10 Skull Mask of Deception Completion: Review of Reaper, Dec14th-16th, Captain's Crew

[Wizza]

No - The Devs have NOT stated that people can't leave feedback if they haven't tried Reaper {It is YOU saying that!}.

Cordovan specifically stated that actually checking things out is more valuable than theory-crafting, which is what you are doing, on something that you have barely even seen, and on something that you won't run.

Sev has stated that that particular bug could end up with Mask of Deception not having Reaper status at all EVER!

Seems a pretty big bug to me!

Yes Mask is a short quest and therefore easier than average. But Reaper isn't about any single quest - It is a difficulty for ALL Quests and therefore it's the easier quests that need to be looked at NOT The really tough ones!
People can't complete HH Reaper 10 np those people will just run Tavern Brawl Reaper 10 instead!

With Reaper it's the easiest quests that need to be targeted for difficulty - the tougher quests will be that much more difficulty anyway!

Exactly. You are still making my point. You are basing your feedback on a quest that:

1) You haven't run
2) You won't run
3) It was heavily bugged.

The other R10 quest that was completed was Tide Turns (IIRC), which another easy quest that is supposed to be completable at R10, as Sev stated and expected. You have no idea of how difficulty R10 actually is.

Now you're taking the mick!

I've tried running Hard.

I had an LFM up Hard until Elite Opener for 3 or 4 Quests before ANYONE joined! {Not just an opener - ANYONE! And guess what, Once that Opener joined I had a full group within the same quest!}.

A couple days later the same thing with Normal until Elite Opener LFM!

And no I'm not going to not put Until Elite Opener on the LFM because that cuts my chances down even further! {And I really don't want to have to repeat quests as many people don't so the more that can be done on Elite the better and I'm not going to turn down the chance to run Elite if it comes up!}.

I also don't want to have to have the same conversation with everyone who joins and then immediately asks if we can do Elite instead!

I have no problems filling hard, when I did that recently to farm a few items. And there were a lot of Hard lfms on Argo when I logged more frequently.

[Kza]

This is exactly what they shouldn't do. We've seen way too many D&D traits wiped out by these types of requests (sneak attacks on skeletons/oozes anyone?). Encounters are supposed to have different challenges with a variety of ways to deal with them.

When this gets done, all we have left is tank/healer/dps one size fits all (which I know some folks actually want). Monsters like undead lose the traits that make them what they are you're left with vanilla everything. This is where dumb terminology like "mobs" comes from. This game has made too many steps in that direction & they should, if anything, go back to the books and reinforce some things like undead traits, not wipe them out further.

Why on earth would a "mindless thing" give a crud about someone trying to intimidate it? That makes zero sense.

Agreed 100%, More different mobs/quests/aproaches/etc no no to standard everyting! +1

[Mr_Helmet]

You have no idea of how difficulty R10 actually is.

Anyone who hasn't run R10 has a worthless opinion on R10, but it's the internet so they'll keep posting.

[Pyed-Pyper]

The relative value of past lives increases as the value of gear increases. ....

I'm going to assume here that you meant "decreases", otherwise you'll need to explain what you mean.

.... The gear is much easier to obtain than the past lives. Therefore the recent Cannith and Slave Lords Heroic gear (paired with heroic temple weapons) make any past grinding of heroic gear obsolete and partially compensate for a potentially large past life advantage of an older player---should a new player farm the stuff.

In order for new players to be on the same footing as vets, the value of past lives need to diminish over time. They have been, and this is good.

Epic passive and active PLs should never have applied in heroics. The martial passives in particular completely throw the balance, as your toon reaches AC values that make it invincible.

I know past lives are a holy cow for some but they really need to get proxy nerfed even more. Maybe the 50 PRR reaper pot would help with that.

You seem to be lumping all PLs, heroic, iconic, and epic, into one pile.

I agree completely that epic PL effects should not be functional at heroic levels. At most, an epic PL should be:
(epic PL [effect])*(character level/20)***

I think there is a great disparity between new players and their starter gear, and veterans who have essentially the DDO wishlist of gear available in their TR banks.

I disagree with (your apparent conclusion) PL's being the problem. EPL's in heroic aside, lopsided power creep in a few classes and every-update power creep in gear are the is the primary offenders in my opinion. Power creep used as a bandaid to assist new players keep up with long-time players is a poor way to fix what's broken, because whatever is available to new players is available to veterans.

The problem is balance, and I don't mean balance between classes but balance versus challenge. Take DC's for example, caster or martial. How do max'd PL bonuses compare to max'd gear bonuses? Heroic PL bonuses have been static for years, aside from the addition of new classes. Have gear bonuses changed?

