Vip - rip

[Chi_Ryu]

with what plat? seriously, I joined a permadeath guild and went to get a hire after running the first quest and did not have enough plat for a hire. So I thinks maybe you fudge a little, and yes, I broke every barrel on the way.

I sold my Thieves' Tools to buy the Barb in the example above.

[slarden]

Valid or not, his tone has gotten what it deserves.

You may have missed some edits.

I am all for no champs in korthos, but in 4 runs (2 on norm no champs) they really didn't make a difference. Like seriously not at all. Like nothing like folks are saying, one shotting uber 20k le rawr, seriously, not even close. Champs I killed just as stupid easy as I did the rest of them. I am still ok with removing them from korthos, but folks, let's stop pretending they are hard.

Looking over the posts what I see is that the OP posted something very consistent with what I see in the feedback in the official topic forum. I was one-shot on EE several times before the last tweak and I have been one-shot by champions since the damage was reduced. The combination of complete fort bypass and damage boosts is making the one-shotting possible - it's mostly crits.

I actually ran Korthos since the changes and I can tell you a champ had some damage reduction and I never saw a # other than 0 for the base damage. I took it down with my level 1 bta weapon only because it had lacerating and festival icy burst. Both things would not be available to a new player so they would be doing 1 per hit with frost touch.

[Lord_Crovax]

Looking over the posts what I see is that the OP posted something very consistent with what I see in the feedback in the official topic forum. I was one-shot on EE several times before the last tweak and I have been one-shot by champions since the damage was reduced. The combination of complete fort bypass and damage boosts is making the one-shotting possible - it's mostly crits.

I actually ran Korthos since the changes and I can tell you a champ had some damage reduction and I never saw a # other than 0 for the base damage. I took it down with my level 1 bta weapon only because it had lacerating and festival icy burst. Both things would not be available to a new player so they would be doing 1 per hit with frost touch.

Which is weird, I have no issues with champs, all first life toons, I'm a VIP, I start on elite, no twink gear, and I run just fine, only thing that gets me is lack of knowledge on quests, and then it's 99.9% traps that get me killed, champs rarely if ever do it.

My only issue with champs is when they are there as you load and kill you before you finish, seen a few quests do that.

[Keladon]

Valid or not, his tone has gotten what it deserves.

You may have missed some edits.

I am all for no champs in korthos, but in 4 runs (2 on norm no champs) they really didn't make a difference. Like seriously not at all. Like nothing like folks are saying, one shotting uber 20k le rawr, seriously, not even close. Champs I killed just as stupid easy as I did the rest of them. I am still ok with removing them from korthos, but folks, let's stop pretending they are hard.

This perfectly proves how a totally random feature to add difficulty is not a good idea.

When people are complaining about getting 1shot and running into monster champions with the most painful buff combinations while others can clear the same quest without running into them.. something's wrong.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Success or failure shouldn't depend on being lucky.

Champions should appear in second and further lives, if ever, but not in the very first one. It simply is not understandable for a new player why there's an npc who is able to one hit-kill the player, to let a whole quest fail, and so on. But this decision was made for a good reason (I expect, or at least I hope), but I do not really understand its sense.

Turbine, please, all of you are reasonable people - why did you do this?

Their intention was to make the game harder, because we have a very vocal "the game is too easy" crowd.
Now I also know a lot of veterans who aren't part of this crowd because they understand why the game has become easier after playing it for years. (knowledge, gear, skill, past lives, ..)

So even though that was their intention.. and I have my doubts about the reason, the fact still remains that they could've chosen at least a dozen different solutions to this problem.
But they chose to introduce randomness.. why? It's supposed to keep things exciting... I guess. (Real exciting when you see the vets that asked for it, say they make no difference at all)
I doubt they expected that it would ruin escort quests, defend quests, other quests in general because people get 1shotted.. and make no difference at all half the time because it's random.
(We'll consider beating on huge bags of hp as "no difference at all"right now, even though to me that's just annoying and anything except fun.)

[kmoustakas]

I'm a returner. You'll easily recognize me as my toon actually is named "Returner" (on Wayfinder, 1st life to get in again, Rogue/Wiz planned) and performing as bad as you guys at Turbine probably bet on?! When I left, quests on Khorthos were easy, almost all even on Elite, except the one where to keep the npc alive. All fine, but now I fail at the "defeat the chrystal" quest all the time (lol? w.t.f.?), because on every attempt two champions spawn and kill me and my hire with one hit instantly. I do not know what the deeper sense of this gameplay design decision was? If I was Turbine, I'd probably say: well, we know we made this game - but we don't want you to be vip (because DDO is dead) - and if you dare anyway, we simply kill you. Is this your very intention? If not, then this clearly is a bug (I wonder why it not had been mentioned already) that has to be removed now.

