Monster Champion Feedback

[Portalcat]

I logged in after U24, hearing all the complaints about champions, thinking I might see a real challenge at EE endgame for the first time in a few updates. I was disappointed. Seriously. I'm really confused as to why people are as panicked about champions as they seem to be.

A year ago, have the ability to at least cast raise dead scrolls was a litmus test for EE-capability. There were a lot of ordinary mobs in EE GH that would 2-hit you, especially as a caster. The biggest thing I notice about Champions on EE is... they can 2-hit you. So, now we're at one mob out of a group being as strong relative to player characters as they were a year ago.



EE used to be really, really difficult. You needed decked-out toons and had to play the game attentively and carefully to beat it. Champions haven't brought it back to that point, and I don't understand the complaints.

[TOAOJMan]

I happen to be active in a Permadeath guild and these champions make it foolish for us to run on Hard or Elite (non-Epic), which we have been doing successfully for years. EH and EE, sure they need to be extreme challenges - we as a guild understand that we won't ever run on those settings. HH and HE however, should be doable without fear of being one-shotted, especially in low-level content - which is where much of our time is spent. I want to see a checkbox to make them optional, at least for Heroic quests.

I've heard from several people in my guild that will be cancelling VIP subscriptions over this. If it isn't fixed by Jan 1, you can be sure you'll be seeing lower revenue!

[Sam1313]

I have been playing this game for 3 almost 4 years now, this character in this picture I just TR'd into a monk. This is in the water works on HARD! HOW IS THIS FUN? It's more like a waste of time.

[Braegan]

I have been playing this game for 3 almost 4 years now, this character in this picture I just TR'd into a monk. This is in the water works on HARD! HOW IS THIS FUN? It's more like a waste of time.

Are you just testing thresholds?

Clearly you have met yours.

Fight less at a time, group up, lower the difficulty, and/or improve as a player.

[hit_fido]

I logged in after U24, hearing all the complaints about champions, thinking I might see a real challenge at EE endgame for the first time in a few updates. I was disappointed. Seriously. I'm really confused as to why people are as panicked about champions as they seem to be.

Oh?

Portalcat (Completionist, Epic Completionist)

Oh.

[RapkintheRanger]

I greatly dislike the game change.

I don't really want to play it this way.

i find it takes longer without being more fun. why do i want to smack more HP monsters. that is already tedious.

Stuck with having to use a hire and raise a hire over and over.... hires. sheesh.

All i wanted to do was log in and play a couple quests. DDO has added more frustration and irritation and diminished game experience. I don't know what this is supposed to add to the game.

I am disappointed.

sigh

[Thayion516]

We don't envision starting players with Starter Gear and zero knowledge playing on Hard or Elite.

Sev~

When I TR, Noobs WILL definitely see Champs when they group with me running thru Elite Korthos and Harbor as I always post a LFM to be social. So your vision should include interaction with TR players.

[Systern]

Greetings!

We have been reading player feedback, data gathering how players did over the weekend with Monster Champions in place, and playing with the content ourselves. Although we are still data-mining, I wanted to give players our initial impressions of all of this.

~ Overall we like the system and have had fun with it. A lot of players played with the system over the weekend. That said, even our most hardcore devs agree there are probably just too many Monster Champions, especially on Hard. We plan on reducing the spawn chance by around ~20% on Elite and ~40% on Hard. This will include minions and orange name bosses.

~ We are also looking at damage. There is some content where the damage is higher than we are comfortable with. We will probably dial back the damage increase as well. We want feedback on the possiblity that damage boosts for minion and orange named bosses will drop by about 20%.

We are looking for feedback for these proposed changes as we want to make those changes this week.

~ We agree with players that it would be cool to have the Champions have a chance to give an extra reward such as Champion tokens. We like the suggestion that tokens can be turned in for some crafting materials and are looking into that.

~ Hirelings seem somewhat fragile with Monster Champions lurking about. After our changes we will be looking for feedback as to whether they need to take less damage from Monster Champions. That change is somewhat involved and wouldn't be put in until the next patch.

Sev~

Having the spawn rate be 8% and 6% seems more reasonable. We'll have to see how those numbers actually play out. From individual testing, the spawns seemed more infrequent after the first night. I don't know if you tweaked things down or the RNG merseinne-prime/anti-Wi-flagging RNG engine just needed to seed itself some, or... something. In group, they felt more common but I couldn't track that as well because, well, I was playing with friends, and the priority was playing with them and not generating feedback. I'm sure you understand But ya, back on topic... They felt more common in groups. Can you double check that there isn't weapons-shipment-cannith-challenges-style double-scaling going on?

As far as the damage goes... it depends on what you're proposing to turn down. The default "Champion: I Deal More Damage I" isn't really the issue. The On-hit effects are fairly brutal, often irresistable types, and otherwise a very large value. Remember On-Hit effects don't get saves. Remember that you chose to not give bucklers MRR, and that TWF has very little means to increase their MRR. If (formerly) FoS or DocOc or (who ever is in charge of loot now) recommended a sword that did 150d2 on-hit, they'd be smacked and thrown out of the conference room. And that would be for us chopping down these trees with 130k hp... For them splattering us with under 2k, and often less than 1k; it's freaking overkill. 20% reduction to that is not enough. Oh yea, and there's still the "applying an aura is not a hit and stop doing insane damage to me then" type stuff too.

The Absorb/Absorb/Vulnerable package of buffs is just punitive. Feats are scarce, and melees generally only have room to pick up 1 Improved Critical feat. After doing so, the weapons they carry tend to gravitate to those types. Despite what the animation looks like, I don't actually have a shortsword that does Slashing damage, and I have no opportunities to play-around their arbitrary absorption (looks like 50%) of piercing damage. How is that even supposed to work? I've just pointed out it doesn't work from a play perspective. How does it work thematically? Immersion? What if I have Silver Slinger that does both Pierce and Bludgeon? Does it do 1/4 damage if vulnerable to slashing? Normal damage if vulnerable to Bludgeon? It really just looks like another variable that designers could play around with, so ya did...

Please remember that True Seeing is a rare and powerful effect. Previously, in the time of Elite Shroud being called too hard and the blades getting toned down, people complained until True Seeing was removed from the standard Raid Boss package. The prevalence of True Seeing in the current environment is skewed because it's a buff. An arcane buff. That arcane casters cast on themselves and never melee you before they die. Because the AI you inherited from your predecessors is stupid. The monsters that do cast it on themselves to effect are like... Cloud Giants in Gianthold! That were complained about until you guys toned them down as well because they could actually hit us.

And again, can't stress this enough: Champions need a way to telegraph their buffs so a player can tell how to approach the engagement, not just a means to research "*** just killed me"...

p.s. Epic ward sucks.

[Thayion516]

Greetings!

We have been reading player feedback, data gathering how players did over the weekend with Monster Champions in place, and playing with the content ourselves. Although we are still data-mining, I wanted to give players our initial impressions of all of this.

~ Overall we like the system and have had fun with it. A lot of players played with the system over the weekend. That said, even our most hardcore devs agree there are probably just too many Monster Champions, especially on Hard. We plan on reducing the spawn chance by around ~20% on Elite and ~40% on Hard. This will include minions and orange name bosses.

~ We are also looking at damage. There is some content where the damage is higher than we are comfortable with. We will probably dial back the damage increase as well. We want feedback on the possiblity that damage boosts for minion and orange named bosses will drop by about 20%.

We are looking for feedback for these proposed changes as we want to make those changes this week.

~ We agree with players that it would be cool to have the Champions have a chance to give an extra reward such as Champion tokens. We like the suggestion that tokens can be turned in for some crafting materials and are looking into that.

~ Hirelings seem somewhat fragile with Monster Champions lurking about. After our changes we will be looking for feedback as to whether they need to take less damage from Monster Champions. That change is somewhat involved and wouldn't be put in until the next patch.

Sev~

Great! about the reduction in champ spawns. Where I can get behind SOME champs in a dungeon, I am getting tired of 3-5 per group of mobs.

However. I think it would be more beneficial to do it in Tiers.

Dungeon Level 1-10. No Champs. This will help newer players get acclimated to the game. No one is expecting a challenge under lv 10.

Dungeon Level 11-20. Champs with +30% HPs/Damage/Stats/Buffs

Dungeon Level 21-30. Champs with +60% HPs/Damage/Stats/Buffs

And Sev/Varg, can you guys just do something with the hires in general? They honestly do nothing most of the time. Simplify the code? Optimize their Logic? Something? I dont need more bells and whistles on them, I just need them to Work.

[Sam1313]

Are you just testing thresholds?

