Monster Champion Feedback

[Dorian]

Greetings!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sev~

So what would the total spawn rate be on hard/elite after the reduction? Initially, you said it was set to 10%... it's pretty obvious that its more than that now.

I think the damage boosts should be dropped down 40%. This would put their damage output close to red named end boss damage. (It's stupid to have trash mobs hit harder than bosses.)

Hirelings are getting absolutely slaughtered by Champions. I'm glad this is on your fix for a later update. (please include summon monsters and wolf pets / iron companions)

Please do not add more champion immunities like FoM. It's been a lot of fun playing with groups using tactics like pulling into dancing balls and webs. Please don't take away group tactics with crowd control immunities.

I would also add a way for the Champion buffs to be dispelled. If a Wiz wants to spend the spell points to Greater Dispel, Energy Drain, then cast an insta-death spell, this should be another viable tactic.

I think overall the changes look good.

[Aletys]

Drat! Ya got me again...

Was it the "I've had the pleasure of running levels 17-22 since Champions went live" that gave it away?

Sorry, I didn't mean to be snarky. What I should have said was that running thru Korthos on elite at level was a total **** shoot. We'd have a run with a 27% spawn rate & multiple champions at once, then we'd have a run with 10% champions and only one champion at a time. On the same quest. The first was generally a party wipe, the second we could complete. Anything with high spawn rates pretty much guaranteed multiple champions mobs. And sometimes it took several runs before we got a survivable instance.

Even after we adjusted our tactics after the first run in (& wipe) with championsy, if we got more than one at a time (which was very common), it became very iffy as to whether we would survive. I'm not talking about one toon dying, I'm talking party wipe. If we got three champions on us at the same time, we were toast. And that happened way too often, unfortunately, and sometimes with no warning - a door opens suddenly & all of a sudden we're surrounded, or they simply spawned on top of us. We tried all sorts of approaches, but we finally got to the point that if we saw three or more champions in a single mob, and couldn't find a way to separate them, we'd abort & reset. We did not find that fun.

[BD_]

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

Sev~

I started playing DDO during U17 (I think - the GH one). I didn't use the Wiki or ship buffs or anything until my first character was at least level 5 - (I actually stopped using ship buffs when that character was about lvl 12 and have never used them since on any character (other than haggle and XP buffs).

I did just fine on at level elite quests in Korthos and Harbor - mostly playing solo or solo with a hire and a couple times with other fairly new players. Sure they weren't the cakewalk they were on normal, but they weren't that hard either... New players tend to not rush through quests as much because they want to explore the quest a little - yeah it takes longer to complete a quest, but its quite a bit easier than just speed rushing and powering your way through everything.

[phillymiket]

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

Sev~

Have you looked at the LFM?

What do you envision them doing?

Solo Normal?

[Monkey-Boy]

. . . to tweak even after an update goes live.

Sev~

So when will we see your first revision?

[Qhualor]

Have you looked at the LFM?

What do you envision them doing?

Solo Normal?

if incentives and difficulties were balanced properly, i would envision new players to play normal quests. that is the next step that the devs can no longer ignore. it would reduce the justification issues and the number of arguments about balancing the game around new/inexperienced players.

[DarthCaedus]

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

So instead of 2500 slashing damage from a gargoyle I can expected 2000 now?

[BD_]

Wow.

"Don't let 'em drive you off the court, son! Get back and get in their face!"

Or whatever you want to do...

I think people are just speaking their mind.

I am a little shocked (not) that the "Make it Harder!" crowd isn't saying anything about EE raids.

Could it be that EE Quests are still solvable for them even solo and short-manned and making EE raids non-short-mannnable (like intended) would actually affect them personally?

How about a similar "easy button, 2 hour" fix for Raids?

Like, "Each Raid periodically hits the party with 6000 HP Damage of a Random Type spread out among all party members"

This would make it more difficult.

Or just cut to the chase with, "Raids can no longer be started with less than 6 members"

Solves nothing about the imbalance but simply makes it so you can't do what you have been doing.

Let's make the game harder.

I support it.

I'll get in line first.

My Completionist has too many stacked bonuses, I can do anything - or all things - if I wanted...

My Casters are neigh untouchable with evasion, gear, destinies and enhancements and still have plenty of DC...

When I hit level 20 on any capped destiny toon, I get waaay too much power for the content at that level.

Anyone else?

Yes, almost all quests on EE are still soloable with champions, and raids are in no way affected by champions. Some raids are easy to shortman on EE (EE Chrono for example is soloable, EE Firepeaks isn't much harder shortman than with a full party to name a few) others are extremely difficult on EE even with a full party of well geared experienced players.

