Sweet Vengeance

[Martyr]

I had two problems with this particular guildleve for Horizon.

I actually found it quite entertaining at first, running around taking out little Lala assassins. It was actually quite fun. We had the stars set a little high for our level, so it was challenging, but not terrible.

....and then the little bugger ran off....and kept running....and running.

Really? Did they have to make the last assassin run for five minutes straight to the other side of the map? Kind of felt that chase was a little ridiculous. I'm not a big fan of the mobs running off in the middle of a fight to begin with, but I've gotten used to it. Or, I thought I had until this guy.

However, besides the really long jog we had to take, my party and I knew what to expect at the end, since there's really no surprise or variation in what happens after a mob runs. Mob runs -> Two new mobs appear -> Three mobs attack your party, but you can only engage one of them or risk losing SP. A clumsy, mostly hated system, but I've grown used to it.

The real fun began after our party got jumped by the three assassins and completely wiped. Instead of wiping us then resetting, the assassins, in true assassin form I guess, followed us from their spawn point, all the way back to the camp where we had returned to. Since they had somehow 'engaged' us from half the map away after we'd already died and respawned, we couldn't turn down the stars to something we could handle. The assassin then proceeded to spawn camp us, consistently one-shotting us in our weakened state after reviving.

Eventually, I guess the assassin became bored, because he wandered off, allowing us to finally turn down the level of the leve. Since we only had 5 minutes left at that point, we turned it down to 1-star so that we could just finish the leve, then went off to hunt down the assassins again.

We started by returning to the spawn point where we were ambushed to dispose of the two assassins there that had popped up when the original mob ran. We took care of those easily and went off to search for the last assassin before time ran out.

Unfortunately, he was nowhere to be found. His icon on the map was gone, so there was no indication of where he could have been. We split up and searched in different directions, but the guy had vanished. Needless to say, we ended up failing the leve.

Not really sure if there's a point to this post, since it's mostly venting. It's kind of entertaining in retrospect, but was really frustrating at the time. I really hope they look into changing a lot of these mechanics for some of the leves, though. Something more exciting than 'kill 5 mobs, start to kill 6th mob, 6th mob runs, 2 more mobs appear, kill mobs 6, 7, and 8.' And maybe less running. Or no running at all. Who decided that mechanic was a good idea? X.x

Hell, I think I'd appreciate it if they just did something simple like, "Mob 5 calls in reinforcements" and the two extra mobs just jumped you. At least you wouldn't lose your progress on the last mob you were fighting. Not to mention you wouldn't have to waste time jogging aimlessly through the desert.

[Meow_Zedong]

Its a glitch. Until they fix it, there is an easy way to stop it. No one in your party should press return until everyone is dead and the mobs go yellow again. That way they won't follow you to camp.

[Martyr]

That'll be good to remember for next time. As it stands right now, whenever we get that leve, we just set the stars a little lower so that we're sure to slaughter the little punks.

[VydarrTyr]

Ugh. That's painful. The same thing used to happen to us on the Mongrels leve at Camp Iron Lake. We'd get killed by the dog, then when we respawned at the crystal, it would run there and wipe us out. We'd have to wait until the dog turned yellow, and then wandered off, before reviving.

Fortunately, SE has fixed the Mongrels leve. Maybe submit this under "In Game Bugs"? Hopefully SE can figure out what turned this Lal assassin into Chuck Norris, determined to track you down across entire continents.

[Martyr]

Yeah, good plan.

I mean, it's funny now, and at least we have a story, ("Remember the time that one midget assassin took us all down, followed us across the desert, and danced on our corpses?") but it's still kind of lame that it happened.

And, also, I'm just not a big fan of running mobs. I think that was the thing I was most upset about. Having to run across the continent after this guy, only to get thrashed and spawn camped. Felt like I'd hit some weird time paradox/wormhole/portal and wound up on a WoW PvP server.

[Shaily]

I agree, the leves where the mob runs across the entire map are just ridiculous. There's been so many occasions where we've been chasing a fleeing mob, actually managed to get in front of the mob, and still not been able to just take it down while it was running. Spending five minutes following something you can't kill isn't much fun.

Hell, I think I'd appreciate it if they just did something simple like, "Mob 5 calls in reinforcements" and the two extra mobs just jumped you. At least you wouldn't lose your progress on the last mob you were fighting. Not to mention you wouldn't have to waste time jogging aimlessly through the desert.

This sounds good. The leve itself stays the same, but saves all that annoying running. It also makes it a bit of an extra challenge, having the extra mobs jump straight away rather than appear after your HP and MP have regenerated a bit during your run.