The xp of some challenges is still unreasonable.

[Munkenmo]

From the release notes:


The XP on some challenges has been adjusted to provide a more reasonable amount of XP/minute.

This adjustment is incredibly poor, as you have proven you are able to modify xp values on challenges without taking the servers down, please fix this now.
1k per minute is what we were aiming for in 2009, times have changed since then and it's a poor goal for many players, yet some challenges can't even provide 1k/min without pots / voice / ship buffs.

6star level 25 Buying time = base 4800xp awarded + modifiers.

http://i.imgur.com/3auiX.jpg

[Kinerd]

It is simply a matter of terminology. You interpreted "reasonable" as "reasonable", but this was a classic blunder, albeit one only slightly less famous than getting involved in a land war in Asia. What "reasonable" in this context meant is "I know we are nerfing the bejesus out of challenge xp/min, but I'm not the one who made this dumb, dumb, dumb decision so I'm going to hide it behind words".

No one in a position to make decisions at Turbine understands the concept of xp/min. Trying to reason with them is therefore useless: there is no reason involved, words notwithstanding.

[Zindro]

Note: This is for someone who is level 25. The experience is even worse for a person who is under 20.

I read a dev post stating epic challenges should give a person who is over level 20 more exp than 1kxp per minute. Someone is who is level 19 should be getting about 1kxp per minute.

That is how it was working... why was it changed?

[Mathermune]

For 5 minutes, you got

1k xp per min. (admittedly a bit low)
However many clicky chests you got
2/3 of an epic token

Plus none of it is hit with a repeat penalty. I agree that there should be a way to level up ED's quicker than there currently is. But I think that the way to do it is take off the repeat penalty for epic level quests.

Challenge xp is still on the low side. But that is slightly negated by the fact you never get penalized for repeating it.

[tyga250]

For 5 minutes, you got

1k xp per min. (admittedly a bit low)
However many clicky chests you got
2/3 of an epic token

Plus none of it is hit with a repeat penalty. I agree that there should be a way to level up ED's quicker than there currently is. But I think that the way to do it is take off the repeat penalty for epic level quests.

Challenge xp is still on the low side. But that is slightly negated by the fact you never get penalized for repeating it.
Repeat penalties stop when u hit 3mil xp (lvl 25) and a lot of quests are much much better than 1k xp per min. That's right, I went there; challenges weren't even the best xp per min.

The first 50% nerf was bad since it affected all challenges, not just the ONE giving uber xp per min. Why on earth are you nerfing challenges that gave horrible xp per min anyway? Adjust what was broken and not just a blanket nerf across the board! I've also read from a few devs that first time bonus was too much. FINE, adjust the first time bonus. Why mess with additional star xp? It's gone from 100% of base to 10% of base... ***.

I find it inexplicable that they have made the most expensive pack a 1500tp token farm. Honestly I feel bad for anyone who actually purchased this pack before this update and I will be recommending to everyone who doesnt own it to NOT waste their money!

[danotmano1998]

Why on earth are you nerfing challenges that gave horrible xp per min anyway? Adjust what was broken and not just a blanket nerf across the board!

You'd think that this approach would be the logical choice, wouldn't you?
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

[Full_Bleed]

Both Buying Time and Time is Money are now terrible XP.

I guess that's one way to get people to stop running them.

[ytuy]

Both Buying Time and Time is Money are now terrible XP.

I guess that's one way to get people to stop running them.

I have earned about 250 epic dungeon tokens over the past two weeks with not too shabby exp... Do you know what that means for Turbine??

12 True heart of woods that will not be bought in the future... They don't want you farming decent XP and then taking away the need to spend TP in the future... it isn't logical. Anything that affects revenue gets fixed fast... why don't people understand this?

True hearts of wood take about 2-4 hours to farm... now with bad exp, you have to go out of your way to farm them. Some people would rather just buy a heart of wood for 10 bucks instead of farming for 4 hours. True they made the pack useless, but in the long run Turbine will make more money this way.

They don't want people leveling off epic challenges. It costs them money...

[dng242]

For 5 minutes, you got

1k xp per min. (admittedly a bit low)
However many clicky chests you got
2/3 of an epic token

Plus none of it is hit with a repeat penalty. I agree that there should be a way to level up ED's quicker than there currently is. But I think that the way to do it is take off the repeat penalty for epic level quests.

Challenge xp is still on the low side. But that is slightly negated by the fact you never get penalized for repeating it.

Like he said (all of it).

I'll be honest, I'm not worried about buying time. I would really love the other C challenges (and a few other quests) to give more appropriate xp/ingredients(loot) for the time. I find it odd they spend so much time developing new stuff when a few corrects to the old would be a huge help.

So Turbine, a little recycle/reuse :)

[Kinerd]

I have earned about 250 epic dungeon tokens over the past two weeks with not too shabby exp... Do you know what that means for Turbine??

12 True heart of woods that will not be bought in the future... They don't want you farming decent XP and then taking away the need to spend TP in the future... it isn't logical. Anything that affects revenue gets fixed fast... why don't people understand this?

True hearts of wood take about 2-4 hours to farm... now with bad exp, you have to go out of your way to farm them. Some people would rather just buy a heart of wood for 10 bucks instead of farming for 4 hours. True they made the pack useless, but in the long run Turbine will make more money this way.

They don't want people leveling off epic challenges. It costs them money...One problem with this analysis is Turbine has dramatically marginalized past lives with epic destinies. Would you rather spend 4m xp getting +1 to attack or getting rank 5 in two distinct destinies? Destinies, duh. Throw in endless stones of experience to skip a significant chunk of heroic xp. Past lives just don't matter that much; really they never did.

Another problem is that all other epics drop plenty of token fragments to keep getting true hearts if you really feel like it.

You're really giving Turbine too much benefit of the doubt here. It would be more comforting if they were savvy businesspeople, aggressively changing things to maximize their profits, swaggering around in Gordon Gecko suspenders or Mad Man guy hats... but that is just an illusion. The unpleasant truth is that they just don't care. Changes happen at the whims of casual observation on the part of the highest ups. No reason. Barely any thought. A wise man once said we are being digested in the belly of a cold and indifferent universe, and that is pretty much what's going on here. My advice to you is to enjoy the game for what it is: a dysfunctional excuse to play with people you like.

[Carkolda]

I have earned about 250 epic dungeon tokens over the past two weeks with not too shabby exp... Do you know what that means for Turbine??

12 True heart of woods that will not be bought in the future... They don't want you farming decent XP and then taking away the need to spend TP in the future... it isn't logical. Anything that affects revenue gets fixed fast... why don't people understand this?

True hearts of wood take about 2-4 hours to farm... now with bad exp, you have to go out of your way to farm them. Some people would rather just buy a heart of wood for 10 bucks instead of farming for 4 hours. True they made the pack useless, but in the long run Turbine will make more money this way.

They don't want people leveling off epic challenges. It costs them money...

First, I have never (and will never) buy true hearts. I have never (and likely will never) hear of people buying true hearts. In addition, I feel like I had my 1200 turbine points (yes, I bought it on sale) stolen from me, since the pack I purchased (with the reasonable xp/min and ingredients) is no longer the pack I own. And based on this nerf, I will not be buying any more packs or points for the forseeable future, since they likely will go and ruin the pack after people purchase it.

Alternatively, I think this is going to do them more harm than good. Like another poster said, past lives are significantly diminished in value with ED's. Based on my experiences with my most recent double-TR (and a single TR that is still level 4), I will never TR again. That realization was made after a few things:
1) The lion's share of my 2nd and 3rd life xp came from Time is Money. This nerf completely nukes that option from high orbit.
2) The XP required to go through 2nd, and then subsequently 3rd lives is unbearably high IMHO. 4.3 million xp just to get to 20? I'd rather single-life it and take that time running for ED's. What I get in return is a much better ROI.
3) I will never purchase a heart of the wood out of spite for Turbine, even if they eliminated the tokens for heart mechanic. I would sooner stay at my 32-point-build for the rest of my time with them.

Until Turbine shows some maturity and discipline in how they approach specific problems (first-time xp is too high, so let's nerf ALL xp in challenges is not appropriate), they will not see me spending any more money on their products. I have spent $230 over the course of 2-1/2 years. Don't count on seeing any more until a paradigm shift occurs... one that actually benefits the players instead of hurts them.

[Vormaerin]

1) The lion's share of my 2nd and 3rd life xp came from Time is Money.

While I think the current xp return is a little low, even by my non zerger standards, it seems to me that if this statement is actually true, that is justification for fixing the xp rate on that quest. If its that much better than the alternatives, its out of whack.

[Munkenmo]

What some of the nay sayers here seem to be missing are facts like this was:

A perfect run
At the highest possible level
5% voice
5% ship buff

and I only just broke 1k / min.

It's incredibly easy to miss one objective in this quest or have to buy time. This pack was once advertised as being solo / casual friendly.

As it stands now, It takes a perfect run at the highest possible difficulty level to not even break 1k / min without extra exp boosts.

How can anyone defend this as reasonable?

A casual player or someone below cap would be lucky to get 500xp a minute, this current incarnation of challenge exp is anything but reasonable.

[Khatzhas]

While 1K XP/minute tends to be looked down on by the hardcore crowd, 500 per minute isn't that bad going for a new player.
Particularly considering that the challenges seem to be there as item acquisition options with the XP gain secondary.
Actual levelling is probably intended to be primarily through quests rather than farming challenges.

I can understand that it is upsetting if you bought the pack for the experience farming, only to have that changed later though.

[Thrudh]

As it stands now, It takes a perfect run at the highest possible difficulty level to not even break 1k / min without extra exp boosts.

How can anyone defend this as reasonable?

I agree that is not reasonable. And this was one of the challenges that used to give good exp. I shudder to think how much experience/minute some of the longer poor exp challenges (like Picture Potraits or Dragon's Hoard) must give. They were not good before... I wonder how bad they are now with an across the board double nerf (a challenge-by-challenge single nerf should have been done instead).

[Thrudh]

1) The lion's share of my 2nd and 3rd life xp came from Time is Money.

You're just making a case for the nerf. If the experience from that one (repeatable) challenge truly was that much better than the vast majority of quests, then yes, it needed nerfing.

Now I think they went too far, and the blanket nerf they did across ALL challenges was a very weak "solution".

[Puppetian]

The nerf was taken too far, I just ran a solo lvl18 thru CR20 Time is Money and got a grand total of 17,5k for a 6 star run with a 20% pot and voice going. I can understand that challenges might have been too good, but nerfing them right to the ground isn't going to generate move revenue. Frankly, as a premium player that payed whopping 1500tp for the cannith challenge pack I feel cheated.

Edit: Yes, it was a first time solve too.

[EvilI]

I have earned about 250 epic dungeon tokens over the past two weeks with not too shabby exp... Do you know what that means for Turbine??

12 True heart of woods that will not be bought in the future... They don't want you farming decent XP and then taking away the need to spend TP in the future... it isn't logical. Anything that affects revenue gets fixed fast... why don't people understand this?



Every true heart in your pocket means more money in Turbine's. Youre not going do do those 12 TR:s without xp-pots, are you?

[MRMechMan]

6 staring some of these challenges is *not* easy.

The total xp/min is not even the shocking thing here. It is the xp/star that is.

