You know the game is not balanced properly when...

[Blackheartox]

Yes, they want me to hate them.

To learn of true love,you first need to feel real hate.
That kind of thing?

[bartharok]

To learn of true love,you first need to feel real hate.
That kind of thing?

Quite possible, i dont know WHY they want me to hate them, after all.

[Holybird]

snip

Dude, you skipped the confirmation of 3rd Arty tree and Arty ED

[Vooduspyce]

We've considered a Killer DM mode - something even harder than elite - where content always scaled to 6 people, champions have nastier effects, and monsters did more damage.

Why do you tease me like this?

The problem, outside of implementation time...

Wouldn't the implementation time be relatively low since all the parts are already there? You already made the champions really tough on day 1 of their release and you already have the ability to scale to 6?

what could we possibly use to reward players for playing it? We don't want to add even more XP into the game.

XP is fine and an easy reward to implement... for the folks that will actually run a higher difficulty, seems like xp is fine. They are mostly going for the challenge but an xp bonus would be appreciated as well. It's not like the folks that can do this difficulty can't get fast xp elsewhere anyway.

A spyce girl or boy can dream.

[Splunge]

I know there is a sub-section of players that want even *more* difficulty in existing content. We have to make decisions about where to spend our time, and we think our time would be better spent making new challenging content with new Mythic treasures to reward those challenges than trying to back track and introduce difficulty where a lot of players don't want it.

One way to introduce more difficulty in existing content without much direct work would be to recalibrate quest levels. Figure out how much power creep there has been over the years and adjust the quest levels accordingly. Older content would probably end up with larger adjustments than newer content.

The big downside I see to this is that there could end up being some holes in heroic content at some levels, but this could be overcome by introducing some new heroic content, possibly before recalibrating the levels. I certainly wouldn't complain about some new heroic quests. Personally, I like playing the heroic levels more than the epic levels.

[Monkey-Boy]

Wouldn't the implementation time be relatively low since all the parts are already there? You already made the champions really tough on day 1 of their release and you already have the ability to scale to 6?

Increasing mobs HP, saves, and damage output shouldn't be hard.

XP is fine and an easy reward to implement...

Oh hell no, too much of this game is a never-ending XP treadmill as is. And for those of us no longer leveling toons this is a worthless reward.

The reward would need to be items, and that does take time/work. I understand Sev not wanting to allocate resources to this if he wants them working on NEW stuff. New packs are also better for Turbine since it generates revenue from the sales to premium players.

New/tougher content is the better way to go though I'm concerned about Turbine being able to create enough of it. Who knows, Epic gianthold has us busy for almost a year. maybe another pack of that size could do the same.

[IronClan]

Sev there's something the Numbers can't show: having a Mythic/Killer Difficulty gives a reason for us to improve our characters, even if playing it provides nothing but a higher chance at Mythic items dropping. In fact this is part of what was "broken" that has caused so many players to leave... Why TR over and over if there's nothing challenging to do to motivate improvement?

Honestly though the best thing would be to just tweak one older EE map pack per update with a "challenge pass" that makes EE significantly harder (while you're in there finish Feather of Sun's loot/Augment polish pass for that specific pack and make 1d4 items Mythics) and do as you currently are: making sure the newest content is harder on Hard and brutal on EE.

Once again I volunteer to come sleep on a cot next to the Mt Dew machine and polish the database numbers for old/unplayed EE quests and raids. I am talking purely the stuff almost NEVER on the LFM panel

You can't possibly p*** anyone off by polishing/increasing the challenge of the following:

House C quests and Raids
Sub-terrain Raids/Area
Red Fens
Carnival

Almost no one plays this content so you have cart blanch to increase it's difficulty on EE and if you do that you can incentivize running it again with new polished versions of old loot (not drastically improved just polished up a bit) and a handful of Mythic versions added.

[Monkey-Boy]

Sev there's something the Numbers can't show: having a Mythic/Killer Difficulty gives a reason for us to improve our characters, even if playing it provides nothing but a higher chance at Mythic items dropping. In fact this is part of what was "broken" that has cause so many players to leave... Why TR over and over if there's nothing challenging to do to motivate improvement?

Absolutely true.

But you won't get repeated play out of most people just based on "challenge." It needs to "pay," and that pay needs to be items.

