Girth's Ep2 Lost quests.

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May I ask what the way forward here is then? Will Girth and I be allowed to take some of the criticism and work with it to create version of the quests that is deemed acceptable while allowing some level of creative license (sinows rising instead of falling as an example) in these quests?
 
I think that's a good goal. I'd rather everybody work together and, honestly, for future quests, you two may want to consider a QA team that exists people outside your inner circle. I don't mean that to be rude, but like, you know, a different set of eyes? And to seriously accept the criticism without a "I disagree" or "It's perfect". Really actually listen to what people say.

Also, to the people who had complaints but did not bring it up to Girth because they were scared of his response or didn't bother (you know who you are), you gotta speak up.
 
To be fair, Girth seems to have fallen into the trap that most new developers, including myself, do: when given the power to create new content, our first instinct is to do something much more difficult than any Sega quest in order to make our own content stand out and actually give players a challenge; unfortunately, it's extremely easy to underestimate how difficult, long, or just plain annoying a quest is going to be when you do all of your testing on Normal to save time. I've had a decade to temper my development style, but for people who are just starting to use Qedit, they don't have the benefit of such perspective.

As far as moving forward is concerned, administrators and developers have to collaborate to determine whether a particular quest is fit for a particular server. Perhaps Girth and Yata would be willing to address some of the concerns, but at some point you have to accept that quests are in at least some capacity works of art, and if you don't agree with an artist's interpretation of how an area should be played, then your only options are to either accept that other people might enjoy playing it, even if you don't, or to not use it at all. Hopefully there is middle ground to be found between Matt's and Girth's positions.
 
Sodaboy said:
I think that's a good goal. I'd rather everybody work together and, honestly, for future quests, you two may want to consider a QA team that exists people outside your inner circle. I don't mean that to be rude, but like, you know, a different set of eyes? And to seriously accept the criticism without a "I disagree" or "It's perfect". Really actually listen to what people say.

Also, to the people who had complaints but did not bring it up to Girth because they were scared of his response or didn't bother (you know who you are), you gotta speak up.
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I can agree with this. I know very well how belligerent Girth can be and I will try my best to temper some of the things he insists on. I'll start up a thread for those people who didn't voice concerns to give their input.
 
As I said in the PM, theres 2 ways to look at this situation.

With ego:
1. Facts are facts. I have more experience with this game than anyone on this server. Theres probably less than 10 people on the planet with more experience than me with this game and what is considered balanced. If I had the knowledge I would've made a server like this years ago instead of putting up with dumb people like Lee. After 16 years, its hard to not want sega like quests with at least 30% more enemies.

Without Ego:
1. I simply want creative control over my quests. I made ep2 losts quests for the same reason that sega made ep1 losts: to fill enemy gaps.
2. We have no seabed quests (pw3 is a joke). Theres no enemy gaps filled for morfos/depths/zeles and sorta biters. Thats what this quest was supposed to accomplish. Yes these are Mid-tier to Heavy -tier enemies but they are spread out over the ENTIRE seabed. 450+ enemies aint shit for an hour long quest if you can kill 600+ in less than 30 mins in a MA4C
3. If you're gonna be a leader, don't make decisions that literally hold up a sign saying "i'm taking away the time spent on this quest"


I come off aggressive i'll admit but i'm far from closed minded and i'm willing to reach compromises. But as i'm playing through seabed now...all I see is pointless changes because you didn't like where X enemy was sitting.

Anyways, if you want my changes to seabed and tower, then i'll make them and give you the end result. But the fact of the matter is, i'd rather none of them be up at all if i'm gonna be stagnated instead of consulted.
 
I'm going to put Girth's unedited quests back up effective almost immediately, as soon as I can log in and do it. I would appreciate it if those of you who had issues, speak to Girth about them and also, for Girth to not dismiss them.

Girth, we know you've played the game for many years, but just because you have done that, doesn't make your opinion on how a quest should be any less valid than anyone who has a differing one.
 
I'll never belittle someones opinion because I have more experience in something. Zynetic is a very strong and experienced player himself. Truth is we just rarely agree. I simply thrive on being a leader with things that I'm passionate about so I can see why its easy for me to come off aggressive/ a closed minded prick.
 
Alright, the original quests have been put back up. New loads of the quest will have them as the author intended.
 
Sodaboy said:
I'd rather everybody work together and, honestly, for future quests, you two may want to consider a QA team that exists people outside your inner circle.
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For what it's worth (and Girth can confirm this) I called Heart Breaker a sloppy spam quest to his face when I tested it before release. I still didn't like it on release. I even went into Chaos Calibur the first time expecting the same messiness and was pleasantly surprised. I would consider myself part of his "inner circle" but I'm not going to praise my friends when I think they did something wrong. It shows a blatant lack of integrity for myself and respect for them.

Even so, ganking both quests without talking to the quest giver is probably the most unprofessional thing I've ever seen Matt do. And believe me; I otherwise have a lot of respect for him as a person, a player, and as someone who has the power to change things.

I think the problem here is less about him going to people with different opinions and more of him just blocking out feedback and others refusing to give him feedback. On the latter, this isn't the first time I've seen or heard of the community here complaining about an issue in partial privacy and expecting their voices to be heard. As Sodaboy said, you really need to speak up if something is bothering you.
 
