Upcoming Quest XP Changes

[PurpleFooz]

Very soon we’ll be opening Lamannia with the newest version of Enhancements. Included in that version of the game code are several new features and changes coming to quest XP in the expansion. We wanted to highlight what’s coming with a very early write up, because the changes that you’ll see on Lamannia are not yet ready for testing, and include a lot of place-holder numbers. Today we wanted to talk about the changes so that you have some insight into what features are coming:

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

We are still refining what the final numbers will be for these changes and bonuses, and as we get closer to Expansion launch day we will go into greater detail. The version that will appear on Lamannia is not meant for testing, and is there merely because we have taken an early game build to continue Enhancements review with players. You’re welcome to provide feedback on what you see, but it is not something Lamannia participants should focus on because it is still a work in progress.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz

[Systern]

Thanks for the heads up Fooz! :)

I really appreciate that you took the time to communicate with us. And you even did so in a manner that wasn't "kicking the hornet's nest"! Good Job! ;)

It's awesome about XP-Ransack. I'm also excited to hear about Sagas. I kind of imagine they're the next evolution of the Campaign System that was introduced last year. It'd be nice to point out to the friends that just madly click through all the dialog that there is an overall story arc From Necro to Shroud, or Gianthold to Reaver's...

Looking forward to hearing more from you in the future...

[OzmarDDO]

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.


That sounds interesting - can you give us more detail? What does that mean? Is a random quest chosen each day to get a "daily bonus"? Or do all quests give this bonus once each day? So if you run Kobold's New Ringleader 5 times in one day you get less XP than if you run it 5 times over 5 days?

-Ozmar the Curious

[Gljosh]

This sounds kinda like a mixed bag. Will the amount of total xp stay the same just the curve will be less? Seems like a carrot being dangled after the "new TR" posts. I do like the XP reset no grinding quest can be run more often to get and bank levels.

[Texlaw1992]

I too like the XP penalty changes and Saga idea, assuming character copy gets fixed so I can actually get back to Lam ...

Question: for the many of us who have already completed all the sagas up to now, will we be able to claim a saga reward right away or would we first have to run all the quests in that saga over again?

[Systern]

This sounds kinda like a mixed bag. Will the amount of total xp stay the same just the curve will be less? Seems like a carrot being dangled after the "new TR" posts. I do like the XP reset no grinding quest can be run more often to get and bank levels.

Re-read Glin's post announcing the TR ideas. 4th bullet point in the first list. It's been the intention all along. It's not 'a carrot' like you suspect.

[Charononus]

Sadly I have a bad feeling with this that all levels will now have the anemic xp of house c and amrath now.

[oradafu]

Sadly I have a bad feeling with this that all levels will now have the anemic xp of house c and amrath now.

Yeah, three days ago, I expressed the bad feeling I have about what I suspect will happen:


This is pretty much how I feel also. The Devs kept the XP low for the upper Heroics to extend the endgame when the cap was 20. However, they didn't adjust and continue to not adjust the XP for those quests since MOTU came out.

From what I read in Glin's posts, the Devs aren't thinking about boosting the XP in these quests, but leveling out the XP across the board. If this is the case, I think they are just going to add a new XP problem in Heroics. Let's say they flatten the XP needed for upper heroic levels but bump up the lower and/or mid heroic levels. This will present a new problem in both areas, in my mind. In the lower levels, the XP needed can't be boosted too much, because quest give junk XP. Even though several of the quests from levels give decent XP, the mid-heroic levels have some of the least populated quest selection in the game. If the repeat penalty isn't fixed and the XP needed to get to level 28 increases to any degree, the mid-heroics (GH and Sands) are going to become the new XP problem area if players want to cap.

I've pointed it out before, but the number of quests from levels 12 to 19 is half the number found from level 1 to 11. Additionally, the current number of quests from 20 to 25 is half that of 12 to 19, yet it's the upper heroic quests that continue to have junk XP.

I still feel that way from what I read from PurpleFooz. Especially from this portion of his text, which I assume that "move" is a typo of "more":


We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.


Instead of padding up the lower and mid-heroic quest XP, why not just pump up the anemic XP found in the upper heroics? That would solve alot of the TR grind problem without creating new problems eslewhere. It also allows fresh Epic players to grind some decent XP with level 18 and 19 players, instead of the artificial segregation that prevents heroics from entering Epics and an incentive is created for Epic players to continue to play in non-Epics.

Repeat penalty XP being reset and the daily XP bonus sounds like nice additions.

I'm a bit worried about the Sagas, but I like the idea in theory. My worry is that players will only get a single option, instead of a series of options for the reward. If we're not given a series of options, I can see where people might be angry that they have gotten another +2 Tome that's useless on that character. I'd like to see an option of maybe the XP bonus and two or three other goodies so they player has a choice. Not having a choice stinks alot of times, look at the Eveningstar Challenges that people don't like getting random awards or the death knell to the Sands token turn in when the barter box removed all choice from players.

A bit off topic, but not too much... Please look at boosting the XP in all the Monster Manuals except the last one. Also, adding more content like the Monster Manuals helps speed up the grind process, but the release of them is so slow...and the fixes near non-existent.

So for the most part, I'm happy to see that something is being done about the XP curve. Unfortunately, I think the solution might cause problems elsewhere in the game, namely early and mid-game, if not into the Epics also.

[FlaviusMaximus]

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.


- PurpleFooz

Excellent change. Really excellent. I know you guys listen to the DDO community, and this is a prime example.

I hope this change doesn't also involve the decay at level cap not freezing in place, but since there is no mention of it, I wont make any assumptions.

[ForumAccess]

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.
Awesome. Absolutely awesome. These are changes that have been desired for a very long time, and will be a great addition! I am so glad to hear this!


Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.
hrm. Going to have to wait to see how this actually falls out. But from my reading, it sounds like one quest will be chosen as the 'daily quest', out of the entire pool of quests in DDO? Maybe I am just missing something, but this seems like something that will be largely ignored, unless you just happen to be running that quest anyways.


Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.
Wow, this sounds rather neat! Very cool.

I get that this is more of just something that is tied in to showing off the Enhancements, but I have to say that these changes seem like they will be a really great addition once they get tuned properly.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Instead of padding up the lower and mid-heroic quest XP, why not just pump up the anemic XP found in the upper heroics?

It just got harder to get to level 15. Do you really not understand why they would want to do this? If so, look at what they are trying to sell with the expansion.

[Teh_Troll]

It just got harder to get to level 15. Do you really not understand why they would want to do this? If so, look at what they are trying to sell with the expansion.

There's a hell of a lot more XP avaialble 1-15 than 15-20.

Devils' in the details, please give us the details so we know what we're looking at.

[oradafu]

It just got harder to get to level 15. Do you really not understand why they would want to do this? If so, look at what they are trying to sell with the expansion.

Oh, I get it alright...and this might go a bit off topic, so forgive me.

I understand the boosting of XP needed in the lower and mid-heroic levels will be an added incentive for Iconic Heroes and TRing into Iconic Heroes. But if they turn these levels into the new horrific XP grind bump, the Iconic Past Life and Heroic Past Life feats need to be granted in the same TR then. And let's face it, it's probably levels 12 to 14 that will become the new worry spot since there's so few quests in that area of the game and there's not going to be any future additions anytime soon for that part of the game, since levels 15 to 18 are getting some padding with this expansion and the rest of the focus for future updates should be for the lack of endgame quests in the level 24 to 28 area.

If the expansion offers great XP for all the quests and not just the Epic quests and the XP increase for the existing upper heroic quests, there shouldn't be a reason at all the play with the XP curve(s) at all. But we've seen that the XP offered for Heroics still consists of the pre-MOTU endgame grind mindset, so I doubt the XP for those quests will be good. And yeah, the introduction of Iconic Heroes does appear to be the main reason they want to play with the XP curve and not players outcry of the anemic XP for upper heroic quests.

[oradafu]

There's a hell of a lot more XP avaialble 1-15 than 15-20.

Devils' in the details, please give us the details so we know what we're looking at.

Yes, the Devil is in the details.

There's more XP from 1 to 15. But the number of quests found from level 1 to 11 individually is practically double that found in the levels 12 to 19. And what I suspect will be the new trouble area (levels 12 to 14) only has 31 quests (which two are raids), which isn't exactly a diverse number of quests to choose from.

Yes, you can run quests from lower levels, but depending on how much XP they make us need in the previous levels, we might not have the current cushion of grinding XP from those levels.

I'm just a bit leery about flattening the XP curve.

[Qhualor]

Very soon we’ll be opening Lamannia with the newest version of Enhancements. Included in that version of the game code are several new features and changes coming to quest XP in the expansion. We wanted to highlight what’s coming with a very early write up, because the changes that you’ll see on Lamannia are not yet ready for testing, and include a lot of place-holder numbers. Today we wanted to talk about the changes so that you have some insight into what features are coming:

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

We are still refining what the final numbers will be for these changes and bonuses, and as we get closer to Expansion launch day we will go into greater detail. The version that will appear on Lamannia is not meant for testing, and is there merely because we have taken an early game build to continue Enhancements review with players. You’re welcome to provide feedback on what you see, but it is not something Lamannia participants should focus on because it is still a work in progress.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz

i like this, but...

why increase lower level xp? i think its fine the way it is and even the average player can get through those levels without xp/min grinding and without much effort. i do like the 15-20 range getting attention though, but i think there would be a lot less griping about xp grind in those levels if the quests and difficulty were rewarding appropriately. i wouldn't doubt it would be too much work or something to just increase the xp on a quest by quest basis in that level range, so it sounds like adjusting the xp curve required is the next best thing.

a little curious as to why a daily bonus for quest completion. sounds like another xp boost added to the game and i think its gotten to the point its silly crazy when you see someone link over 100k xp in elite Von 5. not a big deal i suppose.

overall, i like your post and glad to finally see some attention on TR xp. looks like going down the right path.

[redspecter23]

Overall these changes sound quite promising. I'm a bit concerned about the lack of any news about increased Amrath and Cannith xp. It might just be me, but I think that's the first step that should be taken, with across the board curve changes looked at after this. Increasing the xp in those two packs and giving enough incentive to keep a streak going through them solves a good portion of the xp problem and lets you smooth out any remaining rough patches with xp curve changes. There are some older quests in the lower quest ranges that could use a look as well.

As mentioned, it's a bit scary whenever the quests get looked at for xp. I too am worried that instead of adjusting the poor xp quests upward, they will be looking to adjust the good xp quests downward. I'll keep an open mind until I see the changes in action.

[Zillee]

Very happy to read about these upcoming changes!

[Ziindarax]

Decaying EXP repetition penalties is something that the player base has been requesting for a long time. Great to see that the devs are finally implementing decaying xp penalties.

I like a lot of what I see, but I am a little concerned by their plan to increase the exp needed to level in the lower levels (on the otherhand, there were quite a few quests that I may have ended up skipping on account of Greater tomes and Bravery Bonus Elite streaks coming into play). As such, I'll wait and see before I pass any kind of judgment.



Very soon we’ll be opening Lamannia with the newest version of Enhancements. Included in that version of the game code are several new features and changes coming to quest XP in the expansion. We wanted to highlight what’s coming with a very early write up, because the changes that you’ll see on Lamannia are not yet ready for testing, and include a lot of place-holder numbers. Today we wanted to talk about the changes so that you have some insight into what features are coming:

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

We are still refining what the final numbers will be for these changes and bonuses, and as we get closer to Expansion launch day we will go into greater detail. The version that will appear on Lamannia is not meant for testing, and is there merely because we have taken an early game build to continue Enhancements review with players. You’re welcome to provide feedback on what you see, but it is not something Lamannia participants should focus on because it is still a work in progress.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz

[Tscheuss]

This definitely sound nice; however, I am curious whether the Daily Bonus comes with one's first quest of the day, or with a particular quest.

[Zillee]

This definitely sound nice; however, I am curious whether the Daily Bonus comes with one's first quest of the day, or with a particular quest.

Oooh, good question! I'd read it as a particular quest, taking it to be an incentive to get players to group more by getting a bunch of LFMs up to run a particular quest for that daily bonus.

[AZgreentea]

This all sounds very interesting. I like the addition of the "quest of the day". Its one of my more favorite things from the more recent MMO's. I wonder, will the quest of the day ever be a Challenge instead of a quest?

Also, how do these changes effect the XP of wilderness area's? Maybe a bonus for completing the S/E/R like the Saga?

[djl]

The way I interpreted the "daily bonus" was that it applied to all quests individually, encouraging people not to farm but to instead run every quest once and move on to the next one.

EDIT: This was also my 1337th post ^_^

[EllisDee37]

I like everything I read in the OP. Thumbs up!

My reading of the daily quest completion bonus is that it applies to all quests always. I interpret this as a persistent bravery bonus mechanic to encourage running a variety of quests instead of window farming the good ones.

[Uska]

Like some of this not a fan of the xp ransack reset it will decrease the variety of quests being ran some I think not a lot maybe but it will have an effect.

[djl]

Like some of this not a fan of the xp ransack reset it will decrease the variety of quests being ran some I think not a lot maybe but it will have an effect.

How do you figure? Nothing is really going to change regarding quest farming variety, even if they nerf those specific quests. Powergamers will always discover the most efficient method to grind and do it, ignoring everything else.

This change will make TRing so much simpler because you will no longer have to worry about how many completions you do of this or that and what impact it will have on your Epic leveling plans. You can run whatever you like, with no long-term consequences. It will be quite refreshing.

[oradafu]

Also, how do these changes effect the XP of wilderness area's? Maybe a bonus for completing the S/E/R like the Saga?

Yes, please add Saga's for completing Wilderness Areas. Having a reward for completing all the slayers, explorers and rares has been something many of us have asked for. This is usually an area of the game most people skip, so adding some incentive to completing them would be nice for the few players that attempt the slayer grind (although some of the slayer numbers are completely unrealistic for the size of their maps and number of spawns, such as the three House C maps).



Like some of this not a fan of the xp ransack reset it will decrease the variety of quests being ran some I think not a lot maybe but it will have an effect.

The XP ransack will be a boon for players who play casually, players with multiple toons, players who have returned after a long break and players with few or no packs. If you haven't logged into your toon for a while, you're not sure which quests you've ran the XP into the ground or not. Having the XP reset after a period of time helps solve that problem.

[cdbd3rd]

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level. ...


While you're looking at "flattening the XP curve", can that also include a glance at maybe flattening exponential increase in Slayer kills required for XPs in explorer areas?


Meanwhile, big /props @ the XP ransack reset - as long as it's some reasonable time frame.

[BruceTheHoon]

Best news I've heard in MONTHS.

[Zaragoss]

Plz remove Guild decay and everything is fine :-)

[Stoner81]

While you're looking at "flattening the XP curve", can that also include a glance at maybe flattening exponential increase in Slayer kills required for XPs in explorer areas?

Or just increase the number of monsters per instance, The Red Fens is a prime example of this you have about 150 ish monsters per instance (not sure on exact numbers so my apologies if I'm wrong) and yet the slayer count goes up to 7,500! Just add more monsters please.

Stoner81.

PS - Cannith Manufactory is also the same, those are the main two I can think of but I bet there are others.

[Atremus]

If you are willing to share, I have 2 questions about these changes:

1). Will the Dev's institute an easier mechanic to get to FR? While Leveling in the Dead Zone (15+) I often want to go to FR but can't. The bridge quest is Level 16. By the time I run the LoD chain, I am Level 18 to preserve the Bravery Streak and have XP grinded past the Level 15 content available in FR.

I understand that BB and XP grinding isn't needed, but this is how I enjoy the game.


2). About the XP ransack timer: will it be Identical to the Chest timer?

[Darkrok]

I'd heard that the 'ransacked' xp starts on the 3rd repetition. If that's the case would like to see that relaxed a bit. There are some short quests that I actually enjoy running more than that.

Also, please make sure that, just like currently on live, the new 'ransacked' xp does not apply at cap (25 or 28 depending on when this goes live). There shouldn't be any xp degradation ever at cap...it just makes it harder to work on epic destinies.

I definitely agree with some of the player comments about xp 'dead zones'. If you flatten the curve pay special attention to quests in the level range and doubly important quests that people actually enjoy running in the level range.

Other than those issues I'm looking forward to these changes. It's definitely a step in the right direction.

[danotmano1998]

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz


This is epic.
Absolutely fantastic to hear this, and to read about it.
As many enthusiastic +1's as I can possibly give, consider them granted.

It's very nice to hear that things are being spread out more evenly with the xp curves, and the addition of the saga NPC's with rewards sounds great. The Daily Bonus is an excellent idea as well. The ransack XP idea is excellent, glad you guys chose to listen to the players on this.

Yes, these early previews are indeed much appreciated. Thanks for all your (and all the rest of the team's!) hard work!!!!



P.S. For some reason, you don't show up in the Dev Tracker. I stumbled across this post accidentally.
Whether or not your official title is Dev, I would expect that you would fall into this posting category. Just thought I'd let you know.

EDIT - D'oh, yes you are in lammania, not the standard one, no wonder. *Shambles off for more coffee* Whoops!

[Flavilandile]

ok, I'm not going to give the long answer yet... But I'm going to ask questions :

- Does your brainstorm about XP Changes involves eventually getting rid of the Bravery '********' Streak ?
- Does your brainstorm about XP Changes involves eventually considering putting back an old system to replace the above one ?
- Does your brainstorm about XP Changes involves all the quests already in game along with those that are not there yet ?

I'll do a long answer depending on the answers to that... But the idea to work on XPs has some interest, I just hope it won't go the way the Enhancement Crash and the Epic TR Fail....

[Grubbby]

...
P.S. For some reason, you don't show up in the Dev Tracker. I stumbled across this post accidentally.
Whether or not your official title is Dev, I would expect that you would fall into this posting category. Just thought I'd let you know.
It shows up for me in the Lammania Dev Tracker. Don't think Lammania threads ever showed up in the normal dev tracker.

[mortifer_rex]

If you are willing to share, I have 2 questions about these changes:

1). Will the Dev's institute an easier mechanic to get to FR? While Leveling in the Dead Zone (15+) I often want to go to FR but can't. The bridge quest is Level 16. By the time I run the LoD chain, I am Level 18 to preserve the Bravery Streak and have XP grinded past the Level 15 content available in FR.



There is a new portal that will take you to the Spinner's prison which allows you to skip the lvl 16 quests and go straight to FR.

[Atremus]

To go to FR through the new portal you need to complete LoD and The road of a lot of Spiders and Priestesses quest. Once those two quests are complete you can hit the portal and do the bridge quest and wind up in the cavern. Without doing the 2 flagging quests, the temporary portal does not grant instant access to FR.

This portal will probably disappear when 18.2 comes out and the spinner of shadows quest is fixed.

[Darkrok]

There is a new portal that will take you to the Spinner's prison which allows you to skip the lvl 16 quests and go straight to FR.

That may go away in the next update. It was put there because Spinner of Shadows is closed and it should be opening back up.

[QuantumFX]

While this sounds all nice and fuzzy, I’d still rather see them go back and reevaluate the base XP for most of the adventures in game. One of my biggest pet peeves in DDO is completing a long arduous quest and getting a pitiful XP reward on completion. (ex. Most of Amrath.)

Since you devs like math formulas, try this:

Adventure Base XP = Adventure level*1,000*Length of Quest modifier.

Quest Modifier

Very Short = 0.25 Modifier
Short = 0.5 Modifier
Medium = 0.75 Modifier
Long = 1.0 Modifier
Very Long = 2.0 Modifier


(And, yes there will have to be some quest length reevaluation done. {Looking at you, Hold for Reinforcements.})

[dlsidhe]

*reads thread*

*sees repetition penalty removal*

*stops reading*

*DANCES*

That...is phenomenal news. Especially for my style of doing a TR - I don't have 24 hour TRs. I have 9-10 month TRs. I have three characters at Epic levels and two or three TR'ing at any point, and then experimental alts; I play toons according to what I feel like doing at the time.

