Upcoming Experience Changes

[Steve_Howe]

I think the experience changes will have a net positive effect.

They just should have been done sooner.

Thanks.

[davmuzl]

How do you make elite give exactly or even approximately the same xp/min as normal when there's so many different playstyles, gear set-ups, Builds and yes even skillsets in the game?

Who do you base it on? The Completionist Zerger who blasts through quests doing the minimal possible?
Or the 1st Life Flower Sniffer who takes 90 mins to run Heroic Wizard King?
Or somewhere in between but where in between?

If Elite gives the same XP/Min as normal and normal is 10x easier than Elite what incentive is there to run Elite?
If other incentives are given to Elite {Favour, Loot etc.} then what incentive is there to run anything other than Elite?

The idea of having difficulty levels is to give players the option to choose the level that fits their playstyle and gear/skill level.
It is balanced around what is the most efficient way to run the quests, because that is what the majority of players are going to do.

Btw... Why not just move the xp bonus from the streak bonus to the bravery bonus? It's basically the same thing just without having to run to an NPC.

[jakeelala]

This is a consistent position for many people who dislike bravery, but it's missing a large part of what bravery is about.

Bravery doesn't just encourage people to run elite, it encourages people to run many different quests. The aspect where it gets people to run unpopular quests is generally ignored by the detractors, and I note that your example focuses on WizKing, a hugely popular quest. Bravery isn't about WizKing. Bravery is about sorrowdusk, threnal, restless isles, and all the content that would go dark without the streak bonus.

The streak mechanic isn't inherently good, though. I'd much prefer scrapping bravery and switching to a "first run" bonus where the first time you run a quest, the difficulty-based first time bonus gets doubled. (Drop elite first time from 80% to 75% to match the 150% bravery we currently get on live.) This preserves the incentive to run a variety of content while removing the limited level range and worries about breaking streaks.

EllisDee for Dev!

[EllisDee37]

so i am level 18 say and i have bb on and am planning on running let sleeping dust lie (a traditional bb killer for me as i hate it but want to run shroud) i allow a lvl 19 guildy to join who has there bb shut off...... i still lose bb? this does make sense as it would be power leveling penalty

That's not power leveling. Power leveling is when a really high level character groups with a much lower level character. It isn't related to the quest level at all.

In the hypothetical you lay out, neither of you need to suppress your bravery because it is already suppressed automatically by virtue of a 19 being in the party. No streaks are broken, no harm no foul, right now on live when a 19 is in a party running a level 16 quest. You all get the message "You are not eligible for bravery in this run" in your xp report.

witch results in me turning my bb off and running it on normal with an all welcome 14----28 lfm on an aoe/cleave build and just running a super quick solo normal run on a cc or single target wiz/sorc assassin that can control where there dps goes to single targets....

That would be powerleveling. The 14s would get no XP. Also note that in this example as well as your first, if you do this right now on live, bravery is suppressed and nobody has their streak broken.

[Arcanoid]

Ever time you died, you lost more and more XP... no wonder that first grind to Level 10 took 6 months

How far we have come.

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~

[JOTMON]

That's not power leveling. Power leveling is when a really high level character groups with a much lower level character. It isn't related to the quest level at all.

In the hypothetical you lay out, neither of you need to suppress your bravery because it is already suppressed automatically by virtue of a 19 being in the party. No streaks are broken, no harm no foul, right now on live when a 19 is in a party running a level 16 quest. You all get the message "You are not eligible for bravery in this run" in your xp report.

That would be powerleveling. The 14s would get no XP. Also note that in this example as well as your first, if you do this right now on live, bravery is suppressed and nobody has their streak broken.

I most commonly see power levelling in the Shroud raid on Elite
almost daily I see... LFM : 16-28 Elite shroud..
So sad to see Shroud being power level run when it used to actually be challenging to run when it was endgame.
New players are missing out on the true challenge of earning and building shroud gear.
How much of a grind it was.. there was no raid bypasses.. people would regularly exit before completing to avoid the timer and miss out on the end chest to farm shards/lower level ingredients.
almost makes me wish that raids would lock out over level players.. then it would be Shroud.. Max level 18... but this would probably hurt the levelling process and raiding in general.

