User talk:Linsey Murdock/Questions4

Henchmen
Hello ,i would like to ask you why do all the henchmen in GW:EN and all other campaings have only 12 ranks in their attiributes when most of lvl 20 monsters have at least 15 ranks in their attiributes and 18  in hard mode, i think henchmen should have at least 14 ranks in their attributes( minor rune+ head gear), It's a bit unfair   for henchmen and for ppl who don't like to pug. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:Ainvar.
 * Wait, "lvl 20" enemies? Are you sure they have that high in attribute points? The enemies don't have runes or insignia (Andrew McLeod, who works on creature design at Arena Net, mentioned that here). So a level 20 enemy is actually weaker than we are - we have the benefit of runes and insignia and etc, while they don't. They are just like henchmen in that regard, so I think it all balances out in the end. Erasculio 14:20, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The reason we don't give Henchmen better attributes is because we don't want them to be better than the average player or even really as good as a player. This is still a team based game and we don't want it to be preferred that people take a henchmen over a player. If you want to have a fully spec'd out henchmen, take heroes. If you don't want any henchmen at all, you can party up with one other person to have a full party of humans and heroes. Heroes are meant to be the better version of henchmen and humans should be better than Heroes.
 * Just to clarify, while Monsters don't use runes and insignias we can set their attributes at a fixed level as well as their health,armor etc. So monsters can have ranks in a attribute over 12 and are more likely to at lvl 20 or higher. It is true that in hard mode monsters can get over 16 in an attribute. It all depends on what we need the monster to do and how we need them to perform. - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 19:18, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeh I am pretty sure when I have 16 in fire magic the ruby djinn bosses in hard mode hit as if they have about 32 in fire magic :P -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 19:48, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * We don't go that high lol. We can do things like increase damage through buffs which do not relate to the actual attribute. - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 19:53, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It's amazing that considering the max attribute level of 12, henchmen still manage to be better than the average player. I'm sure some will disagree with me on this, but I think whoever works on the AI should be commended. Even in Prophecies, the henchmen can do a lot with relatively poor skills. Bcstingg 02:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The downside is, Henchmen need sometimes too long to kill enemy mobs and are stupid in many situations or don't use skills properly which leads to frustration. Joining any random pug kills twice as fast. They are definitely far away from being better than an average player and I don't think higher attributes than 12 would make them preferred over real players. 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Henchmen might not be better than the avarage player, but they definitely rank higher on my list than avarage PuGs. You just need to know how to control them and you'll easily complete anything in normal mode with regular henchmen and anything in hard mode with heroes. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 11:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Gem, that's probably more what I was trying to say. Better than the average PuG. I first started using full hench teams after a failure on Nahpui Quarter that was my fault (I didn't know you couldn't backtrack, and retreated too far). I decided it was more fair to other players to try a mission with full hench teams first so I'd know what I was doing. I figured I would be unsuccessful, but understand the mission, then return to do it with a group. Then I found out the henchmen weren't nearly as bad as everyone said they were, and I had a reliable, consistent group that was better than the average (but not the best) human groups I'd been in. I'm not sure what unsigned meant about "stupid in many situations", in my experience they do smart things many average players don't do (like casters kiting enemy mobs). Bcstingg 13:27, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, especially with the "reliable" part. Henchmen don't change - sure, they have some limitations, but once you understand how to deal with those, they are far more reliable than the average PUG (who you don't know how will act, what skills will be using, if they will leave or not in the middle of the mission, and so on). Sure, it's fun to play in PUGs once in a while, but when doing something that is hard or time consuming, I think henchmen are way, way better than PUGs. Erasculio 13:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I like to say they are "reliably stupid." :) As for the high damage, if you look at the damage calculation article, you'll notice that the difference between caster and target also affects the damage dealt. So in hard mode, not only may the critters have slightly higher attributes, but their higher level adds another 10% to their direct damage spells. Bosses deal double damage in some campaigns, so yes, those Ruby Djinn bosses in hard mode simply annihilate everything not under PS if they aren't shut down immediately. --Thervold 19:06, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * its annoying that henchmen can not avoid a single trap and all of them get spiked for 50 dmg each second, or sometimes they simply refuse to heal although they are at full energy, at last they should get a minor rune to make up for their stupidity, this would not improve their ai but is better than nothing. 24 September 2007 (UTC)

The Path to Revelations
Were you the one who created this quest? Or more accurately, series of quests (considering the Cipher quests as part of the chain)? (For the record, I loved this quest line, indeterminate quests are fun, especially with the "hot and cold" indicator.) If you are... or if you know... could you tell us if there may be more to the quest? The final cryptogram seems to hint at a bit more, but I'm also pondering things like the Tapestry Shred or Ancient Weapon that seemed to hint there was more going on, when there really wasn't (at least, not for a while for one of those). Thanks for any information you can give. --Nkuvu 02:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It was not I who made those quests. I listed on my talk page which ones I worked on. :) This was by John Stumme.
