Question to the Devs about Elite difficulty

[Havok.cry]

I am wondering if it is your guy's intention to make the elite difficulty into the challenge difficulty for veterans, completionists, or other highly experienced players? With the new raid boss changes, this is what I see happening, and I like the idea that those long time players will have fun, if not new, challenges. It was one of you guys that said challenge equals fun after all.

[donfilibuster]

Hopefully it will make clear that casual is for casual players and hard is harder.

Unlike it is now where many want to do elite right off the bat wether they can or merely think they can.
The new xp bonuses still encourage doing harder but the quest being actually harder may put people in place.
It can truly be seen as an extra reward rather than the must-have.

Naturally this goes mostly for new players, one can always do elite as desired.

[Havok.cry]

I agree

[Jaid314]

Hopefully it will make clear that casual is for casual players and hard is harder.

Unlike it is now where many want to do elite right off the bat wether they can or merely think they can.
The new xp bonuses still encourage doing harder but the quest being actually harder may put people in place.
It can truly be seen as an extra reward rather than the must-have.

Naturally this goes mostly for new players, one can always do elite as desired.

what makes you think noobs are going to realize that they're not ready for hard/elite?

my personal prediction is that they still won't learn, and we'll still see complete buffoons who think they're ready for content that they're not ready for, and will continue to dragon unfortunate pugs along with them into horrible, repeated death.

[danotmano1998]

what makes you think noobs are going to realize that they're not ready for hard/elite?

my personal prediction is that they still won't learn, and we'll still see complete buffoons who think they're ready for content that they're not ready for, and will continue to dragon unfortunate pugs along with them into horrible, repeated death.

Yeah, people go into quests not ready, especially new players. Always have, always will.

How are people going to learn if they don't try?
I don't call that being a buffoon, I call that trying to improve and an opportunity to learn.

Even if everyone dies horribly, the worst you lose is some time and a handful of Platinum for the repair bill.

Be kind to new folks, they are the life blood of the game we love, and we all were new at some point. More players = more money for Turbine = DDO longevity.

[Havok.cry]

I'd still like a dev response as to their intentions with elite.

[Seikojin]

I like the changes as well and hope Elite will be hard to perform. I tried Elite Stormcleave with my lvl 20 and it seemed harder. Like things were harder to kill, got tripped more often, etc.

[Shade]

I like the changes as well and hope Elite will be hard to perform. I tried Elite Stormcleave with my lvl 20 and it seemed harder. Like things were harder to kill, got tripped more often, etc.

stormcleave?
heh solo'd it on my lvl8, easy as ever.

There's been no changes to hard/elite quests at all.

Nor even monsters in hard/elite raids.

The ONLY related change was raid bosses, which had some stat increases by a very small amount on normal, big amount on hard, and huge amount on elite.

[herzkos]

unless and until turbine changes the favor system, elite must be accessible to
the "casual" players.
yes, it should be a challenge. yes, it should be difficult.

no, it should not require past lives, super uber gear (redundancy intended), or levell 60+ ship buffs.

i think a first good step would be to get rid of dungeon scaling. as people solo it on norm and hard and
then get their heads handed to them on elite. they thought they were ready because they were able to solo hard.

[Shade]

unless and until turbine changes the favor system, elite must be accessible to
the "casual" players.

What your logic there?

Why should casual players, or hell even the veteran players easily get every single favor reward? Should everyone be equal for some reason? No one should be able to play harder to rise above another? Why not give casual players a percentage of all xp/plat earned by everyone? Should we all also be communists?

And FYI: The huge majority of the favor rewards in the game can now be gotten without even stepping foot into elite.

[herzkos]

What your logic there?

Why should casual players, or hell even the veteran players easily get every single favor reward? Should everyone be equal for some reason? No one should be able to play harder to rise above another? Why not give casual players a percentage of all xp/plat earned by everyone? Should we all also be communists?

And FYI: The huge majority of the favor rewards in the game can now be gotten without even stepping foot into elite.

if you're going to quote, at least quote the whole paragraph.
You left out the part where I said elite should be challenging.

there is no way to make elite challenging for the supertwinked past lives while still maintaining a fun
challenge for the "casual" players. Whether you like it or not, Turbine has gone to a f2p model (personally,
I don't like it but they didn't ask me). This model means that their primary income is going to be coming from
players who spend money on the game in "micro"transactions not via subscription. Most of that money comes
from casual gamers who are looking for fun not from powergamers who spend 24-7 in the game. Alienating
your prime income source is not a solid business decision.

I understand that you want an elite quest to indicate that upon succesful
completion the player can consider himself to be the best of the best. I just disagree with the transferral
of "elite" from the quest difficulty to the player completing the quest.

I'll ignore the red scare argument.

And FYI: i'm well aware how easy it is to get favor rewards as well as how marginal they are compared to
ship buffs.

[KyrzaBladedancer]

Easy way to fix people doing quests on difficulties they shouldn't be doing them on would be to reintroduce XP debt. So when your typical pug goes "oh we got a healer now, lets do elite!" after the first time he'll think maybe its not a good idea cause last time he lost xp. It would also teach people to be more careful and not bite off more than they can chew.

[goblean]

Until they put in a disincentive to run elite, new-ish casual players will still jump to open elite. Whether it be for the favor, xp or loot you still hear someone pipe up after a "what difficulty?" ELITE!

Of course, they will also most likely be the first to ding, run around with no hp and be under geared. They will still get a completion from the couple of people that can pull the party through. Nothing changes other than making the quest slightly tougher for those people. In the long run you would probably have less of the decent players willing to join a random pug/lfm, and even somewhat decent hjealers giving up pugs.

I've said it before make the xp bonus personal, and decrease it 10% every death all the way down to 0 xp earned for a quest.