Monster Champion Feedback

[Fuitentooty]

I think champions are a good idea, but I’m not really sold on the implementation right now.

Ran EE 3BC + EE necro quests yesterday in a group of 2. Roughly, the champion spawn rate seems to be about 1 per 5 mobs. We killed a massive amount of champions (conservative estimate of 120?) but never saw one chest.

Are chest drop rates incredibly low, or are they bugged for these quests and just don’t drop?

I don’t see any noticeable increase in difficulty but instead an increase in time to complete the quest. We didn’t even notice the champions (btw the crowns need to be a bit bigger) until the end fights, in particular Temple of Vol, where 3 of the 4 vampires were champions. Seems like champion hp is tripled compared to their mob counterpart, but those vamps had a massive amount of hp.

It didn’t make the fight any harder - just a lot longer.

HP inflation does not equate to more difficulty. How about adding some AI to the champions? For instance, have champion fighters do some tactical feats like tripping, stunning blow, hamstring, archers do manyshot, etc.

As it stands right now, all this has done was increase the time it takes to finish a quest because of hp inflation. And there’s no chests dropping from champions. Not impressed at all by this so-called increase in difficulty. You might as well just do an across-the-board increase of CR/hp/stats/damage of either all mobs or mini-bosses or bosses on hard/elite difficulties and it would achieve the same effect.

[kafrielveddicus]

Hey DEVS,

Can you not see the general theme of the responses here!!!!!

All the UBER I am soooo epic guys, say they love it because they think that they are in some rat race and hope others wont catch up!

And then,

There are the others who generally just dont care and have no interest in catching up to the said above UBERS, they just want to play the game and enjoy it, these folk are saying leave it in Epic Elite Content or give them a choice to play with Champions or not!

Seems pretty simple!!!

/Signed if you agree

[Seikojin]

...snip...

In the end, I decided that the damage from "I hit harder!" is a bit too high and should be scaled back from its current 3x damage (or so it feels like) to 2x damage, at least on hard.

I like this assessment.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

Well said!!

i think that by and large champions (in my limited experience granted) are fine more or less as is. I do have some recommendations, more like minor tweaks, though.

1. i have not seen a single champ drop a chest yet. Not one, given the couple of dozen fought that doesn't make a lot of sense. Their chests should have a higher drop rate.
2. the sometimes spawn on plot npc's. Not that it matters really when they can't be killed anyway however it suggests the code is a little sloppy which brings me to ...
3. their spawn should have some sort of cool down. Granted it's not common but it's not unusual to walk into a group that has 1 or 2 champs. My personal record is 4. At that point you start wondering if they aren't "normal" and the other mobs are actually gimps. The code could use a cool-down timer that say only allows a champ to spawn at maximum once every 6 or 10 seconds say. This would still allow for the occasional battle with 2+ champs but at least if the group (or solo player) takes it slow and steady they really shouldn't have to deal with more than one at a time.

on the whole i think it's a great change. I remember pre-motu when it took serious effort to build a toon that could run "epic", in a group, without getting planted. Especially if you weren't going to win/buy your heart but were running the epic's to get your tokens. It was brutal and it was amazing fun. I remember my first toon that could sorta complete in a group with only a few deaths and finally earning his tr heart and it felt like an amazing accomplishment. Hell back then the number of people who could reliably solo epics (and not just the "easy" ones) could probably be counted on two hands for any given server.

This is no where near a return to those days, but it is a nice baby step back towards them. More difficulty will bring more enjoyable playing. I mean really who remembers that 247th run of impossible demands that wants smooth as clockwork? Nobody. Now who remembers that shroud that was so close to a party wipe but managed to have one or two guys get just a little lucky and pull the run out of the fire? Everyone... Every single person in that run does. All of the most fun times i have had from a questing perspective have been those messy, dirty, "what the hell is going on" type of runs. And in the old days many of those ended in wipes. You know what we did? We decided that we needed a "trapper" or a "healer" or a different difficulty or we sold, repaired, restocked and charged right back in to show that damned quest who's boss.

Today accomplishments are measured in "past lives" but it wasn't always so, they used to be measured in quest completions. That feeling you get when you finally finish off that 3rd bard life, yeah we used to be able to get that feeling a couple times a night depending on the content we were running.

I greatly miss those moments as they are so very very rare now, with champions we squeak a little more back to when it felt like you accomplished something by completing the quest.

