Monster Champion Feedback [Archive] - Dungeons & Dragons Online Forums

JOTMON

12-12-2014, 10:49 AM

1. Terminal Delirium is the primary problem.
(Combat): Greater Beholder hit you for a total of 6,059 points of slash damage after 5 were blocked by Good damage reduction.
(Combat): Xorian Gargoyle hit you for a total of 4,188 points of slash damage after 5 were blocked by Good damage reduction.
(Combat): Xorian Gargoyle hit you for a total of 2,192 points of slash damage after 5 were blocked by Good damage reduction
This one is just a rezfest.. we ended up just releasing and repairing and reloading mana on every death.. probably 10 re-enries eah and 20ish deaths each
The Mirror room is just bs trash 14 mindflayers spamming brain drain .. some crowned.. (I was immune to a lot of it as a PM, but the rest of the party was screwed here), lots of crowned mobs here one shotting for 2k+ each..
a tank is of no use here, one shot dead, rez, oneshot dead, rez, oneshot dead.. release...repair regen, clear death penalties, re-enter..repeat...

2.Mask of Deception.
Disappearing crowned assasins that take no aoe damage and appear behind you do a thousand+ points of damage and disappear again becoming immune to all aoe /dot damage.
fortunately my PK guard killed him as I was spam rezzing at the shrine plinking him for trival damage every time he zoned in to attack before disappearing again. . I had 13 deaths on one crown assassin.
None of the above is from crit damage.. I have 250%+ fort on my Necro caster and 1k hp and regularly solo/party all endgame EE content without this kind of issue.
Besides the annoying crown assassins and the extended range of the dragon breath spamming casters this one was the best of the 4 as new content goes... still no loot desirable loot of any worth.

3. Fashion madness
Last fight with the Red named Beholder was on super steroid haste.. spamming spell attacks
I was constantly stoned the entire fight.. the Behodler just spammed flesh to stone, and a bunch of stuff I was immune to on my PM.. death death, rez rez, death death, rez rez done.
Champions would just wander around oneshotting stoned party members.
BTW locks people out of the room if you didn't get in, door does not reopen until the beholder dies..
used my jibbers blade at the end since we were all dead at one point in the room and others (recalled to repair) were locked outside of the room with no way to get back in.. so no rez release repeat on this one.
Loot.. meh...

I am fine with the concept of Crown mobs and more difficulty, I welcome it.
I do not however have any interest in 10% of the trash mobs being able to 1shot kill a player on a single swing.
Normally a death would involve bad timing on heals, cast a rez, or running to a shrine and rezzing or the occasional cake...
after running some of the new content, it became a screw this, I am not drinking pots and eating cakes for trash mobs. release repair reload mana and reenter as many times as it takes.

If this is the mechanic we end up having to resort to I just wont run EE content anymore. except once and done for favor.
I am sure the devs didn't design new content to have it run once for favor and ignored forevermore.
or have everyone skip harder difficulties because there are too many pita crown mobs..
the reward does not=the time & resources.

bsquishwizzy

12-12-2014, 10:51 AM

My limited exposure to them, here's my thoughts:

There is a spawn-rate problem. They seemed to spawn in every group of 4 or more mobs. If you're going to make something like this, you should have a drop rate of about 1 to 20 mobs.

That and the fact that people are soiling themselves that they no longer cannot solo EE with stacks and stacks of cake and pots makes me think they are just about PERFECT!!!!

Keep it up!

ddo.rsmo.pt

12-12-2014, 10:51 AM

I don't think the difficulty increase is that big of a deal except the one-shotting. That shouldn't happen even on EE except in raids.

My mule level 5 dwarf has 40% damage mitigation, using Korthos equipment.

If you go into EE quests, and you're taking 1000 damage, I would say you have 0 PRR, and you probably haven't being paying attention to the evolution to the game in the past several updates (hardly ramp up).

Having said that, the Champions do pack a punch, but the only problem I found was that there are too many at time, in just one group.

Carry on.

Disclaimer: I had only time to play one quest (Palace of Stone) and it seems that I may have picked the softer one. If people are reporting "over 9000" damage, then yeah, that's a bit too much :P

Panzermeyer

12-12-2014, 10:51 AM

Suggestion: Although giving a chest per Champion would just be stupid, I would see fitting that Champions could give some bonus, some examples:
- Count double towards the conquest counter
- Each 5 Champions killed would increase the End Loot +1 (capped at +2)
- Each 5 Champions killed would increase the chance for named loot

Although not perfect, this mechanic seems OK, obviously based off Diablo.

P.S: I'm getting the feeling people are reporting that on EH they get a chest for each Champion...? Is this right? 'Cause on Epic Elite, we didn't get any chests, only 3 chest from Palace of Stone (2 from Optionals (which also were Champions), and 1 from End Quest).
P.S2: If Orange names already give chest (most of the quest, anyway), there's no benefit.
P.S3: Reposting here, since the other thread was nuked.

Carry on.

Chests seem to only come with red/oranged named champions.

I have run into a lot of champions now with no chests.
Last nite ran EH Palace of Stone and the named Stone Pile was a champion and produced an extra chest (whereas it was not and did not eariler in the day)
This morning ran an EE Lords of Dust and two of the red named Rhakshasa's were champions and both spawned extra chests. No other champions have spawned chests for me yet.

cave_diver

12-12-2014, 10:57 AM

barecm

12-12-2014, 10:59 AM

Champions are a great addition to the game. I think this game has gotten way too easy lately. I do think they should only appear on Elite (Epic and Heroic) and Hard (Epic and Heroic), but not on normal or casual.

In order to make this more appealing, they should give a small amount of XP as well as a chest with a small chance of dropping named items (if the quest has them) and/or level appropriate unbound ingredients for random crafting systems. Greensteel, alchemical, thunderforged etc...

SiliconScout

12-12-2014, 11:02 AM

I think that by and large Champions (in my limited experience granted) are fine more or less as is. I do have some recommendations, more like minor tweaks, though.

I have not seen a single Champ drop a chest yet. Not one, given the couple of dozen fought that doesn't make a lot of sense. Their Chests should have a higher drop rate.
The sometimes spawn on plot NPC's. Not that it matters really when they can't be killed anyway however it suggests the code is a little sloppy which brings me to ...
Their spawn should have some sort of cool down. Granted it's not common but it's not unusual to walk into a group that has 1 or 2 champs. My personal record is 4. At that point you start wondering if they aren't "normal" and the other mobs are actually gimps. The code could use a cool-down timer that say only allows a champ to spawn at maximum once every 6 or 10 seconds say. This would still allow for the occasional battle with 2+ champs but at least if the group (or solo player) takes it slow and steady they really shouldn't have to deal with more than one at a time.

On the whole I think it's a great change. I remember pre-MOTU when it took serious effort to build a toon that could run "EPIC", in a group, without getting planted. Especially if you weren't going to win/buy your heart but were running the EPIC's to get your tokens. It was BRUTAL and it was amazing fun. I remember my first toon that could sorta complete in a group with only a few deaths and finally earning his TR heart and it felt like an amazing accomplishment. Hell back then the number of people who could reliably solo EPICS (and not just the "easy" ones) could probably be counted on two hands for any given server.

This is NO WHERE near a return to those days, but it is a nice baby step back towards them. More difficulty will bring more enjoyable playing. I mean really who remembers that 247th run of Impossible Demands that wants smooth as clockwork? Nobody. Now who remembers that Shroud that was so close to a party wipe but managed to have one or two guys get just a little lucky and pull the run out of the fire? Everyone... every single person in that run does. ALL of the most fun times I have had from a questing perspective have been those messy, dirty, "what the hell is going on" type of runs. And in the old days many of those ended in wipes. You know what we did? We decided that we needed a "trapper" or a "Healer" or a different difficulty OR we sold, repaired, restocked and charged right back in to show that damned quest who's boss.

Today accomplishments are measured in "past lives" but it wasn't always so, they used to be measured in quest completions. That feeling you get when you finally finish off that 3rd Bard life, yeah we used to be able to get that feeling a couple times a night depending on the content we were running.

I greatly miss those moments as they are so very very rare now, with Champions we squeak a little more back to when it felt like you accomplished something by completing the quest.

jalont

12-12-2014, 11:02 AM

I like the change, and if anything, I don't think it goes far enough. Most of the champions aren't any different than a regular mob for all intents and purposes. The chance of getting one shotted is so small that people will still be easily soloing EEs, and they add no chance of failure for an EE group.

Archangel666

12-12-2014, 11:03 AM

Disclaimer: I had only time to play one quest (Palace of Stone) and it seems that I may have picked the softer one. If people are reporting "over 9000" damage, then yeah, that's a bit too much :P

I don't know about 9000, that's more of a meme thing, but I do know that there have been reports of 6000 damage. Nobody can survive that.

Personally I don't see a random dice roll picking a player at random and basically saying "You get to die this time" as being either fun or a challenge.

To me getting one-shotted should only ever happen in Raids and should come with a very clear tell so that people can move out of the way and even then should be rare, rather than a norm.

In a quest though, where a Champ spawns at you and may or may not have this damage boost, the only tell you get is when it swings at you and suddenly you're dead. You don't have time to examine every champ that spawns when there are a couple of them and other mobs also.

Thlargir

12-12-2014, 11:06 AM

...provide us with your feedback on the Monster Champion system.

Party of 2: multi-TR fairly well equiped WF arty, and first life WF Barbarian, no hires.
Quests: Heroic elite L8 and L9 at level, Xorian Cipher, Vault of Night series, etc.

First thing we noticed was that the spawn rate was much higher than 10%, more like 30%. The chest drop rate seemed all over the place - the quori stalker ambush in the Prisoner produced 5 chests (do they count as orange named?) whereas many encounters with multiple champions produced nothing.

We also noticed that many spawns seemed to spawn with their original hit points (i.e. their HP bars were at 30% as they spawned).

The biggest thing was how hard some of them hit. Both our characters have approaching 400hp and yet we still suffered a couple deaths before we figured out the potential danger and adjusted. Lesser equipped, poorly balanced groups will find them pretty tough if they have bad luck with the spawn dice - perhaps limit them to one champion per encounter?

TL;DR version
Zerg temporarily slowed, backbacks filled faster.

Cleanincubus

12-12-2014, 11:06 AM

Heroic Elite - The Mask of Deception.

I was running it on my level 26 Drow Pale Master for Favor. Before I grabbed the mask, I ran into a mob with a few Champions, but specifically a level 23 Dragonwing Sorcerer. I was hit with 1,157 cold damage (-30 from Resist Cold spell), and died instantly. Seemed a little excessive for a level 18 quest (on Elite).
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v473/CivicSpoon/ScreenShot00009_zps5311820d.jpg

Kaytis

12-12-2014, 11:09 AM

I spent years getting my toon to the level of power she is at. She has 2 TRs and 15 ERs. Epic hard was my difficulty level of choice. Overnight, I am getting ganked in EH quests. When running solo I have no possibility of recovery (I won't buy cakes). I had just started doing Epic Elites with a friend and was quite enjoying them. But that is off the table now.

This is how it should have been done: Champions should only have appeared either as an option, or as a new level of difficulty. Champions should have been worth extra xp and renown. A set and generous amount. Killing 30 champions in a quest should be 30,000 extra xp and 2000 guild reknown. XP and guild renown are the only true incentives left in this game and people would have stepped up.

Instead, you have taken away people's perceived level of ability, without any increase in reward (I stop looting chests when my inventory is full as it is). I think you have made a huge mistake. I can't emphasize that enough. You are going to lose accounts. It may be temporarily satisfying to say "ha ha, look how upset everyone is", but this is going to affect your job status down the road, and that won't be quite as satisfying.

You have different audiences to cater to. Some are very vocal on the forums. But there are many many quiet ones who are not. Sure everyone pays the bills, but when a sizeable measure of everyone gets frustrated and leaves it's going to hurt. Be very very careful how you handle this.

dualscissors

12-12-2014, 11:09 AM

As a comparison in play experiences, the old school fantasy rpgs started you out at level 1 and didn't give you extra hit points. So when you were level 1 or 2 (or lvl 3 if you were a d4 HP class), you had single digit or barely double digit HPs. Anytime you got in a fight with, say, meek archer kobolds or a lowly brigand with a longsword, it was only a matter of time before you'd get dropped due to an max dmg hit or a crit against you.

I would argue this wasn't a particularly fun feature in the evolution of fantasy games - death by inevitable bad luck, not because of poor play.

The reports I'm hearing of Champions packing 1-hit-kill punches sounds a lot like the old save-before-you-die games.

Vargouille

12-12-2014, 11:10 AM

Oh and True Seeing and Deathward on champions... that just eliminates a lot of the tactical options (stealth play, to start with - all the way through) outright. I thought the point was to increase the tactical variety and not decrease it? And that's not getting into what it does for the characters who rely in displacement and such.

Now, if the champions did NOT universally have True Seeing and if Assassinate and such worked on them, that would be different...

Monster Champions only have a chance to have True Seeing and/or Deathward. Some Champions won't have either one. We certainly expect players to use instant kill abilities on many Champions.

The exact chances to have True Seeing and Deathward are, of course, subject to change. We didn't want these to be very low, as that also reduces the tactical variety that's used -- not every champion should be instant killed or entirely invis-zerged past.

A quest of 400 mobs will have 40 champions. It seems like the % is more like 25%.

This sounds like confirmation that the current percentage is probably working correctly. If you felt there were 40 out of 400 normal monsters (plus extra for the higher chance for orange named minibosses), that's precisely 10%, which is only slightly higher than the intended amount.

What warning for new players is given? new player steps into pug on ee... instasplat in harbor...
We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.

Stealth is useless everything has true seeing. Assassins are useless. other rogue tactics close behind.
Stealth is unaffected by True Seeing.

why didn't you give them defensive buffs. displacement. haste, and etc other noramal buffs that players would have at that level.

Each of the buffs listed here is already in the list of the possibilities. We agree!

Nestroy

12-12-2014, 11:11 AM

Generally I like the idea with the champions, but... Here some notices free from my mind:

Ran several EH quests yesterday. Seems every 3rd mob now has Champion. Palace of Stone - a mob of 15 animated rocks, and 5 of them Champion?! EH hits on my melee tank were ok, just about 100-200 dmg from the champs - far away from the reported 1000 dmg oneshotting all but the best HP builds. This at about 200 PRR and about 150 AC.

I just happened to kill about total 200-250 champions w/o getting one single chest. I know, this is random, but - WAI?!

On EH wading thru legions of champions still was no big deal. Just some inflation of HP and I emptied my mana pool somewhat faster. Only thing stinking me big time has been the fact that both mobs and champions increased big time in both power and quantity on EH when adding more party members. This also holds true for the one EE quest I tested (lots of champions in The Snitch too) and the HE quests I ran yesterday after the servers went back up. Not funny to get a big time scaling on champion quantities and powers with MORE members - I always thought the champions were supposed to increase group play but currently even deter me further from picking up group members, except for selected players I know that know their trades.

My suggestions to the Devs:

1.) Finetune the ammount of champions. Running quests with about 1/3rd of mobs (!) being champions is just plain ridiculous. 1/10th or 1/8th of total mobs sounds about right. Even better would be a mechanic where different mob types have different chances to spawn champions. But this certainly would be too expensive to code, I suppose. Sometimes the champion mechanic is lacking reason. Animated Rocks spawn Champions?
2.) Tune up the chest droprates. I expect getting some reward for killing legions of champions. At least make them champions drop guild renown. I do not expect a chest for each and every champion. But about 250 of them and no chest?
3.) Tune down scaling for champions. We are supposed to fear them on soloing, but we should be able to break thru their ranks on large groups.

hit_fido

12-12-2014, 11:12 AM

I happen to be running my fighter currently. He was doing fine stunning and/or tripping most champions he ran across, no kiting or range attacks needed.

This is very good news. Personally I feel encouraged to add another dimension or two re: CC to my play style like the good old days instead of just relying on dps/aoe.

My feedback is from running ~20 low level quests having just TR'd.

I liked this idea when shared on Lamma forum, I still like it, although the implementation isn't what I expected. I expected champions to work something like random encounter orange/red names - maybe seeing 3-4 in an average instance (or more/less depending on quest size) and being scaled up at minimum to orange/red strength with some other interesting twists. The reality is there's almost never been a time in quest where I can't see at least one, if not two/three champions active.

Rate of champion spawn is higher than expected, but I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. If the 'champion characteristics' are scaled better then it may be more fun than my original expectation because of greater variety and more frequent change ups. But if the characteristics remain around the "one shot" magnitude being described by some I'd rather see much fewer spawn per quest.

The "fortification ignore" is the most egregious characteristic to me. If it's ok to bypass *all* fortification, then will it be ok to bypass all deathblock? What about champion caster mobs with "bypass all will saves"? Complete bypass seems wrong. It's also the characteristic that will most encourage the mentality of "all I can do is kite" because the consequence could be getting one shotted - I'd rather see powerful defensive characteristics combined with upgraded (but not one-shot territory) offense that give players time to understand the challenge posed by the champion then adapt.

Saw a non champion ooze split up and produce 3 champion spawns. That seems wrong.

Also prefer a more interesting reward than trash chest. If the only champions dropping them are champion orange named then at least make the chest like +1-2 levels higher than normal. Champion mob should drop champion chest.

Well it will be nigh impossible to design a system that pleases everyone but for my part as a more casual player, it's a good change, could be better, hopefully some tweaks will make it more fun for more players.

jalont

12-12-2014, 11:13 AM

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 11:18 AM

As said in other thread, the ammount of damage sufferd from delirium is not the effect of champion monster damage but from debuffs provided by enviorment so when people bring that damage up it is unrealistical ammount and doesnt provide proper feedback.
Now that thats it out of the way, i have a marginaly larger sample on ee and elite questing and my encounter with champion monsters can be put into 2 words: "GOOD JOB".

You guys have hit the jackpot with this change, you have made quests and every encounter different from the previous one and thus gave fresh air to ddo.
Just the thing it lacked, as now elite and epic elite feel just the right way.
My only issues with champ monsters are:

1. I havent seen a single champ monster immune to cc, is that intentional?
2. Chest in air spawns, kinda annoying.

But overall this is a wonderful idea and i sincerely hope you wont cut the champ monster spawn rate, and if you do dont cut it to much since ddo is extremely fun with this change

Seikojin

12-12-2014, 11:19 AM

No longer sleep walking through EE, this actually introduced some challenge to the game and reminded me of what it was like when I first started the game, fun.

Love it!

edit: 1 thing, I would like it if the crown over their head was a little more prominent, or if it was easier to identify in some other way (slightly larger, maybe have their name actually include the word champion, bold text for the name, something). It can be difficult to locate which one of the mobs just hit for 800 damage when all 6 look identical.

In what I have seen, the champions force targeted combat and group tactics. They are like minibosses, can come in packs, and can work together to tear a party up.

I can see where their spawn rate can be buggy at 10%. Especially knowing how randomness in ddo works. If the trigger to call the spawn of a champ gets hung, the handle will get a duplicate respoinse of yes and spawn more champs instead of timing out and locking the game up.

Personally though, I am fine with it. It is on hard and elite difficulties only, so it does not prevent anyone from completing the game. It just makes hard a bit harder and elite a bit eliter.

When I ran eh flesh solo, I did fine up to a point where there were 4 champs in a cluster. I re-entered and was able to take them down, one at a time. This was on a non-evasion heavy armor fighter dual wielding scimis. The damage I took was high, but I was expecting that and drank plenty of pots between or popped a heal scroll if it was getting too hot while fighting.

Tilomere

12-12-2014, 11:20 AM

In TD groups of 8+ caster mobs with 3 champions were stacking 3-5+ burning bloods in the first second of combat. For those of you unfamiliar with arcane spells, burning blood (http://ddowiki.com/page/Burning_Blood) does an initial tick of acid and fire damage, followed by five more equal ticks of damage.

There is no save, no spell resist, no interrupting, and no avoiding the spell, as it is instantly directly applied to your character.

In heroic, the ticks after MRR from normal casters were around 160 combined fire and acid or slightly under a thousand over time. The champion caster mobs after MRR were double, at 320, or slightly under 2000 damage over time. Getting hit with say 5 heroic burning bloods in the first second of combat due to being within range of several casters due to either being in a room with 20+ of them or floating up to a platform of 8 of them from a mixture of champions and regular mobs would apply 800-1600 upfront and 4,000-8,000 additional damage over time after MRR.

For a heroic level dungeon, I'll just say interesting and leave it at that.

http://i58.tinypic.com/34qa9ar.jpg

axel15810

12-12-2014, 11:20 AM

Overall this is a great change. Excellent, kudos devs. This is a huge improvement. However, there needs to be a few tweaks:

- We need more buff diversity. There seem to be only a handful.

- We need a better way to find out what buffs champions have other than individually selecting them and inspecting them with the examine button. This is not feasible to do in fast paced combat. Perhaps you could make the crowns a different color depending on the buffs they have? Or perhaps ditch the crowns and put the buff symbols on their heads?

- The spawn rate seems a bit high. Seems like most encounters have at least one or two champions.

- You need to make sure the quest rewards are kept up to scale with the increased difficulty changes. Both XP and loot. I'm afraid that like raids, running all quests on epic normal will become the new standard across all the servers. If the XP/minute is vastly better on epic normal, I can easily see epic elite and epic hard being ignored.

- Please make the champions visually more prominent. Some kind of glowing animation or color around the monsters' bodies would be best. The actual monster itself needs to be easily identified as a champion. The crowns are too small and when mobs are in close proximity to each other it can be hard to spot which are champions.

Zzevel

12-12-2014, 11:21 AM

I think the difficulty level is perfect - EE has some challenge to it

don't change anything aside from maybe adding a token xp bump when you kill one

for those that cant handle it find a group to play with and work together

This, we had a group of 4 last night doing Elite Von 1-4 (lvs 11, 11, 9, 7) and it was a blast, sure we had deaths but that was the fun of it. We actually HAD DEATHS. Prior to this i think I died <5 times in the last couple months. It slows you down (a bit) but mostly we found the champions as speed bumps. Yeah there were a couple one shouts and once we had 3 hp amongst us (champion w/ chain lightning WEEEEEE!) but for the first time in months (years) we slowed down and actually had a lot of fun and worked together.

Don't change them, deaths are supposed to occur and they give GREAT flavor. (and 3 chests in a group of 6 champions is always a great bonus too)...

ChicagoChris

12-12-2014, 11:21 AM

Cordovan -

Champions are so cool! Thanks for making EE hard again, and EH, while not overly difficult, can no longer be phoned in...

Couple of suggestions and comments

I do like the idea of limiting spawn rates in mobs, but I feel that this should:
1) Scale with difficulty settings (which I believe it currently does)
2) Scale with Dungeon Scaling

This would help with small groups not getting completely blind sided, but will encourage larger groups from splitting up so much.

I also think champion kills should get an automatic guild renown reward, and possibly always drop a reward like a scaled up breakable
1) Renown should be in the 50-500 range
2) drop should be something like a level appropriate random lootgen, or plat in the 1000-5000 range (I hate that I can't be bothered to pick up the plat from a barrel - like a penny on the floor)

Some sort of sound notification of champions would be cool - trumpet blast or some such.

Finally (I'm not sure how this would work) champions should inspire their comrades - some sort of Aura that boosts the mobs, encouraging the players to have to concentrate on the champions before killing the mobs.

Overall, definitely a great add to the game.

Congrats!

bartharok

12-12-2014, 11:22 AM

I, at least, have had no more trouble stunning champions, than i have stunning the non-chapion critters. Which means that the champions are not a great problem, since i can just run to them and stun them. That way i dont get hit for thousands of damage (not that i have gotten hit for thousands of damage even when i failed to stun them)

lugoman

12-12-2014, 11:26 AM

Ran epic hard fleshmakers and about 25% of the trash mobs were champions. They weren't very bad on epic hard and only went below 75% health when there were three or more champions beating me at once. Had three champion chest drops.

gamblorjb

12-12-2014, 11:28 AM

Have only been running EH stuff since U24 but I find the champions a nice change of pace. I'd say the % is closer to 15-20% than 10% but I don't mind that.

I find the orange named bosses to be over 50%, in fact, I did unbroken chains and all the slavemasters were champions. They all also dropped chests which all had renown in it, including 2 legendarys.

I would like to see renown earned for every champions killed. Maybe have it based on their CR level. Maybe 1:1, so a CR 25 mob champion would earn you 25 base renown. If it was a 10% chance of champions, on average you would see say 100 total in a quest (I know it varies from 0 to hundreds but example) so 10 champions and an extra 250 renown.

I think you need to get something from the mob champions even if it's renown like above, some sort of currency for trade in (auto get like the token fragments), xp, etc.

Great idea as long as they aren't crazy powerful.

Thanks for rolling out new ideas and asking for feedback.

gwonbush

12-12-2014, 11:29 AM

I decided to look at champions more from the perspective of a relatively new player. Rolled up a barbarian at level 4, ran the harbor at h/e. Since Blood Tribute gave me as many temp hp as I could ask for, I was able to get a feel for where the damage totals were at. Defenses were 37 PRR, 30 MRR, 5 resists.

Ordinary kobolds champions were not particularly dangerous, having around 130 hp and hitting for 10 max with a slow attack rate. Kobold champion warriors were worse, doing around 10-18 damage a hit on elite at a faster rate with around 200 hp. They were basically mini Bloodknuckles that sometimes came in packs. What was really nasty were the shamans. Scorching Ray on Hard was hitting me for 34 (45 without defenses). Elite shaman champions were hitting for 55 damage lightning bolts (22 on save, 70 without MRR on failed save) that could hit you twice.

