Monster Champion Feedback

[BDog77]

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~

I wonder if, given the HP total jumps we are seeing and the one shotting, some higher level mobs aren't "sneaking through" (HE MOBs on hard, or EE MOBs on EH, for example). This would explain why some of these cases seem rather hard to reproduce....

[Sehenry03]

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

one shotting is just stupid, extreme challenge or not.

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

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

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.

Holy ****. The Dev's say they plan on nerfing champions and people start complaining AGAIN. if you don't want to waste time...or you don't want to be 1 shot...DON'T DO EXTREME DUNGEONS.

You all just got through saying that you want the casual to be catered to...you really don't want the elitists to have anything?

[Thar]

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~

But be completeable with the right party/stradegy....

[RoguemcStabby]

I've played HE and EE content, with static groups and I do not find anything wrong with champions, if anything they keep you on your toes and force you to react to them / prioritize them.

Keep them, maybe reduce their spawn rate, but, really I think the people who don't like them are overreacting (and I've been pwned by several champions).


The add a much needed challenge to the game. Thank you.

[J-mann]

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~

Not seen anything that says you have read that feedback, no acknowledgment no nothing. So here is mine:

Did VoN 1-4 EE, my character is a 18pala/1ftr/1rog, 120fort 130some odd prr ~80 mrr, 880 hp, dunno my ac off hand. Full party, have every major buff needed.

Von1: troll champs had 35-50k hp. Thats ridiculous, I thought you were not going to just bloat mob hp? On top of that, one particular troll was swinging for 3-400 damage a swing, how are melee supposed to play if they get unlucky with two of those?

Von2: I was the beholder fodder (sealed soul plus deathblock) so I got to aggro all of them. Had one of the holders crowned, and he hit me for 250 damage with his bite.... a beholder.... they normally hit for about 30-40 on ee..... so 5-6x damage mod really? Other than that one nothing really serious.

Von3: first door, our stalwart vanguard does the honors of opening it, and behind it is 4/6 mobs championed, he drops dead instantly, all 1k hp of him in the first salvo from the mobs. This is stupid, its not challenge its roll the dice and see if you get to just drop dead for no reason. Archers did 240-340 each, the caster mob hit him with burning blood for ~100 damage each tick (only survived one though, so 200 damage from the caster). 20% tone down? Needs more about a 50-60% tone down. In the next part, the one where all the scorpions come up after you open the door, had one of the scorps that was a campion hit me for roughly 600 damage, didnt see what buff combo he had, didnt have time, was trying not to end up dead (still did, just after I killed the champ). These damage numbers make melee unplayable in ee again, at least if you dont like dying all the time.

Von4: Got nothing really out there in this one, just got one iron golem that took the whole party about a minute to a minute and a half to beat down, not sure what his buffs were but he had a TON of hp.

What I noticed during my whole play session: the ranged toons were never bothered other than by the increased hp, kiting removed the danger almost entirely from the champions. Which is basically how the people in my guild felt, the ranged toons didnt much care, the melee toons felt like they took a kick to the place the sun dont shine, which is the feedback we gave on lam, almost all the champ buffs punish melee next to none harm range.

[Braegan]

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~

Max Greetings to you as well!

Dialing back the spawn rate seems like a good move, esp on Hard and EH. But I am not sold on making them do less damage. If the change makes them do less damage, let that affect Hard/EH only and leave EE and a real kick in the teeth if you aren't careful. Honestly, don't knee jerk on this. First reduce spawn rate, than evaluate, and if needed evaluate again and reduce damage.

Not sure what you mean about crafting mats. If it's an anything goes and I can loot anything from a Cannith Crafting Item to a Phlog than ok. But some of us don't even bother with cannith crafting so tokens to exchange for those would be something not of interest to everyone.

Hirelings have always been fragile. I dunno their AI makes them think they are zerging uber TRs when they just aren't . Either a buff to hires and/or some agro reduction ability added to all hires may be the answer. Give them all bluff/diplo maxed and let them divert the agro off themselves might go a long way.

Now a couple other things I was mulling over...

