Open World Areas Sidequests

[Arthuvin]

I would like to suggest quests to be carried out in open world areas, such as Keep on The Borderlands.

My idea is that these quests to be similar to those that exist in LOTRO, with an NPC giving this quest in the wilderness area itself.
These quests must be carried out in the wilderness itself, without the need to enter an instance. In a format similar to LOTRO.

To make my idea clearer, here is an example o the Keep on The Borderlands:
- We could have an NPC on the farm next to the Keep who asks us to eliminate 30 goblins around his property.
- Another example could be an attack on the Lizzardfolk camp, killing 20 of them and eliminating a boss.
- Another example could be eliminating the spider infestation at the Isolated Gorge.

* I repeat. These examples must be run in the Wilderness area, without needing to enter a specific instance.
* The NPCs who give the quests can be in the Wilderness itself or inside the Keep, whichever is more convenient for each sidequest.
* The floating markers above the NPC's head could be different, like this one on Sal Danek's head in Threnal.

* Sidequests would have an entry in the Quest Journal, with a conclusion text for the player to read it later.
* These quests would give a small Favor reward like dungeon quests.
* Loot could be named.
* These could be sidequest packages sold for DDO points or free for VIPs.

I make this suggestion because I like the immersion in the game's story, as if I were embarking on an adventure in this beautiful fantasy world, where we walk through beautiful places, dark places and full of challenges, interacting with characters from the story and being heroes, getting rewards and doing part of the game's own story.

Check out this farm at Keep on the Borderlands. It seems like a sin to have so much space wasted without a sidequest given by an NPC.

In addition to several other wilderness areas with interesting locations that can be explored through quests directed by NPCs.

Rare and Random Encouters are not compelling enough. Players don't feel compelled to do this type of content without having an NPC give you a quest with a marker on their head like a more common RPG.

This is my humble suggestion of a type of content I would like to see in the game.

 

[Nebless]

Well your examples are all covered by the wilderness area's slayer deed so I'm not sure why having an NPC tell you to do it is better than it being auto granted when you enter the wilderness area.

The only real difference is the favor and loot you want added, but would that be enough to make people want to buy the pack?

 

[Onyxia2016]

Since the wilderness areas are themselves and instance, I could see have optional/side quests.
In the case of Borderlands and the farm in your screenshot, there could be an NPC (aka the farmer) who requests your help in defending the farm from a horde of hobgoblins, which would tie into the scripted event that happens when you get close the the broken down wagon on the road NW of the keep. Something similar could be done around the little fishing shack and the mill (thing with the water wheel).

I do not see how these could be more than killing hordes of monster type quests. I could be wrong and the current game structure my allow for more in-depth quests mechanics within an instance.

 

[Arthuvin]

Since the wilderness areas are themselves and instance, I could see have optional/side quests.
In the case of Borderlands and the farm in your screenshot, there could be an NPC (aka the farmer) who requests your help in defending the farm from a horde of hobgoblins, which would tie into the scripted event that happens when you get close the the broken down wagon on the road NW of the keep. Something similar could be done around the little fishing shack and the mill (thing with the water wheel).

I do not see how these could be more than killing hordes of monster type quests. I could be wrong and the current game structure my allow for more in-depth quests mechanics within an instance.

Yeah, that's a start. I would be very happy with this. And I think a lot of players too. Killing mobs of monsters is something.

With the direction of a NPC, with the quest conclusion text at the journal, and the other frats I mentioned It would be a immersive and fun content - especially for new players.

 

[Mand O'Lin]

I would like to suggest quests to be carried out in open world areas, such as Keep on The Borderlands.

My idea is that these quests to be similar to those that exist in LOTRO, with an NPC giving this quest in the wilderness area itself.
These quests must be carried out in the wilderness itself, without the need to enter an instance. In a format similar to LOTRO.

To make my idea clearer, here is an example o the Keep on The Borderlands:
- We could have an NPC on the farm next to the Keep who asks us to eliminate 30 goblins around his property.
- Another example could be an attack on the Lizzardfolk camp, killing 20 of them and eliminating a boss.
- Another example could be eliminating the spider infestation at the Isolated Gorge.

