Update 29: Level 30 Overview

[Toxxyk]

Since I didn't see a Dev comment yesterday regarding what is happening to people that are not a cap, I will post again that your proposal of keeping them at their current XP and then having an "unexpected" amount to get to the next level is wrong.

Consider your average, non forum reading player who logs out "1 pip" from level 26 the night before the next expansion hits. Maybe they have a piece of equipment they are going to use, maybe its a new quest they will do at the next level. The point is, they log out expecting that the next day they will run a couple quests and get their level.

Instead, the update hits. They log in. They are now SOOOO much xp to the next level. In fact, they do a couple quests and notice their XP bar doesn't even move. This is going to result in support tickets. And frustrated casual players. These are significant downsides than incur real costs to Turbine (support isn't cheap).

Instead, you should recalculate the xp, so that if I'm 90% done level 25, when I log in after the expansion, I'm 90% done level 25. There are no downsides to this over what you've proposed.

[CThruTheEgo]

Flattened xp curve is a good thing for epics imo. Will hopefully mean lower level epics get run more often.

[Loromir]

And oh gods please do not make me run Druids Curse more than I already must. Once heroic, once epic, per life, per character is enough. More than enough. Way more than enough.

Off topic...but I'm curious why people don't like Druid's Curse. I know the loot is nothing special, but I actually like the quests.

[JOTMON]

The TR cutoff should be level 28. I've mentioned this in the council with pretty good support and apparently you guys think differently.

Lets explore the reasoning then.

Adding grind for no good reason isn't my idea of a good time...

I agree, there is little value in increasing the XP required to ER when Spheres already maintain their own XP cap of 6.6mm XP.

should be simple enough to Allow ER upon reaching the 6.6mm/sphere requirement and remove the level cap requirement.

Dev's have already unhinged Epic fate points/slot earned from level 29/30 as being inaccessible until reaching level 29/30 during reincarnations.

[*]Number of Twist Slots: This is +1 compared to whatever you currently have. You might or might not have gotten an Epic Completionist slot yet. The 4th slot you have costs 4 Fate Points to unlock tier 1, the 5th slot costs 5 points to unlock, regardless of what order you gain your extra slots. If you drop below level 29/30 (Reincarnation), then you lose those Fate Points and slot until you level up again.

[Propane]

Unless you intend to doom players to even more rounds of EN Wizking/Spies, I don't feel flattening the XP is a good idea. Specifically, adding over 1000k to the required XP for lvl23.


tl;dr I'm not in favor of flat XP curve cause XP is not distributed evenly enough. There's simply not enough XP available when you're level 20 or 21, compared to when you're near the cap.

Agreed - Another reason to allow a reset Slayer / Rares for the explorer areas for each ETR.
(NPC to talk to, clicky item, heck a DDO store item if need be)

Am I the only one that sees this as a current gap for people on the ETR train?

[EllisDee37]

[*]I don't want to be level 21 so long that I need to have appropriate gear. Or level 22. Or any of the lower levels.

I get the feeling this is one of the design goals.

If so, I can't really argue with the logic. It always seemed a little cheesy to me to ETR, collect saga rewards and immediately start using ML23-24 gear.

[Iriale]

I am not happy with the new flat XP curves. It will take more XP to get to every single level than before. meh. Glad that my main is epic completionist. I'm sorry for my alts; this is too much for me, thanks. ER is enough boring now.

[Whippy]

Seems mostly like good ideas here, however I think that the curve being totally flat from 20-30 is a mistake. Sure, flatten it a bit, but it means far too long spent in the lower epic levels with not as good gear on, levels that we've all already played over and over and over and over again. And let's be honest, people are a bit bored at the moment. Perhaps a slight increase in required xp as the levels go up would make it more appealing.

Also we've all got a bunch of gear we've been working hard to get from DoJ etc that is lvl 28, we've hardly had it on yet as at the moment we get to 28 and ER or TR pretty much straight away, it'd be nice to actually have a bit of time to wear it, use it, get the benefit of our hard work and making the XP curve totally flat reduces the time we can wear that gear.

Then there is the question of Sagas. Currently a popular way to do your ER's is to bank your sagas, then turn them in when you are level 20, instantly taking you to level 21 or 22 etc depending on pots/amount to turn in. The ER process is already somewhat boring and the level cap increase will make it even more laborious, so taking the ability to get to at least level 21 with saga turn in away I think is a mistake.