So, what I'm reading is thus: I take a couple weeks off from the TR grind, and when I come back I can rerun quests I really like (not necessarily top-XP quests, but ones that I enjoy) and not be penalized?

The daily quests are nice and all, and I look forward to the Saga System, but that I'm no longer tied to running quests I loathe specifically because they're high-xp or have groups running them frequently is awesome. I can now resume avoiding Heywire's Foundry and Offering of Blood until I have to flag for the raids. Hooray!

[arkonas]

honestly if they were to revisit the Lord of Eyes chain, Amrath and House Cannith quests. Revamp their xp a lot. people would run these more. Reason to do it would be to breath life back into the packs. Hell this would be a reason to sell the packs to a lot. to some once they find out it might not be worth it to them. for others they might just skip these 2 areas entirely.

[Satyriasys]

With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

YAY!! Thank you for listening!

[Silverleafeon]

Very soon we’ll be opening Lamannia with the newest version of Enhancements. Included in that version of the game code are several new features and changes coming to quest XP in the expansion. We wanted to highlight what’s coming with a very early write up, because the changes that you’ll see on Lamannia are not yet ready for testing, and include a lot of place-holder numbers. Today we wanted to talk about the changes so that you have some insight into what features are coming:

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

We are still refining what the final numbers will be for these changes and bonuses, and as we get closer to Expansion launch day we will go into greater detail. The version that will appear on Lamannia is not meant for testing, and is there merely because we have taken an early game build to continue Enhancements review with players. You’re welcome to provide feedback on what you see, but it is not something Lamannia participants should focus on because it is still a work in progress.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz

Eppy Woot!

[NytCrawlr]

The Good Stuff

All welcoming news, thank you Purple.

[Ancient]

Fantastic news!

Any chance that challenge xp might get a little boost as part of this? One of the big arguments for the nerf was that you could keep running it forever... it seems like the new quest repetition penalty system would work just fine to keep them in balance.

[Silverleafeon]

*reads thread*

*sees repetition penalty removal*

*stops reading*

*DANCES*

That...is phenomenal news. Especially for my style of doing a TR - I don't have 24 hour TRs. I have 9-10 month TRs. I have three characters at Epic levels and two or three TR'ing at any point, and then experimental alts; I play toons according to what I feel like doing at the time.

So, what I'm reading is thus: I take a couple weeks off from the TR grind, and when I come back I can rerun quests I really like (not necessarily top-XP quests, but ones that I enjoy) and not be penalized?!

Aye this a huge boon for you.

A big part of a Legend Life is the planning that goes into it to avoid painting yourself into a corner.
Now, with these changes if you find yourself painted into a corner, simply wait for the paint to dry.

Huge, huge for Epic XP as you can wait for reset of quests you did on heroic.

[redspecter23]

Like some of this not a fan of the xp ransack reset it will decrease the variety of quests being ran some I think not a lot maybe but it will have an effect.

It depends on how long the ransack timer is. I'm a fairly fast leveler, but not ultra fast. I can do a 3 week TR going at a steady pace. If the ransack timer is 7 days then that adds a complete week to my TR if I were to wait around for it to degrade to run it again instead of pushing on and taking my level.

I see how it will vastly improve very casual players that only get online a couple times a week and it certainly improves the issue where heroic and epic completions overlapped.

There are situations that can be "exploited" for lack of a better word. It really depends on the mechanics of the system. Here is a theoretical example.

Assume a 7 day ransack timer.

I run Litany of the Dead, elite on a Monday on my level 12 toon. I do this to preemptively get the ransack timer rolling and do only a single run right now. (I'm not sure what the min level is to get in. This is just an example.)

Six days later, on Sunday, when I'm around level 17, I run it 12 more times on hard and once on normal to ransack the xp from the quest.

On Monday night, the ransack timer is lifted and I run it 12 more times on hard while at level 17 or 18.

That's 26 runs of one quest within a one week window and in this situation, I can probably ignore much of the other "filler" content I'd normally do in this level range, especially considering that the xp curve will favor this level range soon and be easier to get through. Combine this scenario with a similar plan for Shadow Crypt and you can start skipping massive amounts of content. The core problem here isn't the ransack timer mechanics, but the massive xp advantage that those two quests have over other quests in their level range. This is due in part to the great xp of those quests and also the extremely low xp of other quests (like the new pack for level 15 and the lack of anything competitive with Shadow Crypt xp for level 12's to run)

I hope this sort of situation is being looked at as I'd hate for edge cases like this to be a reason not to go ahead with a great idea. As with all systems, one has to look at the edge cases and attempt to "break it" before it goes live.

[Darkrok]

There are situations that can be "exploited" for lack of a better word. It really depends on the mechanics of the system. Here is a theoretical example.

I'm pretty sure that 2 things will be the case. One is that the ransack on a quest is the 4th run (ie 3 runs at normal xp, next run has a penalty). The second is that even if you do what you'd said you'd only be able to run 1 more time with no penalty. Yes, you started the ransack timer on that first day but the second run you did 6 days later started its own ransack timer for that day. I'm not positive this is how it will work but I'm pretty sure they'd be going that route.

[redspecter23]

I'm pretty sure that 2 things will be the case. One is that the ransack on a quest is the 4th run (ie 3 runs at normal xp, next run has a penalty). The second is that even if you do what you'd said you'd only be able to run 1 more time with no penalty. Yes, you started the ransack timer on that first day but the second run you did 6 days later started its own ransack timer for that day. I'm not positive this is how it will work but I'm pretty sure they'd be going that route.

Like I said, it really depends how they implement it. I use a system like what I've listed above for chest ransacks. I'll do my first looting as soon as possible, then ransack it throughout the week. As soon as the timer is up on the first looting, the chest is completely clear again and I could sack it all in a single day if I chose to. I based my xp situation on the chest ransack mechanics as that's all the info we have to go on currently. I'm sure it will be somewhat different.

[Silverleafeon]

I run Litany of the Dead, elite on a Monday on my level 12 toon. I do this to preemptively get the ransack timer rolling and do only a single run right now. (I'm not sure what the min level is to get in. This is just an example.).

You got a toon that can do Litany at level 12?
Wow?

Maybe you struggle thru it, but is struggling good xp per min?

Even the thought of arranging 3 power gamers to sit around and wait at 15 to help you for one
quest seems...

Consider, doing Litany once a day instead for the Daily bonus?

[redspecter23]

You got a toon that can do Litany at level 12?
Wow?

Even the thought of arranging 3 power gamers to sit around and wait at 15 to help you for one
quest seems...

Consider, doing Litany once a day instead for the Daily bonus?

The level was just added as an example. It could be a different level, quest or timeframe. I'm just pointing out a potential flaw in the system. I'm sure many players could solo elite Litany at level 12 or even lower. I typically solo it at level 16 and those 4 levels don't add a whole lot on most builds.

Edit: Yeah, the daily bonus thing could change it as well. If your first quest run every day is a daily bonus, then I do one Litany run every day for the week and a few more on the last day before ransack resets.

[Silverleafeon]

Assume a 7 day ransack timer.

I run Litany of the Dead, elite on a Monday on my level 12 toon. I do this to preemptively get the ransack timer rolling and do only a single run right now. (I'm not sure what the min level is to get in. This is just an example.)

Six days later, on Sunday, when I'm around level 17, I run it 12 more times on hard and once on normal to ransack the xp from the quest.

On Monday night, the ransack timer is lifted and I run it 12 more times on hard while at level 17 or 18.

I see what you doing now, and I am pretty that is not how the ransack timers work at all.

It pulls the latest one off of the stack, not clearing the whole stack.
You would only get one additional run out of that.

[Silverleafeon]

But it is good to bring up thank you.

[redspecter23]

I see what you doing now, and I am pretty that is not how the ransack timers work at all.

It pulls the latest one off of the stack, not clearing the whole stack.
You would only get one additional run out of that.

There are no quest ransack reset timers yet. How do you know how they work? ;)

For reference http://ddowiki.com/page/Ransack
I'm basing my quest xp ransack assumptions off of chest ransack mechanics. After your week is up, the chest is refreshed completely to 100%. It doesn't replace lootings one at a time but instead resets the entire ransack.

[Thrudh]

And let's face it, it's probably levels 12 to 14 that will become the new worry spot since there's so few quests in that area of the game

There's a TON of quests for a level 12-14 to run... At 12 you can run Threnal, Sorrowdusk, Restless Isles, VON 5-6... Then after that you have GH, Sands, Droam Invasion quests, Relic of Sovereign Past, Invaders, some house J undead stuff...

Those are the most fun levels (you just got your greensteel out of the bank), and there's plenty to do.

[Silverleafeon]

In other words, each quest completion should have a 7 day timer on it.

Not a timer that once your first completion is a week later, all your completions
are removed.

Ask the loot experts about it, see what they say.

[Silverleafeon]

There's a TON of quests for a level 12-14 to run... At 12 you can run Threnal, Sorrowdusk, Restless Isles, VON 5-6... Then after that you have GH, Sands, Droam Invasion quests, Relic of Sovereign Past, Invaders, some house J undead stuff...

Those are the most fun levels (you just got your greensteel out of the bank), and there's plenty to do.

+1

[Silverleafeon]

There are no quest ransack reset timers yet. How do you know how they work? ;)

For reference http://ddowiki.com/page/Ransack
I'm basing my quest xp ransack assumptions off of chest ransack mechanics. After your week is up, the chest is refreshed completely to 100%. It doesn't replace lootings one at a time but instead resets the entire ransack.

Very interesting, thank you for the information.

[Silverleafeon]

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Woot, once per quest not once per toon!

I think they just took care of ransack abuse right there.

I have watched once and done vs farming and seen it preform well already.

[Silverleafeon]

Fantastic news!

Any chance that challenge xp might get a little boost as part of this? One of the big arguments for the nerf was that you could keep running it forever... it seems like the new quest repetition penalty system would work just fine to keep them in balance.

Hopes for challenge review in the near future.

[dlsidhe]

Aye this a huge boon for you.

A big part of a Legend Life is the planning that goes into it to avoid painting yourself into a corner.
Now, with these changes if you find yourself painted into a corner, simply wait for the paint to dry.

Huge, huge for Epic XP as you can wait for reset of quests you did on heroic.

That second part is better news than the first; letting timers reset on Epic XP helps with the fewer quests available at that level.

And, honestly, I doubt there will be much "exploiting" of the XP reset - people who do speed TRs (like a couple of my guildies) have their pattern down to a science - why wait for the ransack to expire when you can be through a TR in a week? People like me who flowersniff through it will benefit more; as an example, my monk on her legend life would love to go run Kobold's New Ringleader again (both for the XP and because it's a fun quest), but it's no longer feasible. I've put her on hiatus while I level destinies on my rogue and paladin; but, if I could go back and run fun quests again, I would. I hate planning every bit of XP; this makes it more likely I'll TR again.

[Silverleafeon]

That second part is better news than the first; letting timers reset on Epic XP helps with the fewer quests available at that level.

And, honestly, I doubt there will be much "exploiting" of the XP reset - people who do speed TRs (like a couple of my guildies) have their pattern down to a science - why wait for the ransack to expire when you can be through a TR in a week? People like me who flowersniff through it will benefit more; as an example, my monk on her legend life would love to go run Kobold's New Ringleader again (both for the XP and because it's a fun quest), but it's no longer feasible. I've put her on hiatus while I level destinies on my rogue and paladin; but, if I could go back and run fun quests again, I would. I hate planning every bit of XP; this makes it more likely I'll TR again.

Aye, Cloey would shrug and say, a week ~ "I did three lives in one week..."

[Silverleafeon]

I think you are right, the biggest part of this is to Epic Xp.

I wonder...

What happens when you allow Epic Xp in Quests to reset?

This would allow a huge loop hole in the game to be examined.

What I mean is this, when you hit level cap your quest completion
counters stop, to prevent Epic Quest from eventually hitting 0 XP.

Now that this is no longer a threat, it is quite possible that being
at level cap will no longer protect quest completion counters.
That protection can be removed.

This means that farming out Rusted Blades after 12 completions
would result in zero xp until next week.

All theory, but...

[Silverleafeon]

Also if there is a daily timer on each quest, then the ransack rules might be different.

[Teh_Troll]

Oh noes! Now getting to level 15 is only easy instead of super-easy

Only TrollusMaximus could have nothing positive to say about these much asked-for changes.

Kudos Turbine...

I am TrollusMaximus . . . and even I can't find anything bad to say about this.

But . . . the devils' in the details and I'd like to know all of the details before I call off the hounds of d000mm.

[UurlockYgmeov]

First: Excellent Communication! Keep it up!

Players hate to be mushrooms - and those that volunteer time on Lammania really don't deserve to be mushrooms.

Second: TRing is a good source of revenue - making it easier (and the XP curve) and smoother only helps the game and the bottom line.

Third: Encouraging players to do entire chains with carrots - I like; daily bonuses - I like; Grace period - I like (but most TR's aren't a single level long enough to enjoy it - so it needs to be a very short grace period (20 hours or so). These things are a massive paradigm shift and as others have said devil's in the details (and we wait with baited breath to(and drooling tongues) see the details)

Fourth: Overall XP needed for 3rd life and beyond needs to be reduced from the current 4.3 million....

Keep it up! Am looking forward to seeing what is coming for sagas!

[Systern]

Woot, once per quest not once per toon!

I think they just took care of ransack abuse right there.

I have watched once and done vs farming and seen it preform well already.

Pretty sure they mean that each day there will be a featured, showcase quest...

Monday: Run HiPS for the Daily bonus.
Tuesday: Run Raiding the Giant's Vault for Daily Bonus.
etc,
etc...

Not, every quest gets a bonus the first time you run it each day.




Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, (We'll pick) a quest (that) will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing (that) quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

[dlsidhe]

I think you are right, the biggest part of this is to Epic Xp.

I wonder...

What happens when you allow Epic Xp in Quests to reset?

This would allow a huge loop hole in the game to be examined.

What I mean is this, when you hit level cap your quest completion
counters stop, to prevent Epic Quest from eventually hitting 0 XP.

Now that this is no longer a threat, it is quite possible that being
at level cap will no longer protect quest completion counters.
That protection can be removed.

This means that farming out Rusted Blades after 12 completions
would result in zero xp until next week.

All theory, but...

Yeah, it's just theoretical that the removal of counters at cap will be removed, but there's no reason for them anymore if you can run a variety of quests, then come back to them later. That would encourage people farming destinies to run a variety of content rather than the same fast, high XP quests repeatedly, which would lead to more groups in Epic content. In theory.

[dlsidhe]

Pretty sure they mean that each day there will be a featured, showcase quest...

Monday: Run HiPS for the Daily bonus.
Tuesday: Run Raiding the Giant's Vault for Daily Bonus.
etc,
etc...

Not, every quest gets a bonus the first time you run it each day.

^This.

So, one day it might be "Bonus XP on Misery Peak!"

Then, the next, "Trial by Fire is today's Bonus Quest!"

That's how I read it.

[redspecter23]

Yeah, it's just theoretical that the removal of counters at cap will be removed, but there's no reason for them anymore if you can run a variety of quests, then come back to them later. That would encourage people farming destinies to run a variety of content rather than the same fast, high XP quests repeatedly, which would lead to more groups in Epic content. In theory.

I would have to assume that the situation we have on live right now that allows for unlimited completions with no additional penalty will no longer be the case when this change goes live. I really don't think Turbine ever factored that in the first place and probably assumed we would TR to reset our completions and farm more destinies. Their new TR system combined with this new xp system remove the need for unlimited completions at cap anyway. You will however have to wait for your quest xp ransack to wear off if you enjoy farming just a few specific quests (or buy the timer reset that will inevitably end up in the store).

[Darkrok]

^This.

So, one day it might be "Bonus XP on Misery Peak!"

Then, the next, "Trial by Fire is today's Bonus Quest!"

That's how I read it.

That's not how I read it so I'd love to see a developer comment on this one. I read it as the first time on ANY quest every day you get a bonus. Like I ran Kobold's New Ringleader on Monday, get bonus, run it again, no bonus, run Misery's Peak bonus, run it 2 more times no bonus, then run Kobold's New Ringleader 24+ hours after the first run on Monday and get the bonus again. I could see the wording he had taken to mean either one though.


I would have to assume that the situation we have on live right now that allows for unlimited completions with no additional penalty will no longer be the case when this change goes live. I really don't think Turbine ever factored that in the first place and probably assumed we would TR to reset our completions and farm more destinies. Their new TR system combined with this new xp system remove the need for unlimited completions at cap anyway. You will however have to wait for your quest xp ransack to wear off if you enjoy farming just a few specific quests (or buy the timer reset that will inevitably end up in the store).

I really hope you're wrong on this. Some people will really not want to Epic TR to continue getting ED xp - even after the new changes for ED xp. They may really like the life they're on. Maybe they just want to farm gear and get occasional ED xp in an off destiny. There could be any number of reasons someone would want to stay at the cap for a prolonged period of time. Creating a system where they're now limited in the number of times they can run a certain quest at cap in a certain time period would be less than ideal.

That said, the fact that we will have ransack-style rather than permanent xp penalties far outweighs even that downside. I'd much prefer it if you're not right - especially given the emphasis at cap on gear over xp farming (which requires repeating on quests until you're ransacked from a loot perspective) - but even if you're right worst-case means you have to wait whatever the ransack timer on that quest is to rerun it for xp. Under the current system where there's basically two quests worth running (rusted blades/impossible demands) that's pretty bad. When we keep in mind though that with the new cap of 28 those quests would be far from ideal I don't see it as being a killer - just not a perfect solution.

[Systern]

That's not how I read it so I'd love to see a developer comment on this one. I read it as the first time on ANY quest every day you get a bonus. Like I ran Kobold's New Ringleader on Monday, get bonus, run it again, no bonus, run Misery's Peak bonus, run it 2 more times no bonus, then run Kobold's New Ringleader 24+ hours after the first run on Monday and get the bonus again. I could see the wording he had taken to mean either one though.
Doesn't that sound too good to be true to you? I also recalled that a player suggested the premise of featuring lesser run quests with a daily bonus a few months back and it was received well by Turbine. I figure it's more likely they took a good idea to give less popular stuff a temporary boost rather than they are rewarding farming a quest over the course of a week rather than a day.




I really hope you're wrong on this. Some people will really not want to Epic TR to continue getting ED xp - even after the new changes for ED xp. They may really like the life they're on. Maybe they just want to farm gear and get occasional ED xp in an off destiny. There could be any number of reasons someone would want to stay at the cap for a prolonged period of time. Creating a system where they're now limited in the number of times they can run a certain quest at cap in a certain time period would be less than ideal.

That said, the fact that we will have ransack-style rather than permanent xp penalties far outweighs even that downside. I'd much prefer it if you're not right - especially given the emphasis at cap on gear over xp farming (which requires repeating on quests until you're ransacked from a loot perspective) - but even if you're right worst-case means you have to wait whatever the ransack timer on that quest is to rerun it for xp. Under the current system where there's basically two quests worth running (rusted blades/impossible demands) that's pretty bad. When we keep in mind though that with the new cap of 28 those quests would be far from ideal I don't see it as being a killer - just not a perfect solution.

People rage and complain about soul-numbing, boring, repetitive grinding. I can see Turbine putting in a system to discourage that quite easily. "I don't do this because it's fun! I do it because it works!!!" "Fine, it won't work anymore. Go play other quests and have fun."

