Monster Champion Feedback

[Connman]

i think they should make a new server and call it champions and whoever freaking in love with champions should go there and play there...

then it will be fair. yeah! hardcorest badassest ultra skilled players starting from scratch! go! go! go! old ddo was too easy?

go that server!

but me, i want my old game... dont freaking kill it! dont!

i didnt quit even tho krappy graphics and played my old game.

i didnt quit when diablo came out or rift. didnt even try them cuz i liked my "old" ddo.

dont kill it!

I would buy two character transfers right now, One for my wife and one for me. And maybe they should, because then you would have a real way to find out who is in love with the idea or not.

[DarthCaedus]

wow.... really? you have never actually played another MMO have you?

you do realize that with every change they made over the past year that made the game easier, they not once reduced XP or made it more difficult to level. In fact, the XP curve was adjusted so even THAT was easier on TR's.

now turbine introduces a mechanic to bring difficulty back up a notch and this is the reaction?

Sorry. I understand that turbine has almost forced people to believe Elite is normal. but it should not be.

and fact of the matter is that it really does NOT take that much longer to level running hard instead of Elite.

Yes I played Neverwinter which is why I can confidently say a casual or new player should definitely try that game as an alternative if this change sticks and isn't made optional. If you enjoy the champions - stick with DDO. If not - Neverwinter gets my vote vs. the the U24 version of DDO.

[JOTMON]

Ah, No. What we want is you to learn how to deal with them and get better, not whine they are too hard and make the game easier.... The game is super easy already. As have been stated many many times, Elite isn't the only difficulty... If it is too tough, drop to hard... I can Solo Enorm Temple of Vol without difficulty, but there is no way I could solo EE temple of Vol... Yet I still have several Epic Necro items... Gear is not difficult to gain on Normal. This mindset of Elite is the only choice is a major problem... Yet It is still easy and fast to get to 20/28... and I've done it several times, using only the gear I find.

Dev's: I think you have a no win situation here... If you leave things as is, some/many people will quit... Yet if you remove it, Some/many will quit. I personally, while unsure how I like the champs, will be very upset if you just do away with them, or even tone them down too much, as they, with some exceptions, are not that bad, and quests are still being steamrolled... and removal will be seen as capitulation to people unwilling to try to grow, and I suspect further drive that wedge between new players and vets...

Just to make sure I wasn't underestimating them on heroic, I tried several toons at several different Levels from 27EE to 2HE, and well, yeah, sometimes they hurt... But listening to gen chat, people were upset that their level 2 sorc got killed in a Elite Kobolds New Ringleader...

Elite should be hard, and the risk of death on Elite should be there... people have become soft...

With every TR the experience we gain as players and all the perks from previous lives should make every repeat run easier... this is part of why we do this.

Quests/raids are well designed for the levels they represent.
The problem starts when you have level 16 toons running with over level toons.. like level 28 toons in elite shroud.
Shroud is no challenge to level 28 Epic destinied max geared TR life toons.

I proposed that Champion spawn rates should have been tiered to over level players.
The whole champion mechanic needs to be changed.
A level 20 raid like Von6 at level is a tough raid.... for level 28's... not at all...
Now a party of level 20's running a 'at level' challenging raid is screwed by having to deal with champions as well as the expected Elite difficulty.

At level toons should see very few if any champions, the quests/raids are level appropriate for difficulty.
Over level toons should drive the % increase in Champions.. the higher the level and more players that are over level should increase the number of champions they face.

Currently many people bypass quests and come back to them to run as overlevelled toons to knock out favor or grind for items as a cakewalk instead of running content at level.
There is no motivation to run at level one you have achieved the XP for that level.
Over level toons don't care about the xp, they are grinding for items/ingredients, or helping low level toons get the same.. without appropriate challenge.

[Aletys]

To be fair, the babysitters job is probably terrible then. Assuming the reports are accurate, an enemy caster having line of sight to Tesara is most likely a fail. So the babysitter is unlikely to see anything, unless someone else in the party messes up their job.

I kind of like EllisDee's suggestion to make the NPC's champions as well. At the very least, Commander Tesara ought to be a fairly respectable combatant. Coyle, on the other hand....



