Monster Champion Feedback

[Ayseifn]

Just did the 3 drow houses, portal and then demonweb quests on EE. 7 quests and I actually paid serious attention to the mobs this time and slowed my zerg, no deaths for me but a few for group members. We all had fun, laughed at the crazy random damage that we knew if we played better was avoidable and moved on. Almost as much fun doing those quests as when I first ran them.

THEY never cater to the 1%.
NEVER, NOT A SINGLE TIME.
THEY ALWAYS CATER THE 99%.
ALL PROPER GAMES CATER THE 1%.

RIOT THE MOST POPULAR MMO AROUND CATERS AND TAKES FEEDBACK ONLY FROM 0.2% GAMERS WHEN IT COMES TO BALANCE AND THEY TAKE 99,8% FEEDBACK FOR COSMETICS WHAT STYLE FOR NEW CHAMPS AND WHAT COLORS TO ADD TO SCREEN.

Sigh.

They just need to fix it for heroic and induce some rules for epic.
Its a great system that should stay, just needs some tweaking for masses.
Personally i would like it to stay as it is.
No special reward but harder and more fun.


But best choice would be, keep it for ee only, or add a stupid ******** checkbox, but if you add that we will need to get appropriate rewards for killin champs since otherwise it will be a waste of time and a pointless mechanic.
If we get more loot and more xp with a chekbox people who are unable to kill those monsters will complain and after that this mechanic will be ignored and become yet another thing that was a good idea but took the wrong turn because they listend to bad feedback.
And we will go back to a game that has the most easiest "elite" difficuly from all games.

ITs a vicious cycle i would never want to be a dev trying to balance this mechanics.
You cannot please everyone.
But you guys should do the simple thing, just check when you had more players.
Before motu when the game was considerably harder and people had a need to improve their character with any means possible, or now.
That is the only question you guys should ask yourself.

Sorry if this seemed rude, but im just tired from people making false claims all the time.
I got hit for 6 k damage, all champ mobs 1 hit.
(in a place and a quest where you damage recieved gets amplified)
I got hit by a 850 light bol from a champ
Several people go to a kobold shaman champ and stand there literelly for hours and never get hit by that damage.
But no you get 1 shot, its bad.
Why would it be bad to be 1 shot?
We never had risk in this game anyway

Yeah, so far I've done probably 30-40ish EEs and no instant kills. The bad stuff is the the fort bypass with true seeing on a melee but even then it's not horrible, I just need to adapt to the new game instead of zerging too hard. Not one death has been unfair, every single one I have had personally I can attribute to sloppy play.

The lowered DCs on tactics might need a look in though as I said before, my DCs aren't horrible but I can trip spiders almost every single time without even equipping a vertigo item and they're notorious for high saves in that department.

[Sehenry03]

Ok so I ran Garls Tomb 2 and The Tide Turns quest line yesterday...

The champion count was at MOST 10% of the total mob count. The day before while doing similar quests they were ALWAYS 30-50%...ALWAYS.

My guildies were still running EE content and said they noticed no change in HH. Anyone else find fewer mobs in heroic dungeons yesterday then the day before?

[Keladon]

But best choice would be, keep it for ee only, or add a stupid ******** checkbox, but if you add that we will need to get appropriate rewards for killin champs since otherwise it will be a waste of time and a pointless mechanic.

But I thought all those vocal players just wanted more of a challenge?

Give players an option to turn champions off and they will do so, even those asking for more difficulty.

[Mosasi]

So far champions are great! It is a dynamic and exciting mechanic, but some minor alterations could be beneficial.

For starters given that the random generated loot is not what it once was, chests dropping more of it doesn't real matter to me, and the folks I play with. What does matter to us though is experience, and the occasionally nice wondrous item. Would it be possible to have champion chests provide a significantly higher drop rate of wondrous items? This would be great at epic levels, but it would be truly outstanding if done at the heroic level, as I've found heroic wondrous items are quite a bit rarer.