[IronClan]

Or it could be that they really are a weaker overall archetype right now. It takes enormous investment to get enough DCs for most content (and how fun is to have to debuff mobs constantly?) and yet someone with a barb, paladin or bard will outclass you with only moderate gear against bosses.

Trash in a lot of quests can just be out runed and then rubber banded anyway.

I don't know how I got your aggro, but you sure are persistent. Is this thread red DA for some people or what?

Or it could be that you're caught up in new and shiny perception just like everyone else and you happen to be posting a lot of it yourself. From my perspective a lot of what you post is exaggerated and driven by popular perception>reality . A lot like the guy in the Barb threads who when presented with DPS calc that shows 25 base damage from Storms eye BY ITSELF adds more DPS than Holy Sword, he just kinda waved his hand and said

"nah anh, Holy Sword is still more DPS than anything a Barb can get because of reasons!"

I might add much like you hand wave Evasion and say Evasion doesn't count for survival because of reasons.

The reason you are hand waving is that the objective reality does not agree with the perceived reality... and Humans when presented with objective reality and perceived reality almost ALWAYS choose the popular perception over the actual. There's a reason why witch burnings and koolaid drinkings, and any number of irrational human superstition driven horror.

Frankly most human beings should mistrust the popular perception as a matter of due diligence.

[Vasax]

I know there is a sub-section of players that want even *more* difficulty in existing content. We have to make decisions about where to spend our time, and we think our time would be better spent making new challenging content with new Mythic treasures to reward those challenges than trying to back track and introduce difficulty where a lot of players don't want it.

We've considered a Killer DM mode - something even harder than elite - where content always scaled to 6 people, champions have nastier effects, and monsters did more damage. The problem, outside of implementation time, we ran into is this; what could we possibly use to reward players for playing it? We don't want to add even more XP into the game. Higher level loot drops aren't really useful while leveling since it already out levels players on higher difficulties. No one is going to grind for power items if they will level past them quickly. Our data shows that such a difficulty would probably sit unused for a vast majority of the player base. As much as the idea intrigues me, I don't know if that's a good use of our time.

We believe that the best use of our time is to provide difficulty in newer content.

Sev~

And that is the issue? You're not asking those in the "sub-section" what they want. As a member of the Sub-section, I have posted a bunch of options that would keep me interested in the "Killer DM" mode. Equipment and XP are not the only methods of rewarding a player and I think that is the biggest failure point of DDO. You actually have many upon many ways of rewarding players at this end of the spectrum and I have even commented on it several times.

I'll just name a few examples.

Items, that serve no direct DPS/XP purpose but people will want
-- Treasure's Eye (augment or item), increases collectable by 500%, if you click a collectable, you now get 5 instead of 1, min level 1, BtC
-- Rogue's Friend (tools), unlimited thieves tools +5, min level 28, BtC
-- Astral Shard (end reward), player can choose, 2 AS or 2 Seeds or ### CoV or Renown


Right now, we have to run EE WGU at level 20, to get a challenge. I don't think that was ever intended at all, period.

[bartharok]

Frankly most human beings should mistrust the popular perception as a matter of due diligence.

I am not sure i have yet met an intelligent human being (and havent seen one in a mirror either)

[hit_fido]

Absolutely true.

But you won't get repeated play out of most people just based on "challenge." It needs to "pay," and that pay needs to be items.

They'll get repeated play for about a week (or less), right up until "people" have all the items again and come back to the forums complaining that they have nothing to do and that the game is even easier than before. That is a waste compared with what they're doing with the time they have now.

If they spend any effort on a killer mode, I prefer the suggested leaderboard style suggestions. Leaderboard needs to show the top 3 or 5 scores for flawless no-reentry victories (time? or some other score adjusted by completing optionals too). As we've seen in the past, scores can and are frequently beaten by achievement oriented players. A good score doesn't eliminate the interest in repeating the content, since it will still be possible to do better, or possible that someone else does better and takes the board position away from you.

It also has the potential for redirecting some challenge/achievement based activities back to group rather than solo, since we'd presume capable and coordinated groups of 2 or more will likely achieve the best scores and hold the top leaderboard positions.

