What does this message refer to?

[startle]

I need some new Bags of Sending and decided to do the Ambitious Solon Queen's quest to get a couple, but haven't done this quest in many years now..
When I try to get the quest from her, she tells me that I'm busy. I did have the Dreadhorn quest active and thought that that is what she was referring to. But even after I cancelled that quest, she still gives me the message (below)... What is she talking about?

 

[Kyronix]

I need some new Bags of Sending and decided to do the Ambitious Solon Queen's quest to get a couple, but haven't done this quest in many years now..
When I try to get the quest from her, she tells me that I'm busy. I did have the Dreadhorn quest active and thought that that is what she was referring to. But even after I cancelled that quest, she still gives me the message (below)... What is she talking about?

This is usually the case if you are performing another quest. Are you currently participating in another quest? This can also occur if the solen queen you are talking to is not the same that gave you the initial quest, perhaps from a while ago?

Excellent choice in head wear by the way.

 

[kelmo]

You can not do two Solen quests at the same time. Are ya on the seed quest or the powder quest?

 

[Tina Small]

You can not do two Solen quests at the same time. Are ya on the seed quest or the powder quest?

You will also see that if you have an active Collector's Quest or Hag's Quest (i.e., any of the quests you can see and cancel from your character's context menu).

 

[startle]

Thank you all for your ideas... I found that even tho I had quit the Dreadhorn Quest and my quest log showed nothing, if I did a single/click on my char it mentioned yet another quest... After I quit whatever that quest was, I was able to get the queen to give me her quest...

Sheesh... and Ant Quests don't show up as normal "quests" do, why not?

 

[kelmo]

Dunno... I have had this issue before with Solen quests. Just thought I would mention it. I seem to remember it was just the solen type quests... The Hag quest may well be in the same quest slot...

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

There are at least two Quest Engines in UO.

Older Quest Engine:
Came in with the Solen scenario. The Solen quests, the Hag quest, and Victoria the Sorceress's quest (the Doom Gold Skull quest) are all under this older engine. Access the quest info through your context menu. You can only do one quest at a time. (Hence the message in the original post.)

Newer Quest Engine:
Came in with Mondain's Legacy. Incorporates the escort and rescue missions. (Even though they were far older than the first quest engine quests, which were not incorporated.) Access the quest info through the "quest" button on your paper doll. You can do more than one quest at the same time.

Possible Other Quest Engines:
Every once in awhile there's an event (not an EM event but a centrally-done event) that appears to use a still-older quest engine, because it's similar to the "I heard there's a Kryss of Vanquishing in Despise!" quests you used to get from random NPCs.

-Galen's player

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

This is usually the case if you are performing another quest. Are you currently participating in another quest? This can also occur if the solen queen you are talking to is not the same that gave you the initial quest, perhaps from a while ago?

Excellent choice in head wear by the way.

Any chance in some day integrating the older quests into the newer quest engine? (For all of you who go to the last post first, see my post above this one for an explanation of what I mean.)

-Galen's player

 

[Lord Obsidian]

Sheesh... and Ant Quests don't show up as normal "quests" do, why not?

Unfortunately because there are two different quest systems. The ant quests are part of the classic quest system which has been introduced much earlier and never had a "quests" button in the paperdoll to access the quest progress. The new (usual / "normal") quest system has only been introduced with ML (was it ML?).

oops, slow writer here... made some research before posting, sorry

 

[Kyronix]

Any chance in some day integrating the older quests into the newer quest engine? (For all of you who go to the last post first, see my post above this one for an explanation of what I mean.)

-Galen's player

If this were ever the case it would be in a situation where new quests were added and converting the old ones would be something that was lumped into that task. That being said, without digging into the mechanics of the old system, I'm not sure how feasible it actually is.

 

[Flutter]

Thank you all for your ideas... I found that even tho I had quit the Dreadhorn Quest and my quest log showed nothing, if I did a single/click on my char it mentioned yet another quest... After I quit whatever that quest was, I was able to get the queen to give me her quest...

Sheesh... and Ant Quests don't show up as normal "quests" do, why not?

It's the old gump quests like that, the doom bone quest for instance or any quest previous to the existence of elves, that causes issues. The system was never equipped to allow more than one quest at a time.

 

[Flutter]

If this were ever the case it would be in a situation where new quests were added and converting the old ones would be something that was lumped into that task. That being said, without digging into the mechanics of the old system, I'm not sure how feasible it actually is.

Thank you for being so active on our forums

 

[cdavbar]

It's the old gump quests like that, the doom bone quest for instance or any quest previous to the existence of elves, that causes issues. The system was never equipped to allow more than one quest at a time.

This.

