Let's Talk: Killer DM Mode

[tiamat1985]

I would gladly pay 10-25$ for a well done Killer DM Mode, maybe with leaderboards and/or with cool possible rewards like store pots or some astral shards or cosmetics; I would be glad to spend TP in advance to have it on the following update and I know many people that would do the same thing.
I think many would pay good money for that (if well done).
Why you don't make a simple survey on the forum, or on the social networks, if possible?
I think you should rely more on surveys, most people don't write on the forum and those are your real player base.

p.s. many people said it's not nice to be randomly killed, well, I bet it's almost the only way to die in the pen and paper and it's the reason the resurrection spells exist! This game is meant to kill people in quests! Else just do a permadeath server like someone suggest.

[Barbarbar]

Meh we already had an in-game achievement board with the introduction of Cannith Challenges,i even held a couple of records there,remember what happened to it?
Was it rewarding?Was it worth anyones time other than showing you could get the most ings/min?

People need distractions so they can keep playing the game since most of us are playing for more than 5 years are burned out and already saw the game decay.

U24 and mirror room 1 week
Champions offered 2 weeks of distractions both in forum and ingame
Champion chunks 2 more weeks
Mimic "event" 3 weeks counting Lamannia

DPS tests,Speedruns (often abuse temporarybugs runs) for what?

[Calinthus]

When you make a challenge or dungeon so difficult only elites can do it solely for challenge, they don't, because nothing of value drops which can make them more elite. They are only elite in the first place because they are the type of player that seeks to make powerful characters, not flower sniff.

I'm always trying to make my toons a bit more powerful, but, I also flower sniff. Just 'cause you're one, doesn't mean you can't be the other, too. ;P
I really do appreciate the effort that is put into the game, and that effort shouldn't always just be ran by. If it takes me an hour or even 2 to totally clear a quest, if I had fun, it was a good investment, if I ran with friends, even better, loot has always been secondary to fun, at least to me.
See ya in game, mate.

[General_Gronker]

Simple. Reward item augment crystals.

No. As I said in the mother thread, these theoretical Killer Dungeons should provide no additional reward besides bragging rights. But if rewards are necessary, then they need to be things like custom user titles exalting the user's accomplishment, or custom pets or cosmetics doing the same. Nothing - NOTHING - that adds to the character's power in any way.

Period.

[axel15810]

It's an interesting discussion, and I just wanted to insert some random thoughts:

~ It is a rare and precious thing - maybe even close to impossible - for content to be challenging to a player that has run it many many times and memorized the ins and outs of that content. We can change bits of it to hit harder, throw more creatures at players, and have more evil tricks but once the players learn the ins and outs of those new changes the content will once again be easy. Unless it can randomly just kill off people, and we don't think that's really a "challenge."

Sev~

Sev, I wanted to respond to this thought in particular because I have seen it brought up several times and I very much disagree. Hear me out. Certainly content gets easier when it is memorized, but -

What you're stating here can only be true if the player is running in the same group at all times. However, most players PUG or play with different people all the time. Therefore the party members themselves can serve as the random factor that causes content to be challenging even if it has been memorized.

Also, players make mistakes. We're human. Making content more difficult through increased mob damage means the margin of error for the player is much smaller. Back when cap was 20 I had run the shroud hundreds of times, but Harry still killed me every so often. I died because of human error - maybe I didn't heal myself in time, maybe I hit the blades, maybe I accidently let too many mobs surround me, maybe I hit the wrong button on my keyboard, maybe I was slow in getting out of the way of that meteor swarm, ect.

On elite before destinies when cap was 20, shroud was still very difficult and had a high failure chance even with a group of players who all had the raid memorized. And that failure chance existed because the margin of error was much smaller due to the increased threats in the dungeon.

So just because you have the dungeon memorized doesn't mean the content is trivialized. The presence of human error will cause difficult content to be a challenge even when it's been memorized. It will still be challenging because it can require you to play close to flawlessly to not fail. As opposed to lower difficulties where you can make tons of mistakes and not get killed.