[Spoonwelder]

My experience last night - two different scenarios:

Scenario 1 - playing with a somewhat gimp group - second lifers on iconics, playing a zombie themed static group. We were Cleric, PM, Arti, Pally (all with at least 3Wiz splash for zombie)....we are light on melee DPS (see Zombie attack speed). We had hit 20 last week and decided to fill in our House K favor in VON1-4.....well we got into VoN1 - just on EH so our first experience for all of us with Champions. First attempt - ran into a Champion minotaur (freedom, TS, DW, and another) along with the first named minotaur....took alot of extra work to kill the champ versus the named minotaur. We moved on then ran into 2 of 4 bugbears in the next group....not a real problem one did get instakilled (didn't have time to check buffs)....next is the 4 ogres by the deathmatch....we got a little split up (one guy trying to get the chest behind the locked door - another doing breakables on the other side). I (cleric) was able to instakill three of the ogres (prepped with necrotic ray) but another was champion (DW, Ihit harder, another where if HP hit 50% he hits even harder). Triple hit about 140hp each killed me (only have 430hp on this gimp). Another person goes down....my deathpact fires and I am back up - anotehr person goes down...at this point I realize I have no res scrollls, no SP and no pots (gimp). So we release and rebuff, I get some scrolls we try again.

Attempt 2 - goes better a few less champions, nothing to worry about - but I am out of SP just before the silver key so Invis - I run and get key skipping those fights (in that room were 3 champions of the maybe 8 plus miniboss - only one followed me so only one had TS)....we clean him up and make our way to the fight at the shrine - we look in through the bars and see 3 troll champs - one is the divine....oooo joy for us. Door opens and we clear the trash - one instakill on a champ then the other 2 have DW so no help there - after various attempts - use of shrine - both me(cleric) and wizard are out of SP and the two trolls are still up.....we just release and call it a night for the group - basically thinking we will have to shelve these guys or just play Enorm from now on.


Scenario 2:
So after that I log onto my main (level 27 Pal15,Ran3,Fi2-Tempest Pally running in Draconic for Arcane ETR) and just go into VoN1 to see if it was just our gimp group or was it the champs. EH again but only me - so soloing on EH - HP will be lower on mobs but thats pretty much the only difference). I cleaned up - never challenged by any of the champions - maybe a bit more damage than I usually take and the champs take a few (5-10) extra swings to kill vs normal mobs. I figure ok thats not really a fair test L27 in a L22 quest so I go to 3BC (needed to do some saga work anyway).....Grey Garl quest.....still successful BUT I took noticeably more damage and the endfight (before the chest fight) took noticeably longer as I actually had to deal with the trash that was hurting me (I used to just kill her and jump in the water ignoring the trash).

In neither scenario was there ever a chest or any XP or any benefit for the increased challenge.

Assessment:

New players, non-optimal builds(aka gimps) and just plain non-elite players will not appreciate the Champions added difficulty. Elite players will see them as a minor increase in difficulty and they will require a small change in tactics.

Personally I like the enhanced challenge BUT it is another nail in the coffin of 12 of my 14 alts - I have 2 characters that have multiple past lives, ETRs, full or mostly full destinies. My other 12 don't since I don't have that much time so now they won't be able to solo alot of quests and/or wouldn't be a strong contributor in others.

PUGs - honestly I think they will take another hit - pugging is already a crapshoot - now if I have to carry 2-5 other players through a quest versus soloing the same thing on my main because the puggers aren't fully kitted/destinied with no perceivable benefit.....I just can't see any upside to pugging based on that.

Recommendations:
On EH - tune them down a titch - as they are basically an EE mob in an EH quest - and make sure no more than 1 spawns per group of mobs, maybe 2 if tuned down. Potentially keep them out of boss fights as in the boss fight the boss should be your most dangerous foe not the 'trash'. Ensure there is some benefit for dealing with them - ie. tune up the chance for chest drop - ie. like 25% on EH and 50% on EE. Over the night I dealt with probably 30 Champs and didn't get any chests.

On EE - I didn't play EE last night but I would recommend similar limits - effectively Champs should be at best between the difficulty of an Orange and a Red Named (honestly they should be tuned to a bit less dangerous than an orange named but I wouldn't mind the other).

[Vanhooger]

Hey DEVS,

Can you not see the general theme of the responses here!!!!!

All the UBER I am soooo epic guys, say they love it because they think that they are in some rat race and hope others wont catch up!

