The Future Reaper Update

[TheMaxpower]

Although we have few details, this sounds like a very risky idea! People have spent years building up reaper points and have spent money buying xp pots to help increase the amount of points they have. Any kind of nerf or loss of customization is going to anger a lot of players.

[ahpook]

If this change reduces lag further, then I would call it win.

That is a big IF.

... If they can deliver on keeping reaper buffs (especially DC) approximately the same, ...

They can't. It will have to be a nerf or buff for someone. If they are giving out all the same benefits so that a max reaper point players remains the same then the algorithm will either fail to give something to a player with less points that they want or it will give them something they didn't have (which may be a buff). In order for all players with 20 reaper points to not lose something they have to give all players with 20 reaper points everything that could have been obtained with 20. Obviously they won't do that or it would be a significant buff (and a model that would not scale to max reaper points). But not giving people what they have is a nerf even if they get something else. Losing some HP to get some Melee Power, Ranged power or spell pen will be a nerf if what was wanted was the HP.

Overall this seems like a bad idea and a way to upset players or cause excessive power creep. If they are ok with that level of drama then they should just throw away reaper trees and convert reaper points to access non-quest benefits like cosmetics or special costed items or navigation items. (e.g. 100 reaper points let you go to your guild ship from anywhere, 150 reaper points lets you jump to any quest entrance).

[Zites]

I really hope they abandon this stupid idea.

What makes DDO interesting is that you can pick and choose the abilities you want in different enhancement trees to get your character build the way you want. Removing that choice from reaper is the wrong way to go, if anything we should get more reaper trees.

The problem with Reaper is 2 fold. All difficulty Reaper setting are too easy for casters and range, In fact every non-caster r10 melee build that isn't married too a healer.
This can be fixed by 1 of 2 ways,

1. By increasing Reaper difficulty.

Monsters need triple their current hp and New Reapers above r-5 need to be champions with deathward and anti casters/range mechanics to restore any semblance of challenge in reaper.

2. By buffing poor performing classes that cant exploit current Reaper mechanics, classes like Pure Fighter, Paladin ect.


The best Melee characters are some form of caster.
Point in case.




Until that happens, everyone should just TR into an AOE build or some form of caster if you want to participate in High Reaper quests.



Link to a simple search of youtube (ddo r10 solo) this month.
https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...IIBA%253D%253D

[Malusny]

Hello,

I do agree that it is too early to say and to be judgmental about the changes that they are planning to put in. I do believe that Severin's words don't sound appealing to most players and I would kindly also ask the Dev Team to make sure that those players who were grinding reaper points for a long time, won't come out as losers after that reaper tree update. Someone also said something about combining reaper points from different characters on the same account - I believe that would be very unfair towards players who don't have more than one active "main" character. I would also ask the Devs not to combine those reaper points, it would be very unfair towards many players.

When it comes to specific details, we have to wait but I do believe that if the Developers make it in a form of any kind of nerf - it will be a big mistake and surely will result in players raging. We also hope that the changes are going to be tested and checked thoroughly before the actual release. Strimtom also mentioned it in on one of his podcasts and we completely agree that no content update should be released before it is 100% full proof correct and working well.

We hope that the Dev Team will look into the reaper trees with those important thoughts:

1. Reaper changes won't hurt neither the new players nor the very experienced players who worked hard to acquire all those reaper points.
2. The reaper changes will not be a direct nerf to players when it comes to their offensive and defensive capability in reaper difficulty. Period. (this is an important one).
3. Everything will be prepared and tested under a variety of circumstances to ensure that the changes are really going to make DDO life better overall (this is something that DDO had problems with in the past, many many times).
4. The players' feedback will be majorly possitive when it comes to what the DDO community is gaining/losing by those changes (for example, players will generally agree that those changes were good and worth changing - so there would be a major game performance improvement, otherwise what's the point of changing the trees?

Please make sure that it is going to be fair for everyone, not a nerf accross the reaper board for those who have all points, not an update that will cause the game to be shut down to do hotfixes shortly after...