[Systern]

Hey Fooz, one thing that I would really like to see added in addition to all the awesome stuff you've mentioned coming down the pipe...

Can your trip past heroic to epic rest Bravery Bonus Flags, maybe? My girlfriend really likes heroic Gianthold. I like having the streak while Epic to push to cap easier. It'd be nice if we were both happy.

Of course, with the curve adjustment (are you just flattening the arc, or adjusting its length btw?) and introduction of sagas and daily quest bonuses, I'm not sure it'll still be that big of an issue in the future.

The current bravery streak mechanics really do make players choose to do content either at heroic or elite, and dissuades from doing both.

[Darkrok]

Sorry, my own stupidity ate a longer post so these will be short answers.


Doesn't that sound too good to be true to you? I also recalled that a player suggested the premise of featuring lesser run quests with a daily bonus a few months back and it was received well by Turbine. I figure it's more likely they took a good idea to give less popular stuff a temporary boost rather than they are rewarding farming a quest over the course of a week rather than a day.

Would depend on the bonus involved but I could see it being workable either way. The wording definitely didn't make it clear to me...I could read it either way and see it as workable either way depending on the details.


People rage and complain about soul-numbing, boring, repetitive grinding. I can see Turbine putting in a system to discourage that quite easily. "I don't do this because it's fun! I do it because it works!!!" "Fine, it won't work anymore. Go play other quests and have fun."

I definitely agree with their goals here...just saying that at cap there really isn't enough content to have ransack timers for xp, especially with some of the more active players in the game.

In my specific case I have a toon that's likely to stay at cap for a long time. I love pulling him out once a week to loot ransack rusted blades and the deal and the demon. Current system I can get ED xp for all the runs while I'm doing loot ransack. Under the new system if they have less runs to xp ransack than to loot ransack I couldn't do that...I'd probably sacrifice 25-50% of the xp gained depending on how the quest xp ransack rules were structured. It's cases like this that make me think they'd be better off just leaving cap as-is.

[HAL]

Instead of padding up the lower and mid-heroic quest XP, why not just pump up the anemic XP found in the upper heroics?

This^

[Grosbeak07]

I like these changes in general. Of course I reserve final judgement until we see how they actually work on Lamannia.

[Qhualor]

People rage and complain about soul-numbing, boring, repetitive grinding. I can see Turbine putting in a system to discourage that quite easily. "I don't do this because it's fun! I do it because it works!!!" "Fine, it won't work anymore. Go play other quests and have fun."

i really hope that's what happens. for about 3 years i have been watching the lfm unofficially during my down times in the game. i would see what players were running for quests, how many in groups, group makeup, quantity of lfms, how many in what level range etc. over time i saw many changes and ups and downs in activity, but one thing i saw more and more of was the same xp farming quests. i saw less and less lfms for the more unpopular quests and watched how long someone would leave the lfm up for, check to see if they end up soloing by checking the Who, look to see if they were short manning, look to see where the party leader was at that moment and what he/she was doing while trying to fill the group by hovering over the lfm, look to see if the lfm stayed active and he/she would attempt to solo but still accepting join requests, etc.

a change is definitely needed when all you see are the same good xp farming quests on the lfm and little of everything else. boosting the xp in some of the less popular quests would be a start.

[Hokiewa]

The lovefest will come to a rapid end when the other shoe drops. Book it!

[btolson]

Are you also considering divorcing Heroic Completions from Epic Completions for epic'able content?

Purposefully avoiding epic'able content during heroic levels is the most un-fun meta-gaming mechanic in the game, IMO. XP ransack will help with this, but it doesn't sound like it will preserve Bravery Bonus for epic content that was completed during heroic levels, which is what I at least am really after.

[GermanicusMaximus]

Only TrollusMaximus could have nothing positive to say about these much asked-for changes.



The lovefest will come to a rapid end when the other shoe drops. Book it!

OK, just stop! Calling me TrollusMaximus was Thrudh's best attempt at trying to say something funny in a long time, and now you are just going to ruin everything! :D

[TheJedi]

Will the repeat counter still get paused when you hit max xp? or, will destiny xp grinders have to plan out the repeat counter versus the reset timers...

[MelkiorPeasantbane]

Very soon we’ll be opening Lamannia with the newest version of Enhancements. Included in that version of the game code are several new features and changes coming to quest XP in the expansion. We wanted to highlight what’s coming with a very early write up, because the changes that you’ll see on Lamannia are not yet ready for testing, and include a lot of place-holder numbers. Today we wanted to talk about the changes so that you have some insight into what features are coming:

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

We are still refining what the final numbers will be for these changes and bonuses, and as we get closer to Expansion launch day we will go into greater detail. The version that will appear on Lamannia is not meant for testing, and is there merely because we have taken an early game build to continue Enhancements review with players. You’re welcome to provide feedback on what you see, but it is not something Lamannia participants should focus on because it is still a work in progress.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz

Wow...I know I have read some of these ideas before on the forums, but to actually see them implemented is just awesome. Thanks for the info!

[Hokiewa]

OK, just stop! Calling me TrollusMaximus was Thrudh's best attempt at trying to say something funny in a long time, and now you are just going to ruin everything! :D

Lol, even a blind squirrel finds a nut one in awhile

[AlmGhandi]

...much fun and interesting information...
- PurpleFooz

Having important game information posts such as these automatically picked up by the DEV tracker... and not just the Lama dev tracker would be cool! It might even motivate some more of us to go back to lamaland! Otherwise... well I don't usually check the lama dev tracker (downtime... uptime... not clicking chat.... etc) and had to wait to hear it from people in game before checking it out for myself...

IF you are going to do good, informative communication... why not do it loudly!!!

[My2Cents]

I think changing the XP for a quest so it does not stay permanently degraded is critical for new players and/or those who have difficulty finding groups - it relieves the "pressure" of feeling trapped. This was a major issue for me in the beginning and I felt very frustrated.

Please don't lower XP so much because of this that it negates the benefits of this change.

Also: Re Bravery Bonus, in my view is the biggest problem splitting players into class divisions on the LFM panel. Any changes that make TR's less likely to feel COMPELLED to run BB/Elite quests will only help the game as a whole - IMO.

Changes like this to the XP penalty system are one of the biggies for me...

[merentha]

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

I'm hoping by the lower level ranges you mean 1-5. Maybe cutting in half 15-20's individual level xp requirement (TR multiplier) and doubling 1-5s would cut out farming(content)/pooling(experience) at the later levels and add in a reason to run other quests in the lower levels (I skipped all but STK and Sharn in the marketplace this life as well as most of House J).




One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

Sweet! My TR buddy and I were just lamenting that running the Carnival, VoN, Sentinels, Red Fens and now Gianthold on heroic too much will cut out the benefits to xp they can bring in Epic. A side question though, will the Epic versions be able to count towards streak in the future? Many of the quests have a surprising difference in trap amounts and entirely new mobs added in Epic that lack in Heroic (all in developer attempts to make the experience for us fresh). Why not let that count for our streaks? (side note I three times this life went into a room on heroic elite looking for mobs I remembered being there in epic again).



Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Interesting. Could very randomly make for a pleasant surprise.



Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

Finally! My guild mate and I have been commenting on this for quite a while now! An unasked for opinion...make the saga (quest chain completion) worth N25/H40/E80% of the total base XP for the chain (defaulting to the lowest common difficulty ran). [/QUOTE]

[count_spicoli]

Ok all this mostly sounds good. But im not sure why you went to the trouble of this whole new system when you could have just fixed quest xp in level 18-20 quests. I don't remember hearing most people complain about levels 1-17 when they tr but EVERYONE COMPLAINS about amarath, cannith, iq xp. I am even ok with iq because most of the quests are quick and easy. But cannith and amarath on elite are grim endevers that should be rewarded accordingly. ALL you had to do was beef up the quest xp here and you would have sold more of these packs as well as make EVERYONE in this game happy. WHY do you guys refuse to acknowledge this? With all these changes 18-20 WILL still be brutal. Now everyone will just wait for xp timers on vale stuff to wear off so they can do running with devils 400 more times. GRRRRR!!! You guys are killing me with this stuff. FIXXX AMARATH AND CANNITH XP IMMEDIATLY AND STOP ALL THIS CLOWINING AROUND WITH THIS OTHER XP NONSENSE!!!

[Aussir]

Instead of messing with existent XP, just increase the XP in the quests from level 16 and up. Running a level 19 quest and getting 3k of XP is a JOKE.

Lower the XP we get from quests and my temporary break will become permanent.

I keep getting the increasing feeling that Turbine is out to outright kill DDO and this doesn't make me get away from that feeling, quite the opposite. All I see are posts from the Devs with increasingly idiotic ideas.

Between this new "let's lower XP from quests" fail (anyone else thinks it's the opposite? Wake up, guys), the Epic TR fail, the Enhancement Pass fail and the latest string of fails (that still don't get fixed in the new patch), I'm having a hard time to decide which one is the cherry on top of the fail cake.

[FrostBeard]

Good writeup dev's definitely want to hear more on this stuff as it unfolds.

[Frotz]

Adventure Base XP = Adventure level*1,000*Length of Quest modifier.

Quest Modifier

Very Short = 0.25 Modifier
Short = 0.5 Modifier
Medium = 0.75 Modifier
Long = 1.0 Modifier
Very Long = 2.0 Modifier


(And, yes there will have to be some quest length reevaluation done. {Looking at you, Hold for Reinforcements.})
Just a thought: an XP/min spent in the quest reward would dynamically reflect the actual length of quests--call it a rebate. Now one problem with that-is that while it wouldn't give more XP per minute per completion it would give more per XP per completion, and with limited completions available with the repetition penalty it would give more XP per quest over all runs if you ran it more slowly. However, with repetition penalties resetting there'd be no permanent advantage.

[KanedaEX]

Any action that diminishes the grind on this game has my support. Let's hope the changes meet the expectations. Really sick of grinding xp on my TR's

[Hambo]

i like this, but...

why increase lower level xp? i think its fine the way it is and even the average player can get through those levels without xp/min grinding and without much effort. i do like the 15-20 range getting attention though, but i think there would be a lot less griping about xp grind in those levels if the quests and difficulty were rewarding appropriately. i wouldn't doubt it would be too much work or something to just increase the xp on a quest by quest basis in that level range, so it sounds like adjusting the xp curve required is the next best thing.

a little curious as to why a daily bonus for quest completion. sounds like another xp boost added to the game and i think its gotten to the point its silly crazy when you see someone link over 100k xp in elite Von 5. not a big deal i suppose.

overall, i like your post and glad to finally see some attention on TR xp. looks like going down the right path.

My guess is that with the advent of Veteran I, Veteran II and Iconic Alts, the lower levels are being under-utilized. This is an attempt to get those of us who don't run all the lower levels on elite for the favor to revisit some of the content. Same thing with the Saga system, since most of the sweeping arcs start below level 10.

[CaptainSpacePony]

XP... curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

...We are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works... With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.


The devil's in the details, but these will be much appreciated.



Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.


I've always enjoyed bounties in games. It might also help LFMs and stir up interest in less popular content. You may consider opening this to a few quests at time to offer a bonus at different levels.



Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

- PurpleFooz

Sagas sound very interesting.
Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Finally, we will be adding a new way to receive bonus XP: Sagas. New NPCs will be arriving in Eberron and Faerûn who chronicle the deeds of heroes across multiple story archs/adventure packs. By completing all the quests in a given Saga, you can speak with the Saga NPC to claim an extra reward such as a large one-time XP grant, guild XP, or even tomes. The quality of those rewards can also be influenced by running the quests on higher difficulties.

We are still refining what the final numbers will be for these changes and bonuses, and as we get closer to Expansion launch day we will go into greater detail. The version that will appear on Lamannia is not meant for testing, and is there merely because we have taken an early game build to continue Enhancements review with players. You’re welcome to provide feedback on what you see, but it is not something Lamannia participants should focus on because it is still a work in progress.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this early look, as we’d like to continue these types of posts to let players peek behind the DM screen a bit more ahead of Shadowfell Conspiracy.

- PurpleFooz[/QUOTE]

[xberto]

Don't forget the Teamwork XP bonus that will encourage group play and encourage LFM usage by granting an XP bonus to parties that start and complete a quest together :)

[RD2play]

really like the saga stuff :)

the daily xp bonus on quests ... well don't know if I like that. have to see how its implemented.

making lower lvls take more xp and taking the pressure off the 15+ quests will be a good thing, there is way more low lvl content than there is high lvl content. I mea usually I have to skip quests in the low range due to hard capping to fast, and above 15 you suddenly have to repeat quests multiple times to even get the lvlup (not really an issue cus there's lots of gear and flagging stuff to farm there but still)

getting rid of the repeat penalty in the way t works for ransack tm is a good idea imo. it will allow people to run quests more often and increase the chance your pug group will fill with vets :)

all in all I think it will be an improvement to the game

[EllisDee37]

Don't forget the Teamwork XP bonus that will encourage group play and encourage LFM usage by granting an XP bonus to parties that start and complete a quest together :)I like the concept but dislike the idea of waiting around before starting.

I just proposed this (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/419096-On-Bravery-Streak-Bonuses?p=5027643&viewfull=1#post5027643) in another thread, but it was inspired partly by this post of yours so here seems a good place to repost it:

Just to toss this out there, I could see maybe a "balanced party" bonus as something like 5% per unique class icon in the party that completes any quest without a late arrival penalty.

Your class icon is the icon that display in the party list, so my 12/8 fighter/cleric would count as a fighter since he shows a fighter icon.

Upon quest completion, every party member who does not have a late arrival penalty (and is not a hireling) is counted for these purposes. However many different class icons are present are added together for x, and everyone in the group gets x*5% "balanced party" bonus. Whether the late arrivals get this bonus or not isn't terribly relevant to me.

Let's say my wizard hops in an elite crucible at level 16 for the [bravery] bonus, puts up an IP LFM and pops a hire to start on the maze. A sorc joins, then another sorc, so I dismiss the hire and the three of us complete the maze. Now barbarian join, I tell him to pop a hire if he likes, and he does. I do the trap room and swim. After the swim a ranger joins the lfm and sprints out to quest just for the favor and relics. He gets 80% late arrival penalty as we complete.

At completion, we now have a wizard, 2 sorcs, a barb, a fvs hire, and a late-arriving ranger. That's 3 unique classes -- wizard, sorc, barb -- so the group's "balanced party" bonus is 3*5=15%.

[maddmatt70]

I like some of your xp concepts, but agree that increasing the lower level xp is about selling stones and is a mistake because it will discourage newer players who want to see faster progress as they play.

Have you devs thought about changing the xp stones? I think the xp stones should not be level based, but rather just provide a base experience and furthermore useable at any heroic level e.g. they are worth say 1 million xp and are useable at any level between 1-20 to provide heroic xp. You devs are creating a false incentive with these xp stones which is contrary to the goal of retaining newer players.

[digital_terror1]

I don't believe increasing the exp a low level TR will need will be an issue once it goes live, for a couple reasons.

1. If this daily bonus idea applies to every quest, that will likely balance out the increased xp needed at lower levels.

2. I ran a 12th life TR from 1-20+ easily, never repeating any quest more than twice total. First run elite, then for those quests with really nice rewards or high exp I may have done a single hard and a single normal run. MOST levels I left several bravery bonus eligible quests undone because I capped out on the exp needed. I was capping out every single level all the way up to 19...and only had to consider farming anything at that point for my last 2 ranks to 20. Rarely used an xp pot unless I obtained it from the daily dice. First thing I did after taking my next level was to clean up the quests left behind 1 run each on elite. Doing this life in this manner has led me to believe that MOST of the 'lack of xp' that players experience at any level is due more to taking levels too soon and not working the system that is already in place, i.e. the bravery bonus system.

3. Having a resetting xp ransack that would restore full value for the quest periodically will greatly assist players with leveling at all ranges, especially f2p or premium. I do believe, however, that the xp ransack system should be denied f2p. Premium and up only.

[Teh_Troll]

Don't forget the Teamwork XP bonus that will encourage group play and encourage LFM usage by granting an XP bonus to parties that start and complete a quest together :)

do this and make the stupid death penalty PERSONAL and not affect a whole party.

[Gljosh]

Well so far people have mentioned increasing the XP at the later non-epic levels. Recently I ran Jungles of Khyber on Epic Hard for roughly 60k XP and it took about 10 minutes (we did all the optionals). The Epic levels seem to fly by (300k till 21, 450k till 22) the amount of XP is insanely good (don't nerf this). Levels 1~17 go be pretty quick, lots of quests to run through solid XP. Than 18, 19, 20 things grind to a halt, that last 1.5 million XP seems to take forever, unless you bank from 18 till 20. Those last 3 levels you pretty much have Reavers Reach for decent XP grinding, IQ quests can be run pretty quick but the XP is less than stellar. Currently, we have XP pots, BBs, XP Tomes, Airship Shrines, and Stones to reduce the grind. So we are not short on bonuses (all available on the DDO Store), but short on decent XP (Quest and Wilderness) and requiring too much XP (roughly 1/3 of the total XP earned 1.36 million to 1.9 million, 2.1 mil to 3.1 mil, and 2.9 mil to 4.4 mil). A third life TR needs more XP for 17 to 20 and a first lifer needs from 1 till 17.

[TBot1234]

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions. Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value. Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.

Thanks for the news. More information is needed.

I play only one toon nowadays. What are the odds that the "quest of the day" will be in my level range?

If the system is different then "quest of the day" can we hear how it will work?

Thank you.

[oradafu]

Thanks for the news. More information is needed.

I play only one toon nowadays. What are the odds that the "quest of the day" will be in my level range?

If the system is different then "quest of the day" can we hear how it will work?

Thank you.

I too suspect that it's basically going to be "quest of the day". If you're curious about what the odds are, here it is:

01 - 3%
02 - 5%
03 - 6%
04 - 5%
05 - 6%
06 - 5%
07 - 5%
08 - 5%
09 - 5%
10 - 4%
11 - 5%
12 - 3%
13 - 3%
14 - 2%
15 - 3%
16 - 4%
17 - 4%
18 - 2%
19 - 4%
20 - 3%
21 - 5%
22 - 4%
23 - 2%
24 - 4%
25 - 1%
26 - 0%
27 - 1%
28 - 0%

I took the number of quests at each level (including raids) and divided it by the number of total quest (363), then rounded upward. That includes the 10 quests in the upcoming expansion, which we've been told are 5 for level 16 and 5 at level 27. Level 25 was rounded up to 1%, but is really 0.002%.

[myliftkk_v2]

2. I ran a 12th life TR from 1-20+ easily, never repeating any quest more than twice total. First run elite, then for those quests with really nice rewards or high exp I may have done a single hard and a single normal run. MOST levels I left several bravery bonus eligible quests undone because I capped out on the exp needed. I was capping out every single level all the way up to 19...and only had to consider farming anything at that point for my last 2 ranks to 20. Rarely used an xp pot unless I obtained it from the daily dice. First thing I did after taking my next level was to clean up the quests left behind 1 run each on elite. Doing this life in this manner has led me to believe that MOST of the 'lack of xp' that players experience at any level is due more to taking levels too soon and not working the system that is already in place, i.e. the bravery bonus system.


As a VIP I tend agree with what you're feeling above. Not sure if that holds true for those who don't have access to all content, but I agree that if players arent capping out and running everything at level or no more than two above before they cap, they're leaving xp on the table.

On the other hand, I took a different toon and grouped with someone TRs who repeated the living bejesus out of a handful quests and reached 20 quickly, but left a large amount of content unplayed that I had to go back and re-run for favor.

[Alistina]

I am unable to update the Lamannia launcher. After it downloads the 'update game data' to 100%, it shows unspecified patch error, and doesn't move to the next 'disconnect part'.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[Deadlock]

When you said very soon last week, does that mean we'll have it this week?