* I repeat. These examples must be run in the Wilderness area, without needing to enter a specific instance.
* The NPCs who give the quests can be in the Wilderness itself or inside the Keep, whichever is more convenient for each sidequest.
* The floating markers above the NPC's head could be different, like this one on Sal Danek's head in Threnal.

* Sidequests would have an entry in the Quest Journal, with a conclusion text for the player to read it later.
* These quests would give a small Favor reward like dungeon quests.
* Loot could be named.
* These could be sidequest packages sold for DDO points or free for VIPs.

I make this suggestion because I like the immersion in the game's story, as if I were embarking on an adventure in this beautiful fantasy world, where we walk through beautiful places, dark places and full of challenges, interacting with characters from the story and being heroes, getting rewards and doing part of the game's own story.

Check out this farm at Keep on the Borderlands. It seems like a sin to have so much space wasted without a sidequest given by an NPC.

In addition to several other wilderness areas with interesting locations that can be explored through quests directed by NPCs.

Rare and Random Encouters are not compelling enough. Players don't feel compelled to do this type of content without having an NPC give you a quest with a marker on their head like a more common RPG.

This is my humble suggestion of a type of content I would like to see in the game.

To an extent this already exists in the game. Think of the random encounters some wilderness areas have... the King's Forest being an excellent example. Not simply a random red-name, but something more. When completed, some even give a reward.

 

[Onyxia2016]

Searing Heights could use some of that Kings Forest magic. I cannot remember the last time I did anything there. Just a waste of space.
If is was not from the Bargain of Blood quest I am not sure anyone would go there. Those that do mount up and blast through leaving a string of lag inducing monsters in their wake.

 

[Arthuvin]

To an extent this already exists in the game. Think of the random encounters some wilderness areas have... the King's Forest being an excellent example. Not simply a random red-name, but something more. When completed, some even give a reward.

But they are random. Random encounters are not compelling enough. And their NPC's don't have the quest marker above their heads. And there is no conclusion text to the story in the quest journal. King's forest have a lot of wasted space. It's potential is not fully explored. Lots of cool locations and villages for quests such as these I'm proposing.

 

[Arthuvin]

Searing Heights could use some of that Kings Forest magic. I cannot remember the last time I did anything there. Just a waste of space.
If is was not from the Bargain of Blood quest I am not sure anyone would go there. Those that do mount up and blast through leaving a string of lag inducing monsters in their wake.

I agree. We could have a quest for eliminating the orcs from the farmstead near Stormreach's gate.
Another potential quest could be to escort the kidnaped farmer from the cave he is to the farm.

 

[Onyxia2016]

There are tons of flavor potential in many wilderness areas. One could even make the argument that slayer pots would be better is instead of us running around looking for things to slay, these side quests would bring the monsters to us.

These two point alone would add some small measure of new content as well as give slayers a boost (pun intended).
All while using assets already in the game so very little in the way of cost on SSG's part

 

[Sophie The Cat Burglar]

In a sense, what you ask for already exists in the form of wilderness location, rare encounter, and slayer quests. You are essentially asking the quest writers to add more textual information to such activities. If such a thing were to happen, it is a sure bet that some players would complain about long dialogs. Others would complain that the developers are wasting time on old systems that do not get used. A third group would complain that the developers should have added Champions and/or Reapers to wilderness areas instead. Players that want more wilderness transporters will renew their complaints. The group that wants to link up all the wilderness areas might make an appearance. And so on.

Aelonwy and some others used to ask for more quests in areas like the Cerulean Hills and Searing Heights. The developers responded by adding 4 quests to the former area (Lost Gatekeepers) and one quest to the latter area (The Promise of Fire).

A small number of players used to ask for more quests in the King's Forest.

If enough people support this idea, you may get more text in the next wilderness area. However, the Law of Unintended Consequences may rear its ugly head because the developers doing the writing may not implement things in the manner you expect. The more detailed the proposal, the less likely that is to happen.

