Developer Diary: Instances 2.0 (Part 1)

Mrbloodworth

Developer Diary: Instances 2.0 (Part 1)

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By: Joe “jwbarry” Barry

Instances… 2.0

Hey everybody. This is Joe “jwbarry” and in this, the first entry in a series of Dev Diaries, I’m going to be talking about our new Scaling Instances and explaining what that means, how it works, and giving you a bit of insight into why we made a lot of the decisions we did and some of the cool upgrades and changes coming with The Lord of the Rings Online™ Volume 3, Book 2.

Quality vs. Quantity

One of the constant challenges of game development, particularly within the MMO space, is the balance of quality and quantity when it comes to content. You need to make sure you have enough to do, but you also want to make sure it’s fun, challenging, and rewarding. Debates of how much more time to put into polishing a space, versus starting development on a new one, are a constant. When is good enough, good enough? Where is the point of diminishing returns and have you hit it yet? Is that one last thing on your list really what’s going to make this content sparkle and shine and be unique or is it actually extraneous? We struggle with these questions on a daily basis. There are rarely easy answers. Yes, in one person’s view the answer may be very easy: a simple yes or no. But, we’re not a one-person design team. We’re not one person in charge of reviewing content and providing opinions on it. And we’re not one customer who’s ultimately paying for it.

These issues and debates crop up most frequently with instances. Instances are large, complex, expensive pieces of content to make. They are completely hand-crafted experiences and game play, requiring organized group testing, multiple passes for balance, challenge, and fun. It takes a very large amount of time to go through the full process of getting an instance into a shippable state. Despite all of that, each instance meets with varying degrees of success. Even when a space ends up successful with solid gameplay and fun, like Orion’s recent rebuild of Garth Agarwen, it suffers because it is set at a single level and only accessible to a small portion of the playerbase. This creates a lose/lose situation. We have great content that the majority of players aren’t in a level band for, and the players who want to play it are left with something not in their level range and an unrewarding experience as a result.

This was one of the challenges we set out to tackle with the Skirmish system. We were able to construct spaces that are available to as many players as possible and succeeded in knocking down many of the barriers that limit the impact, accessibility and audience for the content we produce. Now, we’ve looked at the Skirmish technology and started tinkering with applying it in other places to spread those benefits.

What instances did for Skirmishes, Skirmishes now return the favor…

Instances were the first place we looked. What tech did Skirmishes bring to the game that could be leveraged to improve the gameplay experience, lifetime, and audience of instances? Three goals became important very quickly.

First, we wanted to get as wide an audience and as much potential playtime into each instance as we possibly could. The more players an instance is available to, the better value we get for that content and the better play experience. Instances are also a critical part of LOTRO’s current end-game. The more instances that are available throughout a character’s career, both while they are leveling and once they hit cap, the better suited they are for that end-game and the richer and more diverse that end-game experience will be. Second, we didn’t want to dramatically change what an instance is or how it feels; the differences they have from other content is what makes them unique within LOTRO. Each instance is hand-crafted from start to finish, with purposefully balanced encounters, tuned pacing, and unique bosses with custom skills you’ll only see in that place. They’re tailored experiences for a group of people. Each space offers a unique experience and high quality gameplay, and we don’t want to change that.

Third, if we are going to be opening up these instances to perform some upgrades, we should look at the gameplay that’s currently in them, and where there are opportunities to do so, add some polish, tweak some encounters, and ensure the quality of the experience is at the level we expect. From the time of Shadows of Angmar through Mines of Moria and to Siege of Mirkwood, the quality standards and expectations of both the dev team and players have increased. At the same time, the skills of those involved with designing and constructing the spaces have increased. New tech has come online that has opened up new techniques and gameplay mechanics and tools that a lot of the original instances didn’t have access to. While we were back working in a dungeon, extra time was spent to ensure an instance that shipped with SoA would meet the new standards of what an instance is including the balance expected, the custom elements, the skills, and the challenge level of boss fights. There’s no sense in re-releasing an instance and making it as accessible as possible if we don’t also spend the time to make the gameplay as good as possible.