Getting 300xp/star is an utterly worthless amount and is an incredibly boneheaded move by the developer that changed this. Really.

Fire them if they can design something that bad, they do not deserve to work at your company.

While this may sound harsh, any person with that little gray matter upstairs should be cleaning toilets or something equally menial, not designing a game that thousands of people play and love.

[MartinusWyllt]

Both Buying Time and Time is Money are now terrible XP.

I guess that's one way to get people to stop running them.

As well as making grinding items a, well, a grind. 500 xp/min at least saw you with something that looked like progress while getting 5000 or 6000 mephit wings or magma shards.

[Munkenmo]

The total xp/min is not even the shocking thing here. It is the xp/star that is.

Getting 300xp/star is an utterly worthless amount and is an incredibly boneheaded move by the developer that changed this. Really.

This.

even increasing the * values to 3k each isn't going to be unreasonable in the 5-10 min challenges.

the 20+min challenges are so far beyond reasonable now though that it's blatant devs don't know better or don't care.

Neither explanation is acceptable.

[Ancient]

For 5 minutes, you got

1k xp per min. (admittedly a bit low)
However many clicky chests you got
2/3 of an epic token

Plus none of it is hit with a repeat penalty. I agree that there should be a way to level up ED's quicker than there currently is. But I think that the way to do it is take off the repeat penalty for epic level quests.

Challenge xp is still on the low side. But that is slightly negated by the fact you never get penalized for repeating it.

Once you hit 25 (or cap xp and stay 23), you don't get penalized on anything (unless you already had a penalty, this is a bad mechanic).

I've simply replaced running buying time with impossible demands. 17-20k on normal, 2 minute completions plus I get better loot and guild renown. At a slow pace to and from quest giver, I can cycle in 4 minutes easy. There are other quests with better loot and better xp/minute.

There is zero excuse for what they did to challenges.

[MartinusWyllt]

There is zero excuse for what they did to challenges.

Still I'd like to hear at least one from one of them.

[Carkolda]

While I think the current xp return is a little low, even by my non zerger standards, it seems to me that if this statement is actually true, that is justification for fixing the xp rate on that quest. If its that much better than the alternatives, its out of whack.

No, it was a long slog and a horrible grind. But it was better than running with PUG's and failing after an hour-long investment into a quest. It's not that it was a better alternative to quests, it was a better alternative to people. Don't ruin the challenge because people suck.

[krtkoo]

I've simply replaced running buying time with impossible demands. 17-20k on normal, 2 minute completions plus I get better loot and guild renown. At a slow pace to and from quest giver, I can cycle in 4 minutes easy. There are other quests with better loot and better xp/minute.


now you have reset option, you dont need to run to quest giver (tho you will miss the reward)

[Ancient]

now you have reset option, you dont need to run to quest giver (tho you will miss the reward)
I like the guild renown, although you are right. With 2 minute completions and a reset button, on normal that is 34-40k xp less time than it takes to run a <5k buying time challenge run.

And once again, there are better quests that offer more xp/loot per minute.

[Isolani]

There was no need to nerf the xp in challenges, if anything, they needed to increase the xp in a lot of them.

They probably needed to tone the 5 minute challenge xp down a bit in epic levels, you could go 20 to 21 in less than 1 hour just doing 5 minute challenges, but they went way overboard on this xp nerf.

I won't do challenges at all now. I don't need any of the cannith challenge loot, and I don't care about grinding FR challenge ingredients for random loot, so if the xp is bad now too there is no reason at all to do them. I don't see how that improves the game, it's just more content that people won't do because it isn't worth the time anymore.

Turbine is really dumb sometimes.

[Dawnsfire]

The ones that really bother me are the lower level 20 minute challenges. A couple of thousand for 20 minutes is horribad.

[Ancient]

Funny thing...

As soon as people started posting specific XP/Minute numbers for House C challenges and compared them to XP/Minute numbers for quests...

All those in favor of the nerfs decided to go post on different threads.

[Isolani]

I have earned about 250 epic dungeon tokens over the past two weeks with not too shabby exp... Do you know what that means for Turbine??

12 True heart of woods that will not be bought in the future... They don't want you farming decent XP and then taking away the need to spend TP in the future... it isn't logical. Anything that affects revenue gets fixed fast... why don't people understand this?

True hearts of wood take about 2-4 hours to farm... now with bad exp, you have to go out of your way to farm them. Some people would rather just buy a heart of wood for 10 bucks instead of farming for 4 hours. True they made the pack useless, but in the long run Turbine will make more money this way.

They don't want people leveling off epic challenges. It costs them money...

How will Turbine make more money from this nerf? I used to buy hearts even though it was easy to grind epic tokens with challenges. I would rather spend the tokens slotting epics whenever I had enough tokens, and just buy the hearts to save myself 2-4 hours of mind numbing grinding for no reason but to TR. Time is more important than money to me, I have more money than I have time.

Now, I won't be TRing at all because the gains are trivial compared to epic destinies. Once I finish the characters I already had in mid TR, I'm done with TRing.

And I certainly won't be doing any challenges because I don't care about the loot, and now the xp is horrible too. Challenges are just more content that isn't worth doing after this nerf. You can just lump challenges in with all the other awful xp/min quests that everybody but newbies and masochists skip. So I won't be buying any more hearts and I won't be doing any challenges...I don't see how that means more money for Turbine.

MrCow posted in another thread that xp for 15+ minute challenges is better now, so maybe those ones are worth it now, but I haven't done any of the long challenges yet to see.

Either way, the game keeps getting less and less fun and more and more grindy in my opinion. It's my day off and I'm posting here instead of playing...that is generally not a good sign in my MMO experience.

[Morbleue]

It is simply a matter of terminology. ... I'm not the one who made this dumb, dumb, dumb decision so I'm going to hide it behind words".

No one in a position to make decisions at Turbine understands the concept of xp/min. Trying to reason with them is therefore useless: there is no reason involved, words notwithstanding.

Right on! I would add to that, as i live in a former Soviet contry.... How Turbine does things is standard decision-making under a soviet technocracy. Is ironic to see a US company becoming something like that!

But they can pretend for sometime still... that they are powered by their fans. Soviet space had only "people s democracy". They have pretty much the Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Ring franchise monopolies. Though Baldur Gates was more successfull in my mind. Also people have a hard time voting with their feet as they are emotionally attached to their characters.

But if the system does not change, they will disappear. It is not about new content now, it is about changing their ways. They now conditionned me, and a lot of other customers i read, to think "update=bad news!". And ask myself "should i continue playing?". I already deleted a few toons and consolidate everything in one server. I believe Guild War will not kill it and also the Hobitt film will help Turbine in the short term. I have little belief they will change their ways. 2013 is a more interesting horizon. There are real strong releases of online games that will hit the shelves. I spend money with that in my mind. I spent enough to keep me busy until these releases hit the shelves. I want to see a growing player base, more visibility when i plan my purchases and characters and more fun for me personally before i open the wallet again.

[Zindro]

But if the system does not change, they will disappear. It is not about new content now, it is about changing their ways. They now conditionned me, and a lot of other customers i read, to think "update=bad news!". And ask myself "should i continue playing?". I already deleted a few toons and consolidate everything in one server. I believe Guild War will not kill it and also the Hobitt film will help Turbine in the short term. I have little belief they will change their ways. 2013 is a more interesting horizon. There are real strong releases of online games that will hit the shelves.

I am done with ddo... I check back at these threads to see if Turbine will respond. It is pretty clear at this point someone at Turbine did not do a double nerf on accident. They won't respond to any of these threads or questions. I feel duped that they offer one pack that had decent exp... then nerfed it... then nerfed it to the point I am wasting my time even zoning in for a first time bonus. Just makes me not want to see what they have coming around the corner.

[Kinerd]

While I think the current xp return is a little low, even by my non zerger standards, it seems to me that if this statement is actually true, that is justification for fixing the xp rate on that quest. If its that much better than the alternatives, its out of whack.This is a good point, but it has an even better counter-point: the challenges pack is by far the most expensive. The only reason I have ever seen any player give as a recommendation was the very strong XP, especially from a solo perspective and especially at the high levels. This case was only strengthened by the absurd implementation of epic levels (repeat and overlevel penalties). A mind with a conspiratorial bent would surely look at that (absurd!!!) implementation and say "aha, Turbine wants to make money by selling the one pack immune to those penalties; that is to say, the very expensive challenges!"... but then they absolutely obliterated the very strong XP!

There is simply no reason involved here. They (the people who make the final decisions) just don't care. Don't torture yourself by looking for justifications. There are no patterns in noise.
While 1K XP/minute tends to be looked down on by the hardcore crowd, 500 per minute isn't that bad going for a new player.A 6 star level 20 run is currently 1600 XP for 5 minutes of quest time. 6 stars for barely 250 xp/min, counting loading turnaround.

[Vormaerin]

Funny thing...

As soon as people started posting specific XP/Minute numbers for House C challenges and compared them to XP/Minute numbers for quests...

All those in favor of the nerfs decided to go post on different threads.

I don't think anyone is *in favor* of these changes. Though a number of us don't think they are as catastrophic as some of you do.

The main objection is that people are using a completely arbitrary standard that is unquantifiable in the broader picture.

XP per minute for a quest? Your standard is "variable per variable". What good is that? The power leveling crowd on the forums almost certainly gets more xp per minute than the typical player. Whose "minutes" are we supposed to use? Perhaps the Devs should hire the fastest zergers and then say "hmm, can zerg in 2min so 2k xp". Or do you want them to look at reports on average time in quest and say "wow, most folks spend 25 minutes doing WW. Guess it should give 25k xp." ?

You also haven't explained if that's 1k/minute with first time bonus, bravery bonus, tome, pot, and shrine? Or what you should be getting on a fourth run after the first time bonuses are gone?

Most, though not all, of the challenges do have a fixed time frame. But xp is still variable. How many stars should you need to get to meet your 'adequate' xp level? Do you mean first time or second time? With what xp bonuses active?

The standard of 'xp/minute' is meaningless. Its just a bunch of anecdotes and the resulting expectations. Its not something the devs can meaningfully use as a criterion.

[Kinerd]

Strongly disagree! XP / min is dimension / dimension. So long as you're consistent with whose dimension you use, we'll be way better off than we currently are, which is random XP values that have nothing to do with anything. That you will get slightly different results depending on whose and which dimension you use doesn't mean you should disregard the process entirely.

The point is to at least consider the second dimension.

[Vormaerin]

That you will get slightly different results depending on whose and which dimension you use doesn't mean you should disregard the process entirely.



I think we disagree about whether its "slightly" different results, at least with regards to quests. The average group, from my experience, seems to take easily 5 to 10x as long as the "how long it should take" times given by zergers. Someone told a poster earlier today that Kobold's New Ringleader is great xp because you can finish it in 2 minutes. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people. But a lot more people won't finish it in less than 15-20 minutes (unless there's a zerger rushing through it for everyone).

Throw in all the variables like access to ship shrines, tomes, bravery, optionals, etc and it becomes a rather big dimension.

[Carkolda]

The argument here is some quests provide better xp while others provide less. Here's an example:

You can skip all the boxes in KNR and get it done in about 3-4 minutes. You also, on first run through with elite BB, get over 4k xp on it. There's that 1k/minute

You can solo The Pit, and again with tome and elite BB, you get north of 35k. I've known people to get it done in about 25 minutes, and I myself have gotten it done in about 45... and a zerger I am not.

