Upcoming Experience Changes

[FranOhmsford]

it was meant as a tong in cheek comment,
If all the quest gave the same exp of a first time elite BB streak regardless of level&difficulty then everybody would group for normal again.
and the "the game isn't hard enough" crowd would still have their elite.

all meant as a joke ofc

Normal is vastly easier than Elite!

Heck since Champions Normal is vastly easier than Hard!

Why would anyone group for Normal when they could simply solo it without ever taking any dmg?

Giving Normal the same XP as Elite would have more people running Normal yes but those people would be running it solo and groups would still be Elite only!

Oh and Hard simply wouldn't get run ever as there'd be no point running Hard - If you want the higher chance at loot you run Elite.

{The above is for Heroics - Epic dynamics are quite different!}.

[donblas]

I do like the idea that the first time you play a quest with a toon on whatever level might attract a substantial bonus. It would certainly give me an incentive to run content I bypass at the moment in favour of running other quests multiple times. It may even give me an appreciation of those quests I rarely run ATM.

I concur that it is difficult to keep a group together for some long chains, and I also have a slight problem where the chain has quests of different levels, so the difficulty changes or the XP dynamic between quest level and toon level might change. It seems odd that these chains appear to have a setting where you are suppose to do the quests quickly in game time but your toon won't gain levels three or so times during the chain. Although I suppose it does make the chain build in difficulty until you get to the big boss at the end of the last quest.

[Robai]

A lot of players like tracking the bravery streak count so we wouldn't want to remove it entirely.

Sev~

Similarly a lot of players like tracking raid completions count and wouldn't want it to be reset on TR.
Just saying.

[EllisDee37]

Not sure if players can see this but:

What I see as the sum total of your many, many recent posts in this thread is that your vision for fixing bravery amounts to an incoherent jumbled mess. Not so much the ideas themselves, but how the practical application of them in-game would be. In fairness, the current bravery system is an esoteric confusion, so degrading that into a jumbled mess isn't all that far to fall.

I'd much prefer they move in the opposite direction, toward a simpler, more elegant solution. Adding a clunky mechanic on top of a clunky mechanic is almost never the right way to go. And running to an NPC between quests is about as clunky as clunky gets regardless how many there are sprinkled around the various public areas.

[Silverleafeon]

similarly a lot of players like tracking raid completions count and wouldn't want it to be reset on tr.
Just saying.

lol, +1

[UurlockYgmeov]

A lot of players like tracking the bravery streak count so we wouldn't want to remove it entirely.

Sev~

I like tracking it.


Hall of Heroes


Guild Ship (Kraken IIRC)


Current dialog (simple, clean and to the point)

[EllisDee37]

Current dialog (simple, clean and to the point)

Super annoying and cumbersome to anyone not in a guild.

[Silverleafeon]

Not a gold dragon, still its a marshal and its a bell ringer...hmm...not bad, shall I start a random rumor that the next class will be marshal



by the way, before a Planeswalker did some time traveling to change history, he used to look like this:

[UurlockYgmeov]

Super annoying and cumbersome to anyone not in a guild.

there is another (twin brother it seems) in the Hall of Heroes. How is the cumbersome to anyone not in a guild?

[Silverleafeon]

there is another (twin brother it seems) in the Hall of Heroes.

Nice, its a big place.

How is the cumbersome to anyone not in a guild?

I have met a few "I don't want to belong to any guild!" players over the years.

Rather durable bunch, quite determined to do what they want to do.
I doubt any of them would be ruffled by a extra loading screen.

After all, they tackle quests sans ship buffs and love it.


Some of them form their own guild in time and build it up from scratch.

[cru121]

IMHO, pausing Bravery Bonus should have a Mysterious Remnants cost. For example, 3 * character level.

Or maybe unpausing should have cost - that would allow pausing at epics, then TR, then unpausing cheaply.

[Equatis]

It'd be really nice if you guys would seriously make an effort to have more free-form "chainless" quests and so forth in future updates. None of this "you must have done the other quests to do this one" stuff. Flagging for raids is okay, but don't make us have to do several quests to flag for another quest--it's hard to keep a group together for an entire chain. Too many people leave after one quest and then if anybody joins they probably won't be flagged for the last one so they have to drop out. Unfair..

