A nice surprise

[shiznitz]

On Friday, I gathered 4 others (all 20 and me 19) to explore Shattered Vale since I had completed the access quest a few levels before but never had a group to go check it out. I see it is the zone used for the bezerker/guardian final fights and the first gnolls we saw were grey (level 13) . That did not bode well. Further in, there were some blues so we started killing them. So, we start getting pretty bored and are about to bail when POP! a level 19^^ giant appears with about a dozen blue gnolls and slaughters us all. We would have gone back but the zone has a 4 hour timer on it.

Just a nice EQ2 surprise. The game doesn't have enough of them.

[HaemishM]

Prease to tell me, what the fuck is a 4 hour zone timer? Is that a timer of 4 hours before you can go back there if you die? If so, WTF? If not, ignore that last WTF.

[naum]

Zone timers, XP debt, ^^mobs, EQ2 taking the genre to a whole new level... ...I take the zero...

[Murgos]

4 hour timer means, I think, that everything starts repopulating after 4 hours.  So they would have had to start clearing again from the beginning.  I.e. another 4 hour time investment to get the giant thingie to spawn.

[Sobelius]

Sorry -- it's of the kind that says "you can't come in again until 4 real-world hours have passed."

-- these are few and far between
-- not sure why they're needed for instanced zones; I think they're designed to add pressure to your experience, as in "don't die because you'll have to wait to get back in"
-- work around is to make sure at least one group members stays alive in the zone


It's definitely completely unnecessary. Adds nothing to the game but a headache and is an annoyance.

[shiznitz]

Yes, I do not see the purpose of the timers either other than to give a false sense of "doing" a dungeon in one shot.  I guess going back in immediately and defeating the encounter with what you learned the first time is only ok if you have to wait X hours first. If the devs don't have the balls to make some zones 1 attempt only per character, then don't try and fudge it with a stupid timer.

However, shard retrieval is not impacted. Clicking on the entrance to the zone gives your shard back.

It's funny. The reaction only shows how easily I have accepted some of EQ2's inane design decisions. We tried to go back in, saw the timer and said "fuck it, let's try Firemyst Gully?" Ironically, FMG has an 8 hour timer, but we managed to kill the boss. Do not enter a timer zone without a monk (FD is in EQ2, put purely as a survival skill) and make sure the monk has a feather (allows anyone to rez a group priest, is summoned by any priest and no rent.) Obviously our monk got slaughtered before he could FD.

[shiznitz]

4 hour timer means, I think, that everything starts repopulating after 4 hours.  So they would have had to start clearing again from the beginning.  I.e. another 4 hour time investment to get the giant thingie to spawn.

Actually, the timer just prevents you from going back in. The zone will be fully re-spawned after the timer expires.

[kaid]

It actually is kinda a fun event. I am just not sure how doable it is in the level range it is intended for.  The other problem is due to its targeted level range of 16 to 19 or so usually unless your group turns off xp gain by the time you figure out how to beat it the event is grey to you.


That said the first time when the tank turned around saw a giant charging said oh shit and proceded to get punted into a wall was pretty classic.


kaid

[shiznitz]

It really is stupid how basically the whole zone was grey/blue - not a challenge in any way - and then this uber mob pops out of fucking nowhere. Granted we only had 4 people, but 6 level 17-18s would have been seriously owned.

[Glazius]

It really is stupid how basically the whole zone was grey/blue - not a challenge in any way - and then this uber mob pops out of fucking nowhere. Granted we only had 4 people, but 6 level 17-18s would have been seriously owned.

So what was "nice" about this surprise again, given that it locked you out of a zone for several hours, came out of absolutely nowhere, and wouldn't have presented a survivable challenge to a group of any size it wasn't grey to?

I'm looking, but I can't see it.

--GF

[shiznitz]

Point taken. I like "ohshit!" moments maybe? The more I write about it the less I care about going back for another crack at a food pellet - but I probably will anyway because what else am I going to do in EQ2? Kill 20 green skeletons to get some gloves?

Thinking about these games is not conducive to remaining a customer.

[HaemishM]

Sorry -- it's of the kind that says "you can't come in again until 4 real-world hours have passed."

I am completely and utterly speechless at the absolute idiocy of this mechanic. I cannot even begin to imagine what the fuck anyone was thinking when they came up with this, but I can damn sure bet "Does this make the game more fun?" wasn't on the list of thoughts.

[Sky]

Hammstein, nothing out of EQ2's dev team surprises me anymore. They are like that one asshole DM that everyone hated because he'd throw every super difficult mob from the monster manual into a dungeon and then if you beat it, asmodeus would pop up and throw your character sheet into the fireplace (that actually happened to me once).

Screw solo players, nickle and dime your services, punish friendly gameplay (driveby heals, buffs), the list does go on. I mean, when even groups are doing grey dungeons, doesn't that set off some whistles somewhere?

The spawning high mob at the end of the low dungeon? Doesn't surprise me at all after exploring Luclin and finding that one dungeon with mobs that only spawn once you're in aggro range. That's the closest I've ever seen to the old AD&D joke we had: wandering damage tables.

When I talk of fun being the alpha and the omega, Everquest is not in the discussion, and apparently never will be, since EQ2 is so much worse than EQ was, despite claiming it was the opposite. Hope you enjoyed your box sale, SOE, hope it was worth all future revenue for your asshole company.

Oops I rambled.

[Righ]

Just a nice EQ2 surprise. The game doesn't have enough of them.

I'll echo everybody else when I say that to me, this sounds entirely craptacular. If this gives EQ2 players their jollies, balanced gameplay is probably considered griefing.

[Sobelius]

Though I play EQ2 and enjoy a number of things about it, there are plenty of other things I don't like. The instanced zone timers are on the don't like list.

Reading back to the start of the thread, though, the "nice surprise" was not the zone timer, it was the high level encounter that came as a surprise after his group had almost gotten bored. It was the equivalent, if I read into it correctly, of a DM lulling your group into a false sense of security then throwing an "ohshit!" encounter at the group to wake folks up a little.

It's just too bad the nice surprise was followed up with a less-than-nice surprise -- namely, that the group couldn't get back into the zone to try again right away because the big nasty wiped them...kinda like the DM saying: "Well, you found the big bad monster, but now you have to wait until next week's play session to have another crack at him."

[Samwise]

the big nasty wiped them...kinda like the DM saying: "Well, you found the big bad monster, but now you have to wait until next week's play session to have another crack at him."

Actually, that's pretty accurate, because in all the PnP games I've played and DMed, characters don't respawn when they die.  If the entire party were to be slaughtered, we'd be taking a break to roll up new characters.

Mind you, I've never played a PnP game where any encounter was so grossly unbalanced that the entire party got killed before they could run to safety and rethink their strategy.

[Sobelius]

Mind you, I've never played a PnP game where any encounter was so grossly unbalanced that the entire party got killed before they could run to safety and rethink their strategy.

Then you've been lucky to play with wise DMs.

I wonder how many DMs have toyed with the idea of zone lines? ;)

I once thought about making respawn points part of my PnP world, only because my players have gotten so hooked on MMORPG no-perma-death character dynamics...could not make it work in a way that made sense, so I simply capped the XP penalty for death/rez and did away with death equaling a level drain.