Edit:
I mean, what is the incentive nowadays to become a VIP? Getting all the content but getting ripped in the first elite quest? No, definitely not. Please, take a little more time to think about your decisions - or explain the hyper-10-times-reincarnated-it's-still-a-challenge difficulty increase! Or should I move DDO directly into the desktop-basket, should I uninstall, is this your intention? I want an answer, please.

Have you tried normal or hard until you level up or get better gear? Because last I heard, first life ungeared toons are not meant to lol-fest elite

[Helium4]

Imho champions as introduced were the best that could happen for EH difficulty. I don't run fotm builds and have never endlessly grinded to get the best gear possible and with most of my chars EE is a challenge for me, depending on group of course. EH on the other hand was no challenge, so I appreciated when they added champions. Concerning low level quests I also enjoyed them as they were, but I only met champions in catacombs on elite for the first time. While I would not mind if Korthos was champion free, I do not see any reason why starters without significant knowlegde should be able to solo elite quests with lvl1 chars without any problem. I also do not see any reason why not to run this specific quest (if it is that bad) on hard or even normal and (try to) start the elite streak after that. In terms of XP it is totally pointless. In the first part of the game (heroic) XP falls from heaven.

VIP status should certainly give benefits but no guarantee to beat every quest on elite in the first run. Maybe Turbine should introduce champions to new players in the tutorial. Running in groups would help a lot, but sadly DDO is also turning into yet another "single player MMO", still with the best quests (especially Eberron) and character build options, but also with many flaws and invalidated content and no real reason to hope for major improvements due to limited resources. But that's another topic...

[Qhualor]

Why not? These are starter areas and I don't believe the hp and damage is scaling properly at those low levels. Even with past lifes and using an uber weapon that new players can't even get now it took me a while to take down a korthos champ with damage reduction. Elite was never inaccessible to new players in the past.

This has nothing to do about you folks wanting to add challenge to the game for yourself. It's all about making elite inaccessible to others. Most vets skip korthos except the ones wanting to get the favor and they zerg through it once and done FAST. How long does a new player or a person working on their 2nd/3rd character spend in Korthos, The Harbor, etc? A few weeks or longer vs. a few hours. Past lifes and twink gear was never required to complete Elite in the past and now the rules are being changed.

Korthos I'm fine with no Champions or at least reduce the spawn chance by half, but I don't consider Harbor a starting area. The earlier new players experience Champions the better so they can start learning to deal with them. I remember when I was new many of those quests were tough. Even over the years with dumbing down the difficulties, how do you know elite was always accessible to new players? Do you talk with them often about it? Whenever I TR'd I would a lot of times get blind invites and tells asking me if I would help them with Korthos and Harbor quests on normal almost every single time. Elite was very rarely said.

Straw man. I want challenge and the hardest difficulty shouldn't be considered easy enough to be default setting and expected to beat it every time. You can still complete elite on a first life character and I seriously find it hard to believe that Champions have drastically changed the game that you must have twinked out gear and past lives. Before blaming Champions, unless its one of those bugged out times that us pro Champions have agreed needs to be fixed, I would question the players skill and tactics.

[nibel]

I actually ran Korthos since the changes and I can tell you a champ had some damage reduction and I never saw a # other than 0 for the base damage. I took it down with my level 1 bta weapon only because it had lacerating and festival icy burst. Both things would not be available to a new player so they would be doing 1 per hit with frost touch.

Get a sword, a mace and a bow (or rapier). Every champion that have physical resistance takes normal damage from one of slash, piercing or blunt. On epics when you have a ton of damage behind each attack, you can usually ignore the weapon swap, but on heroic it helps.

Heck, you are given a sword and a mace on heyton's rest. And IIRC there is one of the starter quests that gives you a bow as well (Grotto end chest?).

[slarden]

Which is weird, I have no issues with champs, all first life toons, I'm a VIP, I start on elite, no twink gear, and I run just fine, only thing that gets me is lack of knowledge on quests, and then it's 99.9% traps that get me killed, champs rarely if ever do it.

My only issue with champs is when they are there as you load and kill you before you finish, seen a few quests do that.

