Famitsu - Creating a Monster: Pandemonium Warden

[Mistress Stowastiq]

Thank you for the post Elmer

[BRP]

The real question becomes whether gear improvements and player determination will overcome eventual player loss and lack of interest. Since SE seems to only want to allow the 'correct way' of killing AV, I would assume any other potential strats found might become just as useless as the KC style zerging strat.

KC zergs are incredibly overpowered. Not everything is going to be nerfed.

[Narol]

It sounds like standard e-peen dev mindset, where you want to make the biggest, grandest boss that can only be killed by the highest of the high-tier players. I'm especially drawn to the "it took the dev's twinked testers 4 tries with 32 people" line, with the estimate that as many as 54 people would be required. That's not anywhere near intelligent design. That's just punishing players because you like seeing them die to your super-powered boss. I'm not against devs making things that can shank players brutally, but I think it's absurd to expect that 50+ people might be required, only to give tangible rewards to less than a party's worth.

Just look at those two. You know they're thinking, "Yea, you got your ass kicked by our mob, didn't you?"

That's exactly what they're thinking. "Devs vs players" comes from the "DM vs players" mentality in D&D and so on, and is very hard to avoid. They clearly haven't avoided it so much as shoved it all into a few specific areas (PW, AV, whatever WotG god-NM).

[BRP]

It sounds like standard e-peen dev mindset, where you want to make the biggest, grandest boss that can only be killed by the highest of the high-tier players.

How fucking delusion are you guys you think these guys do it for epeen? When it is not this, you think it is out of spite.

This isn't a DM vs players situation. What are you talking about? Making a hard monster isn't griefing players. Quite the opposite.

[Narol]

Making an unfairly hard mob that's estimated to take upwards of 50 people to beat and will only reward a small number of them is all good and healthy now?

I doubt the devs are consciously sitting down and saying, "Let's design an NM that will show just how big our penises are," but they're certainly creating fake difficulty by anticipating that players will need an alliance of alliances. It's not the fun kind of hard. It's like a super monster in a CRPG rom hack.

This is, of course, to say nothing about changing AV every time he's been killed, and releasing a vague as sin video claiming "the secrets are in here if you know how to look at it right." Real difficulty would be giving a kid Tolstoy to read. AV video is like giving him Dick and Jane in Klingon. PW is better but not by a huge amount.

[BRP]

Pandemonium Warden was defeated and the devs are quite happy with how it was done. AV has only been defeated through tricky(and overpowered) exploits, so there is always the possibility they are not going to like that. It is their job to make new versions of the game that keeps their original idea intact.

Stop with this jilted lover crap already. Since you love being so emotional over exploits being taken away, why are you not on the ground kissing their shoes for keeping Kraken Club combo in the game in the first place? Precious, precious item combos! It makes me wonder if killing the monster is important at all.

I can't say if AV is a good or bad design for certain because it remains quite secretive(and that in itself is not a bad, mostly a good thing.) The fact it requires 50 people, let alone 18 is not going to be a good thing in my book. However, I wouldn't be so stupid to call it "unhealthy." I don't like the idea of AV based on how it looks like right now, but what I really want to get across is that resenting people over it is retarded. (EDIT: Or resenting SE ever for anything they have done.)

Also I like how you fit in a complaint about rewards in there. Like grinding on these monsters for items is "healthy"(lol) in the first place.

It's not the fun kind of hard.

There is only one kind of hard. The fun kind. It only depends on whether you are smart/strong/fast enough to conquer it. Did SE release a monster that cannot be defeated by humans?

[ronin sparthos]

How fucking delusion are you guys you think these guys do it for epeen? When it is not this, you think it is out of spite.

This isn't a DM vs players situation. What are you talking about? Making a hard monster isn't griefing players. Quite the opposite.