And those are Free To Play quests. There's no reason why paid content (and extremely expensive paid content at that) should provide xp on par with.... say... Garrison's Missing Pack or Sunken Sewer.

Those who say that the xp/minute (I had to laugh at the "minute" comment, because last I checked, a minute is a measure of 60 seconds) is an unfair benchmark clearly have never TR'd (or double-TR'd). There are guides, suggestions, quest lists, plans, held levels, etc.... all of that goes into planning a TR or Double TR. If you aren't making 1k per minute on your TR, you're spending a LOT of time running other stuff. Just think about it. A Double TR Cap to 20 is 4.3 million xp. Even at the 1k/minute xp run, you're still talking about 4,300 minutes (or 71 hours) of continuous questing.

So yes, 1k xp/minute is appropriate. Because those of us who have to deal with that monumental of an xp mountain need to churn appropriately. So when we see a pack we paid a lot of turbine points for go from "good repeatability" to "absolute garbage," Yeah, we're going to get upset.

[Ancient]

XP per minute for a quest? Your standard is "variable per variable". What good is that?
Do you drive a car? MPH stands for Miles per hours... KPH (Kilometers) if you are in a metric area. In statistics it is quite normal to use a normalizing factor (the denominator) so you are comparing apples to apples.

For the challenges, it is fairly easy to figure out who's minute to use. There is a set minimum time limit on every challenge. For quests, it is more subjective but it is still pretty easy.

Remember that it was Turbine who initiated this issue (along with the nerd rage on the forums). The claim was that the challenges were over powered exp. One challenge did need adjustments, and the numbers of XP/hour were thrown around as proof. The resulting double nerf really hit the House C challenges hard (I don't care about eveningstar challenges, bad xp and bad loot means that they could remove them from the game and I might not notice).

The reason to quote xp/minute in quests to is demonstrate that the remaining challenges should have been left alone... and that in fact some of the challenges were sub-par xp/minute even before the first nerf.

[Vormaerin]

There are guides, suggestions, quest lists, plans, held levels, etc.... all of that goes into planning a TR or Double TR.
.

Sadly for your argument, I do have TRed characters. Again, you are taking an arbitrary benchmark based on a certain playstyle as if its universal fact. Not to mention it doesn't address the issue of what xp for whose minutes.

On the xp side... should it include the optionals? Is that with first time bonuses, tomes, pots, BB, ship shrines? Or is that what you expect running it a fifth or sixth time?

On the "minutes" side? Even assuming soloing the Pit is normal behavior (which its not), are we using your friend's 25min as the benchmark or your 45 min? Should that reward level be based on blitzing through the minimum amount of the content possible? KNR might be 1kxp/minute for a certain playstyle, but its not for most people.

Because certain people zerg quests, does that mean that challenges have to be set to zerger benchmarks that most folks never see? If challenges are giving zerger xp to the majority of players (who get 1/2 or less of that rate), doesn't that result in the challenge packs being far more valuable than anything else they could be doing for xp? Which seems unlikely to be the dev's intent.

[Ancient]

You have several bad assumptions in your post.

First, the Cannith challenges never... ever... gave zerger xp on repeat runs. It gave solid xp, but a top TR group could do much better on other quests. There was one eveningstar challenge giving too much experience... the majority of challenges actually gave very bad levels of experience per minute even before the first nerf.

Second, the issue of benchmarks for quests was opened by Turbine when they nerfed the challenge quests... Stating that they gave more xp than they should implies an acceptable level of xp per effort/time.

Third, We don't need exact math to know that 10k per minute in a quest is better xp than 200 xp per minute in a challenge... Worrying about the fifth decimal place of accuracy on that comparison is looking for an excuse to miss the point.

To address the specific nuances, Tomes/pots/ship shrines are all supposed to be bonus xp and they all apply equally to different quests... They are non-issues. Bravery bonus can also be ignored since it does not apply to repeat runs. The other questions can be answered simply by looking at the decisions that would be made by a person trying to optimize xp/minute... if the bonus is worth the time (like Delera's 2) then include it. If doing the bonus would lower the xp/minute then don't. The fact we cannot pin the completion time down to an exact microsecond is once again... missing the point.

Fourth, there isn't a magic lever at the start of a House C challenge you can pull to get an automatic five star completion in the minimum amount of time. The fact that someone can get decent xp out of a challenge would not mean that everyone can. The counter-point is true however, at the moment... NO ONE can get decent xp out of a repeat house C challenge run.

The two best House C farm challenges were buying time and time is money (the short ones). Trying to get good xp from these involved five minutes of frantic effort (which I found fun). Compare and contrast this to what I did to earn 7 epic destiny points a few days ago.... Zone in, go stand where I'm asked too, then recall. Repeat dozens of times for 20k xp every two minutes.

Recap:
Pike -> 10k xp / minute
Play the challenge -> about 1k xp/ minute on the good ones, about 200 xp/minute on the bad ones

It isn't the tomes or quest optionals that are the problem. The problem is that 10,000 xp per minute is FIFTY times more xp per minute than the 200 xp/minute provided by some of the House C challenges post nerf. 50! FIFTY... Five-Oooohhh, as in one hour of standing in place nets me more xp than two solid days (no sleep) of running some of the House C challenges.

The only good thing about this nerf is that it as people provide numbers, it is getting to be more and more fun illustrating how ridiculous the nerf was in the first place!

[Tiamas]

The two best House C farm challenges were buying time and time is money (the short ones). Trying to get good xp from these involved five minutes of frantic effort (which I found fun).

**** critical part removed ****

The only good thing about this nerf is that it as people provide numbers, it is getting to be more and more fun illustrating how ridiculous the nerf was in the first place!

I know you didnt want to, but you called for a nerf here, plz remove it. I am too lazy to check my quote later so i removed it here already ;).

[Ancient]

Because you asked nicely... I'll do it. But there are 10 or more quests in the expansion that can produce about 10k xp per minute. The very first farm house quest, impossible demands, can match that xp rate.... solo. Nerfing the "stand in place" quest wouldn't even amount to a speed bump for those serious about grinding epic destiny xp. I'm not the first to point this out, I'm not even in the first 10 to point this out.


There are DOZENS of epic quests where even very ungeared average players can and do regularly attain 5-10k/xp a min on EASY NORMAL quests.. Challenges originally offered 3-7k/min - depending on your star performance, attaining hte full 7k was VERY DIFFICULT. And challenges now give 1-2. It makes zero sense.

Is turbine going to nerf every quest where you can manage that xp? No they aren't. They just dont understand game balance.

Here's an example tho for those in search of epic xp, and for turbine to nerf next:
Impossible Demands, el very first quest in the eveningstar chain (the global obj recommends you to eitehr that or the challenges, not a tough choice anymore:
plus - once your 25 there is no rep penalty.
Thus you can run it with a cpl lvl25 at an alamingly fast rate, on normal without any xp penatly due to the new mecahnics of p2:
Grants 18k xp in 1-2mins tops.
Thats 9k+ a min.
Does not require uber chars. Does not require much dps. Just a very trivial quest, that gives a lot of xp.

And getting to 25 in the first place without incurring a single rep penalty is not at all difficult sans challenges: Run each new quest once hard, once norm - youll be there.

Will turbine nerf that one next? Perhaps. But I know another 10 quests that give roughly the same xp/min, so I have no idea what there goal is here. Epic Xp goes fast, its just the fact of the matter. Challenges were not the problem.

[Dolphious]

As others have noted for epic xp, those challenges were never anything special. They are a great way to get tokens though, and that would be true even if they didn't give epic xp at all.

The thing that changed is they used to be a good way to get over the 18-20 hump on a TR, particularly if you primarily solo. That hump is a problem IMO. I used to get TRs to 17 then raid and gear grind for the last few levels (on top of some xp grinding in IQ and RR). I've only done one TR since u14, and that last level was painful.

[Tiamas]

I wasnt 100% serious about removing it *g*. Though you know, as soon as more people give advice of how to do something effectively (like farming XP) some devs remember that is not WAI and nerf it. At least it somehow feels a bit like that lately. (Thats just my very own subjective opinion based on nothing but a feeling, try to beat that with numbers!)

[Vormaerin]

The fact we cannot pin the completion time down to an exact microsecond is once again... missing the point.

Fourth, there isn't a magic lever at the start of a House C challenge you can pull to get an automatic five star completion in the minimum amount of time.

2 minutes vs 15 minutes or 25 minutes vs 45 minutes is not worrying about "exact microseconds." That's major shifts. Its the "holy 1kxp/min" for group A and half or less for the second group.

Second, are you saying that the 1kxp should be for 5 star completions only? Because no one else is saying anything so specific. They just say that running the challenges should be over the 1kxp/minute. How much should a 1 star completion be worth? Seriously, that's my whole point. People are just throwing numbers around without any tie in to anything except some holy writ that 1kxp is good and anything else is bad.

I don't know what quest you are piking and I really couldn't care less. If you want to be bored like that, more power to you. Its certainly not a factor in the discussion of what's a reasonable reward, nor does it address the point you used it in reference to. If a player gets 5kxp each run of Time is Money, for most players that will be far more xp than they'll get anywhere else. Barring an invite to some piking opportunity.

[Kinerd]

I think we disagree about whether its "slightly" different results, at least with regards to quests. The average group, from my experience, seems to take easily 5 to 10x as long as the "how long it should take" times given by zergers. Someone told a poster earlier today that Kobold's New Ringleader is great xp because you can finish it in 2 minutes. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people. But a lot more people won't finish it in less than 15-20 minutes (unless there's a zerger rushing through it for everyone).

Throw in all the variables like access to ship shrines, tomes, bravery, optionals, etc and it becomes a rather big dimension.Let's take either extreme:

-Balanced around the most casual Time: now the quests that are most zergable are even better to run, rewarding those quests that are most susceptible to skill/knowledge. Great! That is a good thing to reward.
-Balanced around the most zerger Time: now the people with the most skill/knowledge have the widest palette of "good" quests; which is to say all of them. People are rewarded the more skill/knowledge they have. Again: great! That is a good thing to reward.

Anywhere in between is a balance between two great things, by definition! Behold! Considering time at all nets us a great situation instead of "you want to run Taming the Flames? pfft, let's run Delera's for the millionth time instead", and what is frankly a debacle of XP/time for quests from 18-20, the levels that require by far the most XP.

.

Consider each issue you raise in this light, and you will see that it is equally irrelevant in the overall sense. Considering a variable at all will always net an improvement. The variables you already describe are already ignored, we can't get a worse situation by continuing to ignore them. This is lucky, because of course every variable is going to be continuously ignored by the decision makers at Turbine and this discussion is 100% meaningless.

[Vormaerin]

Not that that has anything to do with my point, which is that xp/minute by itself is a vague and useless term. Or, rather, your point expands on why I've said its a vague and useless term.

The Devs could say "Look, Mr.Cow (or whomever is particularly fast even by zerg standards) is getting 1kxp/minute in this quest. Its all good." And 99% of the player base doesn't. Would that address the concerns of the posters in this thread?

Or do they think 1kxp/minute is a god given right of anyone who bothers to play?