If you play easy EE content you won't get one-shot. If you play higher level EE you will unless you have a high PRR because of the complete fort bypass + higher damage. I've seen many people one shot by champs on EE including a fellow Sarlonian that argues champs are too easy now and there is no chance of dying.

[slarden]

Get a sword, a mace and a bow (or rapier). Every champion that have physical resistance takes normal damage from one of slash, piercing or blunt. On epics when you have a ton of damage behind each attack, you can usually ignore the weapon swap, but on heroic it helps.

Heck, you are given a sword and a mace on heyton's rest. And IIRC there is one of the starter quests that gives you a bow as well (Grotto end chest?).

I had piercing and slash and both resulted in 0 base damage. I am not going to carry an arsenal to Korthos because of champs - I will get them done with the weapon effects.

You are confusing the issue. You think I am saying it's too hard for me which it's not -I am saying champs in korthos is a stupid idea period and it will be harder for new players relative to the elite difficulty when I was a new player.

[slarden]

Korthos I'm fine with no Champions or at least reduce the spawn chance by half, but I don't consider Harbor a starting area. The earlier new players experience Champions the better so they can start learning to deal with them. I remember when I was new many of those quests were tough. Even over the years with dumbing down the difficulties, how do you know elite was always accessible to new players? Do you talk with them often about it? Whenever I TR'd I would a lot of times get blind invites and tells asking me if I would help them with Korthos and Harbor quests on normal almost every single time. Elite was very rarely said.

Straw man. I want challenge and the hardest difficulty shouldn't be considered easy enough to be default setting and expected to beat it every time. You can still complete elite on a first life character and I seriously find it hard to believe that Champions have drastically changed the game that you must have twinked out gear and past lives. Before blaming Champions, unless its one of those bugged out times that us pro Champions have agreed needs to be fixed, I would question the players skill and tactics.

How long do you spend on level 1-3 quests when you tr? I am done with those low level quests in a few hours and see no need for that tiny % of my leveling to have champs.

I see no rational reason why a vet needs challenge in the harbor - that is absurd.

As for the "pro champion" people as you call them I think many are arguing to make it more difficult for others - not to make it more challenging for personal challenge. Especially when I hear them arguing that champs must be in Korthos and the Harbor to give them challenge. Then I see some of them complain in other threads that they run on normal because there is no incentive to run on elite.

[Loromir]

So here is the crux. Braegan has been playing this game for 8 years...he can do the Korthos Quests ungeared on elite in his sleep. There are plenty of tactics and strategies that can be used to get you through all of the Korthos Quests on elite with even the most Gimp Ungeared toon...but those tactics are learned through playing the game.

Elite is not designed for the new player with a fresh off the boat toon. As stated you were lvl one rogue with no gear attempting a quest 2 levels higher than your character. Rogues are kind of tough to play for a new player at lower levels, so I'm not surprised you had trouble with your quest. And the fact is, after some trial and error, you eventually completed that quest on elite. So...I'm not really seeing the problem.

But to be honest...it's not a fair comparison when Braegan completes the quest and you can't. No one would expect Braegan to fail...while it's not surprising that you failed. That is not a critism of you as a player....its just the difference between someone just learning the game versus someone who has played for 8 years.

[Amundir]

I also do not believe a first life lvl 1 toon should be guarenteed a HE quest win.
A side from that, someone mentioned not having enough for hirelings at start? Typically when I'd start a new character I'd do the storehouse secret first, breaking everything and selling stuff after that one was done and it would get me enough for a hireling pretty much 100%.
Other than that, if you know your going to need a hireling past the grotto, you can always -not- enter the grotto, keep logging off and back on to the toon and the starting barrels before the grotto keep respawning that you can get stuff out of to sell/use.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot typically daily silver dice rolls usually give out plat.

[Chai]

Low level elite difficulty is no longer /autocompletion?

Perhaps this is a move in the right direction.

[Hendrik]

Low level elite difficulty is no longer /autocompletion?

Perhaps this is a move in the right direction.

It's not fun to play chutes and ladders with chutes.

[bartharok]

It's not fun to play chutes and ladders with chutes.

Oh, but it is. The trouble is that only others should hit the chutes.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

So we heard a few opinions on the issue. Are there more of them out there? The serious ones I'm interested, not the other ones.

Opinions:
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...mpion-Feedback

Or go back 14 or so pages and read the 70 different rage threads. They already toned the champions down once, so if people start linking you to HelloKittyonline, understand it's not because they're all heading there and need company.

