Girth's Ep2 Lost quests.

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GuardianGirth

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Yoyoyoyoyo. Earlier tonight the last 2 hopkins quests were finally added to the mix. I'm basically making this topic for others to give feedback. I tested the original 3 as well as the new seabed and tower many times but feel free to give me any comments, questions, criticism, and any possible errors in the quest (enemy hit boxes not working or acting weird, certain aspects of the quest not working. Anything that seems unnatural or causes issues with finishing the quest.

Hope you all enjoy them. I tried to make the progression in both seabed and tower very sega-like. Heart Breaker is designed to be tougher than pw4 IMO. It might be the most challenging quest on the server so make sure you're prepared. Telepipes are not allowed in the towers but are allowed in the halfway point(CCA). Let me know if any of you manage to find the "secret boss fight" in it. 8D

I'll be working to get Crater and Desert hopkins done within a week or 2. Glad I finally got to finish ep2's Lost quests.
 
First of all, thanks for releasing your quests and the hard work you put in them.

I did run through the whole Seabed one with 3 other players. These are my thoughts after clearing it for the first time :
The beginning of the quest is well done and the progression works fine. However the last rooms of Seabed Upper are messy. There are many things going on at the same time especially in little rooms. It's probably easier to handle with better gear and spawns' knowledge but some rooms are way too full. Seabed Lower is long and a lot of waves are confusing. I do remember that a deldepth's hitbox wasn't working next to a heal ring in Lower Levels, where you usually deactivate the poison in big room. Rings are where they should be so we don't run out of traps and that's a good thing.

The quest is interresting but it could use refinement especially in Seabed Lower where the spawns are too messy. You mixed Deldepths and Morfos with Delbiters and Sinows and it is not working imo.

I hope it helps if you want to improve it.
 
I know what deldepth you're talking about. I'll see if I can fix it. If not i'll remove him. And while the term "messy" is pretty subjective, the quest is meant to be long and some of the final waves are meant to be difficult. Very rarely do you run into Biters/depths or biters + zeles and morfos at the same time so after 16 years I think people deserve something a little sexy tough. Also....DID ANYONE NOTICE THE DOLPHINS ;DDDDDDDDDDDD
 
There's a reason those combos were never done by SEGA.

Said combos are not difficult, they're just annoying more than anything. I can't say I enjoyed Chaos Calibur at all, it's honestly a very messy quest because it flows badly and tries to throw too many enemies into too small rooms (and the big rooms just feel like a random clusterfuck).
 
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I disagree on the messiness because after repeated plays its going to turn into muscle memory just like any other quest. There is a severe lack of seabed quests made in general from sega. I can understand where people are coming from but on some level you have to remember that there really isn't much to compare a seabed quest too and lets face it....pw3 isn't exactly lacking in "clusterfucks" or messiness. I guess in my head I just see no reason to not want to experience all kinds of enemy variations the game has to offer. I know they wont be liked by all and i'm sure the original 3 weren't but I personally think seabed's flow is damn near flawless considering I managed to use every room.
 
Finally had a chance to test Chaos Calibur. Already told Girth about any issues I have with the quest, but I had a blast personally. My peeves really boil down to glitched enemies (certain Deldepths and one of the Sinow Zoas earlier in the run) and something that was funny but was really out of place. Don't remember having a problem with any of the spawn contents.

THE DOLPHINS

Best use of dolphins in a video game 2016.
 
Just uploaded a fixed version of Lost CHAOS CALIBUR which corrects some issues with the spawns.

Thanks, Girth!
 
Lost SHOCK GUNGNIR, Lost RIOT RAYGUN and Lost DEVIL'S SCEPTER have been reverted to their original versions, because the quests were perfectly fine and the random extra enemies were not needed (plus it looked tacky since they were just placed down and not sync'd up). If the traps are an issue, I will remove them.

