Vip - rip

[Chai]

The role of luck. Luck shouldn't decide if you succeed or fail a quest.

With random numbers in a D&D based game, luck is a factor. We call failure due to bad luck "getting killed by the dice".

And talk about a hostile answer. The question was "what is the point of VIP if it's not running elite", you managed to not answer that in 3 full lines of text, congratulations.

The answer to that is one of the benefits (not the sole benefit by far) is opening elite without having to run normal or hard first. Being able to open elite =/= it should be 100% success rate for ungeared first life characters, simply due to having subscribed to a VIP payment plan.

Yes, this has devalued VIP, but that's up to Turbine to decide whether or not that's an issue.
They're still driven by money, if they notice the amount of subs going down, I'm sure they'll act accordingly.

That's been happening for a while now, and didn't begin with adding champions.

[Chi_Ryu]

The role of luck. Luck shouldn't decide if you succeed or fail a quest.

But it does all the time! Every time I roll a 1 on a Beholder's disintegrate and am wiped out immediately... Every time my hold person doesn't stick... these are all luck based events. The whole game has a non-trivial luck element - unless you are overpowered for the quest.

[Keladon]

With random numbers in a D&D based game, luck is a factor. We call failure due to bad luck "getting killed by the dice".



The answer to that is one of the benefits (not the sole benefit by far) is opening elite without having to run normal or hard first. Being able to open elite =/= it should be 100% success rate for ungeared first life characters, simply due to having subscribed to a VIP payment plan.



That's been happening for a while now, and didn't begin with adding champions.

So because it didn't begin with champions means it's alright to devalue it further?
Flawed logic.

When a champion 1shots an escort NPC, noone is going to call that "getting killed by the dice". (Well.. you will, maybe)
I'm not even going to call that unlucky, that's just plain broken.

[Loromir]

My main goal on Korthos is to run it, don't sweat the XP, I know the loot is mostly garbage although I have received a +1 tome on Korthos, get it over with and get to the Harbor and above.

My main goal on Korthos is to get Coin Lord favor and get Bravery Streak Started.

[Chi_Ryu]

When a champion 1shots an escort NPC, noone is going to call that "getting killed by the dice". (Well.. you will, maybe)
I'm not even going to call that unlucky, that's just plain broken.

I have already experienced non-champions one shotting the Crystal in that specific quest on Elite multiple times. This is nothing new.

(However, I think escort quests with vulnerable NPCs are terrible for just that reason, especially if they are long - HI PRE-U23 COYLE).

[Keladon]

But it does all the time! Every time I roll a 1 on a Beholder's disintegrate and am wiped out immediately... Every time my hold person doesn't stick... these are all luck based events. The whole game has a non-trivial luck element - unless you are overpowered for the quest.

And sometimes I get tripped, or held, or my spells don't land or a trap goes off, etc. But I have never failed a quest because of that, yes, never.
And I'm not "overpowered" for the quests I'm running either.

When a champion decides to ignore all my fortification and hits multiple time harder than the mobs around him or even 1shots someone, you fail the quest without any involvement of skill or gear.

It doesn't happen often, but it's still happening and it doesn't add any challenge at all, only frustration. (I find a few posts about 1shot experiences everyday)

I have already experienced non-champions one shotting the Crystal in that specific quest on Elite multiple times. This is nothing new.

(However, I think escort quests with vulnerable NPCs are terrible for just that reason, especially if they are long - HI PRE-U23 COYLE).

Never experienced that myself and if it went down it was because I wasn't paying attention and it took a few hits, not just 1 hit.
1 champion getting through or refusing to aggro you or a partymember (happens more often than I'd like) and it can be over now, sounds pretty broken or luck based to me.

[Braegan]

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.

I can understand the frustration of randomness. That is nothing new in this game however. Random loot drops have been a long source of player frustration. I know it's a little different because it doesn't equal failing a quest. I have seen some champ with a couple nasty combos send me in "retreat mode" to heal up, but those were all higher level. Low level mobs in general don't hit hard enough to really make a fuss about it and most low level characters have so little to no fort that the fort bypass buff doesn't mean anything. So far the regular orges in WW are tougher than any champ I've seen. Now if one of those ogres gets to be a champ that could be messy, but IIRC they are all optional anyways.

