[MUD-Dev] Sony to ban sale ... point of view of an eq veteran

[Jeff Freeman]

At 09:24 AM 4/12/00 -0700, John A. Bertoglio wrote:
>Sony should not ban the practice, they should make it impossible through an
>ingame redesign.

Lots of arguement with Brad McQuaid on the EQ newsgroup about this very
thing (back when I used to follow it):  Fixed spawn locations, static
"quests" (if you want to be real generous about the word "quest"),
one-and-only-one location to find The Magical Doodad that everyone wants...

It was a dead-end, this argument.  They want people to be able to "go on a
quest" that they've mapped out:  point a, to point b, to point c.

Absolutely refuse to accept that 1) 90% of the people just hit a webpage to
see where "point c" is, and 2) whether you do skip to point c or not, there
will be a line of players (if everyone is playing nice and taking turns)
waiting for the mob to respawn at point c, because that mob has the One And
Only Fabulous Thingie.

They decide that fishbone earrings are a mid-level magic item, so they put
them on a mid-level mob.  But guess what?  If you're high level and you
want a pair, you can't get them from any high level mob.  You have to go
back to that one mid-level mob and kill it (which won't even be a
challenge, although it might be a long and boring wait for the thing to
respawn).

The way the dungeons are designed is equally frustrating:  All fixed spawn
locations, but with a level spread from Way Too Easy to Way Too Hard.
Instead of exploring a dungeon from Top to Bottom, you walk in until you
hit a spot beyond which you will die.  Everything behind you is too easy.
Everything ahead is too hard.  So you squat and kill the same thing over
and over.  When you level up a couple times, then you can move to the next
spot.

Static quests for generic items:  Take the monk quest to get three putrid
rib bones for a magic headband.  Here's the quest:  "Go camp the ruins
until you have killed the same putrid skeletons over and over again, for
about six hours."  I kid you not, it literally takes that long.  Not so bad
though, because while you are parked there in the same spot for six hours
(maybe with a cleric, who also needs to camp there for hours on end for one
of their guild quests), you can kill three different KINDS of skeletons.

It doesn't seem like they would have to redesign the game system itself so
much as just replace the quests.

Maybe put in a quest or two that people would like to do themselves, versus
paying other players to do it for them.

--
 http://dundee.uong.com/




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