LFM: Unused Quests

[cforce]

A quote from jwbarry in this thread got me thinking:

That's the core problem with multiple paths. Only the one that is the most efficient is worth the time to build, because all the other ones get ignored. MMOs can never have enough content, not us, not WOW, nobody. So we can't really afford to build secondary paths through dungeons that end up just being ignored.

This is really true of a game at a macro level now, too. When was the last time you saw any of the following:

LFM: The Swiped signet
LFM: Archer Point Defense
LFM: Purge the Heretics
...

I could continue this list for a while. Probably 90% of player hours spent in-game are spent in less than 50% of the quests! Why? Because players figured out which quests have the best XP reward/investment ratio, and focus on those -- only a small segment of the population spends time on less XP-efficient (or, in some cases, reward-efficient) quests.

Turbine, you *must* have data on which quests are being run frequently, and which are lying fallow, yes? Can't you balance out the rewards on the ones that players have figured out are under-XP'ed, to get them back in the rotation? If you can't afford to develop unused *paths* in a quest, then isn't developing unused *quests* even worse bleeding?

[Impaqt]

A quote from jwbarry in this thread got me thinking:



This is really true of a game at a macro level now, too. When was the last time you saw any of the following:

LFM: The Swiped signet
LFM: Archer Point Defense
LFM: Purge the Heretics
...

I could continue this list for a while. Probably 90% of player hours spent in-game are spent in less than 50% of the quests! Why? Because players figured out which quests have the best XP reward/investment ratio, and focus on those -- only a small segment of the population spends time on less XP-efficient (or, in some cases, reward-efficient) quests.

Turbine, you *must* have data on which quests are being run frequently, and which are lying fallow, yes? Can't you balance out the rewards on the ones that players have figured out are under-XP'ed, to get them back in the rotation? If you can't afford to develop unused *paths* in a quest, then isn't developing unused *quests* even worse bleeding?

Well, heres the thing, they DID go back and rebalance the XP on most, If not all, of the LotD Series Quests.... and guess what... We still dont run those.....

Yes, the XP:Time:Loot ration plays a big gactor in many quests, but the quests still need to be fun.

If EE3 gave us 2500XP instead of 740 would it get run More?

THe Swiped Signet... The XP is decent.. its just that the Mobs are overpowered for the quest level. and archer points Fail Mechanic is just stupid.

[cforce]

Well, heres the thing, they DID go back and rebalance the XP on most, If not all, of the LotD Series Quests.... and guess what... We still dont run those.....

Well, I'd argue that they went back and *tried* to rebalance those, but didn't get the number right. If you look at the flip side, The Pit got a big boost in the amount of people running it, and having fun running it, after the XP was significantly increased. But, to your point...

Yes, the XP:Time:Loot ration plays a big gactor in many quests, but the quests still need to be fun.

Yeah, I intentionally left the 'Shadow' tomb series off of that list, for example. If there's something fundamentally frustrating about a quest, there are some things you just can't compensate for. However, I think that's the minority of the unused content. I think there are far more quests that are *actually* pretty fun, if somewhat challenging, that more people would try to take on if the challenge/reward was set correctly.

[Angelus_dead]

LFM: Purge the Heretics

Can't do that! I'd lose paladin features.

I could continue this list for a while. Probably 90% of player hours spent in-game are spent in less than 50% of the quests! Why? Because players figured out which quests have the best XP reward/investment ratio, and focus on those

They don't have to be the "best" either, or equal to the best... just in an appropriate ballpark.

Turbine, you *must* have data on which quests are being run frequently, and which are lying fallow, yes? Can't you balance out the rewards on the ones that players have figured out are under-XP'ed, to get them back in the rotation? If you can't afford to develop unused *paths* in a quest, then isn't developing unused *quests* even worse bleeding?

What's especially sad for me is the numerous quests which I could tell would be unused simply by looking at the level on the door when it came out.

Whisperdoom's Spawn, Made To Order, Dreams of Insanity, Dead Shall Rise... Litany of the Dead... all those quests were dead on arrival, and solely because of the level they were set at. If they'd had +2 CR level (and somewhat stronger monsters to compensate), then they'd have been fine. But NO, Turbine got this funny idea they needed to add quests across a wide range of levels, instead of just at the highest level.

Fortunately Turbine finally seems to have gotten past this idea. Notice that with module 6, they skipped adding level 15 quests and went straight to level 16.

[CDevil]

All this is true, and you make some valid points.