And then,

There are the others who generally just dont care and have no interest in catching up to the said above UBERS, they just want to play the game and enjoy it, these folk are saying leave it in Epic Elite Content or give them a choice to play with Champions or not!

Seems pretty simple!!!

/Signed if you agree

Yes, it's pretty simple. Again checkbox, done.

[Zzevel]

If not allow a check box on opening quest for players to opt to have Champions -> more fun for the player base as they get to choose their playstyle

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

[lexinator]

On EE Palace of Stone, me (Pally S&B) and Sorc friend only had troubles when the random encounters had 3+ Champions. Most have the Quad Damage (or whatever) perk, which deal around 750-800 damage (tested with 200 PRR = 66% damage mitigation). This means one-strike on less prepared players, but giving the EE difficulty and that they're Champions, seems fair.


I feed that, given the cluster of monsters this particular quest had (seems the norm nowadays), 2 Champions per encounter should be the maximum, also to avoid trivializing Champions.

Well said, and +1.

I gave the same suggestion and reasoning in one of the now locked threads. May as well echo it in the "official" thread as well.

[Capricorpus]

DDO is easy. Champions made it slightly less easy.

It's a good thing in my book. If you think they make the game too difficult, go back to playing on a lower difficulty. A lot of players have been spoiled ever since MotU, lower difficulty settings aren't just there for your daily xp runs.

[Gempoult]

I posted this in one of the previous threads, will re-post here:

I personally don't like the champions for the sole reason they make me feel like playing Diablo, and I don't really like playing Diablo, and anyone that does should just go play it and stay out of DDO if possible With that said I am more than willing to "tolerate" them if some changes are introduced, first tone down the spawn rate - A LOT - getting 40%+ of the mobs in a dungeon to be champions is kinda ridiculous, you advertised them as "special mobs that will sometimes appear in quests" - stick closer to that statement, please. Second add some kind of relevant reward for the slowing down the process of leveling (no, vendor trash chests 1 in 100 drops are not relevant reward) - make them drop renown 100% chance or something. Another idea I had is make a "champion bonus" category added to the quest exp, giving 1% of base exp per champion killed at completion, of course with the current spawn rate that wont work You can even think of an unique reward - Champion's tokens or something (just don't make them go in bags lol) that would drop like collectables, are based on the champion's CR and could be traded for useful consumables?

[Blackheartox]

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

One day, when the night is clear and the stars shine bright, people will realize this that they should play on their skill level and not force the game to adapt its difficulty to their own skill level..


One day...


But.. One day pigs will fly, plants will talk and people will live in peace and harmony...


/a man is allowed to dream

[Vanhooger]

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

Some will be upset that now they can't nobrain zerg Elite as they use to do.

Most people doesn't like to adapt to change....best example is blitz, now more powerful then ever but people still think that after U23 is garbage.

[kafrielveddicus]

They already do this, there are TWO difficulties WITH champions and TWO difficulties WITHOUT champions. You already can choose not to play with them, just change the box you are checking.

Thank you for confirming my thoughts about UBERS in the rat race!

Checkbox would solve that, you can play with champions in heroics and I can choose not to! why do you care how I play?

[lyrecono]

ran 56 quest today, pugging from lv 1, had 2 or more deaths each quest, all elite streaking, lv 150+shipbufs+30 resist energy
ballanced party, 1 cleric (me), 1 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rog, 1 barb, 1 monk, al tr vets, all aware of the changes
1200(rounded down) damage from a firebal in a lv 2 quest (the paly was in full plate and shield&def stance mode)
60+ damage per hit from a swarm of champion spiders in the catacombs
850 damage from lighning casting shaman in WW
besides al the useless deaths, the imunities, resistances and hp increases (1300hp non red named spider in the catacombs.....) make the journey through their a boring slog, the mobs die but much slower.

with all the party deaths costing me 10% exp everytime i feel inclined to invis&solo to speed things up
thumbs up for another nail in the lfm's coffin.
not that we're getting an overflow of newer players but this widens the gap between vets and newer players even more

seriously Cordovan, dev's, put in an opt out, this system is chasing of newer/weaker players and wastes my time


Edit, you can no longer say: get better saves, or better ac (paly had 66ac), more hp, etc, it just turned into rusian roulette, no longer does it mater if you are a tripple heroic, epic and iconic completionist, have mad skills, somethimes 12 champions spawn right on top of you and kill you, somethimes a rare pops and does 6 times the damage of your max hp, no amount of heal amp or prr/mrr helps here, it's unballanced, it's a slog, it's a waste of time, that could have been spend fixing the quests, bugs or the barbarian class

