Another Look at TR XP requirements

[inggold]

Casual is not typically defined in terms of time. Or at least not time alone

Casual players can be a little time or a lot, casual playing is more meaning that end game goal is not the single intent. Casual players tend to be as much or more focused on social aspects, role playing aspects, exploring for the sake of exploring rather than being primarily or solely focuses on character advancement.

As opposed to hardcore players, who do gear themselves primarily towards progression of power. This player can be on 10 hours a week or 30 - the point is that they aren't the role playing, meandering for the sake of meandering, sit and chat kind of person.. they are focused primarily or solely towards progression in the game.

Being hardcore doesn't mean spending 25+ hours or some arbitrary benchmark of time in the game as a first necessary benchmark - or at least it shouldn't. Those days of gaming mentality started to die a long time ago, and good riddance when they are finally gone forever.

Hardcore is much more about learning the mechanics, gearing to the mechanics, and progressing your character to meet the end game challenges. It is a lot more fun to do that with your friends and "crew" rather than re-levelling to even be able to begin.

And that is the point I hope I am conveying - time sinks for the sake of time sinks on TR's experience curve isn't any challenge, it isn't any benefit to the players or long term for the game.

"Enjoying the trip" is fun the first ten times... but seriously, even Delera's gets a little old after 50 times through it, and it doesn't even have the merit of relevance to end game as grinding at cap would. I would prefer that my time sinks are in some way at least relevant to end game, and allow me to continue to play with my friends at that level. (I prefer the challenges, for instance, at least they are relevant content for my 20th characters... bonking Coyle over the head for the 9 millionth time, however, is not.)

[ahpook]

How about this: after a 50 elite streak, you can get the bravery up to 75%. After 100 goes up to 100%. That way there's more an incentive not to break it. I tried to keep my streak as far as I could (till lvl 17 in this life) Not because it was doing any good, but as a challenge. You get the same XP bonus from running 5 elites or 200. That's a bit borked specially in the latter levels when you need it most.

I don't care for this. The biggest problem with BB is that the penalty for breaking the streak discourages many grouping scenarios. Lets fix level 16 to 20 by flattening the XP cost, increasing XP of high level quest or adding more high level quests.

If we want to do something for higher BB streaks, I would change the penalty for breaking a streak from a full reset to subtracting 50 from your streak. In other words, if your BB streak is 55 you can run a quest on normal and your streak drops to 5. That allows you to make a few exceptions to your streak to join in guild runs or pugs without entirely messing up your streak. Of course the number of 50 can be tweaked to a more appropriate number.

[QuantumFX]

I *STILL* wish that Turbine would just give in, ditch the XP cost increases, and make 34/36pt builds work like ECL +1/ECL +2 characters from P&P D&D. It makes the character slightly more grindy. But makes a player want to tackle bigger challenages at level. (That’s the draw for me.)

[Dexxaan]

How about this: after a 50 elite streak, you can get the bravery up to 75%. After 100 goes up to 100%. That way there's more an incentive not to break it. I tried to keep my streak as far as I could (till lvl 17 in this life) Not because it was doing any good, but as a challenge. You get the same XP bonus from running 5 elites or 200. That's a bit borked specially in the latter levels when you need it most.

That would make sense!

....and therefore it'll never be implemented.



.

[Thrudh]

How about this: after a 50 elite streak, you can get the bravery up to 75%. After 100 goes up to 100%. That way there's more an incentive not to break it. I tried to keep my streak as far as I could (till lvl 17 in this life) Not because it was doing any good, but as a challenge. You get the same XP bonus from running 5 elites or 200. That's a bit borked specially in the latter levels when you need it most.

No, I don't like it...

People are too OCD as it is. Breaking an elite streak down to a hard streak isn't that big of a deal (50% to 25%, and you can get the streak back up after 5 more quests if you want to), yet way too many people hate to do it.

Add your suggestion in, and people will totally freak out over breaking a streak that you can't rebuild, and grouping will become harder.

[danotmano1998]

No, I don't like it...

People are too OCD as it is. Breaking an elite streak down to a hard streak isn't that big of a deal (50% to 25%, and you can get the streak back up after 5 more quests if you want to), yet way too many people hate to do it.

Add your suggestion in, and people will totally freak out over breaking a streak that you can't rebuild, and grouping will become harder.

True, and a solid point. We really don't want to give people more of a reason to be exclusive.

[GentlemanAndAScholar]

No, I don't like it...

People are too OCD as it is. Breaking an elite streak down to a hard streak isn't that big of a deal (50% to 25%, and you can get the streak back up after 5 more quests if you want to), yet way too many people hate to do it.

Add your suggestion in, and people will totally freak out over breaking a streak that you can't rebuild, and grouping will become harder.

I agree in part. The reason people (myself included) hate to break it, is solely because lvls 18 and 19 of a TR2+ are so large that I'll get whatever little I can. 50% vs. 25% one time bonus can mean 5-10K XP lost on some quests. The main reason this thread exists is to revisit those XP requirements for TR2+ and specially those last 2-3 levels that seem to take forever.

[karsion]

The main reason this thread exists is to revisit those XP requirements for TR2+ and specially those last 2-3 levels that seem to take forever.

Thing is however that this thread is mainly an excersise in futility. Turbine heard the complaints of players about XP in latter lives and decided to appease them (bravery bonus and streak) and make money (tomes of learning). Any increase in quest experience gained or xp needed to cap would be shooting themselves in foot and decreasing money making potential.

And from my discussions with friends and other players number of people who want to do multiple TRs is not a big percentage of players in DDO. Most of those who want will get themselves greater tomes.

I don't care one way or the other but I think it is very unikely they will tinker with xp especially with an expansion in the wings, new enhancement system in the making and whatnot.

[Matuse]

Any increase in quest experience gained or xp needed to cap would be shooting themselves in foot and decreasing money making potential.

Smoothing out the XP curve so that it all isn't focused at 17+ would not stop anyone from doing bravery streaks and buying learning tomes. It would make those last levels a lot more bearable by stretching some of the pain downstream a bit where the content can far more easily stand it.

At a guess, U13 is going to be the last sub-20 content we see for a while. That's bad. I'd really like to have 5-6 adventure packs, each with 4-7 quests all in the 16-19 range. But I think it will be literally years before that happens.