Brute Force vs. Teamwork / Planning

[Maelphistez]

Rather than pile on a post about "sacks of HP in Reaper" or "is kiting the same thing as cheesing" I thought I would start a new post on the extremely small chance that a Dev might read it and think about how to incorporate it into future game plans.

Assumptions:
1) Scaling up mob HP or blanket reductions in character DPS is not a fun solution to the problem of "Challenge".
2) Reducing self-healing by itself is not a good means to encourage group play and teamwork.
3) Fundamentally rebuilding the game engine isn't going to happen so hordes of mobs will still cause lag.

Goals:
A) Provide quests that have paths for Brute Force as well as Teamwork gameplay.
B) Encourage people to run quests at or below quest level rather than far above quest level.
C) Fun for all.

Solutions:

• Provide in quest mechanisms that require coordination and teamwork but can reduce the effective HP of bosses. As an example of how this might work, imagine Legendary Tempest Spine. For those that have run this on any degree of Reaper, the Stormreaver turns into a monster sack of HP that randomly murders characters in a wide swath around him with little to no chance to survive. We are all familiar with gathering the runes to place into the urns to reduce the Stormreavers defenses at the end, but what if rather than placing these runes once the party had the option of leaving members behind to "protect" on-going rituals that increased the Reavers vulnerability to damage. Thus, the party could make one trip to gather each rune and plan on Brute Forcing through the Reavers defenses or send parties back to maintain rituals that made the Reaver easier to kill. This gives the option of brute force but also allows the opportunity for a group to work together to make the completion something other than a simple beatdown.
• Rather than reduce self-healing to the point of useless, allow self-healing to work normally. This can be countered by allowing Reapers to amp up all mobs in a radius around them. Plague reapers could add bane damage to all mobs nearby, Carnage could give armor piercing and improved crit multipliers to surrounding mobs, and Fear reapers could cause increase mob attack and movement speeds. Attempting to force players into healing each other reduces fun, especially for people who would rather pay attention to the mobs rather than to the parties HP bars (like me).
• You've set up penalties for over-level play in Reaper now but you haven't made it worthwhile for people to challenge themselves by running it under level. Rather than another source of XP inflation, why not give percentage increases to named item drop rates when quests are run under level? Maybe +2% for each level under (+4% if run on Reaper) the quest level to a max of +10% (+20% on Reaper) named drop rate for running items under quest level.

[Qhualor]

you had me until you went on to the first solution. what you are proposing are changing the mechanics of existing quests, which are done creatively by the devs and may or may not be more time and resource intensive than just doing a straight up Reaperfying of the quests. examples include 3BC, but quest layout is generally the same with some twists thrown into it. I cant imagine how long it would take to do something like that in even just half the quests in the game.

what you say though about Reaper is exactly why I don't play it. I think its interesting to add some twists to it like Reapers, but nerfing self healing, changing mechanics of CC and increasing mob damage output to ridiculousness tells me its just the devs way of fixing something they lost control of and they had to add enough rewards to it so that its enticing enough to get players to want to run it and justify their time investment. it may be a reminder of the "good ol' days", but I still think the desired outcome could have been the same without having to resort to the very things many players, including Reaper players, complained about over the past several years.

I don't agree that quests should be designed as either brute force or teamwork. I think it should be more designed to encourage teamwork in every quest. I hate to admit it, but when I run EE content with groups I have been getting band aides put on my boo boos a lot more than prior to Reaper. hilarious too because currently playing a ranger that can heal himself. the message does seem to be getting across to players, but would have happened regardless if n/h/e was balanced better. with brute force questing can come teamwork and with teamwork brute force questing can be a part of it. as long as teamwork is encouraged all the time, I care more about making content interesting and fun that doesn't necessarily mean it should be focused primarily on brute force. there needs to be more D&D put into DDO.

not that I agree with the design of Reaper and how it all turned out, but the primary reason for Reaper is supposed to be about the challenge. its not supposed to be primarily loot drops to encourage under level play or xp, which does seem to be the primary focus with players from where I sit. the more I see players talk about Reaper xp and loot the more I see Reaper failing in its intended design. I hardly see players talk about the challenge part of Reaper and if they do, most couple it with xp. "I like the challenge of Reaper, but I run R1-3 for the most efficient xp and that's why I am in heroics".

[Saekee]

your proposal reminds me a little of the old spectral dragon fight in which some players protected levers to light up the room when the dragon appeared--that debuffed it.

It caused crazy lag though & hence why it shut down

[Maelphistez]

I'm not advocating that the Devs go back and redo quests. That's impractical and not worth the huge amount of effort it would require. I'm just asking that Devs remember that there are varying playstyles among their player-base. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people wanting to Brute Force their way through quests and that should remain an available option. I'm just asking that for those that don't want to assemble a party of Furythrowers and Warlocks, there be alternative methods to accomplish quests that allow for a more teamplay version.

And Saekee, I agree that the Spectral Dragon fight is closer to what I am talking about than any other quest I can think of at the moment. I don't think we can pin the lag problems of that event on splitting up though. That whole thing, while a good idea, was an abortion of good ideas meeting terrible execution. Increasing group size to 24 instead of 12 was just the first of many problems. However they coded it, you didn't have a true "party" instance and had to use general chat to coordinate groups in the four rooms... you also could enter the event while in a party only to have your party split between different instances. I won't even get into the mass banning caused when a few people figured out how to use lag to get multiple scales while the majority of the players had no idea how it occurred or even that it *HAD* occurred. I'd prefer that SSG go into a development cycle and come up with DDO2 rather than end up with another disaster like that.