We know it is not possible to make everyone happy but whatever you (Devs) do, please be fair to everyone.

Cheers.

[Oxarhamar]

I get why its unpopular, but I like moving away from highly selective Reaper trees towards something more like D3's Paragon system, where you just allocate small, generic incremental bonuses...

The reason being Reaper trees are particularly guilty of pigeonholing builds into a hyperspecialty, and that makes it difficult to balance things at high-tier endgame because the builds that totally specialize in something can do it so much better than those that even partly focus on it, that you're left with either making mobs so strong that only a hyperspecialist can do that thing, or making them weak enough that a hyper-specialist can do it every time without fail.

So that kinda puts the devs in the position where they're forcing everyone into a hyperspecialist build, which is bad for build diversity...or they're letting hyperspecialist builds negate the difficulty of R10 by being able to no-fail CC or IK every mob. Neither is healthy for the game.

Reaper trees are usually what makes the biggest difference between, ie, a moderate DC caster and a specialized one, so that makes the most sense for where to start trying to flatten the curve a bit.

I'd like to see Reaper move towards just a flat schedule of bonuses as you gain points, with all bonuses only applying in Reaper mode. Something like 2 HP and 1 SP for every point, and every 5th point gives 1 PRR and MRR, then like every 12th point was 1 MP/RP/2 USP, every 24th was 1 Dodge/Dodge Cap/MDB, and every 48th was 1 All Attributes

Disagree since Reaper tree can be filled out completely it doesn’t pigeon hole into hyper speciality

[superevbully]

Although we have few details, this sounds like a very risky idea! People have spent years building up reaper points and have spent money buying xp pots to help increase the amount of points they have. Any kind of nerf or loss of customization is going to anger a lot of players.

This if any new system doesnt reflect the xp pots spent ill be angry like this poster points out ..........there are things that cannot be changed that involve real money disposed in such said system

[DrawingGuy]

Reaper trees currently contain vast amounts of power within them - over 1k potential HP before any scaling modifiers (and including CON HP), 15 to stats, direct DC increases, and special boosts... it's a bigger gap than past lives. The introduction of Reaper Trees and the power difference they contained killed my alt library - I went from actively playing 6 toons to 2. This means I'm not buying tomes, bag slots or ingredient holders, augments or consumables for those toons. I suspect I'm far from the only one in that boat, so they'd have a vested interest to shift some extreme grind mechanics with such power to account based to encourage individual players to have more characters and thus have more characters to spend money on. Past Lives also follow this concern, though being a deeply monitized system with boxes, hearts, xp tomes, xp pots, and applying across all content, not sure if monetary gains of more characters per player would outweigh the per character value loss. At least for me global reaper trees would be enough of a barrier removal to play more characters.

This means, though, SSG would have a vested interest in making Reaper trees global. However the custom trees come with multiple technical concerns. First is that the system is not cross-character compatible - the mechanics don't exist (yet) to make it account based, and different characters would want different customizations anyways. And while there are ways they could potentially make it work, such as separating Reaper XP into a global value that could then be applied to each individual character to then spend freely, it would still require developing the framework to do so. And they have other major concerns that would make them not want to do that. One is going back to the power levels - the power of reaper trees are vast, and maybe they should be nerfed. If they're already going to be digging into the system, this would be the right time to visit that. Another major consideration is lag. These multiple customizable trees add a fair bit of calculation weight every time you enter or leave a quest. While efforts were made to address some of this load that helped alleviate the crippling lag people got whenever they entered a quest, there is still a fair bit.

Bringing everything to a single system allows them to address all three things. 1 - a system that can be server based rather than character based. 2 - Rebalance the power levels (if deemed as needed). 3 - Make the system much lighter to help address lag.

