Monster Champion Feedback

[Aletys]

A good amount of those asking for nerf were either running Heriocs or felt EE was challenging enough. If there was a proper reward in place then there might not be as much complaint over addition of challenge (for those already challenged) with no reward.

There have been threads already of guild farming certain quests for Champion Chests to get tons of renown fast.

You already know EN is the most efficient way to level it also has the same rewards named loot wise as EE the is little incentive and champions are the perfect way to turn this around.

Most of the quests prior to the release of the epic orchard quests do not give the same loot on EN as on EH or EE. There was already a lot of incentive to run those quests at EH or EE, but if you don't already have the better gear, you'd be probably out of luck in being able to run them if the Champions get made stronger again, especially if you don't have multiple lives under your belt.

This would further split the community into the "haves" and "have-nots". Then is always the favor issue. You can't get the favor you need on EN.

[Sgt_Hart]

I do not want to see damage scaled based on past lives please. I'm not doing past lives to get PRR to make my rogue more survivable just to have the damage increased on me to negate the past lives. Thank you.

And yet, champions are what Percentage of monsters?
OnHit is not strictly speaking on all of those champions anyway.
And the basic mobs would not be scaled up.

So.. the past lives would have exactly the desired benefit, Except when 1.)champions come onto the scene, and 2.)have a specific type of buff.

For the record, Of the two characters in my sig, The primary's got 15, The other's about the same. Just so you know I'd feel it too.

Curious, How would -you- increase the challenge for those who find it easy, with the assumption that adding a checkbox, or additional difficulty is out of the question? I'm not saying that I think it is, but I suspect turbine would've done that at the get go if it was felt to be.. cost/time effective. So why don't we operate under the belief that what's on the table is what we have to work with.

[slarden]

you can still get one shotted by non Champions. it happened to me 2 days ago doing EE DDtW. green dragon did her spin move and bam, dead with a full 750 hp. depending on your saves and hp, disintegrates from casters and beholders can one shot you. Tempest Spine has mobs that use Slay Living. the game is full of things that can one shot you and we have seen these complaints over the years. now that we have Champions that deal big damage, its the same complaints. I still have not been one shotted by any Champion. I have taken some big hits, but never "insta killed".

I never said anything about spawn rates. even those that were all for Champions even said the spawn rates were too high and the Champion did need some tweaks. we just asked for some tweaks, not to have them nerfed down to just a little tougher than trash mobs making people go right back to the way the game was played pre-Champions. you treat them now just like any other trash mob.

the difficulty increased for 3 days and nerfed back to the way it was before. yes, people have said exactly the same things that others were saying if the devs didn't nerf Champions. some have said they stopped spending money, some have left the game, some have cancelled subs and some are on a break. they had a great idea to bring back some variety and challenge but the devs reacted too quickly. its not the first time that players have griped about how tough certain parts of the game is. there is something completely wrong with the game if the toughest difficulty is almost guaranteed to be no fail by all types of players. that's not a problem with Champions. that's a problem with the player base and the devs not putting their foot down.

To me there is a fundamental difference between a dragon boss one-shotting you and a random orc barbarian one-shotting you. I didn't feel that getting one-shotted once in a long full play session was all that bad - but I also thought that was a really stupid mechanic and most casters have less hp and prr than me so they likely would have died more. I don't have a problem with champions or the damage they were doing initially except for the mega-crits. I've done many things for challenge in this game, but I find absolutely no challenge in random mobs of champions being able to kill me on a crit.

There are more things you can do to prepare for the dragon boss such as higher saves, evasion, MRR, acid resist, acid absorb, etc. I don't think encouraging people to have massive hp or avoiding mobs entirely is really good for the game.

Weighing both the challenge complaints and the other comments on this thread I don't think mega-crits is the right solution for challenge. People have been become too invested in this casual vs. powergamer forum silliness and the result is arguing that a stupid mechanic should remain the game. I think they should eliminate the megacrits and raise the damage back up to where it was on EE and see what people think.

