I'm not quite with you there, Ben, what are you referring to in particular?
To explain:
In the example given, a player trips "Quest 1 - Stage 1" when they see something happening. You are then suggesting that they can talk to either NPC about it.
Set the NPC events to "Event Only Happens If - Party Has Special Item - Quest 1" (This means that Quest 1 is in progress, and will only happen if the Quest = Stage 1 or higher).
Since you only had three events in your example, I assume that you finish the quest at Stage 3, so all you have to do is remove it, and those NPC events won't fire.
Repeated quest stages in OAUA don't reset the quest but advance it, so triggering a Quest Stage 1 two times would result in a quest value of 2, three times in 3 etc. So if a quest is at stage 3 and the party triggers a Quest Stage 1 event, I think the quest value will be 4 not 1. Just like Merlin wrote in his first post, describing what we at first took for a bug in OAUA:
Okay...
But, given the nature of quests and the fact that they are triggered in order, what happens if you step on them in this order:
Quest 1 - Stage 1
Quest 1 - Stage 2
Quest 1 - Stage 1 (because you backtracked)
Quest 1 - Stage 2
Quest 1 - Stage 4 (because you went the wrong direction)
Quest 1 - Stage 1 (beacuse you backtracked from going the wrong direction)
Quest 1 - Stage 3 (finally found it...but will it fire now?)
Quest 1 - Stage 1 (man, screwed up again, which way were we supposed to go?)
Quest 1 - Stage 4 (found it! will it fire?)
If each on adds 1 each time, by the time you hit Quest 1 - Stage 4, you'd be at Stage 9. If only the Stage 1 fires, you'd be at 5 by the time you hit 4, which means it never fires (and neither does 3).
Again...what is the advantage of this?