I am neutral to the idea. As an example, adding a few more encounters, with lots of textual information, to the King's Forest will not cause me to start adventuring there. Setting random encounters to fixed locations (a la Saltmarsh), adding more random encounters, adding direct to quest teleporters, adding more quests, and adding really useful loot to the King's Forest might cause me to start adventuring there, but only if the experience payout and loot payout make it equal to or better than other options. Such an update could be brilliant or a complete waste of time. There is no way to know which it will be until the Rubicon is crossed. These comments apply to most old wilderness areas.

I advise not getting your hopes up very far. The developers here are very pressed for time. Player suggestions do get implemented, but it often takes a long time from suggestion to implementation and what actually happens is usually a very small slice of what was hoped for.

This is an example of a suggestion where players could do a lot of heavy lifting for the developers. Start a thread in which players suggest random encounters, including all the text. Maybe the developers could use some of the entries, saving themselves some time.

Example:
Wilderness: King's Forest
Initial Location: (exact coordinates for encounter)
Initial Quest Giver: Loathar Freeman, Gentleman Farmer
Initial Quest Text: Good day, traveller! You look like the sort who can fend off a ruffian or three. Perhaps you would be willing to help me for a small reward? Black devils from the underworld have been raiding this area, burning, killing, and pillaging everything in their path. Purple Dragon Knight patrols are doing the best they can, but now they are sneaking onto the farms at night and stealing out livestock. Last night, some of those devils stole my best milk cow, Betsy. Their tracks lead into that copse of trees, yonder. A Captain told me the drow have an outpost in the dark heart of those trees. Would you be brave enough to hunt down those fiends and bring back Betsy? I can offer you room and board and a small reward if you succeed. Take care if you linger in this area and leave them be. They may well come for your camp when you least expect it.
Encounter Quest Location: (exact coordinates for encounter)
Encounter Quest Text: You have found the drop camp Loathar Freeman spoke of. They are not yet aware of your presence.
Encounter: There is a camp with three drow fighters, three drow archers, and a cow (Betsy) at the Encounter Quest Location. Upon seeing the player character, the drow will attack. After all drow are killed, clicking on Betsy will teleport the player character back to Loathar Freeman.
Final Location: (exact coordinates of encounter)
Final Quest Giver: Loathar Freeman, Gentleman Farmer
Final Quest Text: You did it! Thank you so much for saving my cow and protecting these war torn lands from those devils. You saved many lives this day. As promised, I have a small reward. My brother was a bit of an adventurer and left me these items after he died of the consumption. Please take your pick. Perhaps you can use it to kill a few more of those wretched drow.
Final Quest Note: Betsy appears next to Loathar Freeman during the final phase of this encounter.

This is a very banal example but you get the idea. Perhaps you could channel some forum energy into a good deed. Just beware there is only a very small chance that such suggestions will ever get implemented. However, such an effort may just spur a quest writer or two to include some more textually detailed encounters in the next wilderness area, which is what you want.

 

[DarkSkysz]

so much space wasted

A wise man once told me, "never wish for mounts or anything like that, because if you do need them its because the game is a huge desert of wasted space"

DDO is master of creating huge landscapes just for nothing. Desert, underdark, borderlands, tangleroot and so on.

I wonder how many players actually explored 100% of these maps. My guess? Less than 1%.

 

[Onyxia2016]

I wonder how many players actually explored 100% of these maps. My guess? Less than 1%.

I can honestly say I am in the 1%, but with the caveat that I have only done it once.
There are entire areas of the game that I have not set foot for years. Been there, wasn't anything to write home about so never went back.

These areas have so much potential. There is already lore and monster type defined for these areas. Would not take number to create some dungeons to scatter around. As we have seen from the Delving video series, dungeons can be created pretty quickly once you have lore and monsters hashed out. This basically write themselves

If I had a say in the marketing side of things I would make these an adventure pack so they are free to VIP but also offer them for DDO points.
This way VIP gets to use a perk that has gone unused recently but others still have a way to get it.

Marketing is not hard, so long as you know your customer base.

 

[saekee]

I think it is a great idea, especially in the lower-level quests. Think epic Orchard where a mage asks you to help with a puzzle and golem creation, or close a rift.

I am unsure how much the devs will want to give this their attention though.

