Action Point Costs

[BlueBadger]

The current mod 8 design of action points sees many many many tier 4 actionpoints never purchased because of the incredibly high cost with relatively little gain (except in specific circumstances... like HP, dmg and a few others)

This is becaues you get most of the benefit for 1 action point, then a little bit more benefit at the cost of 2 more action points but the benefit is less then or equal to the benefit you got from that first action point. It's really quite bad to have decreasing returns on increasing prices... it's just really sucky sometimes... and means you can't really focus in on those abilities, because it would jsut cost you WAY too much of all your other abilities.

I know there's some fixes for some of these types of enhancements, specifically for the paladins and the ones involving the turning attempts and things like that. Paladins are a very enhancement heavy class and I know that it's designed in a way that they don't want it to be possible for everyone to have all the enhancements as well as their race based ones...making us choose different paths instead of having everything(or only having a little bit of everything..). Getting back to the point... the pally turning action point costs are being touched so that to get the top tiers you 're not spending ridiculous amounts of action points for relatively little gain, and mostly with the intention of just opening up a class prestige line.

I was wondering if any of the other expensive lines would be going in this direction, especially in the skills area (usually huge wastes of action points, what's the point of having all these tier 4 skill ranks when anyone who invests in them, will generally be really really messing up the build from being able to afford many of the more useful APs(except for a few VERY rare and specific, non game breaking if made cheaper, circomstances).


Where I'm going with all of this is: skill and other class based enhancement lines need to be made much cheaper instead of the 1,, 2, 3 , 4 path.


The biggest and most obvious one to me is fighter Kensai. Fighter kensai is nice and all, but spending 20 action points just to get to kensai 3 (10 each for fighter attack boost 4 and critical accuracy 4, both things that because I'm in the kensai line, I wouldn't want on my character because the kensai is essentially covering me fine on those lines with all the other pre reqs and benefits, that they because nice little extras that I'll be having on but I honestly wish I could spend those 20 action points in other places... ) The other problem is that with Kensai 3 costing a total of 8 APs for the tier 3 prestige line + another 3 for the 3 weapon specialties, +2 more for the capstone, that leaves me with only 3 action points next mod to spend on something else... I'm not complaining about that, but I am very sad that it's costing me so much to get kensai, I'm honestly starting to believe it's not worth that many action points and I'm seeing more and more the appeal of the builds focusing only on kensai 2, ranger6, and 2 monk levels.


Anyhoo, sorry for the long run on sentences ... I'm tired and suck at writing clearly...

[Riggs]

signed

It is pretty absurd to say pay 2 points for warforged dr 1...but 6 points(12 in total) for dr 3. One point of dr esp at high levels is completely and utterly not worth 6 action points.

Could give many examples, but many lines of enhancements are priced way above their utility.

[Goldeneye]

AP are very costly, but they force the player to make choices.

This idea of a very expensive progression is what ddo is about.
If you want to have the highest [ability/skill] possible, you must sacrifice other [abilities/skills]

+1 tomes sell for about 10k+
+2 tomes sell for about 100k+
+3 tomes would sell for 500k+

small ingredients cost 10k+
medium ingredients cost 50k+
large ingredients cost 150k+

AP:
Sorceror's CHA 1 = 2 AP (2 total)
Sorceror's CHA 2 = 4 AP (6 total)
Sorceror's CHA 3 = 6 AP (12 total)

higher stats in character gen (off the top of my head, might not be exact):
lvl 1 Human:

12 Base STR costs 4 Ability Points
14 Base STR costs 6 Ability Points
16 Base STR costs 10 Ability Points
18 Base STR costs 16 Ability Points

you get my point - everything in ddo is about exponential costs

But I do agree with you - some of the AP lines are really very expensive (example: 20AP just for the sake of Halfling Guile IV) - and it would make me and many other players if they were lessened a little.

[Uska]

I would rather they drop ap's all together and nerf mobs a bit. Bring the game closer to pnp

[redspecter23]

I think that the skill based enhancements should all be dropped to 1/1/1/1 or even 2/1/1/1 so you pay up front for that first boost, but future ranks cost less. Rogues might just take Disable Device 4 and might even be able to sacrifice some level up skill points in it as a result, which would add more building options. Many other enhancement lines that are not of the skill type but are still very poor top tier investments could be changed to a 1/2/3/1 advancement with perhaps a higher min level applied to tier 4 (say level 16 or 18?). Your "real" cost of tier 4 at that point is staying pure longer. You're rewarded for your pure class rather than penalized for it. I'm looking at SP enhancements and things like wand/scroll use for this sort of treatment.

