Reaper is a complete fail

[RoberttheBard]

That sounds good on paper, but the reality is that we're further segmenting the population. And we all know that once Reaper becomes the new norm, that's the only thing anybody will want to run. Even the people that have no business running in it.

That's what has happened to elite in the past. On the rare occasion I see someone post up a normal or a hard run (not counting "dailies") they are all by their onesies for the entire duration of the LFM, whether they start and leave it up while they quest or whether they finally give up getting a group after a lengthy wait.

So you can say there are other levels, but in reality if you want to group with anyone there is going to be only one.

And then there is the whole issue with the gap between hard and elite. I've got flavor toons that can solo Hard all day long and never use up their sp or come close to dying. Yet they step into an elite and it's a struggle to get from shrine to shrine and there are some battles that simply can't be won. (Like the end battle in slavers 3... impossible on elite with a "tactics" toon with subpar dps)

Then I'd say that the advice in the post you quoted is valid: If you can't run Elite, run a lower difficulty. Despite the hyperbole, there are quests being run on a daily basis that not only aren't being run in Reaper, but aren't even being run on Elite, and that's through all three levels of play: Heroic, Epic and Legendary. I'm sure some of my guild mates could come here and state that there are people that are either looking to, or that actually are running Reaper. However, they can't say that if they're interested in running something we're discussing in guild that we won't drop to a difficulty where they feel comfortable running it. We keep players because we don't alienate them by excluding them from group activities, even when they, quite frankly, outright suck at the game/character building, etc.

It becomes more of an issue of "I won't run a lower difficulty because I shouldn't have to" than an issue with the game. All of these levels exist, and they exist because not everyone is ready, willing or able to run the higher difficulties. They exist because people look at class icons and believe that "x class can't contribute", but if someone wants to run "x class", they need to be able to. I found that link to the archived forums last night. It's amazing how, in 2008, ranged Rangers were being ostracized from groups because "their dps sucks". It's amazing how rogues "sucked at dps, coming through disabling all the traps but with only three kills". It's even more amazing to read posts like those from people that, today, insist that that wasn't going on back then.

So if anyone's really curious about what happened to grouping in this game, take a read through the forum's archives. I think you're in for an enlightening experience. You see, the developers didn't "break grouping", the players did. What's really ironic about reading some of those threads is how melee was king. If you come back closer to the present, you'll find that casters were king, and reading now, everyone must be ranged, which would include some casters. As an aside to this, the threads that I read predate Epic Destinies, so grouping in this game was on a downward spiral long before they were added.

[AzB]

Video games are created by people, not nature. All challenge is artificial. If you despair of artificial challenge, maybe you should learn to swim or fish or walk.

I think what he meant was artificial intelligence as opposed to an actual human DM.

[Eryhn]

That sounds good on paper, but the reality is that we're further segmenting the population. )

dont rly see this. the only segmentation taking place is within the playerbase that ran elite BB on a regular basis. most there probably atm experiment with it and find a skull range suitable to them for either pug or private groups. so yeah, we may see a decline in ELITE lfms.

I dont see how that affects the norm/hard pugs though, they are where they were before.

[Requiro]

<snip>

I agree with you with one thing only: R10 supposed to be impossible to finish - even Severlin said that. I know that is was pain, lots of deaths, long, using super gear and astral shards repair, but all this should be known by Developers. That should be part of design. But Developers failed... again. R10 was beaten in first days of Reaper. Maybe that bring some attention to Devs, that there is more Power Creep in game that they aware of.

Nevertheless, IMO reaper is no any close to fail. It's great feature. One of the best improvement to game, in recent history. Overall I like new DDO more than before.

[AzB]

So if anyone's really curious about what happened to grouping in this game, take a read through the forum's archives. I think you're in for an enlightening experience. You see, the developers didn't "break grouping", the players did. What's really ironic about reading some of those threads is how melee was king. If you come back closer to the present, you'll find that casters were king, and reading now, everyone must be ranged, which would include some casters. As an aside to this, the threads that I read predate Epic Destinies, so grouping in this game was on a downward spiral long before they were added.

Totally agree with this.

However, I don't agree with the rest of your post. As pointed out, dropping from elite to hard shows the wide gap between the difficulties. For some characters, hard is way too easy and elite is way too hard. Reaper does at least allow 1-2 skulls which bridges the gap from elite nicely. It's harder, but not night and day like it is from hard to elite.