[Sehenry03]

And yet, champions are what Percentage of monsters?
OnHit is not strictly speaking on all of those champions anyway.
And the basic mobs would not be scaled up.

So.. the past lives would have exactly the desired benefit, Except when 1.)champions come onto the scene, and 2.)have a specific type of buff.

For the record, Of the two characters in my sig, The primary's got 15, The other's about the same. Just so you know I'd feel it too.

Curious, How would -you- increase the challenge for those who find it easy, with the assumption that adding a checkbox, or additional difficulty is out of the question? I'm not saying that I think it is, but I suspect turbine would've done that at the get go if it was felt to be.. cost/time effective. So why don't we operate under the belief that what's on the table is what we have to work with.

I still say take champions out of HH content and leave just in HE but amp them up.

In Epic levels have them in EVERY difficulty and just amp them up as needed.

EN would be kinda like HH champions are now...pretty darn easy
EH would be more like HE champions...still not too tough but they can hurt a lot
EE amp them up dramatically...NOT hp's. Don't slow us down like WoW does. Make them hit harder and yes RANDOM attacks and dmg types. Confuse us and catch us off guard. That's what EE is suppose to do!!!

[slarden]

They lost mine.

8+ year VIP.

I've been telling people on both sides of the debate.

RELAX

It's just a game and why don't people understand Turbine needs to make adjustments to things to make this system right. If they can address the megacrits they can probably increase mob-size and damage #s to what they had previously.

The megacrits are just stupid - I agreed with the devs and majority of player base that was a bad mechanic.

[redoubt]

So if I'm invising Claw of Vulkoor and one of the guardians is a champ I either lose the end chest or the 10% XP? What about quests like DA and VoN 2 with a ton of orange nameds at the start, would it be good xp/min to just farm that bit and reset over and over? Or how about NPC champs, if I kill the one in Weapon Shipment do I get 10% XP before the quest fails?

Just seems like another thing that'd need tweaking on a per quest basis.


Miss out on first time bonus in epics if you do them on heroic, there still isn't enough epic content IMO so I still keep VoNs and such for epic.

My proposal said that no names or respawns would be champions. They are already specials. That the champion system is so random it applies to NPCs is bad. No NPCs, no oozes or other brainless mobs.

If the spawn rate is dropped, as I suggested to 1/2/3%, I doubt people will farm just for those. The rate is pretty low. They become a challenge in the quest that is worth fighting, but when you might need to fight anywhere from 30-100 (depending on difficulty) mobs before one spawns, I'm not sure it would be worth the farm. A quest like coal chamber would only have a few even.

Your comment about missing bravery bonus on epic would also be fixed by putting the quests in twice. They become counted separately. You get first time bonus for von1 heroic and first time bonus for von1 epic, in addition to separate favor.
y

[Albinosaurus]

I talked down to 1 player the day the Champions were nerfed. I lost my head for a moment and got my hand slapped.

ive continuously been posting about the vocal community that justifies why we cant have challenge at the very minimum on elite difficulty because it interferes with favor and character progression. I called some hypocrites because the last few years the same people who are against Champions are also the ones that asked for more challenge. any time the devs do something to balance out the game or implement something that is tough, it gets nerfed down after a lot of ranting and threats. at the same time after a lot of ranting and threats they want more character power trivializing the game. we have gotten too used to the face roll/zerg/solo on the toughest difficulty for too long and it interferes with the players who actually want the game to be more fun and interesting. for some of us it was a welcome addition, but it quickly was taken away.

ive been hearing since 2009 that if Turbine doesn't cater to casual play that they will be at risk of keeping the lights on. the population has been going down since they started giving us power creep toys and making the game easier seriously reducing the fail chance over the past few years. Turbine has been listening to the wrong per cent of the player base for too long. couple that with trying to monetize off from it, it hasn't made the game better. it has made the game worse. many challenge seekers are now gone, maybe pop back in once in awhile, but no longer dedicated to the game like they used to be. Turbine needs to start thinking about all play styles and not the ones that are bringing the game further down.

