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  1. #1
    Community Member Bjond's Avatar
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    Default It's a Hard Life: HCL for Live Servers?

    Personally, I find Heroic play to be absurdly boring. HCL spiced it up a bit, but all you get in the end is a cosmetic and a bank mule, nothing for your real characters. What if you could run an "HCL" life on a live server? What should the reward be? What would the life look like?

    Here's my take on how that might work:

    • On death, your character is reset to L1 or sent to the creation screen without a PL feat.
    • On death (maybe), all coin and inventory on the character is lost (destroyed)
    • During play, HCL powerleveling restrictions apply for XP gains (zero XP outside FTB limits, etc)
    • During play, XP is only gained from reaper completions.
    • On TR, your character acquires 3x the normal PLs; eg. racial = 3x RPLs, heroic = 3x HPLs, etc..

    I suspect the on-death and on-tr parts would be relatively simple to add and get right. The hard part would be ensuring there's no way to do no-risk HCL leveling of a zone-parked piking alt.

  2. #2
    Community Member Oxarhamar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bjond View Post
    Personally, I find Heroic play to be absurdly boring. HCL spiced it up a bit, but all you get in the end is a cosmetic and a bank mule, nothing for your real characters. What if you could run an "HCL" life on a live server? What should the reward be? What would the life look like?

    Here's my take on how that might work:

    • On death, your character is reset to L1 or sent to the creation screen without a PL feat.
    • On death (maybe), all coin and inventory on the character is lost (destroyed)
    • During play, HCL powerleveling restrictions apply for XP gains (zero XP outside FTB limits, etc)
    • During play, XP is only gained from reaper completions.
    • On TR, your character acquires 3x the normal PLs; eg. racial = 3x RPLs, heroic = 3x HPLs, etc..

    I suspect the on-death and on-tr parts would be relatively simple to add and get right. The hard part would be ensuring there's no way to do no-risk HCL leveling of a zone-parked piking alt.
    No we don’t need HCL on live servers

    Definitely not going to get much traction on inventory delete

    The rewards are something for your regular character it’s account wide

  3. #3
    Community Member PedXing20's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bjond View Post
    Personally, I find Heroic play to be absurdly boring. .... The hard part would be ensuring there's no way to do no-risk HCL leveling of a zone-parked piking alt.
    You're bored with the game and want someone else to make it less boring with rules that would prevent you from cheating?

    Stellar use of resources there!

  4. #4
    Community Member Airgeadlam's Avatar
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    Play in r10 from lvl1. No PL gear. If you die, delete. There, you have your hardcore right there.

  5. #5
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    You can always just immediately delete any character who dies, you don't need anything in the game to enforce this.

    There are (or at least were) guilds that used this rule on an honor basis.

  6. #6
    Community Member Oliphant's Avatar
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    What about a per quest opt in for permadeath with big xp rewards or something, give the brave a way to advance faster? More of a quality over quantity leveling experience for peeps that enjoy HC. Also perhaps a slightly kinder version of permadeath where you toon does not get deleted but must go back to level 1 and rebuild from scratch.
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  7. #7
    Community Member Oliphant's Avatar
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    ^^ Having it per quest would mean having to watch quest doors like a hawk though, or it maybe it would need to be an option that each player selects for themselves only. Letting someone select it just for themselves and park is kind of the loophole that seems problematic there.
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  8. #8
    Community Member Nebless's Avatar
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    While I like the current set up of separate Hardcore League Servers and if SSG plans to keep doing them I see no reason to introduce the feature on the regular servers.

    BUT

    If SSG ever decides to stop doing the special HCL servers than introducing a feature like Age of Conan has would be nice.

    In Age of Conan at the character creation screen you can check a box to make your character an "Unconquered" one. As long as you don't die you keep earning rewards (cosmetics) at certain levels (for AoC it's 20, 40, 60 and 80). These unlocks are account wide, but to make it more special it could just be character (the 'hey look at me, I'm special' feature). The max reward for making it to max level was a complete set of cosmetic armor and weapons for your class.

    If you die, you drop out of unconquered status, you keep any rewards you've earned, but stop progressing towards more rewards and just become a plain old character.
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  9. #9
    Community Member SoVeryBelgian's Avatar
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    I mean, you could just ask for more HC seasons, or a play a permadeath character... like High R, or say, no potions/scrolls...

    Or if you've truly wrought out all the joy of DDO and now it is a breeze... you could play something more engaging and difficult?
    NONVIOLENCE IS MY NAME. LORE IS MY GAME!


  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bjond View Post
    Personally, I find Heroic play to be absurdly boring. HCL spiced it up a bit, but all you get in the end is a cosmetic and a bank mule, nothing for your real characters. What if you could run an "HCL" life on a live server? What should the reward be? What would the life look like?

