Multi-Patch/Update Preview: XP Changes

[hunzi2010]

Not a developer, but...

Chest ransack and experience ransack are different things. Chest ransack is entirely different, and it doesn't kick in until a certain number of completions (https://ddowiki.com/page/Chest_ransack, you can complete a quest eight times in a week before ransack begins to apply). Since the developers haven't mentioned it, I don't think chests will be affected. Loot and experience are different things, after all, and the developers haven't mentioned that they think loot rates need to be adjusted.

Thanks for that and I am aware of this page already but I just wanted to get confirmation, seeing as the devs are making all these changes of late, thought it better to get confirmation, just incase.
Cheers.

[Dnarth]

The ransack feature needs to be changed.

BUT......................................

Let's face it DDO'ers, we've been exploiting WK, Spies, VoN3 etc for far too long for us NOT to expect a change. we had one 2 years ago and those "dailies" weren't included.

If people leave the game over this, then so be it. I'm idle because of SSG ignoring a few classes and Trees. But I will return. In fact the changes they've posted the last few days are enough for me to come back in.

We NEED some changes to the game. Reaper needs an overhaul, those that disagree have too much invested into that system so of course you will be miffed at the changes.


It's going to be a "difficult" change for us all.

Please speak for yourself. I am glad you are speaking for 6 others now. Now that you are a community organizer you can run for president.

The dailies are lame. It's not going to be "difficult" for all of us. This is nothing more than behavior modification. You can call SSG daddy all you want I won't. The behavior modifications SSG has implemented since reaper and racials. The behavior modification also has a lengthy history of giving to much then taking away.

My quest card for epics is complete and say's epic elite after each quest. Nerfs are stupid. Increase's to quest xp are good. You been grandstand all day for a week. You went after the low hanging fruit to be a spokesmen. Weak Sauce. Call for nerfs of slayer xp. I am sure you will only count your 6 friends after that futile attempt.

[Cantor]

I was thinking that the permanent ransack seemd heavy handed and then it occured to me that maybe that's just because I dont know the design goal. They have played whack a mole over the years with optional exploits and botting, crucible shadow crypt von4 now wizking. Maybe this is a long term fix designed to stop the whack a mole. What many are calling a poorly thought out way to nerf a few quests may be a well thought out way to fix a reappearing problem.

[Dnarth]

I was thinking that the permanent ransack seemd heavy handed and then it occured to me that maybe that's just because I dont know the design goal. They have played whack a mole over the years with optional exploits and botting, crucible shadow crypt von4 now wizking. Maybe this is a long term fix designed to stop the whack a mole. What many are calling a poorly thought out way to nerf a few quests may be a well thought out way to fix a reappearing problem.

the design goal is to kill the dailies. This wizking optional only run thing is a red herring perpetuated months ago by a dev sock account.

[Cantor]

the design goal is to kill the dailies. This wizking optional only run thing is a red herring perpetuated months ago by a dev sock account.

I know people in game who did the wizking thing ( before it was forum common knowledge) and have seen a lot of lfms. It's not a made up conspiracy.

[mikarddo]

Actually the new norm will be character level = normal +3 (or elite +1) due to the detachment of bravery from levels and lack of rxp/xp penalties.

Which is utter sadness. Heroics at normal level on reaper was already mostly zerg. Going +2 or even +3 is just silly. Clearly a huge step in the wrong direction imho. Making reaper at level rather than at level+2 did so much good for the heroic game, pugs included.

[Cantor]

Which is utter sadness. Heroics at normal level on reaper was already mostly zerg. Going +2 or even +3 is just silly. Clearly a huge step in the wrong direction imho. Making reaper at level rather than at level+2 did so much good for the heroic game, pugs included.

I agree. We're headed back to level 17+ quests never being run. I have a path now which includes the es sagas. This change may mean that it will be more efficient to run lower level stuff instead.

That said the mismatch between reaper and bb has been tough on grouping.

[Ralmeth]

These changes sound mostly great! A while ago, I thought about how XP should be updated and I came to this same conclusion regarding making the bravery bonus XP as suggested, and I think I even suggested this once. I have one concern though, and that is optional XP permanently ransacking and how this will impact epic dailies. These can definitely get old, so I only do these some of the time, but there are two advantages to having them in the game, as opposed to simply running a wide variety of quests:
1) Leveling off destinies is not fun. Sure, there's a new store potion to help that you can use money to alleviate this, but running dailies is a good way to level up an off destiny. For me what this will do is make me want to play my main even more than any of my alts, as my main has all destinies filled in, while my alts do not.
2) There's an important social aspect to dailies in that, as long as you are not running them at some off-time, you can usually get a group together pretty quickly. I've made some friends this way. So without dailies being a viable option, I'm concerned that people will group less in epics.

