Bro, yall need to give us a ■■■■ timer already

[Mister Forgash]

It does seem there's a bit of 'This isn't a problem for me, therefore, it's not really a problem'.

You do x not y and drive off. Mission fails. Tell me what is there to improve?

Visibility. If I may abstract the argument a little bit, Think of a road.. We have lines on them and we know to stay in the lines.. but we put reflectors there too even though there's already lines. Is it a bad thing even though we all know to stay inside the lines?

 

[JustBrowsing]

Seems to me that this is akin to wanting an "extra life" in case you might die which the game already provides. I don't see anything wrong with a timer, or a more visible wall for people moving at vehicle speeds but I also don't see anything wrong with "ironman" mode for quests where if you make a mistake like leave before it's done you fail for that mistake.

I like where you are going with this. Modes.

It should be an option so people can configure quests to their liking. I failed a few quests for leaving the area a couple times when quests first were introduced but I learned the lesson and I haven't made that mistake in years. Same with pressing E while flying a gyrocopter. Did it once and never again.

Since 3.0 is really the age of optionality, I agree, optional warnings or timers would be brilliant.

Wait....should there be a timer before exiting a vehicle after pressing E to give players time to undo their exit....?

Good question though after thinking about it, I do not think a vehicle exit timer system is comparable to a complex mission killing result. A terrible player like me may take a whole day to kite or run and club enough enemies to clear a location and complete a mission. Such is life for me. Hours upon hours I spend trying to complete a mission while also being on call and distracted by work so I find it very easy to spend a whole day just getting through something. Attempt after attempt time after time until finally I succeed and in my haste fail the mission because of a technicality. The end result is a complete waste of real life time trying to find entertainment in a game world that, at the end of the day becomes fruitless because I was so overjoyed at finally completing the thing, I forgot the technical barriers left before completion. Frustrating and to be honest, I leave many games for this reason.

If I must compare the complex to the simple then I offer that I play to escape and have fun, much like someone watching a weekly TV show but if the escape provides real world frustration, it's just not worth it. If you exit a vehicle, in most cases it's gonna be fine no timer or warning is really needed but if the result would end in loss of hours for a player because they ejected from 500 feet and would need to spend hours and hours to get back to where they were in game terms, then, likely, yes, you might add a warning / timer just to ensure your player base isn't arbitrarily frustrated and puts the game down. It's easy to alienate a player, its not easy to keep them beyond the next flashy thing.

Thanks for listening

 

[Sapient6]

As Riamus points out there are technical and gameplay reasons for keeping the player within the boundary. Technical: get too far away and zombies despawn. Gameplay: cheese all the zombies outside where they're easier to kill. I find the gameplay reason a little dubious given the way zombies spawn in now, but that fixing the technical limitation likely fails a cost/benefit analysis (just guessing, but I'm willing to bet any fix would be so complex that time and risk would be huge).

So how about this: keep the "Stay Within" for the CLEAR portion of these missions. If you leave the area before you have completed the clear objective then you fail. If you leave without picking up the satchel the game just doesn't say a word. If you log out you fail the quest. If you drive far away at some point you're going to realize your quest marker still points back there and the quest text still says to get the satchel.

Enjoy your ride of shame back to get the object.

For funzies leaving the area on an active Fetch quest to flick a toggle for you and forever after Rekt will have nasty things to say about you forgetting ■■■■ every time you visit him.

 

[Jimmy D Spoofy]

So since this was the third mention of technical limitations, I decided to figure out what those hangups might actually tangibly be and here are some things I found. Quest kill progress is tracked live through death-event callbacks on entities that are currently loaded for the quest rather than against a persistent record of what has actually been killed. The sleeper volumes those entities spawn from maintain their own coarse, timer-based clear/respawn state. That state is also sensitive to player position. So if you leave before a triggered volume finishes resolving as cleared, it can desynchronize. Neither system was designed to handle the player moving out of range while that process is still underway.