Check out the wiki entry for that quest. It doesn't do anything for what you believe is the underlying problem, but it should help you complete that specific quest (assuming you yourself are able to survive the mobs).

Even before U24, I've had Tesara parked in a corner, invisible, both gates guarded, and had her run out in the middle of the quest. Take her back, park her, rinse and repeat, ... . It helps, but it's not guaranteed. And, as someone else said, all it takes is a spell caster getting near enough to one-hit her. They've got true sight now, right?

[Blackheartox]

I can understand one reason why those OP players enjoy this addition of these champs!
It makes it harder for us newbie players to ever reach the same status they have achieved over the years.
So they feel more important and should be looked up to.
We all started as a newbie at one point in time and I can imagine it wasn't easy getting to their status now, but that does not mean they should want it even harder for others to achieve the same status they now enjoy!
If players quit because it gets more difficult to get ahead in this game, then slowly the game will die, and all your work then means nothing when you don't have a game to play anymore.
They want to introduce champs into quests, then at least have an extra reward for killing champs, and I don't mean chest, make up for the exp we lost cause of the deaths incurred due to the champs being present in the quest.
I am sitting and waiting to see what they do with this issue, and if it works out in a way I don't appreciate, I will move on, there are plenty more games on the internet. I play games to pass the time away, to enjoy my free time, not to get frustrated and depressed.
It's your call!

Ok il put this super easily with how it was for me.
When i was a newbie, i failed at almost every quest.
Elite was out of my reach, epic was to hard to me.
IT took me months to figure how everything i needed to be able to step in into that content.
Literally months to farm my first pieces of epic gear, my first 2 gsteel pieces.
ANd i was bad, i was in a bad guild that had a bad name so i had issues getting into groups.
I slowly managed to do quests at my own pace, learn them, from normal to hard, i knew exactly what that kobold shaman was able to do on normal, on hard, on elite, what that named kobold was able to do on normal, on hard, on elite.
I managed to reach the point that people would accept me in parties, my gear check was passable, i was part of tods, of vons, i messed up my first epic von, it was entirely my fault for beating to long and messing up timing.
I failed, i died, i released, i reeenterd, i sturggled.
Then i learned when i was able to complete many quests on my own, i learned of the wonders of tr.
I had 20 tokens and i told myself, lets start this.
I trd, it literally took me weeks to get to 20.
And not because i was bad, because i didnt know what the hell i should do.
No bravery, no xp pots, no weekend xps, no endless farming of quests.
Everything was closed, the xp needed was much higher.
ANd i didnt own content yet.
But slowly i worked my way to 20, slowly steady and stronger then last life.
Way stronger.
I alrdy knew content to some degree and i enjoyed it with my new attained powers.
It was magnificent, and i still died, died alot, but died less then before.
3rd tr took me literally 2 weeks in old system, and people praised me as i was a 3rd lifer, one of very few brave enough to attempt that.
After that i got hooked and addicted to tring so i continued and continued and before i knew it i was a completionist.
With a ammount of knowledge about the game that was quite high compared to other people.
And it felt great, i had wings i was unique, i had that amazing feat that told me i won ddo.
IT was great, i decided to pursuit stacking of some lifes, my fastest tr in old days was a week, that means no xp boosting possible in the game at that point.
And i was called a lunatic who can do a 1 week tr.


Nowadays, without much effort, with no xp stones i can get a character from 1-28 in 2 days.
With stones you can do it in few hours.
With help of gm you can do it in a instant.


Today ddo is not the same as it was before.
Ddo was nerfed so many times that those moments i loved when i was new, the moments of fail, learn, adapt and overcome to be stronger and better.
Those moments do not exist.

People should embrace changes like this since for us vets its nostalgic and for you new players, this is just a little sight of how things were.
DDo wasnt always a elite zerg fest, ddo actually had some challenge for every sort of player back in the day.
And i say big ty for devs that remember those times and try to bring it back to todays unsocial soloist dont die on elite ddo

[Cordovan]

Just wanted to pop into the thread to let folks know that we are still reading and processing through what has become an extremely large amount of feedback. We want to give this system and the feedback time to cook and develop, rather than make knee-jerk reactions to a new system, so please continue to play with it a bit and let us know how things progress.

