Update 29: Level 30 Overview

[Silverleafeon]

(If you have been quietly preferring the proposed flat "curve", speak up now and be heard.)

I like the Flat curve because its First Edition lore.
Having played thru a lot of old school heroics, I dislike the old death valley of level 18.

However, I consider the compromise made by you folks to approach our suggested 8 million to get level cap much, much, more important.
Thank you for the 8.25, and if you do adjust the curve, please keep within the 8 to 8.25 million range.

Should a great amount of players feel a flat curve is undesirable, I will shrug my shoulders and say, "whatever, no big deal..."

[mikarddo]

I agree with many of the other posters, I don't think the flattened xp curve is a good idea. While there are some arguments seemingly based on logic (why should 20-21 take much less time than 19-20), the game design is that people at all epic levels can enter any epic quest, and in practice you need to get to level 23-25 to be able to use the gear to contribute to the fun, popular, rewarding quests. That's why you see so many people run the same few quests over and over - because they are quick xp, so we can fly through levels 20-24 as fast as possible to get on with the fun stuff.

A potential idea is to flatten out the xp curve after level 25, requiring 1 million xp for levels 26-30, as thus:

Level 21: 300,000 xp
22: 300k + 450k = 750k xp
23: 750k + 600k = 1350k xp
24: 1350k + 750k = 2100k xp
25: 2100k + 900k = 3000k xp
26: 3000k + 1000k = 4000k xp
..
30: 7000k + 1000k = 8000k xp

Which doesn't change things in the early epic levels but flattens things out in the later epic levels.

Thats a very good scheme. No change to the lowest levels and a flat curve at the top end. That very much works.

[Devlinus]

The TR cutoff should be level 28. I've mentioned this in the council with pretty good support and apparently you guys think differently.

Lets explore the reasoning then.

Adding grind for no good reason isn't my idea of a good time...

I would like to add my agreement to this statement. TR cutoff for both Epic Destiny and Iconic should remain at Level 28.

As a player with many varied play styles, I have a lot of characters... one that I am actively working on as my main TR, and several that I always plan to keep single life with a very specific build/theme.

So, when I play the game, I have to choose how I want to spend my time... do I work on my main TR project? or do I work on a themed character concept.

Therefore, I don't have all of the EDs and/or Iconic lives farmed out on my main TR toon.

To now see that each life in the future is going to require somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million extra xp is just not very encouraging. So 'not encouraging' that I just had a heated debate in game with other players while questing when they told me your plans, and then after we finished the quest chain, I came here to the forums to read it for myself, and now offering my opinion and input (which as you can see from my forum post count, I rarely do). But it is just that 'negatively' emotional for me right now.

I hope the developers will re-consider this point before it is implemented.

Thanks for your time,
Devlinus

[FranOhmsford]

Since a couple of people have brought this up:

There is a major downside to this proposal: Players are strongly incentivized to stop playing DDO right now, this instant, because this unfairly rewards XP to those who happen to have stopped getting XP at a particular time/level.

Under this proposal, anyone who has exactly enough XP to gain level 22 should probably stop playing, especially if they think they won't hit level 23 before Update 29 comes out (maybe stop playing today, maybe in a week, etc.), or maybe get some alts up to exactly level 22 (or 21 or 23 or whatever breakpoint you think makes sense). Otherwise they are "wasting their time" because instead of playing they could just wait and get "free XP" for choosing to not play DDO.

While we will probably consider a more gently sloped curve, the same issue is likely to be there in some form. There's really no world in which we want to explicitly reward not playing the game. (Considering it's entirely fair to ask each character to earn the same amount of XP to earn the same levels, ultimately, we're willing to deal with the downsides, which we do recognize as being real downsides.)

1) I think you're exaggerating the effect you're worried about a bit - Lvl 21 and 22 don't take that much time that many people who play more than once a week anyway will simply stop playing that character till the update.
Maybe a few people might leave a character at Lvl 26 knowing that they'll get a big chunk of free xp when the update hits but not at 21 or 22.

