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.

[cd288]

I mean, by the time the online resources took off like a year after launch you could probably have found this information online in the discussion section for the mob on Allakhazam or something like that.

I do agree that it could've been nice to include some vague reference that might be a hint to a number of potential placeholders (maybe some would not be PHs at all), but ultimately I think it's kind of cool that they did it this way. They were not going to handhold at all and had no problem basically making you grind random mobs in LFay in hope that they spawned a brownie lol

[port9001]

I think what makes it cool is that it hints that there's knowledge that even the quest giver doesn't know. Since they are outcasts, maybe they've taken refuge with the pixies? But the elfbro doesn't know that, he just knows some brownies made off with his arrows. I kind of like that. I wonder if some of these decisions were intentional or if we're just rationalizing the results.

[Salaryman]

"...you werent intended to spawn camps by killing their ph..." -the guy who wrote the lore for kunark

[cd288]

Originally Posted by Salaryman [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

"...you werent intended to spawn camps by killing their ph..." -the guy who wrote the lore for kunark

Do you have a link to that for further context? Kind of a confusing quote

[Vador981]

doing the tunarean signet ring requires killing things in WL which will wreck the faction needed to do the turn in, to get the named one that drops the crest to spawn.

[mycoolrausch]

The designers must have either had a vague and rather optimistic view of the world being more dynamic with different groups of people moving around killing different groups of mobs in such a way that intricate cross faction quest lines just harmoniously work themselves out.

Or they didn't really know what they were doing and didn't even stop to consider the ramifications of this particular placeholder on this particular spawn rotation related to this or that particular quest with this or that particular faction requirements.

Either way classic everquest is better than the modern approach of on rails theme park shit but only in the sense that vanilla ice cream is better than shit flavored ice cream, it's not a high bar.

Someone will make a truly great MMO, someday. Maybe.

[Tnair]

This was purposefully obtuse to force exploration and cooperation. In ye olden days, youd literally /ooc or ask guildies or others of your class about this shit and it was a real puzzle. You run around asking /ooc Has anyone seen brownies? someone says they were killed by a brownie two zones over. you go to lesser fay like they said and find several brownies, but no outcasts. you kill a few brownies just to see what they drop, what factions happen, etc. Nothing related to your quest. You come back the next day, find one outcast, feel joy and track it down and it doesnt drop anything but brownie parts. But now youre on a trail. You hang out looking for xp or interesting named spawns or just exploring while you try to find more outcasts. Repeat for a week and youve gained half a level, learned a new zone, learned some favorite locations where the outcasts seem to be found most often. You finally have your arrows and got dam it took forever and seemed impossible at first and now your green chainmail has your Adventure in it and isnt just pixels. A year later a newbie ranger is asking for help in ooc finding brownie outcasts and you take them on a hunting safari with your hard earned knowledge.

[azeth]

Originally Posted by Tnair [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This was purposefully obtuse to force exploration and cooperation. In ye olden days, youd literally /ooc or ask guildies or others of your class about this shit and it was a real puzzle. You run around asking /ooc Has anyone seen brownies? someone says they were killed by a brownie two zones over. you go to lesser fay like they said and find several brownies, but no outcasts. you kill a few brownies just to see what they drop, what factions happen, etc. Nothing related to your quest. You come back the next day, find one outcast, feel joy and track it down and it doesnt drop anything but brownie parts. But now youre on a trail. You hang out looking for xp or interesting named spawns or just exploring while you try to find more outcasts. Repeat for a week and youve gained half a level, learned a new zone, learned some favorite locations where the outcasts seem to be found most often. You finally have your arrows and got dam it took forever and seemed impossible at first and now your green chainmail has your Adventure in it and isnt just pixels. A year later a newbie ranger is asking for help in ooc finding brownie outcasts and you take them on a hunting safari with your hard earned knowledge.

amen

[port9001]

I honestly wonder if this actually was intentional. I have a hard time imaging there were moments when quest designers were thinking "hmmm better not include too many details here" but maybe it was a design decision. I do agree it has the effect of adding a ton of mystique to the game and forces people to hang around areas in order to figure quests out. It's a pretty cool concept and in a lot of cases it did lead to some pretty fun quests.

Now I'm wondering what the most difficult to solve quest was.