Overall, the worst monster I fought was a shaman champion on a high platform in Hard Hazadil's Warehouse's end room, potshotting me for a total of around 180 damage while I climbed my way to him.

In the end, I decided that the damage from "I hit harder!" is a bit too high and should be scaled back from its current 3x damage (or so it feels like) to 2x damage, at least on hard.

Krelar

12-12-2014, 11:29 AM

This sounds like confirmation that the current percentage is probably working correctly. If you felt there were 40 out of 400 normal monsters (plus extra for the higher chance for orange named minibosses), that's precisely 10%, which is only slightly higher than the intended amount.

I only ran 3 quests (2 EH, 1 EE) last night but in my experience every group of 5+ mobs had 1-4 champions in it.

We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.

Then you are not paying attention to the reality of the game.

Ever since you introduced bravery bonus anyone that wants to run in a group has to run on elite.

Maybe your hope is champions will change this, but that is going to take some time and I suspect many new people will give up and leave before that time comes.

Garothe

12-12-2014, 11:34 AM

Just going to reiterate my points from the other thread, than I'm done with this, looks like break time from DDO for me. I'm a 7 heroic tr character, and have never done an epic tr, so I have almost no PRR or MRR. I run solo and groups on Elite, and am pretty well geared for under epic content.(No I don't do EE content, I found it too difficult, yes there are a lot of us out here that do) Was running various sands quests yesterday, and in 2 different dungeons, I was one shotted. I'm a sorc with 268 hps(yes I could get more, but I'm a sorc, why should I be concentrating on HPS). In Raid the vulkrum, a hatchling crown was doing roughly 138 damage a hit, the boss of the dungeon was doing about 34. I still don't see a world where that makes any kind of sense.

So basically I can no longer run elite without a group. This now means I am waiting sometimes an hour or more to try to find a group where I get at most 3 quests with them in before they disband, or I can choose to break my streak, run hard quests, which yes I find insanely easy, and redo the same quests over and over and over again in order to get enough xp in order to level. This obviously sounds like a ton of fun.

All your mid range players who are playing even a remotely squishy they are losing virtually all of there solo ability. Because of course hires work so well at well... anything, so your dead before they even attempt to try healing you. Basically all it takes is one group to run up to me, I don't see the crown in time, and I'm dead before I know what's happening, the hireling follows almost immediately after words, and I just wasted the last 20 minutes of a dungeon. Yes elite dungeons should have a fail chance, and I have died / wiped on heroic elite before. But that doesn't mean I should be dying in a single shot! This is a **** idea which is trying to make the game more difficult for the 10% top end people, who are largely unaffected by this anyway. Us more regular players, we'll get to enjoy our time standing around doing nothing, while trying to get a group.

DANTEIL

12-12-2014, 11:36 AM

I am going to try not to sound like a whiny casual player here, but in the experiences that I have had so far, Champions make the game too difficult for me. I understand that the response to this will be to simply run the game on Normal -- and I already do that when I attempt a quest on-level (I mostly solo). When I am over-level, however, I like the option of being able to run a quest on Hard or Elite -- mostly for the favor and sometimes for modest XP and/or possible loot depending on the quest. I also don't like to repeat a lot of quests if I can help it, so the option of getting the favor from Elite and being done with it is appealing. And this is mostly all Heroics I am talking about.

I have seen a lot of posts here expressing excitement for champions in Epic Elite content -- and I sincerely think that's great for players who run almost exclusively in EE and haven't felt all that challenged by the game recently. But I also believe that there are range of other players such as myself for whom the existing game was already sufficiently challenging, and these new Champions have the potential to reduce my playing options considerably (or least my chances of success). I don't know how you balance this -- I was hoping for an 'optional' toggle (with a possible 5-10% boost in XP if you leave the champion toggle on) but at the very least the numbers of champions appearing should be scaled back in Hard content compared to Elite. It is still early, so I am going to keep trying this with an open mind, adjusting my expectations as I go, but so far I am not encouraged.

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 11:40 AM

As i said alrdy, best thing you guys could do now is delete bravery bonus and change it to a bonus where you gain bonus xp for every party member that is alive at end of dungeon and scales with difficulty.

That added change would kill the "all need to play elite" mentality and if you keep the bonuses to a reasonable rate it will promote grouping and would be a excelent change in addition to monster champs.

I for example am unaffected by this change, it is pure positivity to me since imo elite should be for skilled players and epic elite solo should be for the most skilled players or groups that work together and use tactics.
Champs provide both of those.
Now if you just change the mentality to initially force every player to run elite and elite and elite and to do solo solo solo for experienced players /xp penality to member death/ it would make a greater positive change then we could imagine.
Just dont give in to negative feedback and change this wonderful mechanics you added to game

Vanhooger

12-12-2014, 11:41 AM

bartharok

12-12-2014, 11:43 AM

I only ran 3 quests (2 EH, 1 EE) last night but in my experience every group of 5+ mobs had 1-4 champions in it.

Then you are not paying attention to the reality of the game.

Ever since you introduced bravery bonus anyone that wants to run in a group has to run on elite.

Maybe your hope is champions will change this, but that is going to take some time and I suspect many new people will give up and leave before that time comes.

Brand new players may do elites, but its because of player expectations, not dev expectations. Or peer pressure, to use another term.

Wh070aa

12-12-2014, 11:48 AM

Okay.

These tings do more damage then the boss of dungeon, and can 1 hit kill you. Melee without absolute best gear is unplayable.

Getting 1 shot is not fun. Beating on multiple 35000+ damage meat bags is not fun.

On side note repeater adrenaline stuff is broken/working as intended and no longer applies on 2nd and 3rd bolt as it did before, so I do way less damage too.

Who cares? Its not like anyone cares about players that don't absolutely min max, and have best gear, and want to farm for more xp, and gear in best way. Pugs are dead, and ewryone from my static party/guild no longer plays, so its such fun indicative to group. I am gonna be running normals now. Thanks.

Lonnbeimnech

12-12-2014, 11:48 AM

Archangel666

12-12-2014, 11:49 AM

Brand new players may do elites, but its because of player expectations, not dev expectations. Or peer pressure, to use another term.

There's also the fact that compared to just a few years ago, the playerbase is miniscule, meaning less players to group with and less choices when it comes to difficulty.

For newer players who might want to try say Heroic Hard and actually have the confidence to throw up an LFM (Rarer than you might think, many of them are quite shy), only to have the LFM sit there with nobody joining.

Eventually they either run Normal, even though they want to try harder difficulties, join an Elite PuG since that's all they can find which may well be beyond their capabilities, or they move on (Further exacerbating the shrinking playerbase).

dunklezhan

12-12-2014, 11:50 AM

Thank you for the dedicated thread, and for the responses.

I haven't played elite yet - I've heard the stories and know when I'm outgunned. I won't even bother to try. That is NOT a complaint, elite should be for the best and I am very much not in that bracket, I have no real business being there on my own.

So thank you for the champions too :)

Speaking for hard and EH, which I have played since the update, I think the spawn rate is too high and the resultant mobs not scary enough. I would rather have fewer spawns that are really tough than run into packs of mobs with multiple crowns which just hit a little harder or have true seeing. They don't add much except an easy way to identify your first targets (priority order now goes: crowned caster>caster>crowned anything else>everything else). If elite is now really for the elite, then hard needs to be just a little bit harder please - more in line with what elite was before the update in my view which is to say: tough, but certainly doable with just a bit of experience and a half decent build - and I'd rather have that achieved by way of challenging but fewer crowns, than with lots of crowns which are only a teensy bit tougher than the other mobs.

DaGreat1

12-12-2014, 11:50 AM

I did the new quest Mask of Deception yesterday, and then went to finish Cannith quests (Blown to Bits and Schemes of the Enemy), all on elite.

In Mask of Deception, nothing to say, but my friend and I thought there was a little too much champions in Cannith Quests. We don't mind the challenge. Many quests sure need a boost in that area. However, when fighting Hunter and Gatherer in Blown to Bits, we also had 2 artificers champions et 1 tempest champion to fight at the same time (with other non-champions mob, of course)

and in Schemes of the Enemy, not much to say, except somewhere, we fought 5 watchers construct, with 3 of them being champion. We could still one-shot them, but 60% of the mobs being champions, we were quite happy they were only watcher's construct :)

Vanhooger

12-12-2014, 11:51 AM

There is a "checkbox", normal/hard/elite >.>

Ok, I'll let you explain that to all those whiners so, good luck.

kumagnificent

12-12-2014, 11:54 AM

Brand new players may do elites, but its because of player expectations, not dev expectations. Or peer pressure, to use another term.

Bravery bonus is a near-must-have, as some believe (I don't). It's a nice bonus, but ALL bonuses are not must-haves. Just saying.

There are game settings for those who can not handle champion mobs: casual and normal difficulty.

Would it be awesome to have ALL mobs be champions? Let's call that difficulty simply EPIC. All caps. It reminded me of the old times when epic quests were actually epic, and rewarded skill and game knowledge, as well as teamwork.

The way quests are with champions now - folks would actually want dedicated healers to come out and play.

LongshotBro

12-12-2014, 12:05 PM

i've been following all the feedback closely as well as having played for many hours since the update in EH.

based on the variety of responses, it seems to me that champs are working as intended. EH there is a slight uptick in challenge, but nothing dire. Some of the champs were more difficult than others, i died a couple of times, but not insurmountable. EE sounds like it is where it should be - a very difficult situation that prompts more grouping unless you are at the top of your game (elite). Sounds like it harkens back to the days of plain ol' Epic play, where my first experience was opening the first door in The Tide Turns...and promptly getting killed by the first mob in there with his bow. i realized i wasn't prepared, but was not discouraged. That was of course many years ago, but still, i haven't tackled much EE since then and i'm fine with that. i realize a lot of others have and found it lacking in challenge so i am happy now that it packs more of a punch for them, which it should.

On the whole, what champs added overall (and is evident through the feedback) is randomness and variety, which is great! If DDO had been like this since the beginning, no one would be having these discussions right now. But i get it, something new is going to take some getting used to. Personally, i like that these dungeons i've ran so many times before have a bit of spice now, and i hope to see this trend continue. Maybe we'll get random traps someday, too.

As far as chests/loot are concerned, i'm content with the chance for random gen chests on orange champs. Sometimes random stuff is pretty good and it seems they tweak the tables and prefixes, etc. every so often which is fine. i wouldn't be against playing with champ drops though, making something like cosmetic rewards or something crafty. On the other hand, it's been exactly one day since this has been in place and i'm sure based on how it goes they'll adjust over time.

Stonemerge

12-12-2014, 12:05 PM

I think the difficulty level is perfect - EE has some challenge to it

don't change anything aside from maybe adding a token xp bump when you kill one

for those that cant handle it find a group to play with and work together

There are no groups for me - The DDO rushhour is between midnight and 7 in the morning here in germany and maybe i could do 1 run but nothing more before i hit my bed. The 10 hours before (my usual playtime) it is hard or very hard to find groups (except weekend). My Guild has 200 Accounts, but not more than 2 or 3 players online (and not in my range) at my time - rush hour i can see 80 or more

I dont care for ee (Epic normal is good xp and favor isnt too important) but i don't want to see eh championized ... it is the best solo-experience for most players - ubers will not play ehards, so leave them to us non-uber-players.

but my main-concern is heroic ... i was able to solo Framework heroic elite, but i doubt that it would be possible for me with dozens of champs who can kill me with just one random hit. Most quests will be out of my reach. so i need to skip elites - but i dont want to lose my streak - "maybe i CAN find a group sooner or later and the bonus is too high to lose" - so i will just do quests under level on normal and hard - with superlow amounts of xp/min. While the guildchat-ubers will do their static group and still rush through each content.

Why is this game better now? Ubers will feel even more uber - casual players will never see the big items - LFMs will be "selective" again - we will wait 2 hours for a tank/healer/cc/whatever again - nonamericans are more or less out of the game - all build(s) are about HP and PRR (2 level evasion splash is now a 5 level Fighter/Pal-Splash) ... IMHO this is the worst design decision ever

But i dont want to take away the new funny stuff from the highend players - this Champ-Thing should be epic elite only - not in heroics plz ... we are so spread out nowadays and heroics are no endgame; give new players / casual players / build testers / slowpokers / alloptionalers a chance to get a few past lifes / completionist and dont force away their epic streak bonuses. Allow these players to catch up one day with the ubers, not separate them forever.

OptIn/OptOut Is the best solution to all this ... "I want a challenge" players opt-in and get a big bonus of whatever for doing that and are happy ... and "dont force me" players can do what they want. This game is about its customizability in classes, feats, enhancements - no other game has this complexity - forcing us to play Defenders in Heavy Armor and Tower Shield and grab Toughness 7 times will kill DDO. No One-Hit-Kills !!!
And the main reason that this game still exists is the D&D niche - a roleplaying game. Why force Storylovers and LandscapeViewers into a EachStepCanBeaDeath-Challenge ? And what about Permadeath players ? Or those guys on Wayfinder - will u close that server now or what ?

I understand that players will disagree with me. If i would live in the USofA, had a bunch of guildies online and have all possible past lives, i would get bored too - but I prefer to create new toons constantly - give them 3 lives - grab all favor, filling out all EDs and the (2nd) best items for them on their final life, then they r banksters - i play a shroud from time to time with them ... but i want a new toon then and i dont want to lose my beloved toons - so i dont TR constantly. I am experienced, but not uber - my main can solo ee - my other toons not. Plz have that in mind - what is nothing but a slightly bigger challenge for you, might be impregnable for another player - lets find a way to satisfy all of us.

OptIn for the MortalFear-Swingers in ShadowPlate with 2000 HP and 200 PRR and OptOut for the rest - thx

caberonia

12-12-2014, 12:06 PM

I question the wisdom of putting these in heroics at all. Heroics are easy for over-twinked vets who know the quests like the back of their hands. Does your feedback from new players indicate that they found this game too easy?

This. You wanna Buff EE go for it.. make every mob in EE a champ idc, but thinking it was a good idea to add the same to Heroic is just silly.

LongshotBro

12-12-2014, 12:08 PM

There's also the fact that compared to just a few years ago, the playerbase is miniscule, meaning less players to group with and less choices when it comes to difficulty.

For newer players who might want to try say Heroic Hard and actually have the confidence to throw up an LFM (Rarer than you might think, many of them are quite shy), only to have the LFM sit there with nobody joining.

Eventually they either run Normal, even though they want to try harder difficulties, join an Elite PuG since that's all they can find which may well be beyond their capabilities, or they move on (Further exacerbating the shrinking playerbase).

Let's give it more than one day to see what happens. i suspect we will see an increase of LFMs for different difficulties and perhaps a sigh of relief from people who had been struggling mightily to get through elite content, who will hopefully group more now, and be more open to running hard or even *gasp* normal.

btw what's so wrong about normal? i'm no spring chicken, and still sometimes i run normal when i don't think i can handle harder difficulties.

Monkey-Boy

12-12-2014, 12:11 PM

This. You wanna Buff EE go for it.. make every mob in EE a champ idc, but thinking it was a good idea to add the same to Heroic is just silily.

A would rather have seen ALL mobs in EE get smaller buffs than what was implemented. I don't want to play friggin Diablo.

kafrielveddicus

12-12-2014, 12:19 PM

Pretty much destroys the permadeath concept when mobs can one shot critical damage, but so be it, it will likely kill permadeath style altogether, that will be the end of my ddo gaming as it happens.

My recommendations for new and casual players;
Designed to slow down your acquisition of free DDO store points to buy adventure packs -> means they are trying to suck money out of you
Designed to create more instadeaths for Melees not preventable by gear -> means they are trying to suck more money out of you
Designed to create more inventory clutter with extra chests, buy more inventory -> means they are trying to suck money out of you
Designed to get you to burn thru more HP and SP, buy more HP and SP pots -> means they are trying to suck more money out of you
Designed to slow down favor to acquire things like drow, 32 point, monk -> means they are trying to suck more money out of you

My recommendations to the DEVS;
Save the Monster Champions for the chest thumpers that run end game EPIC ELITE -> more fun for the rest of the player base
If not allow a check box on opening quest for players to opt to have Champions -> more fun for the player base as they get to choose their playstyle

Other comments in general regarding the actual continued existence of the champions;
Full fortification for players should still be full fortification
NO mob should be hitting for more damage than an actual toon at that level can hit, no crits if fortification is present
No trash mob should be more difficult then the end boss or red named quest bosses located in quest

Overall, think these mobs are a stupid fix, would have been better to adjust all the current mobs stats in each setting.

P.S. played some Heroic elites level 12 with two other toons in guild range level 15-18 and if it wasnt for the fact that I was an ARTIFICER and kiting all the crowned mobs the other two toons would have been smoked for sure repeatedly, this will make the game lead to all non-melee toons which pretty much is all my personal builds anyways, but kills it for those that enjoy playing melee.

Hoping to continue to play this game and enjoy it.

kumagnificent

12-12-2014, 12:19 PM

Ah yes everyone should run Normal through 12 or 13 TR lives in order to become good enough.. because thats what everyone else did right?

Actually - no. Maybe for a life or two. :D - You misunderstand me. Zerging through a quest and destroying everything that comes along is *not* the only way to play the game. You can sneak through. You can go slow, play safe. I agree that the one-shot issues should be fixed; however, the rest of the champions idea feels really well with the concept of the game.

The opt-in and opt-out for champions seems like the best way to go. The opt-in should have some nice rewards to make it a viable option. Perhaps more loot per champion kill, and additional xp per champion kill?

totalmir

12-12-2014, 12:22 PM

The best feature added to the game in a while..
Yesterday I went into an EH mask of deception,and was really surprised when some assassin ripped me to shreds.There is a bit of problem when there is like 3 of them in the same place,but overall the feel is great.Once again we have mobs in quests that have to die first.

That being said,today I Played some HE gianthold on my rogue and noticed the terrible combo of a trip spamming mob/champion,and personally think that no mob that spams improved trip time and time again should be made a champion.There was also an instance of a crowned shaman that almost killed me with his stick.If the champion is a caster it shouldn't be able to melee you to death by doing more damage than a regular melee mob.Archer champions are pathetically weak compared to the other types of champions.

Monkey-Boy

12-12-2014, 12:24 PM

I agree that the one-shot issues should be fixed; however, the rest of the champions idea feels really well with the concept of the game.

The one-shotting has to go, I can tolerate the rest of this "feature."

Random deathward, FOMs, True-seeing, some mobs with more HP, etc . . . is fine. And have some mobs do more damage is fine, what's not fine is the one-shotting.

Kamode_Corebasher

12-12-2014, 12:24 PM

Now that Update 24 is out, and clearly there's a lot of community interest in discussing the new Monster Champion system, we thought it would be a good idea to consolidate the large number of threads on this topic into an official thread. Please run some quests, give it a bit of time, and provide us with your feedback on the Monster Champion system.

We have seen a lot of feedback that appears to be tilted toward Terminal Delerium in particular. It should be noted that Terminal Delerium is an Extreme Challenge dungeon, so particularly if you are running it on Epic Elite, it may not be the best quest to singularly evaluate Monster Champions on. That said, we do appreciate all of your feedback on this topic, regardless of what quest(s) are being used to evaluate the system.

Thanks!

Was playing a fleshy CC Wizard with cocoon twisted and wearing medium armor (750ish hp) for the 4 new quests...all on EH and with three other guildies....no melee dps'r in the group. Then two more quests as a front-line dps'r (average AC (90ish), PRR(90ish), MRR(60ish), self-casting displacement, HP = 916) running an EE Foundation of Discord and EE Prison of the Planes. That said, on average I'd say we saw ~10 champions per quest, and I was hit unusually hard maybe 5 times....basically "oh $#!#" moments but not death moments (we did die a few times whether by odd beholder or trying to figure out we needed to jig instead of move around in a funky fashion :-)

I'd say this initial implementation of yours is successful. Two guildies who I was running with were not of the same opinion...at least initially...I'll be poling them again after a week or so.

Out of all the Champions through the 6 quests, 1 extra chest dropped. I dislike that it's just trash loot. Please add something more that would have me wanting to open the chest.

AzureDragonas

12-12-2014, 12:25 PM

Starting to hear rummors some champions either broken or scaling too much. Tanks with 200 AC and 150+ prr get hit for 2k from melee damage not on criticals. or in heroic elite with my bard had issue while 1 champion reaver at acute delirium was hitting me for near 150 base. while i had 70 prr and 16 damage reduction...

Ovrad

12-12-2014, 12:27 PM

This sounds like confirmation that the current percentage is probably working correctly. If you felt there were 40 out of 400 normal monsters (plus extra for the higher chance for orange named minibosses), that's precisely 10%, which is only slightly higher than the intended amount.

I think you missread his post, he just said it should be 40/400, but seems more like 25% chance of champion. And yeah from personally experience, it's easily 25-33% of mobs are champions. There is no way it's currently working as the intended 10%.

Champion scaling in high level quests needs some quick fixing. Going full PRR was already way superior to dodge characters, and now even the full PRR toons are getting one-shotted, you guys should at least try to balance this stuff before releasing it...

HAL

12-12-2014, 12:28 PM

My static groups are first-life characters without high level raid gear as we don't grind. We run a quest once and done. We are mostly long-term players who have run the quests many times on our many alts, so we aren't newbies. Knowing the quests, we run on Elite for BB. With the exception of those quests known to be easier even on Elite, we have found Elite a challenge already.

This change does not seem to take our playstyle into account AT ALL. This change seems to be aimed at vets with multiple past lives and huge amounts of gear (including tomes). But if you keep increasing content difficulty for a small percentage of players who have created uber-characters you are squeezing out all of the players who do not play that way.

Some players say to start playing Hard difficulty if the new Elite is too challenging. Except Hard difficulty doesn't offer the same challenge as old Elite did. Adding Champions to Hard does not make it the same as pre-Champion Elite. Its just a "bursty" Hard difficulty. And of course it doesn't offer the same loot, Favor, or XP rewards.

Other MMOs have the same problem with power creep but don't squeeze players out of content. Players who have created characters that no longer are challenged by a MMO's content have "won" that MMO. That player can create a new character or create other challenges for themselves like permadeath, naked runs, etc.

I am very disappointed that Turbine has elected to go this route.

Ayseifn

12-12-2014, 12:30 PM

Said it in another thread but I'll put it here too, I love this change.

Can you fix tactics though? At the moment it feels like any stunning blow or trip are no fail, just did EE stormhorns on a level 23 and I don't think I ever failed a trip/stun.

Fuitentooty

12-12-2014, 12:32 PM

I think champions are a good idea, but I’m not really sold on the implementation right now.

Ran EE 3BC + EE necro quests yesterday in a group of 2. Roughly, the champion spawn rate seems to be about 1 per 5 mobs. We killed a massive amount of champions (conservative estimate of 120?) but never saw one chest.

Are chest drop rates incredibly low, or are they bugged for these quests and just don’t drop?

I don’t see any noticeable increase in difficulty but instead an increase in time to complete the quest. We didn’t even notice the champions (btw the crowns need to be a bit bigger) until the end fights, in particular Temple of Vol, where 3 of the 4 vampires were champions. Seems like champion hp is tripled compared to their mob counterpart, but those vamps had a massive amount of hp.

It didn’t make the fight any harder - just a lot longer.

HP inflation does not equate to more difficulty. How about adding some AI to the champions? For instance, have champion fighters do some tactical feats like tripping, stunning blow, hamstring, archers do manyshot, etc.

As it stands right now, all this has done was increase the time it takes to finish a quest because of hp inflation. And there’s no chests dropping from champions. Not impressed at all by this so-called increase in difficulty. You might as well just do an across-the-board increase of CR/hp/stats/damage of either all mobs or mini-bosses or bosses on hard/elite difficulties and it would achieve the same effect.

kafrielveddicus

12-12-2014, 12:36 PM

Hey DEVS,

Can you not see the general theme of the responses here!!!!!

All the UBER I am soooo epic guys, say they love it because they think that they are in some rat race and hope others wont catch up!

And then,

There are the others who generally just dont care and have no interest in catching up to the said above UBERS, they just want to play the game and enjoy it, these folk are saying leave it in Epic Elite Content or give them a choice to play with Champions or not!

Seems pretty simple!!!

/Signed if you agree

Seikojin

12-12-2014, 12:37 PM

...snip...

In the end, I decided that the damage from "I hit harder!" is a bit too high and should be scaled back from its current 3x damage (or so it feels like) to 2x damage, at least on hard.

I like this assessment.

Kamode_Corebasher

12-12-2014, 12:38 PM

Well said!!

i think that by and large champions (in my limited experience granted) are fine more or less as is. I do have some recommendations, more like minor tweaks, though.

i have not seen a single champ drop a chest yet. Not one, given the couple of dozen fought that doesn't make a lot of sense. Their chests should have a higher drop rate.
the sometimes spawn on plot npc's. Not that it matters really when they can't be killed anyway however it suggests the code is a little sloppy which brings me to ...
their spawn should have some sort of cool down. Granted it's not common but it's not unusual to walk into a group that has 1 or 2 champs. My personal record is 4. At that point you start wondering if they aren't "normal" and the other mobs are actually gimps. The code could use a cool-down timer that say only allows a champ to spawn at maximum once every 6 or 10 seconds say. This would still allow for the occasional battle with 2+ champs but at least if the group (or solo player) takes it slow and steady they really shouldn't have to deal with more than one at a time.

on the whole i think it's a great change. I remember pre-motu when it took serious effort to build a toon that could run "epic", in a group, without getting planted. Especially if you weren't going to win/buy your heart but were running the epic's to get your tokens. It was brutal and it was amazing fun. I remember my first toon that could sorta complete in a group with only a few deaths and finally earning his tr heart and it felt like an amazing accomplishment. Hell back then the number of people who could reliably solo epics (and not just the "easy" ones) could probably be counted on two hands for any given server.