Lost CHAOS CALIBUR and Lost HEART BREAKER have been modified to be more suitable as "SEGA-like quests", so they appeal to everyone and not only fringe minorities. (Lost HEART BREAKER was especially unsuitable for Ephinea and the average player)

- Many spawns tweaked/changed to be more suitable for the environment and player position (and also to the average player)
- Majority of Deldepths have been removed, especially those in small rooms
- Majority of Morfos have also been removed
- Majority of Recoboxes have also been removed (don't use these as roadblocks, that is just bullshit. They are best used far away so Recons can fuck people up)
- Side-room enemies have been removed
- Delbiters have been significantly nerfed so they don't have infinite confusion range and 10000% chance to use. (Percents in Qedit are written as 0.20, not 20 for 20%. For reference, most of SEGA's Delbiters are 0.20 confuse chance and 20 confuse range)
- Doors have been aligned properly (almost every single one was in the wrong spot)
- Enemy spawns have also been aligned properly (this includes Sinows and Delbiters that weren't spawning the same in a room). Before they were all messed up and it felt tacky... Edit those XYZ co-ordinates manually!
- Sinows now fall from the ceiling as they should, others have been changed to standing sinows
- Darkness has been removed in Pioneer 2 since that was a contextual change for the simulator quests
- The correct warp is now taken instead of the VR warp
- NPC dialogue has been slightly changed since it was copied directly from one of the Lost VR quests.
- Seabed Upper enemies reduced to 209 from 250
- Seabed Lower enemies reduced to 178 from 254

- Tower 2 has been completely axed from the quest. (It's already 20-30 minutes long in Tower 1, and Tower 2 was highly unsuitable since it was just a random monster spam with 319 enemies and a lot of bullshit unsuitable for the average player. Even PW4 only has 240 across both towers)
- CCA / Gal Gryphon also removed (did you know opening your menu dodges warps? It's very easy to get to Gal)
- Some spawns tweaked/changed to be more suitable for the environment and player position (and also to the average player)
- Majority of Recoboxes have been removed
- 3F is now unable to be cheesed as you have to warp to spawn the next section (before it was just a delay after the previous spawn)
- Doors have been placed at the entrance of each floor
- You are now able to warp back through floors
- The floor count on warping is now done properly (for reference, parameter 5 of the insta-warps is the floor number when warping in hex, the entire quest had 0s or 2s)
- Enemy count reduced to 172 from 222 (from 541 if you want to count the axed area)

Hopkins is bugged slightly and will crash you if you talk to him after the first cinematic. I'll have a look at what is causing that later (probably a missing ret in the script or something).

The reason for these changes is because the majority of reception to these quests have been negative. They are simply too long and cater only to players with gear and androids. Sure, they are possible to do with other setups, but they are not fun, they are annoying.

There are a small minority of players who enjoy these sorts of quests, but I don't want to hear it, because quests should be designed for everyone in mind, especially quests designed to be a continuation of SEGA's official quest lines. This does not mean quests have to be "easy", but difficulty in PSO is simply not possible outside of artificial difficulty, and the majority of people just enjoy simple monster bashes. Is it a surprise that MA4 is the most popular quest? (Outside of the boss rushes that is)

I took it upon myself to edit the quests for what I deemed suitable for Ephinea, because it was clear from this thread you were not receptive to criticism and jumped for the "it's subjective" line far too quickly. If your quests were truly flawless, people would have enjoyed them more, but they did not. They got put up immediately because we trusted that your quests would be of a high quality similar to the original 3 quests, but it is obvious now that Lee had his hand at editing the spawns since he was the one who fully developed them -- he used your designs as a base, not the final product (plus the scripts of the later two quests are just stolen from previous quests and slightly modified, not exactly "your" work either).

From now on we'll make sure to double check quests before being uploaded to Ephinea, regardless of who the author is. Make sure your work is of high quality! (and line those spawns up properly if they're supposed to be so you don't trigger my OCD...)

Thanks though Girth, this was a nice lesson in Qedit for me. Also learned how to script a bunch from scratch, although I still have quite a few things to learn.
 
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I found a way to avoid the damage trap in Lost Shock Gungnir - the one that does lots of damage followed by more damage and poison traps. It can be avoided if you're walking really close to the left side (those destroyable walls). The trap will explode without doing any damage.
 
