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[EarlyAccess]Narrative Events and Quests

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8 years ago
Nov 23, 2016, 7:02:45 PM

Just want to blurt out that the text and perspective of the UE storyline is damn well done. :)

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8 years ago
Oct 23, 2016, 10:57:34 AM
  • Did you see some bugs? I’ve already read that “Bug Fixing” is something impossible to complete (it should be possible and even easier to achieve it soon J ) but did you see some other strange situations?

Not yet.

  • What is your feeling about those quests/events’s appearance? (appearance rhythm, diversity…).

The divdersity is really really nice. Sometimes political, sometimes just build stuff. Really good. Appearance rythm is good as it is now. Especially the option to choose an objective is VERY good. (Srsly, keep that.)

  • Did you see some silly objectives, stuff you can’t achieve, which are too complicated, annoying to do, that you never want to do?

Sophons/Political quest: Militarists vs. Pacifists: In the second part of the quest where the militarists build a blockade, you get to choose whether to have zero industrial output for 10 rounds or half output of every resource for 10 rounds. This is FAR too much. Quests giving boosts feel good. Quests giving you major mali are very bad. (For example: I'd be fine with -50 & industry vs. -25% overall, but not more than that.)

  • Are the rewards sufficient? Did you receive a poor reward after doing a super complicated Quests? Or, on the contrary, a super building after killing a stupid pirate? xD

Experienced nothing like that yet. The rewards seem okay.

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8 years ago
Oct 25, 2016, 9:17:10 PM

Hi! For me, having lots of different quests will be great but it will be even better if the Devs focus on replayability of quests through semi-randomized outcomes of a player's decisions. Example:


1) You choose to ranch space cows.

2) There is 50% chance of a space cow disease evolving and infecting your population. The more Ecologists you have in your senate, the less is the chance of this event.

3) If the pestilence occurs, you will have a chance to avoid a dramatic aftermath: the more Scientists you have in your senate, the more is the chance, and if you are successful you will get a minor reward in a randomly picked form of either a slight science boost (these bacteria are so curious) or a local food boost (the disease killed the weakest cattle and a superior breed evolved). 

Some hints to the variables or general principles might be present.


After all, this approach does not require much additional artwork. It is even better to use a single picture throughout a questline to make its parts more recognizable.

quaedam wrote:



RageMcGeezaks wrote:

Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

That’s annoying indeed. I could postpone it and require the Era2 to launch it.




I cannot comment on that specific quest but please don't make quests too easy. It is not bad if involving yourself into a quest means a hard decision requiring a careful assessment of the situation. Failing quests is a part of the story as well.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 25, 2016, 10:21:20 PM
RageMcGeezaks wrote:

 

Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

So I usually go for the other option, pretend to build but never finish only science buildings for 10 turns. 

Which is also crippling, but at least you don't have to finish these buildings to get the reward. :)

I didn't found it difficult (playing on normal). I just desing a ship named "CHAEP" with the cheapest hull and no mudules on it. You can build 4 of them very quicly and scarb once you got the reward.

Of course it can delay few turns (in this difficulty rarely more than 3-4) and make you lost a bit of dust, but it never crippled my economy.

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8 years ago
Oct 31, 2016, 2:52:15 PM
quaedam wrote:


phanemy wrote:

I love these quete, mainly when they add lore, but i things they appear too often.

Thanks a lot J We’re trying to find a good “appearance rhythm”, that’s why we’ve asked your opinion about that. Thanks for the feedback


Caelie wrote:

I like quests and events in general a lot, I think they add much variety to the game that keeps it from going stale, but I find myself agreeing with phanemy that they are a bit too common now. It seems like one is almost always popping off. It's a bit much. I would prefer each quest/narrative to be more impactful (both in difficulty and reward) and to not have them happen so often.


Thanks for your input, I’ll remember that. 


Syrenion wrote:

In general I think, this illustrates nicely the gripe I have with the quests from a purely mechanical point of view: while narratively and visually they are great to read and add flavour to the game, they are often too demanding, complicated and time-consuming to really make it worth the effort. Often times I found myself going out of my way trying to get to quest markers that were just too far away from me, thereby using up a ship I direly needed in other situations. 


Now I think this might also be a Early Access problem, since with a bigger map and without time limit and with the ability to turn off the score victory, one might actually be able to take the time to fully commit to such taxing quests, but at the moment they seem rather a hinderance at times.

Thanks for your feedback. I understand what you mean and I think we should find a balanced way to create quests which are complex/demanding, but also easier quests and events that the player should achieve in just a few turns without changing too much his/her gameplay. 

I disagree that there are too many quests or they pop too often. I find most of them much more achievable then in EL. I've done everything game asked me to in the first 60 turns of my first playthrough, and I had all the galaxy explored. I liked that pacing and it was fun. If anything, I feel that there would be not much to do, if quest pacing was slower, at least in this stage of EA, while lots of mechanics are missing.

Writing this just to balance the feedback.

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8 years ago
Oct 31, 2016, 5:35:59 PM
lo_fabre wrote:
RageMcGeezaks wrote:

 

Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

So I usually go for the other option, pretend to build but never finish only science buildings for 10 turns. 

Which is also crippling, but at least you don't have to finish these buildings to get the reward. :)

I didn't found it difficult (playing on normal). I just desing a ship named "CHAEP" with the cheapest hull and no mudules on it. You can build 4 of them very quicly and scarb once you got the reward.

Of course it can delay few turns (in this difficulty rarely more than 3-4) and make you lost a bit of dust, but it never crippled my economy.

Okay, nice!