A bit of experience based on how tough the champion is would be nice too. The experience should be notable enough to encourage players to try and kill them as opposed to avoiding them. From talking with friends the base line should be around the always-spawning Von 3 names, and increase based on the quest level * quest difficulty towards something consistently rewarding.

I would also like to see an occasional solo champion mini named/boss have a chance to spawn in quests. Some DM announcement could sound off indicating one has spawned and give a general direction. These would be notably tougher than other champions, and semi infrequent in their spawning. However, they reward one chest every time, and an additional chest based on quest level and difficulty, and the chest could have a notable boost to loot, like a +4 or +5 loot.

All in all I am enjoying this mechanic, and am excited to see what becomes of it over time.

[Saekee]

I plan to check later but I assume that champions do not appear in the cannith and eveningstar challenges due to the absence of a difficulty selector?

[Loholt-UK]

TL;DR

My experience so far has been on Heroic Elite difficulty on level 12 to 15 quests as I had just TRed into an iconic when the update hit.

My thoughts about champions at this level range are that you've got it about right unless your intention was, as many people assert, to stop me soloing Elite quests - it didn't work, I have soloed 80% of the quests I've done and only joined groups for stuff like Fleshmaker's in the Orchard because of the runes at the end fight and the fact that hirelings just don't work anymore since you "fixed" them.

As for the fun factor, I am enjoying myself more but this may just be due to the novelty factor and I might just get used to it and revert to previous levels of fun (which was still pretty fun tbh). It is handy to have more opportunities at chest loot during the Festivult though, the timing couldn't have been better.

Just my 2c.

[chanlin0582]

Ran with a level 25 Air/Cold sorcerer on Epic Hard Spinner of Shadows. Before I was able to run through this quest with a hireling without any serious issue. I will say I am very much a casual player. I have never been one to raid, and I my play style has always been aimed at characters that can solo/duo with hirelings at Hard/Epic Hard.

Out of two attempts I had multiple deaths to Champion Khyber Hezrou. These mobs are already one I have to alter my tactics for since they are immune to one of my main methods of killing things. Instant kills were doable but I had to level drain them 2 to 4 times before I got it to land. Drained on average 7-8 levels from them before I could land instant kills like Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee.

When I had the champion mobs 1v1 or with other regular mobs I had no real issue handling them. There were several instances where I had 2 to 4 champions at a time though and this is where I always died at least once in the process of trying to kill them. I was never one shot like many other reports I'm seeing here, but I agree with many others that the spawn rate of Champion mobs feels to high. I ended up giving up and resetting the quest. My second run I was a little better prepared and managed to complete the quest, but not without dying about 9 times.

My eventual method for dealing with them which worked fairly well was to level drain and instant kill OR to charm one or two to fight and defeat the others. I will also echo the sentiment of another post I saw. It just doesn't seem right that when I have the Spinner and a Champion mob fighting me at the same time that in every instance I outright ignored the Spinner because I was less worried about the boss mob in the quest killing me than I was about the Champion mob doing the same.

Also, I never saw a chest drop from any of the champions I managed to kill. (About 12 in each run)

I will say that I could probably alter my gear some so I have something in my golf bag to deal with champions. Having tools ready to deal with specific situations has always been part of the game. It just seems the amount of resources I'm putting into dealing with this new threat is too far skewed. Things went from being mildly challenging at EH to darn near impossible for me. I know I will need to alter my gear/build/play style or all three to be viable again. The knee jerk reaction here is to cry foul.

I don't think champions need to go. Just the frequency and reward for them needs to be adjusted.

[Blackheartox]

But I thought all those vocal players just wanted more of a challenge?

Give players an option to turn champions off and they will do so, even those asking for more difficulty.

Ok il give a example where this mechanics is actually coming from.
Diablo3.
Since i played that game alot, and i mean i got a wizz and a monk fully engeared before last patch i can clearly say that i kind know how this mechanic works.

