Jump to content

Photo

Difficulty and Balancing of Quests: The Worst of the Worst

OPINION

  • Please log in to reply
6 replies to this topic

#1 Nightmare

Nightmare

    Original ZC Tester

  • Members
  • Real Name:James
  • Location:Jackson, NJ

Posted 04 November 2021 - 08:01 PM

As everyone knows, balancing quest difficulty can be a tricky thing.  Make your quest too easy, and you can turn off people who have played for years and years upon end, bore them, and they'll never be interested.  Make them too hard, you'll tick off your playerbase and they will never play them.  But there have been a few outliers over the years, some that have just outright broken the rules in terms of difficulty, that are unacceptable even by Kaizo terms, without a difficulty setting.

 

The most notable examples include:

 

James Quest 2.

 

Quick synopsis:  After TSA:  The Silent Assassin, supposedly beat James Quest in 0 games, I ended up in a race to challenge him.  This resulted in a making of the difficulty of James Quest 2.  After ghastly reports of players being over 300 games to completion, TSA's exposure, and the quest's bugs and unrelenting difficulty, I made the decision to pull it when I returned to Zelda Classic in the 2011-2015 range.  A remake has still not been completed to my expectations.

 

Armageddon Quest 1

 

OUCH's gold bearing standard, this held the honor of being the default hardest quest for years.  It later did get softened slightly to Armageddon Games Forever, and there was a recent new release in Armageddon Quest 2.  I have not looked over that.  But this one is still played.

 

Gleeok's 6th Quest Candidate

 

Always known to be a stickler for challenge, Gleeok's 6th Quest Candidate really did live up to the reputation, even going too far that only 2-3 people beat it in the testing and really drove people mad and caused enough controversy. 

 

Honorable Mention:  Liberation of Hyrule series

 

Today, the community and council, by a very convincing vote, decided to vote the formerly Official 3rd Quest into this category and become the first quest to be excommunicated and retired from active nth quests..  Almost unbearable even by the best of players, this was nearly unplayable except by its testers and never was truly able to be truly mastered except by Gleeok.  Even Kaizo has its limits, and the 3rd pushed its limits beyond what was acceptable in a general format, even in a challenge format.

 

I think this is a lesson learned that the player and the target audience has to be respected when you make a quest.  I know it's a VERY DIFFICULT task to make a quest that will please nearly everybody and most of the time you will not succeed.  Time can make things worse as generations change taste as well.  It's always good to have at least one tester that is not yourself when you are making a quest, because if you make a quest for yourself, release it, and don't properly test it, this can happen.  It's rare, but it's probably the last thing you want as a quest developer.

 

-James



#2 Evan20000

Evan20000

    P͏҉ę͟w͜� ̢͝!

  • Members
  • Real Name:B̵̴̡̕a҉̵̷ņ̢͘͢͜n̷̷ę́͢d̢̨͟͞
  • Location:B̕҉̶͘͝a̶̵҉͝ǹ̵̛͘n̵e̸͜͜͢d҉̶

Posted 05 November 2021 - 07:26 AM

True 100%ing Yuurand is harder than anything listed here.

172-1721620_zelda-rupees-png-zelda-green


  • Russ, Moosh and Orithan like this

#3 Mani Kanina

Mani Kanina

    Rabbits!

  • Members

Posted 05 November 2021 - 09:29 AM

Don't buy into the lies of the rupee, it's not real, it's not worth it.



#4 Deedee

Deedee

    Bug Frog Dragon Girl

  • Moderators
  • Real Name:Deedee
  • Pronouns:She / Her, They / Them
  • Location:Canada

Posted 05 November 2021 - 01:20 PM

Don't buy into the lies of the rupee, it's not real, it's not worth it.



#5 Architect Abdiel

Architect Abdiel

    Kingdom Builder

  • Members
  • Real Name:Michael
  • Location:Florida

Posted 05 November 2021 - 02:18 PM

Don't buy into the lies of the rupee, it's not real, it's not worth it.

#6 Hergiswi

Hergiswi

    don't look for me, i'm just a story you've been told

  • Members
  • Real Name:chris
  • Location:house

Posted 05 November 2021 - 03:12 PM

Don't buy into the lies of the rupee, it's not real, it's not worth it.



#7 zcfan27330

zcfan27330

    Junior

  • Members

Posted 05 November 2021 - 09:09 PM

It's funny, I found James Quest 2 easier than James Quest 1, solely because you continued with full life





Also tagged with one or more of these keywords: OPINION

0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users