I just don't want you guys to give up on making content very difficult just because you think it won't be challenging even after we memorize it. Believe me, that's not true.

[BigErkyKid]

Here is a thought.

The guild who first beats a quest and from then on maintains the speediest run of a quest "owns" it. In This new difficulty, that is.

Ownership can be tracked somewhere in the forums, perhaps with stats of the party that did it and what not.

Ownership grants some IG benefits.

So, thoughts?

[Thar]

To be clear, my earlier post was directly in response to whether or not new difficulty should be end game only or across all existing quests. That's a topic of discussion in of itself, as there doesn't appear to be a player consensus (even just in this thread).

There seemed to be some responses that seem to think I was saying greater difficultly shouldn't be available across all existing quests, or that it should be across all existing quests. Rather, it would be nice to see discussion on the merits of each approach (and to a lesser extent novel ideas on how to implement either one) than just shut down discussion on one or the other.


Welcome to this discussion. Clearly there's a variety of opinions.



Yes, I understood, that's why I responded. Different players are talking about different ideas, both of which are valid. Not everyone believes C/N/H/E are fine, as is apparent from discussion here.

C/N/H/E are fine, another mode is not needed, develop some new endgame content for people. We need more content more than we need another difficulty. No one runs stormhorns... why is there no pug? Because it's a pain and long and HARD so people skip it. If people wanted killer mode, they would be running Storm horns and other hard quests. if they are then congradulations, you win ddo...

and for those who like to troll, i do run SH, on some guys I do very well, some not so well and almost never in a full group as no one wants to run it...

[mna]

Permadeath can offer you a killer dm feel.

... hey... I suppose it'd be just too difficult to code for a game like this... but "conduct achievements" exist in some games.

You know, like permadeath, no-shops, nudist (well, I suppose "starter rags" might not count), no-food (including potions!), ...

[IronClan]

Self entitled insanity... the game literally can not have a challenging mode or an EE only reward because the setting that is intended to be the most challenging (and logically should also be the most rewarding) has become somehow in the space of about 6 months, EXPECTED by vocal contingent on the forums to be completable by average skill moderately geared up players, and they insist that this setting NOT have the best rewards.

The opposite of how game theory and game design works... No risk = high reward... Makes no sense in any rational world.

A new Difficulty setting just creates a new stratification of the player base and LFM's that fill slower FOR EVERYONE, what is needed is for Turbine to sack up and just tell the players straight away: you don't have a right to run EE setting with average skill and builds, and you don't have the right to deprive higher skill levels and build optimizations a setting that can challenge them. This devalues the whole point of ETR'ing and TR'ing and getting gear... It breaks the fundamental gaming equation the skinners box that keeps people wanting to improve/progress and continue to do so.

Like a parent dealing with a spoiled child Turbine needs to sack up and tell them they can't allow them to keep getting their way and ruining it for others.

Risk = Reward, if you don't like this you aren't a gamer.

It is laughable that there are people willing to ask for let alone DEMAND that Turbine rewards less risk the same as more risk. It's amazing that these people aren't embarrassed or at least self conscious asking for Turbine to PANDER to the lowest common denominator.

[Sharktopus]

Since XP and loot is out of the question, as the devs said they don't want to move in that direction. My ideas -

- Cosmetics: create a handful of Killer DM exclusive cosmetics and give them a low drop rate in any Killer DM mode chest. Could include pets, hair dyes, cosmetic helms or armors.