I know you said you don't expect new players to run right into elite on Korthos, but some that ViP up to try the game for a month might. It won't hurt anyone to make Korthos exempt from Champs as that is the training grounds, kids glove area. Korthos is also home to two problematic dungeons with a system like this: Heyton Rest and Cannith Crystal. First impressions are everything, and before champs due to the nature of those quests they have given me trouble on occasion, on a multi trd twinked experienced player. I would give Korthos a free Champ zone.

All quests that involve protecting an NPC, Object, or otherwise FAIL condition even while the party can be alive and in combat needs to be evaluated. Either give NPCs, Objects Champ status as well so they can withstand a few hits like they were able to before this change, or like my idea for hires give them Diplo/Bluff to divert some agro off them. Of course that works more with NPCs than object, but meh.

Please don't cave on the checkbox option.

Please don't change Terminal and make more quests like it. It was insanely hard my first few runs. Runs that took up to two hours to complete (one was a bugged run, but 1st time running didn't know it so went thru every nook making sure we didn't miss something). Now a few days later I can pug this with some knowledge and make it a painless but on your toes kind of run.

More to come if I think of anything else/encounter anything else.

/Game On!

[Thar]

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.

if it's a check box and someone has a reason to click it (challenge, reward chest, token, xp) then it will be done.

[Thar]

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

Sev~

But it is an option and favor is needed for bag space etc. It would not be inconcievable whether that is your intent or not that a new player would do harder especially if talking to current players (that don't know about champions). Much of the game is built to reward the hard/elite streaks, favor rewards, more xp etc.

[Rakuda13]

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!

Sorry but Im finding the game too hard.I logged in three times today,thinking i might enjoy some questing. Its just not enjoyable anymore.Im running heroic which i have been doing for years and now its just to taxing.I know the quests already,so there really isnt anything interesting about the quests anymore.I have the gear from past lives,so no reason to force myself to do them.New players dont want to do elite even before the update,now its even harder to find people.The news champions havent been dropping chests on elite,only on hard.
These champions are fine if you have a full party of people with past lives and you have been playing together for years,but a with a smaller pug party its just not fun.

[Krell]

I haven't totally formed an opinion yet, so for now I just plan to pop on here and list examples of things that wiped or nearly wiped a pretty strong full party. Many of the champion encounters seem manageable. There are so many of them it is hard to pick out specifics unless it was something that started dropping party members very quickly. Every group of mobs seems to have 1-2 champions.

Example for today is Thrill of the Hunt EE. One non-boss Shadar-kai champion wiped out everyone in range with about 2-3 chain swings. Some party members had around 200 PRR and 150 fort but it didn't seem to make a difference other than they died about a second or two later than the rest.

On a funny note, I saw a CR0 champion rat in Friends in Low Places EE.

[CaptainSpacePony]

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

<snip>

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.

I agree with the quote other than to remind everyone that there is already a check box--just choose normal or casual.

[Edwardt]

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~

It should be challenging, sure.

Unfortunately I choose Wayfinder as my main server and right now it's 8pm eastern and there is NO player at level 13 +/-2 level online.

Yesterday between 8pm and 9pm there was also nobody in that range online. Several hours earlier, I'm in Europe, it's just the same.

Even if there would be some potential it's far from grouping up. Some quests, one so called challenging, I had to abort some quests, because there was no way to solve some champion combinations.

True, before the update I was able to solo the most heroic. Now it's only by accident. When the numbers are nice and i get only one, or two champions at a time.

A usual 'group' on Wayfinder for heroic content is mostly player + hire. Sad but true. Should that now imply the challenging quest are some kind of history?

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~

Two examples I got for this.

one - Haywire Foundry, heroic elite

a Foundry Engineers champion standing on the catwalk guarded by the fire traps. The magic missiles with additional damage took my mate (barbarian - no UMD for shield) several times down before we could reach him in manner of a sicide commando.

second - Fathom the Depths, heroic elite

not sure if it was a Deep Water Mage, or a Channeler. Same kind of magic missile shot. Base damage + 48 damage per missile ended in death.

[Thar]

Holy ****. The Dev's say they plan on nerfing champions and people start complaining AGAIN. if you don't want to waste time...or you don't want to be 1 shot...DON'T DO EXTREME DUNGEONS.