 * So I can't really speak to the quests since I didn't work on them, but do keep in mind that GW:EN is meant to set up and create a bridge to GW2. So there are times when it may seem like it's hinting at more, and that may very well be hints towards GW2. - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 04:14, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ahh, thanks for the quick response. ^_^ I wasn't sure if the list of quests on your page was comprehensive or just a sample. And... I was about to go off and ask about this in the proper place, but it looks like Erasculio beat me to it. --Nkuvu [[Image:User_Nkuvu_sig_button.jpg]] 17:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Bear Club for Men/Women
Linsey, I don't understand your design goals in creating this quest. We're given a quest with a funny name, a weapon with a funny name that does only 15-15 damage (making it clear it's a joke weapon like the banana scythe), and we must have this weapon equipped when the bear dies. So it seems at first it's going to be a lighthearted and fun quest, especially because of that last point. I'm thinking -- maybe this bear will be a bit of a challenge, but I should be able to do it with the weapon that was given to me for the quest. But the bear turns out to be a level 24 super-tank with natural regeneration and a half-cast-time Troll Unguent, and the club is completely ineffective. Even killing him with my assassin using daggers can take 3 minutes or more, and there's no way to switch to the club and time the death blow when the club only does 1-2 damage, which isn't enough to overcome his natural regen. So the quest practically screams "use a spirit spammer" since that's about the only way to be sure you have the club in hand when the bear dies. But that's not much fun or in line with the (seemingly) light-hearted nature of the quest. And from a story perspective, I doubt that strategy would impress the Norn much.

I do enjoy a challenge, but quests that are too difficult with anything other than one gimmick build aren't so much challenging as they are frustrating. Dwarven Boxing is a good example of a solo quest that uses a specialized low-damage weapon, but still allows you to have fun with it. Success is not guaranteed and there is some challenge, but you at least have a good chance of completing it using the weapon and skills at your disposal, instead of just going /Rt secondary and letting spirits do all the work.

