The xp of some challenges is still unreasonable.

[Munkenmo]

The total xp/min is not even the shocking thing here. It is the xp/star that is.

Getting 300xp/star is an utterly worthless amount and is an incredibly boneheaded move by the developer that changed this. Really.

This.

even increasing the * values to 3k each isn't going to be unreasonable in the 5-10 min challenges.

the 20+min challenges are so far beyond reasonable now though that it's blatant devs don't know better or don't care.

Neither explanation is acceptable.

[Ancient]

For 5 minutes, you got

1k xp per min. (admittedly a bit low)
However many clicky chests you got
2/3 of an epic token

Plus none of it is hit with a repeat penalty. I agree that there should be a way to level up ED's quicker than there currently is. But I think that the way to do it is take off the repeat penalty for epic level quests.

Challenge xp is still on the low side. But that is slightly negated by the fact you never get penalized for repeating it.

Once you hit 25 (or cap xp and stay 23), you don't get penalized on anything (unless you already had a penalty, this is a bad mechanic).

I've simply replaced running buying time with impossible demands. 17-20k on normal, 2 minute completions plus I get better loot and guild renown. At a slow pace to and from quest giver, I can cycle in 4 minutes easy. There are other quests with better loot and better xp/minute.

There is zero excuse for what they did to challenges.

[MartinusWyllt]

There is zero excuse for what they did to challenges.

Still I'd like to hear at least one from one of them.

[Carkolda]

While I think the current xp return is a little low, even by my non zerger standards, it seems to me that if this statement is actually true, that is justification for fixing the xp rate on that quest. If its that much better than the alternatives, its out of whack.

No, it was a long slog and a horrible grind. But it was better than running with PUG's and failing after an hour-long investment into a quest. It's not that it was a better alternative to quests, it was a better alternative to people. Don't ruin the challenge because people suck.

[krtkoo]

I've simply replaced running buying time with impossible demands. 17-20k on normal, 2 minute completions plus I get better loot and guild renown. At a slow pace to and from quest giver, I can cycle in 4 minutes easy. There are other quests with better loot and better xp/minute.

now you have reset option, you dont need to run to quest giver (tho you will miss the reward)

[Ancient]

now you have reset option, you dont need to run to quest giver (tho you will miss the reward)

I like the guild renown, although you are right. With 2 minute completions and a reset button, on normal that is 34-40k xp less time than it takes to run a <5k buying time challenge run.

And once again, there are better quests that offer more xp/loot per minute.

[Isolani]

There was no need to nerf the xp in challenges, if anything, they needed to increase the xp in a lot of them.

They probably needed to tone the 5 minute challenge xp down a bit in epic levels, you could go 20 to 21 in less than 1 hour just doing 5 minute challenges, but they went way overboard on this xp nerf.

I won't do challenges at all now. I don't need any of the cannith challenge loot, and I don't care about grinding FR challenge ingredients for random loot, so if the xp is bad now too there is no reason at all to do them. I don't see how that improves the game, it's just more content that people won't do because it isn't worth the time anymore.

Turbine is really dumb sometimes.

[Dawnsfire]

The ones that really bother me are the lower level 20 minute challenges. A couple of thousand for 20 minutes is horribad.

[Ancient]

Funny thing...

As soon as people started posting specific XP/Minute numbers for House C challenges and compared them to XP/Minute numbers for quests...

All those in favor of the nerfs decided to go post on different threads.

[Isolani]

I have earned about 250 epic dungeon tokens over the past two weeks with not too shabby exp... Do you know what that means for Turbine??

12 True heart of woods that will not be bought in the future... They don't want you farming decent XP and then taking away the need to spend TP in the future... it isn't logical. Anything that affects revenue gets fixed fast... why don't people understand this?

True hearts of wood take about 2-4 hours to farm... now with bad exp, you have to go out of your way to farm them. Some people would rather just buy a heart of wood for 10 bucks instead of farming for 4 hours. True they made the pack useless, but in the long run Turbine will make more money this way.

They don't want people leveling off epic challenges. It costs them money...

