Upcoming Experience Changes

[Severlin]

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.

~ Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty.

~ 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.

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~

[cru121]

Looks like a step in the right direction.

[Saekee]

Sev this is exciting and thx for the post. Will there be bonuses if no one dies in a party/PUG? Something to add incentive to not abandon other players.

[Memnir]

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.

[Severlin]

Sev this is exciting and thx for the post. Will there be bonuses if no one dies in a party/PUG? Something to add incentive to not abandon other players.

The current death penalty was supposed to do that, but from the feedback we received it ended up being more of a disincentive to grouping than a reward for helping people through the quest.

Sev~

[Qhualor]

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.

~ Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty.

~ 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.

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~

1. theres another nail towards less reasons for teamwork in a group.

2. fine with that.

3. glad to see something is being done about this, but annoying having to run back and forth to the Hall to turn on/off BB. hopefully there will be some kind of checkbox or something when clicking on the quest, picking up the quest at the quest giver, in the options section of the panel or something.

4 & 5. there is more than enough xp in this game and its become too much of a focal point now. im saying it now in black and white, people who want to group will group and people who want to solo will solo regardless of the extra xp. we will see more complaints from soloists on this extra xp rewards. I seriously doubt there will be a significant increase in grouping with these changes. the actual problem is still not being addressed.

[Saekee]

The current death penalty was supposed to do that, but from the feedback we received it ended up being more of a disincentive to grouping than a reward for helping people through the quest.

Sev~

Thx for the prompt reply! Note, though, that there are carrots vs sticks. The penalty was a stick to help fellow players and this proposal will remove it. Was just curious if there would be a carrot to aiding them.

In past threads on this topic, this was hotly debated. I anticipate that this theme will come up again.

[btolson]

~ 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.

Sev~

Is there going to be some lengthy timer associated with suppressing and reactivating a streak? If not, I'm uncertain how this differs substantially from simply removing Bravery altogether and upping first time completions on hard/elite by X/Y% to compensate, which would be easier to implement and one less intricacy to teach new players about.

[Forerunner]

all looks good to me

[Saekee]

1. theres another nail towards less reasons for teamwork in a group.

2. fine with that.

3. glad to see something is being done about this, but annoying having to run back and forth to the Hall to turn on/off BB. hopefully there will be some kind of checkbox or something when clicking on the quest, picking up the quest at the quest giver, in the options section of the panel or something.

4 & 5. there is more than enough xp in this game and its become too much of a focal point now. im saying it now in black and white, people who want to group will group and people who want to solo will solo regardless of the extra xp. we will see more complaints from soloists on this extra xp rewards. I seriously doubt there will be a significant increase in grouping with these changes. the actual problem is still not being addressed.

Great points. Note, though, another part of the argument. I think people tend to take the perspective of the person who loses xp when someone else croaks in the party. But let's not forget how awful it feels when You are that one-death in the xp report. I wonder how many people who are new, with flavor toons, off-destiny, undergeared etc avoid groups so as to not be a burden? This has happened in my case, for what it is worth--I've been in situations where I didn't want to burden others so I solo'd.

[jjflanigan]

The current death penalty was supposed to do that, but from the feedback we received it ended up being more of a disincentive to grouping than a reward for helping people through the quest.

Sev~

I always wondered why it was implemented the way it was. A better way (just in my opinion) to have it implemented would be for it to give a bonus at the end of the quest for each person in the group that didn't die. 2% per person would be good. That would encourage running with a full group because, worst case, you get the exact same you would have gotten alone, and best case you could get an extra 10%. Could even do 2% for no deaths, 1% for one death, 0% for more than one deaths from a person.

Makes it so another person's death doesn't penalize the player, and also encourages grouping because you have a greater chance for exp bonuses -- two birds with one stone.

-JJ

[Full_Bleed]

Definite improvements.

~ 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.

As a replacement for "flawless" this is better... but...

I really wish there was something more like a base +10% Survival bonus with a -1% per death so people didn't get reckless after dying. I really think a less all-or-none approach would be more productive in shaping more cooperative and positive behaviors. And, sadly, the above opens the door for griefing.

~ Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty.

~ 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.

Both excellent changes.

Though the suppression would be more convenient as a checkbox at adventure entrance and/or a UI option to auto-suppress breaking streak so people aren't holding groups up running to the hall to suppress or forgetting to unsuppress.

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.

