Flavor text in dungeons

[msgnomer]

<p>Has anyone heard any news on flavor text?  I just ran my old dungeon with the flavor text still working and wondered about a couple of things.  Anyway know of any news or rumors ... </p><p>(1) Is there a timeframe for a fix?  Is it in the works?</p><p>(2) Will dungeons that are published while the flavor text is broken automatically work when the fix is put in place or will they need to be republished.  I wonder about this since the older published dungeons still have working text - it's just the newly published dungeons with the issue, making it look like an issue with publishing rather than the mobs.</p>

[msgnomer]

<p>/cries</p><p>Another week and nothing in the patch notes.  I'm still sad that a major feature of the dungeons is not fixed and  wasn't even included in a dungeon contest.   Good, I guess, for those that don't like to bother with flavor text, lol.  Bad for us that that think mobs that communicate add something that another floor tile or more tapestries don't.</p><p>I'd settle for someone having heard that there is an intention to fix this.  The silence does not bode well for it being returned to the game. </p><p>I found a bit of good text in people's dungeons added tremendously to my enjoyment and immersion in a dungeon. </p><p>In general, I find troubling  the number of features that are still broken in the game or used to work but are broken now and not fixed. </p><p>I might even be convinced to buy a flavor text effect object in the Marketplace, if the promise of potential SC gets this fixed more quickly. </p><p>-you friendly neighborhood curmudgeon</p><p>edit - obviously it bothers me, especially before I finish my morning coffee.  I suppose the thing to do is just walk away from dungeon maker for awhile and wait for the repairs to be completed.  I might do a bit of questing in-game, but even more happily, it's summer and time to head out to the real life beach and mountains. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Meta-Shadow]

<p>I am in the same boat. I just made my first dungeon and I am quite proud of it. Nearly all of the NPCs have flavor text but I tested it out today and was sad to see that not one of them spoke anything they should have.</p><p>To SOE, your Dungeon Maker feature is awesome, fix this text issue, please! <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[msgnomer]

<p>I read somewhere (and now I can't find it) that text has never worked in the original poet's dungeon.  I also have never seen any SOE person comment on this issue.  I'm now wondering if this means that there isn't going to be a fix for this.  It's hard to know if it's one of those that will always be there now, or whether they just haven't gotten to working on it yet.  I certainly hope it's the latter.</p><p>Someone said something about everyone being on equal footing for the contest and I have to disagree.  They told us to keep working and the problems were getting fixed.  There are three major and interrelated design areas - the mobs/the decor/the story.  If your dungeon had a story and it was conveyed in part by flavor text, and then that was the bug that wasn't fixed, then your dungeon suffered for it. Even if no one else cares, it makes a difference to the dungeon designer who now has to publish 4/5 of their dungeon and call it complete. </p><p>There's another game I've been debating about trying and now may be a good time to back away.  I've been running into such a number of bugs associated with the features of the game I use.  I can finish up a couple of my houses, and a bit of questing, but when I started with the dungeon maker I was quite enthusastic and expected more features to be added, not part of the starting set of features removed.  I like the speaking mobs to speak - not huge long monologs, but telling quips that help immersion and reinforce the story.  Without it, the normally "good" mobs in my (now unpublished until flavor text returns) dungeon don't make as much sense, unless the adventurer takes the time to read the books and apply a bit of logic to what was going on.</p><p>I just wish I knew this was on someone's list to be fixed.  <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/c30b4198e0907b23b8246bdd52aa1c3c.gif" border="0" /></p>

[Afista]

<p>I ran a couple of the copied winning dungeons last night and noticed that flavor text <em>was</em> triggering in 1 of them. (I either didn't notice the other, or they didn't have any) Didn't run a normal live dungeon though so not sure if the fix is only because they were copied over or not. Will check my own later today and see if text triggers at all.</p>

[msgnomer]

<p>Thanks for the update report.  That might be a good sign - however a few days ago I had unpublished my dungeon and republished it, in an attempt to trigger text and it was still no go.  I have a lot of text so I'd have gotten a bit of it for sure if it had been working then.  Maybe I'll republish and try it again in the near future. </p>

[msgnomer]