    Here's my take on how that might work:

    • On death, your character is reset to L1 or sent to the creation screen without a PL feat.
    • On death (maybe), all coin and inventory on the character is lost (destroyed)
    • During play, HCL powerleveling restrictions apply for XP gains (zero XP outside FTB limits, etc)
    • During play, XP is only gained from reaper completions.
    • On TR, your character acquires 3x the normal PLs; eg. racial = 3x RPLs, heroic = 3x HPLs, etc..

    I suspect the on-death and on-tr parts would be relatively simple to add and get right. The hard part would be ensuring there's no way to do no-risk HCL leveling of a zone-parked piking alt.
    Seems weird to do it on live, and hard to separate the different players / items.

    Could just allow "your character" into HC (level 1 naked, obviously), and/or allow you to apply a HCL life to your live server char(s), with vendor / token whatever. I think we've always understood HC isn't going to increase power on live though.

  11. #11
    Community Member Bjond's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by PedXing20 View Post
    You're bored with the game
    Not yet. I'd estimate I'm a minimum of 2 years from being done with Epics. This post was aimed at planting a seed that would hopefully sprout .. something .. sometime .. before I get there.

    Quote Originally Posted by Airgeadlam View Post
    Play in r10 from lvl1. No PL gear. If you die, delete. There, you have your hardcore right there.
    That's just dumb. There's no upside. You don't even get RXP playing that way. At least with real HCL you get a cosmetic for your real characters. It's not much, but it's not nothing at all.

    Basic human psychology on risk v reward is not linear. Most consider 10% gain for 10% risk to be a very bad deal. It's closer to needing 50% gain for 10% more risk before people become interested. This is why pretty much no one ever plays more skulls than R1 in Heroics. It's a bad deal.

    IMHO, something big needs to be done to fix Heroics. I'd be more than OK if they just deleted L1~20 from the game entirely -- new chars are just born L20 with full racial PLs. I don't think that would fly, though. Why? Recent conversation: "Welcome back!" / "Oh, I didn't leave. I was doing racials." / "Ah, we thought you quit."

    Some kind of increase difficulty in Heroics WITH a commensurate reward would go a long way toward making L1-20 more than an onerous chore.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bjond View Post
    Not yet. I'd estimate I'm a minimum of 2 years from being done with Epics. This post was aimed at planting a seed that would hopefully sprout .. something .. sometime .. before I get there.



    That's just dumb. There's no upside. You don't even get RXP playing that way. At least with real HCL you get a cosmetic for your real characters. It's not much, but it's not nothing at all.

    Basic human psychology on risk v reward is not linear. Most consider 10% gain for 10% risk to be a very bad deal. It's closer to needing 50% gain for 10% more risk before people become interested. This is why pretty much no one ever plays more skulls than R1 in Heroics. It's a bad deal.

    IMHO, something big needs to be done to fix Heroics. I'd be more than OK if they just deleted L1~20 from the game entirely -- new chars are just born L20 with full racial PLs. I don't think that would fly, though. Why? Recent conversation: "Welcome back!" / "Oh, I didn't leave. I was doing racials." / "Ah, we thought you quit."

    Some kind of increase difficulty in Heroics WITH a commensurate reward would go a long way toward making L1-20 more than an onerous chore.
    Permadeath is not the challenge in hardcore, it is a condition. The challenge is starting with no past lives and no gear and achieving the goals within a set time period. Permadeath is the condition that prevents you from just repeating a quest until you get it done. As stated, reaper was created to provide more challenge in heroics and it has its own reward system for that.

  13. #13
    Community Member Oxarhamar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bjond View Post
    Not yet. I'd estimate I'm a minimum of 2 years from being done with Epics. This post was aimed at planting a seed that would hopefully sprout .. something .. sometime .. before I get there.



    That's just dumb. There's no upside. You don't even get RXP playing that way. At least with real HCL you get a cosmetic for your real characters. It's not much, but it's not nothing at all.

    Basic human psychology on risk v reward is not linear. Most consider 10% gain for 10% risk to be a very bad deal. It's closer to needing 50% gain for 10% more risk before people become interested. This is why pretty much no one ever plays more skulls than R1 in Heroics. It's a bad deal.

    IMHO, something big needs to be done to fix Heroics. I'd be more than OK if they just deleted L1~20 from the game entirely -- new chars are just born L20 with full racial PLs. I don't think that would fly, though. Why? Recent conversation: "Welcome back!" / "Oh, I didn't leave. I was doing racials." / "Ah, we thought you quit."

    Some kind of increase difficulty in Heroics WITH a commensurate reward would go a long way toward making L1-20 more than an onerous chore.
    TR & RTR in Heriocs is a huge portion of the game

    You are bored with it you can up the skulls or bypass Herioc with Ottos box

    players do indeed increase the skulls in heroics though R1 is mainly run for efficiency I run in pugs that do 2 3 6 8 & I wanted to join a static group of friends that did R10 1-20 but, I wasn’t on the same schedule

    I’ve run R10 Harbor spicy things up

  14. #14

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    I think coming up with some other mode of play that is risky but then offere a perk at level 20 (like a double TR) is a fine idea.

