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Sir Rendlan

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I will preface this by saying I mean no disrespect to Shiida, because I don't think these quests were designed with these sorts of things in mind. They're meant to be cool and look crazy or whatever.

 

It's a lot easier to say this than to actually do it... but I will say it regardless. I am interested in quests with thought out and patterned spawns that have unique, fun, or challenging combat solutions. Now this is just a personal take but I really truly think quests like HoD 1/2, PTS, and other extraordinarily high monster count quests take A LOT away from the game play of PSO. The "design" of the spawns is pretty... boring / lame / unintuitive / not inductive to interactive game play. I will use this spawn from HoD 2 as an example. Yes it's symmetrical and neatly placed, but there's not really an challenge to it while at the same time not having any interesting solutions to handling besides spam Dark Meteor / Iron Faust / Rafoie or some other boring catch all weapon without much variation. These quests and ones similar are full of spawns that have similar characteristics. 

hod2.png

 

Now lets look at CCC for an example (widely considered by some the best custom quest or among them). If you've played the mission you know out right that it's challenging but not by means of overloaded monster spam. If you've played the quest enough you'll also know there's varying, unique, and interesting ways to clear spawns throughout the mission. I removed the stompers from the middle so that the view was a tad bit better, but here you can see there's multiple enemy types all threatening the player(s) in different ways while still keeping the "beauty" of symmetry, a relatively low monster count, and providing the player with many unique ways to handle the spawn. ccc.png

 

I am no expert in qedit and certainly could not do the things Shiida or Lemon or Ender or whoever have done. I do however feel like I know a good quest design when I see it. Some areas I think not worth spending time on are forest and temple. Not even Ender was able to make good quests out of those areas (not his fault). Quests to reference to see what good spawn patterns and set ups look like are for E1: MA1C, Christmas Fiasco 1 (meh), and you can see good spawn sets for given areas in all the Mop-Up / Sweep-Up / MA: Area quests. For E2 (there's a lot of good ones here): CCC, Christmas Fiasco 2, Malicious Uprising #3 and #5, Sweep Up #6, 7, 9, Raid on Central Tower, Max Attack S, MA: Area quests, the last room of PW4, MA2C, Gal Da Vals Darkness. E4: Christmas Fiasco 4, Realms of War, MA: Area quests, Sweep-Ups #(idk all the E4 ones), New Mop-Up 5, MA4C. I am sure I am missing a lot of quests in general from all areas that deserve a mention, but off the top of my head these are some of the premiere quests in terms of design in my opinion. 


A quest that a lot of people have tried to fool with but haven't been able to get quite right is an EP 1 style Realms of War (one of or the hardest quest in the game) and that's partly due to E1 not being very hard. Christmas Fiasco 1 is moving in the direction of it, but not really near the level of difficulty or design. 

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17 minutes ago, Saber +7 said:

but I will say it regardless. I am interested in quests with thought out and patterned spawns that have unique, fun, or challenging combat solutions. Now this is just a personal take but I really truly think quests like HoD 1/2, PTS, and other extraordinarily high monster count quests take A LOT away from the game play of PSO. The "design" of the spawns is pretty... boring / lame / unintuitive / not inductive to interactive game play. I will use this spawn from HoD 2 as an example. Yes it's symmetrical and neatly placed, but there's not really an challenge to it while at the same time not having any interesting solutions to handling besides spam Dark Meteor / Iron Faust / Rafoie or some other boring catch all weapon without much variation. These quests and ones similar are full of spawns that have similar characteristics

I understand this criticism, but Shiida's quests all have great scenarios and stories. There's really little you can do in ep1 to make the quests hard other than put a bukkake of monsters in your face, and even despite this, they are still very creative, just look at IDS. The first time I played through HoD2 was probably the most memorable moment I had on this server, of course once you learn the spawns it loses some of that magic, but you can say that about any quest.

 

MotV, IDS, HoD 1&2, WOI, Shiida quite simply does not miss, and I will not stand for any besmirching of our queen

 

Once you've spent thousands of hours playing you of course find most quests easy, but that does not mean that the quests mentioned above don't still have their place.

 

Also I know people love spamming DM in those quests (I think they like spamming DM in all scenarios tbh) but Shiida's quests are my fave ones to run as a hunter. Hacking and slashing in MotV or PTS is just the best

Edited by jdhenry124
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There's certainly some decent scenarios in the quests in relation to the combat. They're not totally devoid, but compared to pretty much every other quest I mentioned they may as well be. The story may be neat, but that has nothing to with the combat / quality of it. There's ways to make E1 hard just by matter of timer, similar to CCC, but yes it is challenging to get all the right elements in E1. 

