Shamus Plays: LOTRO, Part 21

[StriderShinryu]

I wonder if Turbine notices these logic failures. Why would you need to poison dogs if you can stab bears and wolves to death? How could honey and blackwort be mixed to make poison? Are the berries poisonous or something? If they are, why would you bother with the other ingredients?

My head hurts from overthinking these quests.

Well, I believe the point of poisoning the dogs is because it's meant to be a sneaky way to get rid of them all in one shot.. if you forget about the whole hunting down and killing mother part. When you're just going into an area and trying to thin out a specific part of the wildlife, there's really no need for stealth or a plan beyond "kill them all." *shrug*

As for the poison itself, my guess would be the berries are poisonous but have a specific smell or taste that would keep the dogs from eating it (or something like that). The honey and blackwort could be used to disguise the smell or taste (or the appearance that the dogs had been poisoned in the first place.. like if they all started gagging and throwing up as soon as they ate it). That's just my guess though. I'm not skilled in making poisons.. or am I? :O

 

[Orange Monkey]

Just when you thought there was one sane human in middle-earth

Great comic as always Shamus!

 

[GreyDuck]

You're in top form, Shamus. Epic Lulz.

 

[Dev Null]

So the bandits' cunning plan is to take vicious man-eating wargs and breed them with dogs to make them... what, exactly? Smaller? More cuddly? Better at playing fetch? If you're looking for killer beasts to invade with, and you've already got wargs, uhm... breed wargs?

Maybe they should breed them with cows instead. Then they could eat the hay.

 

[StriderShinryu]

So the bandits' cunning plan is to take vicious man-eating wargs and breed them with dogs to make them... what, exactly? Smaller? More cuddly? Better at playing fetch? If you're looking for killer beasts to invade with, and you've already got wargs, uhm... breed wargs?

Maybe they should breed them with cows instead. Then they could eat the hay.

It's actually the other way around. They're breeding wargs with dogs to make more vicious bloodthirsty dogs (or sort of a smaller slightly more easily controlled warg). At that point in the gameworld you really haven't even met real wargs yet outside of maybe running into a randomly spawning and pathing Elite monster that likes to eat careless new players for breakfast. Plus, the badguys in the area are just bandits and not goblins or orcs who have more ability to control real wargs.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You just wait until you find the unruly son

 

[MooseHowl]

"And that's another thing!" he says raising his voice> "I'm trying to get some work done here, so please stop eating the soap-cakes and drinking all my joint tonic!"

Hilarious stuff. Something tells me Lulzy is going to have a lot of the... runs. Runs to Chetwood, I mean. At least her joints ought to be nice and limber!

 

[Khornefire]

I'd thought the serious had gotten boring, but then I saw clap-trap and decided I should keep reading.

 

[ucciolord1]

You just wait until you find the unruly son

Oh he'll have a field day with that one.

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Great job shamus, and explains well why I am not doing any other MMO beside WoW. I feel your anger questing with lulzy, WoW quests are exactly as silly, illogic and make you hike all over the place just for a cup of tea and some rusty coppers.

 

[i64ever]

It's sad when the only reasonable motive the NPC's could have for the mindboggling dumb quests they send you on is that they're trying to get you killed. I'm with Lulty, I'll take betrayal over gross stupidity anyday.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Is it my imagination, or does the dog lying next to Ellie look like an exact copy of the blind dogs from STALKER? Maybe it's the texturing.

[small]Man, I could really go for some joint tonic and soapcakes right about now....[/small]

 

[Georgie_Leech]

Aw, no song this time?

 

[fanklok]

The second item is berries. The berries are free, plentiful, close at hand, and guarded by killer bears.

I started to cry when I saw this.

According to Stephen Colbert, the top five threats to america are:

5 Terrorists
4 BEARS!!!
3 Democrats
2 Robots
1 MORE BEARS (no one ever suspects the second bear)

You foolish foolish fool, it's.

5. Bears
4. Robots
3. Bears
2. Robots
1. Robot bears (Shamus I do hope you never ever have to deal with a monstrosity of this magnitude, they can heal, dps, and tank, simultaneously)

Rumor has it this game is going F2P so I'll be you're friend, we can break every charter in the Geneva Convention, perform acts of genocide on a regular basis, and (eventually) look fabulous in matching (only color wise) outfits.

 

[Giest4life]

I think laughed so hard at the first page I had nothing left for the subsequent 5:

Since arriving in town I've discovered that the inhabitants can be divided into two groups:

1) Idiots
2) Me

Pure gold I toll ye, pure gold.

 

[Amarsir]

Had me going with the herbalist for a minute. That was great!

 

[Sartan0]

Somehow I am not unhappy I never played that game...

 

[likalaruku]

You're really going at it. I've got this whole story saved as a 240 page document.

 

[Garden Ninja]

"And that's another thing!" he says raising his voice> "I'm trying to get some work done here, so please stop eating the soap-cakes and drinking all my joint tonic!"

Hilarious stuff. Something tells me Lulzy is going to have a lot of the... runs. Runs to Chetwood, I mean. At least her joints ought to be nice and limber!

The Soap Cakes gag was pure gold! Might help if he bothered to label any of his ingredients, but considering the make up of the town in general, he's probably not that bright.

 

[pfloriani]

I wonder if Turbine notices these logic failures. Why would you need to poison dogs if you can stab bears and wolves to death?

Quest design in MMOs is a black art based on some conflicting issues:

1) Players like to quest alone so they can follow the story at their own pace.
2) Multiple characters may be trying to do the same quest at the same time.

So, let's say the quest is instead "stab all the dogs".

Character One shows up and stabs all the dogs.
Character Two shows up, all the dogs are dead. Since it would be unsatisfying to have the game give credit to the second character, generally he or she has to wait for the dogs to respawn.

The rate of respawning is also an issue here; too fast and it may not be possible for a character to kill all the dogs, too slow and you have players waiting in line for their turn.

Thus, the quest is structured so that both players can do it independently at the same time without getting in each other's way. Instancing is also a solution for this, but MMO developers try not to overuse instancing for solo questing as it breaks the "shared world" concept.

Many story elements that seem nonsensical are imposed by the nature of MMO gameplay; the early MMOs often had players waiting in line to kill a specific target (and getting disgruntled in the process), and MMO designers now design to avoid that.

Sorry for imposing the serious discussion here, but I think that there are some quest elements that Turbine writers would like to write in a more logical way but are constrained by the nature of the game. Admittedly, it's easy to be less charitable about some of them ("You're out of honey? Really?"), which is where what Shamus is doing is so funny.