<p><cite>Afista wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I ran a couple of the copied winning dungeons last night and noticed that flavor text <em>was</em> triggering in 1 of them. (I either didn't notice the other, or they didn't have any) Didn't run a normal live dungeon though so not sure if the fix is only because they were copied over or not. Will check my own later today and see if text triggers at all.</p></blockquote><p>I don't think it's fixed, but I might know what you experienced.  Once only, my carniverous plant shadowkinght in my poet's dungeon created a pet and there was some flavor text from the two of them.  Thing is, it wasn't MY flavor text.  The plant was one mob I did not assign text to. </p><p>I think I remember a similar incident with a skeleton.  Now, if you saw lots of flavor text that was highly personalized to the dungeon you went through, then I don't know how to account for that.  I also don't know how to account for the flavor text triggering when none was created for the mob, but that's a bug of another sort.</p><p>I went through my dungeon and no text triggered,  and I have a LOT of potential text.  I also went through two of the contest winner's dungeons and neither of them had a peep of flavor text.</p>

[Afista]

<p>Yeah, it might have just been a fluke or only working because it was a copied dungeon. I ran mine again and nothing triggered. Granted I don't have but a handful of mobs in mine... but still =P</p><p>I did roll a character on the Permafrost server tonight just to run a dungeon there and there was a zillion mobs in it. I'm not sure if maybe they just didn't have any flavor text... but nothing triggered there either.</p><p>The winning copied dungeon that did trigger text for me the other night was when I ran The Lovely Bones one. I remember the last mob saying something like "Ah, our guests have arrived" or something like that.</p>

[msgnomer]

<p>I went through my third contest winner dungeon, "The Lovely Bones" and there were two or three triggers of text for me as well.  However, they were generic and didn't seem to have anything to do with the dungeon itself or even fit where the mobs were positioned.  I suspect it's the same bug that I saw in my own dungeon.  Only the designer can tell us for sure if they programmed that text, but I suspect not.</p>

[Glenorian]

<p>On Afista's note about the zillion mobs on the permafrost server dungeon, nearly all of mine have flavor text, and lots of it so there would be a variety of possible texts coming from them.  It's not working yet.  I have a dungeon with a mistmoore layout and the text works all the time.  No texts on the poet palace dungeons yet <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>We'll need to revisit a lot of the dungeons when the text is working, the designers will appreciate it.</p>

[Afista]

<p>Ran a few more random PP places last night, before the servers died, and there wasn't any text either. Really, really hoping there will be a fix for this too. It can make a really great dungeon an amazing one!</p>

[Sands]

<p>Flavor text doesn't work in my Lair of Scale dungeon either.</p><p>Would be nice to get a dev to look into it!</p>

[msgnomer]

<p>I think flavor text might be starting to work, but oddly.  What are other's experiences?</p><p>I did a few dungeons with a group Sunday night and saw just a few flavor texts, so I temporarily published my own dungeon to check.</p><p>Based on the way flavor text used to perform only a percentage of the time, I had similar flavor text on several spawners, expecting a percentage of them to trigger.  What happened going through the dungeon  was that aggro flavor text was triggering almost 100% of the time and all other flavor text was trigger almost 0% of the time. </p><p>I'm going to check my older long publsihed dungeon and make sure its still working like it used to, but my poet's dungeon sure didn't work like I'd expected it to, based on previous behavior of flavor text.</p><p>Is any else now seeing flavor text, and is it behaving like before or differently? </p><p>EDIT: I just went through my older dungeon, and it might be that for the aggro flavor text the range was increased to see it or something. I saw the increase to almost 100% in my older dungeon as well.   I found a couple of the mobs further away didn't have aggro flavor text.  It doesn't explain though why I saw less of all the other types of flavor text.  I'd previously run my older dungeon several times and never got so little (1-3%) flavor text for all the categories other than flavor text.  Definitely never got almost 100% aggro flavor text.</p><p>Granted, that's not exactly a thorough analysis, but something is up.</p><p>I actually don't care what the percentages are, but when I've got my designer's hat on,  I sure wish there were a set of usage rules for the tools I have available. </p>

[Meta-Shadow]

<p>Well I know that the flavor text is working in my dungeon now! So I am comfortable with publishing it now.</p><p>Thank you SOE, for the fix, and the added new features for lore oriented dungeons!</p>

[msgnomer]

<p><cite>Meta-Shadow wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Well I know that the flavor text is working in my dungeon now! So I am comfortable with publishing it now.</p><p>Thank you SOE, for the fix, and the added new features for lore oriented dungeons!</p></blockquote><p>There's the rub.  Is is completely fixed yet?  If the greatly increased aggro flavor text is a permanent change, then I know I need to go in and remove some of the aggro flavor text in my dungeon before republsihing it.  If its something they are still playing with, then I'll hold off.</p><p>Luckily my older LoS dungeon isn't filled completely with speaking mobs, so the boost to the aggro text is within acceptable limits.  However, it seems the rest of the text triggers less than before.  On the other hand, my poets dungeon has larger groups of mobs in places and with all of the them triggering aggro text it looks really cluttered.  And all their other text seems wasted as it never gets triggered.</p><p>I didn't see anything on whether this is considered the final fix or not.  I don't want to remove a bunch of aggro text and then have it reduce on triggering again.  I don't know how to make the other text trigger more - I already have mulitple possible entries in each category.</p>

