Average Completion Time Idea

[Litz]

So Litz was at it again thinking of ways to make the game better. I was reading a post about how people go AFK to much and it made me think to the many times I have been in a group and suddenly a player has to go afk cause the wife got home with the groceries, then they come back and say how the wife is upset that he's playing, and ultimatley the group has to do without that person. We'll were all adults even if we pretend in a fantasy game. If your going to sneak playing DDO and you know you got 30min, or a hour ect., wouldn't it be cool to look at a LFM see a group posting for help then you click the mission name and see stats on that mission which include the "Average" play time for completing it. They should compile this info for all players, and servers, and divide by the number of runs. I know there are people who will take pride in running it in 5min but they will ofset the others who enter the quests and play while the comercials are on. So we could budget our play time and avoid the angry spouse syndrome, or the late for work again senario..

As with other Litz ideas its now time to solicit opions from the other peanuts.

[aemulus]

So Litz was at it again thinking of ways to make the game better. I was reading a post about how people go AFK to much and it made me think to the many times I have been in a group and suddenly a player has to go afk cause the wife got home with the groceries, then they come back and say how the wife is upset that he's playing, and ultimatley the group has to do without that person. We'll were all adults even if we pretend in a fantasy game. If your going to sneak playing DDO and you know you got 30min, or a hour ect., wouldn't it be cool to look at a LFM see a group posting for help then you click the mission name and see stats on that mission which include the "Average" play time for completing it. They should compile this info for all players, and servers, and divide by the number of runs. I know there are people who will take pride in running it in 5min but they will ofset the others who enter the quests and play while the comercials are on. So we could budget our play time and avoid the angry spouse syndrome, or the late for work again senario..

As with other Litz ideas its now time to solicit opions from the other peanuts.

Lol... not a bad idea. From the development side, the calculation and display of those numbers could increase the latency, but it would be nice to see that info. Coming from someone who doesn't have any real life aggro...

I do find it kind of amusing though, in a party, and someones wife goes from cr10 to cr100 raged ... lol ... not being sexist or anything, but 9 times / 10 it is usually someone female companion doing the aggro... not enough attention or something like that

Amusing though. Cuz it's not me... lolz

[cdemeritt]

The problem with that is the variety of builds/skill lvls/weapons/etc. involved. When I run with the guild on a Shroud run, I know what we are capable of, and we usually complete in under 60 min. however, Sometimes certain people are on timer and can't go, so this time it took 75 minutes. Then you get into PuG's, some can go really smoothly, was in one recently where we completed in 42 minutes (fastest I've seen) but the next run took 110 minutes, because the makeup of the group is different, explaining to the first time what's going on, a difficult pull in Pt2, with an restart due to an accidental death of something before the other were ready, Etc. Etc. While a general amounts of time it takes can be roughly estimated, I don't think you can truly have a reliable "EST Time to Complete" provided by the game, Just too many factors to calculate.

[Zenako]

Experienced players should already have a good idea of completion time.

Inexperienced players could easily be intimidated by time numbers they cannot come close to matching.

Take Von 1-4 for example. Some of those parts can be knocked off quickly by a group that has mastered it. Other groups will have major issues. Problem is, it is likely far more of the runs are done by those who can bang it out fast. So seeing things like 10 Minutes for Von 1 or Von 2, 3 Minutes for Von 3a, 15 minutes for Von 3b, and 10 minutes for Von 4 or the like could easily be counter productive and lead to second quessing.

If in doubt just ask the group how long they expect the quest to take, and be realistic. If you really really got to log in 30 minutes, don't even think about starting up a quest that they think should take 20. Bleep happens.

[Litz]

I guess a compromise would be to track "Your average time" which could be stored client side which would reduce lag, but still be usefull in debating if you want to join or not. It could also be an incentive to be more efficient to "reduce your average"..

[Issip]

I think the "short", "long", "very long" tags on the qeusts are an attept at this. I find that sometimes they are accurate, other times quests marked "very long" may commonly be very short, so I don't think it's a good way to judge the time required to complete a quest.

That said other approaches, like the one you suggest would have their own pitfalls. If its a server wide average, it could be skewed by guilds that either run the quest super-fast, know some shortcut, or exploit. Conversely they could be skewed by some groups that take hours to complete the run due to multiple party members dropping, etc..