Let's not forget, though, that there's still FAVOR to consider.

So in the end, although many may detest it, they'll still run these adventures at least once, just to put that check in the box for their favor totals.

(Now if only they'd put the difficulty levels back for those beginner quests in the harbor...)

[Angelus_dead]

Well, heres the thing, they DID go back and rebalance the XP on most, If not all, of the LotD Series Quests.... and guess what... We still dont run those.....

Yes, the XP:Time:Loot ration plays a big gactor in many quests, but the quests still need to be fun.

The early stages of Litany were fun originally (if you could pretend loot and XP were total non-factors), and are still fun now... EXCEPT that they're at the wrong level of the game. There are plenty of other quests at those levels which offer needed loot and favor, as well as XP. By the time you've done them a bit, you are past the level where Litany's XP can do you any good.

Then you're left in the position of going back to the Litany series at overlevel to pick up some favor or a Silver Flame Necklace by going through solo... but you can't solo, because there are a lot of forced-group-split mechanics, so you need to drag someone else with you...

[Borror0]

Well, heres the thing, they DID go back and rebalance the XP on most, If not all, of the LotD Series Quests.... and guess what... We still dont run those.....

You don't know XP crypt?!

[jwbarry]

A quote from jwbarry in this thread got me thinking:



This is really true of a game at a macro level now, too. When was the last time you saw any of the following:

LFM: The Swiped signet
LFM: Archer Point Defense
LFM: Purge the Heretics
...

I could continue this list for a while. Probably 90% of player hours spent in-game are spent in less than 50% of the quests! Why? Because players figured out which quests have the best XP reward/investment ratio, and focus on those -- only a small segment of the population spends time on less XP-efficient (or, in some cases, reward-efficient) quests.

Turbine, you *must* have data on which quests are being run frequently, and which are lying fallow, yes? Can't you balance out the rewards on the ones that players have figured out are under-XP'ed, to get them back in the rotation? If you can't afford to develop unused *paths* in a quest, then isn't developing unused *quests* even worse bleeding?

We do have that data. The challenge is finding the time to do anything with it.

As soon as you rebalance the xp on one quest, you might as well do it for all quests. Anything that goes down will get screamed out as a nerf, so if you're going to balance down more than one quest, you might as well do them all at one time, just so those who will freak out will only do so once and get it out of their system (Fun random information fact, every time we've done a rebalance, the overall xp in the game has always gone up). And then, once you rebalance the quests, you really should also rebalance the optional objective xp at the same time. And thus, we've created easily a month long task.

I am in no way saying its not worth doing, and generally, if one is really wrong or off we'll adjust it. But its a lot of time it would take to do a real thorough solid pass, and most players put a lot more value into the bullet point "X new dungeons" than they do into "XP rebalanced." One you get excited about, its a bunch of new stuff, the other is a nice bugfix or polish, but certainly (for me at least) doesn't excite me as much.

Again, ones that are really off we look at and adjust, but there's a massive time sink to do them all, and they really should all be done at once. It'll happen sometime I'm sure, but there's a lot of stuff on the list above it.

[BlueLightBandit]

Of all the gianthold quests, Madstone Crater is my least favorite... and yet I seem to run it just as much as the others because the XP benefit is simply that much greater than the others.

The problem is, they need to look at the quests that they *REDUCED* the XP on, or the quests that people run a lot without them having to alter the XP... and shape new quests like those. Those are the "good" quests that people "like", so determine what makes those better than the others and use that as a model for creating new quests.

[Impaqt]

We do have that data. The challenge is finding the time to do anything with it.

As soon as you rebalance the xp on one quest, you might as well do it for all quests. Anything that goes down will get screamed out as a nerf, so if you're going to balance down more than one quest, you might as well do them all at one time, just so those who will freak out will only do so once and get it out of their system (Fun random information fact, every time we've done a rebalance, the overall xp in the game has always gone up). And then, once you rebalance the quests, you really should also rebalance the optional objective xp at the same time. And thus, we've created easily a month long task.

I am in no way saying its not worth doing, and generally, if one is really wrong or off we'll adjust it. But its a lot of time it would take to do a real thorough solid pass, and most players put a lot more value into the bullet point "X new dungeons" than they do into "XP rebalanced." One you get excited about, its a bunch of new stuff, the other is a nice bugfix or polish, but certainly (for me at least) doesn't excite me as much.