How will Turbine make more money from this nerf? I used to buy hearts even though it was easy to grind epic tokens with challenges. I would rather spend the tokens slotting epics whenever I had enough tokens, and just buy the hearts to save myself 2-4 hours of mind numbing grinding for no reason but to TR. Time is more important than money to me, I have more money than I have time.

Now, I won't be TRing at all because the gains are trivial compared to epic destinies. Once I finish the characters I already had in mid TR, I'm done with TRing.

And I certainly won't be doing any challenges because I don't care about the loot, and now the xp is horrible too. Challenges are just more content that isn't worth doing after this nerf. You can just lump challenges in with all the other awful xp/min quests that everybody but newbies and masochists skip. So I won't be buying any more hearts and I won't be doing any challenges...I don't see how that means more money for Turbine.

MrCow posted in another thread that xp for 15+ minute challenges is better now, so maybe those ones are worth it now, but I haven't done any of the long challenges yet to see.

Either way, the game keeps getting less and less fun and more and more grindy in my opinion. It's my day off and I'm posting here instead of playing...that is generally not a good sign in my MMO experience.

[Morbleue]

It is simply a matter of terminology. ... I'm not the one who made this dumb, dumb, dumb decision so I'm going to hide it behind words".

No one in a position to make decisions at Turbine understands the concept of xp/min. Trying to reason with them is therefore useless: there is no reason involved, words notwithstanding.

Right on! I would add to that, as i live in a former Soviet contry.... How Turbine does things is standard decision-making under a soviet technocracy. Is ironic to see a US company becoming something like that!

But they can pretend for sometime still... that they are powered by their fans. Soviet space had only "people s democracy". They have pretty much the Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Ring franchise monopolies. Though Baldur Gates was more successfull in my mind. Also people have a hard time voting with their feet as they are emotionally attached to their characters.

But if the system does not change, they will disappear. It is not about new content now, it is about changing their ways. They now conditionned me, and a lot of other customers i read, to think "update=bad news!". And ask myself "should i continue playing?". I already deleted a few toons and consolidate everything in one server. I believe Guild War will not kill it and also the Hobitt film will help Turbine in the short term. I have little belief they will change their ways. 2013 is a more interesting horizon. There are real strong releases of online games that will hit the shelves. I spend money with that in my mind. I spent enough to keep me busy until these releases hit the shelves. I want to see a growing player base, more visibility when i plan my purchases and characters and more fun for me personally before i open the wallet again.

[Zindro]

But if the system does not change, they will disappear. It is not about new content now, it is about changing their ways. They now conditionned me, and a lot of other customers i read, to think "update=bad news!". And ask myself "should i continue playing?". I already deleted a few toons and consolidate everything in one server. I believe Guild War will not kill it and also the Hobitt film will help Turbine in the short term. I have little belief they will change their ways. 2013 is a more interesting horizon. There are real strong releases of online games that will hit the shelves.

I am done with ddo... I check back at these threads to see if Turbine will respond. It is pretty clear at this point someone at Turbine did not do a double nerf on accident. They won't respond to any of these threads or questions. I feel duped that they offer one pack that had decent exp... then nerfed it... then nerfed it to the point I am wasting my time even zoning in for a first time bonus. Just makes me not want to see what they have coming around the corner.

[Kinerd]

While I think the current xp return is a little low, even by my non zerger standards, it seems to me that if this statement is actually true, that is justification for fixing the xp rate on that quest. If its that much better than the alternatives, its out of whack.

This is a good point, but it has an even better counter-point: the challenges pack is by far the most expensive. The only reason I have ever seen any player give as a recommendation was the very strong XP, especially from a solo perspective and especially at the high levels. This case was only strengthened by the absurd implementation of epic levels (repeat and overlevel penalties). A mind with a conspiratorial bent would surely look at that (absurd!!!) implementation and say "aha, Turbine wants to make money by selling the one pack immune to those penalties; that is to say, the very expensive challenges!"... but then they absolutely obliterated the very strong XP!

There is simply no reason involved here. They (the people who make the final decisions) just don't care. Don't torture yourself by looking for justifications. There are no patterns in noise.

While 1K XP/minute tends to be looked down on by the hardcore crowd, 500 per minute isn't that bad going for a new player.

