Rebalance quest experience for Raids

[Yaro]

Raid XP is too low (or XP for everything else is too high) which is why people only run Raids for favor and loot.

On my latest toon I decided to challenge myself to running every quest on Elite with a max of -10% XP penalty. It has proven challenging to put together groups for many quests, but for the Raids it is extremely difficult. For Chronoscope Elite it's almost impossible.

The problem is that no one wants to run Chronoscope, VON, Titan or ADQ on Elite "at level" because the XP for the time required is simply not there. Instead people grab their level 20 toons and run through the Raids for favor and TR loot.

Does anyone else feel like this is ridiculous?

Raids are complicated and fun and should be an important part of advancing levels. My suggestion would be to increase the XP for raids a bit while lowering the XP for everything else in order to motivate people to run raids at the appropriate level. If a Raid takes much longer to run, it only stands to reason that it should provide a proportionate amount of XP.

What do you think?

[MasterOfWorlds]

I would support a re-balancing of raid exp, but I don't think every other quest's exp would have to be decreased. Although some could certainly use the nerf...

[Yaro]

The reason I suggested dropping the XP for everything else is because you don't want the opposite - people only doing Raids. The amount of XP that would be necessary to add to the Raids to make it competitive on a time basis with everything else could be very large. I think it's just a question of balancing it all out.

[J1NG]

The lowering of xp in normal quests will stop all TR'ing. Especially TR2+ toons. It's already a chore.

Increase Raid xp, but don't mess around with normal quest xp unless it's to raise it.

J1NG

[KillEveryone]

I actually grab raids at level if I can for the XP and I've ran with plenty of people that were wanting XP from raids and I've seen them restrict their LFM to the level range of that raid. Typically TRs.

People repeat the raids because of loot and you may not get the item you are looking for the first time through.

It is also easy to get past the level of the raid since you have to wait three days before you can run it again so there really isn't any XP farming for them.

Shroud is just a grind for ingredients which is why it you don't see an at level XP run in there very often. I have but it is rare and because of the three day wait between completions, you are not likely to see another.

For ToD, by the time you get flagged and with many pugs requiring boots, you'll probably be capped before you can get XP from here.

VoN5/6 can be passed up with the XP in that range. I've seen some VoN5 XP farming so I'd figure they went in and did VoN6 after.

DQ is also in that XP range where there is quite a bit so it is easy to be past the level when you get flagged.

Abbot has that sigil flagging so it is easy to go past this level range by the time you are flagged for it. Litany is also bucu XP and if you are grabbing XP you will typically farm this quest. I've ran with some people that were wanting to get XP from Abbot but they were TRs

Not sure why people insist on bringing a 20 in for Chronoscope.

Not may people run Titan. Never been in there myself. Have a character flagged for Twilight Forge but I've not seen anyone wanting to run this quest. Tried to solo Twilight forge but I'm not quite sure how to get that done without another player.

I've had guildies run HoX and VoD at level for XP. Not sure about pugs but it seems that pugs don't care for out side of what they have seen as normal.

I think that it is TRs that do run these quest for the XP more often but even being a TR, the raids have a three day wait before you can run it again so it is easy to get out of that level range by the time you are off timer.

[Thrudh]

Raid exp is already very good... there is no reason to up base exp on raids.

I'd be for upping the elite exp bonus on raids only to 100% though.

20s won't benefit, and it will give people a reason to run elite raids at or near level.

And there won't be any reason to lower exp on quests either, since you only get that 100% bonus the first time you run a raid on elite.

[Yaro]

I'd be for upping the elite exp bonus on raids only to 100% though. 20s won't benefit, and it will give people a reason to run elite raids at or near level.

Yes! I think people need more motivation to run elite raids near level.

I tried and tried and tried to run Chronoscope on Elite with a max level of 10 (it's a level 6 quest, 8 on Elite, so that would be -10% XP) and never got more than 4 people in the group. I frankly don't think it's possible to put together a group for that.

I was able to get a Titan run on Elite at level, but we had to 6-man it. Yes, that was crazy, and it took forever, but we got it in the end. It was a nice sense of accomplishment.

KillEveryone brings up some great points. The 3-day wait definitely slows things down. (Perhaps they could drop the wait if you're playing at level.) Titan is a huge pain because of the puzzles, which are really hard. Some of the higher-level Raids can be tough because you're over-level by the time you flag.

That being said, when I check the board I can't help but notice that the low- and mid-level Raids are most always being run by top-level toons. And it's very, very hard to put together groups to run at level. That's just not right.

[Narmolanya]

Don't forget Tempest Spine. It is run constantly at level for xp on n/h/e. The reason you see this raid run so often is because it has no timer (and FTP as well).

