Quest Talk:Intro: Skorgrím's Tomb

The title of this page needs attention. A special character has failed to come into the name of this quest. Broogen

Objective 2

In the game, the second objective is not actually 'Complete the instance Skorgrím's Tomb', but 'Talk to Dwalin'. That is, during the instance when the second objective is active, both the objective line and the description is the same as for the first objective. Is it intentional that the page contains the informative and 'actually right' description of what to do instead of what the quest log contains? Or maybe is it the case that no-one has captured this objective yet, and I should fix it? -- CementHold (talk) 09:46, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

The article, as it exists now, matches the content of the completed quests log for one of my fairly new dwarves. However, and this is an important caveat, the actual live quest may have been different back then, and of course, the quest may have been revised since my dwarf did the quest, in which case, current players will see something slightly different.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the only reliable way to document a quest is to edit the article while doing the quest. You need to compare the contents of the quest tracker (with quest objectives checked), and the active quest log for the instance (Quest:Intro: Skorgrím's Tomb), and for the parent non-instance quest (Quest:Intro: Skorgrím's Tomb) with the article texts. If you take a lot of screenshots, you might be able to do this after completing the instance and parent quest, but it is usually easier, and more reliable, to update the article while you are doing the quest. This is a lot easier when you have dual monitors, and run the game in windowed mode. But, if you don't have such a setup, you do the best you can. Remember that instances will automatically exit about 5 minutes after completion, even if you don't talk to the NPC with the "Travel Now" button.

When you discover discrepancies between the quest, as you experience it, and the wiki article, that is often due to changes in the game. Turbine does respond to feedback from players regarding the clarity and flow of the quests, and they do make silent minor changes to the quests, as well as major revisions noted in the release notes. The introduction quests is one area that was subject to a major rewrite a while back (2 years? About when F2P was introduced, IIRC.) The Skorgrím Tomb instance got a significant work-over.

- RingTailCat (talk) 12:31, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

I am actually very confident in my methodology. For simple quests, I do check and edit the page while doing them, as you say, plus I also take screenshots of everything for future reference. Wherever there might be live events or timing involved, I rely much more on screenshots. I have both the quest log and the quest history open, and I take a screenshot whenever I see any change. This way I can see from the quest history when the game jumps to a new 'objective section', the quest log tells me what the objective text is, and I can tell exactly when changes happen with regards to system messages or any other events. (Sometimes a system message and an objective change happen at the same time, then I make a judgement call and decide which order makes more sense.) But this is a bit of a digression.

What I am saying is that in this particular quest, the second objective (which is active while you are doing the instance) is not 'Complete the instance Skorgrím's Tomb', but 'Talk to Dwalin'. It says that right up to the point when you finish the instance (then it changes to the third objective). And it seems like a mistake from the game's part, especially with the objective description saying 'You should speak with him again when you are ready to leave.' - it just seems it was copy-pasted from the first objective. Thus I find it hard to believe that this is a result of a game update. I would question that whoever wrote down the sentence 'Complete the instance Skorgrím's Tomb' actually saw it in the game. I certainly didn't.

So that is why I am hesitant to change this objective to what appears in the game, despite the fact that I feel perfectly justified to do so. I am actually kind of hoping to get a green light for this change, otherwise it would mean that we could rewrite any in-game text to whatever we feel makes more sense.

CementHold (talk) 14:35, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

You don't really need anyone's permission, just go ahead and use your best judgment about how to make the parent quest and instance quest flow nicely. Readability is probably more important that technical accuracy, after all we are guessing about the actual internals of the game. If someone doesn't like it, they can undo, rollback or edit your changes. As long as your goal is to improve the wiki, I expect most folks here will appreciate your efforts.

You are probably right about the bold objective #2 text. The info about completing the quest should be a system message above that text. And the dialog with Dwalin should probably be the final (unified) message from him at the end of the instance. I would not move the dialog from the end of the instance, because it occurs while you are still in the tomb. It does occur after the chat window message about completing the instance, so technically it belongs with the parent quest. It just seems to flow better because you are still at the instanced location when you do the dialog. If anything, that dialog text could appear in both places.

Some other instances handle the relationship between the instance and the main quest different from this one. Very often, there is no equivalent of this quest's objective #2. In the main quest, you talk to the quest giver, do the instance during obj#1, and talk to the quest giver again, still in obj#1. This kind of detail is not really important to the flow of the quest and instance, so that final dialog (the one with the "travel now" button) almost always goes at the end of the instance.

