The Future Reaper Update

[Nickodeamous]

I think this thought is a problem in itself. There should be no expectation that any build gets to run high skull reapers. Zero. R9/10 should be unfairly punitive. If you want to run it without 'cheesing' (i.e. Casters at this point and time) the difficulty, deal with it. As someone else said, it should represent a difficulty where a perfectly formed party would struggle to complete it, not an entitled difficulty for any build.

Oh, I'm not saying that these stats allow everyone to participate in R10. Lol. It's more than that. It's player builds, player skill, playing the flavor of the month that "cheeses" it as you say. I have a caster and a melee, so I get the difference. I'm more advocating to keep the stats bonuses i get with my 156+ reaper points. The HPs to me are key for melee, but not so much caster since I can range them. Melee needs CC in high skull. We all know that. I guess my point is, don't take away my hard earned points and bonuses. I don't think SSG will nuke reaper tree buffs tbh. I think it may just smooth out the curve a bit. It'd just a game. Let's all have fun how we want

[Zites]

I said that it should be that way, not that it is that way. And they are all caster runs, i.e. cheesing it, as mentioned in that post.

Yes I was agreeing with you and now let me introduce you to the power of DODGE in LIGHT ARMOR and CLOTH
1.

2.

3.


Hmm.....which one of these is not like the other.

[Marshal_Lannes]

In my opinion, removing reaper trees is a terrible idea. It will be deal-breaking for many. These are now integral parts of characters. A skill bonus players have spent countless hours questing to enhance. Removing the trees will ultimately kill off the reaper scene (except for the R1 XP bonus) and let's not forget, an extremely compelling argument can be made that reaper saved DDO. It may be too early to hit the panic button at this time, but I hope the Devs think long and hard about the many ramifications a decision like this will have.

[superevbully]

Many players spent a lot of time (years) and money (xp pots) to grind out reaper points based on a system that SSG designed and implemented. It would be extremely unfair and insulting to many players if this change results in any kind of nerf. It would be like "Bait and Switch." What's next, past lives no longer give you the benefit you were promised and worked hard for? I can see it now .... each past life now grants: +1 HP, +1 MRR, +1 PRR. "Sorry, the original rules no longer apply. See you back in the game." Perhaps not. LOL

So this there are systems that cannot be changed find another way like legendary reaper etc no more power all challenge

[Kelledren]

Spot on.

I would have zero issues with someone I was running with getting a boost because I have more more reaper points than they do. I think this is healthier than carrying somebody with no reaper points. Honestly outside the HP, Dodge, DC boosts, and D-Strike boost everything else from the trees is fairly trivial anyway.

Edit: bad grammar corrections

[Kelledren]

So this there are systems that cannot be changed find another way like legendary reaper etc no more power all challenge

For the reasons MaxPower stated they simply cannot remove the reaper buffs that people ground out points for. I know legally they can do anything, but the line with me is if a large portion of the population spent $$$ to get or grind something out, then that should be off the nerf table. This is the issue with new classes too- the rebalancing should come quickly when needed.

I think to make the higher reaper difficulties more of a challenge they should add different reapers. Like a reaper that tosses out a zone of silence and targets casters. Then the caster with the reaper aggro has to separate from the party to allow others to cast.

[Kilgrave]

For the reasons MaxPower stated they simply cannot remove the reaper buffs that people ground out points for. I know legally they can do anything, but the line with me is if a large portion of the population spent $$$ to get or grind something out, then that should be off the nerf table. This is the issue with new classes too- the rebalancing should come quickly when needed.

I think to make the higher reaper difficulties more of a challenge they should add different reapers. Like a reaper that tosses out a zone of silence and targets casters. Then the caster with the reaper aggro has to separate from the party to allow others to cast.

+1

[Saekee]

Devs can make the changes but let people with existing points and buffs keep them as a kind of legacy/grandfather clause

[capsela]

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. The devs giveth and they taketh away.

[misterski]

Devs can make the changes but let people with existing points and buffs keep them as a kind of legacy/grandfather clause

Don't think the idea is to take away the reaper points you've already earned. The supposed plan is to remove the reaper trees (which were a mistake in the first place) and give scaling bonuses based on the points you have earned.

[capsela]

It's over.

[Lotoc]

As far as what I'm aware their intent going forward with scrapping the reaper trees sounds fine.
A lot of people are talking about it like it's completely removing all bonuses while sev clearly said that he wants a system where the party leader's reaper points grant power to his party.
I'm really not a fan of reaper trees as is, people talk about them like them going away means losing choices but the reaper trees are entirely just numbers with no gameplat besides the reaper action boosts which honestly aren't interesting either.
As you get more reaper points the trees besides the defensive ones stop being choices entirely and just "take whats relevant to your build." and honestly once you pass 82 points unless you're playing a hybrid build all you gain from reaper trees anymore is some hp, and when you have fewer points it makes cha/wis/int based melee/ranged builds feel awkward.