    I am not sure about your proposals specifically. As mentioned above in another post, HC league is not just permadeath—it is also no PLs, no gear, no level 200 guild ship buffs, etc. So maybe right there could be an interesting condition. I would love to convert a HC character into an otto box honestly…
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  15. #15
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    1. There shouldn't be a reward. You should do it for the "challenge"
    2. You don't need the Devs to do anything. If you die, delete the character. If you don't, yay! You didn't die.
    3. BAM! There it is, done.

  16. #16
    Community Member Bjond's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Oxarhamar View Post
    You are bored with it you can up the skulls or bypass Herioc with Ottos box
    The RXP gains are so tiny from upping skulls in heroics that there's zero point in doing so. And, while I don't have a lot of RXP (most chars have 75'ish points), there is a problem with increasing RXP rewards for heroics: capping out too soon, thus again making it pointless to run over R1 in heroics.

    I did wonder if someone would bring up Otto's. That's not a solution, that's a problem. It doesn't skip boredom, it INCREASES boredom. You're talking about replacing playing the game with being stuck in the level-up UI.

    If you were to give me infinite otto's, I'd probably try to use them for racial/heroic PLs. After about a week or so of being stuck in the TR/UI, I'd probably start avoiding DDO. After about 3 weeks, I'd quit the game. And, that's not even enough time to do an otto-completionist. It is enough time to get so sick of the TR/UI that I'd never want to login ever again.

    Now if they were to offer 1-click direct buy racial/heroic/etc PLs, that would be interesting and tempting because those would actually skip the TR/Leveling UI.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saekee View Post
    I think coming up with some other mode of play that is risky but then offere a perk at level 20 (like a double TR) is a fine idea.

    I am not sure about your proposals specifically. As mentioned above in another post, HC league is not just permadeath—it is also no PLs, no gear, no level 200 guild ship buffs, etc. So maybe right there could be an interesting condition. I would love to convert a HC character into an otto box honestly…
    The inventory-delete on death I mentioned was an attempt to recreate the "no gear" part of real HCL. You could risk banked gear, but you'd loose it on death. Other factors could also be added to help it make more sense on risk v reward, such as PLs don't apply to HC-Life chars and they get "old" (stat degradation over time?).

    Ultimately, I just want something in heroics that is both more challenging and more rewarding. Heroics could be more than the place Epic Completion characters go to retire and maybe quit the game. It badly needs to be more challenging for those characters and as a natural consequence of greater challenge, it needs more reward.

  17. #17
    Community Member Oxarhamar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bjond View Post
    The RXP gains are so tiny from upping skulls in heroics that there's zero point in doing so. And, while I don't have a lot of RXP (most chars have 75'ish points), there is a problem with increasing RXP rewards for heroics: capping out too soon, thus again making it pointless to run over R1 in heroics.

    I did wonder if someone would bring up Otto's. That's not a solution, that's a problem. It doesn't skip boredom, it INCREASES boredom. You're talking about replacing playing the game with being stuck in the level-up UI.

    If you were to give me infinite otto's, I'd probably try to use them for racial/heroic PLs. After about a week or so of being stuck in the TR/UI, I'd probably start avoiding DDO. After about 3 weeks, I'd quit the game. And, that's not even enough time to do an otto-completionist. It is enough time to get so sick of the TR/UI that I'd never want to login ever again.

    Now if they were to offer 1-click direct buy racial/heroic/etc PLs, that would be interesting and tempting because those would actually skip the TR/Leveling UI.



    The inventory-delete on death I mentioned was an attempt to recreate the "no gear" part of real HCL. You could risk banked gear, but you'd loose it on death. Other factors could also be added to help it make more sense on risk v reward, such as PLs don't apply to HC-Life chars and they get "old" (stat degradation over time?).

    Ultimately, I just want something in heroics that is both more challenging and more rewarding. Heroics could be more than the place Epic Completion characters go to retire and maybe quit the game. It badly needs to be more challenging for those characters and as a natural consequence of greater challenge, it needs more reward.
    You can certainly get do Otto completionist in 3 weeks time

    You can already increase the Challenge & the rewards you just don’t think the increase in rewards are worth the increased challenge

    You can already leave your gear in the bank if you think that’s making it too easy or delete it when you die if that’s what you want
    Last edited by Oxarhamar; 05-01-2023 at 01:38 AM.

  18. #18
    Founder adamkatt's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Airgeadlam View Post
    Play in r10 from lvl1. No PL gear. If you die, delete. There, you have your hardcore right there.

    Heres your answer bjond. do this.
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  19. #19
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    Crank up the reaper level. Heroic stops being boring once you start running it on R6+. We have Reaper specifically to prevent the boredom of the game being too easy, but people seem to pretend high reaper only exists for level 30+ quests.

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