Epic Levels and Good Old Normal Shroud...

[Lithic]

The original plan as presented in beta was for the xp penalty for level 20+ to be tied to active epic destiny level rather than character level. People complained that it was too confusing and since it had not been implemented yet the devs dropped the idea.

The problem with that was the auto level up system of destinies. It would be easily possible for a leader to make a group that conforms to an elite bravery bonus only to lose this bonus when the optional exp pushes character x to the next destiny level.

Had they made a system similar to leveling where you can only advance by talking to the fatespinner then t would have been a great system for regulating exp penalties.

[sirgog]

This kind of thing comes up every time there is a level cap increase. It is just more pronounced now due to gaining 5 levels at once. Sure you lose out on the exp for shroud, but why do you care? Why don't you care about losing exp from reaver or titAn or non epic dragon and dq?

Exp penalties as they are currently are a good idea and necessary to keep DDO from becoming a farm fest of trivial content. If this means that you don't get exp for bringing capped characters to heroic normal Von raids then be it. Definately completely not signed

I will say that while I agree, it's a little strange that a trivial raid (EN Chrono or EN DQ2) offers decent XP with 23s or even 25s while an easy but not so easy as to be trivial raid (Shroud Normal) offers none.

[Fefnir_2011]

Really? You run raids solely for the purposes of... XP? And you're upset because taking level 25s into a level 17 quest is crippling any XP you could get? In terms of pure levels, Shroud is to level cap now as Shadow Crypt is to level 17s. It's okay. You can let go of Shroud as the end all be all of everything. It's perfectly reasonable for it to no longer be *gasp* end-game content. It'll be just like VoN now: people will run it for XP, or for loot at cap, instead of for both.

[Dragaer]

Do you have a 20+ yet?

I have one or two.

Do you understand how it works? I don't know how else to explain this to you, but you're not understanding what I'm proposing.

I do understand what you are proposing and I do not think it would work.

Just by making your destiny inactive (which I agree is the more powerful effect) and 'pretending' that the other 5 levels are not there is making the issue more complicated than needs to be.

How are you proposing to regulate this?

• They are unable to hit the LFM until their destinies are inactive?
• They are unable to enter the shroud with destinies active?

Anyone who has ever puged before can see the problems these two points alone will make. We can't get a pugger to chew gum and rub their tummy at the same time and you want to have them turn off their epic destinies before a shroud? They better put a fate spinner right next to the entrance because you're going to have people:

• forget to turn off their destiny
• make the party wait as they go back to the marketplace to turn the destinies off
• run into those who think that they can only see a fatespinner in Eveningstar and take twice as long to get there and back
• beg for ANOTHER ship invite to get to meridia only to spend the next 5 min re-buffing themselves
• heavans forbid that no one in the group has a level high enough to get fred's brother hired and beg for a GT or drop group and make everyone wait while they make the "run"

If you don't plan for your system (whatever that system is) to work flawlessly for the lowest common denominator it just isn't going to work well.

If you want people to be able to turn destinies on/off they need to make everyone able to do so without a fatespinner; or upon entering the raid the game automatically turns off the destinies. (IMO this is the only way that your proposal could work).

-or-
You can just turn off xp penalties for raids (without all the confusion and moving parts and having uber characters in raids whatever shall we do?!?!?)

-or- (and this is what Turbine chose)
Leave the system as it is and deal with it.















-If I did misunderstand that you meant that they actually revert back to level 20 by going to a fatespinner........I don't think I need to go into what issues that will cause do I?

[Shade]

The solution is simple.

Enable epic shroud. It's already complete and fun to play. They simply have it disabled.

[Raist1280]

Yeah, but the power comes from EDs, not levels 21-25...make 'em give up their ED, they're essentially level 20, and would be justified in being treated as such. Letting them keep everything, and treating them as level 20, would really trivialize some things.

So your solution to epic level toons penalizing xp would be to gimp the epic toons by taking away their destinies? Its the epic LEVELS (21-25) that are imposing xp penalties... taking the destinies away gimps the higher level toons while still allowing the xp penalties anyway. That will lead to LFMs going up for groups up to (but not beyond) level 20... which is already a viable solution to being able to run high-level heroic content without having some level 24-25 taking away or drastically reducing everyone else's xp... I've seen plenty of LFMs go up for Shroud runs that are open to lv17-20 only... I've also seen Shrounds up to lv25, mostly it depends on whether the person posting the LFM is looking to get xp from the raid or not. For myself, I don't expect/require/even care about xp when running raids like Shroud... Shroud is there for GS mats and whomping on Harry every 3 days... if I want xp I'll go hit up a level-appropriate (depending on character level) quest that's going to get me far better xp/min anyway...

[mystafyi]

to keep DDO from becoming a farm fest of trivial content.

This already happened. I was hoping heroic elites will stay as currently with amped trap/spell damage, but alas, dev's already commented it will get easier. Oh well, hello kitty online might have more challenge soon.