Is there perhaps some way to defeat the bear using the club that we've all been missing? Or was having the club be completely useless, and yet somehow still be in your hand when the bear dies, part of a design goal I'm not seeing? Bcstingg 20:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * So, the original design of that quest involved you getting special Bear Fighting Skills to accompany the club, but we ended up not having the bandwidth to do that. The bear is certainly beatable without having to use a spirit spammer. Spirit Spammer is just the current fallback build that everyone is using. I do agree that some adjustments to his species would help make this quest a bit more doable for every class. Natural regen is yuck, I didn't intend for him to have that, but I guess it came with the boss buff Andy gave him. The reason I tried to give him a more serious build was because when he didn't have anything, people complained that it was boring. Maybe I went a bit overboard with the challenging bit heh. I should prolly make sure that he doesn't have any fast casting or recharge as well. Any other suggestions? I'm welcome to ideas. :D - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 21:02, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You know, I thought of special bear fighting skills as that seemed to be in the spirit of the quest, but wasn't even going to suggest it because it seemed like way too much work for one quest. So it's funny that's what you had originally planned. I'm sure there are other ways to beat him, but the possible builds are heavily constrained by having to have the club in your hand when he goes down. You either have to degen him to death, kill him with spells, invest in hammer mastery, or bring Brutal Weapon, because a weapon switch won't work considering his natural regen. Of course, I've only tried beating him with an assassin so far, and I know another class like mesmer could easily beat him while holding the club and not have to spam spirits. I can see the difficulty in tweaking a quest like this -- how can you make it challenging, but not so simple that anyone can just go to the wiki, learn all his tricks, beat him easily, and declare it "boring"? And balancing him so that all classes have an equal challenge would be impossible. Right now I think it's primarily melee classes that will have the most trouble, since we must be holding the club when he dies, and we must rely on our weapon for most of our damage. If I could get him down to 20 health or so and then just beat him to death with the club doing 2 damage, that would be challenging but not impossible. With his current skills, and his current regen, it becomes a question of either tweaking a build for a really long time to beat one quest, or falling back on spirit spammer. I suppose I don't have any truly useful suggestions, but that did clarify what the quest was intended to be, and I see how hard it is to stay true to that design without the special skills. Bcstingg 21:39, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Haven't done this quest myself yet, but I would think that builds like touch rangers could beat the enemy. :) I think that hard stuff just requires some more effort and the game has lacked (before GW:EN) the hard stuff that I'd like. So far I've been pretty happy with the challenges and this quest sounds like one of them. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 21:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not 100% sure, but I think I beat this bear using the Ursan Blessing skill. Yukiko [[Image:User_Yukiko_Sig.png]] 22:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think I want to change his skills around a whole lot, but I think that reducing any fast cast/fast recharge and natural regen will go a long way to make this more balanced for non-casters. I'll talk to Andy on Monday when he is back in the office and see what we can do. Thanks for the feedback guys! - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 00:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Gem, I like hard stuff too, but the problem with this quest currently is not so much that it's too hard, but that it limits your options -- because of the natural regen, beating the bear to to death with the club is just about impossible unless you invest in hammer mastery or use something like barbs or splinter weapon, but relying on bringing particular skills isn't what makes a quest hard. When I get a quest that says I need to beat a bear to death with a club, I want to beat a bear to death with a club! :) If I could use some hit-and-run tactics, interrupt troll unguent, and slowly wear it down, that would be a challenge without being impossible or relying on a gimmick build. Spamming spirits is easy, and it's unfortunate that it completes most of the solo quests so well, making it the most attractive option for many. On another note, it would have been awesome if the reward for this quest were a max version of the club of a thousand bears, like the boxing reward was a max version of the brass knuckles. Bcstingg 01:11, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Everything you say carries a "unless i want to expend on hammer mastery", why is so complicated to expend points on it? you said: "I want to beat a bear to death with a club!" well a club