Redesigning Dol Dinen
Dol Dinen is a sub-area of the North Downs zone in Lord of the Rings online. The North Downs are an area north of Bree where there are human, elf and dwarf settlements. The land borders Angmar, the kingdom of the Witch King, and as such turns out to be the front line for the Witch King's invasion force. The initial settlement his forces set up is in Dol Dinen. The area is filled with elite trolls, orcs, and goblins as well as a vast amount of siege weaponry. The Ranger settlement of Esteldin is all that stands between the armies in Dol Dinen and the rest of the Free People of Middle Earth.
The concept of the area is fantastic but the execution falls a little flat in my mind. There are about four different quest chains for the area and while I was able to solo a few of the initial quests in the chains, the later ones would definitely require a group. I was lucky enough to piggyback with this person who was having a level 60 run them through and to do all the quest chains, it still took us over three hours to complete the area. I could see a group of at level people requiring at least 5 hours to complete it all.
When most people are leveling to cap, unless they have a friend at 60 to help them, they just skip the whole area as it is not an overly efficient use of time.
Over the weekend I started thinking as to how I would redesign Dol Dinen. Between breaking the assault into different waves, changing the concept of chain quest, world phasing, and group instancing, I think Dol Dinen could be a fun and much more exciting place.
The main the quest chains I am going to look at are the Troll Siege, The Black Tide of Angmar, and the Breaking the Front Lines chains.
The Breaking the Front Lines chain has you kill goblins and collect their slave collars, returning to kill a goblin task master, returning again to kill a warg chieftain and then continues when you pick up some orders from a killed mob and forces you to travel to multiple points across the zone to get the orders deciphered and warn others.
The Troll Siege chain is 4 quests long and has you killing a set number of Troll Siege members, returning again to disable their siege weapons, returning again to kill these orc bone-speakers, and returning a last time to kill the Troll siege leader.
The Black Tide of Angmar is 5 quests long and has you collecting badges from orcs on the outskirts of camp, returning again to kill three orc captains, returning again to kill vast numbers of orcs, returning again to kill the orc leader and steal his armor, and then the last quest sends you into an full multi-hour instance on the other side of the zone to kill another orc leader. The last quest is also about 5 levels above the previous quests.
I do not think the story for the quests has to be completely reworked. I do think the quest chains need some reorganization but I will be staying with 3 different quest chains with the same story for the most part, just changing the flow. One of the concepts I will be relying heavily on is changing the way chain quests work as I talked about in my previous post.
Starting with "Breaking The Front Lines", you would be receive the following request from the quest giver:
"We have received reports of a large invasion force from Angmar that has taken up occupation in Dol Dinen. The camps are thick with enemy forces and our scouts could not infiltrate deep within them. None of our forces can reach the orcs and trolls within the camps as the camp outskirts are filled with goblin slaves and wargs. We need your help to break their front lines.
Start by slaying the goblins in the area. Bring me 10 of their slave collars so that I may further investigate these bindings the Angmar Orcs are using. Following that, slay 10 of the wargs in the area to clear it out. With the wargs dead, strike at the chief warg. This will devastate their forces. Once you have finished that, scout out and slay the Goblin Chieftain. With the chieftain dead, check his tent for any information."
The Meta-quest "Breaking the Front Lines" would be listed in your quest log with 5 sub-quests as such:
Breaking the Front Lines
- Collect 10 Slave Collars
- Slay 10 Wargs
- Slay the warg chief
- Slay the Goblin Chieftain
- Search for information
All of these quests would be non-elite mobs and entire chain would be soloable. The quests would have to be completed in order, but you would not have to return tot he quest giver between quests. As soon as you finished the objective, you would receive the experience for that quest and the next one in the path would unlock. After slaying the goblin chieftain, you would find orc orders within his tent and with that step done, you could return to the quest giver for completion of the meta-quest. This would cause a phase in the world to pass (like World of Warcraft's world phasing in Icecrown).
Just like how the quest is in game now, you would be sent to another ranger to request he translate the orc letter. After having the letter translated you return it to the original quest giver and receive the next quest chain.
In the game as it is now, both the Troll Siege and the Black Tide of Angmar quests are elite chains. I think the area would be better served by breaking these up, move the trolls to the final quest line so the final quest line stays elite and make all the orcs in the area non-elite.
