Monster Champion Feedback

[Qhualor]

No, you can't prepare for random, that's the whole idea of creating something random. And there's no sense in listing all their "random buffs" because it will still be different every run, some runs will still be easy while some will be incredibly hard. You don't know where they will pop up or with what combination of buffs or even how many. It's like rolling a dice that adds to your selected difficulty, it can go from easy to impossible, it's all luck based.

Like I said, there is no learning curve here, encountering them has only thought me I'm better of zerging quests or running past them invisible, something I never did before we had champions.
So this feature just created another zerger.. but that was the point of champions right? Oh wait..

yes you can. you are just choosing not to take heed, use your head and prepare for it. if you have been running the quests you know there will be at least one in every other mob. quickly analyze the situation and go from there what the best course of action is. is it better to go straight for the Champion and ignore the other trash mobs? vice versa? let the heavy hitter in the group take the agro while you get on their back? build up your ki to use SF? cast a disco? lots of things to do and the Champions are just as susceptible to CC as the trash mobs. slow down a bit if you need to. its really not that hard, especially as easy as they are right now. elite should be tough.

[Keladon]

I talked down to 1 player the day the Champions were nerfed. I lost my head for a moment and got my hand slapped.

ive continuously been posting about the vocal community that justifies why we cant have challenge at the very minimum on elite difficulty because it interferes with favor and character progression. I called some hypocrites because the last few years the same people who are against Champions are also the ones that asked for more challenge. any time the devs do something to balance out the game or implement something that is tough, it gets nerfed down after a lot of ranting and threats. at the same time after a lot of ranting and threats they want more character power trivializing the game. we have gotten too used to the face roll/zerg/solo on the toughest difficulty for too long and it interferes with the players who actually want the game to be more fun and interesting. for some of us it was a welcome addition, but it quickly was taken away.

ive been hearing since 2009 that if Turbine doesn't cater to casual play that they will be at risk of keeping the lights on. the population has been going down since they started giving us power creep toys and making the game easier seriously reducing the fail chance over the past few years. Turbine has been listening to the wrong per cent of the player base for too long. couple that with trying to monetize off from it, it hasn't made the game better. it has made the game worse. many challenge seekers are now gone, maybe pop back in once in awhile, but no longer dedicated to the game like they used to be. Turbine needs to start thinking about all play styles and not the ones that are bringing the game further down.

1. It's the vocal community and also minority that wanted more challenge. When they introduced more challenge, the majority acted & Turbine reacted to that.

2. If they didn't cater to the casual player the game wouldn't be here now. Same thing with the move to F2P that brought a lot of "casualization" with it.
It's a nice try, but your argument just doesn't match the facts. (look at other games, I know this isn't any other game, but it's still an mmorpg)
You also can't expect a game to get older and the playerbase to keep increasing.

[Aletys]

Some Champions cannot bypass Displacement or Blur. Champions do not inherently bypass stealth.

We still may work with the numbers for what percentage of champions get buffs like True Seeing or See Invisible, but it's not 100% (and hasn't been). It does vary based on some factors, such as being orange named.

I've seen as high as 50% in quests which had a lot of champions, which seems way too high to me. I would thank that no more than 10% of them should have it, as a cap. The more monsters we had, the higher percentage that had it. In quests with only a few champions, it was too variable from run to run to be able to give a reliable number.

[Qhualor]

1. It's the vocal community and also minority that wanted more challenge. When they introduced more challenge, the majority acted & Turbine reacted to that.

2. If they didn't cater to the casual player the game wouldn't be here now. Same thing with the move to F2P that brought a lot of "casualization" with it.
It's a nice try, but your argument just doesn't match the facts. (look at other games, I know this isn't any other game, but it's still an mmorpg)
You also can't expect a game to get older and the playerbase to keep increasing.

1. Since neither of us can provide proof other than DDOOracle that shows the population going down, its a wash.

2. Yes F2P brought casualization, but so doesn't every other game. Casualization is what made today's DDO and pushed out many players that enjoyed a challenging game. Apparently Turbine can't design a game to cater to all play styles or casualization won't allow Turbine to cater to all play styles? The game could be better and higher population if Turbine was able/willing to make both sides happy. We won't know as long as casualization has Turbine on a leash.

