Monster Champion Feedback

[Monkey-Boy]

Seriously, Thrudh? I'm gonna answer for Monkey-boy, cause he has already answered your question. Maybe you will accept the answer if it comes from another person as well.

He wants challenge, he just thinks that RANDOM challenge is dumb, and quite frankly, not challenging in the slightest anyway. Having read the entire thread, he states this over and over again.

On another note, I'm afraid that introducing Champions to the game in the manner that it was done has irrevocably shattered the already fragile playerbase. I'm like Monkey-boy in that I think random is, at it's core, too punishing. A party can perform perfectly for the 1 hour (or whatever it takes) to get to the final room, and then wipe through no fault of their own, if the random buffs are actually effective at adding challenge to the party. I also think that the way this was implemented, a vast majority of these Champion buff permutations add no challenge at all, making the situations where the stars aligned and a group of Champions spawn with the right buffs to take down the party EVEN MORE punishing. I ran Necro 4 last night with a random pug on EH, and it was the same old rolfstomp as it has always been, as a matter of fact, 3 of us ran ahead and completed most of the quests, even though it was scaled for 6. The Champs didn't even slow the zerg.

Unfortunately, now we have people who are saying they will not return to the game unless Champs are completely removed AND people saying that they will leave the game if Champs are tweaked to matter less (dumbed down, less spawns, etc.) This is the first time since I started playing that there has been such a divide between players on a single issue.

I have played through a lot of DOOOOOOMMM periods in DDO, but this is the first time that I am honestly worried that this game might not even make it as far as maintenance mode. I see it as a horrible sign that just yesterday they said they wanted to let this play out a bit, and then today they have already adjusted the spawn rates and damage. This tells me that yeah, for the first time, it's not all talk, and the number of cancelled subs has started to alarm the Turbine team. And, yeah, this hurts all of us, even the "forum Uber-Leets".

Unfortunately, we can't go back in time and just not release Champions. I wish the Dev team had seen the divide on the Lamma feedback, and thought twice about releasing Champions in the state they were in. Taking it away now solves nothing, I think it has pushed too many people past the breaking point.

Thinking about this is what makes ME sad, Conman, and I think everyone that is left, Uber-Leet to casual, can agree on that.

It's so nice having people reply for me, it's almost like having minions. I put him on ignore anyway so thank you for handling this.

Though I wouldn't have said "too punishing," I'd have said "too stupid."

[redoubt]

I didn't notice this, but if there actually is a champion buff that ignore all fort that needs to go.

Someone posted a screen shot of it a few pages back.

I think they need to put in buffs that bypass part of fort. i.e. 35% bypass (precision), 15% bypass (item) If the mob gets both and your fort goes from 120% to 70%. Not ZERO.

[BD_]

What?!?

WHY must it be one group -vs- another, again?

It most certainly is possible to find a way to please both groups. We must.

The progression Casual > Normal > Hard > Elite must MAKE some kind of SENSE.

Right now its Huge Joke > Joke > Much, much harder > Slightly harder than much, much harder.

That huge gap between JOKE and MUCH, MUCH HARDER must be addressed or, and hopefully I'm wrong, there could be a price to pay.

...

So I to applaud the effort, even if I think there are a few tragic llaws that should be tweaked.

Pre champions it was Huge Joke > Joke > slightly less of a joke > much much harder.... Either way there's still that huge difficulty gap leaving many players with the problem of no difficulty level is "appropriate" for them.

Sadly there are some (not saying you're doing it - you admit there are some major problems with the champion system) but some very vocal people on the forums that are unwilling to admit there are flaws with the champion system and are insulting and obnoxious towards anyone that says anything negative about champions. There are also some people that are unwilling to give the champion system a chance and say they hate it no matter what.

I think the champion system never should have made it live as is, and that it should have been left up on Lammania longer to work out many of the problems that are happening now on live.

[DarthCaedus]

Unfortunately, now we have people who are saying they will not return to the game unless Champs are completely removed AND people saying that they will leave the game if Champs are tweaked to matter less (dumbed down, less spawns, etc.) This is the first time since I started playing that there has been such a divide between players on a single issue.

Remember what Ronald Reagen did in the 80s? He directly armed Iraq and secretly armed Iran so they can fight each other brutally for a decade.

In the past the player base has been very united on issues against Turbine - ETR, Guild Decay, etc. Now Turbine turned the tables and is having the players go at each other.

Stealing right from the gipper's playbook.

[Impaqt]

This appears to be largely an assumption- possibly just an excuse to be condescending.

People had specific complaints about the system and Turbine is trying to address it. The whole "entitlement" assumption is garbage.

I just call it as I see it.

[DarthCaedus]

I just call it as I see it.

Nah, you have 20k posts and most I've seen have some sort of insult. That's your way of getting an insult in.

[Albinosaurus]

Nah, you have 20k posts and most I've seen have some sort of insult. That's your way of getting an insult in.

It's not even that complex. He's obviously a troll. Nobody can be dumb enough to not at least acknowledge the view point of the people who don't like the champs.