Then I suggest to rename quest accordingly: 'garrison two piles of garbage in 10 turns'  ;)

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8 years ago
Nov 1, 2016, 1:31:12 PM
RageMcGeezaks wrote:
lo_fabre wrote:
RageMcGeezaks wrote:

 

Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

So I usually go for the other option, pretend to build but never finish only science buildings for 10 turns. 

Which is also crippling, but at least you don't have to finish these buildings to get the reward. :)

I didn't found it difficult (playing on normal). I just desing a ship named "CHAEP" with the cheapest hull and no mudules on it. You can build 4 of them very quicly and scarb once you got the reward.

Of course it can delay few turns (in this difficulty rarely more than 3-4) and make you lost a bit of dust, but it never crippled my economy.

Okay, nice!


Then I suggest to rename quest accordingly: 'garrison two piles of garbage in 10 turns'  ;)

Uups! That wasn't my intention, just solved the quest the quickest way occurred to me.


This quest is really unbalanced, as both branches have a very different difficulty, but not sure if rewards are corresponding..


I also used this tactic sometimes in ES1 and EL. In first to get bonus for orbiting ships, and in last to achieve some quests, so it's not new to Endless games and I'm sure I'm not the only one to use it.

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8 years ago
Nov 1, 2016, 2:55:32 PM
lo_fabre wrote:
RageMcGeezaks wrote:
lo_fabre wrote:
RageMcGeezaks wrote:

 

Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

So I usually go for the other option, pretend to build but never finish only science buildings for 10 turns. 

Which is also crippling, but at least you don't have to finish these buildings to get the reward. :)

I didn't found it difficult (playing on normal). I just desing a ship named "CHAEP" with the cheapest hull and no mudules on it. You can build 4 of them very quicly and scarb once you got the reward.

Of course it can delay few turns (in this difficulty rarely more than 3-4) and make you lost a bit of dust, but it never crippled my economy.

Okay, nice!


Then I suggest to rename quest accordingly: 'garrison two piles of garbage in 10 turns'  ;)

Uups! That wasn't my intention, just solved the quest the quickest way occurred to me.


This quest is really unbalanced, as both branches have a very different difficulty, but not sure if rewards are corresponding..


I also used this tactic sometimes in ES1 and EL. In first to get bonus for orbiting ships, and in last to achieve some quests, so it's not new to Endless games and I'm sure I'm not the only one to use it.

I think it is a very creative way to deal with it, as with other games, sometimes the optimal move does not really make any sense outside of the game itself. 


For the balance of the rewards I am not sure. 

The science building seems really good, but I never really could afford to spend so much time building it in the early game.

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8 years ago
Nov 1, 2016, 6:14:38 PM

Only I want talk about I love the narrative events in Endless space 1, and I want more of that in ES2, but with more impact in the decisions. This kind of things make the game inmersive and interesting.

A idea: Maybe more events related to heroes and her adventures for the space? Like heroes of might and magic 3?

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8 years ago
Nov 1, 2016, 9:25:21 PM

I finally recalled a relevant issue.


I had a Craver quest about the growing a Bishop. I needed to increase Craver population within 10 turns, but every other new pop was the one of a minor faction despite Craver trait and Cravers being more numerous at the beginning of the quest. I did everything I could, but it was an early game so I did not have many options. I failed, of course.

This quest is either a win or fail without much impact from a player's actions. I think it can be made more difficult, but it should provide some options like eating a population unit - even if you need to force your Cravers into cannibalism.


Besides, please consider there could be a bug with the Cravers' trait.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Nov 11, 2016, 9:18:05 PM

Just in case these bug reports were more appropriate here:


https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/114-bug-reports/thread/21349-those-darn-kids-bug



https://www.games2gether.com/endless-space-2/forum/114-bug-reports/thread/22055-bug-a-clever-fake-event



I will eventually get to placing some save files into these two threads.


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8 years ago
Oct 20, 2016, 7:35:35 PM

Just a minor "bug", I refined a reward building for Dust (I really can't remember which ?), but I could not re-build it.


Those should be unrefinable I think (but in this case, building rewards should have no maintenance costs I guess).

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 12:23:56 PM

“Please help me.”


The Amoeba kneels in the sand, sobbing.

--------------------------

The Amoeba, kneels? In the sand?


I understand why it turned out like this, but still want to ask that will there be race-fixed quest or quest texts in future?


An amoeba kneels in the sand feels really wired...

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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 3:02:54 PM

Haha, I agree, it feels quite weird! 

I will discuss that with the writers and find a way to fix that :D


Thanks Templerlord, and sorry for this... bizarre experience! 

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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 3:14:19 PM

I think one issue I have with quests is that many of the minor factions quests to assimilate them are too easy or can be completed by doing something that was going to happen anyway. I can't tell you how many times I've had a minor faction tell me "We'll join you, but only if you're large enough! If you can achieve a total population of 8, we will join you!" and I can't help but think "Ok, guess I'll be seeing you in 2 turns then."

My only other gripes were the Academy quest and Those Darn Kids quest, but you're already covered those :)

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Jan 25, 2017, 5:03:22 PM
templerlord wrote:

“Please help me.”


The Amoeba kneels in the sand, sobbing...

Uh, yeah.


We're on it.

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8 years ago
Jan 26, 2017, 12:12:15 PM

Hi again,


After update 2 started 4 campaigns (2 Horatio, 2 UE) and didn't get the Academy quest. Is this gone? Or simply are you improving it?


Thanks

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8 years ago
Jan 28, 2017, 7:27:02 AM

After official update 2 the Academy quest someway reappeared. Suspect it was a bug or something related to its preview, so no problem here.


