Monster Champion Feedback

[Severlin]

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?

Correct. Reports of non-extreme challenge quests "one shotting" players are concerning and we are looking into them, so specifics would be great. We can also adjust champion damage output dividing my melee, ranged, and spell so if spells (as an example) are too severe we can adjust that separately.

Sev~

[DarthCaedus]

TTraditionally, 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.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.

Here is the irony. Prior to U24 (not sure about now) Kobold Shaman's would cast hold spells on hard but never elite. Presumably that was because the damage was too high with the bonus damage.

[Sehenry03]

Correct. Reports of non-extreme challenge quests "one shotting" players are concerning and we are looking into them, so specifics would be great. We can also adjust champion damage output dividing my melee, ranged, and spell so if spells (as an example) are too severe we can adjust that separately.

Sev~

Which means "STOP WHINING and start giving feedback". Tell them where and when and who hit you that 1 shotted you. Some people have done great but come on...most of the nay sayers are just crying about the update instead of providing FEEDBACK.

[Dagolar]

Honestly, I see it as the best solution. It isn't hurting anyone, aside from the coders who have to make it happen. Why does it make players angry? If you want champions, just check the box. How does it hurt anyone if someone would rather not deal with champions?

The argument of "if there was a checkbox, no one would play it" is fundamentally flawed. For example, I would check the box for traps every time if I could get the extra xp for ingenous debilitation, and I'd probably still check it if I had a high HP build or could otherwise reasonably expect to survive the traps if unchecking the trap option resulted in an XP penalty. Risk/reward is the key issue. As of now, there is no risk/reward system for champions. My xp/min is much greater on EN now, so I've just been running EN until I get bored and find something else to do. I broke out the old Xbox this evening and dusted off my copy of Fallout:New Vegas. What an awesome game! I haven't played it since I rediscovered DDO a few years back.

At the moment, it's because the champions are intended to be a difficulty balancer for reduced game difficulty, and the devs don't want to make that optional, thus allowing the people who are just quick running quests to be able to keep doing so.


But you're on the right track-

The thing is, if we implement a check box for 'Champion Mode':
*Champions Enabled
*Champions drop collectible tokens on kill, which can be traded in for exclusive gains
*Champions give XP and chests
*Champions are beefed up a bit more to compensate for the reduced numbers
*Overall map difficulty is increased by 10% of the base Hard/Elite settings (ie, if a Hard-difficulty mob had 100 HP, it now has 110. If it had 50AC, it has 55. Damage is unaffected, since that's basically what champions are for.)
*Named item drop rate is increased by 20% of the base Hard/Elite settings (ie, if it had a 5% drop rate, it now has a 6%).


Thus, in one quick swoop, we've created a system that allows:
*Player choice
*Fine-tuning difficulty and rewards to suit playstyles
*A way of getting better drops out of a quest when you're better than hard, but not good enough for elite
*A way of going past elite difficulty and get some fresh challenge for the tricked out toons


This is what I'd like to see..


Just have the checkbox work like the public LFMs, where it remembers your last setting.
I'd personally never have it off.

[Sehenry03]

One thing I would take a hard look at.

The HP's of some champs. Some have WAY to many hp's. When I play tonight I will throw in some examples. More damage is fine but 10 times the hp's is just a time sink.

[Sehenry03]

At the moment, it's because the champions are intended to be a difficulty balancer for reduced game difficulty, and the devs don't want to make that optional, thus allowing the people who are just quick running quests to be able to keep doing so.


But you're on the right track-

The thing is, if we implement a check box for 'Champion Mode':
*Champions Enabled
*Champions drop collectible tokens on kill, which can be traded in for exclusive gains
*Champions give XP and chests
*Champions are beefed up a bit more to compensate for the reduced numbers
*Overall map difficulty is increased by 10% of the base Hard/Elite settings (ie, if a Hard-difficulty mob had 100 HP, it now has 110. If it had 50AC, it has 55. Damage is unaffected, since that's basically what champions are for.)
*Named item drop rate is increased by 20% of the base Hard/Elite settings (ie, if it had a 5% drop rate, it now has a 6%).