So if LDS is back to its pseudo-original state, does that mean the megid-rigged heal ring is back too? I'd get on and check myself but I'm fat.
 
Yeah it will be, I can remove it though, I forget all the traps in those quests.
 
I would strongly recommend that you do. Instant death can be done gracefully, but those weren't examples of it.
 
Wow zynetic, its almost like you're making shit up because its YOU that is negative and not anyone else i've ran into. Do you realize most of those ideas in LCC were intentional? I wanted unique acting biters. I wanted unique spawn positions. I WANTED the sinows to not fall from the sky. After 16 fuck years you're gonna tell me Seabed doesnt need a quest with high Depth morfos and biter counts? You just hate the quest yourself and bitched and moaned because you have power. Heart Breaker I can agree with on some fronts but You honestly had no right to do that and Seabed was more than fine. I've handled it with parties who haven't died once.

16 years later and there's still people who think this game shouldnt given you EVERY possible enemy combination that it has to offer. Pathetic. I'm done making quests if you're gonna do this shit without even consulting me. Thats honestly the biggest slap in the groin, that I wasn't even contacted at all.

Truth is. Heart breaker I can KIND of get. But removing an entire tower was too much.
Seabed was fucking perfect and i've yet to get negative responses.


Considering those were the first 2 I put together myself with Lordyata, i'm not surprised by little bugs here and there, but other than that you could've asked me to do it myself because this is just insulting.


Edit: WAIT WAIT WAIT. HOW THE FUCK IS THIS EVEN A TOPIC AFTER PLAYING "MONSTER SPAM" AND CRAP IN RAGOL RESCUE. LOL you allowed shit like that but complain because I made a long seabed quest that had appropriate sinow spawms in relation to Soul blade and actually had extra enemies in each box room? You can hate the sloppiness of certain things, but don't you dare ever tell me the enemy counts were too much.

I would've just altered Heart breaker myself if you had asked.
 
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I should say that as a quest developer myself, I would be outraged if somebody modified one of my quests without permission. I disagree with most of the choices I've read Girth as having made, but that's not the point: the point is that they were his choices to make in his own quests. If you don't like the way somebody made a quest, either ask the author for permission to change it, ask the author to change it, or take it down, but don't modify somebody else's work without permission. If you hate his quests so much, then make your own and put those up, instead.
 
I should say that as a quest developer myself, I would be outraged if somebody modified one of my quests without permission. I disagree with most of the choices I've read Girth as having made, but that's not the point: the point is that they were his choices to make in his own quests. If you don't like the way somebody made a quest, either ask the author for permission to change it, ask the author to change it, or take it down, but don't modify somebody else's work without permission. If you hate his quests so much, then make your own and put those up, instead.
I completely agree with this. It's one thing to dislike someone else's content and wish it was different, and a VERY different thing to use one's power to change it to the way they would have preferred it. Yes, a lot of the work we did ripped code from existing Lost quests, and we did it that way on purpose to expedite the development. Is all of the work completely ours? No. But the main body of it came directly from Girth's mind. I just made sure it (mostly) worked. Personally, I feel that these changes are based on a personal dislike of the way they were constructed - primarily because there have really only been two people publicly voicing concerns. There were somethings that were requested to be changed and they were. If we had more communication from the admittedly limited community I'm sure some changed would have been accepted, even if grudgingly. The point here is the complete lack of communication and perceived abuse of ability
 
Although I think the two of them, Matt and Girth, should probably talk to each other directly, I believe Matt felt as if Girth's attitude was that he wouldn't take any criticism of his quest in any way. Whatever Matt had to say, Girth would just disagree with anything said about the quest, as they were already "perfect" to his eyes.

Also to hate his quests is a strong word. Don't think anybody here hated his quests. I know some people who have had issues with the quests, not including Matt, and not sure if they told Girth about it or not.

I have to take responsibility myself, though, because I allowed the quests to be edited and replaced without anyone consulting Girth.
 
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