You might get that one random champion that one hits you, and certain quests/spots champions seem to be bugged badly...

I'm probably one of the few that can still solo EE's with Champions but thinks the current champion system never should have made it live as is...

[SiliconScout]

Have you looked at the LFM?

What do you envision them doing?

Solo Normal?

Personally I would hope that the LFM adjusts to having more Hard, even Normal runs. The big hangup there is bravery bonus to be honest and if I am truly being honest I think that when you got the bonus for being underlevel it made a LOT more sense.

Granted many groups didn't try for that under level bonus but when you did .. whooo boy did that feel nice.

[Aletys]

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

Sev~

Sev, I think you've missed the point. Most of us are _not_ starting players, with starter gear & zero knowledge of playing on hard or elite. We TR & we play Korthos again. And we're telling you there is a problem. Please listen to what we say. We've provided actual numbers (# of champions/# of total monsters), actual percentages of what we've seen. The numbers are way off from what you guys advertised. It is not working much of the time. Yes, sometimes it's playable, but often it is not.

[BD_]

We played with the system a lot. I personally started with the Delara's and the Droam series with Champions on and didn't run into too many issues, even in the Minotaur city where they where constantly spawning because my build didn't have a stun for the runts. I moved on the Menechtarun and ran the series to reach the Demonweb Pit with Epic characters. That's just me, and doesn't even speak to all the content Q/A and other devs ran. We also had the champions up for weeks on Lamannia and tweaked based on feedback there.

That said, it's a numbers game. Sometimes the sheer number of players on live mean that the extreme low chances of hitting too many Champions will happen more often just due to numbers. You see some of the outlier cases you may not see in testing. The other problem is we can't generate the same kind of data with a Q/A team or even with Lamannia that as we do when we datamine on the live servers. We are always looking for player feedback and data to mine and we need to be willing to tweak even after an update goes live.

Sev~

It's possible that the following is due to randomness but highly doubtful - I say bug...: In certain area's literally every orange mob is a champion. In certain quests/areas - every champion I have encountered did very high (3-5x normal mobs) damage. In other areas every champion I encountered did less than or equal damage as non champions and in some cases (about 1/4 - to 1/3 of irestone islet champions) did considerably less damage than non champions...

[PpalP]

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

Sev~

Sorry but that's seems to me a response from an elitist/uber player than from a professional Dev. Sorry to be so hard, but adding random things that do random things without a good testing don't make good results, isn't a matter of "envision", is logic.

Also take in mind that are players, like me, that enjoy playing solo, or Permadeath, at his own pace; yes, I do HE with care and with one hire, play with tactics (learned from my PD playing), but this random sistem is like it is, a random punishment with no reward at all. I'm playing this game from four years ago in my little free time, people like me are only asking to get a change to still play and enjoy the game*

* And no, I don't want people tell me how I have to play or at what difficulty; I did the same from 4 years ago and if I have to change the way I found fun playing DDO well, the answer is easy ; )

[phillymiket]

Personally I would hope that the LFM adjusts to having more Hard, even Normal runs. The big hangup there is bravery bonus to be honest and if I am truly being honest I think that when you got the bonus for being underlevel it made a LOT more sense.

Granted many groups didn't try for that under level bonus but when you did .. whooo boy did that feel nice.

I hope so to.
Whatever.
It's their game.

I've spoken and been heard.

I truly hope it works out.
I like Champions.

I hope Korthos people start LFMs and find a way and like them to because it's a great game.

If that happens... best move ever.

It's just that the Price of Failure for the starter area seems a tad high to me, so I really hope the culture there changes.

I'm out. Thanks for listening.

[MangLord]

Well, you got it half-right. Those who choose to run with champions should get some extra xp, & maybe a higher chance at the named loot. Don't nerf it for the rest of us.

To be honest, I'd happily take a 10% xp hit for the convenience factor. If opting for champions gave me an additional chance at named loot in the end chest for farming purposes, I would opt for the highest chance possible every single time. Otherwise, forget it.

If a raid with champions gave the party a +1% chance at named loot, I would campaign for it actively.

[Severlin]

So instead of 2500 slashing damage from a gargoyle I can expected 2000 now?

Extreme challenge dungeons are extreme. That adventure is there to push you to the limit to find out ways to beat it if you up the difficulty. We wouldn't want to reflexively change champions based on extreme challenge dungeons meant to push parties to the limit.

