Monster Champion Feedback

[Stonemerge]

And for a party that has some that like champions, and some that dont, the checkbox works just how?

we already have checkboxes: "public lfm - yes/no" and "prefer not to be leader" - jsut one more checkbox "Champions yes/no"

then u use the lfm panel

"Wheloon ee full chain with champs bring-A-Game" (or in short WC)

or

"Wheloon eh full chain ip NoCh"

---

or


"Spies he champs selective"

[Sam1313]

I think what you all have done was tried to cater to a very very very few Uber players complaining that the game was too easy. What you really ended up doing was driving away NEW players and forcing the non uber, non duping, non exploiting veteran players into running Normal mode. Good job. Keep up the great work maybe in a few more months every server will have the population that Wayfinder has. Speaking of which. How is anyone on that server going to level?

[bsquishwizzy]

Ok, how about this: change-up the Champion logic, make the spawns more rare (about 2%), and implement the following rules:

1) Uber immunities in all but one or two areas. For example, high fort saves, deathblock, immunity to level drain, 300% fortification, High AC, High PRR / MRR, True Seeing, high DPS, but a laughably low will save. So you can dance them like a monkey with a shock collar on, but FoD? Fuggetaboutit.

2) The do not rubber band when the move out of their zone, but are also allowed a ranged attack and/or summon 2 to 3 mobs at a time. So, should they party break off an attack, the Champion retreats and summons aid or ranges the party. This way, the party can retreat, formulate a plan to take them on, and to trial-and-error to figure out the chamption’s weaknesses.

3) DO NOT get rid of the one-shot-one-kill capabilities. Knowing this will cause zerg groups to evaluate whether they want to take out a Champion, or simply stealth past them.

4) Make sure the group gets decent XP for taking out a Champion.

5) Make sure they are not counted as part of the number of mobs needed to get Conquest.

I like the idea of these and a random mob that no one was expecting, and no one can look up on the wiki to figure out how to handle them. It gives the group pause to think about whether they want to take this mob on, or somehow tip-toe around the problem and move on with the quest.

[Grosbeak07]

Was in a full group, running on epic hard. Champions added maybe a touch more difficulty, but it seemed appropriate. Epic Hard was well... harder than it used to be. AS IT SHOULD BE. The only real tactic we did different was killing the champions first.

We've all gotten too used to simply pwning content. This change seems good to me.

[janave]

How is anyone on that server going to level?

Probably bladebarrier and wail cookies. Shhh

[bsquishwizzy]

we already have checkboxes: "public lfm - yes/no" and "prefer not to be leader" - jsut one more checkbox "Champions yes/no"

then u use the lfm panel

"Wheloon ee full chain with champs bring-A-Game" (or in short WC)

or

"Wheloon eh full chain ip NoCh"

---

or


"Spies he champs selective"

We have people who have a problem saying "zerg IP". Adding "NoCH" is just adding more gibberish to people who already think that using comments to tell other players how you're running the quest is an alien concept.

[redoubt]

Buffing 30-50% of the mobs is just a buff to the mobs. Its not a "champion system". If you want a system that reflects the occasional champion amongst the bad guys consider this:

1. Catagorize the buffs:
-- offensive - 50% fort bypass, TS, 2x damage, vorpal, etc
-- defensive - +50 to 100% fort, displacement, +50 to one energy resist
-- party - bard song damage boost, haste, mass heal (to include long cast time)

2. Set the rate by level (no named):
-- normal: 1% of mobs
-- hard: 2%
-- elite: 3%

3. Set the buff rate:
-- normal: one buff
-- hard: two buff (not from same category
-- elite: three buffs (one from each.)

4. Set auto drop reward from ALL champions (make champions worth killing or don't bother putting them in the game.)
-- each champion is worth xx% of base xp. (5-10?)
-- XP capped characters get: commendations, heart seeds, tokens of the 12, astral shards... something worth actually getting.

Ok, how about this: change-up the Champion logic, make the spawns more rare (about 2%), and implement the following rules:

1) Uber immunities in all but one or two areas. For example, high fort saves, deathblock, immunity to level drain, 300% fortification, High AC, High PRR / MRR, True Seeing, high DPS, but a laughably low will save. So you can dance them like a monkey with a shock collar on, but FoD? Fuggetaboutit.

