Bad Mission Design 101.

[Luminara]

I like Croatoa.  It's a really nice break from the monotony of Hellions, Outcast, Freakshow, Family, Council, Circle of GODDAMN GHOSTS NOT DYING WHEN I SHOOT THEM AND FLYING OFF AND DISAPPEARING...

 

*cough*

As I was saying, levels 25 and 30 are always something I look forward to because I can go to Croatoa and pick up some relaxing story arcs.  Croatoa's well designed, the missions are, if not entirely entertaining, at least consistent within the framework of the narrative devised for the zone and with each other, the story arcs flow well and the zone critter chatter has some amusing moments.  But there's one mission which so egregiously violates every principle of good design that I can't help but to despise it.

 

 

I kept the image quality low for various reasons (forum breakage, Verizon's deprioritization being comparable to a denial of service attack, etc.).  But it really doesn't need to be high quality for our purposes.  One look and you know which mission it is.

 

There are so many things wrong with this one.  It begins as a triple hostage rescue and escort.  Escorts are bad mission design in general.  Yes, they occasionally serve a purpose, such as escorting someone to an interactive object, but the escort itself is unnecessary, and ultimately, both pointless and a waste of the player's time.  For those who rely on stealth, like stalkers or widows, escorts can even be detrimental to their ability to participate in and experience content.  The whole idea of escorts is a design flaw.  Anything you can do with escorts, you can do without, faster, easier and less annoyingly.

 

Once those hostages are rescued, escorting them to the objective presents it's own obstacle.  I can't imagine how or why, but the developers apparently failed to notice that there's no opening in the fence surrounding the objective.  The gate is on the other side of the mission barrier wall.  So you have to escort the NPCs to a fence, and pray that the pathing AI doesn't shit itself when it gets to that point, running around in circles instead of jumping over the fence (it happens).  Then you have to pray, again, that the NPCs won't jump onto the fence, rather than over it, because it's one of those fences which doesn't have a properly defined geometry, so you (or the unlucky NPC) just slide until it finally kicks you off... or you get stuck and have to use /stuck (which NPCs can't do).

 

But, hey, they don't usually turn into shish-kebabs, so this part of the mission isn't as bad as it could be.  It's still a rotten design, another one of those things which never should be used in any game, enhanced by atrocious pathing and a monumentally huge oversight in the layout of the map, but it's not the end of the world.  It's tolerable.  If the mission ended at this point, it would be memorable only in the sense that it represented the end of the arc, and be little more than a barely remembered example of bad design in a long list of missions with design problems.

 

Oh, no, though, it doesn't end there.  It becomes so much worse that it's almost impossible to figure out how or why the team in charge at this point could have conceived of something so incredibly bad that the very existence of it is offensive.  You see that timer in the compass?

Yeah.

 

We're playing a fast-paced action-oriented game... and we're locked into a 15 minute wait.  15 minutes of being stuck in this mission.  There's no way to end the timer early, short of the destruction of the objective, and even if you allow the objective to be destroyed, it takes nearly the entire 15 minutes.  That's just a huge dick move.  A bigger dick move than large outdoor maps with clear all objectives.  And it actually gets worse.

 

The initiation of the timer begins a series of waves of enemies... but you have to defeat a wave before the next one spawns.  And they don't spawn rapidly, it's a laconic, lackadaisical series of waves.  You can make a Thanksgiving turkey dinner between these waves.  It's like the development team got together and asked how to create a torture device.  This isn't a mission, it's Hell in video game format.  It wouldn't be nearly as bad if defeating a set number of waves ended the timer and completed the mission.  It would at least be interesting if the waves came at set (preferably short) intervals, regardless of the status of previous waves.  It wouldn't be such a pain in the genitalia if the developers hadn't done everything in their power to guarantee that you were not setting foot out of that mission for the full duration of the timer, and you were absolutely not going to be entertained in any way, either.  But they did, and this is what we ended up with.

 

The really sad fact is, this mission is so poorly designed that the best ways to complete it are to auto-complete it, or to take a character with any decent amount of +Defense, +Resistance, +Regeneration or -ToHit, or even an uninterruptible self heal, stand in the path of the first wave and Alt-Tab out for 15 minutes.  The mission was designed in such a way that not playing is the best approach.  That is... just fucking pathetic.  I know we like to have it easy here, but this is just too much.  I hated this mission every time I played it on the original servers, I've reached the point of loathing it's very existence now.  This glaring insult to gaming should never have gone live in this state, much less remained completely untouched in the years afterward.  Here we are, fifteen years later, with the fetid corpse of this failed abortion still polluting the entirety of Croatoa.

