Monster Champion Feedback

[phillymiket]

I didn't think I was being overly rude, if I was, wasn't my intention.

Let's chalk it up to energy is high during changes to game and folks are well energized and sometimes tone doesn't reflect well..

Hehe, it cools.

i said some horrible things earlier :-) (sorry)

I think i've used the phrase "Pinnacle of stupidity" and "Insanly crazy insane" which doesn't even make sense.

Yeah, people see their game shift and they react all sortsa ways.

Unfortunately, the best compromise will anger everyone, so..

I know there is fake testimony in here.

No Academy Awards for a few of those.. :-D "I was born in a small village where we have always played DDO to survive... until today."

But I think some are real players really about to leave.

(for the 20th time I'm done posting in this thread..i think)

[btolson]

Greetings!
~ 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~

Hirelings tend to be more than somewhat fragile even without Champions. I suggest giving them some free PRR & MRR across the board, similar to how they have trap resistance across the board. As long as you only buff their defenses and not offenses, it will be hard to really break anything.

[Braegan]

Yeah, it's been a bit heated. But from my viewpoint, it's the "don't change a thing - love the champs as is" camp that has been nastier, and extremely condescending to the players who don't agree with them. But, that's just my opinion.

Well, some folks are able to have a respectable conversation while disagreeing.

Many are not, lol.

Either side of the camp, we can all be a little more respectful in our demeanor toward each other regardless of a passing frustration of some pixels.

I try to do my best, tho I do admit human nature and tone have lead to some confusion previously.

[Vulkoorex]

Has anybody tried HE at level on the Red Fens - The Last Stand?

Just wondering with the new update if it's even possible to ensure the elder survives.

[Braegan]

Hehe, it cools.

i said some horrible things earlier :-) (sorry)

I think i've used the phrase "Pinnacle of stupidity" and "Insanly crazy insane" which doesn't even make sense.

Yeah, people see their game shift and they react all sortsa ways.

Unfortunately, the best compromise will anger everyone, so..

I know there is fake testimony in here.

No Academy Awards for a few of those.. :-D "I was born in a small village where we have always played DDO to survive... until today."

But I think some are real players really about to leave.

(for the 20th time I'm done posting in this thread..i think)

Well we are cool

But I really do hope folks do consider not leaving the game. A little challenge is good, the devs are listening, they will tweak some stuff. And, there are always a few folks like me willing to join an lfm or roll up a char to help you figure stuff I learned. Grouping is good, it really makes this game so much more fun. Just leave your ego at the door, join group and profit.

/Game On!

[RapkintheRanger]

How about this. Add a champion level. All mobs are champions (no need for stupid hats). No hires permitted in champion levels (they wont live anyway, you are really just looking out for them and their families -- assuming they are able to breed). Let people group or whatever, let people have extra loot/exp whatever... just let me get back to playing the game i liked.

please.

[Sam1313]

^^^ this

Here's some tips:

1) I see you don't have a single PL stance active
- I'd go with 3x brace for the PRR, 3x Ench Weap for DPS, 3x Fort (switch to dbl strike later), 3x Colors of the Queen.
- Did you have your 3x Shadar-kai Stance active? If you did I don't see why all that incorprality didn't kick in to save you when you went below 50% HP

You have to plan. No one is going to click those stances for you.

2) Have your Bottled Tornado on your Main Hotbar
- If you were away and didn't <cough, cough> so you could have unlimited tornados you at least should have <cough, cough> enough to have unlimited air ellies from the Cove.

Having the right tool would be better, yes? You should know this.

3) Hit Points, hit points, hit points
- How on Earth do you have so few HP? Maybe-log in and out so your 3x Barb PL kicks in.

Barbarian Past Lives are NOT a dump stat!

4) Ship Buffs
- Yours only stratch half-way across the screen, I know you're a Guild Leader but maybe find a real guild.

This is DDO not DD-SOLO.

I could go on.

Listen, There are FOUR difficulty settings.

1) Paper Targets, 2) Cardboard Targets, 3) The one that just killed you 4) The one you ran last week.

You need to know your limits and go with "Cardboard" or buck up or something.

We can't let you breeze through the Harbor on Hard by yourselves when there are people abusing EE.

The line must be drawn here.

Have you tried Normal?

EDIT - ^^^THIS IS SARCASM. IT HAS BEEN QUOTED ENOUGH^^^ :-)

This character is a hero. = he only has 1 past life which was AA Ranger who at epic level was in Shiradi, maxed that out then went to primal avatar, maxed that out then went to Fury of the wild maxed that out then True Reincarnated back to level 1 as a Monk. I am trying to go Monk/Archer with him.