Odds are with the changes people with currently capped reaper trees are just going to gain power, the trees can't give you anything anymore after 156 reaper points, a track could in theory keep granting RELEVANT power much longer, and because the updated reaper system will loan out power to people with less points if could possibly adress the power gap within parties enough that this higher growth limit doesn't deter lower investment players as much as the system currently does.

[elvesunited]

Potential problems ->

Reaper Potential Battle Pass: What a reaper battle pass would have is an open question. Best guess based on hints given is that as characters gain levels and/or reaper points they get rewards such as cosmetics or bonus XP. Best scenario is that this is an add on and will not replace existing reaper bonuses. Worst case scenario ....

Reaper Potential Nerf problem: Reaper adds a lot to enemy saves. If the bonus DCs from reaper are taken away a lot of DC casters are going to lose the ability to function at higher reaper. ( Note: if they do take away DC and stat bonuses from reaper then they could compensate by reducing the amount they increase enemy saves in higher reaper ) But even other characters could be hit hard if they lose the reaper hp which allows them to be 2-hit wonders instead of 1 hit wonders in high reaper thus reducing build variety in reaper even farther. But the bigger problem with a reaper nerf is .....

Reaper Bait Switch Problem: Players spent a lot of time and money building up these reaper points. If they get taken away and replaced with lesser bonuses or, Lolth forbid, cosemtics then DDO will burn its most active players. I'm not sure DDO could even survive that.

[Sheneran]

As a player who was a hardcore in the past, got banned and never came back, what keeps me away from coming back (and problably is the same reason why most newbies don't stay) is:

1) the huge power gap accumulated by the years of playing. I get it that people spent a lot of work and money to get the reapers trees and all that, but you have to count also that you didn't have much else to do in this game, so it's not like people only "worked hard" for them, but also had fun in the process. This is what an MMO consists of. People don't complain when their old gear gets outdated by a new update, the same should apply if you spent the time looking for xp instead of gear.

The difference between a new character and an old one is just too big because in this game they kept adding more and more cummulative bonuses that you could obtain with time, via reaper trees and past lives, while in other games this kind of bonus is not as much as it is in DDO, but is more gear related, what means it doesn't generate all this big gap between new players and old ones, because the old gear gets invalidated, while the inherent bonuses from past lives and trees keep accumulating.

So the idea of sharing the benefit across alts and other members of groups is a good one. That should be also applied to past lives as well.

2) the huge pay-wall. This game is just too expensive to start out right now. So many expansions, tomes, races and other kind of payed stuff that you must have and they're not cheap at all.

[Sheneran]

I'm not sure DDO could even survive that.

People have been saying that for 10 years and things keep going. Those who are addicted will keep spending. It's like the car industry: they noticed they get more ROI if they focus on the rich big spenders who buy expensive products than on the general population.

I'd not be suprised if they do more money now with boxes, +8 tomes, multiple expansions, chest rerolls, hearts, 50% pot and all that with tons of past life goals, raid bypasses, etc, than before U14 when the costumer base was way larger, but the whales didn't have much to spend on.

[Mamalian]

I said that it should be that way, not that it is that way. And they are all caster runs, i.e. cheesing it, as mentioned in that post.

I'm not sure playing a pure class caster could be considered "cheesing." They are exploiting nothing, the game is broken.

[DaviMOC]

As a player who was a hardcore in the past, got banned and never came back, what keeps me away from coming back (and problably is the same reason why most newbies don't stay) is:

1) the huge power gap accumulated by the years of playing. I get it that people spent a lot of work and money to get the reapers trees and all that, but you have to count also that you didn't have much else to do in this game, so it's not like people only "worked hard" for them, but also had fun in the process. This is what an MMO consists of. People don't complain when their old gear gets outdated by a new update, the same should apply if you spent the time looking for xp instead of gear.

I dont know. I 100% agree about newbies not only those but for alts too . But for my experience being able to continue something instead of start over is the main reason I come back to DDO from time to time. I used to play WoW alot and the sense of start over or that anything that I did before an expansion dosent matter any more really drove me out of it . If ddo had a similar experience I would have left it long ago and never com back.

