Is Epic Normal really supposed to be that easy?

[Auran82]

Just running probably half of the quests once on each difficulty with only moderate bonuses should get you 25, and 1.5-2 destinies.
The rest you can easily get through some more quests, and there also some pretty huge xp to be had on certain challenges. Also keep in mind challengs have no repeat penalties, and there are FOUR INSANELY LARGE explorer area, each of which goes up to 7500+ or higher on slayers.. So no, you willl indeed be able to cap every destiny without any "extreme" repetition.

I thought the star bonuses were a one off high amount of xp, then a small amount for following runs, or was that changed?

I know 5 staring a challenge the first time on live gives like 40k and the times after that will give closer to 10k or just over

[Shade]

Epic normal, is 'normal mode on a level 20+' quest, nothing more, no special 'for the best of the best' rubbish that it used to have.

Not exactly true. There are still gona be heroic vs epic modes, evne for new quests.

EG: Into the rift offers both modes, and the overall CRs don't vary much, but the challenge increases very slightly.

So Epic Normal will be slightly harder then Heroic Normal for the same quest, even if its' a very marginal difference.

Was fairly easy to tell this when the forest tended to offer both modes due to a bug, there were slightly difference. Maybe ~5% more incoming dmg. Very minor.

[Shade]

I thought the star bonuses were a one off high amount of xp, then a small amount for following runs, or was that changed?

I know 5 staring a challenge the first time on live gives like 40k and the times after that will give closer to 10k or just over

Yea the first time bonus is still there.

Just saying the 2nd to 90000th run will be the same, if you 6stard the first one. And they arent too bad xp wise on later runs, at least certain challenges..

And think more like 160k xp first time instead of 60k on live ones. Though numbers are likely still in flux.

[Auran82]

Not exactly true. There are still gona be heroic vs epic modes, evne for new quests.

EG: Into the rift offers both modes, and the overall CRs don't vary much, but the challenge increases very slightly.

So Epic Normal will be slightly harder then Heroic Normal for the same quest, even if its' a very marginal difference.

Was fairly easy to tell this when the forest tended to offer both modes due to a bug, there were slightly difference. Maybe ~5% more incoming dmg. Very minor.

I thought some of the starting expansion quests were level 19 instead of being over 20? I know the hospital one was. Which would explain why they had both modes.

[patang01]

QFT. If our only source for balancing Normal difficulty was these boards we'd be out of business pretty quick.

I've found normal hard on some classes and like normal on others. I don't find anything easy with the current amount of caster spam going on. As long as hard and elite ramp up difficulty as said normal as is seems like it should.

I think people who claim that normal is too easy also compares Epic to how Epic used to be - soloed only by the absolutely elite geared caster types, all others better run in packs.

If that was the case no one would be able to solo this new content. Which is still true on some classes.

[patang01]

Speaking of quest levels:
I think they should be buffed. They are all 1 too low imo.
As is, there is not a single level24 quest in the pack (raid is, but thats not exactly where people will be getting much xp). The cap is 25.. Thus no matter WHAT players run, if they join a pug for normal difficulty - 95% of the time if not more, they will suffer a -10% xp penatly due to having a 25 in the group. I don't think thats fair, and its never happened in the past.. EG:
Module 9 (cap up to 20)
Max quest level: 19 - no penalty grouped with capped chars
Module 6, (cap up to 16)
Max quest level: 16

I agree - and I'm no elite player; anyone soloing or duoing content after level 23 will be slow screwed - especially running older Epic content as most is level 19 casual and 21 for normal. Then if anyone want to level a second destiny the effect gets worse.

In Beta after the third reset I ended up leveling my FvS running mostly normal quests with a constant XP penalty.

[knockcocker]

Very true, but... D&D is a tabletop game that's generally played in a small room with a group of friends... It's not a game that you play in the food court of the mall with random strangers sitting down at random times to join a particular quest. You know the people you play D&D with and you're just as familiar with their attitudes as they are of yours, and that makes things much easier.

Sigh. I wish more people got this.

[Vallin]

QFT. If our only source for balancing Normal difficulty was these boards we'd be out of business pretty quick.