Guild leader is correct and it is a real guild. A guild of friends. The guild is over 3 years old and is currently level 67 pushing 68.

My characters are: Samyel is level 26 with 5 AA Ranger past lives. My wizard Samjr is level 24 with 4 wizard past lives. All of these are Heroic past lifes. I have yet to do a Epic TR with any of them.

I didn't know you can use twists in heroic please explain to me how????? when I go to the ED page it is grayed out and tells me I can't do anything until I reach level 20 again.


I am still here I do not threaten to quit I just walk away for a few weeks.

[phillymiket]

This character is a hero. = he only has 1 past life which was AA Ranger who at epic level was in Shiradi, maxed that out then went to primal avatar, maxed that out then went to Fury of the wild maxed that out then True Reincarnated back to level 1 as a Monk. I am trying to go Monk/Archer with him.

Guild leader is correct and it is a real guild. A guild of friends. The guild is over 3 years old and is currently level 67 pushing 68.

My characters are: Samyel is level 26 with 5 AA Ranger past lives. My wizard Samjr is level 24 with 4 wizard past lives. All of these are Heroic past lifes. I have yet to do a Epic TR with any of them.

I didn't know you can use twists in heroic please explain to me how????? when I go to the ED page it is grayed out and tells me I can't do anything until I reach level 20 again.


I am still here I do not threaten to quit I just walk away for a few weeks.

Hey man!

I'm sorry.

I was just making a joke and it came out bad.

Clearly the one who failed the Sarcasm check is me <Sarcasm Crafting Failure>

I'm sure your guild is great, you shouldn't need anything more than you have.

I was just pretending to be to a "super-vet" to poke fun at them - not at you.

Good luck! I'm sure Hard will be fine after they adjust the Champions :-)

[bbqzor]

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

Difficult to know what this means, since you continue to use relativistic values. More to the point: what *actual* percentage are you aiming for? Why not just tell us?

Varg has previous said "less than 10%" was the intended value. Currently it is *OFTEN* 20% or more. This is NOT statistical outliers... this is like more than half the time. 20% reduced by 20% is still 16%... far above "less than 10". While if it is indeed less than 10 (could be 9.9 so using 10 for math, we just dont know), and its 40% off, it goes to a mere 6% or less. We dont need relative changes, we need the actual number youre looking for. Thats the ONLY way we can give you accurate feedback on if youre hitting your target, and/or how your target intention feels.

As it stands, right now theres way too many. Will 20% less be way to many still? Very likely, in this players opinion, but without real numbers who knows.

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%.

My feedback on the damage reduction is that such a change is good. Right now that damage boost can seriously destroy the opportunity for fun which previously existed. Perdition Pass with champions? Hope you have a dedicated healer or dedicated CC because the champs just destroy the escort mob very, very quickly. Dialing it back (not that 20% is enough) would address this. As would simply adding cases or exemptions to some quests to avoid champs. Special cases aside, EE is the only difficulty where I have felt that regular run-of-the-mill champ damage needs to be toned down. 20% is probably about right for that, as a general mark, tho there are definitely cases where scripts (ie perdition pass and others I have mentioned in previous posts) are sure to need more (or preferably, no champions at all).

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.

... Which materials. Because I would think the list may need to be larger than that to appeal to everyone. Perhaps it could be cached in for xp/renown as well, similar to sagas or monster manual. So something like 100 champion tokens = a small xp or renown bump.

Also... please do NOT make actual tokens we have to sort into bags. Omg just dont. We have enough inventory problems as it is, and they all just got made worse with the latest round of inconveniences inflicted upon us. I fully understand some are surely necessary to combat other problems, but man. No double click to remove from bag? Shared bank tab arrows ON TOP of items? Come on. Its just work to use any kind of bag or bank now. Adding more burden to an ailing system is not wise. Just make it something tracked MM style, where its intangible and nothing that creates micromanagement for your player base. They only work it should be on our end, is popping a window or hailing a guy to cache them out for something. The rest of the time, make it work in the background so we can focus on what we should be focused on: actually playing the game.

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.

