Maverick EXP: an idea for bringing more traffic to unpopular quests.

[Questdoer]

I think we can all agree that this game has a lot of content which most people barely ever even touch.
Not necessarily because they don't like those quests, but because the amount of EXP that they get from the quest just cant compare with the top farming spots.

Now we could just increase the amount of EXP they give, (or decrease the EXP of their competitors) and that would solve the problem.
But unless you got the balance juuust right, then all you would end up doing is changing what quests are the go-to quests for their level while possibly introducing some new problems.

So here is my idea, it would be a new system called Maverick EXP.

Maverick EXP would be a global bonus of up to +100% EXP on a quest, which decays by 0.1% (0.05% for raids) every time that quest is completed by anyone on that same server.
And the bonus would be increased by 0.05% every time any other quest within the same level range is completed.

Multiple runs, and additional players (but not hirelings) within the same instance would count towards this.
So a team of 5 people with 1 hireling, running a quest twice would count as 10 completions.

Epic variants would be calculated differently then their heroic counterparts.

[AbyssalMage]

I think we can all agree that this game has a lot of content which most people barely ever even touch.
Not necessarily because they don't like those quests, but because the amount of EXP that they get from the quest just cant compare with the top farming spots.

Now we could just increase the amount of EXP they give, (or decrease the EXP of their competitors) and that would solve the problem.
But unless you got the balance juuust right, then all you would end up doing is changing what quests are the go-to quests for their level while possibly introducing some new problems.

So here is my idea, it would be a new system called Maverick EXP.

Maverick EXP would be a global bonus of up to +100% EXP on a quest, which decays by 0.1% (0.05% for raids) every time that quest is completed by anyone on that same server.
And the bonus would be increased by 0.05% every time any other quest within the same level range is completed.

Multiple runs, and additional players (but not hirelings) within the same instance would count towards this.
So a team of 5 people with 1 hireling, running a quest twice would count as 10 completions.

Epic variants would be calculated differently then their heroic counterparts.
Idea is sound. It would be a nightmare to program though. It would give the game a more "living" feeling.

[Scrapco]

I like the idea. How do we know which ones are hot or not? ("API! API!")

[Selvera]

So to play devils advocate; XP isn't the only reason quests are run or not run. It's the reason the majority of people do run many quests that they do run; but there are reasons some people don't run quests that they don't.

Reasons why people don't run content might include:
- The xp is bad.
- They don't own the content
- They're running with someone who doesn't own the content
- They don't know the content very well
- The quest takes a long time and they have limited play time before they have to do something else
- They really hate fighting a certain type of enemy found in the content
- They find that particular quest/zone ugly or boring
- Their build isn't good against the specific content.
- They're solo and the content forces grouping
- They're in a group and the content can easily be solo'd
- The content doesn't drop any named items and they want to farm sentient Xp at the same time
- The content can't be run on reaper (or is very long for the rxp it gives), and they want reaper xp at the same time
- The content doesn't have (working) collectables
- The content doesn't drop tokens of the 12 and they want those at the same time

As an example. Only some of them relate to experience, meaning that a system which focuses only on experience will never be perfect. But a system doesn't need to be perfect to be a good idea, so I'd be ok with a bit of an xp boost to less run quests on the server.

I think a more practical way to do something like that without having to constantly re-adjust XP values of every quest every few seconds would be to take down a tally of the number of times a quest was completed on a specific day (and difficulty could be factored in), and use that to bump up the quests that are less run to having more xp the next day. Or even once per week on patch day.

[scipiojedi]

I love the idea but there is a caveat that when a new quest pack comes out it will give insane xp for a few hours and then zilch for awhile. Did you say how long it takes for it to regain xp after it has depreciated?

[zehnvhex]

- They don't own the content

This is a big one.

Certain quests have had such good xp for so long they've become the de facto "Get these first..." quests. So everyone has Gianthold. Everyone has Vale. Nearly everyone has 3BC. Etc...

One of the nice side-effects of this is that it does funnel players together. It's really easy to get a party going for something like VoN, GH, etc...because everybody has it and the XP is reliable/good.

Sure it sucks if you want to do Threnal, but I'd argue it's healthy for the game in it's current state at least that there is content when you can reasonably assume you'll be able to form a group because everyone has those quests and most people on will want to do them.

Something like this would just spread out the playerbase a little bit more and right now that wouldn't be a healthy thing to do.

What DDO needs to do, in my opinion at least, is create a system where players match up first and -then- decide what to do. I think it's a fundamental issue in DDO that the way the game is set up (thanks to first run bonuses, BB, RXP, etc...) that you think, "Okay I want to do dungeon X today" and then you open up LFM and if nobody is running that dungeon, you give up and go play a different game or solo or whatever.

We should be shifting the paradigm towards you open up LFM and just pick a group and go. Unfortunately the game is heavily designed around discouraging that kind of behavior. Ideally you wouldn't even have to go that far. You should just click a button and the game magimatically takes care of the rest. 1~2 minutes later you're in a full group in a level appropriate dungeon. (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/487501-Building-a-better-DDO-Random-Group-Finder?p=5987395)

Unfortunately we have what we have now which is just...ugh.