It isn't necessary to do this. This is very disrespectful, as has your tone been throughout.

My tone began helpful and inquisitive and proceeded to match the ops tone towards me step by step.

You are asking questions from someone that doesn't know the answer that you are wanting. They are new, have stated they are new and don't know because they are new to it. All you have proved in your ellaborate demonstration is that a vet in starter gear can complete the quest, which is not the posters issue. Their issue is that they are new and feel useless in an elite quest without first gaining the experience and knowledge that those telling him he "sucks" all have.

The developers have developed the game in a way to balance vets and everyone else questing in the same content to try make it fun for all in some way. To do this they created a large difference in elite and normal setting. Some are going to find it too easy, some are going to find it too hard. The original poster is in the content too hard on elite basket for his experience and knowledge in game.

Ease up on the newbie's, its a frustrating experience enough for them to load the game and wipe every quest. Don't pile a wall of hate on top just because you want to stroke your ego at how adaptable your abilities are acrosss a wide range of classes.

Not quite.

The op is a returning player who said he used to breeze through elite korthos. He returned found one quest a little challenging and made a post with tones of quitting again.

Long story short:

OP ranted
I tried to help
OP thru poo
I thru poo back

If someone is having a difficult time with a quest, why not group up? Just a thought...

Group up in an MMO?!?!?! That's crazy talk!

[Keladon]

I can understand the frustration of randomness. That is nothing new in this game however. Random loot drops have been a long source of player frustration. I know it's a little different because it doesn't equal failing a quest. I have seen some champ with a couple nasty combos send me in "retreat mode" to heal up, but those were all higher level. Low level mobs in general don't hit hard enough to really make a fuss about it and most low level characters have so little to no fort that the fort bypass buff doesn't mean anything. So far the regular orges in WW are tougher than any champ I've seen. Now if one of those ogres gets to be a champ that could be messy, but IIRC they are all optional anyways.

I have been wanting to mention random loot for a while now.
It's another one of those random systems and there's a reason people call random loot "trash".

But like you said, bad random loot doesn't really determine whether you fail or succeed at a quest and there's always the AH to find some good pieces. (on my server at least)

And I'm quite happy about that first sentence. It's personal, but I don't like the kind of randomness champions bring.
I don't like having an extra invisible dice being thrown for me to determine the real difficulty of a quest.
For those who like this randomness, great! But you have to admit there's still a lot of issues concerning champions that have to be fixed. (and hopefully will be)

Group up in an MMO?!?!?! That's crazy talk!

I know that's sarcasm.. but most of the more recent MMO's (and even some older ones) are or have become increasingly solo friendly and I can only assume there's a reason for that.

[Chai]

So because it didn't begin with champions means it's alright to devalue it further?
Flawed logic.

The flawed logic is that people are equating the VIP benefit of "open on elite without having to run hard or normal" as being equal to "100% success rate on elite with ungeared first life character" simply because they paid to be VIP.

When a champion 1shots an escort NPC, noone is going to call that "getting killed by the dice". (Well.. you will, maybe)
I'm not even going to call that unlucky, that's just plain broken.

That was happening long before champions entered the equation. Escort/protect quests are the issue there, not this new mechanic.

The other major issue here is people not willing to lower the difficulty of the quest, due to expectation of a no fail completion on the highest difficulty setting. This is the pink elephant in the middle of the room no one wants to address.

The one error Turbine made here is letting elite difficulty become auto completion and leaving it that way for a long time before putting champions in. This set the expectation that it was the highest XP setting but not a higher difficulty setting, complete-able by all with little to no chance of failure. Due to this people are not willing to adjust their difficulty setting to meet the same expectation of 0% fail chance, even when there are 2-3 settings which would accommodate this.

[slarden]

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

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.

Are you serious? We are talking about Korthos and the Harbor here.

