Comments on: Notes from the boardroom.

By: Melmoth

Melmoth — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:45:15 +0000

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By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:19:49 +0000

I wrote up a post related to this one on my blog: Player perceptions about your game. It doesn't answer the question about why the debuff exists, but some of the perceptions of players like Melmoth about elements in MMOs.

By: Melmoth

Melmoth — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:58:48 +0000

@unwize: “I guess the actual design intent in this case was to prevent players from running away from wargs so easily,” I’d agree, but they cast the debuff at the end of combat, try it. At least, the ones I was experimenting on in the North Downs did. It might be that they also cast it if you try to run, I must admit that I haven’t checked that, but stand toe-to-toe and the debuff appears right around the time you land your killing blow; this is the thing that annoys me, or that I find to be curious at the very least. Long debuffs to last the duration of a fight and possibly beyond: no problem. Long debuffs only at the end of a fight: hmmmm.

@Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green: Fair points there, you’re certainly right that it does make the mobs more memorable, but I feel that it’s not really for the right reasons. Making a mob memorable because it frequently and repeatedly annoys you to the extent that you log off in frustration is not really the way to go. Those fights where the debuff really makes you have to work to survive? Fantastic! Most of the time though you’re just limping around the landscape at a painful rate of knots for no good reason.

@pjharvey: As unwize says, in this case you can cure the wound debuff, but it costs, you need to have enough of the salves to last for your session of game-play thus taking up valuable inventory space when questing, and invariably you’re going to run out of salves before you run out of mobs to kill. You’re right in the fact that, even if you can mitigate the problem, if the mobs invariably debuff you ‘just because’ then the likelihood is that you’ll run out of mitigation before you run out of mobs. It is terribly frustrating, not because of the debuff itself, but because it is applied in a way that is knowingly going to have no effect other than to cause you grief.

@Capn John: Indeed, LotRO is certainly not the only one guilty of it. Overly long debuffs can be justified though, I think. It’s more the combination of a long debuff and the fact that it is applied at the end of combat, thus making it abundantly clear that it’s nothing to do with the mob trying to win the combat but about the developer trying to slow your progress after the fight. Or so it appears. As I said, I love to gain some insight into the design decision from those who implemented it, because I find it most curious.

By: Capn John

Capn John — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:50:04 +0000

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how that music…er…I mean, there was a time in WoW when Diseases could last for up to half an hour, and they were nasty Diseases too, with nasty debuffs. Not just a reduced run speed but you could take extra damage, or have your stamina reduced, etc. Brutal stuff.

Now you’re lucky, or rather unlucky, to catch a Disease that lasts 5 minutes or more.

By: pjharvey

pjharvey — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:40:42 +0000

I think I would appreciate the design decisions more if it were possible to avoid, or at least mitigate, the effects through situational awareness and agility in combat. Being hit by a debuff time and time again simply because that’s what the creature does right before death has made me drastically cut short game sessions out of frustration.

By: Brian 'Psychochild' Green

Brian 'Psychochild' Green — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:22:53 +0000

It ate my previous comment. :(

I hate these creatures as a player, too, but let me point out a few things.

1) The monsters are memorable. What’s the difference between fighitng a wolf and a goblin in LotRO? What’s the difference between fighting a wolf and a crazed gnome in WoW? (Besides the fact the you’d only feel guilty about killing the wolf…)

2) It’s a shared experience. Every LotRO player will read this article and know exactly what you’re talking about. Shared experiences, even negative ones, can strengthen a community. Or, to put it another way, you’re part of an exclusive club of people who know what fighting wolves in LotRO means.

3) It’s not always just an annoyance. When I was in the swampy areas of Angmar, a slug slimed me then a worm spewed fire. While sauntering out of the burning slime and watching my morale bar decrease, I thought, “Ah, this sucks more than just being slimed.”

Not to say this is brilliant design, but here are a few things designers might consider.

By: unwize

unwize — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:14:33 +0000

Possibly another money sink, since they can be cured for 13s a time (at lvl 60). You certainly have to puzzle at the length of some of those debuffs though, I agree.

I guess the actual design intent in this case was to prevent players from running away from wargs so easily, since wargs should really be pretty quick in comparison. Instead of speeding the wargs up, they slow the player down.

Moria introduced the warg riders that have that annoying tendency to snare, quickly sprint away, and pepper you with spears. Perhaps they should give regular wargs the ability to perform that quick sprint part in order to chase fleeing players rather than snaring them.

There’s also that annoying and incurable ‘hounding fear’ debuff, which according to one dev, is apparently so deeply embedded in the code somewhere that removing it would send the whole house of cards crashing down.