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

[Impaqt]

meh. Seem like good and expected changes tome.

[Missing_Minds]

Yep... and it's a FUN 44 hours play time watching your powers grow as you level up in EDs that benefit you...

But if you want to get more fate points past 2/1/1 or so, you're going to have to get 7+ million (more than you got running 1-25) playing epic quests in crappy EDs that barely help your character at all.

Not saying they should have left the XP alone, but the ED system is pretty broken.

They dangle a carrot.

We choose to make those runs.

This "grind" is the standard MO of MMOs. I think it is safe to say that you realize that as much as I do.

There was a time when gamers were much more willing to work for what they wanted and complain less. But those times are nearly gone if they haven't left already. Oh sure, we still have a few of the older holdouts claiming things are too easy, but when the name of the real game is fun, is nigh impossible to create 1 size fits all for fun.

Is it possible we can think of a different way to gain such powers, such points (a delay of power mechanism) that would be more fun than a standard linear XP grind fest?
Quest and favor hunting perhaps? I don't know honestly.

[Tiamas]

And another stupid decision on turbines list of stupid decisions. Bible starts looking like a flyer compared to that list.

Btw, expecting a nerf is not a valid reason for the nerf itself.

• Yes it was good XP/min. (If optional XP decreases on repetitions it isn't anymore after like 5 runs)
• Yes, theres better XP/min.
• Perhaps it was the most run quest (not much fighting) for destiny farm.
• Yes, Turbine can probably track that.
• No, "destroying" the reason people are running a quest is not a good motivation to run other stuff.
• Yes, buffing other quests (XP-wise) would be cool to have more options.

• Yes, it sucks that "exploit* early, exploit often" is still the way to go.

*we all know its not really exploiting here, but you get the point

[Chai]

Thing is EDs only need to be done once per toon.

Turebine did a great job making a game cater to casual gamer and powergamers alike with the NHE system, but people arent willing to accept this. On one side you get players claiming elite is too hard because they died in one elite quest one time and it wasted 45 min of their precious time they could have been spending farming xp elsewhere, and on the other side you got people claiming elite is far too easy when the expectation is that every new player with a week of tenure playing can handedly beat it. If people would just realize the standard is in place for a reason and play where they fit in that standard, there wouldnt be an issue.

As far as creating a game thats not a linear grindfest - forget it. The idea is to create a game that is fun enough where the immersion takes players mind off the fact that it is a linear grind fest. Once people get bored with specific aspects of the game, they begin to play the part of the game they hate as a means to an end, and that end is being more powerful in the part of the game they still like. If they can avoid playing ALL of that stuff and grind it out as fast as possible using one quest, they will, even though they claim to hate the grind.

Ive always found it kind of odd that people can hate 90% of a game and still keep coming back to play 10% of it. I dont see this in any other thing I have ever done. People who hate 90% of football dont play it or even follow it for instance. People who hate 90% of martial arts dont show up on a daily basis demanding a higher rank from the masters without having to do the work and put in the time. People who hate 90% of skateboarding or snowboarding dont skate or board.

I dont see a different way to make this all happen. The best way is to enjoy playing most if not all of the game. People that dont will continue to claim this was the only way to level their destinies, which is far from true. People that enjoy the entire game have all epics open to them to use to farm XP.

[Hendrik]

The real issue is, all other quests requires few months of grinding to get acces to real (not boring) content.

Huhwhat?

Are you sure your playing DDO? And if you do not like grinding then why in the Nine Hells are you spending months doing it then spend many more months grinding when you get to the 'real (not boring)' content?

The game is what you make of it, you have made it a grind.

Stop.

[Vellrad]

Huhwhat?

Are you sure your playing DDO? And if you do not like grinding then why in the Nine Hells are you spending months doing it then spend many more months grinding when you get to the 'real (not boring)' content?

The game is what you make of it, you have made it a grind.

Stop.

Try to get into epic elite on wizard without multiple past lifes and spell pen twisted. After having 90% + spells not getting through spell resist maybe you will understand.
And no, hard isn't answer, its done without even trying while sleeping.

[Kinerd]

Anytime that the community at large decides that the only acceptable method for completion of a certain quest involves running to the end as quickly as possible.... fighting as little as possible.... and completing the quest in 1-2 minutes....

(and repeating for the next hour...)

... it is a bad thing IMO.

It takes all fun from the average guy who wants to actually do the quest, more or less, as intended. The guy who wants to enjoy doing the quest.

This is perhaps an important point: could it have been designed or otherwise intended as a zerg fest? Look at the various changes Under the Big Top has gone through. There is a 0% chance that someone accidentally put a tiny hill at exactly the needed spot to jump and grab the first ledge. Though not an immediately obvious option, there is a 100% chance it was intentionally designed. When this more efficient option is inevitably removed, doesn't it make more sense to conclude that the devs changed their minds (or someone else's mind changed the devs) rather than that the zerg options were in some way NWAI, accidents, exploits?

I never join any quest where I am expected to stand somewhere and wait... and not touch anything.

I do not join quests to avoid half or more of the quest.

I join to go in, with six people, who I expect wil alll be contributing in some manner.
I join to enjoy the quest. Usually by killing monsters.

That's all well and good, but you could always make your own LFM to do so. Once the quest is nerfed or the "exploit" is removed, no one can put up an LFM to do it the old way. You talk about how you want the freedom to run the quest your way, but by supporting this decision you are doing so at the expense of other peoples' freedom to run the quest their way.

[Thrudh]

Try to get into epic elite on wizard without multiple past lifes and spell pen twisted. After having 90% + spells not getting through spell resist maybe you will understand.
And no, hard isn't answer, its done without even trying while sleeping.

Not every epic elite has drow in it. And there are spells are do bypass spell pen for when you ARE fighting drow.

[Junts]

I haven't even started on another char for ED's yet, though my first is very well through (I'm at 3-2-1 presently, 8 destiny levels from 4-2-1 and being done with it), but I'll observe this, which is also similar to my observation about TRing:

Melee characters have an easier time with swapping destinies around - they're usually just fine without any destiny benefits. Twists let them do some awesome stuff, certainly (especially twisting fury stuff into dreadnaught or shadowdancer), but the time spent even in a completely irrelevant destiny is not that noticable as long as you're doing EH and below quests. Also, those characters are able to simply drop into fury before they can twist it for quests where they really need that dps (or into dreadnaught when they need aoes from all the cleaving goodness, etc). Further, a pretty high percentage of destinies have -something- that can help the melees be effective, whether its smaller dps upgrades (annoint and purify weapon, Reign, etc) or survivability boosts (rejuv cocoon, pr bonuses, dodge bonuses, etc). 3-5 of those destinies have are ones they can fight in while getting some buffs from the destiny, even if most of it is useless to them (sentinel, flowers, dreadnaught, fury, shadowdancer). That's basically half the tree.

Casters have two, maybe 3 destinies that do anything at all for them. They'll probably have real specs in both destinies and switch between. However, they also really want to twist the abilities from the other destiny (draconic abilities while magister, magister abilities while draconic) to stack DC or spell pen boosts together. All that other time in other destinies that basically don't help them in any way. Shiradi is the only other one that even interacts with elemental or dc spellcasting.

This is just like tring. Listen, melee past life feats are handy (hit, damage, healing amp) but hardly critical. Once you get 36 pt builds, unless you are a monk, you can survive quite well and often will never take a chosen pastlife feat. You could make a perfectly geared, ed mastered, 36 pt melee character with everything and if you had not done 3x fighter and 3x monk the difference would be barley noticable - a couple percent damage.

Casters are in the other boat. PL wiz, both passive and active, is incredible. PL fvs is very important. Even PL sorc applies to many (evoc dc) and sometimes pl cleric! Without these, you simply cant make a dominatingly effective caster the way you can make a dominatingly effective melee while skimping a little on tring.

The moral of my story is that being an amazing caster requires you to spend a lot more time in classes and destinies that don't actually help you be effective while you are in them than being a similarly amazing melee does. And I think there's a level to which that's a bit of a problem and fuels this whole situation. I have reaped a lot of EE exp leveling up my paladin in destinies that you would be amazed I played EE quests in, but it was ok because I had twisted the 1 or 2 abilities I really needed to be able to do my job, even if I was a draconic incarnation while I tanked that EE quest. It simply wasn't that noticable.