Any news greatly appreciated, there are a lot of people especially keen to see the improvements made since the alpha version to see the impact of the torrent of feedback and the surveys.

8 weeks yesterday till the expansion release. Hopefully enough time and resource available to gather feedback, refine and troubleshoot before the release.

[Silverleafeon]

Next a new daily bonus is being added to quest completions.
Notice the "s" on quest completions.

Every day, a quest will have a bonus added to the base XP value.
Which leads me to believe the "a" in this sentence is a generalization pronoun,
not a singularization pronoun.

Playing the quest on any difficulty level qualifies for this daily bonus.
Which leads me to believe the "the" in this sentence is simply referral.


But time will tell...

[TBot1234]

I too suspect that it's basically going to be "quest of the day". If you're curious about what the odds are, here it is:

01 - 3%
02 - 5%
03 - 6%
04 - 5%
05 - 6%
06 - 5%
07 - 5%
08 - 5%
09 - 5%
10 - 4%
11 - 5%
12 - 3%
13 - 3%
14 - 2%
15 - 3%
16 - 4%
17 - 4%
18 - 2%
19 - 4%
20 - 3%
21 - 5%
22 - 4%
23 - 2%
24 - 4%
25 - 1%
26 - 0%
27 - 1%
28 - 0%

I took the number of quests at each level (including raids) and divided it by the number of total quest (363), then rounded upward. That includes the 10 quests in the upcoming expansion, which we've been told are 5 for level 16 and 5 at level 27. Level 25 was rounded up to 1%, but is really 0.002%.

You are too cool for words. Thanks. It illustrates my feeling that a "quest of the day" system will not anything to jump up and down about, since there is only at most a 6% chance I'll be able to run the quest of the day.

[oradafu]

You are too cool for words. Thanks. It illustrates my feeling that a "quest of the day" system will not anything to jump up and down about, since there is only at most a 6% chance I'll be able to run the quest of the day.

If the daily bonus is a "quest of the day" type system, you should have a better than 6% chance for most levels. That's because you can always do a quest on elite while you are two levels over, which most people who TR appear to do.

If they are going with a "quest of the day" system, I'd like to see all the level 1 quests removed from circulation and possibly even the level 2 quests. I'd also remove the handful of solo quests. If the grouping for raids was healthy (like it was pre-MOTU), I'd suggest removing them also from rotation; but since the grouping is so poor for raids now, I'd keep them in rotation also. I'd also probably adjust the chances upward of getting the bonus for quests that are rarely ran at level and/or contain poor XP.

[EllisDee37]

I really hope it's for all quests, not just one randomly selected quest each day. But if it must be a single randomly selected quest each day, I would remove all raids and all F2P quests from the rotation. This would eliminate all level 1 & 2 quests, as well as all those raids people run for 0 XP because there's always a 25 in the group. (eg: Shroud.) Plus it would encourage VIP/Premium via incentive as opposed to punishing F2P with penalties, which is always nice.

The more I think about it, the more unworkable a single random quest system is. Imagine today's quest is...Tangleroot part 8.

[Cyr]

Couple comments...

1) I see no mention of upping xp in horrible xp/min quests right now such as cannith challenges(after first run), amaranth, cannith quests... That is troubling. There is very low hanging fruit out there which is a blight on quest design right now when it comes to xp...those should have never shown up in game as they are.

2) quest ransack reset...could be great could be a mess depending on the numbers...ransack at 3 times and weeks to reset would be a disaster for example...

3) Rebalancing TR 2/3 xp curves...okay higher level nneds too just come down...lower level DOES NOT NEED to be increased....my favor log is pretty full already in that lower range...no need to add lots of grinding down there...I mean more runs of WW really seems like a needed game change to anyone???

[Kydrou]

Fixxing Exp Curves is always nice.

Unless is for making them longer.

The only flaw, is that the lower levels would take longer, because they would require more experience.
Not only starter quests are long, and with low exp in comparison to the latter quests, but they are also LONG. Misery's Peak is minimum 15 minutes, for me, solo. 1st time i ran it? 23 minutes. Even now, on a 6 man party takes 12 minutes.
This would only increase exp-farming, and that is boring. And remember kids, Boring is Bad. BAD.
I'd rather play 3 hours of 12 different quests than 30 minutes of Kobold's New Ringleader everyday.

The rest was Gold! Take the pyrite out!

[Lonewolfe]

If the grouping for raids was healthy (like it was pre-MOTU), I'd suggest removing them also from rotation; but since the grouping is so poor for raids now, I'd keep them in rotation also. I'd also probably adjust the chances upward of getting the bonus for quests that are rarely ran at level and/or contain poor XP.[/QUOTE]

The problem is, how many raids are ran at level except for TS or maybe FoT and CitW?

[Yalinaa]

If the grouping for raids was healthy (like it was pre-MOTU), I'd suggest removing them also from rotation; but since the grouping is so poor for raids now, I'd keep them in rotation also. I'd also probably adjust the chances upward of getting the bonus for quests that are rarely ran at level and/or contain poor XP.

The problem is, how many raids are ran at level except for TS or maybe FoT and CitW?[/QUOTE]

I usually do VoN 5-6 with BB in most of my TRs, very good xp.

But honestly, I don't understand the reasons behind these changes... It seems everyday a new completionist pops up on my home server (Cannith), everywhere I go, a lot of legend characters are around... so, it's probably NOT THAT BAD to level up, TRing is just booooooming right now... I do it as well, it was never such as easy as now, and I did a lot of legend lives. The only possible problem, as others already mentioned, the low base xp of the lvl 17-20 quests (compared to their length and difficulty).

So, my honest question is, what is the REAL reason for the changes, when you can fix the issue easily with higher xp on lvl 17-20 area. I'm waiting for an answer here...

[Systern]

The problem is, how many raids are ran at level except for TS or maybe FoT and CitW?

I usually do VoN 5-6 with BB in most of my TRs, very good xp.

But honestly, I don't understand the reasons behind these changes... It seems everyday a new completionist pops up on my home server (Cannith), everywhere I go, a lot of legend characters are around... so, it's probably NOT THAT BAD to level up, TRing is just booooooming right now... I do it as well, it was never such as easy as now, and I did a lot of legend lives. The only possible problem, as others already mentioned, the low base xp of the lvl 17-20 quests (compared to their length and difficulty).

So, my honest question is, what is the REAL reason for the changes, when you can fix the issue easily with higher xp on lvl 17-20 area. I'm waiting for an answer here...

to spotlight/advertise/draw interest to the lesser run packs... Restless Isles... Threnal... Delera's Sidequests... Breathe some life into all the forgotten little quests that no one bothers with...

[Yalinaa]

... Restless Isles... Threnal...

Oh... When I do TR I still prefer the FUN, so... If I want pain, I guess, I could watch some Uwe Boll movies instead... or something equivalent.:)

[Eilyen]

Currently the "Daily completion bonus" is active on Lamannia and its not a "quest of the day" bonus but a +20% of base to every quest the first time you run it in a given day.

[Tscheuss]

Currently the "Daily completion bonus" is active on Lamannia and its not a "quest of the day" bonus but a +20% of base to every quest the first time you run it in a given day.

Ooh, nice. :D

Definitely incentive to spread the questing around instead of repeating in the same day.

[Seikojin]

As a VIP I tend agree with what you're feeling above. Not sure if that holds true for those who don't have access to all content, but I agree that if players arent capping out and running everything at level or no more than two above before they cap, they're leaving xp on the table.

On the other hand, I took a different toon and grouped with someone TRs who repeated the living bejesus out of a handful quests and reached 20 quickly, but left a large amount of content unplayed that I had to go back and re-run for favor.

I think, and agree with, the xp changes despite how easy it is to gain levels through first running everything on elite. Ultimately we have to look at the system as a whole. DnD is about choice. You choose adventures and paths to glory that are for you to relive and tell. This new change can allow a rogue to go all rogue. Do quests that are perfect for the rogue to shine in. And reach the same level as the mage who did every quest, or the fighter who did only quests he or she would excel at.


I am unable to update the Lamannia launcher. After it downloads the 'update game data' to 100%, it shows unspecified patch error, and doesn't move to the next 'disconnect part'.

Any help would be much appreciated.

There is an issue with the patcher. To get around it, right click on the shortcut for lamannia, choose properties, then add -invoker at the end of the target box. It should be a path to the launcher exe a space and -invoker (c:\programfiles(x86)\turbine\lamannia\launcher.ex e -invoker). When you relaunch it, it should properly update with a bunch of new UI's.

Your issue may not be that, but that was the most recent workaround. Also, you can go to the lamannia folder, into the backup folder, and drag those contents back to the main folder, replacing everything, and essentially roll the build back and force a new update past whatever build you have that is broken. My son had some patching issues and we did that among some other things to try and get it patching again. You can move the patch bin file from the game directory to also invalidate and force re-downloading of patches as well, iirc.

[XxJFGxX]

Very soon we’ll be opening Lamannia with the newest version of Enhancements. Included in that version of the game code are several new features and changes coming to quest XP in the expansion. We wanted to highlight what’s coming with a very early write up, because the changes that you’ll see on Lamannia are not yet ready for testing, and include a lot of place-holder numbers. Today we wanted to talk about the changes so that you have some insight into what features are coming.
- PurpleFooz


How about you add a enhancement tree solely for spellpower for arcanes/divines especially arcanes so they will not be stomped into the ground completely.

[azrael4h]

There's a TON of quests for a level 12-14 to run... At 12 you can run Threnal, Sorrowdusk, Restless Isles, VON 5-6... Then after that you have GH, Sands, Droam Invasion quests, Relic of Sovereign Past, Invaders, some house J undead stuff...

Those are the most fun levels (you just got your greensteel out of the bank), and there's plenty to do.

You forgot Tempest Spine (l10, 12 on elite).

Is flattening the level ranges of some of the older packs also in the cards? Such as the above-mentioned Sorrowdusk, which is levels 6-10.

[Dandonk]

This sounds promising. Getting my heroic completions to not permanently count against my epic repetitions will be nice. Looking forward to seeing more about this.

[Stoner81]

We’ve previously mentioned in our Reincarnation discussions that we’ll be reworking the XP curve to be less steep for 2nd and 3rd life reincarnations. Those curves will be ameliorated, so that the increase in XP needed to level isn’t such a drastic increase in the 15-20 range, and so that the lower level ranges require move XP to level.

If you get this right then I think this could be really really good, I never seem to get time to run various content in the lower levels because I level up so fast (I never run 3BC stuff for example) anything where you have more choices to earn the XP instead of a very limited level range has to be a good thing surely?

Stoner81.

[SirShen]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.

[Charononus]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.

Have they lowered legend life xp? If not that reallllllly reallllly hurts bad.

[FranOhmsford]

SAGAS!
-------

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!......

Give NOTHING LESS than a GUARANTEED LEGENDARY VICTORY to People completing these!

This is the PERFECT PLACE to put in GUARANTEED High Guild Renown rewards!

[FranOhmsford]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.

Aye.

Come on Devs - LOOK AT YOUR GAME!

There's MANY MANY Quests that we're basically forced into Repeating - Invaders, ALL of Orchard {the biggest one being LITANY - Minimum 4 Repeats!} and Many others!

If you're going to do this then PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S GOOD!....
Make these FORCED REPEAT Quests NOT a part of it!


Honestly it's a GREAT idea all round and will INSTANTLY put a Stop to the Ubiquitous Shadow Crypt/VoN 3/Wiz King Farms!
No Longer seeing Kobold's New Ringleader EHHHHHHHHN LFMs is going to be GREAT too!

BUT

FORCED REPEAT QUESTS ABSOLUTELY MUST BE IMMUNE!
I DON'T want to be Earning PITIFUL SAVE COYLE XP in my FOURTH run of LITANY {ESPECIALLY if I'm doing the Ghost Beholder LAST!}.

[oradafu]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.


Aye.

Come on Devs - LOOK AT YOUR GAME!

There's MANY MANY Quests that we're basically forced into Repeating - Invaders, ALL of Orchard {the biggest one being LITANY - Minimum 4 Repeats!} and Many others!

If you're going to do this then PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S GOOD!....
Make these FORCED REPEAT Quests NOT a part of it!


Honestly it's a GREAT idea all round and will INSTANTLY put a Stop to the Ubiquitous Shadow Crypt/VoN 3/Wiz King Farms!
No Longer seeing Kobold's New Ringleader EHHHHHHHHN LFMs is going to be GREAT too!

BUT

FORCED REPEAT QUESTS ABSOLUTELY MUST BE IMMUNE!
I DON'T want to be Earning PITIFUL SAVE COYLE XP in my FOURTH run of LITANY {ESPECIALLY if I'm doing the Ghost Beholder LAST!}.

This is exactly why said I was worried about the Devs playing around with the XP, unless it was to increase the horrible XP in the upper heroics. I voiced my fear that doing any XP adjustment would create a new trouble XP spot and the most likely area would be levels 12 to 14, since that's the area with the least amount of quests after Shadowfell gets released. Naysayers claimed that I was raising red flags for no reason since all the "fun" quests and great XP quests were in that area so players could just run those quests multiple times. Well, I'm pretty sure that we've now got a new trouble XP spot, right where I predicted.

Instead of just adding a ransack XP timer like players asked, the Devs have decided to add a 30% draconian XP hit on repeating quests. Why is wrong with the current XP penalty staying? If there's really something wrong, which I don't, just get rid of the "first three completions have no adjustment to xp" mechanic. But being hit with a 30% XP hit just for repeating a quest is probably one of the dumbest things added to the game lately (and there's alot of competition lately for asinine projects and ideas for the past few weeks, much less past year).

[chrisdinus7]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.

As is being noted, this is a terrible change. If you want to encourage people to run different quests, then do so through changing the first time rewards and adding the daily bonuses. No need to nuke repetitions. Heck, a lot of the people still playing probably like repeating quests, since it has been such a feature for so long.

[Kadderly]

What would be more reasonable would be a stacking 10% penalty per run that is reduced by 10% per day +1-3% reduction per daily bonus earned. This would be meaningful motivation to encourage more varied quest choices without being completely crippling. Even if you ransacked a quest completely in a day of farming it would be available in a week (approximate) same as ransacking chests. If you are leveling you could run the quest once-twice a day till you outlevel it which is fair about deterring grinding via just a handful of quests without harming the leveling progress of multi-TR folks or simply people who play 12+ hours a day and level fast.

[Nascoe]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.

Hm, I think the idea is sound, but it will need a bit of work on the details. If you do the quest 4 times in a row (EHHN?) you would end up getting very little XP for the last 2 runs, and if you just wait around it would take an awful lot of time to do the quest again.
On the other hand, if you play a string of say 4 quests, then after the first completion of all 4 of them, you would already be back up 3 % from playing other quests. So if you go and play 20 other quests, then you can get it up to a reasonable level for your second time through. So it leads away from mind numbing grinding of a single (or a couple of) quest(s), which is very much what is needed.

I can imagine that with a bit of fine-tuning the % of decay drop-off for playing other quests in between as well as setting the penalty to say 10%-20%-30% or something this could work fine.
It should be combined with the evening out the XP-curve and revamping XP/quest for some of the levels with little quests though.

[oradafu]

Hm, I think the idea is sound, but it will need a bit of work on the details. If you do the quest 4 times in a row (EHHN?) you would end up getting very little XP for the last 2 runs, and if you just wait around it would take an awful lot of time to do the quest again.
On the other hand, if you play a string of say 4 quests, then after the first completion of all 4 of them, you would already be back up 3 % from playing other quests. So if you go and play 20 other quests, then you can get it up to a reasonable level for your second time through. So it leads away from mind numbing grinding of a single (or a couple of) quest(s), which is very much what is needed.

I can imagine that with a bit of fine-tuning the % of decay drop-off for playing other quests in between as well as setting the penalty to say 10%-20%-30% or something this could work fine.
It should be combined with the evening out the XP-curve and revamping XP/quest for some of the levels with little quests though.

Levels 11 to 14 only have 9 to 11 quests each. Level 16 now has an improved 14 quests, just like level 17. And to round out the Heroic upper levels, level 18 has has 8 quests with very poor XP and level 19 has 16 quests with very poor XP also.

With that in mind, where do you suggest players should seek these 20 quests without getting hit with the repeat penalty or preventing XP from being gained in the next level? Also keep in mind that Epic quests are off-limits for anyone under level 20.

[Dandonk]

I like the idea of the xp bonus for doing the quest first that day but i dont like this

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

what about quests like Invaders were you need todo the quest alot more then 3 times. The xp hit will be alot. So now if i did that quest 6 times i would have not play it for a 18 days. DO you want players to stop playing? This will hit casual players with not many quest packs hard.

Yikes, seems very harsh. Will at least need a few penalty free runs, and lower stacking penalty and higher reduction rate. Atm it seems insanely harsh, especially to new/ftp players that we want to keep around in hopes of them going VIP/premium some time.

[Chette]

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)


Whaa, where did that come from? That's horrible!!! Do you know what that will do to casual players that don't own all the packs? Well, I guess they probably do, maybe that's the point...

Here's a suggestion. If you want people to stop running certain content many times, why don't you IMPROVE the content of the crappy quests that nobody ever runs, instead of destroying the XP of the fun/good quests that are frequently run? Instead of bringing everything down a level, why not make all quests something people want to run? Doesn't that make sense? Won't that encourage people to run more quests, buy more packs, oh and, I don't know, maybe make your game overall more enjoyable?

Additionally, as others have said, I don't think you even considered the fact that there are many quests in this game that MUST be run more than once, for flagging or item gathering purposes. Nobody in the development team thought about it, but when you ask the people who play the game, they'll instantly realize this. Or what about the situation where you're online leveling up short man with a few guildies. Your friend logs on and see you're running a certain quests. They ask to join, but then need to do elite first, for bravery streak. Usually, if you're a cool person, you say sure man, we'll help you out, and you run the quest again. No problem. Now you want people to take a massive XP penalty for helping out a friend. Way to promote friendly grouping there.

[SirShen]

Whaa, where did that come from? That's horrible!!! Do you know what that will do to casual players that don't own all the packs? Well, I guess they probably do, maybe that's the point...

Here's a suggestion. If you want people to stop running certain content many times, why don't you IMPROVE the content of the crappy quests that nobody ever runs, instead of destroying the XP of the fun/good quests that are frequently run? Instead of bringing everything down a level, why not make all quests something people want to run? Doesn't that make sense? Won't that encourage people to run more quests, buy more packs, oh and, I don't know, maybe make your game overall more enjoyable?

Additionally, as others have said, I don't think you even considered the fact that there are many quests in this game that MUST be run more than once, for flagging or item gathering purposes. Nobody in the development team thought about it, but when you ask the people who play the game, they'll instantly realize this. Or what about the situation where you're online leveling up short man with a few guildies. Your friend logs on and see you're running a certain quests. They ask to join, but then need to do elite first, for bravery streak. Usually, if you're a cool person, you say sure man, we'll help you out, and you run the quest again. No problem. Now you want people to take a massive XP penalty for helping out a friend. Way to promote friendly grouping there.

This is what will happen you run the quest on elite, hard, normal and casual and then you get hit with -30% so no way are you going to see an lfm and think ill run that again. It will stop players grouping up even more. Also the Daily Playthough Bonus +20% is bugged you go into a quest and it there when you look again ITS gone.

[MangLord]

I think the changes sound great.

My only concern is that instead of getting the level 19 blues as a multiple TR, that one big plateau will be replaced with several smaller ones. Not really a huge deal, but at least at high level you have a lot of powers to work with, whereas a low level wizard or favored soul (for example) is going to be stuck grinding XP without a wealth of tools at their disposal. Personally, I would not want to spend any more time as a gimpy zombie pale master than I had to.

