Do away with N/H/E

[bartharok]

So you are telling me the generic enemies we are fighting now are some how special?

A bat on korthos does the same things as a bat in shavarath
A kobold on korthos does the same things as a kobold on shavarath

in fact, our enemies are do **** geneic that:
A DOG is exactly the same mechanic wise as a DRAGON.. same animations, same abilities, and in some cases.. the same SOUND EFFECTS

Certainly I am not the only one who notices these things? Have you ever really taken the time to OBSERVE the enemies you zerg through?

I have to wonder some times if the people playing this game have ever really paid attention to what they are playing.

Some pay attention, some wish to see something that isnt there.

Aimations are per form, since a thing of a certainshape moves in a particualr way.

Scaling the critters as you want them to scale requires a change in ai as well, if tve creature is a spell caster. Melees might scale better, but even then you would either have to rescript to add abilities, or have them be extremely generic. Which seems to be what you want them to be.

So my conclusion could be that yiu want the ai of mobs to be downgraded. Which i dont thini you want, but which would be likely to hapen.

[Xionanx]

Some pay attention, some wish to see something that isnt there.

Aimations are per form, since a thing of a certainshape moves in a particualr way.

Scaling the critters as you want them to scale requires a change in ai as well, if tve creature is a spell caster. Melees might scale better, but even then you would either have to rescript to add abilities, or have them be extremely generic. Which seems to be what you want them to be.

So my conclusion could be that yiu want the ai of mobs to be downgraded. Which i dont thini you want, but which would be likely to hapen.

\

??

The "AI" is also super generic.. again, pay attention to what the monsters are actually doing. The only enemies that have any kind of "Special" AI are the "Boss" monsters of CERTAIN raids. Otherwise all enemies of a "Type" use a generic AI.

All "Spider" type mobs use the same AI
All "Giant" type mobs use the same AI
All "Render" type mobs use the same AI (flesh, ice, fire, ethereal, etc.. but wait, its also the same AI as skeletons.. same animations too)
All "Dog" type mobs including dragons use the same AI (Dogs, PK hounds, Black/White/Blue dragons) same combat routine, approach enemy in melee, bite, trip, breath weapon)
etc etc.

Honestly, stop killing things in a super fast zerg and just "Shield Block" and watch what enemies do.. AI is so **** **** basic and generic for "Trash Mobs".. its a joke that anyone would think otherwise. Again, only the few and far between raid bosses have any "Special" mechanics to them.. and most of those are event triggers or on timers.

This whole debate is pointless:

1. I Know its Possible to do it
2. I also know Turbine WONT do it

Debating "Why" they wont do it is a complete waste of everyone's time. Though it has been enlightening to see just how oblivious some players are to the game they are playing.

[biggin]

\



This whole debate is pointless:

1. I Know its Possible to do it
2. I also know Turbine WONT do it

Debating "Why" they wont do it is a complete waste of everyone's time. Though it has been enlightening to see just how oblivious some players are to the game they are playing.

A video game in and of itself is a waste of time, much less talking about a video game but it is what people enjoy doing so why bash them for it? Why not just delete the forums and have the 'council' inform dev's of what we want and have it become a republic for information discussion?

[Axeyu]

\

??

The "AI" is also super generic.. again, pay attention to what the monsters are actually doing. The only enemies that have any kind of "Special" AI are the "Boss" monsters of CERTAIN raids. Otherwise all enemies of a "Type" use a generic AI.

All "Spider" type mobs use the same AI
All "Giant" type mobs use the same AI
All "Render" type mobs use the same AI (flesh, ice, fire, ethereal, etc.. but wait, its also the same AI as skeletons.. same animations too)
All "Dog" type mobs including dragons use the same AI (Dogs, PK hounds, Black/White/Blue dragons) same combat routine, approach enemy in melee, bite, trip, breath weapon)
etc etc.

Honestly, stop killing things in a super fast zerg and just "Shield Block" and watch what enemies do.. AI is so **** **** basic and generic for "Trash Mobs".. its a joke that anyone would think otherwise. Again, only the few and far between raid bosses have any "Special" mechanics to them.. and most of those are event triggers or on timers.

This whole debate is pointless:

1. I Know its Possible to do it
2. I also know Turbine WONT do it

Debating "Why" they wont do it is a complete waste of everyone's time. Though it has been enlightening to see just how oblivious some players are to the game they are playing.

Have fun battling that strawman.

[Darkmits]

No point in having advanced AI for enemies that are designed and expected to die within 2-3 seconds from the moment they're aggroed.