I think the casters feel a lot more that without having access to one - or both - dc boosting lines, or spell pen boosting lines, or elemental damage boosting lines, etc, they're simply not up to the EE task at all, so they have to seek out fairly mindless, easy experience because they're losing a lot more by being out of the 2 destinies that they're good in - whereas the melees have literally 2-3x as many destinies to choose from that provide useful benefits.

Gear doesn't help you make up dc and spell pen gaps the way it can help you make up ac, dps, and dodge gaps. Casters are at the mercy of the enhancement, destiny and feat/class lines a lot moreso than the melees are. They can't afford to skimp on multiple of them at the same time, and that really hits the people who didn't want to do 9 past lives in the teeth. They're just not really up to snuff when they're running around as dreadnaught casters who can't yet twist any strong abilities out of draconic or magister while they're doing it.

[Vellrad]

Wall of text

This is exactly what I'm thinking, and (in some way) what I tried to say, but I was unable to form it this way.
+1

[djl]

The ED system is terribly designed-- if it didn't force you into EDs that have little or no benefits to your class for 70% of the overall exp needed to unlock all fate points then it wouldn't be as necessary to use shortcuts like Dun Robar. But as it is, grinding out all your EDs by questing is a terribly tedious chore because the majority of them flat-out SUCK for your character. It's not fun at all.

If they would allow us to PICK what we wanted to get exp in, even if it came at a exp penalty, it would make the system a hell of a lot more fun to use. But because we're forced to be in the ED we want to level, people cheese it by grinding two-minute quests with high rewards so that they can get the grinding out of the way and be able to play their good EDs in "real" quests without feeling like they're throwing exp away.

[dogbreath68]

Turbine has been doing this since the beginning of the game.If anyone remembers running threnals when level cap was 10 and there was only 1 raid in the game tempest spine.You could run east west in no time and get to south.There you could run south all 3 chapters in less than 8 min,remember back then the gear was not good , and run get your end rewards and the chance at a +2 tome or vorpal or banisher or whatever the best was back then.Turbine then decided that wasnt good for the game so they put doors in and made you look for a chest with a key ,and dont forget the thousand slimes and puddings added in for gear damage.After all this said my point is if they cap us either by level or quests for 6 months at a time or more,what are players supposed to do? Quit playing til theres more content?They design these quests it seems with no testing or feedback at all,if it takes 6 months to put out new content the new stuff should be gone through with a fine toothed comb to see if things like rusted blades is possible,and if it is and it goes live then why change it?If its ok to release then why is it not ok to keep it?
People like me that cap quickly dont want to sit and wait,we want instant satisfaction.Giving us something and then taking it back is Turbines montra get used to it I have.Do I like it hell no,but I nor any of you can change it so just either roll with it or move on,sad to say that thats the only 2 options Turbine gives its long standing paying customers but its the way it is.So get out the today and run the **** out of it and move on monday..See you all at the portal.

[djl]

Turbine has been doing this since the beginning of the game.If anyone remembers running threnals when level cap was 10 and there was only 1 raid in the game tempest spine.You could run east west in no time and get to south.There you could run south all 3 chapters in less than 8 min,remember back then the gear was not good , and run get your end rewards and the chance at a +2 tome or vorpal or banisher or whatever the best was back then.Turbine then decided that wasnt good for the game so they put doors in and made you look for a chest with a key ,and dont forget the thousand slimes and puddings added in for gear damage.After all this said my point is if they cap us either by level or quests for 6 months at a time or more,what are players supposed to do? Quit playing til theres more content?They design these quests it seems with no testing or feedback at all,if it takes 6 months to put out new content the new stuff should be gone through with a fine toothed comb to see if things like rusted blades is possible,and if it is and it goes live then why change it?If its ok to release then why is it not ok to keep it?
People like me that cap quickly dont want to sit and wait,we want instant satisfaction.Giving us something and then taking it back is Turbines montra get used to it I have.Do I like it hell no,but I nor any of you can change it so just either roll with it or move on,sad to say that thats the only 2 options Turbine gives its long standing paying customers but its the way it is.So get out the today and run the **** out of it and move on monday..See you all at the portal.

For the record, I do NOT think that being able to completely max all your EDs in a week is good for the game. Once you do it, the only thing that is left is to grind Web or the new quests for gear... And then when you get that gear, you're done. There's nothing left to do on that toon, until the next update.

