Monster Champion Feedback

[Keladon]

Most powergamer posted here like the new challenges from CM at EH and EE.

I will suggest they make a new toon and try out the CM at HH and HE, and I hope they will experience why CM will make large impact to new players and casual player in Heroic level. Before saying improving your toon or just play normal, I will suggest they try HH and HE with new toons with little tweak.

And for those who looking for more challenges at Epic, I will suggest them to not unlock Epic destiny and see the Joy.

Enjoy.

Not a bad point, people would do everything they can to make the game easier, min/max builds, the most OP epic destiny with corresponding twists, a few dozen past lives, knowing quests into the details.. and then they complain the game is too easy.
There's is enough challenge to be had, just choose not to avoid it.
Make a fresh character, nothing from the shared bank, not planned or min/maxed, only found gear, no past lives, I'd even say in a fresh ED if that was possible. Trust me, the game will be harder.

Playing to make the game easier and then complaining the game is too easy is just silly, yet that's what most people here are doing.

Still, I'm willing to compromise. Champions -> EE, harder then the first implementation. EE should be hard or impossible, make it that way, there's no need to change other difficulties, you shouldn't hear people saying EN is too easy, they can just pick a harder difficulty, you can't do that for EE..

[Dragavon]

We'll keep listening to feedback from all players.

What I think you should have done was to leave champions as they where. Then removed dungeon alert, and replaced DA with even more champions when people started zerging

[Archangel666]

What I think you should have done was to leave champions as they where. Then removed dungeon alert, and replaced DA with even more champions when people started zerging

Interesting. What I think they should have done, which would have taken a lot less work than creating these Monster Champions is the following:

1: Remove Dungeon Scaling. From this point on, if you enter a quest you face the same difficulty whether you're solo or in a full party.

2: Change Bravery Bonus to something that's actually "Brave". Want bonus experience? Run a quest on Elite, 2 levels below the level of said quest.

Would you look at that? Game is suddenly harder than it was and we don't have to deal with "Random".

[Wizza]

I think the biggest mistake was to reduce their spawn rate AND their damage output. You either make them less frequent but lower the damage output only by a little (say 10% compared to 25%, so that we cannot get 1-shotted) or make them way more frequent and nerf their damage a lot more.

In both cases, their HP pool is just insane. Juju zombies in EE HH have 40k+ HP, immune to Elec, absorbing 3 types of damage at the time in most cases and pose no threath since they are super slow.
The ones in Mask of Deception have over 25k HP.

I can't see the HP number of the owlbears in the Dragon fight in Haunted Halls but I think they have like 80k HP. Same story for Earth Elementals, Helmed Horrors etc. The numbers are just insane.


My biggest disappointment with this system is that the variety of buffs is too small and in many cases useless. All we care about is the 'I Deal greater damage' and 'True Seeing'. The only time I ever examined a Champion was to check if they have Absorb Electric when Energy Burst was doing yellow numbers. The other times, I don't care. All I think is " ***, I shouldn't get closer to that champ or he will hurt me ". Where are the mobs that buff each other? Why are the Sorcerers not trying to dispel us? Why are they not casting Flesh to stone (Mass Hold can easily be prevented)? Why are there no fun buffs like 'This mob is running with Hasted speed' ?

Heck, why are you not using the Challenges buffs on them? Double Speed, INVINCIBILITY for some seconds, Life Replenish giving them super high regen, Invisibility (at the condition that it breaks when they attack). You can do better than just "OH I HIT LIKE A TRUCK".

[Tilomere]

Just link or fuel Sentient Weapons or some sort of special ioun stone with Champion Tokens (gold/silver/bronze) from different difficulties and people will begin seeking out champions and asking for more of them, and won't mind harder ones. As long as the very rare heroic 1 hits are gone, it should work out. If you want champions to be harder than quest bosses at all difficulties and levels, killing them should be tied to some sort of reward better or more unique than regular dungeon loot. That's MMO 101.

[Stonemerge]

They should just make an end game quest.

"Audience with the Dungeon Master".

Very specific requirements to even enter the 12 man raid. Must have all favors. Must be completionist. Entering quest resets all favors to ZERO.

Challenging puzzles that need at least 6 players to operate at the same time.

Fights with former raid bosses but they are all buffed up.

Random traps that can one shot you.

No shrines except to the door of the Dungeon Master.

A Dungeon Master so powerful that if the quest is completed, it's likely only one or two players were left standing.

The reward..for those that died, a named item of your choice. The one's standing, a named item and one wall of the most sought after Trophy Room.

The wall will be daggers, next wall will be shortsword, etc. Once an item is placed on the wall, it can never be removed.

That should keep the very best busy for awhile.

