Monster Champion Feedback

[DarthCaedus]

In brief, Turbine needs to utilize several top tier players like yourself for whom epic elite is as trivial as you describe it is for yourself, and work with them to figure out just how much to amp up epic elite difficulty so that it's no longer remotely close to guaranteed success. Once EE is hard enough that someone like you fails it frequently, then it's probably at the correct level for another year, or at least a few more months.

There is much truth to this. The people complaining the game is too easy will quickly say it's too hard if they are unable to complete it.

This actually happened when U14 was new. Many hardcore folks thought EE was too hard and Turbine made it a bit easier. People forget that - but it happened.

The thing is there were already a few OP builds at the time that were crushing EE right after U14 came out - before it was made easier, but they just weren't in the know.

[phillymiket]

Another thing I don't understand..' Dungeon Scaling'..

Why do we still have dungeon scaling.. especially for hard/elite.. get rid of this.

You go to all the trouble of screwing around with champions for hard/elite and you completely ignore Dungeon scaling ??

Great point.

We have Dungeon Scaling that makes mobs easier with fewer people, we now have Champions that (seemingly, maybe I'm wrong) get tougher when there is more people in party.

Before Dungeon Scaling quest were harder but you could learn and tweak your strategy because the quests were predictably difficult, so you'd eventually overcome them with practice and move your play up in difficulty.

You could adjust your over-all strategy.

Now you can only adjust your tactics. (or did I get those backward?) by opening up the mobs Focus Orb like a Fortune Cookie to see your fate before each mini-fight.

If we removed scaling on Hard and Elite and removed Champions on Hard we'd have a game that progresses (for an average, non-uber player) like this

1)Casual - practice
2)Normal - easy to solo, easy
3)Hard - Much easier in a group, predictably difficult but doable solo if you go slow.
4)Elite - Must have a group - unpredictable and nasty

That makes sense. That's better for new players and it's also better for Vets because Elite would actually be harder.

But anyway...

Devs are adjusting what they are adjusting so any further suggestions will see no action until the next phase plays out.

[psykopeta]

I've seen some champs spawn with less than total hit points. It's happened more than once. If I were to guess, these monsters had equivalent hit points to a normal version but the hit point pool of a champ. They spawned around 1/3 of total.

This happened in Necromancer's Doom, Haverdasher's, & Delera's 2. I have not noticed it in any high level or epic dungeons.

in eyes of stone

ALL eles (sigh) and their... you know, that orange/whatever it's called, the summoner? were champions, since i was only forced to kill them, dunno if appeared more champs

however, air, earth and fire eles spawned with like u said, 1/3 of hp, which was like o_Ouu

[cdemeritt]

http://imgur.com/

Totally free. No sign up required.

I've used imgur for years... a good site for photo hosting.

[hit_fido]

Therefore you can't shape EE around the powergamers without hurting other players, you have to find a new playground for them in a new difficulty setting.

Yeah I think that is a reasonable option too.

a) adjust difficulty on existing choices; but players feel like ground is shifted under them

b) add a new choice, checkbox, playground, or whatever; but not all players will necessarily use the new choice

They both have tradeoffs but I think (b) would have been better overall for the most players. (a) is the easiest to implement for Turbine initially but now they have to spend time tuning it to some degree that nets a positive outcome while taking into account a much bigger section of the player base than just the desires of the top x%.

[Connman]

Here's the tl;dr of this entire thread:

Justify, defend, or tweak champions however you want, but you are losing players in an already too small player base, and will continue to for as long as it isn't optional. Nothing else anyone can say or do is even relevant against this fact.

This may be the case %100 I do not know. But I would like to point out my opinion on this.

A week ago, I would have said this.

Justify, defend, or tweak the Game however you want, but you are losing players in an already to small player base, and will continue to do so as long as there is no challenge anymore Nothing else anyone can say or do is even relevant against the fact that long term customers that have been long term customers because of the challenges presented that, often. would take years to overcome.


I am going to take the hit on this one I bet but I am willing to be the sacrifice to get this out there.
A lot of the long term players and power gamers have really been dancing around the issue to try to keep everyone calm, peaceful and productive, but...

On a purely personal note on the way it feels inside my guts. Yes a lot of people that have top end toons, that have the best gear. have spent years of grinding and improving their characters only to have their accomplishments trivialized by changes that lower difficulty and hand out the same rewards I had to fight for to anyone that shows up.