The entire point with Kensai costing so much is that is the price you pay for the kensai abilities. Tempest 1 costs you 3 feats that you would not normally take in order to reap huge rewards. If all the prerequisites were "good" abilities that you'd take anyway, then you really wouldn't be giving up anything for it, as you'd have taken all those in either case. Saying that, I do think the overall cost on kensai 3 is much higher than it should be.

Stat based enhancements like sorcerer charisma and cleric wisdom, I believe are priced out very well. It's not always guaranteed that every player will buy into the 3rd rank all the time. That 6 point cost is somewhat prohibitive, but it should be on such a powerful ability.

[Aranticus]

I think that the skill based enhancements should all be dropped to 1/1/1/1 or even 2/1/1/1 so you pay up front for that first boost, but future ranks cost less. Rogues might just take Disable Device 4 and might even be able to sacrifice some level up skill points in it as a result, which would add more building options. Many other enhancement lines that are not of the skill type but are still very poor top tier investments could be changed to a 1/2/3/1 advancement with perhaps a higher min level applied to tier 4 (say level 16 or 18?). Your "real" cost of tier 4 at that point is staying pure longer. You're rewarded for your pure class rather than penalized for it. I'm looking at SP enhancements and things like wand/scroll use for this sort of treatment.

sorry while i agree with the overall reduction in certain enhancements, i do not agree with your example. unless you run a 8 int rogue, you are going to have sufficient skill points for your rogue skills. giving a 1/1/1/1 progression is akin to saying "here all the skill points you need to make a super rogue who can disable any traps and have max SA damage". there is a point where you have to make decisions. you either specialise in this or that or be a jack of all trades

same thing for casters and clerics. from what you stated, you want say a cleric that have maxed healing enhancements, full scroll enhancements, max turns and max DV. sorry thats not specialisation. thats overkill. what i would like to see is prolly a 1/1/3/3 progession or something along that line. small reduction but still make it relatively costly so having the best mean spending the most

The entire point with Kensai costing so much is that is the price you pay for the kensai abilities. Tempest 1 costs you 3 feats that you would not normally take in order to reap huge rewards. If all the prerequisites were "good" abilities that you'd take anyway, then you really wouldn't be giving up anything for it, as you'd have taken all those in either case. Saying that, I do think the overall cost on kensai 3 is much higher than it should be.

most of these arguements are borne out of the fact that people want kensai because it is a very powerful specalty. however, attack boost and critical accuracy is basically almost useless enhancements. afterall who need attack boost since we can already hit everything on a 2. who need critical accuracy when we can confirm all our crits. now if you change attack boost to speed boost and let critical accuracy either add to crit damage or lower fortification of mobs, i'm sure there would be no detractors for kensai

Stat based enhancements like sorcerer charisma and cleric wisdom, I believe are priced out very well. It's not always guaranteed that every player will buy into the 3rd rank all the time. That 6 point cost is somewhat prohibitive, but it should be on such a powerful ability.

my comments in red

[Borror0]

The problem you describe could be summarized as:
1. Many enhancements are too expensive for the benefits they grant.
2. If we adjust the costs correctly, we won't have enough desirable enhancements.
3. Therefore, we don't touch the AP cost until more enhancements are added.

Worthy of mention:
1. Not being able to grab all the enhancements you want is a good thing.
2. Having useless seemingly attractive enhancements is a good thing.
3. DDO developers have very little room to adjust the cost of each enhancement.

[BlueBadger]

Borr I think you really got a lot of what I and the others were trying to say except one additional point that I think is important is that as it is right now there's so much benefit to the first tier of any enhancement line and that there are very very few worth putting any more then one point into. Also there are many that are totally useless and huge wastes of dev time.

I think that a lot of the less powerful abilities, SHOULD be cheaper, especially to give more build options. One of the examples someone gave was the rogue skills... I was actually going to use this one as an example in my first post, a lot of ppl don 't want them to be cheaper because then an 8 int rogue could get all the traps... could get all the skills and whatnot... the thing is that right now, an 8 int rogue can pretty much get every single trap in the game, except for maybe one or two traps, on elite...many characters with one or two rogue levels have better trap skills then pure rogues... this is because the optionals that look to be there in terms of giving up items/stats/spells/skills/feats and especially action points... all the things that in theory could be stacked (and obviously some of these will always stack together to a certain point), won't always be maxed, and maybe not at first, but they will get mixed and matched so that a combat focused rogue could still have really reasonable trap abilities without focusing everything into it... so that a trap and skill focused rogue can still get some survivability or dps or whatever...