The MMO genre works that way. All no-named mobs have a very simple predetermined rotation in their actions with very little threats for the players. Named mobs (bosses) do not have advanced AI in the sense that they react as a human according to player actions, but pose greater threat through higher damage. Even newer-generation single player offline games have predictable AI.

[bartharok]

It is also possible to send a manned mission to mars. But that doesnt mean that it is easy to do it..

[Gremmlynn]

?? Clearly you and I are playing 2 different games.

IMO the ONLY difference between the very first quest you do in the game and the highest tier raid, is "MONSTER DIFFICULTY".

That is it. They don't add:

More puzzles
More traps
More riddles
More jump
More "Tactics"
etc..

The major contributing factor to the "Level" of the dungeon is how much damage the monsters do, their AC, and how many HP's they have. I suppose the DC's of Traps and their damage as well. All of which could be scaled using the "CR" system.

But like I said a few posts back, they supposedly tried this before but ran into a problem of the enemies being too "poweful" because the way the scaling worked AT THE TIME. IMO should not be too difficult for them to implement. All they need to do is create a "CR Table" for every monster in the game, and then pull that monsters stats from the table to fill dungeons..

Example..

Kobold, Level 1, 29 HP, 1D4+1 Damage, -2 To hit
etc
etc
etc
etc
...
Kobold, Level 10, 176 HP, 2d8+2 Damage, +8 To hit
so on and so forth for every "level" of quest in the game and every "type" of monster, trap, search DC, spot DC, etc. DDO, at its core HAS THE FLEXIBILITY to do it. It's just a matter of the developers being WILLING to do it.

Sure, if the devs were willing to go through each quest and modify the spell lists for every caster, to modify the feats every mob has access to, to modify the defenses every boss has etc., based on the level the quest is being played at and what the players have access to or to counter at those levels.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done. Just that it would be something that would need to be adjusted by hand at every level.

[Gremmlynn]

2. I also know Turbine WONT do it

Well that's an easy one. Because enough of us aren't willing to pay what it would take to give them a reason to do it. Not that it would matter to most of us if they did, as we wouldn't be willing to pay that much to play a video game anyway.

[changelingamuck]

Time wise for the dev's, I think think this is a bad idea. It would take rebalancing so many different levels of things. Which could mean all kinds of issues yet to be seen.

^This. It's an intriguing idea. But I can make a pretty confident guess that this is never, ever, ever, ever going to happen. It's a change that would tear up the foundations of too many fundamental mechanics/systems in the game.

[Axeyu]

"There are over 7,000 different monsters in DDO, each with unique stats."

[Ligraph]

I haven't read the whole thread, but I also agree that there should be less difficulty settings, if anything to reduce playerbase fragmentation.

Just removing the difficulties though will cause a lot of other problems, that will require careful math to ensure that even a small part of the playerbase doesn't get the shaft (for example eTR's). At the same time favor, general xp, loot, repetition penalties and such need all be taken into account. We also have to take into consideration the fact we are pretty vocal about Dungeon Scaling working against grouping, and that quite a large part of the playerbase wants to be able to solo. So here's my suggestion:

2 Difficulties: Story and Challenge

25%/25%/40%/80% xp bonus of running a difficulty for the first time changed to:
- 75% bonus for running the quest for the first time regardless of difficulty
- 50% bonus for running the quest for the second time regardless of difficulty
- 30% bonus for running the quest for the third time regardless of difficulty
- 15% bonus for running the quest for the fourth time regardless of difficulty

Story
- Replaces Casual and Normal
- Quest CR equal as current Normal
- Rewards the favor of current Hard (not a typo)
- Rewards equal base experience to Challenge
- Designed for a solo player WITH hireling
- Loot payout (named items, ingredients, platinum etc) set to 25% (1/4th) that of Challenge (be it amount of them or chance to appear)
- All rare encounters and optionals appear always.
- Progression for 20th list completions as is.
- Mobs gain 10% base HP per extra player (for a total of +50% at full group) and 5% damage (for 25%)

Challenge
- Replaces Hard and Elite
- Quest CR equal as current Normal (not a copy-paste typo)
- Rewards the favor of current Elite
- Rewards equal base experience to Story
- Designed for a group of 3 players WITH 3 hirelings.
- Loot payout (named items, ingredients, platinum etc) set to current Elite.
- Rare encounters and optionals stay as they are on current Elite.
- Progression for 20th run rewards at triple rate (ie. 7 Challenge runs would produce the current 20th run reward list, and every run would produce the current 3rd run reward list)
- Mobs gain 33% base HP per extra player (for a total of +100% at full group) and 17% damage (for 50%)

With the above, I make farming xp a lot easier, and I make farming full favor and named items as well as ingredients harder. After all, players are mostly after xp and not items if I understand the current discussions forums.

