R10's are too easy now!

[slarden]

What drugs are you on???

That statement is accurate. My assassin still has much better dps than my casters before and after U51. I think my casters gained more than my assassin from U51, but it was definitely needed. The gap between martial dps and casting dps was too high and is more reasonable now. Melees still out-dps most ranged and all casters significantly, but it's a more narrow margin.

[slarden]

I hope they don't undo the monster nerfs much (if at all) based on some of the threads like this one. The monster nerfs were needed because there were a number of people that found heroic elite just fine and epic elite far too difficult. That is why this monster nerf was long past due and that is what the monster nerf was designed to fix. We are getting a number of claims that the game is too easy, but these claims are not from people that found epic elite to be too difficult before the update. Those are the players who's opinions we need to be noting. The people that were cranking up the reaper level before the update are not the most relevant opinions as to whether the monster nerfs went too far (and like you said, people can just up the reaper level if they want more challenge so they really don't need to undo any of the monster nerfs). That said, if high reaper really is too easy for our best players then it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to ask for R7-R10 to be tweaked so they once again have a more challenging place to play, but the monsters should not be made more difficult in the lower difficulty settings just because our most OP players are not being challenged in R10.

If the goal was to smooth out epics it's entirely reasonable that some content will feel easier. Prior to U51 you had level 20 quests such as bargain of blood having bosses with more hit points than sharn bosses.

If the hit points drop to a reasonable level it's going to seem easier. Bargain of blood is not even available, but I would expect the boss to go down quicker when it's available. Working as intended.

[Dazednconfused]

Not if you solo

[spikkel]

Melees have been far, far ahead for many months now. Even with this update they are still ahead, just not by as much. That said, we could all use some extra defensive capabilities so I am definitely on board for that.

What drugs are you on???

I suppose none, because as a caster character:
1) when you are hit, you are dead
2) when you shoot at stuff, your spellpoints will eventually run out at legendary quests
3) when you cast something it needs to be empowered, heightened, maximized, quickened, ... or it won't hit
4) at legendary, if they save, and yes they save a lot, its no damage or other effect at all
5) they changed hate in that way, that players who have fewer hitpoints draw a lot more hate, or how do you explain that even if a caster is just standing on a distance and does nothing draws aggro away from the melee with the 2-hander?

And as a melee fighter:
1) when you are hit, you can be hit another 5-10 times until you are dead, so time enough to be healed by someone
2) you keep hitting forever except when you hit oozes
3) since the base stuff doesn't cost you anything, you don't even need to boost anything that would cost something, except maybe a flavor effect by action boost
4) when you miss, don't worry about it, they changed AC in this way that you always hit a percentage years ago

And on top of that, except when there are several criticals that triggered, a melee does a lot more damage than a caster

I could make the same list from a ranged characters view without a problem, but I think you know the drill by now.

All the nerfs against casters and ranged characters came after excessive complaining on the forums because the tank was not able to reach some trashmobs before they died. So the devs boosted the melees and the mobs to ridiculous levels (orcs with 200k hitpoints??? hello????). And they nerfed ranged and casters until they were only useful in epic normal/hard quests or when they had an even more ridiculous amount of past lives and a min-maxed build that couldn't ever be explained to a sane dungeon master

Let me give you some DND lessons:
- A party needs to work together and has different roles in it: a trapper, a healer, a buffer, crowd-control, a nuker, a ranged, a dps-melee, a tank, a smooth talker, ...
- Most partymembers have a few of these roles in their character (a specialisation and a few extra talents)
- The party needs to work together to overcome challenges. That can be puzzles, swashbuckling or just being Jimmy the rogue in the crucible.

So let me explain that last part again:
The party needs to work together, so complaining about a non-melee in your party being able to do damage, is selfish and ridiculous in DND

2HF still does a lot more average damage than a caster or a ranged, but we are once again getting a bit closer to a more balanced system. Keep it this way and stop complaining about your fellow players.