While technically this also comes at a customization loss, which could affect lower reaper point balance (something I don't think would be that hard to account for), the current reaper system already is a case of just grinding to the point where everyone is the same anyways. There is no ultimate system loss. I personally see having the reaper system changed to be server wide and induce less lag well worth thee temporary customization loss. The only part I see as potentially controversial is the second point - balancing. If they nerf, people will be upset. If they keep end game power the same, people will be upset with keeping the game too easy. And how they balance the progression will be its own beast too. Still, I look forward to this change.

[thegreatcthulhu]

Reaper trees currently contain vast amounts of power within them - over 1k potential HP before any scaling modifiers (and including CON HP), 15 to stats, direct DC increases, and special boosts... it's a bigger gap than past lives. The introduction of Reaper Trees and the power difference they contained killed my alt library - I went from actively playing 6 toons to 2. This means I'm not buying tomes, bag slots or ingredient holders, augments or consumables for those toons. I suspect I'm far from the only one in that boat, so they'd have a vested interest to shift some extreme grind mechanics with such power to account based to encourage individual players to have more characters and thus have more characters to spend money on. Past Lives also follow this concern, though being a deeply monitized system with boxes, hearts, xp tomes, xp pots, and applying across all content, not sure if monetary gains of more characters per player would outweigh the per character value loss. At least for me global reaper trees would be enough of a barrier removal to play more characters.

This means, though, SSG would have a vested interest in making Reaper trees global. However the custom trees come with multiple technical concerns. First is that the system is not cross-character compatible - the mechanics don't exist (yet) to make it account based, and different characters would want different customizations anyways. And while there are ways they could potentially make it work, such as separating Reaper XP into a global value that could then be applied to each individual character to then spend freely, it would still require developing the framework to do so. And they have other major concerns that would make them not want to do that. One is going back to the power levels - the power of reaper trees are vast, and maybe they should be nerfed. If they're already going to be digging into the system, this would be the right time to visit that. Another major consideration is lag. These multiple customizable trees add a fair bit of calculation weight every time you enter or leave a quest. While efforts were made to address some of this load that helped alleviate the crippling lag people got whenever they entered a quest, there is still a fair bit.

Bringing everything to a single system allows them to address all three things. 1 - a system that can be server based rather than character based. 2 - Rebalance the power levels (if deemed as needed). 3 - Make the system much lighter to help address lag.

While technically this also comes at a customization loss, which could affect lower reaper point balance (something I don't think would be that hard to account for), the current reaper system already is a case of just grinding to the point where everyone is the same anyways. There is no ultimate system loss. I personally see having the reaper system changed to be server wide and induce less lag well worth thee temporary customization loss. The only part I see as potentially controversial is the second point - balancing. If they nerf, people will be upset. If they keep end game power the same, people will be upset with keeping the game too easy. And how they balance the progression will be its own beast too. Still, I look forward to this change.

Well written, you raised some things about Reaper that I had never even considered. I particularly understand now how it can be such a big detriment to players who use alts.

[wolfy42]

Killing the alt library is what I have been trying to fight against lately.

I suggested making past lives account based, not character based, but I feel like doing that for reaper points could also work (while changing the trees a bit, but still keeping trees and all the effort people put into them).

I have 18 character slots. I play 2 of those characters with any regular basis and I have a 3rd I sometimes play with friends who are low level (but like once in a blue moon (tis a druid as well, so it howls at it).

I want to use those slots for fun different types of characters. I want to be able to have a character of every class (heck i'd buy even more slots, to have multiple combos etc).

That would give SSG a ton more money cause I would need new tomes for them (Stat ones at least), I might want more skill tomes as well, I'd want more character slots eventually etc. Mostly though, outside of them making more money, it would just be MORE FUN!!!

Yeah, I can reincarnate fairly fast and play a new build that way, but then I lose that old build I was just having a blast with. If I just make a new character though I lose all my past lives, all my reaper points, have no tomes on it at all (unless I invest in it for just a temp char I won't be playing that much anyway cause I'm not doing the whole past life/reaper train on it again).

