The ability to remove active quests

Stormvessel

I dislike having my quest log cluttered up with quests that I know I will not (or cannot) get around to completing (for either roleplaying reasons or actual reasons).

For instance, if I recruit a certain NPC and then release her, her active quest remains. Or if I am roleplaying and a particular quest is at odds with my character's alignment, I would like the ability to remove that quest.

There is also this reason: I am a completionist, and I obsess over certain quests as long as they are in my quest book.

If a quest is dropped, it can be reattained by talking to whichever NPC issued the quest.

I feel as though being able to remove noncritical quests would be a welcome and useful feature.

elminster

Stormvessel said:

I dislike having my quest log cluttered up with quests that I know I will not (or cannot) get around to completing (for either roleplaying reasons or actual reasons).

For instance, if I recruit a certain NPC and then release her, her active quest remains. Or if I am roleplaying and a particular quest is at odds with my character's alignment, I would like the ability to remove that quest.

There is also this reason: I am a completionist, and I obsess over certain quests as long as they are in my quest book.

If a quest is dropped, it can be reattained by talking to whichever NPC issued the quest.

I feel as though being able to remove noncritical quests would be a welcome and useful feature.

I'm guessing this would probably be a fairly involved scripting issue. Its one thing to remove the entries but it is another to have NPC's repeat dialogue again.

Stormvessel

elminster said:

Stormvessel said:

I dislike having my quest log cluttered up with quests that I know I will not (or cannot) get around to completing (for either roleplaying reasons or actual reasons).

For instance, if I recruit a certain NPC and then release her, her active quest remains. Or if I am roleplaying and a particular quest is at odds with my character's alignment, I would like the ability to remove that quest.

There is also this reason: I am a completionist, and I obsess over certain quests as long as they are in my quest book.

If a quest is dropped, it can be reattained by talking to whichever NPC issued the quest.

I feel as though being able to remove noncritical quests would be a welcome and useful feature.

I'm guessing this would probably be a fairly involved scripting issue. Its one thing to remove the entries but it is another to have NPC's repeat dialogue again.

If a quest cannot be reacquired, then they could keep the option isolated to noncritical quests, provide a warning, and require the player to confirm that he/she wants to remove the quest.

I wouldn't remove a quest to begin with unless I was 100% certain that I wasn't going to be doing it. I think most Baldur's Gate players are smart enough to make that call.

Another option would be to keep the quest, but to remove it from your questlog. In my opinion, not all quests need to be tracked. It's the charname's questlog, it only makes sense that he should be able to control what goes in it.

abacus

I support this... It's particularly annoying when you've already completed a particular quest, but a random dialogue triggers the quest log.

This happened to me recently when returning to the Druid Grove for the Limited Wish quest. The guy near the entrance accosted me about Faldorn (who was already dead), and I've now got the 'Animal Trouble in Trademeet' thread in my active quests log.

It's not critical, by any means, but it's really itchy!

CaloNord

Could it possibly be solved by simply having the option the hide the entries? For example add a "Removed" or "Hidden" section or page so ones I don't want to do right now or possibly ever can just be flicked into there?

Dee

You can already collapse the entries so that you only see their headings, although I suspect that's not what you mean.

Stormvessel

Dee said:

You can already collapse the entries so that you only see their headings, although I suspect that's not what you mean.

Yes, it's also about other things. The sense of satisfaction that comes from completing all the quests in the log, as well as keeping things tidy and orderly. Dumping old quests and being able to keep pertinent matters more easily in perspective is also a lot of what this is about for me. No matter how many games of Baldur's Gate I play (over 1000 hours worth according to Steam), there are always one or two quests that get stuck in the log no matter what I do. Like Abacus said (and I alluded to in my original post), something always seems to trigger an entry without actually triggering the quest itself. Being able to just simply go *click* and have them gone, seems like a small thing to ask and a much needed feature. Technically, our character is the one writing this stuff down. Surely he/she should have the option to remove a quest that he/she knows can't (or won't) ever be completed.

To be honest, it's kind of immersion breaking to constantly see entries that are impossible to complete, especially when said entries are impossible to complete for what should seem like totally obvious reasons.

Franpa

They could add a new entry to the journal called "Hidden Quests" and let you hide/move quests to this new topic that is always present at the bottom of the list of your active quests.

Stormvessel

Franpa said:

They could add a new entry to the journal called "Hidden Quests" and let you hide/move quests to this new topic that is always present at the bottom of the list of your active quests.

That is actually a very intuitive idea, Franpa. And it could be done without being forced to alter NPC scripting.