As I said, the only thing I wanted was for it to be optional. The vets can have their harder content, and I even encouraged incentivization so that they would have a reason (beyond just the challenge) to do it.

As for them losing players since '09, you have the causes mixed up. I played back then too. What drove most people away back then was the payment model. Any new player who thought DDO was actually free to play only had to look at the cash shop and list of limitations for being f2p/premium, and see how much content they were locked out of, before they thought, "F2P, my ***. I'm outta here." After the initial buzz from players looking for a good f2p game left, what we had left were the people who were okay with it being a subscription game in disguise with extra features available in the cash shop. I don't think it's quite p2w, but it has that option too.

All MMOs (that I've ever heard of) have power creep, and people rarely leave for that reason alone. No, people leave because of game-changing dev decisions that they are dissatisfied with. I played WoW for 6 years until the end of Wrath and tried Cata briefly before being fed up with them. It wasn't because my 12k hp shaman would have to scale up to have 50k hp or that my damage would need to increase exponentially to be viable in end-game content--it was because they trashed the skill trees with the excuse that "everyone just looks up builds." I value character customization and playstyle variation over raw power or difficulty. They homogenized all the classes and specs so that everyone has to play the same things. THAT is listening to the wrong crowd--just the same as Turbine is doing now with the champions and people saying they should be mandatory, because champions reduce the number of viable builds--not everyone wants to run a CC-bot to be able to progress. So they lost yet another player and sub because of it.

The only reason I'm even still on the forum is because this thread is still active, and I have some faint hope that maybe the devs will come to the right decision about it. Until then, I'm just going to play something else. Turbine doesn't want my money? Someone else sure will. Yeah, I'd rather play a d20 system, but not with this garbage in the way.

In a game that is all about choice, why are champions not optional?

[redoubt]

And yet, champions are what Percentage of monsters?
OnHit is not strictly speaking on all of those champions anyway.
And the basic mobs would not be scaled up.

So.. the past lives would have exactly the desired benefit, Except when 1.)champions come onto the scene, and 2.)have a specific type of buff.

For the record, Of the two characters in my sig, The primary's got 15, The other's about the same. Just so you know I'd feel it too.

Curious, How would -you- increase the challenge for those who find it easy, with the assumption that adding a checkbox, or additional difficulty is out of the question? I'm not saying that I think it is, but I suspect turbine would've done that at the get go if it was felt to be.. cost/time effective. So why don't we operate under the belief that what's on the table is what we have to work with.

I think that the reduction in spawn rate is a good thing. At the same time, I would like to see the champions being more dangerous. (Not a roulette game, but more dangerous.)

What the system is missing, even still is the feeling that these are actually champions. Make them hard (maybe not as hard as the boss, but a strong mini-boss maybe) and then give a reward for them.

What the system has that it needs to lose is redundancy. Running a bunch of level 6 thru 8 quests on elite, 9 out of 10 have true seeing. I'm okay with buffing the damage on all the bosses, but double and triple buffing the damage might be the wrong path. Make a good set of buffs and then use all of them instead of just a few. I'm reposting my concept below. The spawn rates I originally suggested might be too low, but then again, would be okay with mini-boss levels of power if the very low spawn rate was used. Maybe a little less power if they stay at 9%. Think about Kai-Teng in Litany. He is fairly tough within that quest, but short of forgetting deathblock, he doesn't one shot people. If you pushed the spawn rate down to 1-3%, then maybe you could make champions like that.