And quite honestly, dropping down to normal "daily" runs is a joke. There is no challenge there for anyone, it's just a weird zergfest for xp. For someone new to the game and learning it, these normal runs really aren't going to help much.

Reaper works, but it's not the best way to induce challenge into the game so that more people of different levels can play and contribute. Have you ever played PnP? You can have a party with a great deal of difference in experience and skill and even the newbs will have something to contribute. Not so much in DDO. How can you fix this? Not with reaper. Reaper is placating the hardcore gamer crowd, and they'll be the first to bail on the game when they get bored with it. (And then they can add Reaper 11!)

Real challenge comes from facing the unknown, many times poorly prepared. That doesn't happen when everyone has the dungeons memorized and are geared specifically for the big fight.

[AzB]

I dont see how that affects the norm/hard pugs though, they are where they were before.

Which is non existent. (I don't count "daily" norm runs as they are just xp farms)

[JOTMON]

I don't believe Reaper was a complete failure, or a great success...
its just stuck in between and in need of adjusting..

They went a different direction than I would have expected.. I was hoping Reaper would be the Legendary level 34+ content the capped toons were wanting to challenge themselves with their optimized toons.. not a levelling xp grind..
but we will adapt..

In my opinion..
Reapers 1-4 are too easy relative to Elite.. especially when players actually start filling Reaper Tree's..
I would of expected Reaper 1 to be marginally more difficult than Elite.. and its not... traditionally Hard running groups are running Reaper 2 without issues...
May be intentional.. but if it is.. why do we have normal /hard/elite.. dump them into Solo then go all reaper all the time ...

Reaper should be about full party difficulty where players are at their best for challenge.. no dungeon scaling.. set difficulty as a full party of 6.

Reaper dungeon alert.. Dungeon alert is already screwy.. remove it from Reaper..

Fear Reapers.. need fixing.. ticks of aoe damage are ocurring before mobs are activated in area's where Reapers cant be reached... and of course the fear reaper ticks only stop when it dies.

Death timer resets when you rebound from your soulstone.. get rid of this BS rebound reset..

That's my spiel on Reaper..

Now.. can we get a xload of content for capped toons to run..
or is the expectation to screw over the compeltionists/epic completionists/iconic completionists and other players that built toons for capped endgame and force them back into TR's for reaper XP instead of giving them endgame (capped level) content to run.

[RoberttheBard]

Totally agree with this.

However, I don't agree with the rest of your post. As pointed out, dropping from elite to hard shows the wide gap between the difficulties. For some characters, hard is way too easy and elite is way too hard. Reaper does at least allow 1-2 skulls which bridges the gap from elite nicely. It's harder, but not night and day like it is from hard to elite.

And quite honestly, dropping down to normal "daily" runs is a joke. There is no challenge there for anyone, it's just a weird zergfest for xp. For someone new to the game and learning it, these normal runs really aren't going to help much.

Reaper works, but it's not the best way to induce challenge into the game so that more people of different levels can play and contribute. Have you ever played PnP? You can have a party with a great deal of difference in experience and skill and even the newbs will have something to contribute. Not so much in DDO. How can you fix this? Not with reaper. Reaper is placating the hardcore gamer crowd, and they'll be the first to bail on the game when they get bored with it. (And then they can add Reaper 11!)

Real challenge comes from facing the unknown, many times poorly prepared. That doesn't happen when everyone has the dungeons memorized and are geared specifically for the big fight.

Reaper is, just like Elite, an option, and it's an option that isn't for everyone. Hell, there are quests that I can solo on HE that I can't solo on R2, such as the second part of the Fire Caves, at least, disclaimer here, not on a Melee FvS, the only one I've tried it on in Heroics, and this solo. I've been busy in epic levels, and only goof off with that one when nobody's on, or when nobody has time to run anything. Now, I could have alleviated these woes by throwing up an LFM for it, I'm sure it would have filled, there were enough people running around in range in Barrel's Bottom alone, let alone anyone that may be hanging out on their ships, or goofing off elsewhere. Especially if I stipulated that I'd be running the Saga quests.

Most of the daily runs I see are in at least EH, not EN, and even with that, there aren't a lot of "new" players running them. The daily circuit we ran Tuesday included VoN 3, Two Toed Tobias and Spies. All three of these quests have non epic versions where new people learn the quests. Although, TTT is completely different from the heroic, despite presumably being on the same map, it's amazing the difference not being flooded makes... EE, LE and Reaper aren't the difficulties where one goes to learn a quest. Especially if one is a new/newer player. I know I'll be a lot more comfortable running LE once I hit 30, running it underlevel can be done, and is, quite frankly, fun, but it is a detriment to everyone else that may be at cap already, or, knows it like the back of their hand from previous experience.