You get in options a button that adds scaling.
Its set to be 1 at default so any player that plays the game plays at 1.
You have diff modes, with last one being really tough aka you can really die easy when you fight trash spawns.
Players complained as the game was beat in couple days.
They added tweaks here and there.
Champ monsters have special iteration added on them which scaled with difficulty and on inferno they had up to 4-5 special attributes added to them.
When you play hardcore aka mode where you have 1 life alone aka what they call permadeath here, and get a lag spike since game is online and meet 1 champ mob with bad suffixes, you get 1 shot.
Noone complained it was to hard.
People who couldnt do it, just didnt play it.
Others settled to lower difficulty.

Now after many people completed hardcore inferno, blizzard figured, hey fellas, we need to cater those players more so lets do something crazy.

You know that button?
WHere default is set to 1?
Well they made it so that you can move the thingy as you wish up to 10.
And 10 meant the regular first mob on normal could ko you np.
Noone complained, everyone had the option to scale as they wish.

Now the wonderful thing since blizzard is a smart company.
THey know that challenge should come with reward and to get to super efficiency on scale of 10 you would need to grind gear, so they made checks of what gear can drop on what difficulty.
Champions in diablo 3, drop multiple magic items on higher difficulty scaled by number of champions you kill scaled by scale you play on.
You get like 5 stacks which reset after logout after every champion kill that increase your chance to get extra gold, extra loot etc.

In diablo3 the reason why you pursuit hardest challenge is to
a)have fun
b)get better gear
c)be able to play on hareder challenge

Which made the game have a good replayability.

You need to add some reward for extreme challenges that is only available to pepople who execute the quest perfectly on hardest difficulty.
Otherwise there is no point in doing so.

I myself am not against no reward, but ONLY if the mobs stay in all elite epic content.
I WILL BE against it if they add a checkbox and no reason at all to play with champ monsters.

Shineys are the reason why people play the game, even if its a nonnoticable special shiney.
A fragment of something that can be made into something that can buff you up for 10 seconds.
Good enough, if it proved to me that i completed this super hard encounter, good enough for me.

In ddo getting gear now compared to premotu is laughable ammount of easy button couple quests on normal runs.
It should never happen in a mmo to be at that point.
ANd this is coming from someone who played alot of mmos in different styles.
Ddo has the poorest reason to strive toward epic past lifes and completionst and toward progress overall if we know they will just add some ultra crazy buff again.
/example holy sword, monk stances, dodge, prr, mrr, mortal fear, balanced attacks, blitz, furyshooting
etc etc,

If they want to make a proper game, why dont they just look at other popular games and try to do what those do?

Most of my friends in rl that play other games, like vindictus, diablo, wow, that airplane one shooter thing /no idea what the name is/, never etc always ask me how ddos endgame feels like as they wanted to play it.
I told them, i play the game for 8 years and there is still no endgame here, and that which we can currently call endgame would be a waste of time for anyone who playes mmos on a more serious note.

[nibel]

@EllisDee 37

are you sure ? i could have sworn they lowered the base xp of quests when they gave us those huge streak bonuses, now you make me doubt myself.

Some very specific quests took some XP hit, like Rusted Blades and Vol. Others got a very well deserved XP raise, like Cannith, Stormhorns, and Wheloon. Always that there were a XP change, they would say it on the release notes. And all of them since MotU were mostly buffs than nerfs.

In doubt, just check the wiki quest page, click "page history", and select the first change and the current one, and see how the XP changed.

[Tokeri]

hmm yea thats rather helpful thank you

[gaffneyks]

I can tell from this thread that a number of people believe champions should stay so it looks like they will stay.

I hate them to the point that I am on this forum and not playing the game and have zero desire to play.

That being said. My VIP runs out on 12/28/2014. If turbine puts in mechanic that allows me to bypass this and go back to how I played prior to this update. Then I will renew
If not, then I will not renew my VIP and will move on. Thanks to all who have helped me the last 4 years.

They must decide if a change like this is worth losing some of a dwindling player base.

A option to turn this on or not was actually a pretty good idea.