I do think the ransack penalty is a little excessive. I run with a lot of people in several guilds regularly, and wind up helping people flag for Tor, Litany, Shroud, etc several times each life. Not that I won't do it with a massive xp hit, because my friends are the primary reason I play, but I don't feel like I should be penalized for being a team player in an MMO. If the XP takes a hit, then please increase the droprate of named items in a similarly stacking fashion. I would gladly run LoD chain 10x for no xp if I were guaranteed to finally get my envenomed blade shard that I've been farming for the past year. I'm getting no xp on 40+ runs anyways with nothing to show for it.

[Mephisto-Helix]

I agree, those penalties are absurd. Whomever thought this up really has no grasp on tr'ing for completionist nor how badly this will affect grouping. It's silly and vindictive and has no place in our game. Scrap it or stand to lose many many more players.

[GrrArgh]

I just logged in to Lama, just to mouse around a bit and the new xp mechanics were the first thing to 'interest' me. I must admit to a feeling of dread when reading the above pictured blurbit, but, in the spirit of true munchkins everywhere I put that aside and did a little playtesting. You've got to understand a thing well in order to leverage it to your maximum advantage. That being said.....

I went out and ran The Miller's Debt.

Once with bonuses (tome, VIP perk, first time completion and all that).
A second time with no penalty. (As I understand it, you get one free run outside the first time penalty immunity that begins the ransack incrementation.)
A third run with -30%.
A fourth run with -60%.
A fifth run with -90%.

Ok. That seems simple enough. Let's go run Arachnophobia.

One run. Ah, look at that. Daily Bonus. Cool. I should be able to go back to The Miller's Debt and see that make a difference.

Anticipated xp take: -90% (capped ransack penalty) +1% (for running that Arachnophobia pass) = -89%

A sixth run on The Miller's Debt. Actual xp take: NO XP AWARDED.

Putting aside everything else. The system as described is broken.

Moving on.

Hypotheticals now.

#1

If I ransack a quest to 90% and am content to run it at this level, (honestly? I run -99% quests all the time. Kill/Breakable/trap/door xp bonuses aren't penalized and I can make quite a killing on those alone), that means a couple things. One. I can only run quests I am one level above or less. Two levels above and I get a -10% penalty that means NO XP AWARDED. That's limiting. I don't like that.

#2

If I plan on ransacking a quest to 90% and then gaining some (immediate, that day) xp back....well, let's see. I've already admitted to running at -99% xp on LIVE. But that's on quests so far below me that I'm just wanting a braindead solo run or 20 after I get off work. Let's be real conservative and say I want to maintain about -80%. That's 10 fresh quests. I'm not seeing any level restrictions here. So....I start my DDO-day by running 10 Korthos-Harbor quests on my level 15 character and then go to ransack the quests I want for a daily 10% reduction to the penalties I'm accruing? There's 26 Level 1&2 quests.....it seems (at least on a daily basis of the thing) that I'm now adding a huge grind to my shorter grind to pull less xp now so I can make more xp over the coming week? That's more time spent at a lower level than I'm used to/want. Maybe that's the goal? *shrug* I'm not making judgements at this point. I'm just looking at how this might affect me. Love it or hate it....how do I leverage it?

#3

If I plan on ransacking a quest to 90% and then not running it again....+5% a day. I mean I suppose I could make a few runs on one character and then shelve him for 180 days while I run other characters (I have 30+, sue me, I like building characters.) but I DO like to play my favorites more than one day every 6 months. Okay, okay. I know that's the extreme end of the bell-curve. Extra runs of daily first time things will help mitigate the wait......so.....

#4

If I'm looking at a quest I really like and really like grinding (they do exist). I can see myself currently running it and only it for a whole Saturday on and off. 10xN, H, E makes for 12 runs. But since the first runs are exempt on the other difficulties still. We're looking at 10x runs in one day for the sake of xp penalty. So, two penalty free runs? Then maybe a quick (hah) bounce through the harbor and korthos for a +26% makes run three -4%. Run four: -34%. Run five: -64% and locked? (-90% capped +26%) Run six through ten: -64%. That's how I'm seeing it anyways. Now for a comparison check.

Old Way: 100%+100%+100%+90%+80%+70%+60%+50%+40%+30% = 720%
New Way: 100%+100%+97%+ 67%+37%+37%+37%+37%+37%+37% = 586%

Hmmm....oooookay.....that sucks.

Well what if I don't go for one day overkill. What if I break it up over two days Saturdays a week apart where I've been too busy to plan in the intervening time (it happens). The oldway progression won't be affected. The new way will require two passes throguh all of Korthos and the Harbor (ick). But the numbers would look something like:

Old Way: 720%

New Way (Day1): 100%+100%+97%+ 67%+37%+
*Seven days pass throwing 35% in. But.....does the first next two runs bounce the decay back up to a full 90%? No idea. But let's assume.
New Way (Day2): 72%+42%+37%+37%+37% = 626%

So.....seven extra days, two long runs through Korthos/Harbor (or the equivilant out there in actual xp generating quests) and I'm still not pulling the xp I used to.

Ok, that's enough imagination for today. I'm going to go play LIVE some more now.

In conclusion though....

As far as I can see, we're reducing grind and making xp more plentiful by increasing grind and giving you less xp. *shrug*

And it bears mentioning once again (to be fair) that I tend to pull most of my xp from kill/breakable type bonuses anyways. As long as I can pull 1% of base xp I've personally got nothing to complain about. But it's not going to stop me from trying to leverage whatever system we have/get. My time is precious to me. Where I choose to spend it - how I choose to spend it.

Feel free to point out a better schema to me. This is just how my mind has wrapped around what I've seen of the new change. I could be missing something HUGE and/or obvious. I hope I am. The world in which I've missed the point is a familiar one. Just set me straight.

[GrrArgh]

#3

If I plan on ransacking a quest to 90% and then not running it again....+5% a day. I mean I suppose I could make a few runs on one character and then shelve him for 180 days while I run other characters (I have 30+, sue me, I like building characters.) but I DO like to play my favorites more than one day every 6 months. Okay, okay. I know that's the extreme end of the bell-curve. Extra runs of daily first time things will help mitigate the wait......so.....

It's not letting me edit my post and I just realized the grevious math error here.

#3

If I plan on ransacking a quest to 90% and then not running it again....+5% a day. I mean I suppose I could make a few runs on one character and then shelve him for 18 days while I run other characters (I have 30+, sue me, I like building characters.) but I DO like to play my favorites more than one day every third week. Okay, okay. I know that's the extreme end of the bell-curve. Extra runs of daily first time things will help mitigate the wait......so.....

[dark270]

I agree, those penalties are absurd. Whomever thought this up really has no grasp on tr'ing for completionist nor how badly this will affect grouping. It's silly and vindictive and has no place in our game. Scrap it or stand to lose many many more players.

agree totally!

if this **** goes thu, im walking away from this game

[Kza]

Way way over the top in extremeely hard xp penalties. This force people to play the game one way. If some ppl like to do the same quest many times i have 0 problems with that. Right thing to do is to make the xp better from bad quests and have a nice decay xp penalty and leave it that way.

Introducing xp decay and in same time make repetitions be way crappier? I dont understand the logic, my brain hurts.

[Zibowskij]

Whaa, where did that come from? That's horrible!!! Do you know what that will do to casual players that don't own all the packs? Well, I guess they probably do, maybe that's the point...

Here's a suggestion. If you want people to stop running certain content many times, why don't you IMPROVE the content of the crappy quests that nobody ever runs, instead of destroying the XP of the fun/good quests that are frequently run? Instead of bringing everything down a level, why not make all quests something people want to run? Doesn't that make sense? Won't that encourage people to run more quests, buy more packs, oh and, I don't know, maybe make your game overall more enjoyable?

Additionally, as others have said, I don't think you even considered the fact that there are many quests in this game that MUST be run more than once, for flagging or item gathering purposes. Nobody in the development team thought about it, but when you ask the people who play the game, they'll instantly realize this. Or what about the situation where you're online leveling up short man with a few guildies. Your friend logs on and see you're running a certain quests. They ask to join, but then need to do elite first, for bravery streak. Usually, if you're a cool person, you say sure man, we'll help you out, and you run the quest again. No problem. Now you want people to take a massive XP penalty for helping out a friend. Way to promote friendly grouping there.

This

[SqueakofDoom]

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y87/shenpet/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg (http://s3.photobucket.com/user/shenpet/media/Xpnerf_zpse1ecf02c.jpg.html)

Please note that the current values are placeholders. The command to change them is currently not working :(

Also, GrrArgh, the quest not giving you any XP on your sixth run is a bug. We have a fix for it, but I'm not sure when that fix will make it to Lamannia (probably in a couple of weeks.)

[TPICKRELL]

While I can understand the intent of this, the penalty accrues way to fast and goes away way to slowly. Until we see the new XP leveling curve, we don't know how bad this really is, but with the live XP curve it would make leveling so painful, especially in the 15-20 range that I'd probably stop TRing all together.

Glad I've been grinding out all my alt's destinies now before this travesty goes live.

At the very least you should be able to run a quest 2 times without penalty, and then at least once per day per toon.

There are only a handful of level 16-20 quests that have acceptable XP, so having this severe a system will break playability in those ranges unless the new curves allow a once and done leveling for multiple tr toons.

[Nascoe]

At the very least you should be able to run a quest 2 times without penalty, and then at least once per day per toon.

You can do the quest multiple times before the decay sets in. You can do each difficulty for first time completion, and then you can do them another time without penalty, decay starts with 3rd time - see GrrArgh'S post above:

Once with bonuses (tome, VIP perk, first time completion and all that).
A second time with no penalty. (As I understand it, you get one free run outside the first time penalty immunity that begins the ransack incrementation.)
A third run with -30%.
A fourth run with -60%.
A fifth run with -90%.

[caissede12]

Please note that the current values are placeholders. The command to change them is currently not working :(


Is it possible to know what kind of numbers Devs think implementing? might help people cool down a little... exept if actual number that will go up on live will be 29% decrease instead of 30%... (you know, just so it isnt the "same" as right now!) Because it did happen we get told the numbers are placeholders, but they end up going live nearly the same.

[Mephisto-Helix]

We've had 'placeholder' speeches before and wouldn't ya know, the placeholder figure just goes to live. The collectible turn in was also 'placeholder' and we all know how that trainsmash went ahead regardless. So forgive me if I don't quite believe it.

Just know, as stated many times already, that as it currently stands ....... you are going to unfun this game, big time.

[oradafu]

We've had 'placeholder' speeches before and wouldn't ya know, the placeholder figure just goes to live. The collectible turn in was also 'placeholder' and we all know how that trainsmash went ahead regardless. So forgive me if I don't quite believe it.

Just know, as stated many times already, that as it currently stands ....... you are going to unfun this game, big time.

I'm another not holding my breath on the "placeholder" being changed. At least not changed in the players favor. Or if it does get changed, something even worse will be adjusted against the players.

As people keep repeating, if you want players to run more quests or buy older packs, increase the XP to those quests. Also, stop giving the upper heroic quests horrible XP, as if the cap is still 20 and you're trying to extend the life in that section of the game. Just go ahead and double or triple the XP in the upper heroics already. We're really getting tired of asking for this and there's a good chance that many of us that have stuck around for the game for the past year may be leaving along with the exodus that has happened since MOTU.

[cave_diver]

When I heard Turbine was revamping xp across the board I said cool (though in my head a voice was saying hold on as I have been disappointed before by Turbine).

Now I see the penalty, some dev is going to come on and say the decay rate is a place holder but when it goes live it will be as is.

Turbine, living up to my lowered expectations release after release

[Charononus]

When I heard Turbine was revamping xp across the board I said cool (though in my head a voice was saying hold on as I have been disappointed before by ********).

Now I see the penalty, some dev is going to come on and say the decay rate is a place holder but when it goes live it will be as is.

********, living up to my lowered expectations release after release

They lower mine each release, my expectations are so far underground right now it's not even funny.

[danotmano1998]

Please note that the current values are placeholders. The command to change them is currently not working :(


Wow! THIS is good news. Squeak, to be brutally honest, those placeholders are terrible.

The 30% reduction is a ridiculously high number, and the 5% back is ridiculously low. AT THE MOST it should take a week to reset.

Shave that 30% reduction to 10-15%, and bump that 5% up to 10% and you're talking.
The math already posted above show how badly players would be penalized. Please don't do that to us.

[SirShen]

Please note that the current values are placeholders. The command to change them is currently not working :(

Also, GrrArgh, the quest not giving you any XP on your sixth run is a bug. We have a fix for it, but I'm not sure when that fix will make it to Lamannia (probably in a couple of weeks.)

Thanks for the reply but you have to admit the placeholdering at the moment is so bad.

[patang01]

Please note that the current values are placeholders. The command to change them is currently not working :(

Also, GrrArgh, the quest not giving you any XP on your sixth run is a bug. We have a fix for it, but I'm not sure when that fix will make it to Lamannia (probably in a couple of weeks.)

I REALLY hope that these are placeholders. Super steep penalty with a super slow decay. 90% after 4 runs and 18 days for the penalty to go away completely? How on earths name can ANYONE have a chance to unlock destinies in a reasonable time? This forces non VIPs that might own the first pack to buy every single additional release in order to have enough content to get some headway.

This is just awful. Note, I'm VIP - but there's just some content that's not worth playing. If the intent was to make people play different quests instead of farming the same over and over you fail. Because a lot like me combine farming for items, seals, shards etc also as part of leveling.

To me this smells like another money grab where you force people to buy packs to even have a chance to level.

I really seriously hope that you guys revise this policy and to look over the XP for quests before you decide to put this in place. 'Cause some stuff ain't worth running and even less so with repeat penalties like this.

[Wizzly_Bear]

Asinine. If this change goes through, I will abandon TRing (and the hearts and xp pots that I sometimes buy) altogether. Good thing I'm nearly done on my current TR, and that it is a life I wouldn't mind being stuck on.

[SockMonkey]

Dont worry when this goes live as is or worse you will be able to buy an xp timer reset in the store.

see? easy like pancakes.

[quijenoth]

I like what this thread has to offer. I also like the idea someone put through about increasing xp on party make up.

Ill cut and paste my Secret Door thread reply as its relevant here also ...

My personal opinion is, overall, that if you want something to be appealing then make it worth while. currently Most of the XP is obtained by completing a quest. people gage completion of a quest on the time spent in that quest to get to completion. optionals unless a part of completion are ignorned if that time is reduced. I say lets turn it on its head. Make optionals mean far more XP than completing the quest. Im not saying raise optional xp by 1000% because that will result in people running to the first optional then recalling out and repeating. what I suggest is this...

drop completion xp by 50%.
divide the remaining 50% xp over the optionals. upon completion of quest.

Say a quest has 10000 xp on completion and grants 500xp per optional of which it has 10 - net XP 15000 xp
reduce it to 5000 xp on completion optionals grant 500xp AND 500 xp upon quest completion - net XP 15,000 xp IF you complete all optionals.

the numbers are purely representational and would need adjusting as Devs know best but the principle is that completing the WHOLE quest should be more valuable to the party than simply running to the end as quickly as possible.

[Charononus]

I like what this thread has to offer. I also like the idea someone put through about increasing xp on party make up.

Ill cut and paste my Secret Door thread reply as its relevant here also ...

My personal opinion is, overall, that if you want something to be appealing then make it worth while. currently Most of the XP is obtained by completing a quest. people gage completion of a quest on the time spent in that quest to get to completion. optionals unless a part of completion are ignorned if that time is reduced. I say lets turn it on its head. Make optionals mean far more XP than completing the quest. Im not saying raise optional xp by 1000% because that will result in people running to the first optional then recalling out and repeating. what I suggest is this...

drop completion xp by 50%.
divide the remaining 50% xp over the optionals. upon completion of quest.

Say a quest has 10000 xp on completion and grants 500xp per optional of which it has 10 - net XP 15000 xp
reduce it to 5000 xp on completion optionals grant 500xp AND 500 xp upon quest completion - net XP 15,000 xp IF you complete all optionals.

the numbers are purely representational and would need adjusting as Devs know best but the principle is that completing the WHOLE quest should be more valuable to the party than simply running to the end as quickly as possible.
You need to apply for a job at Turbine, your ideas are just as bad as the dev's ideas.

[Dandonk]

Dont worry when this goes live as is or worse you will be able to <removed>

see? easy like pancakes.

Please do not give them more ideas.

[oradafu]

You need to apply for a job at Turbine, your ideas are just as bad as the dev's ideas.

Naw. I smell Turbinesque management material right there: Players are complaining about poor XP for quests, so let's cut the XP by 50% and make optionals the other 50% but players will now only gain any of this XP upon completion. It has all the hallmarks of what we've gotten lately from the company: to fix a problem that players complain about let's kick the players in the sack, toss a bag of ice to the player to show that the company is really a bit friendly then kick the play in the butt so that they end up face down in manure.

[Delacroix21]

The way to get people to run other quests is not to PENALIZE repeats, but BUFF first time bonuses of quests.

[dlsidhe]

The 5% back per day is fine, if the rate of XP gained dropped 5% per completion.

Example (famous one!) Kobold's New Ringleader:

Run it E, Hx7, N. Total of 9 completions, of which 6 should count towards repeat penalty. Under the current system, it would take three weeks for the XP to reset completely, vs. one week at 5% decay.

As this has no effect on powergamers (who would blow through the content), 5% decay per repetition with 5% recovery per day would assist casual gamers, who may only play once a week.

[oradafu]

The way to get people to run other quests is not to PENALIZE repeats, but BUFF first time bonuses of quests.

We've had first time bonuses buffed for a while now and there's been little to no increase in running other quests. The way to get people to run other quests is to increase the XP in the lesser run quests.

A prime example of a quest that has extremely poor XP that drags down a whole pack is Hold for Reinforcements. On Elite, Hold for Reinforcements is only 855 XP. It doesn't matter how much you bump up the first time XP bonus on that quest, it's still horrible XP for a 15 minute quest. The overall XP for that quest needs to be bumped up by a minimum of 5 times that. But because the XP is so poor and Coyle's old HP made him a glass cannon, people avoided the whole pack.

There's tons of examples like this. In the mid-heroic levels, there's dozens of quests that need the XP boost if Turbine wants players to run and/or buy the packs. In the upper heroics, the XP is just plain bad that comparing any XP from a level 18 and 19 quest to an Epic quest, it's not even funny.

[KookieKobold]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

[quijenoth]

Naw. I smell Turbinesque management material right there: Players are complaining about poor XP for quests, so let's cut the XP by 50% and make optionals the other 50% but players will now only gain any of this XP upon completion. It has all the hallmarks of what we've gotten lately from the company: to fix a problem that players complain about let's kick the players in the sack, toss a bag of ice to the player to show that the company is really a bit friendly then kick the play in the butt so that they end up face down in manure.

See that's the problem - people see -50% and scream nerf. I see modify the XP and create options to create a more enjoyable game.

Lets take my XP example.

The downsides are
Quests will require people to wait for groups to complete optionals instead of running solo or building jack of all trade classes to solo.
Quests will take longer to complete overall making the progression to 20/28 slower.

The plus sides are
More options for exciting new dungeons that make each class feel important.
The option to introduce More XP per quest instead of more quests per level as they adjust the quests for the time vs XP reward.
More uses for under used classes to obtain certain objectives.
Flexability to grant More XP for optional rewards such as ingenious debilitation, observation, conquest, etc. - you could easily double the % bonus on these.
People would repeat quests less often - reducing the need to "farm" key XP quests and the need to introduce more ways for players to repeat the same content over and over.


Generally, up until level 15 you can complete all quests once IF you try to complete all optionals (this is from personal experience*) however if I speed run the quests I would generally have to start repeating quests by level 12.