As far as challenges go, no one in this thread has bothered to say whether they think the 1kxp/minute is for a 1 star effort or only for those who 6 star it. Are they arguing that the lvl 10 Time is Money should give the same xp reward as the lvl 20 version, since the time is the same?

The "Reference" points being used so far are completely vague, arbitrary, and utterly useless for furthering the discussion. They are not actionable suggestions.

[Kinerd]

Not that that has anything to do with my point, which is that xp/minute by itself is a vague and useless term. Or, rather, your point expands on why I've said its a vague and useless term.

The Devs could say "Look, Mr.Cow (or whomever is particularly fast even by zerg standards) is getting 1kxp/minute in this quest. Its all good." And 99% of the player base doesn't. Would that address the concerns of the posters in this thread?

Or do they think 1kxp/minute is a god given right of anyone who bothers to play?

As far as challenges go, no one in this thread has bothered to say whether they think the 1kxp/minute is for a 1 star effort or only for those who 6 star it. Are they arguing that the lvl 10 Time is Money should give the same xp reward as the lvl 20 version, since the time is the same?

The "Reference" points being used so far are completely vague, arbitrary, and utterly useless for furthering the discussion. They are not actionable suggestions.Well, I think everyone has been pretty clear that we're primarily concerned about quest vs. quest. Mr. Cow doesn't get 1k xp/min in every quest; in fact, I would very strongly urge a dev to go over the lists Mr. Cow has very helpfully provided demonstrating the staggering variety of xp/min values throughout DDO. Picking his Sorcerer Diaries since, well, they came up first in google for me, we see everything from 4890 (Shadow Crypt) to 156 (Hold for Reinforcements). We also see that the three House C quests come in at 575, 555, and 474. This is what I mean: a dev would hold time constant by holding Mr. Cow constant (for a certain value of cow, you could say), and compare quests that way. Or a dev could hold time constant by surveying people who had only been playing for a month. So long as they don't mix methodologies, we would see improvement.

The central point is that while the devs claim to have changed challenges to "a more reasonable amount of XP/minute", they very clearly have no grasp of the term. Of course we would prefer that the absolute number is higher rather than lower, but that's a quantitative issue. We're still grappling with the qualitative issue of division at all.

(Ideally they would also notice that 18-20 has a tiny number of quests relative to XP required compared to, for instance, 5-8. Baby steps.)

[Ancient]

The "Reference" points being used so far are completely vague, arbitrary, and utterly useless for furthering the discussion. They are not actionable suggestions.
That is hilarious... being that the dev's just acted on them.

[Ancient]

2 minutes vs 15 minutes or 25 minutes vs 45 minutes is not worrying about "exact microseconds." That's major shifts. Its the "holy 1kxp/min" for group A and half or less for the second group.
Which is why asking for exact rates is silly in the first place. You can however tell when things are drastically out of balance.


Second, are you saying that the 1kxp should be for 5 star completions only?
Because no one else is saying anything so specific. They just say that running the challenges should be over the 1kxp/minute. How much should a 1 star completion be worth? Seriously, that's my whole point. People are just throwing numbers around without any tie in to anything except some holy writ that 1kxp is good and anything else is bad.
I think an epic five star completion should be worth more than 1k xp/minute... but I don't think a 1 star should. I don't think anyone on this thread has stated such.


I don't know what quest you are piking and I really couldn't care less. If you want to be bored like that, more power to you. Its certainly not a factor in the discussion of what's a reasonable reward, nor does it address the point you used it in reference to. If a player gets 5kxp each run of Time is Money, for most players that will be far more xp than they'll get anywhere else. Barring an invite to some piking opportunity.
Thankfully, the devs have paid better attention to the numerous lists of quests that provide better xp... especially at the epic level. The devs have spoken on this issue, and they have stated they will be raising the challenge xp. Not to the original levels, but it will be going back up.

[Hilltrot]

1) The lion's share of my 2nd and 3rd life xp came from Time is Money. This nerf completely nukes that option from high orbit.


This is a good reason to nerf XP in a quest. Running a quest repeatedly without playing other quests.

Is Time is Money that much fun for you? Or was it just a way to jump ahead in level quickly.

I wouldn't play a game if leveling were not fun. I've paid for and played SWTOR. Made it to level 25ish. (I forget). Stopped because the gameplay was boring. Played Diablo 3. Stopped at level 18. Boring. Everquest - I paid $50 for it and stopped at level 3. Everquest 2 - Didn't make it past the free tutorial. Age of Conan, level 40. LOTRO with a system much like challenges, lifetime membership. Made it to 38 before I was freaking tired of doing the same stupid set of challenges day in and day out. Of course WoW to 60, then another to 70(for my brother. . .), skipped the next one, then two to 85.

Personally, I don't understand how you can stand playing the same challenge again and again through multiple lives. . .

I usually like adventures based on how much I enjoy them, not how much xp/min. Some people bring their work ethic to their game. Personally, I think people should leave their work ethic at work.

[Isolani]

This is a good reason to nerf XP in a quest. Running a quest repeatedly without playing other quests.

Is Time is Money that much fun for you? Or was it just a way to jump ahead in level quickly.

I wouldn't play a game if leveling were not fun. I've paid for and played SWTOR. Made it to level 25ish. (I forget). Stopped because the gameplay was boring. Played Diablo 3. Stopped at level 18. Boring. Everquest - I paid $50 for it and stopped at level 3. Everquest 2 - Didn't make it past the free tutorial. Age of Conan, level 40. LOTRO with a system much like challenges, lifetime membership. Made it to 38 before I was freaking tired of doing the same stupid set of challenges day in and day out. Of course WoW to 60, then another to 70(for my brother. . .), skipped the next one, then two to 85.

Personally, I don't understand how you can stand playing the same challenge again and again through multiple lives. . .

I usually like adventures based on how much I enjoy them, not how much xp/min. Some people bring their work ethic to their game. Personally, I think people should leave their work ethic at work.

I wouldn't level on challenges like that either, but seriously, what do you care how other people like to level? You level how you like and let other people do what they like.

[Ancient]

The Devs could say "Look, Mr.Cow (or whomever is particularly fast even by zerg standards) is getting 1kxp/minute in this quest. Its all good." And 99% of the player base doesn't. Would that address the concerns of the posters in this thread?

At the epic level 1k/min isn't high enough to be balanced with other exp options.

As far as the non-epic levels, not even Mr. Cow can complete a House C challenge in less than 5 minutes... So yes, if he could get 1k/min in each and every one of the House C quests at the non-epic level... I'd be happy. Like the rest of your objections, this one really doesn't apply to the issue.

[Carkolda]

I wouldn't level on challenges like that either, but seriously, what do you care how other people like to level? You level how you like and let other people do what they like.

I like this post. Who do people think they are that they can dictate to others what is the best way to level their characters? Who are they to define what "fun" is.

Hilltrot, to answer your question: I ran it over and over because of three reasons.
- First, it was a low-committment deal. If I wiped, it was only 5 minutes lost. If my wife called for me to do something, I was able to pause what I was doing. Some of the longer quests take an hour or more, and as a healer I can't just bail on people like that.

- Second, it's steady xp and I know it well. I knew what to look for, where to go, and how to get 4 stars in 5 minutes every time. And the challenges, while not great xp each time, the per-minute reward turned out to be pretty decent... anywhere between 800-1,000 xp on average for heroic levels. It also allowed me to guestimate how long I would need to do something; it gave me a benchmark. I measured levels in TIM runs. And then by 5 minute increments.

- Third, and most importantly, the quests were easy enough and mind-numbingly boring enough, where my guildies and I could just hang out and chat and have a grand old time. Talk about our GF's/BF's/Wives/Husbands/Kids/ and all that stuff. It enabled us to sit around the table with a bag of cheetos and some mountain dew and just BS. We didn't have to focus on the game at hand so much, and so we enjoyed each others company more than the game itself. And last I checked, that's what D&D is about.

By enacting the XP nerfs, I've been back inside TIM twice. I've found that the xp is so atrocious it isn't even worth our time. I now own a pack (Yes, I paid 1,250 tp on it, got it on sale) and I don't play it any more. Thanks, Turbine, for ruining content because you apparently felt your definition of "fun" superseded your player base's. If you aren't going to fix the XP, I want my TP back.

[laurawilder]

I like this post. Who do people think they are that they can dictate to others what is the best way to level their characters? Who are they to define what "fun" is.

- Third, and most importantly, the quests were easy enough and mind-numbingly boring enough, where my guildies and I could just hang out and chat and have a grand old time. Talk about our GF's/BF's/Wives/Husbands/Kids/ and all that stuff. It enabled us to sit around the table with a bag of cheetos and some mountain dew and just BS. We didn't have to focus on the game at hand so much, and so we enjoyed each others company more than the game itself. And last I checked, that's what D&D is about.

By enacting the XP nerfs, I've been back inside TIM twice. I've found that the xp is so atrocious it isn't even worth our time. I now own a pack (Yes, I paid 1,250 tp on it, got it on sale) and I don't play it any more. Thanks, Turbine, for ruining content because you apparently felt your definition of "fun" superseded your player base's. If you aren't going to fix the XP, I want my TP back.


This is a perfect example as to why Turbine needed to nerf the xp as was mentioned previously. They did not lower the xp to ruin the fun but to offer balance. The challenges were made to add to the game and offer alternative options to farm items, gear and exp. It was not meant to supplant the game and make a mockery of working to be a completionist.

This is why I met someone the other day on his 4th life that knew nothing about the game and I mean nothing. This person did not know at what lvl a ranger got spells and they had been a ranger in a past life. They did not know where the waterworks was and did not know that bard could raise the dead by a scroll.

If you want to play the DDO version of Mario Brothers fine, but DDO does not need to insult its true player base and all those that made the game what it is today by having challenged abused to the point that someone levels lives only in them.

[Hilltrot]

I wouldn't level on challenges like that either, but seriously, what do you care how other people like to level? You level how you like and let other people do what they like.

In a way, it does affect me. Laurawilder mentions good points but I would like to add more myself.

There was a day when certain adventures in DDO gave way, way, way too much experience. So everyone played those adventures and those adventures only. Like 6-7 adventures to hit max. This kills the game because the game has "no content." Just a few adventures. This is how people will see the game. Boring. In the end, this kills the game. Most people play games to have fun, not just level. If people come to this game and find out that it's only a couple of adventures repeated endlessly, they won't keep playing. Welcome to Everquest 2.

It only takes a certain amount of advancement to keep people "interested" in an RPG. This should not be the primary concern of an RPG company. The primary thing you need is a compelling story and more importantly to an MMO, gameplay.

Let me repeat this.

Gameplay is the most important aspect.

Imagine for a moment for all those people who believe people only play for the XP number at the end of the quest.

Turbine comes up with a new adventure. You enter into a square room. First you run to all four corners 30 times. Then you jump 100 times. After this you hold the left mouse button for one minute. This takes 5 minutes.

You get a chest filled with wonderful possibly epic stuff and you get 20,000 experience.

"Everyone" would be sitting around playing this "wonderful" adventure ad-nauseum.

This one adventure would kill DDO. DDO would become a running gag. People might try to defend the game, but by simply listing this one adventure would destroy all defense of this game.

Yes, some nuts would play this adventure. To help alleviate the pain of working this adventure, they would invite friends to come along to chit-chat. They may even drink a bit or pull out a bong to dull the pain.

You aren't playing a game. You are working a meaningless job!