2) And exactly what have you got against alts?
I have 28 characters on Cannith, 14 on Sarlona, 7 on Khyber and at least one on every other Server {OK so on some servers that 1 is basically just a placeholder and gold-roller but I have spent significant amounts of time, money and effort on over 75% of my Alts...Many are now 2nd, 3rd and even 4th/5th Lifers! And not just on Cannith either - I have 2 3rd Lifers on Sarlona and 2 2nd Lifers on Khyber!}
If I want to play an alt who's currently at Lvl 10 on her 3rd Life rather than another who's parked at 27 on her 2nd Life with one E-TR already done for a couple weeks why is this a problem?


Thinking about it - The possibility you're worried about COULD be a huge incentive for people to dust off a few alts and play the game MORE!

[firstprotector]

why change the xp curve at all, just add the extra levels to the existing setup. no loss or gain to people playing. as for the TR level i will no longer play a iconic, since it is not worth the time for a reincarnation. i have spoken to my guildies and none are happy with the new planned changes.

[SableShadow]

We're likely going to reconsider just how flat the curve will be

My issue with the flat curve is "shiny time"; I like my shinies, and it doesn't delight me to have to wait longer for my cooler shinies.

I get what you're going for here, less time between 'ding!'s (heck, the entire enhancement system arose out of concern that the time between levels - between dings - was too long).

Just 2cp.

[dunklezhan]

Thanks for the feedback. We're likely going to reconsider just how flat the curve will be, though we do want more than ~24 hours for players to give feedback before we make any firm decisions. (If you have been quietly preferring the proposed flat "curve", speak up now and be heard.)

I am fine with flat curve. Good, even.

DnD 2nd ed went to a flat curve once you got past about L12 as I recall (though of course it was different XP depending on what class you were, because of how XP was awarded for certain class-based activities), and it worked just fine. It also presumably makes it way easier for devs to balance XP rewards throughout the entire curve. I didn't encounter the idea of an ever increasing curve till I played WoW, and even then you actually levelled just as fast because the XP went up entirely in line with the level of the content, being based on individual kills as it was. Here in DDO that's not how we do XP, and a flat curve seems entirely reasonable, especially if it helps the devs even out the rate of levelling a bit.

So I think its a good idea. Stick with it. If I lose out a bit on my several stalled L21-23 characters, so be it. After three or four months no-one will know the difference. Just yank the plaster off and move on with the rebalancing and content production.

[dunklezhan]

I like the Flat curve because its First Edition lore.
Having played thru a lot of old school heroics, I dislike the old death valley of level 18.

However, I consider the compromise made by you folks to approach our suggested 8 million to get level cap much, much, more important.
Thank you for the 8.25, and if you do adjust the curve, please keep within the 8 to 8.25 million range.

Should a great amount of players feel a flat curve is undesirable, I will shrug my shoulders and say, "whatever, no big deal..."

Yeah this, especially the last line. This just isn't something to get upset about. Nobody is really losing anything as far as I can tell, and if you do consider L21 or 22 suddenly being a little bit further away I'm sure it won't take you long to earn it back - any L20 or 21 can run VoN3 quite happily, y'know? If you are really that desperate for the XP. If people are really looking for something to get their knickers in a twist about, I recommend waiting until we've seen some Legendary (or Reaper, if it happens) content.

[FranOhmsford]

I am fine with flat curve. Good, even.

DnD 2nd ed went to a flat curve once you got past about L12 as I recall (though of course it was different XP depending on what class you were, because of how XP was awarded for certain class-based activities), and it worked just fine. It also presumably makes it way easier for devs to balance XP rewards throughout the entire curve. I didn't encounter the idea of an ever increasing curve till I played WoW, and even then you actually levelled just as fast because the XP went up entirely in line with the level of the content, being based on individual kills as it was. Here in DDO that's not how we do XP, and a flat curve seems entirely reasonable, especially if it helps the devs even out the rate of levelling a bit.

So I think its a good idea. Stick with it. If I lose out a bit on my several stalled L21-23 characters, so be it. After three or four months no-one will know the difference. Just yank the plaster off and move on with the rebalancing and content production.

You can't compare DDO with PnP when it comes to XP!

