So I heard there were some XP changes...

[Chilldude]

A friend was telling me that they were overhauling the quest XP in DDO because they realized a lot of quests had too little XP and people weren't running them. This didn't make sense to me because how the heck would Standing Still Games do something right... just didn't compute. So I went to check out what the deal was and I saw...

The following quests will have their XP lowered.

Grim and Barett: XP lowered by 10%
The Jungle of Khyber: XP lowered by 10% on Heroic only. Epic will remain unchanged.
Spies in the House: XP lowered by 10%.
The Litany of the Dead: XP lowered by 10%

LOL!!! OK, they made me look! They got me. I admit it. For a second I actually thought that maybe, just maybe they pulled their head out of the rock. So all this XP overhaul nonsense was just an excuse to nerf the XP of the best XP quests. Now THAT makes more sense.

This gave me a pretty good chuckle though...

The following quests will have a MAJOR increase (10-20%) to their XP:

Major increase? 10-20% increase? Major? I know of several dozen quests that a 300% increase would only be minor, and still might not be enough to make them playable.

Oh man, I sure did get a chuckle though. They nerfed jungle, spies and litany! LOL!

[cru121]

*shrug*

the changes to bravery bonus and relaxing of reaper overlevel penalties is much bigger deal than few percents up or down on a few quests

mho

[LucidLTS]

A friend was telling me that they were overhauling the quest XP in DDO because they realized a lot of quests had too little XP and people weren't running them. This didn't make sense to me because how the heck would Standing Still Games do something right... just didn't compute. So I went to check out what the deal was and I saw...



LOL!!! OK, they made me look! They got me. I admit it. For a second I actually thought that maybe, just maybe they pulled their head out of the rock. So all this XP overhaul nonsense was just an excuse to nerf the XP of the best XP quests. Now THAT makes more sense.

This gave me a pretty good chuckle though...



Major increase? 10-20% increase? Major? I know of several dozen quests that a 300% increase would only be minor, and still might not be enough to make them playable.

Oh man, I sure did get a chuckle though. They nerfed jungle, spies and litany! LOL!

Oh, but wait, it gets even better. Optionals now ransack PERMANENTLY per life! You can't wait a week or even a month, you have to reincarnate to reset it! So Devil Assault, already not great XP/min by anybody's standard, has effectively had it's XP cut 70% after the first few runs per life.

They made a few feeble attempts to justify it, but about the best they could do was the lame "repeating a quest too many times makes people quit" (without increasing the drop rate of loot or reducing completions required for a full list), but nobody bought it. So they gave up and just rammed it down our throats regardless.

Fernando would have been proud.

[Potatofasf]

*shrug*

the changes to bravery bonus and relaxing of reaper overlevel penalties is much bigger deal than few percents up or down on a few quests

mho

yeah, a forced way to make Reaper mandatory and not an option. Leveling on Elite turned to become way slow than R1. The leveling curve on R1 is like running a second life toon.

Oh, but wait, it gets even better. Optionals now ransack PERMANENTLY per life! You can't wait a week or even a month, you have to reincarnate to reset it! So Devil Assault, already not great XP/min by anybody's standard, has effectively had it's XP cut 70% after the first few runs per life.

They made a few feeble attempts to justify it, but about the best they could do was the lame "repeating a quest too many times makes people quit" (without increasing the drop rate of loot or reducing completions required for a full list), but nobody bought it. So they gave up and just rammed it down our throats regardless.

Fernando would have been proud.

I still farming the same dailies, still more charming than slog through content that are tedious or plain bad (i.e. Tower of Frost, Slaver series and ToEE).

[Quikster]

*shrug*

the changes to bravery bonus and relaxing of reaper overlevel penalties is much bigger deal than few percents up or down on a few quests

mho

Honestly the only thing I have really noticed is guildies grouping together more because their heroic reaper xp is no longer getting "killed" due to someone being a level higher. Other than that it has been business as usually for leveling as far as I can tell. But tbh, I don't pay a ton of attention to it anywho.

[FlavoredSoul]

I still farming the same dailies, still more charming than slog through content that are tedious or plain bad (i.e. Tower of Frost, Slaver series and ToEE).

SSG fails to realize that there are three reasons people run content 1. high exp, 2. good loot, 3. it doesn't mentally torture players who run it.