Sounds like fun additions.

[Uska]

Sorry its terrible and more dumbing down, the loss of the bonus was to encourage teamwork. I cant say I care for it at all

[Severlin]

I always wondered why it was implemented the way it was. A better way (just in my opinion) to have it implemented would be for it to give a bonus at the end of the quest for each person in the group that didn't die. 2% per person would be good. That would encourage running with a full group because, worst case, you get the exact same you would have gotten alone, and best case you could get an extra 10%. Could even do 2% for no deaths, 1% for one death, 0% for more than one deaths from a person.

Makes it so another person's death doesn't penalize the player, and also encourages grouping because you have a greater chance for exp bonuses -- two birds with one stone.

-JJ

We didn't do something like this because it would be a nerf to solo XP.

Sev~

[Uska]

Looks like a step in the right direction.

No its not

[Uska]

The current death penalty was supposed to do that, but from the feedback we received it ended up being more of a disincentive to grouping than a reward for helping people through the quest.

Sev~

Now I have less incentive to group myself really. I miss the old days where solo was more difficult d&d is a group game you guys are ruining that more and more.

[Hafeal]

Sev, thanks for the news. IMO, all of these are moves in a good direction to help lfms.

1. theres another nail towards less reasons for teamwork in a group.

Q, the problem, frankly, is that the 'bonus' became perceived as a 'penalty' and a metric to exclude players from groups and a way to lead to conflict when players died. At least now, maybe, some of the TR zergs will put up an lfm and let people ride on their tails whilst they level without worry about their max xp being devalued. After all, solo does not equal teamwork.

In fact, now, teamwork will be tested - will the TR, xp zerger be helpful to the rag tag bunch behind them? Will the rag tag help the zerg when he rolls 1 and goes *ping* dead quite humorously and unexpectedly?

[Tom116]

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.

~ Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty.

~ 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.

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~

This should help out new players a lot, glad to see grouping being encouraged. We need some new blood

One question though, why make the extra xp per person in a quest an event? Seems like a great incentive to group up, maybe just cap it at 1ce per quest per day and don't make it a TON of extra xp. Even something like 4% extra per person, making it +20% at a full 6 man group?

[Angelic-council]

Finally

I been saying this for so long now. It was weird that we lose exp just because someone else died in our party. It's not my fault that I died, so I don't need to lose any exp. This is a positive change. +1

[ValariusK]

The deaths change is a good one. I don't get bent out of shape when I put up a LFM and start a quest, come close to finishing it, have a couple people join right near the end, and have one of them die for -10%. But frankly I'm weird and a lot of people probably do get greatly annoyed by that. You might also consider an additional penalty (perhaps an extra -10%) for 3+ deaths and perhaps another -10% for 10+ deaths.
The deaths change for hirelings is also good, given how stupid hires are behaving right now.
Suppressing bravery bonus as an option will help, but probably more on raids than on basic quests. Any way you could just set bravery streak bonuses to just not break? Or even to have each quest where you would normally 'break' a streak to just decrement each relevant streak count by 5? Visiting an NPC is likely to be clunky for most people in practice who will probably just do it for running MOD/FOT/CITW/thunderholme raids on EN or EH.

Here are another couple of suggestions:
If you set up a LFM, the default is your level -2 to your level +2. This means that default groups are likely to inflict powerlevelling xp penalty on the lowbies in the group. Can we adjust the powerlevel penalty accordingly or change the LFM system? Also, given the nature of the game right now, the person being 'powerlevelled' is often an at least equally contributing member of the team, especially if they're a multiple TR with good gear and a strong build. Any way to make the power level penalty conditional on, well, actually being powerlevelled? Certainly the penalty can be the basic presumption, but some index of healing/trapping/killing/etc might be used to reduce or eliminate said penalty---e.g., if someone is leading the kill counts, providing the full trapping bonus, or providing a lot of timely heals and support, they're probably not really being powerleveled.
Also, can we make it a little quicker to set up a group posting through the LFM system. For instance, a 1-click button to set up a bravery bonus group for the instance I'm presently inside of (hard if I'm in hard, elite if I'm in elite)---you get the idea. Maybe even give me the option to automatically reject any incoming request that would break the bravery bonus (this can be annoying sometimes when I am in the middle of fighting through a quest and you start getting LFG requests popping up and the math isn't right when you add up their levels---especially if I'm kiting things around).