That said, we do see some large areas of feedback that we are looking into, including overall spawn rates, the number of mini-bosses who show up as champions, and whether there should be some development work to further differentiate Heroic and Epic difficulty spawn rates and Champion power, among other things.

For those who aren't aware, the current in-game reward system for Champions is temporary; we've already been working on a reward system for Champions that we expect to debut sometime fairly soon (either patch or Update.)

Thanks, much appreciated!

[DarthCaedus]

Just wanted to pop into the thread to let folks know that we are still reading and processing through what has become an extremely large amount of feedback. We want to give this system and the feedback time to cook and develop, rather than make knee-jerk reactions to a new system, so please continue to play with it a bit and let us know how things progress.

That said, we do see some large areas of feedback that we are looking into, including overall spawn rates, the number of mini-bosses who show up as champions, and whether there should be some development work to further differentiate Heroic and Epic difficulty spawn rates and Champion power, among other things.

For those who aren't aware, the current in-game reward system for Champions is temporary; we've already been working on a reward system for Champions that we expect to debut sometime fairly soon (either patch or Update.)

Thanks, much appreciated!

Things are already at a boil for some people. Please consider making the entire champion system optional.

[DarthCaedus]

Ok il put this super easily with how it was for me.
When i was a newbie, i failed at almost every quest.
Elite was out of my reach, epic was to hard to me.
IT took me months to figure how everything i needed to be able to step in into that content.
Literally months to farm my first pieces of epic gear, my first 2 gsteel pieces.
ANd i was bad, i was in a bad guild that had a bad name so i had issues getting into groups.
I slowly managed to do quests at my own pace, learn them, from normal to hard, i knew exactly what that kobold shaman was able to do on normal, on hard, on elite, what that named kobold was able to do on normal, on hard, on elite.
I managed to reach the point that people would accept me in parties, my gear check was passable, i was part of tods, of vons, i messed up my first epic von, it was entirely my fault for beating to long and messing up timing.
I failed, i died, i released, i reeenterd, i sturggled.
Then i learned when i was able to complete many quests on my own, i learned of the wonders of tr.
I had 20 tokens and i told myself, lets start this.
I trd, it literally took me weeks to get to 20.
And not because i was bad, because i didnt know what the hell i should do.
No bravery, no xp pots, no weekend xps, no endless farming of quests.
Everything was closed, the xp needed was much higher.
ANd i didnt own content yet.
But slowly i worked my way to 20, slowly steady and stronger then last life.
Way stronger.
I alrdy knew content to some degree and i enjoyed it with my new attained powers.
It was magnificent, and i still died, died alot, but died less then before.
3rd tr took me literally 2 weeks in old system, and people praised me as i was a 3rd lifer, one of very few brave enough to attempt that.
After that i got hooked and addicted to tring so i continued and continued and before i knew it i was a completionist.
With a ammount of knowledge about the game that was quite high compared to other people.
And it felt great, i had wings i was unique, i had that amazing feat that told me i won ddo.
IT was great, i decided to pursuit stacking of some lifes, my fastest tr in old days was a week, that means no xp boosting possible in the game at that point.
And i was called a lunatic who can do a 1 week tr.


Nowadays, without much effort, with no xp stones i can get a character from 1-28 in 2 days.
With stones you can do it in few hours.
With help of gm you can do it in a instant.


Today ddo is not the same as it was before.
Ddo was nerfed so many times that those moments i loved when i was new, the moments of fail, learn, adapt and overcome to be stronger and better.
Those moments do not exist.

People should embrace changes like this since for us vets its nostalgic and for you new players, this is just a little sight of how things were.
DDo wasnt always a elite zerg fest, ddo actually had some challenge for every sort of player back in the day.
And i say big ty for devs that remember those times and try to bring it back to todays unsocial soloist dont die on elite ddo

Shouldn't you let people are new decide what it is they would enjoy instead of you deciding it for them based on your perception of how things were when you were new (and hint hint - it wasn't nearly as tough as you make it out to be - it just seemed so at the time becuase well.... you were new).