2) The do not rubber band when the move out of their zone, but are also allowed a ranged attack and/or summon 2 to 3 mobs at a time. So, should they party break off an attack, the Champion retreats and summons aid or ranges the party. This way, the party can retreat, formulate a plan to take them on, and to trial-and-error to figure out the chamption’s weaknesses.

3) DO NOT get rid of the one-shot-one-kill capabilities. Knowing this will cause zerg groups to evaluate whether they want to take out a Champion, or simply stealth past them.

4) Make sure the group gets decent XP for taking out a Champion.

5) Make sure they are not counted as part of the number of mobs needed to get Conquest.

I like the idea of these and a random mob that no one was expecting, and no one can look up on the wiki to figure out how to handle them. It gives the group pause to think about whether they want to take this mob on, or somehow tip-toe around the problem and move on with the quest.

Some good ideas. Thanks for a reply attempting to help with the situation. I put my idea in here too. I think we agree on a lot of what would help.

On the one shot kill part. I think a few things need to change before something like that could be kept:
-- the dispel line needs to work equally between players and mobs (so we can debuff them and not get one-shotted if we play it right)
-- beholders need to suppress magic (including their own) and the magic comes back if not in the cone.
-- the champion density needs to go way down. In a room with respawning crowns you can neither examine them all nor pick the right tactic as the you are, like it or not, fighting 8 mobs at once and each one needs a different tactic.
-- I also like the idea of a better visual to identify the champion buffs.

[Qhualor]

Devs,

Stick to your guns mostly. Finally attempting to bring back challenge to the game and us "few" that welcome challenge have arms wide open. Some players have had it too easy the last few years steamrolling/zerging quests even on elite. Some talk the talk but clearly it shows it was just that. The Champions need some tweaks and I still say they should be more rare, but dont nerf hammer them. I want this to work very much. I can see a positive domino affect happening from this and any other new challenges going forward.

[Gremmlynn]

From what I saw, just running low level stuff, Khorthos/harbor, there seemed to be to many in comparison to the rank and file mobs, they seemed to hit to hard and have to many hps relative to other mobs IMO. One other thing I noticed was that it seemed to be all or nothing when it came to mini bosses being champions.

Personally I'd like to see trash type champions to be mid way between regular mobs of their type and mini-bosses and mini bosses to be mid way between the regular version and the boss of that content as far as hps and damage goes. What I saw was trash champions with quest bosses who outclassed those bosses. The other buffs, debuffs and defense bonuses should be what sets them apart (though they should also lose the crowns). Also, far fewer of them, as their frequency and numbers causes quests to become centered around them.

This seemed to cause quests to feel disjointed as the real difficulty had little to do with the quest design and mostly to do with how many crowns an encounter contained.

[Wizza]

Too many of them.

The "I deal great damage" is over the top. Getting one shotted for 1k damage (NOT in Delirium) is ridicolous.

The True Seeing appears WAY too much as well. 80% of the Champions I encountered had TS.

[Systern]

My little troupe consists of 3 completionists: 14-15 lives, 7-8 epic lives... We're not "gimp", but may not be the uber-est out there.

We ran 4 quests last night getting the 3rd of us to 28 to ER again tonight-

EE Vol: We saw a LOT of champions. 30-45% of the mobs it seemed. Spawning at CRs 73-78. 140k hp Quells chain casting intercession, dispell magic, and chain missile doing 28-44 damage per missile, and 6-9 of them just sucked. Every random trash respawn in the hallways (every 45 seconds to 1 minute?) had at least 1-2 champions that took enough time for another set of respawns to occur. The end fight had 2 champions spawn and took forever to beat down because they were doing so much damage. While we didn't wipe, we each had about 7 deaths before we decided to regroup and swap destinies. I'm playing a pure swashie dex build with Epic Reflexes; My reflex saves are at 82 before songs; I was STILL failing evades against cometfalls. We happily, merrily, trounced this quest on EE 2 weeks ago on our last ER.

That sucked. It wasn't fun. Wasn't worth the time. Even though plat is absolutely meaningless in this game, wasn't worth the 8k repair bill.

EH Ghosts of Perdition:
Yawn.... Oh lookie, another champion speed bump. CR 33-36. All the orange named statues have crowns too! ... meat sacks. Just longer to beat them down.

EH Inferno:
Every. Single. Orange-Name. Had. A. Crown. 2/3rds of them spawned chests. Yaaa, "Shloot" (it's a portmanteau. second word is 'loot') to pay for the previous repair bill.