[spikkel]

I hope they don't undo the monster nerfs much (if at all) based on some of the threads like this one. The monster nerfs were needed because there were a number of people that found heroic elite just fine and epic elite far too difficult. That is why this monster nerf was long past due and that is what the monster nerf was designed to fix. We are getting a number of claims that the game is too easy, but these claims are not from people that found epic elite to be too difficult before the update. Those are the players who's opinions we need to be noting. The people that were cranking up the reaper level before the update are not the most relevant opinions as to whether the monster nerfs went too far (and like you said, people can just up the reaper level if they want more challenge so they really don't need to undo any of the monster nerfs). That said, if high reaper really is too easy for our best players then it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to ask for R7-R10 to be tweaked so they once again have a more challenging place to play, but the monsters should not be made more difficult in the lower difficulty settings just because our most OP players are not being challenged in R10.

+1

[StormKnight]

Are you saying us average Joes have a period of time to catch up with reaper xp?

[Weemadarthur]

Are you saying us average Joes have a period of time to catch up with reaper xp?

Bit of a yes and no scenario here. Currently there are a boatload of broken abilities that can be exploited to make high reapers trivial. If you are lucky enough to stumble upon a few of these super powers you will be able to gain a huge amount of rxp in short order as they can make you almost unkillable in even the hardest content. That combined with game balance adjustments that are out of whack at the top end of the difficulty spectrum (r10 at cap is now I would say somewhere around R8 pre U51) and it means those that were running high reaper before are finding it easier now. For the average Joe though not a lot will have changed. You may be able to push a skull or 2 but not really enough to help you catch those who already had the power to push skulls before.

So to sum up those who were struggling in low reapers will now at least be able to run those quests with less struggle, those that were mid tier (R4-6) are now able to run high reapers and those who were already running high reapers are pretty much able to zerg them. So I think it will still be hard to catch up as those running the difficulties above will still be earning more RXP but for those that are new to reaper or were struggling before now is the perfect time to start gaining RXP.

[Bjond]

I suppose none, because as a caster character:
1) when you are hit, you are dead[..]

And as a melee fighter:
1) when you are hit, you can be hit another 5-10 times[..]

Let me give you some DND lessons:
- A party needs to work together and has different roles

Hmm. I think you need some DDO lessons. First, this isn't D&D. It's not only played with static pre-made parties. When one in your static is missing, there's no DM to fill in a missing role with an NPC or conservatively play the missing link. Parties mostly don't exist in DDO, at least not in the strict separate-roles way you're talking about and definitely not even in the classic MMO-trinity.

It's not that people don't like trinity or role-division, it's just that there are not enough people playing DDO to support that kind of play. Basically, if you can't solo in DDO, you can't play. I left DDO because I was tired of solo'ing all the time at cap or being forced to group in boring easy content because there were so few r8+ groups (or even r6+). Or, repeating RL again because people didn't have Sharn or Fey access.

Catching a couple high-reaper groups a week just doesn't cut it. Seeing 10~15 names in LFM isn't enough. Current DDO is about squeezing synergy from however many and what kinds of different solo builds happen to want to group at that difficulty.

---

BTW, back on topic: I'm definitely aligned with the OP's mindset. The answer to not enough R10 groups is NOT to make R10 so easy that a pack of squealing puglets can roar through it. I gave up on heroics and mostly only did epics back when I was playing DDO regularly in part because they were so absurdly easy they weren't fun. The only struggle was to see who could manage to leave the rest of the group behind.

Difficulty is necessary; there has to be a level of difficulty that qualifies as unreasonably hard to ensure there's always a challenge for those that crave it. However, there also has to be enough players around to fill those groups, too.

This is why, IMHO, U51 was a mistake. Not because U51 is bad or broken or buggy. It's because DDO doesn't need it. What it needs is no lag and much bigger LFM lists (ie. mega-server).

[LightBear]

The only way to tell if r10 is at the spot where both the devs and the players want it to be is after a few hardcore leagues.
If all of a sudden every jack and their grannies are hitting 24M+ reaper points in the first month or so then something obviously is wrong.
But the last seasons we had exactly one group (a trio I guess) who was able to lead the reaper points board and lead by a substantial margin.
You can see that most of the players that went for rxp where able to get to the 10 point mark, then some went on to the 20 point mark.