In PnP hardly any player would expect to take a Lvl 1 character to Lvl 30 {and if they did manage it it would be at the expense of YEARS of game play or a really monty haul DM!}.

In DDO the opposite is in effect where only a tiny minority of players expect to spend all their time at Lvls 1-10 {Mainly Permadeathers} and the object of the game is to level up and play the higher level content!

[Toxxyk]

Thanks for the feedback. We're likely going to reconsider just how flat the curve will be, though we do want more than ~24 hours for players to give feedback before we make any firm decisions. (If you have been quietly preferring the proposed flat "curve", speak up now and be heard.)



Since a couple of people have brought this up:

There is a major downside to this proposal: Players are strongly incentivized to stop playing DDO right now, this instant, because this unfairly rewards XP to those who happen to have stopped getting XP at a particular time/level.

Under this proposal, anyone who has exactly enough XP to gain level 22 should probably stop playing, especially if they think they won't hit level 23 before Update 29 comes out (maybe stop playing today, maybe in a week, etc.), or maybe get some alts up to exactly level 22 (or 21 or 23 or whatever breakpoint you think makes sense). Otherwise they are "wasting their time" because instead of playing they could just wait and get "free XP" for choosing to not play DDO.

While we will probably consider a more gently sloped curve, the same issue is likely to be there in some form. There's really no world in which we want to explicitly reward not playing the game. (Considering it's entirely fair to ask each character to earn the same amount of XP to earn the same levels, ultimately, we're willing to deal with the downsides, which we do recognize as being real downsides.)

First, thank you for acknowledging that you have considered this issue.

You are in a better position than I am to determine how many people have only one character that they actively play. Because those are the only people that I see that would act as you've described. Those people might stop playing DDO entirely until the patch hits.

However, I suspect for the vast majority of people, they would simply switch to another character -- perhaps rolling a new iconic in hopes of getting it to 22 before the patch.

Also, I don't really consider this "free XP" -- since you would not be applying the XP to the current epic destiny (at least, in my proposal, you wouldn't).

Personally, I am absolutely dreading the patch if you go forward as you proposed. I have a mid-epic level toon that will, frankly, gather dust for a long time if I have to grind out a massive amount of xp to get it to the next level after the patch. Now for me, that just means a toon I don't play, since I have many.

Consider the effect on a person that has only that character. They may stop playing DDO permanently.

EDIT: To be clear, I am most concerned about people that don't read the forums and/or even patch notes. People that do read the forums will game the system no matter what you do.

[Violentbeginning]

I would be OK with either the flat slope, or a curve, but if the XP per level is to be static, it feels too much. 750k per level would be more reasonable I think.

As far as implementing it such that folks would gain xp (to retain their level on the new curve/slope), why do that? XP per character should be what it is. If someone ends up gaining a level sooner, or having to work a little more to gain the next level (due to where they might fit on the curve) so be it. XP is XP, and nomatter where you end up on the curve or slope, you will still need exactly the same amount of XP as everyone else in the long run.

[Ewynn]

I respectfully disagree with Developer Vargouille's reasoning about the flattening of the epic XP curve. He provides three points to support his argument and a fourth point as a conclusion, summarized basically as:

1) There are two parts here, the first is that the same amount of time should be spend in each level, the second (related) is that that leveling should not become harder as you progress.
2) The amount of XP given is basically irrespective of level.
3) There is no reason to rush through the early levels
4) He concludes that XP should be the same for each level

The problem with point one is that a completely linear XP approach is that it is regressive. It forces the lower level epics to "pay the same price" as the higher level epics, but they do not have the same capabilities or equipment as higher level epic characters so it takes them longer to gain a similar amount of experience than it does for higher level epic characters. For example, it is much easier to run a 28th level character through EE Spies in the House than to run a 21st level character even though they get about the same XP. So the 21st level toon is having to work much hard to get the same amount of XP.