Flat out think we should have both reaper points and past lives count across all characters on each server. There are ways to prevent that from being abused (doing first life characters for fast past lives etc) such as making the xp penalty for past lives also count per server (and increasing the cost for reincarnating a character xp wise based on the # of past lives right away, so you can't have 10 characters ready to reincarnate to avoid paying). That makes everyone still pay as much/need as much xp for past lives as they cost in the past, but allows everyone to gain those past lives however they like, on as many characters as they like.

I hate that I'm forced to play just a few characters if I want to make long term progress, it sucks.

[Michaelaz2]

Everything wrong in this gamer and they choose to focus on reaper trees ? Put that same energy into customer service

[MaeveTuohy]

Reaper trees currently contain vast amounts of power within them - over 1k potential HP before any scaling modifiers (and including CON HP), 15 to stats, direct DC increases, and special boosts... it's a bigger gap than past lives. The introduction of Reaper Trees and the power difference they contained killed my alt library - I went from actively playing 6 toons to 2. This means I'm not buying tomes, bag slots or ingredient holders, augments or consumables for those toons. I suspect I'm far from the only one in that boat, so they'd have a vested interest to shift some extreme grind mechanics with such power to account based to encourage individual players to have more characters and thus have more characters to spend money on. Past Lives also follow this concern, though being a deeply monitized system with boxes, hearts, xp tomes, xp pots, and applying across all content, not sure if monetary gains of more characters per player would outweigh the per character value loss. At least for me global reaper trees would be enough of a barrier removal to play more characters.

This means, though, SSG would have a vested interest in making Reaper trees global. However the custom trees come with multiple technical concerns. First is that the system is not cross-character compatible - the mechanics don't exist (yet) to make it account based, and different characters would want different customizations anyways. And while there are ways they could potentially make it work, such as separating Reaper XP into a global value that could then be applied to each individual character to then spend freely, it would still require developing the framework to do so. And they have other major concerns that would make them not want to do that. One is going back to the power levels - the power of reaper trees are vast, and maybe they should be nerfed. If they're already going to be digging into the system, this would be the right time to visit that. Another major consideration is lag. These multiple customizable trees add a fair bit of calculation weight every time you enter or leave a quest. While efforts were made to address some of this load that helped alleviate the crippling lag people got whenever they entered a quest, there is still a fair bit.

Bringing everything to a single system allows them to address all three things. 1 - a system that can be server based rather than character based. 2 - Rebalance the power levels (if deemed as needed). 3 - Make the system much lighter to help address lag.

While technically this also comes at a customization loss, which could affect lower reaper point balance (something I don't think would be that hard to account for), the current reaper system already is a case of just grinding to the point where everyone is the same anyways. There is no ultimate system loss. I personally see having the reaper system changed to be server wide and induce less lag well worth thee temporary customization loss. The only part I see as potentially controversial is the second point - balancing. If they nerf, people will be upset. If they keep end game power the same, people will be upset with keeping the game too easy. And how they balance the progression will be its own beast too. Still, I look forward to this change.

Excellent.

I also don't really see the reaper trees as all that customizable (and not at all if you have 156 points). What you select is pretty much determined by your class and main stat. The degree of customization will not really be missed. I think people just like the feeling they are making choices even when they are actually fairly trivial. Kinda like how we like to vote even though our one vote makes little difference.

[DoctorOfLiterature]

First, I didn’t hear Severlin indicate any specific plans for a Reaper update. They know people who have max reaper points would like additional tiers or benefits. But they are worried about power balance. I didn’t hear anything that suggested a nerf and as others have said that would be a huge mistake. Reaper trees are one of the biggest grinds in the game and doing anything to degrade the value to people who have worked so hard would be very destructive to the game. If you envy the power in the reaper trees, grind reaper points in high reapers at end game.