1. Catagorize the buffs:
-- offensive - 50% fort bypass, TS, 2x damage, vorpal, etc
-- defensive - +50 to 100% fort, displacement, +50 to one energy resist
-- party - bard song damage boost, haste, mass heal (to include long cast time)
Note 1: Many people in this thread have listed good, reasonable and challenging buffs the mobs could have. There should be no trouble picking good ones without resorting to putting extra damage x3 and extra hp x2 on every mob.
Note 2: Also, don't put melee buffs on casters and don't put caster buffs on melee.
Note 3: Don't jack up traditional vulnerabilities. i.e. I've see too many trolls with high fire and acid resist. They are supposed to be vulnerable to it. I'm fine if a caster drops a Protection from on them. That is something that 1) I can wear through, and 2) seems more reasonable than a troll with innate fire resist.

2. Set the rate by level (no named, not even orange, they are already buffed.):
-- normal: 1% of mobs
-- hard: 2%
-- elite: 3%
Also, do set some mobs to be ineligible for champion status. i.e. the mobs IN the maze in tomb of the tormented.

3. Set the buff rate:
-- normal: one buff
-- hard: two buff (not from same category
-- elite: three buffs (one from each.)

4. Set auto drop reward from ALL champions (make champions worth killing or don't bother putting them in the game.)
-- each champion is worth xx% of base xp. (5-10?)
-- XP capped characters get: commendations, heart seeds, tokens of the 12, astral shards... something worth actually getting.

People running normal won't even see a champion in every quest. Most quest they might see 1 based on the average number of kills. This will provide a learning experience for dealing with champions, but the very low frequency of seeing them should keep frustrating encounters to a minimum.

If you are worried that this would not be enough of a challenge, by doing it smartly, buffs won't be wasted. A hobgoblin archer won't have +50% fire damage and a beholder won't have "extra slash damage". They will get buff appropriate for what they are. Next, by the time you get to elite they will have 3 buffs. It might look like, +50% damage, +100PRR, haste clickie. Now this mob is tough and once he agros, he drops the clickie and the whole pack is hasted.

I think adding challenge in a smart way is a great idea. I think the champion system as a concept is also a good one. Sadly, I think the implementation is flawed. (Bad enough that I'm worried that 2 of the 6 in my guild are going to quit. I'm trying to get them to hold on, but they told me today that they took a pair of 28s into the new evening star quest on heroic and both got one shotted. Neither of them is a fan of the new system at this time.) I'm hoping if we can "tweak" the system and use smarter buffs maybe we can bring it around to be a system that more people will have a positive reaction to.

Only a few champions, but they are tough. They are infrequent enough, that seeing one will cause you to stop and look at it and develop a stategy for it. It also provides a reward commensurate with the extra time and resources used to deal with it.

I think that should answer your questions.

[caberonia]

I just don't get it. Maybe someone can explain it.
Why add a new randomized convoluted system and apply it across the board to heroic and epic hard and elites.. when you could have simply upped the difficulty in EE using the system thats already in place for the desired increase in challenge and would not have had half the uproar in the community?

If they had simply added champs to EE or used the pre-existing difficulty system to up EE almost no one would have complained. Yet here we are..

[Qhualor]

Further, part of the issue with champions is that if people are shut out of EH & EE because they can't deal with the champions, they will never get the gear they need to run the higher difficulties. The "elites" already have this gear, the average player may not. And, while they've done away with the EN/EH/EE loot on the newer quests, it's still there on the older quests. So it further splits the player community unnecessarily.

if they cant handle a higher difficulty than they should be playing the difficulty that suits them better. aspire for better if you want, but making elite the norm is exactly what is wrong with the system and why players like me have to settle for lesser challenge and why we keep having the casual play vs. elite play discussions. elite has both play styles playing together causing friction.

[Qhualor]

I just don't get it. Maybe someone can explain it.
Why add a new randomized convoluted system and apply it across the board to heroic and epic hard and elites.. when you could have simply upped the difficulty in EE using the system thats already in place for the desired increase in challenge and would not have had half the uproar in the community?

If they had simply added champs to EE or used the pre-existing difficulty system to up EE almost no one would have complained. Yet here we are..

oh no, theres plenty of complaints that elite cant be challenging for those that cant handle it because they need their favor and don't want their leveling progression slowed down. some of us who want Champions for the fun, variety and challenge have been at least asking to only have Champions on elite difficulties, but others argue against it.