[memloch]

After playing for some time in both heroic and epic my feedback on the system is as follows:

The spawn rate in my opinion is too high. The champions should feel special but they appear in most encounters so do not feel special at all. Instead of aiming for a spawn rate based on the number of mobs in the quest if it was possible to look at a spawn rate based on encounters. I would have no problem if they were buffed even a bit more but there were fewer of them. With this in place you can then increase the chest drop as we would have earned it.

The most fun so far has been Champion Willow Wisps. Chain lightning attacks were devastating, especially with 2 at a time.

[Kaytis]

Just wanted to pop into the thread to let folks know that we are still reading and processing through what has become an extremely large amount of feedback. We want to give this system and the feedback time to cook and develop, rather than make knee-jerk reactions to a new system, so please continue to play with it a bit and let us know how things progress.

That said, we do see some large areas of feedback that we are looking into, including overall spawn rates, the number of mini-bosses who show up as champions, and whether there should be some development work to further differentiate Heroic and Epic difficulty spawn rates and Champion power, among other things.

For those who aren't aware, the current in-game reward system for Champions is temporary; we've already been working on a reward system for Champions that we expect to debut sometime fairly soon (either patch or Update.)

Thanks, much appreciated!

I am not sure you have the luxury of time here. Has anyone from accounting stopped by to have a chat with the dev managers? It might be possible to stem the bleeding by saying it was a great test run, and we are going to turn it off for a couple weeks while we evaluate the feedback.

[Qhualor]

Yes I played Neverwinter which is why I can confidently say a casual or new player should definitely try that game as an alternative if this change sticks and isn't made optional. If you enjoy the champions - stick with DDO. If not - Neverwinter gets my vote vs. the the U24 version of DDO.

Yeah if you like following bread crumbs to your objectives and don't like live action combat, Neverwinter is good for casuals.

[Blackheartox]

Shouldn't you let people are new decide what it is they would enjoy instead of you deciding it for them based on your perception of how things were when you were new (and hint hint - it wasn't nearly as tough as you make it out to be - it just seemed so at the time becuase well.... you were new).

Hint, it was harder back then, that is a fact, since useful gear was harder to get by, raiding and epics had a timer, and overall monster damage was higher in every quest since you didnt have acess to mitigations you have today.
Back in the day you could had issues with your to hit for example

[DarthCaedus]

Yeah if you like following bread crumbs to your objectives and don't like live action combat, Neverwinter is good for casuals.

The reality is there are positives and negatives of both DDO and Neverwinter. U24 tipped the balance in favor of Neverwinter and makes DDO a non-option for me. You can poke just as many holes in DDO if you wish. I doubt I am the only person that will Neverwinter the better option after U24.

[Aletys]

All CC works great on them. Even the Dev mentioned that they intentionally left them vulnerable to CC.

The problem is people don't want to have to use strategy. They want to be able to cakewalk through everything.

Trip, Stunning Blow, Ottos, etc ALL work the same on champs as it does on normal mobs.

And, if you don't happen to have a party member who has CC? Or the right kind of CC? That's a real issue at low levels. My level 3 cleric has a couple of CC spells, but they are all individual (not mass), and neither work against undead. The druid I run with can trip them in wolf form, & she does. Melees can trip & stun (not sure what level they get this at), but if we get mobbed, it doesn't really matter, when you can't get through the mob to the darn spellcaster who's insta-killing you fast enough. The issue really isn't when there's just one of the champions, it's when you get a mob of the darn things.

[DarthCaedus]

Hint, it was harder back then, that is a fact, since useful gear was harder to get by, raiding and epics had a timer, and overall monster damage was higher in every quest since you didnt have acess to mitigations you have today.

I see very little difference between a new player running harbor quests on elite today vs 4 years ago except champions. The quest is much harder and the other changes amount to very little player power.

Remember, you said "When you were new". It is complete mythology. Newer players will have a much tougher time today with champions and as you said you failed on elite without champions when you were new. None of the things you mentioned help a new player at all.

[Krelar]

This feedback is primarily based on EH difficulty, I have only run two EE quests so far since the update. I was between levels 23 and 26 during this time.

A bit about my character/play history to put this feedback into perspective: (Skip this section if you don’t care)

My toon is melee based (Formerly a paladin, currently a swashbuckler/stalwart defender multi class)
My toon has epic completionist and is on his 4th life.
Before the update I had soloed most of the saga quests, and a few others, on EE multiple times. (Only at or near level cap though)
Shortly before the update was the first time I went from 20-28 running EE quests at level. I was in a static group of 4 and I found this to be just about the right challenge for me at this time.