While I agree with point two that XP does not see a large increase in quests as you go up in level, your capability to complete higher level quests keeps pace with the quests' increasing difficulty. Nobody runs a 21st level toon in EE Mark of Death and expects to be a significant contributor, of course there are always the 1%'ers who will disagree. It does make sense that a consistent amount of experience is given because the challenge for higher level quests is matched with a characters increasing capability. If there capability stayed the same one would expect that the reward would go up, as it does not it reflects that the challenge of the quest for play reasons stays consistent from quest to quest.

Point 3 says there is no reason to rush through the early levels and I some what agree; however, the stark change from a soft progressive curve to a strictly regressive linear approach will frustrate new players with the difficulty of early epic play. A more reasoned approach might be to group the early levels into tiers where there are similar capabilities (possibly, 21-23, 24-26, 27-30) so approximately tier 1 600K, tier 2 800K, tier 3 1M each. This would allow a relatively consistent pace of leveling and prolong the time that characters get to use most of the highest level gear and capabilities. It makes the earlier levels less onerous and the higher levels last a bit longer to use your best gear and capabilities. Note also that each of the tiers offers only slightly increasing capabilities: Tier 1: One normal feat, Tier 2: One normal, one ED feat, Tier 3: Two normal, two ED and one Legendary feat. This also blends nicely with the primary gear sets:

Tier 1: Evening Star Commendation gear, Base TF, and CitW gear;
Tier 2: TBC, FoT, TF+,
Tier 3: TF Max, Orchard, MoD, DoJ, Epic Shroud

I am not sure why the strictly linear approach is being put forward, perhaps there is less development time involved, which would provide a change to the game at a reduced cost. Or, perhaps it is merely being put forward to solicit conversation/ideas from the player community. Either way I am glad to have the opportunity to play the game and will continue to play regardless of what is adopted. I like a lot of the other things mentioned as they increase the variety of builds, and once implemented will allow the developers to work on more new content.

Please do keep up the good work and I'll see you in Khyber --- uh, the server not the location. :-)

[Bobby88888]

Flat xp curve = bad. Please do change this. Higher level epic quests tend to give more xp and I don't want to be stuck at low levels for ages and then fly through the high levels. Do however keep the total xp for lvl 30 down as low as possible, getting an ER is already mind numbing and off putting as is and need another 2 mil xp isn't going to help it at all. How about making ER based off your kama in that sphere and tweak the kama values as needed? With IR remaining linked to level.

[Runerock]

Hmm I am going to say I like the idea of having 29 to 30 take a lot of xp. This would leave me more time to raid and more people at "end game" I am not married to this idea and just know we will all be in the same boat regardless.

[Thrudh]

Thanks for the feedback. We're likely going to reconsider just how flat the curve will be, though we do want more than ~24 hours for players to give feedback before we make any firm decisions. (If you have been quietly preferring the proposed flat "curve", speak up now and be heard.)

I never thought levels 26 and 27 took too long... I liked spending more time at the high levels because of the extra feats and good gear I could use.

But I will admit we spend way too little time at 20-22, and I do sometimes miss out on quests I'd like to run down there.

I would like some solution between the current and proposed exp curve...

Maybe 500k for 20-21, and 750k for 21-22, and then flatten it out from there.

[Hawklynn]

==> Epic Reincarnation and Iconic Reincarnation will require being level 30 after Update 29.

Looking back at the Update 20 release notes for Epic/Iconic TR introduction, it does say that these TRs would eventually be at level 30. Two years have gone by and the feel of hitting level 28 to perform
the TR has become a norm for not only me, but many friends online. My suggestion is just to allow the player to perform an Epic/Iconic TR at level 28, or anytime after until hitting level 30.

The reason for this pertains to how players get accustomed to a specific reward for an achievement. Level 20 has always been the level to perform a heroic TR. It was never set at level 12 or level 16 to perform a heroic TR, and then changed to only be at level 20. Also, when level 25 was introduced, players headed to level 25 acquiring all the new feats and filling their epic destinies with the XP gained. However, there was no Epic/Iconic TR at level 25. So when level cap of 28 came out, although many upset voices shouted out (based on XP gain for three more levels) there was an achievement reward provided for hitting level 28. That reward was the new Epic/Iconic TR. It helped players overcome the grief of acquiring XP for 3 more levels and introduced a new goal for the player community.