The nice thing with epics is that you can group with anyone in the 20-30 range. With this one change, you are going to make it so there will be less incentive for people to join a group where they've already ransacked the optionals. The bravery bonus / streak system that is being replaced is ample evidence that a lot of people don't join groups because they already ran that quest. It seems to me that this will be a negative change to grouping, and I would wager this is just because a limited number of people are abusing the current system. Why not award optional XP when the quest is completed, with the optional XP ransacking just like the quest does?

[Cantor]

These changes sound mostly great! A while ago, I thought about how XP should be updated and I came to this same conclusion regarding making the bravery bonus XP as suggested, and I think I even suggested this once. I have one concern though, and that is optional XP permanently ransacking and how this will impact epic dailies. These can definitely get old, so I only do these some of the time, but there are two advantages to having them in the game, as opposed to simply running a wide variety of quests:
1) Leveling off destinies is not fun. Sure, there's a new store potion to help that you can use money to alleviate this, but running dailies is a good way to level up an off destiny. For me what this will do is make me want to play my main even more than any of my alts, as my main has all destinies filled in, while my alts do not.
2) There's an important social aspect to dailies in that, as long as you are not running them at some off-time, you can usually get a group together pretty quickly. I've made some friends this way. So without dailies being a viable option, I'm concerned that people will group less in epics.

The nice thing with epics is that you can group with anyone in the 20-30 range. With this one change, you are going to make it so there will be less incentive for people to join a group where they've already ransacked the optionals. The bravery bonus / streak system that is being replaced is ample evidence that a lot of people don't join groups because they already ran that quest. It seems to me that this will be a negative change to grouping, and I would wager this is just because a limited number of people are abusing the current system. Why not award optional XP when the quest is completed, with the optional XP ransacking just like the quest does?

There will still be dailies. Von3 will just lose its prime spot. Spies is so good even losing the optional won't kill it. Wizking will likely drop out too, the payoff won't be good enough to gamble on towers.

Preemptive response. Then why do anything if there will still be dailies?
Because other stuff will be more competitive.

[mikarddo]

I agree. We're headed back to level 17+ quests never being run. I have a path now which includes the es sagas. This change may mean that it will be more efficient to run lower level stuff instead.

That said the mismatch between reaper and bb has been tough on grouping.

Precisely, I have been doing both ES sagas as well but expect to stop doing so. The idea that these changes should create more diversity is flawed for heroics. Its far more likely to create less diversity...

Besides, I think it will create fewer pugs as well as +2 or +3 makes soloing or duoing at max zerg speed easier than before and thus offers even less reason to open the group to pugs if someone just wants to go fast.

[Talon_Dragonsbane]

I just did heroic Tower of Frost and it is ridiculously long and hard for its level. It needs a 400-500% increase in xp, not 5-10% that devs are indicating. Worst quest ever.

[Captain_Wizbang]

Its far more likely to create less diversity...

I think it will create fewer pugs as well

I agree. as far as newer players joining any reaper pugs.

Take the reaper aspect out I think it will create more pugs though.

[LTForge]

I'm not going to copy-paste the entire original post to break this down but I'll address the proposed design changes and fixes.

Design Goals:
1. The overall rate of leveling shouldn't be dropping for anyone except people who exploit issues to gain EXP quickly.* See below
2. Can't criticize this, I think it's a great design goal.
3. I think this would be better served if the goal was changed to "Players should be rewarded for breaking their regular play pattern to join a group or to help out friends and guild mates" in order to encourage an active, co-operative and lively community.
4. *I'm not familiar with many loopholes in Optional EXP but the ones I do know of could stand to be fixed if only for consistency. That said many optional objectives do not feel particularly rewarding as is so I feel like the mechanic as a whole needs tuning, rather than targeted exploit fixes. Still, I can understand the need to turn off the generator before you work on the dam, so to speak.

Proposed Changes:
1. Good idea overall, hopefully the proposed list isn't the complete one though. Additionally and frankly, I disagree with this method of enticing players to change up what they're playing though. I have favorite quests and quests I hate, it's extremely rare that EXP is a factor in this. Theme, design, writing, duration of quest, class and level play a much greater role in determining where I'm going to play at any given time, though I recognize the vast importance of this as a QoL change and DO appreciate it. I also recognize that I'm not the only player and that others can and do prioritize EXP over other things, so obviously apply salt liberally to this one before taking.