As others have mentioned you don't see the other mid level range raids run for xp is because most players will quickly out level the level range in the three days it takes to reset. I know personally I have not run VON 5/6 in well over a year at level because there are not many groups for it during my peak playtime. With all the other xp available I am not going to sit around for two hours at 2am waiting for it to fill.

[Yaro]

As others have mentioned you don't see the other mid level range raids run for xp is because most players will quickly out level the level range in the three days it takes to reset. I know personally I have not run VON 5/6 in well over a year at level because there are not many groups for it during my peak playtime. With all the other xp available I am not going to sit around for two hours at 2am waiting for it to fill.

OK. Then what if the XP rewards were rebalanced so that the mid-level Raids contributed significantly more to your leveling? If you didn't get so much XP from everything else, and a lot more from the Raids, perhaps more people would be running them at level. That's my whole point. What's the purpose of having content if no one ever sees it because there's no payoff?

[Kmnh]

The raids are so fun to run at level. The people avoiding to run them are the ones I don't want to party with in the first place. I'm playing ddo, not farmville.

[Yaro]

I'm playing ddo, not farmville.

Awesome. I hope you don't mind if I use that one.

[Bobthesponge]

/not signed

Raid XP is fine. Raids, with the exception of Tempest Spine, are not run for XP but for loot. The reason is the raid timer. Chronoscope is a lvl 6 raid with a 3 day timer. You don't have to be a power gamer strapped to a catheter with mommy bringing you food toand a bucket level beyond that in 2 days.

(pause for a moment to watch this. Yes it is in German and yes it is WoW, but still funny).

The same can be said for most other raids. When you are grinding at end game, the XP from Shroud, Abbot and ToD help out but you don't get much after your 20th completion.

[Yaro]

Raids, with the exception of Tempest Spine, are not run for XP but for loot. The reason is the raid timer.

Precisely. My point is that it's disappointing that they're not run for XP. My suggestion is to alter the game so that they are.

If changing the Raid timer would accomplish this, then I'd have no problem with that. My hunch is that the problem is XP and not the timer. When trying to put together low- and mid-level Raids I've very rarely come across the problem of someone being on timer. Most everyone, however, complains that it's just not enough XP for the time commitment.

[redspecter23]

Raid XP is actually not that bad if you run them at level. If you're looking for incentive to get people running these quests at level, I think that you may need to look a bit further than just upping the XP. Raiding is all about the weeks and months of grind at one particular raid in order to get what you want. That one run you do while leveling up doesn't really contribute to your raid goals all that much in comparison to the 19 or 39+ additional runs you'll be doing once you cap. 3 days after your at level completion you could very well be capped. So you are limited to one run per lifetime at level.

The suggestion of removing the timer is an interesting one, but still a broken concept. It would make it far too easy to get the loot you need. Part of the problem is that the raids themselves often don't really take that long. Reaver and DQ are prime examples. You could have completions 5 minutes after walking in the front door. I think perhaps an opposite approach would be better. Raids should scale up from their lowest setting all the way up to 20. So Reaver would be normal at level 14, hard at level 15, elite at level 16 and then scale up so elite+ at level 17, elite++ at level 18, elite+++ at level 19 and elite++++ at level 20. % chance for named loot could increase a small bit for higher difficulties

[varusso]

I wouldnt mind seeing the raid timer reduced or removed entirely, but I know that it is in place as a braking mechanism to keep people from just running the quest over and over until they ransack and get to 20 completions faster. It HAS to be there in order to extend the life of the game.

And I honestly dont see the XP as really being a factor in this. As a general rule, the people who CAN run raids at level smoothly (other than TS) are the same people who wont be at-level long enough (with the raid timer in place) to get more than a couple completions before they are not running it for XP anymore anyway.

Aside from that, I think its more about making the run easy by doing it overlevel. I have run VON at-level, and it went OK, but I have no burning desire to do it on a regular basis -- not because of lack of XP, but because I dont particularly care for the extra effort to get the same loot

Adding extra XP to make it proportionate to the difficulty would be a good thing (in ALL quests for that matter). But it would end up being treated the same way as a first time bonus on any good quest -- do it once and move on.

[Junts]

Yes! I think people need more motivation to run elite raids near level.

I tried and tried and tried to run Chronoscope on Elite with a max level of 10 (it's a level 6 quest, 8 on Elite, so that would be -10% XP) and never got more than 4 people in the group. I frankly don't think it's possible to put together a group for that.

I was able to get a Titan run on Elite at level, but we had to 6-man it. Yes, that was crazy, and it took forever, but we got it in the end. It was a nice sense of accomplishment.

KillEveryone brings up some great points. The 3-day wait definitely slows things down. (Perhaps they could drop the wait if you're playing at level.) Titan is a huge pain because of the puzzles, which are really hard. Some of the higher-level Raids can be tough because you're over-level by the time you flag.