Busy ?! oh common - we all know that the selfproclaimed best will solo this the first day on epic elite - "it was not a challenge, but at least fun"

We definitely need a Tarrasque; may the gods curse all ubers *lol*

[Ayseifn]

Just link or fuel Sentient Weapons with Champion Tokens (gold/silver/bronze) from different difficulties and people will begin seeking out champions and asking for more of them, and won't mind harder ones. As long as the very rare heroic 1 hits are gone, it should work out. If you want champions to be harder than quest bosses at all difficulties and levels, killing them should be tied to some sort of reward better or more unique than regular dungeon loot.

I wonder what the best quest to farm tokens will be, spiders in VoN 2, the first wave of DA, HH or something else?

[FestusHood]

Still, I'm willing to compromise. Champions -> EE, harder then the first implementation. EE should be hard or impossible, make it that way, there's no need to change other difficulties, you shouldn't hear people saying EN is too easy, they can just pick a harder difficulty, you can't do that for EE..

See now that wouldn't work for me and many people i know. I"m someone who found epic elite to be an appropriate challenge without champions, and i know a lot of people who felt that way. How would you like it if they just kept it to elite, both heroic and epic? Except of course, make it even harder, even in heroic.

[Neomarica]

Greetings Devs.
Here are my thoughts regarding the champion issue : there is obviously 2 responses by 2 groups.
1. The "elitist" who have "Everything " and will never pay a penny.
2. The Newb/casual player who are a 1000 times more likely to pay for the game by VIP for instances.

Maybe you could include the players by give players some choices and arrange a vote, or poll or such.

Either way someone is gonna be unhappy, imo its better the elitist is unhappy, No matter how much they whine, they wont quit DDO anyway. Afterall its harder to quit if you have tons of pastlives and capped EDs, high end gears,etc.. while its easy for a new player to move on.

Good luck, and try to keep all the VIP subs if you can
Keep up the good work!

The elitist is likely a VIP while the newb/casual player is not very likely to spend any money on the game short of things like black friday sales.

Or maybe not. How would YOU know?

[Keladon]

See now that wouldn't work for me and many people i know. I"m someone who found epic elite to be an appropriate challenge without champions, and i know a lot of people who felt that way. How would you like it if they just kept it to elite, both heroic and epic? Except of course, make it even harder, even in heroic.

Alright, deal.

Besides, EE isn't supposed to be "an appropriate challenge", it's supposed to be really hard, almost impossible. If it's an appropriate challenge now, you'll be shouting it's too easy in a few months and the discussion would start all over again.

[BD_]

See now that wouldn't work for me and many people i know. I"m someone who found epic elite to be an appropriate challenge without champions, and i know a lot of people who felt that way. How would you like it if they just kept it to elite, both heroic and epic? Except of course, make it even harder, even in heroic.

If they increase the difficulty gap between hard and elite by too much, the result will be a very large portion of the player base that has no "appropriate" or fun difficulty. - ie they sleepwalk through hard and can't even come close to handling elite...

[BD_]

I think the biggest mistake was to reduce their spawn rate AND their damage output. You either make them less frequent but lower the damage output only by a little (say 10% compared to 25%, so that we cannot get 1-shotted) or make them way more frequent and nerf their damage a lot more.

In both cases, their HP pool is just insane. Juju zombies in EE HH have 40k+ HP, immune to Elec, absorbing 3 types of damage at the time in most cases and pose no threath since they are super slow.
The ones in Mask of Deception have over 25k HP.

I can't see the HP number of the owlbears in the Dragon fight in Haunted Halls but I think they have like 80k HP. Same story for Earth Elementals, Helmed Horrors etc. The numbers are just insane.


My biggest disappointment with this system is that the variety of buffs is too small and in many cases useless. All we care about is the 'I Deal greater damage' and 'True Seeing'. The only time I ever examined a Champion was to check if they have Absorb Electric when Energy Burst was doing yellow numbers. The other times, I don't care. All I think is " ***, I shouldn't get closer to that champ or he will hurt me ". Where are the mobs that buff each other? Why are the Sorcerers not trying to dispel us? Why are they not casting Flesh to stone (Mass Hold can easily be prevented)? Why are there no fun buffs like 'This mob is running with Hasted speed' ?

Heck, why are you not using the Challenges buffs on them? Double Speed, INVINCIBILITY for some seconds, Life Replenish giving them super high regen, Invisibility (at the condition that it breaks when they attack). You can do better than just "OH I HIT LIKE A TRUCK".

I've seen one with haste - of course it was an archer in a lvl 18(20 on elite) quest and it was hitting for only 4-8 per hit (+an unknown amount of acid damage(less than 35) per hit. Something wrong when a champion mob in a lvl 20 quest is hitting for less than champion mobs in a lvl 3 quest...

[Keladon]

If they increase the difficulty gap between hard and elite by too much, the result will be a very large portion of the player base that has no "appropriate" or fun difficulty. - ie they sleepwalk through hard and can't even come close to handling elite...

Ok, so propose a solution.