I could support something like this, as long as there is a 3rd difficulty (or more) above Challenge.
Something like:
Reaper
- Replaces ------.
- Quest CR equal as current Normal + 10
- Rewards the favor of current Elite
- Rewards base experience to Story*1.25 (because it'll take forever to do)
- Designed for a group of 6 very well geared players working together (probably with voice comms).
- Loot payout (named items, ingredients, platinum etc) set to better than current Elite.
- Rare encounters and optionals always spawn. They reward double the Elite xp, and are considerably harder (double-champed).
- Mobs gain 200% base HP and 100% damage.
- Mobs also gain special abilities. Like healers being able to revive, casters get good spells, melees get tactics, etc.
- Bosses and minibosses are much harder than elite. They get better AI, special abilities, death timers, etc.
- No reentry.

Also:

- Progression for 20th run rewards at triple rate (ie. 7 Challenge runs would produce the current 20th run reward list, and every run would produce the current 3rd run reward list)

What 20th reward lists? Quests have these with anything worthwhile?

[Darkmits]

Reaper
- Designed for a group of 6 very well geared players working together (probably with voice comms).
- Mobs gain 200% base HP per extra player and 100% damage.

These two are mutually exclusive You can't have the quest designed for a full group and add scaling for 7th, 8th etc.

What 20th reward lists? Quests have these with anything worthwhile?

Dreaming Dark quests, some low level quests like Waterworks etc. Raids as well.

[KevinMullins]

Simply put a very bad idea.

[Ligraph]

These two are mutually exclusive You can't have the quest designed for a full group and add scaling for 7th, 8th etc.

Fixed, was supposed to be

- Mobs gain 200% base HP and 100% damage.

Dreaming Dark quests, some low level quests like Waterworks etc. Raids as well.

Hopefully the old raids get switched to Raid Runes as well. Idk about the quests though.

[Grace_ana]

The problem - and this was mentioned back on page 1 - is that the CR doesn't equate to the difficulties we have. So, let's say I have a lvl 14 toon. I can run a lvl 14 quest on elite and a lvl 16 quest on normal, and the elite quest will be much harder. I would sleepwalk through the lvl 16 normal. When they make difficulties, they don't simply scale up mobs. They add other things too, like champions, ability to bypass fort, etc. In addition, the scaling is higher than the stated "level," in this case 16. So a caster's lightning bolt in a lvl 14 elite will hit harder than the same in a lvl 16 normal. Same with traps, actually - the saves required are not equivalent.

So all this idea would do is make the game a cakewalk for at least half the population, with no options for those players to seek out a challenge. That doesn't sound like a plan for a healthy game to me. I know I would probably quit playing, because it would be boring.

[shores11]

/not signed

horrible idea as it would make the game way to easy.

[Rykka]

Start converting quests to use the challenge system instead where u pick the CR ?

Good idea or bad?

[Edit]
I just wanted to clarify a couple of things
I am not proposing changing the minimum level of any quests
i am proposing changing loot
I am not proposing changing quest ransack
I would just like to see quests scale to more levels upwards

Nope. Imma go with bad idea. It's whole lotta work to just to give you the "No Champs!". Nope. Nope. Nope.

[PsychoBlonde]

The thing about it is, depending on the quest even, hard is generally a 1 to 2 level boost to difficulty, elite is more like 2-5, the challenge system is a straight +1, +2, +3, +4, etc as far as I can tell. Still, that means someone could choose +4 and if they got the same bonus. Still the bravery streak bonus is HUGE to TRed folks, I don't know how you would replace that.

Well, if it worked like existing challenges there would be "star objectives" and you'd get a bonus to xp for completing those, with an extra kicker 6-star bonus for completing the challenge at max level that could basically replace bravery bonus. So, basically the way to get maximum XP would be to do every challenge at max level and complete all stars perfectly.

Which could be fine, but the entire thing is completely academic because they'd basically have to rebuild the entire game from scratch to do this. The amount of work would be staggering.

They kind of did SOME of this with the latest Night Revels event--they converted some quest maps into challenges. It was enjoyable, and I would certainly like to see another challenge pack. But even level . . . what was it, 35 challenges are negligible in difficulty compared to quests of the same level on elite.

I wouldn't mind having a wider possible level setting for quests, but I think even this much would be pretty prohibitive.

What would be better would be to keep normal/hard/elite AND have a level setting, so you could pretty much run any quest at whatever level you liked. But that's the sort of thing that would have to be a part of the game from the very beginning.

[eris2323]

No No, No No, No.

/no no no no no no