This brings me to the "R 10 isn't hard enough" phase of the dialog. It can never be hard enough, if people are willing to eat deaths in order to get the completion. The only way this would work is if dead players are respawned outside of the quest, with a lockout timer running. This would, of course, generate tons of rage. It would, however, create that fail chance the devs were looking for.

[JOTMON]

Death timer resets when you rebound from your soulstone.. get rid of this BS rebound reset..

.

fixed per release notes..

https://www.ddo.com/en/update-34-patch-1-release-notes
~Resurrection timers will no longer be reset after being pulled back to your soulstone for wandering too far from it.

[Simard]

This brings me to the "R 10 isn't hard enough" phase of the dialog. It can never be hard enough, if people are willing to eat deaths in order to get the completion. The only way this would work is if dead players are respawned outside of the quest, with a lockout timer running. This would, of course, generate tons of rage. It would, however, create that fail chance the devs were looking for.

I'd point out that it's to the benefit of SSG directly and the rest of us indirectly to have people willing to use those resources to complete. Ultimately those cakes and shards to repair represent real money spent on the game. And in a micro transaction game that becomes a financial engine, which helps fund our habit.

[RoberttheBard]

I'd point out that it's to the benefit of SSG directly and the rest of us indirectly to have people willing to use those resources to complete. Ultimately those cakes and shards to repair represent real money spent on the game. And in a micro transaction game that becomes a financial engine, which helps fund our habit.

I'm not going to disagree with that, but the point of that portion of the post stands: As long as people are willing to eat the deaths to complete, Reaper can never be hard enough that it can't be completed.

[sk3l3t0r]

I'm complaining because hardcore vets asked for challenge and what they got instead was another grind. It was the perfect grind with the ability to complete it just by being persistent in an instance.

+1

It's the ability to triumph via persistence that they should have left out. That's what is going to put it on farm in a very short period of time for exactly the people who actually needed a challenge at this point in their DDO careers.

I agree, valid complaint...and we knew it would happen the second any type of "real" reward was added that added any type of power, and already the complaints about it that the XP is too high...I predict it will be on farm by next week for some hard cores...

I am probably never going to play Reaper at all. It bothers me that it will linger as something needing dev attention long after the players who really needed it to maintain interest are sated and done with it and that the process will of becoming sated will run it's course in weeks or a few months at most.

I played once today first time, forced into it..join an LFM for EH farm of Memoirs for Legendary Pansophic Circlet, turns into an r1... 2 deaths for me, maybe 10 for the group, feels like a slight tic up from EE took a tad longer than normal. This is exactly how I felt when MOTU was introduced and Epic grind was introduced.... we have just come full circle again because we have more and more completionists x1,2,3 running around these days and the majority of the population is bored because they maxed out most of their goals on the last big hamster wheel that is not really shinny anymore. This was never intended to be for the hardest of the hardcores...it was window dressing on a new shinny hamster wheel. Those hardcore folks already figured this out and are just enjoying the high for now, then we will lose another generation of players, zombie mode will set in and all will be fine again...nothing to see here...and next update will be a Xoriat one..

Reaper 1 should have been what Reaper 7 is. Reaper 3 should be where the vets are crashing and burning, with even persistence not enough at this point and them all scheming how to craft better gear and develop better tactics to get over the hump there. That's the Reaper that would have given long-time vets something to challenge them until the x-pac comes out this fall/winter.

Which is a total slap in the face given the expectations that was presented to us that the DM wants to kill you...and now we have a brand new shinny hamster wheel to maintain...but hey we made DDO great again!!!

[Mr_Helmet]

I don't believe Reaper was a complete failure, or a great success...
its just stuck in between and in need of adjusting..

They won't adjust anything. SSG will continue with their hamfisted dumb ideas until you either adapt to it or leave the game.

[sk3l3t0r]

RThis brings me to the "R 10 isn't hard enough" phase of the dialog. It can never be hard enough, if people are willing to eat deaths in order to get the completion. The only way this would work is if dead players are respawned outside of the quest, with a lockout timer running. This would, of course, generate tons of rage. It would, however, create that fail chance the devs were looking for.

Death must have consequence for it to be feared...I completely agree on your point. Or worse, true death, or permadeath...oh wait...