 

[Shear-buckler]

A wise man once told me, "never wish for mounts or anything like that, because if you do need them its because the game is a huge desert of wasted space"

DDO is master of creating huge landscapes just for nothing. Desert, underdark, borderlands, tangleroot and so on.

I wonder how many players actually explored 100% of these maps. My guess? Less than 1%.

It's not wasted space, it creates a sense of scale.

 

[Onyxia2016]

There have been numerus suggestions that were not just players asking for something without paying for it. Most had a balance to new content/feature as well as a revenue source. They all seem to be ignored.

 

[CBDunk]

This is just an expansion of existing zone mechanics... essentially 'rare encounters' that ALWAYS occur (like 'The Wailer' in Saltmarsh) and have some sort of story to them (like various Kings' Forest, High Road, and Storm Horns encounters). Quest icons and map markers are also currently used in zones. Not sure about 'text in the quest journal'.

That said, I'm generally not a fan of the 'kill 10 wolves' type of 'quest'... and they'd be problematic in non-respawning zones where the player(s) may have already killed all of the required type of creature.

More involved / story based zone encounters... absolutely. I'm a big fan of the various examples around Eveningstar and wish they would have done more of that. The three 'boss level' encounters in the Isle of Dread zone are also nice. Now combine the two... instead of Stonejaw just being standing around in a random clearing it would be nice if there were a tracker NPC who warned you about him and gave you directions to one of a few random places he could be hiding. Maybe you need to kill a particular kind of dinosaur and leave the meat to draw Stonejaw out.

There is a LOT that could be done along these lines w/o having to introduce anything 'new' in terms of game mechanics. However, there are also presumably reasons SSG hasn't done as much with these systems as they could. Maybe those sort of 'zone stories' take a lot of work... or maybe people play them once and then never again. That latter is very likely true as the 'rewards' for these events are usually a small amount of XP and a generic chest. Basically, they are neat... but only worth playing for the one-time novelty value. They, like other 'optional objectives' need better rewards.

One thing the devs might consider would be moving all the 'generic but rare' chest rewards to ONLY drop in 'optional' chests. So, if you want sentient XP, tomes, unslotting tools, curse cleansers, et cetera... you'd want to do all the optionals rather than JUST the 'end chest' which has the quest specific named loot. That'd make those zone chests a good potential source of useful materials.

 

[Mand O'Lin]

A wise man once told me, "never wish for mounts or anything like that, because if you do need them its because the game is a huge desert of wasted space"

DDO is master of creating huge landscapes just for nothing. Desert, underdark, borderlands, tangleroot and so on.

I wonder how many players actually explored 100% of these maps. My guess? Less than 1%.

I have.

 

[Sophie The Cat Burglar]

If the quest log permanently retained wilderness region progress, almost everyone would complete every wilderness on at least one character.

Since a character reset also wipes out wilderness region progress, very few bother trying to achieve that goal.

That is not a ding against DDO. It is just a behavioral consequence of how the game is designed.

This game is about gobbling up experience and constantly upgrading equipment. If the experience and equipment are there, the players will come.

 

[Drunken.dx]

While I love roaming wilderness areas I'm against adding generic MMORPG "kill 10 wolves" types of quests in them.

I'd rather that SSG put that effort into fixing a number of rare/random encounters that never spawn (looking at you storm horns)

 

[Arthuvin]

While I love roaming wilderness areas I'm against adding generic MMORPG "kill 10 wolves" types of quests in them.

I'd rather that SSG put that effort into fixing a number of rare/random encounters that never spawn (looking at you storm horns)

I know what u mean, but not every Sidequest Im proposing need to be like this. There is room for directed, well writen and immersive quests.
Eg:
* That dragon random encounter in the Storm Horns could be turned into one of such quests.
* There could be a set of prequel quests of an assault to each monster army camp in the Storm Horns which may be a prequel to the main assault in the central army camp at the top of the mountain (obviously not mandatory to the main assault - fully optional).
* There could be lots of sidequests in the stormhorns wilderness or helping villagers and compelling us to explore that enormous beautiful wasted space.

Ps: I emphasize my idea is that such quests are given by NPCs with a different marker above their heads, like this one above Sal Danek's head in Threnal: