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

[rdasca]

I'm a bit confused, on one hand your saying the players need a bunch of XP to level destinies and this change will make it harder to do that because their won't be as much XP available. Then you seem to indicate that running a quest over and over is not your cup-o-tea and then you say its a slap in the face to people that don't run quests over and over until their eyes bleed... If that is what your saying I've lost you somewhere. The only ones that are hit by this change are those that were planning on lining up a running this quest after cap to level destinies..

Sorry for being confusing;

Yes, it takes a lot of XP to level EDs.
No, running the same quest 10000 times over and over again is not my cup-of-tea.
Yes, it is a slap in the face.

Just because I do not like running any one quest over and over again, as in back to back to back, ect... I do like having quick quest that I can run to get good XP when I have nothing else going on. So yes I have ran Rusted Blades many times, nowhere as much as someone who is ED XP capped but a bunch.

I think we need to ask ourselves if Turbine ever intended for us to earn Cap and all destines over a weekend of playing, I bet the answer is "No".

The answer may be no, but that is what happened, so now they want to take that option away, those that did not do this no longer have the option if they do not do so before the change. Also you could add that Turbine did not intend people to TR in 37 hours either but it has happened, do they need to nerf XP in quest so they can slow down people on the TR train?

I'm not even a 100% convinced they intended the ED system to be traversed in a single life time.

Too bad, not everyone likes or wants to be on the TR train, in fact some of us actually hate TRing and see it as a chore, yes I have TRs and will most likely do a few more, but it does not mean I like it, and I have a few toons that will never TR am I not supposed to get all the fate points that I want on them?

Personally I don't like quests that can be run in 1-2 minutes by killing a single objective. I'm also not fond of Kill X number of... either.

Me either actually, but having a few quest like this are a good thing, not every quest should take an hour to do either, sometimes people just do not have that much time in game.

I actually believe the Challenge System was what was intended as "XP Filler" for the Epic content, its the only way I can rationally think why they would make the FR challenge tokens BTC instead of BTA avoiding the outcry that happened when Cannith Challenge was initially BTC.

Your opinion, mine is, challenges suck, and FR challenges suck the worst, horrible XP, low payouts, and sub-par loot, IMO not one good reason to run them more than once for the favor then done.


As Cyr said, there are other quests out there that can be done as quick as this one, and people wanting to farm for XP will just switch to them, but what happens when Turbine does the same thing to those quests? Sooner or later, unless you play 24/7 it will take years to get your toon capped, there has to be a medium between capping in a week-end and capping sometime in 2015.

Oh and signed of raising the challenge XP back up, please Turbine give me some sort of reason to run them.

[Dawnsfire]

I think it is pretty easy to call it a nerf. The current 'end game' (for many) in DDO is collecting a staggering amount of xp to level EDs. Until they 'fix' that (in one way or another) any reduction in fast ways to collect that xp is a nerf.

What they did here was simply to increase the end game grind. Not welcome at all

[Missing_Minds]

NEW: The quest "End of the Road" has a new additional quest objective. You must now kill a certain number of Netherese forces in addition to killing the demon to complete the quest.

That makes me a bit sad. It completely ruins the sneak playstyle.

While I have no idea how many people have zerged it via chug (invis) and run, true sneaking people are penalized now.

While yes, you are dealing with sell swords, you are also dealing with Netherise that are NO slouches when it comes to magic. They also know about you and what you've been up to.
Why wouldn't they instruct their security forces to be on guard and watchful? You'd think their spell casters would have "see invis" active at a minimum, let alone posted with melee and/or archers, ready to cast dispell magic on those invisible or at least glitterdust.

No... Now it has been (just from the sounds, I have zero clue what the kill count must be) turned into a storm the castle, leave no one alive. Gee... a murderous bunch are we.

[Hokiewa]

I think it is pretty easy to call it a nerf. The current 'end game' (for many) in DDO is collecting a staggering amount of xp to level EDs. Until they 'fix' that (in one way or another) any reduction in fast ways to collect that xp is a nerf.