Wait! This is exactly what Carkolda was saying! I just wrote the perfect adventure for him!

[Munkenmo]

Wait! This is exactly what Carkolda was saying! I just wrote the perfect adventure for him!

No this isn't, most people who grind xp / minute don't want to group with whiny break every barrel look at every corner person anyway. This has been proven to me time and time again when "adventure types" ignore the text in my lfm and join zerg groups.

A far more reasonable method would be for turbine to admit their content from level 18 onwards has been abysmal exp for a very long time, and boost this.

Given how few quests there are in the 18-20 range it wouldn't actually take long.

[Hilltrot]

No this isn't, most people who grind xp / minute don't want to group with whiny break every barrel look at every corner person anyway. This has been proven to me time and time again when "adventure types" ignore the text in my lfm and join zerg groups.

A far more reasonable method would be for turbine to admit their content from level 18 onwards has been abysmal exp for a very long time, and boost this.

Given how few quests there are in the 18-20 range it wouldn't actually take long.

I don't think you bothered to read my post. I didn't mention any barrels in my adventure. I never mentioned "zerging" either. My adventure didn't require any grouping. And 4k per minute is at least reasonably good by zerging standards in a repeatable adventure.

25 quests in the 18-20 range. Yes, level 20 is rather sparse with only 3 quests. But the game just recently allowed you to go past 20. Levels 14-16, 24 quests. But there were so few quests level 18-20. . . .

The reason why you have said 25 is less than 24 is because you only count quests that give an inordinate amount of xp when worked. You make my point. Adventures need to be balanced on experience to prevent large portions of content from being skipped.

Believe me fTdOmen, if you put "I'm an insulting person who works DDO instead of playing it," I would never join your lfm. I would probably /squelch you just to make sure it didn't happen by accident.

[Artrish]

Personally, I don't understand how you can stand playing the same challenge again and again through multiple lives. . .


The same way we all stand for repeating the same quests over and over and over through multiple lives.

At the moment in game, i am level 18 and have dried up the quest options that i find fun and manageable to run. I repeated running with the devils for the fifth time and got 8k exp for 40 minutes inside the quest. As bad as my math is, i saw this to read 200 exp/min. So, i thought to myself, buying time gives 1300 exp for 5 mins, that cant be too bad as it is about the same exp/min.

Off i went to run challenges to try bump my exp up to help toward my next level up. I ended up running it 4 times. Those 4 times took me about half an hour due to small breaks between or just needing to pause to rest,etc, so the exp gained was the 5200 for a half hour. It felt long just due to it being a quest 4 times, while the one run of devils didnt FEEL as long as those 4 of the challenge.

So the exp from challenges is close to what i earn from quests after doing the initial 2-3 runs of them and hitting repeat penalties, but, quests feel way more fun because i get guild renown and they are a chunk of over 5k in one go.

I will much prefer it when the challenges go back to what i feel is a reasonable amount of exp for them. When needing a million exp points to be able to level into the next life, how many people complete a quest they enjoy to get only 1300 exp points from it?

When those challenges gave enough, while buffing my character out with a stack of exp pots and shrine buffs for exp, to give close to 5k exp a run, they were fun to run. I used to find the balance was that there was no guild renown earnt for the exp gain to be higher.

[Tiamas]

Turbine comes up with a new adventure. You enter into a square room. First you run to all four corners 30 times. Then you jump 100 times. After this you hold the left mouse button for one minute. This takes 5 minutes.

You just described basically almost any task in any computer game. You hit some buttons in order to achieve some action on your screen. (Mind/-motion controlled things just use different kind of "Buttons"). So if you break it down to that point any quest or challenge is the same. And basically it is true. The difference of what we like and what not is just in our minds, and they are different.


It only takes a certain amount of advancement to keep people "interested" in an RPG. This should not be the primary concern of an RPG company. The primary thing you need is a compelling story and more importantly to an MMO, gameplay.

Remember, minds are different. I can tell you that i dont give a **** about the story in DDO or any other RPG. I like character progession and customization stuff (DDO has still the best out there for me), playing skill challenges (very simple example: make the jump at a certain spot and dont fall, etc.), and interesting fights. I dont read any story texts ingame and if i have to answer stuff i do that by remembering the position of the correct answer. So please, don't tell me what a (MMO-)RPG has to have to be interesting for players. I know that there are a lot of people who like a good story (and that is absolutely fine), but there are also a lot of people like me. Others are doing "real" role play within the game, thats another option, and there are plenty of them.

Btw, (this part is for everyone) most ridiculous thing is that challenges and quests have to be different because they are called different. Check out the first part of this post, basically its all the same, so there is no real reason to say that anything should be done for a specific reason. Quests are not for XP only and challenges not for loot only. They are all adventures/tasks/bits&bytes. Different mechanics, ok, but break them down to clicking buttons and they are all the same. If you dont like one mechanic, use another. But dont tell anyone else which mechanic should be used to achieve something.


PS: The only way to play the game right is my way. I defined the "fun of gameplay" by my existance. So shut up you whiners and let everyone have MY fun!

PPS: You might have to roll a sarcasm check once.

[Munkenmo]

I don't think you bothered to read my post.

I read your post.

You told me how to play, and how my current way of playing negatively effects you.

You told me that character progression is secondary to gameplay.

Then you went on to describe a theoretical quest, and peoples reasons for running it, It's nice that you have your opinions, but you shot them off as facts, and came across as putting down other peoples reasons for playing whilst you were at it.

It's rather clear to me that we have different reasons for playing, and probably wouldn't group well together, but that doesn't change the fact that Challenges have been nerfed to an unreasonable level of xp.

My proposed solution is to re adress all level 18-20 content as a starting point and shift the xp totals up significantly.

[Carkolda]

Wow... Trot, are you nothing but a troll? Seriously? Have you ever played PNP? PBP perhaps? I highly doubt that you have. Otherwise you wouldn't be making brainless comments about how others are allowed to play, because it would ruin your precious perception about the game and what it's supposed to be. I've been a part of TRUE RPG's since I was 8. And it's a time-honored tradition (Dating all the way back to NES and the original Final Fantasy) to grind meaningless quests/monster encounters to get to a level so the rest of the content is easier. Dragon Warrior 1/2/3 had this, too. Swords and Serpents? The list goes on. Get off your high horse and realize that you cannot dictate to others how play style is meant to be done. This game is a group and individual game. If you don't like running a grindy quest, here's a hint: Don't Run It. I know, complicated, neh?

@ Laura: While I understand your point, I would venture a guess that you are giving an extremely isolated example to make your point. You also make an assumption about a few things.

First, how did that player get through level 1-12 (The earliest you can run Buying Time) without running quests, especially on multiple lives. The only way to accomplish this would be to have someone pull them in on a pike and let them sit and farm XP, but even this is limited to a level gap of a few levels. And the argument of "Well, they could go in because they had a 20 in the group" doesn't hold water, mostly because cases like that are so abnormal that it doesn't apply to the whole. Hell, I've run TIM and Epic TIM probably 2-300 times and I still couldn't pull that off. Blame the people who supported someone who piked their way through 60 levels (which I highly doubt they did), not the game system (specifically the challenges). My guess is you ran into someone who bought the account off someone else.

Secondly, I would like you to define the "true player base" of DDO. Getting to level 25 is a slog fest through quests. You HAVE to repeat quests and do slayers to get to 25 on multi-tr (aka grinding). It's inevitable. Don't pretend you don't. So the only difference is the quest I run takes 5 minutes and the one you run takes 50 minutes. Big hairy deal.

Third, you clearly aren't reading one of the most fundamental reasons why people like me are angry about the nerf. It's twofold:
1) Instead of addressing the individual discrepancies with the game's XP balance (i.e. scalpel), they instead did a broad-spectrum nerf that hurt every challenge (i.e. chainsaw). The #1 argument was people getting 200k xp on their first-run for a challenge. Yes, that's too much. Way too much. But making a challenge that previously offered 5,400 xp for 4 stars in 5 minutes now give 1,500 is... well, absurd. Especially when some challenges (the Mansion, in particular) give such horrendous xp you'd rather nail your junk to a board than run them for xp.
2) Probably the most insidious problem is the fact that they took The Most Expensive Pack and made it Worthless. I know that may be hard for you grasp this, but those of us who paid money to purchase the product as it was, only to have it changed after we purchased it... well. I have to say that I'm feeling quite a bit cheated by Turbine. That's why I've been calling for a refund. The Turbine Point cost for challenges was high before, and some argued entirely not worth the 1500 it was. And this was before the XP double-nerf came into play. Now? Now I expect that the pricing would have to be around 250 turbine points for it to be worth our money.

People who are elitist in their mentality (most commonly amongst VIP's) seem to think that we peasants who actually purchase the content should just suck it up and go along with the EULA because ... after all, Turbine gets to make changes to their software whenever they want. The problem is that those of us who AREN'T VIP's are buying a product with the expectation that the product is not going to fundamentally change after we purchase said product. What they did was effectively take Green Steel and delete it from the game. That's how fundamental of a change to the XP they made to the challenges is. Can you get by without GS? Of course you can! But how many people would be screaming on these boards because it? A great number.

Laura, you need to step off that horse you are riding, and realize that people have varied gameplay styles. I've been playing this game for 2-1/2 years, and have been Premium the entire time. I have spent probably 20-30,000 turbine points + $80 for the xpac. So I have just as much vested in this as any VIP, and in many cases, more. The difference? I own all the content in the game, not merely rent it. And I should be allowed to play it in any way, shape, or form I choose, not you. Just like you should be able to play it any way you want to.

And FYI, you need to watch the generalizations. I've run all the different quests in the game, with the exception of the last chain in the demonweb and the raid. Why? Because I don't feel like investing an hour into a quest and finding it bugged out. I'm waiting for them to iron out the kinks before investing that kind of time.

[Vormaerin]

Which is why asking for exact rates is silly in the first place. You can however tell when things are drastically out of balance.

I didn't ask for rates. I objected to arbitrarily inserting numbers into the discussion as if they actually had all the relevant parameters to mean something.



I think an epic five star completion should be worth more than 1k xp/minute... but I don't think a 1 star should. I don't think anyone on this thread has stated such.

Actually, no one said anything about what level of success should be required. They just tossed out xp/minute figures from quests without saying if they are talking about first time, repeats, what number of stars, or anything else. Its not actionable feedback.



Thankfully, the devs have paid better attention to the numerous lists of quests that provide better xp... especially at the epic level. The devs have spoken on this issue, and they have stated they will be raising the challenge xp. Not to the original levels, but it will be going back up.

I'm not sure that causal link actually exists. The devs have made statements that imply they have some standard of measurement, but at no point have they said anything to indicate what that standard is, much less that its some comparison to the quest xp rates being tossed about.

I'm glad that the xp is being increased. It was too low. But the devs' comments so far don't lead me to believe that this change will satisfy most of the number tossers in these threads.

[Carkolda]

Actually, no one said anything about what level of success should be required. They just tossed out xp/minute figures from quests without saying if they are talking about first time, repeats, what number of stars, or anything else. Its not actionable feedback.