Anyway, tailoring a game towards that small group that leads the rxp hcl board is not the smartest thing to do.
I mean, if those 20 players can cough up 10 million dollars in revenue each year, by all means, make a game just for them.
For the rest of us, we like to play this game as well.

Edit:
Soooooo, it is going to be possible to crank reaper up to 11 then?

[fatherpirate]

Do keep in mind, you only have the OP word on how easy it is for him.
Not saying it is not easy for him, but there is no way to confirm this.

[sturmbb]

I suppose none, because as a caster character:
1) when you are hit, you are dead
2) when you shoot at stuff, your spellpoints will eventually run out at legendary quests
3) when you cast something it needs to be empowered, heightened, maximized, quickened, ... or it won't hit
4) at legendary, if they save, and yes they save a lot, its no damage or other effect at all
5) they changed hate in that way, that players who have fewer hitpoints draw a lot more hate, or how do you explain that even if a caster is just standing on a distance and does nothing draws aggro away from the melee with the 2-hander?

And as a melee fighter:
1) when you are hit, you can be hit another 5-10 times until you are dead, so time enough to be healed by someone
2) you keep hitting forever except when you hit oozes
3) since the base stuff doesn't cost you anything, you don't even need to boost anything that would cost something, except maybe a flavor effect by action boost
4) when you miss, don't worry about it, they changed AC in this way that you always hit a percentage years ago

And on top of that, except when there are several criticals that triggered, a melee does a lot more damage than a caster

I could make the same list from a ranged characters view without a problem, but I think you know the drill by now.

All the nerfs against casters and ranged characters came after excessive complaining on the forums because the tank was not able to reach some trashmobs before they died. So the devs boosted the melees and the mobs to ridiculous levels (orcs with 200k hitpoints??? hello????). And they nerfed ranged and casters until they were only useful in epic normal/hard quests or when they had an even more ridiculous amount of past lives and a min-maxed build that couldn't ever be explained to a sane dungeon master

Let me give you some DND lessons:
- A party needs to work together and has different roles in it: a trapper, a healer, a buffer, crowd-control, a nuker, a ranged, a dps-melee, a tank, a smooth talker, ...
- Most partymembers have a few of these roles in their character (a specialisation and a few extra talents)
- The party needs to work together to overcome challenges. That can be puzzles, swashbuckling or just being Jimmy the rogue in the crucible.

So let me explain that last part again:
The party needs to work together, so complaining about a non-melee in your party being able to do damage, is selfish and ridiculous in DND

2HF still does a lot more average damage than a caster or a ranged, but we are once again getting a bit closer to a more balanced system. Keep it this way and stop complaining about your fellow players.

+1 I especially like your comment
"So let me explain that last part again:
The party needs to work together, so complaining about a non-melee in your party being able to do damage, is selfish and ridiculous in DND"

i am often amazed when people complain that someone in the party is stealing all the kills etc, its a pve co-op game. if the mobs are killed regardless who killed them
that's surely a good thing??

[spikkel]

Hmm. I think you need some DDO lessons. First, this isn't D&D. It's not only played with static pre-made parties. When one in your static is missing, there's no DM to fill in a missing role with an NPC or conservatively play the missing link. Parties mostly don't exist in DDO, at least not in the strict separate-roles way you're talking about and definitely not even in the classic MMO-trinity.

Oh, but I can play DDO well enough and have the past lives/reaper points to prove it
And these are played for, not bought with ottoboxes.

I didn't stop playing and I almost never complain.
But I've seen this forum complaints pushing the DEVS in directions that made a lot of players leave.
There is a less vocal side to that story, the one of casual non-whining players. And those were with a lot and most of the playerbase still is.

And about DDO not being DND, of course you are right, but it should resemble DND where possible not a standard MMO.
If you want a 12 in a dozen MMO, there much better choices, DDO is played because of the versatily in character building, not because of the mindless keyboard hammering.

