Make optionals worth taking the time to do

[Sholekar]

Skeletons in the closet (and a couple raids) provide a great example of how to make optionals worth doing. The game has lots of great content that is often ignored or has paltry rewards. If some named loot from a quest was shifted to an "optional" chest that only appears if you complete the associated optional, this will both incentivize doing optionals, but reduce annoying farming because you can, if you take the time, have more chances for the specific loot you want. Or just more loot.

Some quests do something similar to this with named items in optional chests, but making it standard practice in quests with named loot would be amazing. And just add those "named" chests at the end of the quest. QoL.

Make me want to do the optionals. 5% xp for a 30% increase in time to do the quest is not a suitable reward. But more named-loot chests? Bingo. More play, less grind. Win win.

 

[Sholekar]

I'm genuinely curious if you still complete the optionals when running legendary quests at cap? Personally, while leveling, I'm hit or miss - sometimes I feel like doing them, and sometimes I don't.

But when it comes to farming gear or RXP at the legendary level, I see little point in doing optionals. I do like to explore new content a few times, but after that, I don't bother.

That's the big issue for me. After I've run the quest a couple times, the optionals tend to be not worth the time. Especially at cap. Having something that makes them either scale the quest (including rxp) and/or provide named loot/sent exp would make it a lot more worth it to smell the roses, even in Legendary.

 

[eshadowbringer]

That's the big issue for me. After I've run the quest a couple times, the optionals tend to be not worth the time. Especially at cap. Having something that makes them either scale the quest (including rxp) and/or provide named loot/sent exp would make it a lot more worth it to smell the roses, even in Legendary.

I believe there are many people who find themselves in the same position, and this presents a significant opportunity for SSG.

 

[Buddha5440]

"I do the optionals most of the time, but it depends somewhat on the quest; whether the opts are particularly far out of my way, whether there's potential named loot "

This.

More named (and good) loot needs to be put into the optionals. I can't recall how many times I have posted an LFM with "All optionals" in the post and people simply Zerg to the end.

 

[Panda]

I said the same, would be very good IMO

Oh my bad! I missed your reply, but yeah! Great minds think alike my friend.

 

[Panda]

I was also thinking of something that might give incentive for wanting to keep farming for items too, what if you could "crunch" copies of an item for a chance to upgrade the mythic bonus? The gameplay loop for this game is based on repeating the quests and content over and over it might add another layer to trying to perfect the gear we already have, or is that just too much?

 

[Nebless]

I'm genuinely curious if you still complete the optionals when running legendary quests at cap?

If it's just a favor run because I'm so overleveled I won't see any XP, than my take on optionals is; if it happens, it happens.
- I like to break stuff so getting that one is pretty automatic no matter if xp is involved or not.
- For the one's where they want you to find the various notes to read, I'll try to do those just because of the story factor.
- Optional bosses if not too far out of the way I'll do it for the loot chest.

All in all I like to fully explore ALL of a dungeon to get the most out of it, so doing optionals is just part of that package.

 

[Visik]

Clearly some people will do optionals just because they exist. Equally clearly, this post isn't intended for them.

I concur with the OP: there are a LOT of quests where the XP for optionals is nowhere near commensurate with the time and/or annoyance involved in actually doing them. At the same time, there are quests where so-called 'Optionals'.. aren't. Try doing Devil Assault without getting ALL the optionals, sometime. (Then tell me how you pulled that off, because I want to learn from you.)

And the recent change that made it so that optionals PERMANENTLY ransack is a serious pita for some quests as well. Two quests that have traditionally been run frequently for the combination of optional XP and Tokens of the Twelve are Devil Assault and Wiz King. Now if you're farming tokens, you have fewer good choices, because there are simply fewer LFMs for these quests. And the DA "Pike for XP; hand over Tokens" arrangement is all but dead.

IMO, if a quest drops named items, they should (slightly) drop the odds of those items appearing in the end chest(s) in return for a small chance of them appearing in Optional chests. If the overall drop odds for the quest run increased a bit over just running for the end chest, it would be a net win for farmers, encourage casuals to bother to do the optionals, and overall reduce the straight line to the goal mentality that's become so common on the ol' hamster wheel o' lives. Yet at the same time, those who don't need the named items could still skip the optionals without any change in their rewards.