Turbine simply need to encourage people to complete all quests fully instead of making it a boring grind of the same old quests over and over for the best xp per minute.

* My last 3rd lifer did every quest on elite once only skipping the raids, the closed baubry chain, and isle of refuge (I didnt even repeat shadow crypt) I used only 1 xp pot during vault of night chain. I only completed wilderness areas for the locations, I didn't farm them at all. The only time I had trouble with XP was hitting 17 for which I had to farm gianthold quests on elite, hard then normal, and the same with orchard - to reach 18 one complete farm of litany (EHHHHHHHHHHNC with an XP pot) was required. currently Im 1 bubble from 19 and have only done vale quests once on elite - expecting to run each on hard to hit 19.

[dlsidhe]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

That seems reasonable, actually.

[danotmano1998]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

So real values would mean:

You get base +20%
Then Base
Then Base -20%
Then Base -40%
Then Base -60%
Then Base -80%

And in the space of 1 day (or 18 hrs) it would go from 80% back up to 30%?

This is much more like it if so...

[quijenoth]

That seems reasonable, actually.

I don't see this reasonable at all

most power games will want to level 2 or 3 times per day. if you bottom out their XP but have it return 2 days later they have by that time made their xp for 2 or more levels and wont even consider running those quests again (the exception here is epic quests which are less affected by level)

Most casual players play maybe 2 or 3 times a week, they level much slower and rarely repeat quests unless "invited" into a farm group. they will likely not even notice the fact there is any form of xp degrading since they play the same quest so infrequently.

I put myself between the two - I play every day but don't power game preferring to play with a regular group of 4, when they aren't all on I play a second or third character in regular groups. It can take me along time to level but isn't that the point of DDO - the journey - why else would others say TRing is the endgame.

[Drwaz99]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

It would have made much more sense to wait to release this until the information on the revamping of the XP curve was set. It would have provided much more context. Your putting the cart before the horse. Let me guess: there are 2 different developers working on these 2 separate but very entwined issues?

[dlsidhe]

I don't see this reasonable at all

most power games will want to level 2 or 3 times per day. if you bottom out their XP but have it return 2 days later they have by that time made their xp for 2 or more levels and wont even consider running those quests again (the exception here is epic quests which are less affected by level)

So...they're not effected.


Most casual players play maybe 2 or 3 times a week, they level much slower and rarely repeat quests unless "invited" into a farm group. they will likely not even notice the fact there is any form of xp degrading since they play the same quest so infrequently.

So they're not effected.


I put myself between the two - I play every day but don't power game preferring to play with a regular group of 4, when they aren't all on I play a second or third character in regular groups. It can take me along time to level but isn't that the point of DDO - the journey - why else would others say TRing is the endgame.

So you're not effected.

How is this not reasonable, again?

[oradafu]

So...they're not effected.

So they're not effected.

So you're not effected.

How is this not reasonable, again?

Because they aren't playing the game his way and only his way is reasonable.

[dlsidhe]

...casual gamers COULD be effected, though, as they could rerun quests with no penalty. That's a positive effect, so...again, how is it not reasonable?

[Barhai]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.
So looking at the current favorite xp farming quests on epic:
And yes probably some error in there.
Can be done each day for the same xp:
1 x Rusted blade EE (note no lv penalty until L27) 14327 xp base, 20% bonus, devious +7%, +10%(tome), +5% (voice), +10% VIP=21k
then one run at 19k, a run at 16 k then a run at 13k.
so 69 k each day.
Then Impossible demand for about the same xp.

So about 140k ish per day.
It takes 1.5M xp to cap a destiny, or one every 11 days with just that. With running other quests you expect to match that xp. So one destiny every 5 days playing quite a lot...
Or 55 days to cap a toon.
That seems a "bit" high.
Guess some new xp strategy can be formed for epic.
Question: does the -50% reduction to the repeat penalty also applies to optional? Some quest have more xp in optional than the base quest.

Now for heroic:
Need to see how it combines with the new xp curve. Main problem I see is the loss of xp from shadow crypt and Necro 4.
Loss of shadow crypt means having to do threnal and/or resting isles... NO. These quests are hated for a reason.
Loss of Necro 4 massive xp, means having to do... Eh what? We are already doing gianthold and the missing series is low xp. The new shadow quests can't be done by most toons either.

And as has been said, on heroic the daily xp penalty reduction doesn't matter, next day you are a different level already.

[patang01]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Much better,

Maybe I'm daft (more like most likely) but what does XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0% mean?

[Wizzly_Bear]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.
Still a tad harsh, but much closer. I think if every run after the first is counted against the ransack, that it should be 10 or 15%, not 20%.

[KookieKobold]

snip: what does XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0% mean?


We designed the system with the ability to decrease penalties on quests by running other quests but with this current setup that ability is not applied.

[Charononus]

So looking at the current favorite xp farming quests on epic:
And yes probably some error in there.
Can be done each day for the same xp:
1 x Rusted blade EE (note no lv penalty until L27) 14327 xp base, 20% bonus, devious +7%, +10%(tome), +5% (voice), +10% VIP=21k
then one run at 19k, a run at 16 k then a run at 13k.
so 69 k each day.
Then Impossible demand for about the same xp.

So about 140k ish per day.
It takes 1.5M xp to cap a destiny, or one every 11 days with just that. With running other quests you expect to match that xp. So one destiny every 5 days playing quite a lot...
Or 55 days to cap a toon.
That seems a "bit" high.
Guess some new xp strategy can be formed for epic.
Question: does the -50% reduction to the repeat penalty also applies to optional? Some quest have more xp in optional than the base quest.

Now for heroic:
Need to see how it combines with the new xp curve. Main problem I see is the loss of xp from shadow crypt and Necro 4.
Loss of shadow crypt means having to do threnal and/or resting isles... NO. These quests are hated for a reason.
Loss of Necro 4 massive xp, means having to do... Eh what? We are already doing gianthold and the missing series is low xp. The new shadow quests can't be done by most toons either.

And as has been said, on heroic the daily xp penalty reduction doesn't matter, next day you are a different level already.
Just to add to this most of necro 4 is level 16, there are no other level 14's that you could run at 16 that aren't already ran and I still need to farm at that point. Level 17 is litany, then I already hit the missing chain and farm it because it's pretty much all that's there. I suppose I could use my key to the city for the u18 quests but it's pretty bad when you need to use something that is edging dangerously close to cheese/exploit to be able to play a quest at level.

[dejafu]

I think this would be a good time to get a sneak peak at what the new heroic XP leveling scheme is going to be. This is going to seem a lot less harsh if it's going to only take, say, 50-75% of the current XP needed to get a 3rd life TR to level 20.

[oradafu]

I think this would be a good time to get a sneak peak at what the new heroic XP leveling scheme is going to be. This is going to seem a lot less harsh if it's going to only take, say, 50-75% of the current XP needed to get a 3rd life TR to level 20.

I haven't heard any Dev saying they were removing XP needed for TRs. The Devs have said they are flatting the XP curve, which means moving the backloaded XP down to lower levels. This is why several players are talking about the lack of XP and/or quests between levels 12 and 15.

But I do agree, this is about time that we learn what that XP curve is planning to be.

[DogMania]

Don't forget you do the 1st run on elite (full xp + 1st time bonus)
2nd on hard (full xp + 1st time bonus)
3rd hard (xp penalty starts)
as many more hards as you want with xp penalty growing
Last run normal (full xp + 1st time bonus)

I realy don't see what the issue is about this, and to the poster who mentioned threnal, at least 1 of the quests has VERY good xp and is worth running

[Deadlock]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Change the XP Ransack per repeat to -10% and you have retained something that we are familiar and comfortable with.

So we're saying, if you stick to the same difficulty each time:

1st run: full XP with bravery bonus
2nd run: full xp no bonus
3rd run: -10%
4th run: -20%
5th run: -30%
6th run: -40%
7th run: -50%
8th run: -60%
9th run: -70%
10th run: -80%
11th run: -80%
12th run: -80%

And any subsequent run would be -80%.

Now there are only a handful of quests where you would consider doing this, but they are the ones that we will run repeatedly for a good reason, and predominantly because the XP from alternatives at that level are garbage.

If you're not going to adjust individual quest XP to provide a more rewarding alternative option to the quests that get run repeatedly, then leaving the ransack penalty at 10% is your best bet.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Thanks Kookie!

Would you be so kind as to take a minute out of your already hectic day and give one or two real-world examples? Thank you in advance!

[Zzevel]

so you want to add 20-30 'per day' quest times to every toon. per day = 24 hours? so i have to run it later and later each day to make sure i dont get a penalty? ... wait guys i got 4 more minutes till my timer is up... whatever...

and how will 500 characters on the server with 20 timers each going affect our processor times? If two handed fighting messed with it the heck is this making anything better?

the only thing this does is stop ED xp farming at the price of bending over the TR guys and holding people up from PUGGING a quest they may have run in the past day? What game is this anymore?

[ArcaneArcher52689]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

so, let me know if this seems right:
first time elite= full bonus +20% daily bonus
first time hard= full bonus
first time normal= full bonus
second run on any difficulty: full xp
third run " " : -20%
fourth run " " : -40%
then i go to bed for 18 hours
next day (i'm now back down to 0% ransack)
first run of the day with +20%
second run of the day with -20%
third run of the day with -40%?

seems like a big score for casual gamers like myself, that only run 1-5 quests per night, and rarely run a quest more than 3-4 times.

I do see how the power gamers will be annoyed, but other quests may become more worthwhile with a +20% daily bonus

Also, people can now stop skipping the quests that are both epic/heroic, because repeat penalty will be gone by the time they hit epics

[Wizzly_Bear]

Will this bonus affect challenges?

if it does, will it affect the stars, or only the base xp?

[oradafu]

Will this bonus affect challenges?

if it does, will it affect the stars, or only the base xp?

I popped into a Challenge or two and didn't see any XP changes affecting it that I remember.

I'd be surprised if anything besides the Daily XP bonus will be affecting the Challenges. Actually, the way the Devs have crippled Challenge XP, I'd even be surprised if the Daily XP Bonus works with Challenges.

[Kambuk]

With -80% cap you can take a level 5 into Shadowcrypt and leave at level 14
(2 Boxing with a lvl 7 wizard, and yes shadow crypt elite can be done by a 1st life level 7 wizard)

This is not solving the problem it's making it worse.

Shadowcrypt with an -80% penalty is still going to be the best xp/min if you know how to run it and if you have 2 people in the party who know what to do it's even faster, I average about 11 min for a hard run on a level 7 wizard 2 Boxing but i have done it hundreds of times. People who have never run it can expect 1 hour+ runs and if they don't have firewall even longer and then they potentially get to fail at the end fight...

I want to see a solution that actually means my fastest way to level back up a TR is to run other quests, other quests need a big boost in XP and optional XP needs another big boost so that doing them actually means more xp/min rather than less.

Maybe Ransack hitting 100% after 5 runs is the best solution.
Hit shadow crypt at lvl 5 and come out at 8 after 5 runs run a few other quests for a few days and go back and get 10-11 run a other quests for a few days and get 12-13. (Assuming semi casual player only playing a few hours every day)

Kambuk

[quijenoth]

Because they aren't playing the game his way and only his way is reasonable.

Actually my point is why spend the time and resources developing a system that doesn't affect 90% of the player base... And yes I'm referring to heroic levels - as mentioned epic is handled differently and this change may well impact on that side of the game more where as my previous suggestion provides benefits from 1st to 28th.

I don't care if it doesn't fit my play style - ill play as long as I enjoy the game but if they start forcing us to repeat the same quests to make it up levels instead of providing more quests then the game will stagnate for me. content is king in MMOs - some MMOs you can play from 1st to top level 3-4 times and never have to repeat the same content.

Also this stinks of Turbines abandonment of the lower level game unfortunately, which I find very sad and a big step away from DnD. 7th lvl veteran status, stone of xp from 7th to 15th (previously 8th to 16th) Iconic characters starting at 15th. So much content is being abandoned for the shiny epic levels. mark my words if this game goes for another 2 years we will be seeing level 40 or even level 50 characters by then.

is it a good thing? I dunno, but as long as it keeps making them money I guess it doesn't matter.

[quijenoth]

With -80% cap you can take a level 5 into Shadowcrypt and leave at level 14
(2 Boxing with a lvl 7 wizard, and yes shadow crypt elite can be done by a 1st life level 7 wizard)

This is not solving the problem it's making it worse.

Shadowcrypt with an -80% penalty is still going to be the best xp/min if you know how to run it and if you have 2 people in the party who know what to do it's even faster, I average about 11 min for a hard run on a level 7 wizard 2 Boxing but i have done it hundreds of times. People who have never run it can expect 1 hour+ runs and if they don't have firewall even longer and then they potentially get to fail at the end fight...

I want to see a solution that actually means my fastest way to level back up a TR is to run other quests, other quests need a big boost in XP and optional XP needs another big boost so that doing them actually means more xp/min rather than less.

Maybe Ransack hitting 100% after 5 runs is the best solution.
Hit shadow crypt at lvl 5 and come out at 8 after 5 runs run a few other quests for a few days and go back and get 10-11 run a other quests for a few days and get 12-13. (Assuming semi casual player only playing a few hours every day)

Kambuk

+1 to you Kambuk, that's exactly the problem Im forseeing - if you think its hard to get groups for quests now, imagine what it will be like when people are only running 4 or 5 quests to 20!

[patang01]

so you want to add 20-30 'per day' quest times to every toon. per day = 24 hours? so i have to run it later and later each day to make sure i dont get a penalty? ... wait guys i got 4 more minutes till my timer is up... whatever...

and how will 500 characters on the server with 20 timers each going affect our processor times? If two handed fighting messed with it the heck is this making anything better?

the only thing this does is stop ED xp farming at the price of bending over the TR guys and holding people up from PUGGING a quest they may have run in the past day? What game is this anymore?

Another thing is to look at XP across all quests. I mean who plays the harper chains for XP? I don't - it's horrid for XP, yet timewise it's on par with lots of the MOTU quests. That doesn't make sense to me. If they had a balanced system in place for XP then I'd understand and maybe play some other quest for XP farming but they don't.

So we get the glut of people doing Impossible and Rusted. Over and over.

I don't mind TRing doing few quests and move on; sure it's not as effective as doing the same stuff over and over but I get mind numblingly bored doing the same stuff over and over.

[nibel]

With -80% cap you can take a level 5 into Shadowcrypt and leave at level 14

I wouldn't start at this extreme low level, but I can see people farming Shadow Crypt as they farmed Rusted Blades. Then jump into litany and stay there until cap (level 18 can run elite litany with no overlevel XP penalty).

For this reason alone, I advocate for the "cap" still be -100% XP. Not strictly zero. -100%. If you have any quest XP boosters (tome, ransack, conquest, etc) you might get something from it. While not completelly eliminating the problem Kambuk showed up, might reduce it effectiveness enough for people considering running something else besides only two quests from 5 to 20.

Also, +50% decay per day is too high. I would use raid timers as your standard to reset the XP of the quest. So, if you penalty per repetition is 20%, renew it by 7% a day. Add 2% per different quest run too, so farmers can even jump in a new mood of running some quest "chains" to clear the decay while farming (eg, run circular vale quests for 10% penalty decay instead of the same quest window farming).

[Stormblade721]

I don't really see the problem per se. Grinding XP for levels is kind of a drag but I don't see why you would want to cap the XP in this manner. Most people grinding through lives that often, are going to be upset, I myself, would rather get the Levelling to 20 out of the way as quickly as possible. I've been playing since 2007, and new content doesn't come along often enough to make doing the same quests over And over anything but a tedious grind. Even now, the thought of grinding Deleras 2 and Thrall over and over again to make levels is anything but fun. I currently have 2 third life Tr's stuck between 10 and 12, because I'm just tired of doing the same quests over and over. Three Barrel Cove? (SHUDDER) god forbid. I do not believe the casual player will care one way or the other. I do believe the players who are driven to TR toons over and over to attempt to reach completionist status will be uset at having to run many of the quests that most do not run now, as either the XP per minute is sub par, or the quests themselves are onerous. I have to admit, I quit running Three Barrel Cove a long time ago.

[nibel]

Another thing is to look at XP across all quests. I mean who plays the harper chains for XP? I don't - it's horrid for XP, yet timewise it's on par with lots of the MOTU quests.

It is a complex issue. It is not only about XP. My best proofs about this are the pit and tomb of tormented. Both are REALLY good XP/min if you know what you are doing solo, and Shadow-Crypt-levels XP/minute (over 2k/minute) if you duo them with a good partner (on tormented, is so that you can focus on maze while your partner focus on zombies). Yet, they are not farmed. Why?

Because Shadow Crypt is easier and shorter.

It is not only a matter of XP/minute. A lot of quests have great XP/minute, but some of them have a skill ceiling much lower than the others, thus are easier to farm on "autopilot".

Just raising the quest XP to ludicrous levels will ensue people will run it once for the 200% extra first time elite bonus, and never touch it again because they don't want to farm while outside of autopilot. Farming by definition is not "fun". It is a chore. You might feel good when you beat it and you might find fun on the challenge to do it "fast" or "without resources" or "gimped" or whatever. But the farming itself is NOT fun. Thus, if you need to farm XP, for whatever reason, the path of less resistance is usually preferred.

And this mean: short, easy quests with decent to good XP/minute.

I agree that some quests should have their base XP values redefined for being too good (Shadow Crypt and VoN3 do not deserve their high base XP with so many optionals in the main path), others for being too bad compared to equal level quests(Threnal East 3, Cannith, Druid's Deep), and a third category for not be rewarding anough for their challenge level (Amrath, In the Flesh, Invaders, Acute Delirium...). I just disagree that "raise the quest XP" is the universal panacea for any unpopular quest.

[maddong]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Looks good. Thanks for communicating!

[Charononus]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.
Still looks bad, we can do 12 runs before we cap out now, we should be able to do at least 10 runs after, the ramp up is way quicker with this system. And for the love of god don't lower any quests xp raise some of the underperformers.

[jskinner937]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Like the rest, but would be much happier to see -10% per run penalty. 20% would hurt those that are grinding a life quickly, and might actually discourage new players from getting VIP and/or buying packs since the best grinds are p2p.

[350zguy]

I'm fine with the -20% capped at -80%

I guess the question is, do you get repeat counters like normal, when you run different difficulties....


Elite +50%
First Time +20%
First Day +20%
No death +10%
Blah +10%

Hard
First Time +20%
No death +10%
Blah +10%

Normal
First Time +20%
No death +10%
Blah +10%

Repeat Normal
-40% <---- After all you just ran it 3 times.

Repeat Normal
-60%

Repeat Normal
-80%

So 6 runs in a day, would "bottom" you out, for that day.

The very next day...

+50% takes you to -30% XP, and then the +20% first time of the day takes you to -10%.


So the very next day you could...

-10%
-50%
-70%

Seems like you could just rotate 3 or 4 quests, and play all week keeping decent XP.

I can see people who just GRIND their face on Shadow Crypt, and other "stupid" XP quests getting annoyed cause it slows them down, puts in an artificial pause slightly sooner.

But if they want to keep playing... They can just move quests, maybe group with some one... Naw they won't do that, I guess they can just level 2 toons at once...

[Charononus]

But if they want to keep playing... They can just move quests, maybe group with some one... Naw they won't do that, I guess they can just level 2 toons at once...

