Linux #70: Quest deadline changes after acceptance [CLOSED]

[Jay_H]

I accepted a quest which granted 20 days to complete. In the journal, however, it only grants 19. Then it continues counting down after travel.




This actually looks like a quality of life improvement, now that I think about it. You're counting down the days to finish the quest in the journal?

[Interkarma]

I agree this is a display rounding bug (and it's on my internal list of things to solve). What's happening is the player is given 20 days, which right away ticks down to 19.23:59 and is rounded to 19 days in the log. I'll fix this to make sure it displays more appropriately.

You're right this is a small quality of life feature. I played both ways in my tests and found the countdown was a lot easier to use compared to manually calculating dates to check if I still have time for a quest, or if I should travel recklessly or not. I see it as the result of the character doing the math for me when looking over their journal.

[Jay_H]

I had an idea but it's sort of clunky, so YMMV. It could be an inclusion of both ideas:

"I have 15 days to defeat the creature and return to Agryn Yeomsmith for my reward. (4 days remaining)"

The clunkiness would increase when a single quest occupies more than one journal entry.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I had an idea but it's sort of clunky, so YMMV. It could be an inclusion of both ideas:

"I have 15 days to defeat the creature and return to Agryn Yeomsmith for my reward. (4 days remaining)"

The clunkiness would increase when a single quest occupies more than one journal entry.

I think your solution is better than the current one. While I appreciate the game doing the math for you, if the journal entry was written on the 13th of Morning Star, then it should list the days remaining from the 13th of Morning Star, i.e., always 20 in my view (yeah, I'm a stickler for immersion...). Parenthesizing the updated count would be a way of signalling that it doesn't appear in the original journal entry but instead it's a kind of clarification added by the game.

Another alternative would be to show a "virtual" journal entry after the quest entry, as in

"(Sundas the 15th of Morning Star:
18 days remaining.)"

This entry would not be persistent, it would be calculated from the real quest entry and placed there. If the player re-checked again the next day, they would see an entry for Morndas the 16th with 17 days remaining instead.

[Nystul]

i like this idea with "x days remaining" in addition to the fixed 20 days (I think also vanilla had it fixed)

[Interkarma]

The issue with adding "x days remaining" is that no such text exists in quest Message resources. Someone would have to update every quest to add that line and associated clock macro.

I believe the countdown is a very elegant quality of life feature that fits right in with no extra changes required to quest scripts. Very, very few players want to calculate the time difference between their current Fantasy Month to see how many of their 20 days have elapsed from the previous Fantasy Month. Or is the quest 45 days and now they have up to two Fantasy Months time difference to calculate? And if they don't have the month progression memorised, are they supposed to consult an online calendar before they can work out if they have enough time to even bother trying on the quest. On the whole, people don't want to be performing time-date calculations against an imaginary calendar. It's hard enough doing this in the real world, guys.

I have a private exercise for readers. Think honestly about how often you really calculate the time difference between current date and quest start date to determine how many days are remaining. Or do you just kind of go by feel and tick "reckless" travel when you think time is short?

What I'm trying to say is the lack of clear communication of deadlines actually removes travel strategy in Daggerfall. People aren't sure how much time is left so they just take the fastest travel options available. Sometimes to their own detriment (e.g. "You drop to the ground, completely exhausted. In that state you are easy prey to roaming monsters and never awaken.").

By clearly communicating quest deadlines, players can stop calculating dates and go straight to making real strategic choices about travel time. Should they take the risk of reckless travel with that disease rattling in their chest, or do they have time to find a temple on the way? Do they have time to rescue that NPC and still get back for a reward? Can they stack these two quests in one trip, or should they prioritise one over the other? These decisions are more meaningful if the player knows how much time they're dealing with. If you force people to perform time-date calculations beforehand, the strategy evaporates in favour of simplicity.

I think this small changes accomplishes a lot of good things for the player. I hope that people will at least give it a fair shake. If I get enough feedback to the contrary, I'll put it back to classic behaviour, or add another INI option. You guys know I'm always open to feedback. I just want people to play with this small change for a while first and see how it goes.

[Jay_H]

I think we're all on board that the countdown is better than vanilla's static number. I imagined the addition of a supplemental countdown was going to be an issue from the start. Maybe after quests are all hammered out that's something one of us could update and experiment with, releasing a questfix pack on our own time.

[CM August]

@Interkarma I agree completely. It helps that Daggerfall's journal is somewhat more abstract than, say, Morrowind's - so personally the change hardly affects even the "immersion" factor at all. In testing I've found it to be, as you say, an elegant quality of life improvement to the questing experience.

[ifkopifko]

Hi there.

On the whole, people don't want to be performing time-date calculations against an imaginary calendar.

Are you sure about that? Haha, sorry, couldn't help myself. Personally, I am all for immersion (almost). But yeah, I mostly use reckless travel when I feel that time is short.

Actually, I agree that having the game do the math for me is a very good idea. However, I also agree with Al-Khwarizmi, that right now the journal entry is not very intuitive. The player has to be aware that it works in this specific/strange way.

If adding a line "(x days left)" at the bottom of each journal entry containing this time information is a problem, then I would vote for an INI option.

But in the end, no matter which approach you will choose, I will play DFU like there's no tomorrow. Thank you all for you efforts.

[Narf the Mouse]

Maybe display the time as "X/Y days", where X is the number of days left, and Y is the total number of days? That way, all that might need to be changed is the text display for quest time