This absolutely will help, BUT I would make a request: Please extend this to script/quest mobs as well. Coyle should not take extra champion damage, nor is it likely good for the game (long term) that he can spawn as a champion. I mean look, Im as happy as the next player to enter east 3 until I see champion coyle, and afk while he solos the script. But thats not good for the game, and later on its guaranteed to mess up some new script that goes in. Same with perdition pass... the npc dies to champs lightning fast. The game is going to be more stable and more enjoyable to just zero those kinds of things out now. Hirelings included (along with fixes to their AI and such... including fixing the Arty Dog to have an acid breath toggle along with the fire breath toggle so he can stop healing acid guys plz).

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.

Simple question: Did you run, more than a single cursory time, any of the EE Orchard quests with champions? Because theres no way that something like EE Champs in Ghosts with 30 con drain beholder and lichs with no save gmof force blast is just exactly what you envisioned people be suffering through to get mythic helms. If it is, youre wrong. Im sorry if thats strong but man... that is simply NOT fun. Its not about challenge at that point, it just kinda crosses over into stupid. Sure, I *can* do that, and it *is* beatable... but I no longer want to. Id rather log off.

Related, can we get a save or something added to those lichs? Can we get a save or something added to the harpy "fascinate" in storm horns? Can we get a save or something added to the Enchanter Lightning Sphere daze in Fleshmakers? All these new no-save, no-chance effects get old fast. Please dont tell me there is one. There is not, nothing in the combat log, even saves of 90+ with no fails on 1 cannot pass. Its either not there, or it both does not display in the log AND is set so high no one can reach it. Both cases are effectively irresistible from a player perspective, and its a serious drain on fun. Champs just made it 100x less bearable.

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.

Good to read, but the overall champion rate is the first thing to look at. Getting 20%+ as "common" isnt an outlier (Im talking mobs in general, not orange named. Orange named are close to like 75%+ or something its seriously crazy). Its just very, very different from the impression we were given elsewhere. Again, telling us what we should be seeing is as helpful, if not more, than letting us guess and hope our feedback is useful. Help us help you.

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.

This is almost always the case in EE when mobs get "double damage buffed". I have simply not had time and opportunity in these cases to read the full buff descriptions on the mobs in question because with everyone exploding Im busy helping to win the fight. But it seems to be confined to EE, and on mobs with two adrenaline icons. I think the name was "second wind" but not 100% sure. I will post more as I find it. As Ive said before, champ damage in general needs to go down, 20% is probably about right. That other change isnt wrong. But the special case of "adrenaline" level mob dps is outside the scope of that, I think one or two of the champ buffs specifically need adjustment.

The current chance for normal monsters to be Champions is far below 40%. But orange name chance to be Champions is quite a bit higher than 40% right now, and we are likely to lower the amount of orange name champions more significantly.

Having normal champions be 5-10% and orange named be 25-35% is about as high as I think these can reasonably go. Orange is tough to gauge... for quests with just one named orange guy, something like 50% is fine. But for quests with a wave of orange mobs, 50% results in a crazy hard pack. Like case in point... having the 3 orange named in Battle for Eveningstar be 50% champs is fine. 1-2 per quest, no probs. But having the pack of orange drow blademasters in Belly of the Beast pop in the arena as 50% champ is some serious potential for imbalance. If you can set named and non-named separate, that would help... if you cant, tough call.

Please bug report any situations where you are sure a Champion has 10x as many hitpoints as similar non-Champions around him (same exact monster). That is definitely unintended. (Please include quest, /loc location, difficulty & level. Thanks!)

All over. But Amrath specifically is very apparent, you can see what people are talking about there. Gensis Point has regular orthons with 600ish hp, and champion orthons with 5000. Other mobs like the devils are similar, just rarer. Running around the top loop its pretty easy to see this. Party scaling may significantly affect this instance of it, its not like I went in there dozens of times to check. Same deal in Sins, go train a hallway, get 20 mobs, check the champs vs regular, often very close to or past 10x the base hp. Im sure, from play-feel, that other places are similar.... but it seems to be mostly related to elite scaling in higher level (but maybe not epic) quests.

[Tilomere]

Ran Attack on Stormreach chains solo HE and some GH. Champions themselves were never a problem. On quest #7 the PDK starting weapon (lvl 15 longsword) broke, on a very well geared character solely from attacking. So it seems champions either due to lvl or HP are taking weapon durability away much faster in U24. Could you increase weapon base durability 50%? I think it is some specific caster heroic champion mobs that will prove to be problematic. The ones with dots and disintegrate.

Disintegrate would almost 1 shot a clothy, and should automatically 1 shot them and leather now.

Dots would be 75% absorbed by ship buffs or resists, and 25% would leak through. At double damage, 125% leaks through now, for 5x as much damage. God help PMs vs light damage dots. Or anyone not wearing plate.