An obvious solution didn't come to mind while looking at this stuff.

As for Buried Treasure though, I can't find a reason. Also, I noticed that the quest can actually spawn zombies outside of its radius. So that's a funtm little trap.

 

[Syphon583]

@Syphon583 Not all the the time. Only when in a vehicle and only when you leave the POI borders.

Isn't that what I said? A timer would obviously only appear when you leave the border. Not sure what difference being in a vehicle makes. If you leave the border, you leave the border. Once you do, the time would appear and count down briefly until you either cross back over or time expires.

 

[Syphon583]

Eh, if you say so. I'd say the best solution is players who pay attention to what they are doing. But that seems to be asking a lot these days. In all my time playing I've never accidentally failed a POI quest, only one or two buried supplies because I got chased too far away and didn't wanna die so I failed. And even then I didn't get mad at the game, just at myself for not paying enough attention to how far I moved. Guess most people would rather blame the game than themselves.

Good for you! I'm glad you don't have the same struggles that clearly many other players have. It seems a little bit of a putdown, though, to say that "(paying attention) is asking a lot". As a UX designer professionally, it's my job to account for all types of users when designing an application. I have to account for all sorts of people and the ways that they will use the application. I will also often scratch my head when doing a usability test and say to myself "how in the hell did they not see the big blue button?" It's not my job to criticize the user, though. It's my job to figure out why they aren't seeing it and make the design easier for them to use.

It's the exact same thing here. Players have a ton of things begging for their attention when playing this game. Whether it's in the UI, something they hear, being attacked by a zombie, knowing the clock is ticking before horde night kicks off... all could be happening simultaneously.

I think it's a little narrow sighted to say a forgiving timer wouldn't be better then a wall that appears .5 seconds before crossing it.

 

[JustBrowsing]

...Neither system was designed to handle the player moving out of range while that process is still underway.

The OP reports a legitimate frustration and asks for a change. Because the code, as currently written, does not easily allow for that change, the request may not be simple to implement.

But instead of acknowledging the frustration and discussing whether a workable solution exists, some members go out of their way to defend what appears to be an effectively arbitrary game-design decision. They dismiss the complaint with irrational "skill issue" proclamations and attack the person raising the grievance rather than acknowledging that it can be a legitimate issue for some players.

The real solution is either to remove the arbitrary limitation by fixing the code or to explain clearly why doing so would require an unreasonable amount of time and effort. Instead, the OP gets shouted down by people who are intelligent enough to understand the actual issue but still feel some strange obligation to defend the status quo.


To me, offering this optionality does seem like a ton of work but who knows? in the world of AI assisted coding, it's allot easier to get through thousands of lines of retrofit than it used to be. Maybe its not a heavy lift to do something additive. Maybe it is.

 

[Sapient6]

It's the exact same thing here. Players have a ton of things begging for their attention when playing this game. Whether it's in the UI, something they hear, being attacked by a zombie, knowing the clock is ticking before horde night kicks off... all could be happening simultaneously.

In my case it only comes up when I'm playing with a friend. We'd often pick up two missions somewhat near to each other, finish one and head directly to the second before heading back to the trader. Every now and then we'll kill all the zombies in a fetch/clear and then move on... only to have one of us announce moments later "oh ■■■■, it was a fetch." womp womp

So yeah, distracted. Also: I'm typically playing to unwind after work (software dev, regulated area of life sciences) so my focus is very much spent for the day.

I'm glad my occasional inattentiveness has helped a few people feel superior about themselves for a little bit. Gotta be hard running with such a low SO.

 

[FenixMatariki]

If i remember right even Guns Nerds and Steel forgot the supplies and drove off in a recent episode of his current "Bite Club" series, i feel i'm forgetting a rule of some sort...