- Higher mysterious remnant drops from all Killer DM champions

- Endgame killer DMs should give an improved chance for +5 and +6 tomes to drop, as well as skill tomes. This alone would give a ton of incentive to run these

- Low chance for consumable drops including jewlers toolkits, slayer pots and XP pots. Only the lower tier of these items would drop as to not to compete with the DDOstore

- Very low drop chance for a lesser heart in any killer DM end boss chest, somewhere around 0.3% seems right. Huge incentive right here for players to run Killer DM, even with a very low drop rate

All of these rewards must require your character be at or below the effective quest level or they don't drop. This requirement ensures that these rewards could not be farmed overlevel. For epics, we may want to change this requirement to any epic quest depending on how Epic DM mode scales...but we want to keep an incentive to run endgame killer DM and not have all level 28's farming a lower level epic like Lords of Dust for their rewards. So that would be an issue the devs would have to wrestle with in the future.

We don't need more loot, even the fluff you're suggesting is unnecessary. I like the heart idea, but only because I've pulled exactly 3 hearts since I've been playing this game (2 +1s, and a +3). On the other hand, pulling a heart still gets me excited, whereas getting any other drops is "whatever." I don't need any more tomes to throw in my guild chest/auction house, etc.

We don't need more loot. We are all geared to the teeth at this point. Even new players, since vets have such an overflow of powerful gear, the trickle down effect is very real.

We don't need more loot. Part of what makes this game too easy, is we are geared to handle anything the game can throw at us. (running EE on a first life toon should be very rare and intimidating)

We need more content. A new difficulty qualifies to me as new content. Especially if it is impossibly hard and offers no more power creep that would make the other 80% of the game that much easier.

While I appreciate the suggestion, the forum title is "Let's talk: Killer DM Mode." We should be talking about upping the difficulty of available content to the point where the best of the best are writing their congressmen and crying themselves to sleep at night. Those people do not need more loot. They want more challange and replayability to extend the shelf life of their ubertoons. I hope beyond hope that Turbine just throws down 100% and says "Here, you wanted a harder game? Chew on this, ya gimps!" Like they tried to do with champions. The initial champion launch would have been a huge success, I feel if they were just contained to Epic Elite. Instead of throwing waves of superpower trash mob shock troops at the whole game. That's what scared people. 99% of the game population was going "woah what the heck just happened!?" while the uber ubers were cheering "YES! This is how it should be!" There is definitely a way to achieve the latter without manifesting the former.

[Systern]

It's an interesting discussion, and I just wanted to insert some random thoughts:

~ I don't think it is possible for a team of any size to create hand made content in any video game faster than the most dedicated players can consume it. We understand that we are in a perpetual content race with the players; we know that we will always lose that battle. The plan is that Temple of Elemental Evil will be big and fun and have good itemization. It will not keep the most engaged players entirely busy for the 3.5 months it will take for the Shavarath update to be finished. It just won't. We know this. You know this. We will try our best to make the content as re-playable as possible.

~ It is a rare and precious thing - maybe even close to impossible - for content to be challenging to a player that has run it many many times and memorized the ins and outs of that content. We can change bits of it to hit harder, throw more creatures at players, and have more evil tricks but once the players learn the ins and outs of those new changes the content will once again be easy. Unless it can randomly just kill off people, and we don't think that's really a "challenge."

~ When we talk about a Killer DM mode we are talking about a new difficulty level for existing content with system changes to make it more challenging. It would not involve any additional customization of old content like randomized traps, additional difficulty on puzzles and the like.

~ The problem with making Epic Elite have more relative difficulty, even for new content, is the gaps between difficulties become larger and more players can fall into a situation where the previous difficulty is too easy but the next one up is too hard. On the other hand new levels of difficulty can cause the potential players grouping to fracture even more. We understand this. These conundrums are what keep us awake at night when we should be sleeping.

~ I think the challenges in Terminal Delerium were in some ways the wrong kind of extra challenge.

~ The subject of a Killer DM mode is really a mad notion that is good for discussing the problems surrounding difficulty in an ongoing game. While it is theoretically possible to implement it, I think even the short discussion here shows the potential problems in design the idea presents. I am hoping that by bringing up these discussions I am not creating situations where the players are getting upset at these theoreticals.