With version 0.2.30 two issues with quests, not important, but delaying:


First with UE in second choice I pick industrialists, actually this is demanding to enact 3 industrialists laws, while federation government only allows two laws. I looked for the tech that allows you an extra law slot, but now is a free tech reaching Pop&Inf quadrant (the left one, sorry don't remember the name). It left me with a hard choice: go straight for this quadrant using all my inf, change to democracy (I think is the one that has 3 law slots from start) losing my industry bonus or leaving the quest.

Not sure if this is intended and one of the "hard choices" for player or an unexpected effect of the new tech distribution. ATM is not game breaking, but significant delay to quest completion if you don't want to lose good bonus or research opportunities.


Second with Sophons, I pick the militarist way in first chose. This was easy since update 2, and with good reward. But now, with the low industry values of Hekim (unique planet), is hard to reach, as production at early game is very low (this issue affects other game aspects and has even its own thread). As before not sure if intended hard choice or an unexpected effect of planet grid redesign.


A side of this, thanks for your good work!

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8 years ago
Feb 4, 2017, 5:17:07 PM

Hey guys,


I finally had enough cash left to get the game and am loving it so far, I however had a big issue that makes it impossible for me to complete one of the paths of the Cravers main quest.
I decided to revive the Endless and let him lead my people into the Infinite factory.
One minor problem however was that my borders had expanded far beyond the star system and was already colonized by my people because it took so long to level him up to 9. (In the time it took him to level up to 4 times some other heroes had leveled up 6.)
Once I finally got him to the factory I decided to rebel against them, I easily destroyed their fleet but now I had to invade my own planet... which is impossible.

I decided to evacuate it, hoping the native faction would return, they didn't.

Now i'm stuck hovering over a barren planet with something awesome forever beyond my grasp.

I really hope this can be fixed without to much effort!
(Maybe making the invasion a curiosity with the requirement being to have a certain amount of manpower in your fleet, or having the planet automatically switching back to the opposing faction.)

Thanks allot for making this game and I hope to see more soon


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8 years ago
Mar 12, 2017, 9:45:43 PM
  • Did you see some bugs? I’ve already read that “Bug Fixing” is something impossible to complete (it should be possible and even easier to achieve it soon J ) but did you see some other strange situations?

When I fail or cancel a quest, then I get the completed quest message for the previous quest.  I immagine you're aware of this.


On one of the first craver quests when you bring a ship back to your home planet, its not clear that you must disband the fleet to complete the quest.  Many people just park the ship in the system and are confused as to how to finish the quest.  I would make sure players know how to disband before this quest is issued.


  • What is your feeling about those quests/events’s appearance? (appearance rhythm, diversity…).

The art is always beautiful.  Sometimes though, I feel that the minor faction quests are out of character with the race that gives the quest.  


  • Did you see some silly objectives, stuff you can’t achieve, which are too complicated, annoying to do, that you never want to do?

As mentioned before, the early craver quest.

  • Are the rewards sufficient? Did you receive a poor reward after doing a super complicated Quests? Or, on the contrary, a super building after killing a stupid pirate? xD

I think that it is too easy to add minor factions.  The small tasks that you are given seem paultry to the advantage of earning a new planet.  I would have multi-step quests that require different types of actions to win.  I.e.  find a ruin, return to planet, donate dust, complete a building...

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8 years ago
Mar 14, 2017, 11:27:58 AM

Thanks for the feedback, Piddyx. Very helpful.


We'll be working on the Craver quest and Fail/Cancel quest bugs shortly. Thanks for flagging them up.


Regarding the minor faction quests, as you may have guessed the quests are written so that they can be used without knowing the identity of the minor faction. This makes for some pretty interesting linguistic gymnastics at times. One issue involved removing the verb "kneeling" because it didn't work if it applied to the Amoeba . . . Maybe we'll look at preventing certain minor faction quests from being spawned depending on the minor faction in question. If you have any especially egregious examples, we'd be keen to hear!


The ease in which quests lead to Minor Faction assimilation are being internally discussed presently, so we should have an update on that issue soon.

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8 years ago
Oct 12, 2016, 6:40:29 PM
RageMcGeezaks wrote:

I really love the Sophon story-line and humor so far :) 

Those are my favorite too! I love the one where ENFER runs amok in one of your systems, it's so funny!


I'm not a huge fan of the "find X anomalies" ones, especially since they are sometimes not even possible on smaller maps with a lot of AI factions.


Generally though, I absolutely love the direction this game is going quest- and lorewise. More please!! :-)

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8 years ago
Oct 11, 2016, 3:29:17 PM

I have not had the pleasure of experiencing a lot of the quests to their finish yet, but I have noticed a few things. 


I hope I am right to assume that some quests .. for example the "find the academy" one is more or less shared among the various players/AI at least it seems that way. 

I must admit that I find this type of quest really annoying for the following reason. 

You get this interesting quest and you decide to try to fulfill it. However you also know you are never going to make it before one of the AI´s so why bother. 

It would be nice if the quests would be a bit more specific to each player, especially the ones that involve finding a location. 

Also if you are tasked with finding X amount of anomalies it should be possible to do so. I am fairly certain that those things are a one time event for the person who send an expedition... which kinda ruins those quests when you get them later and already have explored your section of space. 

I do not think it would break the game to have quest specific events/anomalies etc. spawn that only the player can see. 


One more minor thing I have noticed is when you get events based on exploration of anomalies curiosities etc. Some events really do not make any sense when you consider what planet you are currently investigating. 

