Champion auto fail in Small Problem.

[Qhualor]

I didn't mention champions - for exactly that reason! The fact that this was a required tactic always irked me before and it still irks me, champions or no champions.



The 'fun' of a quest-ending ambush happening to an absent NPC within an RPG or MMO should come from the risk that things could go south, and the drama of managing that risk. That means you have to know about the risk. You should not have to learn about the risk from first failing the quest and subsequently metagaming. There should be a good chance the NPC will die yes, but the chances of that happening before players get there should be much much lower. That's all.

If you don't help, the NPC should die, absolutely. But you should get the opportunity to help without having to metagame. That could be a proximity spawn, or it could be that there is a minimum HP value that the NPC can fall to until the players are within some kind of proximity (i.e. 'close enough to tell that something bad is happening, and then react quickly'). But proximity, or GM text with enough time to get back, or something is better than players having no chance at figuring out from the information revealed during the quest that might be an ambush and getting back in time to prevent quest failure - at which point player skill or build ability can have an effect (i.e. you'll still need to be good to succeed).

that's the result of quest knowledge. an ambush should be a surprise attack, even for us, but theres very little randomization. nothing you can do about that unless you role play the quest.

I agree that there should a risk of failure, but failure is part of a learning process. if you fail you should be thinking about what you could have done differently to succeed. than try a different strategy.

[redoubt]

YES. we need to make hard and elite easier.

Go back and read. I'm not asking to make hard/elite easier. I've actually asked for the opposite on several occasions. This thread is about relaying a broken encounter mechanism to the devs attention.

I never said the quest was too difficult, just that this encounter, as now designed is luck based. If the server feeds you the wrong champion, Brawnpits goes down faster than Charlette the Harlot! If the server doesn't select those traits, you can solo it.

I am all for random. I'd like random traps that can kill 2500hp barbarians. But I think a lot of people would cry over that.

Anyway, the point is that in a protection quest, when following the flow of the quest, the NPC should not get ganked by the new champions mobs before you even arrive.

back in the day and well before Champions, it was common for one player to talk to the air ele while the rest of the group was down at Brawnpits. that fight actually took a few minutes and very risky to fail even back then. those fire eles spawn with hounds a few seconds after talking to the ele right next to Brawnpits. wouldnt be much of an ambush on Brawnpits if the mobs had to wait until you get there first.

now before anybody says im defending this, I have said that NPCs need a buff with Champions in the game now. the devs have also said they will be doing that.

This strategy was figured out long before champions were a thing in order to prevent the thing you just described.

I'm not sure there's anything more to say.

Yes, Yes. I know (as I said before). We had new people and didn't metagame it. Next time we did and there wasn't even a champion next to him. Go figure.

Also, the reason to leave people at the camp was not because brawnpits died to easy, it was to let someone sneak up the mountain to the altar BEFORE talking to BP. This bypassed fighting all the mobs on the mountain top and having the elemental in combat mod until you killed the mobs. So once someone was up top, you would talk to BP, then the person up top would talk to the spirit and jump down WITHOUT fighting the mobs on the mountain. THAT is what he metagame was.

Oh, and thanks for the bumps!

[Gauthaag]

heh, reminded me several runnings of elite weapon shipments, where we were failing, cause the group of spawned devils always contained two or more champs instantly agroed on poor twelve wizzy, slashing him to pieces before we can even react

[dunklezhan]

that's the result of quest knowledge. an ambush should be a surprise attack, even for us, but theres very little randomization. nothing you can do about that unless you role play the quest.

I agree that there should a risk of failure, but failure is part of a learning process. if you fail you should be thinking about what you could have done differently to succeed. than try a different strategy.

I never said different. If I did, then I worded it badly.

I agree that it should be a surprise attack, and I agree that in this quest giving a storytelling sign that it might happen so that you can choose to leave people behind would weaken the story/surprise.

Its not my preferred way to deal with the situation. I would prefer a situation that, on your very first run through, allows you to come back to brawnpits to find him nearly dead, with enough time for you to do something about that if you react fast enough and are skilled enough. In fact, in an ideal world where things don't bug out, I think it should not be possible for the ambush to trigger and the quest to continue until players are not present for a period of time.

What i was getting at was meant at a more abstract level: I was just saying that if 'foreknowledge' is to be assumed in quest design, then the quest design should give you some way to get that foreknowledge without failing once first. Otherwise it's just the DM messing with you.

On this quest, foreknowledge would spoil the story and so the solution I would actually advocate is the one whereby the ambush continues to happen without a 'tell'. If you are not there, Brawnpits might be taken down to a sliver, but could not actually die until at least one player is in a position to potentially do something about it. They might fail at that "something" if he's already down to a sliver and DPS/healing is not fast enough or there are champions about, and indeed sometimes he'll be on a lot more than a sliver, and if you choose to leave someone to guard him then nothing changes from how it is now, so no loss.