A 6 star level 20 run is currently 1600 XP for 5 minutes of quest time. 6 stars for barely 250 xp/min, counting loading turnaround.

[Vormaerin]

Funny thing...

As soon as people started posting specific XP/Minute numbers for House C challenges and compared them to XP/Minute numbers for quests...

All those in favor of the nerfs decided to go post on different threads.

I don't think anyone is *in favor* of these changes. Though a number of us don't think they are as catastrophic as some of you do.

The main objection is that people are using a completely arbitrary standard that is unquantifiable in the broader picture.

XP per minute for a quest? Your standard is "variable per variable". What good is that? The power leveling crowd on the forums almost certainly gets more xp per minute than the typical player. Whose "minutes" are we supposed to use? Perhaps the Devs should hire the fastest zergers and then say "hmm, can zerg in 2min so 2k xp". Or do you want them to look at reports on average time in quest and say "wow, most folks spend 25 minutes doing WW. Guess it should give 25k xp." ?

You also haven't explained if that's 1k/minute with first time bonus, bravery bonus, tome, pot, and shrine? Or what you should be getting on a fourth run after the first time bonuses are gone?

Most, though not all, of the challenges do have a fixed time frame. But xp is still variable. How many stars should you need to get to meet your 'adequate' xp level? Do you mean first time or second time? With what xp bonuses active?

The standard of 'xp/minute' is meaningless. Its just a bunch of anecdotes and the resulting expectations. Its not something the devs can meaningfully use as a criterion.

[Kinerd]

Strongly disagree! XP / min is dimension / dimension. So long as you're consistent with whose dimension you use, we'll be way better off than we currently are, which is random XP values that have nothing to do with anything. That you will get slightly different results depending on whose and which dimension you use doesn't mean you should disregard the process entirely.

The point is to at least consider the second dimension.

[Vormaerin]

That you will get slightly different results depending on whose and which dimension you use doesn't mean you should disregard the process entirely.

I think we disagree about whether its "slightly" different results, at least with regards to quests. The average group, from my experience, seems to take easily 5 to 10x as long as the "how long it should take" times given by zergers. Someone told a poster earlier today that Kobold's New Ringleader is great xp because you can finish it in 2 minutes. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people. But a lot more people won't finish it in less than 15-20 minutes (unless there's a zerger rushing through it for everyone).

Throw in all the variables like access to ship shrines, tomes, bravery, optionals, etc and it becomes a rather big dimension.

[Carkolda]

The argument here is some quests provide better xp while others provide less. Here's an example:

You can skip all the boxes in KNR and get it done in about 3-4 minutes. You also, on first run through with elite BB, get over 4k xp on it. There's that 1k/minute

You can solo The Pit, and again with tome and elite BB, you get north of 35k. I've known people to get it done in about 25 minutes, and I myself have gotten it done in about 45... and a zerger I am not.

And those are Free To Play quests. There's no reason why paid content (and extremely expensive paid content at that) should provide xp on par with.... say... Garrison's Missing Pack or Sunken Sewer.

Those who say that the xp/minute (I had to laugh at the "minute" comment, because last I checked, a minute is a measure of 60 seconds) is an unfair benchmark clearly have never TR'd (or double-TR'd). There are guides, suggestions, quest lists, plans, held levels, etc.... all of that goes into planning a TR or Double TR. If you aren't making 1k per minute on your TR, you're spending a LOT of time running other stuff. Just think about it. A Double TR Cap to 20 is 4.3 million xp. Even at the 1k/minute xp run, you're still talking about 4,300 minutes (or 71 hours) of continuous questing.

So yes, 1k xp/minute is appropriate. Because those of us who have to deal with that monumental of an xp mountain need to churn appropriately. So when we see a pack we paid a lot of turbine points for go from "good repeatability" to "absolute garbage," Yeah, we're going to get upset.

[Ancient]

XP per minute for a quest? Your standard is "variable per variable". What good is that?

Do you drive a car? MPH stands for Miles per hours... KPH (Kilometers) if you are in a metric area. In statistics it is quite normal to use a normalizing factor (the denominator) so you are comparing apples to apples.

