Reaper Grouping

[Vindraxx]

I really enjoy grouping in DDO and also really enjoy playing challenging content. Reaper grouping has been one of the highlights of my return to DDO and I was really excited for the Reaper bonus weekend this past weekend because I had a lot of time I could play. However, between levels 21-24 I was barely able to find any reaper groups at all even on a reaper bonus weekend, in a large part due to reaper XP penalties for over level characters. When I logged off last night at level 24, I had a LFM put up for the high road chain for characters level 20-24 (base level of epic quests were 24) and was competing with a same group running Epic Elite Bravery Bonus high road taking characters level 20-28. If that same group chose to do reaper it would take a -80% penalty to reaper exp to the point that it complete ruins any incentive to play on reaper.

It sincerely needs to be examined the impact the reaper exp penalty is having on the ability to find groups. From anecdotal experience, there probably does not go a night that I'm playing where restricting the level range or excluding someone from a group that would otherwise meet bravery bonus requirements does not take place. Reaper is fun, playing in groups is fun, please make it easier for us to play in groups without penalties.

I would actually be happy if Reaper EXP across was cut across the board by 50% as long as the -50% Reaper EXP penalty was removed from quests that meet bravery bonus standards. I actually don't care about the amount of EXP as much as I care about being able to find a group to play with. And this penalty is leading to longer wait times for groups and people being excluded that would otherwise want to join.

[Kylstrem]

it definitely needs to be examined at Epic levels as devs just need treat Epic as Epic 20-30, no penalties for any level range.

However, the current issue with Reaper in Epics is that the majority of people interested in Reaper are likely also doing the Racial Reincarnation hamster wheel (I know I am).

So, many people just aren't doing epics currently.

[slarden]

I was able to get 4 people to run level 20s at 3 skull with me, but yeah it's a tougher range to find a party.

What I see is people running R1 2 levels over during heroic levels, not worrying about reaper at all during lower epic levels (dailys, wilderness, elite streaking) and then running low to mid skull reaper at higher epic levels (28 to 30). It has alot to do with the power/difficulty curve and the path of least resistance.

You gain alot of power at 20 but difficulty in reaper is arguably a bigger jump from 19 and then as you progress through epics the power increases faster than the difficulty as you get closer and eventually to 30.

Lower rxp is NOT the answer.

[florestan]

I really enjoy grouping in DDO and also really enjoy playing challenging content. Reaper grouping has been one of the highlights of my return to DDO and I was really excited for the Reaper bonus weekend this past weekend because I had a lot of time I could play. However, between levels 21-24 I was barely able to find any reaper groups at all even on a reaper bonus weekend, in a large part due to reaper XP penalties for over level characters. When I logged off last night at level 24, I had a LFM put up for the high road chain for characters level 20-24 (base level of epic quests were 24) and was competing with a same group running Epic Elite Bravery Bonus high road taking characters level 20-28. If that same group chose to do reaper it would take a -80% penalty to reaper exp to the point that it complete ruins any incentive to play on reaper.

It sincerely needs to be examined the impact the reaper exp penalty is having on the ability to find groups. From anecdotal experience, there probably does not go a night that I'm playing where restricting the level range or excluding someone from a group that would otherwise meet bravery bonus requirements does not take place. Reaper is fun, playing in groups is fun, please make it easier for us to play in groups without penalties.

I would actually be happy if Reaper EXP across was cut across the board by 50% as long as the -50% Reaper EXP penalty was removed from quests that meet bravery bonus standards. I actually don't care about the amount of EXP as much as I care about being able to find a group to play with. And this penalty is leading to longer wait times for groups and people being excluded that would otherwise want to join.

It's not really down to the penalty, it's just not efficient to earn rXP in epics regardless. Even if you did fill a group at the right level the time and payout versus running heroic content especially at higher skulls just isn't balanced. The rXP equation just needs an epic multiplier to boost the payout and people will be more interested.

[Selvera]

Reaper XP is likely worse in epics for the following reasons (in my experience):

1) Reaper difficulty is much harder in epics, because EE is much harder then HE. There is a much smaller % of the player base ready to run EE at character level = level on normal then there is to find players ready to do this in heroic levels.

2) A decent chunk of the people who are running epic levels run mostly daily quests (on normal or hard), and therefore aren't going to help out your reaper runs, even if they are capable of running EE/R1.

3) Of those people who are both capable of EE and are looking to run quests that aren't just fast and easy xp; a good chunk of them are still running for either EEBB or elite sagas. Due to how epic bravery bonus works (4 levels higher then normal = 80% reaper xp penalty) and epic sagas work (no maximum level); you can't run a reaper group in these ranges and expect anything but **** reaper xp.

4) A significant portion of epic quests are epic-versions of heroic quests; where if you ran them on heroic, you do not get bravery bonus or first-time reaper bonus XP for the quests. Since first-time reaper bonus XP is fairly substantial, this reduces the number of quests you can run on reaper to get good rxp out of (assuming that you started at level 1 and didn't objectively avoid any quests that had epic versions, and even if you did, the people which you group with probably didn't).

5) Level 20 is a hard limit, where level 19's are not allowed to enter epic-level reaper quests and level 20 characters are not allowed to enter level 19 quests on reaper. This means that there is a moderate sized subset of quests (11 quests) where you can only get max reaper XP with characters exactly level 20; thus essentially preventing partying for these quests. There is another subset of quests with only 20-21 allowed for max XP. In both these cases it becomes significantly harder to group for these quests.

So in short: There are a lot of reasons that severely limit your ability to find a group to do reaper in epic levels; even ignoring the claim that everyone is repetitively grinding out racial past lives (which has some merit). And even if you solo for reaper xp in epics, it's more difficult to find quests that give good rxp, and those quests are more difficult then heroic.

If you are powerful enough, and can carefully plan around the pitfalls of epic-level reaper. I believe some of the quests can be very good reaper xp; even to the point that some quests are better reaper xp when repeated then the average first-time-bonus heroic quests.

I would not recommend running epic-reaper quests without at least a sizable chunk of reaper xp already, right now I'm looking at about 21 points to be a good breaking point for epic reaper to possibly be worth considering for rxp (the 21st point gives you +100 HP in epic levels).