Again, ones that are really off we look at and adjust, but there's a massive time sink to do them all, and they really should all be done at once. It'll happen sometime I'm sure, but there's a lot of stuff on the list above it.

EE3 is about as Off as it gets Jw......

15 Minutes of Hell. There are NO shortcuts and in the end, you get a Whopping 750ish XP. Coyle is a lunatic.. Buffed or not, that guy has a death wish.

[Angelus_dead]

But its a lot of time it would take to do a real thorough solid pass, and most players put a lot more value into the bullet point "X new dungeons" than they do into "XP rebalanced."

That's an unfortunate triumph of marketing over substance. I think the Ascension Chamber is the biggest example of this- it must be painful to market something when you know the substance isn't there. Poor Kate Paiz releasing that video advertising mod5 and mod6 raid content, but already knowing that players had completely given up on the Abbot raid by that time. (The vid showed 4 PCs in one puzzle room! Thats SO out-of-date).

But that's the way it is... "NEW features" gets press, "FIXED features" doesn't... and it's doubly forbidden because it's an admission of fallability.

I notice that you personally created many of the unupopular dungeons, and that they incorporated a lot of broadly-requested replayability features such as random traps and nonlinear pathways. It must be tough having some good work going wasted because of how it was positioned in the game as a whole. Litany I & II got improved XP and new named items... but only when it was too late.

[Angelus_dead]

15 Minutes of Hell. There are NO shortcuts and in the end, you get a Whopping 750ish XP. Coyle is a lunatic.. Buffed or not, that guy has a death wish.

Yes that's very funny. During the original XP-rebalancing patch to DDO, a 100 XP/minute metric was used. Yet somehow EE3 is at half that, when really it should have started at 1500 XP base, and then had a huge bonus added on to account for the possiblity of failing the quest (which creates the possibility you'll have to do multiple partial runs until you win, bumping the time to well over 15 min)

But that reminds me there is another problem in the Threnal chain. West Excavations are a whole lot easier than East Excavations, with obvious differences in the CR of monsters and such. Yet the XP and level is about the same.

[Hafeal]

We do have that data. The challenge is finding the time to do anything with it. As soon as you rebalance the xp on one quest, you might as well do it for all quests.

You are right - but it has been done and it was not done right - Gianthold. The idea has been sold wrong all along. New content was seemingly implemented without thought or proportional impact to existing quests - or whatever thought was put into it was just miscalculated.

Re-balancing and informing players is giving them new quests. It's all in how it is marketed. It will to be re-marketed, in order to reintroduce players to seldom run quests.

Besides XP, spread the wealth. Instead of making a list of 15 named items only part of chain quests, give a them a random opportunity to pop up in other quests for that house. Loot is a driving force for many players besides xp - good, useful loot at any level.

Lastly, because of the long delay in character class raises, many people have capped faster than content was available or lower level stuff that was put out - who cares if you don't have or play your lower level alts too often. People want the best. They played necropolis because it was the highest level loot in the game - until this Mod. And despite the unique items you can get in necro, the raid is too hard for everyone but the power gamers, who also found it too challenging. Thus, even before the new mod people had migrated back to GH and now are flocking to Meridia. More varied content that is fun. I'm sorry, necro just isn't. These forums are filled with threads as to why and what could be done to make necro better, from the 5th level set through the raid.

I dunno, perhaps I am wrong, but I am willing to bet necro numbers are down to what they were when Gianthold came out.

[narizue]

I am in no way saying its not worth doing, and generally, if one is really wrong or off we'll adjust it.

Threnal East 3, Hold For Reinforcements.

Tell me its not off.

[parvo]

We do have that data. The challenge is finding the time to do anything with it.

As soon as you rebalance the xp on one quest, you might as well do it for all quests. Anything that goes down will get screamed out as a nerf, so if you're going to balance down more than one quest, you might as well do them all at one time, just so those who will freak out will only do so once and get it out of their system (Fun random information fact, every time we've done a rebalance, the overall xp in the game has always gone up). And then, once you rebalance the quests, you really should also rebalance the optional objective xp at the same time. And thus, we've created easily a month long task.

I am in no way saying its not worth doing, and generally, if one is really wrong or off we'll adjust it. But its a lot of time it would take to do a real thorough solid pass, and most players put a lot more value into the bullet point "X new dungeons" than they do into "XP rebalanced." One you get excited about, its a bunch of new stuff, the other is a nice bugfix or polish, but certainly (for me at least) doesn't excite me as much.