This is no where near a return to those days, but it is a nice baby step back towards them. More difficulty will bring more enjoyable playing. I mean really who remembers that 247th run of impossible demands that wants smooth as clockwork? Nobody. Now who remembers that shroud that was so close to a party wipe but managed to have one or two guys get just a little lucky and pull the run out of the fire? Everyone... Every single person in that run does. All of the most fun times i have had from a questing perspective have been those messy, dirty, "what the hell is going on" type of runs. And in the old days many of those ended in wipes. You know what we did? We decided that we needed a "trapper" or a "healer" or a different difficulty or we sold, repaired, restocked and charged right back in to show that damned quest who's boss.

Today accomplishments are measured in "past lives" but it wasn't always so, they used to be measured in quest completions. That feeling you get when you finally finish off that 3rd bard life, yeah we used to be able to get that feeling a couple times a night depending on the content we were running.

I greatly miss those moments as they are so very very rare now, with champions we squeak a little more back to when it felt like you accomplished something by completing the quest.

Spoonwelder

12-12-2014, 12:40 PM

My experience last night - two different scenarios:

Scenario 1 - playing with a somewhat gimp group - second lifers on iconics, playing a zombie themed static group. We were Cleric, PM, Arti, Pally (all with at least 3Wiz splash for zombie)....we are light on melee DPS (see Zombie attack speed). We had hit 20 last week and decided to fill in our House K favor in VON1-4.....well we got into VoN1 - just on EH so our first experience for all of us with Champions. First attempt - ran into a Champion minotaur (freedom, TS, DW, and another) along with the first named minotaur....took alot of extra work to kill the champ versus the named minotaur. We moved on then ran into 2 of 4 bugbears in the next group....not a real problem one did get instakilled (didn't have time to check buffs)....next is the 4 ogres by the deathmatch....we got a little split up (one guy trying to get the chest behind the locked door - another doing breakables on the other side). I (cleric) was able to instakill three of the ogres (prepped with necrotic ray) but another was champion (DW, Ihit harder, another where if HP hit 50% he hits even harder). Triple hit about 140hp each killed me (only have 430hp on this gimp). Another person goes down....my deathpact fires and I am back up - anotehr person goes down...at this point I realize I have no res scrollls, no SP and no pots (gimp). So we release and rebuff, I get some scrolls we try again.

Attempt 2 - goes better a few less champions, nothing to worry about - but I am out of SP just before the silver key so Invis - I run and get key skipping those fights (in that room were 3 champions of the maybe 8 plus miniboss - only one followed me so only one had TS)....we clean him up and make our way to the fight at the shrine - we look in through the bars and see 3 troll champs - one is the divine....oooo joy for us. Door opens and we clear the trash - one instakill on a champ then the other 2 have DW so no help there - after various attempts - use of shrine - both me(cleric) and wizard are out of SP and the two trolls are still up.....we just release and call it a night for the group - basically thinking we will have to shelve these guys or just play Enorm from now on.

Scenario 2:
So after that I log onto my main (level 27 Pal15,Ran3,Fi2-Tempest Pally running in Draconic for Arcane ETR) and just go into VoN1 to see if it was just our gimp group or was it the champs. EH again but only me - so soloing on EH - HP will be lower on mobs but thats pretty much the only difference). I cleaned up - never challenged by any of the champions - maybe a bit more damage than I usually take and the champs take a few (5-10) extra swings to kill vs normal mobs. I figure ok thats not really a fair test L27 in a L22 quest so I go to 3BC (needed to do some saga work anyway).....Grey Garl quest.....still successful BUT I took noticeably more damage and the endfight (before the chest fight) took noticeably longer as I actually had to deal with the trash that was hurting me (I used to just kill her and jump in the water ignoring the trash).

In neither scenario was there ever a chest or any XP or any benefit for the increased challenge.

Assessment:

New players, non-optimal builds(aka gimps) and just plain non-elite players will not appreciate the Champions added difficulty. Elite players will see them as a minor increase in difficulty and they will require a small change in tactics.

Personally I like the enhanced challenge BUT it is another nail in the coffin of 12 of my 14 alts - I have 2 characters that have multiple past lives, ETRs, full or mostly full destinies. My other 12 don't since I don't have that much time so now they won't be able to solo alot of quests and/or wouldn't be a strong contributor in others.

PUGs - honestly I think they will take another hit - pugging is already a crapshoot - now if I have to carry 2-5 other players through a quest versus soloing the same thing on my main because the puggers aren't fully kitted/destinied with no perceivable benefit.....I just can't see any upside to pugging based on that.

Recommendations:
On EH - tune them down a titch - as they are basically an EE mob in an EH quest - and make sure no more than 1 spawns per group of mobs, maybe 2 if tuned down. Potentially keep them out of boss fights as in the boss fight the boss should be your most dangerous foe not the 'trash'. Ensure there is some benefit for dealing with them - ie. tune up the chance for chest drop - ie. like 25% on EH and 50% on EE. Over the night I dealt with probably 30 Champs and didn't get any chests.

On EE - I didn't play EE last night but I would recommend similar limits - effectively Champs should be at best between the difficulty of an Orange and a Red Named (honestly they should be tuned to a bit less dangerous than an orange named but I wouldn't mind the other).

Vanhooger

12-12-2014, 12:41 PM

Zzevel

12-12-2014, 12:44 PM

If not allow a check box on opening quest for players to opt to have Champions -> more fun for the player base as they get to choose their playstyle

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

lexinator

12-12-2014, 12:45 PM

On EE Palace of Stone, me (Pally S&B) and Sorc friend only had troubles when the random encounters had 3+ Champions. Most have the Quad Damage (or whatever) perk, which deal around 750-800 damage (tested with 200 PRR = 66% damage mitigation). This means one-strike on less prepared players, but giving the EE difficulty and that they're Champions, seems fair.

I feed that, given the cluster of monsters this particular quest had (seems the norm nowadays), 2 Champions per encounter should be the maximum, also to avoid trivializing Champions.

Well said, and +1.

I gave the same suggestion and reasoning in one of the now locked threads. May as well echo it in the "official" thread as well.

Capricorpus

12-12-2014, 12:46 PM

DDO is easy. Champions made it slightly less easy.

It's a good thing in my book. If you think they make the game too difficult, go back to playing on a lower difficulty. A lot of players have been spoiled ever since MotU, lower difficulty settings aren't just there for your daily xp runs.

Gempoult

12-12-2014, 12:46 PM

I posted this in one of the previous threads, will re-post here:

I personally don't like the champions for the sole reason they make me feel like playing Diablo, and I don't really like playing Diablo, and anyone that does should just go play it and stay out of DDO if possible :) With that said I am more than willing to "tolerate" them if some changes are introduced, first tone down the spawn rate - A LOT - getting 40%+ of the mobs in a dungeon to be champions is kinda ridiculous, you advertised them as "special mobs that will sometimes appear in quests" - stick closer to that statement, please. Second add some kind of relevant reward for the slowing down the process of leveling (no, vendor trash chests 1 in 100 drops are not relevant reward) - make them drop renown 100% chance or something. Another idea I had is make a "champion bonus" category added to the quest exp, giving 1% of base exp per champion killed at completion, of course with the current spawn rate that wont work :) You can even think of an unique reward - Champion's tokens or something (just don't make them go in bags lol) that would drop like collectables, are based on the champion's CR and could be traded for useful consumables?

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 12:47 PM

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

One day, when the night is clear and the stars shine bright, people will realize this that they should play on their skill level and not force the game to adapt its difficulty to their own skill level..

One day...

But.. One day pigs will fly, plants will talk and people will live in peace and harmony...

/a man is allowed to dream

Vanhooger

12-12-2014, 12:48 PM

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

Some will be upset that now they can't nobrain zerg Elite as they use to do.

Most people doesn't like to adapt to change....best example is blitz, now more powerful then ever but people still think that after U23 is garbage.

kafrielveddicus

12-12-2014, 12:49 PM

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

Thank you for confirming my thoughts about UBERS in the rat race!

Checkbox would solve that, you can play with champions in heroics and I can choose not to! why do you care how I play?

lyrecono

12-12-2014, 12:49 PM

ran 56 quest today, pugging from lv 1, had 2 or more deaths each quest, all elite streaking, lv 150+shipbufs+30 resist energy
ballanced party, 1 cleric (me), 1 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rog, 1 barb, 1 monk, al tr vets, all aware of the changes
1200(rounded down) damage from a firebal in a lv 2 quest (the paly was in full plate and shield&def stance mode)
60+ damage per hit from a swarm of champion spiders in the catacombs
850 damage from lighning casting shaman in WW
besides al the useless deaths, the imunities, resistances and hp increases (1300hp non red named spider in the catacombs.....) make the journey through their a boring slog, the mobs die but much slower.

with all the party deaths costing me 10% exp everytime i feel inclined to invis&solo to speed things up
thumbs up for another nail in the lfm's coffin.
not that we're getting an overflow of newer players but this widens the gap between vets and newer players even more

seriously Cordovan, dev's, put in an opt out, this system is chasing of newer/weaker players and wastes my time

Edit, you can no longer say: get better saves, or better ac (paly had 66ac), more hp, etc, it just turned into rusian roulette, no longer does it mater if you are a tripple heroic, epic and iconic completionist, have mad skills, somethimes 12 champions spawn right on top of you and kill you, somethimes a rare pops and does 6 times the damage of your max hp, no amount of heal amp or prr/mrr helps here, it's unballanced, it's a slog, it's a waste of time, that could have been spend fixing the quests, bugs or the barbarian class

Powerhungry

12-12-2014, 12:51 PM

I have run Dragon mask on both EH and EE (in a group) as well as Fashion Show on EH and EN (solo) plus LoD, Spinners and other on EH and HE. The mobs density is too high (well above the 10% projected) and the chest drop rates were poor (one or two only).
Several individuals have made the comparison to Diablo's champion system (probably where Devs got the idea). The main difference is the champions in Diablo 1/2 (D3 is an abomination...) was risk/reward and density. In an entire dungeon instance you might have 1 or 2 champions and each champion dropped loot of a higher level.
This new system by DDO has no reward for the risk (one-shotting a 200 hp player in EE is fine - one shotting an uber geared 1500 hp, multiple TR/eTR character is not....ever) and they spawn way too often.

DagazUlf

12-12-2014, 12:53 PM

My feedback is based on having played through the Madness series a bit, and not the new Eveningstar quest.

900+ damage in Fashion Madness in one hit on EH is not really fun or enjoyable at all.
Would really like (aka, NEED!), some designator in my Focus Orb when I have a Champion highlighted. When there's a huge group of similar monsters, that little crown doesn't help much to tell me which one I need to focus my attacks on.
There were times when 1-in-3 and 1-in-2 monsters were champions in large combats. Twice this was with the illithids and the eyeballs in Palace of Stone; that's just overwhelming and not particularly enjoyable.
All of my runs were in a nice solid guild group, and overall very fun. It just seems like way too many Champions can happen at once, and there's some problem with ramped-up damage on occasion.

Thanks.

Monkey-Boy

12-12-2014, 12:54 PM

caberonia

12-12-2014, 12:56 PM

ran 56 quest today, pugging from lv 1, had 2 or more deaths each quest, all elite streaking, lv 150+shipbufs+30 resist energy
ballanced party, 1 cleric (me), 1 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rog, 1 barb, 1 monk, al tr vets, all aware of the changes
1200(rounded down) damage from a firebal in a lv 2 quest (the paly was in full plate and shield&def stance mode)
60+ damage per hit from a swarm of champion spiders in the catacombs
850 damage from lighning casting shaman in WW
besides al the useless deaths, the imunities, resistances and hp increases (1300hp non red named spider in the catacombs.....) make the journey through their a boring slog, the mobs die but much slower.

with all the party deaths costing me 10% exp everytime i feel inclined to invis&solo to speed things up
thumbs up for another nail in the lfm's coffin.
not that we're getting an overflow of newer players but this widens the gap between vets and newer players even more

seriously Cordovan, dev's, put in an opt out, this system is chasing of newer/weaker players and wastes my time

See THIS is my issue.. again you wanna do crazy supre elite mobs in EE fine.. but heroic... 1200 dmg fireball.. i mean *** were the devs smoking. They took NO time to actually think of the Consequences of adding it to Heroic. Likely did 0 testing to heroic.. and just threw it in there with the same formulas they came up with for EPIC. To make it worse they made it a generalized RANDOM system so there is no possible way they could even imagine all the crazy combos that they could end up getting.

Reminds me of the time they redid the traps and any party without a trapper was pretty much a fail until they fixed it, only this time its all about the random champs..Get the wrong one = fail.

bartharok

12-12-2014, 12:58 PM

Yes, it's pretty simple. Again checkbox, done.

And for a party that has some that like champions, and some that dont, the checkbox works just how?

Vanhooger

12-12-2014, 12:59 PM

And for a party that has some that like champions, and some that dont, the checkbox works just how?

Just put in the lfm, easy.

Powerhungry

12-12-2014, 01:00 PM

And for a party that has some that like champions, and some that dont, the checkbox works just how?
Same as difficulty level- locked in (on/off) by the person that enters

FeartheBow

12-12-2014, 01:01 PM

Monster Champions only have a chance to have True Seeing and/or Deathward. Some Champions won't have either one. We certainly expect players to use instant kill abilities on many Champions.

The exact chances to have True Seeing and Deathward are, of course, subject to change. We didn't want these to be very low, as that also reduces the tactical variety that's used -- not every champion should be instant killed or entirely invis-zerged past.

This sounds like confirmation that the current percentage is probably working correctly. If you felt there were 40 out of 400 normal monsters (plus extra for the higher chance for orange named minibosses), that's precisely 10%, which is only slightly higher than the intended amount.

We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.

Stealth is unaffected by True Seeing.

Each of the buffs listed here is already in the list of the possibilities. We agree!

New players don't play Heroic Elite Huh?????? Well it's kind of hard NOT to when that's all that's in the LFG's elite elite elite. Besides that there is the Bravery Bonus that adds like what +80% to your XP? Who in their right mind wouldn't want to run Elite so they could level faster. Anyways great job on destroying the game. I have decided to quit and go to world of warcraft and yes you can have my stuff and keep the $80.75 I spent on this stupid game just last week..........good bye

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 01:04 PM

New players don't play Heroic Elite Huh?????? Well it's kind of hard NOT to when that's all that's in the LFG's elite elite elite. Besides that there is the Bravery Bonus that adds like what +80% to your XP? Who in their right mind wouldn't want to run Elite so they could level faster. Anyways great job on destroying the game. I have decided to quit and go to world of warcraft and yes you can have my stuff and keep the $80.75 I spent on this stupid game just last week..........good bye

Have fun with enemies that have 10000000000000000000000000000000000000k hp bars

Vanhooger

12-12-2014, 01:05 PM

Have fun with enemies that have 10000000000000000000000000000000000000k hp bars

Here we're not that far dude :)

HAL

12-12-2014, 01:05 PM

We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.

Then you are not paying attention to the reality of the game.

Ever since you introduced bravery bonus anyone that wants to run in a group has to run on elite.

Maybe your hope is champions will change this, but that is going to take some time and I suspect many new people will give up and leave before that time comes.

This. And there are new players who are joining vet guilds / groups. We have 2 newer players in my static groups. Are Vets supposed to run content on Normal to make up for new players? Or maybe the Devs are trying to discourage vet groups from taking new players even less than they already do!

HAL

12-12-2014, 01:14 PM

Giorgakis

12-12-2014, 01:16 PM

The only error was not to add a simple checkbox.

You want more challenge/loot? Tick checkbox.

You want to run as you did before U24? Do not tick the checkbox.

Done.

If you do this all the whiners about champion gone.

I think that Vanhooger's suggestion would be for the best of the game after my experience running solo or duo Epic Elite Quests with my Paladin after Update 24. Crowned mobs hit far to hard and sometimes they have true seeing and in some cases they are as challnenging as end bosses, althouth they have far less hitpoints, and you usually have to fight end bosses without any more additional monsters to add to the incoming damage you have to deal with. Epic Elite is pretty challenging as it for most characters and builds. Lots of past lives, heroic and epic, good gear and a good build allowed some of the players to be able to solo EE content but that was not the case for most people. Not everyone has an op self heal like Lay on Hands and the Bladeforged's Communion of Scribing and not everyone has displacement clickies and a lot of PRR/MRR. Things turned upside down now with the champion monsters. EE is hard to solo now for people who previously could and EH might be too much to solo for an average player without the best gear, strong self healing and dps. I won't bother with hirelings since they tend to die every once in a while even on EH. Not everyone want's to wait for a full balanced group to do a few quests and I thought those days where over. In my opinion champion monsters should be made optional since there are people who already liked them because they previously found the game too easy. For most players it wasn't easy the way it used to be prior to the update. For the few that they want to step up their game make them available with the tick box on the quest window and increase the xp gain and loot or something to make it worthwhile.

redoubt

12-12-2014, 01:16 PM

We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.

Who do you expect them to play with?

I don't put up lfms that are not on the elite difficulty. I doubt many vets do.

Do you think a lot of new players put up lfms?

caberonia

12-12-2014, 01:17 PM

Who do you expect them to play with?

I don't put up lfms that are not on the elite difficulty. I doubt many vets do.

Do you think a lot of new players put up lfms?

New players are supposed to solo normal and casual til they get 12 or 13 TRs under their belt then they can party.

HAL

12-12-2014, 01:18 PM

mutilador

12-12-2014, 01:18 PM

EE mobs do enough damage already.

Champions don't need damage boost.

This is a nerf for all melee classes.

The ppl having fun are casters players as always.

redoubt

12-12-2014, 01:19 PM

Lantander

12-12-2014, 01:20 PM

This "feature" seems tailor-made to drive away players and anyone who doesn't have a dozen ETRs under their belt. Some of the people posting on this thread may have been bored in their 30th run-through on Elite through all quests, but that isn't a reason to add in "fun" sudden death and party wipes for everyone - without any additional rewards. And even if more champions had chests - trading almost guaranteed player deaths for some "precious" random trash loot is short-sighted at best.

We have (or had) quests with a more or less well-laid pacing... now it's just gambling if the one monster that already was very deadly gets a crown and kills a whole group for sure.

Qezuzu

12-12-2014, 01:26 PM

-Champions are currently too common

-Champions should be much rarer in hard and epic hard difficulties, and heroic elite difficulties, or the buffs in those difficulties should be toned down. I know that you "don't expect" new players to be running elite/hard but with the climate of Bravery Bonus, that's what they're going to be doing if they want to group with most players.

-Champions should reward XP upon kill. Something like 50 x [quest level]. CHANCE at trash loot from ORANGE NAMES ONLY is garbage, I don't have the inventory space and most champions are not orange name in the first place.

-The damage buff is too much and too common. I looked at every champion's buffs in multiple EE quests and virtually 100% of them had it, most of them exclusively having damage buff. It should be reduced to 2x normal or so, and more interesting things like "Absorb Slash" (not DR against slash, literally heal from slashing attacks) or "Reflect Fire Spells" would make this a much better system, as opposed to "CC me or kill me in three seconds or else I'll two-shot you!"

-ALL buffs should come with weaknesses. Stuff like reduced [will, fort, or reflex] save, weakness to [element] or [physical damage type,] weakness to [tripping, stunning,] etc.

-The bypass fortification buff should bypass 100% of, but not entirely negate, fortification

-Buffs should be able to be dispelled by Disjunction and the like, or nerfed (e.g. damage buff gets reduced from 3x to 1.5x)

-Anti-caster/archer buffs should be more common. Melee mobs that do massive damage to melee players are far more common than any buffs that hinder players who can kite+attack. Stuff like deflect arrows, mantle of invulnerability, and heal from [element.]

Sam1313

12-12-2014, 01:27 PM

We had 6 new people to the game in our reserve guild on cannith, U24 comes out and last night me and a few others from the main guild log in to run some quest with the new players since we was all on at the same time. After getting wiped out in a heroic elite quest in the Red Fens 3 of those 6 new players logged out and deleted their characters all at the same time. I tried to explain to these guys that this should not had happened that the Champions was to my understanding only suppose to appear in epic hard and epic elite. I think a few of them understood but the 3 that ended up deleting their characters had stated to me that there was no point in trying to continue to play the game because when they are not running with me or any of the main guilds officers that the game is just right down too hard for them even on heroic hard. 2 of the 3 was free to play and couldn't open elite and said there was no point in continuing on because they can only play when I run with them due to them having a bravery bonus now and they don't want to break that and lose the xp from having a elite bb. The guy that posted above (Fearthebow) was one of those players who logged out and deleted his character. :(

Now my own personal experience with the Champions in Epic levels. Ok I used to Solo with a hire Epic Elite, after U22 That seemed too hard for some reason. So I went to running Epic Hard with Garret the sainted placed at the entrance just in case. NOW with the introduction of the champions it looks as if I will be FORCED to run Epic Normal. I have a level 28 Human Arcane Archer that ran Devils Assault on Epic Elite last night with the Hire Garret the Sainted. That character BARELY made it through that quest alive due to the champions. Now I also have a level 25 Human Arcane Archer that has 5 past heroic lives as a AA Ranger so he is supposed to be getting a +6 to bow damage and attack (I seriously doubt this though) this character has all the best gear in the game (he is my Champion) even he had a difficult time completing some eveningstar quests last night because of these champions. I am not complaining about them, but seriously my time is very limited and if I sit down to run a quest and spend 35 minutes in a quest just to wipe out then I consider that a waste of time. That is BS.

Stonemerge

12-12-2014, 01:27 PM

btw what's so wrong about normal? i'm no spring chicken, and still sometimes i run normal when i don't think i can handle harder difficulties.

Nothing is wrong with epic normal (I will onehit kill everything and the mob cannot hit me - ehard fits more to my playstyle)

but there is something wrong with heroics now

i.e.

preU24:
i am lvl 18 - so i play lvl16-quest on elite for BB - i.e. "Rainbow in the Dark"
Base XP 9000 +
80% 1st time bonus + 50 % BB Bonus + 30 % Traps + 25 % Conquest + 15 % Ransack + 8 % Vigilant + 10% Persistence + 10% Flawless + 50% GreaterTome 1st

43.725 XP (miscalculation possible :) )

but i cant play heroic epic anymore - im not so uber, im not so masochistic
there are no groups at my play time; if there are groups, they r selective or play hard diff
and i dont want to lose my streak (maybe i would find a group later and the bonus is so high and the number is so nice: Elite streak - 4132 or so)

what can i do, i play hard without breaking my streak - lvl18-3 is 15 - "Missing" hard

Base XP 5700 +

40% 1st time bonus + 0 % BB Bonus + 10 % Traps + 10 % Aggression + 15 % Ransack + 10% Persistence + 10% Flawless + 50% GreaterTome

16.672 XP

but because i need to repeat those quests its more likely a (no firstime bonus - Tome only 20%)

10.600 XP

I need to do lower quests to not break my streak now and i need to run them 3 or 4 times (repeats on the next day for daily bonus and the next day and the next day) - all of them ... PreU24 i was just doing elite quests once per life - now i need to do the same stuff 3 times - boring - i know, we did this all the years ago - but i was glad, that i didnt needed this anymore - OR i buy Superior XP Pots and Stones of Experience in the DDO Store ;)

Plz no champs in heroics - only in epic elite quests - thx

redoubt

12-12-2014, 01:33 PM

A point of data for the Devs from one players:

90% of my play time is spent with at least one guild mate. The three characters I am currently playing are all in set groups. Depending on which combo of guild mates is on, we play a set of characters together. Non of our groups have a healer. All have a trapper.

We run heroic elite and EH for leveling. Lately I've been able to get them to run EE as well. Getting them to run EE ended last night. Two of my guild mates I was running with logged out yesterday very frustrated and mad at the game. I do not expect them to be willing to run EE with me again for a long time. This is disappointing.

On the topic of pushing down to lower difficulties. Each life I do requires 3.8 + 6.6 mil xp (10.4mil xp) We have always run one and done. With streak you can do that easily in heroic elite and nearly so in epic with a mix of EE and EH. I did TR2s back before streak and it was a long slog. My guild mates didn't do it with me because it was more than they wanted to grind. Getting streak fixed that, they TR with me now. If we get pushed back down into less streak bonus and the time per life goes up significantly, this will end as well.

Again, this is one persons opinion (others may speak for themselves).

redoubt

12-12-2014, 01:35 PM

FAQ

12-12-2014, 01:37 PM

I've had some contact with champions so far and it seems like an interesting concept but I have some suggestions:

1) Number of champions. No way is the chance correctly set at 10% for regular mobs. From my experience and from all the reports on forums. Tone down the number of champions that spawn.

2) Champion buffs. I do not know if they already are (and I have not tested it), but please consider this: make them dispellable. This would be an interesting option for casters to actually slot dispel and disjunction. Got a tough mini-boss with some nasty buffs, use dispel to try and get some off. This would be an interesting option for using tactics (instead of the current state of 'DPS is king and BYOH'). But I must stress, DO NOT EQUATE MONSTER CR WITH CASTER LEVEL FOR THE BUFFS. Set the caster level for buffs at the QUEST LEVEL.

3) Automatic guild renown: if you want champions to be tough, reward accordingly. All champions should award guild renown when killed.