The new changes for level 29 and 30 will bring about new excitement to the game, new builds, and perhaps another rush of players coming back to DDO. The new TR requirements at level 30 seem to be a sting for those enjoying Epic/Iconic TRing. Level 28 has been the TR level for 2 years now. Changing it to level 30 is not needed. Just allow the Epic/Iconic TR to be capable once a player hits level 28.

Players can choose to acquire the new feats and abilities of level 29 and 30 and place that XP into their off destinies. Some friends have mentioned they wouldn't mind heading to level 30 and have that additional XP go into their off destinies (since current destinies are still capped at 6.6 million ??).

Other players can remain at peace knowing their XP needed to level 28 can still allow them to TR. Maybe it takes a player one week, one month or more to get from 20-28. That additional XP needed to get from lvl 28 to 30 is just .. a sting. Painful!!

[SirValentine]

We're likely going to reconsider just how flat the curve will be, though we do want more than ~24 hours for players to give feedback before we make any firm decisions. (If you have been quietly preferring the proposed flat "curve", speak up now and be heard.)

I prefer the proposed flat table. Currently, low Epic levels go by so fast, while higher ones drag. Evening it out, letting lower Epic gear be used more, and lower Epic quests (and Wilderness areas!) get run more, is an improvement.

I will, once again, second the motion for more bank or inventory space for bound-to-character gear. (Not just more Shared Bank. Not it's bad, it just doesn't at all address the real issue.)

[Aletys]

why change the xp curve at all, just add the extra levels to the existing setup. no loss or gain to people playing. as for the TR level i will no longer play a iconic, since it is not worth the time for a reincarnation. i have spoken to my guildies and none are happy with the new planned changes.

This. +1

[Gljosh]

==> Epic Reincarnation and Iconic Reincarnation will require being level 30 after Update 29.

Looking back at the Update 20 release notes for Epic/Iconic TR introduction, it does say that these TRs would eventually be at level 30. Two years have gone by and the feel of hitting level 28 to perform
the TR has become a norm for not only me, but many friends online. My suggestion is just to allow the player to perform an Epic/Iconic TR at level 28, or anytime after until hitting level 30.

The reason for this pertains to how players get accustomed to a specific reward for an achievement. Level 20 has always been the level to perform a heroic TR. It was never set at level 12 or level 16 to perform a heroic TR, and then changed to only be at level 20. Also, when level 25 was introduced, players headed to level 25 acquiring all the new feats and filling their epic destinies with the XP gained. However, there was no Epic/Iconic TR at level 25. So when level cap of 28 came out, although many upset voices shouted out (based on XP gain for three more levels) there was an achievement reward provided for hitting level 28. That reward was the new Epic/Iconic TR. It helped players overcome the grief of acquiring XP for 3 more levels and introduced a new goal for the player community.

The new changes for level 29 and 30 will bring about new excitement to the game, new builds, and perhaps another rush of players coming back to DDO. The new TR requirements at level 30 seem to be a sting for those enjoying Epic/Iconic TRing. Level 28 has been the TR level for 2 years now. Changing it to level 30 is not needed. Just allow the Epic/Iconic TR to be capable once a player hits level 28.

Players can choose to acquire the new feats and abilities of level 29 and 30 and place that XP into their off destinies. Some friends have mentioned they wouldn't mind heading to level 30 and have that additional XP go into their off destinies (since current destinies are still capped at 6.6 million ??).

Other players can remain at peace knowing their XP needed to level 28 can still allow them to TR. Maybe it takes a player one week, one month or more to get from 20-28. That additional XP needed to get from lvl 28 to 30 is just .. a sting. Painful!!

I say we hybridize the approaches. You can ITR/ETR at level 28 (or make it when you have the 6 million in a sphere for an ETR) BUT you can only farm the Heart Seeds (the 100 CoV items) when at level 30.

[mikarddo]

I say we hybridize the approaches. You can ITR/ETR at level 28 (or make it when you have the 6 million in a sphere for an ETR) BUT you can only farm the Heart Seeds (the 100 CoV items) when at level 30.

Thats not a half bad idea.