Upcoming Experience Changes

[Lonnbeimnech]

You shouldn't need a 'bonus' to be a good teammate.

You shouldn't need an 'incentive' to buff and heal.

Being in a group attempting to achieve a goal has the inherent responsibility that you will do what you need to do for the group.

I strongly disagree with your assessment that the change is 'dumb' and I certainly find nothing in your logic that supports keeping the status quo - in fact - if anything, it strengthens my view of how needed this change is.

But am I a good team mate for bringing enough deathward potions for the whole party?

Or are they good teammates for bringing their own pots?

[Tscheuss]

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.

The Flawless bonus was a carrot to encourage teamwork, but certain players began to view it as their due. It was the players that turned a bonus into a penalty and a carrot into a stick. Now the teamwork carrot is being demoted to an individual carrot, and the teamwork carrot is already being missed. lol

[GroundhogDay]

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~

Now this is more like it, job well done.

[Postumus]

But am I a good team mate for bringing enough deathward potions for the whole party?

Or are they good teammates for bringing their own pots?

False dichotomy.

[Saekee]

The Flawless bonus was a carrot to encourage teamwork, but certain players began to view it as their due. It was the players that turned a bonus into a penalty and a carrot into a stick. Now the teamwork carrot is being demoted to an individual carrot, and the teamwork carrot is already being missed. lol

great response!

Nice changes.

1. What is the thought behind limiting the group bonuses to an event instead of full time?

I speculate that they will use this as a testing ground to see what happens. If it is not abused and has positive community effects, then it might occur more often or be made permanent.

/speculate off.

[Ralmeth]

Awesome proposed changes! Looks good to me

[UurlockYgmeov]

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~

There are technical reasons for the bravery suppression to be tied to an NPC.

I brought up concerns with the team about convenience, and we are planning to also add the NPC to guild airships.

Sev~

Ideally he'd be standing top deck next to the buff device.

Sev~

^^^^ for that

Just two things: Kindly add two things to the Character Sheet: A Icon indicating the status of the 'pause/supressed' (Streak: On|OFF) and a tooltip showing the current streak.

[Drevok]

~ 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.

Well... it is better than currently... sort-of...

BUT Flawless should mean FLAWLESS. i.e. You and your group ensured that nobody died.

So I much prefer :
10% Flawless bonus. nobody dies! YAY!
5% Survivor bonus. i.e. somebody dies, but at least it ain't you! And yes, hirelings count!
0% you died...

Survivor bonus... well at least the darn noob that did die lost twice as much as you did!

~ 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.
... I brought up concerns with the team about convenience, and we are planning to also add the NPC to guild airships.

Great change given the constraints! (especially for NPC on airship)

~ 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.

I like this solution better than mine! (which was a flat 5% bonus if have a minimum of 4 people in the party).

[Catteras]

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

The death penalty didn't promote teamwork either. It promoted solo'ing or only running with other elitists. This isn't teamwork. There is no teamwork if you're solo'ing or mad dashing through a quest and each zerger is killing his own cr ap (or invis-running).

This does promote grouping in many different ways, though.

[Qhualor]

The death penalty didn't promote teamwork either. It promoted solo'ing or only running with other elitists. This isn't teamwork. There is no teamwork if you're solo'ing or mad dashing through a quest and each zerger is killing his own cr ap (or invis-running).

This does promote grouping in many different ways, though.

No, it didn't promote teamwork largely. It had a lot more meaning back when we had half as much xp as we can acquire now. What did promote teamwork was when the difficulties were better balanced toward character power. My reference to "another nail" meant one of the remaining reasons to promote teamwork will now be gone. All that is left is player attitude and how helpful they feel like being a team player. This change now will encourage BYOH DDO even more.

[davmuzl]

I'm in the same boat with people who want an incentive to not let others die. It's not even only about healing others but it also means that playing taking aggro is a personal risk only. If someone dies because they were trying to help their party members they shouldn't be penalized.

The one thing I can actually get mad about is when people reenter the quest without mentioning. I've had this happen multiple times where people fall into the lava in von5 and release and reenter. It's completly unnecessary and means that everybody in the party gets 10% xp less.


Looking forward to bonus xp in raids. Hopefully this way people will actually run them at level.

[BoBoDaClown]

I can't believe there are people who heal or buff based on 10% xp... bit sad really. To be fair, I never cared about people dying = -10% anyway, so I'm probably not the target audience for that change.


On the other ideas:

Really good. Obviously a toggle for bravery bonus would be better, but if that's too difficult to implement, makes sense what you are doing.

Not sure why you do the grouping bonus solely for bonus weekends - is it because you are trialing it to see the effect or you are worried about there already being too much xp in the game?