You seem to be a strong advocate for Reaper. Do you realize the "need" for Reaper stems from lack of balance? PL's are not the primary cause of that lack of balance, if they are at all.


*** up to level 20. I am not arguing for an increase in EPL power.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

I'm going to assume here that you meant "decreases", otherwise you'll need to explain what you mean.

... ~snip~

Yes.

I think we agree generally and that the finer points sort themselves out. The need for reaper was created by the power creep in EPL, gear, and class passes with some more detrimental than others depending on where you're at.
Sorcs > everything else but warlock, in heroics and they haven't been affected by anything but gear and EPLs really.

[Xaxx]

This is exactly my point
If radiants are not viable as anti reaper
Then I have no more place in this game

But the question of engagement is such that one shot if hit
But that was 10 skull

At 5 is there a middling?
Where radiant is useful to counteract damage

If this is not dialed in
They are missing the mark

For any comments on the cleric in the video let me set clearly one big point..... that cleric was me and I haven't played an active healer in this game since the cap was 12... nigh on 8 or 9 years ago. So yes the cleric didnt do much outside of hand holding as it was far away from my ddo comfort zone anymore.

As for radiant.... it was a radiant with like 850 pos spell power and every possibly meta because I had no idea what we would face. That said getting into the cluster with a butload of reaper mobs was not that good of an idea. I also put wings in a bad place and kept hitting them leaping into combat or traps at the wrong time. Please do not use the cleric in the video as a true metric of what to expect from healing abilities. That said for the higher star stuff your more than likely going to have to have a babysitter along like the old days. That and being flogged by a troll yelling HJEAL MEH was distracting.

[SirValentine]

Bravery bonus has been bad for the game...

As someone who's been happy to point out things I think are bad for the game...that's not one of them.

How many TRs did you do before Bravery Bonus existed? That was ugly, painful, off-putting. Bravery Bonus was a massive win for the game, as far as I'm concerned.

Before Bravery, TRing was a choice between very 2 bad things: ultra-boring Normal x9 of a select few quests, or run a variety of content at a more challenging difficulty, but level up at a snails pace.

Now, Elite being trivialized by massive power bloat on gear & massive power bloat in enhancements is a whole other topic; there's a couple of things I'll gladly repeat really have been and continue to be bad for the game.

[Mr_Helmet]

That and being flogged by a troll yelling HJEAL MEH was distracting.

But it was cheaper than your dominatrix, think of the money Reaper mode will save you over the next couple of years

[Mr_Helmet]

Now, Elite being trivialized by massive power bloat on gear & massive power bloat in enhancements is a whole other topic; there's a couple of things I'll gladly repeat really have been and continue to be bad for the game.

Epic PLs working in Heroic is hilariously stupid OP.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

This is exactly what they shouldn't do. We've seen way too many D&D traits wiped out by these types of requests (sneak attacks on skeletons/oozes anyone?). Encounters are supposed to have different challenges with a variety of ways to deal with them.

When this gets done, all we have left is tank/healer/dps one size fits all (which I know some folks actually want). Monsters like undead lose the traits that make them what they are you're left with vanilla everything. This is where dumb terminology like "mobs" comes from. This game has made too many steps in that direction & they should, if anything, go back to the books and reinforce some things like undead traits, not wipe them out further.

Why on earth would a "mindless thing" give a crud about someone trying to intimidate it? That makes zero sense.

Adrenaline works with crossbows.

I don't care if it makes sense---it's a QOL thing.

Maybe we could call it "undead perfume" or something.

There's a way to make it make sense. Give it to divines only. I don't know.

Put it in the new FVS tree.

[FranOhmsford]

Cordovan specifically stated that actually checking things out is more valuable than theory-crafting, which is what you are doing, on something that you have barely even seen, and on something that you won't run.

"Is more valuable" does not mean what you think it means!

Exactly. You are still making my point. You are basing your feedback on a quest that:

1) You haven't run
2) You won't run
3) It was heavily bugged.

I have run Mask of Deception many times.

I have seen the video of it being run on the highest difficulty available.

I cannot run that difficulty myself as I cannot get on Lamannia and even if I did get on Lamannia there's no way I'd get into the groups to run it on that difficulty!

One day I may run it on that difficulty - It's unlikely but not impossible!

And I have accepted that it's heavily bugged, I've also stated my opinion that Severlin's admission that this bug could {and likely will} end with said quest being banned from having Reaper difficulty in the first place to be not a good thing!

The other R10 quest that was completed was Tide Turns (IIRC), which another easy quest that is supposed to be completable at R10, as Sev stated and expected. You have no idea of how difficulty R10 actually is.