4) The damage buff: is it correct that champions deal 3x normal mob damage? If so, IMO, that is incompatible with the current spawn rate and will only push builds back toward ranged. Lower the spawn rate and keep damage as is or vice-versa.

Just my 2cp. But please really consider option number 2.

janave

12-12-2014, 01:38 PM

After running almost all base lvl 6-7 (+2ebb) quests with the m.champions, i think at least the early heroics need treatment, and maybe adjust in steps of lvl4s, as it is a common pattern for gear update too!

This would optimally take my earlier suggestion with it, that is to slow down enemy movement rate on lower levels, to give room for players to move around and position their characters, oozes with several 100s hps overrunning hasted characters is not funny. 2240HPs on a skeleton archer in one of the base lvl7 deleras quest was really surprising too, i quoted into party chat since i have the monster manual perk, and everyone had the same reaction :D.

Some stuff due to the buffs both moves and hits like a truck, i seen spell damage over 350points on my lvl8 wizard, and physical damage over 100pts. The latter was often paired with 30 something light damage, this is just too much in the early heroics to be fun, being on the edge is fun, but having no chance to react is just disappointing.The numbers we are now seeing in early heroics were something we previously seen only in lvl20+ Epic Hard quests. I remember when getting hit in Amrath Elites for 60pts melee damage was a thing, now in lvl7 quests we get hit for 100+dmg.

Its a very cool idea, but needs some tweaks with a gradually increasing approach vs flat boosts.

I dont think further cc immunity is needed, since many subtype of cc immunity is already in place, such as those immune to mind affecting spells and so on.

Lastly, yes pls try to make chests to be less likely to float mid air.

-Anti-caster/archer buffs should be more common. Melee mobs that do massive damage to melee players are far more common than any buffs that hinder players who can kite+attack. Stuff like deflect arrows, mantle of invulnerability, and heal from [element.]

Very much the above, i sorta had that feeling it will be most punishing to melee range characters as nearly every challenge before. Add more elemental absorbs, and super ac/dodge vs arrows.

On a wizard i find plenty of tools to deal with champions, i throw webs, i dominate them to take advantage of their buffs, instakill em, and if i just get tired ..put em hapless and nuke em from orbit :D.

Stonemerge

12-12-2014, 01:40 PM

And for a party that has some that like champions, and some that dont, the checkbox works just how?

we already have checkboxes: "public lfm - yes/no" and "prefer not to be leader" - jsut one more checkbox "Champions yes/no"

then u use the lfm panel

"Wheloon ee full chain with champs bring-A-Game" (or in short WC)

or

"Wheloon eh full chain ip NoCh"

---

or

"Spies he champs selective"

Sam1313

12-12-2014, 01:41 PM

I think what you all have done was tried to cater to a very very very few Uber players complaining that the game was too easy. What you really ended up doing was driving away NEW players and forcing the non uber, non duping, non exploiting veteran players into running Normal mode. Good job. Keep up the great work maybe in a few more months every server will have the population that Wayfinder has. Speaking of which. How is anyone on that server going to level?

bsquishwizzy

12-12-2014, 01:45 PM

Ok, how about this: change-up the Champion logic, make the spawns more rare (about 2%), and implement the following rules:

1) Uber immunities in all but one or two areas. For example, high fort saves, deathblock, immunity to level drain, 300% fortification, High AC, High PRR / MRR, True Seeing, high DPS, but a laughably low will save. So you can dance them like a monkey with a shock collar on, but FoD? Fuggetaboutit.

2) The do not rubber band when the move out of their zone, but are also allowed a ranged attack and/or summon 2 to 3 mobs at a time. So, should they party break off an attack, the Champion retreats and summons aid or ranges the party. This way, the party can retreat, formulate a plan to take them on, and to trial-and-error to figure out the chamption’s weaknesses.

3) DO NOT get rid of the one-shot-one-kill capabilities. Knowing this will cause zerg groups to evaluate whether they want to take out a Champion, or simply stealth past them.

4) Make sure the group gets decent XP for taking out a Champion.

5) Make sure they are not counted as part of the number of mobs needed to get Conquest.

I like the idea of these and a random mob that no one was expecting, and no one can look up on the wiki to figure out how to handle them. It gives the group pause to think about whether they want to take this mob on, or somehow tip-toe around the problem and move on with the quest.

Grosbeak07

12-12-2014, 01:47 PM

Was in a full group, running on epic hard. Champions added maybe a touch more difficulty, but it seemed appropriate. Epic Hard was well... harder than it used to be. AS IT SHOULD BE. The only real tactic we did different was killing the champions first.

We've all gotten too used to simply pwning content. This change seems good to me.

janave

12-12-2014, 01:47 PM

How is anyone on that server going to level?

Probably bladebarrier and wail cookies. Shhh

bsquishwizzy

12-12-2014, 01:49 PM

we already have checkboxes: "public lfm - yes/no" and "prefer not to be leader" - jsut one more checkbox "Champions yes/no"

then u use the lfm panel

"Wheloon ee full chain with champs bring-A-Game" (or in short WC)

or

"Wheloon eh full chain ip NoCh"

---

or

"Spies he champs selective"

We have people who have a problem saying "zerg IP". Adding "NoCH" is just adding more gibberish to people who already think that using comments to tell other players how you're running the quest is an alien concept.

redoubt

12-12-2014, 01:55 PM

Buffing 30-50% of the mobs is just a buff to the mobs. Its not a "champion system". If you want a system that reflects the occasional champion amongst the bad guys consider this:

1. Catagorize the buffs:
-- offensive - 50% fort bypass, TS, 2x damage, vorpal, etc
-- defensive - +50 to 100% fort, displacement, +50 to one energy resist
-- party - bard song damage boost, haste, mass heal (to include long cast time)

2. Set the rate by level (no named):
-- normal: 1% of mobs
-- hard: 2%
-- elite: 3%

3. Set the buff rate:
-- normal: one buff
-- hard: two buff (not from same category
-- elite: three buffs (one from each.)

4. Set auto drop reward from ALL champions (make champions worth killing or don't bother putting them in the game.)
-- each champion is worth xx% of base xp. (5-10?)
-- XP capped characters get: commendations, heart seeds, tokens of the 12, astral shards... something worth actually getting.

Ok, how about this: change-up the Champion logic, make the spawns more rare (about 2%), and implement the following rules:

1) Uber immunities in all but one or two areas. For example, high fort saves, deathblock, immunity to level drain, 300% fortification, High AC, High PRR / MRR, True Seeing, high DPS, but a laughably low will save. So you can dance them like a monkey with a shock collar on, but FoD? Fuggetaboutit.

2) The do not rubber band when the move out of their zone, but are also allowed a ranged attack and/or summon 2 to 3 mobs at a time. So, should they party break off an attack, the Champion retreats and summons aid or ranges the party. This way, the party can retreat, formulate a plan to take them on, and to trial-and-error to figure out the chamption’s weaknesses.

3) DO NOT get rid of the one-shot-one-kill capabilities. Knowing this will cause zerg groups to evaluate whether they want to take out a Champion, or simply stealth past them.

4) Make sure the group gets decent XP for taking out a Champion.

5) Make sure they are not counted as part of the number of mobs needed to get Conquest.

I like the idea of these and a random mob that no one was expecting, and no one can look up on the wiki to figure out how to handle them. It gives the group pause to think about whether they want to take this mob on, or somehow tip-toe around the problem and move on with the quest.

Some good ideas. Thanks for a reply attempting to help with the situation. I put my idea in here too. I think we agree on a lot of what would help.

On the one shot kill part. I think a few things need to change before something like that could be kept:
-- the dispel line needs to work equally between players and mobs (so we can debuff them and not get one-shotted if we play it right)
-- beholders need to suppress magic (including their own) and the magic comes back if not in the cone.
-- the champion density needs to go way down. In a room with respawning crowns you can neither examine them all nor pick the right tactic as the you are, like it or not, fighting 8 mobs at once and each one needs a different tactic.
-- I also like the idea of a better visual to identify the champion buffs.

Qhualor

12-12-2014, 01:55 PM

Devs,

Stick to your guns mostly. Finally attempting to bring back challenge to the game and us "few" that welcome challenge have arms wide open. Some players have had it too easy the last few years steamrolling/zerging quests even on elite. Some talk the talk but clearly it shows it was just that. The Champions need some tweaks and I still say they should be more rare, but dont nerf hammer them. I want this to work very much. I can see a positive domino affect happening from this and any other new challenges going forward.

Gremmlynn

12-12-2014, 01:56 PM

From what I saw, just running low level stuff, Khorthos/harbor, there seemed to be to many in comparison to the rank and file mobs, they seemed to hit to hard and have to many hps relative to other mobs IMO. One other thing I noticed was that it seemed to be all or nothing when it came to mini bosses being champions.

Personally I'd like to see trash type champions to be mid way between regular mobs of their type and mini-bosses and mini bosses to be mid way between the regular version and the boss of that content as far as hps and damage goes. What I saw was trash champions with quest bosses who outclassed those bosses. The other buffs, debuffs and defense bonuses should be what sets them apart (though they should also lose the crowns). Also, far fewer of them, as their frequency and numbers causes quests to become centered around them.

This seemed to cause quests to feel disjointed as the real difficulty had little to do with the quest design and mostly to do with how many crowns an encounter contained.

Wizza

12-12-2014, 02:00 PM

Systern

12-12-2014, 02:03 PM

My little troupe consists of 3 completionists: 14-15 lives, 7-8 epic lives... We're not "gimp", but may not be the uber-est out there.

We ran 4 quests last night getting the 3rd of us to 28 to ER again tonight-

EE Vol: We saw a LOT of champions. 30-45% of the mobs it seemed. Spawning at CRs 73-78. 140k hp Quells chain casting intercession, dispell magic, and chain missile doing 28-44 damage per missile, and 6-9 of them just sucked. Every random trash respawn in the hallways (every 45 seconds to 1 minute?) had at least 1-2 champions that took enough time for another set of respawns to occur. The end fight had 2 champions spawn and took forever to beat down because they were doing so much damage. While we didn't wipe, we each had about 7 deaths before we decided to regroup and swap destinies. I'm playing a pure swashie dex build with Epic Reflexes; My reflex saves are at 82 before songs; I was STILL failing evades against cometfalls. We happily, merrily, trounced this quest on EE 2 weeks ago on our last ER.

That sucked. It wasn't fun. Wasn't worth the time. Even though plat is absolutely meaningless in this game, wasn't worth the 8k repair bill.

EH Ghosts of Perdition:
Yawn.... Oh lookie, another champion speed bump. CR 33-36. All the orange named statues have crowns too! ... meat sacks. Just longer to beat them down.

EH Inferno:
Every. Single. Orange-Name. Had. A. Crown. 2/3rds of them spawned chests. Yaaa, "Shloot" (it's a portmanteau. second word is 'loot') to pay for the previous repair bill.

EH Spies:
Yawn. Occasional meatbag to suck up time.

For those that like the changes and the difficulty... What do you propose for the characters that find CR 35ish way too easy, and CR 75 too 'hard'? (Old whine: EH too easy. EE too hard. Wahh, buff melees)

For the Devs... Remember all these changes you just made to healing amp because multiplicative buffs are too hard to balance? Giving EE mobs 150% of the number of Buffs that are 150% more effective each is kinda the same thing... Tune it down.

And while I didn't have time or desire to check every single champion. Each one I did look at (~15 of them) all had True Seeing and Death Ward.

And Epic Ward.
Epic Ward sucks. You want tactical diversity? You want to remove our blanket immunities? Remove theirs too.
You thought level drain was cheap, so you changed nightmare weapons to only give 1 neg on vorpal. That Epic Ward regens in 3 seconds.
You think stat drains are cheap, so you made these epic warded critters 90% immune to the damage in the first place. And then regen the damage after 3 seconds.
Of course, this doesn't fix the problem since you're giving everything death ward, which is 100% immunity, and not just 90% immune for a 3 second window.

TL;DR: Unfun. Too many OP buffs on EE.

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 02:03 PM

FranOhmsford

12-12-2014, 02:04 PM

Now I've only played some low level quests since the update - namely Catacombs and Waterworks - so take this with a pinch of salt but:

1) Elite doesn't seem to have got any harder.

2) It seems like 30% of mobs have a Crown and mostly this just means they take 1 more hit to kill.

3) ANY mob can be a Champion - Oozes, Spiders, Quest NPCs {Librarian Guillaume in Catacombs - He still got one shot btw!}.

4) Zombie Champions can be a real pain to a Staff Acrobat!
Why is it that every Champion I actually noticed in End-Game Marguerite was a Zombie? {80% of that quest if not more are Skeletons!}.

5) With all those Champions {even in Friar's Niece I counted 3!} I didn't see a single chest!

Feedback

1) Reduce the numbers of Champions - 30% is way too high!

2) Buff the remaining Champions better!

3) Make only intelligent creatures able to be Champions - No Champion non-named Oozes/Spiders etc.
Preferably also keep Champion status away from unintelligent Skeletons and Zombies - Most Undead quests have a few intelligent Undead around!

4) Weapons breaking is a personal bugbear of mine - If a mob has DR already it shouldn't get more DR!

Daerius of the Blessed Blades

12-12-2014, 02:05 PM

Epic Elite should be a challenge. My guild is by no means the uber-guild on Ghallanda, but we short-man most raids and EE content simply because there is no real threat or challenge. It seems like pugs have accepted EE as the Norm, which I can't imagine was the game's intent. Maybe instead of whining about the challenge and randomness (a MUCH needed feature in DDO!) that Champions add to the game, maybe Normal needs a increase in difficulty so that EE remains a significant challenge.

That being said, mobs doing 2K damage per hit on EH/EE seems a little extreme, and likely needs to be tweaked. But Epic Elite has gotten so easy, many of my guildees never PUG because that's the only way we can get a challenge anymore is by short-manning the content. That surely is not the intent of an MMO, to encourage soloing???

To a man (and woman) last night, even the more casual players in my guild LOVED the challenge of Champions and we enjoyed many a laugh while our lowbies (including one multiple TR, one first lifer, and one second lifer) ran heroic elite content and faced random mobs that turned out to be a challenge for the first time in YEARS.

Thank you, Turbine - we had more players log on and STAY on late into the evening running old content than we've had in a long time. Champions are MUCH appreciated!

Grosbeak07

12-12-2014, 02:06 PM

Too many of them.

The "I deal great damage" is over the top. Getting one shotted for 1k damage (NOT in Delirium) is ridicolous.

The True Seeing appears WAY too much as well. 80% of the Champions I encountered had TS.

That I'd bet is on purpose. Prevents people from skipping 90% of mobs in a quest by using invis pots.

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 02:07 PM

Overall, I like champions. They are fun and make the game interesting.

However, their spawn rate is way too high.

It should be "I wonder if there will be a Champion?" not "I wonder which 2 or 3 of these mobs ahead will be Champions?"

Not that it's too hard as is, but more that it's tedious and Champs aren't at all a surprise when you see one. Too much is too much.

Put a cap on the number of active. (and yes, some will stone or bard song the Champs or w/e to freeze the spawn but most won't)

We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.!

Here's the thing, New Players (not brand new but new) have been playing Elite for a good while now.

What you are talking about is beating the New Folks back to Normal.

How will they react? Doesn't that concern you?

It concerns me. I worry for this, my favorite game.

Too much sweeping changes too often.

If I didn't have so much invested I might not want to re-gear and re-configure my toons yet again for the billionth time.

Sorry to repeat from other thread but they all got locked so...

I think you should do this:

- Leave Hard alone, it's too harsh for a new person to lose H and E overnight

- Make E have Champions but cap the numbers.

- Make a new higher level of difficulty, "Paragon Level" or w/e, that has all the Champs in their full glory.

"They Added a new difficulty level !!" is a positive event.

"I can't play on Hard or Elite anymore !!" is a negative event.

Why do something in a negative way that could have been done with positivity?

I don't have issue, I've already adapted my style. Stealth will be big for me now. Sniping at range. Enlarged Insta-kills, charm the Champion the let him kill the trash and leave before the charm breaks, etc., etc.

For a Vet it's "Champions-Shmampions".

The only thing you are eliminating is new players in Elite and Hard.

Are new players in Heroic Elite and Heroic Hard the problem?

Or is Vets cherry-picking and ROFL stomping your EE content the problem.

If it's the Vet's this does little to stop them.

If it's New Players that are the issue, then Gratz - problem solved.

This should put the kibosh on their little hopes and dreams of hanging tough in the big leagues.

GoldyGopher

12-12-2014, 02:12 PM

I have run a dozen quests on Hard and Elite settings in the past 24 hours. While not as many as some and more than others; it is still a low sample size however here are my feelings. Here is a sample of what I encountered.

When running Mask of Deception I encountered roughly one champion for every two to three mobs, roughly 33% to 50%, that number is way to high. Every mob I was able to examine had Deathward as their random effect and three had a melee strike bonus I did not totally understand.

When running Lines of Supply every group had multiple champions. My estimate is that 40% of the mobs were Champions. Every mob that I examined had Deathward and many had a melee strike bonus.

When running {I]Impossible Demands[/I] I actually cleared every room, each room had at least two champions, many had three. The Named Spider Akostra was a Mini-Boss Champion. I was not able to examine many of the mobs, but Akostra had Deathward.

When running Running with the Devils I encountered 27 Champions and one mini-boss named champion in the end fight, however I was unable to find his chest. All mobs I examined had Deathward and many had that Melee strike bonus.

When running A Relic of Sovereign Past I encountered nearly 40% Champions, many of which Adamantine Defenders in Clay Golems (I don't remember one of them not being a champion). I encountered two named mini bosses and they both gave chests.

When running The Tear of Dhakaan every group of mob had at least one champion, except for the oozes in which case every ooze was a champion. I felt like 33% of all mobs were champions. Half of the named mini-bosses, IE Nartar, were Champions and offered a second chest.

In the entire time I was one shot once (my first run of Mask of Deception on EPic Elite Solo in an off destiny without a Fort item. Hit for over 900 HP of slash damage.

I do not remember seeing a mob above a level 12 (14 on Elite) without seeing deathward on them. I tried to check as many as I could, but it got confusing with upwards of 9 champions active at a time. I saw many mobs with a melee strike bonus (which I could not figure out exactly what it did), but beyond that I cannot think of another buff in the higher level quests. I think I saw a couple of these champions with true sight, but where are the other buffs?

My opinion based on what I have seen in those dozen quests:
Way too many Champions spawn at a time. I am not talking about zerging through a quest and collecting a dozen mobs but slowly moving one grouping at a time.
Too many of the non humanoid like mobs (oozes, wargs, dogs, defenders, rust monsters) became champions, fighting six champion oozes at a time is quite painful and slash one of those oozes by accident...
There seems to be an AI/gaming problem with Champions, if they are not active they cannot take damage. My rogue was useless.
I'd really like to see more variation in these mobs, how about higher AC (and lower HP), maybe even some other defensive buffs. I'd prefer these mobs get defensive buffs rather than offensive buffs.
At the highest level Mask of Deception my mine maxed character was taking 200 to 250 points of damage per hit, she has 180% fortification, a 105 AC, 25% dodge and I forget the other little details. The only time she was one shot was when her fortification was at like 60, I am not sure that is a bad thing.
In my solo play there is no way I could handle more than three Champions at any one time, four was the death confirmed whether playing level 6 or 32 with appropriate level characters.

golruul

12-12-2014, 02:23 PM

After playing EE demonweb + 3BC + Orchard quests yesterday, my feedback:
* Number of champions spawning looks to be (much) more than 10%.
* Concentration of champion spawns could use a change. For instance, in EE Temple of Vol, with a party of 2 players and killing every single monster we encountered (i.e. no zerging), going into one of the rooms would throw yellow/orange alert and have 3-5 champions. Going in the basement room (after opening a gate, two staircases down leads to a square room with urns in the center) triggered red alert and 4+ champions -- this is after killing every single monster we encountered up to that point. Instant death.
* 100+ champion kills and not a single chest.
* In high level EE quests, monsters tend to be a huge bag of HP -- battles aren't necessarily more difficult, just much longer. Champions make this even worse. In EE orchard quests, the champions (especially undead with crit resistance) take a long time to kill. It wasn't more "challenging", just really tedious and not fun. Please stop doing this.
* I'm fine with all of the extra abilities/damage champions have except for their increased HP.

Note that I was playing a pure caster druid for all of this.

Artrish

12-12-2014, 02:26 PM

don't cave in to the charlie casuals there are lower difficulty settings the can choose

This would be nice to do if those lower difficulties would progress the characters. The way the game is setup these days, you need to repeat a quest on normal 4-5 times to make up for a first time elite run. I have been on the server running multi lives where i had to repeat quests 10 times each to try level my characters, i cannot handle those days anymore as after the second life doing it, the mind goes numb and the game doesn't feel like a game, it just feels like a chore.

Champions are a nice thought, and this whole adding in difficult options for people to have a challenge is nice. Those that do it often are out of touch with what a casual gamer goes thorugh. On the servers there is very little option other then to join elite groupings. For me it is fun to feel character progression, i don't want to spend 50 hours a week of gameplay to progress one or two levels when the character builds require 12-14 past lives to show progress in questing.

It is a mix of different issues that i describe in my post.

For me, the champions just put a block in my tr goals. I can get around it though i would be playing outside my class setup to do so. I tr'd one in to a sorc, so in the level 2 dungeons my sorcs acid spell kills the general mobs though when i hit a champion, it takes 5 casts to take one down and the incoming damage requires me to drink a potion every second hit which is a larger increase in time then the usual 2 hit and move on scenario i am used to. Too stressfull a style for me to play, though i can physically get through it, my body is too tense playing that wayand it isn't a fun experience for me.

I heard an option once to roll a new character, which is very disrespectfull to suggest as all my character have around a thousand hours time invested in them and to completely delete these to make room for new ones so i can roll characters to solo a normal difficulty life (not many would join my normal difficulty hosted runs, have tried it in past many many times).

As a casual gamer, my time is just as valuable to me as other gamers who are up for a difficult challenge. I am aware this is difficult to balance the environment to be enjoyable for all. At the moment, the balance is not in favor of the casual gamer and the options feel very degrading to enjoy the time on the game as such. As mentioned in another thread on this topic, i am choosing to have the weekend away from ddo instead of rolling up a first liver to solo normal quests 4 times each.

In short, listen to the guys that enjoy playing for a challenge as to how the champion mobs are going, just have some consideration for what the alternatives you are mentioning to the casual gamer that dont want to participate in difficult gameplay setups. All our time is valuable to us and we are all worthy to enjoy character progression, rewards and the feeling of advancing for our time spent here.

Have a fun time out there, take care.

Sam1313

12-12-2014, 02:26 PM

If you want to make the game harder, make it more challenging then just remove the stupidly overpowered weapons and armor. The thunderholme weapons. What was wrong with the citw weapons? or green steel for that fact? Heck just remove all weapons after Meridia let there be only green steel weapons even in epic, that should make those crying the game is too easy happy, but yet I don't see them using stock gear. Hmmm. And yes what about PERMADEATH? I don't see my PD characters being played now a lot. And that's another thing I don't understand maybe some one out there that's just so GOD Uber can help me to understand. If your so GOD UBER and this game is soooooooo easy, then why are you running around with the best gear in the game? Go Naked. Play permadeath if you want a challenge.

Connman

12-12-2014, 02:26 PM

And I really like them with little hats on them! This is EE, never missed on a dominate monster, built for it but not really geared.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah42/bc7902098/ScreenShot00028_zps0a4004ae.jpg (http://s1377.photobucket.com/user/bc7902098/media/ScreenShot00028_zps0a4004ae.jpg.html)

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 02:33 PM

Love it! Don't change a thing.

Ran all the quests yesterday on EE + EE Haunted Halls, sure a few times some members died but over all love the champions......don't cave in to the charlie casuals there are lower difficulty settings the can choose :)

Cool...

Except Charlie Casual keeps the lights on.

Tell me you are getting a shared bank or buying new packs anymore like New Guy might?

"New Guy" has more income potential then "Mr. Vet."

Deride the new player all you want.

If they stop playing we all go down.

you need to repeat a quest on normal 4-5 times to make up for a first time elite run. .

This is how it used to be.

Run Norm 4-5 times for each quest.

That was fine then.

But making people go back to that after running E for so long? It makes it feel much worse.

People who are getting their first PLs just had their work load doubled (perhaps).

Granted BB XP bonus should not have been inflated so high to start with. Half as much would still have been great.

But people don't like to go back.

If you want to make the game harder, make it more challenging then just remove the stupidly overpowered weapons and armor.

^^^Ding Ding! We have a winner!.^^^

"Hmmmm... Let's add 60 DR plus 50%++ damage reduction with PRR."

"Hey! Why is everyone having such an easy time in Elite anymore?"

Gee, I wonder...

Albinosaurus

12-12-2014, 02:34 PM

Since this seems to be the "official" thread to discuss this, I'm just going to copy from another one I responded to:

Ran Disciples of Shar chain and Lords of Dust chain earlier tonight and had many instances of 3-4 champions spawning out of groups of 6-10, and let me tell you: I F***ING HATE THIS FEATURE!

The champions are an arbitrary increase in difficulty that contribute no benefit to the player. They are an unwarranted and unrewarding tax on player resources and time. Worse, they don't add anything interesting to the fights, exception frustration and irritation. Just remove this feature. It's an out-of-genre idea (from ARPGs) that has no place here. If you don't believe me on that point, just think about what purposes these serve in ARPGs:

-Break up monotony of killing non-boss enemies.
We already have lots of named monsters in quests that do that.
We have traps, puzzles, and platforming obstacles that also do that.

