Monster Champion Feedback

[patang01]

um.. actually, We(The players) didnt put the champions in. We didnt even really ask for em. The devs put them in so perhaps the devs also feel the game had gotten too easy?

The DDO devs are definitely NOT in the habit of putting whatever a few folks on the forms ask for into the game.

That's not entirely true; we stated to the devs that it's too 'easy' (for some with good toons with great gear and lots of past lives) and they created the champion feature as a response to that feedback. This didn't just happen out of the blue because the Devs did a test drive and said 'wait a minute'.

The problem with champions is that it's a terrible instrument to balance player power. Most of the time good players with good gear will blow through content without much issue, but then there are certain times when the dice beats you over the head with a room full of champion zombies and tiny spiders. And you feel like....really?

And it's worse in low end content; that's your ramp up period where you slowly get familiar with features, add feats to use tactics etc. In those champions are just stupid roadblocks and not really good challenges. To me champions should be epic encounters. Something to look forward too and something that is rewarding.

Combating a room of shadow champion rats is just off turning. It removes all form of immersion since you know those are the most powerful in the room, not the red named boss. For me at least the whole champion random debacle misses the greater point of making pivotal encounters more interesting. Like mini bosses that's worth the option. Like red named. Those are the ones Turbine should beef up. Not the shambling zombie that just spawned. It gets corny real quick in that case.

[Cordovan]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

[Ancient]

I just don't think champions will work in these types of quests.

Before we eliminate champions from escort quests, could we try a month or so of always making the escort a champion? Would be a fun switch to see them do all the work for once.

[Vulkoorex]

Thats actually not true at all. and dont get me wrong, I am an advocate of looking at the favor reward tiers and modifying them if necessary.

But, you dont "need" elite to accumulate enough favor to gain FREE turbine points. You can simply run MORE quests on Normal or hard. You dont need to run a single quest on elite to get your backpack spaces or bank slots. You just need to do more quests on Normal and hard.

if this slows down people running 200 favor on an alt server just to accumulate free turbine points, that totally not a problem to me.

How can f2p and premium players unlock the 400 silver flame favors, unlock the Cannith Artificers favor, unlock Harper enhancement favor, and the 5000 favor for +5 tome?

The answer: they probably can't and will likely have to spend Turbine Points and purchase from the DDO store.

[Monkey-Boy]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

is this already in effect or is this something that waits for the next patch?

[Livmo]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

Hooray! I was starting to like it the more I played.

Just an idea. I would like to sign up to be a Champion and get pulled into a quest with all my gear and ablities disguised as one of the baddies with a crown. If I kill an uber they drop an Adventurers Backpack for me to loot that contains some of their backpack items/gear. Of course the dead player will not loose any items. Just and incentive for me to be a Monster Champion and maraud in the game. The game becomes more unpredictable that way and more fun. You never know who you would get as the Player Monster Champion drawn into the quest.

Also, it would be neato if this idea was expanded, so RL players could be disguised raid bosses as well. No set patterns. All randomness.

[EllisDee37]

How can f2p and premium players unlock the 400 silver flame favors, unlock the Cannith Artificers favor, unlock Harper enhancement favor, and the 5000 favor for +5 tome?

The answer: they probably can't and will likely have to spend Turbine Points and purchase from the DDO store.

They'll probably have to purchase those things regardless of champions. If you're looking for 5000 favor, champions are the least of your concerns. And unlocking Artificer via favor is a major PITA, and most of it involves content where champions cannot spawn. (Raids and challenges.)

[Impaqt]

How can f2p and premium players unlock the 400 silver flame favors, unlock the Cannith Artificers favor, unlock Harper enhancement favor, and the 5000 favor for +5 tome?

The answer: they probably can't and will likely have to spend Turbine Points and purchase from the DDO store.

None of those things could remotely be considered "necessary" to play the game. Most players i know dont even have 5k favor tomes.

Do people really think turbine, and more importanly, warner brothers, is a charity gaming organization?


There are 4 things i feel are critical to the enjoyment of the game.

2 backpack tabs and 2 bank tabs. All those can be obtained without stepping into an elite instance.