Snipped

Then perhaps we go with the average accomplishment of stars per challenge as a benchmark. Some quests (like Short Cuts) are virtually impossible to clear 5-6 stars, but TIM and Buying Time are readily available to get 4, with a little bit of luck to get 5-6. This is the kind of attention to detail they should have been using the first time. They have data logs which track completions, I'm sure. So the benchmark would be the average completion rate per challenge, and then permute the xp at 1k/min on heroic challenges, and perhaps 2k/min on epics, base level for both based on what the average completion time is for each challenge. That's what most people expect as the "acceptable standard." Will it take some more work? Yeah. But, it'll provide XP so ALL the challenges can be run instead of a few being run with the rest being avoided.

[LightBear]

They have data logs which track completions, I'm sure.
They check if you completed, not the failures.
They check if you gained some more favor.
They give out xp based on the both of them (stars and completion).
I doubt that they log all 3 of these tied together.

[Carkolda]

They check if you completed, not the failures.
They check if you gained some more favor.
They give out xp based on the both of them (stars and completion).
I doubt that they log all 3 of these tied together.

I'm curious... If they don't, how did they know to lower the xp to make it more "reasonable?"

[Vormaerin]

That's what most people expect as the "acceptable standard."

I really wish that posters would stop pretending that the forum based zerg style is actually normative for the player base as whole. 1k xp/minute standard is only usual for a specific playstyle.

Regardless, that's a side point. The rest of the post is a start at addressing the concerns that I was getting at. At least there is some idea of what the player is expected to be able to do to get the specified rewards.

[Hilltrot]

Wow... Trot, are you nothing but a troll? Seriously? Have you ever played PNP? PBP perhaps? I highly doubt that you have. Otherwise you wouldn't be making brainless comments about how others are allowed to play, because it would ruin your precious perception about the game and what it's supposed to be. I've been a part of TRUE RPG's since I was 8. And it's a time-honored tradition (Dating all the way back to NES and the original Final Fantasy) to grind meaningless quests/monster encounters to get to a level so the rest of the content is easier. Dragon Warrior 1/2/3 had this, too. Swords and Serpents? The list goes on. Get off your high horse and realize that you cannot dictate to others how play style is meant to be done. This game is a group and individual game. If you don't like running a grindy quest, here's a hint: Don't Run It. I know, complicated, neh?

First, you start with name-calling. . .

ROFL

get up. . . . TRUE RPG

ROFL

Try to get up. . .. TRUE RPG

ROFL

Get up . . . Dating back to the NES . . .

ROFL

Ok, get up time to be serious, Dragon Quest TRUE RPG

ROFL

Grinding, time honored in PnP . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

Sorry about the wait. I past out from laughing.

Grinding is a tradition in MMORPGs, and really, Really, REALLY bad CRPG's. (Sorry, if I shattered your belief that Dragon Quest was a good game . . .)

Grinding has never been a time honored tradition in PnP. Ever. If you go to Gen Con, believe me, you don't sign up to play the same adventure 20 times for 80 hours straight.

Grinding does occur in a lot of MMOs, but that is either because the game is based on really bad Japanese CRPG's like Everquest was; the MMO just sucks; or that people are playing the game a lot more than people normally ever played PnP.

Now, I never mentioned ftdOmen's original post, my original reply was about Carkolda's. But I'm sure that Turbine will eventually even out the XP for the new 21-25 adventures and challenges. Just hope that you don't have to wait as long as a Deepwood Sniper. (4 years now?)

But back to Carkolda. I still believe Turbine had good reason to nerf the XP. The argument could be made that the nerf was too much. Usually buffing other parts of the game instead of nerfing one aspect, is more diplomatic. However, Turbine chose this method likely because they didn't want to increase the leveling speed.

Before 2-point conversions, NFL teams would always kick the ball on conversion. (I guess some teams might have had an injured kicker and would run it.) Every conversion a kick. Unless it was an important one, it really was boring and wasn't even worth watching. I think the networks started to use them as commercial breaks. So, the NFL adopted 2-point conversions. It really makes the conversion far more interesting to watch.

Now did the NFL demand that every team run the ball and play a certain way as you claim that I am doing? No. They simply changed the rewards. That is what Turbine has done and I am supporting.

Turbine isn't preventing you from doing anything. You can play challenges all day, every day, if you like to. ftdOmen can play challenges all he wants to as well. Despite the words you two have put in my mouth, I haven't once said that people shouldn't be able to play challenges as many times as they want. Go. Play them a million more times for all I care.

[Carkolda]

Ok, get up time to be serious, Dragon Quest TRUE RPG

Proof, ladies and gentlemen, that trot doesn't read my post and is only trying to stir up a fight.

Dragon Warrior 1/2/3 had this


Grinding, time honored in PnP . . .

Again, proof you don't read my post.

And it's a time-honored tradition (Dating all the way back to NES and the original Final Fantasy) to grind meaningless quests/monster encounters to get to a level so the rest of the content is easier

And that makes this comment:

Grinding has never been a time honored tradition in PnP. Ever. If you go to Gen Con, believe me, you don't sign up to play the same adventure 20 times for 80 hours straight.

without value. I have never, or will I ever, suggest that PNP should have a grinding aspect to it. My reference above (which you clearly didn't read) indicated that electronic games have a grinding aspect to them. And if you are comparing DDO to an actual true TT group of PNP, you are sadly mistaken.


rest of your post

Your NFL reference was an interesting illustration of my argument, because what they did was increase the reward for doing something harder, not penalize something for doing it easier. They didn't turn the kick conversion into a 1/2-point value. They made the harder one 2 points. Thanks for proving my point. Any more evidence you would like to provide that supports my position?

@ Vormaerin: 1k xp per minute is a far cry from zerging. I accomplish 1k per minute in many quests, and a zerger am I not. How much of a zerger can a cleric/monk be, when I'm only dishing out maybe 30-40 points of damage a swing? So no, I don't agree with you that 1k/minute is zerging, especially when you can run quests like impossible demands and net yourself 12-14k inside of 5-10 minutes. 1k/minute is a pretty reasonable standard I should be shooting for when I TR'd for the first time.

[Cyr]

The "Reference" points being used so far are completely vague, arbitrary, and utterly useless for furthering the discussion. They are not actionable suggestions.

It is actually very simple.

It is called an average. You set up what you want the average xp/min to be and base that upon the average completion time including average run time to the quest.

It is just a matter of data mining to get this information. We are not talking about rocket science here.

Then slow players will get less xp/min (as always) and zergers will get more xp/min (as always) then the average player, but all content will be much much closer in it's rewards so that players will not be skipping as much stuff and grinding as much specific things as they do now.

[ferrite]

/signed

Challenges, as they are implemented are a complete screw-up.

First, the developers don't listen to what players want here. Second, the devs don't listen to complaints and concerns. Third, they don't LISTEN. And here we are today.

Let's face it, they've changed it dozens of times and still can't get it right. So what makes you think they ever will?

[laurawilder]

Carkolda,

While I sympathize with Turbine altering the pack after you bought said pack I do not agree and I am not elitist in my viewpoints.

Turbine while adjusting it has taken nothing away from you. Just as before you can run the challenges until your face turn blue with no loss of xp as quests get after having been redone.

Also you do not get the most insidious problem as you like to call it. Challenges are just another excuse people have to not run in a lfm. So rather than joining a pug lfm someone will run a challenge.

That is the worst aspect of these challenges and easy xp. Add in the bravery bonuses and all Turbine is doing to oil the non mmo style players to just power level fast and easy at the expense of the story arcs would ruin the game.

Why create more quests and adventures when no one is willing to make the effort to run them as they would give less xp than the challenges. Why be the person trying to learn his character when the idiot next to him has all the shiny things in game from maxing out challenges with guildies in 5 minutes instead of doing a raid that takes 40 minutes.

So believe me I get the big picture it is you that do not. I do not believe in rewarding those that like to cut corners and get something for nothing.

There are more that power level in challenges than you will admit since you are addicted to the xp per minute yourself. The previous person I cited was real and while it was an extreme example it was also a common one. I can take you on any server and in any of the large guild find within moments many that would have been elevated by others, more so than in the past. Piking and power leveling has always been around and some is ok. But not when you actually can do it by avoiding content.

Had Turbine taken something truely away from you I would see your point but alas all they did was make you actually have to work and grind more in the challenges. The truth is it irks you that now they just are no longer more appealing than running the quests.

So remember do not post on the forum that some are noobs and do not know endgame, are not raid ready, or you cannot find enough people to run all the old raids at level. Because that is what you are creating by advocating a higher xp per minute from running challenges with no penalty.

[Vormaerin]

It is just a matter of data mining to get this information. We are not talking about rocket science here.



That's kind of my point. The posters early on were getting all enraged that they weren't getting what they consider reasonable xp. And they were tossing out numbers like 1k xp/minute. But they weren't qualifying it in anyway. They weren't saying what they think you need to accomplish for that. Is that what they expect the 1 star players to get? The five star players? The average player (who I doubt gets 1k xp in quests generally) or just the 'elite'?

I know the devs can determine that stuff. They obviously have if MadFloyd's "get 15 min xp for 5 minutes' work" comment wasn't just a throwaway.

But that doesn't change the fact that the player comments were vague and unhelpful. Do I need to five star The Disruptor to get that 15k xp? The posters seemed to think they were providing information about their expectations, but they weren't providing enough information to be worth reading.

[Isolani]

Carkolda,

While I sympathize with Turbine altering the pack after you bought said pack I do not agree and I am not elitist in my viewpoints.

Turbine while adjusting it has taken nothing away from you. Just as before you can run the challenges until your face turn blue with no loss of xp as quests get after having been redone.

Also you do not get the most insidious problem as you like to call it. Challenges are just another excuse people have to not run in a lfm. So rather than joining a pug lfm someone will run a challenge.

That is the worst aspect of these challenges and easy xp. Add in the bravery bonuses and all Turbine is doing to oil the non mmo style players to just power level fast and easy at the expense of the story arcs would ruin the game.

Why create more quests and adventures when no one is willing to make the effort to run them as they would give less xp than the challenges. Why be the person trying to learn his character when the idiot next to him has all the shiny things in game from maxing out challenges with guildies in 5 minutes instead of doing a raid that takes 40 minutes.

So believe me I get the big picture it is you that do not. I do not believe in rewarding those that like to cut corners and get something for nothing.

There are more that power level in challenges than you will admit since you are addicted to the xp per minute yourself. The previous person I cited was real and while it was an extreme example it was also a common one. I can take you on any server and in any of the large guild find within moments many that would have been elevated by others, more so than in the past. Piking and power leveling has always been around and some is ok. But not when you actually can do it by avoiding content.

Had Turbine taken something truely away from you I would see your point but alas all they did was make you actually have to work and grind more in the challenges. The truth is it irks you that now they just are no longer more appealing than running the quests.

So remember do not post on the forum that some are noobs and do not know endgame, are not raid ready, or you cannot find enough people to run all the old raids at level. Because that is what you are creating by advocating a higher xp per minute from running challenges with no penalty.

So basically you want Turbine to force people to group with you? Not sure that's going to be a good business model since they have said that soloers are a significant percentage of the population.

[LordPiglet]

I don't particularily understand the hard part about normallizing xp on challenges.

They said they should give atleast 1 k per minute

So set them at 1 k per minute, base XP on a 5 minute challenge is 5k, 10 minute challenge 10k, stars at 10% of base as they have now. Heck, they could even tier the stars so that 1 is 10%, 2 stars is 20% . Even then the XP wouldn't be out of control.