You realize the more likely option is that they decide to quit, ddo loses more players, and turbine doesn't make money from them right? The speed tr'ers all use xp pots from what I've seen so turbine will lose money. As far as the repeats wearing off that's great for the epic quests but does pretty much zilch for me while leveling in a heroic as my goal once I'm past the low levels is to do a level per night and I'm not even the fastest tr player. Limiting the ability to level quickly will alienate a sizable portion of the playerbase that seem to spend a decent chunk of money on xp potions. It's a case of shooting yourself in the foot, and with the proposal they made to tr's and haven't completely backed down on, I'd say it's a case of shooting yourself in the foot repeatedly.

[LilyOphelia]

I actually just did a TR2 life with my partner, and we did just about every quest in the game (sans raids) at Elite difficulty, up through level 12; we did only a single Elite run for each quest (absolutely no Hards or repetitions).

It was extremely slow, because even banking a full level of xp at all times, we kept out-leveling the Elite BB and we were just getting the base xp for the quests. When we abandoned our quest to do everything at 12, and we just stuck to our Elite BB, we went even faster. We actually had to skip over half the packs from 12-20 because we out leveled them.

Given that they're giving us an extra +20% on each first quest completion each day, it's going to go even faster!

Also, I believe the quest xp will go base plus 20% for your 1st run and then base minus 20% on your second run, for a 40% difference; then -40% on your 3rd run, etc. From the way I read their notes, that's what it looks like to me.

I'm completely for the system. I feel like there are plenty of quests in the game. XP/min doesn't factor into my quest selection. I just keep running whatever seems interesting or novel (because I haven't done it in a life or two) enough, and then I end up at 20.

I can't comment on questing after 20; that might be more problematic. But with the new expansion quests, you could probably start at one end of the epic quests and work your way through several times.

---

For context, we ended at 2750 favor when we hit level 20.

[Tscheuss]

It would be nice if running other quests shaved off some ransack. This would give the hyper crowd a way to speed up recovery.

[caissede12]

Nice numbers, thx for sharing it. Its way better than the placeholders, for sure. Not sure about the difference whit current penalty system. I kinda get mixed feelings since its both a buff, and a nerf at the same time. the 50% retrieved every 18h is really nice, in the current system that would have been a big buff, but whit -20% per repetition... you need to run the same quest on multiple days to be it worth the loss (expect maybe at end game, but even than, yea you can farm ED xp, but you will also have ED Tr)

I would prefer see a -15% as repetition (or even back to 10%) because as said before, the xp curve change isnt a xp reduction, but just flattening the curve (and I can see the same current problem lvl16+ happening around lvl 12). But we also need to think about the Saga npc. I wonder what kind of xp they are gonna give, if they will be really worth it (so worth running the quests needed to complete the list (I dont see lot of ppl runing low xp quest that take forever for 10K of xp...)

Best fix would be to make all quest more similar in xp (not all, end chain should have +, and hardest also etc)

[patang01]

Just raising the quest XP to ludicrous levels will ensue people will run it once for the 200% extra first time elite bonus

My argument is not to raise XP super high, my argument is that the difference in XP for similar length quests makes people once and done them and they won't bother with them again.

[Nascoe]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Hm, a lot more reasonable than what is in de description box, but ...

1. Why not make it 10-20-20-30 instead to make it get worse decay for more extreme repeat?
2. I think that the ransack regained - it it should make any sense - should be at about 30-35% per day so it takes about 2 days to get back to reasonable (after 2 days its -80+70+20% from the daily first run, right?)
3. And then put back in that last option, with say 10% regain for other quests.

Oh, could you explain again when it sets in, as I see some confusion in the discussion.
Can you run it once with first time completion on E/H/N (+20% bonus for the first time), then another time without penalty on all difficulties, and the decay sets in with doing a quest for the 3rd time on any difficulty?
Or does it start decaying right after the first (on a difficulty level)?

[Nascoe]

With -80% cap you can take a level 5 into Shadowcrypt and leave at level 14
(2 Boxing with a lvl 7 wizard, and yes shadow crypt elite can be done by a 1st life level 7 wizard)

This is not solving the problem it's making it worse.

Shadowcrypt with an -80% penalty is still going to be the best xp/min if you know how to run it and if you have 2 people in the party who know what to do it's even faster, I average about 11 min for a hard run on a level 7 wizard 2 Boxing but i have done it hundreds of times. People who have never run it can expect 1 hour+ runs and if they don't have firewall even longer and then they potentially get to fail at the end fight...

I want to see a solution that actually means my fastest way to level back up a TR is to run other quests, other quests need a big boost in XP and optional XP needs another big boost so that doing them actually means more xp/min rather than less.

Maybe Ransack hitting 100% after 5 runs is the best solution.
Hit shadow crypt at lvl 5 and come out at 8 after 5 runs run a few other quests for a few days and go back and get 10-11 run a other quests for a few days and get 12-13. (Assuming semi casual player only playing a few hours every day)

Kambuk

Hm, Kambuk, i am amazed at what grind people will go through to build that uber completionist etc. character and do it fast!

Off course no game mechanic can stop people from finding the easiest XP/Min and racing through the lvls like that. The only thing that helps there, is to have content that is actually fun to play so a majority of people do the actual quests for nice rewards and character progression.

But after playing every quest in the game for the umpteenth time, I guess there is not much one looks forward to, and adding new content can hardly keep up. Changing XP decay will hardly change much in that respect, apart from shifting the approach to grind.

Still, I hope that things like revamping the Harbor now (looks interesting, if only because its different) also means updating some of the quests to make it a bit more interesting again to play, and then get on to other things etc. I would love to see them do something creative on epic (edited from Elite) with the Waterworks, or the butchers path (put in some really challenging butchers), or give us that fight with the Dragon in Misery's peak!

[oradafu]

It would be nice if running other quests shaved off some ransack. This would give the hyper crowd a way to speed up recovery.

I believe that's what this section of the XP Ransack counter is:


XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

That's the number Kookie says it actually is on Lamannia, but Lamannia states that it's 1%. Either way, that's way too low.

To be effective while leveling through Heroic quests, the percentage needs to be 5% since levels 11 to 15 only have 9 to 11 quests each (and three of which are raids).

[Kadderly]

Hm, Kambuk, i am amazed at what grind people will go through to build that uber completionist etc. character and do it fast!

Off course no game mechanic can stop people from finding the easiest XP/Min and racing through the lvls like that. The only thing that helps there, is to have content that is actually fun to play so a majority of people do the actual quests for nice rewards and character progression.

But after playing every quest in the game for the umpteenth time, I guess there is not much one looks forward to, and adding new content can hardly keep up. Changing XP decay will hardly change much in that respect, apart from shifting the approach to grind.

Still, I hope that things like revamping the Harbor now (looks interesting, if only because its different) also means updating some of the quests to make it a bit more interesting again to play, and then get on to other things etc. I would love to see them do something creative on Elite with the Waterworks, or the butchers path (put in some really challenging butchers), or give us that fight with the Dragon in Misery's peak!

What Kambuk is pointing out is that leveling the playing field with xp/minute would be a far superior solution to motivating people to use a wider variety of quests rather than just cherry-picking the good xp/minute ones. Once you've been playing the game for years and done every single quest dozens or hundreds of times a piece there is nothing you can do to make them more "fun". What you can do is analyze the completion times and re-adjust the quest XP based on fastest times and adjust to meet the minimum of 1000xp/minute and the problem is alleviated.

The harbor adjustments are addressing the drop-off of new customer around level 4 when they finish harbor and get lost figuring out what to do next.

I would like to see both re-adjustment and xp ransack. There are packs I avoid altogether because the time spent vs rewards is pitiful and to me that translates to "no fun". Adjusting the xp in these packs to entice me to play them would work wonders. The ransack mechanics allow high level players the ability to actually level and do it without skipping content at low level so you aren't penalizing yourself at high levels.

[Nascoe]

What Kambuk is pointing out is that leveling the playing field with xp/minute would be a far superior solution to motivating people to use a wider variety of quests rather than just cherry-picking the good xp/minute ones. Once you've been playing the game for years and done every single quest dozens or hundreds of times a piece there is nothing you can do to make them more "fun". What you can do is analyze the completion times and re-adjust the quest XP based on fastest times and adjust to meet the minimum of 1000xp/minute and the problem is alleviated.

The harbor adjustments are addressing the drop-off of new customer around level 4 when they finish harbor and get lost figuring out what to do next.

I would like to see both re-adjustment and xp ransack. There are packs I avoid altogether because the time spent vs rewards is pitiful and to me that translates to "no fun". Adjusting the xp in these packs to entice me to play them would work wonders. The ransack mechanics allow high level players the ability to actually level and do it without skipping content at low level so you aren't penalizing yourself at high levels.

Oh, I agree with all of that. Some of the packs just are not worth the time to bother currently. And its good that they change ransack so that your levelling up on heroic in a quest won't hurt your XP later on, when you really need it for EDs.

But I hope that they not just change XP spread during levelling (although putting more of it where there's a ton of quests, instead of in the upper ranges where there's only a couple of quests makes huge sense for me), but also look at changing some parts of quests to make them a tad more interesting to repeat and while they are at it, it would be good to see some epic versions added to those current low lvl f2p quests too because some of those quests harbour very fond memories :-)

[danotmano1998]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Kookie,
THANK YOU for posting this and clearing up some of the panic people had when seeing the original numbers.

Turbine,
THANK YOU for attempting alleviating a huge headache that was part of the game and made some playing un-fun for me.
With these changes, I will no longer have to avoid quests during my heroic levels so as to leave them available for epic xp.

[350zguy]

The only reason I wanted quest penalties to reset, is because it felt like you were punished for running quests you liked, and or wanted loot from at low level.

So, if I run GH Trial by Fire 4 times because I'm helping my guild mates, or being social... When I hit epic levels, I'm going to have a 10% penalty out of the box. On top of that, if I do it just once at epic, then I'm -20% forever....

That felt like a harsh penalty for playing with people, and trying things out.

So, anything that removes that stigma of playing quests, because "you pay for it" on the back end is good.

Now, why another 20% bonus of XP up front? I don't know, sure free XP!
Why decay faster? Clearly to prevent or discourage people from slamming one quest over and over.

Really if you wanted to prevent that, you would just take the quests that are STUPID XP, and just reduce their XP... Shadow Crypt is the KEY player in that space.


So... what is the goal? My desire for the decay timer removal, was to remove the feeling of permanent penalty at level cap, for "playing" the game with others, and in general.


Clearly they are trying to discourage massive repeats in a single day.

[RaidMR]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them. First off I'd like to say I think something like a ransack timer on the quest repeat penalty is a good idea; with the level cap increase and epic destiny completion running into repeat penalties have become a constant annoyance. If it was me though I'd change the structure a bit and eliminate "XP bonus on daily first run", and add (5%?) to "XP Ransack regained per other quest run".

To me, it seemed the whole point of repeat penalties was to encourage us (the gamer) to explore other content and not just running one quest to maximize xp/min. Likewise the first completion boosts were to encourage running the quest (at difficulty) that was new to the character; however a daily refresh for a first run seems much too like a xp give-away, it's like saying 'Welcome back to the grind; here's 20% to do the same thing as yesterday!'

In that spirit I'd also slow down the xp recovery on ransack per cycle. That way you'd also encourage a bit more wait which would probably encourage a little branching out quest wise.

[oradafu]

Really if you wanted to prevent that, you would just take the quests that are STUPID XP, and just reduce their XP... Shadow Crypt is the KEY player in that space.



Never suggest reducing XP for a quest. The Devs are always heavy on the trigger to hurt players but slow to respond (or outright ignore) to situations that will help players. We can point to the Amarth quests as a prime example of this. Wasn't the XP for some of those quests reduced greatly years ago, but with MOTU and Epic levels, the Devs haven't readjusted any of the Amrath or other upper heoric level quests individually.

Increase the base XP for lesser run quests or quests with poor XP. This will go a much further way to get people to run more quests than penalizing players for migrating to the few quests that have great XP in the Heroic levels.

[patang01]

Never suggest reducing XP for a quest. The Devs are always heavy on the trigger to hurt players but slow to respond (or outright ignore) to situations that will help players. We can point to the Amarth quests as a prime example of this. Wasn't the XP for some of those quests reduced greatly years ago, but with MOTU and Epic levels, the Devs haven't readjusted any of the Amrath or other upper heoric level quests individually.

Increase the base XP for lesser run quests or quests with poor XP. This will go a much further way to get people to run more quests than penalizing players for migrating to the few quests that have great XP in the Heroic levels.

I agree - we should never argue for a fight to the bottom, but to enhance quests that no one run. A good way to do that is to revamp them slightly or add more XP. Reducing other quests XP simply spread more misery among a few bright spots.

[nibel]

Really if you wanted to prevent that, you would just take the quests that are STUPID XP, and just reduce their XP... Shadow Crypt is the KEY player in that space.

I can understand the reason why Shadow Crypt have such high base XP (I also believe 10k base is too high. 7-8k would be perfect). Do you remember to very first time you ran it? Without guides, wiki, or whatever. Just getting in and running as a normal quest. It can take well over an hour to find 8 gears, and maybe 15+ minutes to find the levers to complete. Then you have that vampire boss that is a pain if you dont nuke him from the start with overwhelming force before he have a change to multiply into dozens of vampires.

What really made it interesting for XP zergers is the ammount of optionals you can harvest in every crypt run just doing the shortest path. IMO, the optionals themselves are the key to the ludicrous XP/minute of Shadow Crypt runs. Lower the optional XP to 3-5% of base (instead of 15% like now), and shadow crypt farming drops from "required" to "good". The same can be said from von3 runs.

Very few quests really need a huge bump on XP. The main problem is that most of them are in the 15+ range, where TR2 XP requirements skyrocket. XP bump alone is not the solution for low level quests that are not run too much.

[350zguy]

I agree 100% that a decent amount of quests need an XP bump UP.

However, that still doesn't change the FEW outliers that seem to be 3 to 4 times the XP of anything else.

However when 1 out of 4 people you inspect have EEEESSNWN(DD)SESSW in their BIO on their character... There is a problem with that quest.

I think a 5% drop in the optional would do it, but lets not race to the bottom, lets raise some shatter quest xp. etc...

[Jeremiah179]

I have an idea that maybe is cool, maybe is stupid, but I will risk it.

Instead of a daily bonus... have a bonus that accumulates based on server completions of the quest.

If globally the quest has not been run much, it has a nice bonus, maybe 25%? maybe more...maybe a lot more!

If it has a been run an average amount or better...simply no bonus.

***
They can keep it a secret what the recipe is ... no need to disclose the number of runs or the decay or the bonus amount...

They can call it a "Rare Quest Bonus" if you find quests that have not been run in days - maybe you get a sweet bonus?
It would be "awesome" if it also applied to instances... you pull an instance in an explorer area that has not been achieved in several days?? Maybe you get 10K instead of 3K...lol could be very fun for flower sniffers and explorers...

Unpopular quests because of xp-min ratio have a chance of a nice bonus maybe...

All of the high xp, fast, and more popular quests... they would just get same xp as always no need to harm them...

I think the decay is too fast (50%)... 25% might be fine? I think the problem with the "other quest" removing ransack is...they will run a bunch of the fastest quest on the server to clear timers... we will see decay timer groups forming around the fastest quests....lol

[maddmatt70]

This is all about ending farming dun robar and the like - that is the true function of this mechanic. You the devs have to make epic xp easier to attain because without dun robar type farming epic xp is a more unattainable grind that is not worh the effort. The devs have not really addressed epic xp gain in a positive framework.

[maddmatt70]

I am referring to the quest ransack in my above post. Read between the lines and the devs also plan to change the way xp worked when a character is capped. No longer will they be able to continuously get xp, but rather they will become sacked after 8 runs and then have to wait 18 hours to run it again.

[CoasterHops]

This is all about ending farming dun robar and the like - that is the true function of this mechanic. You the devs have to make epic xp easier to attain because without dun robar type farming epic xp is a more unattainable grind that is not worh the effort. The devs have not really addressed epic xp gain in a positive framework.

I think its a pretty good idea to get a chunk of your ED XP farming out of the way now before the update hits live, as for grinding lvl 20 - 25 this was never an issue, remembering that Dunrobar and Impossible Demands were left to farm at lvl 25. I still think attaining XP at cap will be easy enough with a mechanic like this, it just means you get a little bit of different scenery, instead of driving yourself nuts, spending half of the 2 minute quest standing next to a bell......

[Silverleafeon]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

I'm fine with this, but hey I'm a Halfling crazy enough to heal pug raids so....

Fawngate of Khyber

[maddong]

Why not double the first time heroic raid bonuses and triple streak bonuses on heroic raids while we are at it. That will get a lot more people motivated about heroic raids when they can pick up a +160% elite and +150% streak first run elite bonus! If you enjoy raids and have already got your bonus you will have more chances to tag along with the people wanting that sweet first time bonus....

[Salmagnus]

Some issues, proposed changes.

One of the things which bother me (and I suspect causing a quest XP overhaul) is that there seems to be a base quest reward XP cap starting about level 10-11 for quests. For example, most level (non raid, ROUGH average) lvl 11 quests give about 4k XP. Most lvl 18 quest give about.... 4k XP. Something is just not right here. There should be a reasonable progression of XP gained as you level. Seems to me that the quest XP rewards needs to be scaled up somewhat. IMHO, about 400-500 XP per level should be about right. So, an average lvl 10 quest would give about 4-5k XP whereas the average lvl 18 quest give about 8-9k per quest. I suspect there is a XP formula used internally which may need adjusting or just make the quest somewhat longer, more monsters, etc at higher levels to give more XP.

Another issue and solution, which might also make stones of experience from boxes and Iconic heroes more desirable, is over level quest XP gains. When you start an Iconic hero, or use a stone to jump levels, there are a lot quests skipped which now need to be re-run for favor. It becomes very very tedious run these quests again with no XP gains and little in the way of loot. The solution would be to give a hard 20% XP reward for the first run, and only the first run, if the difference in quest and character is 6 or greater. Hard is defined as XP that would not be boosted by any other first run XP mechanics, only tomes, VIP status, and such. Nor would running this quest at six or over clear ransack penalties on other quests. This way we players are getting at last some XP for doing something not much fun.

Myself and others think there should be a reward for grouping. I have not seen any other proposals so here are my own. Give 5% for two players, 15% three too four players, and 20% for five or more, excluding raids. Include using hirelings instead real a player but at half the XP bonus to round out a party.

[sjt_12]

Myself and others think there should be a reward for grouping. I have not seen any other proposals so here are my own. Give 5% for two players, 15% three too four players, and 20% for five or more, excluding raids. Include using hirelings instead real a player but at half the XP bonus to round out a party.

Having a grouping reward is a great idea. Much better than a penalty for not grouping or running a quests too often.

[Charononus]

Grouping bonuses wouldn't promote groups but instead promote multi-boxing. It'd also add drama as some people would probably start refusing to run without a full group.

[350zguy]

When you're willing to spend 8 hours redoing the same quest over, and over there is a flaw in the reward system.
When you're unwilling to run quests with other players, there is a flaw in the reward system.
When you must plan what quests to run, and avoid running ANY quest with epic content because it will hurt your level cap play options... There is a flaw in the reward system.

Those are my three issues with the reward system.

Decay of the reward penalties addresses 2 of these issues. You no longer have to avoid running a quest at 14, for fear that at level 25 you will get diminished rewards.

If you lose the 10% bonus for completion of a quest without deaths... It's not that you can NEVER get that 10% back because repetition. Your repetition will decay away, so the penalty of having a death in a quest doesn't limit your "maximum" XP attained from any individual quest anymore. So, while you still lose some XP per MIN, it isn't XP lost NEVER able to attain again.

It doesn't address Rusted Blades, or Shadow Crypt, or any of the quests that are so completely out of line with effort vs XP, that they are window farmed, alts are parked at level to keep them open, and bios on characters contain the secrets to winning them fast.