This is a game where you play against the gameworld in the group you are in on that moment, so complaining to nerf partymembers in contraproductive and childish

And to make everything unreasonable hard for newer players is also contraproductive and childish

There are 14 difficultylevels from casual => hard => elite => r1 => ... => r10
I think everyone which isn't stupid should be able to finish in a group on r1
From there on, it can be pushed to unreasonable levels

For example something they can do is make it so that
R2 = 1.5xR1 (Hitpoints, saves, AC, ...)
R3 = 1.5xR2
...
R10 = 1.5xR9

This gets impossible pretty quick for everyone, and the few who brag that they have a build that can solo R10, they won't ever be able again to do that
Problem solved for everyone:
99% of the people can enjoy the game.
1% have their challenge => beat R10, and I welcome them to post a video when they do because I would be one of the first to congratulate them

[Epicsoul]

Reaper 10 quests (not raids) were easy before u50, after u50, and the same remains true for u51. Have they got easier? In ways. And while the answer to balancing this may by some rebalancing of certain ED abilities -I'm looking at you, Time Stop, and how it makes boss fights even more trivial- the long-term answer is to rebalance reaper with a full-scale pass.

[boredGamer]

The only way to tell if r10 is at the spot where both the devs and the players want it to be is after a few hardcore leagues.
If all of a sudden every jack and their grannies are hitting 24M+ reaper points in the first month or so then something obviously is wrong.
But the last seasons we had exactly one group (a trio I guess) who was able to lead the reaper points board and lead by a substantial margin.
You can see that most of the players that went for rxp where able to get to the 10 point mark, then some went on to the 20 point mark.

Anyway, tailoring a game towards that small group that leads the rxp hcl board is not the smartest thing to do.
I mean, if those 20 players can cough up 10 million dollars in revenue each year, by all means, make a game just for them.
For the rest of us, we like to play this game as well.

Edit:
Soooooo, it is going to be possible to crank reaper up to 11 then?

Come on. R10 was not what was utilized in HC, and no one is balancing the game around a small group of anything HCL.

Completely making stuff up should be against the eula around here.

[Zites]

So, after getting set up with the new ED system, a group and I decided to run some R10's........what a JOKE!

We were on a full run through all the content. Mobs were dropping dead so fast one could barely slow up before the next group of mobs were dead! Enemies have little to no HP and there attacks were hardly hitting for any damage!

This was not a group of UBER toons, just a "rag tag" group that joined a pug group....even pulled a couple lowbies with us....level 23 and 26.

DDO R10's are now "Reaper Casual".....no challenge what so ever!.

Hoping DDO/ Devs change this soon!

Enjoy

[user110000]

I have only 42 reaper points are there any easy r10s where you can get bravery bonus? could do with a little catch up if its possible right now

[Epicsoul]

I have only 42 reaper points are there any easy r10s where you can get bravery bonus? could do with a little catch up if its possible right now

What level are you? The quickest way to get reaper experience is running level 30+ quests at cap, even if it's just R6 or so. I would do as many as possible, since the first time bonus will net more than repeating easier ones on R10.

[user110000]

What level are you? .

27 currently, sorry should have said

[Tyrande]

I have only 42 reaper points are there any easy r10s where you can get bravery bonus? could do with a little catch up if its possible right now

I would suggest the Gatekeepers chain at level 30 on R6+. They're fast with a full group. Can get everything done in an hour or two.

[erethizon]

i am often amazed when people complain that someone in the party is stealing all the kills etc, its a pve co-op game. if the mobs are killed regardless who killed them
that's surely a good thing??

Some people are obsessed with being the best. They don't enjoy it when other people get all the kills. One of the reasons my groups are so popular is that, as the leader, I do as much is as needed. If I am in a group that needs me to do all the work then I end up nearly soloing. If I am in a group where the dungeon can clearly be easily handled by the rest of the group I quietly make less effort. I stop using my special abilities (i.e. only use my warlock blast auto attack and don't bother with any of my hot keys) and may even approach enemies more slowly so that other people get to each pack of monsters first. It's subtle and goes unnoticed but I realize that other people want to do the killing if they can so I just quietly let them take all the credit. Maybe it is the cleric in me (my first class and I am a healer at heart), but sitting back and letting other people do all the work while I just make sure no one dies feels good to me.