And those were some big trolls!!!

>>And those were some big trolls!!!

Makes me wonder if the trolls are genned based on the level of everyone in the quest, or if they gen at any level whatsoever... If it's the latter then this is much more than a minor annoyance.

I read my log, one was swinging 839

So basically go on this quest with like level people, like was originally suggested.

Anytime a critter gens to the level of players, always have the players int he same level range.

<<<Unfortunately, that is largely out of our hands with the public runs. In my single run, I signed up for the one that best matched my schedule. I was lucky and got an awesome group. But it would've been nearly impossible to pick a group based upon level. Some people's levels don't even show up on the site for some reason.

~ Heathyr and friends>>>

Basically, you have to input your level, most people don't bother. I'm just saying, anytime there is any type of combat that scales in a quest. It sucks to be the 20 something in a group of capped players.

Hmm.. interesting.

It was great fun up until the trolls. I really enjoyed it, until they started chewing on me.
Did they spawn because of a bug that we players on the run had no control over? We did pay for a fair shot at solving the puzzle, if a non-player generated bug death occurs, completely stopping all progress, halting access to the castle to a crawl, something should be done. Could anything have been done given the way this event is designed? Is it too late to figure up something for the folks that dealt with the troll bug?

Put me back in coach!

The trolls are intended. There was messaging the first time they showed up to tell you why. These are the same trolls from the Landing invasions a ways back.

If something seems excessively frustrating, there's probably a way around it that no one has found. If you go off an existing walk through, you only know what they guessed, right or wrong.

~Vanah

>>The trolls are intended. There was messaging the first time they showed up to tell you why. These are the same trolls from the Landing invasions a ways back.

I'm sorry Vanah, but whilst I understand the trolls were intended, it's nigh on impossible to catch any clues that might have been in their first spawn messaging given the resultant screen scroll. I tried to read everything I could during the quest but I'm afraid I wasn't prepared to scroll back on the off-chance I missed something in case I missed something else.

>>If something seems excessively frustrating, there's probably a way around it that no one has found. If you go off an existing walk through, you only know what they guessed, right or wrong.

I'm a little offended that you assumed I was following an existing walk through. I LOVE puzzles and was determined to figure things out for myself so I spent a lot of time wandering the outskirts of the castle trying to find something, anything that would get us back inside and reunited with the group.

All that aside, I had a blast and just wanted to add my voice to that of the OP who thought the supertrolls were a little too "super" given that they genned on the basis of there being one or two capped players in the group; harsh for the rest of the group!

Also, I actually designed a Castle Quest a few years ago for another online game which had similar puzzles in it, we seem to think the same way Vanah ;)


~*~ She conquers, who endures ~*~

I found a way around dealing with the trolls, but that does not mean for a second that I thought they were even remotely fun. Running BSC without a cleric and without figuring out one of the secret workarounds ends up being a very costly event. I think I decayed 3, maybe 4 times throughout the 3 hour quest. Which is something else that just stinks, considering we have next to no control over the group make up. There should be an auto respawn ability (like Droughtman's) that would allow players to continue on without decaying.

Puzzles are fun, communicating and working together is fun... tossing capped trolls at people is notsomuch fun.

Most definitely the decay spots should be updated. Progress is the idea, not spending 45 minutes stuck trying to get back in, etc. Not fun nor fair. Death mechanics should also be updated for the quest a la Droughtmans so there's no penalty to get back into the fray in my opinion. :)

Jim/Tk

>A big reason the decay/depart drop spot is in the beginning is due to the fact that groups are intended to deal with the death, and not just decay/depart. Obviously, with random groups, it doesn't work out very well when no one brings the tools to raise someone.

how about when you have 2 GMs there, and can't cast at the trolls to even try to rescue your companions?

>>And when said trolls are so overpowered they've wiped out all the clerics in the party who have no choice but to depart.

~*~ She conquers, who endures ~*~


We were just unlucky and the quest rolled a open ended roll resulting in a roll of 5000 to determine the trolls level range. Normally they likely wouldn't swing at 873.. they would only swing at 843.

Using the bug that was discovered during BSQ that had absolutely nothing to do with BSQ in the argument isn't going to work.

---

~Wyrom, SGM
Quests
Platinum
Promotions

>>>Using the bug that was discovered during BSQ that had absolutely nothing to do with BSQ in the argument isn't going to work.

---

~Wyrom, SGM
Quests
Platinum
Promotions


True, the trolls being immune to our casts sucked but wasn't due to the quest itself. Tho it's likely we would have been wiped by them anyway, but not certain.

Combat in the quest is fine, I just think it's the fact that the trolls can spawn at what seems like level 160+ that seems to cause problems. If there is 1 capped player, and the quest auto spawns to highest level, well.. that can basically ruin it for everyone else.

Personally, what I think would be awesome, but maybe extremely hard to code, is an average level system. 2 capped players, and 8 people around level 50.. the capped players levels are adjusted for the quest to say 60. The level 50's are buffed slightly to 60. Then mobs could be spawned at the adjusted rate, and everyone would have a chance. No worrying that OMG, my level 12 guy can't go on this quest cause he is going to certainly die.

The ability to extend time was one of the things that broke along with the script resets once that Academy Quest run happened. Having a lot of the quest system functions bork halfway through the live runs was very unfortunate for both the smoothness of the runs and my sanity. I wish it had happened before this last set of tickets went on sale. The problem with automated runs is that they don't like to be manhandled.

At the time of your incident, we didn't know the cause of the issue. Nothing similar had happened before, despite several similar quest progressions. When the issue happened, I took inventory of where you guys were, how you guys got there, what choices the players made, and how much you had left to go; compared it to the previous runs' progression; and decided that the risk of me messing with the time and having none of you be able to collect a prize or return to your starting point for no net gain was not a valid option, nor was restarting the quest with 30 minutes left to go with a significant combat bug that you would likely run into again if you didn't figure out the shortcuts. By that point, the other GM, someone with no connection to the quest or knowledge of these issues, had already popped down to talk to you. I wanted to get the OOC GM presence out of the quest so you guys could continue as quickly as possible. It did result in a lot of confusion. I'm sorry. I regret the incident, and I regret that I was unable to restore your group to the point you requested. The last thing I wanted was people to feel that honestly, they could think of better things to do.

I will do my best to make sure this does not happen again in the future.

~Vanah

Just a suggestion but would it be possible to have different levels for the Castle quests? By that I mean a group could sign up for either Easy, Medium, Hard or Extreme levels of the same quest since it is auto run. Easy could be no trolls and harder puzzles, all the way to Extreme where you do run the risk of dying. There are few things more annoying then dying and missing out on solving the rest of the Quest.

Lady Rek