is a kind of hammer so expending some point on hammer would be logic, so why is that option so horrible? Coran Ironclaw 04:07, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * It's not complicated or horrible. My point was that in my opinion, it's a sign of bad quest design if a mesmer can beat it with Imagined Burden, Conjure Phantasm, and Power Return, while a profession like assassin must either rely on a gimmick build like spirit spammer or go out and buy a few platinum worth of hammer attacks we'll never use again. I invested in hammer mastery and the hammer did 6 damage instead of 2 (still not enough to outpace his regen), so hammer attacks are a requirement if you're going to go that route. I can complete the quest, that's not the issue. I was just pointing out that it's not much fun when there are lots of creative options for casters, and a few gimmick builds for melee characters, created by the requirement of having the club in hand combined with his natural regen. I thought maybe it was just me, and I normally just find some way to complete it and move on if something frustrates me, but I asked about it because some of the talk pages showed it was a common frustration and lots of people were falling back to spirit spammer. Bcstingg 15:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't think casters have any problem there (for example, I defeated him as my Necromancer without any problems, without relying on any Ritualist skill), but I see Bcstingg's point regarding melee professions. I think the easiest way for them to do this quest would be by using one of the Blessings, like Yukiko above did with Ursan Blessing. We couldn't have special skills, but maybe we could have Olaf giving the "Ursan Blessing" skill there? I think that would allow anyone to defeat the Bear while using the club (and people who don't want to use the Blessing could simply not equip it, then). Erasculio 15:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
 * This just came to mind too, and I can see why some might disagree with me about this quest. There are two types of difficulty in Guild Wars: figuring out which skills to bring and using effective strategy/tactics. The best missions and quests combine these two. Hell's Precipice back when we only had Prophecies skills is a good example; Jennur's Horde is a good recent example. You need to pick appropriate skills and you need to have good tactics. I just personally think finding good tactics and using them is more challenging and fun, since if a quest just depends on bringing the right skills you can tell someone "just equip these and you'll win", and once you figure out the skills, there's no further challenge to be had. But I can see how people who really enjoy the skill-choosing part more than the tactical part would find something like this to be great fun, while I was hoping to just be able to choose some good general skills and maybe a few special-purpose skills like Blinding Powder, and then beat the bear with sound strategy. I don't mind a tactical challenge, but I don't care for laboring over a build for a long time. Some people are the opposite. Bcstingg 15:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

(reset indent)I managed to beat him quite simply using a basic beastmaster build. Using Call of Protection and Symbiotic Bond your pet can tank quite well, then using a selection of attacking skills (pref something that does bleeding to counter regen) and you're home free.. works on a Warrior too, just need a +energy set. Me55enger 16:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess Bcstingg's point is: Why create a special weapon for that quest, when all ways of beating the bear do NOT involve that weapon? --Xeeron 16:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good summary. My first time through this quest went something like this:
 * See "Clutch the Club of a Thousand Bears" in quest log
 * Look for club on ground, talk to NPCs in arena, find no club
 * Shrug, try to kill bear anyway, and with considerable effort, succeed!
 * Quest not completed, check wiki for answer / possible bug
 * Find out about bear club I was given, find it in my inventory
 * Figure this special bear club was given to me for a reason and will do a lot more damage to the bear. This must be why the quest was so hard the first time!
 * Swing club at bear, it does 2 damage, stare in disbelief. -- bcstingg (talk • contribs) 15:36, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


 * True a large part of the fun is in finding a build that will work, but because imho they went a little over the top with the bear's boss buff, I now find that there is simply no way I could beat this guy on my Dervish or Paragon using just normal primary profession skills. My experience as dervish:
 * -Attempts using Ebon Dust Aura to blind him and kill him with scythe attacks
 * -Oh crud, bear has troll unguent, ok new strategy
 * -So I will need an interrupt, but..oh wait...Dervish doesn't have interrupt, crud
 * -Stomps off with W secondary to buy distracting blow and tries again
 * -Goes in, succesfully interrupts troll unguent, which then turns out to recharge in 5 secs
 * -Grumbles something about *impossibly stupid quest*
 * -*Several dozen attempts later*
 * -In all despair tries an Illusionary Weaponry build and hooray, succes!