To meet these primary goals, we focused on applying 5 specific elements of the Skirmish system to instances to upgrade and enhance them and let them reach their true potential as experiences.

Access

The first part of the Skirmish system we looked at adding to instances was Skirmish Join. For a long time within MMOs, it was accepted that part of playing an instance was the time spent to gather your party, get all of the quests a space has to offer, and travel to the instance. Depending on how many people you needed, where they started out at, and where the instance entrance was, this could actually take more time and coordination than playing the actual instance.

With Skirmishes, this paradigm changed dramatically. We didn’t require you run to a door; you could simply open a panel and select the space you wanted. We didn’t require you to gather your party; they all teleported in from wherever in the world they were currently at. We didn’t require you to visit a bunch of NPCs strewn over the world to pick up quests; they were automatically bestowed upon entering the Skirmish. This opened up the Skirmish spaces to be played by the highest possible number of people and also ensured a better play experience for all involved. Play time was spent in the actual Skirmishes and playing the content, not in travel and organization.

For Volume III, Book 2, we’ve renamed the Skirmish Join panel to be the new Instance Join panel. Within it there are currently two tabs: Classic and Skirmish. The Skirmish tab is probably familiar to most of you, so I won’t cover it here; there are previous dev diaries that focus on that part. The Classic tab is the new one and includes every replayable instance in the game. This includes all instances from Shadows of Angmar through Mines of Moria and Siege of Mirkwood. There are 39 entries in all (there’s a list at the end of the series of articles), ranging from Garth Agarwen, to Carn Dûm, to the Vile Maw, to Sammath Gûl and dozens more. Every 3, 6, and 12-man replayable instance in the game is now accessible through Instance Join.

Just like Skirmishes, once you select one, you’ll receive a window to travel now, as will all players in your fellowship. You’ll all teleport in from wherever you are, be able to play and enjoy the instance together, and be placed back where you each came from when you’re done. Unlike Skirmishes, instances actually have entrances in the world. Those still exist, and if you run to the entrance, the instance join panel will open with the instance you’re trying to enter highlighted. The exit doors at the start of instances also exist and running into those will teleport you back to wherever you entered from.

Scaling

The second part of the Skirmish system we chose to look at adding to instances was scaling. Our tech currently allows scaling on three different axes, and we looked at each in turn.

First up is group size scaling. This was done for Skirmishes to increase the accessibility and to offer up an experience that one person could play or 12 people could play. It also allowed us to create experiences for the Epic that could be enjoyed and completed by either the pure solo or group player. Group size scaling, however, creates a less hand-crafted and a more procedural feel to the content and space. This is masked to an extent by randomness in Skirmishes. Group size scaling also involves constructing multiple versions of every boss and mini-boss, greatly increasing the amount of design and implementation necessary, particularly for a previously built space and boss. Given that, and considering our second goal of maintaining what is special and unique about instances, we decided against bringing over group size scaling.

Second is difficulty tier scaling. Within Skirmishes, this increases the armour, health, damage output, and ratings and mitigations of all monsters in the space across the board. Since Skirmishes are more systematic in nature, that feels good and fits within them, but due to the more custom hand crafted nature of instances, it didn’t feel like the right fit. Difficulty tier will likely come to instances at some point in the future and in a form different from how it works in Skirmishes, but for release we decided to keep things on the simpler side, feel out how they’re working and where the system wants to expand to, and keep this tool in the bag for a later date.