Your argument doesn't make sense if the game can only be played a certain way. The facts are there, but you just want to make excuses.

[Hilltrot]

Epics were not challenging, you got your cookie cutter builds and just finished them all in almost the same way.
People soloed epics back then too.

The big difference is that epics were an endgame back then, it's been a long time since we had anything you could call endgame.

You didn't get any extra rewards for running things like elite back then, so why should you get them now?



No, you can't prepare for random, that's the whole idea of creating something random. And there's no sense in listing all their "random buffs" because it will still be different every run, some runs will still be easy while some will be incredibly hard. You don't know where they will pop up or with what combination of buffs or even how many. It's like rolling a dice that adds to your selected difficulty, it can go from easy to impossible, it's all luck based.

Like I said, there is no learning curve here, encountering them has only thought me I'm better of zerging quests or running past them invisible, something I never did before we had champions.
So this feature just created another zerger.. but that was the point of champions right? Oh wait..

You're reiterating what I've said several times. This is not making the game harder. It isn't. It simply isn't. Many who have posted FOR champions have stated as much. Very few have said it actually makes the game harder. It just brings random death. This death is stopped using the standard zerg tactics that have been done before. BB headless chicken, invisizerging, and exploits will return to the norm.

If champions are actually fun, it makes no sense not to put them in normal. A champion on normal would still be a pushover and would add some "flavor." But this was done to add to difficulty? The developers completely ignored the standard responses to higher difficulty when making champions. The best counter for a champion against BB headless chicken is a ranged root. But champions don't have that. Giving "Truesight" to a champion doesn't stop invisizerging. You've got to give extra speed or some dispel as well, otherwise you just avoid the one champion that can see you and run onwards.

What really upsets me is that instead of preparing us for this MASSIVE change and telling us about it ahead of time, it was released in a manner as if they were trolling us, hoping for the worst possible reaction from the community. And as has been seen, they did do a fabulous job at that. As the original post in this thread said, they were expecting if not hoping for a negative reaction.

[Ayseifn]

Epics were not challenging, you got your cookie cutter builds and just finished them all in almost the same way.
People soloed epics back then too.

The big difference is that epics were an endgame back then, it's been a long time since we had anything you could call endgame.

You didn't get any extra rewards for running things like elite back then, so why should you get them now?

Nah, there was still some variety in builds even back then, didn't need to go cookie cutter.

Back then you got extra rewards for running content on the hardest level, right now the hardest difficulty level is EE.

[Sehenry03]

Could someone please explain to me WHY champions need to be worth extra xp/tokens/chests?

The whole point of champions is to make Hard and Elite tougher then it was (yes then they nerfed it and now its a joke again). If they were introdeuced to make content tougher...then good. Stop at that. By adding a reward you are going back to making it easier again.

Come on Turbine take a stand on SOMETHING. Either get rid of champions and cave to one side...or do what you INTENDED to do and make Elite into what elite should be. It should be VERY hard to beat. We get our reward after beating the quest when we get xp/items/whatever. Champions are not something we are suppose to farm or use to level off of. They should JUST be used to make Hard/Elite tougher. You don't need to reward your player base for every single change and when you do then we are all back to the entitled thing. You want to do ANYTHING later your player base will be demanding to know what the reward is and what they can spend it on.

Fine...tweak champions...make them pointless like they are now. Don't reward the people screaming for rewards for beating something that you say should be the normal in a quest now =(

[Rys]

Could someone please explain to me WHY champions need to be worth extra xp/tokens/chests?

Because it's meatbag of 40k hp that is not worth of beating down.

[Enoach]

Ran an EE Belly of the Beast just to check out the spawn rate...

This quest has an existing issue in that it triggers RED alert at the start of every wave - I think it is counting the Drow Spectators

The spawn rate of Champions for regular trash was good averaged about 1 per wave. However, when the Blademaster wave came nearly half the spawns were champions. While I like the champion concept this particular quest suffers from having RED alert even though the party killed all of the spawns and was not dragging the dungeon behind it as well as having half the spawns in the arena all PUMPED UP.

I love this quest and have enjoyed playing it on EE but I think that this one needs to have the Dungeon Alert FIXED for the ORANGE spawn rate to work out as a challenge and not a PITA.

[Sehenry03]

Because it's meatbag of 40k hp that is not worth of beating down.

