Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

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BansheeXYZ
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by BansheeXYZ »

The following edit should clear up the bizarre "need to loiter" confusion without altering classic's difficulty much at all. I just tested it and the monsters spawn almost immediately and in different rooms. The only way you might get mobbed is if you had the misfortune of the quest picking a really small building, but that's far better than players thinking the quest is broken.

Code: Select all

variable _S.04_
_spawn1_ task:
	when _S.01_ and _S.04_ and not _S.03_
	create foe _bats_ every 0 minutes 6 times with 100% success 

variable _S.05_
_spawn2_ task:
	when _S.01_ and _S.05_ and not _S.03_
	create foe _rats_ every 0 minutes 7 times with 100% success 

variable _S.06_
_spawn3_ task:
	when _S.01_ and _S.06_ and not _S.03_
	create foe _scorpions_ every 0 minutes 3 times with 100% success 

variable _S.07_
_spawn4_ task:
	when _S.01_ and _S.07_ and not _S.03_
	create foe _spiders_ every 0 minutes 3 times with 100% success 

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mikeprichard
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by mikeprichard »

Would this qualify as a "small QoL change"/"fixing unclear behaviour" in base DFU now that features have been locked (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2503)? Hope so! This is something that to me as well doesn't make sense in the context of the quest, and has been confusing many others on youtube playthroughs. Was just discussing this in the wiki thread, in fact.

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Jay_H
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by Jay_H »

I'm willing to change it to every 5 seconds for rats and bats and every 10 seconds for scorpions and spiders. This quest is available from level 1 on, and to walk into a house and get flooded by scorpions is an extremely unpleasant venture. This'll still keep players occupied (in fact, killing a scorpion whatsoever is going to be an ordeal for most new players) but getting swamped by enemy critters is likely to open its own bunch of complaints.

I haven't asked Interkarma about it but I'm assuming small edits to quest files will be allowed; it's not a change to the game engine and won't interfere with any other aspect of the game so I'll guess there's no problem with it until I hear otherwise.

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Interkarma
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by Interkarma »

Just confirming I don't mind the spirit of the change. This quest format does seem to cause a lot of confusion to new players. There is probably a balance somewhere to spin things bit faster without overwhelming user. I trust you guys to submit a change for this if you wish.

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mikeprichard
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by mikeprichard »

Jay_H wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 2:31 pm I'm willing to change it to every 5 seconds for rats and bats and every 10 seconds for scorpions and spiders.
Thanks, all; sounds OK to me. This quest always struck me as a bit too easy, anyway - not to mention giant friggin' scorpions that somehow appeared out of thin air after several minutes of banging around the house being pretty weird.

Also, while this quest seems to be the most prone to confusion, are there any other "critter in a building"-type quests to which similar tweaks could be applied? The building extermination quests I could see are the following, although Jay may already be planning to adjust some or all of these with his above proposal:

The below four quests all have a timer that could be tweaked per the notes earlier in this topic:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:The_Exterminator
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:The_Infested_House
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:A_Rat_Infestation
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Hun ... nt_Rodents

The below six quests may not need tweaking, as I think the single creature involved in each already spawns instantly:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Hunt_for_Barbarians
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Hun ... t_Scorpion
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Hun ... ant_Spider
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Wild_Animal
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Unwanted_Houseguest
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Rogue_Imp

BansheeXYZ
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by BansheeXYZ »

So here's me pretending to be a noob with the new behavior. As you can see, it didn't really address the confusion because the time to search is still lower than the time to first spawn. The houses actually get smaller than this as well, so I'm not sure even 1 minute is going to work.



As difficult as you may think it is, we need to go to immediate spawns somehow. If that means taking out the spider/scorp draws, fine. If that means limiting those draws to lvl 10 and up, fine (but that's probably not supported).

The only alternative I can think of is to add more text. Fire a message on entry that says something like:

Code: Select all

You hear scratching noises coming from the walls. In time, the creatures may show themselves.

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mikeprichard
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by mikeprichard »

BansheeXYZ wrote: Thu Aug 15, 2019 4:45 am The only alternative I can think of is to add more text. Fire a message on entry that says something like:

Code: Select all

You hear scratching noises coming from the walls. In time, the creatures may show themselves.
I suggest this message (which might be the best solution), and/or reduce all critters to 5-second real-time spawn intervals, not just bats/rats.

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Jay_H
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by Jay_H »

Banshee, the thing is that you're already an expert Daggerfall player, so you have some qualities the new player doesn't: 1. You can move very quickly, making a 10-second sweep of a house a possibility (most of our players coming from other games will take about twice as long); 2. You know the monsters should spawn in a specific time frame in a specific way, whereas most new players bumble around, check their player log, look up at the ceiling, talk to the merchant before wondering what's going wrong, and exit and re-enter the building just to make sure it was the right one. All of these are limitations you knew you could cut because you're already so well-acquainted with the system. Someone who needs help figuring out this quest will almost always be slow enough to get it.

On the other extreme, take the new player (the target audience for this question) who dies 15~ times in Privateer's Hold and is taking on their first few quests. This is precisely the kind of person who should not attempt to fight 6 spiders or 3 scorpions at once.

Reducing it to a 5- or 10-second interval was a QOL improvement to make the quest solution more obvious, but to make it a flood is more than that; it's a dramatic increase in difficulty, and one that the majority of players will not be able to handle. In other words, far more people will learn how a quest executes than will be able to grapple with the proposed difficulty increase. I'm willing to listen on this but the evidence for me is very much against it.

One solution I can implement, that I'd be willing to shift to, is to spawn one enemy immediately upon entrance and let the rest trickle in after. That's both a confirmation that it's the right place and an allowance for the player to keep finding them. It isn't perfect though, and may erroneously shift the player's expectation.

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mikeprichard
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by mikeprichard »

Fair points, Jay - Banshee was definitely speed-running that shop (and the distinction between whether something is technically possible vs. actually likely for the target audience is important). But would you be willing to consider his proposed message? I think that would be a nice and fairly immersive way of hinting to players that they'll need to wait around for more beasties, even with 5-/10-second reduced spawn timers.

Also, to confirm which specific quests these changes will affect - the first four I linked in my post above/shown below, correct?

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Jay_H
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Re: Clearing Monsters from house quests broken?

Post by Jay_H »

I don't see a problem with it. It won't affect gameplay and it'll help newer players to understand where the quest objective is -- and troubleshoot if something goes wrong with finding the right building. My original objection was that it isn't in the spirit of classic, but sometimes the spirit of classic isn't something to be defended.

I forgot one of those quests... Thanks for reminding me. I can give an entry message a shot and some playtesting will show how people receive it.

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