Bad quest designs

[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

[Pulgasari]

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.

Dis good chance Juntsie tell dem bouts making friend with steenky evils. Not elf can doez all him selfs.

[cd288]

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.

True, although I think a point OP was alluding to is depending on the type and location of the PH (i.e., static camp in an obscure area that spawns mobs totally unrelated to the quest mob), and spawn chance of the mob, there could've been a decent chance that no one would ever figure it out and that's a bit of bad design. In the case of this specific quest, better design probably would've been to increase the number of PHs to include more mobs that wander throughout LFay.

[Tnair]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

True, although I think a point OP was alluding to is depending on the type and location of the PH (i.e., static camp in an obscure area that spawns mobs totally unrelated to the quest mob), and spawn chance of the mob, there could've been a decent chance that no one would ever figure it out and that's a bit of bad design. In the case of this specific quest, better design probably would've been to increase the number of PHs to include more mobs that wander throughout LFay.

While I do miss the pre-wiki days of collective exploration, when Identify may have actually been helpful, I do agree overall. I think they started with this intent, of obtuse quest design, and then development spiraled and they got more and more rushed to finish, and a whole lot got just...left in whatever state it was when it was time for release. This was early days when they literally were guessing what an MMO player group would even do, and they were designing based on guesses and hopes. Not tryna argue that Brad was a genius playing 5 dimensional chess or anything. EQ1 is a mess. A beloved mess.

[Pulgasari]

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

This was early days when they literally were guessing what an MMO player group would even do, and they were designing based on guesses and hopes. Not tryna argue that Brad was a genius playing 5 dimensional chess or anything. EQ1 is a mess. A beloved mess.

'Hunting' and then going back to town to recover and broker your treasure was the previous model of MMO before EQ.

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by cd288 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

True, although I think a point OP was alluding to is depending on the type and location of the PH (i.e., static camp in an obscure area that spawns mobs totally unrelated to the quest mob), and spawn chance of the mob, there could've been a decent chance that no one would ever figure it out and that's a bit of bad design. In the case of this specific quest, better design probably would've been to increase the number of PHs to include more mobs that wander throughout LFay.

You weren't meant to figure it out - people were meant to wander about murderhoboing random mobs and that would eventually spawn the specific mobs other people would kill.

The way we do specific camps and kill no things besides those (so not 'accidently' kill phers for rares in open zones) is far from the expectations of how players would/should play.

[cd288]

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

You weren't meant to figure it out - people were meant to wander about murderhoboing random mobs and that would eventually spawn the specific mobs other people would kill.

The way we do specific camps and kill no things besides those (so not 'accidently' kill phers for rares in open zones) is far from the expectations of how players would/should play.

Generally agree with you. Although with respect to this quest specifically, I don't often remember seeing groups at pixie camps in LFay just randomly grinding there.

[Dolalin]

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.

[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.

[magnetaress]

Holy tldrs batman. Read thread title. Saw multiple walls of text. Made this post.

Can we plz at least get a bullet point of the offensive quests plz. Like at a minimum. Example:

• cleric epic - pearl shards in sky fire for days
• wizard epic - fucking staffs lol
• jboots - bottlenecks (both hasten and Aac ring)
• soulfire - non pallies and long Lucan spawns
• good militia tunic traitor guy - paladins killing Lucan the turn in mob