I say we make EE almost impossible, and immediately after that I see people saying: "don't make it too hard".. Are you kidding me?

A perfect summary for this thread would be: "We want a more difficult game, but don't actually make it more difficult, we just want to have something to complain about!"

[BD_]

Ok, so propose a solution.

I say we make EE almost impossible, and immediately after that I see people saying: "don't make it too hard".. Are you kidding me?

A perfect summary for this thread would be: "We want a more difficult game, but don't actually make it more difficult, we just want to have something to complain about!"

My comment has nothing to do with how difficult I feel the game should be overall - Only with the relative difficulty between (casual, normal,) hard, and elite.

Making EE (much, much) harder without making EH harder would have the effect I previously mentioned...

[Keladon]

My comment has nothing to do with how difficult I feel the game should be overall - Only with the relative difficulty between (casual, normal,) hard, and elite.

Making EE (much, much) harder without making EH harder would have the effect I previously mentioned...

So we could just make EH the difficulty of EE before champions and make EE harder than it is now with champions.

Or would that make EH too hard for you?

Like I said, they could have just left it alone, but people like having something to complain about.

[FestusHood]

Alright, deal.

Besides, EE isn't supposed to be "an appropriate challenge", it's supposed to be really hard, almost impossible. If it's an appropriate challenge now, you'll be shouting it's too easy in a few months and the discussion would start all over again.

Ok, i'll bite. Heroic elite isn't supposed to be an appropriate challenge. It'e elite after all. It should be nearly impossible. If you let them nerf heroic elite, you'll just be bored with it in a few months. Since i get the impression you don't run many epics, i'll tell you that pre champions, upper level heroic elite quests were already harder than their epic hard counterparts.

[BD_]

Ok, so propose a solution.

I say we make EE almost impossible, and immediately after that I see people saying: "don't make it too hard".. Are you kidding me?

A perfect summary for this thread would be: "We want a more difficult game, but don't actually make it more difficult, we just want to have something to complain about!"

My solution will never happen but, would involve across the board nerfs (not to specific builds, classes, or items) but universal nerfs along with fixing a few specific bugs, and making of more customized challenges instead of just increase mob hps and damage across the board.

With respect to champions - my thoughts are fix the bugs first, then tweak things for balance; and that the champion system should never have gone live as it is (too many bugs).

[Qhualor]

Why are the "elite" players, who are crying about them dialing back champs a little bit, even talking about Hard difficulty? I thought they were elite? Why aren't they playing on Elite?

This just goes to show how their arguments are really just sociopathic and have nothing to do with game health. Just add the optional checkbox. If those "elite" players really are elite, they will check it every time. The rest of us don't want to deal with champs, because they are a waste of time and effort, and give no incentive to want to bother with them.

which elite players are you talking about. less generalization and more specifics.

I talk about elite, but I don't always run it because im focused more on past lives than playing the class I want to play right now. I wont have the proper gear exactly, play the past life with 100% interest and knowledge and wont invest in it more than what I loot or acquire along the way. I also don't run certain packs until a certain level when my characters are a little stronger or more at level.

[BD_]

So we could just make EH the difficulty of EE before champions and make EE harder than it is now with champions.

Or would that make EH too hard for you?

Like I said, they could have just left it alone, but people like having something to complain about.

With respect to the difficulty gap between EH and EE yes...

For me? No, EH wouldn't be too hard for me... you're falling into the same "elitist" one track mindset that anyone who says the champion system has flaws thinks the game is too hard and can't handle it.

I have multiple characters that can still steamroll most EE's solo... and would probably still be able to solo most EE's even if literally every mob was a champion... I wouldn't want to because I'd find it boring but that's a different topic...

[Albinosaurus]

They've already been losing players for a long time, at least partly due to casualization of the game. So whether or not the champions cause some players to leave is irrelevant if they also help retain other players in equal measure.

1. There's no evidence that people are staying because it was harder, or that anyone came back for that reason. The people who were here were already staying.

2. The primary point that I qualified was about making it optional. If it was a choice on the player's part, they could make both camps happy. (Well, except for the ***holes who just want it harder for everyone, but they are sociopaths and shouldn't be taken seriously anyway.)

3. I said before in a different post, this game can afford to lose some vets; it can't afford to lose its non-vet player base. This is mostly due to how much TP each group is willing to buy, but also because of its effect on LFMs. It's easier to lose a lot of non-vets than to lose a similar number of vets--especially because the vets are so much more invested.

4. There is no reason that this should not be optional, except that they haven't provided a reason for players to want to do it. Lots of people have suggested lots of ways to incentivize it, but the real reason vets don't want the checkbox is that they are afraid they won't be able to fill up their groups if people have to put in extra work for no extra reward. Only the masochistic challenge-seekers want this feature, and they know the rest of us won't want to participate if there's no tangible reward for it--because it's a waste of time/resources.