Sev~

[FestusHood]

As a melee, I was right in the mix with the kill counts but somehow didnt die once. I used my Webs, Glitterdust, and charms to minimize the danger I faced. Most of the other melees had multiple deaths. not because they were bad... but because they were playing with the same tactics they played with last week.... None.....

Just wanted to add that i haven't died yet either while they were hitting somebody else. As i mentioned in another post, web, glitterdust, etc. aren't really tactics they are effects. When you say use tactics what you are really saying is change the effects that you have been using.

[DarthCaedus]

Extreme challenge dungeons are extreme. That adventure is there to push you to the limit to find out ways to beat it if you up the difficulty. We wouldn't want to reflexively change champions based on extreme challenge dungeons meant to push parties to the limit.

Sev~

Thank you for your response.

Yep, charms and cc are your friend. I do know how to beat that room.

Does that mean when running non-extreme challenge quests we shouldn't expect to get one-shotted very often? Or is that just a new reality of Hard and Elite?

[Qhualor]

Greetings!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sev~

Sev, I think you've missed the point. Most of us are _not_ starting players, with starter gear & zero knowledge of playing on hard or elite. We TR & we play Korthos again. And we're telling you there is a problem. Please listen to what we say. We've provided actual numbers (# of champions/# of total monsters), actual percentages of what we've seen. The numbers are way off from what you guys advertised. It is not working much of the time. Yes, sometimes it's playable, but often it is not.

he was actually responding to someone about new players, not supposedly experienced players who TR back to level 1.

[MangLord]

I hope Korthos people start LFMs and find a way and like them to because it's a great game.

That seems like a tall order. For me, I want to get a feel for the game before wading in to the social aspect. Traditionally, Korthos and much of the Harbor were forgiving and solo friendly because its unlikely that a new player is walking into the game with a circle of friends to lean on. Yes yes, normal is where I should be blah blah, but eventually you hit an xp wall as F2P and HH is now a giant step up for an undergeared, fresh otta Korthos player looking to level and I think it's a giant turn-off. To expect that new player to drop money on a VIP acct when they just got one shotted by some random kobold shaman isn't an easy sell. Some people like that masochistic aspect, but I don't think the majority of people do.

[Stonemerge]

We have have players with two diametrical mind sets

In D&D-Term some are Lawful:
They want to "beat" the game and to "beat" other players. They are looking for a challenge; are sportsmen and want the same stipulations for everyone.
They will always adapt their toons to the instantaneous optimal state. Finding out what is best atm is part of their game. They will change tactics and gear all the time to stay on top and climb the ladder up. If they are on top or the challenge is not provoking enough, they'll get bored. I understand that we have lost a bunch of such players and we will lose more, if there is no "endgame"; nothing that could tickle their strategic ambitions.
We will not see much new content, its simply too expansive in this late state of the game; so the "Champions" are the way to satisfy these players.

And then there are those other players - Chaotics like me:
Freeminds who are not here to "beat" anything. They just want to play on their own terms, not being forced into groups. They are not interested in finding out the optimal build of the month. They might have longterm goals or do unusual things. They are no casuals - some of them are here for years; rather spawning alts than TRing 30 times. They can win elite easily, but dont like to play a tactical "role" in a group, dont have Teamspeak or do not even speak english well enough.

I like to play my quests slowly, often bluffing enemies to me, i disable all traps, doing all optionals, killing each enemy, blessing chests. And i do this with constant changing builds - thats the fun for me. I can do this until the GH elite quests. But then i need and want a party for Crucible, Necro 3 + 4, Vale, IQ, Wheloon ...
My toons are versatile enough to be useful in each party and i am a very experienced player - but i dont want to be a dedicated healer, trapper, tank - and i am not interested in epic elites (besides the favor). I do not like epic at all. It is a grind, nothing more for me. I do my usual quests on EH or EN on a daily base and hope that its over as soon as possible and i can get back to my beloved heroics.

Champions in heroics will kill all the fun in this game for me. I build my toons for the heroic elite diificulty as we knew it and for solo abilites. "Hard" means "i kill everything in one hit" for me (not to mention normal diff).
The "lawful" players are far more interested in playing epic elites - heroic elite is no challenge for them, i see that - but they will rush through this in 2 days, so they can play their ee-stuff. Give them what they want - Champions in ee - not even toned down - give them the full package. But lower the spawns in ehard.
Almost all the discussion is about heroic difficulty with champions (or not). Skip champs or make them optional (with slightly more xp and better loot) in heroic content. But do not touch it in epic elite - give the sportsmen their needed challenge. i think this is a solution we all could live with. It might not please everyone, but this is better than losing more players because this game is not soloable anymore or provides no challenge for others.