 

[Memnir]

IMHO, instead of inflating monster attributes with Dungeon Alert - SSG should inflate the XP of all optionals by significant amounts. If it sounds an absurd number to add - double that and we'll be on to something. This includes the rewards for monsters slain, breakables bashed, and no deaths - along with unique quest-based optionals.

The Devs have tried to change player behavior in all the wrong ways - no carrot, all stick. But, the players who are constantly rushing ahead to cause high DA in everything do so because it's more efficient XP gain, and no other reason. The Devs have incentivized this style of play with XP potions - limited time on the bonus means milking each potion for all one can. Yet, they've also left optional XP at miserly levels since the game's inception.

Give us some carrot, Devs. You may be surprised at how it well it'll be received and possibly doing quite a lot to help lag.

 

[Aelonwy]

Yet, they've also left optional XP at miserly levels since the game's inception.

Give us some carrot, Devs. You may be surprised at how it well it'll be received and possibly doing quite a lot to help lag.

Not just left optional XP at miserly levels actually reduced the XP of some optionals during the quest XP revamp, and then again when they reduced XP on quest repeats... optional XP can actually be reduced to nothing. It would seem from actions-taken that they would like to de-incentivize optionals. We were told at some point that they were going to make future quests with valuable, xp-worthy optionals but then nothing came of that comment. I guess they changed their minds without mentioning it.

 

[Silverfox]

Offering named items as a reward for doing optionals has already been done and has failed miserably for nearly as long as DDO has been around. Muckbane is a good example an item and xp reward for doing an optional. Since it becomes btc to create your own with cannith crafting and have a better item that does more damage and is BTA. This is true for any quest and any item once you have it there is no more need to keep running the optional that drops it. Optional xp is only worth while until a better source of xp is available. Any optional adding more than 3 to 5 minutes of additional quest time can clearly be replaced by another quest that not only offers the same or more xp but favor optionals offer nothing comparable.​

So clearly in hindsight optional xp and named loot are only a very short term carrot and offer nothing to players in the long term. This is true even for raids once you have obtained what you want the incentive to do optionals drops dramatically.

 

[Sympl]

5% xp for a 30% increase in time to do the quest is not a suitable reward.

Just to be that guy....

Many times, kill, breakable, trap, secret door bonuses aren't achievable without completing the optionals. And the optionals tend to be worth 10-60% of base experience.....

So, let's low-ball it and assume you only get the last tier of each and common 10%....you're looking at potentially a (10% optional + 10% kill + 5% breakable + 10% trap + 5% secret door).....40% increase already......

Don't pretend. Because completing optionals on the whole pays out much better than that....and usually doesn't take much extra time at all (mileage per quest will vary).

 

[GolargoSturdyfeet]

Running the quest ten times, leaves no optional xp. Not worth doing most quest. This can lead to zerging and DA.

 

[Gragahn]

There are three gameplay reasons to run a quest (not including fun/exploring/story/challenge etc)
1. XP and/or RXP
2. Favor
3. Loot

For the people only interested in #1 and #2. adding Named Loot to optional chests won't change the way they run the quest. That's fine. But for people at least partly interested in loot, they will be incentivized to consider doing optionals. Straight away we will have more diversity in the way players run quests, instead of it always being a zerg. The players that want to zerg can still do so of course, with no change to their playstyle. And people that are after the loot will have more opportunities to get a particular piece before running into chest ransack, which is a very frustrating mechanic.

The example I like to use is Raven at the Door. When I needed a Reflective Bloodstone, I would complete the quest then do 'Rescue Yesper' optional to get an extra chance for 5 minutes sidetrack. I have the Bloodstone now, but I still sometimes run the optional for the chance on more Sentient XP depending on how I feel. I don't bother with any of the other optionals because they only have regular/no chests.

 

[mikarddo]

I very rarely do optionals because most of them take far too long for way too little reward.

99.9% of all optionals do not offer interesting loot and nearly as many give way less xp/min than the main quest and thus are not worth the time. It is common for options to give xp worth 15 seconds of time compered to the regular xp yet take 1-2 mins to complete (e.g. you are doing 8k xp/min so a 2k xp optional needs to complete in 15 seconds to be worthwhile).