Link?

Because Sev's statement here....

The current design is balanced around Reaper 1-3, with extreme groups venturing into the 4-6 range. Higher than that should be virtually impossible - though players love to prove us wrong.

Sev~

Mentions nothing about it being on a quest by quest basis!

Nothing about certain quests being doable on Reaper 10 by design!

I have no problems filling hard, when I did that recently to farm a few items. And there were a lot of Hard lfms on Argo when I logged more frequently.

You know full well that "Loot Farms" are not the same as "XP runs"!

I'm not running the same quest over and over ad infinitum, I'm running multiple quests one after the other!

[FranOhmsford]

As someone who's been happy to point out things I think are bad for the game...that's not one of them.

How many TRs did you do before Bravery Bonus existed? That was ugly, painful, off-putting. Bravery Bonus was a massive win for the game, as far as I'm concerned.

Before Bravery, TRing was a choice between very 2 bad things: ultra-boring Normal x9 of a select few quests, or run a variety of content at a more challenging difficulty, but level up at a snails pace.

Just because the previous meta was also problematic does not make BB good!

Now, Elite being trivialized by massive power bloat on gear & massive power bloat in enhancements is a whole other topic; there's a couple of things I'll gladly repeat really have been and continue to be bad for the game.

The Devs first posited Reaper 6 months ago?

But anyway - BEFORE Cannith Crafting was updated!

I'd say that Cannith Crafting Update was for the new post Reaper Meta not for Elite.

I'd say that the Devs are very much expecting 90%+ of the population to be running Reaper 1-5 religiously once it's released - And I'm not happy about that!

[Severlin]

We are well aware that there is a large variance in difficulty quest to quest. It is not the goal of Reaper to try to fix that. Yes, that means we are sure there will be quests that will be much easier to finish on high Reaper difficulties.

If a particular quest becomes problematic enough then we will make it unavailable for Reaper.

A majority of players are not in Elite today; we don't expect a majority of players to run Reaper.

Sev~

[Qhualor]

As someone who's been happy to point out things I think are bad for the game...that's not one of them.

How many TRs did you do before Bravery Bonus existed? That was ugly, painful, off-putting. Bravery Bonus was a massive win for the game, as far as I'm concerned.

Before Bravery, TRing was a choice between very 2 bad things: ultra-boring Normal x9 of a select few quests, or run a variety of content at a more challenging difficulty, but level up at a snails pace.

Now, Elite being trivialized by massive power bloat on gear & massive power bloat in enhancements is a whole other topic; there's a couple of things I'll gladly repeat really have been and continue to be bad for the game.

BB has been good, but at a big cost to the game. its long overdue to be revisited. its been bad for the game because it was one of the results to player requests to have more incentive to run elite content. back in those days there was just favor and an unnoticeable higher drop rate for named items. BB has led to all playstyles running the same default difficulty setting which resulted in accommodating quest mechanics and design for all playstyles and than which led ultimately to Reaper after many complaints of lack of challenge in the game and disagreement with what challenge is as all playstyles argued back and forth.

BB was also created during a time when we had a lot less content and less xp boosts options available. I'm not going to go back and count the number of new quests since the implementation of BB, but we have had a lot since. even back before BB it was possible to not have to farm low level quests more than twice and still be able to take level. it wasn't until the mid heroic levels, sometime after level 10, that repeating quests was a little more necessary. back then, content that is now routinely skipped or considered unpopular were being run consistently and there were lfms for them consistently. it was much more common to see groups farming quests 9x by level 16 because content did start to really thin out plus the xp curve was higher than it is now.

TRing wasn't a thing back then. players did it, but it wasn't something you did as soon as you hit 20 for a lot of players. many players stayed at cap to at least to get heroic twink gear to make it easier to level when they did get around to TR. it was much more common to see first life characters than TRs because a stable of alts was popular, but if a character had wings they usually didn't have more than 2 or 3 past lives. I personally didn't notice an uptick in TRing until after tomes were able to be carried over each life, which was a big reason for some players to not TR.

BB is just too good and has led to many problems with DDO, but the community as a whole is unwilling to work with it. even something simple like bringing hard and elite BB xp closer together instead of such a huge difference between the 2 causes too much stress for improvement. that alone would separate elite and hard players a little more as they play the difficulty setting that best suits them. as long as the community is unwilling to negotiate a change in BB, it will stay as is and it will continue to cause problems with DDO and the community will turn a blind eye to those problems while at the same time asking for more and more things to hurt the game causing more changes.

[FranOhmsford]

We are well aware that there is a large variance in difficulty quest to quest. It is not the goal of Reaper to try to fix that. Yes, that means we are sure there will be quests that will be much easier to finish on high Reaper difficulties.