As far as a personal timer - what's my average time? That might be handy, but I think if you have run the quest enough times to have a statistically significant average for it to display for you, then you probably know about how long it will take, and can also use the makeup of teh group to help you judge.

Also, I have problems at times estimating how long it will take to get a group together. I'll see a pug and it's mostly full and I have time to run the quest, but then it takes 45 minutes to get the last cleric slot filled, leaving me with not enough time to finish. Not much that can be done about that.

[Litz]

I think if you have run the quest enough times to have a statistically significant average for it to display for you, then you probably know about how long it will take, and can also use the makeup of teh group to help you judge.

I must be an exception. I can't remember what I ate last night let alone the last time I ran ______ quest. Often I find myself remembering traps that aren't there, or an objective that isn't until we advance it to the next part ect..

[Zenako]

I must be an exception. I can't remember what I ate last night let alone the last time I ran ______ quest. Often I find myself remembering traps that aren't there, or an objective that isn't until we advance it to the next part ect..

Sounds like someone has been wandering too near those funky mushrooms in STK as few too many times....

[sirgog]

Sounds like someone has been wandering too near those funky mushrooms in STK as few too many times....

mmm... STK mushrooms...

I'd like to see a 'personal bests' time file kept clientside. Something you can challenge yourself to beat.

[TK.Halcyon]

Experienced players should already have a good idea of completion time.

Inexperienced players could easily be intimidated by time numbers they cannot come close to matching.

Take Von 1-4 for example. Some of those parts can be knocked off quickly by a group that has mastered it. Other groups will have major issues. Problem is, it is likely far more of the runs are done by those who can bang it out fast. So seeing things like 10 Minutes for Von 1 or Von 2, 3 Minutes for Von 3a, 15 minutes for Von 3b, and 10 minutes for Von 4 or the like could easily be counter productive and lead to second quessing.

If in doubt just ask the group how long they expect the quest to take, and be realistic. If you really really got to log in 30 minutes, don't even think about starting up a quest that they think should take 20. Bleep happens.

This is an example of the server stats not really providing any relevant information. VoNs for example :-

VoN 1 - Fastest time - 3 mins . Average Time 5 mins (not waiting for people to log and join just for completion)
VoN 2 - Fastest time - 3 mins . Average Time 7-9 mins ( if u have 3 people who can each do one side then 3 mins )
VoN 3.1 - Fastest time - 2 mins. Average time 3-4 mins
VoN 3.2 - Fastest time - 7 mins. Average time 10-12 mins (dang runes... where ya hiding)
Von 4 - Fastest time - 4 mins . Average time 10 mins ( best time if u have 2 people who can solo each lever at the same time)

And then u get the newbs who don't know the airbridge in von 2 or the noobs that "forget" their feather fall.

I know at least 6 people that can individually do the above. But people like them will skew the stats for the server.
Or you have the soloist.
Who goes afk in a quest.
For the whole day.

Average times are at best a guide but you get good runs and you get bad runs. To spend resources calculating them is a really a waste of both the developers time and the servers processing power.

[Uska]

To me this adds nothing to the game and takes up resources that could be better used elsewhere, of course I the less statistics I see in my mmo the happier I am as the more there are the more some people want to brag about it, then you will have some people who would use this to complain that hey were are dragging behind average time you all need to speed up.

[tihocan]

I think the "short", "long", "very long" tags on the qeusts are an attept at this. I find that sometimes they are accurate, other times quests marked "very long" may commonly be very short, so I don't think it's a good way to judge the time required to complete a quest.

Something I'd really like to see is a re-evaluation of these durations based on true data collected from the game (what I'd measure is the median time for full groups whose level range is within 2 levels of the quest level (e.g. between 8 and 12 for a L10 quest)).

[Lithic]

Something I'd really like to see is a re-evaluation of these durations based on true data collected from the game (what I'd measure is the median time for full groups whose level range is within 2 levels of the quest level (e.g. between 8 and 12 for a L10 quest)).

One of the best examples of how bad those durations are is East 3. Not only is 15mins NOT a short quest, but failures are common when level-appropriate and can lead to 1+ hour of frustration for a "short" quest.