Reaper XP

[Pyed-Pyper]

Well I know more than just a challenge was wanted. It is a very plain concept to understand: Risk without reward is never taken. Especially in MMO's. The problem I have with the reward system in Reaper is it shoots three times, hits the target twice, and the third ricochets and hits your foot.
People wanted a non-trivial challenge, check
People wanted a boost to some meaningful reward, check with a boost to pulling named items
People wanted some system that only makes the grind in reaper easier, *pichnew!* This one is the bad one.

I mean I get the meaning here. It adds something to aim for. However the reaper mode was more about item 1, a meaningful challenge. They did go full banhammer on players power. However to balance that, add a earn creep to get marginal returns? That seemed like the poor decision to me. In the end, that is what they added, so that is what we get. How could it be worked on and improved is the next step.

Personally, the one thing making reaper a must run, loot. In ddo there are two long haul runs: exp and loot. Exp has plenty of ways to gain fast and hard. Loot on the other hand is a mess of systems with many different ways to boost the junkpile, but nothing really boosts the quality pile. This extra chance to get better named items is a big positive in reaper.

Unless, like flagging mechanics, it was removed before going live and I am totally off mark and reaper has nothing going for it except challenge?

DDO says Reaper is for intended to challenge the toughest adventurers. Challenge through higher difficulty.

Alongside that comes a truckload of power creep, mitigating the difficulty, available from level 1. This game needs more power creep the same as it needs more bugs.

Some people wanted more power (creep). A number of people asked for challenge, not power creep. And some people warned that the power creep would be self-defeating to the advertised purpose of Reaper.

By adding the power creep, DDO transformed Reaper from an interesting choice into a divisive must-have.

[mrjosom]

Terrible idea, that strengthens the push to TR and further push the divide on Reaper XP/min on TR toons and non-TR'ig toons actually wanting to challenge high level content.

Instead.. give better XP for higher level content and better XP for higher Reaper Skull completions.


The XP ratio is screwed up..
A TR and quick run of 15 Reaper 1-3 skull quests in the Harbor solo'ing and with an on/off guildy netted me almost 4k Reaper XP in 2.5 hours with no deaths and little effort.
~An at level solo Bringing the light (base level 2 quest) .. 1 Skull took 4 minutes and netted me 228 Reaper XP.
~A over level Reaper 10 Skull Cabal (base level 24) gave me 98 Reaper XP. after an hour and many deaths with a full party of level 30 well geared players.

Current formula.. Base Reaper XP = 50 + 3 * (quest level on elite) * (number of skulls)
Better XP needs to be applied to Epic/Legendary base XP, and Skulls should apply better XP bonus

In level 2 content each Skull adds 6 Reaper XP to a base of 56 Reaper XP..
a one skull level 2 quest gives 56 base xp, a 10 skull increase this to 110 xp (sure there is more from bonuses, but the bonuses don't make it worthwile to challenge higher skulls)
~there is little motivational drive to increase the difficulty beyond 1 Reaper in low level content, since quantity of xp/quest trumps quality per quest. especially in Reaper XP/min.

For level 30 content, each skull only adds 90 Reaper XP. while painfully increasing the difficulty thus killing the replayability for higher level skulls and Reaper XP..
~Sure we will do it for the 'challenge'.. but that's more one and done then back to the 5 year expected grind (based on my current math to cap Reaper XP)
Brings me back to the MOD runs.. it was more efficient to run the raid 20x Normal than run it Elite for the chance of loot drop increase.. the numbers just didn't support the risk vs reward.
Pugs everywhere were hamsterwheeling Normal runs in off destinies and taking whoever wanted to come along since the difficulty didn't warrant a be at your best group and the ultimate reward was faster this way.


The current obvious choice for Reaper XP is to suck it up and force ourselves into TR's to run the optimal Reaper XP/min.
Great time to bring up secondary main toons and alts sice the double benefit of obtaining TR lvies and optimal Reaper XP is all bundled up nicely in TR rinse/repeat first time bonus low level and low Skull content farming..


I would look at changing the formula to
Base Heroic = 10
Base Epic = 100
Base Legendary =500

Base Reaper XP +5 * (quest level on elite) * (number of skulls - over level)
essentially -1 skull per over level..
This would let level 30 players run Reaper 10 skull level 20 Epic quests and get only base XP. since the skull modifier would reduce to 0.
11 over level would put skulls negative and kill the base xp... basically set Reaper XP to 0.
an additional modifier for quest length would be beneficial..
.

I agree with you. what I was trying to explain is that for instance my pg doesn't need any more heroic life. then once I Etr on that pg it doesn't count as first time I'm playing a quest since I've been playing that quest on the previous Epic life. For the normal xp this is correct, but I was asking to reset the count on the quest completions only for the reaper xp. This can be valid also for those who wants to Etr instead of Tr. But actually I agree with the review u've made in ur post.

