I got a little frustrated last night questing in the Waterworks. I came to the conclusion that it's a beautiful area of Moria but the quests kinda suck. Well, a few of the quests suck, most notably when you have to go over to the west side of the area. Here you'll find mobs so thick they frequenly stand "in" each other (there being no colision detection they just cohabit 3D space). When it comes to the salamander mobs, this is particularly annoying - and dangerous. These mobs hit hard and their fire DOTs make fighting more than one at a time hard as a solo player. And yes, these quests are rated as solo.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the quests should be easy. Indeed I completed a rather challenging solo quest on the other side of the Waterworks and felt quite satisfied with myself afterwords. But there comes a point where a quest is either mislabeled (a few of those out there) or the design of the quest area is faulty. In the case of the neck-deep mobs, I'd say we're working with the latter here. If you have mobs overlapping each other physically, this is got to be a bug. Add in a rather rapid respawn time and you'll be constantly in combat as you rotate through the same spawns over and over again. This is not sustainable nor survivable. Even when you're two or three levels above the mobs (which I was).
What does this sort of thing do to the player? Well, I wanted to log. Frustration is not having fun and if I'm not having fun in a game, why play? Certainly I'm somewhat masochistic in my quest to complete every quest in the game, but there's a level of fun in that for me. Where the fun stops is when design flaws come into play. For some reason I have a fairly low tolerance for this sort of thing. I think I'm justified in all honesty. The very nature of a game is fun and anything not fun doesn't belong in the game. There's no reason I should continue to play a game that is not fun.
Okay, I'll turn off the rant now. I'm still a huge fan of LOTRO. This should be evidenced that I fought against my instincts to log and instead did another round of quests after (finally and with the help of a kinmate and a random person) completing the frustrating ones. I actually think I would have logged if this second set of quests sent me right back into the fray of mob city, but instead they went else where - including the properly challenging quest I mentioned above.
My kinmates agreed on the insanity of that particularly area and the general suck of the Waterworks quests. And on the nastiness of the salamanders. I told them at the end of my maddening adventure that knowing me, I'll torture myself and still try and get these quests done. Thinking about that today, after some sleep and perspective, I still think I will. But maybe after I gain a few levels and make it somewhat easier on myself.
By the way, three levels to 60... I have two second age emblems I'm leveling to see which one comes out better... I got a new halberd (still third age) finally to replace the one I got from Volume 2 Book 1... and I'm two pieces away from a complete level 60 Captain's armor set (all bought off the AH).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the quests should be easy. Indeed I completed a rather challenging solo quest on the other side of the Waterworks and felt quite satisfied with myself afterwords. But there comes a point where a quest is either mislabeled (a few of those out there) or the design of the quest area is faulty. In the case of the neck-deep mobs, I'd say we're working with the latter here. If you have mobs overlapping each other physically, this is got to be a bug. Add in a rather rapid respawn time and you'll be constantly in combat as you rotate through the same spawns over and over again. This is not sustainable nor survivable. Even when you're two or three levels above the mobs (which I was).
What does this sort of thing do to the player? Well, I wanted to log. Frustration is not having fun and if I'm not having fun in a game, why play? Certainly I'm somewhat masochistic in my quest to complete every quest in the game, but there's a level of fun in that for me. Where the fun stops is when design flaws come into play. For some reason I have a fairly low tolerance for this sort of thing. I think I'm justified in all honesty. The very nature of a game is fun and anything not fun doesn't belong in the game. There's no reason I should continue to play a game that is not fun.
Okay, I'll turn off the rant now. I'm still a huge fan of LOTRO. This should be evidenced that I fought against my instincts to log and instead did another round of quests after (finally and with the help of a kinmate and a random person) completing the frustrating ones. I actually think I would have logged if this second set of quests sent me right back into the fray of mob city, but instead they went else where - including the properly challenging quest I mentioned above.
My kinmates agreed on the insanity of that particularly area and the general suck of the Waterworks quests. And on the nastiness of the salamanders. I told them at the end of my maddening adventure that knowing me, I'll torture myself and still try and get these quests done. Thinking about that today, after some sleep and perspective, I still think I will. But maybe after I gain a few levels and make it somewhat easier on myself.
By the way, three levels to 60... I have two second age emblems I'm leveling to see which one comes out better... I got a new halberd (still third age) finally to replace the one I got from Volume 2 Book 1... and I'm two pieces away from a complete level 60 Captain's armor set (all bought off the AH).
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