Even if we agree that PW is a challenging monster that the playerbase is just whining like bitches about, the monster still rehashes loot (easy to obtain loot at that) and only rewards four people out of the 54 that the devs believe would be needed to take down Warden. That's simply the biggest hangup with PW and poor HNM design on SE's part.

Yes, you can sell the gear to reward everyone but at the end of the day its still only 4 pieces of loot for a nigh Dynamis level event. Thats where these "grand" NMs flop, not on the difficulty (Warden sounds like a long, technical and highman event, AV is still highly debated) but on the utter lack of reward and lack of common sense on the devs part.

What do they think? People sit in whitegate just oozing to help with some monster likely to rip half their EXP bar off?

Big monsters need big lootpools, especially ones that require months of farming. It's not SE vs the players but more idealist SE vs realist players.

[Narol]

Edit: Too lazy to quote BRP's post. This is directed at him:

If AV were designed intelligently, it wouldn't need counterintuitive or otherwise horribly obscure methods to defeat it. Like I said, it's like Dick and Jane in Klingon. I agree that exploiting his AI to keep him from attacking you is abusive, but if it's easier to find glitches than it is to find proper strategies, you're not designing your mob right. Same for rewarding a tiny number of an expected 50+ people. A mob that takes 6 people to kill and drops 1 item is fair enough, and encourages running it multiple times. A mob that's hard as hell, takes ages to farm the pop items for, and only rewards <10% of the people who kill it is bad design through and through. The rest of your post is pretty much babble, from the looks of it. I have no idea how to relate it to anything I said, although I get a kick out of your saying that "hard" and "fun" are mutually inclusive.

Also, I agree with this:

What do they think? People sit in whitegate just oozing to help with some monster likely to rip half their EXP bar off?

It's the idealist SE "everyone wants to hold hands and sing songs and are altruistic towards each other" mindset. There's helping your LS, then there's getting yourself killed for nothing. Dynamis at least is less stingy than PW on rewards.

[Pirian]

Ok so wait...

So half of the testers have hints on how to defeat it and the other half are "fighting it for the first time". But even so, it took them 4 tries to kill it. 4 tries even though half know how to defeat it, and they wonder why we call them unbeatable? Their flawed logic is not amusing.

[BRP]

Big monsters need big lootpools, especially ones that require months of farming. It's not SE vs the players but more idealist SE vs realist players.

I too believe pinatas are the height of the human experience.

[Narol]

So half of the testers have hints on how to defeat it and the other half are "fighting it for the first time". But even so, it took them 4 tries to kill it. 4 tries even though half know how to defeat it

Not only that, they were twinked with relics and god knows what else.

[ronin sparthos]

I too believe pinatas are the height of the human experience.

If the pinata comes 'round every 2months (lets be reasonable, T4 trigs suck) and it's the second hardest monster in the game.... why not? Is rewarding a 50-man group (lolSE estimations) for a job well done too much to ask from the developers?

Don't attempt to make PW seem like Bahamut where you run in and get loot handed to you. lol

[BRP]

Maybe the problem lies in the fact you can only fight it once every 2 months? That's the only truly obscene part. Requiring 50 people being bad is debatable. I'd say it would beyond SE's(or almost anyone's) grasp to make an encounter as satisfying as an optimal solo/3-man/6-man encounter, but it should be possible.

Speaking of hypothetical situations, superior solution is to have players no longer need to be "rewarded." Suddenly, it doesn't matter how many things it drops! Ever! Nothing would get in the way of enjoying Pandemonium Warden or Absolute Virtue. Or any challenge in the game.

Of course now we would be speaking about a FFXI(or MMO) that seems unreal to most here. I have to wonder would you all quit if you could get any item you want at will(/getitem "Mar's Ring" <me>)? What if you could watch any cutscene you want anytime? Fight any monster you want without restrictions?

There is always the chance that there are people playing FFXI would never find it fun. They just play, because they must. The idea of fighting Pandemonium Warden or Absolute Virtue simply wouldn't interest them I guess. Why would SE ever design a monster for them? (EDIT: It is not like they will lose money if they don't)

[jaryk]

Ok so wait...