[phillymiket]

I just don't get it. Maybe someone can explain it.
Why add a new randomized convoluted system and apply it across the board to heroic and epic hard and elites.. when you could have simply upped the difficulty in EE using the system thats already in place for the desired increase in challenge and would not have had half the uproar in the community?

If they had simply added champs to EE or used the pre-existing difficulty system to up EE almost no one would have complained. Yet here we are..

Baby steps do nothing.

By taking a giant leap forward they were able to cause a bunch of people to drop their subs in anger.

Then by following it up with a giant leap backward they were able to also cause a different bunch of players to drop subs in anger.

Had they given it thought and applied EE Champions first and then maybe expanded to HE and then maybe Hard, based on the reaction and effect, then nothing would have happened.

No subs dropped, no major forum rage, nothing.

Sure maybe they would have improved the game but that doesn't compare to all this subscription action we had.

(I know I shouldn't need to put "/sarcasm on/off here but I probably should anyway.)

[Qhualor]

As I said, the only thing I wanted was for it to be optional. The vets can have their harder content, and I even encouraged incentivization so that they would have a reason (beyond just the challenge) to do it.

As for them losing players since '09, you have the causes mixed up. I played back then too. What drove most people away back then was the payment model. Any new player who thought DDO was actually free to play only had to look at the cash shop and list of limitations for being f2p/premium, and see how much content they were locked out of, before they thought, "F2P, my ***. I'm outta here." After the initial buzz from players looking for a good f2p game left, what we had left were the people who were okay with it being a subscription game in disguise with extra features available in the cash shop. I don't think it's quite p2w, but it has that option too.

All MMOs (that I've ever heard of) have power creep, and people rarely leave for that reason alone. No, people leave because of game-changing dev decisions that they are dissatisfied with. I played WoW for 6 years until the end of Wrath and tried Cata briefly before being fed up with them. It wasn't because my 12k hp shaman would have to scale up to have 50k hp or that my damage would need to increase exponentially to be viable in end-game content--it was because they trashed the skill trees with the excuse that "everyone just looks up builds." I value character customization and playstyle variation over raw power or difficulty. They homogenized all the classes and specs so that everyone has to play the same things. THAT is listening to the wrong crowd--just the same as Turbine is doing now with the champions and people saying they should be mandatory, because champions reduce the number of viable builds--not everyone wants to run a CC-bot to be able to progress. So they lost yet another player and sub because of it.

The only reason I'm even still on the forum is because this thread is still active, and I have some faint hope that maybe the devs will come to the right decision about it. Until then, I'm just going to play something else. Turbine doesn't want my money? Someone else sure will. Yeah, I'd rather play a d20 system, but not with this garbage in the way.

In a game that is all about choice, why are champions not optional?

we all know the game is played with entitlement and Path of Least Resistance for better rewards. optional wont be used much and we all know that.

I wasn't saying that casualization was the only thing that led to population decline. there are other factors involved, but the trend since MOTU has been casualization, VIPS paying for both expansions and P2W as the leading reasons why. there are also a lot of in between stuff that happens every update. we always see someone disagreeing with the changes to the game and say they cancelled their sub and leave.

[Albinosaurus]

if they cant handle a higher difficulty than they should be playing the difficulty that suits them better. aspire for better if you want, but making elite the norm is exactly what is wrong with the system and why players like me have to settle for lesser challenge and why we keep having the casual play vs. elite play discussions. elite has both play styles playing together causing friction.

This may be true in heroic content, but this is the opposite of my experience in epic levels. Changing EE doesn't do anything to non-vets because it's already out of their grasp and because BB isn't such a big deal. However, in heroic levels, BB and Favor are the two major reasons to complete Elite difficulty, being able to open HE is a prime motivator for subs, alongside all the extra adventure pack access. Champions rob the player of this motivator, and make a subscription hard to justify. Between people losing a BIG reason to sub, and other people outright leaving the game, I'm not sure how anyone can sit here and say champions promote the health and longevity of this game with a straight face.