One example I had earlier today. 

I explore a lava or gas giant planet.. forgot which. And then get this nice picture of a lush planet and something I can only assume to be space cows. Then get options to either eat or domesticate them. Now fair enough it can be that space cows can live on those planets... but the illustration is just off and kinda breaks the immersion of the event quite a bit. 



Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 11, 2016, 5:05:45 PM

I love these quete, mainly when they add lore, but i things they appear too often.

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8 years ago
Oct 11, 2016, 5:59:46 PM

I've only done one full playthrough so far, but I really enjoyed the quest system.  Even more than in Endless Legend.


I especially liked the diplomatic issues that came up where you had to pick sides against warring subfactions inside your government (militarists vs pacifists, etc.).  

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8 years ago
Oct 11, 2016, 6:17:45 PM

I really love the Sophon story-line and humor so far :) 


Although there is this faction related side-quest, Darn kids or something:


Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

So I usually go for the other option, pretend to build but never finish only science buildings for 10 turns. 

Which is also crippling, but at least you don't have to finish these buildings to get the reward. :)


Also the timed quest are all impossible if you play on endless speed, the quest timers will need to be tweaked for that.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 11, 2016, 6:58:18 PM

I think Lumeris's has a narrative quest that has you choose between exploring 50% of the galaxy, making 3 colony outposts or assimilate a minor faction. If you choose the "3 outpost" option, it does not retro-actively count if you already had an outpost going. I think it should.


Also the exploration option led me to a military follow-up quest which I was not really expecting since the initial quest was marked with science. I thought it would be a path to pick to somehow get stronger in science, and perhaps it is later, but I did find it a little odd to suddenly have a quest to build 3x "40 attack power" ships after exploring half the galaxy.


I like quests and events in general a lot, I think they add much variety to the game that keeps it from going stale, but I find myself agreeing with phanemy that they are a bit too common now. It seems like one is almost always popping off. It's a bit much. I would prefer each quest/narrative to be more impactful (both in difficulty and reward) and to not have them happen so often.


I don't know about balance because I am not an expert player but my general thoughts on rewards are that some are neglible, some are okay and some are super-nice.


Edit: Oh yeah, i forgot to add: Do effects from events scale with gamespeed? I get the impression they don't from the endless game i am currently playing.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 12, 2016, 4:03:05 AM

I would like it if some 'explore x amount of curiosities' or 'make x amount of outpost' quests objective were retroactive.


The Lumeris quest where you need 80% of the Pacifist party is rather difficult to do, especially when compared to the other objective of a paltry 20% Industrialist.

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8 years ago
Oct 12, 2016, 7:52:08 AM

Liking the quests so far. Though there are some minor problems I encountered. 


One was probably due to Early Access and the tech tree not being fully developed yet, but one step in the main quest of the Vodyani asked me to either investigate or colonize Auriga. Since my exploration hero was bound at the moment and I was pretty well stocked with Arks, I sent one of those there only to find out that I didn't have the technology to colonize Ice, as well as not being able to research it as it wasn't part of the tech tree yet. 


Speaking of research I must also say that the research at the moment plays a too crucial role in some of the quests. Another quest while playing the Vodyani had me search 5 ruins, which was on the one hand very time consuming since there weren't that many systems with ruins around and on the other hand it required me to research those technologies which give me more "expedition manpower" - something that I would not have researched otherwise since it's simply taking away valuable time and resources from my main goals of winning the game. 


In general I think, this illustrates nicely the gripe I have with the quests from a purely mechanical point of view: while narratively and visually they are great to read and add flavour to the game, they are often too demanding, complicated and time-consuming to really make it worth the effort. Often times I found myself going out of my way trying to get to quest markers that were just too far away from me, thereby using up a ship I direly needed in other situations. 


Now I think this might also be a Early Access problem, since with a bigger map and without time limit and with the ability to turn off the score victory, one might actually be able to take the time to fully commit to such taxing quests, but at the moment they seem rather a hinderance at times.


I want to stress, though, that I really appreciate your effort to add quests and other lore intensive bits and pieces, as they make this game so unique, and as they were something that I really enjoyed in Endless Legend.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 12, 2016, 8:14:28 AM

The quests are good in general with lots of lore and decent rewards. I have not encountered a single bug or misplaced reward so far. 


My only concern really is the fact the faction quests are systematically done in the same order so it makes the replays kind of boring on that area. As I suggested in another thread, it would be nice to have some branching system in those quests changing slightly the flavor and destiny of the faction, maybe influencing politics and economics in a different way? It would makes things more interesting in my opinion. 

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8 years ago
Oct 12, 2016, 10:31:40 AM

I really like the 'dynamic' quests especially. I got the one that triggers when your planet population is split between Militarists and Pacifists, and it was an excellent, multi-part story. I'd like more quests that were triggered by conditions like that than the static or random ones.


It would be great if there were quests that had even more interplay between these various factors (eg- getting your Industry too high on a planet populated by Ecologists could trigger protests or an eco-terrorism related questline)


The only thing I'd ask for in particular is that there's some clear indication of when a quest is competitive or cooperative. Maybe I'm missing something but I didn't see any special indication that I was competing against other players for the Academy quest, for example.


Thanks! Everything I've seen on this front has been excellent so far.

