Are the Quest to fast and easy now?

Deamon81

Well-known member
I remember the time when we started playing DDO. I got the feeling that al lot of quested are not easy to play and you have to spend 30-90min and sometimes more to finish it. So the Quest start screen whith short medium or long really got a value on the playtime.

During the years some quests are nerved so getting easier and quicker, it seems to be that a quest which takes more then 15mins will not be played or getting nerved to get easier....
I´m not sure if my feeling is wrong but we moved from a D&D Online RPG to a quick Hack and Slay Online RPG?
 

Jellytelly

Active member
I remember the time when we started playing DDO. I got the feeling that al lot of quested are not easy to play and you have to spend 30-90min and sometimes more to finish it. So the Quest start screen whith short medium or long really got a value on the playtime.

During the years some quests are nerved so getting easier and quicker, it seems to be that a quest which takes more then 15mins will not be played or getting nerved to get easier....
I´m not sure if my feeling is wrong but we moved from a D&D Online RPG to a quick Hack and Slay Online RPG?
The player base has gotten more knowledgeable, more powerful, and better gear. And after running the quest a thousand times, you know where the short cuts are, exactly where the mobs will spawn, etc. So of course, the completion times get shorter and shorter.
 

Dragavon

Well-known member
Back then for example the Delera chain easily took 4-5 hours on normal. It took over an hour to get through each quest on normal. Now we do all of them in under an hour on reaper.

So yes.
 

SpartanKiller13

Why do I have 522 ddo build files
Had a 16 minute Haunted Halls yesterday, my first run was nearly 2 hours lol. We were curious if the XP was good if you just did the main line instead of all the opts (which is fun but bad efficiency) - it's not bad FWIW

Had a slow run of Good Intentions and it took 8 minutes. Definitely wasn't less than 20 the first half-dozen times
 

Jellytelly

Active member
Not to mention, in the old days, we would go everywhere, check every corner, do the optionals. Now, most veterans just make a beeline for the quest completion. That saves a lot of time.
 

Enoach

Well-known member
We do have more knowledge of the quests, we do have gear and even abilities we didn't have when these quests were first introduced.

I would also point out back in the day doing optional objectives was more the norm for groups I was in. Chains like Tangleroot were often run from start to finish sometimes starting slightly over level and ending under level for the quests.

That brings in the other part, running quests at or over level is common today, while it was common to run under level in the early days. I remember running my level 4 wizard with a group Stormcleave Outpost (Level 8) as the way to beat the boss was MM as we didn't have the gear to bypass and the shield wall was the common tactic.
 

Discount Gandalf

Well-known member
If you asked someone brand new who does not have the benefits of a guild, expansion gear, past lives, reaper points, and who wasn't having their hand held by guides or someone already here, they'd say you were crazy for suggesting this game is easy. You can't even really recapture this feeling of difficulty by creating a brand new 28 pt build f2p account because you already know what is behind every corner and where every trap is sprung. But it is still fun and I recommend trying it if you are feeling the game has gotten stale. I do it all the time when I get bored of facerolling everything.
 

Dunspartacus

Well-known member
I think another big thing is a lot of characters are a lot more self reliant now, both in terms of power and knowledge. Back in the day the group stayed together as a group as you needed the healer, the beatstick, the blaster, and the DC caster together to deal with threats. Now so many classes have access to good defenses, CC options, and not to mention a plethora of powerful gear that splitting up is a lot more viable. Packs in things like VoN 3 that used to take a full group to down on hard can now be easily solo'd by a single player or R1, and being able to split up lets you accomplish things significantly faster.

Also as others have stated, people just know quests better now, and that is massive in getting them done fast. I think my first few times in a wiz king group it took us like an hour to figure out on like hard mode, sloughing through everything, constantly falling into pits or going to the basement for no reason. Now with 3 people who know the quest and can easily solo a wing on their own we can have it done in like, 10 min easy on R1.
 
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ShotCaller

Well-known member
If the quests seem too fast and easy, I don't think this is because of a lack of effort on SSG's part. We have biolocks, bio-forcefields, wave attacks done to death ("No, seriously, be death and fury incarnate!!"), and mobs that can appear from thin air, dig up from any surface, and execute perfect drops from any height.