If any single quest is completable in a decent time on Reaper 10 then that is the quest that will get run the most on that difficulty.

I don't see how any quest can be considered easily completable on Reaper 10 and Reaper be considered a success.

If a particular quest becomes problematic enough then we will make it unavailable for Reaper.

It is likely that a number of quests will not support Reaper {Home Sweet Sewer for instance } But you have admitted there is a variance in difficulty quest to quest and I feel {personally} that you should aim your target reticules at those "easier" quests rather than at the already tough quests.
Basically by making sure the "easier" quests are super difficult the tough ones will take care of themselves!

A majority of players are not in Elite today; we don't expect a majority of players to run Reaper.

Sev~

You do realise this is gonna get quoted a lot right?

A majority of players are not in Elite today?
Where are these players?
Why are they never on LFMs?
Why don't they join LFMs?

I've tried again and again to make the Elitists realise that they are a tiny percentage of the population - It's nice to have Dev support finally!
But again - Where are these players?

And yes I realise there is still a large number of newbies, many likely F2P {from the fact that the Default server doubles in size when it becomes the default} who have to run Normal and Hard prior to Elite but this is generally done either solo or in closed groups.
It's also largely confined to one server {other servers do get some newbies but it's a trickle}.


I have also found that my characters are significantly stronger generally than those newbies who I do end up running with {not all of them but certainly the majority}, I can run mainly Elite now on Heroics and therefore do run mainly Elite if at all possible.
I don't have a problem with newbies joining me, I put up LFMs all the time and pretty much accept everybody {except when they're already on my ignore list}.

There are many players stronger than me - Some much stronger - There's a huge variance in both player and character ability in DDO!

Again it's nice to finally hear a dev say this - Most players aren't running Elite right now!
It makes me very optimistic about the future!

But Pugs are almost uniformly Elite in Heroics

Ahhhh - You're adding in Epics aren't you?

Epics are different - But still even there more and more players are gravitating to Elite {especially in Saga Quests}, Less and less players are willing to run Normal only.
I'm still getting by right now on EH/EN Dailies VoN 3, 4, Toby, Spies, WK, OoB, Chains, ADQ.
1 year ago that was EN/EN
Soon it may become EE/EH.
And we will have the same effect with Reaper as people gravitate to the next difficulty up.



P.S. How exactly is Reaper opening going to work?
Are 1st or 2nd Life F2Players going to be able to open Reaper 1 but not Elite?
Is Reaper going to give the same Favour as Elite? because if it does and F2Players can open it then it will absolutely become the Default.

[nokowi]

Epic PLs working in Heroic is hilariously stupid OP.

Yes, there is no excuse for this existing this long.

Why did they even bother to take away the twist bug?

[nokowi]

A majority of players are not in Elite today?
Where are these players?

Playing the game, not on the forums.

Why are they never on LFMs?
Why don't they join LFMs?

Because they like soloing, don't want to zerg, may need to AFK, don't want to run into power gamers, jerks, or even casual players that think they are entitled to run elite.

In short, there are plenty people who are able to run the difficulty appropriate for their toon (despite forum hysteria).

[cru121]

P.S. How exactly is Reaper opening going to work?
Are 1st or 2nd Life F2Players going to be able to open Reaper 1 but not Elite?
Is Reaper going to give the same Favour as Elite? because if it does and F2Players can open it then it will absolutely become the Default.

I took a first lifer to Lamannia (premium account) and I could not open Reaper immediately. I bought an Elite Difficulty Quest Unlock Token, this allowed me to access Reaper as well (any skull level).

[Qhualor]

A majority of players are not in Elite today; we don't expect a majority of players to run Reaper.

Sev~

well, you do have access to the numbers, but you are aware of all the reasons why this "majority" is not running elite, right?

[FranOhmsford]

Because they like soloing, don't want to zerg, may need to AFK, don't want to run into power gamers, jerks, or even casual players that think they are entitled to run elite.

In short, there are plenty people who are able to run the difficulty appropriate for their toon (despite forum hysteria).

You keep making this same attack and it is an attack.

But I am running the difficulty appropriate for my toons!

In Heroic that difficulty is ELITE!

In Epic generally that difficulty is either EN or EH!

I very rarely run EE and if I do it's usually either in a full group or when CAPPED! {or in fact sometimes both!}.

I have refused to join L-TS groups because they sent a tell to my Lvl 25 1st Life Bladeforged that was in no way capable of running that quest on that difficulty!

I am NOT attempting to run difficulties I am not capable of running!

Please stop throwing that accusation around!