[Starla70]

I had my first experience with all the reaper stuff this weekend. I wanted to let the bugs get worked out for a bit. Ran 4 flagging quests then the 12 man raid for VON. Had 1 melee with us. He complained the whole time how unfair Reaper is to melee. I tend not to play melee toons, but he was really upset over it all. I personally found it okay. I was playing a cleric and I had to work, which I am fine with, rather like that part. My biggest issue is when I went to the vender, unless you have a certain amount of points, you can't even see what you can work for. That turned several players I was running with off as well. We ran on 1 or 2 skulls, had people in the raid bragging about running 5 skulls solo. It did not seem to impress anyone.

[Rog]

I like reaper mode the exp pents sucks. i get it we grinding out permanent buffs it should be hard.
many group are going ee.
this will create a larger divide between the 2 groups.
fix that or listen to cry because they failed to grind

[Gljosh]

Don't worry, soon we will have Reaper XP Tomes, Reaper XP Pots, Reaper Otto's Box, Reaper XP weekends, Reaper XP Drops in Gold Daily Dice rolls, etc.

Currently I am enjoying running some of the earlier (heroic) stuff on R1 instead of E.

I do dread the companion missions in Threnal though...

[Selvera]

I proposed reaper XP changing from 50 + (3*level*skulls) to 20 + (4*level*skulls) in a different thread, but it was buried in a longer post and not explained.

The reasons for this change are: It provides more incentive to run reaper at higher levels and higher difficulties and dis-incentivizes speed running lower-difficulty low skull content for reaper xp. The current formula is weighted towards low-skull low-level content for reaper XP, so this balancing feels needed.

The change is also very simple, and should not take a huge amount of developer time to implement; as it requires no new formula or adding new incentives or anything; it just requires changing a couple of constants in the code. If the developers feel like it's a good idea; it can be implemented very quickly.

Some math about this:
At level 4
The new formula reduces reaper xp for playing 1 skull significantly (36 instead of 62)
The new formula gives approximately the same xp if you run the quests on reaper 7 (132 instead of 134)
The new formula slightly increases the reaper xp if you run the quest on 10 skulls (180 instead of 170

At level 15
The new formula reduces reaper xp for playing 1 skull (80 instead of 95)
The new formula gives exactly the same reaper xp if you run the quest on reaper 2 (140 instead of 140)
The new formula increases the reaper xp if you run the quest on 10 skulls (620 instead of 500)

At level 30
The new formula gives exactly the same reaper xp for playing 1 skull (140 instead of 140)
The new formula gives more xp for playing reaper 5 skulls (620 instead of 500)
The new formula gives significantly more xp for running the quest on 10 skulls (1220 instead of 950)

And as an added notes:
The reaper xp for running a level 24 quest on reaper 10 would increase by about 27% if the new formula is used.
The old formula had running a legendary (level 30) reaper 10 quest giving 15 times more reaper XP then running a level 4 1 skull reaper quest. My new formula proposed increases this to nearly 34 times more reaper XP.

[Recared]

Straight to the point:

first repet
baseqstlvl4runat5r3 86 62
total xp r 191 52
total bonuses (%) 300 50
total reaper xp 148092 148378
total r after 148378 148455 <- applied vip bonus and many others.
MEDIUM lenght qst

I have been noticing getting substantially less reaper xp while questing today and I made some tests ->
-> either The tome of learning for 50% bonus fist time quest (which was being applied) or the 50% streak bonus (which was being applied) are not being applied at the moment.

I could be wrong in the conclusion, but that's what my testing showed. I thought at first some other bonuses may not be being applied, but further testing revealed exactly a bonus of 50% in the base reaper xp is missing. I am very sure it was being applied before and reports from other players also showed this: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post5938106

An explanation and/or correction would be much appreciated.

[baimpala]

An argument for Reaper level to be based on 'normal' base level vs. 'elite' base level is this:

You cannot activate reaper trees until you hit character level 4, yet 'normal' level 2 quests are available to be run in reaper difficulty.

For those desiring a challenge, simply click 10 skulls. If you can solo reaper 10 without no challenge, perhaps it's time to find a new game, you've clearly mastered this one and it offers nothing more for you.

For those of us mere mortals, reaper difficulty is pretty fun, quite a bit more challenging (especially to solo) and actually caused me to TR my triple/triple completionist who otherwise was only being used to farm gear for alts, etc.

Thanks,
Bam

Edit: As EllisDee37 points out, there should never be a penalty for entering a quest with a character the same level as the quest, for uniformity at least. So a level 4 character entering a base level 2 quest (or level 4 on Elite and Reaper per the quest log) is 'at level' for either elite or reaper and should not incur a penalty. Again, if folks want to make it more challenging, just select higher skulls. I believe this would eliminate a significant source of confusion for all players. Otherwise, I think Reaper is about right just where it is.

