Notes of 12/6: Rusted blades and End of the Road "nerfed"

[maddmatt70]

OOh they bumped up belly in the beast xp. That is one of the best quests in the game. If they tripled the xp in there and made it worthwhile to run that would be awesome.

[maddmatt70]

End of the road is cheese currently. I wish they gave the mobs see invisibility, but at least they gave them a kill optional. I do not mind the rusted blades nerf. I and many others have run that quest far too many times. We all could use a change I would bet and then run some other good xp quests instead. Not a real improvement, but least a change of pace.

[MRMechMan]

This is what happens when they decide epic quest base xp=14-18k, no matter difficulty, N/H/E, length of quest, etc.

PIN THE XP TO THE QUEST, is that so hard?

CiTW, MA, LOB xp is so freaking bad...why??

IF you are gonna start messing with base xp, there are SOOOOO many places to look that are more important than rusted blades. It was ran a lot but because it was good xp and we need so much of it...and raids are horrible xp in comparison.

[KainLionheart]

exploit early, exploit often

I see what you did there, and I like it. In my mind, you win this thread.



As for the nerf / fix <please delete as you feel appropriate> I never actually got to experience 72 hours of pure rust-fess XP. I do however agree with some of the prior points made, I do agree with some of the things Shade pointed out.


So there Was anoTher game that went free to play recently, Of couRse I wont say what it is (theres a little puzzle there ;P )

I'll be downloading it and trying it out this weekend but from what I have heard so far (from real life friends not online reports) its F2P model is far worse than DDO's, so thats something in our favour at least

[Kmnh]

Rusted blades is not even in the top 3 quests for xp farming. It's ran so often because it's easy to pike. One person runs to the weapons rack, 5 wait at the bell. Everyone tabs back into the game to kill the boss when they hear the boss complaining.

I don't like pikefests like that, so I'm glad that it's being changed.

[arjiwan]

And calling this a "quick fix" is sort of funny actually.

The "quick fix" means, the "fix" provided was a quick and wasn't given a thought. But the time they tried to to do this wasn't quick, yes.

[Ape_Man]

OOh they bumped up belly in the beast xp. That is one of the best quests in the game. If they tripled the xp in there and made it worthwhile to run that would be awesome.

Yes, this quest is AWESOME.

This nerf was silly, there are other XP farms. The better mousetrap simply breads a smarter mouse. We will find the cheese.

[Atremus]

Why change End of the Road? Sneaking was a nice change of pace. Just make the scrolls mandatory and let us sneak the rest of the quest.

[Justicesar]

Rusted blades is not even in the top 3 quests for xp farming. It's ran so often because it's easy to pike. One person runs to the weapons rack, 5 wait at the bell. Everyone tabs back into the game to kill the boss when they hear the boss complaining.

I don't like pikefests like that, so I'm glad that it's being changed.

What are the top 3??

[smatt]

Who cares? Oh wait I guess some do.... Cool...

I simply cant' do this kind of running any more... 47 runs of the smae 1 minute blech fest in a day.... Yippeeeeeeee!

They should've nerfed it after the first week though. 15k a min is way to high in ANY quest....

[arminius]

Yes it is true that we'll just find the next best xp per minute quest and run that into the ground.

However...

People reserved HoRB to get the full benefit. If the other quests that are good and are next in line for farming were not reserved on that character then the only recourse is TRing, soley for the metagame reason of resetting the completion count in those quests? That will suck hard.

The game designers set this up so that the only way to gain the benefits of twists is to gain what, 16 million xp, and the only way to do that physically is to either reset completion counts on a gadzillion TRs or get to 25 with as few repeat quests as possible and hope that the completion count hasn't destroyed your chances. Either way is too metagame. Who sits around and says, I'd love to rescue the princess in the castle but I can't, it would give me too many repeats and I need to reserve rescuing the princess for 2 months so that I can rescue her 400 times then and maximize my twist points.

[Doomcrew]

We all knew it was coming but that still does not make it right, it is just another slap in the face of players who do not cheat and do not take advantage of loopholes like this quest to get all the XP they need in a week-end.

IF those players didn't/don't play that way, how does this affect them at all?

[MrkGrismer]

fix or not, the change to rusted blades is a "nerf", simply because optional xp will decay every completion even when you are capped. Now, if they change that mechanic so that optional xp doesn't decay once you hit character xp cap, then there would be no problem at all with this change. Unfortunately, after a few runs of doing the optional, the total xp available in the quest will become less than it is currently, thus nerf.

If it is true, I agree that they really should fix that so it doesn't decay at capped xp. Although I will admit I have never noticed any reduction, but it is very unusual for me to repeat a quest more than 5 times on the same character.

Personally I like running the optionals in Rusted Blades.

[rimble]

IF those players didn't/don't play that way, how does this affect them at all?

Yup, I've been off grinding various Eberron Epics for old epics I want, and a few choice newer things...Druid's Curse for Ivy Wraps, A Stay at the Inn for random high-level chests, and even HoRB for Dun'Robar rings...I really couldn't care less about this change. Sure, I'll get less XP during my Dun'Robar ring runs, but whatever.

I still think the game could do with a little more 'cooldowns' than absolute permanent penalties--repeat penalties continue even at cap, but they also degrade at some acceptable rate too (including the degradation on optionals as well).

[danotmano1998]

With the amount of times people came to the forums and complained about zerging the same quest over and over for easy xp, it's not surprising in the least that the Dev's decided to "adjust" things.

[Doomcrew]

I still think the game could do with a little more 'cooldowns' than absolute permanent penalties--repeat penalties continue even at cap, but they also degrade at some acceptable rate too (including the degradation on optionals as well).

Wonder if Turbine could manage something along those lines ...

An XP penalty similar to the ransack code. A declining payout that resets
after time.

It might be the answer to both sides of this discussion.

[arminius]

The other effect people haven't mentioned much is that grinding ED xp involves being on a gimped destiny. That never mattered when you spent the whole time in Rusted Blades, in fact, it was often a boon when you got Shadowdancer's d-door, etc.

But boy it won't be pleasant to be running actual quests where you actually care about performing well with an ED that gives you next to no benefit. And not just once or twice, enough to fill 16 million xp's worth. At that point, who'd care if you became a stronger character in the end? Playing for months at half strength just to gain an incremental power boost at the end of it may not end up being worth it at all.

[Hendrik]

Better late then never.

[Alavatar]

What are the top 3??

First rule of Fight Club ...

[rimble]

The other effect people haven't mentioned much is that grinding ED xp involves being on a gimped destiny. That never mattered when you spent the whole time in Rusted Blades, in fact, it was often a boon when you got Shadowdancer's d-door, etc.

But boy it won't be pleasant to be running actual quests where you actually care about performing well with an ED that gives you next to no benefit. And not just once or twice, enough to fill 16 million xp's worth. At that point, who'd care if you became a stronger character in the end? Playing for months at half strength just to gain an incremental power boost at the end of it may not end up being worth it at all.

Although I'm not a huge fan of how the system works, I have stumbled upon some pretty neat abilities in some of the EDs that I have had to play through. Abilities that I had previously disregarded just from reading them, so there is some value there. Regardless, I haven't found being off-destiny to hurt up through EH. If you're a big/exclusively EE player, I can see some problems with that. I would still prefer being able to always be set up with the ED/Twists I want, but it's not super terrible.