This hurts my feelings

I had to "grow up" in DDO fighting the most epic monsters, overcoming the most epic challenges in any video game I ever played. The first time my wife saw a beholder in the game she squealed with excitement. The first time I faced Velah I was struck with awe, wonder, and a fire breath that one shotted me. My first trip to Amrath was magical. It was a Place that trully felt like end game.

I learned from the best of the best on Ghallanda, If the names Redgun, Akira, and Isssssatank, mean anything to you then you know what I mean. When I encountered challenges my choices were to seek advice from those that I knew or to find out on my own. At no point ever, and I mean ever, had it even occurred to me to come to the forums to the game and ask for the game to be made easier. But some people did, I guess and the Dev's listened.

The Dev's also listened when we said we wanted more power, more items, bigger quests and more raids. And the power has crept up. They had some guys there that went all loot crazy, I like these guys loot is good, but they got ahead of the "make challenges guys" so there you go, everyone is overpowered.

Right now, as I am typing this, I literally have some tears in my eyes. When I think about the friends that have left over the years to to ever dissolving, end game, and challenge it truly makes me sad. I have made myself very sad typing this post. And having read between the lines in many, many posts by long term players, if you look for it you truly can see the sadness in their posts, the yearning for a time when we stood together or fell alone.

When I started playing the game it was hard, **** hard. You needed gear to be up to par. You needed a good build to be usefull, and you needed to pass a MyDDO check to get into elite raids as an Unknown.

And now today we have a game that is filled with players that have never had to face the challenges that we did. They have never been forced to get better. So they think that after a couple of years of flying through the game like it is nothing somehow has given them some ground to stand on when talking to players that have faced these challenges.
They say "what is going on yesterday I could SOLO epic elite and now I can't. THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE GAME"

All those people out there that are saying yeah its not that bad just get a little better, are most likely people that "grew up" in the era of hard gaming here. All it took us was a smoke break and about five minutes to remember how to beat a semi-challenging enemy and we were back at it, a little more cautious, still destroying stuff.

The players that have "grown up" in the new era of DDO have never truly been challenged, and it shows. The second this thing turned on the years of never been given enough challenge to slowly garner the skills to survive and compete is completely apparent.

So I have this to say to all the players that suddenly aren't very good at the game. Gear up, get better, play together or die alone.

You will say but yeah the vets never help us, well we never had to. All you had to do was hold down W and the left mouse button until you got XP.

Now that you will clearly need our help, you can bet your right arm we are there right now jumping up and down saying," whoa whoa there don't get crazy on us. give us a chance to help you get better. We WANT you to get better. That's it, that is where the big disconnect from the power players and newer casual Players is.

The power gamers are trying to say this as nicely as possible. "you need to get better gear and develop better tactics to survive and we are happy to help"

But what the newer players are hearing is "you suck get better nOObz"

And I don't know why!

Yes the game provides some challenge now, yes you will be forced to get better if you want to be a useful party slot member in the higher difficulties.

People are complaining that they should be entitled to complete the hardest difficulties without these obstacles.

Well you know what, I am entitled to complete these higher difficulties because I can survive.
If you can't survive you are not entitled to get a completion, I am sorry, that entitlement comes with years of garnering skill, not just a a couple of years of coasting along on autopilot.

I am sorry If I hurt your feelings, but at this point someone just had to say it. Casual gamers demanding the game be dumbed down to their level has turned one of the greatest designed games into something akin to Mario party. Newer players treat the monsters and the dungeons with the same respect. Well now, the game just went from Mario party to Shinobi.

If you agree with me and don't really want to get involved in this, that's cool, I feel your pain.
If you don't agree with me and feel the need to reply with a bunch of comments designed to make me feel bad, don't bother, I can barely keep from crying thinking about what has happened to the greatest game I have ever played.

I miss you Redgun, the one who taught me how to solo epics when they new.
I miss you Isssssatank inspiring me to be the best tank the server has ever seen, I never hit that one and tanking is dead, but maybe now

But most of all I miss you Akira who gave me the best advice I have ever gotten in this game "Don't just f***ng stand their Phineur Jump around and heal yourself man"


TL/DR
I am very sad
Please everyone calm down and DON"T LEAVE
If the challenge is to hard, ask for help we want you to have fun.
Vets can still make this happen for you.

I am sorry I have gone off topic, but I feel it is reverent. And I applaud the vast majority of all players on every side of this discussion for being so civil, thoughtful and productive. I don't want this post not to be, but I feel it should be read by those with the power to do something.

Thanks and have a great day!