[littleredfifi]

<p>I have a Crushbone Keep dungeon (Fifi's Fun House) with tons of quotes, proverbs and comedic, corny & nostalgic FT (flavor text). I only used the first two rooms of the dungeon and blocked off the rest to make it short but sweet. Something I noticed after I first published it was that I had tons of FT in the first room and almost none in the second room. I usually had lots of the aggro & half health FT and sometimes the Death FT but almost never the Battle FT. Recently, however, I've noticed a lot more FT in that second room and plenty of FT in general.</p><p>Somebody made the comment about range being a factor and I have to wonder about that. I recently took my son in my dungeon and some of the FT that was in my chat log was not in his but at those times he was slightly farther away than I was. One other problem I had and still have is that I sometimes get the message "The text you entered is not valid. Please try again." and there is no rhyme or reason to why it is "invalid" (none of my FT is inappropriate or obscene).</p><p>Anywho... I'm adding to Fifi's Fun House and will re-publish it soon. Try it out and see if you get any FT, there should be tons of it, and let me know if you did.  =D</p>

[Glenorian]

<p>I did notice that there is a lot of flavor text triggering in my dungeon also.  I am ok with this I think.  I have a lot of specific mobs and I am glad that players can experience each of their dialogue.  I was not happy with the low level of triggering I got in my other dungeons.  It would be good to know if this will now be the norm so that I can plan appropriately on the next one.  If I have a number of standard mobs I don't want all of them shouting the same thing etc.  But if it is a low level of trigger than I will want to program them all so that you'll at least get something.  I think I prefer it on the heavier side so that at least I know that my coolest mob will get  his say.  Before..you could get to the boss and nothing.  He/She'd die too fast!  I found that to be a let down.</p>

[msgnomer]

<p><cite>Glenorian wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I did notice that there is a lot of flavor text triggering in my dungeon also.  I am ok with this I think.  I have a lot of specific mobs and I am glad that players can experience each of their dialogue.  I was not happy with the low level of triggering I got in my other dungeons.  It would be good to know if this will now be the norm so that I can plan appropriately on the next one.  If I have a number of standard mobs I don't want all of them shouting the same thing etc.  But if it is a low level of trigger than I will want to program them all so that you'll at least get something.  I think I prefer it on the heavier side so that at least I know that my coolest mob will get  his say.  Before..you could get to the boss and nothing.  He/She'd die too fast!  I found that to be a let down.</p></blockquote><p>LOL, I had exactly that chatty mob problem when I tested my poet's dungeon - I had a groups of weak mobs in a few places for story reasons.  I'd set them with similar dialogue "knowing" only a few would trigger.  Now it looks like the worst sort of comic book confrontation with numerous diologue boxes obscuring my characters line of site!</p><p>Glenorian, are you seeing more of all kinds of flavor text or just the aggro flavor text.  I was seeing almost 100% aggro text, but very little of the other.  However, it could be a quirk of my dungeon or random luck.</p><p>I agree I'd rather work around too much than too little.  But mostly I'd like to know whether this is set for now.</p>

[Mysstie]

In my 1-room dungeon I pretty much get all the Aggro text, usually get the death text but not all the time and the Battle text I think I've seen only once. Not knowing exactly when battle text is supposed to trigger is part of the problem. Does a battle have to last X amount of time, or mob goes to X amount of health (which could get passed over as it goes straight to death status), or is it based on the adventure's health? Maybe some of them just die too quick. I may have to turn my damage shield off and let them hit for awhile.

[intoXILE]

<p><cite>msgnomer wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I went through my third contest winner dungeon, "The Lovely Bones" and there were two or three triggers of text for me as well.  However, they were generic and didn't seem to have anything to do with the dungeon itself or even fit where the mobs were positioned.  I suspect it's the same bug that I saw in my own dungeon.  Only the designer can tell us for sure if they programmed that text, but I suspect not.</p></blockquote><p>Yeah, that's my fault actually. I forgot that if you put flavor text on a mob in an old dungeon, and then you removed that mob and used it in another dungeon....the name change and the flavor text remains. Oh well. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p><p>Thanks for running it though!</p>