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8 years ago
Oct 12, 2016, 5:51:05 PM

Really small complaint : The first Cravers' quest is pretty annoying. At first i though the rogue fleet was gonna patrol a few systems, but then it just flew through my home system and went on its merry way on the other side of the galaxy. I might be wrong, but i think the starting quest should be a bit easier and not needing you several fleets to corner the enemy one.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 11, 2016, 3:02:46 PM

Hello :)

I’m here to ask you some questions about Quests and Narrative Events. :)

First, I would like to know your global feeling about them. Even if I know that this feature is not the main one in 4X games, maybe you’ve noticed some details that you want to give feedback on? :)

  • Did you see some bugs? I’ve already read that “Bug Fixing” is something impossible to complete (it should be possible and even easier to achieve it soon J ) but did you see some other strange situations?
  • What is your feeling about those quests/events’s appearance? (appearance rhythm, diversity…).
  • Did you see some silly objectives, stuff you can’t achieve, which are too complicated, annoying to do, that you never want to do?
  • Are the rewards sufficient? Did you receive a poor reward after doing a super complicated Quests? Or, on the contrary, a super building after killing a stupid pirate? xD

You can also of course add your own answer/suggestions/questions about the choices (quests) or the effects (events) and everything you want! :)

Thanks a lot. :)

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8 years ago
Oct 13, 2016, 5:32:40 AM
quaedam wrote:

Hello :)

I’m here to ask you some questions about Quests and Narrative Events. :)

First, I would like to know your global feeling about them. Even if I know that this feature is not the main one in 4X games, maybe you’ve noticed some details that you want to give feedback on? :)

  • Did you see some bugs? I’ve already read that “Bug Fixing” is something impossible to complete (it should be possible and even easier to achieve it soon J ) but did you see some other strange situations?
  • What is your feeling about those quests/events’s appearance? (appearance rhythm, diversity…).
  • Did you see some silly objectives, stuff you can’t achieve, which are too complicated, annoying to do, that you never want to do?
  • Are the rewards sufficient? Did you receive a poor reward after doing a super complicated Quests? Or, on the contrary, a super building after killing a stupid pirate? xD

You can also of course add your own answer/suggestions/questions about the choices (quests) or the effects (events) and everything you want! :)

Thanks a lot. :)

For me, the Bug Fixing quest was impossible to complete because it asked for 2 more populations in a system who only had one slot left. Not only that, but the short timeline made it near-impossible to influence the outcome; 10 turns isn't enough to build a food-producing building and have it crank out enough food to squeeze out a population sooner.


Instead, I would suggest it makes X craver populations less efficient until the planet they're on produces X food total. That way there's no time limit and you can influence its speed by moving the pops to different planets/systems.


As for the other quests, I have one major gripe about the storyline quests: when you make your initial choices of which branch to take, you don't see the final reward for it until you complete the initial quest. I would rather skip the paltry initial rewards and compare what technology/equipment I earn for completing each particular branch.

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8 years ago
Oct 13, 2016, 11:45:27 AM

Hi Quaedam

I believe that events are a good way to add diversity in the gameplay

To be honest i believe that the most important thing in 4X is to be able to get a diverse gaming experience (be it by fiddling with custom faction, world settings etc) and adding a bit of random in game events is mostly a good thing.
I think that these quest (random ones) will become increasingly interesting the more they are (since right now the pool is somewhat low and some events are mostly useless [getting more food on barren planets when you can't colonize any is kind of a let down])


The faction quests are the most interesting though (for now only the sophons seems to have a real quest-line though) they allow you to take different approach for the game and it's a good thing.



What i noticed about balancing quests : the Lumeris quest that gives you the choice between 20% industrialist or 80% pacifist : the 80% pacifist is a dead option, most of the time you'll get this quest after having 3 or 4 parties and you wont be able to get 80% pacifist no matter how hard you try (had to wait and to change my government to dictatorship xD)

The voydani have a quest asking for you to kill pirates in their own systems/constellation but sometimes these pirates are very far, i had them once in another constellation around another empire system ...

The sophon quest asking for building only science related improvements for the next 10 turns : well if you already built all your available science improvements you will automatically fail this quest (rather than "only build science improvements for next 10 turns" i think a "own at least 2 (or 3) science improvements in your systems before 10 turns" would be better balanced)

Like i said the quest (event actually) where you find drones that increase the food on barren planets must be triggered only if you have barren colonies

Last but not least, we can't see what the empire improvements we unlock will do until we unlock them. It would be great if we could have a description of their effects before chosing what part of the quest we want to complete

I hope I could help

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 13, 2016, 8:31:15 PM

It was working well for me, and stories are interesting.

My only nuissance is with Harmony related quest, as it appeared very soon and take me only with scout ships that are no match for this roaming fleeet. But may be it's all my fault.

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8 years ago
Oct 14, 2016, 6:48:48 AM
quaedam wrote:

Hello :)

I’m here to ask you some questions about Quests and Narrative Events. :)

First, I would like to know your global feeling about them. Even if I know that this feature is not the main one in 4X games, maybe you’ve noticed some details that you want to give feedback on? :)

  • Did you see some bugs? I’ve already read that “Bug Fixing” is something impossible to complete (it should be possible and even easier to achieve it soon J ) but did you see some other strange situations?
  • What is your feeling about those quests/events’s appearance? (appearance rhythm, diversity…).
  • Did you see some silly objectives, stuff you can’t achieve, which are too complicated, annoying to do, that you never want to do?
  • Are the rewards sufficient? Did you receive a poor reward after doing a super complicated Quests? Or, on the contrary, a super building after killing a stupid pirate? xD

You can also of course add your own answer/suggestions/questions about the choices (quests) or the effects (events) and everything you want! :)

Thanks a lot. :)

Gladly. Let's begin:

Issue number 1) Less obvious choices in quests. Take the Vodyani step 2 of the story quest: one side gives you some influence that will barely cover the one you have to spend getting a minor faction asimilated. The other ... give the absolute most vital piece of tech for the vodyani in the game curently: amazingly fast engines that let you zip across the galaxy at speeds that make the sophons weep (I think sophons can recover the speed advantage ... in era 3. You become the flash in era 1). I mean ... yeah. There is never any reason to pick the asimilitate quest when the exploration one gives you such a powerfull tool for the vodyani ship-bound migratory playstyle.