LOL Irivan, you have been qft by a dev... It may be a record for someone with as big a hidden red stick as you to achieve this honor :P

Anyway, you are correct - example being my 5th life TR FvS - running through caster lives on elite content at all levels solo and duo and rarely being in danger except when I do something stupid or risky, or if I am playing too late and zerg face first into a trap that I should have avoided.

I have maintained some very limited perspective on game difficulty because I keep recalling that I could not do what I am doing now when I started this game six years ago. I know that my original ranger struggled to get past the stupid wolf and kobold on the way to ww. I have no freaking idea what I was trying to do at the time but I hated that encounter. LOL!! So we all had difficulty when we were learning this game and for the most part we have forgotten.

I'm cool with devs bypassing my opinion on normal difficulties. I trust they have a room of noobs and newbs that they can survey for those purposes. That would be most healthy for game development IMO. We need the noobs and newbs to become vets eventually, and hopefully they won't fill the forums with garbage when they get to that point.

Vallin.

[Postumus]

Mad, don't listen to these people who are making claims that the new content is super easy, that is not true, not at all, they have lost sight.

Most of the people playing the new content on Llama are the games hardcore players.

And already the same people complaining that the new content is too easy are now complaining some of it is too hard.

Love it.

[SockMonkey]

If these people on the boards didn't stick with you through the down years with no updates and no hope, you would already be out of business.

QFT - "Vast and mysterious" 'Nuff said.

[nayozz]

Mad, don't listen to these people who are making claims that the new content is super easy, that is not true, not at all, they have lost sight.

Most of the people playing the new content on Llama are the games hardcore players.


/signed...


when veterans find out bug, broken things it is fine, instead when they say :" omg with my uber op epic raid gear, completionist and such i find this normal quest too eazy1y1y1y1y1"
just do not listen in that case


edit: so, what i should be forced to do ? say to a generic player: sorry i can no longer group with you, cause a veteran boasted on a beta forum to unfaily raise normal difficulty and this quest just can't be done with subpar people like you, but only with overgeared and tr characters... i best solo it than face a 100% failure cause of you being in my party, raising the dungeon scaling up a notch and making quest on normal impossible to complete.

[JOTMON]

With Scaling... it may be more of a challenge with a party rather than solo

^This.


I suspect the new epic content is not as easy as people are boasting them to be.
A uber geared caster soloing a scaled dungeon is not a fair representation.

Dungeon scaling for soloing vs a party is a huge difference.
Even 2 manning becomes an easy button vs a full party run.

To me it appears the dungeon scaling is broken.

I can run elite cannith challenges 2man melee (was running Progenitor crystal.. the protect the kobold with the big crystal) with no issues, mobs are manageable. Was going so well we decided to invite a couple more people to get them through it.

4 man party(no casters -2 protecting the foreman did not wander, the other 2 were at the cat path) as soon as the kobold picked up the crystal we went from no alert to full on red dungeon alert. As melee's we could not run, superslowed and mobbed to death.

Thought it must have been a bad instance tried 2 more times then said screw this and changed to two 2man parties both of which completed several runs without any issues.

I definitely notice a big difference questing wise between running a full party and soloing epic quests.

So when I see braggards boasting about how they solo'ed an epic quest.. it is a meaningless achievement.

Solo It with without Dungeon Scaling (a party of 5 pikers in the quest) and I'll recognize that as epic worthy.

The whole Dungeon Scaling needs to be scrapped.. either run it with a party or be uber enough to short man it.

Red dungeon alert also needs to be scrapped or changed, it doesnt hurt zerging casters they can throw down an AOE and still kill everything around them since spells are not impacted in any way, only melee's who cant move or hit mobs are detrimentally impacted.

At least change this DA by removing the existing effects and change to a blue bar 50% spell damage reduction penalty for Red DA.. that would hurt caster zergs who are saving SP by running past mobs. Center the DA on the offender, the quest wide impact of DA screws the entire party who end up red DA and are nowhere near the active mobs aggroed on a rogue zerger or lost soul running for his life in the wrong direction.

The game is supposed to be geared to party play not catering to soloists who can't solo unscaled content.