[Yalinaa]

Really would like to see Turbine pull this player, jalont, portalcat, and/or similar players for whom epic elite is trivial, get them on some lammania-like instance, and then incrementally dial up champions, more interesting combinations of mobs, more special attacks (why can't epic elite archers use dispelling shots and paralyzing shots, let alone manyshot), other buffs (why aren't all epic elite mobs wearing 30% speed and 15% alacrity by now? They live on the mountain where goatskin boots are made, for god sake let them wear a pair), area effects (how about blanket "ship buff ward" in epic elite content) until they're at just about a 60-75% fail rate. Then set that up as the new top target to aim for and give these players something to try and master again. Then revisit it periodically to keep the fail rates on pace with any new power creep.

If it's not possible Turbine might as well come out and admit they've exhausted their means to challenge the top x% within the structure afforded by this game engine and their own development budget. They probably already have but not admitting it lets them keep these players on the chain hoping for some exciting new personal experience that is never coming.

Don't understand you perfectly. Why is a bad thing if you finished a character, you wanna test him/her? With 50+ PL that character should be really good, and fun to play. Right now there is a canyon between the powergamers and the average players. With champions change they just dig it deeper. I don't like how they think, because I think it's just lazy work to write a champion script and copy/paste it to every quest. Yeah, designing a difficulty above EE would require work, but NOONE would come here and whine that he died on Mythic, and trash mobs hit hard there. Yes, I am against such laziness, not just because when you design something for a quest it will surely work for every other quest (see Baudry chain part 1 on HE), I see here they missed a good opportunity to create some real challenge, something to make us believe that one day, one day maybe there will be an end game in DDO, not just the countless ERs.

[patang01]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

I honestly liked that the regular mini bosses were champions - it's interesting that they get different buffs as long as none of them are game breaking (by completely negating players gear). I didn't mind that orange creatures were now more likely to be champions. That felt right since there's not an abundance of them and they should be a little bit more intesting.

The greatest issue I have with regular champions is that it feels so corny. A shambling zombie, a shadow rat; you'd assume that the orange name IS a champion because he's some kind of mob boss. Not the zombies. My personal opinion is this; remove regular champions completely. And make all mini bosses champions. Also add a small chance to spawn a body guard with each mini boss. These can be one buff champions and give them some kind of aura to show they're 'body guards'.

It makes the system flexible while maintaining a need for tactics when you get to the area. It also removes the weirdness of entering rooms with no champion or some with tons of champions. Simply put 'regular' champions just feels wrong on cannon fodder. If there was a champion in that group at least upgrade it to a cooler creature - something that looks beefier and better. Heck, upgrade that automatically to a beefier orange name to add immersion. Like a room of zombies. If there's a champion there make it an orange named frankenstein. If there are rats - make it a MASSIVE rat. If there are spiders, make it like the big spider rare encounter in the high road.

Add the visual creature, not just the silly crown.

[DarthCaedus]

Players have been leaving for years.

Turbine has been making the game easier every update for years.

A popular definition of insanity goes something like this.

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Im all for trying something different at this point. Making the game easier has not increased the population.

There has been a steady decline since the FTP bubble and it can't really be connected to any one thing causing it.

I think people are over-simplifying the arguments by pretending this is an argument about making the game easier or harder. There are specific complaints about the champion system that were raised and the devs have already validated the primary 2 complaints as things to be addressed:

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~

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.

Sev~

I wish people would be more honest instead of pretending everyone that doesn't like champions is just looking for an easy button.

I may or may not return to DDO depending on what happens in the near future, but I do appreciate the devs efforts.

[Kaytis]

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

I really think it would have been more fun to add a new level of difficulty using elite as a baseline where every monster was a champion -even the red names. With the right xp incentive, I could have been really on board with that.

Edit: plus you wouldn't need the silly crowns.

[EllisDee37]

I really think it would have been more fun to add a new level of difficulty using elite as a baseline where every monster was a champion -even the red names. With the right xp incentive, I could have been really on board with that.

I would be fine with champions giving bravery bonus. Opting out of champions would opt you out of bravery for that run, but would not break your streak.

[Kamode_Corebasher]

On your next adjustment, increase Champion Damage boost back to what it was yesterday and instead lower Champion HP by 30%.

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

[bbqzor]

To clarify my earlier comment: If you see a Champion monster with clearly 10x as many hitpoints as an identical monster standing next to it in the same instance and party, that's unintended.

Just happened again. Detour, Epic Hard, party size 2, regular wolf mobs (the ones near shrine in the middle-ish, regular meaning non-orange). Champion had over 21000 hp. Regular mobs are around 2k +/-. Took a screenshot, if you want it mailed anywhere varg pm me, I dont have hosting to put it up here (tho if the forums have native hosting somehow feel free to clue me in, Ill get it up).