EH Spies:
Yawn. Occasional meatbag to suck up time.


For those that like the changes and the difficulty... What do you propose for the characters that find CR 35ish way too easy, and CR 75 too 'hard'? (Old whine: EH too easy. EE too hard. Wahh, buff melees)

For the Devs... Remember all these changes you just made to healing amp because multiplicative buffs are too hard to balance? Giving EE mobs 150% of the number of Buffs that are 150% more effective each is kinda the same thing... Tune it down.

And while I didn't have time or desire to check every single champion. Each one I did look at (~15 of them) all had True Seeing and Death Ward.

And Epic Ward.
Epic Ward sucks. You want tactical diversity? You want to remove our blanket immunities? Remove theirs too.
You thought level drain was cheap, so you changed nightmare weapons to only give 1 neg on vorpal. That Epic Ward regens in 3 seconds.
You think stat drains are cheap, so you made these epic warded critters 90% immune to the damage in the first place. And then regen the damage after 3 seconds.
Of course, this doesn't fix the problem since you're giving everything death ward, which is 100% immunity, and not just 90% immune for a 3 second window.


TL;DR: Unfun. Too many OP buffs on EE.

[Blackheartox]

I think what you all have done was tried to cater to a very very very few Uber players complaining that the game was too easy. What you really ended up doing was driving away NEW players and forcing the non uber, non duping, non exploiting veteran players into running Normal mode. Good job. Keep up the great work maybe in a few more months every server will have the population that Wayfinder has. Speaking of which. How is anyone on that server going to level?

Well im not running normal at all dear sire.

[FranOhmsford]

Now I've only played some low level quests since the update - namely Catacombs and Waterworks - so take this with a pinch of salt but:

1) Elite doesn't seem to have got any harder.

2) It seems like 30% of mobs have a Crown and mostly this just means they take 1 more hit to kill.

3) ANY mob can be a Champion - Oozes, Spiders, Quest NPCs {Librarian Guillaume in Catacombs - He still got one shot btw!}.

4) Zombie Champions can be a real pain to a Staff Acrobat!
Why is it that every Champion I actually noticed in End-Game Marguerite was a Zombie? {80% of that quest if not more are Skeletons!}.

5) With all those Champions {even in Friar's Niece I counted 3!} I didn't see a single chest!


Feedback

1) Reduce the numbers of Champions - 30% is way too high!

2) Buff the remaining Champions better!

3) Make only intelligent creatures able to be Champions - No Champion non-named Oozes/Spiders etc.
Preferably also keep Champion status away from unintelligent Skeletons and Zombies - Most Undead quests have a few intelligent Undead around!

4) Weapons breaking is a personal bugbear of mine - If a mob has DR already it shouldn't get more DR!

[Daerius of the Blessed Blades]

Epic Elite should be a challenge. My guild is by no means the uber-guild on Ghallanda, but we short-man most raids and EE content simply because there is no real threat or challenge. It seems like pugs have accepted EE as the Norm, which I can't imagine was the game's intent. Maybe instead of whining about the challenge and randomness (a MUCH needed feature in DDO!) that Champions add to the game, maybe Normal needs a increase in difficulty so that EE remains a significant challenge.

That being said, mobs doing 2K damage per hit on EH/EE seems a little extreme, and likely needs to be tweaked. But Epic Elite has gotten so easy, many of my guildees never PUG because that's the only way we can get a challenge anymore is by short-manning the content. That surely is not the intent of an MMO, to encourage soloing???

To a man (and woman) last night, even the more casual players in my guild LOVED the challenge of Champions and we enjoyed many a laugh while our lowbies (including one multiple TR, one first lifer, and one second lifer) ran heroic elite content and faced random mobs that turned out to be a challenge for the first time in YEARS.

Thank you, Turbine - we had more players log on and STAY on late into the evening running old content than we've had in a long time. Champions are MUCH appreciated!

[Grosbeak07]

Too many of them.

The "I deal great damage" is over the top. Getting one shotted for 1k damage (NOT in Delirium) is ridicolous.

The True Seeing appears WAY too much as well. 80% of the Champions I encountered had TS.

That I'd bet is on purpose. Prevents people from skipping 90% of mobs in a quest by using invis pots.

[phillymiket]

Overall, I like champions. They are fun and make the game interesting.

However, their spawn rate is way too high.

It should be "I wonder if there will be a Champion?" not "I wonder which 2 or 3 of these mobs ahead will be Champions?"