[EllisDee37]

I most commonly see power levelling in the Shroud raid on Elite
almost daily I see... LFM : 16-28 Elite shroud..
So sad to see Shroud being power level run when it used to actually be challenging to run when it was endgame.
New players are missing out on the true challenge of earning and building shroud gear.
How much of a grind it was.. there was no raid bypasses.. people would regularly exit before completing to avoid the timer and miss out on the end chest to farm shards/lower level ingredients.
almost makes me wish that raids would lock out over level players.. then it would be Shroud.. Max level 18... but this would probably hurt the levelling process and raiding in general.

I very much miss the days when I could count on getting xp from Shroud.

[Hafeal]

I just wanted to throw a huge shout out to Sev for his on-going contributions in this thread.

For a guy who was internet rumored (intermured?) to have been fired a couple of days ago, nice to see you employed and well. Or maybe you were close enough to a shrine to res? Either way, thank you.

[der_kluge]

so i am level 18 say and i have bb on and am planning on running let sleeping dust lie (a traditional bb killer for me as i hate it but want to run shroud) i allow a lvl 19 guildy to join who has there bb shut off...... i still lose bb? this does make sense as it would be power leveling penalty

The 19 wouldn't be getting BB from Sleeping Dust anyway, and I would think the normal rules would apply - if a 19 joined a level 18 (on elite) quest, you wouldn't qualify for BB anyway. So, it wouldn't change anything.

witch results in me turning my bb off and running it on normal with an all welcome 14----28 lfm on an aoe/cleave build and just running a super quick solo normal run on a cc or single target wiz/sorc assassin that can control where there dps goes to single targets....

If you opened it up a "flagging only, 14-28" you wouldn't qualify for BB anyway (Assuming someone 19+ joined) since the first rule applies. You wouldn't need to turn off your streak for this - but would if the party filled with all of 18th level or less characters.

is great change but unless it does actually expand some of the power leveling penalty as you level up more for sure not quite like epics but maybe 4 levels over 10-20 range idk might be alot of work but and confuse some players about who they can let in there group especially if it scaled with leveling

That's a broader topic, and probably should be relevant to raids, I agree.

[ilhares]

I most commonly see power levelling in the Shroud raid on Elite
almost daily I see... LFM : 16-28 Elite shroud..
So sad to see Shroud being power level run when it used to actually be challenging to run when it was endgame.

I think you're mixing up some terminology here. Power levelling is when somebody who is greatly over-level assists the smaller ones - for the purpose of being levelled. That isn't what's happening here. There's ZERO XP in a shroud run with the high level guys. That isn't power levelling. That's epic level guys helping stomp out the content because everybody needs the ingredients/completions to finish making their GS items.

The PL penalty is applied, sure, but that was never the intent when it comes to the Shroud. Every so often (on Cannith, at least) I find regular old XP style runs in there, if they can get enough people in the right level range who are flagged.

[Gondandur]

It is true that tying the group bonus to an event gives us the ability to monitor and moderate the bonus, but we think people will dig it. Part of this change allows us to have some nice "raid weekends"; it's a good bonus and system to have. Having it on an event also gives us a bit more wiggle room on the - amount - of the bonus.

If we were to see dramatic changes in grouping behavior, it's clearly something we'd look at. Our hope is that these changes have a beneficial impact, and address some long-standing concerns raised by near-everyone over the years. This will not be on the first deployment to Lamannia, but our hope is to get some of these changes out for public previewing soon-ish. Thanks for the great feedback so far!

I like the idea of raid weekends but i would suggest to the dev-team to add also +x to loot per raid member, some people do raid at cap level and fully capped on ED too so they wouldn't find actractive the mere xp bonus.

About grouping, in my opinion the true problem is that in the last years we have lost the spirit of having a balanced party, few people care to do quests having a tank, a healer, a dps and a support character. All that really count is dps (saddly) and evasion.