[Merfyn]

Given Cordovan's answer above, I'll see how it goes tonight. Hopefully the modifications will make champions a challenge rather than an impossibility, as I get that content is too easy with changes over the years.

I definitely wasn't prepared for Shaagh's to spawn so many champs (definitely in excess of 10%; I remember two of them over my corpse in the end room when I finally died after killing several) or that they would be so difficult; I would have taken henchmen and not relied on BYOH. Incidentally it was hard difficulty, running with a 6th level ranger.

sorry,While I certainly dont feel F2P players are "Pond Scum" by any means, I dont see how players that do everything in their power to NOT buy buy turbine points is a demographic Turbine needs.

What point am I missing? why would slowing down free TP farmers not be completely working as intended in this new system?

Players are leaving because.. players have left and the population is decreasing.
Having more players to group with is always a good thing, just look at all the threads complaining about the low number of lfg's.

Players attract players. It doesn't matter if some of those don't buy turbine points, they benefit from having them around in other ways.

Impaqt, I'm not saying you personally share in the bigotry, though there's plenty of it in this thread. Some of it in ALLCAPS!! However, the limits of f2p like unlocking the shared bank are things you may have forgotten the sacrifice involved in, if you didn't start as VIP in the first place. Without this, a "fr00by" such as I is reduced to only what he can find or scrape together to buy on AH. Add to this that much of the game's intricacies are only learned through constant play (with much of it suffering spoilage, like my exploiter) and the casual player has some *significant* challenges.

Those can be positives, as can champions, but a "throw 'em in the deep end" sentiment from the veterans doesn't encourage player retention. Happily, I see far more sentiment of that nature on these forums than I've *ever* seen in game, where many vets go out of their way to help.

As to your question -
Keladon has exactly the correct response. In addition to this, I've forked out probably over $100 for a "free" game. Admittedly, this includes the cost of dual boxing with my son's account since I loathe PUG-a-Zerg play. Yeah, and I get that someone on their 3rd TR isn't very interested in being careful on Butchers' Path Elite, for which Zerg seems like norm for said ALLCAPS!! veteran players. Meanwhile, my Pally is chuffing along 30 seconds behind the group like the fat kid in broken-field running since he can't afford better boots than he got on Korthos.

And yeah, I'm on Wayfinder and Argon. Smooth move, I'm sure.

However, if you chase away us fr00by types, say buh-bye to said potential revenue stream. I wouldn't bat an eye if you removed the "100 favor dash" since IMO that goes against the game's intent, but it's not like I plan to just take the next blind guild invite that I get.

If you hadn't considered it, there's a variety of games which are far newer, use similar f2p/game credit models, and do pretty nicely... I doubt Warner Bros. is going to open-source DDO or substantially change the graphics on their own, so the flashier games will appeal to the younger members of my demographic that don't share my nostalgia, even when the games may be inferior.

[ice584]

UPDATE 12/16/14: We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Original Post: Now that Update 24 is out, and clearly there's a lot of community interest in discussing the new Monster Champion system, we thought it would be a good idea to consolidate the large number of threads on this topic into an official thread. Please run some quests, give it a bit of time, and provide us with your feedback on the Monster Champion system.

We have seen a lot of feedback that appears to be tilted toward Terminal Delerium in particular. It should be noted that Terminal Delerium is an Extreme Challenge dungeon, so particularly if you are running it on Epic Elite, it may not be the best quest to singularly evaluate Monster Champions on. That said, we do appreciate all of your feedback on this topic, regardless of what quest(s) are being used to evaluate the system.

Thanks!

Admittedly I haven't played a ton recently, but I'm to the point where I feel like I should definitely have gotten at least one chest from these new mobs. I have literally seen 0 chests drop from champion mobs. I've seen screenshots so I'm not debating they don't drop, just stating I have yet to see even one. When there are noticeably harder mobs in every quest and I get no rewards from the increased time and effort expended to get through those quests, that's nothing more than an increase to the grind.

My two cents...
If the goal is to inject harder/tougher mobs into the mix while giving players a chance at "greater" loot, that's awesome. But, set it up so that there's a random chance to spawn a champion mob who always drops a chest. That's infinitely better than always/randomly/frequently spawning champion mobs who randomly spawns chests. You can tweak the percentages around so that you're not dropping chests any faster than before on average, but this way we don't have to wade through these champion mobs all the time with absolutely no rewards.

If the goal is not to add more loot for the players, then give us a small "Champion" bonus to XP or something. The worst thing in MMOs is work+effort resulting in absolutely no rewards. Even crappy rewards is better than no rewards at all.