Any reasonable, sane person would agree that the checkbox, followed by incentivized rewards for champions, would be a perfectly acceptable compromise that would allow people who don't like it to opt out while the challenge-seekers can have their harder setting to play on. Win/win.

Instead, he condescendingly makes bad arguments to try to shut them up. I stopped reading his posts around page 12 or so.

[Keladon]

where's the /sarcasm slash??? Looking up your previous posts now to see your typical outlook...

Sarcasm? Champions are random, there's no denying that.

Yes, my typical outlook about wanting more options and pleasing everyone, is there anything wrong with that?

I see people saying you can't please both those against & those in favor of this change.. but you can, make it optional, it's not even hard to come up with a solution like that.

[Blackheartox]

A big hit to champion monstery, can you guys at least not scale down the damage output on epic elite?

Im fully ok heroic elite and hards being nerfed and easy as always, but can you at least keep the damage for epic elite?

[redoubt]

True, you don't NEED to. But even if elite takes longer, its 3x the favor. Unless it take you 3x the time of normal to run it, its more efficient to favor farm elites.

I think you mean it was more efficient to farm elites.

so if running a dungeon on Normal takes 10 Minutes. and then Hard takes 25 Minutes, and Elite, you fail every time. You should probably stick to Normal.

Turbine does not owe anyone free turbine points.

I was trying to leave it open, because it depends on the player/group. For some, elite is still fast. Often not much longer than normal, so it is more efficient with respect to favor (and I suppose TP as well.)

If a change creates a situation where hard or normal becomes more efficient, then use that. The trouble with this scenario, as is being expressed frequently in this thread, is that when normal or hard become more efficient time wise, the time to favor, as well as the time to xp, ratio(s) become less favorable.

Again, please realize, I'm in favor of the champion system in concept. I'm in the "it needs to be tweaked" crowd. I've posted it a few times, but I'd like to see them be infrequent, but challenging. (But not so overtuned that their damage before mitigation is in the thousands.) I'd like to see them be "champions" and make their guys better, maybe have a moral buff for those close to them (some people are describing this as an aura, I think.) Anyway, creatively making them challenging and not simply overly immune hit point sacks with bigger hammers.

[dunklezhan]

If those changes Cordo mentioned several pages back have gone into live, then our experience 2 manning Threnal on heroic hard this evening was that the minor tweak had a major effect. We saw maybe three of four champs per quest (more if there were oozes and we got careless, but then they were champ divided oozes and therefore weak anyway), none were a particular problem and the two orange named giants at the end were both champs but didn't drop any loot.

TWF melee and a druid had no trouble with them at all. In fact I many shotted them both on the same manyshot timer (this is not a 'power build'. It is Rang.7 pal4 scimmie build right now). both on 2nd life, with in my case still with mostly pre-loot-pass gear.

We did have a death - a hireling. Kept standing in traps. And the druid - got earthgrabbed whilst moving through a trap. Champions not at fault.

Honestly, I think you nerfed too hard on heroic hard. Can't speak for Elite yet, since I can't open on elite on that character. Would say spawn frequency on heroic hard is about right... but that the champs need to be significantly scarier. Mind you, when we got a champ render we made sure it went down first and fast. Renders can be nasty at the best of times!

[Merlocke]

..
the reward does not=the time & resources.

^^This

[Hafeal]

I have played through a lot of DOOOOOOMMM periods in DDO, but this is the first time that I am honestly worried that this game might not even make it as far as maintenance mode. I see it as a horrible sign that just yesterday they said they wanted to let this play out a bit, and then today they have already adjusted the spawn rates and damage. This tells me that yeah, for the first time, it's not all talk, and the number of cancelled subs has started to alarm the Turbine team. And, yeah, this hurts all of us, even the "forum Uber-Leets".

... Thinking about this is what makes ME sad, Conman, and I think everyone that is left, Uber-Leet to casual, can agree on that.

I agree with you there - clearly - action was taken becuase something was quickly hitting the 'ol pocketbook.

This whole scenario is 1 step up from the debacle of Shroud blades - because it made it to Lammania, while Shroud blades was a nasty little "look what we did!". Shroud runs never recovered - whether or not the blades were really difficult did NOT matter - perception did.

Of course, not bringing this to PC, not giving a longer look on Lammania, let's face it, 90% of the playerbase does not go to Lamma land, not getting more player feedback, has given a response no one should be surprised with.

Perception is killing champions at this point. Not the fact as to whether they really do, or do not, need to eradicated, kept, buffed or nerfed.

And that is what is sad to me, the dev team here has once again ignored this game's history to its own detriment. That impacts all of us who love the game.

[Inoukchuk]

Possibly a big thing that needs to happen here is we get a new class of "nearly-boss monsters" with say green names, to help differentiate between the two types of mini-bosses we have now (traditional Named mini-bosses, and the trend of non-named mini-bosses that can heavily fill portions of a quest like wood woads and drow blademasters).

Mobs that remain orange-names can retain a high % of being champs (still would prefer 50% or less, otherwise why not just make champ status default for them?).

Mobs that are transitioned to green-names can have the same % as regular mobs.