Anyhow it's Turbine's choice. I already went through the learning curve and was able to learn to run elite as a new player. It really only hurts newer players and not me. I just think it's a dumb way for Turbine to lose revenue.

[slarden]

No. He's mostly saying that the difference here isn't gear. It's skills and knowledge. And skills is what should separate being able to face the toughest challenge vs not being able to.

Which of course is absolutely false for the starter area that is the subject of this topic. There is no skill involved in these starter areas at all. It's strictly gears and other accumulated benefits.

[Chai]

Are you serious? We are talking about Korthos and the Harbor here.

Anyhow it's Turbine's choice. I already went through the learning curve and was able to learn to run elite as a new player. It really only hurts newer players and not me. I just think it's a dumb way for Turbine to lose revenue.

It doesn't hurt the new player because the new player does not set the expectation that elite should be auto complete with a 0% fail rate, and thus will choose one of the other three settings while learning the game. That's the expectation of players that have been around a while, not new players.

[Keladon]

The flawed logic is that people are equating the VIP benefit of "open on elite without having to run hard or normal" as being equal to "100% success rate on elite with ungeared first life character" simply because they paid to be VIP.



That was happening long before champions entered the equation. Escort quests are the issue there, not this new mechanic.

Talking about 1shot, not getting killed, escort quests have always been rather frustrating because the NPCs are programmed to be as squishy as possible, but I've never seen anyone go down in 1 hit.
The problem with 1shot is that you can't assign a healer to the npc ..or anything, you can't heal someone that dies in 1 hit.

And if we're talking percentages, would it be fair to say an ungeared first life character should have 0% chance to succeed on elite? Exaggerating doesn't mean you're right or that it's a fact.
But then again, you do say that flawed logic would be that.. and not that everyone is expecting that - so I see no issue there.

Being able to run elite doesn't mean you should automatically get 100% chance to succeed. But making it feel futile to run on elite does take away a big benefit of being VIP and that's what this thread is about.

[Chai]

Which of course is absolutely false for the starter area that is the subject of this topic. There is no skill involved in these starter areas at all. It's strictly gears and other accumulated benefits.

Metagaming knowledge trumps all - regardless of which area of the game is being played. There are multiple suggestions in this very thread which are sound tactics for getting through that content even on elite. Not having that knowledge means choosing an easier difficulty setting.

[Ayseifn]

Being able to run elite doesn't mean you should automatically get 100% chance to succeed. But making it feel futile to run on elite does take away a big benefit of being VIP and that's what this thread is about.

This is one quest, and one of the shortest in the game. If you fail just restart.

You can probably fail this three times and still complete it faster than Heyton's Rest.

[Chai]

Talking about 1shot, not getting killed, escort quests have always been rather frustrating because the NPCs are programmed to be as squishy as possible, but I've never seen anyone go down in 1 hit.
The problem with 1shot is that you can't assign a healer to the npc ..or anything, you can't heal someone that dies in 1 hit.

It has happened and been complained about quite often on the forums, long before champions.

And if we're talking percentages, would it be fair to say an ungeared first life character should have 0% chance to succeed on elite? Exaggerating doesn't mean you're right or that it's a fact.
But then again, you do say that flawed logic would be that.. and not that everyone is expecting that - so I see no issue there.

That would be a false claim. They don't have 0% chance of success. Its just not 100%.

The flawed logic is equating the VIP ability of "open elite without playing hard or normal" as equaling "able to complete elite quest failure free because I paid for a VIP sub". You can open a quest on elite without playing hard or normal first. Having the expectation that this means you should be able to complete failure free on the highest difficulty setting is flawed logic. Claiming this devalues VIP if you cannot do this is flawed logic, because that was never the benefit of VIP in the first place.

Being able to run elite doesn't mean you should automatically get 100% chance to succeed. But making it feel futile to run on elite does take away a big benefit of being VIP and that's what this thread is about.

Its not futile to run on elite. Its challenging and has a higher rate of failure, but not 100% failure. There are multiple examples in this thread alone which show this.