[Nickodeamous]

I'd like to see Reaper move towards just a flat schedule of bonuses as you gain points, with all bonuses only applying in Reaper mode. Something like 2 HP and 1 SP for every point, and every 5th point gives 1 PRR and MRR, then like every 12th point was 1 MP/RP/2 USP, every 24th was 1 Dodge/Dodge Cap/MDB, and every 48th was 1 All Attributes

Here is my take on this. As a monk, not having 3k HPs in high reaper is detrimental to being one shotted. Something I am not willing to part with. I can't just stand back and nuke everything. So, while I agree with a progression system, I think some of the metrics need to be a tad higher.

Here is my thoughts:

Hit Points: 8 for every point - not game breaking...a Tank with 150 RPs and 6k HPs will be at 7.2k. everybody else below 2k will be mid 2k-3k. Lets face it, mobs hit hard in R10, especially if you have to be within melee range...

Spell Points: 2 for every RP. Again, at endgame, this is not game breaking.

Every 5th point: +2 PRR and +2 MRR
Every 10th point: +1MP/RP and +2 USP
Every 20th point: +1 Dodge/Dodge Cap/MRR Cap/Tactics
Every 50th point: +1 All Attributes
etc...

Just my 2 cents
Nico

Edit: also, don't forget about the boosts we all use...losing 30% Doublestrike for 30 seconds is not the same as losing 45 Spell Power for the same time period at end game. Please be cognizant of melee who rely on these boosts.

[Enoach]

I admit that I'm in the camp that when Reaper was being thought of as an idea that it would be a challenge difficulty with cosmetic rewards. I was not a fan of trees as I felt these would actually remove the challenge, which would once again put us in a place where people felt it was too easy. It seems that it only took a couple years to prove that out.

I want to hear what the plan is, if it removes reaper core bonuses from non-reaper content and solves the lag of applying bonuses at the start of the quest then it would at least meet two items of concern off my check list.

They already have a cap on points able to be used based on level so they already have a scaling of sorts in the system.

[droid327]

Here is my take on this. As a monk, not having 3k HPs in high reaper is detrimental to being one shotted. Something I am not willing to part with.

Well the other option there is to just roll back a few skulls so you arent getting one-shot anymore. That would, to me, be a goal of the Reaper tree revamp. R10 should represent a significant challenge to even the most powerful groups, and that means a real chance that players occasionally get killed.

That being said, yeah I agree that binary one-shot mechanics arent the best way to create challenge, and I'm open to tweaking the numbers (though 8 HP per RP is a buff from the current average of 5.3)...but players should end up at a point where R10 is something to progress towards, but not be playing regularly

[Nickodeamous]

I admit that I'm in the camp that when Reaper was being thought of as an idea that it would be a challenge difficulty with cosmetic rewards. I was not a fan of trees as I felt these would actually remove the challenge, which would once again put us in a place where people felt it was too easy. It seems that it only took a couple years to prove that out.

I would argue that reaper trees are not the reason toons are one shotting mobs in R10...looking at the bonuses below, it become apparent that a Melee with +21 Melee Power is not why reaper is easy, nor does it say to me that a spell caster with +48 Spell Power is the reason why mobs are being nuked. What you see below is a nominal amount of power that allows builds other than Meta builds to have a chance at running in high skull. Nothing below to me is broken when it is a very small % of the attributes we have already at endgame. I think its more of a balance thing vs. reaper points are OP...cause to me, they are not.

A maxed out toon gets the following:

Melee/Range Power: +21
Tactics: +4
Damage: +4
Spell Power: +48
Spell Points: 550
Spell DCs: +4
Spell Pen: +5
Ability: +15 (+5 in one choice in each tree) (equates to +2 DCs/+2 damage)
All Saves: +2
Select saves: +12
Dodge: +10%
Dodge Cap: +2%
MRR and PRR: +3
MRR or PRR: +21

Various Boosts
+1k HPs

[Nickodeamous]

Well the other option there is to just roll back a few skulls so you arent getting one-shot anymore. That would, to me, be a goal of the Reaper tree revamp. R10 should represent a significant challenge to even the most powerful groups, and that means a real chance that players occasionally get killed.