Not that it's too hard as is, but more that it's tedious and Champs aren't at all a surprise when you see one. Too much is too much.

Put a cap on the number of active. (and yes, some will stone or bard song the Champs or w/e to freeze the spawn but most won't)

We don't expect brand new players to be playing Heroic Elite most of the time.!

Here's the thing, New Players (not brand new but new) have been playing Elite for a good while now.

What you are talking about is beating the New Folks back to Normal.

How will they react? Doesn't that concern you?

It concerns me. I worry for this, my favorite game.

Too much sweeping changes too often.

If I didn't have so much invested I might not want to re-gear and re-configure my toons yet again for the billionth time.

Sorry to repeat from other thread but they all got locked so...

I think you should do this:

- Leave Hard alone, it's too harsh for a new person to lose H and E overnight

- Make E have Champions but cap the numbers.

- Make a new higher level of difficulty, "Paragon Level" or w/e, that has all the Champs in their full glory.

"They Added a new difficulty level !!" is a positive event.

"I can't play on Hard or Elite anymore !!" is a negative event.

Why do something in a negative way that could have been done with positivity?

I don't have issue, I've already adapted my style. Stealth will be big for me now. Sniping at range. Enlarged Insta-kills, charm the Champion the let him kill the trash and leave before the charm breaks, etc., etc.

For a Vet it's "Champions-Shmampions".

The only thing you are eliminating is new players in Elite and Hard.

Are new players in Heroic Elite and Heroic Hard the problem?

Or is Vets cherry-picking and ROFL stomping your EE content the problem.

If it's the Vet's this does little to stop them.

If it's New Players that are the issue, then Gratz - problem solved.

This should put the kibosh on their little hopes and dreams of hanging tough in the big leagues.

[GoldyGopher]

I have run a dozen quests on Hard and Elite settings in the past 24 hours. While not as many as some and more than others; it is still a low sample size however here are my feelings. Here is a sample of what I encountered.

When running Mask of Deception I encountered roughly one champion for every two to three mobs, roughly 33% to 50%, that number is way to high. Every mob I was able to examine had Deathward as their random effect and three had a melee strike bonus I did not totally understand.

When running Lines of Supply every group had multiple champions. My estimate is that 40% of the mobs were Champions. Every mob that I examined had Deathward and many had a melee strike bonus.

When running {I]Impossible Demands[/I] I actually cleared every room, each room had at least two champions, many had three. The Named Spider Akostra was a Mini-Boss Champion. I was not able to examine many of the mobs, but Akostra had Deathward.

When running Running with the Devils I encountered 27 Champions and one mini-boss named champion in the end fight, however I was unable to find his chest. All mobs I examined had Deathward and many had that Melee strike bonus.

When running A Relic of Sovereign Past I encountered nearly 40% Champions, many of which Adamantine Defenders in Clay Golems (I don't remember one of them not being a champion). I encountered two named mini bosses and they both gave chests.

When running The Tear of Dhakaan every group of mob had at least one champion, except for the oozes in which case every ooze was a champion. I felt like 33% of all mobs were champions. Half of the named mini-bosses, IE Nartar, were Champions and offered a second chest.


In the entire time I was one shot once (my first run of Mask of Deception on EPic Elite Solo in an off destiny without a Fort item. Hit for over 900 HP of slash damage.

I do not remember seeing a mob above a level 12 (14 on Elite) without seeing deathward on them. I tried to check as many as I could, but it got confusing with upwards of 9 champions active at a time. I saw many mobs with a melee strike bonus (which I could not figure out exactly what it did), but beyond that I cannot think of another buff in the higher level quests. I think I saw a couple of these champions with true sight, but where are the other buffs?

My opinion based on what I have seen in those dozen quests:
Way too many Champions spawn at a time. I am not talking about zerging through a quest and collecting a dozen mobs but slowly moving one grouping at a time.
Too many of the non humanoid like mobs (oozes, wargs, dogs, defenders, rust monsters) became champions, fighting six champion oozes at a time is quite painful and slash one of those oozes by accident...
There seems to be an AI/gaming problem with Champions, if they are not active they cannot take damage. My rogue was useless.
I'd really like to see more variation in these mobs, how about higher AC (and lower HP), maybe even some other defensive buffs. I'd prefer these mobs get defensive buffs rather than offensive buffs.
At the highest level Mask of Deception my mine maxed character was taking 200 to 250 points of damage per hit, she has 180% fortification, a 105 AC, 25% dodge and I forget the other little details. The only time she was one shot was when her fortification was at like 60, I am not sure that is a bad thing.
In my solo play there is no way I could handle more than three Champions at any one time, four was the death confirmed whether playing level 6 or 32 with appropriate level characters.

