Make Epic Elite more rewarding

[Xezno]

There is a large problem end game today and thats the lack of incentives to run on Epic Elite. Yes you get some more xp and a favour, but the xp is gained much faster and requires more resources than just short manning hard or normal.

A game that has hardly any incentive to run the hardest difficulty esentially looses much of its challenge. A good game should cater both to casual and hardcore players alike.

I suggest implementing a reward system that can give a handful of marginally better items that can only be aquired by completing Epic Elite quests. As i understand there are favour rewards now, but with new content those will be easy to get, and you need incentives to run Epic Elite more than once per quest.

This will serve the purpose of making the game more challenging for those who choose to do so (running Elite without rewards is just a curiosity) , and make grouping for the new content easier since full groups will have a higher chance of sucess.

With the old Epic system you esentially had this because the content was quite challenging and the epic items could only be aquired running that content. The whole crafting system is another matter entierly though.

I wont go into specifics on what system should be implementes - but we definatly need a few carrots.

[shadereaper33]

The problem with that idea is that adding too much in the way of rewards to the high end difficulty will make most of the player base see that difficulty as "mandatory" if they want the shiniest loot. A lot of people were asking for a challenge, and that is what they got with the current epic elite. I think some higher drop rates for epic elite, specifically noticeably higher drop rates, would be about the only thing they could change that wouldn't end up with people trying to run epic elite when they weren't capable of it, and thus dragging on the party. It is simple human nature to want to get the best of whatever is available, and if that only comes from epic elite, then that is what the majority of people will want to do, regardless of their abilities. However, if the same loot is available on normal or hard, but at a reduced drop rate, then people will still be able to run where they are comfortable without feeling like they are missing out on something.

[Saravis]

Maybe I'm just old school, but isn't challenge incentive enough?

[sirgog]

I believe +4 tomes are EE only (the unbound ones that is) and further that they only drop from the more difficult optionals. (I posted a +4 tome tracker thread to get info to test this hypothesis properly).

[Xezno]

Maybe a system where u can upgrade the new items with an extra ability with some sort of token that can only be found in epic elite? Maybe a rare drop or requiering more than one token?

Then it would not be a waste to run any difficulty since you still need the base item anyway. A casual player would have no need of the token as he does not have the base item yet, while someone who has allready run the quest a few times on lower difficulties would be incentiviced to run on elite.

And i think that giving a player the option to fail miserably every once in a while just makes the game more fun. It makes the player in question better and makes the game feel less like a "god mode".

And the "old school" for the sake of challenge is fun once or twice. You want to keep the content alive for a long time and getting the best players to run it a couple of times before farming hard solo or shortman is not good at all for the group game and it feels much more like a grind.

[Xezno]

I believe +4 tomes are EE only (the unbound ones that is) and further that they only drop from the more difficult optionals. (I posted a +4 tome tracker thread to get info to test this hypothesis properly).

A small carrot there, but getting unbound over bound esentially only means you can use it for trading if you allready have used a +4 tome. Now if they made all +4 tomes drop in Epic Elite only it would be a diffirent matter.

[sirgog]

A small carrot there, but getting unbound over bound esentially only means you can use it for trading if you allready have used a +4 tome. Now if they made all +4 tomes drop in Epic Elite only it would be a diffirent matter.

The drop rates on the special chests are much higher than say TOD tome drop rates, AFAICT. They might be as high as 1-2%. Plus if you get say a Wis tome on a toon that doesn't really care much about Wisdom, you can usually trade it 1-1 for the tome you actually want.

Ransack one or more of these chests and your group will usually get a tome between you.