The reasoning that the quests are (were?) inaccessible to non-androids is invalid. Should we modify PW4 for the same reason? That's a vanilla quest and it's damn hard without traps.

Bottom line: It's nobody's fault that Sega can't balance their games right and made androids / traps way better than their alternatives. Almost everyone knows the class tiers by this point. Furthermore, newer players have plenty of options for leveling and hunting gear.

I didn't see any rules stating that new quests need to be accessible to all playstyles and classes. Chaos Calibur is clearly intended for advanced players and coordinated parties, and I like that. It's rewarding to clear something difficult.

Edit: I now realize that the dust has prettymuch settled on this, so I guess it doesn't matter. Nothing like showing up late to the party .-.
 
Ade said:
Edit: I now realize that the dust has prettymuch settled on this, so I guess it doesn't matter. Nothing like showing up late to the party .-.
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Still got some left over cake if you wanna partake. ;)
 
I'm gonna put this here:

The quests need to be accessible to everyone because they're a continuation of SEGA's Lost quests, so they need to be similar just like the original 3 Lost E2 quests. If you ever want to see them as part of the Hunters Boost Road, they need to be completable by the majority of players, not the minority who have levels and gear because you want to make them "difficult".

PW4 is an easy quest, it's not exactly hard by any means and can be solo'd by fleshies without an issue.

The reason I've never bothered "attacking" other quests, so to speak, is because they're their own thing that can just be ignored and are not really comparing themselves to anything else, but Lost Seabed and Tower were an unnecessary spike in difficulty compared to the other 7 quests.

Lastly, difficulty does not equal fun.
 
PW4 was super hard when it first came out in 2004 or whenever it did, and everyone got clobbered at first. Then we memorized it and got better. It was NOT easy when it first came out.

Forest to LHS and Caves to LIS have a similar difficulty jump, but there's a larger gap between Mines and Lost Soul Blade. When Sega finally released a Ruins "Lost" quest, it was a large jump, as well (and so was Ives' quest).

When Ep. 2 starts, it scales back a bit, but by the time CCA, Seabed, and Tower are reached, new levels of difficulty emerge, which is consistent with how the base game plays out.

The difficulty spike is not unnecessary and is should be expected by someone who recognizes the underlying patterns. I hate to L2P this one, but I'm going to.
 
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Matt said:
PW4 is an easy quest, it's not exactly hard by any means and can be solo'd by fleshies without an issue.
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Easy? My ass. PW4 is not an easy quest. It is a punishing quest - it is easy to go through it if - and ONLY if - your entire party knows what they're doing, but if you make a single mistake everything will start going straight to hell. You can't say that something is unfit for the majority of players when toning down a Seabed quest and then turn around calling what is widely known as the most difficult vanilla quest in the game an "easy" quest. That is a massive misjudgement in player skill assessment - not everybody here is at an extremely high

The only solo PW4 run I have ever seen was Zack's RAmar run of ultimate at level 80 in single-player mode that he never even bothered to finish uploading. If you'd like to contribute one, feel free, but if it involves using fully sphered gear with high hit% then that is far from regularly accessible to the average person, especially considering just how limited PDs are when they aren't able to be duped in mass quantities.

I suppose you could argue sandbox mode would make anything accessible, but that's not on the table for people who like to improve their gear through the hunt to watch their character progress.
 
If you find that PW4 is not an easy quest, I wonder what you would think about Lost Heart Breaker... It surely requires knowledges if you want to solo it, but with a full party including a decent Fo it's actually easy. Blessing is allowing players to damage ennemies without caring about control at all and it lasts 30 seconds. Also I wouldn't call it the hardest quest on vanilla PSOBB, some are much more challenging.
 
Care to give any examples, or are you going to go the tried and true Phantasy Star community method of trying to prove somebody wrong with no context instead of trying to provide useful information?

PW4 only seems easy to us because we've gone through the motions countless times. The moment I heard Heart Breaker was made in an effort to be harder than PW4 I already knew it was going to be far out of my realm of interest because my definition of fun doesn't fall within something you'd see in a ROM hack.
 
Agastya said:
Care to give any examples
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Sure, MA4Ce2 and ROW are easily harder since you won't see many times more than 3 or 4 ennemies per wave in PW4. It makes it easy to control even with poor knowledge.
 
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Matt said:
but Lost Seabed and Tower were an unnecessary spike in difficulty compared to the other 7 quests.
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Aren't Seabeds and Tower meant to be more difficult than the earlier Episode 2 areas? It seems to me like you're continuing to assert expertise regarding the intentions of Sega. I shouldn't have to tell you this, but you are as ignorant to whatever Sega intended to do with the Lost quests as the rest of us.

Whether fleshies can solo a quest or not is irrelevant and not a reason to take it upon yourself to modify the quests of others. Even though Girth occupies the lowest tier of my ranking of human worth, you shouldn't modify quests without consulting the author.

Matt said:
Lastly, difficulty does not equal fun.
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You do not get to dictate what is fun for the entire player-base. Get over yourself.
 
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