Off the top of my head these are the optionals I remember actively doing (not including optionals that complete just by running the quest):
- Ghost of a Chance (split up, fine xp in optionals)
- Two Toed Tobias epics
- Wiz King (split up, good deal of extra xp)
- Von 3 (nearly on the route but needs a slight detour for significant xp)
- Skeletons in the Closet (as the good xp is in the optional chest)

I suspect there may be a few more but I doubt its many. Please do list if you find any other options truly worth running. Most optionals I simply ignore completely (or auto complate from running the main quest) as running them lowers the reward per time.

 

[saekee]

/signed

 

[ForeverZero]

Clearly some people will do optionals just because they exist. Equally clearly, this post isn't intended for them.

I concur with the OP: there are a LOT of quests where the XP for optionals is nowhere near commensurate with the time and/or annoyance involved in actually doing them. At the same time, there are quests where so-called 'Optionals'.. aren't. Try doing Devil Assault without getting ALL the optionals, sometime. (Then tell me how you pulled that off, because I want to learn from you.)

And the recent change that made it so that optionals PERMANENTLY ransack is a serious pita for some quests as well. Two quests that have traditionally been run frequently for the combination of optional XP and Tokens of the Twelve are Devil Assault and Wiz King. Now if you're farming tokens, you have fewer good choices, because there are simply fewer LFMs for these quests. And the DA "Pike for XP; hand over Tokens" arrangement is all but dead.

IMO, if a quest drops named items, they should (slightly) drop the odds of those items appearing in the end chest(s) in return for a small chance of them appearing in Optional chests. If the overall drop odds for the quest run increased a bit over just running for the end chest, it would be a net win for farmers, encourage casuals to bother to do the optionals, and overall reduce the straight line to the goal mentality that's become so common on the ol' hamster wheel o' lives. Yet at the same time, those who don't need the named items could still skip the optionals without any change in their rewards.

Von 2 pike at enterence and pass tokens is still a goodie.

 

[ForeverZero]

Just to be that guy....

Many times, kill, breakable, trap, secret door bonuses aren't achievable without completing the optionals. And the optionals tend to be worth 10-60% of base experience.....

So, let's low-ball it and assume you only get the last tier of each and common 10%....you're looking at potentially a (10% optional + 10% kill + 5% breakable + 10% trap + 5% secret door).....40% increase already......

Don't pretend. Because completing optionals on the whole pays out much better than that....and usually doesn't take much extra time at all (mileage per quest will vary)

It's all a matter of perspective. exp per quest and exp per minutes are two vastly different things. If you're hurting for xp and not on a pot. Traps and opts are fine. But on pot it becomes a different story.

Usually i have to solo due to my work schedule. My rule of thumb is if its on the way why not. I'm never a trapper so traps just aren't gonna be feasible. I dunno where traps are cause im boring and just yeet through them anyway. But i cbf searching. And disabling. Then going out of my way at least for kost quests to do that.

Now it does shift slightly in parties if i manage one with a trapper. Ill just go through quest while they do trapper stuff if its one of those quests. And when I finish I'm finished. Unless they're close to a next bonus type deal. But thats usually rare.

I try to delegate these types of things if i can. Trappers do trap stuff. Someone preferably caster with good breakable spell choice for those. I'll break, do opts, ect on the way. But only a few quests like above mentioned that I'll go out of my way for optionals or traps. Like von 3 for traps is fine. Theyre all on the way. Thr breakables are just off the main path. 30 seconds of run time both ways not including kill time. Stuff like that I'm fine with doing. But stuff like crucible where you need to break like 230 items to get q5% is so over the top and tedious. I cbf.

 

[Visik]

Von 2 pike at enterence and pass tokens is still a goodie.

I've never actually encountered that one. Never seen an LFM for it.. nothing. Wonder if that one's server-specific.

 

[ForeverZero]

I've never actually encountered that one. Never seen an LFM for it.. nothing. Wonder if that one's server-specific.

Nope its seems its always for your odd alt or two to pike while your main does the quest. Its easier than lod for the alt bards out there since the chest spawns right at enterence. And you can do the quest fairly quick if you know what to do

Von 3 is also good if you use death train mechanic. Most alt bards or the like have teribad saves. Its an extra 2 ish tokens a von 3 run.

 

[eshadowbringer]

Von 3 is also good if you use death train mechanic. Most alt bards or the like have teribad saves. Its an extra 2 ish tokens a von 3 run.

Consistently 2.5 tokens .. death train is easy with the trap. Me, 3 alts and a buddy do it all the time 10 tokens 14-17 min