Pathfinder: Lamatar

[Part of the Party Time journal]  

The first two Kreeg guards at their cavernous mountain top fortress manage to KO Ezren, but are put down soon after by the rest of the team so for the next two guards who also have a hill giant assisting them, Ezren doesn't hesitate to hit them with ice storm which really messes them up. In the nearby mining and forge chamber with a dozne more ogres, Ezren and Kyra annihilate almost all of them with fireballs while Razmus helps(?) my throwing boulders but missing each time!

The next chamber has a trio of hags that manage to force cage Kyra and Ezren while also blocking Razmus and Shay, but are taken down by Valeros, Kyra's summoned bear, and Merisiel's ultra deadly backstabbing. Then the team finally comes across the remains of Black Arrow Captain Lamatar who is now a frost wight and absolutely the scariest foe they have faced so far. He's very fast, shoots three times and every time he hits drains a level! WTF!? As the team is only level 9 and reaching level 0 is death, they throw everything they have against this guy and finally succeed but only end with Ezren and Shay not being level drained.

Low on spells the team then rests at the entrance of the fortress just long enough to get spells back and heal but not recover lost levels before a returning patrol of ogres interrupts them, though Stolas gives early warning for the heroes to strike first. Ezren opens with cloud kill which basically ends the majority of the enemies, and once that's wrapped up the crew decide to press on to a huge throne room with two giants: a throne sitting necromancer and his guard.

Merisiel's giant-slaying bow and Razmus' hammer efficiently deal with the nameless guard while the necromancer hits the team with fireballs and magic missiles. Comedically Razmus finally lands a hit with a thrown boulder but the necromancer catches it and throws it back, smacking him in the face! Ultimately the bad guy, who was more of an HP sponge rather than a threat like Lamatar, is slain.

A note in his treasure pile suggests he too answered to someone else, but first the team return Lamatar's finger (as requested) to the undead nymph who revives him, restores everyone's missing levels, then fades away to the spirit realm making the forest a normal one again. Lamatar is unable to get over his failure and instead of returning to Fort Rannick decides to become the new protector of these woods.

Poor Design: Competitive PvE

[Added to my MMO Design Folder.]

When 100 people need to kill 10 rats from a pool for 10 slowly respawning rats, there's a lot of standing around to do.

This has been a problem in MMOs since forever (it feels like it anyway), so I am surprised that developers still haven't learned their lesson to avoid making these kinds of quests. In Neverwinter Online's Dwarven Valley there are two daily quests that easily sample Competitve vs Cooperative PvE.

Some days you have to kill five Deathlock Wights in a specific area who are few in number (I've only ever found 4, one of which is far isolated and often bugged), come with a group of other tough undead and take around 5 minutes to respawn. It only counts for you (and your party) if you manage to take off around 50% of its health. As you can imagine there's a fair bit of competition to find and kill these ahead of the other players who have the same quest that day. Often it means camping around one of the cairns they spawn at with your strongest attack at the ready, with the x number of strangers around you who are doing the same - all of you hoping to out DPS the other to get one step closer to finishing this stupidly designed task.

The other quest involves people blessing the exact same cairns that those wights spawn at. However since the objective is static and freely available to all who pass by, its a very different experience on those days as everyone welcomes everyone else being there to work together in clearing the scum to reach the objectives faster. Indeed, on these days you would actually be actively looking for other roaming people to join up with instead of trying to out race and out perform them. Obviously I prefer this quest type over the other one as there is no *screwing over* being done or being had while doing so.

What about you? Do you feel the same? Or maybe you have a "good" example of competitive PvE?