 * -Gets DC-ed, crud again
 * -Logs back in: quest and build reset
 * -*Utters several curses*
 * -*Repeats the process and is by now heavily traumatized*
 * But seriously, when it gets to the point where I need to rely almost fully on secondary profession skills (I only had 2 actual Dervish skills on my bar) I'm close to just saying screw it! It's not about being able to finish these quests, it's about the silly ways needed to get there. What if I don't want to buy my characters 6 secondary profession skills that I'm probably never going to use again just to finish a quest that gives me a bugger all reward? I spent a lot of time buying my characters every primary profession skill in the game and now you are telling me that all these skills are useless for the purpose of finishing a simple sidequest? Honestly, if this quest stays at it is, I won't even try it again. I refuse to waste time and money on a quest that only promotes thinking inside the box. Liselle Morrow 23:14, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Who told you to do all quets? There isn't even a title for completing quests. Some people enjoy this, some don't. Not everyone needs to do it. -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 23:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I can only say this: my condolances to all you who think using the same-old same-old builds over and over again no matter what primary character it concerns is fun. If that's your idea of fun, ok *shrugs* I give up. Tired and sick of people missing the point, I'll just crawl back into my little corner where you like to put the people who actually care about a game being fair and balanced. Liselle Morrow 23:42, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You know, I did this with my Necromancer without any trouble, and I didn't buy any skill or did anything different from what I was doing in that area to defeat the bear. I don't know why you think you had to buy or use the same skills for all characters in order to win here. Erasculio 00:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Once again Erasculio, READ the posts. I was a Dervish. Plenty of people up there saying it's harder to impossible for melee characters without a "gimmick build". So read next time before you whine. Liselle Morrow 09:04, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Liselle, I posted a build on your talk page that works well against the bear with all dervish skills. I think many people forget that dervishes are potent casters, even moreso than assassins. I know I did -- the first time through I was focused on using the scythe and timing a weapon swap, which is hopeless. Even when the bear appears to have no health in his bar, he has enough that ~100 damage won't finish him off. I'm going to look into Deadly Arts for the assassin and see if I find similar success. -- bcstingg (talk • contribs) 14:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, Liselle, I have read very well what you said, including "for most characters there simply is no way of beating the bear without heavily if not fully relying on secondary class skills" and "this quest is an excellent example of encouraging standard spirit-spamming builds as the only viable solution to getting it completed". Now let's see...Are Dervishes "most characters"? Nope. Do we have to rely on spirit-spamming as the "only viable solution" to defeating the bear? Nope, either. So...I would like to ask, did you read (or "READ", to quote you once again) what you have written yourself? Erasculio 15:34, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Encrypted Charr Battle Plans
I don't know which of you designers added these, but 1) are they still used for anything? and 2) are they just random key strokes or real encryption schemes? Thanks! --Thervold 17:18, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Aye, I'd love to know if somebody punched the keyboard a couple times, or if you got somebody from the CIA Counterintelligence office on their coffee break to run some phrases through some crazy envryption machine. Thervold, if you want to get a jump on unenecrypting them yourslef for no reason (presuming nobody punched a keyboard), most common letter = e. There are other tricks that I can't think of ATM, but take a shot at it if you want. Calor 19:01, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Whatever they are, those aren't simple substitution ciphers =P A dozen other possibilities come to mind, but that's the most common one (like the cryptoquip puzzles in the newspaper), and they're impossible to resolve into actual English simply by substituting letters. I checked, because apparently I have nothing better to do. =\ MisterPepe talk 19:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * They are used for something. There are some hidden messages in there but I confess, it's mostly just Colin smacking a keyboard. - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 20:10, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Quagmire....giggity. --Ravious 21:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Exactly. I mean you should be able to find a bunch of little hidden things, but the rest is filled in with gibberish. I think the gibberish parts are fairly easy to pick out - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 23:52, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you can only easily see the gibberish because you know what it says :P I can make head nor take of it! -- Lemming [[Image:User Lemming64 sigicon.png]] 00:07, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Can you confirm that these still drop after the preview event? No one seems to get them and people are starting to speculate that there is a bug preventing them from dropping. -- (gem / talk) 17:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Not only do they seem to no longer drop, Captain Langmar doesn't do anything if you have one in spite of her telling you to bring any plans you find. --Thervold 18:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Full functionality for these is not yet in the game. It is possible that we pulled them off the drop list until they get added. - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 18:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, can you get the info somewhere? -- [[Image:User Gem sig.png|Gem]] (gem / talk) 18:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * We did stop them dropping until we add their full functionality. Trust me they are worth the wait, they are teh awesome. - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 19:03, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Then I will keep my 2 different versions. Hope I can find the third without to many trouble. Or maybe it would be nice if it is troublesome counting i already have 2 xD. Coran Ironclaw 19:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

O.O! mine changed like magic! it's a totaly different scroll! Shorter even! :O! I've been robbed! --Lou-Saydus 22:11, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Do they drop now? I have yet to see one drop.Jelmewnema 06:28, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * They are dropping now but are fairly rare. Keep looking! - [[Image:User Linsey Murdock sig.jpg]]Linsey talk 00:15, 29 September 2007 (UTC)