So half of the testers have hints on how to defeat it and the other half are "fighting it for the first time". But even so, it took them 4 tries to kill it. 4 tries even though half know how to defeat it, and they wonder why we call them unbeatable? Their flawed logic is not amusing.

Even moreso the issue of the fact that at least half the people know how to kill it, it's not like they can't tell the other half what to do. I don't see what the handicap is. The only thing this interview does is confirms my belief that SE really doesn't understand their own game. I think they need to sit down and actually play the game, on a server with real people and join LS's and fight things so they understand how shit really works. They're so proud of the fact that PW was beaten even though the first time it was beaten was based on using /logout! I realize Apathy has since mastered this, but it goes to show you how they have no idea what's going on.

[Spira]

you've all gotten it mixed up. The person who killed PW on the 4th try is Suteki, the editor of the magazine, not the dev team and their testers

[Tenjou]

I have to wonder would you all quit if you could get any item you want at will(/getitem "Mar's Ring" <me>)? What if you could watch any cutscene you want anytime? Fight any monster you want without restrictions?

Just wanted to say that from my experience, people seem to enjoy that right now. I suspect people will enjoy it much more in the near future (see sig).

[Narol]

Requiring 50 people being bad is debatable.

Requiring 50 people, 2 months of farming, and only rewarding 4 people at most is the obscene part. It'd be like if KB was nothing but the Pixie Earring/Defending Ring combo. People would still kill it, but the number of people getting rewarded for killing it would be obscenely low.

[Spira]

i can say with some degree of surety that it really doesn't work well for the game in the long run. Sure, everyone wants it and would take it, but the game won't live long, nor will it be fun to play. It's also particularly unfulfilling. People get this stuff to stand out and be "better" than others.. but when everyone else gets access to it, the exclusivity of that item is lost, along with its perceived advantage over others.

I say this because of all the research thats gone into motivational theories that support the system of rewards that SE is giving. Whilst it can be a little on the harsh side for some events, it follows in line with incentive theory, drive-reduction theory, and in some ways Maslow's hierarchy, tho i think that can be applied more to the general MMO environment more than simply its reward system. All these are very much applicable in the games setting and I really do hope the developers have read up on psychology and human behavior before they implement some of the systems in the game

[Mugmug]

Thanks Elmer

[BRP]

Narol: I already addressed both 2 month farming and the "reward" aspect. So like, are you only reading one sentence at a time?


Spira:

i can say with some degree of surety that it really doesn't work well for the game in the long run.

If you are going to put so much weight in your words you should at least bring up some examples. I can bring up examples of games that don't rely on a carrot chase system and are extremely successful(without having to be a job.) I shouldn't even need to though, because almost any non-MMO, non-JRPG, non-crap game example would work. All of these games throughout history never needed money rewards(or even sillier: fake money rewards lol) to be "fulfilling."

"Exclusivity" is achieved through titles already in the game. This is actually a common system with other games, 'cept they will have icons or number/ranks instead. This is a weak gauge of people's abilities, at best, as anyone will tell you(even in FFXI.) Truth is these are mostly useless and people know it. The only real use is to use them for direction. "Try to achieve x number of kills, defeat x monster, etc."

Finally, for "motivation," you said it yourself when things can applied without bringing in the reward system. The large distinction is being motivated to solve/beat shit("fun") or being motivated for "item-tary" gain("work'.) People who pay SE to work are people not worth talking about. Why not talk about your dog playing FFXI while at it? (That would be pretty incredible, actually)

So basically a formula that works to make money isn't going to mean a good game for us. Sometimes it will... other times it can be just the opposite. "Push button, flash red light" might be entertaining to animals(and only for so long...), but right now we are talking about humans.


Tenjou: Private servers are the best thing for MMOs, but they are rarely functional. In this case, not functional at all...