Enough With The Mayans Already!

Note: This post contains minor spoilers about the "They Mostly Come Out At Night"mission.

So yesterday I'm doing this mission and I'm on the third Revenant, the last one before I get the portal to the next part of the mission. I'm finally within a few good hits of banishing the thing, the furthest I've gotten with this one so far without dying. Just as I fire off an incendiary grenade AoE, a Mayan zombie rises out of the ground right in-between my toon and the Revenent, gets hit by the blast and charges. Within a few seconds, I go from just about to finally defeat this section of the mission to resurrecting in anima form.

Grrrrrr...

When the Mayan event started it was an interesting idea and fun, but the longer this event wears on, the less fun and the more annoying it becomes. That's one thing I hope the devs will consider going forward: That a TSW in-game event should be continue to be as much fun toward the end as it is at the beginning. For me, at least, this event has failed that test.

For me, and I'd expect for you as well, the ultimate goal of any game, be it something as complex as TSW or as simple as a hand of gin rummy, is to have fun. Frustration isn't fun. When that frustration is the direct result of something that you have no ability to predict and defend against as a player, it's even more annoying, particularly when it hampers your ability to progress through the game. 

If Funcom decides to do a similar event in the future, I hope they'll prevent mobs from spawning in the middle of combat. When they spawn around you and you're not already fighting something else, you have the option of attacking the mob and participating in the event or simply ignoring it and moving on. When mobs spawn nearby when a player is already engaged in combat, that choice and sometimes the ability to defeat a tough enemy, is taken away from player and turned in a game of chance. Suddenly, you may have a much tougher battle on your hands and far less chance of succeeding than you planned for when you prepared for combat. Sure, you may get lucky and win anyway sometimes, but other times you'll find yourself in the kind of situation I found myself in last night.

In the end, it's all about having fun. If it isn't fun, where's the incentive to press on and keep trying? Unrestricted mob spawning with no rhyme or reason may seem like an interesting and fun idea on paper and on a test server, but for the average TSW player who's just trying to get through missions and progress through the game, it can often prove to be no fun at all.