Sev~

The big disparity is that the game increments dungeon difficulty in 4 increments, Players gain power in 75 increments (soon to be 78 with Warlock, 39/42 PLs + 36 ePLs). Making the game so it's required you have all 78 increments for the most challenging content will drive off all but your hardest of hardcore player base. Making the content so that it scales in a 1:1 progression with character power just leaves your characters stationary and bores the player ("I could get another past life, but what's the point, I'll not be any more powerful relatively...")

The other thing you mentioned is how to incentivize a new difficulty level. More favor? No offense, but now-a-days the only favor rewards I collect are Coin Lords inventory space and Kundarak bank space. We have favor rewards like the "flavorful" Title of the Twelve (it tastes like wet paper!), and the Purple Dragon Knights give you a BtC pet certificate (good exactly once), a Key that shares a cool down with each successive copy you get (so also good once), vendor access to upgrade Raid Loot (only good if you need the loot upgraded, i.e. once), and A FLIPPIN I.O.U. (good never).

Better loot? Most people have commented that they fly through content with all the extra XP from sagas and content. More powerful Levelling gear is not a major draw. (Although I really want those hAmp cloak and bracers to come out :P)


I think if you do go ahead and make a new difficulty level, it should come with a Past Life pass. They've added so much power that we are just OP. I think the past lives might have some balancing mechanisms built in. You'd still want them all for the completionist feat, but the PLs don't turn on unless your current incarnation meets requirements like hElf dilly feats. That would give us something to drive for, diversity and interesting beneficial effects for a character's "final life" but install a practical cap on the power creep. Knowing where builds theoretical caps are would let you decide how hard to make challenging content.

[davmuzl]

It's an interesting discussion, and I just wanted to insert some random thoughts:

~ I don't think it is possible for a team of any size to create hand made content in any video game faster than the most dedicated players can consume it. We understand that we are in a perpetual content race with the players; we know that we will always lose that battle. The plan is that Temple of Elemental Evil will be big and fun and have good itemization. It will not keep the most engaged players entirely busy for the 3.5 months it will take for the Shavarath update to be finished. It just won't. We know this. You know this. We will try our best to make the content as re-playable as possible.

~ It is a rare and precious thing - maybe even close to impossible - for content to be challenging to a player that has run it many many times and memorized the ins and outs of that content. We can change bits of it to hit harder, throw more creatures at players, and have more evil tricks but once the players learn the ins and outs of those new changes the content will once again be easy. Unless it can randomly just kill off people, and we don't think that's really a "challenge."

~ When we talk about a Killer DM mode we are talking about a new difficulty level for existing content with system changes to make it more challenging. It would not involve any additional customization of old content like randomized traps, additional difficulty on puzzles and the like.

~ The problem with making Epic Elite have more relative difficulty, even for new content, is the gaps between difficulties become larger and more players can fall into a situation where the previous difficulty is too easy but the next one up is too hard. On the other hand new levels of difficulty can cause the potential players grouping to fracture even more. We understand this. These conundrums are what keep us awake at night when we should be sleeping.

~ I think the challenges in Terminal Delerium were in some ways the wrong kind of extra challenge.

~ The subject of a Killer DM mode is really a mad notion that is good for discussing the problems surrounding difficulty in an ongoing game. While it is theoretically possible to implement it, I think even the short discussion here shows the potential problems in design the idea presents. I am hoping that by bringing up these discussions I am not creating situations where the players are getting upset at these theoreticals.

Sev~

First of all I have to say I really like the open discussion and it is at least promising that you see the mistakes that were made. The next step would be to actually nerf what is doing better than intended- at least nobody will be able to complain if the goals of future changes to the game are communicated in ase they have to be tuned down.