They did add the new time component, so just kick that in once you hit base time, so that for every extra minute you'd get another 1k xp.

I don't see why a 17 minute Picture portals returns less xp and less ingredients then the 3 5 minute runs I could have done of buying time. This is especially true of picture portals or moving targets where there are automatic time extenders, when you don't always actually want the time extended and you can get absolutely screwed on then crests (and not know it until you're 5-10 minute in).

[Carkolda]

Snip

First, I thank you for reading my posts and responding in the manner you are.

I think the disagreement in our two mindsets is a very fundamental one.

You believe that in order to make the primary appealing, you should make the alternative less appealing. In application, you believe quests should be left alone, and dissuade others from playing challenges by lowering the rewards for running said challenge. I would call this Adverse Avoidance.

I believe that in order to make the primary appealing, you should make it more appealing. In application, I believe that you should leave challenges alone as a whole (obviously, the 200k example was ludicrous), and tweak the quests to make them more appealing, thus encouraging people to run them. I would call this Reward Appeal.

If Turbine established a benchmark for xp gain per time invested, and then applied that to EVERYTHING, then you'd see that people would run quests equally or more than challenges. I know that they have their hands full with churning out U15, and they've probably been coding like fiends since before they announced MotU. But this I believe is something they need to resolve, because I don't see this issue going away.

How can they possibly resolve a 15 minute challenge giving as much xp (or less) as a 5-minute challenge? How can they have a 45 minute quest on BB and first-time give as much xp as a first-time 10-minute challenge? There are too many weird and varied quests, and just saying "eh, this sounds good" is not giving this problem the attention it deserves.

You want people to run/purchase premium content, then make that premium content hold true to a different (higher) benchmark. And you can benchmark the xp based on how many people are in the party (not counting hirelings) when you run it. If you increase the XP gained when you run with a party, it will encourage people to run in parties. Here's an example that you would apply as a GM in a PNP game.

You have a group of 6 PC's in a dungeon on a quest. You would throw an encounter at those 6 PC's that was consummate with their power level. But, because that encounter CR was higher than if it was 2 PC's, there would be more xp to go around.

Same principle. You want people to run as a group, and you want people to run quests. So instead of ****ing everyone and their uncle off because you "nerf" something, why not encourage them to play the original by making it more appealing? Give them a benefit for working in a party. Give them a benefit for buying and running paid content. Encourage them to work together to run quests, not dissuade them from running a quest because it's considered OP by certain people.

Here's my suggested layout with a couple assumptions first.
- First, I would have the dev team go back and review (or start tracking) average completions given the number of players in a party per quest. Yes, this is a BIG task and requires a lot of data points. But once you establish these data points, the law of large numbers applies and you will see the average completion time given any quest, given whatever number of players there are in the quest.

Given that data, here's how I would place an example (and I stress just an example) benchmark:
- Base XP per heroic quests/challenges is 500 xp per minute, and 1,000 for epics. Hard-baseline. So if you are running Durk's got a Secret, and the average completion time is 10 minutes, the base XP given is 5,000 xp. If you're running Epic Partycrashers and the average completion time is 25 minutes, you just got yourself 25,000 xp base.
- For every additional player, you add 75 xp per minute to the baseline. The argument would be "well, that's too much xp." But you're also missing out the fact that larger parties complete quests faster, thus the average completion time would drop to maybe 7 minutes? So a group of 6 players would net 500 (base) + 375 (extra players) = 875 per minute x 7 minutes = 6,125 xp base.
- Hard would give +10% xp, and Elite would give 20% (additively, like it's already done for all your other boosts).
- If you are running premium, paid content that you own or are VIP, you get an additional 25 xp per minute to the baseline. On a guest-pass, that'd be 15 xp per minute to the baseline. So if you were running Come Out and Slay with a group of 6 and assume the average completion time is 10 minutes for that group of 6, you'd be looking at 500 (base) + 375 (extra players) + 25 (for those VIP's or owners of the content) = 900 per minute x 10 minutes = 9,000 xp base. Those on GP would receive 8900 xp.
- This formula would apply to timed events like Challenges, as well. Stars would add maybe a 10% boost to the base XP per star, and if you get 6 stars you get an additional 15% (for total of 75%). So the math would be: 500 (base) + 25 (VIP/Owner) = 525 per minute x 5 minutes (For TIM) = 2,625 xp x 1.4 (40% boost for 4 stars) = 3,675. It's not as good as it was, and it's not as bad as it is. And if you want to add in a group of 5 other PC's, then it changes to 500 (base) + 375 (extra PC's) + 25 (VIP/Owner) = 900 per minute x 5 minutes = 4,500 xp x 1.4 (40% boost for 4 stars) = 6,300. This boost would encourage people to bring friends along.
- If you don't take any meaningful action towards the completion of the quest or challenge, you don't add to the "friend boost." This would prevent pikers from just zoning in and doing nothing. In addition, if you are idle for more than half the time that the quest takes to complete, everyone takes a 75 xp penalty per minute per player idle 1/2 the time.

I'm not saying my idea is perfect, but it's a start.

[Entelech]

You're really giving Turbine too much benefit of the doubt here. It would be more comforting if they were savvy businesspeople, aggressively changing things to maximize their profits, swaggering around in Gordon Gecko suspenders or Mad Man guy hats... but that is just an illusion. The unpleasant truth is that they just don't care. Changes happen at the whims of casual observation on the part of the highest ups. No reason. Barely any thought. A wise man once said we are being digested in the belly of a cold and indifferent universe, and that is pretty much what's going on here. My advice to you is to enjoy the game for what it is: a dysfunctional excuse to play with people you like.

+1 and QFT.

Need further evidence, just look at the Pax video interview where Fernando Paiz described Half Elves as the "prettiest race in DDO." This comment only makes sense if you assume that he had either (1) never even glanced at the models before the rollout or (2) gets turned on by blow-up dolls with Downs Syndrome.

Further evidence? How many savvy business sharks in an internet-centered corporation "forget" to renew their Domain Registrations?

Given the situation, is it any wonder that Turbine decided to simultaneously implement a new physics engine (which is chock full of bugs), new class (more bugs), new raid (dear sweet lordy, the bugs), epic destinies (almost nothing BUT bugs) and completely redo/break/backtrack on/run around like headless chickens with/freak out over a new enhancement system all at the same time? Clearly whoever's in charge is completely innocent of any clue about programming, QA, or customer service. Either that or the management is brilliant, insane, evil, and wants to commit elaborate suicide.

I love DDO. Please step back from the brink and avoid becoming a case study that will make the next ten generations of MBA students suck their teeth and wince.

[Purkilius]

/signed

Everything else has been said...

[laurawilder]

At least you have proposals for Turbine to use and I commend you for that. But I do not think tweaking quests to compensate for unbalance caused by a new addition (challenges) to the game is a solution.

You do not add inflated xp into the game with challenges and then retoactively go and tweak all xp in the game. That is not a solution. That just makes everyone level even faster, makes the game easier, and in the end many would still grumble then that certain xp is not enough compared to another quest.

Also an MMO as I have always stated is not a Mario Brothers game. It should not be all based on xp per minute. In the end roleplayers and others that are slow while learning would suffer while those just running though will be compensated better.

I do not feel that since I can run through Gwylans Stand on Hard at lvl 7 solo as I have ran it so many time over the last almost 6 years should I get more xp than say a group of 5 new players that formeds a static group and are flower sniffing their way through the quest.

The original content always was appealing but when you give players a legal cheat to cut corners in user challenges to level faster they will and I cannot blame them. But it causes unbalance and what I find funny is you realize it by coming up with a system based more on a challence system and not really based on quest difficulty.

Personally it does not affect me much as I can solo almost everything until vale and even then much. But it does sadden me each year I see less team play and less players and it is all because the game keeps changing to attract a temporary player base.

I know that you have said you have played over 2 years. But do you really think the challenges are what Turbine wants players to be playing and do you really think the are the future of the game? Do you think the players that level in them and avoid the content are the ones that will stay long term in the game or the ones that get help building up there characters.

Face it challenges, guild runs, bravery bonuses, veteran status that can be bought and start at 7, stone of xp all have affected new low level players from learning the game and growing with it.

The game is creating an unfriendly new player world that will bottle neck into mid range content those that have no idea what they are doing and leave a top heavy game with a population that will dwindle.

Elevating xp as you assert will not enhance the game in any manner. I am afraid we shall not agree on this topic.

[Hawkston]

I'm not sure 1k/minute is right. If I'm level 4 and zerg through all of Waterworks in half an hour, I should be up 30k experience? Where does that number come from?

[adam1oftheround]

In my opinion: When the pack was bought for XP and then the XP per minute gets nerfed, people have a valid position to request a reimbursement. If this is your position, I suggest you submit a help ticket stating this and requesting a refund of your Turbine Points.

[Carkolda]

I must have poorly explained my position on the xp per minute for a dungeon, because in the suggestions thread I got the same reaction.

The XP per minute is not multiplied how long it takes you to do the quest, the XP per minute is multiplied by the average duration of the quest given a party size. Once that amount is figured out, it remains static. So, for example, if the quest took 7 minutes, it would give 3500 xp base, much like we have for quests now. This doesn't change.

My reason for coming up with the new idea is not because I think challenges are perfect. I see a fundamental flaw in the way XP is distributed in the game, and the challenges just brought it out to bare. Here are the flaws in general with the game system:

XP doesn't reward cooperative play; due to dungeon scaling, quests are easier to run if you are a good solo player and have a not-sucky hireling. Heck, if you're a self-healing anything, and have moderately decent DPS, you can solo probably easier than you can run with a pug. This is counter to a party-based game.

The XP rewards appear to be arbitrary in their assignment. If you look at some quests compared to others, it almost looks like someone rolled some dice and said, "That looks good!" There's no rhyme or reason, and this is displayed by the fact that some quests are run while leveling, but others are completely ignored.

Other than loot and favor, there really isn't any reason to run some of the paid content, and even then some of it's pretty worthless. Right now, the only reason I run Sharn Syndicate is for the BTA items for crafting. There's no lasting and repeatability reward for purchasing some of the content.
--------------------
So what I suggested was a common benchmark to use across the entire game, challenges included. I agree... the MMO should not be Mario Brothers D&D. But, at the same time, people were willing to do that because the XP elsewhere was so poor, even amongst other challenges. Your solution is treating the symptom, but not solving the fundamental problem.

With my solution:
- Party play is encouraged by the fact that there is an XP boost associated with more party members. You would likely see more pugs amongst all level ranges.
- XP rewards would have a rationale and measured approach in every quest. This would mean you wouldn't have people skipping quests because it's faster to get xp elsewhere; they would instead run quests because they like them. It wouldn't be faster because all the quests are benchmarked against all the tens of thousands of completions for each quest. Law of large numbers would apply, so the flower-sniffers would be averaged against the zergers, and you would have a happy medium that is proven in actual run times. Zergers will always earn XP faster than flower-sniffers, and this will actually help normalize the xp gain amongst all players, and give some history and fact-based data instead of just an arbitrary number.
- VIP's and Premium accounts will have allure again, purchasing content will have allure again, and buying friends GP's will encourage people to play paid content again all in the form of a modest xp bump.