Trialing it definitely makes sense to me, and if it improves grouping I think the life it brings to the game would be more valuable than any cost regarding thoughts of there being too much xp.

Anyway, great ideas and great to see some moving forward.

[Faltout]

~ 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.

Ok, so while the bonus is suppressed, you will not get a bonus.
The question is: When it is unsuppressed, are you able to get the bravery bonus for the quest you did earlier by doing it on elite this time?

I hope that you won't be able to get bravery bonus after doing it on lower difficulty.

And this is the really major change. Noone really cares about the 10% bonus. Do with it what you want.

[Postumus]

My reference to "another nail" meant one of the remaining reasons to promote teamwork will now be gone. All that is left is player attitude and how helpful they feel like being a team player. This change now will encourage BYOH DDO even more.

No one in PUGs is going out of his/her way to keep others alive simply for the 10%. They do it or don't do it because that is how they are wired.


The 10% was only an excuse to be a jerk for players who already were jerks.

Noone really cares about the 10% bonus.

This. Ever since xp tomes, VIP xp bonus, lowering TR total xp, and bazillions of xp pots the +10% has been irrelevant.

[Marten]

Ideally he'd be standing top deck next to the buff device.

Sev~

I applaud these group friendly moves. As to a streak person on the ship, why not add the option to the first mate that is already on the top deck. I thought that part of the point of the ship update was to clear the clutter from the top deck. I can't think of a ship where the first mate is not already close to the lever and frankly I don't want another unmovable Ogre or other vermin on my top deck

Honestly, I think that all Raids should be "streakless." Meaning by default they do not count for or against a streak. This would remove most, "wait for me, I have to hit the streak NPC." But as your current coming changes, this is very welcome.

Now, let us buy ship decks as an option to having to buy a whole new ship I like the look of my older ship, but would love to add 1 or 2 decks to it

[arkonas]

.



When LOTRO did this, suddenly the childish immature chat we affectionately called "Bree chat" went global. It was abominable.

If there is to be a 'global' chat channel, hopefully keep it separate from the current localized chats so we only have to disable one channel to avoid the PvP rabble & such.

now i do hope you will have that option to turn it off. i would love to see the chat at least be like rifts where the higher level you were you could see all of the chats. if they did it level wise. i do turn off my chat as well sometimes because pvp usually brought drama/trolls in games. i've seen enough of that on argo. im fine not to see it constantly as well.

[Frogger70]

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.

Sev~

Just to be clear, do I lose the Flawless bonus only if someone in my party dies and I also die or just if I die?

[sirgog]

Firstly on the no deaths bonus. This is basically irrelevant when elite streaking. The difference between 320% of base XP and 330% is 3.125%.

But a lot of people don't understand it, and think it's the difference between 320% base and 1.1*320 = 352% base. Those people will feel better for the change; me, I will continue not caring.


This change misses the whole point of why grouping is unattractive in DDO, even to people like me that strongly prefer grouping, and that is dungeon scaling. Compared to solo, adding a random player results in mobs and traps doing ~40% more damage, having ~30% more HP, and having better saves. Assuming you are a solid player (i.e. capable of elite streak soloing to 16 or 17 at a decent pace), you need an above average player to make up for the additional difficulty.

If you really want to encourage grouping, remove scaling entirely, then adjust Casual difficulty to be the same as it would be now with only 1 player in the dungeon. Set Normal to be what it would be now with 1 player plus 1 hireling. Hard scale to 3 players, and Elite to 6. Then, if five people want to go and run Waterworks on Normal, let them just stomp it.

Before scaling, adding a known mediocre to bad player always made your group stronger (unless they were actually trolling or sabotaging the run). Post scaling, adding a known mediocre player is usually neutral at best, detrimental at worst.


A final point. Early in DDO voice chat was used in most groups. Now it isn't. Voice makes a huge difference in giving the tips needed to turn a mediocre player into a solid one.

[Rhysem]

~ Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty.

Good. If they were any dumber, they'd be rocks. No, that's not fair to the rocks. The rocks in palace of stone are smarter than that.

~ 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.

This is going to be heavily abused. Please think this through very carefully. Recruiting door pikers, or bringing in mule accounts that just sit idle, etc... It might sell TP to people who just load up 4-5 accounts of pikers to go with their main, but I'm not sure its worth it. It has "Asheron's Call XP Chain" written all over it, with all the negative connotations that conveys.

[Livmo]

Just to be clear, do I lose the Flawless bonus only if someone in my party dies and I also die or just if I die?

~ 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.

It says that you only loose the bonus if you die. If you don't die, then you don't loose the bonus. If you die, you then loose the bonus.