The quest giver would give you this new chain:
Stop the Black Tide
- Collect 10 orc medallions
- Kill 16 Ongburz Combatants, Kill 12 Ongburz Manslayers, Kill 6 Ongburz battlemasters
- Kill 10 Ongburz Bone-speakers
- Kill the Ongburz captains: Thorgal, Shum-batar, Dombri
- Search for intelligence
When your went back to Dol Dinen to do this quest chain, you would see the area where goblins and wargs used to be now destroyed. Goblin and warg corpses litter the area and their tents and defenses would be up in flames. You would fight your way through the orc encampments, basically doing mass killings of everything in the area, culminating with killing the three captains. Each captain would be more difficult than usual mobs, but not impossible to solo. After you defeat the third captain, you would find some more orc information in his tent.
Returning this information to the quest giver would reveal about the orcs' secret siege weaponry, their troll army and the name of the orc leader. The quest giver would give you the final quest chain, the world would be phased again, and we would tell you that you will need a group.
End the Siege from Angmar
- Kill 16 trolls
- Disable the troll siege weaponry
- Defeat the troll siege leader
- Defeat the head orc
When you returned with your group the final time, the orc camps are now destroyed, in flames, and littered with orc corpses. Trolls now fill the area and are looking for anything salvageable in the destruction. Your group would kill these trolls, push further to their siege weaponry and destroy it and then finally confront the troll leader followed by the orc leader. The orc leader would be a very difficult fight and require a full 6 man group.
In the end, I think this would tremendously improve that area. The player would only have to travel to and from Dol Dinen 3 times (compared to the 4-6 it is now) and finding a group would be a lot easier since the group has to just sweep through and do a quest chain that auto-progresses for them.
Quest Experience and Multi-Stage Quests
When two quests take different amounts of time, why do they offer the same amount of experience? When you know every level 30 quest gives the same amount of experience, why do the ones that take a long time? They are only inefficient if your goal is the end game.
The amount of experience a quest gives should be dependant on the average time that quest takes to complete in internal testing and beta testing. If a level 30 quest that takes 10 minutes on average to complete, a level 30 quest that takes twice as much time should give twice as much experience. A quest that takes 10 minutes on average and a quest of equal difficulty that takes 20 minutes on average should not give the same amount of experience. What is even worse is when there is a quest that takes 30-60 minutes to complete and it gives as much experience as a 10-15 minute quest.
There is enough information out there so that players know what is and is not worth their time. So please reward properly.
Group quests are another type of quest that do not seem to be properly rewarded. For example: last night, I was working with a group on the Book 4 questline in Lord of the Rings Online. The questline is filled with multiple group quests but the rewards seem uneven. The final quest, which is a group instance quest, took our four man group over a half hour to do. It may have been close to an hour, but I was not watching the clock. Either way, the experience given for completion was about the equivalent of 2-3 solo quests.
The instance quest was level 42 and took about 45 minutes. I can complete level 42 solo quests in 10-15 minutes each. So if me doing 3 solo quests is the same reward for me completing the group quest, why do the group quest? It is more work and takes an effort to find other people. That extra effort should be rewarded.
Another thing I have been thinking about is certain quest chains. While for the story of some quest chains, I can understand it, but why I do I have to return to the quest giver for completion of every quest.
An average quest giver will tell me "I want you to kill 10 orc grunts" and when I return he'll say "now go kill 3 orc lieutenants", followed by "go collect the orc orders" and then returning once more for he will request "go kill the orc boss." Why can we not have a quest giver just say "Go kill 10 orc grunts, once you finish that go kill 3 lieutenants. With the lieutenants dead, you should be able to find the orders in the tent. After you find the orders, head to the main tent and assassinate the head boss."
Your quest log could say "Complete Mayor Questgiver's requests." and then list all four major objectives he requested. They would be required to be done in order as the later quests are "locked" until the earlier quests are completed. But when you complete one of the quests, you would automatically be given the experience without having to return to the quest giver and the next quest would unlock. After you completed all his tasks, you would have the overall quest completed and be able to return to the quest giver for an item reward and some additional experience.
This would solve one of the most annoying things with questing in LotRO, and that is when you have a quest chain to go to a specific area but that quest chain is the only set of quests for the area and you have to make the long return to the quest giver in between each quest. It would not work for every quest chain because in many quest chains there are story developments, but for many other chains the quest giver knows every step he wants you to complete before you even start.