Dungeons & Dragonshas been undergoing a renaissance in recent years thanks to blockbuster games likeBaldur’s Gate 3and TV shows likeStranger Thingsintroducing many new fans to the tabletop game, and this growth could be beneficial forD&D-based free-to-play MMORPGDungeons & Dragons Online. Based on theDungeons & Dragons3.5e ruleset,DDOfills a unique niche in theMMORPGmarket by essentially being a real-time representation of the beloved tabletop game.
In an interview with Game Rant ahead of the game’s new Vecna Unleashed expansion,Dungeons & Dragons Onlineproducer Amanda Grow weighed in onD&D’s recent surge in popularity and what it means forDDO. Grow spoke about howDDOis working on its early game experience so that new players aren’t too overwhelmed, as well as how the game’s content scales in difficulty according to the player’s tastes.
Dungeons & Dragons Online Makes Questing Less Confusing
With 16 years of content under its belt, it’s more important than ever forDDOto make the onboarding process as smooth as possible forDungeons & Dragonsnewcomers. One way the team has tackled this issue is by leveraging the game’s various tavern keepers to guide players toward their next adventure. If players are unsure of where to go, the tavern keeper can present them with a list of available quests and send them in the right direction. If players find even this decision overwhelming, there’s a handy “dealer’s choice” option that simply assigns them a random one.
We’re trying to update the tavern keepers in the early part of the game to help you out to say, “Ah, you got some choice paralysis, you don’t know where you want to go next. Here, I’ll give you a list that you could pick from, and you know what? If you still don’t even know what you want to pick, I’ll just pick one for you. Here, go do this quest.”
The idea is that people will feel a little less overwhelmed when they’re coming into a game like this that has so many different choices of content where you’re like, “Oh my gosh, where do I even begin?” Particularly because all of them are meant to be understood as standalone. If you don’t play the entire story arc, it doesn’t hurt you, you’ll probably enjoy the full story, but if you’re like “Which story do I want?” the bartender will help you out. So this is the first iteration of that, and we’ll continue to expand it if people like it.
Like many ofthe best MMORPGs,DDOfeatures countless quests and stories to explore, and this can induce some choice paralysis for new players. As MMORPGs continue to grow in size over the years, it’s becoming increasingly important to find ways to keep new players from being overwhelmed.
Dungeons & Dragons Online Has Various Difficulty Options For All Playstyles
DDO also features a somewhat unique mechanic among MMORPGs in that players can actually choose a difficulty level for nearly all the content they encounter. Although players have long been able to choose Heroic orMythic difficulties inWorld of Warcraft, for example, it’s rare that players can opt for easier, solo-friendly difficulty levels.
One of the things that we’ve always been very cautious of in DDO is the ability to let a player scale the amount of challenge that they want in any particular experience. If you are going to play a dungeon by yourself, if you’re gonna play it completely by yourself, you’re probably going to play on Casual Mode. If you’re gonna play it by yourself, but you’re willing to take a little bit more risk, you can probably get one of our AI hirelings to help you.
By allowing people to scale how tough they want the experience to be, that’s what really allows them to tune the size of their group.
New players can kick things off in Casual Mode for content when they’re starting out, and then bump things up once they get comfortable. To manage the difficulty level even further, AI hirelings can be brought along as party members for those who may not wish to group up for certain content. Later down the road, they can try their hand at either soloing the hardest difficulties or tackling those with a party. For those who enjoy the highest stakes possible, the game offersa Hardcore modesimilar to other games which gives player characters a single, precious life.