[RoberttheBard]

+1



I agree, valid complaint...and we knew it would happen the second any type of "real" reward was added that added any type of power, and already the complaints about it that the XP is too high...I predict it will be on farm by next week for some hard cores...



I played once today first time, forced into it..join an LFM for EH farm of Memoirs for Legendary Pansophic Circlet, turns into an r1... 2 deaths for me, maybe 10 for the group, feels like a slight tic up from EE took a tad longer that normal. This is exactly how I felt when MOTU was introduced and Epic grind was introduced.... we have just come full circle again because we have more and more completionist x1,2,3 running around these days and the majority of the population is bored because they maxed out most of their goals on the last big hamster wheel that is not really shinny anymore. This was never intended to be for the hardest of the hardcores...it was window dressing on a new shinny hamster wheel. Those hardcore folks already figured this out and are just enjoying the high for now, then we will lose another generation of players, zombie mode will set in and all will be fine again...nothing to see here...and next update will be a Xoriat one..



Which is a total slap in the face given the expectations that were presented to us that the DM wants to kill you...and now we have a brand new shinny hamster wheel to maintain...but hey we made DDO great again!!!

I'm having a really hard time getting the bolded and the last line of this quote to tally out. Anyone else, or did I miss some sarcasm again? Because "we were promised that the DM wants to kill you", and having 10 deaths in an R1 quest would seem to suggest that the DM succeeded in killing you. This comes back directly to the point I made in my last post: Reaper cannot be set to have a fail condition on it so long as people are willing to eat the deaths to get the completion. The irony of this quote is that it was R1 that caused 10 deaths to the party, not R7, or R10, R1...

[die]

My friends and I are having a blast on reaper. This game has not been this fun since they took the death penalty away in o7 or 08.

[KoobTheProud]

I'm not going to disagree with that, but the point of that portion of the post stands: As long as people are willing to eat the deaths to complete, Reaper can never be hard enough that it can't be completed.

This is the issue in a nutshell.

It's great that SSG can make some money off of Reaper in terms of the consumables needed to *guarantee* completions at this point. However that fact makes Reaper unchallenging for the people that the difficulty level was supposed to challenge. In the long run Reaper will look like something that was designed to be a bait-and-switch instead of the content the community was asking for. That can't be good.

[RoberttheBard]

This is the issue in a nutshell.

It's great that SSG can make some money off of Reaper in terms of the consumables needed to *guarantee* completions at this point. However that fact makes Reaper unchallenging for the people that the difficulty level was supposed to challenge. In the long run Reaper will look like something that was designed to be a bait-and-switch instead of the content the community was asking for. That can't be good.

They're sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place on this though. On the one hand, they could treat Reaper like raids, and disable the consumables, but that will cause untold amounts of rage, or they can leave it as is, and rake in the cash that people are going to spend on cakes. From a business standpoint, the latter makes more sense than the former, but it paints them into a corner.

I guess another alternative would be to disable Reaper xp after x number of deaths, on a player by player basis, instead of per party. That would "move the goal posts" from xp awarded on completion no matter what to "xp rewarded on a completion with < x deaths. With x being a variable that can be adjusted according to how many Skulls...

[KoobTheProud]

I think the best answer is to cap deaths in an instance before it closes. Whatever the number is the group cannot exceed it or the run is over. That would be challenging.

[slarden]

I'm complaining because hardcore vets asked for challenge and what they got instead was another grind. It was the perfect grind with the ability to complete it just by being persistent in an instance.

It's the ability to triumph via persistence that they should have left out. That's what is going to put it on farm in a very short period of time for exactly the people who actually needed a challenge at this point in their DDO careers.

I am probably never going to play Reaper at all. It bothers me that it will linger as something needing dev attention long after the players who really needed it to maintain interest are sated and done with it and that the process will of becoming sated will run it's course in weeks or a few months at most.

Reaper 1 should have been what Reaper 7 is. Reaper 3 should be where the vets are crashing and burning, with even persistence not enough at this point and them all scheming how to craft better gear and develop better tactics to get over the hump there. That's the Reaper that would have given long-time vets something to challenge them until the x-pac comes out this fall/winter.

I disagree I think making reaper 1 just a little harder than elite and R10 much harder is the right answer so people can increase difficulty gradually as they learn and improve. I would have preferred optional challenge vs. grind, but it's clear the majority of the player base likes this better and it makes TR fun again.