Well I have always said that mob "meatbags" should be reduced a lot. I posted earlier that in Saced Helm on HE at the end fight...its a lvl 6 quest!!!...2 hobgoblins marksman and same CR...1 had 143 hp's the other had 1300...this 10x the hp **** is horrible. I mention Sacred Helm because I happened to see the HP's on the bar. I did proof is in the poison and even though I couldn't SEE the hp's of mobs just by seeing my dps output you could tell they had 7-10x the hp's at times.

I don't care if I get 1 shot. I will plan for that and deal with it...but spending my whole mana bar just to kill 1 mob with stupid amounts of health...THAT I hate.

Either way it still doesn't justify getting a reward for killing what is gonna be a normal thing in quests. Give us our end reward or our xp bonus for mini bosses...but don't keep giving us more for champions...they REALLY aren't worth it.

[phillymiket]

Epics were not challenging, you got your cookie cutter builds and just finished them all in almost the same way.
People soloed epics back then too.

It was cookie-cutter builds back then. After you took the obligatory "must-haves" (toughness, TWF/THF line, Metas) there was little left to play with.
The difference was that people did Epics by out-thinking each part. (disregarding small periods where everyone exploited a "hole" in the system like the Mass-Hold/Heavy Pick era.)
There was a little trick for each encounter and people figured them out and passes the info on.
Soloing by out-thinking seems right and proper to me.
Just powering though Epics, like today, is different and not something I saw a lot of back then.

Could someone please explain to me WHY champions need to be worth extra xp/tokens/chests?

I don't get that either.
If the game is too easy then restoring the balance is the reward.
There was too much reward for the effort before so no extra reward is needed.
If Champions are "Meatbags" than that's another issue, although personally the number of 7x-10x HP mob I've seen is very small.

This quest has an existing issue in that it triggers RED alert at the start of every wave - I think it is counting the Drow Spectators

This is something.
Also in the new quests, like the sewers of Fashion Madness, Red Alert appears from just saying "Hi" to a hallway of mobs.
Champions must add to the power and therefore "awareness" of the mobs.
Just showing up shouldn't trigger Red Alert if you have killed everything along the way.
Dungeon Alert was installed to prevent zerging lag, if you aren't zerging then it should not be such a big factor.

[JonasSimbaca]

If I want to get hit for 1/2 to all of my hit points through 180% fort and displacement I'll play on elite. If I want to fight with a challenge I'll play on hard and if I want to one-shot everything I'll play on normal. That's how the developers established the difficulties.

Now there are elite level mobs in hard so I can't get through. I don't want to run through on normal as it is too easy for my level of skill. Now hard has been made too difficult.

I don't play on east coast US times so getting a group together isn't an option.

Let the uber elite players have their champions in their elite dungeons and leave the rest if us alone.

I'm a casual player and want a spread of difficulties, not mind numbingly easy, impossible and more impossible (for normal players).

[Lonnbeimnech]

1. Since neither of us can provide proof other than DDOOracle that shows the population going down, its a wash.

2. Yes F2P brought casualization, but so doesn't every other game. Casualization is what made today's DDO and pushed out many players that enjoyed a challenging game. Apparently Turbine can't design a game to cater to all play styles or casualization won't allow Turbine to cater to all play styles? The game could be better and higher population if Turbine was able/willing to make both sides happy. We won't know as long as casualization has Turbine on a leash.

Your argument doesn't make sense if the game can only be played a certain way. The facts are there, but you just want to make excuses.

They can and have > Casual, normal, hard, elite.

What happened to them?

Now we have 3 kinds of casual and a normal (so called elite).

[Wipey]

nope

[Keladon]

1. Since neither of us can provide proof other than DDOOracle that shows the population going down, its a wash.

2. Yes F2P brought casualization, but so doesn't every other game. Casualization is what made today's DDO and pushed out many players that enjoyed a challenging game. Apparently Turbine can't design a game to cater to all play styles or casualization won't allow Turbine to cater to all play styles? The game could be better and higher population if Turbine was able/willing to make both sides happy. We won't know as long as casualization has Turbine on a leash.

Your argument doesn't make sense if the game can only be played a certain way. The facts are there, but you just want to make excuses.