Thus, in one quick swoop, we've created a system that allows:
*Player choice
*Fine-tuning difficulty and rewards to suit playstyles
*A way of getting better drops out of a quest when you're better than hard, but not good enough for elite
*A way of going past elite difficulty and get some fresh challenge for the tricked out toons


This is what I'd like to see..


Just have the checkbox work like the public LFMs, where it remembers your last setting.
I'd personally never have it off.

I just don't see them adding a check box under any circumstances.

I really think the champions were added to make it so fewer people get elite quests done as quick thus cutting down on TP's being given out.

People need to give up on the check box and start coming up with ideas on what they would like to see the champion mobs become. They are here to stay.

[-D_Rock-]

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~

I love the idea of champions. I do agree with a lot of the player feedback on this thread as well though. take them out totally? nah. offer a ridiculous checkbox of nerfing? no way that would completely discredit Turbines idea to begin with.

for me personally, im a vet. i have a lot of knowledge about the game. i have a 32nd life completionist toon blah blah blah no one cares not even me, i just wanna play the game with people. so the champions are not a problem for me.

On the other hand i DO remember what it was like to be new to the game and want new players to keep playing the game as well. i had no friends, no ideas on builds, nothing. so i can tell you that if i were a new player and this continued i would want to go play a different game too. i felt really bad for new players when this first hit, and now i feel a lot better. i agree decision made here. kudos Turbine for keeping a great idea around, but fair for everyone.

[DarthCaedus]

Correct. Reports of non-extreme challenge quests "one shotting" players are concerning and we are looking into them, so specifics would be great. We can also adjust champion damage output dividing my melee, ranged, and spell so if spells (as an example) are too severe we can adjust that separately.

Sev~

Great thank you, that is the primary concern I have with the new system. I don't mind build limitations for extreme challenges, but I don't think we should be getting one-shotted outside of extreme challenges and raids often.

Thanks again.

[Albinosaurus]

Correct. Reports of non-extreme challenge quests "one shotting" players are concerning and we are looking into them, so specifics would be great. We can also adjust champion damage output dividing my melee, ranged, and spell so if spells (as an example) are too severe we can adjust that separately.

Sev~

Why are inflated numbers the only tool available? Why can't the challenge come from interesting abilities that change the combat dynamic on a per-encounter basis rather than gimmicky one-shots, huge hp pools, and cheesy buffs that undermine player builds and playstyles?

[gwonbush]

I think the buff to damage on champions should be lowered even further on Heroic Hard than on Heroic Elite to lessen the jump from Normal to Hard. As for Epics, I haven't really played them much since the update, but from what I could tell they don't need the damage champions do reduced further than planned.

[kgol15001]

been playing for many many years now... almost 7 i think.. and have never enjoyed the game so much. My friends in other guilds and I are having a ball. Sure, it is a bit more difficult, but that is what is so much fun. Death, destruction, rethinking tactics... all good.
Just my thoughts.
Please do not do anything drastic to the champions. If i wanted a game in which i never died and could just run around all day in a panda suit, I'd play WOW.
Gracias.

[Rys]

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~

Uhm. That's not pushing the limits. Either you have ccer or it's 'in mirror - shoot - out mirror'. And either you get hit once and die or not. Like playing russian roulette. Also there is a lot of stuff in the room blocking the view...but maybe it's wai...for pushing the limits.

[FestusHood]

Generally, but I will admit not all cases, something being too easy leads to boredom and loss of interest. If there is no challenge why do it.

Being too hard can have the exact same effect. If i perceive that i can never beat this, why bother trying?

[DagazUlf]

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.

<snippage>

This all sounds great.

Any chance of an additional indicator in the focus orb?

[Monkey-Boy]

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~

There's extreme and then there's just plain ridiculous.

one shotting is just stupid, extreme challenge or not.