Clearly you have met yours.

Fight less at a time, group up, lower the difficulty, and/or improve as a player.

1. I am not testing thresholds.
2. I cannot fight less at a time when I just walked into a room with this many in there.
3. I already lowered from elite to hard I am not about to run normal. I shouldn't have to be forced to break a BB.
4. Grouping is NOT an option for me as I have to go afk a lot due to real life.
5. Improve as a player huh? I invite you to the cannith server to run with my characters then you tell me how I can improve as a player. I have been playing for 3 almost 4 years. 6 or more hours a day everyday.

[Qhualor]

Oh?




Oh.

and some here have more past lives and having issues with Champions. go figure.

[phillymiket]

I have been playing this game for 3 almost 4 years now, this character in this picture I just TR'd into a monk. This is in the water works on HARD! HOW IS THIS FUN? It's more like a waste of time.

Are you just testing thresholds?

Clearly you have met yours.

Fight less at a time, group up, and/or improve as a player.

^^^ this

Here's some tips:

EDIT - vvv THIS IS SARCASM vvv

1) I see you don't have a single PL stance active
- I'd go with 3x brace for the PRR, 3x Ench Weap for DPS, 3x Fort (switch to dbl strike later), 3x Colors of the Queen.
- Did you have your 3x Shadar-kai Stance active? If you did I don't see why all that incorprality didn't kick in to save you when you went below 50% HP

You have to plan. No one is going to click those stances for you.

2) Have your Bottled Tornado on your Main Hotbar
- If you were away and didn't <cough, cough> so you could have unlimited tornados you at least should have <cough, cough> enough to have unlimited air ellies from the Cove.

Having the right tool would be better, yes? You should know this.

3) Hit Points, hit points, hit points
- How on Earth do you have so few HP? Maybe-log in and out so your 3x Barb PL kicks in.

Barbarian Past Lives are NOT a dump stat!

4) Ship Buffs
- Yours only stratch half-way across the screen, I know you're a Guild Leader but maybe find a real guild.

This is DDO not DD-SOLO.

I could go on.

EDIT - vvv THIS IS SARCASM ^^^

Listen, There are FOUR difficulty settings.

1) Paper Targets, 2) Cardboard Targets, 3) The one that just killed you 4) The one you ran last week.

You need to know your limits and go with "Cardboard" or buck up or something.

We can't let you breeze through the Harbor on Hard by yourselves when there are people abusing EE.

The line must be drawn here.

Have you tried Normal?

EDIT - ^^^THIS IS SARCASM. IT HAS BEEN QUOTED ENOUGH^^^ :-)

[diasho2]

All these complaints about how the hypothetical new players are going to react are a bit overboard. New players SHOULD get their a**es handed to them when first starting an MMORPG. Did you quit when you got whipped by a rat or a spider in korthos? Probably not, or you wouldnt be here to respond. There is a setting for those people, its called casual. When your ready to move up to normal, you should get your a** handed to you again, same for moving up to hard and elite.

If in the current game play and culture of the game people are forced into normal and casual running to avoid death they will quit. Is that really the message you think turbine wants to send. I personally doubt it. Turbine has made it clear over the past several updates everything is all about elite. BB, first time, and streak all push people to run elite first. Like it or not this is the game we play in at this time. If BB, first time, and streak were all removed then elite would no longer be as big of a push. It still would to some extent due to favor but the with out the those bonuses players would not be punished for not running elite which face it, at this point we are.

I like the idea behind champs. They add flavor, encourage groups, and get players to adjust tactics, that is good. There are massive bugs in the way they have been implemented. +20% hp cool double hp still ok, 5-10x base hp on multiple champs makes champs feel more like end bosses. Same thing with their damage. Its great that they hit harder than the normal trash mobs, however having a couple of mobs that can wipe a party repeatedly regardless of tactics because of one hit via range attack, stacked dots, etc these things need to be rethought.

