Mordiceius' Gaming Blog Flying Away on a Wing and a Prayer

Solving the Problem of Group Quests

I like group quests. No, I love group quests. I think properly implemented group quests can give a great sense of immersion. The problem is, so few group quests are properly implemented.

I was thinking back to Lord of the Rings Online. I love the game world, but the amount of group quests was wholly depressing. It was not because there were not enough but instead too many and mostly were poorly implemented. On the other side of the coin, when Blizzard revamped some of the leveling in World of Warcraft (I think it was around patch 2.2), they removed practically all group quests from the vanilla world.

Generally, the three main problems I have seen with group quests are:

• Flow
• Enemy Saturation
• Population Density

Flow
A group quest should be a culminating event. In Lord of the Rings Online there would be multiple times when the quest flow would be Solo->Solo->Group->Solo->Solo->Group. This can create massive roadblocks for the player. If you are doing the questline with some random PUG players and a tank or healer leave half way through the quest chain, it becomes a lot harder to fill that spot.

Proper flow would hopefully go something more like Solo->Solo->Solo->Solo->Group->Group or Solo->Solo->Solo->Solo->Solo->Group. All the group quests should be at the end of the quest chain so that everyone can get up to that point together. Furthermore, I think group quests should only be the final quest in the chain. Having multiple group quests in a row can be tiresome and still create player roadblocks.

Enemy Saturation
Dol Dinen (at least how it was when I used to play) in Lord of the Rings Online is a terrible way to design an area. The area is filled with literally hundreds of enemies and all of the enemies are elite. You need to have a full group to even venture into the area. If one person gets separated, they will die and you will have to clear the way to their body to resurrect them because they will not be able to run back to you due to respawns behind you.

Areas filled with elite enemies should only be in instances where you by design will be with a full group at all times. I do not believe that any area in the open world of an MMO should be filled with elites. The best solution would be to have the area filled with normal enemies and then just have the "big bad" of the area be elite to coincide with the group quest to kill them. This way, it helps the players fill powerful themselves by being able to solo the generic trash but still make the big bad seem a powerful foe.

Population Density
This might be the biggest problem with group quests. When new content or a new expansion comes out, it is usually simple to get a group together for quests as thousands of people will be doing the content. Six months later or even years later, it is much different. When leveling in the time after the initial rush of people, most players will just skip the group quests. It is just too much work to try to find a group for it. If there is a quest reward they really want or need, they will just get a high level person to run them through the quest.

There are multiple ways you can handle this. You could just not put any group quests into the game, but I think that is a poor solution and can easily be thrown out. You could, after six to twelve months turn all the group quests into solo quests. I do not like that solution since it generally ruins the "epicness" of the quest. The third option, and my personal favorite, is to give companions.

I am not a fan of full time NPC companions. I do not want everyone having a full party of companions all day every day and forever only running around in a group of companions. Instead, a few months after a new game's release players should be given something like a "companion summoning horn" or something of that nature. When used, it would summon companions to fill out your party. The caveat is that they would only last for ten minutes and the horn would be on a one hour cooldown.

With this solution, players can still get the epic feel of the group quest even when the main mass of players has moved on to the level cap. If it had been implemented in World of Warcraft, it could have initially been usable only from levels 1-60. Six months after the Burning Crusade expansion came out, they could extend the item to work from 1-70. Six months after Wrath of the Lich King's launch, the could once more extend it to work from 1-80. People in the initial rush would be forced to group with each other, but new players to the game after the rush or even alts of players would still be able to accomplish group quests without sacrificing the integrity of the quest.

Like I said in the beginning, I think group quests are a fun and immersive part of MMORPGs, I just think the implementation needs tweaking so everyone can do them.