[Seikojin]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

Double edged sword. I loved the rate of champs currently, but meh, if it still is working, cool. Hopefully I still feel a challenge from elite at level considering a reduction in spawn and power.

Now, if we can only get these champs into raids...

[Hafeal]

I am very sad
Please everyone calm down and DON"T LEAVE
If the challenge is to hard, ask for help we want you to have fun.
Vets can still make this happen for you.

Thanks and have a great day!

The challenge has ALWAYS been hard.

DDO has ALWAYS been a difficult game and it is STILL a difficult game, starting at the character creation screen. Until Mod 6, DDO was masochistic due to xp debt, imo, not challenging - simply not fun (sometimes). Nostalgic memories of 2006 and 2007, simply polishes the ugly parts of those years.

From what I have seen and read, the only people who think DDO is easy are vets who have accumulated years of quest knowledge, AI anticipatory knowledge, character build knowledge, incredibly rare loot, a dragon's hoard of raid loot, a mountain of plat and/or AS for twinking.

I always find it amusing that so many whine and chomp for better more powerful loot and then come right back and say how easy the game is. Stop playing the game for 6 months, start over with a 28 point build, no loot, no plat, NO Trs, NO EDs, run Elite. Tell me the game is easy. It ain't. If you grind the TRs, if you grind the EDs, if you get the rare loot, **** it, the game should be easier. What the game shoudn't be - is designed around the small percentage of players who want a high end game tailored simply for them and what's in their closet.

[DarthCaedus]

...........
you need to get better gear and develop better tactics to survive and we are happy to help

People are complaining that they should be entitled to complete the hardest difficulties without these obstacles.

I am sorry If I hurt your feelings, but at this point someone just had to say it. Casual gamers demanding the game be dumbed down to their level has turned one of the greatest designed games into something akin to Mario party. Newer players treat the monsters and the dungeons with the same respect. Well now, the game just went from Mario party to Shinobi.

...........

You are oversimplifying this discussion into a "she wants an easy button" argument which is flat-out wrong. If you read the thread there is alot of feedback and the devs already validated the biggest 2 complaints by changing those.

I think what irks me more than anything is that some of the biggest cheaters on my server are on here pontificating about how people want easy buttons when most of their lifes came from recycled ottos's stones and xp stones. I see them die in quests but it matters not because they use a spirit cake before I can use my res scroll - where did those come from? They will never have to worry about running out of sp because they have unlimited sp potions in their bank characters, in the mail, in deleted toons (that can be undeleted for free if they choose VIP for a month), in their buy back tab - whereever they can stash it. Unlimited guild renown elixirs, raid timer bypasses, - you name it.

I am not making any generalizations about everyone in thread, I am talking about specific people from my own server that I know for certain have used massive exploits - pontificating about people that never used any of those cheats wanting an easy button.

We don't need your lecture sir. I have no idea if you used those things or not and I am not hinting even a little that you did- but we don't need your lectures about a topic even the devs agree with us on.

Read the post and recognize that people have specific complaints about the champion system and the devs agree on both the major points.

There will always be disagreements but your comments are what they are - no better or worse than anyone else in this game.

[DANTEIL]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

Are the same adjustments going to be made for both Heroic and Epic quests? It seemed like there was some consideration of adjusting one more than the other… so just wanted to ask.

[HAL]

I wish people would be more honest instead of pretending everyone that doesn't like champions is just looking for an easy button.

Unfortunately they are being honest - if you're the kind of person who looks down their nose at everyone who doesn't play the way that you play, everyone who doesn't play the way you play MUST be looking for an easy button.

There couldn't possibly be any other reason why everyone wouldn't want to play the way the "ubers" play... O.o

[Jaenar]

Heroic Elite - Jungles of Khyber(von3)

Sorry I forgot to get the /loc at the time, there were other mobs to deal with.

Near the end of the quest, you have to air jet over the wall to the area just before the three named encounter. As soon as you land there are three Ogre and a Drow Scorpion. Two of the three ogre had 350-380 hit points, the third had 3810 hit points and was a crowned Champion. I think this is an example of a 10x hit point Champion? I ran the quest this afternoon around 1pm est, so after you made changes I think. Between his excessive hit points and buffs, took a few to kill him. I was with one other person duo.

[patang01]

Don't you think that is was a little bit stupid that the red-names are now less scarry than the trash?



I love personally crafted and balanced dungeons, where thought and planning are put into each encounter.