 

I don't like any of these quests you've mentioned even slightly. I respect them in the fact they're different from other quests and obviously are quite good for hunting. I don't think they're good quests in terms of the characteristics I mentioned above (which make good quests in general in my opinion). This has nothing to do with the maker. Not personal in any way. 

 

I don't know what to say about the DM comment. I don't care for that form of game play at all. It is possible to play ranger and still have a variety in the way you handle spawns while remaining efficient. DM is not the end all be all and it's rather boring to play with and watch.  

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Honestly I'd like to see a quest that is pretty tough, like WOI where there's enemies all over the map and once you die its game over! Or it can even be as stressful as the final room of HOD 2 where there's a sandstorm and a poisonous air in the room, causes a huge amount of damage to you over time while also dealing with enemies. For me, usually quest like these where theres a certain excitement and stress in a mission is the most fun for me so thats what i usually look forward to lol

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/6/2021 at 6:27 PM, SanicTeam said:

Honestly I'd like to see a quest that is pretty tough, like WOI where there's enemies all over the map and once you die its game over! Or it can even be as stressful as the final room of HOD 2 where there's a sandstorm and a poisonous air in the room, causes a huge amount of damage to you over time while also dealing with enemies. For me, usually quest like these where theres a certain excitement and stress in a mission is the most fun for me so thats what i usually look forward to lol

I feel quests like these end up alienating against other class's , as you would just run 3 casts with a fo taking in turns to freeze trap and DM spam to clear ,with the fo to resta and max buff

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6 hours ago, ink said:

I feel quests like these end up alienating against other class's , as you would just run 3 casts with a fo taking in turns to freeze trap and DM spam to clear ,with the fo to resta and max buff

Actually yeah now that you mention it, it does alienate classes which sucks, i only like the mission for how chaotic it can really be but having certain classes having a higher priority to do those certain quests can be a bummer, then again I'd still love to see missions where any class can participate!

Edited by SanicTeam
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I know I'm pretty late to weigh in, but I felt I should comment anyway. 

HoD and CCC are apples and oranges and shouldn't be directly compared to each other.  They aim to provide vastly different play experiences.  If you like one over the other that's cool but it doesn't mean the other is bad; just that you like the gameplay style of one more than the other.  I have great respect for R-78 for being able to produce quests like HoD, even if I didn't particularly like the style of gameplay they provided. (I prefer more CCC style quests where small mistakes like player positioning and team composition matter, which is why I made it the way it is.)

My answer to @Sir Rendlan's original question is to make something that you'll enjoy playing, not something that you think others will enjoy.  You will need to be playtesting this quest a lot.  I often ran my own quests 100+ times before I released them, and then more after release to fix problems I didn't find myself.  So if you don't enjoy playing the quest, it can quickly become a chore.

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On 3/5/2021 at 11:45 PM, Saber +7 said:

I don't know what to say about the DM comment. I don't care for that form of game play at all. It is possible to play ranger and still have a variety in the way you handle spawns while remaining efficient. DM is not the end all be all and it's rather boring to play with and watch.  

 

Sadly to say, as someone who played with arrest needle and Iron Faust before using Dark Meteor, I have to disaggree: Dark Meteor Is the end all be all .(It's probably boring to watch If you're not a DM user, but that Idk...) 

 

Also, I can't think of any way to be as efficient as with a Dark Meteor, u less you're thinking of using a charge partisan (or great fairy sword, maybe..) or an Ultima Reaper. That Is, If you can keep many monsters close enough to hit them at once and dispose of them as fast as possible. (GL paralysing monsters as RAmar or RAmarl, though. Only FS/SQ Is guaranteed, and SQ Is pierce special) 

 

Probably the closest way to be effective, but not enough, Is by getting In the center of a horde and freeze-trapping and using Iron Faust as a RAcast and RAcaseal, which Is safe and effective. 

 

{If only there were a weapon with DM special's long lingering effects. Probably what @Emewn wished for with the Yasminkov shot-type weapon a while back :onion-head65:

 

On 3/20/2021 at 7:33 AM, ink said:

I feel quests like these end up alienating against other class's , as you would just run 3 casts with a fo taking in turns to freeze trap and DM spam to clear ,with the fo to resta and max buff

Exactly :onion-head69:

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On 3/20/2021 at 12:33 PM, ink said:

I feel quests like these end up alienating against other class's , as you would just run 3 casts with a fo taking in turns to freeze trap and DM spam to clear ,with the fo to resta and max buff

On 3/20/2021 at 7:03 PM, SanicTeam said:

then again I'd still love to see missions where any class can participate!