I think the difficulty level of old epic is really overstated. I can't remember ever failing in old epics except sometimes in eVon 6 PUGs because a few people didn't get it or eChrono PUGs because the party lacked dps. eVon I didn't care because I could re-run soon enough. in eChrono I didn't mind when the party failed because I always had lots of shards and was missing seals and scrolls. The drop rate assumed a higher failure rate in the end part.

For the most part old epics was about cc-tank-healer-trapper-dps. I don't want to go back there because despite people longing for those days the participation rate was kind of low compared to now. I do think those roles should still exist in raids, but to a lesser extent in quests. Those roles shouldn't be required for every single quest in the game.

Let's just take a look at traps for example... back then if you hit a wheel in epic under the big top before the traps were disabled and you didn't have evasion you would have expected to die. There may have been ways to survive by using protection from elements and having a high enough reflex saves etc. but the only traps that come close at all are some of the traps in ee HH and maybe a few more. Most of the traps are a joke. Similar things were expected to happen when someone walks away from the CC or heals- most of the time that meant death. By the time just before MotU things were figured out for the most part and wizards were running around able to solo a lot of the quests- still todays ee quests don't stand a chance.

Talking about CC-tank-healer-trapper-DPS- I don't get what is so bad about the concept in general. Yes it is annoying to have to wait for a healer to show up, but it's not if these roles were ever set in stone anyway in DDO. Filling any of the other roles doesn't mean you can't deal any damage. At the same time the old epic system was pretty good at supporting players who had more than one character. At that point you have enough options imo to justify making people wait 10 minutes in case they can't alt to a healer. At the moment a DPS-healer-tank setup isn't even needed in raids because they are too easy. They should imo at least be relevant in most quests. It doesn't make sense that I can just grab my Barbarian and enter ee and occasionally drink an SF-pot because he is only in his second life and not triple heroic and epic completionist. I don't even care that I lose the Blitz stacks every time I switch sides in inferno because I have enough passive healing and DPS anyway.

The game was also more balanced back then or at least "under control". Take a look at a pure Fighter and Paladin tank back then- the Fighter had the option to get slightly more intimidate, DPS and AC, but the Paladin had his own advantages to balance that out. In the end both had to invest a lot to be able to take on the endgame raid bosses. Today one gets healing and a major DPS bonus for free while the other struggles with both. I would also expect a Paladin to have much higher intimidate these days, because he gets so much more out of his charisma score (not really relevant atm because the intimidate isn't needed and nobody actually has to build a tank).

[blerkington]

Hi,

Killer DM mode with rewards like achievements, cosmetics or convenience items might be a nice addition to the game. It's kind of a luxury item though, for a game which has so many other problems.

It could be expensive in developer time relative to the frequency with which it would be used. Given the vast number of tricks there currently are in the game for cheesy completions of quests, it might not be all that much of a badge of honour either.

I also find myself wondering whether the people capable of completing this higher difficulty level would do so repeatedly after getting their achievement/cosmetic reward etc.

I can think of a number of things I would prefer to see the developers work on first. These include creating new content for everyone playing the game, working harder at class balance, providing a better spread of difficulty from casual to elite in the content we have now, and of course bugfixes.

Thanks.

[Azarddoze]

There seemed to be some responses that seem to think I was saying greater difficultly shouldn't be available across all existing quests, or that it should be across all existing quests. Rather, it would be nice to see discussion on the merits of each approach (and to a lesser extent novel ideas on how to implement either one) than just shut down discussion on one or the other.

I feel like this depends alot on the long term goal and if TR is going to be the main aspect when it comes to retaining players. I got bored of it but I see it as a very viable and fun gaming experience for alot of players even over long term (I enjoyed it for years). Which leads me to think that adding a new difficulty across the board will be better in this case. On top of offering something more to those who prefer the level 1-20 part of the game, it also opens up a progression system through difficulty for many more people in those level range.

