Adventure Time / Length

[Deriaz]

So, I had an interesting experience today with a friend. He had never tried DDO, being a WoW guy (though he quit awhile back), but sounded excited that it was an MMO that could be both casual and hardcore. I helped him out to the best of my ability, explaining Enhancements and stuff when he got confused.

But we reached the quest on Korthos where you defend the Tavern, and then chase after Jacoby. Before entering, he hesitated. "Adventure: Long. What does that mean?" he asked.

Being rusty on this, I said, "In the range of about 15 minutes to an hour, generally. But it gets kind of vague later on." I don't know if it's accurate or not, but either way, he asked again how long it would take. "With the two of us, I would assume 10 to 15."

I started mulling it over during the quest. Quest duration says "Long", but how accurate is that, really? We pounded out the quest, and I looked at our completion time. Right around 12 minutes.

That got me thinking. The game already tracks how much time you're in the quest for. Would it be possible to put this to a better use? Perhaps chalk it into a "Server average" or something. Obviously at first, it will lead to some strange numbers -- quests taking a few hours, it could show. But over time, outliers like that would diminish in severity, giving you a pretty accurate measure of exactly how long groups usually take to complete said quest. You can even add in parenthesis, or somewhere else, how many times the quest has been run. Could possibly also change -- say I have Normal clicked, and it shows 5 minutes to complete. If I click to Elite, the average number will update to show average Elite completions; maybe this one is 15 minutes.

I think it would help ease the confusion my friend, and possibly other players, have on what exactly it meant by "Long", "Very Long", and the others terms. Giving players an average number helps them take a good guess at, "Will I have time to actually finish this quest?" Obviously, though, I have no idea if this would be hard to implement or not. I thought I'd share anyways.

[MrCow]

There are a few things to point out:

• This would not likely include time spent in adventure areas leading to the quest. This could be anywhere from a few seconds (Spawn of Whisperdoom) to many minutes (Hound of Xoriat). This would be misleading in some cases to list the average quest completion times.
• The first time to run a quest is generally the longest, and you can get a wide spread. For instance, The Pit tend to have completion times in the 25-40 minute range, but often take upwards of 90-120 minutes for a first time. Heavily-run loot runs would also be skewed due to the speed at which some players repeatedly and constantly clock in those quests, such as 7 minute Monastery of the Scorpion runs.
• Some quests can be vastly shorter or longer with particular group compositions.
• Ultimately, the quest length servers as both a generalized time gauge as well as how many items you are offered on standard end reward lists:
  
  • Short - 4 items
  • Medium - 4 items
  • Long - 7 items
  • Very Long - 10 items

[Deriaz]

I didn't consider the adventure areas. Hm. . . I guess that really would be a problem. Unless it just ignored the adventure area? Since those usually have slayers and stuff in them. But I could see why that isn't viable. And hey, I just learned something about loot lists and length -- I never made that connection in my head. I'll have to let him know about that, too. Thanks for that tip.

As for the wide spread, that's why I offered it as an average. While first runs can definitely take that long on the Pit, over the course of time you'll have those first timers becoming more knowledgeable, and their run times will go down. And then you have the pros who already know it. It'll look funky at first, but the average should even itself out if given enough time. The average would probably end up somewhere in the 70 minute mark, which I wouldn't really say is incorrect. Though I also didn't consider the loot run quests. That, and the group make-up, really does throw a wrench into the works. . .

It was a pretty quickly thought out idea. I still think it may have some sort of role (if not in a completely different presentation than I offered. Heh.), but thank you for pointing out the stuff I didn't consider.

[Mercules]

This also ignores Favor Runs.

A level 16 doing a level 2 Harbor quest does not take as long on Elite as a level 2 doing a Normal run of the same quest.

It is a solid idea, but really hard to do well. To many variables to get more than a rough general idea of the length. I think all they really need to do is double check the lengths they have listed on all the quest and maybe adjust some of them to match the current reality.

[Bogenbroom]

It is an interesting idea. As has been noted, might be a bit hard to pull off, but maybe they could do something like average run time for players on their first completion. You'd still get all sorts of skewy numbers, but...

Anyway, I like the thought.