Again, ones that are really off we look at and adjust, but there's a massive time sink to do them all, and they really should all be done at once. It'll happen sometime I'm sure, but there's a lot of stuff on the list above it.

This is why XP rewards should by dynamic. A forumla should be in place that dynamically adjusts XP based on how often a quest is run server-wide.

[DrAwkward]

Again, ones that are really off we look at and adjust, but there's a massive time sink to do them all, and they really should all be done at once. It'll happen sometime I'm sure, but there's a lot of stuff on the list above it.

Time sink, and very very boring on your end, I imagine. New content is probably as much fun for you to create as it is for us to run. Should be, anyway.

How about this? Can you at least figure out "dry spots" across the level range?

I think you'll find (I sure do) that XP rains from the heavens until about 5th, then we get a drought in 7th through 9th, and then XP rains from the heavens again at 10th and up. This rough spot is frustrating for me, and this level range is where I abandon most of my alts; I suspect it might be a sticking point for new players as well.

So also take a look at the level range of the Mains for folks that leave the game. I don't mean the "ZOMG Nerf! quitters" or the "capped retirees". Just the regular folks that try it out, play for while, lose interest, and wander off. I'd guess that a high percentage fall in the 7-9th level range.

[Vinos]

We do have that data. The challenge is finding the time to do anything with it.

As soon as you rebalance the xp on one quest, you might as well do it for all quests. Anything that goes down will get screamed out as a nerf, so if you're going to balance down more than one quest, you might as well do them all at one time, just so those who will freak out will only do so once and get it out of their system (Fun random information fact, every time we've done a rebalance, the overall xp in the game has always gone up). And then, once you rebalance the quests, you really should also rebalance the optional objective xp at the same time. And thus, we've created easily a month long task.

I am in no way saying its not worth doing, and generally, if one is really wrong or off we'll adjust it. But its a lot of time it would take to do a real thorough solid pass, and most players put a lot more value into the bullet point "X new dungeons" than they do into "XP rebalanced." One you get excited about, its a bunch of new stuff, the other is a nice bugfix or polish, but certainly (for me at least) doesn't excite me as much.

Again, ones that are really off we look at and adjust, but there's a massive time sink to do them all, and they really should all be done at once. It'll happen sometime I'm sure, but there's a lot of stuff on the list above it.

I think we would rather see the unused quests go UP in XP not lower the XP of the popular ones.

[jwbarry]

This is why XP rewards should by dynamic. A forumla should be in place that dynamically adjusts XP based on how often a quest is run server-wide.

Anything dynamic you guys will just figure out a way to game it and overload something.

On a slightly less cynical note (although the previous isn't incorrect, lol), XP is supposed to reward for challenge and difficulty. Just because a dungeon isn't being run doesn't mean its any more challenging. It might be harder, it might not be as compelling, it might have 1 fewer treasure chest than the other dungeons at its level, it might be part of a chain that's tough to get through, it might be just hard to reach and find. That's part of the challenge of balance. XP shouldn't dynamically change just because people aren't doing something, the core reasons as to why they're not doing it should be looked into, figured out, and time permitting, fixed or the reward increased proportionally to everything else. And on the flip side, just because everyone thinks a dungeon is fun to do, definitely doesn't mean that I should get 'punished' by getting less xp for running it a day after everyone else. That's just bad.

[jwbarry]

I think we would rather see the unused quests go UP in XP not lower the XP of the popular ones.

If you're going to balance you might as well do them all. No sense in just upping the low ones, then you only fix half the problem. Or even worse, you create a large problem of greatly increasing your xp and thus changing the advancement rate along your levelling curve, and invalidating some content because now players are outlevelling it faster than before.

Nope, if you're going to balance you go all out, up what's too low, and drop what's too high. No sense in doing anything but.

[Impaqt]

If you're going to balance you might as well do them all. No sense in just upping the low ones, then you only fix half the problem. Or even worse, you create a large problem of greatly increasing your xp and thus changing the advancement rate along your levelling curve, and invalidating some content because now players are outlevelling it faster than before.

Nope, if you're going to balance you go all out, up what's too low, and drop what's too high. No sense in doing anything but.

Really? What Quests in the l11+ range had there XP Raised when you lowered all the XP in the Gianthold?

I'm Just saying People got over that change pretty quickly even though PoPs XP was probobly too High to start.

There IS Presidence for Adjusting Some quests and not others.....