On the other end, injecting difficulty at one point creates a gap within the same difficulty (ie: EEs level 32s would be much harder than 30s) and this could be frustrating to those who are pushed back one notch. I don't think it's a good reason enought to hold up on the idea but it's definately a thing to consider I guess. An overused idea is simply to provide an "harder than intented" difficulty and then tone it down a little bit according to feedback, while letting the powergamers have their fun the first days/weeks. They'll scream nerf but if communicated the right way, it's better than nothing... on the short term. Without those cons though, it would still be nice. (On rewards: there's less to think about with this method)


Personally, I see so much more benefits to adding a new difficulty across the board since it will affect a much bigger % of our gaming time which I am sure you know, is well divided over the course of a year (TR/ETR/Eventually End game). For those interrested in it. Then there's the progression that comes with it which is nice over time. This also will not, imo, chase people off the difficulty they were used to running before.


Obviously this is just an opinion without taking the rewards issues into account.

[Silverleafeon]

To be clear, my earlier post was directly in response to whether or not new difficulty should be end game only or across all existing quests. That's a topic of discussion in of itself, as there doesn't appear to be a player consensus (even just in this thread).

There seemed to be some responses that seem to think I was saying greater difficultly shouldn't be available across all existing quests, or that it should be across all existing quests. Rather, it would be nice to see discussion on the merits of each approach (and to a lesser extent novel ideas on how to implement either one) than just shut down discussion on one or the other.

Let us talk about this for a minute, because there is a loophole and a big one.


Once upon a time when a group of three TR buddies all had an old style Otto's Box. It required min level 8 to use. So, while we were leveling up, banking level seven trying to reach level eight, we decided to try doing Von 1 Heroic Elite. We put up lfms while we grouped and took whoever (the leader would occassionly boot people who complain/impolite/slowed the party down by refusing to finish out quickly).

So in we go Von 1 Heroic Elite Shortman (level 6 in level 10 quest) and it was a disaster.



Once upon a time, a group of Iconic also decided to group up and do Von 1 Heroic Elite, but this time way over level taking the 75% xp penalty.

So in we go Von 1 Heroic Elite several people (level 15 in level 10 quest) and it was a cake walk.



What am I trying to say?

Quests that are not at level cap can be approached by over and under leveled toons, allowing the players to adjust their challenge difficulties. Since typically (with the exception of a few places), higher level quests award better xp, the reward for pursuing difficulties exists already as well the the ability to adjust difficulty.


However, end game will mostly be approached by level 30 toons, who will over time be granted masterful craftmanship loot. As such I feel there is a huge efficiency by taking Varg philosophy on special treatment for end game. Given that 4th edition capped at level 30, there is strong reasoning to assume that may very well be the final level cap, with future power granted by increases in Epic Destiny levels (to 10?) and mastercraftmanship loot.

[Azarddoze]

Self entitled insanity... the game literally can not have a challenging mode or an EE only reward because the setting that is intended to be the most challenging (and logically should also be the most rewarding) has become somehow in the space of about 6 months, EXPECTED by vocal contingent on the forums to be completable by average skill moderately geared up players, and they insist that this setting NOT have the best rewards.

The opposite of how game theory and game design works... No risk = high reward... Makes no sense in any rational world.

A new Difficulty setting just creates a new stratification of the player base and LFM's that fill slower FOR EVERYONE, what is needed is for Turbine to sack up and just tell the players straight away: you don't have a right to run EE setting with average skill and builds, and you don't have the right to deprive higher skill levels and build optimizations a setting that can challenge them. This devalues the whole point of ETR'ing and TR'ing and getting gear... It breaks the fundamental gaming equation the skinners box that keeps people wanting to improve/progress and continue to do so.

Like a parent dealing with a spoiled child Turbine needs to sack up and tell them they can't allow them to keep getting their way and ruining it for others.

Risk = Reward, if you don't like this you aren't a gamer.

It is laughable that there are people willing to ask for let alone DEMAND that Turbine rewards less risk the same as more risk. It's amazing that these people aren't embarrassed or at least self conscious asking for Turbine to PANDER to the lowest common denominator.