Again the one error Turbine made here was scaling elite difficulty allowing people to not fail on that difficulty often for years at a time. Had elite not changed into the high XP autocomplete for that long of a period of time, there would be little to no debate on this issue, because the expectations in the minds of the players would not have changed.

[Qhualor]

Which of course is absolutely false for the starter area that is the subject of this topic. There is no skill involved in these starter areas at all. It's strictly gears and other accumulated benefits.

For a veteran player there wouldn't be really any skill involved on Korthos and many of the low level harbor quests. For a new player its where they start to develop skill, start learning basic game mechanics and they won't have the gear to help boost character power.

[BD_]

The flawed logic is that people are equating the VIP benefit of "open on elite without having to run hard or normal" as being equal to "100% success rate on elite with ungeared first life character" simply because they paid to be VIP.



That was happening long before champions entered the equation. Escort/protect quests are the issue there, not this new mechanic.

The other major issue here is people not willing to lower the difficulty of the quest, due to expectation of a no fail completion on the highest difficulty setting. This is the pink elephant in the middle of the room no one wants to address.

The one error Turbine made here is letting elite difficulty become auto completion and leaving it that way for a long time before putting champions in. This set the expectation that it was the highest XP setting but not a higher difficulty setting, complete-able by all with little to no chance of failure. Due to this people are not willing to adjust their difficulty setting to meet the same expectation of 0% fail chance, even when there are 2-3 settings which would accommodate this.

Escort quests may be the initial problem, but champions being both bugged, and 100% random and 100% equal in all quests compounds the problem. No matter how you spin it, champions are still both bugged, and should not be blanket added to all quests equally. In DDO every quest is more or less hand crafted - which is why champions should be adjusted for individual quests...

While it is true that there are multiple difficulty settings and you don't have to play elite all the time, have you played normal on low level quests lately? Even for a someone new to gaming completely, Korthos quests on normal are a total joke... A lot of people forget how much game experience matters - some people will call it arrogant, but I fully expect to succeed almost all the time on the most difficult quests on elite - not because the quests are too easy, but because I've gotten good enough at this game that you cannot make it too hard for me without more or less "breaking" the game or putting in arbitrary things that are nearly impossible with bad luck, etc. etc. There are plenty of people running around that through a combination of game skill, game knowledge, gear, past lives etc. can ROFLStomp quests easier than I can... This will happen with pretty much any game eventually - with enough play people will get good enough to "beat" it no matter how hard (within reason) you make it... Random spots of "bad luck and you fail" does not make a game harder, it makes it take longer and be more tedious...

Champions - if done correctly could be great, as they are now they're awful... From what I've seen very few people are completely against champions - but almost everyone - even a majority of the most "pro champion" posters agree that there are problems with the champion system as it is now...

[FestusHood]

It did take me three attempts because the crystal got one shotted, but that was my failure (for me that's always the toughest part of the quest).

This isn't all that difficult, really.

I'm sorry but this just sounds funny.

How many tries do the hard ones take you?

[Qhualor]

Talking about 1shot, not getting killed, escort quests have always been rather frustrating because the NPCs are programmed to be as squishy as possible, but I've never seen anyone go down in 1 hit.
The problem with 1shot is that you can't assign a healer to the npc ..or anything, you can't heal someone that dies in 1 hit.

And if we're talking percentages, would it be fair to say an ungeared first life character should have 0% chance to succeed on elite? Exaggerating doesn't mean you're right or that it's a fact.
But then again, you do say that flawed logic would be that.. and not that everyone is expecting that - so I see no issue there.

Being able to run elite doesn't mean you should automatically get 100% chance to succeed. But making it feel futile to run on elite does take away a big benefit of being VIP and that's what this thread is about.

You keep talking about these one shot problems like it happens all the time. I still haven't been one shotted by a Champion yet and nobody in my pug groups have said they were just one shotted. NPCs will get their boost I'm sure soon enough, but I would expect an update from the devs after New Years.

I still say you are spending too much on the game if the only VIP perk you care about is elite unlock when you can get one for free in game.