Reaper is a complete fail

[KoobTheProud]

reaper is ddo2

If you want to promote grouping and team play in reaper, get rid of the trees.

I agree that the incentives in reaper (+XP, reaper trees, cosmetics, etc) are definitely over-pushed at this point.

I think you have to separate low skull grinding and high skull play in terms of the overall effect on the meta. R1-R3, maybe R4 is just grind material at this point and totally fails at the stated purpose of providing extreme challenge to established players. Most R1 instances are solo grinders at work using it to TR a bit faster and slowly accumulate reaper points which then make future R1-ish grinding easier.

High skull play on the other hand largely achieves the goal of giving players more challenge, albeit with too many incentives involved to make it a meta played for challenge and fun.

Making low skull grinding less efficient, by making it tougher to solo and duo and by removing things like the souls, would make grouping at those difficulties more common and the actual challenges involved more rewarding to complete.

At high skulls the challenge is there however the meta change to ranged and caster-heavy is also a feature. Removing the souls would also help here as casters are OP in that meta as it is, compared to melee.

If reaper was actually about bring your friends to conquer a higher difficulty level and have fun along the way as you try to survive it would be a very good endgame. In the form it currently takes it is just another form of the endless grind - begging for yet another difficulty level to actually provide challenge to the established players.

[Pyed-Pyper]

I agree that the incentives in reaper (+XP, reaper trees, cosmetics, etc) are definitely over-pushed at this point.

I think you have to separate low skull grinding and high skull play in terms of the overall effect on the meta. R1-R3, maybe R4 is just grind material at this point and totally fails at the stated purpose of providing extreme challenge to established players. Most R1 instances are solo grinders at work using it to TR a bit faster and slowly accumulate reaper points which then make future R1-ish grinding easier.

High skull play on the other hand largely achieves the goal of giving players more challenge, albeit with too many incentives involved to make it a meta played for challenge and fun.

Making low skull grinding less efficient, by making it tougher to solo and duo and by removing things like the souls, would make grouping at those difficulties more common and the actual challenges involved more rewarding to complete.

At high skulls the challenge is there however the meta change to ranged and caster-heavy is also a feature. Removing the souls would also help here as casters are OP in that meta as it is, compared to melee.

If reaper was actually about bring your friends to conquer a higher difficulty level and have fun along the way as you try to survive it would be a very good endgame. In the form it currently takes it is just another form of the endless grind - begging for yet another difficulty level to actually provide challenge to the established players.

I feel confident you were around when Reaper was introduced, but maybe its been too long for you to remember the beginning. Yes, some enterprising players were completing R10s from day one, but as a general difficulty level, R1 was a challenge then because no one had ground out wings and the accompanying power.

Sure, removing the SP dots will make things more difficult. Just remember that the total amount of 'additional available spell points' has already been reduced once, and what did that do? I seriously doubt it will have the effect you say it will. It certainly won't be the magic panacea to restore the good ol' days of grouping.

SSG knows their target market well enough. Dangle a big enough carrot and those exercise wheels will turn and turn 'til the bearings fail.

[Kilgrave]

Remove self heal Penalty.

[Anuulified]

Remove self heal Penalty.

Why bother, 1 vengeance reaper on r5 hits 10x harder then a fort bypass champ on r10. Whether you can self heal or not makes no difference when you are 1 shot for 6k+++++++ damage at 320 prr.

[devashta]

Coming soon - "r10 zerg ip byoh" LFMs.

This is already so in Ghallanda at least.

I am returning player after 4+ years. I joined few R8 - R10 runs to check how it is and this is what I found:

1) No melees what so ever in any R8+ runs
2) Ranged toons (read: Inquisitor) killing off mobs way before they got to us.
3) Same group of players playing at this level. Very very few new faces occasionally.

And what is this cluster**** of reaper(s) appearing randomly in a dungeon with absolutely no connection to the adventure or the world along with negative healing amp? Completely takes away the D&D immersion.

[SuperNiCd]

This is already so in Ghallanda at least.

I am returning player after 4+ years. I joined few R8 - R10 runs to check how it is and this is what I found:

1) No melees what so ever in any R8+ runs
2) Ranged toons (read: Inquisitor) killing off mobs way before they got to us.
3) Same group of players playing at this level. Very very few new faces occasionally.