The buffs to tower of frost and toee exp alone were pretty massive (toee got like a 35% boost and is still worse exp/min than most stuff but whatever) but even if toee or tower of frsot got a 200% exp boost they'd still be unpopular because A. a 200% boost would put them pretty close to but not surpassing the post-nerf dailies, and B. nobody except a tiny minority like the design of those quests.

SSG doesn't get that even if they cut the exp in spies down by 50% it's still 100 times more fun than running tethymar, toee, or tower of frost.

[Anuulified]

A friend was telling me that they were overhauling the quest XP in DDO because they realized a lot of quests had too little XP and people weren't running them. This didn't make sense to me because how the heck would Standing Still Games do something right... just didn't compute. So I went to check out what the deal was and I saw...



LOL!!! OK, they made me look! They got me. I admit it. For a second I actually thought that maybe, just maybe they pulled their head out of the rock. So all this XP overhaul nonsense was just an excuse to nerf the XP of the best XP quests. Now THAT makes more sense.

This gave me a pretty good chuckle though...



Major increase? 10-20% increase? Major? I know of several dozen quests that a 300% increase would only be minor, and still might not be enough to make them playable.

Oh man, I sure did get a chuckle though. They nerfed jungle, spies and litany! LOL!

The exp changes had zero effect on ERs, they can still be done in 2 days with effort and no exp potion. Heroics I haven't tried yet.

[Requiro]

A friend was telling me that they were overhauling the quest XP in DDO because they realized a lot of quests had too little XP and people weren't running them. This didn't make sense to me because how the heck would Standing Still Games do something right... just didn't compute. So I went to check out what the deal was and I saw...

LOL!!! OK, they made me look! They got me. I admit it. For a second I actually thought that maybe, just maybe they pulled their head out of the rock. So all this XP overhaul nonsense was just an excuse to nerf the XP of the best XP quests. Now THAT makes more sense.

This gave me a pretty good chuckle though...

Major increase? 10-20% increase? Major? I know of several dozen quests that a 300% increase would only be minor, and still might not be enough to make them playable.

Oh man, I sure did get a chuckle though. They nerfed jungle, spies and litany! LOL!

Yes. The last XP balance is one big facepalm.

Developers just can't understand, that the ONLY way to encourage people play other quests is boost XP proportional to time and difficulty.

The exp changes had zero effect on ERs, they can still be done in 2 days with effort and no exp potion. Heroics I haven't tried yet.

Could you post some tips, please? For me it's still about 10-14 days... sometimes longer...

[Veltamore]

Oh, but wait, it gets even better. Optionals now ransack PERMANENTLY per life! You can't wait a week or even a month, you have to reincarnate to reset it! So Devil Assault, already not great XP/min by anybody's standard, has effectively had it's XP cut 70% after the first few runs per life.

They made a few feeble attempts to justify it, but about the best they could do was the lame "repeating a quest too many times makes people quit" (without increasing the drop rate of loot or reducing completions required for a full list), but nobody bought it. So they gave up and just rammed it down our throats regardless.

Fernando would have been proud.

Devil Assault is one of the quest where the optional xp should not ransack. BECAUSE they are not optional you have to do them to complete quest.

[Requiro]

Devil Assault is one of the quest where the optional xp should not ransack. BECAUSE they are not optional you have to do them to complete quest.

IMO: Developers are fully aware of this.
They also know that Devil Assault is one of the most played quest because of Token of the Twelve.

And the more we gain Tokens for free, the less we buy Hearts from Store.

Do I have to say more?

[Cantor]

SSG doesn't get that even if they cut the exp in spies down by 50% it's still 100 times more fun than running tethymar, toee, or tower of frost.

Totally disagree, spies is worn out. I would one it once a life at most, sometimes I dont run it at all. Would be way off the radar if the exp was average, hated if it was bad.

[erethizon]

IMO: Developers are fully aware of this.
They also know that Devil Assault is one of the most played quest because of Token of the Twelve.

And the more we gain Tokens for free, the less we buy Hearts from Store.

Do I have to say more?

Even less conspiracy-theory than that, it could be that they want to encourage a variety of play like they said. There are a number of quests that drop tokens. If you run all of them you will likely get your 20 tokens without repeating anything at all. People that once-and-done their way though the game rarely complain about grind. People that repeat the same things over and over are the ones most outspoken about the terrible grind this game has. Encouraging a variety of play was likely a good move.