[Keladon]

Ok il give a example where this mechanics is actually coming from.
Diablo3.
Since i played that game alot, and i mean i got a wizz and a monk fully engeared before last patch i can clearly say that i kind know how this mechanic works.

You get in options a button that adds scaling.
Its set to be 1 at default so any player that plays the game plays at 1.
You have diff modes, with last one being really tough aka you can really die easy when you fight trash spawns.
Players complained as the game was beat in couple days.
They added tweaks here and there.
Champ monsters have special iteration added on them which scaled with difficulty and on inferno they had up to 4-5 special attributes added to them.
When you play hardcore aka mode where you have 1 life alone aka what they call permadeath here, and get a lag spike since game is online and meet 1 champ mob with bad suffixes, you get 1 shot.
Noone complained it was to hard.
People who couldnt do it, just didnt play it.
Others settled to lower difficulty.

Now after many people completed hardcore inferno, blizzard figured, hey fellas, we need to cater those players more so lets do something crazy.

You know that button?
WHere default is set to 1?
Well they made it so that you can move the thingy as you wish up to 10.
And 10 meant the regular first mob on normal could ko you np.
Noone complained, everyone had the option to scale as they wish.

Now the wonderful thing since blizzard is a smart company.
THey know that challenge should come with reward and to get to super efficiency on scale of 10 you would need to grind gear, so they made checks of what gear can drop on what difficulty.
Champions in diablo 3, drop multiple magic items on higher difficulty scaled by number of champions you kill scaled by scale you play on.
You get like 5 stacks which reset after logout after every champion kill that increase your chance to get extra gold, extra loot etc.

In diablo3 the reason why you pursuit hardest challenge is to
a)have fun
b)get better gear
c)be able to play on hareder challenge

Which made the game have a good replayability.

You need to add some reward for extreme challenges that is only available to pepople who execute the quest perfectly on hardest difficulty.
Otherwise there is no point in doing so.

I myself am not against no reward, but ONLY if the mobs stay in all elite epic content.
I WILL BE against it if they add a checkbox and no reason at all to play with champ monsters.

Shineys are the reason why people play the game, even if its a nonnoticable special shiney.
A fragment of something that can be made into something that can buff you up for 10 seconds.
Good enough, if it proved to me that i completed this super hard encounter, good enough for me.

In ddo getting gear now compared to premotu is laughable ammount of easy button couple quests on normal runs.
It should never happen in a mmo to be at that point.
ANd this is coming from someone who played alot of mmos in different styles.
Ddo has the poorest reason to strive toward epic past lifes and completionst and toward progress overall if we know they will just add some ultra crazy buff again.
/example holy sword, monk stances, dodge, prr, mrr, mortal fear, balanced attacks, blitz, furyshooting
etc etc,

If they want to make a proper game, why dont they just look at other popular games and try to do what those do?

Yes, I've played D3, Torment 6 (the hardest difficulty) was easy for me, it wasn't for everyone, but I never complained the game got too easy because I played a lot to get to that point.

But here there were daily or weekly threads about the game being too easy, people wanted a harder game, there wasn't anyone asking for extra rewards.
And now if you would give them the option to turn champions off, they would do so, unless the rewards are substantial.

Do you want a harder game or do you really just want the shinies? Make up your mind.


By the way: You might want to look into how the Diablo 3 loot system works now, you're probably talking about the loot system at launch or not long thereafter, it has changed quite a bit since then.
Playing on a lower difficulty allows you to earn the same loot as someone playing on the highest one, the drop % is just lower.

[Knobull]

Checkbox option won't work. The elitists will cry about it. For them the game is about excluding others from their fun.

For a game with a major geek reputation (D&D and rpgs in general), these guys remind me an awful lot of jocks and cheerleaders in highschool.

Shouldn't they be playing NHL 2015, Madden Football or Call of Duty or something? While drinking beer and telling their wives to make them sandwiches?