However, I also do not think forcing people to play in a method that gimps their strength in content designed to be challenging is good for the game either. It frustrates players and above-all else, it detracts from the draw of the ED system. It's supposed to grant your character great powers and make you survivable in 23+ content... But playing a melee destiny on a Wizard accomplishes little; so, if you want to get any exp out of the harder content or run any EEs, you have to swap to an ED you've already maxed and therefore forfeit any exp gains. Since EDs came out, players have suggested many great workarounds for the terrible design of the system, the most popular being "half exp for a non-active destiny."

[sirgog]

For the record, I do NOT think that being able to completely max all your EDs in a week is good for the game. Once you do it, the only thing that is left is to grind Web or the new quests for gear... And then when you get that gear, you're done. There's nothing left to do on that toon, until the next update.

It was possible to cap a character in an active week of fairly casual play (or in 24 hours of focused play) when the game's level cap was 16.

The sky didn't fall in - people just made alts. Most players in a Shroud or VOD raid would have 3-10 capped characters and (timer permitting) would be able to bring whichever one the raid leader wanted to the raid.

How many people do you know that have multiple level 23+ alts since MOTU? I did a poll on the epic XP system a while back, and nearly everyone that had 6+ level 20s had abandoned at least 3 of them at level 20, 21 or 22.

IMO the present epic XP system should be completely overhauled before it kills the game.

[Junts]

It was possible to cap a character in an active week of fairly casual play (or in 24 hours of focused play) when the game's level cap was 16.

The sky didn't fall in - people just made alts. Most players in a Shroud or VOD raid would have 3-10 capped characters and (timer permitting) would be able to bring whichever one the raid leader wanted to the raid.

How many people do you know that have multiple level 23+ alts since MOTU? I did a poll on the epic XP system a while back, and nearly everyone that had 6+ level 20s had abandoned at least 3 of them at level 20, 21 or 22.

IMO the present epic XP system should be completely overhauled before it kills the game.

Personally, it makes me way happier that i can focus on 2 or 3 characters and get so much more time on them where I feel like I'm still advancing vs 2 years ago when I barely played Jaerlach because the character was basically done being equipped besides possibly some 20th tome rewards. At the time, playing my main, favorite character felt like a waste of time because he was not an efficient soloer/short manner for income (scrolls, other drops etc) and had only the rare occaisional raid to do where he could gain something. In order to have my time be productive I had to either play my caster (for solo and short man questing) or run less-equipped characters who still needed items.

I've been back for just over 2 weeks, I'm 25 and my destinies are climbing rapidly, but even after 4-2-1 and the (relatively few, fairly easily obtainable) items I have to make to update my equipment, I will almost never feel like my time spent on the character is wasted - he could be working on the other destinies that I don't have to cap for 4-2-1 fatepoints, he may be doing shortman EE runs for loot drops, he may be taking a difficult quest or raid (end of the road EE, etc etc), but it will be productive.

I never grabbed Jaerlach to do an epic ADQ 2 years ago for any reason besides that the stunning monk or caster were on epic timer for the quest.

This is -so- much better.

Then again, I expanded past 3 alts only reluctantly because I ran out of things to do on the first 3. I'd rather have a game where I never ran out of things to do on those 3. The current system is that game.

[maddmatt70]

It was possible to cap a character in an active week of fairly casual play (or in 24 hours of focused play) when the game's level cap was 16.

The sky didn't fall in - people just made alts. Most players in a Shroud or VOD raid would have 3-10 capped characters and (timer permitting) would be able to bring whichever one the raid leader wanted to the raid.

How many people do you know that have multiple level 23+ alts since MOTU? I did a poll on the epic XP system a while back, and nearly everyone that had 6+ level 20s had abandoned at least 3 of them at level 20, 21 or 22.

IMO the present epic XP system should be completely overhauled before it kills the game.

I do not know. I agree with you that the epic xp system is not great. I personally have 9 level 25 characters none of which are capped destiny wise, but they all pretty much have the twists they want. I had to run alot of dun-robar and the like to do so otherwise it would not be possible to get that much destiny xp. Of bigger concern to me is the gear. I do not think there is enough interesting gear to strive for. I am looking forward to the epic gianthold which should bring alot of gear to go for.