[JOTMON]

I think you're mixing up some terminology here. Power levelling is when somebody who is greatly over-level assists the smaller ones - for the purpose of being levelled. That isn't what's happening here. There's ZERO XP in a shroud run with the high level guys. That isn't power levelling. That's epic level guys helping stomp out the content because everybody needs the ingredients/completions to finish making their GS items.

The PL penalty is applied, sure, but that was never the intent when it comes to the Shroud. Every so often (on Cannith, at least) I find regular old XP style runs in there, if they can get enough people in the right level range who are flagged.

True the exactness of "power level" may not have been adhered to... but the end result is an advantage.. just not direct xp..
players are being overlevel assisted through shroud to get ingredients to craft items well before they would have been able to otherwise.
XP is earned later as a result of the advantage gained by having crafted gear. It may not be a direct xp from shroud benefit..but there is an advantage given.

Technically.. DDO gives XP negatives for over level players which negated the benefit of the so-called power levelling.

[Gabrael]

if the BB system get a toggle, It basically mean that nothing will ever break the streak, unless you mess it up on purpose or by distraction.
Might as well remove the ability the break streak period.

[IronClan]

If we were to see dramatic changes in grouping behavior

Here's the thing I think I alluded to in my first post You may see:
No one uses this feature very much, and conclude: no one is really interested in removing BB

Where it could actually be:
No one uses this feature very much, and conclude: because it's a pain in the a** to use the feature and it's hidden away where new players can't even get to it.

In any event the real harm in BB is the mindset of "we must do Elite at all times and never anything less"

This mindset causes people to never join Hard or Normal LFM's in heroic which means new players who start an LFM on anything less than Elite will get no joiners, now with this change the odd veteran who feels charitable might occasionally join the new players LFM. Well I mean he's already taking an XP hit and if he runs off to the Hall and jumps through a hoop he wont break streak, so theoretically he might once in a blue moon do that.

However that Mindset and the Elite XP bonus also causes LFM starters to always make Elite LFM's never any Hard or Normal, it causes them to make the level range Quest level +2 never less and never more. This change does nothing to mitigate or mollify that, it doesn't make it more flexible AND it requires jumping through a hoop besides.

Example: now a Vet can start a level 10 quest LFM with a 9 to 13 range... but he wont because anyone joining will have to run off and suppress their BB.
Example: now a new player can start a Normal LFM and have more than a 0.0% chance of someone joining, but because this would require a veteran to go surpress his streak (jump through a hoop) it's still almost hopeless.

So it will be very seldom used and it wont solve the problem. I see this Most often used by established friends who want to run with each other but are enough levels apart that they would break one of their streaks... I can see it used occasionally when someone wants to run a level 10 quest (to finish it's arc or get flagged say) when he's accidentally leveled to 13 without realizing he still hadn't run it.

That's some really niche uses for something that will take developer time to implement. Don't get me wrong those are legit uses and positives... but it's not enough IMO.

Here's how to really fix this:

keep the "first time on this setting bonus" and "quest XP ransack" as these actually do 100% of the good work of BB but with none of it's binary on or off nature.
make Elite actually Elite and not the default setting
make Hard actually hard
Remove BB from the game
Rebalance XP in heroics so that the incentive to run Elite is higher XP (per longer time spent to get it) and loot drop chances but not using the rigid and binary BB mechanic.

Watch as new players suddenly have no problem getting someone to join their Hard or Normal LFM (like it was before this dreadful social engineering mistake was implemented) because there's no hoops to jump through and no precious BB streak meaningless number to maintain and perhaps see new players stick with DDO because it doesn't feel like a game that's trying to force them do Elite content when they are totally unprepared for that.

[dunklezhan]

The population time has to take up extra time at some point. Whatever we do, we want the player to be able to control when that extra time takes place instead of adding it to login time like it used to.

Can you look into making it populate the first time the social panel is opened in a session, rather than players having to go manually do it? Or putting a refresh button on the grouping panel would be absolutely fine.

[Thar]

I don't think we want to encourage players to run under level to farm Remnants. They are designed as a small additional perk of running harder content.