For the record, I was wrong/confused on this issue. Reaper and Elite levels should align, i.e., I should be running Kobold's New Ringleader on Reaper at character level 2. If the issue is Reaper XP would be 'too much' then by all means lower it to whatever you deem adequate, but for the love of all that is holy, please align bravery bonus and Reaper mode. Make it based on the modified level of the quest. Please, please (in line with cool, cool).

Thanks,
Bam

[MIvan]

Having bravery bonus and overlevel penalty at the same time is ... not well designed.
Please fix it!

[Sunnie]

Having bravery bonus and overlevel penalty at the same time is ... not well designed.
Please fix it!

I fully agree with this.

[RobbinB]

Is there a maximum to reaper xp accumulated for a character, or can everyone at some point have all three trees maxed?

If you play a single toon every day about 8 hours and only play that toon in reaper-based dungeons, then you should be able to figure that out for yourself in about 30 or 40 years.

[RobbinB]

Get rid of the first time bonus entirely, maybe raise base a bit to adjust for that. Seriously, I'm tired of this TR nonsense.
Adjust multipliers for long dungeon lengths upwards. A 1 hour quest/raid should reward way more than a 5 minute quest, not a difference of 0.3 multiplier.

Agreed.

[RobbinB]

I proposed reaper XP changing from 50 + (3*level*skulls) to 20 + (4*level*skulls) in a different thread, but it was buried in a longer post and not explained.

The reasons for this change are: It provides more incentive to run reaper at higher levels and higher difficulties and dis-incentivizes speed running lower-difficulty low skull content for reaper xp. The current formula is weighted towards low-skull low-level content for reaper XP, so this balancing feels needed.

The change is also very simple, and should not take a huge amount of developer time to implement; as it requires no new formula or adding new incentives or anything; it just requires changing a couple of constants in the code. If the developers feel like it's a good idea; it can be implemented very quickly.

Some math about this:
At level 4
The new formula reduces reaper xp for playing 1 skull significantly (36 instead of 62)
The new formula gives approximately the same xp if you run the quests on reaper 7 (132 instead of 134)
The new formula slightly increases the reaper xp if you run the quest on 10 skulls (180 instead of 170

At level 15
The new formula reduces reaper xp for playing 1 skull (80 instead of 95)
The new formula gives exactly the same reaper xp if you run the quest on reaper 2 (140 instead of 140)
The new formula increases the reaper xp if you run the quest on 10 skulls (620 instead of 500)

At level 30
The new formula gives exactly the same reaper xp for playing 1 skull (140 instead of 140)
The new formula gives more xp for playing reaper 5 skulls (620 instead of 500)
The new formula gives significantly more xp for running the quest on 10 skulls (1220 instead of 950)

And as an added notes:
The reaper xp for running a level 24 quest on reaper 10 would increase by about 27% if the new formula is used.
The old formula had running a legendary (level 30) reaper 10 quest giving 15 times more reaper XP then running a level 4 1 skull reaper quest. My new formula proposed increases this to nearly 34 times more reaper XP.

Simple change. Your formula is definitely an improvement. Maybe combine that change with slightly expanded range of "quest-length" modifiers.

[Faltout]

If you play a single toon every day about 8 hours and only play that toon in reaper-based dungeons, then you should be able to figure that out for yourself in about 30 or 40 years.

Nah. No need. Some people are already past the 1 million mark. We should know pretty soon. In the next 6 months (or less. They complete dungeons faster and higher skulls with more experience and reaper tree power)

[Vindraxx]

We are aware that the Reaper XP penalty is based off of the non-adjusted Base level of the quest or raid. There has been confusion over the issue, but we're all on the same page now (at least I think so). We are taking a look at people's feedback, but it's too early to say whether any adjustments will be made in the future. We are also looking at some discrepancies being reported involving Reaper XP in Epic level quests, and will be most likely working on a patch to correct this as soon as we can get it out.

Has this been discussed/reevaluated at all since this posting? This seems like an incredibly awful barrier that makes grouping level ranges much more narrow and I personally would like to add my voice to those that have expressed making reaper exp based of the adjusted base level of the quest so it is in line with Bravery Bonuses. It makes zero sense to me that these systems are not congruent with each other segmenting those who want to run at "base level" for max reaper exp and those who are at "quest level +2".

[Pavelov]

This is kinda about Reaper XP, but also Reaper in general. You can't reenter reaper after dying. Fine. If that is the case can the game PLEASE put a confirm window on the "release" from death button. If you "recall" from a dungeon you get a confirm window, and for normal all you lose is a little exp if you reenter. You completely get locked out of a quest if you recall on reaper and accidentally hitting the "release" button when you are dead can completely ruin so much hard work it is absolutely ridiculous not to have a confirm window on it.