Some of the quests run on EH:

All 4 new quests
Entire Wheloon chain
Necro 4 (Except Ghosts of Perdition)
Von 3
Wizard King
Spies in the House (Yes I did some xp farming in case you can’t tell by now)

Quests run on EE:
Detour
Belly of the Beast

Champions feedback:

EH was still generally very easy for me, the champions generally didn’t pose much extra challenge, they took slightly longer to beat down but still almost never lasted long enough for me to inspect them for buffs that might need a change of tactics. (We won’t talk about the exception, terminal delirium, right now)

The only time, other than terminal delirium, I had trouble was when I got caught in an ambush and was surrounded by about 5 champions. That was a fairly quick death for me and it really didn’t feel like there was anything I could have done to prevent it.

One of the groups I was in also has some people run into trouble when we tried to split up to run Inferno quickly. They ran into a champion air elemental and a champion lich along with some other champion trash that made short work of them.

In EE Belly we barely noticed the champions but the group of 4 I was in were from levels 26-28 and at least 2 of us were fairly well geared. There were a lot of champions, 8-10, when the orange named drow wave started, but the named drider we recruited kept them busy so we could pull them off in small groups.

EE Detour we had a group of 3. (This same group did this quest on EE at level before the update) The champions slowed us down a bit there but weren’t insurmountable, but we also got lucky and I don’t think ever had more than 2 champions in a group. I’d generally let the more tanky character in our group play with the champions while I cleaned up the other trash quickly to cut down on incoming damage.

I’ll have to try EE some more to get a better feel for how they work there when run at level. I had been avoiding it, the first quest I ran with champions was EH terminal delirium so that kind of colored my view of champions at first.

A few suggestions:

Increased difficulty is fine but it needs to be at least somewhat consistent. Having the quest be relatively easy, then suddenly hitting a massive difficulty spike, like say 5+ champions spawning at once, without warning and then dying is not fun.

My suggestion for evening out the difficulty would be some sort of “cool down” on the champion generator. Something like it can only fire once or twice every 30 seconds to prevent swarms of champions from spawning.

If this was implemented then I think the current rate of 10% would be fine, or possibly even a higher rate. This would also allow you to buff champions more if that is needed.

If the champions are spawning more consistently but are harder, I’d like to see some more reward for facing them. A low chest chance only on orange names doesn’t really feel like much.

Some easier way to tell what buffs a champion has would be nice, there just is not usually enough time to inspect them, which means there really is almost no change of tactics when fighting them.

A couple of bugs I’ve noticed:

In EE Belly of the Best we had about 10 chests drop in the arena fight. (Lot’s of orange named drow as well as purple worm there) but some of the chests fell *into* the floor and could not be opened.

A couple times some champions have spawned with only like half their hit points. They haven’t lived long enough for me to see what kind of buff they have. I suspect they are suffering from a similar issue to those with defender stance. When you first log in you have to activate defender stance, your max hit points increase, but not your current hit points.

[Fluffib]

I think the overall idea of champions is good but the implementation could've been better, which has led to hard/elite difficulties being too difficult. Whether good or bad, most people are playing this game on hard or elite, even new players (I only started playing this summer and even back then played mostly hard/elite). Maybe in the long run, having the player base spread across the difficulties would be good for the game, or maybe not. Either way, it should be pretty obvious that in the short run it will cause much disappointment.

Suggestions could include:
1) Only one champion shows up per pack or area of a dungeon.
2) Champion incremental power scales based on # of people in dungeon.
3) Option to turn off champions (and forego whatever reward they would have brought) for hard.
4) Eliminate both the easiest and most difficult combinations.
5) Bravery Bonus changes so that the penalty for having to do an occasional quest on heroic hard is not as much.

I think this game can be very difficult for new players, and the previous status quo of everyone doing heroic elite at the lower levels helped integrate new players into the game. Without that, I think the rate of new player turnover will be even higher.

[Blackheartox]

I see very little difference between a new player running harbor quests on elite today vs 4 years ago except champions. The quest is much harder and the other changes amount to very little player power.