-Provide extra sources of better loot/income/exp to the player.
I would be okay with justifying them in DDO this way, but only certain ones do it, yet ANY monster can be a champion. That's just wrong. It either IS, or IS NOT the reason they are here. If not, just remove them.
Lots of quests already have plenty of loot in them, and this game has been about completion of quests--not slaying of monsters--since its inception. If you want to change that, fine, but be open and upfront about it, and implement it properly. Its current state is terrible.

-Provide a challenge to the player. This, in turn, is supposed to provide fun to the player.
I would agree that they do that for this game, except that they do so in the most artificial way possible: inflated stats. There's nothing fun/interesting about that, it's downright lazy, and that's not the kind of challenge players enjoy. The rest of the game has players gear around different kinds of DR, size differences, creature types, or potentially dangerous spells or abilities. So far, all the champions I have seen have just had more hp and do more damage. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Other people have suggested things to justify their presence in the game, and maybe some of those are good ideas, but as it stands champions are a huge mistake, and greatly diminishes the pre-existing design philosophy behind quests.

With my opinions and criticisms out of the way, I'll offer a few suggestions that might make them tolerable, and allow them to serve some of those previously listed purposes:

-Every champion that can't drop a chest always grants some exp (I'm thinking about 2% quest base) and guild renown. Some plat would be nice too.
-LittleLexi has a collector NPC idea (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/452935-Just-some-musing-on-the-new-Monster-Champions) I think could help.
-Reduce their spawn rate by at least 1/5 of what it currently is and/or put a hard cap on how many can spawn in a quest. Internal timers to keep several from spawning at the same time could also be a good solution.
-Tone down their actual stat increases and instead give them interesting abilities (but nothing too ridiculous like Finger of Death, Flesh to Stone, or any other gimmicky one-shotters). For example, a champion rat around CL 15/16 could potentially use Stinking Cloud or something related to its creature type. Be creative.
-Make champions that don't normally drop chests have a small chance to anyway (5% seems legit; rolling a 20).

Anyway, I hope someone at Turbine is reading this, because this change has evoked incredibly negative feelings toward this game, and it needs to be made right.

The rate is MUCH higher than 10%, btw. They are far too common.

LordKalkin

12-12-2014, 02:35 PM

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

For Epic? Agreed.
For Heroic, as long as BB streaks drive leveling and PUGs? Never.
If a full party of decent+ played 1st lifers cant complete HE this is a disaster.
The game has to accommodate others besides you, me and our 27 past lives.

These need to be totally removed, optional or toned down on Heroic.
Leave them as is on Epic.

Revisit your champion loot mechanic.
No chests at champion. One chest guaranteed at end. Loot scaled on champ kills and difficulty.
Guaranteed guild favor award and exp stone for each party member.
Then you don't have to interfere with established quest loot mechanics.

LongshotBro

12-12-2014, 02:35 PM

Nothing is wrong with epic normal (I will onehit kill everything and the mob cannot hit me - ehard fits more to my playstyle)

but there is something wrong with heroics now

i.e.

preU24:
i am lvl 18 - so i play lvl16-quest on elite for BB - i.e. "Rainbow in the Dark"
Base XP 9000 +
80% 1st time bonus + 50 % BB Bonus + 30 % Traps + 25 % Conquest + 15 % Ransack + 8 % Vigilant + 10% Persistence + 10% Flawless + 50% GreaterTome 1st

43.725 XP (miscalculation possible :) )

but i cant play heroic epic anymore - im not so uber, im not so masochistic
there are no groups at my play time; if there are groups, they r selective or play hard diff
and i dont want to lose my streak (maybe i would find a group later and the bonus is so high and the number is so nice: Elite streak - 4132 or so)

what can i do, i play hard without breaking my streak - lvl18-3 is 15 - "Missing" hard

Base XP 5700 +

40% 1st time bonus + 0 % BB Bonus + 10 % Traps + 10 % Aggression + 15 % Ransack + 10% Persistence + 10% Flawless + 50% GreaterTome

16.672 XP

but because i need to repeat those quests its more likely a (no firstime bonus - Tome only 20%)

10.600 XP

I need to do lower quests to not break my streak now and i need to run them 3 or 4 times (repeats on the next day for daily bonus and the next day and the next day) - all of them ... PreU24 i was just doing elite quests once per life - now i need to do the same stuff 3 times - boring - i know, we did this all the years ago - but i was glad, that i didnt needed this anymore - OR i buy Superior XP Pots and Stones of Experience in the DDO Store ;)

Plz no champs in heroics - only in epic elite quests - thx

i understand your frustration, but that is not my experience so i can only base my response on that. on my main character, this life i am a pure artificer, primarily SWF melee. Each time around through TR's i started off thinking "i'm gonna keep that elite streak the whole time!" but inevitably break it at some point, a little further each life. This time, i made it to level 11 quests before i had to break it. Mind you, this was after having caught up to and surpassed quests at level, without repeating anything.

Now i am level 23, so breaking the streak was long ago. Despite that, i still haven't repeated things much. Actually the only things i've done more than once were LoD but that's due to seal/shard hunting.

When it comes to streaks and BB, certainly they are nice but to be honest i've never really noticed it impacting my play all that much. Cool when i get it but if not, oh well it doesn't bother me. It was always more a point of personal accomplishment to me anyway, as i mentioned, like "i made it further than before without breaking streak."

Despite all the many, many changes DDO has undergone since launch, i still find it to be fun, rewarding and satisfying overall, adapting to new things and finding a happy medium. i hope others find the same experience.

Qezuzu

12-12-2014, 02:36 PM

BD_

12-12-2014, 02:43 PM

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Random mobs should not be harder than the hardest (raid) bosses in the game. They're boss mobs for a reason...

A few other points:

In my experience (running the GH saga on EE) - 2 champions at once was extremely common, 3 at once was fairly common. This is too much: 10% is too much unless you put a restriction on how many can spawn in one area because with a 10% chance per mob the odds of getting a whole pack of champions is too high...

Supposedly the buffs are random, but of approximately 15 that I actually examined, all but 1 had both true seeing and "I hit harder" : Bad luck? doubtful if they're really even close to random, WAI? if so - IMO this is dumb... Based on damage, the ones that I didn't examine appeared to all have it too - unless the ones that were only hitting for 300-400 didn't have it...

"I hit harder" is too much... champion hits on me (with slightly over 100 (50% PRR) ranged from 297-902, with the norm being 450-650 and 700+ hits being fairly common. I was never one hit by them, but close, others in my party were - multiple times. Compare this to most red named bosses on EE (against the same PRR) hitting for 200-300, EE Karleth 300-600, EE Truthful one about 300-600...

Respawning mobs and other special scripted spots (boss fights, special ambush sites.) should either not be able to have champions or have their numbers limited. The odds of getting a ton of champions or having a champion literally spawn on top of you are too high - any area with respawning mobs becomes a game of look for the crown over mobs heads and kill that one while more or less ignoring everything else (possibly while kiting).

Personally, I disagree with orange champion mobs, orange mobs should already be special, that's why they're orange mobs... note the word should... if orange mobs are too weak, then they should be buffed across the board (or close to it) - not having random champions that may or may not result in an uber mob...

There is no tactics or strategy on how to fight a champion that's immune to CC and instakills (yes I realize most champions can be cc'ed and/or instakilled) (orange named or racial immunities or special buffs), hits for 800 per hit, has True Seeing, and has inflated HP - you kite it and/or burst dps as fast as you can... Skilled kiters and to some extent those with uber burst dps can handle them with relative ease (even if they find it annoying or not fun) others can't.

I'm all for adding difficulty and putting in mechanisms to encourage teamwork and tactics but tossing in random uber damage mobs is the wrong way to do it. Playing dodge the champion mob over and over again isn't fun... It's not particularly "hard" it's just tedious...

Kiting isn't fun (for most people).

You want to add tactics and make things more difficult? - Give more mobs flanking bonuses and sneak attack bonuses (making fighting large packs of mobs more dangerous) and then change how mob agro works so that there are more ways to control how many mobs at a time you fight.

Add in more things like the minotaur runts in Frame Work that run away and call for help (summon more mobs) if you agro them but don't kill them quickly.

Fix dispel so that mobs don't auto succeed dispel checks against players and players don't auto fail dispel checks against mobs and then have mobs buff each other and have more mobs that cast dispel (just not spam it). Note that dispel works fine in heroic normal (at least up to about level 15 or so) - on other difficulties mob caster level is too inflated and they ignore max caster level.

More creative (or better) trap placement. There are very few traps in the game where you're fighting mobs and getting hit by traps at the same time...

Note that my experience is running the EE GH saga. I have no idea how hard or frequent champions are on HH, HE, or EH. From what I've seen on the forums, it seems that most find champion mobs on EH to be fairly easy and quite frequent.

I personally do not find champions on EE to be too hard for me - so don't go telling me to play an easier difficulty if i - I also don't find them to be fun. Doing a quest where the only thing that matters is not getting hit by random champion mobs isn't really that much harder, or fun - sure it adds a bit of time and there might be that rare time when you aren't paying attention or have bad luck or lag etc. etc. and get killed by a champion, but for the most part, if you could steamroll EE before, you still can, just now you have to play kite, cc, or instakill the champion over and over again...

Bogenbroom

12-12-2014, 02:45 PM

I haven't had a chance to check them out yet, so I won't speak to the difficulty, but the numbers I am hearing around spawn rate do concern me a bit. Even at the ~10% rate we are hearing they are supposed to spawn at, that seems high. Most encounters run, what, 4-8 baddies, so you are talking ~ 2 champions for every 3 encounters?

Also, the idea of non-sentient champions is wrong. I think it is a great idea for sentient creatures, specifically humanoid and at least average intelligence creatures, but not others... at least not at the same rate.

Just some uneducated feedback. :)

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 02:46 PM

Scrabbler

12-12-2014, 02:48 PM

Monster Champions only have a chance to have True Seeing and/or Deathward. Some Champions won't have either one. We certainly expect players to use instant kill abilities on many Champions.
There's a big problem with that expectation: the time and effort it takes to target the champion, open an inspection window, and read through the 3-7 buff icons to figure out what improvements this particular monster has.

That's a task requiring 3+ seconds, which is not at all managable in a locked-room situation where Champions are spawning on top of you. Honestly it's barely managable when you're coming up on 2-4 Champions per room when navigating down hallways either... the time investment to figure out if a particular Champ is immune to death attacks or not means you're better off going with damage or stun/hold from the start (some Champs are immune to Hold, but that's a lot rarer)

This is quite a problem: you give monsters special specific powers with the intention that players would react to those specific powers, but don't use any predictable / learnable pattern for what those powers are, nor provide a rapid way to see them onscreen.

Thar

12-12-2014, 02:52 PM

Spawn rate is way too high. Every 4th mob being a champion is too much. should be 1 in 100. The stated rate of 10% would be 40 in a quest of 400. i'm counting much higher more like 25%. It should be the same spawn rate as rare loot....

Heroics are way out of wack. Mobs shouldn't have 1000+ hp in a quest where the trash has 100hp. Any instakill is not something that should spawn on trash. Boss yes. and even then pc's should be able to block that with fort, deathward, or some preparation. not luck.

Adrenaline is too much. if your going to one shot people what does this accomplish? it's not challenging it's a waste of time and I can have fun doing other games that require skill. The added damage should be based on CR 1 or 2 x the cr rating of the champion.

True seeing and deathward are too frequent. Casters can't go through EE and insta kill much anyway without 1000s of hours of character tweaking and then its only semi likely to get get the DC highenough to make it an option. most champions i've been able to examine have one or both on ee

Risk vs reward - there is an increased amount of risk. no additional reward in xp, named items or augs, etc. I've killed 100s of champions in the last day. 1 chest.

This should have been set up as a toggle or only for minibosses.

This seems to be another knee jerk reaction to the forum 1% that whines that the game is too easy now with mrr/prr changes. WELL if the feedback was listened too when those changes went in then this wouldn't have occured. There is no reason my full plate/shield cleric should be able to stand on the dwarven artifact in the fire peaks raid when it blows up and only take 500 damage with no buffs. Melee needed some help and the armor changes did that but instead of tinkering it was hit with the sledgehammer. So things became easier for melee, so people broke out their melee from hibernation and there was happiness so then this is the counter to give us instakill damage of 1800 on ee so prr doesn't matter? what????? This impacts those least impacted by the prr changes the worst. casters can't instakill, light armor takes more of a beating.

This was a good idea, but should have been refined on lam before hitting live. not tweaked to the 1% but for a reasonable challenge for all with incremental buffs that make sense. True seeing on almost all champions negates blur/displacement. (again impacting casters and lighter armor users (bards) more) Spawn rates should have been tweaked so this is a whoo champoin lets hit that. not omg not another @#$@ champion. and some reward. 100xp per cr level per champion or token drop to cash in for better heal pot or like. Remember the 99% pay money to play the game too.

Kaytis

12-12-2014, 02:54 PM

I think an immediate first step is to remove champions entirely from heroic. Hearing about new players deleting toons and accounts should not be raising red flags, it should be doing the full Star Trek panic sirens lighting up the Pacman tape where there used to be desks, with bright flashing red lights.

We can debate epics endlessly. Players that got to that level are going to be far less likely to throw in the towel. But heroic is where your new epic players come from. If they don't play through to epic, this debate will be meaningless.

By the way, I have never heard of a "Reserve Guild". That blows my mind. What server has enough players that a guild can have a "Reserve Guild"?

Qezuzu

12-12-2014, 02:55 PM

I have 1 more last thing to add directed towards turbine devs.

You guys should research how popular companies like blizzard and riot balance their games, and games from korean mmos.

They take feedback only from the top best of the best players when it comes to balancing end game highest difficulty content.
And those games are for a reason top leaders of any mmo rankings.
In lol for example that is a sample of only 0.2% of total gamers that the devs listen to.

Compare that to what you have now.

Only problem you have is that you made elite as difficulty the "normal to play" with bravery.
This is a good time to change bravery bonus for the sake of your and our game.

Those games have a focus on PvP. The top players are the ones they listen to because they're the tourney players who can identify exactly what is under/overpowered or if a certain ability/character/item/etc. would become overpowered.

In DDO and other PvE-focused games, you'll get top players wanting more challenge because, with Necro4+MoD gear and fully upgraded TF weapons, multiple epic past lives and fully trained destinies+twists, and years of experience, the game is too easy.

madmaxhunter

12-12-2014, 02:57 PM

Cool...

Except Charlie Casual keeps the lights on.

Tell me you are getting a shared bank or buying new packs anymore like New Guy might?

"New Guy" has more income potential then "Mr. Vet."

Deride the new player all you want.

If they stop playing we all go down.

This is how it used to be.

Run Norm 4-5 times for each quest.

That was fine then.

But making people go back to that after running E for so long? It makes it feel much worse.

People who are getting their first PLs just had their work load doubled (perhaps).

Granted BB XP bonus should not have been inflated so high do start with. Half as much would still have been great.

But people don't like to go back.

QFT, best reply so far. Remove champions. Fix the bugs. Fix the lag. Then bring them back. Running EH VoN 1 last night. Two guildies, one has been playing consistantly for 5 years, the other is a founder. They both lagged at the beginning of the arena fight. I got floated on top of the mob. Half were champions. We wiped. I play this game as a hobby, a diversion. Wasted time leads to other hobbies.

Ghlitch

12-12-2014, 02:57 PM

Ran an EH Extended Haunted Halls of Eveningstar last night with a friend and a hireling healer.

Around half the mobs we ran across were champions. None of them were particularly tough one at a time, but in huge fights, the hireling went down fast. There was only one real death, and that was due to an insane mob of champions all hitting at once. When you're getting mobbed, it's also really hard to tell which mobs have those little crowns over their heads. The 5-pixel width crowns on those tiny spiders are nearly impossible to see.

We were tossing loot out left and right due to the sheer number of bonus chests we were getting. At the end of the quest, I ended up with around 125,000 plat worth of junk loot.

With these two things in mind, I'd like to see a couple of changes:

1. Give champion mobs a name like Champion Priest of Kurtulmak, give them a unique colored name, and possibly give them a glowing aura or something to help with targeting.
2. Instead of random junk chests, let them give out champion tokens. Something stackable you can trade in at an NPC for useful items. (10 tokens for a potion of deathward, 100 tokens for a major mnemonic, 1000 tokens for a +2 tome, 10000 for a +5 tome, etc)

Also, you may want to take a look at removing champions from the dragon boss fight room. The dragon spent much of the fight trying to kill the champion mobs that spawned from all the frozen pillars and mounds. He was down a good 10% before we decided to step in and speed things up. It's entirely probable that the champions would've killed him without any help.

Thar

12-12-2014, 02:57 PM

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Random mobs should not be harder than the hardest (raid) bosses in the game. They're boss mobs for a reason...

I personally do not find champions on EE to be too hard for me - so don't go telling me to play an easier difficulty if i - I also don't find them to be fun. Doing a quest where the only thing that matters is not getting hit by random champion mobs isn't really that much harder, or fun - sure it adds a bit of time and there might be that rare time when you aren't paying attention or have bad luck or lag etc. etc. and get killed by a champion, but for the most part, if you could steamroll EE before, you still can, just now you have to play kite, cc, or instakill the champion over and over again...

I'll agree here on all he said but particularly these two points.

jalont

12-12-2014, 02:59 PM

nibel

12-12-2014, 03:02 PM

All that I ask for is some way to identify the champion buff without requiring us to select and examine.

If they have the damage buff ("I hit harder"), make them 50% bigger in size. As long as you see a huge mob you know they hit hard (or cast hard, whatever)

If they have any kind of resistance, put an overhead icon indicating his resistance (a flame for fire, a cube for cold, etc), or a flame shield-like effect, color coded by type.

If they have True Seeing, think about keeping the "casting" effect over their eyes. If they have Deathward, keep the deathward symbol permanently over their heads.

And so on and on and on.

Wipey

12-12-2014, 03:05 PM

There is no tactics or strategy on how to fight a champion that's immune to CC and instakills (yes I realize most champions can be cc'ed and/or instakilled) (orange named or racial immunities or special buffs), hits for 800 per hit, has True Seeing, and has inflated HP - you kite it and/or burst dps as fast as you can... Skilled kiters and to some extent those with uber burst dps can handle them with relative ease (even if they find it annoying or not fun) others can't.

Got an example of such champion ? Adrenaline, High DC Swash and Warchanter abilities, Shield Bash, Dance, Web, Comet. Or tank it.

I think people got really lazy and complacent since U 23 ( it sure feels like heroics zerg lately, any EE, even underlevel ), with super buff to melee power and prr and mrr introduction. Plus necro 4 quests were trivial compared to for example WGU and Breaking the ranks when Shadowfell came.

There is no mob ( I don't know about new content but as far as I understand, extra damage due to quest mechanics ) that one shots high prr toon. Neither Minotaurs, Elite Vol guard, Shadarkais, Magma Brutes, Ice ellies or other hard hitting mobs.
You get hit for 400- 600 on something like 140 prr.
I think everything can be cced in some way.

It's like EE melee combat before u 23 WITHOUT any prr I would say.

Vulkoorex

12-12-2014, 03:07 PM

I am a fairly new premium player that has almost all the quest packs with 7 character slots and only 2 are fully maxed out in inventory bags and bank tabs. I enjoyed finally playing elite and not having to play a quest twice to gain favors. I liked playing elite so much right off the bat that I even contemplated going VIP just for elite opener on my other future character slots.

With the changes as it is now, I don't see the point of going VIP. Nor do I see the need to play my other 5 unused character slots that I would have also maxed out inventory and bank tabs. Not to mention buying Stat tomes and other stuff. No point in getting an Otto box either since I'll have to grind a completionist anyways.

Dorian

12-12-2014, 03:08 PM

This sounds like confirmation that the current percentage is probably working correctly. If you felt there were 40 out of 400 normal monsters (plus extra for the higher chance for orange named minibosses), that's precisely 10%, which is only slightly higher than the intended amount.

Anyone that has ran more than 2 quests since the update knows that champions are spawning WAY more than 10%. How are you determining that the 10% setting is working as intended? Player feedback? Statements like this make me have less confidence in the developers.

And you say that 10% is "only slightly higher than the intended amount".... what was the intended amount?

jalont

12-12-2014, 03:12 PM

Anyone that has ran more than 2 quests since the update knows that champions are spawning WAY more than 10%. How are you determining that the 10% setting is working as intended? Player feedback? Statements like this make me have less confidence in the developers.

And you say that 10% is "only slightly higher than the intended amount".... what was the intended amount?

I don't think that's true. There's probably a lot of confirmation bias going on. People see 0-1 champion a room for most of the quest, then another room they see four, and they think that the four is the average for all rooms. I'm seeing about ten percent. I'm also not seeing any "one shotting" mobs except very rarely.

There's an incredibly large amount of hyperbole going on in this thread.

Spoonwelder

12-12-2014, 03:12 PM

redoubt

12-12-2014, 03:14 PM

On elite. 3 man party.

99 kills. 16 champions. 2 orange champs. zero chests.

Wraith with 967 hp.

Wraith with vulnerability to pierce.

BigPapi

12-12-2014, 03:14 PM

I've cancelled my VIP because of this. PUGing is dead in this game and it isn't coming back. I don't have the time to dedicate to slogging through every measely quest on on elite when I have a very limited amount of time to dedicate to gaming.
I'll find something better to spend my money on than a game that every once in awhile just randomly drastically changes game play.
I'm sure plently like it, but not me.

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 03:15 PM

From what I'm taking away most from here is that eh needs some added difficulty as well. Lots of people saying now EE is too hard but EH is too easy. This is something that the devs should look at. Clearly EH needs a difficulty boost.

And EE could definitely STILL use more difficulty as well. 24 hours of this being live and not a single almost failed EE quest. In fact, only a single one shot death for me. Challenge indeed.

Ya me too. No one-shots (except in new quests) A few deaths for me, but no one-shots.

That's the thing...

Some are saying that Champs are too much, some are saying they hardly notice Champs at all.

What are all these people telling us here?

They are all saying that the gulf between the best of us and those not yet PLed up the wazoo is far, far, far too great at this point.

Champions, while fun for me and you, doesn't solve that.

In fact, it makes it worse, because new people now have a harder time catching up and can't participate anymore with the overwhelming majority of LFMs which are Elite while the Vets can continue the Crazy Train to Demi-god status without issue.

However, Champions added as a new super-elite difficulty level would have better solve the issue of challenging vets without stomping on the undergeared, unguilded, 1st lifers.

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 03:18 PM

jalont

12-12-2014, 03:19 PM

Says the fully tuned vet. Try on a less than optimal built and/or geared character on EH at level.

Erm, this is all being run with random pugs. Only once was more than one person dead, and that was the endfight of Von 1, and I'm not prepared to say that had anything to do with champions because people with old computers often stutter and die there.

Pretty much every EE in the game pugged in the last 24 hours and at no time was more than one person dead, except for once. I'm sorry, this isn't challenging. I'd like to see EE be a challenge for a good group of fully geared and built toons. We're not even at challenging for a semi-flled group of randoms that may or may not be geared.

BD_

12-12-2014, 03:23 PM

Got an example of such champion ? Adrenaline, High DC Swash and Warchanter abilities, Shield Bash, Dance, Web, Comet. Or tank it.

I think people got really lazy and complacent since U 23 ( it sure feels like heroics zerg lately, any EE, even underlevel ), with super buff to melee power and prr and mrr introduction. Plus necro 4 quests were trivial compared to for example WGU and Breaking the ranks when Shadowfell came.

There is no mob ( I don't know about new content but as far as I understand, extra damage due to quest mechanics ) that one shots high prr toon. Neither Minotaurs, Elite Vol guard, Shadarkais, Magma Brutes, Ice ellies or other hard hitting mobs.
You get hit for 400- 600 on something like 140 prr.
I think everything can be cced in some way.

It's like EE melee combat before u 23 WITHOUT any prr I would say.

Some champions came close - giant skeles at the end of TOR come to mind as being tougher than most, but no specific example... almost any orange named champion is immune to most CC and insta kills though...

My character could tank EE TO pre U23 (yes it was hard but I could do it) This same character - 3 divine past lives and several pieces of uber/semi uber gear later and post U23 buffs to PRR - has difficulty tanking even the "lowliest" champion mob - yeah I can normally kill them fast, but I can't actually tank them... 400-600 per hit from a "trash" mob is still too much when you compare it to boss mobs and raid boss mobs that hit for the same or lower, and many were hitting me for 800ish (110ish PRR)

Again, I personally did not find them too hard, and I welcome increases in difficulty - just not like this. This isn't really that much harder... just tedious...

I still think that champions (as implemented currently) are "wrong" - in concept/lore - and not fun... Again - Boss mobs are boss mobs for a reason, and random "trash" mobs (random champions) should not be harder than boss mobs - currently almost all champions hit harder than almost all boss mobs... (On EE, I have no experience with champions on HH, HE, or EH - I'll probably run a few quests with appropriate characters on those difficulties and form an opinion on champions in those difficulties later.)

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 03:24 PM

I don't think that's true. There's probably a lot of confirmation bias going on. People see 0-1 champion a room for most of the quest, then another room they see four, and they think that the four is the average for all rooms. I'm seeing about ten percent. I'm also not seeing any "one shotting" mobs except very rarely.

There's an incredibly large amount of hyperbole going on in this thread.