But it can be played multiple ways, so my argument does make sense. You don't have to play it casually, there's enough people to prove that.
Also making claims as if they're a fact, only to say it can't be proven when I counter it, doesn't exactly help your argument.
I understand you're trying to be right here, but sometimes you just have to admit you're wrong.

Turbine doesn't only think about the players, they also think about making money, it's both those things that have made DDO what it is today.
The same thing applies to any other mmorpg. Making and updating a game with only the playerbase in mind would be great, but it's not financially feasible. (There's a reason they went f2p or even p2w according to some)

If I want to get hit for 1/2 to all of my hit points through 180% fort and displacement I'll play on elite. If I want to fight with a challenge I'll play on hard and if I want to one-shot everything I'll play on normal. That's how the developers established the difficulties.

Now there are elite level mobs in hard so I can't get through. I don't want to run through on normal as it is too easy for my level of skill. Now hard has been made too difficult.

I don't play on east coast US times so getting a group together isn't an option.

Let the uber elite players have their champions in their elite dungeons and leave the rest if us alone.

I'm a casual player and want a spread of difficulties, not mind numbingly easy, impossible and more impossible (for normal players).

This.

The difficulty is all over the place since they introduced champions, hard can feel like normal only to feel harder than elite when facing certain champions a bit later.

Hard & Elite is pretty much saying roll an extra d20 to determine the real difficulty. Those difficulties have lost their meaning because they're no longer a set difficulty.

[BD_]

yes you can. you are just choosing not to take heed, use your head and prepare for it. if you have been running the quests you know there will be at least one in every other mob. quickly analyze the situation and go from there what the best course of action is. is it better to go straight for the Champion and ignore the other trash mobs? vice versa? let the heavy hitter in the group take the agro while you get on their back? build up your ki to use SF? cast a disco? lots of things to do and the Champions are just as susceptible to CC as the trash mobs. slow down a bit if you need to. its really not that hard, especially as easy as they are right now. elite should be tough.

Why do so many people equate a quest taking longer as the same as a quest being harder? It is not. It may mean the quest is harder to zerg, but it does not mean the quest or game is harder overall...

To me personally, champions (as originally released) did not add difficulty to the game, they added tediousness... (Well maybe in a few spots where you potentially could have champions respawning on top of you or some (possibly buggy) spots where literally every mob was a champion.)

Groups could still zerg through quests - the party would suffer the occasional random death, but that slows the party down by all of a few seconds...

Solo options: Zerg through and hope you don't get that one rare champion that can one hit (or almost) you - that actually manages to get in a hit on you.
Park a res bot hireling at entrance and the above.
Take the time to make sure no champion ever hits you (not really that hard, just tedious - kite or cc or instakill all champions)
Take the time to examine each champion and look for that rare buff combination that can hit super hard (not hard, just very tedious)

You're reiterating what I've said several times. This is not making the game harder. It isn't. It simply isn't. Many who have posted FOR champions have stated as much. Very few have said it actually makes the game harder. It just brings random death. This death is stopped using the standard zerg tactics that have been done before. BB headless chicken, invisizerging, and exploits will return to the norm.

If champions are actually fun, it makes no sense not to put them in normal. A champion on normal would still be a pushover and would add some "flavor." But this was done to add to difficulty? The developers completely ignored the standard responses to higher difficulty when making champions. The best counter for a champion against BB headless chicken is a ranged root. But champions don't have that. Giving "Truesight" to a champion doesn't stop invisizerging. You've got to give extra speed or some dispel as well, otherwise you just avoid the one champion that can see you and run onwards.

What really upsets me is that instead of preparing us for this MASSIVE change and telling us about it ahead of time, it was released in a manner as if they were trolling us, hoping for the worst possible reaction from the community. And as has been seen, they did do a fabulous job at that. As the original post in this thread said, they were expecting if not hoping for a negative reaction.

This...
IMO there are just too many bugs with champions right now...

Could someone please explain to me WHY champions need to be worth extra xp/tokens/chests?

The whole point of champions is to make Hard and Elite tougher then it was (yes then they nerfed it and now its a joke again). If they were introdeuced to make content tougher...then good. Stop at that. By adding a reward you are going back to making it easier again.