Third is level scaling. For Skirmishes, this simply sets the level of the monsters to whatever level selected. Instances typically use several different level monsters throughout the space to more finely tune the difficulty, pacing, and balance of the encounters and bosses. After adding all of the instances to the updated Skirmish Join panel, the greatest way to achieve both goals 1 and 2 was to add level scaling to our instances. However, a hurdle was presented when it was discovered that the initial Skirmish scaling tech didn’t allow for multiple monsters of different levels throughout the space. It was decided this was an important enough feature of instances to maintain and new tech was created to address the issue. Given a content retrofit of a space, we now had the ability to allow it to interact with the level fields within Instance Join and correctly tier out the monster levels and experience to match that of the original dungeon.

For Volume III, Book 2’s release, we’ll have a total of 12 spaces (2 Small Fellowships, 6 Fellowships, 3 Raids [12] and 1 Raid [24]) that have been upgraded with level scaling technology and will scale from their initial access level all the way to cap, Bree’s Great Barrow (Othrongroth), Eregion’s School and Library at Tham Mírdain, Annúminas’ Glinghant, Haudh Valandil, Ost Elendil, and the Misty Mountains’ Helegrod. Now wait . . . 12 spaces? But I listed 7, what’s going on? This is where the third goal comes into play: to ensure that the instances are of as high quality as possible. As part of that, once spaces were examined, vetted, played, and feedback from our qualitative team came through, the decision was made that both Othrongroth and Helegrod would be better, more accessible play experiences if they were split into several bite-size wings. Othrongroth became three Fellowship spaces, each about 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, Helegrod saw more dramatic changes, becoming a total of four wings. The first three are 45-60 minute 12-man raids, while the final wing, focusing on the dragon, is a 30-45 minute 24-man raid. There will be more details about all of these instances and specific upgrades and changes a little later on.

Questing

An important part of the way Skirmishes worked was that they auto-bestowed their quests. This allowed them to remain non-tethered to the world and not invalidate the access benefits of Skirmish Join. For instances, this became a tricky problem. If we left all of the quests in place, you would still have to effectively run to the instance (or the nearest hub) to gather them all up and then turn them back in, and then Instance Join isn’t of much value. However, there’s also a lot of character and story in those quests and simply having them all be auto-bestowed by the instance would rob a lot of that depth.

In this case, we turned to the example of Garth Agarwen’s revamp as the roadmap. In cases where it made sense, quests were converted to be auto-bestowed. In cases where the story was more important, the quests were left alone. Each upgraded instance has up to four new types of quests.

The first type is a daily repeatable, focusing on simply completing the space by defeating the final boss.

The second is a suite of 2 to 4 quests per space, each repeatable daily, where each player randomly receives one from the set upon entry. If you complete yours and play the space later on that day, you’ll get another one from the random set that you haven’t yet completed.

The third is a vector quest. For instances that had all of their NPC-bestowed quests moved to be auto-bestowed, a vector was placed on the NPC to discover the instance entrance, thus still preserving its place in the world and directing people there at an appropriate time and level.

The fourth is the challenge quest. Challenge quests involve overcoming part of the dungeon (most often defeating the boss) in a non-standard, more challenging way. Challenge quests will only bestow when an instance is scaled to the current level cap; they are not attemptable below cap. Each trip through the dungeon allows for one chance at the Challenge quest. If you wipe and restart the boss fight, the challenge mode fails and does not reset. You’ll need to restart the instance to reset the Challenge quest. These are meant to be among the most difficult encounters in the game and require the highest degrees of communication, coordination, and skill.

Each space also has a completion deed associated with it; once the boss is defeated, all of the random quests and the challenge quest are completed, the deed will complete, and you will be rewarded with mastery of the instance.

Just like Skirmishes, if you have daily quests available for an instance, a gold quest ring will display within the Instance Join panel on the instance selection. This only applies to the 12 instances that have been upgraded for Book 2. In the future, as we upgrade each space, it will get a full treatment of similar quest updates and challenges.

Coming Next Time

That should give you a pretty good overview of some of the challenges, and our solutions, involved with scaling our existing instances. Next time, we talk about the structure of the rewards system, what you can get from playing Scaling Instances, stat tracking, and setting the quality bar. See you then!

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