We've always had champions in quests... orange named mobs. The fact that the new champions vastly overshadow these is fine, but we should understand that's what they are. What the should do is instead of making orange named mobs special (old type champion) AND giving them champion (new champion) status, they should just make them normal mobs with 100% chance to be champions. If you want to make them special make the champs and give them and extra 10% HP/dam or 1 extra buff from the random table; they'll still be much tougher than the were and a little tougher than other champs.

[Hendrik]

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




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

Now let's look at a quote from you on 11-21-2014... Less than a month ago

The point of all this TR nonsense is to get more power. Getting more powerful is WAI.

Now Turbine needs to give us a reason to have done all of this.

Devs just can't win..

You quit as soon as they put in some challenge. Nice.

/mancrush

[GRow]

The challenge has ALWAYS been hard.

DDO has ALWAYS been a difficult game and it is STILL a difficult game,

From what I have seen and read, the only people who think DDO is easy are vets who have accumulated years of quest knowledge, AI anticipatory knowledge, character build knowledge, incredibly rare loot, a dragon's hoard of raid loot, a mountain of plat and/or AS for twinking.

I always find it amusing that so many whine and chomp for better more powerful loot and then come right back and say how easy the game is. Stop playing the game for 6 months, start over with a 28 point build, no loot, no plat, NO Trs, NO EDs, run Elite. Tell me the game is easy. It ain't. .

+1 to this. It is easy to make the game harder, play a new first lifer with only gear that player gets in quest and if that isn't enough play under-level. It is much harder to adapt to a game that is too hard.

[Hendrik]

A big hit to champion monstery, can you guys at least not scale down the damage output on epic elite?

Im fully ok heroic elite and hards being nerfed and easy as always, but can you at least keep the damage for epic elite?

Leave the change for Heroic and change it back for Epic.

[Vargouille]

Are the same adjustments going to be made for both Heroic and Epic quests? It seemed like there was some consideration of adjusting one more than the other… so just wanted to ask.

We may make more substantial differences between Heroic and Epic (or other level ranges) at some point, but the changes today are across all levels. There's some changes we weren't prepared to make today within the first week of Champion Monsters being live, and we'd like to see some more feedback with the new values as well before committing to other changes that are more complicated (as well as more time consuming on our end). We felt today's changes were good "bang for the buck", without disrupting live play.

Are the changes alreasy live? Just ran EE LoD and servants and seemed like the spawn rate was alot lower, great job back to how it was before update :/

If those changes Cordo mentioned several pages back have gone into live, then our experience 2 manning Threnal on heroic hard this evening was that the minor tweak had a major effect. We saw maybe three of four champs per quest (more if there were oozes and we got careless, but then they were champ divided oozes and therefore weak anyway), none were a particular problem and the two orange named giants at the end were both champs but didn't drop any loot.

Yes. The changes went live today around the time of Cordovan's post.

We felt we had enough feedback after one weekend to at least get some changes that we think will work better (and that we set up to do without taking any servers down).

On a separate note, Second Wind is probably the single biggest offender for the occasional champion mob doing outrageous damage.

Second Wind probably lasts a few seconds too long, though the damage boost from Second Wind is less than ten seconds already and then it disappears. It is a good idea to get out of the way for a short period after it triggers. And it could potentially have a quicker and perhaps more obvious visual effect when it goes off.

Honestly, I think you nerfed too hard on heroic hard. Can't speak for Elite yet, since I can't open on elite on that character. Would say spawn frequency on heroic hard is about right... but that the champs need to be significantly scarier. Mind you, when we got a champ render we made sure it went down first and fast. Renders can be nasty at the best of times!

We'll keep listening to feedback from all players.

[FestusHood]

Ice Flenser Polar Ray damage has been out of whack for quite some time. I was one shotted by those guys BEFORE champions came out.

I believe something got set up incorrectly when the devs started giving mobs Maximize and Spell Power. I bug reported it a few times, but nothing ever came of it so I assumed it was WAI.

Ice Flenser damage should be looked at again.

Sorry for responding to this so late, but i have to sleep sometime.

I also remember being one shotted by these things. I also remember being one shotted by disintegrates by many types of casters throughout the game.

The thing is, they were predictable, and to some degree you could prepare for them. For ice flensers, you could use fire shield for enduring protection, and protection from energy to prevent getting one shotted at least one time. Disintegrates are a little tougher, as if you could not make the saving throw, it's not like you could actually buff that in any significant way. However, that's kind of what spell absorption items are for. With some predictability, and the right piece of gear, you had a way to avoid it.

When i used to see vets trounce through a quest like invaders, i found that pretty much all of them had a silver flame talisman. Always seemed to me that the persistent evervating beholders did was their biggest threat. Again, the game offered a way to overcome this, and as a result, i bought the necro packs specifically to be able to get one. That's a success for the game.

Back to the point i wanted to make. You say that ice flensers should be toned down specifically because they can one shot you. If you truly feel that, why would the addition of randomly appearing monsters which can do the same thing be a good idea? The fact that you can't realistically prepare for all the ways they might do this is what makes it frustrating, at least for me.

[Hafeal]

snip

Thanks for dropping a post Varg.

/read by Hafeal