[MangLord]

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~

I'm fine with that. However, it seems that Terminal Delirium was designed with mirrored damage before the advent of champions. I really like the quest on EN. It's interesting and clever, but becomes a real chore on EH, or even HE for a 28. Why do you guys insist on making the delirium quests as painful as possible? I hate that inn, and I'd burn it down if I could. No player can sustain 6-8k damage, even while blocking or as a top-shelf defensive build. My swashbuckler is easily the most survivable in the encounter with displacement, ghostly, elusive target and 27% dodge. My dodge bonuses pay dividends, allowing me enough time to take out 1-2 enemies before dying.
This encounter brings us back full circle, with shiradi casters and monkchers being the most survivable and melee/defense classes being unusable. Giant step backwards, devs. The Paladin, who can easily tank a dragon in Thunder Peak, quickly gets nailed with a huge damage spike from a champion, either through an instant 20 stack of vulnerability or several force blasts from eyeballs that he can't mitigate. (put the two together for extra fun!) (20 raid completions for Dumathoins Bracers instantly negated) It's super cheap and breaks through everything he worked hard to build his character for.
My personal group has resigned to casting invisibility on the healer and rezzing the bard/wizard who casts invis on the healer immediately upon rez with the hope that they don't get any aggro while visible. Secondarily, they throw down an AOE to whittle down the mob surrounding the mirror image and the cycle continues. The melees are just temporary fodder when the cleric has the opportunity to rez them.
My bard can usually knock down and Coup one enemy before dying, and that's how we handle the encounter.
Its entirely unpleasant and an instant wipe if we're not extremely careful. Once we got our paladin the epic vim and vigor I vowed to never play it again.

[Lost_Leader]

For the most part I have enjoyed champions. The additional challenge is fun, forcing you to either slow down and examine enemies and make a strategy depending on what kind of champions you will be facing, or continue at a normal pace and risk getting walloped for it.

I like that hard has a slighter higher difficulty gap above normal. We used to joke about how Hard was so very similar to normal and Elite was actually a fairly significant change. Champions increased the difficulty on both so that you actually can tell you are running Hard. And yes, Elite is tougher now, but it is supposed to be elite, after all.

My three main complaints are:

1. Champion Frequency. It looks like this is being addressed, but I'll list it anyways. It seems as though champions are very common, especially on mini-bosses. If you want to make mini-bosses all tougher, just make them tougher, instead of making it a near 100% buff on everything with an orange name.
   
2. Champion Hit Points. It adds to the already overinflated hitpoints, particularly on Epic Elite. Stormhorns suffers the most from this, it already had bosses with 250k+ hitpoints. It loses challenge and just becomes boring when you are swinging at the same badguy for minutes.
   
3. Champion Fortification Bypass. It makes investing in fortification for a tank, well not a moot point, but certainly lessens the value. I think it would offer more versatility to the game to have champions on Hard ignore or reduce target fort by 100% and on elite by 150 or 200%. That way characters who are sacrificing dps and other buffs to increase their defenses can still do their part by running in and getting enemies attention, and still punishing the light weights who get too close or don't manage their agro.

... my 2cp so far.

[-D_Rock-]

There's extreme and then there's just plain ridiculous.

one shotting is just stupid, extreme challenge or not.

ah never played call of duty when that guy head shot you. or many other games with the same outcome. theres always an option to do something else. game is full of quests galore lately. the point of xtreme challenge is to test your might and skills. its not like your going in there for XP only. there's plenty of that these days. I find your lack of perserverence disturbing

[Thar]

Correct. Reports of non-extreme challenge quests "one shotting" players are concerning and we are looking into them, so specifics would be great. We can also adjust champion damage output dividing my melee, ranged, and spell so if spells (as an example) are too severe we can adjust that separately.

Sev~

Any damage output more than 5x the CR is too much.

[Thar]

ah never played call of duty when that guy head shot you. or many other games with the same outcome. theres always an option to do something else. game is full of quests galore lately. the point of xtreme challenge is to test your might and skills. its not like your going in there for XP only. there's plenty of that these days. I find your lack of perserverence disturbing

sorry i'm here for xp only, not to waste time.