[situationalWizzy]

In heroics champ spell damage is over escalated in full parties, its is not the damage itself, a combination of
* uninterraptable casting
* endless spamming
* way too fast casting speed

Vampire form is pretty useless at the moment, since any champion cleric will 1 shot you, even with cloak toggle, i use tons of cc, but yeah bads happen :d.

Im wondering what Running with the Devils is like, which always had funny amount of light damage . Specifically thinking of Ghaele champions.

I can still recall vividly my 1st life as a pale master in Running with the Devils, party wipe lol.
Globe of Invulnerablity helps in here against Nimbus of Light and Searing Light but probably for casters or ranged.
Both light spells have no saving throws fyi.

If you a TR, probably you may already have Pale Lavender Ioun Stone or Jewel Cloak and Mantle of Worldshaper.
These helps a bit too.

Have fun ^_^

[Yalinaa]

Has anybody tried HE at level on the Red Fens - The Last Stand?

Just wondering with the new update if it's even possible to ensure the elder survives.

Just reset till you have a lot of champ NPC there.

My feedback after playing some in the weekend:

I have 2 finished (or almost done) characters, playing the game with them is still very easy. I can't see any difference, I slaying arrow+adrenaline the champs, and other toon is a master stunner/tripper, so still no challenge. Maybe I have to be a little more careful when soloing EE Wheloon, but that's all. This update didn't change anything for me, well, I think heroic elite became more easy and stupid. Come on, my lvl 8 barb is not doing any fight anymore on HE, I just transported all my mass charm cookies to him, and man, those heroic stuff without undeads are super easy after you charmed the champs, they literally destroy the whole dungeon for you!

This champ thing wasted time. It drives away new players, and still no challenge for vets like me. They should just create a higher than elite difficulty instead, mythic/nightmare, and we would have fun. Bad decisions, bad designing.

Now I only play 1 or 2 hours per day, first hour i get my 700k xp for epic reincarnated character, and if I'm in a good mood I do some EE on my wolf girl, or cookie leveling my barbarian (it's extremely funny), then I go and watch some animes.

I'm not leaving DDO, but me doesn't matter, 'cause I never spend money on this game, I don't have to. I'm not living in the basement, but I know how to farm quickly and easily.

[Ayseifn]

Is it possible to put weighting on the 10% part, like normalize it to some degree?

If I only see a quest filled to the brim with champs every 1k or so quests that's cool, but with thousands of people playing that also means that someone, somewhere is being dealt a raw hand right now. Same deal with crazy powerful champs in protect or escort quests, if I get one with epic crate bane in the protect the box chest of the Cartamon chain I wouldn't be happy at all, it's just random restart time.

I do like that some are insanely deadly and that random buffs on top of a random % of champs should even out to some degree but there will always be statistical outliers. If you weight them to some degree and especially for escort/protect quests it'll help take some of the edge off. Capping spawns is another way to go but it opens up a meta gaming can of worms, if there can only be a certain maximum at a time people will just kite/fascinate/drag somewhere and DDoor/etc them and have none of them for the rest of the quest. Unless they aren't that tough and then why even have them in the first place?

[haulindonkey]

Here’s some feedback:
I don’t like them much so far. From what I’ve seen it’s too generic as far as my tastes are concerned. I had an ooze champ cast slow on me. How does an ooze cast spells? Why are there ooze champs at all? Is it possible the monster champion system could have been accomplished while simultaneously trying to make some sense?

It reminded me of what’s been done with the loot system. Vorpal quarterstaff? Rapier of stunning?

It reminded me of the horrible way epic spells were implemented. Feats? No spell list?

It reminded me of the way spiked chains were introduced. As a superpower for a specific race?


It seems like you’re trying to absolutely kill anything that distinguishes one monster from another. Every monster has a chance of being a champ and they seem to all draw champ abilities from the same table. They are too generic and this wipes out any traits that make a monster type a unique challenge. Just like all weapons having the same exact prefixes and suffixes no matter what weapon type, all monster champs get the same abilities and are thus no different from one another. If there has to be ooze champs, why not make an ooze champ table they can draw from? Give them some ooze-like abilities rather than casting wizard spells?

I would suggest creating at least a few different tables for champs. These could include as examples: ooze table, caster table, warrior table, undead table (separating it by intelligent vs non-intelligent perhaps), aberration table, etc. (haven't thought it out entirely but these are just some thoughts) Use some ideas from existing monster feats/traits to guide what these could be.