[brian14]

Ran Eh Inferno of the Damned
several random champions - WAI
all 4 fire elementals and all 4 cinder spawns were champions - random? WAI? I doubt it

They're already orange-named and one might be a champion, but EVERY one of them?

ran EH Fleshmaker's Laboratory
Some random champions - WAI
Every apprentice was champion - random? WAI? I doubt it -

They're already orange-named and one might be a champion, but EVERY one of them?

Not 10% as advertised and not random - orange named and mini bosses clearly have a higher % of being a champion

And this is the crux of the problem, as far as I am concerned.

Dictionary: "champion" - A person who has defeated or surpassed all rivals in a competition, especially in sports.

By definition, champion must be unusual. A champion trog is unusual in a mob of trogs. A champion orange-named should be unusual among orange-named. When every orange-named is a champion (and tougher than red-named end boss), the concept becomes a joke.

As other people have suggested, Champions should be an option you select when entering a quest, and should have some guaranteed reward. That way people who complain about quests being too easy can have their challenge -- and some incentive toward that challenge, -- whereas less experienced, less geared people can opt out. Better yet is if this "guaranteed reward" is something that cannot (or almost cannot) be obtained in champion-less setting.

[Uska]

I just ran several lvl 10 quests on elite solo and while I didnt die I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have champs were running at 40% or better and I think they spawn more often for a larger group. I think I would enjoy them if their spawn rate was turned down to 25% for a group and 10% for solo

[BD_]

So after running EE GH saga and having every champion hit like a raid boss.... The next night I ran Demonweb, Don't Drink, and Belly EE... In this play session every champion I ran into seemed to be weaker than the normal trash around it... Despite all of them (that I examined) having at a minimum a damage buff - none hit for more than 200 (against slightly over 100 PRR) and most hit for considerably less (60-90). Spawn rate was still "too high" (about 20%)

In Belly - during the arena fight literally every blademaster was a champion... Initial thoughts: "seriously???" & "ok, this could suck"
after fighting them: "***? ok that was a joke" & "wow, lots of chests"
They seemed (considerably) easier than (post U23) pre U24 when there were no champions - died quickly and hit for less than 200 per hit....
I think in 5 quests I saw one orange mob that wasn't a champion.... Fights where you have a ton of orange mobs were already some of the hardest fights in the game - making them all champions.... (although in this case they were a total joke...)

I also went into elite Irestone Islet (base level 4 quest), inspected a bunch of mobs and let them beat on me. Every orange mob there was a champion, every group of mobs had at least one usually 2 champions, and I saw one or two roaming champions - that's definitely more than 10%.

It seemed like the champion's increased damage buffs were in fact debuffs... Normal mobs were hitting for 2x in melee and 1x for ranged. Most melee champions were hitting for the same, but some, despite having at least one damage buff were hitting for 4-8 (yes I had PRR, but no DR, and this is compared to other mobs doing 2x damage per hit). Of note Dinks champion with two increased damage buffs was hitting for 3-9, and a few archer champions with two damage buffs was hitting for 4-8. Champion mobs usually had 350-450 hp, while normal mobs usually had 130-220 hps. Also encountered an archer mob with increased slashing damage buff - this was one of the ones hitting for 4-8 and combat log showed piercing damage only.

In my experience in some areas - the damage buff is always too much, and in other areas (it definitely seems to be based on the quest/area) the damage buff appears to actually function as a damage debuff - making champion mobs joke mobs instead.

On a different note, get rid of the second wind champion buff...

[Blackheartox]

Yes, I've played D3, Torment 6 (the hardest difficulty) was easy for me, it wasn't for everyone, but I never complained the game got too easy because I played a lot to get to that point.

But here there were daily or weekly threads about the game being too easy, people wanted a harder game, there wasn't anyone asking for extra rewards.
And now if you would give them the option to turn champions off, they would do so, unless the rewards are substantial.

Do you want a harder game or do you really just want the shinies? Make up your mind.


By the way: You might want to look into how the Diablo 3 loot system works now, you're probably talking about the loot system at launch or not long thereafter, it has changed quite a bit since then.
Playing on a lower difficulty allows you to earn the same loot as someone playing on the highest one, the drop % is just lower.

