User:Plactus

Right now, all I have here is a rant about a mission that I hate (HATE.) and comments about one that I was expecting to that wasn't so bad. I hope to add more to this... although I probably won't, and am fairly likely in the next month or two to move over to the official Wiki.

Vizunah Square
I hate this mission. I've finished all three campaigns, with Protector on all three. This mission is, if not my absolute least favorite, pretty far down the list. There are some I have bad memories of and some that are annoying, but few inspire the seething rage this mission inspires. I don't know why I feel so strongly about this mission, but I'm going to try to list my reasons.

Reason #1: Time

I am not a fan of timed bonuses at all. There are four (maybe five, depending if you count one) missions outside of Factions that use timed bonuses: Augury Rock, Grand Court of Sebelkeh, Ruins of Morah, Abaddon's Gate, and perhaps Thirsty River. In most cases, the time limit is very generous; the only one of those five missions I didn't finish in plenty of time the first time was Grand Court of Sebelkeh.

Factions is different. The frustrating thing is sometimes the time limits are fairly generous, while other times they are tight. In my experience, Vizunah Square is one of the tightest; I've only Mastered it twice, and both times by less than thirty seconds. The fact that it's so tight is exacerbated by several other factors:


 * The mission doesn't start right when you enter the map. There's a full minute delay, I suppose to allow both sides to synch up.  I hope that this minute doesn't count against your time for the mission, but I'm not sure.
 * Even after the minute is up, it takes a while for Togo to begin talking. (I'm not sure about Mhenlo; I've never actually done Vizunah from the foreign side.)  I'm not sure if clicking on him, or when, has any effect on this.
 * After each battle, it takes a while for Mhenlo and Togo to begin their next conversation. There are gates that open at certain points in their conversation, and so you're standing around, waiting for these two to let you get a move on.
 * Each of the battles doesn't begin until after Togo and Mhenlo arrive. They move slower than the player characters, so you're waiting for them to show up.
 * While moving between battles, groups of Am Fah will pop up. They do this, I suppose, based on Togo and Mhenlo's movement, because if you run ahead, they'll pop up behind you.  This is in addition to Canthan Peasants turning into Afflicted behind you.  This makes moving between battles a severely tedious process.

All in all, you lose at least a good minute to waiting or backtracking, and more than that if the minute lost at the beginning counts. For a mission that's so tight, this is EXTREMELY frustrating. It's really annoying to come close and know that if Mhenlo and Togo had gotten a move on, you would have gotten it.

Reason #2: Two Parties

This is a really neat idea, to have two groups: One representing Canthan characters following Master Togo, and the other representing Tyrian characters who came with Mhenlo to answer Togo's plea for help (and later, Elonian characters recruited by Mhenlo along the way). But, for some reason, it just doesn't work.

The first and most obvious reason is simple: The mission can't be done by one team alone, so the two teams need to work together, and work well together, to succeed. I've been on both sides of one team completely and utterly failing, and it's no fun in either case. I've had the other side quit/resign before the mission begins. I've had communications problems between the two teams result in frustration. There's so much that can go wrong that it's not even funny.

(I've tried doing Vizunah Square with the express intent of capturing a skill. I wasn't thrilled to have a human player come in from the other side, because then I felt obligated to finish the mission.)

The two-party system also highlights some issues with the game's mechanics. I know that there are instances where bosses died and I didn't get a morale boost for it. This can be very problematic when your team needs a morale boost to recharge rez signets. I've never been thrilled with the idea that only party members, and not allies, can be rezzed, and here it screams for a change. This mission, as I said, requires two parties. If one wipes (or close enough), both teams lose, with nothing that can be done. The least they could have done is provide resurrection orbs, as they do for Unwaking Waters.

Reason #3: The Battles Themselves

Perhaps the one thing about Factions that really, really pushes me over the edge sometimes is the large groups of enemies. I don't mind if they can be pulled, but oftentimes they can't, at least not significantly. It seems to me that in designing Factions, in an attempt to make some enemies challenging, someone decided the best way to do it was to simply create huge groups of them.

This really shows in Vizunah Square, where you have two parties, plus two allies. I haven't done the math, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number of enemies that spawns in this single mission is 250-300. Fortunately, they don't all spawn at once, and so two parties that know what they're doing can generally keep the number of enemies they're fighting at one time down to a reasonable number. Unfortunately, if people start dying, things go to hell. If the teams start to split up, people are going to start dying. And it's hard to avoid splitting up.

I don't truly hate the Afflicted... except for Afflicted Ritualists. Even the rangers aren't too bad, and... well, I played a 'sin, and Afflicted Soul Explosion never really bothered me. But the Rits, with Flesh of My Flesh, are supremely annoying. The spawns late in the third battle with multiple Rits in one group... well, it's not fun.

All in all, Vizunah Square is one of the most horribly designed missions in the game. If Protector weren't the ONE title track I care about, I would take my ~26 minute completion time, the two skill points and other rewards, and move on, content that I never have to do this mission again with that character.

Dzagonur Bastion
Maybe I got lucky. It happens. But it only took me four tries to get Master's on this mission, and the first two I'm only including for honesty's sake: it wasn't until near the end of the second that I realized you had to step in the portal by Ahmtur to get outside the citadel to defend it. The third time I saved four of the six defenses, and the fourth I saved five, all without any particular effort.

It seems to me that the more I dread trying a quest/mission, the less trouble I have with it. See also: Thirsty River (easiest of the three Ascension missions, IMO), Augury Rock, fighting Glint, Thunderhead Keep (boring!)... I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones that come to mind. Then the ones that I manage to convince myself will be easy – Elona Reach, for instance – are surprisingly hard.

With Dzagonur Bastion down, I've now gotten Master's on all 20 Nightfall missions with only henchmen and heroes. DB doesn't rank in my top 5 for challenges (Jennur's Horde, Ruins of Morah, Gate of Madness, Grand Court of Sebelkeh, Moddok Crevice). Like I said, maybe I got lucky.