 

There are always uninspiring missions, boring missions, even tedious or frustrating missions, but this is one of a kind in Co*.  This mission is a complete break from good design, in every way possible.  It can't even be failed quickly, unlike some of those "Protect X while X runs headlong into slavering hordes of NPCs who can kill with a single attack" missions, or "Prevent X from escaping but be aware that X spawns in a random location and starts running for the door as soon as you enter the mission".  It's a failure in every sense of the word and in every possible way.  As much as I dislike surprise AVs/EBs, bosses which don't scale down to lieutenants and other mistakes and oversights in mission design, this mission makes all of the other design flaws seem like perfectly wonderful choices by comparison, because at least with other bad missions, we can ask for help to speed them up, we can scale down the difficulty if the critters are obnoxiously strong, we can do something to finish the mission and move on.  With this one, we're just stuck.  Waiting.  Endlessly.  Even with a full team, there's no challenge or enjoyment to be had.  It's just shit.

 

I don't expect every mission to be a festival of laughter, or a well written drama, or have great design.  There are enough good ones to skip most of the noticeably bad ones, and enough mediocre ones to skate through the majority of the game without feeling cramped.  No-one bats 1.000, and I never expected Cryptic or Paragon to do so, either.  But they just gave up on this one, threw everything that went into every well-designed mission into the trash and shoveled a steaming load of crap right on the game in this case.

 

So if you're reading this, and you happen to be a game developer, here's your example of how NOT to make a mission/quest/whatever.  Learn from others' mistakes.  Don't make unnecessary escorts a requirement, don't fuck up your map and risk forcing players to abandon and restart missions, and don't ever leave players stuck with a timer that can't be ended early, especially in a mission with lazy, slow waves of critters which pose about as much threat as a mayfly, unless you're encouraging your players to not play your game (why make the game at all, if that's the case?).

 

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Saturday.

[Lines]

8 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 One look and you know which mission it is.

 

I knew which mission you were going to talk about from the title.

 

I seem to remember the whole 15 minutes having regular spawns come at the obelisks when Croatoa was first released. In fact, I remember it being really tough and kinda fun. But my memory is not something to be trusted.

 

But whether it's broken or bad in the first place, it could do with a makeover.

Edited September 26, 2020 by Lines

[Johnny]

The heart of the issue is that people are playing the game to feel heroic, or at least "in charge of the situation."

 

Escort missions run contrary to this, and come off as frustrating not due to a challenge, but due to a perceived pathing flaw in the game engine...not the desired impression.

 

Escort missions are more satisfying when the NPC is somewhat capable in a fight. You kinda see this gold-side, sometimes, except when they go out of their way to aggro mobs that otherwise would have ignored your party.

[Frostbiter]

The one I truly hate is the mission where you have to stop so many Fir Bolg from entering the menhir ring. There's been an AI change that makes them not always stop when one of them takes damage anymore. Pure frustration if you're primarily single target attacks..

[Coyotedancer]

There are two Croatoa missions I autocomplete every single time I go through the place... 

That annoying "Stop 30 Fir Bolg from escaping" mission that Frostbiter mentioned and the fifteen minute Red Cap Stand-Around.

 

They're both annoying as all heck. 

[EmmySky]

The one I hate is where you gotta defeat 20 X and 20 Y or whatever...in a certain neighborhood where there are only like 3.  You gotta drag them in and if you miss it by half an inch oh well doesnt count.  

 

I'd rather wait out a timer..grab a smoke or make another cuppa coffee lol

 

Edit:  @Luminara I do love your way with words...a delightful read no matter the topic!

 

Second edit: @carroto owes me some coke or something 😁

Edited September 26, 2020 by EmmySky

[carroto]

I agree about everything said about the mission, but that's not the mission I'd change if I could change one.  I mean yeah it's a crappy design, but I can plan to start that one up when I have something to do for 15 minutes and as was said, get the attention of one of the mobs and walk away for 15 minutes.

 

The ones that bother me are the one or two outdoor hunts for mobs in areas that have almost none of those mobs.  I usually end up kiting the needed mobs from an adjacent area into the one where I can get credit for them to complete the mission.  Those are the ones I'd change if I were dev for a day.

 

Edit: Wow @EmmySky...ummm...jinx?

Edited September 26, 2020 by carroto

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

 

 

The really sad fact is, this mission is so poorly designed that the best ways to complete it are to auto-complete it

 

 

I do this every single time with every single alt for this mission and one or two others in Croatoa.

[Myrmidon]

They could remove Croatia from the game entirely and I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it. After the reversal of The Snap, a couple of us finally told an old friend that loves Halloweenland that the only reason that we ever went through it was because we liked teaming wit him and it was is go-to.