What they did here was simply to increase the end game grind. Not welcome at all

Limitless 1-2 minute runs for 30k+ xp? Not a nerf at all. A correction.

[rdasca]

You contradict yourself here. You were running one quest over and over and over again. You can still do that, albeit just a bit slower.

Actually I didn't, you could run any quest over and over again with slower XP gain.

I suspect Turbine never intended players to feel obligated to grind out 18 fate points. I suspect they intended three twists like 4-2-1 or so on to be a sort of "completionist" level undertaking that would give something for the 1% to work on while everyone else could be well satisfied by a few fate points. The twists really are icing on a very big cake, and running in a maxed destiny even without twists is a big boost.

It may help explain why they didn't change it earlier - what started out as "the 1%" later turned into a significant chunk of the playerbase and then later we/they started becoming frustrated and complaining about how hard getting 18 fate points is when it was supposed to be really hard for most of us to get all along!

Then no one at turbine ever played this game or any MMO, nor is anyone at Turbine a student of human nature. I personally think people at Turbine knew that ED XP would be maxed by most players, what they did not see coming was the sheer number of people that would do it as quick as a lot have done so.

3 million XP is a 2nd life TR, there are a lot of those running around it is pretty easy to see that most would be willing to grind the XP for how many fate points they want for their toons. Heck look at all the post from when EDs first came out with the number of people complaining that there were not enough EDs to farm out enough fate points to unlock 4-4-4.

Limitless 1-2 minute runs for 30k+ xp? Not a nerf at all. A correction.

IYO, not mine and I get 18k on one toon and 20k on another, not everyone XP capped before stepping inside the quest.

[Dawnsfire]

Limitless 1-2 minute runs for 30k+ xp? Not a nerf at all. A correction.

Except I never ran it that way. I have never been one for mirror farming. I ran the quest solo, went all the way back for my reward and ran it again until ransack every week. I actually like to collect all my loot. The 'Power Gamers' did that **** and now the rest of us suffer. Thanks 'Power Gamers', I now have one less quest to run (depending on how bad they screw up the XP).

[Seventoe]

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.

Optional XP doesnt decay at cap. I maxed fate points by running VON3 into the ground. 4+k per optional, forever.

[Gkar]

All of you are missing the point of the post. I don't consider them nerfed in the strict meaning of the term, hence why I put " ". We all saw the nerf coming to Rusted Blades.

However, we saw it from day 1 of MotU live. So my point is: there is no point in changing it NOW, even if it is a FAIR FIX, like you AND ME are saying.

If we all agree its a fair fix, there is a point in changing it. If not now, when?

[Saravis]

Isn't it a funny coincidence that they release an epic destiny sale the same time that they nerf the xp in Rusted Blades?

[hit_fido]

I personally think people at Turbine knew that ED XP would be maxed by most players, what they did not see coming was the sheer number of people that would do it as quick as a lot have done so.

Only in the context of 2 minute/25k runs would anyone believe "most" players would grind the 10+ million XP so they could twist 4-2-1 instead of a modest 2-1 or 1-1-1. Turbine surely didn't factor in that kind of xp rate; under normal circumstances most players would look at the necessary grind and decide to pass, or only chew off a little, much like players who are willing to TR twice for a 36 point build but who forgo the completionist grind.

The difference is that there is no real shortcut to completionist like there has been for 18 fate points. People see the path to 18 fate and it falls on the "doable" side of their line and like you say, human nature kicks in and they get to work on doing it.

Could be wrong, just more guessing re: Turbine's design intentions.

[Cernunan]

Isn't it a funny coincidence that they release an epic destiny sale the same time that they nerf the xp in Rusted Blades?

[Tid12]

If we all agree its a fair fix, there is a point in changing it. If not now, when?

When we all started stating that this would have become (and it is now) an XP fest as soon as MotU was launched.