That being said, yeah I agree that binary one-shot mechanics arent the best way to create challenge, and I'm open to tweaking the numbers (though 8 HP per RP is a buff from the current average of 5.3)...but players should end up at a point where R10 is something to progress towards, but not be playing regularly

Yeah, I get it for sure. I just threw 8 HPs out there as an example, but if the average is 5.3, that's what I kinda meant . As for rolling back the skulls, its not that I cant handle high skull, its that when I say I get 1 shot, that's usually how we all die, and we get hit for like 4-5k, but having 3k helps to avoid being Nickle and Dimed by DOTs.

But yeah, R10 should be hard...not daily material...but hard with a well balanced group. agree there!!

[Seph1roth5]

They need to realize there are 4 different DDOs.

1: New people that play normal, maaaybe hard
2: people that run elite/r1-4
3: People that run EVERYthing on r5+, and a lot on r8-10

I'm in group 2 btw. Devs seem to, despite always saying they don't balance the game around reaper, be most concerned with the people in group 3. Whenever someone solos/duos a really hard quest on r10 then we get "rebalances" that, while stopping that from being (as) easy, also really hits everyone else much harder.

In THEORY the idea of revamping reaper sounds like a good idea, especially the sharing part, but my bet is that they're going to use this opportunity to just depower us at every level. Kind of like when they said we would get back some of the power we lost from the stat squish once the new EDs came out, and then they lowered tons of numbers across the board.

Can't wait for 25 reaper points to equal +1 attack and +1 mrr.

[JOTMON]

From the Severlin Q&A courtesy of Strimtom:

"Future reaper update is to remove reaper trees and replace with a scaling system that automatically applies bonuses based on reaper points acquired and gives bonuses at certain levels (think battle pass), that is also sharable."

So thoughts:

1) DDO updates are generally to add customization not take it away. Granted they did with pet upgrades but pets are so lackluster that a lot of people were just ignoring them anyway. This would be the first time I can think of where they take away something a lot of people use and replace it with a simplified, automatic version.

2) This potentially will badly hurt spell and tactical DC casters who rely on the extra stats and bonus DC to be effective in higher reaper content the worst. If every character gets the same bonuses it suggests those bonuses will be the generic bonuses that apply to all characters.

3) Players have put a lot of effort into their reaper points. So if this turns into a massive reaper nerf that will go over like a lead balloon with the most active players.

It's possible this could be done in a way that addresses these issues but this could also be disaster looming over the horizon.

Thoughts..
don't f with reaper.

Veteran players have invested heavily into the existing reaper system, the last thing SSG needs to do is to annoy the players grinding the Reaper difficulty.

Reaper points are personally earned, not a party buff.

[Oxarhamar]

I would argue that reaper trees are not the reason toons are one shotting mobs in R10...looking at the bonuses below, it become apparent that a Melee with +21 Melee Power is not why reaper is easy, nor does it say to me that a spell caster with +48 Spell Power is the reason why mobs are being nuked. What you see below is a nominal amount of power that allows builds other than Meta builds to have a chance at running in high skull. Nothing below to me is broken when it is a very small % of the attributes we have already at endgame. I think its more of a balance thing vs. reaper points are OP...cause to me, they are not.

A maxed out toon gets the following:

Melee/Range Power: +21
Tactics: +4
Damage: +4
Spell Power: +48
Spell Points: 550
Spell DCs: +4
Spell Pen: +5
Ability: +15 (+5 in one choice in each tree) (equates to +2 DCs/+2 damage)
All Saves: +2
Select saves: +12
Dodge: +10%
Dodge Cap: +2%
MRR and PRR: +3
MRR or PRR: +21

Various Boosts
+1k HPs

One thing I have always found annoying with the existing system

If you choose one selectable it locks out the other choices farther up the tree but it still forces you to choose from the options even though only the one you previously have is available

Just a minor nitpick which to me you should choose in the first place then just add to that same higher in the tree just by picking up the ranks no need to reselect what’s already selected