal.

It's amazing how some grognards are always lecturing people about the "power of imagination", but as soon as someone mentions a feature they don't like, their vaunted "imagination" dries up real quick, isn't it?

Then why don't you use a bit of that imagination? For the system you are fighting against (undeletable quests) you can pretend that it was one of your characters who wrote it in his or her journal and you are obviously not allowed to make any changes (i.e. crossing out notes) to their private journal.

This is like saying that only music scholars would like to hear classical music

That's because music scholars are more likely to call foul when someone starts adding electric guitar and calls it "improved"classical music.