[SiliconScout]

This perfectly proves how a totally random feature to add difficulty is not a good idea.

When people are complaining about getting 1shot and running into monster champions with the most painful buff combinations while others can clear the same quest without running into them.. something's wrong.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Success or failure shouldn't depend on being lucky.
...

Well I would first point out that it's more like failure depends on being unlucky. MOST of the time that they spawn their buffs aren't all that complimentary and they really aren't all that "tougher" than the others they just have more HP.

But really this is supposed to be DnD ... what good DnD game campaign HASN'T hinged on a lucky roll or two.

Don't get me wrong, their initial roll out was a little harsh. Personally I liked it but I did think for a new player it would be absolutely brutal. Their adjustment is probably slightly too far the other way really but it's fine. Most of the time the champions don't matter all that much if you keep an eye out for them. Occasionally though they can really liven things up. I recently Duo'd Heroic Elite Coal Chamber with a party of 2 casters, 1 ice sorc, 1 PM. Now before the change I can tell you we would have ROFLstomped that quest easily, invis run most of it, etc. This time around we got champs, not crazy numbers but enough of them with True Seeing that Dungeon Alert mattered. So we stopped using invs. Relied heavily on SLA's for Spell Point conservation the PM used insta-kill spells pretty much only on Champs (and a fair few were immune to it) and it was tough. Not only did the champs make a HUGE difference, the force traps aren't one shot anymore, they go off every time we open a door. We had a standard Cleric Hire and had to pick up a Rogue (he only did traps) and we had several deaths but we made it through. Was their ever a real chance we would fail? Honestly, probably not so long we took it slow and to be honest once we made the adjustment to stop the invis zerg, the only thing we really really worried about was the ambush. We were sure to get a couple of champions and if they were both Therge's with deathward that was going to get messy in a hurry. Unfortunately we pulled 4 champs, fortunately only 1 was a caster and he did not have deathward.

Granted it took probably 2.5 times as long to run that quest we had SO much more fun in the end in fact I actually look forward to the next time I run that quest and THAT is something I haven't said since about a month after it was released!

Yeah I get it that it makes Heroic Elite hard, but really it SHOULD be hard, it's ELITE, it's the hardest difficulty meant to be run with a full party or experienced players. Hell the tool tip even says so, it something a new player should work up to and in all honesty if they are a decent player and play somewhat regularly it will take a couple weeks, maybe a month and they will be Elite ready with a LOT better skill set then so many of the current crop of players. I cannot tell you how many completionists, even x3 completionists I have pug'ed with that quite honestly were about as useful as the standard hireling in Heroic levels. That is a sad, sad state of affairs. If Champions help raise the bar then good on them it's better for the community and the game in the long run. It might cost us the odd new player but most of those who would quit over champions likely would have found something else to quit over soon enough, they want an easy button of unlimited candy, I would argue that it will help train and retain quality players and let's be honest quality players in a healthy community atmosphere will draw and retain far more players than any content or mechanic could ever hope to.

[Vint]

It's not fun to play chutes and ladders with chutes.

I said something similar in another thread, and they disagreed with me just because it was me and I am not the most popular guy around. The issues about this have nothing to do with game balance or needing nerfs, it is about people having entitlement issues.

Something must be wrong as I am agreeing with you way too much.

[Chai]

How long do you spend on level 1-3 quests when you tr? I am done with those low level quests in a few hours and see no need for that tiny % of my leveling to have champs.

I see no rational reason why a vet needs challenge in the harbor - that is absurd.

There are 4 difficulty settings. Choosing the toughest one and expecting no chance of failure is what is absurd.

As for the "pro champion" people as you call them I think many are arguing to make it more difficult for others - not to make it more challenging for personal challenge. Especially when I hear them arguing that champs must be in Korthos and the Harbor to give them challenge. Then I see some of them complain in other threads that they run on normal because there is no incentive to run on elite.

The personal argumentation is a straw man.

People want elite to actually be challenging. That doesn't mean they want to always play elite because they feel they need to be personally challenged every single quest. They feel that choosing elite should be a challenge, period. If they don't want that challenge currently, or if their goals change (want really fast XP) then they blitz through normal, which is the best XP/min. This does not rule out that it still makes perfect sense to them that choosing the toughest difficulty option makes the quest....well....DIFFICULT. It also makes sense to them that if they want the fastest XP per minute, they can blaze through normal or hard.

Thus, it is not a personal issue, whatsoever.