I know alot of people that have finished up their characters' destiny xp on the 2-3 characters they play and have been done for a long time basically. If those folks played 6 or so characters they might still be playing. It is almost like destiny xp without farming is too hard to get, but with farming it might be too easy and/or there is not enough to strive for in game besides destiny xp.

I am also really looking forward to the enhancement pass which I hope gives me a lot of fun builds to try out.

[silinteresting]

i have come to the conclusion that the makers of our game have designed a pretty cool system, that when played the way i think they want us to play will keep us playing for quite a while. the way i believe they want us to play is to start with a class then level said class to level 25 in said classes destiny. when this is done then you tr into another class and just keep repeating untill all classes and destinies are complete.i no that there are not 12 destinies yet but i bet there will be. doing this way you get completionest and have the benefit of understanding all classes better, all destinies capped and a pretty powerful character( unless caster then you may need to tr a few more times).

if the above is not right then i see no reason to nerf a quests xp in anyway.

then again after reading above myself i may be just full of it.

your friend sil

[MeliCat]

It was possible to cap a character in an active week of fairly casual play (or in 24 hours of focused play) when the game's level cap was 16.

The sky didn't fall in - people just made alts. Most players in a Shroud or VOD raid would have 3-10 capped characters and (timer permitting) would be able to bring whichever one the raid leader wanted to the raid.

How many people do you know that have multiple level 23+ alts since MOTU? I did a poll on the epic XP system a while back, and nearly everyone that had 6+ level 20s had abandoned at least 3 of them at level 20, 21 or 22.

IMO the present epic XP system should be completely overhauled before it kills the game.

Thanks for that perspective - it helps to know/remember this.

You're right that people are focusing on less characters, but as they finish them they move on. I think one stress when MoTU first came out is that everyone was looking at how *much* work to bring eveyrthing to 25, flag, favor and twist would be.

I do not know. I agree with you that the epic xp system is not great. I personally have 9 level 25 characters none of which are capped destiny wise, but they all pretty much have the twists they want. I had to run alot of dun-robar and the like to do so otherwise it would not be possible to get that much destiny xp. Of bigger concern to me is the gear. I do not think there is enough interesting gear to strive for. I am looking forward to the epic gianthold which should bring alot of gear to go for.

I know alot of people that have finished up their characters' destiny xp on the 2-3 characters they play and have been done for a long time basically. If those folks played 6 or so characters they might still be playing. It is almost like destiny xp without farming is too hard to get, but with farming it might be too easy and/or there is not enough to strive for in game besides destiny xp.

I am also really looking forward to the enhancement pass which I hope gives me a lot of fun builds to try out.

I agree and have seen all of this too.





XP is indeed all over the place as you both and many people here have said.

It would be good to link those threads that people like Sirgog and Shade went into the effort of reviewing some of the xp for quests as a lot of good thinking and ideas have already been done. May as well tap into that. It's clearly the players (of all sorts... not just end gamers but middle and starter gamers too) who have a feel for how much something should be *worth*.

[Seljuck]

In my opinion this change should be done in 1st patch after MOTU goes live. I say more... they should add repeating penalty at lv 25 as well. There's a lot of other quests that gives fair ammount of XP but no one run them, because theres just one simple, easy quest that can be farmed.. Another game balance breaking stupidity.

Every acquired ED lv should be like achievement. It should be hard to acquire.

[arminius]

In my opinion this change should be done in 1st patch after MOTU goes live. I say more... they should add repeating penalty at lv 25 as well. There's a lot of other quests that gives fair ammount of XP but no one run them, because theres just one simple, easy quest that can be farmed.. Another game balance breaking stupidity.

Every acquired ED lv should be like achievement. It should be hard to acquire.

The day they ADD a repeat penalty to level 25 is my last day of the game. They need to go in the exact opposite direction, resetting the repeat count at 25 to 0, but of course leave the first time bonus and bravery bonuses out of it.

If there was 5x-10x the end game content there is presently, then maybe your idea might work. Without more content there would be no way to get 16.5 million xp without multiple TRing, if repeat penalties past 25 operated the same as pre-cap. That's simply untenable for people with 5-15 characters. Not only that, it has you playing for months or even years in destinies you don't want to play and which gimp your character, which is annoying for melee but which affects casters gravely. It just isn't fun in any way.