I'm not saying my idea is perfect, and I'm not saying the challenges (as the originally were released) were perfect. I'm saying that what they have right now isn't working, and their solution to nerf the bejeebees out of an entire class of quests that is paid content riles up a lot of people because they paid for it and had the expectation that xp would be what it was when they purchased it.

If I had purchased the cannith challenges with the expectation that I would only get 300 xp/minute (and 800/minute on epics), then I wouldn't be so upset. But, I also never would have purchased the cannith challenges if they didn't provide higher xp in the first place unless the pack was less than half its current value right now. The price point was high to begin with, and now it's out-of-touch with the rewards you get.

So, instead of only complaining, I offered up a solution that I feel solves the root problem of the cause, which is simply put on display because of the challenge xp debacle.

Thanks for reading.

[Munkenmo]

I'm not sure 1k/minute is right. If I'm level 4 and zerg through all of Waterworks in half an hour, I should be up 30k experience? Where does that number come from?

from people like me who run through the harbor and complete most quests in under 3 minutes.

[Hawkston]

from people like me who run through the harbor and complete most quests in under 3 minutes.

True but you can't sustain that rate of gain on harbour quests past a few repeats, and some of them don't even award 1000 XP altogether. Consider that many if not most players can't open elite on the first run and, well, that 1k per minute is the exception rather than the rule, in the Harbour anyway. 1k per minute would be huge in Korthos, it would mean something like 4-5k for Cannith Crystal.

I guess my point is if you apply that 1k/minute to a 15 minute Level 4 Kobold Chaos run for example, its unreasonable to expect 15k XP. At low levels that's way too much XP.


The XP per minute is not multiplied how long it takes you to do the quest, the XP per minute is multiplied by the average duration of the quest given a party size. Once that amount is figured out, it remains static. So, for example, if the quest took 7 minutes, it would give 3500 xp base, much like we have for quests now. This doesn't change.

I like the idea of rewarding group play with higher XP. However, I don't understand the formula you're proposing here. The challenges are harder with a group than solo, so there should probably be an XP boost for groups doing them, but how does that take into account the difference between a Lvl 4 Kobold Chaos and a Lvl 15 Kobold Chaos?

I am as disappointed as the next person at having the challenge XP reduced (which happened about 2 weeks after I bought the packs), and agree that it should be increased, but I also think that the way they were was harmful to the game, as others have pointed out. It almost felt like I was cheating with some of the XP I was getting, and I rarely left the challenge areas or did anything else until the XP went down.

That said, I didn't buy the House C pack for the XP, I bought it as an easier way to get epic tokens, as I was having trouble doing epics either solo or in groups (as PUGs were hard to find). Now with the new epic system, I don't think I would buy the House C pack at all. Although some of the items are quite nice, with the free daily tokens they could have been got for free with a bit more patience.

[Munkenmo]

True but you can't sustain that rate of gain on harbour quests past a few repeats, and some of them don't even award 1000 XP altogether. Consider that many if not most players can't open elite on the first run and, well, that 1k per minute is the exception rather than the rule, in the Harbour anyway. 1k per minute would be huge in Korthos, it would mean something like 4-5k for Cannith Crystal.

I guess my point is if you apply that 1k/minute to a 15 minute Level 4 Kobold Chaos run for example, its unreasonable to expect 15k XP. At low levels that's way too much XP.

Kobalds new ringleader is >1k / min for 6+ runs
stealthy reposession >1k / min for 6+ runs
recovering the lost tome >1k / min for 6+ runs
ww part 2 >1k / min for 6+ runs

A quest that absolutely has to take atleast 10minutes+, no matter what the level, in my mind should award atleast 1k/minute. The fact that some done, and that challenges now don't, is often a reason why they're avoided.

They're unreasonable.

Given that i can grind out better than 1k/minute elsewhere at level 4 solo, why shouldn't a challenge that often requires teamwork for a high star completion be competitive with xp?

[Carkolda]

True but you can't sustain that rate of gain on harbour quests past a few repeats, and some of them don't even award 1000 XP altogether. Consider that many if not most players can't open elite on the first run and, well, that 1k per minute is the exception rather than the rule, in the Harbour anyway. 1k per minute would be huge in Korthos, it would mean something like 4-5k for Cannith Crystal.

I guess my point is if you apply that 1k/minute to a 15 minute Level 4 Kobold Chaos run for example, its unreasonable to expect 15k XP. At low levels that's way too much XP.

I can agree with you there. My idea was simply a benchmark plan. However, if you apply a different, static, multiplier that goes to pre-determined durations, you may get a number you like. Or have the level of the quest be a multiplier on all xp. Something along those lines.


I like the idea of rewarding group play with higher XP. However, I don't understand the formula you're proposing here. The challenges are harder with a group than solo, so there should probably be an XP boost for groups doing them, but how does that take into account the difference between a Lvl 4 Kobold Chaos and a Lvl 15 Kobold Chaos?

Thanks. The group bonus I am proposing is a flat, static increase per active member. What you are asking about is dungeon scaling. You are right. Challenges are harder in group settings, and thus should provide more xp. 75/minute over a 15-minute quest is 1125 xp. That means up to 5500 xp extra for running in a full party. But, you know how hard challenges are with 6 people in the group. There should be a reward consummate with the difficulty. And with it being tied to time, you aren't going to have an incentive to have a larger group go into TIM vs. larger group going into Rushmoore's Mansion. The xp boost will be proportionately the same.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Ancient]

Kobalds new ringleader is >1k / min for 6+ runs
stealthy reposession >1k / min for 6+ runs
recovering the lost tome >1k / min for 6+ runs
ww part 2 >1k / min for 6+ runs

+1. The pro-nerf arguments can sound reasonable and compelling... until the numbers show up. Lets add the exp numbers to take care of the repeatable portion of the argument.

First life experience
Level 2 - 5000
Level 3 - 20,000
Level 4 - 50,000
Level 5 - 90,000

I would add Durks, Butchers, Garrison's, Info is Key and Repossession to your list. These are all quick moving quests with the biggest barrier between you can completion being how quickly you can move through the quest. The majority of these quests are level 2 quests... So while you may not be able to repeat them "forever"... it is possible to repeat them enough times to achieve the objective (Level!).

Conclusion:
Any 1 of those quests (run 6 times) can get you to level 2.
Four of those quests (6 times each) can get you to level 3.
Add in first time/bravery bonuses on other low level quests and you are easily level 4.


There are enough good low level xp quests to move quickly through these levels without having any issues due to the repeat penalty. There is no need to "repeat" a quest once you have leveled past it. The funny thing about quest exp tuning is that it is easier to keep up high xp/minute at lower levels than it is in the 18-20 range where you need the most exp. That is the level range where the cannith challenge nerf hurts the most.

[Vormaerin]

They said they should give atleast 1 k per minute



Who is "they"? Just some forum posters as far as I am aware.

[Hilltrot]

Proof, ladies and gentlemen, that trot doesn't read my post and is only trying to stir up a fight.


Proof?

You wrote a full wall of text doing nothing but insulting me. Calling me a troll, brainless, and inexperienced and all sorts of other things. You purposely shorten my name for no other purpose than to show your contempt for me.

I laughed at your wall of text which did nothing but call me names . . . I didn't respond in kind.

But you say that I'm trying to pick a fight.

I'm sorry I didn't pay closer attention to your paragraph, but when people start calling me names, it's very hard For me to take them seriously.

[Carkolda]

Proof?

You wrote a full wall of text doing nothing but insulting me. Calling me a troll, brainless, and inexperienced and all sorts of other things. You purposely shorten my name for no other purpose than to show your contempt for me.

I laughed at your wall of text which did nothing but call me names . . . I didn't respond in kind.

But you say that I'm trying to pick a fight.

I'm sorry I didn't pay closer attention to your paragraph, but when people start calling me names, it's very hard For me to take them seriously.

First, I only call it as I see it. Did Laura get such a comment? No. Because the tone of her message was one of discussion, not disparagement. So far, out of you, I have only received the latter. After all, your post above indicates that your only intent is to pick a fight, further reinforcing my comments. Try responding with something substantive instead of petty bickering and you might get an even-handed response.

Secondly... shortening name. I highly doubt Laura is getting offended because I'm responding to her as Laura instead of Laurawilder. Get off your sensitivity train and realize I shortened your name only because I didn't feel like typing the whole name. You knew to whom I was speaking, didn't you? People shorten my name all the time, but doesn't mean I get insulted because they shortened it.

Third, and last time before I completely ignore you, that "wall of text" had you bothered to read, was mostly a discussion post to Laura. I devoted maybe 5 lines of text to you. If you bothered to read the entire post, like I do yours, you would have recognized that.

So, thank you for your input. Do you have anything constructive to contribute to the discussion at hand, or do you want to just stop posting so the rest of us can get on with the discussion?


Who is "they"? Just some forum posters as far as I am aware.

Not sure. It's probably the urban statistic. But, when one of the devs made the comment about 15 minutes of xp in 5 minutes of play... if we reverse engineer the level 21 epic TIM which is 5 minutes and gives out around 15k... *shrug* Not sure. Of course, a level 20 TIM is 5 minutes and gives out 5k. If they are suggesting that 5k is the target of the "15 minutes xp vs. 5 minutes play" part, then the xp output would be what it is now: about 1600 xp. I am disinclined to believe it's the latter, and more to the prior.

[Hawkston]

Regardless of the xp per minute, it sure was a shock to go from an elite first run of waterworks that took about 20 -25 minutes and getting around 20k XP, to a 20 minute, 3 star first run of a lvl 5 Circles of Power immediately after and getting 5800 XP. I can look forward to 20 minute runs of CoP worth ~1400 xp now until I get the arrowheads I need and then I can ignore the place until next life...

[Hilltrot]

In my opinion: When the pack was bought for XP and then the XP per minute gets nerfed, people have a valid position to request a reimbursement. If this is your position, I suggest you submit a help ticket stating this and requesting a refund of your Turbine Points.

I bought a cake to finish the adventure. I still didn't finish the adventure. I want my money back.

You get refunds for not getting what was advertised - not what you wanting. Turbine would have to be insane to give any form of refund simply because people didn't get what they wanted.

Turbine has made it abundantly clear that sales are final and "as is" with no warranty.

They also have very clearly stated that game play will change.

I'm sure anyone who submits a ticket like this will relieve a nice boilerplate response. You would have a much easier time convincing them to increase the XP. But not like this.

You're just demonstrating that this was an exploit they had every reason to stop.

[Ancient]

You're just demonstrating that this was an exploit they had every reason to stop.
The numbers have been given many times in this thread. Not wanting challenges to be 10-20 times worse xp per minute than other quests is not an exploit.

[Carkolda]

The numbers have been given many times in this thread. Not wanting challenges to be 10-20 times worse xp per minute than other quests is not an exploit.
^ This. 300 xp per minute is ****-poor, no matter which way you slice it.

[MrElusiveness]

From the release notes:



This adjustment is incredibly poor, as you have proven you are able to modify xp values on challenges without taking the servers down, please fix this now.
1k per minute is what we were aiming for in 2009, times have changed since then and it's a poor goal for many players, yet some challenges can't even provide 1k/min without pots / voice / ship buffs.

6star level 25 Buying time = base 4800xp awarded + modifiers.

http://i.imgur.com/3auiX.jpg

Yeah they screwed us with the nerf! how about 3k a min?? :D