For the challenges, it is fairly easy to figure out who's minute to use. There is a set minimum time limit on every challenge. For quests, it is more subjective but it is still pretty easy.

Remember that it was Turbine who initiated this issue (along with the nerd rage on the forums). The claim was that the challenges were over powered exp. One challenge did need adjustments, and the numbers of XP/hour were thrown around as proof. The resulting double nerf really hit the House C challenges hard (I don't care about eveningstar challenges, bad xp and bad loot means that they could remove them from the game and I might not notice).

The reason to quote xp/minute in quests to is demonstrate that the remaining challenges should have been left alone... and that in fact some of the challenges were sub-par xp/minute even before the first nerf.

[Vormaerin]

There are guides, suggestions, quest lists, plans, held levels, etc.... all of that goes into planning a TR or Double TR.
.

Sadly for your argument, I do have TRed characters. Again, you are taking an arbitrary benchmark based on a certain playstyle as if its universal fact. Not to mention it doesn't address the issue of what xp for whose minutes.

On the xp side... should it include the optionals? Is that with first time bonuses, tomes, pots, BB, ship shrines? Or is that what you expect running it a fifth or sixth time?

On the "minutes" side? Even assuming soloing the Pit is normal behavior (which its not), are we using your friend's 25min as the benchmark or your 45 min? Should that reward level be based on blitzing through the minimum amount of the content possible? KNR might be 1kxp/minute for a certain playstyle, but its not for most people.

Because certain people zerg quests, does that mean that challenges have to be set to zerger benchmarks that most folks never see? If challenges are giving zerger xp to the majority of players (who get 1/2 or less of that rate), doesn't that result in the challenge packs being far more valuable than anything else they could be doing for xp? Which seems unlikely to be the dev's intent.

[Ancient]

You have several bad assumptions in your post.

First, the Cannith challenges never... ever... gave zerger xp on repeat runs. It gave solid xp, but a top TR group could do much better on other quests. There was one eveningstar challenge giving too much experience... the majority of challenges actually gave very bad levels of experience per minute even before the first nerf.

Second, the issue of benchmarks for quests was opened by Turbine when they nerfed the challenge quests... Stating that they gave more xp than they should implies an acceptable level of xp per effort/time.

Third, We don't need exact math to know that 10k per minute in a quest is better xp than 200 xp per minute in a challenge... Worrying about the fifth decimal place of accuracy on that comparison is looking for an excuse to miss the point.

To address the specific nuances, Tomes/pots/ship shrines are all supposed to be bonus xp and they all apply equally to different quests... They are non-issues. Bravery bonus can also be ignored since it does not apply to repeat runs. The other questions can be answered simply by looking at the decisions that would be made by a person trying to optimize xp/minute... if the bonus is worth the time (like Delera's 2) then include it. If doing the bonus would lower the xp/minute then don't. The fact we cannot pin the completion time down to an exact microsecond is once again... missing the point.

Fourth, there isn't a magic lever at the start of a House C challenge you can pull to get an automatic five star completion in the minimum amount of time. The fact that someone can get decent xp out of a challenge would not mean that everyone can. The counter-point is true however, at the moment... NO ONE can get decent xp out of a repeat house C challenge run.

The two best House C farm challenges were buying time and time is money (the short ones). Trying to get good xp from these involved five minutes of frantic effort (which I found fun). Compare and contrast this to what I did to earn 7 epic destiny points a few days ago.... Zone in, go stand where I'm asked too, then recall. Repeat dozens of times for 20k xp every two minutes.

Recap:
Pike -> 10k xp / minute
Play the challenge -> about 1k xp/ minute on the good ones, about 200 xp/minute on the bad ones

It isn't the tomes or quest optionals that are the problem. The problem is that 10,000 xp per minute is FIFTY times more xp per minute than the 200 xp/minute provided by some of the House C challenges post nerf. 50! FIFTY... Five-Oooohhh, as in one hour of standing in place nets me more xp than two solid days (no sleep) of running some of the House C challenges.

The only good thing about this nerf is that it as people provide numbers, it is getting to be more and more fun illustrating how ridiculous the nerf was in the first place!