Isn't the fact that remnants will not drop if you have a higher level character make the kill a disincentive to grouping with other higher lvl epic players?

And the champion boost kills a lvl 28 as easily as a 22. 400-600 pt hits don't care about level. Nothing about champions is easier on epics if your 22 or 28.

[knockcocker]

This is a consistent position for many people who dislike bravery, but it's missing a large part of what bravery is about.

Bravery doesn't just encourage people to run elite, it encourages people to run many different quests. The aspect where it gets people to run unpopular quests is generally ignored by the detractors, and I note that your example focuses on WizKing, a hugely popular quest. Bravery isn't about WizKing. Bravery is about sorrowdusk, threnal, restless isles, and all the content that would go dark without the streak bonus.

The streak mechanic isn't inherently good, though. I'd much prefer scrapping bravery and switching to a "first run" bonus where the first time you run a quest, the difficulty-based first time bonus gets doubled. (Drop elite first time from 80% to 75% to match the 150% bravery we currently get on live.) This preserves the incentive to run a variety of content while removing the limited level range and worries about breaking streaks.

Agree with this (again) - this seems a whole lot simpler than patching on another convoluted mechanism onto
an already convoluted mechanism. Moreover, it's a lot more casual and new player friendly.

[IronClan]

if the BB system get a toggle, It basically mean that nothing will ever break the streak, unless you mess it up on purpose or by distraction.
Might as well remove the ability the break streak period.

Decrementing it by one automatically solves this problem BTW (cap it as 5 and decrement by one when you "break streak" you can then get it back the next time you run Elite, or you can break it again and decrement it by two and need to do 2 elites in a row to get it back.

This solution has been suggested and resuggested so many times I have NO CLUE who first suggested it but it's the clear winner, it requires no hoops jumped through, it gives minor punishment for breaking streak that is not enough to keep someone from breaking streak when they want to run someone's non BB group, yet is enough to want to run some Elite again to get it back. Finally it removes that "I have collected 1000 meaningless digits in my Elite streak report that does nothing, no one can see and has nothing but negative connotations (it means you're rigidly unwilling to help fill non BB LFM's)...

All of the good things BB did for the game are better accomplished by First run on difficulty setting bonus and XP ransack... BB is just damaging the game and doing nothing positive right now...

This is a consistent position for many people who dislike bravery, but it's missing a large part of what bravery is about.

Bravery doesn't just encourage people to run elite, it encourages people to run many different quests. The aspect where it gets people to run unpopular quests is generally ignored by the detractors, and I note that your example focuses on WizKing, a hugely popular quest. Bravery isn't about WizKing. Bravery is about sorrowdusk, threnal, restless isles, and all the content that would go dark without the streak bonus.

The streak mechanic isn't inherently good, though. I'd much prefer scrapping bravery and switching to a "first run" bonus where the first time you run a quest, the difficulty-based first time bonus gets doubled. (Drop elite first time from 80% to 75% to match the 150% bravery we currently get on live.) This preserves the incentive to run a variety of content while removing the limited level range and worries about breaking streaks.

Edit: ^this first run and ransack to mitigate doing the same quests over and over, leaving Bravery bonus doing spit all except enforcing a rigid Elite group selection.

[Xionanx]

if the BB system get a toggle, It basically mean that nothing will ever break the streak, unless you mess it up on purpose or by distraction.
Might as well remove the ability the break streak period.

Exactly!

If I can turn the streak on and off at will, all this will do is add additional time to "getting to a quest" as players will need to run to the NPC to "Turn off their streak"..

Why even have it go down at that point? For the players who are too lazy to both going to turn it off?

[Ailia]

Exactly!

If I can turn the streak on and off at will, all this will do is add additional time to "getting to a quest" as players will need to run to the NPC to "Turn off their streak"..

Why even have it go down at that point? For the players who are too lazy to both going to turn it off?

At this point, as said, the only way to loose your streak with these changes is lazyness or forgetfulness.

What gameplay purpose do these changes even serve other than wasting time before quests like old ship buffs did?

If you want to streamline the system, just remove bravery and add to the first time bonus.