Tangleroot Redundancy

[Faent]

I guess wash, rinse, repeat is the name of the game at times.

There's been an awful lot of recycling old content recently. The Chronoscope is one nice example. All they had to do was recycle some old graphical content, paint some of it a bit differently, link it all up and and toss in different mobs. Epic content is, of course, just another way of recycling old content. It's lazy game design, but apparently it's good for business. The first time I popped into Chronoscope and saw the Prison of the Planes entrance area recycled and painted a bit differently, I wanted to vomit. Actually, I still want to vomit. That was beyond lame.

[Impaqt]

Here is how Tangleroot came to be...

Boss: "Okay folks, here is the plan... we realized that these players will buy just about anything, so we are just going to make a chain that involves running two dungeons over and over again."

Employee: "Boss, why would players purchase this pack if it is going to be so low quality?"

Boss: "Let's throw some nice named items into the end reward list, that will draw them in!"

Employee: "I guess... how will our loyal customers ever forgive us though?"

Boss: "If they are willing to run up and down dozens of flights of stairs for an Archbishop only to discover that he is evil, and receive a lousy end reward as well, then they would be willing to do this for a great end reward."

"Packs" didnt exist when tangleroot was released.

[Esserbe]

There's been an awful lot of recycling old content recently. The Chronoscope is one nice example. All they had to do was recycle some old graphical content, paint some of it a bit differently, link it all up and and toss in different mobs. Epic content is, of course, just another way of recycling old content. It's lazy game design, but apparently it's good for business. The first time I popped into Chronoscope and saw the Prison of the Planes entrance area recycled and painted a bit differently, I wanted to vomit. Actually, I still want to vomit. That was beyond lame.

It's about art assets and art budget. The Prison of the Planes is a Giant building, and the Chronoscope is also a Giant building. I don't think that's serious enough to make me feel ill, and I don't feel that was lazy asset re-use instead of logical asset re-use.

[MRMechMan]

It's realistic, if nothing else. Same map, but different objectives generally.

And pretty nice xp.

Plus a very handy DW clickie.

All in all, a decent pack to get.

[Faent]

It's about art assets and art budget.

Yep. They need a better art budget so they don't have to keep recycling old textures and models. Let's hope the Forgotten Realms isn't a repainted Gianthold.

[Flavilandile]

To me it dosent seem like the Tangleroot quests were really meant to be run one after another. Granted, that is the easiest way, especially with a PUG.

This.
Tangleroot was meant to be run in between other quests. The first quest is LVL 3, the last one is LVL 7.

Things to remember : Tangleroot was in the original release of DDO, 6 years ago.

At that Time :
- Free To Play didn't exist, only what is now called VIP.
- Level Cap was 10.

At that time Quests were :
- What is now Khortos Quests, they were in what is now Inspired Quarter.
- Harbour, Marketplace, the Houses, Catacombs, Deleras, Tangleroot, Threnal, Sorrowdusk, 3 Barrel Cove, Vault of Night.

There was no explorer area, quest chains in market and the houses didn't exist ( no sentinel, no phiarlan carnival, no market chain ).

You also had to do Waterworks to reach the Market from the Harbour ( or bribe the guard )...
( and you had to either go through sewers or do all the lower harbour quests to be able to enter the rest of the harbour )

So once out of the harbour you did the quests around the Nail, then you went to Catacombs to do the first parts, then you went to Tangleroot to do the first part, then you went to STK, then you graduated to the depth in house Deneith, went back to Catacomb and Tangleroot, and so on.

[learst]

Several of the original / ancient quest chains are like that. Three-Barrel Cove is probably the worst offender; it makes you run through most of the quests twice with almost no changes.

Threnal is pretty guilty too, but less mind-numbing than 3BC.

I agree with the OP, I find TR quite boring and mind-numbing.

I highly disagree on 3BC though. For one thing it is not a chain. Secondly, there is only 1 dungeon that you go through twice - The fire caves.

I also disagree on those who mentioned Catacombs. Again, it is only 1 dungeon that gets repeated. This pales in comparison to TR and Threnal.

[EllisDee37]

I highly disagree on 3BC though. For one thing it is not a chain. Secondly, there is only 1 dungeon that you go through twice - The fire caves.

Garl's Tomb is also a two-parter, but your point stands.

[Jay203]

Gotta agree that Catacombs is alot alike as well, not nearly as bad as Tangleroot but bad.

I had to run this for the Rune Arm and also the House P favor. Knowing that 3BC is as bad I'm not sure it will be worth it.

le sigh

imo Scoundrel's Run and Prove Your Worth are two quests everyone should run at some point in their ddo game "life"

[Razcar]

Several of the chain quests from game launch are like that. Grey Moon, Cult of Six, Threnal, Tangleroot. Maybe the designers were short on time before launch and just had to get content out. Having lots of quests put into the same dangeon is of course a huge development time saver.

