Gamers Fight MMO Boss for 18 Hours - and Fail

Well, looks like all the media coverage got to SE wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/2008_-_%2808/22/08%29_Regarding_Specific_Notorious_Monsters

Note that they say a "decisive outcome may be reached within a shorter period of time." doesn't necessarily scream easier to me, rather, beat this mob in this amount of time or else it kills your group along with everyone else unfortunate enough to be in the immediate vicinity.

Lol, Pandemonium Warden isn't the only unbeatable boss (HNM in FFXI terms) in FFXI, a mob named Absolute Virtue is the original.  While he has technically been beaten, that was through  a use of an exploit and was rather quickly fixed by SE. He was also beaten by the SE dev team (using the uber cool, fade camera maneuver >.>;).

Only thing is, most people know that AV is , realistically, unbeatable and either run away or just stand there and take the death. Most people wouldn't be stupid enough to stand there and whack away at this thing for 5 hours, let alone 18.But then again, most people aren't as concerned with they're e-peen as blue gartr is. I mean, during that time they didn't even actually hurt PW's true form.

There is without a doubt some obscure way to beat these two, but it's just not worth it for most players, as your stil looking at a 10+ hour fight. They're really just put in as time sinks. They don't even drop things that are that spectacular.

This is lame as hell. If you lost, level up your character and try again with a different strategy, and if it takes more than 2 or 3 hours, back out, level up some more, or just say fuck it, and play the other parts of the game. I seriously doubt the boss is genuinely UNBEATABLE. If it really is, that changes things, but to say that SQUENIX is responsible for the amount of time players spend on the game is illogical to me. Whatever though, this kind of stupid shit is why I don't play MMO's.

-Entertainment isn't the reason the world sucks. It's the reason we know the world sucks. For information on games and psychology, look up: Jonathan Freedman(2002)Block & Crain(2007)Grand Theft Childhood, by Harvard researchers Larry Kutner&Cheryl Olson

I think a lot of you probably don't understand these games.

1. No the boss shouldn't be unbeatable. For the (redacted) that think that it is normal to have an unbeatable boss, go away, you don't understand these kinds of games. You remind me of the snobby artists who would put out a blank canvas and say that is the statement they want to make and if you don't appriciate their art then you just aren't worthy of it. In these games, mobs aren't meant to be invincible. The theme is that you can overcome anything with planning and teamwork. Throwing that theme away is what has the players feel betrayed.

2. Likely this was a simple glitch. I'm was playing AoC until recently (canceled this morning) and glitches like this happen all the time. There was one raid boss that would randomly refill to full life occasionally. He was invincible until they fixed him. Likely a new update will come through, they will realize they slipped an extra 0 into the mobs heath and the problem will be fixed.

3. MMO's aren't like playing a normal game, they are more like a flower garden. Some of us would consider tilling, weeding, fertilizing and planting a flower garden a lot of work and a huge waste of time and money. Others really enjoy it, it is their hobby and they will spend as much time and money as they want to play out in their garden. You could say that they are wasting their time, the flowers will die in the winter, they could be reading a book, and all those plants and tools cost a lot of money. Or you could just let them have fun.

In the end, it is what they get out of it that is important. Some get leadership training, others learn skills such as following instructions and working as a team. Critical thinking is important as well as math. Which increases your survivablity more, a 10% increase in damage or an 12% increase in your chance to dodge?

What has the group up in arms is that this is a glitch they find unacceptable. The media has tried to turn it around to say that people are spending too much time on this. When they say that people were becoming ill, they weren't referring to ambulances being called, just likely headaches and stress that any event would cause after 18 hours. It was a glitch and the players want it fixed. Stop making a mountain out of a molehill.

Wow, some people in this thread disgust me with their indifference or ignorance.

I don't understand how this concept is so hard.  They introduce a raid boss.  Pretty much by definition, this means that there is a method for killing it available.  It might be ridiculously hard, it might require you to figure out the specific strategy required first, but it can be done unless they're explicitly telling you otherwise.

Was this boss in an instance?  If so, they have NO excuses.  Instances are the one part of MMOs that have a defined beginning, middle, and end; you go in, you kill a boss, you move on to the next boss and repeat.  If they suddenly drop a boss in there that CAN'T be killed...the instance is impossible to complete.  And anyone about to open their moronic mouths and say "well maybe you're not SUPPOSED to be able to beat the instance"...just shut up right now.  Your contributions to this discussion are clearly non-existant.

There are simple solutions to this problem.  WoW uses the Enrage timer; if you haven't killed the boss in X time, it goes nuts and wipes the party.  The end.  You will NEVER have an 18 hour attempt at a Void Reaver or Kael'thas encounter.  And again, this is different from a guild spending 18 hours on repeated attempts.  If they just keep dying every 10 minutes but continue to die for 18 hours, that's a different story.  But they're being conditioned and implicitly told that they are getting closer to victory.

The encounter should be designed in a manner that tells them how close they ACTUALLY are to winning, or how long they have until they will automatically lose (a la Enrage timers).  It is not hard to see what you're allowing players to do, and what you're encouraging them to do, and what they are in all likelihood GOING TO DO if you don't stop them from doing it.

I don't play FFXI, I stick to WoW and LOTRO for my MMO fixes.  But I wonder, would it be possible to design encounters like this to be taken in "waves" or shifts.

For example, and I'm just throwing out numbers here, say you have a 45 person group.  Would it be possible to have to take this boss in shifts of say 9 players each.

So group A attacks for 3 hours

Group B for 3

Group C for 3

Group D for 3

Group E for 3

and then Group A comes back in and starts to cycle over.  Obviously, the idea being that no group of nine players is stuck doing an ENTIRE 18 hour boss fight, which is pretty ridiculous.  All boss' should be beatable within 12 hours if you're going to make one group do the entire thing.

I don't think this takes away from the Difficulty.  It still means finding 45 people who are capable.  IMO it might even add to the strategy since you need to create 5 effective fighting groups, since if one group gets wiped out the raid fails.

Just an idea.

Sounds like a case of sour grapes. 

Translates to:  If Square-Enix had not made the Mob unbeatable (extremely difficult at least) then we would not have needed to spend endless hours and risk public spectacle. 

News flash for you bubby.  No one to blame but yourself.  No?  You knew what you were getting into and that the Mob was hard.  You showed signs of knowing or how did you know to need/want to gather all the people you did.  If Square was really responsible for not letting your hurt yours (hows that?  They are responsible for your being an idiot?) they could always put in a timer that kicks you if you play more then XX minutes on a single log-in and will let you relog for xx hours.  The screams from the player base would likely fighten the Pandemonium Warden to death.   

Bet you would not have complained if you had won.   But no you spent all that time and lost and complained.  Pitiful. 

Have to wonder what kind of epic/uber loot a mob like that would drop though.

"We decided to end it before we risked turning into a horrible news story about how video games ruin people's lives."

Too little, too late.  It never ceases to amaze me how people will devote themselves to an MMO.

M. Carusi

Capitol Gaming

http://capitolgaming.blogspot.com

What else do you expect from Square-Enix? They are the kings of unbeatable/nigh unbeatable bosses. Do you really think they wouldn't do it in their MMO?

Grab a few hundred otehr players and fight the thing in shifts and get over yourself.

E. Zachary Knight
http://www.editorialgames.com
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
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