Challenges- change the format suggestion

[Captain_Wizbang]

Right now, the ONLY thing challenges contribute to the game is XP.

You can drop loot anywhere. so take that out of this equation.

My proposal is to make challenges a separate XP table altogether.

Besides the current ddo-store purchase, I propose a second store purchase, to double or even triple the XP.

We have large enough segment of the player base that looks at XP @ minute, and this helps those in need of bumping that up a little.

Challenges are not part of ANY story line, they were thrown in to help obtain House C favor, and are "stand alone" adventures. Therefore lending itself to the only viable asset, XP.

If they are going to be part of this game (not my vote) then give them a better functionality. Make them XP farms.

[Captain_Wizbang]

I'm totally surprised this thread didn't get some feedback from the xp@minute players.

[kafrielveddicus]

Our guild runs these often and heavy, but of course we are only allowed to run them when our XP is capped as we are not allowed to earn XP from the challenges.

I find the challenges have a lot of great rewards for running them;

Monster Manual kills and types
Access to several elixirs and potions
Cog of Masterful Craftsmenship
and most of all great gear that can also be crafted on!!

Don't care about the XP, and in some cases these are so easy, no XP should be handed out!

[Captain_Wizbang]

Our guild runs these often and heavy, but of course we are only allowed to run them when our XP is capped as we are not allowed to earn XP from the challenges.

I find the challenges have a lot of great rewards for running them;

Monster Manual kills and types
Access to several elixirs and potions
Cog of Masterful Craftsmenship
and most of all great gear that can also be crafted on!!

Don't care about the XP, and in some cases these are so easy, no XP should be handed out!

That would be the other end of the debate, remove XP totally.

[Kinerd]

To quote MadFloyd, who to be clear should be commended for such communication, "The design intent was to offer something not only different, but re-playable and more strategic. Many quests merely require the player to get from point A to point B; challenges were designed to give the player agency to form a plan and have some degree of control over not just success but the degree of success. "

As such, I disagree with your fundamental assertion; namely, that "Right now, the ONLY thing challenges contribute to the game is XP." Especially since challenges have seen nothing but superficial and quantitative changes since their implementation, I think it's pretty clear that challenges were a grand experiment and nothing more, expressly made to be discarded (and if they could make money off them in the interim, all the better). Especially noteworthy is how (some of) the FR challenges are clearly more fun to play while having clearly worse xp/min. What challenges were expressly designed to and did contribute was quest design information. As such, they should not be viewed primarily as vehicles to satisfy any player desires. This seems odd in vacuo for something sold on the Live servers, but in context it makes sense.

.

As an aside, the idea of buying 2x or 3x experience in the store is clearly a non-starter.