The first time I popped into Chronoscope and saw the Prison of the Planes entrance area recycled and painted a bit differently, I wanted to vomit. Actually, I still want to vomit. That was beyond lame.

You see this all the time in DDO. Crystal Cove is the old training area Smuggler's Rest from before they made Korthos. The Korthos quest (except a few) are old Harbor quest from where the Inspired Quarter is now. Invasion! uses the Waterworks map. The circus tent in Big Top is the old Marketplace tent, etc.

You see it on monsters too - they change the skin of an existing mob and call it a new one. For exampel the Red Fens Vine Stalker who is a dressed up troll. Recycling is cheap.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Things to remember : Tangleroot was in the original release of DDO, 6 years ago.

Yes, it seems so.

Tangleroot Gorge & Sorrowdusk Island are the only other non-Stormreach quest areas mentioned in my 2006 printed handbook.

[macubrae]

Because the hobgoblins aren't stupid and they refortify their front defenses after you leave between quests.

^^THIS^^ is why there are only 6 or 8 creatures in the last fight instead of 50.

[Razcar]

Because the hobgoblins aren't stupid and they refortify their front defenses after you leave between quests.

They are stupid. Because if they just had held all their reinforcements back in the throne room, the combined might of 50 hobgoblins would surely had killed any party. But not through force of arms mind you, but due to massive, lethal, merciless... lag.

[Vallin]

Heh, you newbies complaining about 'packs...' Tangleroot as a 'pack' was not a glimmer in me eye when it was released.

You young whippersnappers better go pick on something else.

Hey, get off of my Tangleroot, um, lawn, or something!!

Vallin.

[Beethoven]

Several of the chain quests from game launch are like that.

Hate to sound like a fanboi here, but there is a good reason for that. Turbine did not want to launch DDO back in February of 2006 already because the game was not finished. Atari pushed for the early release. It's not really surprising Turbine cut corners some where but its not like it was their choice. What they could be blamed for is to not remove old content to completely redo it from scratch, but that's probably because enough people buy and play that content still.

Criticizing re-using stuff for 3BC and Chronoscope is a ;little unfair too. There have been a lot of voices asking for the old Smugglers Rest to be brought back. However, Korthos Island made it redundant as starter area. What's to say we (or at least some of us) asked they listened and found a way to put it back on the map.

Chronoscope was released in combination with the anniversary of the market place tent blowing up, which was a major milestone in DDO and meant to commemorate the event. There really is no other way than re-use how stuff looked back in the day.

Personally I rather have them re-use old maps for that kind of stuff and have their creative team do artwork for new content and I really cannot complain about the look and feel of the new content they brought out. My opinion here may change still depending on how Underdark will look like because for 30-80 USD I do have higher expectations.

[Templarion]

I like Tangleroot but there should be some real environmental changes during the quest line, for example: crashed gate, broken barrels, hobgoblin bodies lying all over the place and spiders feasting on bodies, blood trails of the wounded on the floor, barricaded gates, ambush waiting in hallway etc. (atm, the ambushes don't feel like ambushes, just regular mob spawns)

[Aliss7]

I just bought the low-level packs from the sale recently and have been slowly working my way through them.

o I liked that tavern dude can teleport you to splinterskull. Seriously, why can't zawabi do this for you in the sands?

o I liked the theme of heading back to the "dungeon" and getting deeper each time.

o I liked the part in splinterskull where you can spot the directions to the key... unfortunately it seems that the key spawns in the same spot all the time? It seems to me that the eggs and the key could have been random spawn points in the quest and people with certain skills could have found them quicker. Alas, it doesn't seem to work that way.

[Aelonwy]

o I liked that tavern dude can teleport you to splinterskull. Seriously, why can't zawabi do this for you in the sands?

People have been asking for this feature to be implemented, for years now, in so many other wilderness areas! Example: Some quest givers in 3BC, especially the ones you have to go back to a second time. My personal guess is whomever wrote the code for this wonderful convenience no longer works for Turbine and no one else can figure out how to make it work elsewhere.

[BruceTheHoon]

Gotta agree that Catacombs is alot alike as well, not nearly as bad as Tangleroot but bad.

I had to run this for the Rune Arm and also the House P favor. Knowing that 3BC is as bad I'm not sure it will be worth it.

le sigh

I don't know what cdr is thinking of, but 3BC has some of the most unique quests till that level, if You ask me. Only two of them - two mini quest chains - take place in the same environment and even then monster spectrums change noticeably.

[auntjobiska]

You see this all the time in DDO. Crystal Cove is the old training area Smuggler's Rest from before they made Korthos. The Korthos quest (except a few) are old Harbor quest from where the Inspired Quarter is now. Invasion! uses the Waterworks map. The circus tent in Big Top is the old Marketplace tent, etc.

I do quite like going 'back' to places at higher levels, especially from a different angle and doing different things. Another one is that quest that you need to do before you go to Restless Isles. Isn't that in Osgood's Basement or somewhere similar?

AJ