Easiest way to determine percentage would be to do a big sampe of quests and compare number of champ/total kills per quest.
If the number in lets say 100 quests is around 10% then their formula is correct.
Do a quest with 200 spawns, you get per 10% 20 mobs that are champs and you get 3-4 at once in 3-4 fights but ignore the 60 spawns before where you had none.
That is incorrect math.

I doubt they can deremine the distance between champ spawns so that 2-3 dont spawn exactly near other but just the percentage per mob to be a champ or no

Bogenbroom

12-12-2014, 03:27 PM

SO... any chance things other than enemies are effecting the generation rate of champions? On a lark I just jumped into Bringing In The Light and there were multiple gamblers (the guys that are neutral and you can't interact with, much less fight) that were champions. That seem... odd.

Braegan

12-12-2014, 03:29 PM

From what I've seen so far it seems like there are way too many champs spawning.

When I thought about this when it was first talked about was almost like bringing back that initial feeling of being new and running harbor quests. Fighting oozes and kobolds and then you open a door and BOOM out comes running this big, bad Ogre triple crit smacking the first in line cueing up the *Ding.*

That's what a champ should feel like and with that kind of spawn rate. They should absolutely be deadly and dangerous but in much smaller doses.

I also think the percentage should differ between Hard and Elite. Something like 5% on Hard and 10% on Elite. I know it's supposed to be 10% now, but it really doesn't feel like it.

So yeah, I'd like to see less champs overall, less on Hard vs Elite but make them a bit stronger.

Oh and they should all have something for defeating them, a chest, renown, a cookie, something.

soreslands

12-12-2014, 03:29 PM

I LOVE THE CHAMPIONS! finally i cant breeze my way through EE yes they spawn often and hit hard have lots of buffs and are generally ****s. but then again so are we with the over whelming amount of buffs and gear people have its about time for the mobs to start with them as well

there are only 2 things that needs changed is possible the spawn rate but only a little a little bit so you dont have 6 on you at once and possible changing the randomness of buffs (TS apears alot would like to see others)

Impaqt

12-12-2014, 03:31 PM

I can appreciate the fact that Turbine wants to add a bit more difficulty to the game, but you have missed the target here. you've effectively ramped the difficulty far past where it was.

For people who really understand the changes over the past couple mods, it has indeed gotten much easier. Unfortunately, these systems are not very newbie friendly either. I've been playing this game for 8+ years and I have no idea how some of these players are getting PRR in excess of 200...

Since the game went Free to play, many things got a lot easier to understand and a lot more new player friendly. AC, PRR, MRR, MeleePower, are NOT new player friendly. Its nice that the little bit that new players get by accident are actually doing something, but its certainly not coming anywhere close to making up for this overly aggressive Champion System.

That being said, Champions are spawning at a higher rate than 10%.

I would suggest lowering the Rate on Hard to 5%

GO ahead and leave elite at "10%", but look at how you are figuring that 10% and really make it 10%. Because right now its 15-20%

Not to the big sticking point.

we have been encourage to run Elite as "norm" since this silly "Bravery Bonus" **** came out.

In order for Pugs to come back, It needs to go away. or at least be heavily modified so doing one quest not on elite doesnt mean the end of the world for the people who are impressed by their own big streak numbers.

jalont

12-12-2014, 03:35 PM

I'd have no real problem with lowering the spawn rates... but the truth is that the vast, vast majority of these champions aren't dangerous. They just die/damage like a normal mob. The actual percentage of "dangerous" champions is so low that I'm worried lowering the spawn rate would make them practically nonexistent.

axel15810

12-12-2014, 03:38 PM

With these two things in mind, I'd like to see a couple of changes:

1. Give champion mobs a name like Champion Priest of Kurtulmak, give them a unique colored name, and possibly give them a glowing aura or something to help with targeting.

This. They need an aura or some kind of glowing effect on them.

Spoonwelder

12-12-2014, 03:39 PM

Erm, this is all being run with random pugs. Only once was more than one person dead, and that was the endfight of Von 1, and I'm not prepared to say that had anything to do with champions because people with old computers often stutter and die there.

Pretty much every EE in the game pugged in the last 24 hours and at no time was more than one person dead, except for once. I'm sorry, this isn't challenging. I'd like to see EE be a challenge for a good group of fully geared and built toons. We're not even at challenging for a semi-flled group of randoms that may or may not be geared.
Bad sample - people willing to join EE quests nowadays are the multi PL mulit ETR fully kitted type so they - as I and others have said will barely notice this difference. I don't take my non-optimal characters into EE - I only have one of those doing more than that takes way too much time. I expect most others are the same - and when they aren't then they usually lead the death count even before this change.

Roll a new character and take him out for a spin without twinking his butt off. See how it runs. If you have a non-maxed out character try him out in some EH content - load in some hires and lock em at the door - swap to a bad destiny then try it again and report back. I have played both ways in the past day - my main had it easy soloing - my other pass through was in a group of non-twinked characters didn't go so well.

That said - I think it is close to being ok but they need to tweek it SOON(tm). Many of the suggestions in this thread are viable from remove from EH to putting timers on spawn to maxing the I Hit harder at 2x etc....as well as double checking the spawn rate as anecdotally it seems too high.

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 03:49 PM

Bad sample - people willing to join EE quests nowadays are the multi PL mulit ETR fully kitted type so they - as I and others have said will barely notice this difference. I don't take my non-optimal characters into EE - I only have one of those doing more than that takes way too much time. I expect most others are the same - and when they aren't then they usually lead the death count even before this change.

Roll a new character and take him out for a spin without twinking his butt off. See how it runs. If you have a non-maxed out character try him out in some EH content - load in some hires and lock em at the door - swap to a bad destiny then try it again and report back. I have played both ways in the past day - my main had it easy soloing - my other pass through was in a group of non-twinked characters didn't go so well.

That said - I think it is close to being ok but they need to tweek it SOON(tm). Many of the suggestions in this thread are viable from remove from EH to putting timers on spawn to maxing the I Hit harder at 2x etc....as well as double checking the spawn rate as anecdotally it seems too high.

That isnt that correct.
When i pug in mornings, i would either solo or put lfm, and i almost never get fully maxed dudes since they dont like playing with me.
What i get are new players, and i usually have no issues explaining what they need to do to be effective i epics.
Im a scumbag but only towards those that deserve it.
Usually im a quite nice person ;)

It differs from time zone, quests to the description in lfm

BrianConnolly

12-12-2014, 03:52 PM

I think for newer players Champions are going to be driven from the game. Why not consider a Champion difficulty that is above epic elite that would of course garner more exp. i don't mind the new champions but when 5 out of 6 in a mob are one that is a problem. I had that happen today in a House of Broken Chains. They were hitting around 200 damage. Yesterday in halls of eveningstar they hit another player for 425 on epic hard. That seems more like epic elite territory. I think maybe EN should have 1-3(which currently don't have any), EH 4-6 and EE about 10. I also think that the champion gargoyles in Terminal Delirium are way over powered hitting me once for 5200 slash damage.

Folker

12-12-2014, 04:06 PM

I think they hit too hard.

HAL

12-12-2014, 04:07 PM

Daerius of the Blessed Blades

12-12-2014, 04:09 PM

On a lark I just jumped into Bringing In The Light and there were multiple gamblers (the guys that are neutral and you can't interact with, much less fight) that were champions. That seem... odd.

Ha! I saw that too! I just assumed they were the professional gamblers...

Uska

12-12-2014, 04:11 PM

I now have something to hate more than I do the realms did,a,heroic Von IV and every other monster it seemed was a champion was ridiculous

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 04:12 PM

Paladin20

12-12-2014, 04:13 PM

Champions are spawning at a higher rate than 10%.

I would suggest lowering the Rate on Hard to 5%

GO ahead and leave elite at 10%, but look at how you are figuring that 10% and really make it 10%. Because right now its 15-20%

Not to the big sticking point.

we have been encourage to run Elite as "norm" since this silly "Bravery Bonus" **** came out.

In order for Pugs to come back, It needs to go away. or at least be heavily modified so doing one quest not on elite doesnt mean the end of the world for the people who are impressed by their own big streak numbers.

What he said... If the intention of bringing in monster champions is to promote grouping then it's not working at all, matter of fact that's only going to make things worse for newer players if even a good portion of seasoned players with geared up and multiple TR characters are getting 1-2 shot killed. You're essentially locking out new players from Elite content and are making it annoying for people who are on multiple TR projects. Having monster champions the way they currently are will make it even less likely for folks to group together with unknowns because of the 10% xp bonus received for not dying.

Grouping has already been really scarce for a long time, and this mechanic is only exacerbating the problem. If the idea is to promote PUGs again then get rid of the Bravery Bonus while increasing the base+optional+bonus XP for Elite. If the intention is to make the game more challenging just for the hell of it, well, there are ways to do that without ****ing the **** out of half your player base. It's ridiculous when one room can spawn 3-4 trash mobs simultaneously that all hit harder than end bosses. I don't see how that makes anybody's gaming experience any better.

Uska

12-12-2014, 04:14 PM

Wipey

12-12-2014, 04:16 PM

Some champions came close - giant skeles at the end of TOR come to mind as being tougher than most, but no specific example... almost any orange named champion is immune to most CC and insta kills though...

Do you remember how we used to range the pillar thingies and pull the boss to the side in Tor ?
Now you can solo EE Tor at level easily, I did open to pugs many runs " EE Tor, quest done ,white only" on pally at level 24 or 25, or capped cleric farming for Optics for Palemaster.
The game got too easy, I don't think the damage is that high for the HIGHEST difficulty.

Anyway, Tor skellies can be Adrenalined, Anvil of Thundered, Shield Bashed + auto Bash stunned, Eartquaked, Balanced Attacks knocked down, Webbed, Cometed ( dunno if champs have higher saves but undead get knocked down super easily ), pretty sure you can Frozen Fury them, maybe even Mass Frog ?
Pin maybe ? Don't know about Shiradi.

HAL

12-12-2014, 04:17 PM

On the topic of pushing down to lower difficulties. Each life I do requires 3.8 + 6.6 mil xp (10.4mil xp) We have always run one and done. With streak you can do that easily in heroic elite and nearly so in epic with a mix of EE and EH.

Yep, a lot of people trying to TR, especially the first few lives might be forced to play Normal which will then force a grind which will probably end up losing players. Those who can do Hard or better will still be losing XP because of the random idiotic one-shot deaths. And I expect Hirelings will be even more useless so many people will never be able to recover from that death and will have to restart the quest.

Zzevel

12-12-2014, 04:18 PM

Just put in the lfm, easy.

Brilliant! TWO versions of each level of difficulty! that cuts the LFM possibilities in HALF again...
/SARCASM

Keep it as is, champions add flavor to HARD and ELITE because these levels are SUPPOSED to me more of a challenge. Because they were EASY in the past, doesn't mean they SHOULD always be easy.

If you do not like champions they do not spawn everywhere, they can be avoided by running the quest on either NORMAL or CASUAL (levels made easier for the people who don't like a challenge).

The game has to accommodate others besides you, me and our 27 past lives.

You don't know me, I don't have a single character past their third life, I just like the IDEA that everyone doesn't need a trophy for participating. This idea in NOT being shoved down everyones throat, other options ARE available to EVERYONE, some just do NOT want to use them because they are used to getting something more for little to no effort. This makes people need groups, need strategy and probaly some skill to get the MORE, that's all.

BD_

12-12-2014, 04:22 PM

Do you remember how we used to range the pillar thingies and pull the boss to the side in Tor ?
Now you can solo EE Tor at level easily, I did open to pugs many runs " EE Tor, quest done ,white only" on pally at level 24 or 25, or capped cleric farming for Optics for Palemaster.
The game got too easy, I don't think the damage is that high for the HIGHEST difficulty.

Anyway, Tor skellies can be Adrenalined, Anvil of Thundered, Shield Bashed + auto Bash stunned, Eartquaked, Balanced Attacks knocked down, Webbed, Cometed ( dunno if champs have higher saves but undead get knocked down super easily ), pretty sure you can Frozen Fury them, maybe even Mass Frog ?
Pin maybe ? Don't know about Shiradi.

I never said they were immune to everything... I also specifically said that I personally don't find them too hard, but do find them to be not fun.

I'll reiterate once again Random (trash) mobs should not be harder than the hardest bosses and raid bosses.

mna

12-12-2014, 04:24 PM

Brand new players may do elites, but its because of player expectations, not dev expectations. Or peer pressure, to use another term.

As of now, elite bravery streak is still the norm.

And actually, skilled veteran players (multi-TR and such) can usually still pull it off, it seems. So, they do.

First-lifers and new players (new to the server with prior DDO experience included) probably can no longer survive in that, much less pull their weight. So, no grouping with the veterans.

This means that the player base is fragmented even more, the bravery streakers not even trying to include newbies any more... I thought that was already a problem? It's an even bigger problem now.

Sam1313

12-12-2014, 04:24 PM

BD_

12-12-2014, 04:25 PM

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/905/V8s0aW.png (https://imageshack.com/i/p5V8s0aWp)

My Champions!

/swoon

:-D

Way too easy to totally get around Champions if you have high enough DC.

BTW in this quest at the end fight i made the scorecard -

Red Name Boss -VS- A Single Random Trash Mob Champion Troll.

The winner?

Trash Mob by a knock-out!

Seriously? The trash mob guy took out the boss?

Exactly my point: Boss mobs are boss mobs for a reason... Random (trash mobs) shouldn't be harder than them.

I'm all for increasing difficulty- if done "correctly" - the current implementation of champions is not done "correctly"

Kamode_Corebasher

12-12-2014, 04:28 PM

Nicely done!!

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/905/V8s0aW.png (https://imageshack.com/i/p5V8s0aWp)

My Champions!

/swoon

:-D

Way too easy to totally get around Champions if you have high enough DC.

BTW in this quest at the end fight i made the scorecard -

Red Name Boss -VS- A Single Random Trash Mob Champion Troll.

The winner?

Trash Mob by a knock-out!

Seriously? The trash mob guy took out the boss?

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 04:28 PM

Because they were EASY in the past, doesn't mean they SHOULD always be easy.

Yes, yes. You are true.

But that doesn't make it stink less for those effected.

How about something that would effect you personally...

Player power way over-powered. i hope we can agree there.

How would you feel if you logged in tomorrow and all your gear got nerfed along with PRR and twists and destinies etc.

Then i say, "Just because players were over-powered in the past doesn't mean they should always be over-powered"

Feel better about it?

Not really, I bet.

The level of gear possibilities and power boosts available in the past, while fine then, would feel crippling if brought back now simply because you are used to the good life at this point.

Being "reduced" to Normal might just feel like that.

I wouldn't know but we should be mindful of the possibility.

mna

12-12-2014, 04:34 PM

Ha! I saw that too! I just assumed they were the professional gamblers...

I had some of those as well.

Also, Cellimas had managed to find herself a crown during Misery's Peak (hard). I'm sure she didn't have one in the start room, certainly had it in the end room...
Oh, and there were a few all-champion zombie mob groups spawned from those ice statues.

Was worried about the champion acolyte that was summoning the ice flenser. Didn't have time to check for deathblock, he died just fine during the summoning though, but that does worry me a bit.

Wipey

12-12-2014, 04:34 PM

I'll reiterate once again Random (trash) mobs should not be harder than the hardest bosses and raid bosses.
Maybe they are "bosses" because of their blue blood, people skills or charming personality instead of combat prowess ?.
Nothing wrong that trash mob that fights and kills adventurers every day shouldn't be better :D

Kristii

12-12-2014, 04:36 PM

Great idea. Only thing seems to be these:

Spawn rate seems a bit bugged. Around 30% of mobs look to be champions. I think it should be 10% on hard and 20% on elite difficulty.

I personally think it's a little silly to have a random trash mob be tougher than the boss of a dungeon. Story-line wise, wouldn't the champion have overthrown the boss if it was that tough? Champions are great, but I think they should be on par with the boss of any given dungeon, not tougher.

HOWEVER, this adds spice and danger to questing, which is awesome!

Saekee

12-12-2014, 04:38 PM

Archangel666 joked with me that a champion trap is possible in Wheloon if one considers the animated ones...And here one is!
(BTW bottled tornados in hotbar were made legally and I have never used them)

http://i.imgur.com/cPX6lpN.jpg

This is from a stealth run of TaMD

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 04:40 PM

Maybe they are "bosses" because of their blue blood, people skills or charming personality instead of combat prowess ?.
Nothing wrong that trash mob that fights and kills adventurers every day shouldn't be better :D

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/674/ZMiQQd.jpg (https://imageshack.com/i/iqZMiQQdj)

HAL

12-12-2014, 04:44 PM

2. Instead of random junk chests, let them give out champion tokens. Something stackable you can trade in at an NPC for useful items. (10 tokens for a potion of deathward, 100 tokens for a major mnemonic, 1000 tokens for a +2 tome, 10000 for a +5 tome, etc)

You seem to be the only person who had this problem.

Braegan

12-12-2014, 04:45 PM

Maybe they are "bosses" because of their blue blood, people skills or charming personality instead of combat prowess ?.
Nothing wrong that trash mob that fights and kills adventurers every day shouldn't be better :D

Truth.

The "Boss" is not always the best at what they do (somewhere I can refer RL work into this :) )

Sometimes it's just the guy with enough plat to buy the help of local toughs.

nateusmaximus

12-12-2014, 04:45 PM

Personally I don't see a random dice roll picking a player at random and basically saying "You get to die this time" as being either fun or a challenge.

To me getting one-shotted should only ever happen in Raids and should come with a very clear tell so that people can move out of the way and even then should be rare, rather than a norm.

THIS. This exactly. I ran all the new content today and repeatedly got 1 shotted. For some context, I was running on a Pale Master with 91 prr (so almost 50% damage reduction) and over 1000hp. The champ damage would regularly be in excess of 1k, and was in the multiple thousands on at least three occasions. The most absurd was in Terminal Delirium where I got hit for 4,574 in slash damage from a yellow-name gargoyle... a yellow-named gargoyle.... I realize Terminal Delirium is an extreme challenge, but that's not extremely challenging, it's just stupid, and getting hit for 2k+ in some of the other quests is equally stupid. I totally agree that you should have to play well, have an exceptionally good build, and probably have multiple past lives to play in EE; however, if you have all that you SHOULD be able to play in EE without the game simply saying, "you die now!" Given my stats, those several hits that hit me for 2k+ would have to have ranged from 4k+ to 9k+ in their original damage. I don't care how uber you are, you won't survive those hits. So, as stated before, this basically just introduces a mechanic that occasionally randomly kills you no matter what your stats, skill, or past-life choices. That is dumb game design and won't be conducive to attracting or maintaining a player base.

I'm not really all that worried about this since I'm 99% sure the champs will get nerfed (both in terms of spawn rate and in power) in a subsequent patch or update. Turbine just spent a lot of time and thought on buffing melee builds, and the champs will effectively render melee toons second-class citizens again. Think about it, you can take into your group (or build for yourself) a Monkcher who stays out of range of the champs 95% of the time and does very good DPS, or you can take/build a spiffy new melee pally who does GREAT DPS... but has the unfortunate need to get up close to the champs to kill them, and who will be dying several times in every run because of that. No contest. Monkchers, arti-splashed builds, shiradi casters - all the usual suspects and so-called "flavor of the month" builds will be back in force.

I realize some people are loving this, and fondly recalling the "good old" epic days. I enjoyed those epics too, and one of the things I liked most was how a well formed group of very good players worked together like a well oiled machine. If you had the right team, you could take a very very challenging quest and systematically take it apart. It rewarded skill, past-lives, knowing your role, and working together. The champs do little to none of that despite the superficial similarity to the old epic days.

Don't get me wrong, some elements of the champ concept are great, but please stop the nonsense of 1k+ 1 shot kills.

Also, as a DC caster, having many of the champs spawn with perma-deathblock is also kinda dumb. Again, it harkens back to the old "epic ward" days when DC casters were only for CC, but these aren't those days. Suddenly having yellow-named mobs who didn't cast deathward be immune to your spells is very annoying. I'm not asking to be able to FoD all orange or any red-named bosses, I'm not asking for yellow-named mob clerics not to be able to DW themselves or their allies, but yellow mobs spawning with perma-deathblock!? Really!?

Braegan

12-12-2014, 04:48 PM

So after killing 73 Champions in this quest up to this point. NO CHESTS! And now my own death AFTER BEING ONE SHOTTED that has costed me -10% to my xp.
THIS IS BS FIX IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!

That's more exclamations than a Fran post! :D (I kid Fran!)

For reals tho, what Difficulty were you on? What was it that hit you?

In general tho, everyone needs to relax just a bit. Various game changes were implemented in the past and folks raised the pitchforks and a few weeks later it was business as usual. Anyone else remember shroud blades, flenser polar rays, -con spam in GoP, etc etc.

Just sit back and relax, this will all soon be but a happy memory.

Impaqt

12-12-2014, 04:48 PM

http://i.imgur.com/eKii3H4.jpg

So after killing 73 Champions in this quest up to this point. NO CHESTS! And now my own death AFTER BEING ONE SHOTTED that has costed me -10% to my xp.
THIS IS BS FIX IT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!

hard to tell, but that looks like the Beholder area of Von3.

73 Champions would mean about an ~75% spawn rate as there are just over 100 mobs from the beginning to that quest.

Perhaps you exaggerate a bit?

and since there are no mini bosses in Von3 (all the named are Red, Not orange) there would not be any chests.

Zzevel

12-12-2014, 04:53 PM

How about something that would effect you personally...

Player power way over-powered. i hope we can agree there.

How would you feel if you logged in tomorrow and all your gear got nerfed along with PRR and twists and destinies etc.

Every time they change a class, a race, a skill, enhancements, destinies... 2WF, classes.. etc.. I have been affected, EVERYONE has been affected personally. You roll with the punches and adapt to the new methods or you move along. The Sky is falling around here at LEAST once a year, you have been here long enough to see it. You know the initial wave of panic sets in and torches are grabbed, but in the end people will adjust and come out stronger/better/wiser.

You are correct the players are stronger than the used to be, that's what happens when you add epic levels to a system not designed for them (and yes there was power creep on top of it). This is just one step toward making the game appeal to MORE people... It is challenging for those looking for a challenge while leaving it easy for other that need that avenue.

I'm not saying getting one shotted is cool, or too many are spawning. Minor adjustments should always be made in any new system, i'm just saying - Dont just blindly give into anyone that wants to turn it off because they want to run hard and elite quests as the NORMAL EASY.

Albinosaurus

12-12-2014, 04:55 PM

That's more exclamations than a Fran post! :D (I kid Fran!)

For reals tho, what Difficulty were you on? What was it that hit you?

In general tho, everyone needs to relax just a bit. Various game changes were implemented in the past and folks raised the pitchforks and a few weeks later it was business as usual. Anyone else remember shroud blades, flenser polar rays, -con spam in GoP, etc etc.

Just sit back and relax, this will all soon be but a happy memory.

If by happy memory, you mean they undo this nonsense, that would please me greatly. If you mean that they aren't going to do anything about it, I will probably cancel my VIP and end up taking another year or two off, come back once in awhile to see if they fixed it, and stay away if they haven't. And I'm sure that's what this game needs anyway--MORE reasons for people to quit and diminish the player base even more.

In the mean time, this is just asking for everyone to run pure Enchanters since they are the only ones who can deal with this in any reasonable manner (charm/hold everything).

Rocke

12-12-2014, 04:56 PM

I rarely ever post in these forums, but for what its worth, I wanted to add my thoughts to this discussion....

I've played this game steadily since almost the very start and seen many, many changes over the years and seen a LOT of people come and go. One thing that has been consistent for me over that time is that it has been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed DDO more than any other of the great number of games I have played in 30+ years of video gaming.

I usually go my own path and play my own way, and not always do what others necessarily think you should do. For me, this is what is fun. Trying new characters - and keeping them to play again later rather than doing endless Completionist past lives (I've seen WAY TOO MUCH Completionist burn-out). I do play DDO a lot. More than I probably should, but I'm not a 1%-type uber powergamer. I'm more of a mid-level power player who does some EE quests, but not frequently. I do a lot of solo-ing and PUG-ging.

At a most basic level, every game is the same in one regard: If its fun, then people will usually continue to play. If someone no longer finds it fun to play, then they will move along to something else. No one HAS to play DDO or any other game. They have a choice. They can simply not log in and do something else with their time. So a game has to fun for the majority of players or else it .... goes away; like Star Wars Galaxies did.

I generally like the idea of random champions added to the game. However, I'm not sure if the current implementation will be appropriate/fun for most players. To test things out for myself, I played a number of different quests and different levels; Heroic and Epic. What I found out is that the brief comment in the U24 Release Notes about the addition of Champions GREATLY underestimates the actual reality of what I have seen. Not just in EE either.

1. Some of the random champions are indeed basically "speed bumps" as someone else called them. Others are much more powerful. This is not necessarily a bad thing and is probably working exactly as the devs intended. However, it greatly changes the progression/structure of the quest when random spawns can be SO much stronger than the mini-bosses and bosses. These "champions+" do significantly more than a "a bit more damage" than regular monsters as described in the Release Notes. Two quick (non EE) anecdotes would be 1500HP Kobold Shamans throwing Lightning Bolts and Magic Missiles in HE Butchers Path (not an easy quest) or Troglodyte casters in HE The Pit (decidedly not an easy quest), who spam Melf's Acid Arrows (no saving throw) that hit for 50-75HP/tick and that eat right thru Energy Protection. Or they toss multiple Scorching Rays (save for half damage) that hit for 250-350 HP per ray. One or two of these in a hall or room can be overcome with strategy and tactics of course, but a room full of them would seem to be very difficult for a good group to defeat without a lot of resources. I'm not trying to infer that new or casual players should be able to do these difficult quest on HE, but even well-equipped, multiple PL characters with ship buffs for Energy Resistance who can't repeatedly self-cast Energy Protection are not going to last very long when five of the seven casters are Champions as we saw in the end fight of The Pit. This is to say nothing about the various protection/escort type missions where the random champions maybe can't kill the player character, but obliterate the NPC you have to protect.