In a similar tone with this: cravers. Lore quest gives you a choice between a weapon system that needs era 3 resources to build and ... something mysterious I will not spoil. Era 3 demanding material ... in Era 1. Oh well, in the future you will have amazing guns ready to build without the research right? Well ... nope. Those guns, and excuse my language, SUCK. I think Era 2 whites are just as good, era 3 whites are definetly better. I believe someone did not properly think this through OR asigned them the wrong resources. And while I am on this subject: cravers have a racial afinity for the kinetic weapon type, yet this quest rewards you with lasers. Maybe replace them with railguns or some super torpedo system?


Sophons have the oposite problem ironicaly with their first quest. They have too much important cool shit in one quest that they loose acces to based on the choice. This may not necesarily be bad, but it is inconsistent and it creates some unwaranted frustration due to how important and helpfull those techs could be down the line based on the development of the game. You are asked to make a choice for vital long term affecting techs in the first moments of the game before you even have any ideea how the game will grow and what conflicts you will end up in.


Issue number 2). Explore x anomaly type. Either make it retroactive, OR make it spawn specific quest related anomalies. Otherwise these quests will only ever be either so trivial as to not be worth considered a task OR impossible to complete. Similar for many objectives that demand you explore or build outposts. Curently when I play vodyani I never use any probes on ruins until I get the quest for them, but that's not really a solution, is it?

Issue number 3). The Academy quest. If this quest is to in any way relevant, maybe actualy make the academy secret? As in can't be found through exploration without the quest. Because I have only ever seen the quest once, before I accidentaly ran into the academy (and failed the quest becaue derp?) and the rest of the games have had the academy either discovered in 2-5 turns because it spawned near another empire OR because someone built the academy embasy. In fact, remove the academy embasy structure. Make the academy a quest only deal. With a proper reward for discovering it (curently the dust is a pitance). Perhaps ... first come first serve? The one who discovers it gets a hero free of charge and then the normal recruitment process begins. It would also be an excelent way to plug the Archivist for Endless day into the game in january *wink* *wink*. I have more to say on the subject of heroes but I'll save that for a separate post when my thoughts are in order/when an EA diary comes for them.

Issue number 4). Political repercusions. You sneaky devs, you think I don't see the senate faction symbols on my choices? Well I can, but it also makes me realise they are small and not obvious. Also, there is no tooltip that would indicate those repercusions. Perhaps adress this and let us know that choosing a particular path will boost a certain ideology within our empire.

Issue 5). Minor faction quests. Make them happen, the small people deserve it and we deserve the option of improving relationships with them not through bribery but through genuine friendship ... or intimidation (meaning let the minnor faction quests specific to each race ... sophons would work toghether, cravers would intimidate into obediance, vodyani evangelise to them ... you get the point).

Other than that, I have no more problems with them worth mentioning (I will not complain about how few quests there are and how they vanish as a factor preety soon in the game because early acces, I imagine most of them do not have the proper triggers/are not written yet).

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8 years ago
Oct 14, 2016, 2:39:38 PM
Giarc wrote:

The Lumeris quest where you need 80% of the Pacifist party is rather difficult to do, especially when compared to the other objective of a paltry 20% Industrialist.

Yes, this is practically impossible at the moment. The tools to controls your politics to that extent simply don't exist in the game right now.

Updated 8 years ago.
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8 years ago
Oct 15, 2016, 5:12:04 PM

Playing as the Cravers and conquering two Sophon Systems, one was their home system, I got the Sophon Quest about their Youth (the one where you have to either build only science buildings or station fleets in two systems).. Is this intended? Can I get this quest even if I am not playing as the Sophons and only have them as slaves? Is this some kind of population quest or part of the Sophon quest line?

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8 years ago
Oct 18, 2016, 4:01:43 PM

Thanks a lot for all your Feedback! That’s really nice of you to spend time on this topic.

Now I have a lot on my plate >.> I’ve tried to answer to all your questions (though I didn’t quote when the same question had already been posted). But if I’ve forgotten some questions, feel free to remind me!



Aiyen wrote:

I hope I am right to assume that some quests .. for example the "find the academy" one is more or less shared among the various players/AI at least it seems that way. 

I must admit that I find this type of quest really annoying for the following reason. 

You get this interesting quest and you decide to try to fulfill it. However you also know you are never going to make it before one of the AI´s so why bother. 

It would be nice if the quests would be a bit more specific to each player, especially the ones that involve finding a location. 

Also if you are tasked with finding X amount of anomalies it should be possible to do so. I am fairly certain that those things are a one time event for the person who send an expedition... which kinda ruins those quests when you get them later and already have explored your section of space. 

I do not think it would break the game to have quest specific events/anomalies etc. spawn that only the player can see. 

Hey Aiyen! Multiplayer quests will be available in the game. As you said, the Academy Quest is part of them. They would have a specific shape (different from the solo quests). Be sure that we really want to create specific quests and solo quests/events. Plus, we really want to improve the AI to enable it to interact with quests (at least the Multiplayer ones). Being stuck because of the AI shouldn’t therefore be an issue.