Come on Turbine take a stand on SOMETHING. Either get rid of champions and cave to one side...or do what you INTENDED to do and make Elite into what elite should be. It should be VERY hard to beat. We get our reward after beating the quest when we get xp/items/whatever. Champions are not something we are suppose to farm or use to level off of. They should JUST be used to make Hard/Elite tougher. You don't need to reward your player base for every single change and when you do then we are all back to the entitled thing. You want to do ANYTHING later your player base will be demanding to know what the reward is and what they can spend it on.

Fine...tweak champions...make them pointless like they are now. Don't reward the people screaming for rewards for beating something that you say should be the normal in a quest now =(

This: So long as champions are not "optional" there is really no reason why they need to or "should" give any extra reward: Not that I'm complaining about being able to farm 100k plat of trash loot and 30k guild renown in a an hour in certain champion heavy quests... (I just made an educated guess on those numbers based on one run of EH HH)

Because it's meatbag of 40k hp that is not worth of beating down.

Champs with 40k hps (that also hit like weenies) is just poor design or a bug...

Ran an EE Belly of the Beast just to check out the spawn rate...

This quest has an existing issue in that it triggers RED alert at the start of every wave - I think it is counting the Drow Spectators

The spawn rate of Champions for regular trash was good averaged about 1 per wave. However, when the Blademaster wave came nearly half the spawns were champions. While I like the champion concept this particular quest suffers from having RED alert even though the party killed all of the spawns and was not dragging the dungeon behind it as well as having half the spawns in the arena all PUMPED UP.

I love this quest and have enjoyed playing it on EE but I think that this one needs to have the Dungeon Alert FIXED for the ORANGE spawn rate to work out as a challenge and not a PITA.

The one time I ran Belly on EE since champions literally every blademaster was a champion, did not get instant red DA though. Strangely enough, the champion blademasters actually seemed (considerably) easier than what the quest was pre champions... This and other champion damage anomalies I've seen still makes me think that champion damage is bugged...

[MeliCat]

I wonder if some who are lobbying for easier are doing new players a disservice?

Yesterday on my gimpy gearless BF monk I led a couple of newish players (druid and a pdk fighter) through Inferno HE. The hireling healer for the fighter died a few times but no surprise there. Met a few champions here and there who gave us a bit of a challenge. But basically it was pretty straight forward. They were the ones who wanted it elite and really didn't have any troubles with it.

I do wonder what players from other games make of DDO. I'm sure it's still on the easy side. Not in favour of any lessening of champions bite. If anything I would like to see them made more powerful no so much just with simple melee power or whatever but maybe things like super speed etc.

[Oxarhamar]

I don't get that either.
If the game is too easy then restoring the balance is the reward.
There was too much reward for the effort before so no extra reward is needed.

Problem is outside of Bravery Bonus the rewards for the effort/time spent in EE was less than the rewards for effort/time spent in EN.

EE difficulty has long needed a bump outside of Bravery Bonus.

[Keladon]

Problem is outside of Bravery Bonus the rewards for the effort/time spent in EE was less than the rewards for effort/time spent in EN.

EE difficulty has long needed a bump outside of Bravery Bonus.

But upping the reward AND upping the difficulty would still make EN more rewarding, wouldn't it?

Is this actually a post about just increasing the reward and not even increasing the difficulty? :P

[Aletys]

the devs seem to be very interested in a token system. depending on the rewards for token turn ins, that alone could be incentive enough to run EE/HE beyond xp, favor, challenge. I don't know of anyone that was running elite more because of the chance at Champion chests. until they grow in power, I see no reason for any reward.

running EN may be the fastest and most efficient way to level and if that's what most players were running, there probably wouldn't be so much stink over rewards for killing random Lts. in mob groups and demanding a nerf to their power.

Running EN doesn't give you the favor you need for various rewards, so no, that won't stop the stink. Frankly, extra rewards for killing champion mobs might not help the situation, depending on how it gets implemented. If it gives better named loot than what you can get now on on the various quests, that would be a very bad idea, because it would only aggravate the "easy creep" which has led to this.

Further, part of the issue with champions is that if people are shut out of EH & EE because they can't deal with the champions, they will never get the gear they need to run the higher difficulties. The "elites" already have this gear, the average player may not. And, while they've done away with the EN/EH/EE loot on the newer quests, it's still there on the older quests. So it further splits the player community unnecessarily.