[Sovera]

I've done that mission twice recently as it is necessary to unlock the Katie Hannon TF. The first time I actually did the mission. The second time I tabbed out with Burn on Auto.

 

But as pointed out here the next wave only spawns once the previous one is defeated and mid way through the mission I just turned off Blazing Aura and removed Burn from auto and AFKed.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Frostbiter said:

The one I truly hate is the mission where you have to stop so many Fir Bolg from entering the menhir ring. There's been an AI change that makes them not always stop when one of them takes damage anymore. Pure frustration if you're primarily single target attacks..

 

44 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

There are two Croatoa missions I autocomplete every single time I go through the place... 

That annoying "Stop 30 Fir Bolg from escaping" mission that Frostbiter mentioned and the fifteen minute Red Cap Stand-Around.

 

They're both annoying as all heck. 

 

In the 30 Firbolg mission, though, one can sidestep the issue by going into the map and defeating spawns.  You can stand at the henge and wait for them to try to escape, but it's not mandatory, you're not trapped in that one spot, waiting for the waves to approach, and the waves are so broadly spaced that it's very easy to finish the mission in a comparatively short time.  You can pro-actively work within the mission parameters to end it sooner, essentially bypassing the hidden wave timer.  That's an example of good design.  Not the timer, but the option to ignore the timer and force a successful mission completion.  It gives players at least one option beyond parking their character in one spot and taking a nap.

 

The 30 Firbolg mission isn't much fun, but I don't find myself wanting to check LinkedIn for former developers to stalk and beat with a rubber hose when it's on my mission list.

[UpandAtom]

Those missions were supposed to just sort of let groups chill at a spot and enemies would come running towards them without players having to even move. From a certain point of view, it could've been relaxing? The devs never really making those kinds of missions again showed how popular the idea was :D
The outdoor hunt enemies missions forced you to interrupt the eternal war they have going on in there. It becomes a whole lot easier to find fir bolgs hiding in trees when they're not being stomped by dozens of groups of tuatha stomping every pumpkin in sight. The red caps...yeah, they only lurk on the far edges of the patrol area and made that mission aggravating.

[Frostbiter]

7 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

 

In the 30 Firbolg mission, though, one can sidestep the issue by going into the map and defeating spawns.  You can stand at the henge and wait for them to try to escape, but it's not mandatory, you're not trapped in that one spot, waiting for the waves to approach, and the waves are so broadly spaced that it's very easy to finish the mission in a comparatively short time.  You can pro-actively work within the mission parameters to end it sooner, essentially bypassing the hidden wave timer.  That's an example of good design.  Not the timer, but the option to ignore the timer and force a successful mission completion.  It gives players at least one option beyond parking their character in one spot and taking a nap.

 

The 30 Firbolg mission isn't much fun, but I don't find myself wanting to check LinkedIn for former developers to stalk and beat with a rubber hose when it's on my mission list.

I've beaten that mission by attrition before but it's still difficult. I remember an argument in Help chat one time on whether or not it was possible to even do it that way. 😕

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, EmmySky said:

Edit:  @Luminara I do love your way with words...a delightful read no matter the topic!

 

I love writing.  Even if it's just posting, even if I'm making a silly comment, I love writing.  I love words.  I love being able to communicate, something I can't do well in person due to my mental illness.  So I'm delighted to know that you appreciate how I say something, regardless of what I'm saying.  It matters to me.  Thank you.

[Sovera]

20 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

I love writing.  Even if it's just posting, even if I'm making a silly comment, I love writing.  I love words.  I love being able to communicate, something I can't do well in person due to my mental illness.  So I'm delighted to know that you appreciate how I say something, regardless of what I'm saying.  It matters to me.  Thank you.

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, Sovera said:

 

The Calvin and Hobbes influence just oozes from this.  Absolutely wonderful.  🙂

[SuperPlyx]

I like to think @Luminara  typed all that and posted it while waiting for the 15 minute timer to stop.

 

My favorite part:

3 hours ago, Luminara said:

This glaring insult to gaming should never have gone live in this state, much less remained completely untouched in the years afterward.  Here we are, fifteen years later, with the fetid corpse of this failed abortion still polluting the entirety of Croatoa.

 

*golf clap* Bravo

[Riverdusk]

2 hours ago, EmmySky said:

The one I hate is where you gotta defeat 20 X and 20 Y or whatever...in a certain neighborhood where there are only like 3.  You gotta drag them in and if you miss it by half an inch oh well doesnt count.  

 

I'd rather wait out a timer..grab a smoke or make another cuppa coffee lol

 

Edit:  @Luminara I do love your way with words...a delightful read no matter the topic!