Aiyen wrote:

One more minor thing I have noticed is when you get events based on exploration of anomalies curiosities etc. Some events really do not make any sense when you consider what planet you are currently investigating. 

One example I had earlier today. 

I explore a lava or gas giant planet.. forgot which. And then get this nice picture of a lush planet and something I can only assume to be space cows. Then get options to either eat or domesticate them. Now fair enough it can be that space cows can live on those planets... but the illustration is just off and kinda breaks the immersion of the event quite a bit. 

You’re absolutely right. I have to fix that.


phanemy wrote:

I love these quete, mainly when they add lore, but i things they appear too often.

Thanks a lot J We’re trying to find a good “appearance rhythm”, that’s why we’ve asked your opinion about that. Thanks for the feedback

Cronstintein wrote:

I've only done one full playthrough so far, but I really enjoyed the quest system.  Even more than in Endless Legend.


I especially liked the diplomatic issues that came up where you had to pick sides against warring subfactions inside your government (militarists vs pacifists, etc.).  

Thanks, I hope we will be able to create a lot more politics related quests 



RageMcGeezaks wrote:

Asking you to garrison two fighter ships in 10 turns. Early game this is barely possible without crippling your entire game.

That’s annoying indeed. I could postpone it and require the Era2 to launch it.


So I usually go for the other option, pretend to build but never finish only science buildings for 10 turns. 

Which is also crippling, but at least you don't have to finish these buildings to get the reward. :)

Oh really O.O I have to check that. That’s strange.

RageMcGeezaks wrote:

Also the timed quest are all impossible if you play on endless speed, the quest timers will need to be tweaked for that.



Caelie wrote:

Oh yeah, i forgot to add: Do effects from events scale with gamespeed? I get the impression they don't from the endless game i am currently playing.

That’s the next step for all the quests: balancing them depending on the game speed. 


Caelie wrote:

I think Lumeris's has a narrative quest that has you choose between exploring 50% of the galaxy, making 3 colony outposts or assimilate a minor faction. If you choose the "3 outpost" option, it does not retro-actively count if you already had an outpost going. I think it should.

We’re working on it, in order to avoid that kind of unbalanced situation. 



Also the exploration option led me to a military follow-up quest which I was not really expecting since the initial quest was marked with science. I thought it would be a path to pick to somehow get stronger in science, and perhaps it is later, but I did find it a little odd to suddenly have a quest to build 3x "40 attack power" ships after exploring half the galaxy.

Sure. We’ve decided to make it little bit more coherent. Somehow *mysterious dev* >.> I hope you’ll enjoy those modifications soon.

I like quests and events in general a lot, I think they add much variety to the game that keeps it from going stale, but I find myself agreeing with phanemy that they are a bit too common now. It seems like one is almost always popping off. It's a bit much. I would prefer each quest/narrative to be more impactful (both in difficulty and reward) and to not have them happen so often.

Thanks for your input, I’ll remember that. 


Giarc wrote:

I would like it if some 'explore x amount of curiosities' or 'make x amount of outpost' quests objective were retroactive.


The Lumeris quest where you need 80% of the Pacifist party is rather difficult to do, especially when compared to the other objective of a paltry 20% Industrialist.

I would say: it should depend on the context. But I agree with your point regarding the Lumeris’ objective “make X new outposts” which is really hard without retroactivity. We’ve changed a little bit this quest, in order to make it retroactive and more “open” in terms of way of achievement.


Pejman wrote:

What i noticed about balancing quests : the Lumeris quest that gives you the choice between 20% industrialist or 80% pacifist : the 80% pacifist is a dead option, most of the time you'll get this quest after having 3 or 4 parties and you wont be able to get 80% pacifist no matter how hard you try (had to wait and to change my government to dictatorship xD)

I agree and it has already been balanced



Syrenion wrote:

One was probably due to Early Access and the tech tree not being fully developed yet, but one step in the main quest of the Vodyani asked me to either investigate or colonize Auriga. Since my exploration hero was bound at the moment and I was pretty well stocked with Arks, I sent one of those there only to find out that I didn't have the technology to colonize Ice, as well as not being able to research it as it wasn't part of the tech tree yet. 


This kind of situation shouldn’t occur. You’re right.

In general I think, this illustrates nicely the gripe I have with the quests from a purely mechanical point of view: while narratively and visually they are great to read and add flavour to the game, they are often too demanding, complicated and time-consuming to really make it worth the effort. Often times I found myself going out of my way trying to get to quest markers that were just too far away from me, thereby using up a ship I direly needed in other situations. 


Now I think this might also be a Early Access problem, since with a bigger map and without time limit and with the ability to turn off the score victory, one might actually be able to take the time to fully commit to such taxing quests, but at the moment they seem rather a hinderance at times.

Thanks for your feedback. I understand what you mean and I think we should find a balanced way to create quests which are complex/demanding, but also easier quests and events that the player should achieve in just a few turns without changing too much his/her gameplay. 


Nyanko wrote:

The quests are good in general with lots of lore and decent rewards. I have not encountered a single bug or misplaced reward so far. 


My only concern really is the fact the faction quests are systematically done in the same order so it makes the replays kind of boring on that area. As I suggested in another thread, it would be nice to have some branching system in those quests changing slightly the flavor and destiny of the faction, maybe influencing politics and economics in a different way? It would makes things more interesting in my opinion. 