Dungeon Alert is up to purple, and there's still plenty of HP bag action out there if you need it. All mobs are absolutely fanatical and will fight to the death even though it is statistically obvious they have ZERO chance to beat you or your party, so no morale checks. Packs of mobs are often placed at roughly 5-foot intervals for no other reason than to be there when you show up and subsequently enter into an endless move/fight, move/fight, move/fight cycle.

We have laser guns, explosive-pooping goblins, and bear traps. We have mobs that evoke convenient total-invulnerability shields so you can either fight their minions or hear their evil plot without being able to do anything about it. We have heat-seeking choppy choppy blades. We have lots and lots of steps you have to jump over when the exact same steps in another quest would provide no impediment at all. We have lots of stuff that needs to be done simultaneously. We have Tomb of the Tormented. We have Restless Isles. We have The Pit. We have Riding the Storm Out. We have Devil Assault. We have the Tangleroot and Sorrowdusk 15k runs. We have Coal Chamber.

So, I dunno. But I will say this: sometimes I want challenge, sometimes I want (quick) completion. There's only so much time in the day, and every run doesn't have to be a TOEE-like slog. I've been critical of SSG a lot in the past, but one thing I will not blame them for is making the game too quick and easy. The level of challenge is up to you. That's why we have difficulty levels and Reaper.
 

Nebless

Well-known member
If questing on level on a new character (like during Hardcores) those short, med and long still mean less than 30, 30 and an hour for me.

I ran the Stormhorns final the other day on my lvl 22 and from entering the zone to finishing the quest still took my over an hour.
 

Justfungus

Well-known member
You got 2 kinds of players generally. Power gamers, anything less than R5 is boring to them and casual gamers ... anything with a 'R' in the front kills them. So did the quests get easier? No. You got better or you got better equipment or it is easier because you have that dungeon memorized. Pick One. The main weakness of DDO (other than lag) is to be honest, it has very little replayability. I say that because every dungeon never changes. with exception of the mimic event and an occasional reaper spawn ... run 01 is the exactly same as run 125. They never change, ever.
 

Weaponalpha

Well-known member
So what you are saying is that when you first started you were slower at completing dungeons than you are currently. So either A) the dungeons have become easier or B) you have become more powerful. Hmm, probably A. Those mobs have grown weary of dying over and over and over so they just phone it in now.
 
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Konsumer

Well-known member
I remember the time when we started playing DDO. I got the feeling that al lot of quested are not easy to play and you have to spend 30-90min and sometimes more to finish it. So the Quest start screen whith short medium or long really got a value on the playtime.

During the years some quests are nerved so getting easier and quicker, it seems to be that a quest which takes more then 15mins will not be played or getting nerved to get easier....
I´m not sure if my feeling is wrong but we moved from a D&D Online RPG to a quick Hack and Slay Online RPG?
I wouldn't mind some longer quests as long as there is a save function available inside the quest.
 

gljosh

Active member
The older quests (the vast majority of the game) are fairly easy to seasoned players. If you have run a quest about 25~35 times, you know the fastest routes, location of traps, and mob location. This is why we have 14 levels of difficulty, designed to make the quests "longer" with lower damage and slightly high mob HP.
 

Justfungus

Well-known member
The older quests (the vast majority of the game) are fairly easy to seasoned players. If you have run a quest about 25~35 times, you know the fastest routes, location of traps, and mob location. This is why we have 14 levels of difficulty, designed to make the quests "longer" with lower damage and slightly high mob HP.
But is that really D&D or some kinda memorization challenge?
 

Br4d

Well-known member
The quests are fast and easy because the character systems are more complete and the synergies are almost out of control.

At 20 the Epic content is a bit hard but Epic Destinies instantly invalidates most of the difficulty leap from Heroic to Epic.
 