the big trick here is making and re balancing the AP system so that you can't get all the uber APs but that also a lot more options for diversity and the cost/benefit is a lot more inline so that when you get the main benefit (first tiers) you're also paying the bigger cost in APs... I really love how eladrin made the first tier of the prestige enhancement lines cost 4 and then the other tiers less expensive at 2 each.... this is the kind of structure that most of the enhancements should take, like 2, 1, 1 1 or 2, 2, 1, 1 or 2, 1, 2, 1.... something like that would make a lot of sense to me vs the cost structure now... it's almost at the point where I want to take the biggest variety of things as possible but not specialise anywhere in the ap at all... it's , in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why multiclassing is so powerful right now.. because it opens up more cheap first tier ap lines that are useful.... it's currently the easiest way to get good actionpoints


if a lot of enhacement types were made available to more classes, more races and would have their cost structures completely re done I think it would make it a whole lot more interesting. When they redid the enhancement system back in the lvl 12 era or whenever it was, it was the single biggest change to the game...imo.

completely removing/nerfing the whole AP system is prohibitive on so many levels, as is completely adjusting all mobs and quests, traps and everyting in the game ... if they were going to do that they'd just make ddo 4.0

action point cost restructuring and balancing, especially in the face of all the new levels (and extra action points), with limited number of new things to buy (other then classes with new prestige lines.. and yes more are planned... so you have to consider how those classes are going to be now, as well as in the future once they have the prestige lines) and how the capstones come into play... all really make it so that the costs and the structure of the APs value have all changed since they were first introduced... makes me think that it would cost Eladrin and Turbine relatively little for a huge gain in terms of what it lets them do (more variety, different action points that are easy to add/implement/move or copy over from other races/classes) ... biggest example of this is the metamagic enhancement lines but there are many other examples... the fact that everyone finally gets racial toughness feats really made the game way more balanced... there's still many reasons to go dwarf... but it's no longer the you want hp race.. go dwarf.. it opened up SO many other posibilities...

anyhoo i'm going off on tangents again...

I think they also need to consider the fact that late game, you save up your action points for a long long time.. and I mean I think you should still do that for sorc cha 3, or +whatever sp/hp/prestige or fancy thing but when you're trying to keep that on the same level as +1 disable device... or +tiny little benefit that I won't even notice in the grand scheme of things but that cost me 4+ action points...

[Borror0]

I think is important is that as it is right now there's so much benefit to the first tier of any enhancement line and that there are very very few worth putting any more then one point into.

There is more to it than that.

Simply because there is more advantages to pick the first enhancements does not mean it is a bad thing. The real problems are that the wrong type of cost is applied to some enhancements and that the cost of some enhancements is too high or too low.

There are three types of possible cost:
1. Increasing cost
2. Flat cost
3. Diminishing cost

Each cost is appropriated to different enhancements.

If you want an enhancement line to provide a strong cost the further you specialize in it, the logical choice is a increasing cost. Good examples of such enhancements are the enhancements that are typically core to the character like AC, DPS, HP, etc.

If you have a long series of enhancements where you expect to have all characters take a few ranks past a certain level, then you make the cost flat and you let the character slowly progress. It can also be a good way to easily inflate the AP cost of spec'ing a character.

Diminishing costs are good if you expect the first few ranks to be really attractive and the last ones to go untouched or if you want to favor those who spec more deeply in the line compared to those who don't. A good example of the latter situation is the PrE's.

Also there are many that are totally useless and huge wastes of dev time

Make a list. Each time, there is most likely a reason to why that is.

I think that a lot of the less powerful abilities, SHOULD be cheaper, especially to give more build options.

While that does sound nice, making it cheaper won't necessarily lead to more build options.

As I said, we are on a shortage of enhancements and lowering the cost too much would lead to many problems.

One of the examples someone gave was the rogue skills... I was actually going to use this one as an example in my first post

Well, that is a good thing you didn't because those are a bad example.

As it stands now, there is a higher AP cost to make up for your lower ability scores. Lowering the AP cost would make it easier for someone to make up for his lower ability scores (since the AP loss would be less significant) and therefore favor the 8 Int rogues which are already the most favored options. That change would lead to less diversity, not more.

this is the kind of structure that most of the enhancements should take, like 2, 1, 1 1 or 2, 2, 1, 1 or 2, 1, 2, 1

Under such a system, would not the main complaint be that there are a lot of enhancements that are not all that appealing but would be interesting to spend a grab a tier or two if the cost was cheaper than it is now?

in my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why multiclassing is so powerful right now.. because it opens up more cheap first tier ap lines that are useful.... it's currently the easiest way to get good actionpoints

I disagree. The sole reason multiclassing is powerful is because of the front-loaded class abilities, not the enhancements. Thus, actually, add very little to the power of the character when you compare them with the sacrifices being made. The reason multiclassing is so powerful is called Evasion.