In the following chapters, we’ve planned to change the destiny of some of the Factions J Plus, in the next update, all your choices in the Main Quest will have political impacts…

atejas wrote:

The only thing I'd ask for in particular is that there's some clear indication of when a quest is competitive or cooperative. Maybe I'm missing something but I didn't see any special indication that I was competing against other players for the Academy quest, for example.

Thanks  So, about this concern, we really want to have a different shape, or at least feedback clearly the multiplayers quests


Talfos wrote:

Really small complaint : The first Cravers' quest is pretty annoying. At first i though the rogue fleet was gonna patrol a few systems, but then it just flew through my home system and went on its merry way on the other side of the galaxy. I might be wrong, but i think the starting quest should be a bit easier and not needing you several fleets to corner the enemy one.

Yes, this quest really depends on how the AI will drive the fleet. Sometimes it’s easy and funny, sometimes, lame, and sometimes really annoying. We’re planning to improve the AI and avoid that the situation where a fleet moves away from the neighbors nodes for example. 

Calavera wrote:
RageMcGeezaks wrote:

I really love the Sophon story-line and humor so far :) 

Those are my favorite too! I love the one where ENFER runs amok in one of your systems, it's so funny!


I'm not a huge fan of the "find X anomalies" ones, especially since they are sometimes not even possible on smaller maps with a lot of AI factions.


Generally though, I absolutely love the direction this game is going quest- and lorewise. More please!! :-)

I really have to say that to the writer who created this quest :D I understand, this quest is annoying to achieve if the AI doesn’t participate.


MikeLemmer wrote:

For me, the Bug Fixing quest was impossible to complete because it asked for 2 more populations in a system who only had one slot left. Not only that, but the short timeline made it near-impossible to influence the outcome; 10 turns isn't enough to build a food-producing building and have it crank out enough food to squeeze out a population sooner.

Instead, I would suggest it makes X craver populations less efficient until the planet they're on produces X food total. That way there's no time limit and you can influence its speed by moving the pops to different planets/systems.

That could be a good way to deal with this problem. Plus, with the migration feature, this quest should be a lot easier to do ^^



Pejman wrote:

Hi Quaedam

I believe that events are a good way to add diversity in the gameplay

<3

The voydani have a quest asking for you to kill pirates in their own systems/constellation but sometimes these pirates are very far, i had them once in another constellation around another empire system ...

It could occur if your galaxy settings are set to “Constellation = few” and “Size = Tiny”. I don’t know if it’s the case for your game. Please check your settings and let us know.

Last but not least, we can't see what the empire improvements we unlock will do until we unlock them. It would be great if we could have a description of their effects before chosing what part of the quest we want to complete

I hope I could help

That’s a global problem indeed. I hope we’ll be able to address that.


lo_fabre wrote:

It was working well for me, and stories are interesting.

My only nuissance is with Harmony related quest, as it appeared very soon and take me only with scout ships that are no match for this roaming fleeet. But may be it's all my fault.

Hum… it’s not your fault, but maybe we have to say something like “There is something VERY dangerous here”. As we do for some events…


XDAvenger93 wrote:

1) And while I am on this subject: cravers have a racial afinity for the kinetic weapon type, yet this quest rewards you with lasers. Maybe replace them with railguns or some super torpedo system?

This may not necesarily be bad, but it is inconsistent and it creates some unwaranted frustration due to how important and helpfull those techs could be down the line based on the development of the game.

Thanks a lot for your feedbacks about the rewards. I forgot to update them after balancing iterations but I’ll have a look at it.


XDAvenger93 wrote:

3) The Academy quest. If this quest is t

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8 years ago
Oct 18, 2016, 4:26:56 PM

Hey quaedam! 


Cheers for being willing to herd the space cows back to their reservation! Much steak will be had tonight! 


If you happen to see this I also had some further questions. I thought I did them in this post, but just found out I asked them in the Narration GDD. It is mainly about randomization of quest outcomes and rewards. Would be cool if you could take a look at it! :) 



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8 years ago
Oct 18, 2016, 11:54:21 PM
quaedam wrote:


  • What is your feeling about those quests/events’s appearance? (appearance rhythm, diversity…).

They're great, they reinforce the atmosphere, the environment and of course give us new [such as myself] and old players glorious narrative which is delivered in interactive and bite-sized chunks.


They do a good job of giving you small goals to progress towards, both thematically and gameplay-wise, some of them obviously interrupt the rhythm, however this is only way, way later; say you have 50 Craver pops, but because of your 1 Sophon pop you suddenly have to undertake a Sophon pop quest, as opposed to simply consuming the non-Sophon pops for a food buff, or something; so basically, an in-game way of 'opting out', which both fits the narrative, game mechanics and of course individual player experience.



  • Did you see some silly objectives, stuff you can’t achieve, which are too complicated, annoying to do, that you never want to do?

Well, the only thing which are really odd are early-game quests which expect you to assimulate two minor-factions, where one is literally on the other side of the galaxy, the quests give really nice early-game rewards which in some-cases are really useful, I could imagine a 4 player game, where there are 4 minor factions in-game, but the quests require only 1 minor faction to be assimulated, in this instance, it would seem much more cohesive, plus it further reinforces the value of strategic resources, as well as researching the tech to begin harvesting them in order to reap the rewards of quests done asap.

  • Are the rewards sufficient? Did you receive a poor reward after doing a super complicated Quests? Or, on the contrary, a super building after killing a stupid pirate? xD

So far the rewards have been pretty nice, some pretty entertaining dialogue which helps with immersion with some nice upgrades, sometimes with different SFX and VFX. I'm looking forward to seeing the rewards from the "Something mysterious" quests mainly to see how the rewards scale.

Updated 8 years ago.
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