You all just got through saying that you want the casual to be catered to...you really don't want the elitists to have anything?

i'm not complaining about the nerf but it's not enough. 20% reduction from the current spawn rate on EE is not enough when some rooms have 90% champoins. that would be from the 30% rate i'm seeing to about 24%. still too high.

EE motu is not extreme. I only consider stormhorns/wheloon, and from what i hear the new pack to be extreme. EE is already ramped up and hit for 300-400 they don't need mobs that do 5x that amount. not when the quests are not balanced with shrines for casters. half the classes didn't get dps or other balance buffs, rogues, rangers, casters have no prr. Too much knee jerk reaction to the armor pass. The class balancing should be complete before any adjustment to quest difficulty.

if you could get groups all the time and full groups then fine it might be ok. well you can't. the game is on a decline and it's hard to get heroic groups filled. Epic is easier and 15+ heorics due to iconic tr's but much of the game is solo or close to it now out of necessity unless they merge all servers.

in the meantime this needs an on/off toggle for the quest.

[Qhualor]

But it is an option and favor is needed for bag space etc. It would not be inconcievable whether that is your intent or not that a new player would do harder especially if talking to current players (that don't know about champions). Much of the game is built to reward the hard/elite streaks, favor rewards, more xp etc.

favor can be done like bag space at higher levels. i guess you don't remember 4+ years ago when this was common in the lfm?

i do agree though the incentives and difficulties need to be looked at and adjusted. by doing so would balance the players out better by playing in difficulties that are more suitable for them without "feeling" required to bog an experienced party down because they cant hack elite.

[Qhualor]

if it's a check box and someone has a reason to click it (challenge, reward chest, token, xp) then it will be done.

currently with the rewards system the way it is, there would be no incentive to click "activate Champions" in any quest. in some cases, farming normal and ransacking chests is still the popular way to go in quests.

[Thar]

I agree with the quote other than to remind everyone that there is already a check box--just choose normal or casual.

and that is a waste of time in as too easy. EE was fine before except for some 1% whiners. you could progress in sagas and ETR. normal isn't a challenge and so little saga reward it's almost not woth it.

there is another check box. cancel subscription.

[Qhualor]

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~

when looking into one shotting players, hopefully the feedback also includes the damage mitigation the player has. ill be honest and say i don't have very good damage mitigation as i work through past lives. currently on my 2nd Rogue life with no epic past lives or any past lives to reduce damage, 19% dodge, 57 AC, 26 PRR, 15 MRR, perma blur and ghostly wearing light armor. pretty sad i know and Champions can hit me for half damage or more on EH/EE with currently 630 HP at level 23. for a past life i wont invest too hard on more mitigation so this is the norm for me and i suspect this is this case for many other players as well.

please do get info from all sources before changing anything please.

[Thrudh]

I know many people who have quit the game. Yes some of them quit the game because they were bored, but not one that i know quit the game specifically because it was too easy.

Bored = too easy. Surprised we all have to spell that out for you.

[Thrudh]

Increase the XP for champions. If you are going to increase the time it takes to play a quest, I want an increase in XP. Thanks.

Okay, but every time they buff us or add new gear that makes us more powerful, they have to reduce the xp you get because they just decreased the time it takes to play a quest.

I mean, fair is fair, right?

[Son_of_the_South]

I ran a couple of quests for the first time last night since the update.

Heroic Elite VoN3 (solo). I didn't have too many problems with the champions. Some of the Troll champions hit like trucks and yes it's tough on a Wiz/Monk staff build relying on blur, displacement, dodge but I enjoyed the challenge. The only death I had was because I was zerging jungle and ran into a Beholder champion without my Mantle/PLIS on & got hit for about 340 point disintegrate while on half health.

Went back in and completed fairly routinely (the second time)

Shadow Crypt (elite). Waited for a group so we could farm it. Died twice in 5 elite runs. Both times to phase spiders with TS, fire resist ignoring concealment effects & hitting hard.

I don't mind the deaths, it's nice to feel a little adrenalin back in the game after many lives of zerging heroic content. Perhaps SOME of the "I hit harder" effect & spawn rates could be scaled back a tad. Both deaths on Crypt spawned 3 champion phase spiders in an attic area that all seemed to have TS (& fire resist so WoF was needed) & hit really hard.

Looking forward to the tweaks & thanks for actively listening to us.