It would be nice to see, for example, a Bard champion that, instead of just hitting for extra damage or whatever, sang songs and buffed enemies. Get rid of the gold crown and let them do actions that players could potentially identify as different from the other monsters (such as singing). You could perhaps see an enemy warpriest hit consecrated ground or inflame. Enemy warrior champs could have noticeable action boosts appear overhead. If this seems like too much to develop, just remember that it can evolve. If you have 5 different champ types with 5 different abilities each that could start things off. Over time, add some more types and add more abilities to existing types. This would allow for continued evolution while maintaining some distinction between the types of enemies we face.


TL;DR Find a balance between ease of implementation and complexity. Turn off World of Warcraft and stop playing Diablo. Pick up some Dungeons and Dragons books and find ideas there.

/signed

P.S. Did u examine the ooze to see if he was in undead form? Was wondering if the ooze champ chose to go PM or Archmage with his arcane build...

[haulindonkey]

You know what irks me most about all of this? The attitude of the elitists here.

I was fine with the addition of champions, noting that it broke some quests and expected them to be fixed in time.

I am so sickened by the elitists in this community that I am quitting the game, cancelling my subscription and asking for a refund.

This community has serious problems.

Spare yourself the effort of the standard door-ass comments. I'm kicking it down on the way out.

Be careful out there in other MMO forums and on the interwebs in general. People so easily hurt or offended by reading something in a game forum can quickly find out it's a mighty scary place....

[Michele]

Monster champion system made the prr useless.
I have 155 prr and I'm being hit by 600 damage (no critical) in epic elite devil assault.

Developers, what have you done??? You have improved the prr system to allow us to survive better in epic elite and then you created champion monsters who are able to one shot us? It's absolutely not fun.

I was playing with full health (650 hp at level 22), always was under control and then 1 second of (server side) lag and SBAM! dead... appears a big red number with 600 (I have 215% fortification). I got 7 of those hits in one devil assault run.

The game was fun and challeging without champion monsters, now it's not fun anymore.

[Aletys]

... This is almost always the case in EE when mobs get "double damage buffed". I have simply not had time and opportunity in these cases to read the full buff descriptions on the mobs in question because with everyone exploding Im busy helping to win the fight. But it seems to be confined to EE, and on mobs with two adrenaline icons. I think the name was "second wind" but not 100% sure. I will post more as I find it. As Ive said before, champ damage in general needs to go down, 20% is probably about right. That other change isnt wrong. But the special case of "adrenaline" level mob dps is outside the scope of that, I think one or two of the champ buffs specifically need adjustment. ...

It is "second wind". I've run into it in HE in Korthos. It kicks in when they get below a certain level of health, and every champion I saw it on also had the damage boost on top of that.

[haulindonkey]

Have you looked at the LFM?

What do you envision them doing?

Solo Normal?

You bring up an interesting point. As a new player with almost exclusively elite lfms out, what do you do?

You could:

1.Solo on norm and casual.
2. Try to solo on hard and become lunch for the champions.
3. Try and join an elite lfm and either get turned down or berated during the elite quest and dumped by the group after...
4. Give up and take your $$ elsewhere

Turbine really needs to do something to encourage a more friendly PUG scene for newer players.

Question for the player's council:
Has there been any indication on Turbine's part that they have any interest in some type of buddy or mentor system as has been suggested multiple times here on the forums? There are some new players out there on occasion and it might be nice to keep a few of them around....

[Scrabbler]

This champ thing wasted time. It drives away new players, and still no challenge for vets like me.

Yup, aside from whatever else might be wrong with it, Monster Champions used up an excessive amount of developer time. (And will need more before it's fixed)

Given that the problem was that monsters were too easy to fight, the simplest approach would've been to globally give all monsters a little better damage and a little better defense. That's the end objective, after all: more damage and more defense. But instead of implementing that result directly, they made a multi-layered system of randomness to apply the modifications in a nonuniform, inconsistent way.

A complicated random system can possibly get the right result, but it's a harder design job than adjusting the simple existing stats.

[Rys]

This champ thing wasted time. It drives away new players, and still no challenge for vets like me. They should just create a higher than elite difficulty instead, mythic/nightmare, and we would have fun. Bad decisions, bad designing.

So true. Pugged EE Tor yesterday. Haven't seen that many deaths in a really long time and yet I've barely noticed the change. The only positive thing about this are EE Haunted Halls. So much fun and win in this quest atm. Unfortunately not WAI and will be fixed soon.