[Potatofasf]

Even less conspiracy-theory than that, it could be that they want to encourage a variety of play like they said. There are a number of quests that drop tokens. If you run all of them you will likely get your 20 tokens without repeating anything at all. People that once-and-done their way though the game rarely complain about grind. People that repeat the same things over and over are the ones most outspoken about the terrible grind this game has. Encouraging a variety of play was likely a good move.

In theory it is a "good move". Because as you stated it is good for a type of player, but way bad for another.
It was a enforce situation to "run a variety" of quests, not a choice situation.
As always, good intentions, very very bad implementation.

[LucidLTS]

In theory it is a "good move". Because as you stated it is good for a type of player, but way bad for another.
It was a enforce situation to "run a variety" of quests, not a choice situation.
As always, good intentions, very very bad implementation.

^This

Encourage variety by giving us other valid choices, not by making our current favorites less rewarding! Then people who need a change will find an alternative and be happy, and people who don't will stay and be happy.

But I guess it worked, sort of - I'm running different quests, but I'm running them in a different game, too. I went from 5-10 hours a week of DDO to about 2 since the change, with the slack entirely taken up by other games.

BTW, I don't need tokens of the 12, I have hundreds across several characters. I ran it because it was fun. If SSG feels the need to discourage that, well, that tells me all I need to know.

[Chai]

Permanent ransack of optionals, couched in terms of needing to save the grinders from themselves.

[bracelet]

Could you post some tips, please? For me it's still about 10-14 days... sometimes longer...

I would suggest that giving tips on how to level quickly is a sure-fire way to eliminate that method. There is some pretty sound advice I could give to help you figure it out, but I don't even want to offer that.

On a general note, I have noticed some direct or indirect consequences of the XP changes:

1) There are very few dailies groups posted anymore.
2) There are no new groups to replace the missing dailies groups.
3) There appear to be less people playing.

The increases in XP to other quests didn't help. They weren't enough, and for the most part they reneged on the deal and didn't even increase some of them at all. It's a wasteland right now -except for the folks doing the two day thing.

[Potatofasf]

I would suggest that giving tips on how to level quickly is a sure-fire way to eliminate that method. There is some pretty sound advice I could give to help you figure it out, but I don't even want to offer that.

Cof... cof... exploit... cof... don't spread it, otherwise it will be "changed".

On a general note, I have noticed some direct or indirect consequences of the XP changes:

1) There are very few dailies groups posted anymore.
2) There are no new groups to replace the missing dailies groups.
3) There appear to be less people playing.

As expected. They forced people to stop running dailies and didn't gave any alternative other than run boring/bad designed/horrible contents that few players like. As a result people that didn't jump on the Hardcore bandwagon, left the game. The few that remain are not doing groups for several reasons!

The increases in XP to other quests didn't help. They weren't enough, and for the most part they reneged on the deal and didn't even increase some of them at all. It's a wasteland right now -except for the folks doing the two day thing.

Again! Once they realize the new "exploit" other than run optional in Wizking (alas wasn't an exploit, just a game mechanic, named "Doing Optionals" that now is broken by permanent ransack in the WHOLE game).

Advice to level up 20-30 in two days?
I'm curious to know that as well.

[acemonkey]

Advice to level up 20-30 in two days?
I'm curious to know that as well.

Play more than an hour, or do the etr right after a rtr or htr. Don't let the devs know, but you get like triple xp after a 1-20 run, and you can run more than 3 quests a day. I'm worried they're gonna find out and nerf both those exploits.

[sabella]

^This

Encourage variety by giving us other valid choices, not by making our current favorites less rewarding! Then people who need a change will find an alternative and be happy, and people who don't will stay and be happy.

But I guess it worked, sort of - I'm running different quests, but I'm running them in a different game, too. I went from 5-10 hours a week of DDO to about 2 since the change, with the slack entirely taken up by other games.

BTW, I don't need tokens of the 12, I have hundreds across several characters. I ran it because it was fun. If SSG feels the need to discourage that, well, that tells me all I need to know.

Truly just curious. If it was fun to run the quest and you didn't need the tokens at all, why would it stop being fun if the tokens don't drop?

[Talam]

Devil Assault is one of the quest where the optional xp should not ransack. BECAUSE they are not optional you have to do them to complete quest.

100% Agree.