If a content creator who plays the game for a living forgets i feel there is room for improvement in the mechanic. However i dislike the idea of no border limit argument as angry locals would no longer be able to chase you away from an area causing the mission to fail.

Increasing the visibility of the line while in the vehicle or a short timer to return to the area before mission fail would be a welcome change.
An additional suggestion could be verbal cues? The player character themselves could speak about the supplies when he gets near them "They should be around here somewhere" or when he kills the last zombie "Location cleared, now where are those supplies"

 

[Rooster Gold]

If you could remove the failed quest from the log so theirs not a blaring red permanently stamped on your characters mission tab.
It wouldn't be nearly as bad.

Or at least give us an option to redo the failed quest.

My OCD won't allow for it and I need to restart, ragequit or load a backup save to correct it.

I fail these more than I care to admit by going out of bounds, having a large family means constant neverending distractions.

 

[Slingblade2040]

Simple solution would be to make it that we cant fail a quest unless we die. Yeah you drove back to the trader and killed all the zombies then the trafer goes where is my satchel? No satchel no pay and no quest completion.

That whole you left quest boundaries thing is stupid and should have been removed ages ago. Like I said a quest should only be failed by either your death or you out right quiting it. Running past a ridiculous red line is bad game design but then again we still don't have bandits or learn by doing.

 

[JustBrowsing]

Simple solution would be to make it that we cant fail a quest unless we die. Yeah you drove back to the trader and killed all the zombies then the trafer goes where is my satchel? No satchel no pay and no quest completion.

That whole you left quest boundaries thing is stupid and should have been removed ages ago. Like I said a quest should only be failed by either your death or you out right quiting it. Running past a ridiculous red line is bad game design but then again we still don't have bandits or learn by doing.

In my opinion you are not wrong and the tone and theme of your post reminded me of an old parable. "A ferryman ignored every complaint about his leaking boat, because everyone in the village still needed to cross the water. Then one morning, someone began building a brig."

 

[Riamus]

As Riamus points out there are technical and gameplay reasons for keeping the player within the boundary. Technical: get too far away and zombies despawn. Gameplay: cheese all the zombies outside where they're easier to kill. I find the gameplay reason a little dubious given the way zombies spawn in now, but that fixing the technical limitation likely fails a cost/benefit analysis (just guessing, but I'm willing to bet any fix would be so complex that time and risk would be huge).

So how about this: keep the "Stay Within" for the CLEAR portion of these missions. If you leave the area before you have completed the clear objective then you fail. If you leave without picking up the satchel the game just doesn't say a word. If you log out you fail the quest. If you drive far away at some point you're going to realize your quest marker still points back there and the quest text still says to get the satchel.

Enjoy your ride of shame back to get the object.

For funzies leaving the area on an active Fetch quest to flick a toggle for you and forever after Rekt will have nasty things to say about you forgetting ■■■■ every time you visit him.

That may be the best option I've seen so far. Fetch doesn't have the same problems for cheesing or spawning that Clear has, so removing the restriction for Fetch quests and the Fetch portion of Fetch/Clear quests would be a really good option. The fetch portion is also the part that affects the most people, I think. Other than accidentally leaving the area while fighting a lot of enemies, which shouldn't happen in most POI since you're likely going to be inside fighting them and not have an easy way out anyhow, most issues related to leaving the area by accident are related to the fetch quests.

They can also offer a sandbox option to disable the entire Stay Within requirement for all quests, but I don't think that is really all that necessary if it's just removed from all Fetch quests without needing an option.

As far as someone's comment on the buried supplies quests, that has a good gameplay reason as it forces you to deal with the enemies instead of running them off away from the area and then coming back to keep digging (it's very easy to lead them away and abandon them without requiring much time to do so).

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

I second the thought of simply removing the quest area concept barring maybe a few special quests.

The problem with that is multiplayer. If you can simply leave and come back whenever you want, the POI is blocked as quest POI for others. That would mean that we need a timer again, otherwise people could simply block POIs.