 

Alright, not sure why everyone keeps saying HOD is nothing but DM spam.

It is DM spam because you decide to DM spam.

 

First of all, it's hard to expect Forces to shine anywhere in episode I. And that's because of game balance, not the quest itself.

The only ways I see to make Forces useful would be to either nerf monsters resistances in the quest (not gonna happen) or spam a same type of monsters in every single wave (Wrath of Forest first room).

 

Secondly, Dark Meteor is just too broken, easy-to-use and efficient for most people to use anything else.

I often get to see players even DM spam on a single enemy.

I personally don't know why it was buffed from 330 to 930 ATP here, but it's a fact and made it ridiculously way too powerful.

So yes, in the large majority of quests (excluding Tower), unless you have everything perfectly planned in your team from beginning to end, DM will outclass anything else, if it is not for hell spamming.

 

Now if you decide to try something else, yeah it can take slightly longer, but far from impossible.

Lately I enjoyed playing HODs as Hunter. There is a lot more fun doing that than DM spamming.

And it is not that weak. DM regular hits 5 targets, DM special can hit 8 targets at most, while DF can hit 10 targets if you manage to gather enemy groups.

Lot of alternatives also enjoyable against loads of enemies: Vjaya, Crimson sword, Slicer of vengeance, Arrest/Frozen faust...

Nothing prevents you from playing other classes without still being efficient.

Time your combo attacks in order to stunlock enemies without the need to use Freeze traps.

Focus enemies that are not already handled by another teammate.

 

It is not impossible to play without DM.

I did a solo HOD2 run with one of the weakest classes: Hunewearl.

It took 35% more time than solo Racast DM run to clear (45 minutes instead of 33) but it was definitely an interesting and funny experience.

 

The latest quests added on Ultima: Maximum Attack U series and Sweep-up Operation series made by Matt and Ender.

They are honestly fun to play and don't need DM, but who does actually play them?

Almost no one.

There's just one reason to it: most people want to farm items efficiently and those are not interesting enough to farm if you are hunting anything.

Especially when Happy Hours get turned on, players will just spam a same quest if it's better than another (efficiency speaking), and no much can be done about it.

 

So @Sir Rendlan, as Lemon suggested, do whatever quest you'd enjoy yourself. Because whatever you make there will be people who dislike it and people who like it.

Personally, every single time I made a new quest (IDS HOD MOTV TOD), honestly nothing was bringing me more fun and hype than playing them for a good while, until I eventually get bored of it (like anything else). Because I made them the way I wanted them to be.

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2 hours ago, Kotta said:

 

Sadly to say, as someone who played with arrest needle and Iron Faust before using Dark Meteor, I have to disaggree: Dark Meteor Is the end all be all .(It's probably boring to watch If you're not a DM user, but that Idk...) 

 

Also, I can't think of any way to be as efficient as with a Dark Meteor, u less you're thinking of using a charge partisan (or great fairy sword, maybe..) or an Ultima Reaper. That Is, If you can keep many monsters close enough to hit them at once and dispose of them as fast as possible. (GL paralysing monsters as RAmar or RAmarl, though. Only FS/SQ Is guaranteed, and SQ Is pierce special) 

 

Probably the closest way to be effective, but not enough, Is by getting In the center of a horde and freeze-trapping and using Iron Faust as a RAcast and RAcaseal, which Is safe and effective. 

I don't want to write a whole story book about why this is wrong, but it's wrong. Time and time again Dark Flow / Vjaya and the HU kit have proven to be the top class among nearly every meta of PSO for like 20 years. Dark Meteor is REALLY easy to use and lets you clear things without thinking too much. No one is denying that. There's very few quests (especially 4P) that are actually better on a full RA composition. There's a lot of data to support this claim if you look around on youtube etc. R-78 touched a wee bit on the subject "perfectly planned". Even that is a bit of an exaggeration. A mildly planned HUct run in most cases will dominate RA based runs. Dark Meteor is the end all be all for lazy game play 100%. It's not the end all be all for good / efficient / fast gameplay. 