We have reduced the number of Monster Champions that spawn, and also reduced the overall damage boost Champions get. The numbers are now:

• Hard normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 6%.
• Elite normal monsters: The percentage chance for a Champion to spawn has been reduced from 12% to 9%.
• Hard Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 33%.
• Elite Orange named monsters (mini-bosses) is now 66%.
• Champion Damage boost: Reduced by 25%.

Please continue to provide us with your feedback on Monster Champions. Thanks!

First, a huge THANK YOU for actual numbers. I have no other words, thank you.

Second, That seems to be pretty good, but I suspect the elite orange named number may need to go down to something like 50. Remember, even at 50, its very possibly (statistically) for you to get a wave of 3/4 or more champions without being an outlier. As it stands, that means its very easy to get a full wave. Thats going to seem/feel a lot worse than it is, and like a lot more than 66%. Just a prediction, will see.

As for the damage boost, will have to feel it out. Not sure what it is now (Im assuming its melee power based) so dropping it 25 is just something Ill have to play to see. Will check it out.

[Monkey-Boy]

I honestly liked that the regular mini bosses were champions - it's interesting that they get different buffs as long as none of them are game breaking (by completely negating players gear). I didn't mind that orange creatures were now more likely to be champions. That felt right since there's not an abundance of them and they should be a little bit more intesting.

Don't you think that is was a little bit stupid that the red-names are now less scarry than the trash?

The greatest issue I have with regular champions is that it feels so corny. A shambling zombie, a shadow rat; you'd assume that the orange name IS a champion because he's some kind of mob boss. Not the zombies. My personal opinion is this; remove regular champions completely. And make all mini bosses champions. Also add a small chance to spawn a body guard with each mini boss. These can be one buff champions and give them some kind of aura to show they're 'body guards'.

It makes the system flexible while maintaining a need for tactics when you get to the area. It also removes the weirdness of entering rooms with no champion or some with tons of champions. Simply put 'regular' champions just feels wrong on cannon fodder. If there was a champion in that group at least upgrade it to a cooler creature - something that looks beefier and better. Heck, upgrade that automatically to a beefier orange name to add immersion. Like a room of zombies. If there's a champion there make it an orange named frankenstein. If there are rats - make it a MASSIVE rat. If there are spiders, make it like the big spider rare encounter in the high road.

Add the visual creature, not just the silly crown.

I love personally crafted and balanced dungeons, where thought and planning are put into each encounter.

I absolutely hate the random garbage that is monster champions. It doesn't always but it can potentially break any encounter.

if you want to add challenge buff the bosses, that makes more sense. And don't do it randomly.

Or an across the board buff of 10-20% to damage/HP on to all monsters on EE would be fine.

[Impaqt]

Just happened again. Detour, Epic Hard, party size 2, regular wolf mobs (the ones near shrine in the middle-ish, regular meaning non-orange). Champion had over 21000 hp. Regular mobs are around 2k +/-. Took a screenshot, if you want it mailed anywhere varg pm me, I dont have hosting to put it up here (tho if the forums have native hosting somehow feel free to clue me in, Ill get it up).

http://imgur.com/

Totally free. No sign up required.

[hit_fido]

Don't understand you perfectly.

In brief, Turbine needs to utilize several top tier players like yourself for whom epic elite is as trivial as you describe it is for yourself, and work with them to figure out just how much to amp up epic elite difficulty so that it's no longer remotely close to guaranteed success. Once EE is hard enough that someone like you fails it frequently, then it's probably at the correct level for another year, or at least a few more months.

[Livmo]

http://imgur.com/

Totally free. No sign up required.

All the images I put on the forums are hosted on Imgur.

[Yalinaa]

In brief, Turbine needs to utilize several top tier players like yourself for whom epic elite is as trivial as you describe it is for yourself, and work with them to figure out just how much to amp up epic elite difficulty so that it's no longer remotely close to guaranteed success. Once EE is hard enough that someone like you fails it frequently, then it's probably at the correct level for another year, or at least a few more months.

But can not do that. I mean a lot of players are (were) familiar with a difficulty setting, those who just stepped their feet into elite surely hate the changes, and I can feel it. You can not change the game to make people do backflips, everyone likes to improve... With champs a lot of people feels they are going backwards, which is a VERY BAD thing in an MMO - if it's only an illusion, you still must believe in that every step you make your character improves. Therefore you can't shape EE around the powergamers without hurting other players, you have to find a new playground for them in a new difficulty setting.