True.

But you can't neglect trends as they are what your customers do / expect. Most of my posts aim mostly at offering that one vision of how online gaming (and MMOs) is fun when on top of the social aspect, you've got something to work toward. Both yourself and your characters. And that is true for casuals, noobs, in-betweeners, pro gamers, ect.... Not being able to beat something simply means more time to enjoy the progression side of the game imo.

A lot of overall fun is being lost because of greed and people not letting it go on parts of the game they don't even care about. All kind of players.

[Uska]

Implement hardcore with no Rez shrines or bind points for characters going this route if someone in the group can't raise you your gone.

[luvirini]

~ The problem with making Epic Elite have more relative difficulty, even for new content, is the gaps between difficulties become larger and more players can fall into a situation where the previous difficulty is too easy but the next one up is too hard. On the other hand new levels of difficulty can cause the potential players grouping to fracture even more. We understand this. These conundrums are what keep us awake at night when we should be sleeping.

The problem today is not the people falling between difficulties, but the people who find the hardest difficulty too easy. Having a harder difficulty you can strive to conquer and fail at times is preferable to being bored with too easy time at highest difficulty.

Today with the armor up changes that is the situation in most epic content and by a large factor in heroic.

[IronClan]

No. As I said in the mother thread, these theoretical Killer Dungeons should provide no additional reward besides bragging rights

Explain why harder content that has more risk (more chance of failing) should not offer more reward or incentive in some fashion?

I am really curious how people justify this backwards notion, if they can justify it at all.

Definitely seems to be a byproduct of the public school systems insistence on deluding the newer generations into believing that just participating deserves the same reward as excelling at something does. Ribbons for last place...

[arkonas]

Sev, I wanted to respond to this thought in particular because I have seen it brought up several times and I very much disagree. Hear me out. Certainly content gets easier when it is memorized, but -

What you're stating here can only be true if the player is running in the same group at all times. However, most players PUG or play with different people all the time. Therefore the party members themselves can serve as the random factor that causes content to be challenging even if it has been memorized.

Also, players make mistakes. We're human. Making content more difficult through increased mob damage means the margin of error for the player is much smaller. Back when cap was 20 I had run the shroud hundreds of times, but Harry still killed me every so often. I died because of human error - maybe I didn't heal myself in time, maybe I hit the blades, maybe I accidently let too many mobs surround me, maybe I hit the wrong button on my keyboard, maybe I was slow in getting out of the way of that meteor swarm, ect.

On elite before destinies when cap was 20, shroud was still very difficult and had a high failure chance even with a group of players who all had the raid memorized. And that failure chance existed because the margin of error was much smaller due to the increased threats in the dungeon.

So just because you have the dungeon memorized doesn't mean the content is trivialized. The presence of human error will cause difficult content to be a challenge even when it's been memorized. It will still be challenging because it can require you to play close to flawlessly to not fail. As opposed to lower difficulties where you can make tons of mistakes and not get killed.

I just don't want you guys to give up on making content very difficult just because you think it won't be challenging even after we memorize it. Believe me, that's not true.

this guy nailed it big time. does anyone remember before menace came out how epics were very hard. yes you could still do quests if you worked your way through. you didn't need to have the ideal party or wait for 6. we never did. tod, shroud, vod, chrono, von 5-6, adq, hound. ALL of it was hard to us. we had to work our butt off to get it to work. when we did even if there was deaths we felt great. it was so awesome to complete those raids and hard quests. this is what i want from ddo or any game. that feeling that you could go in and complete with your head held high. people were still able to level to 20. there were training epics like carnival that would lead you into the harder epics like sands which was brutal or ee devils.

of course things will get easier as we get gear past lives etc but if we can ever get that feeling we had with cap was 20 you will have happy customers everywhere. does anyone disagree with me?