As a matter of fact, many recent enhancements are too back-loaded.

[Borror0]

A suggestion I have made a while ago regarding AP cost was the following:
1. Double the number of AP gain by rank.
2. Review each enhancement lines to balance their cost.

As stand, there are enhancements costing too much for 2/4/6 but they would be decently priced at 1.5/3/4.5. Since Turbine is reluctant to use decimals, they could double the AP and thus be able to make an enhancement line that would cost 1.5/3/4.5 currently while avoiding decimals.

It would allow them a lot more control into balancing AP costs.

[FluffyCalico]

I would rather they drop ap's all together and nerf mobs a bit. Bring the game closer to pnp

Unfortuantely as much as I would like to see them gone, the action points actually remind me of 4.0 leveling

[Emili]

I think they should just review many of them... ie. Kensai keeps surfacing because it is the most expensive of any lines in the game. However it is nowhere near the most powerful in terms of return for what you spend. requiring in essence 5 feats plus 20ap pres not counting the cost of the line itself. Kensai itself was designed to place the fighter class back in line with the other melee classes in offense... however the other classes have a significant distribution of enhancements in many areas ... where they can mix and match a significant amout of offensive + defensive abilities readily. Whereas fighter is not so. Ie. a ranger has a significant amount surround favored enemy for damage/saves/ac which fits in easily with tempest, Barbs rage allows for Power/saves/con which also fits in well with berzerker... a fighter takes Kensai she drops her ac/toughness thus becomes more starved defnesively then other classes focusing on primary offense... other classes manage to keep the defense up. This is the flaw in the line.

I would rather they drop ap's all together and nerf mobs a bit. Bring the game closer to pnp

Is way too late for that... although doing so would balance out much of the classes... the rogues base sneak attack balances against the fighters WS balanced against stock mighty rage balanced against ranger favored etc... The base DnD feats would become more important again as you cannot peak the weak areas up with an enhancement.

[RobbinB]

A suggestion I have made a while ago regarding AP cost was the following:
1. Double the number of AP gain by rank.
2. Review each enhancement lines to balance their cost.

As stand, there are enhancements costing too much for 2/4/6 but they would be decently priced at 1.5/3/4.5. Since Turbine is reluctant to use decimals, they could double the AP and thus be able to make an enhancement line that would cost 1.5/3/4.5 currently while avoiding decimals.

It would allow them a lot more control into balancing AP costs.

Which enhancement line that works at 1.5/3/4.5 becomes broken at 2/3/4 (same total cost)?

If each tier of an enhancement is roughly equal in how it elevates a character, then wouldn't 3/4/5 be superior to 2/4/6 for the same total cost?

[Uska]

Unfortuantely as much as I would like to see them gone, the action points actually remind me of 4.0 leveling

which is another huge huge strike against them. Death to 4E bring on 5th or bring back 1st ed ad&d

[Borror0]

Which enhancement line that works at 1.5/3/4.5 becomes broken at 2/3/4 (same total cost)?

If each tier of an enhancement is roughly equal in how it elevates a character, then wouldn't 3/4/5 be superior to 2/4/6 for the same total cost?

Well, there are differences. Getting the first two tiers is cheaper, which may or not be desired. Both are different.

Granted, the total cost is the same but if you want to favor the first two tiers a little more then 1.5/3/4.5 makes sense. Maybe more obvious is the 0.5/1/1.5/2 progression that simply can't be replicated. That would go a long way into pricing the weak enhancements better.

which is another huge huge strike against them. Death to 4E bring on 5th or bring back 1st ed ad&d

There simply is no reason against enhancements other than "It is unlike PnP" and that is a poor argument.

I can think of dozens of reasons to keep enhancements.

[VirieSquichie]

There are quite a few enhancements that I think anyone would be slightly unbalanced in the head if they took more than one or *maybe* two tiers of. Skill enhancements, generally, fall into this category. Almost all of 'em.

The metamagic enhancements are another set I'll blanket that way. Unless you're choosing to cast every single spell with every single metamagic you can apply, the cost reduction on these is far too expensive for the benefit you get. And if that's the way you play, you're being quite a bit inefficient already so the metamagic cost reductions probably wouldn't matter anyway.

It's another situation where they could do a database query to see how many folks actually use the tier 4 enhancements and decide from there how to tweak 'em. No point in having them if they're nearly unused...may as well balance them a bit.