[golruul]

After playing EE demonweb + 3BC + Orchard quests yesterday, my feedback:
* Number of champions spawning looks to be (much) more than 10%.
* Concentration of champion spawns could use a change. For instance, in EE Temple of Vol, with a party of 2 players and killing every single monster we encountered (i.e. no zerging), going into one of the rooms would throw yellow/orange alert and have 3-5 champions. Going in the basement room (after opening a gate, two staircases down leads to a square room with urns in the center) triggered red alert and 4+ champions -- this is after killing every single monster we encountered up to that point. Instant death.
* 100+ champion kills and not a single chest.
* In high level EE quests, monsters tend to be a huge bag of HP -- battles aren't necessarily more difficult, just much longer. Champions make this even worse. In EE orchard quests, the champions (especially undead with crit resistance) take a long time to kill. It wasn't more "challenging", just really tedious and not fun. Please stop doing this.
* I'm fine with all of the extra abilities/damage champions have except for their increased HP.

Note that I was playing a pure caster druid for all of this.

[Artrish]

don't cave in to the charlie casuals there are lower difficulty settings the can choose

This would be nice to do if those lower difficulties would progress the characters. The way the game is setup these days, you need to repeat a quest on normal 4-5 times to make up for a first time elite run. I have been on the server running multi lives where i had to repeat quests 10 times each to try level my characters, i cannot handle those days anymore as after the second life doing it, the mind goes numb and the game doesn't feel like a game, it just feels like a chore.

Champions are a nice thought, and this whole adding in difficult options for people to have a challenge is nice. Those that do it often are out of touch with what a casual gamer goes thorugh. On the servers there is very little option other then to join elite groupings. For me it is fun to feel character progression, i don't want to spend 50 hours a week of gameplay to progress one or two levels when the character builds require 12-14 past lives to show progress in questing.

It is a mix of different issues that i describe in my post.

For me, the champions just put a block in my tr goals. I can get around it though i would be playing outside my class setup to do so. I tr'd one in to a sorc, so in the level 2 dungeons my sorcs acid spell kills the general mobs though when i hit a champion, it takes 5 casts to take one down and the incoming damage requires me to drink a potion every second hit which is a larger increase in time then the usual 2 hit and move on scenario i am used to. Too stressfull a style for me to play, though i can physically get through it, my body is too tense playing that wayand it isn't a fun experience for me.

I heard an option once to roll a new character, which is very disrespectfull to suggest as all my character have around a thousand hours time invested in them and to completely delete these to make room for new ones so i can roll characters to solo a normal difficulty life (not many would join my normal difficulty hosted runs, have tried it in past many many times).

As a casual gamer, my time is just as valuable to me as other gamers who are up for a difficult challenge. I am aware this is difficult to balance the environment to be enjoyable for all. At the moment, the balance is not in favor of the casual gamer and the options feel very degrading to enjoy the time on the game as such. As mentioned in another thread on this topic, i am choosing to have the weekend away from ddo instead of rolling up a first liver to solo normal quests 4 times each.

In short, listen to the guys that enjoy playing for a challenge as to how the champion mobs are going, just have some consideration for what the alternatives you are mentioning to the casual gamer that dont want to participate in difficult gameplay setups. All our time is valuable to us and we are all worthy to enjoy character progression, rewards and the feeling of advancing for our time spent here.

Have a fun time out there, take care.

[Sam1313]

If you want to make the game harder, make it more challenging then just remove the stupidly overpowered weapons and armor. The thunderholme weapons. What was wrong with the citw weapons? or green steel for that fact? Heck just remove all weapons after Meridia let there be only green steel weapons even in epic, that should make those crying the game is too easy happy, but yet I don't see them using stock gear. Hmmm. And yes what about PERMADEATH? I don't see my PD characters being played now a lot. And that's another thing I don't understand maybe some one out there that's just so GOD Uber can help me to understand. If your so GOD UBER and this game is soooooooo easy, then why are you running around with the best gear in the game? Go Naked. Play permadeath if you want a challenge.