[Monkey-Boy]

They'll get repeated play for about a week (or less), right up until "people" have all the items again and come back to the forums complaining that they have nothing to do and that the game is even easier than before. That is a waste compared with what they're doing with the time they have now.

If they spend any effort on a killer mode, I prefer the suggested leaderboard style suggestions. Leaderboard needs to show the top 3 or 5 scores for flawless no-reentry victories (time? or some other score adjusted by completing optionals too). As we've seen in the past, scores can and are frequently beaten by achievement oriented players. A good score doesn't eliminate the interest in repeating the content, since it will still be possible to do better, or possible that someone else does better and takes the board position away from you.

It also has the potential for redirecting some challenge/achievement based activities back to group rather than solo, since we'd presume capable and coordinated groups of 2 or more will likely achieve the best scores and hold the top leaderboard positions.

There are maybe 20 people in this game who care about keeping score, and there's already an achievement board for that.

[hit_fido]

there are maybe 20 people in this game who care about keeping score, and there's already an achievement board for that.

lol.

[Tesrali]

They'll get repeated play for about a week (or less), right up until "people" have all the items again and come back to the forums complaining that they have nothing to do and that the game is even easier than before. That is a waste compared with what they're doing with the time they have now.

If they spend any effort on a killer mode, I prefer the suggested leaderboard style suggestions. Leaderboard needs to show the top 3 or 5 scores for flawless no-reentry victories (time? or some other score adjusted by completing optionals too). As we've seen in the past, scores can and are frequently beaten by achievement oriented players. A good score doesn't eliminate the interest in repeating the content, since it will still be possible to do better, or possible that someone else does better and takes the board position away from you.

It also has the potential for redirecting some challenge/achievement based activities back to group rather than solo, since we'd presume capable and coordinated groups of 2 or more will likely achieve the best scores and hold the top leaderboard positions.

Make drops rare.
Heal amp augments.
True seeing augments.
Functional things such as collectible bonus items.
Maybe a new VOM for 10% more xp that starts at lvl 20.
Fire absorbtion augment.
Universal utility items that do not affect power creep much.
Horizontal increments.

There are plenty simple rewards that endgamers would really appreciate.

ALSO
I run EE MoD 3-4 times a week between my toons. The achievements section is sufficient for that. Trust me.

Killer DM mode would give us something to do. Make a simple quest insanely difficult. Take something simple and make it insane. I honestly wouldn't care if it was Korthos.

[bartharok]

There are maybe 20 people in this game who care about keeping score, and there's already an achievement board for that.

Having an inbuilt system might inspire more to give it a try.

[Tesrali]

Having an inbuilt system might inspire more to give it a try.

Why would it do that if you don't mind?

[Vint]

Frankly most human beings should mistrust the popular perception as a matter of due diligence.

You just won the prize.

There are many builds out there that are good, but they are only great when they are played by someone that knows what they are doing.

The problem arrives when someone that has no clue how to play visits the achievement forum and sees a certain build and determines it must be OP. In game most of us know someone who can solo EE on any class/race. Is everything OP? No. Are there balance issues? Yes, but they will not go away. It is near impossible to balance a game when Turbine must cater to both people who care about making a good toon and those who just copy builds or have no wish to learn game mechanics or other in game tidbits of knowledge.

[IronClan]

Absolutely true.

But you won't get repeated play out of most people just based on "challenge." It needs to "pay," and that pay needs to be items.

This is true* however the real goal is NOT to get people to play "Killer DM Mode" the real goal is to get them to feel that progressing/TR'ing/ETR'ing/Completionist/Uber Completionist are gaining them the ability to play the hardest most brutal content... Right now this equation is broken. People are progressing their characters HOPING there will be a reason to have done so. (see the quote in my sig).

* Though I would say an increased chance of Mythic drops if the increase is significant enough, should certainly help this.

[Monkey-Boy]

Make drops rare.
Heal amp augments.
True seeing augments.
Functional things such as collectible bonus items.
Maybe a new VOM for 10% more xp that starts at lvl 20.
Fire absorbtion augment.
Universal utility items that do not affect power creep much.
Horizontal increments.

This, quality of life improvements that would be worth grinding for. I'd run these quests over and over just to get a friggin True Seeing augment, something that adds no real power but massive convenience of not having to scroll-cast it.