Now, it hurts casual, not-so-casual and new players. The vets have already their Destinies maxed out on their mains.

Leave it as it is, don't change it after SIX months.

[Postumus]

This.

When people come whining to the forums that everyone should use that method to level and not play the rest of the game while levelling it is only reasonable to expect corrective action.

Exactly. How many "This game is stupid because I ran House of Rusted Blades until my eyes bled" threads were there? 20? More?


When people neglect the rest of the game to zerg one quest over and over, that's a design flaw by the developers.

[muny21]

First they take away the challenges now they want to take away this. Who is it hurting if someone wants to farm one quest? If you like to play every quest there is nothing stopping you but them nerfing the xp that people like to grind for is hurting their play-style.

Good job Turbine keep doing this to turn players away from playing. Soon enough you will get your wish and the game will be completely dead and you all can collect unemployment.

[Postumus]

The 'Power Gamers' did that **** and now the rest of us suffer. Thanks 'Power Gamers', I now have one less quest to run (depending on how bad they screw up the XP).

If it is any consolation, from the posts on the forums it appears that many folks who did this got bored and quit DDO shortly thereafter.

[arjiwan]

My opinion for this change? This is the quick fix. They can't spend or their schedules can't afford to fix this in a more meaningful way.

The intention of a dev states: (paraphrasing), "My intention is a stealth quest without using stealth". Instead of fixing the quest, like adding some small encounters, killing the guards before they sound the alarm or more mobs will spawn. Instead, they do this. Instead of making this better, they quick fix it. It is really depressing that this is how they change the quests.

[BladeTricks]

Do they really think this is the kind of "fix" that's gonna make players all of a sudden run a wide variety of content to get fate points? Really??

Everyone will just go farm the next best XP/min quest. Just watch the new ED farming LFMs after the patch goes live...

Then what? Every patch they nerf the top XP/min quest?

[MRMechMan]

Then what? Every patch they nerf the top XP/min quest?

Historically, yes.

Too many people running challenges? Nerf it, burn it with fire!!!!


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

[sirgog]

The XP system in this game is broken beyond belief and exploiting the big XP quests was a player-created partial fix to a terribly designed system.

Fix the problem, not the symptoms. Despite being a clear anti-exploit* 'fix', this change overall will make the game worse.



(* not using the word exploit to mean cheat here but as a term for a sequence break)

[Shade]

Copying my reply here since this is more on topic:

It's ludicrous imo it will only have a purely negative impact on the game. If Rusted blade was the only top xp/min quest, and all the rest were balanced this might work.. But that is definetely NOT the case, there are several other with as good if not better xp/min, which are just as easy.

What the devs don't seem to get at all lately when they keep nerfing only individual content on XP:

It only rudes the fun of the game for the majortiy of players, as most do what they see LFMS for, and the LFMs will only get made for quests which have the greatest reward/time ratio.

By destroying one quest, when there are at least 4 others which offer the same if not better xp/min, all you do is ruin the game by forcing players into an even smaller set of content. (Not to mention challenges, which were always far behind all of these quests and have been utterly destroyed by this terrible decisions)

Horrible game design. How they have not figured out these basic things 6+ years into the game is astounding.

Devs, you have access to massive amounts of feedback. I personally listed all the top XP quests months ago and explained exactly what gets ran.. Yet this happens. No effort, no reward.

The game gets worse, the devs continue to not listen to feedback. Whats the point.

So next patch everyone runs the higher xp/min Death undone (or one of 2 other quests with the same xp/min if you changed that one too) instead of having the choice between it and rusted blades... Thats an improvement? Not seeing it. Limit the content worth running and you limit the players variety, fun and interest in playing your game.

On the bright side I do appreicate the effort to at least give a bone at the same time as doing the nerf, so at the very least players who run the quest to 100% completion (EG: 0.0001% of runs) will not get nerfed, thats good.. But minor.