2. My observations over many different quests are that the random spawn rate is much higher than about 10%. Its closer to 25%-33% overall, with a much higher percentage (66%-75%) of orange-named and casters being champions.

From a "Big Picture" perspective, I'm not necessarily opposed to these new champions. I actually support the concept, but I've had to think quite a bit trying to make up my mind whether the introduction of champions in its current implementation has been -- or will be -- a good idea for DDO. People will have their own thoughts, but based on my experience and perspective, I believe that this is a rather fundamental overall change to DDO. We'll have to see, but whether you like them or not, the introduction of Champions would appear to have significantly changed the DDO game mechanism/structure. Some will take it in stride (as they have posted here and other places). Others clearly don't like it. Most of us are still trying to figure out what we think and are waiting to see how things shake out.

First point: As others have said, you can not please everyone all of the time. But I do think that this is a significant change to the overall DDO game "system" because it suddenly changes the expectations for many (majority?) of non-1% players. For some time, you have become accustomed to certain way of playing and utilizing your scarce in-game time. Now quests will take longer and you will NOT be able to play DDO (i.e. get the XP and loot) the way you did before. Of course this is going to make some people upset. Whether it is for better or for worse for the game or EE gamers is not really relevant in the short term if people get PO'ed and leave.

Were things too easy before? Depends on your perspective, but if you are no longer able to accomplish what you were able to do previously, it leads to frustration and people getting upset. Some adapt and overcome as we have done in the past. I'm pretty confident that others will decide it is time to move along to something else because it is no longer fun for them. Neither you nor I can tell these people that this new way of doing things is good for the game. They have to decided this for themselves, and if they can never do HE/EE quests and continually die in HH or EH as they used to do, will they decide it isn't fun any longer? You can say (and some already have on these posts) that you can just "click" a different difficulty level. That is absolutely correct. You can. However, will they??? When they didn't have to before??

This is unfortunate because we ALL suffer the consequences when people leave and the game base population get smaller.

Second point: I also think this change will worsen the gap between the major of players (who rarely ever read the forums and NEVER post a message) and hardcore EE gamers. The EE crowd who generally have already gathered their end-game equipment and done their Past Lives will continue their EE ways. The rest of the players will now (appropriately??) have to click HN/HH and EN/EH based on knowledge of the game and equipment and WILL NOT be able to catch up with EE gamers or even mid-power people in order to do the endgame raids and quests because they "move slower" (so to speak). In order to gather the knowledge, XP and equipment they need, they have to do quests, but can't do them at the same rate, and so the current "delta" between them and the EE crowd will grow even larger. People see and hear about what the power gamers have done and loot they get, and naturally will want to be able to do this too. Most people understand that it has taken the power gamers a lot of time and effort to get to point where they "can solo EE." Many of them have been or are willing to put in the time/effort to get to a similar point, but now they will have to "go slower." It has moved the goal posts overnight.

Its also not necessarily just leaving the EE crowds to "do their own thing" as some have said because this two-tiered system creates -- or appears to perpetuate -- a perception of "Haves" and Have-Nots" which again leads to frustration and discontent. Many casual players will never get to even a mid-level status, which is where the bulk of game players are really located....

On a personal note, I do not support the way this change was introduced. It seems to have been very sudden and abrupt for the majority of people who do not go to Lammania or read the Lammania forums. It could have been presented in a much better way in order to temper/prepare people's understanding of what was going to happen. Instead, we got a short blurb in the release notes that really did not explain what was going to happened and what it meant.

Anyways, Good luck and have fun in game!!

BDog77

12-12-2014, 04:58 PM

It's like EE melee combat before u 23 WITHOUT any prr I would say.

Yeah, which begs the question, what exactly was the point of U23 again?

BD_

12-12-2014, 05:00 PM

Maybe they are "bosses" because of their blue blood, people skills or charming personality instead of combat prowess ?.
Nothing wrong that trash mob that fights and kills adventurers every day shouldn't be better :D

Ok, good smart*** response.

On a serious note:
In real life: Sure
In a fantasy game that's meant to be fun: No...

Kaytis

12-12-2014, 05:03 PM

That's more exclamations than a Fran post! :D (I kid Fran!)

For reals tho, what Difficulty were you on? What was it that hit you?

In general tho, everyone needs to relax just a bit. Various game changes were implemented in the past and folks raised the pitchforks and a few weeks later it was business as usual. Anyone else remember shroud blades, flenser polar rays, -con spam in GoP, etc etc.

Just sit back and relax, this will all soon be but a happy memory.

Shroud blades and flenser Polar Rays were quietly toned down. That's why no one talks about it any more. The water works mandatory acid trap was basically turned off as far as I can tell. But the real damage these things caused before being fixed was really in dollar terms, not hit points. Pitchforks are needed when the health of the game is at stake.

Thar

12-12-2014, 05:08 PM

house of broken chains. 16 champions out of 65 kills

Albinosaurus

12-12-2014, 05:14 PM

Shroud blades and flenser Polar Rays were quietly toned down. That's why no one talks about it any more. The water works mandatory acid trap was basically turned off as far as I can tell. But the real damage these things caused before being fixed was really in dollar terms, not hit points. Pitchforks are needed when the health of the game is at stake.

QFT. Someone actually understands.

While I would prefer they just undo this change and remove champions completely, I wouldn't be opposed to some method of making them tolerable/justifiable, as I stated earlier in the thread (page 7). What WILL drive me away is leaving them as they are, or changes that don't include making the killing of these bastards worth my time. The entire game--most games, in fact--are driven by an effort->reward system, and these things require a lot more effort for NO reward. That simply will not work. And that's not even talking about the exclusionary implications others have mentioned already.

This was quite simply a gigantic blunder, and it requires attention ASAP. I would even posit that every hour that things are left like this are dollars falling out of DDO and into some other game.

Qhualor

12-12-2014, 05:16 PM

Shroud blades and flenser Polar Rays were quietly toned down. That's why no one talks about it any more. The water works mandatory acid trap was basically turned off as far as I can tell. But the real damage these things caused before being fixed was really in dollar terms, not hit points. Pitchforks are needed when the health of the game is at stake.

Shroud blades were toned down from the what appears to be the same forum rage we are seeing now with Champions.

Flenser Polar Rays don't seem to be toned down to me. last time I ran Threnal a few months ago I almost died from 1 shot after opening the secret door. been like that every time I run that quest.

WW acid trap was nerfed hard. with 5 acid resist from ship I take minor damage.

the -10 to -20 con damage in heroic GOP still exists. just ran that quest on elite with a group 2 days ago and we all wiped twice at the last wave. reminds me of the Phase Spiders in Von 2 that 1 hit would make you completely helpless suffering a huge amount of Cha damage.

sometimes pitchforks are needed to get the devs attention when things are completely out of whack with the game and the attention should be addressed yesterday. I don't think pitchforks are necessary with the Champions because the devs are plenty aware of specific problems and are asking for as detailed feedback as possible to try to correct them. this kind of uproar though will definitely cause Champions to be changed in some way by next patch and maybe even the next one or two after that.

phillymiket

12-12-2014, 05:18 PM

Every time they change a class, a race, a skill, enhancements, destinies... 2WF, classes.. etc.. I have been affected, EVERYONE has been affected personally. You roll with the punches and adapt to the new methods or you move along. The Sky is falling around here at LEAST once a year, you have been here long enough to see it. You know the initial wave of panic sets in and torches are grabbed, but in the end people will adjust and come out stronger/better/wiser.

You are correct the players are stronger than the used to be, that's what happens when you add epic levels to a system not designed for them (and yes there was power creep on top of it). This is just one step toward making the game appeal to MORE people... It is challenging for those looking for a challenge while leaving it easy for other that need that avenue.

Yes of course we all change and adapt when this and that changes.

But other changes have helped you.

"Oh noes! I can roll up a zippy super-bard!", 'Lordsy! Now I feel the need to TR into indestructable Paladin! What will I do!", "PRR and MRR? oh save me cruel fate!"

Except for minor little things, such as Holy Sword or Nerfing obviously not WAI destinies etc, etc whens the last time something not wholly positive was intentionally changed for players? TWF nerf?

What I was asking you was, "how would you feel about your gear getting nerfed", which would clearly negatively impact your game - as this difficulty bump might impact others - not "how would you feel about some minor and probably good thing to change as it often does"?

That being said, to be clear, I like Champions. I'm AFK from fighting some right now.

I just worry that the implementation (all Heroic and Epic Hard and Elite at all levels) might be too drastic and might drive away some of the precious few still here.

How about...starting at level 12?

...just Elite maybe?

...an added new Champion level of play?

...make them 10% less cool?

...half the spawn?

...not have all predictably equipped with can of whoop az and true seeing?

But if it is, it is. i'm fine with it.

I'm not saying getting one shotted is cool, or too many are spawning. Minor adjustments should always be made in any new system, i'm just saying - Dont just blindly give into anyone that wants to turn it off because they want to run hard and elite quests as the NORMAL EASY.

I 100% agree.
It's just that I still can run Elite.
DC > Champion.
New guy =/= DC
Therefore New Guy takes the hit.
New guy isn't the issue.
It's the OP Vets that run the EE stuff in their sleep, they still will just not as fast.

Thar

12-12-2014, 05:18 PM

I'm not saying getting one shotted is cool, or too many are spawning. Minor adjustments should always be made in any new system, i'm just saying - Dont just blindly give into anyone that wants to turn it off because they want to run hard and elite quests as the NORMAL EASY.

And don't blindly give into anyone that whines that things were too easy. EH/EE should not be something only 1% of the population can run. Expecially when turbine points for favor and favor rewards are part of the process. As the game continues on, unless there is a server merger, short man and imperfectly balanced groups have to be expected and accounted for. How many full pugs do you see? and waiting an hour for a 20 min quest isn't fun. it's stupid.

I ran EE prior, during and will continue to do so as after playing this game since beta i am able and entitled to but if I'm not making realistic progress as a point of time vs xp then i'll go do something else as in another game. I will not waste my time.

Uska

12-12-2014, 05:18 PM

hard to tell, but that looks like the Beholder area of Von3.

73 Champions would mean about an ~75% spawn rate as there are just over 100 mobs from the beginning to that quest.

Perhaps you exaggerate a bit?

and since there are no mini bosses in Von3 (all the named are Red, Not orange) there would not be any chests.

The named beholders in von 3 would be mini bosses and if champion should give an extra chest.

stoerm

12-12-2014, 05:18 PM

I've only run low level quests after the update. STK was no longer an easy walkthrough due to the champions, and I had to actually be careful with my multi-TR.

Good job!

Braegan

12-12-2014, 05:19 PM

Shroud blades and flenser Polar Rays were quietly toned down. That's why no one talks about it any more. The water works mandatory acid trap was basically turned off as far as I can tell. But the real damage these things caused before being fixed was really in dollar terms, not hit points. Pitchforks are needed when the health of the game is at stake.

As well I am sure champs will see some tweaking. Also, I am positive folks will better handle them in time. It's been a single day! Of course a new change should present some difficulty on day 1!

The combination of tweaking and players getting used to the champs in general will make this a laughable occurrence making some of these posters think in a few weeks "Why was I so worked up over this, it's easy now?"

I understand all to well the concern of the games health. But if folks are willing to quit on the 1st day of a change without even giving it time to get used to or whatever, then they were going to quit anyway due to this change or another. The only constant in an mmo is that it changes, if it doesn't it becomes a dinosaur.

mna

12-12-2014, 05:22 PM

house of broken chains. 16 champions out of 65 kills

That's still less than the 5 out of 12 in elite Cannith Crystal, yes, the level 1 quest...

Makes for "interesting" protect-the-NPC quests, this does indeed. Except when you get lucky and the NPC to be protected is the champion... (can that actually happen?)

Angelic-council

12-12-2014, 05:22 PM

I have completed all 4 new quests on EE. It's pretty hard, especially terminal. But, terminal is marked as extreme challenge. I'm not going to argue with that one.

This whole new idea of monsters champion is wonderful. It's fantastic system because it's not exactly impossible. If you have CC and a healer in your party, you can easily pull it off. But, the key here is in sudden difficulty increase. I very much hope that turbine think this more carefully before they apply any changes.

In some quests, if you are not melee, you are screwed. I can't tell if this is a good or bad one. You can simply say "just bring CCer with you", but when you get one shotted regardless of your gear and preparation, people get p***ed off (no chance for healing also). So, all in all, let's leave monsters champion alone and talk about their damage dealing. And if 4k damage is really necessery. This should be discussed critically, and not because people are lazy and crying all the time..

Knobull

12-12-2014, 05:26 PM

As i said alrdy, best thing you guys could do now is delete bravery bonus and change it to a bonus where you gain bonus xp for every party member that is alive at end of dungeon and scales with difficulty.

I say ditch the bravery bonus and streaks, and give an xp bonus for running quests under level. As it should have always been.

That said, I have not seen a champion yet because my current character is running quests on normal well under level so I get a chance to play content I have not played before.

I suspect that when I do encounter these one-shot death champions I will be as grossed out by them as every other "filthy" casual player. (The fact that term even exists should tell Turbine something.)

I find it interesting to note that all the threads in the general forum that were locked are largely negative feedback on this change, while the "official" thread is primarily positive feedback. I suspect that some of the posters on the subject in the general forum will never be back.

*edit: I just went back and reviewed the thread, and it seems the feedback in this thread is about 50:50 positive:negative. *tinfoil hat off*

Qhualor

12-12-2014, 05:26 PM

hard to tell, but that looks like the Beholder area of Von3.

73 Champions would mean about an ~75% spawn rate as there are just over 100 mobs from the beginning to that quest.

Perhaps you exaggerate a bit?

and since there are no mini bosses in Von3 (all the named are Red, Not orange) there would not be any chests.

according to wiki red names are

Champion Deathblood troll

Grotkin beholder

Marut end boss

the rest are listed as orange. which beholder is in the pic?

Aliekiller

12-12-2014, 05:30 PM

-snip-

I was going to post about it, but really, Rocke said it all. I'm kinda the same type of player, so it's to be expected most complaints will be the same.

Also, how exactly is being hit for 4k damage okay for an extreme challenge quest? It's as challenging as winning in a roulette game.

Most LFMs are either
1-> EN exp runs(simple, quick, just getting that over with)
2-> EE saga runs(which is now barred for most of the player base)
3-> HE bravery streak runs(which is now also barred for most of the player base)
4-> random stuff(casual dreaming dark for completions etc)

If new players aren't supposed to play Elite, are they supposed to just solo on normal for their first few lives, until they're tall enough to ride along on hard runs? To say nothing of Elite, where the bar is set that much higher?

I like the idea that something is done to improve variety, even though one of my favorite things about DDO is how reliable most stuff is(Dungeon layouts, for one).
Monster champions can be a good addition, but not applied universally like it is right now. Quite a few quests are so perfect, as if a dev's masterpiece inside the game, yet this random mechanic can take most, if not all, the fun away from each and every single one of them.

I was hoping to reach a conclusion by the end of this post, but now I'm not even sure. People had divergent opinions on Champions on Lamannia already, this should've set some red flags that the system need tweaking.

redoubt

12-12-2014, 05:34 PM

Level 5 quests on elite. Group was fire/melee sorc, melee wizard, vanguard (all level 7). +0 to +2 pugs through out.

Crimson heart: 82 kills, 9 champions, 2 orange names, 0 chests

Sanguilne heart: 68, 11, 0, 0

Immortal heart: 28, 3, 0, 0

Burning heart: 73, 6, 0, 0

Lair of summoning: 25, 4, 0 , 0

Chamber of insanity: 33, 3, 2, 0

Archer point: 61, 11, 0, 0

Guard Duty: 44, 10, 1, 0

Stones run red: 30, 4, 0, 0

Brood of flame: 24, 2, 0, 0

HAL

12-12-2014, 05:35 PM

From what I'm taking away most from here is that eh needs some added difficulty as well. Lots of people saying now EE is too hard but EH is too easy. This is something that the devs should look at. Clearly EH needs a difficulty boost.

No thanks. If I'm going to be forced to settle for EH favor, loot and XP I don't want pre-U24 EE difficulty.

Albinosaurus

12-12-2014, 05:38 PM

I understand all to well the concern of the games health. But if folks are willing to quit on the 1st day of a change without even giving it time to get used to or whatever, then they were going to quit anyway due to this change or another. The only constant in an mmo is that it changes, if it doesn't it becomes a dinosaur.

This is an enormous fallacy.

I had no thoughts about quitting or cancelling my VIP until these champions came into the picture. I liked DDO how it was and understood/accepted that some game elements would be changed, others added, and still others removed. What I do NOT accept is lazy developer decisions that cheapen the player experience. The goal of any game developer should be to maximize the fun for the players while maintaining the health of the game (this in turn leads to profit, so they can make a living). Champions fail on both ends of this. They are not fun, they tax the player's time and resources while giving nothing in return, and they further fragment an already too small player base--which in turn leads to people quitting.

You see the problem here? It isn't about what day it happens. It's about what happens. If you truly understood the concerns of the game's health, you would oppose this change too.

Vulkoorex

12-12-2014, 05:41 PM

OMG.

I actually had a pleasant L8 elite (effectively L10) solo quest with my L11 toon. I wasn't one-shot and the crownies only appeared one at a time per mob. My cleric hireling acted like a meat puppet while I ranged the crownies down then switch to melee when they came after me. And yes there was one crownie for every mob I faced. That's a bit much.

Unlike my previous elite solo quests where 3 crownies descend upon me and I have no where to run. Death is unavoidable.

BDog77

12-12-2014, 05:42 PM

Lair of summoning: 25, 4, 0 , 0

Chamber of insanity: 33, 3, 2, 0

My Lair of summoning had 8 champs, and in my Chamber all orange names were champs (only 2 other champs).

Skeen

12-12-2014, 05:43 PM

Great job with the Monster Champions!
U24 is pretty good in general (excluding barb stuff). It's nice seeing a challenge to quests and really funny hearing people freak out in party as they get beat down. I think some of the people I was partied with had not been killed in years. I seemed to have lucked out and didn't get killed by any of the champions, yet. It was fun seeing most of the party turned to stone in the new content while the barb was running around cleaving everything to pieces. The reaction to monster champions reminds me of when Miior was unleashed on us. Different tactics were needed, peoples feeling were hurt, hopes were crushed, etc. Good stuff. Next update please bring out random traps in dungeons! Oh yes, you know you want to.

redoubt

12-12-2014, 05:48 PM

Have fun wherever the winds blows you to.

Try to solo end game raids in wow and report here how it goes

This, "we are better off without you" attitude is not going to help make our game better.

That is another player we don't get to run with to help fill the LFMs and revenue lost.

Braegan

12-12-2014, 05:51 PM

This is an enormous fallacy.

I had no thoughts about quitting or cancelling my VIP until these champions came into the picture. I liked DDO how it was and understood/accepted that some game elements would be changed, others added, and still others removed. What I do NOT accept is lazy developer decisions that cheapen the player experience. The goal of any game developer should be to maximize the fun for the players while maintaining the health of the game (this in turn leads to profit, so they can make a living). Champions fail on both ends of this. They are not fun, they tax the player's time and resources while giving nothing in return, and they further fragment an already too small player base--which in turn leads to people quitting.

You see the problem here? It isn't about what day it happens. It's about what happens. If you truly understood the concerns of the game's health, you would oppose this change too.

No.

There are some that like the champs. They have been asking for a challenge to EE and they got it. The game needs to cater to a lot of different playstyles. Adding champs to hard and elite was the way to go to bring some challenge into the game as well as some element of randomness, while preserving norm and casual for more casual player types and new folks.

The devs made the right choice with adding champs instead of wasting time making some new mythic difficulty. Adding another difficulty would have yielded the same result with more time wasted. Some Ubers happy, some non ubers mad cause they can't run it.

They may not be fun for you, tax your resources and give nothing back. But I (and others) found them fun, not taxing on my resources and gave back a nice element of surprise and challenge.

I would agree to some tweaking but all in all it was a good move, IMO.

Jaenar

12-12-2014, 05:55 PM

I ran Heroic Elite Through a Mirror Darkly last night with a guildmate, no hirelings. We counted 28 Champions throughout the quest. I didn't count the total number of mobs, however, 28 seems a bit on the high side for one quest.

The only real comments I have on the Champions themselves, is that 23 of those 28 had Deathward, that's not a few of them, I examined all of them as did my guildmate. About half of them had true seeing. The other buffs seemed to be mixed up decently.

Also, the absolutely toughest mob/fight in the entire quest, was a Champion caster, I believe it was an Arcanist. He was harder to kill than even the boss and mini-bosses. Mostly because of the spells he was throwing and how often. I don't feel that any champions should be as hard or more difficult than the final fight/boss of that quest. Kinda takes away the uniqueness of the boss of that quest completely.

I don't mind the champions, I kinda like them mostly. I do feel that there are too many spawning though. Running into a Champion should be a "oh hell!" type of run in, not a "oh look, there's 3 more champs in this hall/room/closet".

As far as chests go, we only got one drop and that was a named orange champion, from let sleeping dust lie. Have yet to see a chest off any random champions.

redoubt

12-12-2014, 05:56 PM

I think this is far more correct:

Bad sample - people willing to join EE quests nowadays are the multi PL mulit ETR fully kitted type so they - as I and others have said will barely notice this difference. I don't take my non-optimal characters into EE - I only have one of those doing more than that takes way too much time. I expect most others are the same - and when they aren't then they usually lead the death count even before this change.

Roll a new character and take him out for a spin without twinking his butt off. See how it runs. If you have a non-maxed out character try him out in some EH content - load in some hires and lock em at the door - swap to a bad destiny then try it again and report back. I have played both ways in the past day - my main had it easy soloing - my other pass through was in a group of non-twinked characters didn't go so well.

That said - I think it is close to being ok but they need to tweek it SOON(tm). Many of the suggestions in this thread are viable from remove from EH to putting timers on spawn to maxing the I Hit harder at 2x etc....as well as double checking the spawn rate as anecdotally it seems too high.

Than this:

That isnt that correct.
When i pug in mornings, i would either solo or put lfm, and i almost never get fully maxed dudes since they dont like playing with me.
What i get are new players, and i usually have no issues explaining what they need to do to be effective i epics.
Im a scumbag but only towards those that deserve it.
Usually im a quite nice person ;)

It differs from time zone, quests to the description in lfm

I do not join EE pugs unless I'm on an A toon in my primary destiny. When I put up EE pugs, I don't get people joining in off destinies and crappy gear. My experience is that people are coming prepared to EE pugs.

EH pugs I get all sorts of randomness. Its okay there.

Heroic elite, well we get all types. I actually do see a lot of new players join who are way over there heads. But once we go in progress (as seen by the time in quest counter starting) we don't get new players joining any more.

Garothe

12-12-2014, 05:58 PM

No.

There are some that like the champs. They have been asking for a challenge to EE and they got it. The game needs to cater to a lot of different playstyles. Adding champs to hard and elite was the way to go to bring some challenge into the game as well as some element of randomness, while preserving norm and casual for more casual player types and new folks.

So those asking for more of a challenge on EE means the rest of us running heroic get screwed?

bennyson

12-12-2014, 06:02 PM

bennyson

12-12-2014, 06:04 PM

So those asking for more of a challenge on EE means the rest of us running heroic get screwed?

Champions on HE aren't that bad, I was able to solo a level 6 quest on Elite on a level 7 pure Drow Monk. No less than 149 HP and ZERO PRR/MRR.

Garothe

12-12-2014, 06:06 PM

Champions on HE aren't that bad, I was able to solo a level 6 quest on Elite on a level 7 pure Drow Monk. No less than 149 HP and ZERO PRR/MRR.

Yes, so me as a 14 sorc running elite sands and getting instant killed 3 times in 2 different dungeons, maybe you should read the whole thread before throwing in your 2 cents worth. Like about WW kobolds lightning bolting people for 850.

Firewall

12-12-2014, 06:08 PM

I think this whole champion idea is really bad. If they gave additional XP like all the other named optional bosses i could see a sense but the way this is working is utter garbage.

Played EE Haunted Halls yesterday with 4 friends. At least 50% of the mobs were champions if not more. This is really insane with the Helmed Horrors but it is even worse in the boss fights where you are locked in a room with respawning skeletons (Mummy), respawning ghosts (skeleton giant) or with the tons of respawning zombies with the necromancers. No fun at all! I don't want to imagine how EE What Goes Up or EE Breaking the Ranks will play now or any other quests with masses of (respawning) monsters (Elite Kobold Assault anyone?).

I wouldn't even think of going in there with a random PUG. Anyone want to meet the oranged named giant in EE Tracker's Trap as a champion? It already takes long enough to take that one down.

Some chests flying in the air after the fights with useless random loot most of which you cannot even pick up for selling because of inventory space. If you don't want to give extra XP for killing them let them give 1000 guild renown each and tone down the chances of meeting a champion by A LOT!

Bad idea Devs! Really bad idea!

Vulkoorex

12-12-2014, 06:09 PM

Champions on HE aren't that bad, I was able to solo a level 6 quest on Elite on a level 7 pure Drow Monk. No less than 149 HP and ZERO PRR/MRR.