Some enhancement lines feel like they should be adjusted down to 1,1,2,2 or 1,1,1,1 or in a few cases even 2,1,1,2 rather than the 1,2,3,4 which is so common.

[shores11]

I know there's some fixes for some of these types of enhancements, specifically for the paladins and the ones involving the turning attempts and things like that. Paladins are a very enhancement heavy class and I know that it's designed in a way that they don't want it to be possible for everyone to have all the enhancements as well as their race based ones...making us choose different paths instead of having everything(or only having a little bit of everything..). Getting back to the point... the pally turning action point costs are being touched so that to get the top tiers you 're not spending ridiculous amounts of action points for relatively little gain, and mostly with the intention of just opening up a class prestige line.

The cost of AP's as they are have exactly the intent DDO wanted as it is one of the few things that is somewhat in line with D&D pnp. A player needs to choose his/her path in all classes. Do I want to be an assassin or a mechanic rogue, do I want to be a sniper or a tempest ranger. There is no way that AP should decrease in cost to allow players to be uber in more than one chosen path that is crazy talk.

There is and should not be a one push button or two in DDO (D&D) that allows a player to be uber in all paths. The way the game is setup encourages players to choose and play different characters with different benefits and in turn grabs our attention. It is as it should be...

[shores11]

There are quite a few enhancements that I think anyone would be slightly unbalanced in the head if they took more than one or *maybe* two tiers of. Skill enhancements, generally, fall into this category. Almost all of 'em.

The metamagic enhancements are another set I'll blanket that way. Unless you're choosing to cast every single spell with every single metamagic you can apply, the cost reduction on these is far too expensive for the benefit you get. And if that's the way you play, you're being quite a bit inefficient already so the metamagic cost reductions probably wouldn't matter anyway.

It's another situation where they could do a database query to see how many folks actually use the tier 4 enhancements and decide from there how to tweak 'em. No point in having them if they're nearly unused...may as well balance them a bit.

Some enhancement lines feel like they should be adjusted down to 1,1,2,2 or 1,1,1,1 or in a few cases even 2,1,1,2 rather than the 1,2,3,4 which is so common.

I personally have taken AP lines that even cost me 6 AP's on most of my characters, I disagree with the deduction in cost unless they also reduce the number of AP's given.

[BlueBadger]

I personally have taken AP lines that even cost me 6 AP's on most of my characters, I disagree with the deduction in cost unless they also reduce the number of AP's given.

Yes, I have too, there are many GOOD enhancement lines, because a) they're worth the 6 APs, but also it's not worth spending APs other things. I'm not saying you should be able to get everything, I'm not saying that I'd take skill (or many others) enhancements to tier 4, or even one or two for that matter but... making them non stupid options that don't cost redonkulus amounts for very little gain would be nice.

there's no way ever that tempest 1 = jump 4 enhancement, yet they both cost 4 action points... and considering the pre reqs for both...it's.. just funny lol... they need to take a close look at the big picture of the enhancement system and just focus in some tweaks to certain enhancements... turbine has the data, the design team can and should know where and how they want to be possible and useful... they can balance it to where they want it to... it's just that it would be a sizeable change, it would also require a whole bunch of work and play testing... something that is rather expensive, especially for the relatively small benefit that existing players would get...

this enhancement system is not the one that originally came with the game and the change to it from the original system was a really big and reallllly good change... but a lot of the original specifications and design of the system has changed and evolved... so the system needs to make sure that it evolves and changes with the game... a lot of smaller patches to the system have been made but there still exists many little holes that need to be fixed up...

[redspecter23]

Perhaps if the tier four skill enhancements had some sort of a small kicker tacked on, they might seem more appealing. It would be somewhat like being the master of that skill line.

Rogue:Open Lock IV Master Lockpicker. "You gain +1 to your Open Locks skill. Your lockpicking skills are unmatched. You can open locks 200% faster." It would also be nifty if they added a little animation that shows you laughing at the door/chest after unlocking it just to show how simple it was.

This little boost in no way breaks the game but adds a little touch that makes taking the skill to tier 4 at least somewhat tempting. Power gamers will see no use in it as it adds no power to a character outside of very specific quests (I'm looking at the run into Slavers as an example of how opening locks much faster could be of benefit), but newer players might see it as a reward for devoting to the AP line. Roleplayers might take it just for the animation. Similar treatments could be given to the search and disable lines easily enough. Though an argument could be made that searching and disabling at that speed actually does add meaningful power to the character in that they would be getting hit significantly less while doing it in combat. Not saying that's a bad thing as you spent 10 AP to get there.