Those of you who want a challenge try running with the devils on elite right now. You will have a ball. A group of us went in the day after the update and found the first two gales both champs. Their Light rays hits over 500 per shot and wiped our well full group of lvl 18s in under 2 seconds. One shot each. one member left a couple of us leveled to 20 and we pulled a 28 to give us a hand. We went in slow everyone died but the 28 many times over. In addition to the light ray from normal champ gales for 500+ the fun one was the clerics that pulled saves vs a 72 mass frog, could take 3 ruins, 3 energy bursts, and 3 stacks of dp plus the dps the rest of us were doing and still only be at half hp. 3 more ruins and 2 more energy bursts finally killed it but no lvl 16 quest mob should be able to take that kind of punishment. And that was only one of 6 champ clerics. Their DP was hitting over 300/tick on one stack. By the time we got that far in, the death count was high enough that one tick was all anyone but our lvl 28 could take.

The point is if it takes a lvl 28 to make it through a lvl 16 quest or a lvl 8 to make it through a lvl 3 quest without being taken down in one shot, there is something wrong. I'm all for adding challenge, flavor, etc but telling people run normal or casual? This game is already full of way too much grind. Grind for gs, grind tor for helms and scales, grind von for mythical sos, scales and helm, grind HH for items, grind ingots phlogs, soon grind for the next item or ingredient, then the next. At least with the xp system the way it is now we don't have to grind xp the way we used to. If people have to start grinding quests on normal and casual to get through lives can you imagine just for a moment the stream of players that will leave.

Personally I like ddo. I would like to see turbine be able to continue to keep ddo operating. If as you suggest the solution to being one repeatedly one shotted in a quest is to run quests on normal, and grind them over and over again to make up the difference in xp where you loose the massive bb, and stacking first time bonus, and loose the chance at elite named items that actually are important, which in turn will keep players from being able to gain the ability to gain the strength to not be stuck grinding normal. No normal is not a solution, years ago when I started playing it was, the game has changed. Now forcing this with out first changing the game and the player base slowly back to where it was is a death sentence to the game.

[Oxarhamar]

We don't envision starting players with Starter Gear and zero knowledge playing on Hard or Elite.

Sev~

only problem with this thinking is once they join the pug scene its pretty much Elite or go home for the Bravery Bonus to one & done heroic levels.

[Qhualor]

Please bug report any situations where you are sure a Champion has 10x as many hitpoints as similar non-Champions around him (same exact monster). That is definitely unintended. (Please include quest, /loc location, difficulty & level. Thanks!)

this needs to be put on every page and in every Champion thread.

people need to top spreading around wrong information.

[Braegan]

1. I am not testing thresholds.
2. I cannot fight less at a time when I just walked into a room with this many in there.
3. I already lowered from elite to hard I am not about to run normal. I shouldn't have to be forced to break a BB.
4. Grouping is NOT an option for me as I have to go afk a lot due to real life.
5. Improve as a player huh? I invite you to the cannith server to run with my characters then you tell me how I can improve as a player. I have been playing for 3 almost 4 years. 6 or more hours a day everyday.

1) Ok
2) You can body pull, I assure you or can show you it can be done.
3) I understand, but something has to give. You seem to have met a wall, how you work around this wall is really your call.
4) I don't understand. I have run frequently with folks that have to afk suddenly and consistently due to RL. Just be up front with your group about it, most folks are ok about it if you just mention it to the group.
5) All of us can use improvement in one way or another, no need to be defensive. I have my limitations and understand them, sometimes I work within them other times I work at pushing those envelopes. I also have my main on Cannith, have been playing since well...the start for way too many hours, hehe. I don't claim to be uber, I don't think I am, I am much more the caught between a casual and a power gamer type. But, I think I can help you with this as I have gotten used to having a challenge in game again and I welcomed it.

Shameless plug: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...allenge-No-Fun

If you are serious and would like some help, my free time is limited, but I will do what I can.

My characters: Braegan, False, Instigator, Silothien, Troubadour. If you see them on it's me. I can log on Phalse (a perma level 7 char for purposes of helping new folks, or I can roll up a new char as I've done before). This coming weds and sat evening I might have some free time to play around with, feel free to respond or pm me or w/e, I am happy to help, and I can assure you once you get used to it, it's not that bad.

[pgm152]

We don't envision starting players with Starter Gear and zero knowledge playing on Hard or Elite.

Sev~

I think you underestimate new players. Lots of people may try hard at least, both as a test of whether they are understanding the game and improving their play, but also because your favor system requires people to run quests on higher difficulties. Also, the fact that you unlock hard after normal, and then elite after hard, implies that with the knowledge they learned in the previous play they may be able to succeed in the next.

