Asking NPCs for directions

Playing the Alpha, there were a few cases where guards told me where to go, but I didn't check to see if NPCs in general would give me helpful directions in response to queries. I think it should be possible to ask any NPC in a town a question like "where is the blacksmith?" and give me some useful information on where his shop is.

This could range from simple to complex, and could depend on the NPCs location. It could start with "His shop is in the town center, across the bridge," if the NPC you're asking is across the bridge from the town center. If it was lunch hour, the NPC could respond "His shop is in the town center, across the bridge. But if you want to see him, the blacksmith is likely at the pub now for lunch. You should wait an hour until his shop re-opens." You would also want responses like "We don't have a blacksmith in this town -- you should try Owl's Head."

Most NPCs in a town could probably share the same dialogue for this, so it wouldn't have to be replicated individually for every NPC. It would just be a single response system shared by all NPCs in the town. You could go on from there and give particular responses from particular NPCs.

 

Dark Age had a system where you could ask any NPC guard where another NPC was and they would say "Over THERE," and swivel & point; there were no maps in the game UI at launch, a simple compass overlay and no quest markers, so it was very helpful.

 

As long as the NPCs that dont trust/like you give you false information or refuse to tell you that'll be good

 

... I can't stress it enough ... if I'm asking where cave A is located; I would hope that they would give sufficient detail (landscape identifiers etc).

I don't want to feel like back in the days of Dragon Quest where you're on a search for a cave and all you have to go with is - head east

 

they should be able to give you coordinates that you can use a sextant to find the location

 

They were nice enough to say things like "south", when I had no map and no compass. I'm sure Lum got a lot of "which way is south?"

Anyone who ever leveled a dwarf in L2 knows about the "Toma" quest. He would be in one of three very far apart locations, it was random, you had to find him multiple times, the directions were fairly ambiguous anyway so you never really knew if you were actually at one of his spawn locations. Like all the quests, it's been nerfed many times to be somewhat reasonable today. These quests were all so bad that you'd have friends scouting, macros, friends translating Korean / Chinese forums trying to find anything.

I've been through enough of this. It doesn't bother me at all to have glowing trails on the ground, dots on a minimap, or anything else to help me find something. If someone wants to run navigation in "hard mode" they're welcome to. I don't enjoy it.

 

If it made sense for them to know the coordinates I'm all for it; however in my gaming experience when games provide coordinates they make the entrance hidden ... I don't mind looking for entrances either but a little warning is all I need

[ "Here, It's your lucky day, I travel to the hidden hunting grounds once a year ... once you arrive at the coordinates look for a rock shaped like a Ferret and then walk east; you'll know you're heading in the right direction because you'll have the river to your left - you'll see the entrance behind a water fall" ]

Something like this

 

Quest giver could give you coordinates, You equip your Sextant, which could take up the hand/sword slot, or they make another slot, this device could plan your route to your destination

Have a map in pack (I remember seeing scrolls inpack in early progress videos), open that & place a marker on it, with equiped sextant, you would have a dotted line on this scroll map from where you are to destination.

But I don't think it should be always on screen, there needs to be a bit of work to it, like the dots are not updated live but only each time map is opened

 

@Sir Isycle
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On a side note

Do we know if cartography(or if there are any plans for it at all) made it into episode 1?

 

Quest navigation should work like the real world of being a tourist in the pre-GPS world.

You ask somebody for directions and they say something along the lines of:

"Yes, I know exactly where that is. It's very easy. Go that way down the road for awhile past the Church and then ask someone else."

 

It is not in the crafting Circle so not for Ep1

 

I would expect most NPCs would know the people and places in their town with the following understanding. The smaller the town, the more they would know. The larger the town, the less they would know. The older they are, the more likely they'd know. The longer they've lived there, the more likely they'd know. And it could go on....it all depends on how deep the conversation sim goes. And then it gets more complex if you ask them about people and places outside of town. NPC social and knowledge graphs would help with a lot of this

 

I almost consider coordinates cheating. I actually want adventure and exploration. Besides, coordinates will pop up on websites once people figure out where everything is anyway. I like redfish's suggestions. However, NPCs giving out false information, that is just plain cruel.

 

I think this was mentioned in other threads, but some towns could have street names and thus intersections of the two. Ultima 7's towns did have that to some degree.

 

Landmarks could be introduced to help navigation. For example, liberal use of sign posts, stone piles, and stone circles across the landscape would make NPC directions easier. A skull on a spear indicates a danger zone. Being able to write graffiti on large rocks would be interesting. I guess this points to a type of crowdsourced landmarking system.

 

"what should I do" was the "uh where do I go next?" that was in R1... that being said, @Lum is working on making npc's more robust so you can converse with them about simpler things on a regular basis... That being said... I hated wow's quest system and needing the x/y to find anything. I liked the Ultima Online way of doing things with runes. I'm hoping things stay that way and I can have an expansive rune library so when people need to find a POI they can stop by my house and visit the library.

Cheers!

 

I definitely think this should happen, I really hope there will be some npc who have nothing better to do then troll us pc.

 

Sure, but I think most would know where the merchants district, crafting district, and other major areas of importance are. If they didn't know specifically where the blacksmith was, they'd know the whereabouts.

Besides whatever use it is to the player, I think it just would help the NPCs seem less dumb. If you ask them "Where is the blacksmith?" it would add to the game if they said something other than "Huh? If you say so."

 

I want to have them give realistic directions. "Well you go down to where the old mill used to be before they moved it over the ridge and then you go past the new blacksmith's shop that nobody likes, talentless hack. Once you pass that you have to look for the old windmill which will be on your right, but don't go right, you want to go left."


I live in a fairly small town where most of the people have lived here their whole lives. Everytime someone gives me directions to something it always involves it's where X used to be. I have no idea where anything used to be. I just moved here 4 years ago.

 

Carpet bagger...