I seldom worry about XP personally, to me the game is all about having fun and playing with friends, I've often joined a group running a chain in progress and had to red box the final quest in order to keep in the party, not getting the final quest end reward. A possible suggestion, could each quest in a chain be worth say a possible percentage XP bonus towards completion of the entire chain? This bonus being offered in the final quest for having faithfully completed all previous quests in the chain. So that by completing quests A, B, & C before running Quest D you'd get quest D XP with a % bonus for A,B,& C. It wouldn't have to be a big percentage reward, just a little extra XP for having completed the entire chain so that if I join a group of friends with a chain already in progress, I could complete the remaining quests in the chain, and receive the quest XP & end reward for quests completed, but If I had completed all of them in the proper order I would receive an XP bonus in the final quest for having done so. Therefore not having to red box the final quest in the chain just because I hadn't completed a previous chain quest. This wouldn't hurt Saga rewards since completion of a quest whether you red box it or not still counts towards a Saga completion anyway.

[PsychoBlonde]

That penalty is there to stop people from catching the coattails of quests to gain FREE XP!

Honestly in quests that take longer than 10 mins it's pretty common for people to still be doing this even with the -80% penalty and dropping said penalty would be a big mistake!

Why? Everybody accidentally pikes some FREE XP from time to time. There's no value to the *penalty*. Every mechanic they've ever put in to try and prevent people from grabbing FREE XP just makes the game super-annoying. Gather mechanics, lockouts, late-joiner penalties, pfaugh. If people are being dead weight and you object to it, boot them from the group. It's not like they're actively griefing your XP by going AFK in a quest with a gather mechanic and making you do the whole thing over again because you can't finish it with them sitting there like a lump.

[PsychoBlonde]

I seldom worry about XP personally, to me the game is all about having fun and playing with friends, I've often joined a group running a chain in progress and had to red box the final quest in order to keep in the party, not getting the final quest end reward. A possible suggestion, could each quest in a chain be worth say a possible percentage XP bonus towards completion of the entire chain? This bonus being offered in the final quest for having faithfully completed all previous quests in the chain. So that by completing quests A, B, & C before running Quest D you'd get quest D XP with a % bonus for A,B,& C. It wouldn't have to be a big percentage reward, just a little extra XP for having completed the entire chain so that if I join a group of friends with a chain already in progress, I could complete the remaining quests in the chain, and receive the quest XP & end reward for quests completed, but If I had completed all of them in the proper order I would receive an XP bonus in the final quest for having done so. Therefore not having to red box the final quest in the chain just because I hadn't completed a previous chain quest. This wouldn't hurt Saga rewards since completion of a quest whether you red box it or not still counts towards a Saga completion anyway.

This is actually what Sagas were supposed to be for in the first place--to give people a bonus reward for doing The Whole Enchilada so they wouldn't just farm That One Quest ten thousand times. And it worked, too, at least with my guild--people run chains now instead of just The One Quest. Even for chains with no saga attached, weirdly enough.

It's generally not necessary to encourage people too much to do stuff. You just need to stop inadvertently DISCOURAGING them in most cases.

[General_Gronker]

IMHO, pausing Bravery Bonus should have a Mysterious Remnants cost.

Why? If you're going to throw out a horrible idea, you should at least explain your reasoning.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

I like tracking it.


Hall of Heroes


Guild Ship (Kraken IIRC)


Current dialog (simple, clean and to the point)

...and typoed. I hope that gets fixed, though I'm not gonna hold my breath. I'm still picking up an planar shard *g*

I do like the simple dialogue, and not needing to click through a couple of pages (Legacy crew, I'm lookin' at YOU! Just shaddap and give me the buff!) (...In this case, a confirmation dialogue is much appreciated...)

[knockcocker]

there is another (twin brother it seems) in the Hall of Heroes. How is the cumbersome to anyone not in a guild?

It's a cumbersome mechanic full stop. If they are going to persist with the BB mechanic as it is, it would have made a lotmore sense to put this toggle in the quest entry dialogue box.

