Development Cycle Archive

I, too, and a bit worried about the wording of this post, but I think that we may be misreading what has been said. First, a lot of people never even got a chance at these quests because the quest mobs would spawn within 2 km of a location, and if there were too many critters around, then you had to start killing a bunch of them and hope that they would pop up. This creates a large amount of frustration and makes an already difficult quest nearly impossible to start, much less finish. Another thing is that it is quite possible that certain of the quest mobs might spawn once in a while but would not spawn correctly save for 1% or 10% of the time, thus making their quests impossible to do much of the time. I myself searched around for the Mark of Intellect quest mobs for some two weeks and never actually found them, finally giving up on it for a while, and have never returned to try again. Perhaps the way that they are cutting down on the difficulty, at least in part, is by making the quest mobs spawn within a narrower margin from the central waypoint, and making certain designated locations for them to spawn where other critters will not spawn so that you don't have to run around over a massive area killing everything around in the hopes that it was that spawn of mobs that was keeping the quest mobs from spawning. I'm trying to be optimistic here, and I don't really think that the devs would, even in a more veiled sense, say that the player base just was too incompetent to complete this quest.
If there is content in the game that is not being completed by 75% of the player base, then it's difficult or hidden content and may not really need to be changed, but if less than 5% is completing it, then there is probably something wrong. That, at least, is my general way of thinking, because a decent percent of players really eat up having badges and rewards that few others have managed. I don't think they are looking to make this something that everyone will now complete, and complete with ease, but that those who wish to do it, and are willing to dedicate themselves to doing so, will now find that it is possible, and hopefully possible in a practical timeframe. Just my personal thoughts on the matter, with scattered optimism thrown in. Hopefully my optimism will be proven warrented. Time will tell.

---

Thunderheart wrote:

The Hero of Tatooine quest was added to the game before launch and was driven primarily by dynamic spawns using the POI system.As it turned out, due to the POI system behavior, this quest was difficult to complete.Too difficult in fact.Even still, this quest was a popular quest that players wanted to experience, so in Publish 9, the adventure known by players as "The Hermit's Quest" will be completely revamped.If you've played the quest before, don't be lulled into a sense of "I've done this before" because the adventure has new elements that must be completed to gain the five badges: Mark of Altruism, Mark of Intellect, Mark of Courage, Mark of Honor and the Mark of the Hero.

---

OK I have been at this for about 3 hours or so now and I it is exactly like it was before. Mindless wandering through the desert wondering if the spawn your looking for will ever pop. Its like the movie Ishtar but on heroine.

This is not a quest this a big waste of time. Time that could be used on more real tangible things that you need in game. If you have copmpleted everything else in the game and have nothing else better to do then go for it. Otherwise stay away from this one it will just get you aggrivated! On the side of being constructive because I do have some choice words I'd like to use but I won't.

I seriously think SOE needs to hire someone who knows how to design a quest.

X

What I have seen from this quest so far on live now, leads me to two conclusions:
a) This is the best quest in game so far (if not even the only one that deserves the name)! Good work, but you can do better still!

b) I see a potential problem if other quests, especially the jedi path quests, are formed in the image of this quest: spawn camping. Having quest npcs on spawn timers that despawn after someone talked to them/killed them/whatever, will inevitably lead to spawn camping, as seen on tatooine since the publish went live. Now the community of swg as a whole has never develepod the rules and social skills necessary for such a thing, but instead an archaic "I big! I cm/rifle, I pwn that krayt/elder/whatever! Ugh!" kill-stealing mentality has evloved, unique to games of this genre (I wont go into afk looting etc...).

When I came near a supposed spawn point for the bounty hunter yesterday, I was greeted by a hearty "FO, Stysra!" by a total stranger who sat there staring at an empty spot for what I must suppose hours among some others on the same occupation. Now there are idiots in every community, but I fear the fact that many players come from a FPS background or have no grasp of netiquette for some other reason will inevitably lead to tensions among the players of what is supposed to be a game! Now imagine what happens if some people are sitting on the spawn point waiting for the npc that leads to become a jedi, a tangible reward opposed to the reward of the hero quest.

Therefore I strongly suppose never using the principle of this quest, finding random spawn npcs, for any other quest, or heavily revise the way it is done...