Any quest you're willing to park a character at that level indefinitely, or add details to your bio to, or run for 12 hours back to back at level cap, are "broken" quests. (In my opinion.)

The decay could be 1 week, it doesn't have to be daily to address MOST these issues. The "power gamers" will always "power game". They will always find the absolute BEST way to exploit the flaws in the system for the most gain. We should create a "GOOD" system, that doesn't suffer from any of these three large flaws. But it doesn't have to be a fork lift.

The only reason challenge XP took such a big hit, is because it enabled the MASSES to do what the power gamers already do with Shadow Crypt, and Dun Robar. Get FAST XP, EASY.

[Kraki]

It doesn't address Rusted Blades, or Shadow Crypt, or any of the quests that are so completely out of line with effort vs XP, that they are window farmed, alts are parked at level to keep them open, and bios on characters contain the secrets to winning them fast.


Rusted blades is so quick because of one spell mechanic that has surprised me with its survival after only one minor tweak since Ye Olde Scrolle Nerf. I personally thought that the Rusted Blades optionals were going to get a serious increase and the base would get seriously chopped but that didn't happen.

Shadow Crypt is a horse of a different color. The quest was great XP but horrible to run back in the day before we mapped it out. I spent hours building up my map and determining my shortest route for solution and for full completion with the extra chest. It was a challenge. Of course we were running it at level 7-9 on elite for the most possible bonus back then. I don't begrudge people 12-15 minute runs because they didn't spend 6 hours mapping the quest. I do recommend that people TRY it without a guide. It's a very different experience.

Essentially we have to accept that the game is far easier than it was years ago. It is still a difficult MMO compared to other games where a complete novice can play for hours without even coming close to dying.

We run The Pit on elite in about 20 minutes. How about Wiz King -- you've got a 30% chance to complete that one in 10 minutes or so. The unprepared are going to get seriously beat down...and fast.

If you chop the XP to account for how easily the completionist multi-tr ship buffed vet completes a quest, the new guy is the one who receives the punishment. The vet has moved on to another quest. I know I will.



Any quest you're willing to park a character at that level indefinitely, or add details to your bio to, or run for 12 hours back to back at level cap, are "broken" quests. (In my opinion.)


Re-reading your post, you probably didn't mean it the way I feel it but having characters parked at 7,10,14 and 20 you struck a nerve. If I want to have characters tuned out and parked to help others at strategic points, that's my time and resources including character slots I've given up for it.

Regards,

Kraki

[2pleasegimmie]

Having a grouping reward is a great idea. Much better than a penalty for not grouping or running a quests too often.

/seconded

[redoubt]

I am referring to the quest ransack in my above post. Read between the lines and the devs also plan to change the way xp worked when a character is capped. No longer will they be able to continuously get xp, but rather they will become sacked after 8 runs and then have to wait 18 hours to run it again.

I hope folks are paying attention here.

The devs are proposing that ANY TR wipes your EPIC destiny xp and now they are adding that even when you are level capped, you will get a quest xp ransack.

The two ideas are being proposed separately and being promoted on different things. i.e. xp ransack is being promoted as allowing the xp penalty to decay, but they are not pointing out that you will incure an xp penalty for multiple runs even when level capped.

TR wiping epic destiny xp is being promoted and I still can't figure a good reason for it...

This is a major screw you to anyone with capped destinies and any intention of TRing in the future.

[tsotate]

Myself and others think there should be a reward for grouping. I have not seen any other proposals so here are my own. Give 5% for two players, 15% three too four players, and 20% for five or more, excluding raids. Include using hirelings instead real a player but at half the XP bonus to round out a party.

This is a great idea, especially now that they changed the launcher to allow multiboxing natively. =)

[350zguy]

Re-reading your post, you probably didn't mean it the way I feel it but having characters parked at 7,10,14 and 20 you struck a nerve. If I want to have characters tuned out and parked to help others at strategic points, that's my time and resources including character slots I've given up for it.


Parking someone to run quests with friends, and help people is one thing... Specifically leaving a character parked, on another account so you can use that character to BOOST another character from 5 to 12 running shadow crypt back to back to back, that is a totally different issue.

So, no I didn't mean it that way.

[350zguy]

I hope folks are paying attention here.

The devs are proposing that ANY TR wipes your EPIC destiny xp and now they are adding that even when you are level capped, you will get a quest xp ransack.

The two ideas are being proposed separately and being promoted on different things. i.e. xp ransack is being promoted as allowing the xp penalty to decay, but they are not pointing out that you will incure an xp penalty for multiple runs even when level capped.

TR wiping epic destiny xp is being promoted and I still can't figure a good reason for it...

This is a major screw you to anyone with capped destinies and any intention of TRing in the future.

Not so worried about any of that... I've been playing my monk at cap for a few weeks now... And I've capped 3 more destinies, ran a ton of stuff, and still haven't gotten all the items I'm after. Just playing at cap you will cap EDs, it's not WORK. You don't have to run rusted blades every 6 minutes with a DDoor, or by dismissing a hireling.

Honestly for me... if the blue bars aren't filling... It's boring. That is why I always end up a TR.

[Soulfurnace]

When you're unwilling to run quests with other players, there is a flaw in the reward system.

Any quest you're willing to park a character at that level indefinitely, or add details to your bio to, or run for 12 hours back to back at level cap, are "broken" quests. (In my opinion.)

If I feel like soloing, that's a flaw in the system?
Why should I be punished (or others being rewarded, which amounts to the same) because I'm anti-social, and don't feel like grouping with someone?

Any quest I feel like opening... I have a level 20 Iconic (yes, I found a use for them) to open - at level, I can solo if I don't want a group. No need for to be at-level with the opener ;)

Any quest I add details to my bio to, means I run it a lot - and it's got more than run, hack hack. Maybe a puzzle, maybe a maze. Should you nerf Shroud? Because I have a link to a guide to do those puzzles. *Note. It's a strategy, as oppose to a solver. Solvers take too long!

If I feel the need to run a quest for 12 hours straight, there's a flaw alright - not with the quest. If I need lots of fate points (and capped ED's), and the only way to get them without going across multiple lives is by farming 1-3 select quests worth the xp, then you have an issue with every other quest not being worth the time.
As it stands, this system makes me run content I don't enjoy for the purpose of leveling destinies, albeit slower, and more likely to be solo - simply I'll exhaust most quests before the "day" resets, and not everything will want to run **** content - not sure why.

Oh, wait. They're nerfing TR's too...
/show tinhelmet on
Nerfing farming... followed by complete nerfage on a TR...
That means it will take an annoying amount of time to complete a destiny... and needing all destinies done... will take longer...
Turbine, if you want us to re-run old, disused content, find a nicer way. As it stands, I can't think of any time where the new system benefits me - at all. Just a slap in the face... followed by a dozen more with epic TR.

[Salmagnus]

This is a great idea, especially now that they changed the launcher to allow multiboxing natively. =)

While no doubt some players will take advantage of this, DDO does not lend itself very easily to multiboxing. There are some who do it and do it well, but very few and most do it for extra loot chances.

[SirShen]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Well just been on Lama and this is not the case.

XP Ransack per repeat: -30%
XP Ransack caps off at -800% (really 800)
XP Ransack regained per day: +50%

Would also like to add after you get it up to -90% next run NO XP rewarded.

[SqueakofDoom]

We updated some of the values for XP Ransack for this Lamannia build. (Notably the: XP Ransack caps off at -80%, and XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%)

However, some of the values are able to be changed with commands. Unfortunately, try as I might, these variable XP Ransack values only stick for about 5 minutes whenever I reset the XP Ransack values. (The XP Bonus on daily first run, XP Ransack per repeat, and XP Ransack regained per other quest run return to their original values of 20%, 30%, and 1% respectively.)

The values Kookie listed are what they *should* be at on Lamannia. However, sadly we are stuck with the original default numbers until the commands work properly. :(

Also, that -800% for the XP Ransack cap is most definitely a bug. We also have a bug in our system for getting NO XP after racking up Ransack to -90%.

[Drwaz99]

We updated some of the values for XP Ransack for this Lamannia build. (Notably the: XP Ransack caps off at -80%, and XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%)

However, some of the values are able to be changed with commands. Unfortunately, try as I might, these variable XP Ransack values only stick for about 5 minutes whenever I reset the XP Ransack values. (The XP Bonus on daily first run, XP Ransack per repeat, and XP Ransack regained per other quest run return to their original values of 20%, 30%, and 1% respectively.)

The values Kookie listed are what they *should* be at on Lamannia. However, sadly we are stuck with the original default numbers until the commands work properly. :(

Also, that -800% for the XP Ransack cap is most definitely a bug. We also have a bug in our system for getting NO XP after racking up Ransack to -90%.

This makes me VERY nervous. I can't count the number of times bugs (even confirmed ones) made it from Lama to live. From poor version control to lack of time. Hope you guys can figure this out in 4 weeks. Seems (to us) you couldn't do much with the week since the preview opened.

[Systern]

We updated some of the values for XP Ransack for this Lamannia build. (Notably the: XP Ransack caps off at -80%, and XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%)

However, some of the values are able to be changed with commands. Unfortunately, try as I might, these variable XP Ransack values only stick for about 5 minutes whenever I reset the XP Ransack values. (The XP Bonus on daily first run, XP Ransack per repeat, and XP Ransack regained per other quest run return to their original values of 20%, 30%, and 1% respectively.)

The values Kookie listed are what they *should* be at on Lamannia. However, sadly we are stuck with the original default numbers until the commands work properly. :(

Also, that -800% for the XP Ransack cap is most definitely a bug. We also have a bug in our system for getting NO XP after racking up Ransack to -90%.

Wait, what?

You posted release notes saying that you want things stable so the only thing you changed was the chain and door issues.

But now you're saying you changed this too?


What gives? What's really changed?

[Cetus]

I'm confused and horrified by all this XP change talk at the same time.

[SirShen]

This makes me VERY nervous. I can't count the number of times bugs (even confirmed ones) made it from Lama to live. From poor version control to lack of time. Hope you guys can figure this out in 4 weeks. Seems (to us) you couldn't do much with the week since the preview opened.

Im also getting nervous and sick to to stomach because if this goes live you can only run the quest 5 times max and then its no XP. So if i run normal i get full xp, next run i get full xp without bonus, next is -30%, next -60%, next -90% and then NO XP rewarded.

Hugs to SqueakofDoom for trying to change them and the reply.

[Gratch]

I'd guess they have multiple development branches. The main one has all the other quests and enhancement fixes hitting it but is not stable right now so instead they back ported just a few fixes onto the branch we saw last week for Lama release this week. So there are lots of other changes/fixes... they're just not stable to show this week.


Releasing very polished software.
Taking player input into the system in a short time window.
Releasing on a specific promised date.


If you're really good at software development you can have two of the above.

[redoubt]

We updated some of the values for XP Ransack for this Lamannia build. (Notably the: XP Ransack caps off at -80%, and XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%)

However, some of the values are able to be changed with commands. Unfortunately, try as I might, these variable XP Ransack values only stick for about 5 minutes whenever I reset the XP Ransack values. (The XP Bonus on daily first run, XP Ransack per repeat, and XP Ransack regained per other quest run return to their original values of 20%, 30%, and 1% respectively.)

The values Kookie listed are what they *should* be at on Lamannia. However, sadly we are stuck with the original default numbers until the commands work properly. :(

Also, that -800% for the XP Ransack cap is most definitely a bug. We also have a bug in our system for getting NO XP after racking up Ransack to -90%.

Are characters that are level capped getting the ransack penalties?

[Arcanghakhyorsarthel]

I attempted to complete a saga while on Lama land and saw an option for an auto-complete (VIP only). I could not use this option...and I am VIP. I pay every three months. Can anyone elaborate?

[Nascoe]

I attempted to complete a saga while on Lama land and saw an option for an auto-complete (VIP only). I could not use this option...and I am VIP. I pay every three months. Can anyone elaborate?

I think the developers mentioned that the saga rewards are not actually implemented yet. So I guess that explains why its not working for you?

[carpemontis]

We updated some of the values for XP Ransack for this Lamannia build. (Notably the: XP Ransack caps off at -80%, and XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%)

However, some of the values are able to be changed with commands. Unfortunately, try as I might, these variable XP Ransack values only stick for about 5 minutes whenever I reset the XP Ransack values. (The XP Bonus on daily first run, XP Ransack per repeat, and XP Ransack regained per other quest run return to their original values of 20%, 30%, and 1% respectively.)

The values Kookie listed are what they *should* be at on Lamannia. However, sadly we are stuck with the original default numbers until the commands work properly. :(

Also, that -800% for the XP Ransack cap is most definitely a bug. We also have a bug in our system for getting NO XP after racking up Ransack to -90%.

Hmmm,

Thans for the heads up.

Sadly this whole XP Changing decay mechanic should be left to the next update the one where you guys are deciding to address Epic Tr`s and Destiny XP.

Those 2 issues go much better hand in hand than changing everything on us once again like MOTU and leaving a list of neverending bugs.

There are some thngs to definitely look forward to and there are once again a lot of things that will unnerve you player base.

XP ransack at cap will kill your player base if you have not figured this out already....

SOme play multiple toons different days while others like to focus on a single toon then move on to the next.

Its all about options and always has been in DDO.... This XP direction looks like a one way street so far.... less options and more restrictive.

Make it right for all playstyles please. Look at boosting dismal XP quests not just tossing on the typical pacth band-aid.

Laters

[Arkitektonik]

If you chop the XP to account for how easily the completionist multi-tr ship buffed vet completes a quest, the new guy is the one who receives the punishment. The vet has moved on to another quest. I know I will.


Well said. The cop-out method is to reduce the xp. The thoughtful method is to change the level so it is (a) more fun, (b) cannot be done so quickly.

[Systern]

Just like Devil assault is immune to Bravery Bonus, Is Litany going to be immune to these Ransack changes? We are forced to run it 4 times after all.

[Jasparion]

Just like Devil assault is immune to Bravery Bonus, Is Litany going to be immune to these Ransack changes? We are forced to run it 4 times after all.

Only if you want to flag. Even if you didnt farm quests you'd probably be running it E/H/N. Depending on how good your group is you could quite easily go E/H/Nx4 with the Normal runs doing the optionals. Or E/Hx4/N if you can easily take care of the optionals. You dont lose a huge amount of XP this way.

[350zguy]

Overall the change will make for the 1st time... an INFINITE amount of XP available while leveling.

This is a GREAT change. Balancing the desire for people to just run a single quest over, and over, and over, to the recovery rate of the XP is the trick.

I'm not sure how good this is for the F2P model, because those guys may run out of XP without buying certain quest packs... Now they can just 'wait it out' and get the levels.. However the limited play experience would still probably cause most people to buy adventure packs.

[carpemontis]

Overall the change will make for the 1st time... an INFINITE amount of XP available while leveling.

This is a GREAT change. Balancing the desire for people to just run a single quest over, and over, and over, to the recovery rate of the XP is the trick.

I'm not sure how good this is for the F2P model, because those guys may run out of XP without buying certain quest packs... Now they can just 'wait it out' and get the levels.. However the limited play experience would still probably cause most people to buy adventure packs.

Yes possibly a great blow to the F2P model by coercing them into buying packs....

On the other hand waiting for your charatcer to XP ransack off penalty to re-run the same quests for good XP is probably not a great idea either from Turbine as it will take people more time to finish a TR and in the process possibly lose interest.

Ironically Turbine mentioned them removing the TR timers while inplementing this mechanic that may make tring longer potentially.

Currently people on live who play 4-6 hours a day get a TR doone in a week.... These changes look like they will make it top over a week or so.

Its about options really. People who wanna single-quest grind themselves silly its all good... Flower sniffers should be catered to as well :)

I really dont think Turbine is thinking about anything else right now than keeping us in the Mouse Maze XPgrind forever while figuring out how to keep us enthralled wiht this game still.

Looks like XP pots sales need to go up but this will certainly go to the expense of people TRìng and duration of TRs by the looks of it.

Point is these changes would be supported with a LOT more content.... XP increase of other quests (low yeild ones) optional XP review also. Mob CR vs XP yield in specific quests is also a problem lol level 6 quests rare drop 75-150 XP is a joke.

As many people pointed out Cannith Amrath need a big boost where content xp and quest number is dismal vs xp neede to be gained. Yes they may lower said xp to these levels but its moving the problem elsewheres.

I would welcome most of these changes if they were in the scheme of things not just patchwork mostly.

I also have a sweet finding about a 3rd life toon which recently used a Bigby`s box.

You use Bigbys and get your character to level 15. basically you get tossed into the beginning of the XP void at 15 with no banked levels. If the curently planned XP system goes live It will be nearly impossible to do 3 runs of each quest and get to level 16 without having to back grind level 12 quests and possibly level 11 quests and getting no BB. Very sad but true.

The above scheme of things is very true and has to be done on live right now with the 50% XP pots given in the box.

Current workaround is to take 14 and keep 15 banked then run level 12`s quests for BB.... Then get XP capped at lvl 16 to make sure to get enough XP the rest of the way.

Now tell me did turbine really think this Bigby`s box out.... Or did they just patchwork out the Otto`s basically killing XP pot sales.

Its time for proper well thought out changes from Turbine. I look forward to this XP change unfolding and hopefully in less restrictive way for all customers / player types.

It is very , very early still to say this is a great change.... Having placeholder values at all times and never the correct ones or the intended ones worries me quite a bit as well. There is a lot being worked on right now and this needs to be addressed in full light before going live or even considered of being put on live.


laters

[Acc]

Overall the change will make for the 1st time... an INFINITE amount of XP available while leveling.
.

Infinite over an inifnite period of time :)

which means taking forever to achieve cap differing from Live now possibly :)

[Nascoe]

I think this change is perfectly OK for F2P players really.

In the end what completely F2P player really goes through the levels up to the levels is not counting on repeating quests, but is playing several hours daily grinding out quests? I think its something one would only do for a challenge really - to show you CAN do it. And even then, you would earn a lot of TP and surely buy adventure packs for those TP, right?

Otherwise you can easily buy something to get premium, get more characters, buy some packs, or even the bigsby'S boxes etc.

As for the trouble in TRing and buying bigby's box and dropping into the lvl 15 XP draught - they did just add a couple of quests at that lvl, and its not as if anyone not on a VIP subscription would be having a BB run going on any toon before their 3rd TR (because they would have to rely on a VIP or LFM group to open the quests for them).

It is important to make it not too restrictive, and I think allowing us to gain back some of the ransack from running other quests is a good option. I would say running a quest more than 6 times in a row (all difficulties once with first time bonus and once with just basic XP before the decay sets in) every 2-3 days would be perfectly fine for most people.
Off course they could then put "quest ransack cleaner" pots in the turbine store for those that still want to run 1-3 quests for the umpteenth time to get a certain item or to TR quickly.

[SirShen]

Hey there folks, just an update about the placeholder values that are on Lamannia right now.

Currently, the text that explains the values is bugged and is using old placeholder information. The actual values we will be using on Lamannia are as follows and are closer to what we would actually go with:

XP Bonus on daily first run: +20%
XP Ransack per repeat: -20%
XP Ransack caps off at -80%
XP Ransack regained per 18 hour "day" cycle: +50%
XP Ransack regained per other quest run: +0%

Please keep in mind that these are not final values, and we have not yet decided 100% on them.

Sadly XP Ransack is still -30%. Good news, is now it does stop at -80%.

[350zguy]

Infinite over an inifnite period of time :)

which means taking forever to achieve cap differing from Live now possibly :)

It will extended the time for the UBER GAMERS, or those that go nuts on 1 quest. However, that isn't 100% true, they can move quests, and then go back. I'm not sure we'll know the real outcome till it hits live.

That said... They have nerd nobs, and they can just change it!