I absolutely hate the random garbage that is monster champions. It doesn't always but it can potentially break any encounter.

if you want to add challenge buff the bosses, that makes more sense. And don't do it randomly.

Or an across the board buff of 10-20% to damage/HP on to all monsters on EE would be fine.

I'm not for random as challenge either, most good games balance the difficulty setting, not just throw in random encounters. Not that I mind random buffs to make each similar encounter a little different, but the importance is to avoid getting combinations that deny a players investment. Like remove all fort, or true vision? That's completely destructive to any balance. Armor piercing, vulnerability that stacks etc are okay but completely removing a specific defense is a terrible way to balance things.

I'm not really for lots of HP buffs. A trivial encounter will just drag on and since this is not a system where you can learn attack patterns in a way that you can actively defend against effects other than hiding behind obstructions - there's no real and good way to block specific attacks, then adding more hp and more DPS becomes more about math than actual active combat.

Anyways, I'm glad that Turbine is considering the density and also a way to make them rewarding.

[PpalP]

....
TL/DR
I am very sad
Please everyone calm down and DON"T LEAVE
If the challenge is to hard, ask for help we want you to have fun.
Vets can still make this happen for you.

I am sorry I have gone off topic, but I feel it is reverent. And I applaud the vast majority of all players on every side of this discussion for being so civil, thoughtful and productive. I don't want this post not to be, but I feel it should be read by those with the power to do something.

Thanks and have a great day!

I feel your sadness, I know what mean lossing firends in the game and of course with this reply I don't pretend that you feel more sadness.

The problem I see is that, as you had stated, all that changes that bring us here from there had changed the game (for good or bad), the game we have before U24 was the reason for your sadness, adding champions isn't adding a challenge, is adding a random thing. The thing that we loved isn't in the game anymore (almost). Adding random challenges is like trying to find fun in rolling a dice guessing the result. The challenge you're talking about demands a creative/imaginative aproach that look for our fun (and our money, ok), not only for our money and our time.

To find some challenge and don't be burned by the game I joined Permadeath and fall in love again with the game, but random champions ruined that also : /

[patang01]

Please everyone calm down and DON"T LEAVE
If the challenge is to hard, ask for help we want you to have fun.
Vets can still make this happen for you.

I don't know if you're trying to be sarcastic. I don't think the issue is 'too hard'. Too me it seems that it's to arbitrary.

[Scrabbler]

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.

Simply changing the spawn chance to lower or higher numbers won't solve the problem, because a uniform percentage ignores the different situations.

If you lower the spawn rate, then Champions are too rare in "ordinary" situations: standing there pre-spawned, waiting for you to walk up and aggro. But that same rate allows Champions to sometimes be too common in special situations, like when monsters spawn on top of you, respawn indefinitely, or when the players are locked into a room or defending an NPC.

For good results, you'd go back to the higher spawn rate, but then manually mark off individual chunks of dungeons as No-Champion zones. (Then you'd go and enable Champions in raids, except sometimes when they are manually excluded. The same logic applies)

[Kaytis]

I am sorry I have gone off topic, but I feel it is reverent.

There's a Freudian slip if I ever saw one.

[Thrudh]

I can understand having a scaling mob/ champion system when players are running over level.. like level 27's running von3 on EH.. a level 20 quest

I don't understand adding champions to hard/elite "at level" runs.
The quests were already designed to be a challenge at those levels for level appropriate toons.
If the quest was not a challenge for at level players then the quest design itself needed tweaking.

Quests WERE indeed already designed to be a challenge at those levels for level appropriate toons.... using gear and enhancement trees from 5 years back. But characters have become much stronger, while quests remained the same.

Tweaking every single quest would take a lot more time than adding champions.

How do you not understand this? Even if you don't agree with the implementation, you must understand why quests are no longer challenges for appropriate level characters.

At level parties are getting wiped with no chance of survival.. unless they have a rez piker hanging back at the beginning .. and that is no way to promote gameplay.
It should be extremely challenging, but no 1shot party wipes.. a death from a mistake or poor choice of action that resulted in death.. that can be adjusted in playstyle, strategy, tactics... one-shots.. not so much.
Intimi-tanks, cant get close to the champions due to one-shot potential.. whats the point of tanks if you cant heal them through a mob beating.. may as well all be kiting with ranged attacks playing keep-a-way.

Are they? Are entire parties being wiped out by 1shot champions? Is it truly impossible to handle them? Are you guys changing your tactics at all, or playing exactly the same as before the update?