To Developers: On increasing the Dynamic Range of Quests in DDO

[Dirac]

I like the concept of being able to open any existing quest at any arbitrary level.

However as we have seen in Stormreaver, Elite/16 is really not that much more difficult that Normal/14, and jacking it up to 20 will probably still not make it all that much more difficult.

Really? You don't think doubling the number of elementals and increasing their saves by 4 or 6 would make a difference?

You'll have an issue with loot. With the anti-farmer fix in the chests you'll have people doing level 20 content and still getting only level 12-13 loot max due to being too far under the quest level. Removing that fix is probably not going to happen.

I think the loot issue Riddikulus brings up here is a more serious problem for what I suggested than I originally thought.

Currently, my understanding is that the loot table is tied to the level of the quest. While I am suggesting the level, or at least effective level of elite is increased, increasing the level of the chests is a very bad idea. Of course, we could just divorce the level of chest from the level of the quest. However, I don’t know exactly if that is a development problem.

Perhaps the best idea is to simply remove the level designation from hard and elite. They really do not communicate useful information anyway.

In my original post, I thought it useful to have a good definition of level. On average, a normal, untwinked level 14 group should find a level 14 quest challenging but doable on Normal. Given the approach outlined above, if the hard setting is set at level 15 or 18, does it mean it is really geared toward the normal, untwinked level 15 or 18 group? No, it is geared toward the level 14 characters in the middle and high end of the DoPS.

Thus, just remove the level designation. A level 14 quest has three settings: N/H/E. The loot for normal is set for a level 14 quest, and is boosted +1 for hard and +2 for elite. The actual difficulty of Hard and Elite will be set to attempt to cover the DoPS of the current players. As I’ve argued before this would increase the difficulty difference from what it is now. But there is no reason to try to pitch them as level 18 or level 22 quests. They are level 14 quests for the advanced set of level 14 characters.

[Jaysensen]

Chests can either have a static treasure level assigned to it, or they can scale based on the quest level.
Just because quest X is level Y, doesnt mean that Elite makes all chests in Quest X level Y +2.

[Dharma]

Ok again to reiterate.... If the idea of unbound loot/difficulty were to exist it wouldn't matter that the difficulty was higher. As I showed before if the difficulty modifier for elite was still 2 as it is now, loot wouldn't be adjusted up. At the CR creation of the Mobs they would be beef'd up based on a hard coded % modifier for the quest being opened with a modifier of 2 based on the level of the quest.

LOOT - Would not change
EXP - Would not change

All that is changing is that what it means for the quest to be 1 or 2 difficulty levels higher means that the CR/difficulty of the creatures that are generated is much higher. As we have seen elite doesn't always mean that things are 2 CR difficulty higher than on norm.

For those that argue FAVOR my FAVOR! If you look at the result you would still have no problem getting your favor. Would you maybe have to do a level 10 quest on elite when you get to 14? Sure as it would be a level 15 correlation to difficulty. Will it be impossible no. You will just have to run more quests rather than the select ones that people do run now. As it is with the difficulties being so close together, I would argue that you are getting it too easy now.

Normal favor is 7 on xyz quest. You do it on Hard you get 14 favor... Was it 200% harder? No well why is it 200% the favor? The same can be said for elite if PoP was 300% more difficult would it be a 10min run? Surely not!

Additionally, the casual gamer wouldn't be prevented from doing a quest they just would do it at a slightly higher level than another player. That is if they don't gain enough benefit from becoming familiar with the quest. Do power gamers only play by themselves and amongst themselves? Not always... I have led many a groups through Crucible Elite that had never run the quest. We didn't complete it in the usual 30min or less time, it just took 45ish.

Gimme a break! All of you whine about content, difficulty is content! So many say make it harder... Well this is harder. I won't get my 1750 tome at level 10 this time... Boo Hoo for you!

IF this was implemented you wouldn't be able to BURN through a Mod on all difficulties SOOOO fast. You would REALLY have to work for it.