That being said, when I check the board I can't help but notice that the low- and mid-level Raids are most always being run by top-level toons. And it's very, very hard to put together groups to run at level. That's just not right.

i think you'd find that without the 3 day wait, people would gladly do 20 titans in a row to get the 20t hend reward before capping, and possibly the same for dq. After all, after the first few repetitions the exp would get pretty bad, and after 10 you'd get none at all. You could just zerg very fast runs with knowledgable players to get to your 20th.

You'd hate the raid, but the people who'd do that already hate the raid.

[Yaro]

I think its more about making the run easy by doing it overlevel. I have run VON at-level, and it went OK, but I have no burning desire to do it on a regular basis -- not because of lack of XP, but because I dont particularly care for the extra effort to get the same loot

You've brought the easy button to this post, too? I'm seriously cracking up.

[Sarisa]

Running HoX and VoD once or twice (once norm, once hard) per life in a decent group is actually a good chunk of relatively fast experience. Even with 20's in the group. On hard, you won't even get experience penalties from the 20 in the group. The explorer, slayer, and two possible rares (on the way to HoX) experience from the trip to them adds up too.

Shroud is really good experience the first few times you complete, even with the standard normal farms with 20's. It's even better if you're able to put together an at-level group, but you should only really do so with a (mostly) trusted group. Depending on unknown level 17's to have enough HP and 100% fort isn't always possible.

VoN6 is poor experience, but VoN5 is great TR experience if you can get a decent group to do it. You can complete VoN5, recall out, and re-run it without doing VoN6, and you won't get on timer. I would still run at least 1 VoN6 for experience, just for the shot at the decent TR loot or epic base items.

Tempest Spine, of course, is regularly run for experience.

Twilight Forge is one of the best experience quests in the game, it's just very difficult to get a complete group (in order to complete all the optionals) of at-level players who are capable of surviving the purple side's buggy DA. Titan Awakes is also fairly decent for the time spent.

ToD is great, and definitely worth running at least once for the experience.

ADQ1, and the Demon Queen raid are incredible experience at level in a capable group.

Abbot is also very good TR experience, since you can pre-make a sigil and Litany is incredible experience.

Reaver's Fate is good at-level experience as well, and I tend to always run at least one normal, hard, and elite at level per life.

My group recently ran Chrono at level as well, max level 7, with 7 people. It was a challenge, but great experience for the time invested. Doing the optionals was worth it in our opinion.

Really, aside from VoN6, all the raids are great experience at level. Just there needs to be a bit more incentive to run Elite Shroud in general, besides experience and favour.

Sure, they're not really repeatable aside from pre-raids like VoN5 and Twilight Forge, but they're still worth a once or twice run when you can still get experience from them.

[Yaro]

Raid XP is actually not that bad if you run them at level. If you're looking for incentive to get people running these quests at level, I think that you may need to look a bit further than just upping the XP. Raiding is all about the weeks and months of grind at one particular raid in order to get what you want. That one run you do while leveling up doesn't really contribute to your raid goals all that much in comparison to the 19 or 39+ additional runs you'll be doing once you cap. 3 days after your at level completion you could very well be capped. So you are limited to one run per lifetime at level.

I pretty much agree with this, but not entirely. If this were the case, why wouldn't people run the quests at level for XP (like they do with most everything else) and then continue to grind later when over-leveled? My point is that it's really hard to get anyone to run a low- or mid-level Raid for XP. I think that tells me that the XP is not enough. No?

[Bobthesponge]

Precisely. My point is that it's disappointing that they're not run for XP. My suggestion is to alter the game so that they are.

If changing the Raid timer would accomplish this, then I'd have no problem with that. My hunch is that the problem is XP and not the timer. When trying to put together low- and mid-level Raids I've very rarely come across the problem of someone being on timer. Most everyone, however, complains that it's just not enough XP for the time commitment.

I know what you're saying but there are more issues than XP here. It will have a domino effect on overall game balance.

To start, there is more than enough XP at level so that you don't need to run a raid to level. This actually encourages people to run other quests instead of just the raids which is a deliberate game design and, in my opinion, a good one. (Yes, I know there are quests you can farm to level up for people looking to max XP/min and I do them on my TRs, but I have also run every quest in the game at least once because they are fun.)

The raid timer is essential to game balance as well. If you took away or shortened raid timers then all people would do is farm for loot and everyone would have multiple GS/eSoS/Torq builds. Yes, some people do have those but they spent a long time working for it.

As for the XP/time commitment, you are correct. Raids are not great XP for the amount of time. They are not meant to be, either. Your reward is the special raid loot, not gobs of XP. There is no shortage of XP in the game.