Remember, you said "When you were new". It is complete mythology. Newer players will have a much tougher time today with champions and as you said you failed on elite without champions when you were new. None of the things you mentioned help a new player at all.

New player does not step on elite first time they try a quest.
If they do, then the bravery mechanic is a fail in itself.

New player high likely is not able to open elite and will rarely join elite lfms.
From cannith its like this: some new players manage to learn about grouping system from asking in general chat and when they make lfms from my observations which is almost every days, they put quests on normal first, maybe hard run later and elite after that.
If that player does not notice any change in difficulty he will only see the higher xp, and with the amount of xp that is in ddo he can cap without seing half content.
Imo, in turbines interest should not be that the player gets to 20 ultra fast, but to struggle and buy as many packs as possible.
Current bravery mechanic and death on party member mechanic discourage and go against what is best for turbine.
New player wont bother with epic past lifes, but with content and try to get into the game.

Best thing now would be just to change entirely how bravery works not to encourage strictly elite play.
Elite play is mainly focus from players who arent new but more like newbies and that want to compete with vets.
I think those have the hardest time adapting to champion mechanic system and not the new fresh korthos player.
He for example would not even know what champs are and that they werent here unless told by someone.

[Aletys]

Why in general you are right that protection quests really got extra tough (cannith crystal on elite anyone?), this is no longer true for the much maligned Hold for reinforcements - because since U23 Coyle can not even be killed, and its an optional to protect him from going down (for a solid chunk of XP, but still).

I have noticed that these NPCs we have to protect, as well as all our hirelings really need to get updated with the current state of enhancements, buffs, MRR, PRR etc, because not only are hirelings getting near useless to heal / protect anyone, they are usually one shotted first!

Don't forget that rogues haven't been able to spot traps on epic levels for a while. The highest level rogue available (Issin, lvl 24), can't spot any of the traps in Gianthold on EH. If you don't know where they are, and don't have a party member who's willing to run thru (monk) or sacrifice himself to find them, you're toast.

And let's not forget the new UI, which has made them even worse. Want the hireling to stay put & guard? Forget it. Watch him run halfway across the map to agro on something.

[Seikojin]

Things are already at a boil for some people. Please consider making the entire champion system optional.

It is, do normal. Hard has less spawn, therefore less champs. Adding a control flag takes away even more of the dnd adventure of the system and makes it more like a mud or single player game where you can config cheat your way past intended and designed challenge.

After playing for some time in both heroic and epic my feedback on the system is as follows:

The spawn rate in my opinion is too high. The champions should feel special but they appear in most encounters so do not feel special at all. Instead of aiming for a spawn rate based on the number of mobs in the quest if it was possible to look at a spawn rate based on encounters. I would have no problem if they were buffed even a bit more but there were fewer of them. With this in place you can then increase the chest drop as we would have earned it.

The most fun so far has been Champion Willow Wisps. Chain lightning attacks were devastating, especially with 2 at a time.

The spawn rate will seem high if a lag timeout duplicates the check roll that succeeds, making multiple mobs right next to eachother (or same spawn cluster) champs. THis is the same problem with 100% of all rolls in ddo, and 100% of a problem in all MMO's period. It is either have duplicate rolls, or have the game crash every 5 minutes. Even wow suffers from this, I guarantee it.

I am not sure you have the luxury of time here. Has anyone from accounting stopped by to have a chat with the dev managers? It might be possible to stem the bleeding by saying it was a great test run, and we are going to turn it off for a couple weeks while we evaluate the feedback.

I think they do. The vocal minority in the forums who hate it are outmatched by both the vocal minority that love it and the non-vocal majority who love it. For every 1 guildie who has a complaint, there are 4 who love it for the challenge it adds. On top of this, people who complain about the difficulty loved the idea as well. They like the fact it adds challenge without blanket wards, adding 0's to hp, and requires tactical play at times to overcome without massive pain.

This Champion system spews awesome all over the place for DDO. Sure they can have bugs and be too strong. That can be fixed, as it has been said. The rewards from them will be overlooked as well, as it has been said. I strongly suggest we as a community work harder and better to overcome challenge, not complain it out of the game, making something more blanket happen again.