 

[Jimmy D Spoofy]

The problem with that is multiplayer. If you can simply leave and come back whenever you want, the POI is blocked as quest POI for others. That would mean that we need a timer again, otherwise people could simply block POIs.

Another complication is that these quests often elevate the effective gamestage of the poi.

 

[IElderwolfI]

So since this was the third mention of technical limitations, I decided to figure out what those hangups might actually tangibly be and here are some things I found. Quest kill progress is tracked live through death-event callbacks on entities that are currently loaded for the quest rather than against a persistent record of what has actually been killed. The sleeper volumes those entities spawn from maintain their own coarse, timer-based clear/respawn state. That state is also sensitive to player position. So if you leave before a triggered volume finishes resolving as cleared, it can desynchronize. Neither system was designed to handle the player moving out of range while that process is still underway.


An obvious solution didn't come to mind while looking at this stuff.

As for Buried Treasure though, I can't find a reason. Also, I noticed that the quest can actually spawn zombies outside of its radius. So that's a funtm little trap.

If that is in fact the reason for the border, I can see a simple fix, make the border inside the actual border, then add the timer or a more noticeable warning that you are leaving, like in the middle of the screen. Because as mentioned before when you are in a vehicle, the red border wall shows up far too late to be able to change course or if you are in the desert like what happened to me, its barely noticeable against the redish/orange dirt in the desert. I disagree with what Roland said about this being akin to an extra life, I think an arbitrary border for you to stay in an area to find something to be just that, arbitrary, but if its because of coding limitations then a warning would not be akin to an extra life, just a reminder "hey! You came here for this thing, grab it before leaving"

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Instead of a timer, and I got this idea from a totally different suggestion,
by @Jost Amman. Why not just borrow properties
from the LCB,the Visible green border, and apply it to the boundary of
any active quest. Just press the button and a semi-opaque wall pops up
just like activating an LCB perimeter.

But give it properties like, Player is alive, quest is active. And have it so only
the player or players involved with the quest area can see it. Make the color
adjustable for players that have CVD. If it is 1 block or has the option to be
made 1-5 blocks thick, it would be pretty noticeable going up to and eventually
passing through a green veil.

You want to make it more apparent, then also apply a second set of parameters,
the semi universal color for failure is Red, has been kind of ingrained in the psyche,
as you approach the border, of the visible wall, it turns red or the secondary optional
color. So the rules stay intact, a more apparent border warning is applied, reusing border
code from the LCB.

 

[meganoth]

Instead of a timer, and I got this idea from a totally different suggestion,
by @Jost Amman. Why not just borrow properties
from the LCB,the Visible green border, and apply it to the boundary of
any active quest. Just press the button and a semi-opaque wall pops up
just like activating an LCB perimeter.

How is something you see only when pressing a button helping with **reminding** players of something they forget? Who is reminding them to press the button?

But give it properties like, Player is alive, quest is active. And have it so only
the player or players involved with the quest area can see it. Make the color
adjustable for players that have CVD. If it is 1 block or has the option to be
made 1-5 blocks thick, it would be pretty noticeable going up to and eventually
passing through a green veil.

You want to make it more apparent, then also apply a second set of parameters,
the semi universal color for failure is Red, has been kind of ingrained in the psyche,
as you approach the border, of the visible wall, it turns red or the secondary optional
color. So the rules stay intact, a more apparent border warning is applied, reusing border
code from the LCB.

 

[theFlu]

How is something you see only when pressing a button helping with **reminding** players of something they forget?

While 4sng isn't always the easiest to read, I think the suggestion is to have the border always on with the active quest. So the button to activate it is the quest marker.

 

[meganoth]

While 4sng isn't always the easiest to read, I think the suggestion is to have the border always on with the active quest. So the button to activate it is the quest marker.

Ah okay. But then the LCB is the wrong template as the border is not shown all the time when you set down an LCB