And what is this cluster**** of reaper(s) appearing randomly in a dungeon with absolutely no connection to the adventure or the world along with negative healing amp? Completely takes away the D&D immersion.

Yeah, sad, isn't it?

My hope when it was released was that Reaper was going to be a temporary, necessary-evil band-aid to fix short term issues with challenge (and possibly revenue) that would take some time to really fix properly. If you look at the trees, they look like they were built for eventual deprecation. By that I mean that the cores that can be used outside of Reaper difficulty aren't really game breaking - roughly the equivalent of an equal amount of PL or gear grind.

So in theory if SSG started to take away the incentive to run Reaper, it could just sort of fade into the background for the majority, leaving players who had spent the time grinding the trees some shinies to show for it.

My hope that this might happen is pretty much gone now, though. They seem to be focusing more and more on pushing players to run Reaper as the norm.

Immersion-breaking (from the unexplained Reapers everywhere) has always been one of my top issues with it. The other big one for me is that dev time spent on Reaper necessarily has to subtract from the development of new content and other systems that are actually interesting. I'd love to see more legendary progression systems to further diversify classes and builds at cap. The Reaper trees are excruciatingly boring and generic - they are straight on power ups that add zero interest to game play. Pure rat race grind stuff that has become all but required for all players. I won't even go into how it kills entire play styles, and segregates a small player base since that's been well stated so many times.

Anyway, for whatever this customer's opinion is worth, just thought I'd chime in on the necro'd thread that it's 2020, and Reaper is still a festering wound upon DDO. If the devs are listening, I'm of the opinion that you should focus on starting to deprecate it this year. Thanks.

[heavyaslead0]

Some people play DDO

Some play the game

By that I mean, those that play for the experience versus those that play to conquer the game

Much of Reaper is all about META and looping the mechanics

[SiliconScout]

And what is this cluster**** of reaper(s) appearing randomly in a dungeon with absolutely no connection to the adventure or the world along with negative healing amp? Completely takes away the D&D immersion.

*giggles* You DO remember of course that reaper was introduced as "The DM is trying to kill you" mode right? There doesn't need to be any immersion when the DM is just trying to grind your HP into nothingness.

[Drunkendex]

*giggles* You DO remember of course that reaper was introduced as "The DM is trying to kill you" mode right? There doesn't need to be any immersion when the DM is just trying to grind your HP into nothingness.

When Reaper was announced i expected: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...llEveryoneDies

What we got, on the other hand...

[LurkingVeteran]

I honestly don't understand why they needed both champions and reapers. They could just have put the reaper abilities on champions and made them (or mobs in general) randomly respawn. This wouldn't have broken immersion. It's silly when a game-mode violating the plot has become the default in an RPG. Not even Diablo went that far.

If they had reined in the power creep they wouldn't even have needed it to begin with. For the first 5-10 years DDO was fine without randomly beaming in aliens into every quest, and it was a much more consistent D&D experience.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

I honestly don't understand why they needed both champions and reapers. They could just have put the reaper abilities on champions and made them (or mobs in general) randomly respawn. This wouldn't have broken immersion. It's silly when a game-mode violating the plot has become the default in an RPG. Not even Diablo went that far.

If they had reined in the power creep they wouldn't even have needed it to begin with. For the first 5-10 years DDO was fine without randomly beaming in aliens into every quest, and it was a much more consistent D&D experience.

I love difficulty and so I love reaper for that reason, but I totally agree that immersion is at an all time low in the game.
Champions were the right solution implemented with some things that needed to be fixed.

1. They weren't added mobs, but alterations to existing mobs. Spawning new mobs from a pool within the dungeon keeps the dungeon feeling fresh. A carnage reaper sneaking up on you should be a white wolf in Cabal for One, or a Drow in Eveningstar.
2. The difficulty of the champions was not well telegraphed---memorizing what each name means is a bad system---there should be a smaller pool of names with static abilities. Some of the reapers are excellent in this regard, others less so.
4. Some abilities are "spiky." I'm looking at the fort-bypass mod and the "added damage mod." The added damage mod on casters is a one-shot in many situations. Some abilities should just be to make the mob a redname, similar to a doom reaper---with a massive HP buff.
5. Champion chunks break immersion. Remnants should only appear in chests.

