Monday, December 24, 2012

Pirate101: Should Stormzilla be Removed?

The most complained about quest, based on most of the social media I've seen about Pirate101, is the Stupendor-X/Stormzilla quest.  During the quest, your Pirate pilots Stupendor-X, a battle mech, against Stormzilla, a large lizard monster.  You are given battle mech specific abilities and are tasked with defeating Stormzilla.  This quest is part of the main storyline and, as such, cannot be skipped.

The problem that people seem to have is that you can't engage in direct melee combat with Stormzilla, due to it's epic abilities that will give her (she did lay eggs, seemingly) 2 or 3 hits to your 1.  You have to destroy her eggs, so that they don't hatch into little stormzillas and hassle you, and then drag her through the fires you lay down via kiting.  It's not tough, but it takes some getting used to.

A lot of the complaints suggest that this quest be removed altogether.  I couldn't disagree more.  One of the things that keeps an MMO fresh is quest variety, which admittedly is a bit lacking in Pirate101.  The Stupendor-X quest is one of the few where you are tasked with doing something out of the norm.  As the expansions are released, I'd like to see more of this: more variety, more risks taken, more ideas that we haven't seen in the game before . .  . just anything to break up what can become monotony.

I think that the Stupendor-X questline is a good one, I don't think it's impossible, and I'd like to see KI come up with even more varied ideas on different types of quests.

4 comments:

  1. This reminds me of one of the Privateer's class-only power quests from Cool Ranch, where you take command of four Otter musketeers instead of your regular companions. The bosses are higher level shooters and if your otters target them directly the talent chains will quickly get them killed. You have to quickly figure out what talents they have and know what they each can do well enough to coordinate them as an effective team.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really like this quest, and yes i have had some troubles when i first began this guest but every time that i was defeated i was able to come up with good strategies and eventually beat the stormzilla.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Regarding the type of quest...and needing more of them...
    The problem is that this quest comes very late in the game, with nothing preparing you for such a major detour in the strategy of the game.
    Also, an RPG is all about teaching the player how to rely on their increasing abilities and gear to thwart challenges, so having a main quest that takes away all of those and relies instead on player skill/ingenuity, rather than the characters' abilities, is a huge design flaw.
    It would certainly be better, design-wise, if this were a side quest rather than a main quest.
    Or, at least, have earlier quests that help prepare you to complete challenges without relying on character abilities.

    I knew they were going to have to make some significant changes eventually - fixing a few fairly severe bugs at the very least.
    Looks like the bugs they did fix should help players considerably.

    ReplyDelete
  4. if stormzilla dies out of the game it will be a good and a bad thing its good because theres no traing for it,and you cant use your own abiltes i would wipe the floor with it if i could use my powers
    it would be a bad thing because it give players a good challengen for once lol

    ReplyDelete