I'm seeing a lot of talk in the Skyrim boards about preventing the player from dropping quest items to be hand-holding. I've already posted my response, and as usual ended up having to debate it, but if anyone here is interested in reading it, here you go:
It's not really hand-holding than it is more of a frustration prevention device. In a game this big, you really cannot expect the player to be able to keep track of each and every item he received for a quest, therefore it makes sense to implement countermeasures to keep those quests from being messed up, especially if the player were to take a break from that quest for one reason or another and not remember what items were important to that quest.
The quest item system is in place to prevent accidents that would result in quests becoming impossible to complete. Intelligent quests are the ones that make you think about your options to solve it, not remember each and every item that was given to you. That is unnecessary. Who wants to have to keep track of all their quest items in their mind just to make sure they know not to drop it? That is way too much to ask of anyone in a game this big.
I still don't advocate NEVER allowing you to drop quest items, but there really is nothing wrong with warning the player that the item will be important somewhere down the road. Just give them a pop-up notice that the item might be important sometime later on and let the PLAYER make the decision of just how "important" that importance is. Dropped quest items are hellish to find again if you lose them, and would seriously detract from the fun factor if you were forced to hunt one down. Remember, we play games for fun. Finding some ring you threw away in a random location because it turned out to be important to a quest is NOT fun. And reverting to previous saves here does not work, as there's no telling how long the player might have been away from that quest. Could have been for a few minutes, but it could also be for several months.
Nothing wrong with letting the player know that an important item is important. I see nothing hand-holdy about that.
This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Aug 2 2011, 10:25 PM
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Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?
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