[Albinosaurus]

we all know the game is played with entitlement and Path of Least Resistance for better rewards. optional wont be used much and we all know that.

I wasn't saying that casualization was the only thing that led to population decline. there are other factors involved, but the trend since MOTU has been casualization, VIPS paying for both expansions and P2W as the leading reasons why. there are also a lot of in between stuff that happens every update. we always see someone disagreeing with the changes to the game and say they cancelled their sub and leave.

Kind of hard to take you serious when you use the term "entitlement" as if it's some point of argument (or even true). Path of least resistance? Sure, but every game has players doing that, because leveling can be tedious. The only point I agree with, and conditionally, is that people wouldn't bother with champs if it was optional (without incentivization). I addressed this earlier, but it means one of two things:

a) People just need a good reason to do it (bonus exp/loot/gear etc)

or

b) It's a bad system to begin with

It could be that both are true. Either way, not having it optional has caused a huge rift in the community, and that is worse than if they had done nothing at all.

[caberonia]

oh no, theres plenty of complaints that elite cant be challenging for those that cant handle it because they need their favor and don't want their leveling progression slowed down. some of us who want Champions for the fun, variety and challenge have been at least asking to only have Champions on elite difficulties, but others argue against it.

98% of those arguments are moot if speaking of only EE. Which still begs the question why roll this across Heroics and EH when EE is where the greatest challenge should be anyway. And why not use the pre-existing difficulty system? Why add a new system when there is a already a system in place for what you are wanting to accomplish.

[Qhualor]

This may be true in heroic content, but this is the opposite of my experience in epic levels. Changing EE doesn't do anything to non-vets because it's already out of their grasp and because BB isn't such a big deal. However, in heroic levels, BB and Favor are the two major reasons to complete Elite difficulty, being able to open HE is a prime motivator for subs, alongside all the extra adventure pack access. Champions rob the player of this motivator, and make a subscription hard to justify. Between people losing a BIG reason to sub, and other people outright leaving the game, I'm not sure how anyone can sit here and say champions promote the health and longevity of this game with a straight face.

Champions were meant to challenge elite players and make the game more interesting because for the past few years we have griped about the game getting easier. the devs even explained this reasoning for the Champions. believe it or not, there are actually players out there that aren't caught up in leveling fast and want to play the with a little more fun while they work on past lives or whatever they are doing. over the years players who have been seeing the game get nothing but easier and easier have left or don't dedicate to the game like they used to. nerfing challenge only pushes some customers away. the entire difficulty system and rewards needs an overhaul so that players are playing difficulties and earning rewards that suit their play style better rather than dumbing down elite to accommodate part of the player base.

[Qhualor]

98% of those arguments are moot if speaking of only EE. Which still begs the question why roll this across Heroics and EH when EE is where the greatest challenge should be anyway. And why not use the pre-existing difficulty system? Why add a new system when there is a already a system in place for what you are wanting to accomplish.

why leave out heroic elite? theres lots of players that focus on heroics more than epics for whatever reason. I don't see why heroics should be exempt.

[caberonia]

why leave out heroic elite? theres lots of players that focus on heroics more than epics for whatever reason. I don't see why heroics should be exempt.

I think this thread explains why not heroics better than I ever could.

But to put more of a fine point on it.. the devs could have given people the added challenge they wanted without alienating such a large portion of the player base.

and even so.. why add a new system when upping the difficulty in the old system SHOULD easier than writing a completely new system and attempting to balance it for 4 different difficulty levels.

[Qhualor]

I think this thread explains why not heroics better than I ever could.

I don't know what that means. there is a lot of different opinions in this 104 page thread. from where I sit, its the same reasons given for epics. they don't want it to interfere with their rewards and leveling progression and that I disagree why elite needs to not be challenging in heroics or epics.