I have a mental model of the quest. It has objectives, which are completed in sequence. Within each objective there are one or more goals which may be completed in serial or parallel: some goals can be advanced in any order: collect a bat, collect a ball; while some advance in order: receive the ball, pitch the ball. It seems to be an implementation detail, perhaps a whim of the software developer, if a quest is implemented with multiple serial goals within a single objective, or with multiple objectives. Occasionally, the quests get rewritten so this changes.Then we get unusual quests like the Ale Association challenge: Drink beers (0/6), where drinking each beer advances you to another objective!

So, go ahead and improve our wiki. That makes it your wiki, too.

- RingTailCat (talk) 17:06, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

I think we're not quite understanding each other, so I just did the update, you can see there. :) Now as far as I can tell, both the quest and its instance are accurate as of today (that is, accurate with regards to the in-game quest model). If anyone questions it, I have screenshots we can examine.

I agree with you about the inter-relationship between these quest-instance pairs. Virtually everywhere I saw (including this pair, Skorgrím's Tomb), we get the 'Completed' message in the chat, the instance disappears from the tracker and the quest log, but when we talk to the NPC to 'Travel now', that dialogue window still has the instance quest name as the title. So I also include this dialogue along with every chat message preceding it in the instance page. It is pretty apparent that it belongs there.

CementHold (talk) 17:26, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

I added a comment type message indicating you are to complete the instance at that point in the main quest. RingTailCat (talk) 18:18, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

I took out your parenthesis, as this is not the style used by most, if not all, other instance wrapper quests. RingTailCat (talk) 19:03, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

I do apologize for that. I was so sure that it was a minor oversight. I haven't seen this anywhere (most wrappers I've seen have the link in the objective, because the objective actually refers to the instance), and I just couldn't imagine that we would use the same appearance for game text and for 'editor notes' (and the Skorgrím's Tomb instance page uses italics within parentheses for editor notes, so that's where I got it from). CementHold (talk) 19:48, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

Chiming in late, actually neither can these "Complete instance XXX" be said to be our common style. Most wrapper quest do not have them and I often remove them when the quest is only one of a series without any for all other wrapper quests. Usually the linkified objective reads what to do, right? Furthermore, we also have the quest chain box which is very clear, and usually the walk-through box has has something like "talk to NN and complete the quest "Instance:XXX". I mean, three different locations, how silly do we think our visitors are?

How is it in game? Yes, there is a text "Completed ..." but notice that is in past tense and after that the instance is completed, and this is true for all quests. But there is no "Complete XXX" in imperative form.

Personally I do not like being overly explicit, that kinds of belittles our visitors. There is a slim line between being helpful and becoming too helpful. If there are some rare wrapper quests that have less informative objectives, that is another story. So, I am not supporting this extra fluff as it adds no information that is not already there, plentiful, nor interesting flavour as dialogues do. We may disagree, but that just means we have not reached any consensus about any style ... but using the walk-through box is great and I think all agree on that one.

-- Zimoon (talk) 20:17, 5 August 2012 (EDT)

Of course there is no such text in the game, otherwise there would be no problem (I would have added it myself). I'm assuming RTC added it to compensate for the fact that the objective 2 goal text does not reflect what you actually have to do to progress the quest. I strongly disapprove of making it look exactly like a system message coming from the game. (On a side note: the Completed: Instance: Skorgrím's Tomb system message appears between objectives 2 and 3, but I understand that we do not add this message to either of the two related quest pages.) CementHold (talk) 02:49, 6 August 2012 (EDT)

I edited it the way I would have done it, but I am not saying this is the preferred solution so feel free to roll-back or whatever. This is definitely one of those "rare wrapper quests that have less informative objectives" (objective 2 in this case) so it will become a judge call what is best, or which of several "best" ways to choose. On the other hand, for any player I think it is obvious how to continue the quest and the instance, but for a reader-only the text within objective 2 is pretty clear.

-- Zimoon (talk) 07:53, 6 August 2012 (EDT)

Noting your edit RTC, perhaps this case would call for using a "Objective 1 & 2" objective? It seems the quest text is the same, right? And the more I look at that quest the more it feels Turbine has created an anomaly, there usually is just one objective for the wrapper. And since they read 100% the same I think we could merge them, as we have done for some other quests with identical text. I did not want to edit before suggesting it though, it easily becomes a, edit-war haha.

-- Zimoon (talk) 12:53, 6 August 2012 (EDT)

I have checked the source material again, and the objective goal and description are both exactly identical for these two objectives. So copy-paste didn't failed them this time like it has in the past (this still makes me giggle). Personally what I really care about is extracting the data from the game accurately, and listing this data on the page in a consistent fashion. Beyond that, I pretty much lack the gene that'd tell me how things would look good, so I'll leave it up to you and move on to the next quest. -- CementHold (talk) 13:51, 6 August 2012 (EDT)