About the point 2. I dont like much to discuss monetization but IMO vip is the best and only thing you need to invest when you start this game. The extra 500pts and the acess to elite will unlock an healthy enough experience and build the points required to buy every expansion pack that is not the latest one( and its completly fine to not have it as a newbie). The only issue about that is that gamers nowdays cant stand subscription or p2p models so it is still a barrier for new folks.

[Wizard1406]

As far as what I'm aware their intent going forward with scrapping the reaper trees sounds fine.
A lot of people are talking about it like it's completely removing all bonuses while sev clearly said that he wants a system where the party leader's reaper points grant power to his party.
.

It would be good if the reaper trees stay and the reaper sharing could be "battle pass like", so if the person who shares have x RP people with lower RP get x to hp/saves/DCs/prr/mrr/ stats. With stage 1, 2, 3 etc. each giving larger buffs.

As a player who was a hardcore in the past, got banned and never came back, what keeps me away from coming back (and problably is the same reason why most newbies don't stay) is:

1) the huge power gap accumulated by the years of playing. I get it that people spent a lot of work and money to get the reapers trees and all that, but you have to count also that you didn't have much else to do in this game, so it's not like people only "worked hard" for them, but also had fun in the process. This is what an MMO consists of. People don't complain when their old gear gets outdated by a new update, the same should apply if you spent the time looking for xp instead of gear.

The difference between a new character and an old one is just too big because in this game they kept adding more and more cummulative bonuses that you could obtain with time, via reaper trees and past lives, while in other games this kind of bonus is not as much as it is in DDO, but is more gear related, what means it doesn't generate all this big gap between new players and old ones, because the old gear gets invalidated, while the inherent bonuses from past lives and trees keep accumulating.

So the idea of sharing the benefit across alts and other members of groups is a good one. That should be also applied to past lives as well.

2) the huge pay-wall. This game is just too expensive to start out right now. So many expansions, tomes, races and other kind of payed stuff that you must have and they're not cheap at all.

Yes. It's probably the MMO with the biggest paywalls. And the power difference is too big and there's no catchup, quite the contrary, pastlives are added at a fast pace. Now this wouldn't be so bad if there was enough population to find groups for all difficulty levels. But there is absolutely not (not even enough people for groups for the standard leveling difficulty - R1)

[slarden]

Two of the biggest problems with reaper is the lag associated with entering a quest in reaper mode and the power gap between players. Severlin called the problem with applying reaper benefits an "enhancement tree problem", but it seems more like a problem with applying a bunch of stat changes upon entering a quest to me. I would think they could improve the application of reaper benefits without getting rid of the trees so to me it seems more like they want to get rid of trees and are using this as the excuse to do it.

It sounds like they plan to address the power gap issue, but if they instead do a bunch of math on the fully party rather than each person individually it's hard to understand how this doesn't make the application of reaper benefits worse instead of better. If there are 5 people in the party that start a quest and a 6th person enters the quest while the rest of the party is in the middle of a fight are they going to recalc stats on the fly? That just sounds like it's going to take problem we have today (application or reaper benefits upon entering a quest) and make it much worse.

If they are going to apply reaper benefits all the time regardless of whether you are in reaper mode that solves the problem of applying stats upon entering a quest completely, but breaks a fundamental promise made when reaper mode was introduced (which they broke on day 1 with the cores anyhow).

[Wizard1406]

Two of the biggest problems with reaper is the lag associated with entering a quest in reaper mode and the power gap between players. Severlin called the problem with applying reaper benefits an "enhancement tree problem", but it seems more like a problem with applying a bunch of stat changes upon entering a quest to me. I would think they could improve the application of reaper benefits without getting rid of the trees so to me it seems more like they want to get rid of trees and are using this as the excuse to do it.

It sounds like they plan to address the power gap issue, but if they instead do a bunch of math on the fully party rather than each person individually it's hard to understand how this doesn't make the application of reaper benefits worse instead of better. If there are 5 people in the party that start a quest and a 6th person enters the quest while the rest of the party is in the middle of a fight are they going to recalc stats on the fly? That just sounds like it's going to take problem we have today (application or reaper benefits upon entering a quest) and make it much worse.

If they are going to apply reaper benefits all the time regardless of whether you are in reaper mode that solves the problem of applying stats upon entering a quest completely, but breaks a fundamental promise made when reaper mode was introduced (which they broke on day 1 with the cores anyhow).

If lag is the reason for potentially removing reaper trees, I think making reaper trees always apply is an ok solution. Most entries are on R1+ anyway (except newbies, slayer zone, some raids and specific quests). It makes people stronger on those difficulties but better than taking reaper trees away. Which would upset a LOT of people.

Or alternative, have reaper trees always apply and then remove them on elite or lower, but it might not reduce lag enough.