[Silverleafeon]

Power-leveling penalty: (individual) If you are exactly 4 levels below the highest-level character in the party, you receive a -50% penalty. If you are 5 levels below, you receive a -75% penalty. If you are 6 levels below, you receive a -99% penalty. If you are 7 or more levels below, you receive no XP regardless of bonuses. Characters that are level 20 or higher do not receive a power-level penalty, even when grouped with level 28 characters (verified: level 20 had no penalty with a 28 in quest).


into thus

Power-leveling penalty: (individual) If you are 5 levels below, you receive a -75% penalty. If you are 6 levels below, you receive a -99% penalty. If you are 7 or more levels below, you receive no XP regardless of bonuses. Characters that are level 20 or higher do not receive a power-level penalty, even when grouped with level 28 characters (verified: level 20 had no penalty with a 28 in quest).



I feel that will increase grouping a great deal with very little change to coding or abuse in all levels of difficulty.

[Blastyswa]

Personally, I don't think many of these changes really matter much, or should change anything. However, I can see how the BB change will get some of the super bravery bonus folks to play other difficulties. I drop my bravery bonus half the time in epic levels joining raids first time that life on EN or EH, and never really care because I'm losing +50% of base xp. Using Epic Elite Jungle of Khyber as an example (Yes most people don't run this for BB, its just an example, get over it) +50% xp is 12,392, which after being affected by a voice of the master type effect and guild ship bonus, comes out to around 13,662 xp. From level 20-21, the easiest length between two epic levels, thats about 4-5% of the required xp, or one more run of basically any quest.

I regularly open my groups up for PUGs, typically in a zerging mindset, and accept pikers and people who help. I never get annoyed when people die in quests (With the exception of the ones that then rage after it happens, especially in The Snitch) because the xp loss is negligible. People tend to forget that +10% is not (basexp*1.25 conquest*1.3 ingenious*1.15 Ransack*1.8 First Time*1.5 Bravery Bonus*1.1 Persistence)*1.1 Flawless, which would actually be a noticeable amount. Instead, its (Basexp*1.1 Flawless)+(Basexp*each other bonus separately)-(Basexp*each other bonus separately). So xp loss from a death is only 2732 xp with the same guild ship and voice bonuses.
(Warning, Math)
(24784*1.25)+(24784*1.30)+(24784*1.15)+(24784*1.1) +(24784*1.5)+(24784*1.8)-(24784*5)+5% Voice, +5% Guild Ship= 100,139 xp from a first time Bravery Bonus run on EE Jungle Of Khyber, with lucky trap spawns, not including optional experience, and without bravery bonus, versus 102,871 xp with the flawless bonus. My math is a tad bit clunky with the subtraction, but that's doesn't change its veracity, simply its appearance.

Flawless has never mattered much, and players who used it as an excuse not to group will continue to not group, just without excuses this time. However, I do think that the events are a good way to go, and with the proper amount of xp bonus, should certainly see more PUGs springing up, although my one concern is that a lot of these groups will bear the mark of "Need 3 pikers for weekend xp".

No opinion on hires, whatsoever. I didn't even realize they had penalties associated with them dying, I usually kick them after they pull the last lever.

[Sunnie]

Based on player feedback we are implementing some experience changes.

~ The Flawless bonus to experience now only counts your character's deaths instead of the entire party. This means if you invite someone less familiar with the content to your group and they die you won't lose your XP bonus unless you also die.

This is good.

~ Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty.

This is great.

~ There is now an NPC in the Hall of Heroes that will suppress your Bravery Streak and associated bonuses. While suppressed you can go off and do content on lower difficulties without ruining your streak. This allows you to group with friends, or join pick up groups, or even do new content on lower difficulty settings without ruining your bravery streak. Note that while suppressed bravery streaks are not ended, but you don't get associated bravery bonuses.

This is pretty neat. During heroics I can see myself using it to help out a new player or guildie who died while soloing hard or similar. But I'd probably use it more for epic levels so I can run content on hard without worrying about breaking that streak. (Yes, I find soloing elite is more trouble than it's worth.) It's a step in the right direction, the second step would be to get rid of the bravery streak altogether and adjust the first time bonuses as needed.
Consider adding the Hall of Heroes (Eberron) as a destination to the teleport spell, though, to make it easier to get there.

We also have some special events coming up to reward grouping.

~ We are working on an additional DDO bonus days event that will award a percentage bonus on completion XP for each additional person in your dungeon group. This will not affect raids.

~ We are working on an additional DDO bonus days event that will award a percentage bonus on completion XP for each additional person in your raid group. This will not affect dungeons.

Sev~

Sounds like fun, hope it doesn't break anything. *knocks on wood*