It's not bad if facing one crownie at a time with mob while soloing. It's bad when facing 3 crownies all at once along with other mobs means certain death if you can't run away.

DarthCaedus

12-12-2014, 06:13 PM

So those asking for more of a challenge on EE means the rest of us running heroic get screwed?

Wasn't that their intention all the time? People claiming to run only EE are arguing in this thread EH should be harder even though they don't run it.

EllisDee37

12-12-2014, 06:14 PM

My experience running EH last night (I don't run EE) was great. I soloed the first MotU chain, then the Druid's Deep chain, both on EH. (Then I did a quickie EN xp farm of VON3/Spies/WizKing, then Fathom/Claw and called it a day.)

Love the addition of the champions. Felt just about right. Again, for context I was soloing EH, low level epics. A couple times I actually noticed dangerous mobs before pummeling them into dust. A couple times I actually got nervous, but that wasn't champion related. It was all the earthquakes from the wood woads and the druid's deep final boss that kept knocking me down. But that's standard, no change from pre-U24.

I am not an uber elite. I'm not even an elite:
- I was running one of my new player builds, which are essentially the only builds I play.
- I do not have good gear; mostly the eveningstar commendation gear + cannith crafted.
- I was level 20-21 (0 epic xp at start of session, ~700k at end)
- I was leveling a good off destiny (fury on a melee; got sense weakness during session, woot!)
- I have 2 heroic past lives (both fighter) and 1 epic past life (3% doublestrike)

So not uber gear, not many past lives, not a particularly min/maxed build, not many epic levels, not my primary or even maxed destiny, soloing low level EHs, and for me, the champions were just about perfect. I particularly enjoyed that most of the "Man I hate that mob, I really hope it's not a champion " mobs just happened to be champions: The priestesses in Battle for Eveningstar, the wood woads in both overgrowth and druid's deep, the will o' the wisps in outbreak, etc... Perfect! Also the druids in thorn in paw; pretty sure every one was a champion. It was super satisfying stunning and/or tripping them. Very fun times.

My only complaint is that gimp mobs shouldn't be champions. It feels unflavorful. One example was during a priestess champion fight in Battle for Eveningstar, some of those teeny tiny baby spiders had crowns. That should never happen.

As for the spawn rate, my feeling is that trash mobs might be at around 10% crowns, but orange names seem to be 50% or higher.

Oh, and the chests. So many chests! I probably looted the same amount of champion chests as I did quest chests. In that final fight in thorn and paw (with the den mother, then the pack of dire bears) I think there were three champion chests in that one room when the dust cleared, in addition to the quest chest that's also there.

EDIT: In case it's relevant, I don't use hirelings.

EDIT 2: I didn't die all session. A couple times I noticed some dangerous, hard-hitting champions that seemed to do around 100 damage a hit. A couple times I got down to around 50% HP.

OverlordOfRats

12-12-2014, 06:17 PM

The problem as I see it is there is such a huge gap in power between the bored with elite people and the pre-update difficultly was good for them people.

The first group needed something badly before they left do to boredom. Champions seems to be a good fit for them:D.
The second group was in a reasonably happy place. Champions do not seem to be a good fit for them and looks to be driving some of them away:(.
Driving paying customers away from either group is not good for the game.

So, put in a check box for Champions on the difficulty screen. Win-win for both groups.

The first group doesn't have to get bored again if Champions get nerfed.
The second group doesn't have to give up favor and XP, and have extra added game time to TR to "just run Normal".
As the second group gets closer to the first group they have an extra difficulty in EH with Champions to make that leap up to EE and EE with Champions.

Disclaimer: I run Normal and Hard solo at level for XP. I run Elite solo over level for favor only. I occasionally run with a RL friend. My play style will not be affected by Champions, but I need people from both of the above groups to help me keep this game alive. I cannot afford to pay for the entire game by myself;).

bennyson

12-12-2014, 06:17 PM

Yes, so me as a 14 sorc running elite sands and getting instant killed 3 times in 2 different dungeons, maybe you should read the whole thread before throwing in your 2 cents worth. Like about WW kobolds lightning bolting people for 850.

I don't think little, WW champion kobolds can hit you with the same damage that normal EE casters can deal to you. Maybe about 100ish, but not nearly over 1k. Also, I have read the whole thread, don't see why you had to rage on me there.

It's not bad if facing one crownie at a time with mob while soloing. It's bad when facing 3 crownies all at once along with other mobs means certain death if you can't run away.

The first room of the quest I was in had 2 champs in it, everything beyond that was smooth with one champ at each trash mob.

Kamode_Corebasher

12-12-2014, 06:18 PM

I understand what you're saying here, but I hope (and think) that the end result with adding challenge (with champions and hopefully other good changes) will actually help the population of DDO. I believe retention of players will be longer if there's challenge and grouping becomes the norm again.

To say it another way, I believe newbs will get more good attention from vets if grouping becomes the norm again.

I'd also like to note your "first point" of number 2 below--If the devs slow down the game so that zerging is almost never performed and grouping is needed or the norm and tactics typically need discussed per encounter, then drop rates can/could be increased to compensate for time lost.

I rarely ever post in these forums, but for what its worth, I wanted to add my thoughts to this discussion....

I've played this game steadily since almost the very start and seen many, many changes over the years and seen a LOT of people come and go. One thing that has been consistent for me over that time is that it has been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed DDO more than any other of the great number of games I have played in 30+ years of video gaming.

I usually go my own path and play my own way, and not always do what others necessarily think you should do. For me, this is what is fun. Trying new characters - and keeping them to play again later rather than doing endless Completionist past lives (I've seen WAY TOO MUCH Completionist burn-out). I do play DDO a lot. More than I probably should, but I'm not a 1%-type uber powergamer. I'm more of a mid-level power player who does some EE quests, but not frequently. I do a lot of solo-ing and PUG-ging.

At a most basic level, every game is the same in one regard: If its fun, then people will usually continue to play. If someone no longer finds it fun to play, then they will move along to something else. No one HAS to play DDO or any other game. They have a choice. They can simply not log in and do something else with their time. So a game has to fun for the majority of players or else it .... goes away; like Star Wars Galaxies did.

I generally like the idea of random champions added to the game. However, I'm not sure if the current implementation will be appropriate/fun for most players. To test things out for myself, I played a number of different quests and different levels; Heroic and Epic. What I found out is that the brief comment in the U24 Release Notes about the addition of Champions GREATLY underestimates the actual reality of what I have seen. Not just in EE either.

1. Some of the random champions are indeed basically "speed bumps" as someone else called them. Others are much more powerful. This is not necessarily a bad thing and is probably working exactly as the devs intended. However, it greatly changes the progression/structure of the quest when random spawns can be SO much stronger than the mini-bosses and bosses. These "champions+" do significantly more than a "a bit more damage" than regular monsters as described in the Release Notes. Two quick (non EE) anecdotes would be 1500HP Kobold Shamans throwing Lightning Bolts and Magic Missiles in HE Butchers Path (not an easy quest) or Troglodyte casters in HE The Pit (decidedly not an easy quest), who spam Melf's Acid Arrows (no saving throw) that hit for 50-75HP/tick and that eat right thru Energy Protection. Or they toss multiple Scorching Rays (save for half damage) that hit for 250-350 HP per ray. One or two of these in a hall or room can be overcome with strategy and tactics of course, but a room full of them would seem to be very difficult for a good group to defeat without a lot of resources. I'm not trying to infer that new or casual players should be able to do these difficult quest on HE, but even well-equipped, multiple PL characters with ship buffs for Energy Resistance who can't repeatedly self-cast Energy Protection are not going to last very long when five of the seven casters are Champions as we saw in the end fight of The Pit. This is to say nothing about the various protection/escort type missions where the random champions maybe can't kill the player character, but obliterate the NPC you have to protect.

2. My observations over many different quests are that the random spawn rate is much higher than about 10%. Its closer to 25%-33% overall, with a much higher percentage (66%-75%) of orange-named and casters being champions.

From a "Big Picture" perspective, I'm not necessarily opposed to these new champions. I actually support the concept, but I've had to think quite a bit trying to make up my mind whether the introduction of champions in its current implementation has been -- or will be -- a good idea for DDO. People will have their own thoughts, but based on my experience and perspective, I believe that this is a rather fundamental overall change to DDO. We'll have to see, but whether you like them or not, the introduction of Champions would appear to have significantly changed the DDO game mechanism/structure. Some will take it in stride (as they have posted here and other places). Others clearly don't like it. Most of us are still trying to figure out what we think and are waiting to see how things shake out.

First point: As others have said, you can not please everyone all of the time. But I do think that this is a significant change to the overall DDO game "system" because it suddenly changes the expectations for many (majority?) of non-1% players. For some time, you have become accustomed to certain way of playing and utilizing your scarce in-game time. Now quests will take longer and you will NOT be able to play DDO (i.e. get the XP and loot) the way you did before. Of course this is going to make some people upset. Whether it is for better or for worse for the game or EE gamers is not really relevant in the short term if people get PO'ed and leave.

Were things too easy before? Depends on your perspective, but if you are no longer able to accomplish what you were able to do previously, it leads to frustration and people getting upset. Some adapt and overcome as we have done in the past. I'm pretty confident that others will decide it is time to move along to something else because it is no longer fun for them. Neither you nor I can tell these people that this new way of doing things is good for the game. They have to decided this for themselves, and if they can never do HE/EE quests and continually die in HH or EH as they used to do, will they decide it isn't fun any longer? You can say (and some already have on these posts) that you can just "click" a different difficulty level. That is absolutely correct. You can. However, will they??? When they didn't have to before??

This is unfortunate because we ALL suffer the consequences when people leave and the game base population get smaller.

Second point: I also think this change will worsen the gap between the major of players (who rarely ever read the forums and NEVER post a message) and hardcore EE gamers. The EE crowd who generally have already gathered their end-game equipment and done their Past Lives will continue their EE ways. The rest of the players will now (appropriately??) have to click HN/HH and EN/EH based on knowledge of the game and equipment and WILL NOT be able to catch up with EE gamers or even mid-power people in order to do the endgame raids and quests because they "move slower" (so to speak). In order to gather the knowledge, XP and equipment they need, they have to do quests, but can't do them at the same rate, and so the current "delta" between them and the EE crowd will grow even larger. People see and hear about what the power gamers have done and loot they get, and naturally will want to be able to do this too. Most people understand that it has taken the power gamers a lot of time and effort to get to point where they "can solo EE." Many of them have been or are willing to put in the time/effort to get to a similar point, but now they will have to "go slower." It has moved the goal posts overnight.

Its also not necessarily just leaving the EE crowds to "do their own thing" as some have said because this two-tiered system creates -- or appears to perpetuate -- a perception of "Haves" and Have-Nots" which again leads to frustration and discontent. Many casual players will never get to even a mid-level status, which is where the bulk of game players are really located....

On a personal note, I do not support the way this change was introduced. It seems to have been very sudden and abrupt for the majority of people who do not go to Lammania or read the Lammania forums. It could have been presented in a much better way in order to temper/prepare people's understanding of what was going to happen. Instead, we got a short blurb in the release notes that really did not explain what was going to happened and what it meant.

Anyways, Good luck and have fun in game!!

HAL

12-12-2014, 06:19 PM

Up to 40% of all monsters suddenly become incredibly powerful and no one could come up with a story for this event? I would have taken advantage of this opportunity. Very sad that apparently no one (at least no one with decision making ability) thought of it or at least wanted to make it happen.

Garothe

12-12-2014, 06:22 PM

I don't think little, WW champion kobolds can hit you with the same damage that normal EE casters can deal to you. Maybe about 100ish, but not nearly over 1k. Also, I have read the whole thread, don't see why you had to rage on me there.

The first room of the quest I was in had 2 champs in it, everything beyond that was smooth with one champ at each trash mob.

ran 56 quest today, pugging from lv 1, had 2 or more deaths each quest, all elite streaking, lv 150+shipbufs+30 resist energy
ballanced party, 1 cleric (me), 1 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rog, 1 barb, 1 monk, al tr vets, all aware of the changes
1200(rounded down) damage from a firebal in a lv 2 quest (the paly was in full plate and shield&def stance mode)
60+ damage per hit from a swarm of champion spiders in the catacombs
850 damage from lighning casting shaman in WW
besides al the useless deaths, the imunities, resistances and hp increases (1300hp non red named spider in the catacombs.....) make the journey through their a boring slog, the mobs die but much slower.

with all the party deaths costing me 10% exp everytime i feel inclined to invis&solo to speed things up
thumbs up for another nail in the lfm's coffin.
not that we're getting an overflow of newer players but this widens the gap between vets and newer players even more

seriously Cordovan, dev's, put in an opt out, this system is chasing of newer/weaker players and wastes my time

Edit, you can no longer say: get better saves, or better ac (paly had 66ac), more hp, etc, it just turned into rusian roulette, no longer does it mater if you are a tripple heroic, epic and iconic completionist, have mad skills, somethimes 12 champions spawn right on top of you and kill you, somethimes a rare pops and does 6 times the damage of your max hp, no amount of heal amp or prr/mrr helps here, it's unballanced, it's a slog, it's a waste of time, that could have been spend fixing the quests, bugs or the barbarian class

Apparently you didn't. The system on heroic elite is broken as hell. You will randomly get super mobs that are doing more damage than epic level raid bosses. Again, read the whole thread.

HAL

12-12-2014, 06:27 PM

Yes, so me as a 14 sorc running elite sands and getting instant killed 3 times in 2 different dungeons, maybe you should read the whole thread before throwing in your 2 cents worth. Like about WW kobolds lightning bolting people for 850.

I don't think little, WW champion kobolds can hit you with the same damage that normal EE casters can deal to you. Maybe about 100ish, but not nearly over 1k. Also, I have read the whole thread, don't see why you had to rage on me there.

You just ignored this fact AGAIN: Waterworks Kobold Shamen Champs throwing lightning bolt for 850. There have been many other reports of champs doing one-shot damage at all levels. Up to 6k damage in the highest quests. Or are you saying that everyone is lying?

gwonbush

12-12-2014, 06:28 PM

Except when I tested it, I was getting hit more in the realm of 60 damage from champion lightning bolts. Of course, this is solo. I wouldn't be surprised to see 100 damage with a full party, sometimes hitting twice. And for anybody at level without tons of past lives (or Blood Tribute), that's pretty fatal. To me, 850 sounded more like the HP total for a shaman champion in a full party.

mna

12-12-2014, 06:29 PM

Yep, a lot of people trying to TR, especially the first few lives might be forced to play Normal which will then force a grind which will probably end up losing players. Those who can do Hard or better will still be losing XP because of the random idiotic one-shot deaths.

... well, yes. Given the social multiplayer element, barriers to social participation can't be a good thing, and given the other mechanics already in the game, that's what this new champion system ends up being.

And another thing, if you want VIPs to be able to open elite already first life, it wouldn't be a good idea to make that just about pointless... not expecting them to actually run elite until they could do that anyway, well... no reason to pay either, is there? (And in the end, this seems to be the biggest thing the VIPs get over premiums. Oh well, I thought Turbine liked the stable income from VIP subscribers, but I guess not.)

And I expect Hirelings will be even more useless so many people will never be able to recover from that death and will have to restart the quest.

Exactly. Bring a healer-type hire, expect to have to actively guard them to keep them alive. Especially as they keep running off whenever they feel like it, regardless of what you tell them to do... before the hireling AI changes they at least most of the time managed to stay put when told to do so.

Vulkoorex

12-12-2014, 06:29 PM

bennyson

12-12-2014, 06:29 PM

Apparently you didn't. The system on heroic elite is broken as hell. You will randomly get super mobs that are doing more damage than epic level raid bosses. Again, read the whole thread.

Or maybe I just got lucky that I didn't get super mobs.

Btw, the quest I was in was Caged Trolls in house P

DarthCaedus

12-12-2014, 06:30 PM

Impaqt

12-12-2014, 06:31 PM

The named beholders in von 3 would be mini bosses and if champion should give an extra chest.

according to wiki red names are

Champion Deathblood troll

Grotkin beholder

Marut end boss

the rest are listed as orange. which beholder is in the pic?

I could of sworn all the named in von3 were acutally Red..... I'll have to pay more attention next run

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 06:33 PM

I think this is far more correct:

I do not join EE pugs unless I'm on an A toon in my primary destiny. When I put up EE pugs, I don't get people joining in off destinies and crappy gear. My experience is that people are coming prepared to EE pugs.

EH pugs I get all sorts of randomness. Its okay there.

Heroic elite, well we get all types. I actually do see a lot of new players join who are way over there heads. But once we go in progress (as seen by the time in quest counter starting) we don't get new players joining any more.

I will be perfectly honest, ee before this update was so blatantly easy to a experienced vet that only way he could find some fun was to group up with people who are sub prepared for the quest.
Some did it for braging rights, some did it to fill ego, some did it to help others.
No idea what my reason was, mixed feelings.

But i had very very random people in my groups, and i didnt mind a monkcher in magister, a cetus in primal, a sorc in dreadnought.
And i had it all, i mean we had a ac wizzy in group. Pure tank sorc.
All sort of random builds that you know before it steps into the quest that it wont help much to complete it.
But i didnt mind it.

I i really love this change,
Epic elite, feels finally like epic elite.
And i would be a happy specimen if it stayed this way, and got some more spice added to the story.
Now im for example looking forward to solo breaking the ranks and wgu again.

Buddha5440

12-12-2014, 06:33 PM

Champions are a good idea but the spawn rate is WAY too high. 30-50% of mobs being champions is ridiculous. Change the spawn rate, give us SOME kind of reward for them, and revisit the buffs.

DarthCaedus

12-12-2014, 06:34 PM

And another thing, if you want VIPs to be able to open elite already first life, it wouldn't be a good idea to make that just about pointless... not expecting them to actually run elite until they could do that anyway, well... no reason to pay either, is there? (And in the end, this seems to be the biggest thing the VIPs get over premiums. Oh well, I thought Turbine liked the stable income from VIP subscribers, but I guess not.)

It never ceases to amaze how some of the decisions Turbine sabotages their bottom line. Why they don't want new players to run Elite is baffling because some are going to sign up for VIP for one year. Instead people will get discouraged and just stay FTP and then some percentage will just walk away instead of sticking with it for a year with VIP.

I like another person's suggestion to make it totally optional. Basically it provides better loot and maybe some xp, but it's not required if you just want xp and the standard loot. Forcing this can only result in a player reduction - in fact I am sure it already has.

Stonemerge

12-12-2014, 06:34 PM

I rarely ever post in these forums, but for what its worth, I wanted to add my thoughts to this discussion....

wow, thanks Rocke to your excellent post (year 2006 - 12 Posts) ...

this is the biggest design decision ever, with more impact on the player base than the F2P or the Epic Destinies. I still cannot believe that they are not changing this and rather let paying customers go, but with so many people excited about these changes im not so sure anymore.

I installed an offline RPG game today. The first time i will play anything else than DDO since an 8 week timeout after the MotU-Bug-Update.
I will see what has changed (or not) in around two weeks and i will make my decision then. Playing with my well-geared toon and all my experience as a player on heroic normal is a no-go, playing a quest that will kill me randomly without a way to react oder develop a strategy is a no-go too for me. I dont want to dupe Tornado Bottles or use Whirlwind-Avatar-Twitches, i dont want to pile up thousands of Hitpoints or play Fury-Monkchers and always wait 90secs ... all i want is to play the game i liked so many years, creating all those builds i have still on my mind, on my own speed, the quest i want to play and not logging in in hope if there is any lfm going on or not.
Im so depressed; all those guys here who seem to love this change and then me, the crybaby who knows this will be the end of DDO for him.

I cannot even imagine why players want to die in a quest - if i die, i failed, i need to redo this and i will not; not just because thats frustrating - because there is nothing i can do about the deaths - they will happen. And no - i will never buy a spirit cake - i have all packs, races, inventory - but that ? never !!!

Why spawn monsters ? just say: after each minute there is a percentage chance that u will die and u can do nothing against that. There are still some players(?) who think that would be an new amazing challenge, i bet.

FestusHood

12-12-2014, 06:37 PM

A would rather have seen ALL mobs in EE get smaller buffs than what was implemented. I don't want to play friggin Diablo.

This right here. If they absolutely had to make the game overall harder, this would have been a better way to do it.
Some people like random, and some don't.

Some people like Monopoly, some people like chess. I had no idea there were so many Monopoly fans in DDO. Maybe there aren't, since the silent majority will never be heard here.

DarthCaedus

12-12-2014, 06:38 PM

If you go into EE quests, and you're taking 1000 damage, I would say you have 0 PRR, and you probably haven't being paying attention to the evolution to the game in the past several updates (hardly ramp up).

You are incorrect and obviously don't know what you are talking about. My PRR is fine and so is my understanding of the game. What is lacking is your understanding of the damage output of some of the champions.

Angelic-council

12-12-2014, 06:40 PM

I like the Champion system as it adds:

1. Monster randomness

2. Challenge

3. A wake up call to those grind robots

Although I do agree that they could use some tweaking, but I am in the crowd that likes them and if "newbies" or casual players cant take the heat, they should play on a lower difficulty and improve their toon and/or playstyle.

Overall, please, Turbine Developers, keep up the good work.

+1

I absolutely agree, maybe champions could use "some" tweaking, maybe. But it's a good system. You don't have to be super uber, you can do it and we done it before. It's all about strategy and tactics, also team work in some cases.

Blackheartox

12-12-2014, 06:57 PM

Will add again, no idea if i wrote here.

Question, are there champion buff iterations that makes them immune to cc?
I would like if you could add some kind immunity to enchantment/power words/balanced attacks/shiradis nerve.
Well basically any ability that causes helpless to some champ mobs, and make it rather a high chance since it feels cheap to me that i as sorc can never be touched by champs due to my cc.
I mean i do let them hit, since im a bit of the m nature, but that isnt the point xD

That is mainly so that ranged dont favor from this change compared to melle, like add it at same rate as dward and tseing are

Powerhungry

12-12-2014, 07:03 PM

Try to solo end game raids in wow and report here how it goes
Wow still has a player base to create groups

Grosbeak07

12-12-2014, 07:09 PM

Playing today, I've had zero issues with Champions. Did demon web quests, no deaths (not even hirelings) and didn't really notice that much more of a challenge. Guess either I'm super awesome or super lucky, but I haven't seen any of the issues others have reported.

Powerhungry

12-12-2014, 07:12 PM

jalont

12-12-2014, 07:23 PM

Ladywolf

12-12-2014, 07:26 PM

I love the monster champions

Connman

12-12-2014, 07:27 PM

Someone earlier mentioned that we didn't get any flavor text with the monster champions. I don't have any D&D themed ideas, but I do have a DDO idea,

So the monsters are all like "Man these adventurers are really tough, they come in here and just go wherever they want and ravage us. We need help."

Then it dawns on them, "We need to put up a LFM!"

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah42/bc7902098/themonsters_zps8e270ded.jpg (http://s1377.photobucket.com/user/bc7902098/media/themonsters_zps8e270ded.jpg.html)

And of course since there is no lack of monsters their group fills pretty quick.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah42/bc7902098/ScreenShot00035_zpsed765288.jpg (http://s1377.photobucket.com/user/bc7902098/media/ScreenShot00035_zpsed765288.jpg.html)

Of course most of the guys that click those STRONGS ONLY LFM's go down like the rest, but some, just a few, here and there, can ONE SHOT US BACK.

Well done.

Stonemerge

12-12-2014, 07:37 PM

Adding champs to hard and elite was the way to go to bring some challenge into the game as well as some element of randomness, while preserving norm and casual for more casual player types and new folks.

But i am no casual player ... im here since DDO is F2P. I play each day around 12-16 hours (no, im not proud of that, im a nerd with no job or family)
I capped more than 100 toons in all those years - made pictures - then deleted them ... but i have 10 toons that i want to keep forever ... with new changes i need to respec them from time to time, but they keep their race and looks and role. One of them has not all EDs full, i wanted to do this until this years end and then finally work on my mains goal: TripleCompletionist. All of my 100+ toons were 1st lifers and i leveled them on hard only (times were harder then).
The last 2 years I tr'd my favorite 10 toons and gave them full EDs (20 mio xp * 10), still did some lvl20-fun-builds and learned how to 6 star challenges. I gathered all the gear i want (i.e. Royal Guard Masks for each of them - can u imagine how long this took ?). My Crafter is now 170/170/170 - i have gathered practically all items one can collect (more inventory plz), i gathered thousands of tokens for my to-be completionist. And when i joined ee- runs in the last months (for favor only) i was mostly the killcount leader or no 2. Nonetheless only one my toons is able to solo (higher level) epic elite quest and i dont care - because I dont like to kill lvl 80 rats. I would love if there would be more lowlevel quests in eberron instead - i am a perfectionist, but not an elitist in any way. Do i fear i am not able to do heroic elites anymore ? not really - i guess i will 1-hit kill everything. Why am i so angry then ? Wasting my time with champions for no gain (gimme xp for them, make me smile when i see them) and NO - NO - NO - onhitkills - if anything kills without a chance to react - then this is the same as a lag death - oh wait - ppl wanted a challenge - thats why everyone is crying about lag - they did not understand that lag is just another level of challenge to spice up the game experience for vets. (really - where is the difference ... learn the game lol - there is no way to prevent 6000+ damage)

its a game - it should be fun - and we all have different opinions what fun is - make the best game for everyone - not just 1%

OptIn/OptOut