Cheers

[Pyed-Pyper]

*giggles* You DO remember of course that reaper was introduced as "The DM is trying to kill you" mode right? There doesn't need to be any immersion when the DM is just trying to grind your HP into nothingness.

"The DM is trying to kill you" is just cover for lazy design.

The big reveal from that slogan is
a) the method of death is grind,
b) the "you" is DDO.

[SuperNiCd]

I love difficulty and so I love reaper for that reason, but I totally agree that immersion is at an all time low in the game.
Champions were the right solution implemented with some things that needed to be fixed.

I should say that I have a lot of respect for the current SSG team. I think they've delivered many great things for the game. Ravenloft, Sharn, KotB. A lot of fun class, enhancement, destiny revisions. Mounts. Some good QoL and bug fixes. I could go on.

I like challenge too, and I think the current dev team could do so much better at delivering it than the game-dimishing mess that is Reaper. I'm actually glad to see this thread come up again. I feel like it's important to keep socializing that even though pretty much everyone who is still around is playing Reaper to some extent (it has been incentivized to the extreme), that doesn't mean it is good. It's just the only option we have.

Reaper feels like the last crummy act of Turbine as they went down the tubes. I know a lot of the people involved are the same - but it was a different situation and a different era. So many things have changed for the better since the people who care about the game now own it. Yet Reaper remains.

I hope SSG will take some time to address challenge in a way that sustains and strengthens DDO.

The one thing I think is good about Reaper is the ability to dial in the amount of challenge on a 10 point scale. Everything else, I would re-think, rescind, and reboot:

* boring, grindy trees of generic power creep
* immersion breaking aliens
* extreme, random spikes in mob power
* self healing penalty
* support for only some play styles
* over-incentivizing the challenge mode
* creating huge power gaps between casuals and meta gamers and/or grinders
* challenge always equals stat inflation

[SiliconScout]

"The DM is trying to kill you" is just cover for lazy design.

The big reveal from that slogan is
a) the method of death is grind,
b) the "you" is DDO.

I won't disagree with the premise that DDO's grind it really what's killing me (as in desire to play) but I completely disagree with your statement. You stated that Reapers had not "reason" to be in the quest and the healing penalty also didn't make sense from a quest perspective and were therefore breaking immersion. My reply to be explicitly clear is to the tone that the reapers and healing penalty make sense in that they are the manifestation of the DM's will to simply kill you. He's not playing the game he's simply trying to kill the players. If you were at an actual table throwing real dice in a campaign this is similar to the DM just ignoring damage you do to enemies because he doesn't want them to die or allowing his big bads to have exactly the immunities and resistances they need to kill you. It's that giant beholder in the middle of a Goblin warren that couldn't possibly have managed to get in there much less been a "guard dog" for Goblins but he's there anyway tossing disintegrates like rice at a wedding.

To be clear, there isn't SUPPOSED to be immersion in Reaper, it's not the system / quests design intent or desired outcome. The intent it to be unfair and make things more difficult, the desired outcome is TPK or VERY costly victories.


Where I believe Reapers failures lie is that the trees exist at all, but if they had to be there the power in them should have been cut in at least half if not more and certainly should not have been able to, at any level, overcome the penalties suffered in R10. Secondly it should have offered a very different XP curve. R1 - R4 = same XP as Elite R5- R7= 5% more R8 - R9= 10% and R10 = 20%.

That way the most "effective" leveling would not be running low and mid reaper quests, in fact EVERY reaper quest should offer less XP / minute than heroic. It was supposed to be for the challenge and instead it was for power leveling.

Case in point Very little reaper running on the HC server as a % of population and those that were running it were cherry picking their quests and generally running low skulls. I don't know of a single run anyone did over R5, granted I hardly know everyone but still if there were groups running high reaper I would have expected to hear chatter / bragging about it. Most don't run Reaper for the challenge, they run Reaper because it's faster / easier to gain power.