Smelt

Grumpy old Dwarf
Well if you've been playing long enough you'll remember that you had to have run threnal to get the stone dagger thingy, and then the caves in threnal so you could get a +5 weapon or you couldn't hit the mobs in tempest spine. And that was the only place to get a +5 weapon. There were no past lives so no +2 for class completionist and no +2 from racial completionist to all stats. No racial bonus Aps from tomes or TR's no Universal trees let alone the universal tomes for bonus AP's. There was no warlock or evard's black tenticles, no druid, no monk, etc, etc ,etc.

So yes quests took longer and were a lot harder. You were the bee's knees, or the big cheese of the server if you could solo Elite water works. Hell you had a strong party if you could group elite water works at level. You would rarely consider trying without a cleric, and Battle clerics were unheard of. There were several Quests with a single Mob that was regularly responsible for party wipes. You didn't do STK3 without a rogue. When putting together a group for VON 5 and 6 there was a great discussion before starting to make sure you had people with 25 str and 25 wis for the levers and runes. Not done it for years but i'll bet that is never even questioned now.

New quest were always done on normal in groups before any other difficulty was considered. Now I'll do new stuff on elite with a first life toon and if I wipe I'll decide whether it was down to idiocy, lag or difficulty.... It's rarely difficulty.

There was no store to buy tomes and no AH either, if you found a +1 tome people were amazed and wanted to know where it dropped, a +6 Stat item was something from legend. When the favour system first came out, people were still using House P buffs at cap because they didn't have +4 or better stat items for all stats, or even all important stats.

The game started to get a lot easier when it went F2P. I'm guessing because it needed to attract and keep more casual players. But here we are and the game has evolved beyond recognition. I enjoy playing the game now as much as I ever did, there will be player that don't and have left, and players that don't but are still here. Equally there are players here that would have hated the game as it was in the beginning and would probably have left long before we got to where we are now.

I started playing because D&D, I carried on playing after the free 30 days that came with the purchase because.... not D&D but close enough and I was really lucky in joining a guild of people from a D&D back ground and started playing for the same reasons as me. 18 years later I'm still in that guild, there's only 3 of us left but we are loyal. I'm still playing today because evolved with the game, I started playing exclusively in groups, both in guild and PuG's and now I play almost exclusively solo. But that's ok, my guild mates and I still chat and I often interact with others in general chat as I'm pottering about. My Main's name is Smelt-1-2 so I often get "tells" asking me how I ended up with the "-1-2"

I think in the end DDO is more like D&D than a lot of us think. The beauty of both games is that neither game are one string games. They are both different things to different players. You can Play DDO in many different ways, Strictly solo, Strictly grouping, zerging, flower sniffing, min maxing, flavouring or any mix of those things (and probably others that I haven't even thought of). And on top of that you aren't restricted even then, just because today you can't to group doesn't mean tomorrow you can't solo. This life you min maxed but maybe next life you'd like to flavour. It's all fine and all, importantly, up to you. If you feel the quests are too easy these days... ramp up the skulls, or impose restrictions on yourself (there is nothing to say you have to use your best equipment or run quest at level), Quests are too hard.... stop playing in reapers try elite, hard, normal or even casual. The only person that can judge you for it is yourself. You don't need to go from 1 - 32 in the blink of an eye. You don't need to be competionist anything or even second life anything. If you are getting grief or pressure because you don't have the gear or lives that someone thinks you should have.... don't play with them, or ask them to help you achieve what ever it is they think you are lacking.

Wow that turned into more of an essay than I expected. +1 to anyone that got to the end!
 

Elves United

Well-known member
Had a 16 minute Haunted Halls yesterday, my first run was nearly 2 hours lol. We were curious if the XP was good if you just did the main line instead of all the opts (which is fun but bad efficiency) - it's not bad FWIW

Had a slow run of Good Intentions and it took 8 minutes. Definitely wasn't less than 20 the first half-dozen times
When a new group of quests are introduced, I go to sound options crank up the music ( which I normally keep at 0 ) and then slow walk solo with a trapper character ( at low reaper ) doing as many opts as possible. Some quests are very linear but there are others that have are very expansive like Castle Ravenloft or have large optional areas like Sacred Bounty. ( There are people who run that one hundreds of times and have no idea how to get the optional chest )
 
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