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37 minutes ago, Saber +7 said:

I don't want to write a whole story book about why this is wrong, but it's wrong. Time and time again Dark Flow / Vjaya and the HU kit have proven to be the top class among nearly every meta of PSO for like 20 years. Dark Meteor is REALLY easy to use and lets you clear things without thinking too much. No one is denying that. There's very few quests (especially 4P) that are actually better on a full RA composition. There's a lot of data to support this claim if you look around on youtube etc. R-78 touched a wee bit on the subject "perfectly planned". Even that is a bit of an exaggeration. A mildly planned HUct run in most cases will dominate RA based runs. Dark Meteor is the end all be all for lazy game play 100%. It's not the end all be all for good / efficient / fast gameplay. 

The biggest mistake this server made was allowing Hunters to have ATA high enough to compete with Rangers, Damage should be mitigated by missing as a hunter especially with such high ATP (which should not matter when using a gun). It's really just poor game design however I still come back for more. In my opinion nerf the amount of hit bonus for Hunters. Have 10 hit only equate to a 5 ATA bonus. Get rid of Smartlink completely lol. Nerf the ATP on DM Then classes will be played correctly. 

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2 hours ago, Saber +7 said:

I don't want to write a whole story book about why this is wrong, but it's wrong. Time and time again Dark Flow / Vjaya and the HU kit have proven to be the top class among nearly every meta of PSO for like 20 years. Dark Meteor is REALLY easy to use and lets you clear things without thinking too much. No one is denying that. There's very few quests (especially 4P) that are actually better on a full RA composition. There's a lot of data to support this claim if you look around on youtube etc. R-78 touched a wee bit on the subject "perfectly planned". Even that is a bit of an exaggeration. A mildly planned HUct run in most cases will dominate RA based runs. Dark Meteor is the end all be all for lazy game play 100%. It's not the end all be all for good / efficient / fast gameplay. 

 

:onion-head49:

 

On 3/5/2021 at 9:45 PM, Saber +7 said:

I don't know what to say about the DM comment. I don't care for that form of game play at all. It is possible to play ranger and still have a variety in the way you handle spawns while remaining efficient. DM is not the end all be all and it's rather boring to play with and watch.  

 

I don't know what you were talking about, but I could swear you were talking about the Ranger In this post, not about how DM Is better than HUcast :rf-03:

 

5 hours ago, Kotta said:

 

Sadly to say, as someone who played with arrest needle and Iron Faust before using Dark Meteor, I have to disaggree: Dark Meteor Is the end all be all .(It's probably boring to watch If you're not a DM user, but that Idk...) 

 

Also, I can't think of any way to be as efficient as with a Dark Meteor, u less you're thinking of using a charge partisan (or great fairy sword, maybe..) or an Ultima Reaper. That Is, If you can keep many monsters close enough to hit them at once and dispose of them as fast as possible. (GL paralysing monsters as RAmar or RAmarl, though. Only FS/SQ Is guaranteed, and SQ Is pierce special) 

 

Probably the closest way to be effective, but not enough, Is by getting In the center of a horde and freeze-trapping and using Iron Faust as a RAcast and RAcaseal, which Is safe and effective. 

 

{If only there were a weapon with DM special's long lingering effects. Probably what @Emewn wished for with the Yasminkov shot-type weapon a while back :onion-head65:

 

So I was talking about Ranger-usable weapons and Rangers, only :D [not DF :onion-head28::onion-head09::onion-head79:]

 

And just In case, I've seen videos of HUcast runs. Of course HUcast Is the end game end all, Indeed. [Also way harder with the positionings and all. I think I've seen one uploaded by Serverus and a team In a quest where they uploaded a record :D ]

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1 hour ago, C01D1 said:

The biggest mistake this server made was allowing Hunters to have ATA high enough to compete with Rangers, Damage should be mitigated by missing as a hunter especially with such high ATP (which should not matter when using a gun). It's really just poor game design however I still come back for more. In my opinion nerf the amount of hit bonus for Hunters. Have 10 hit only equate to a 5 ATA bonus. Get rid of Smartlink completely lol. Nerf the ATP on DM Then classes will be played correctly. 

It's not "this server" it's all of PSO from V2 forward. Even on GC where Smartlink isn't there he's the meta. It's really quite a hard thing to escape.

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1 hour ago, Saber +7 said:

It's not "this server" it's all of PSO from V2 forward. Even on GC where Smartlink isn't there he's the meta. It's really quite a hard thing to escape.

That's why I am stating let's make things better by creating real differences between classes. Toss Smartlink out nerf hunter ATA and buff FO techs across the board. Nerf the ATP on Rangers as well. Ultima could easily improve upon the base game as it was and remains unbalanced. Imagine your build and class really mattering lol. 

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