I had this issue when I tried to do the Hags quest. I paged a GM, and the GM was able to tell I had the Doom quest for gold skulls active. I had to either finish or cancel to doom quest to do the hags quest.

So in essence there are two quest systems/quest logs. The GM referred to these older ones as "Legacy Quests". Single click your char and click view quest and cancel the one your on.

 

[startle]

If this were ever the case it would be in a situation where new quests were added and converting the old ones would be something that was lumped into that task. That being said, without digging into the mechanics of the old system, I'm not sure how feasible it actually is.

Thanks for weighing in Kronix.... Changing something like this is certainly NOT on the list of priorities that I would like to see any dev time devoted to... It was a small temporary annoyance, and certainly no biggie as far as I'm concerned...

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

If this were ever the case it would be in a situation where new quests were added and converting the old ones would be something that was lumped into that task. That being said, without digging into the mechanics of the old system, I'm not sure how feasible it actually is.

Thank you for replying.

I've raised this issue before and the argument is that any new players we do happen to get will become confused by multiple quest engines. Indeed sometimes existing players are confused by it.

How worth it this would be in terms of time relative to payoff I can't even begin to guess.

-Galen's player

 

[SlobberKnocker]

If this were ever the case it would be in a situation where new quests were added and converting the old ones would be something that was lumped into that task. That being said, without digging into the mechanics of the old system, I'm not sure how feasible it actually is.

file this under the category of ''leave well enough alone''

 

[Kojak]

file it under the category of lazy - it wouldn't be hard at all to fix it

 

[Kyronix]

file it under the category of lazy - it wouldn't be hard at all to fix it

I'm sorry, you know this how?

Refactoring an entire system that was at some point deprecated in favor of the "new" system is never an easy task . Not only does the original quest system content need to be integrated with the new system, but the old system then also needs to be removed. We also have to deal with any player who may currently be embarked upon a quest using the old system. Then everything needs to be thoroughly tested. These simply stated tasks translate into a tremendous amount of actual work for a relatively low payout.

 

[Merus]

Integrating the quests would seem like the harder route to me.

Create a "new" quest in the new quest engine with the same criteria. Then remove the ability to get the old quest. The old quest system is still active and anyone with those quests active would still be able to keep and complete them, but no new quests under the old system could be offered.

While I believe it would require some work and testing to build the "new" quest, I would think it would be fairly straight forward since the old quest provides the blueprint.

 

[Kyronix]

Integrating the quests would seem like the harder route to me.

Create a "new" quest in the new quest engine with the same criteria. Then remove the ability to get the old quest. The old quest system is still active and anyone with those quests active would still be able to keep and complete them, but no new quests under the old system could be offered.

While I believe it would require some work and testing to build the "new" quest, I would think it would be fairly straight forward since the old quest provides the blueprint.

The old quest does provide the blueprint for the basic content, but there is still the issue of implementing in within the newer engine. That probably wouldn't be too much of an issue, but the old system sill needs to be removed. We couldn't just leave the old one active, given that now we introduce the problem of having simultaneous quest systems trying to work on the same game objects (The NPCs, which we don't want to duplicate).

 

[NuSair]

If I was going to implement a new quest engine, I would convert all the old quest to it before implementing it. I feel that would be the best way to do it. Given the lack of available time (ie- seeming lack of people) working on UO atm, I don't see it as being worth doing.

 

[Basara]

The escort quests used to be part of the old system, so a conversion should be possible for the Solen quests.

The others (hag and collector) are a bit more problematic, as they incorporate random elements.

Personally, I hate the fact that the escort quests (both point to point and rescues) got rolled into the new system. There's something that kills me inside playing a Paladin template Glorious lord, and being unable to rescue a prisoner because I already have one in tow.

Prior to the ML changes, you could get 1 city-to-city escort, and as many rescues as you could find simultaneously, as rescues didn't have a timer that prevented rescue. At the same time, the ability to take escorts through gates and into dungeons (some wanted to go to dungeons as seekers of adventure) didn't work (And you could also lose an escort if there was too much distance between you and them when you crossed a server line), so escorts were an overland affair. You had about 15 minutes to complete the trip. Some rescues simply wanted any inn, any healer shop, any town or any tavern (another sad loss to the system change).

Two months before ML, I picked up an escort in Trinsic, and rescued 4 more on Barrier Island. I then proceeded on foot to Britain, delivering one there, and picking up a replacement south of the Bog of Desolation, north of East Britain. I then went through the bog, down to Cove, delivered another, rescued another person on the way to minoc, delivered two more, and lost 1 of the 3 deliveries to Vesper to time or server line issues along the way, before delivering the last two the Vesper.I used to have a couple of screencaps of my leading the desperate band of ex-prisoners on their cross-continent trek, but that was 2-3 computers ago (hell, I was using dialup at the time)....