Bad quest designs

[port9001]

The designers of this game got a lot of things right, some of them by complete accident, but the quest design in this game is frequently just terrible.

So I'm doing the Ivy Etched Leggings quest for fun. In order to complete this quest you have to slay "brownie outcasts" and gather 6 different arrows from them. Here's the clue given by Lieutenant Leafstalker: "Get them from the brownie outcasts and combine them in the quiver."

Okay, simple enough. The quest text makes no mention of Lesser Faydark but you might stumble upon the idea that brownies live there, I can grant that. Especially when Mistmoore was such a hot leveling zone, that information would not have been difficult to come by. Also, you're a Ranger with track so finding these guys should be easy.

Here's where it gets stupid. If you're lucky, at most two brownie outcasts will be up in Lesser Faydark. You kill them, maybe you get 2 of the arrows, great. Do they respawn? Yes, but they have a placeholder which are two pixies who just float by a tower. If those pixies are never killed no outcasts will spawn. Nothing in the quest text indicates this or gives you any reason to believe you have to kill these placeholders to get them to spawn. If you were just trying to find more outcasts using track you'd end up disappointed but odds are no more would spawn. As far as I know this was never a popular levelling spot, nor does it make much sense to use it. The pixies are low level but the outcasts which can spawn instead are level 30ish. If you were using this as a camp for the pixies you'd randomly have to avoid a badass Druidman spawning instead of a pixie.

If you were doing this quest organically you'd maybe get a few arrows here are there as you passed through lfay on your way to Mistmoore but for the most part you'd need to learn, somehow, that killing these pixies gets more spawns. I can't imagine trying to complete this quest without that knowledge. Since you need 6 different arrows, you need to kill at least 10 of these outcasts before you might have all 6 arrows, assuming you have amazing luck.

Oh, and just for good measure, instead of spawning a regular pixie you sometimes get a pixie jongular which is allied with the Surefall Glade Rangers/Druids. So you'll have to take a few hits to a Ranger guild to complete this Ranger quest.

It would soothe my soul to hear of other equally or worse quest designs, of which I'm sure there are MANY.