Quality of quests instead of quantity

[Vellrad]

Hello.

I don't care how many new quests we get, or are they new or scaled, because almost all quests are the same. You go in, follow one possible path, kill everything on the way, then kill boss. Even bosses are usually the same- huge sack of HP with no skills.

Lets look at quests released by turbine since last expansion (huge wall of text, skip quoted part if you don't wish to read it):

wheloon: friends, lesson, army: go inside, kill everything on way to boss, then kill boss having no interesting mechanics.
thrill: dungeon is boring, but at least boss fight is tough and interesting.
mirror: this is well thougth dungeon, however boss is lacking- periodically teleporting to alternate dimension room with new trash is a bit easier than traditional reinforcements, as players are never supprised and have as much time to prepare as they please. They can also skip porting, using boss teleport as a moment of respite.
stormhorns: ice: standard quest filled with boring trash, ended with boring bosses
tracker's trap, WGU: boring way to boss, finished with quite decent (trap) and awesome (WGU) boss fight. WGU is noteworthy for having excellent boss fight, unfortunately its preceded with boring way to reach boss.
lines of supply: tower defense in DDO.
breaking the ranks: hardcore trash beat up. One of only (if not the only) quest in entire game where battling trash mobs is interesting and challenging. IMO hardest 6 man quest in game.
Last 2 quests are special by having terrible bosses fights, but have fun trash fights before/between those bosses.
U20: study in sable: perfect example how to create dungeons. Way to boss is not dumb kill everything on your way, and boss himself is interesting enemy.
brothers: setting is cool, forges have nice visuals, unfortunately, its your old kill everything on way to boss, then take out boss himself.
The only memorable thing at boss fight is spam of tactical detonation, putting low relfex dudes on ground for most of fight.
U21: HH: this was supposed to be huge port of classic adventure, unfortunately, most of places are not worth of visiting, and people run on one optimal path to optionals to try their luck for named items. Bosses themselves, are not interesting- just huge pile of hit points acompanied with trash.
Thunderholme: Temple was a good raid if we look at boss fights, but there was too much lasers making it boring way to boss.
Fire: arena fight. those things don't deserve to be called raid because of its extremally short duration.
3bc: ghost, old tomb new tenants, legend revisited have typical hordes of trash mobs on way to boss without any special skills. At least there are puzzles in ghost to skip boring boss fight.
prove your worth: as low relfex dude, most of I remember from this quest is inside of my fellows' backpacks . This quest's way to boss is fun and interesting. The only problem are spikes in tunnel that don't show until I'm inside them and traps reflex DCs (I don't know, but they're often complained about). The boss however is a regular bag of HPs. He was supposed to have bluff/diplo/intimi mechanic, but its bugged.
Cargo: Boarding enemy airships is great fun, we need more quests like this one.
U23: Vol, fleshmaker, inferno: go forward killing mobs to kill boring boss without any special skills.
GoP: boring way to interesting and demanding boss fight.
MoD: Another arena fight. Are people really only interested in raids that can be completed during lunch break? Do we have any hope for getting any real raid?

TLDR: Out of 25 latest dungeons, 18 are just standard boring runs to boss by killing everything on way (or invising). 7 of them are different and interesting. Its extremally hard to make army of mobs that exist only to die interesting, so I think we could ignore this part, if we have interesting bosses after.
Unfortunately, 14 out of boss fights are as boring as trash: huge piles of hit points just stand there and autoattack while we murder them.
4 boss fights are decent: (2 dragons/MoD: got nice mechanics, but arena fights is not a raid yet), WF at end of brothers of the forge got his tactical detonations, unfortunately, they're ingorable if you don't have low relfex, and bosses during breaking the ranks spice things up, esp. with dracolich, but themselves are not threating enogh.
Remaining bosses are well made and should be example of how to make bosses.

My suggestion to devs is, when designing a quest, make sure that each boss is memorable, have special mechanics that players must take into account during fight instead of treating boss like any trash mob in game.
If it means you will produce less quests, so be it.
If it means, there will be more scaled content instad of new dungeons, its good trade of. New quests that is about going into a dungeon, killing mobs on way to boss, then killing boss that have no special skills or abilities is exactly the same like running any old quest.
Please, make sure that new content is really new- different than what we have instad of copy/paste.

[FranOhmsford]

The problem is that we're not getting Quality OR Quantity!

That might look like a huge list but it's not really as Wheloon and Stormhorns WERE the last Expansion! {And let's face it - We all know that two packs sold together does not an Expansion make!}.

Take away Orchard and 3BC {Epicifications} and what we have left is TWO Quests, One Uber-Quest and a couple of Slayer Zones + End-Game Raids!
OK so 3BC gave us one more new quest and Orchard has given us another End-Game Raid.


The Epicifications have been hit and miss - some quality work - some sloppy work!