[Drunkendex]

That way the most "effective" leveling would not be running low and mid reaper quests, in fact EVERY reaper quest should offer less XP / minute than heroic. It was supposed to be for the challenge and instead it was for power leveling.

Case in point Very little reaper running on the HC server as a % of population and those that were running it were cherry picking their quests and generally running low skulls. I don't know of a single run anyone did over R5, granted I hardly know everyone but still if there were groups running high reaper I would have expected to hear chatter / bragging about it. Most don't run Reaper for the challenge, they run Reaper because it's faster / easier to gain power.

He's right, you know...

[Pyed-Pyper]

I won't disagree with the premise that DDO's grind it really what's killing me (as in desire to play) but I completely disagree with your statement. You stated that Reapers had not "reason" to be in the quest and the healing penalty also didn't make sense from a quest perspective and were therefore breaking immersion. My reply to be explicitly clear is to the tone that the reapers and healing penalty make sense in that they are the manifestation of the DM's will to simply kill you. He's not playing the game he's simply trying to kill the players. If you were at an actual table throwing real dice in a campaign this is similar to the DM just ignoring damage you do to enemies because he doesn't want them to die or allowing his big bads to have exactly the immunities and resistances they need to kill you. It's that giant beholder in the middle of a Goblin warren that couldn't possibly have managed to get in there much less been a "guard dog" for Goblins but he's there anyway tossing disintegrates like rice at a wedding.

To be clear, there isn't SUPPOSED to be immersion in Reaper, it's not the system / quests design intent or desired outcome. The intent it to be unfair and make things more difficult, the desired outcome is TPK or VERY costly victories.


Where I believe Reapers failures lie is that the trees exist at all, but if they had to be there the power in them should have been cut in at least half if not more and certainly should not have been able to, at any level, overcome the penalties suffered in R10. Secondly it should have offered a very different XP curve. R1 - R4 = same XP as Elite R5- R7= 5% more R8 - R9= 10% and R10 = 20%.

That way the most "effective" leveling would not be running low and mid reaper quests, in fact EVERY reaper quest should offer less XP / minute than heroic. It was supposed to be for the challenge and instead it was for power leveling.

Case in point Very little reaper running on the HC server as a % of population and those that were running it were cherry picking their quests and generally running low skulls. I don't know of a single run anyone did over R5, granted I hardly know everyone but still if there were groups running high reaper I would have expected to hear chatter / bragging about it. Most don't run Reaper for the challenge, they run Reaper because it's faster / easier to gain power.

I think you might be conflating my statements with that of others, but whatever.

Devs posted publicly in early discussions of reaper, that any added power would be counter-productive to a so-called 'challenge' mode, yet the trees were included anyway. Thus, the true purpose of Reaper is revealed - another grind, nothing more. "Challenge" is a lie.

And I will observe, the added power is lacking imagination, just lazy power creepy stat boosts.

I don't understand what discussing the HC server has to do with Reaper. There, any death for any reason is the end. DDO is too glitchy, and Reaper is too inconsistent for anyone to reasonably try to run high reaper in HC.


I do think that the Reaper implementation demonstrates that SSG understands the remaining player base. Most everyone has been driven away and the remaining players are chasing the carrot dangling at the end of the grind stick because they either like the grind or don't mind it. And that's a real shame because there are so many things that the game has right, especially now. I think that content is in an excellent position. There appears to be a dedicated effort to fix the myriad little things, and efforts to make robust structural changes for future growth.

The problem is that any new person that stumbles upon DDO is going to find an insurmountable challenge in being a contributing member of a social game. And that, too, is on the devs.

[sdrocky]

Reaper is supposed to be a challenge but in less than a week some groups completed r10 raids.

Several r10 groups completed in the first day.

Absurd grind for the reaper enhancs.

Make us refarm and recraft slavers for new reaper items is unbelievable.

Groups excluding 1 playstyle(melee) because it's easier to kite it with ranged/casters.

Annoying fear reapers that gives a stack damage even if you are not close to the reaper.

Mobs can 1 shot you if they are champs even in r1 with spells that hits the target multiple times like magic missiles and meteor swarm.

Self heal reduce in reaper is specially punitive for melees and most of ppl don't play healers even if their class icon is cleric or fvs.