 

Second edit: @carroto owes me some coke or something 😁

Yep, first one I thought of actually.  Having hunt missions often is boring enough, having hunt missions only counting in certain "neighborhoods" isn't challenging or fun, it is just annoying and tedious.  Sad thing is this was a zone and mission arcs that were designed and added in issue 5, so I think they really should have known better by then.  

Edited September 26, 2020 by Riverdusk

[Luminara]

2 minutes ago, SuperPlyx said:

I like to think @Luminara  typed all that and posted it while waiting for the 15 minute timer to stop.

 

Ah, no.  Verizon treats pre-paid data customers second class citizens, giving preference to people who say they'll pay later (great business model), so my play time is extremely limited (my data service is only usable for gaming between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. Eastern time.  even now, it's barely sufficient to open Google's home page.  my average throughput during the day drops to less than 10Kbps, sometimes as low as 3Kbps).  I try not to waste any of that time.

 

That's actually what prompted me to start this thread, though.  What might've been an admittedly minor irritation in the "grand scheme of things" carried so much more significance when it became a sizeable part of my play time trampled, urinated on and ground into the dirt.  I could've taken out half a dozen pairs of bosses in that time, easily, or run two regular missions, helping me push this character closer to 50.  Instead, I had to stare at the screen and mutter imprecations, which I have no doubt would lead to a lengthy discussion with several federal agents and a very uncomfortable (and notably lacking in feline company) stay in a small room while they tore apart my cabin in search of "evidence" if I were to repeat them here.

[DoctorDitko]

I hear ya!

I live in a log cabin in the woods of Virginia with 9 dogs (so I guess you could say 9 dogs live in a cabin with me... but I digress) and Verizon Wireless is the only show in town.

 

It sucks.

 

I pay $100+ every month for "unlimited internet", and get 15 GB of data before I become limited to 3g speeds (which I never get anyway) but it's the deprioritization that really kills.

 

At least my ping is good.

 

I'm very much hoping that Elon Musk finishes destroying naked-eye astronomy soon and gives me an alternative.

Hang in there!

[Eva Destruction]

2 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

They could remove Croatia from the game entirely and I wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it. After the reversal of The Snap, a couple of us finally told an old friend that loves Halloweenland that the only reason that we ever went through it was because we liked teaming wit him and it was is go-to.

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who isn't in love with Halloweentown.  It just has absolutely no connection to the rest of the game world, like why is this zone even here?  Okay, it's pretty and atmospheric and all that, but it just doesn't fit.     And add to this some of the mission design sins already mentioned here, as well as those "find the hostages on the giant outdoor map" missions where at least one is hiding under a bridge or behind a rock, and those animated stones that don't die when the summoner does,, it is not a well-designed zone.  I get that they wanted to add a magic-themed zone that wasn't about the freaking CoT, but the execution was just meh.

[Doomguide2005]

46 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

I hear ya!

I live in a log cabin in the woods of Virginia with 9 dogs (so I guess you could say 9 dogs live in a cabin with me... but I digress) and Verizon Wireless is the only show in town.

 

It sucks.

 

I pay $100+ every month for "unlimited internet", and get 15 GB of data before I become limited to 3g speeds (which I never get anyway) but it's the deprioritization that really kills.

 

At least my ping is good.

 

I'm very much hoping that Elon Musk finishes destroying naked-eye astronomy soon and gives me an alternative.

Hang in there!

I hear you, sounds like my situation (before the computer died).  For extra irony I moved from a home less than 2 miles down the highway with high speed internet broadband cable.  Now it's a hot spot with the aforementioned 15 gigs which lasts maybe a week.  At one point even talked to Verizon about getting hooked up ... sure they'd love to.  Only wanted nearly $20,000 to extend the line to us.  Ahhh right that's only slightly less than my yearly income as a Walmart grunt.

 

As for escort missions my group of friends back on Live often joked about getting a burlap sack power.  As in thump 'em on the head, toss them in sack and carry their non-resisting bodies out to safety.

[Luminara]

2 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

I live in a log cabin in the woods of Virginia with 9 dogs (so I guess you could say 9 dogs live in a cabin with me... but I digress)

 

9 dogs... it's their cabin, you're the guest.  Majority rules.  😉

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Eva Destruction said:

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who isn't in love with Halloweentown.  It just has absolutely no connection to the rest of the game world, like why is this zone even here?  Okay, it's pretty and atmospheric and all that, but it just doesn't fit.

 

I suspect it was the result of a holiday event idea getting more than a little out of hand, and eventually becoming a zone because they'd spent so much time and money on it that they couldn't justify only having it available for a few weeks each year.

[KC4800]

I only go in there to help kill the 2 GMs and then hopefully punch Sally once on the way out.