Are these quests broken or just poorly designed?

DocTerry

There are several quests (see below) that are absolute time wasters. i.e. you hang around for 15+ minutes for the aggro to spawn--and nothing.

UNNERVING THE PAST
I have 2 motes out of 6 required, after three visits for 15-30 mins..including one at 1 am in the hope that fewer players will be around.

BLOODTHIRSTY ASSASSINS
There are six guys marked on the map of the two ships, but after several minutes I have yet to find a single one of them.

There are two other similar situation which I can't recall--and I'm only level 7

Are these quests broken? or, Are they just poorly designed and we have a case of too many players chasing too few spawns? (This is going to get worse on the 4th when the game is fully open)

KingRebz

They probably were killed by other players and you were there too late..all you have to do is wait for the npc to respawn.

Alyrn_Grey

If you could get rid of most of the other players those quests work fine. The problem is that they occasionally get stuck and people just sit and wait and wait and wait with more people piling into the same area all preventing the quest from ever resetting when it gets stuck.

This is why you can often move on with these quests by logging off and waiting 60+ seconds and logging in 2 or 3 times. Basically you want to get a different instance loaded without the stuck quest and you can continue.

Xaxxus

I think most of these issues are related to the way the game phases quests after completion.

Ive found that some quests, if there are too many people in the area, they do not refresh (the ragebinder and blaze quest for example). People sit around at the braziers waiting to summon them, but because the area was already 'completed' it never refreshes. But as soon as everyone leaves the area and comes back after a while, its back to normal, and the cycle repeats itself.

Alyrn_Grey

I pretty much confirmed that on a broken last section of Crows Woods where you go into the towers basement. In one that I had a terrible time getting out of there was a player parked at the bottom of the ladder basically keeping that paticular instance from resetting. I finally got to a different instance and it worked perfectly instead of the end boss just standing there ignoring me. Basically someone finished it and to many players where in the room at that time and instead of everyone winding up with the normal guy the entry phase got stuck with the end guy after he is done.

And because that one player wouldn't leave the instance wouldn't reset. This is pretty much the problem across the game when you find a bugged mission. Typically its stuck in the end of mission condition and not resetting the initial phase to the beginning and it won't until all the players clear the broken area.

DuhbAingeal

I would have to agree XaXXus I have found that in areas of high capacity users where quest are supposed to spawn happen to lag. when there is not a high volume of players they work just fine. Perhaps if it was a event like quest line the anchors all that are present would get credit for completing the quest.

DocTerry

Hmmm, thanks for the informative answers. I'm sure we've all played other MMOs where the boss spawns even when there are other players around.

So, I'll put it down to poor game design.