They are tanks or casters not healers, make us sit and wait for a healer is bad.

Require a cc caster is fine but sometimes it takes long to find a good one.

Re-apply the death timer when you move away from you stone is a huge fail.

Quests are getting locked out if the groups are full and someone leaves or dc nobody is able to get inside the quest.

I've been playing this game for 8 years, i had 2 raid healer(a cleric and a fvs) for 6 years but tr'ed then into warlocks because there's no point to have a raid healer if people are taking 24k damage in 1 hit.

I'm not quitting the game yet but every update makes me play less, it makes the game more annoying for me.

I'm playing mostly r1 because it's not really hard but the self heal reduce is really annoying if you solo.

Don't tell me that i should be grouping, i like to solo and i should be able to do so.

I'll never spend a dollar in this game again if melees continue to be treated as second class like this.

I'm not a native english speaker here sorry for typos and all.

so just run casual. sook. or buld a multi class melee that can self heal and bring a hire to park for backup. and yer fins on his soap box again. CGF. reaper is not made to solo. its made to make us group up.

[Vorachtin]

Reaper is amazing and really the only reason I still play. Could use some improvements of course i.e. you should never run r10 and pull blank items! and there should be higher skull levels etc etc. But overall has been a great success.

[sdrocky]

I think you might be conflating my statements with that of others, but whatever.

Devs posted publicly in early discussions of reaper, that any added power would be counter-productive to a so-called 'challenge' mode, yet the trees were included anyway. Thus, the true purpose of Reaper is revealed - another grind, nothing more. "Challenge" is a lie.

And I will observe, the added power is lacking imagination, just lazy power creepy stat boosts.

I don't understand what discussing the HC server has to do with Reaper. There, any death for any reason is the end. DDO is too glitchy, and Reaper is too inconsistent for anyone to reasonably try to run high reaper in HC.


I do think that the Reaper implementation demonstrates that SSG understands the remaining player base. Most everyone has been driven away and the remaining players are chasing the carrot dangling at the end of the grind stick because they either like the grind or don't mind it. And that's a real shame because there are so many things that the game has right, especially now. I think that content is in an excellent position. There appears to be a dedicated effort to fix the myriad little things, and efforts to make robust structural changes for future growth.

The problem is that any new person that stumbles upon DDO is going to find an insurmountable challenge in being a contributing member of a social game. And that, too, is on the devs.

we all had to start at lvl 1 first life. imao i love reaper mode. makes most of us play as a group/team again. i choose neg energy spells just so i can heal pale masters.

i love reaper.

also. go find/show me another game that gives u the build options/reincarnation options this game does. a game is meant to be a challenge. elite is the new casual..


agree since its been ssg and not turbine/warner the game is great again.

MTGGA make the game great again. and they are. so agree on some not all.

its also done on limited funds with a small player base.

And i dare you to dig delve deep into a 14 yo game and change core code without breaking it all. most ppl that have an issue have no idea how a database works. let alone an LINUX/UNIX database. mess with it at your own peril.

[Raithe]

Thus, the true purpose of Reaper is revealed - another grind, nothing more. "Challenge" is a lie.

Not really a lie, a redirection. The point of Reaper wasn't the grind - they could have just added more reincarnation stuff for that. The point of Reaper was vindication - they most likely had metrics that proved that stat-grinding via reincarnation was actually less effective for end game gameplay than simply getting better at running high level quests. High Reaper skulls are meant to require higher stats, make them manditory, and vindicate the grinding method of completing raids and quests.

The problem is that any new person that stumbles upon DDO is going to find an insurmountable challenge in being a contributing member of a social game. And that, too, is on the devs.

DDO has been an anti-social game for a long time. I think everyone in this thread should realize that changes made to this game aren't done because of inspired development, they are done because the developers don't know what to try next - everything they have tried in the past has lead to less and less people playing. The whole point of any RPG metagame is to distinguish oneself through the mechanism of discrimination, so the truth that eludes the developers is that everything they do to support the metagame will lead to less and less people (even die-hard powergamers) playing.

The longevity of DDO in its sad state is entirely centered on the D&D brand name, some very talented artists working at Turbine and then SSG, and the original inspiration to make gameplay fully active (not turned-based).