In the past, if you failed in the quest you could always sit back and think about why and how to overcome it. Maybe it was traps that did it, or you lacked a tank, or maybe it just needed a little different strategy. With champions how does a player make that evaluation now? Did I lose simply because of the random buffs you gave out? Did I win because I got lucky and you didn't give out the buffs that would have killed me? Will that deadly room have more champions the next time I go in there, or less? The path this leads you down is you can no longer predict if you can actually succeed in that quest because you simply don't know if it's going to kill you off with a bad random roll or not.

Also, your quest design used to consider things like if the pacing was good, if the shrines were in the right places, and whether that combination of mobs in that room was meant to be tougher than other rooms or not. With random champions this is all undone.

There are several outcomes you should consider before this champion thing get too far:
- it's going to scare away new players because they will try hard difficulty and it will likely crush them
- it's going to scare away long time players that are more casual, aren't necessarily playing their 10th life with a multi-class build, and used to run quests on hard quite nicely in the past. I consider myself in this boat.
- quest pacing and resource usage is dictated by random rolls now
- if you make champions strong enough that people are forced to group to get past them you are going to go bankrupt. It's one thing if that's an option players can select when they start a mission but your one-size-fits-all approach isn't allowing for that today. I was here, many years ago, when DDO required players to be in groups all the time and it wasn't fun. I left because of it and came back because of hirelings. I have nothing against grouping but if I feel forced to do it to achieve anything I won't bother playing anymore, and I'm not the only one. You tried this in the past and it didn't work, don't make this mistake again.

[Grandern_Marn]

Greetings!

We have been reading player feedback, data gathering how players did over the weekend with Monster Champions in place, and playing with the content ourselves. Although we are still data-mining, I wanted to give players our initial impressions of all of this.

~ Overall we like the system and have had fun with it. A lot of players played with the system over the weekend. That said, even our most hardcore devs agree there are probably just too many Monster Champions, especially on Hard. We plan on reducing the spawn chance by around ~20% on Elite and ~40% on Hard. This will include minions and orange name bosses.

~ We are also looking at damage. There is some content where the damage is higher than we are comfortable with. We will probably dial back the damage increase as well. We want feedback on the possiblity that damage boosts for minion and orange named bosses will drop by about 20%.

We are looking for feedback for these proposed changes as we want to make those changes this week.

~ We agree with players that it would be cool to have the Champions have a chance to give an extra reward such as Champion tokens. We like the suggestion that tokens can be turned in for some crafting materials and are looking into that.

~ Hirelings seem somewhat fragile with Monster Champions lurking about. After our changes we will be looking for feedback as to whether they need to take less damage from Monster Champions. That change is somewhat involved and wouldn't be put in until the next patch.

Sev~

Thanks to all the devs for the work Severlin, overall a welcome addition!

[phyrephoenix]

This system is absolutely horrendous. I have never seen so many good players be so upset. I understand that the game has gotten easier, but it is no virtually impossible to solo elites for heroics, which is a big deal in my opinion. LFMs don't fill like they used to, and many times you are forced to solo quests. That being said, i was a huge fan of champion to begin with, but the escalating damage and hps value of mobs is insane. There are too many champions (and i have read that the spawn rate is being reduced) all of which have about 3x as many hps as normal mobs (and by my guess deal about 3x as much damage). This system is fine for your elite players, but many good players (not of elite status) are extremely frustrated by these changes. I do not post to these forums often, but i feel like i am forced to in this circumstance, the difficulty of dungeons on elite skyrocketed by an exponential amount, both due to the amount of champion, and their inflated values (hps and damage).

[redoubt]

We don't envision starting players with Starter Gear and zero knowledge playing on Hard or Elite.

Sev~

I'm not trying to be flip, but you really should start expecting that.

At 10.4 million xp per life, most vets don't put up normal lfms. Most new players don't put up lfms. The result of this is that new players end up in elite quests, or they don't get to group.

The current chance for normal monsters to be Champions is far below 40%. But orange name chance to be Champions is quite a bit higher than 40% right now, and we are likely to lower the amount of orange name champions more significantly.

I'm fairly confident that we were told the spawn rate for normal mobs was 10%. A lot of us have been testing and actually keeping notes and posting data for you. This sort of response is why I quit helping on lama years ago. Please just tell us your target spawn rate instead of being coy about it.

My personal test data shows the spawn rate around 25%. This is a selection of HE level 5-8, EH level 20-23, and EE level 25+.