[Powerhungry]

I have run Dragon mask on both EH and EE (in a group) as well as Fashion Show on EH and EN (solo) plus LoD, Spinners and other on EH and HE. The mobs density is too high (well above the 10% projected) and the chest drop rates were poor (one or two only).
Several individuals have made the comparison to Diablo's champion system (probably where Devs got the idea). The main difference is the champions in Diablo 1/2 (D3 is an abomination...) was risk/reward and density. In an entire dungeon instance you might have 1 or 2 champions and each champion dropped loot of a higher level.
This new system by DDO has no reward for the risk (one-shotting a 200 hp player in EE is fine - one shotting an uber geared 1500 hp, multiple TR/eTR character is not....ever) and they spawn way too often.

[DagazUlf]

My feedback is based on having played through the Madness series a bit, and not the new Eveningstar quest.

• 900+ damage in Fashion Madness in one hit on EH is not really fun or enjoyable at all.
• Would really like (aka, NEED!), some designator in my Focus Orb when I have a Champion highlighted. When there's a huge group of similar monsters, that little crown doesn't help much to tell me which one I need to focus my attacks on.
• There were times when 1-in-3 and 1-in-2 monsters were champions in large combats. Twice this was with the illithids and the eyeballs in Palace of Stone; that's just overwhelming and not particularly enjoyable.
• All of my runs were in a nice solid guild group, and overall very fun. It just seems like way too many Champions can happen at once, and there's some problem with ramped-up damage on occasion.

Thanks.

[Monkey-Boy]

ran 56 quest today, pugging from lv 1, had 2 or more deaths each quest, all elite streaking, lv 150+shipbufs+30 resist energy
ballanced party, 1 cleric (me), 1 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rog, 1 barb, 1 monk, al tr vets, all aware of the changes
1200(rounded down) damage from a firebal in a lv 2 quest (the paly was in full plate and shield&def stance mode)
60+ damage per hit from a swarm of champion spiders in the catacombs
850 damage from lighning casting shaman in WW
besides al the useless deaths, the imunities, resistances and hp increases (1300hp non red named spider in the catacombs.....) make the journey through their a boring slog, the mobs die but much slower.

with all the party deaths costing me 10% exp everytime i feel inclined to invis&solo to speed things up
thumbs up for another nail in the lfm's coffin.
not that we're getting an overflow of newer players but this widens the gap between vets and newer players even more

seriously Cordovan, dev's, put in an opt out, this system is chasing of newer/weaker players and wastes my time

LOLz . . . I haven't done any low level stuff yet but if this i true this game is approaching the iceberg.

[caberonia]

ran 56 quest today, pugging from lv 1, had 2 or more deaths each quest, all elite streaking, lv 150+shipbufs+30 resist energy
ballanced party, 1 cleric (me), 1 sorc, 1 paladin, 1 rog, 1 barb, 1 monk, al tr vets, all aware of the changes
1200(rounded down) damage from a firebal in a lv 2 quest (the paly was in full plate and shield&def stance mode)
60+ damage per hit from a swarm of champion spiders in the catacombs
850 damage from lighning casting shaman in WW
besides al the useless deaths, the imunities, resistances and hp increases (1300hp non red named spider in the catacombs.....) make the journey through their a boring slog, the mobs die but much slower.

with all the party deaths costing me 10% exp everytime i feel inclined to invis&solo to speed things up
thumbs up for another nail in the lfm's coffin.
not that we're getting an overflow of newer players but this widens the gap between vets and newer players even more

seriously Cordovan, dev's, put in an opt out, this system is chasing of newer/weaker players and wastes my time

See THIS is my issue.. again you wanna do crazy supre elite mobs in EE fine.. but heroic... 1200 dmg fireball.. i mean *** were the devs smoking. They took NO time to actually think of the Consequences of adding it to Heroic. Likely did 0 testing to heroic.. and just threw it in there with the same formulas they came up with for EPIC. To make it worse they made it a generalized RANDOM system so there is no possible way they could even imagine all the crazy combos that they could end up getting.

Reminds me of the time they redid the traps and any party without a trapper was pretty much a fail until they fixed it, only this time its all about the random champs..Get the wrong one = fail.

[bartharok]

Yes, it's pretty simple. Again checkbox, done.

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

[Vanhooger]

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

Just put in the lfm, easy.