Oh they changed it?
I didnt buy the expansion, thinking to do so if champ system in ddo proves to be a fail, nothing to do in ddo beside come during updates and check whats new tbh.
I personally, dont care about loot anymore here.
They alrdy gave us easy to get necro4 loot, there is no proper way to bypass that beside giving even stronger not needed loot.

I was thinking some odd ideas.
Example you cant use renown as reward because there are number of guilds that are 200 alrdy /fair or unfair doesnt matter/
Best would be some kind of collectables you turn in for some cosmetics that are unique and only able to be gotten by playing on epic elite vs champs.
That way i can be proud when i put my mask of invisible stalker, and the regular person that cant complete a encounter wont complain because the item doesnt give me more power.
Just a little something that i can use as proof that i beat the hardest thing.
Since we dont have titles or dps checks etc or whatever.
I think that would be a good direction.

Question im wondering about tho, would the regular player complain if i had a cosmetics on that he cant until he improves his gameplay?

Also this could be improved to raids.

Example cool stuff like, mask of lord of blades: Complete lord of blades solo on epic elite.

Stuff like that

I am pretty sure that would be the best thing to do to keep vets and übers busy, and wouldnt get into the way of regular weekend players.
Check box for champs, but special cosmetic rewards for beating stuff when checkbox is clicked on.
/but personally i am more for leaving champs as it is and just changing how bravery works to be perfectly honest

[Edwardt]

But here there were daily or weekly threads about the game being too easy, people wanted a harder game, there wasn't anyone asking for extra rewards.
And now if you would give them the option to turn champions off, they would do so, unless the rewards are substantial.

The game may be too easy for SOME people here. Heroic and/or epic completionists with their proper gear - no doubt EE is a cakewalk for them and such a challange is most welcome.

Firstlifer with average gear will have to abort some missions on heroic elite, if they run into a group with two, or three highly buffed champions. unlikely, but sometimes it happens.
That will be more frustrating than fun at all.

All the calls that they have to learn the game and deal with it are mostly spoken by experienced players, who have forgotten their beginning and their path to the point where they play now.

Give the challenge a choice - if they want it, they should be rewarded for it - don't force them to be unhappy.

[Sehenry03]

Ok so for those wanting a check box to enable champions here ya go:



First 2 options are no champions and last 2 options are with champions. See I fixed it for ya =)

[Nestroy]

Just a few thoughts for the "too easy" crowd.

When the complaints started that DDO is too easy, most vets agreed a "hardcore" mode as a 5th choice difficulty would be the perfect way. Why? Because the hardcore mode is elite with just a few tweaks to mobs and bosses making them a real challenge. Hardcore is for bragging rights only, in that far it does not give extra rewards or anything on top of elite but just adds to the difficulty. Now we finally have the hardcore mode. Alas, it´s a forced mode on both hard and elite settings with no opt-out possible. And no extra rewards. And alas it gives heroic MCs epic buffs - and that on lv. 1+ quests.

Champions, as they are now, are broken. They spawn too often, have too big a buff up (especially on the damage department) and do not reward anything at all.

Why on gods earth, with the exception of some selected few players, anybody should run these quests now?

Ofc, understandably, this again is perceived by the DDO marketing department to increase the demand for rez cakes, SP pots and healing pots, all bought thru the DDO store. But again, this will turn away more gamers. And what will DDO marketing then try to sell to the remaining players?

I said 2 years ago, with several changes comming post MotU, that DDO entered the stage of Cash Cow in the product lifecycle. Turbine will try to gauge most money out of the game as possible while investing only the bare minimum. As soon as running DDO costs more than it brings in money on a monthly base, it will get canceled. And this can happen any time now and will happen de facto over night.

So let´s get on with the MCs - we do not get anything better. Perhaps we can convince the devs to tone down either spawn rates or damage a bit, but do not expect the MCs to be taken back or to drop anything useful at all. And do not expect to see some major development going into MCs anyway.