I understand that the resources necessary to make specific, targeted changes to a broad scope of quests is immense, especially in comparison to tweaking reward values and variables but I hope this is the beginning of a wider effort to move people away from feeling the need to only play a tiny handful of quests for EXP and loot.

Please up the value of a few more of the Free-To-Play quests though, I suspect most people have forgotten exactly how tedious it is to level up a character when you're broke or new to the game. Especially when you get up to level 10+, I've introduced 8 people to the game in the last year and run through free content with them extensively. Every single one of them has quit because of, or become extremely discouraged by the agonizingly bad rate of progression in the game for free to players.

2. Overall seems like a good idea,** though I feel the need to ask, does this mean that a player who plays a quest for the first time on normal is barred from it completely while Hard can still upgrade to Elite later? If so that's going to make your first TR (Not first life mind you) pretty confusing for new people who are going to have a weird time figuring out how (or if they even should) to optimize their progression path. Won't matter for TR2+ but I think it's worth noting here.

3. Good change, would like to see 30% for both Heroic and Epic though, again largely for the sake of the free-to-players who are in level ranges where there's a content drought. But, either way it's a nice bonus that helps with the mentioned design goal of getting people to play different quests, and it's a nice bonus (sort of) for casual players.

4. This one gives me a lot of mixed feelings. IF the answer to my question in Point 2** is that the completions can always be stacked up regardless of initial difficulty completed than I think this change is fine. If the answer is "they can't" this is awful and while it won't hurt the existing, paying player-base this will instantly kill the game for new players and people who are still in the early-ish stages of progression, or who don't have a wide variety of adventure packs. This is a dungeon crawler but it's also an MMO, we need players a hell of a lot more than we need to run a couple extra dungeons per TR.

If this system isn't handled extremely carefully I'm worries this ALONE could swing from a decent change to a suicide disguised as patch notes. Tread. Very. Lightly... and when in doubt, give the players the advantage. We'll appreciate it and probably throw (more) money at you.
Seriously.

5. I understand this is to deal with exploits but this feels like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. This doesn't jive with design goals 1 or 2 either except on paper. Yes this will encourage people to play a variety of quests, but without the rewards resetting anyone who doesn't own a wide variety of quests at a given level risks dropping their EXP significantly even if they're doing everything that's available to them (God help the Free-To-Players)

6. ...Meh? Good change on paper but this could go either way, especially in Heroic since the level range available is dropping, which will reduce the total available player count for Reaper Difficulty on any given quest though the increased EXP from the new scaling will likely make up for that. Personally I hope you wait to implement this until you've tweaked and implemented the rest of your proposed changes first but even if this turns out to be a bad change I suspect the benefits will stop it from being anything more than an annoyance.

TL;DR
Some good, some meh, some potentially extremely bad, needs to be handled carefully and clarified a bit before implementation because this could be a nice QoL change or a game-breakingly bad one. This game is old and the community is passionate but small so I hope this winds up being something that helps breathe more life into the game but I'm worried regardless.

Good luck SSG.

P.S: I didn't break down the EXP values or propose specific quests because I wanted to save time and space on the already pretty large wall. I'd be happy to go over it in greater detail as this topic advances though.

[Dnarth]

I know people in game who did the wizking thing ( before it was forum common knowledge) and have seen a lot of lfms. It's not a made up conspiracy.

What like one server? The wizking thing always sounded noobish. On G-Land right after it was posted some random toon no one ever heard of post's WK opts. LOL and was never heard from again nor was wk opt only ever posted again. Even dailies are lame. As are slayers. Yes I have participated in dailies and slayers. But never to the point the bulk of my leveling has ever came from a snoozefest.

At least let us in on what servers are doing wk opt only so we can point and laugh.

[Silverleafeon]

5. Optional objectives will ransack, and that ransack will not reset over time; they are essentially being changed to a play-through bonus with ransack that only resets with a Racial, True and Iconic Reincarnations.

This seems clear, what will they be called?

To compensate, optional objectives will ransack more slowly.

How slowly, could we have some figures?

With this change we can add more, or make more of them have greater rewards.

Does this mean that you will be making all optionals more along the lines of the Wiz King/Von 3/Spies type optionals?

So many, many optionals are very poor xp.
Will you be changing thus?

Many quests would become much more attractive if thus was changed.
The main reason Von 3 is so good is the optional xp payoff and the amount of optionals available.

This could be a good thing if you are seriously upgrading option xp across the boards.
Otherwise it does seem simply an xp nerf to a very small handful of quests.

Note: the reduced rate at which optional objectives ransack has not yet been changed on the test server.

Makes sense why I did not notice a difference when I ran on the test server.