[JOTMON]

Speaking of quest levels:
The cap is 25.. Thus no matter WHAT players run, if they join a pug for normal difficulty - 95% of the time if not more, they will suffer a -10% xp penatly due to having a 25 in the group. I don't think thats fair, and its never happened in the past.. EG:
Module 9 (cap up to 20)
Max quest level: 19 - no penalty grouped with capped chars
Module 6, (cap up to 16)
Max quest level: 16

The way I see it..
Epic levels 21 to 25 - some are destiny/twist xp'ing, some will go straight to 25 without twists.
Epic 21-25 will be running the same/similar content on a regular basis and it is unreasonable to apply XP penalties to parties mixed in this range.

Any Epic party running levels 21-25 should not receive any XP penalties.
Bring a Epic 21+ into a 20epic and let the 10%penalty apply.
Bring a Epic 21+ into anything below Epic 20 and let the big penalties apply.

[Spartywinz]

[*]Clr/Fvs that insist that carrying healing scroll does not increase their healing potential because they "have potions"

With unlimited potions on lama, even on epic elite you only need scrolls if you have below average melee. I'm just trying to help you be the best you can be.

[praetor]

i hopped on lam and did a few of the old epics on normal. all i suggest is that the naming be changed. because epic is one of the last words i'd use to describe it. the devs clearly have an agenda in mind as evidenced by their responses so far, so at this point instead of trying to make suggestions about actual game improvement, we could instead help them with renaming. clearly, epic is the new casual.

[tanzer]

QFT. If our only source for balancing Normal difficulty was these boards we'd be out of business pretty quick.

If you publish half the changes proposed to live you'll be outa business pretty quick

[danotmano1998]

^This.
To me it appears the dungeon scaling is broken.

I can run elite cannith challenges 2man <snip>

Yes, but challenges are twice over broken, and admitted to by a dev. (Madfloyd??)
These have 2 kinds of scaling going on in them, which is NOT WAI.

[Krell]

The way I see it..
Epic levels 21 to 25 - some are destiny/twist xp'ing, some will go straight to 25 without twists.
Epic 21-25 will be running the same/similar content on a regular basis and it is unreasonable to apply XP penalties to parties mixed in this range.

Any Epic party running levels 21-25 should not receive any XP penalties.
Bring a Epic 21+ into a 20epic and let the 10%penalty apply.
Bring a Epic 21+ into anything below Epic 20 and let the big penalties apply.

I think there should be no powerlevelling or over level penalties for quests and players in the 21-25 range. Maybe 20-25 range since it seems some of these quests on normal will be 20. Let Epic players play together without the need to exclude certain players or quest difficulties.

The four level range wasn't bad when the cap was lower. If you keep a static number like four and continue to increase player levels, you are chopping the player base pie into smaller pieces. This further restricts the number of online players available to group with you which increases the difficulty of forming no-penalty groups, and I don't think we want that. I vote for bigger pie pieces. Strawberry-Rhubarb would be nice.

[Ivan_Milic]

For people that did epic normal,whats the scroll drop rate,is it the same as live epics?

[Machination]

I don't really care about the name. As long as "Elite Epic" is more difficult than "Epic" on all the existing quests today. "Epic" is already a silly name for a lot of "Epic" difficulty on quests on live servers right now. Considering "n/h/e Epic" difficulty will be available on all existing quests, just make elite a real challenge, as I posted before should be something only a really competent group of 25's with full gear can do, "Elite" has lost its meaning in 99% of the game already. "Epic" is already an extremely tarnished name in my mind as well. Name changes don't really help anything....do they?

There is an entire other argument, which a lot of people don't talk about on forums much, which is just STOP messing with all the old content (everything that has been released to date) only leaving at most bug fixes for that content (we don't need three difficulty settings for old content we've all run 100's of times), and focus only on new content and new challenges.

i hopped on lam and did a few of the old epics on normal. all i suggest is that the naming be changed. because epic is one of the last words i'd use to describe it. the devs clearly have an agenda in mind as evidenced by their responses so far, so at this point instead of trying to make suggestions about actual game improvement, we could instead help them with renaming. clearly, epic is the new casual.