[ValariusK]

I think we can all agree that this game has a lot of content which most people barely ever even touch.
Not necessarily because they don't like those quests, but because the amount of EXP that they get from the quest just cant compare with the top farming spots.

Now we could just increase the amount of EXP they give, (or decrease the EXP of their competitors) and that would solve the problem.
But unless you got the balance juuust right, then all you would end up doing is changing what quests are the go-to quests for their level while possibly introducing some new problems.

So here is my idea, it would be a new system called Maverick EXP.

Maverick EXP would be a global bonus of up to +100% EXP on a quest, which decays by 0.1% (0.05% for raids) every time that quest is completed by anyone on that same server.
And the bonus would be increased by 0.05% every time any other quest within the same level range is completed.

Multiple runs, and additional players (but not hirelings) within the same instance would count towards this.
So a team of 5 people with 1 hireling, running a quest twice would count as 10 completions.

Epic variants would be calculated differently then their heroic counterparts.

This idea is pretty similar to the camp bonus that monsters had in Dark Age of Camelot. Basically, they were worth more xp if they were killed infrequently and less if they were killed a lot. I've advocated something similar for quests. But to keep it easy for programmers and for people to keep track of, I suggest something like this:

Determine on each server each week, on Sunday the 10% least run quests. Determine also the 5% least run. For the rest of the week until the next Sunday, quests in the lowest 10% are worth +25% more xp. Quests in the lowest 5% are worth +25% more xp on top of that (so 50% total). Use the in-game mail to send what amounts to a plea for help from the quest givers of said quests to everyone who logged in the previous week.

[memloch]

This idea is pretty similar to the camp bonus that monsters had in Dark Age of Camelot. Basically, they were worth more xp if they were killed infrequently and less if they were killed a lot. I've advocated something similar for quests. But to keep it easy for programmers and for people to keep track of, I suggest something like this:

Determine on each server each week, on Sunday the 10% least run quests. Determine also the 5% least run. For the rest of the week until the next Sunday, quests in the lowest 10% are worth +25% more xp. Quests in the lowest 5% are worth +25% more xp on top of that (so 50% total). Use the in-game mail to send what amounts to a plea for help from the quest givers of said quests to everyone who logged in the previous week.

I like this idea. Perhaps do the calculation during each weekly restart.

[acemonkey]

I love the idea but there is a caveat that when a new quest pack comes out it will give insane xp for a few hours and then zilch for awhile. Did you say how long it takes for it to regain xp after it has depreciated?

That's easy, cap the minimum xp as 100% of the base rate. This idea shouldn't give more than probably 50% bonus, though, or the bonus should be added rather than multiplied by the rest of the bonuses. It also shouldn't affect reaper xp.

[mr420247]

Sorrow dusks and threnals are killer fast rxp

These days run in kill 10 rinse and repeat its the hour long packs with 10k hp trash that

give what less than 20k xp that r just not fun esp w pointless dps nerfs

[goldgolem]

They could achieve a similar affect with a Maverick saga and each week/month change the quests that are in the saga. That would be a lot easier to programme

[Chacka_DDO]

I think such a system would be hard to implement and I assume it would be a flash in the pan.
If you think experience points are the reason that some adventure packs are visited less frequently I would recommend to improve the base experience for such quests.
But in my opinion, you should do other things to make "old" adventure packs more attractive and this is e.g. loot that is not completely outdated junk.
And you could have new loot options to make it more attractive to run a quest at least once/life or day.
But such benefits should be related to the player or character and not to the whole population of a server.
In the end, the intention to do this can be only increasing the fun for a player by making more different adventures attractive to play.
But it must be of course fun for the player to run different quests.
Personally, I try to run all quests at least once/life because it is fun for me and it doesn't matter that much for me how rewarding this is for exp or loot.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Sure it sucks if you want to do Threnal

I'm not sure anyone could convince me that someone wants to do Threnal. I'm totally willing to believe that someone wants the cloak. I'm totally willing to believe that someone wants the favor. I'm not able to believe that someone actively wants to run the chain. :)

[Renvar]

I think an easier thing to do would be to just build a schedule that rotates (like the store bonuses and such) like this:

Week 1 - 25% XP Bonus to Threnal and Haunted Halls, and Harbinger of Madness
Week 2 - 25% XP Bonus to Restless Isles. Stormhorns, and Heart of Madness
Week 3 - 25% XP Bonus to Red Fens, Secrets of the Artificers, and Thunderholme
Week 4 - 25% XP Bonus to Sorrowdusk Isle, Wheloon and Trial of the Archons
Week 5 - 25% XP Bonus to Necropolis 1, 2, 3, and 4
Week 6 - 25% XP Bonus to Tangleroot, Dragonblood Prophecy, and Devil Assault
Week 7 - 25% XP Bonus to Phairlan Carnival, Sentinels of Stormreach, and Druids Deep
Week 8 - 25% XP Bonus to Reign of Madness, Dreaming Dark, High Road, and Mines of Teth
Week 9 - 25% XP Bonus to all FTP Content.

Roll through that on a rotation.

If that's not enough, maybe throw in double remnants, or treasure hunter loot table bonus in those quests as well.