[Grace_ana]

What like one server? The wizking thing always sounded noobish. On G-Land right after it was posted some random toon no one ever heard of post's WK opts. LOL and was never heard from again nor was wk opt only ever posted again. Even dailies are lame. As are slayers. Yes I have participated in dailies and slayers. But never to the point the bulk of my leveling has ever came from a snoozefest.

At least let us in on what servers are doing wk opt only so we can point and laugh.

I haven't ever seen people posting for them on Khyber.

[Silverleafeon]

I haven't ever seen people posting for them on Khyber.

+1 aye

On Khyber, players would roll thru the dungeon so fast the king would be dust...
If anyone objected, people would assume the objector simply was too slow getting to the entrance or something...

[erethizon]

+1 The proposed XP nerf will just push people into stopping DDO. The XP grind wheel is already way too big.... Forcing a 1 quest per True reincarnation is crazy. The chance of crossing an LFM of a quest you've already done is also important and will have the opposite effect SSG thinks it will have. It'll prevent those who are xp hungry from joining LFMs they've already done thus doing little to help with PUG diversity but also kill any chance of newer players from catching up the older players. Realizing how painful and impossible it is for them to catch up, they'll eventually leave the game, leaving the small "elite" crowd to a barren ghost town.

SSG needs to focus on making the game fun, reducing the hamster wheel grind, encouraging more LFMs by attracting new players. Buddy xp bonus, first time daily + additional weekly bonuses can be fine but without punishing players and letting them play the way they want.

Sorry, I don't mean to vex you, but if this xp nerf goes through you'll probably have a tougher time filling your LFMs than now. The people who joined those "dailies group" you complain about will probably leave the game anyways.
Of the few that are left, many will have already run your particular quest and thus would get little Xp or benefit out of joining your PUG thus leaving your DDO experience even more lonely and frustrating.

As you pointed out : "I realize a lot of people do not like it" .... this should sound an alarm bell. Any change that begins with that is probably not a good sign. The 130+ pastlives XP hamster wheel is too big, and until that changes and focuses more on gameplay, content, etc... DDO will have trouble attracting new players. Using XP as a punishing stick is a bad idea.

Cheers

People (such as myself) already refuse to run any quest they have done once because the first time bonuses are huge (it's the main reason I lead most of the groups I am in). The changes proposed make repeating quests better, not worse (since they are increasing the daily playthrough bonus and increasing the base experience of many quests). The only thing that will be worse is optionals assuming you have already run that particular quest many times since your last heroic, racial, or iconic TR.

People will be more likely to run content they have not run 5+ times before because their will be better optional experience even if the quest takes longer than others. And if they have run every quest many times and they are all optionally ransacked then they will join pretty much anything with good base experience because they are all the same (i.e. all ransacked).

This change doesn't make running content you have run once before worse than it is now. It makes running content that you have run 10 times before worse than it is now. It increases the motivation to run everything several times rather than 10 quests countless times.

And sure, some people will leave. Some people leave in protest after every update. Then they either come back or they don't. Everyone else simply adapts to the changes as we have done 42 times before (since this is update 43).

If they avoided every update that had a lot of people not liking it we would have almost no updates. "A lot of people" have complained about almost everything and then either left or adapted (many later coming around to like the new system). I thought reaper was a bad idea. Now I'm really glad it happened. If you took my not liking it as gospel and didn't implement it then we would be missing out on a great system. A lot of people fail to fully understand changes without actually trying them. Plus most people are naturally afraid of change. If we listened to he naysayers not only would we not have DDO updates we wouldn't have cell phones or computers or any of the other "scary" changes that made life different.

[Rull]

Which is utter sadness. Heroics at normal level on reaper was already mostly zerg. Going +2 or even +3 is just silly. Clearly a huge step in the wrong direction imho. Making reaper at level rather than at level+2 did so much good for the heroic game, pugs included.

I'm not really concerned about the overall difficulty but the disconnect between quest level and player level is getting silly.

When doing Red Fens on elite at (+3) you'd be level 12 and you would be getting level 7 items.
Gearing 'as you go' becomes worse, widening the gap between new players and TRs.

[Rull]

I agree. We're headed back to level 17+ quests never being run. I have a path now which includes the es sagas. This change may mean that it will be more efficient to run lower level stuff instead.

That said the mismatch between reaper and bb has been tough on grouping.

Yeah, reaper being at-level was nice conceptually, but the mismatch made it do more harm than good.

I'd like to see the +1 quest level on hard and the +2 on elite disappear completely.

If a party fails a quest on elite and they redo it on Hard instead, they should not be already over-level for that, IMO.