In conclusion, flattening the curve is fine, making totally flat is a mistake.

Hello-

I don't like the idea of a flat line, a shallow slope is better.

Get some of your toys earlier (Lv 23 and 25), get to use your big toys longer (lV 28-30).

Something like...

Level XP
20 -
21 400,000
22 900,000
23 1,500,000
24 2,200,000
25 3,000,000
26 3,800,000
27 4,700,000
28 5,700,000
29 6,800,000
30 8,000,000

This I like... much better than totally flat

[Whippy]

If we are going to be level 20, 21, 22 etc for ages we'll need better gear for those levels probably rather than just something you had on you... so we'll need more bank space. Urgently need more bank space please for bound gear alone!

[Fluffib]

I agree with many of the other posters, I don't think the flattened xp curve is a good idea. While there are some arguments seemingly based on logic (why should 20-21 take much less time than 19-20), the game design is that people at all epic levels can enter any epic quest, and in practice you need to get to level 23-25 to be able to use the gear to contribute to the fun, popular, rewarding quests. That's why you see so many people run the same few quests over and over - because they are quick xp, so we can fly through levels 20-24 as fast as possible to get on with the fun stuff.

A potential idea is to flatten out the xp curve after level 25, requiring 1 million xp for levels 26-30, as thus:

Level 21: 300,000 xp
22: 300k + 450k = 750k xp
23: 750k + 600k = 1350k xp
24: 1350k + 750k = 2100k xp
25: 2100k + 900k = 3000k xp
26: 3000k + 1000k = 4000k xp
..
30: 7000k + 1000k = 8000k xp

Which doesn't change things in the early epic levels but flattens things out in the later epic levels.

[Qhualor]

If we are going to be level 20, 21, 22 etc for ages we'll need better gear for those levels probably rather than just something you had on you... so we'll need more bank space. Urgently need more bank space please for bound gear alone!

I still have my eChrono set, Claw set and TOD set that my characters would always where as part of their end game build when cap was 20. I stopped wearing them months and months ago instead using a couple pieces of Commendation gear, something from Wheloon and Stormhorns chain and ML11 gear. That's what I use until level 23 when I upgrade to mostly random loot gear with +8 stats.

I do think we could use some fresh ML20 epic gear, but not for the reason you are saying. When/if Turbine decides to create new epic level 20-23 content, it would be a good opportunity for some new gear choices and an added reason to run that content.

[Maudib_360]

[*]Why flatten the XP curve?

• It makes sense for characters to spend similar amounts of play time at each level, rather than new levels coming slower and slower over time. For comparison, consider the old Heroic 3rd life XP requirements and levels 18-20. While that's a different case overall (from 1-20), we want to get away from that feeling that the last few levels are just so much harder.
• XP per epic quest doesn't increase much with increased level, which takes away from one reason to increase XP requirements over time.
• Unlike the normal "start" of an XP curve, there's no great reason for designers to rush characters through the early Epic levels. That's not where most of your abilities come from, either from a power perspective or "cool new things to use" perspective. By the time a character is epic they've got lots to do, and Epic Destinies are on a separate track. Given that, it's largely nicer to space the "dings" of gaining a level out more - yes, they come slower early on, but you never reach that large gap at high levels where it seems to take forever to get those final levels. (Players may remember the old Heroic 3rd life XP curve being somethign like that at level 18/19.)
• Based on quest and XP distribution, it makes sense for the lower levels to require as much XP as higher levels. Though we've relaxed a lot of "restrictions" on epic questing, many players do still play quests around their character level, and/or in increasing order.

I really don't like this idea for a flat XP curve as proposed. As other posters have mentioned, this is the equivalent of just raising the ML on level 23 and 24 items (CitW, 3BC, etc.). As current epic levels just serve as gates to what gear you can use, there is a reason to rush through these first few levels. I don't want to wait longer to use some of the cool items I've accumulated over the years.

This proposal will not reach your goal of "characters spending similar amounts of play time at each level". The first few levels are going to be painfully slow compared to the upper levels due to what gear we will be allowed to use. This is the exact opposite of what we have currently in epic and heroic.

I also disagree with all the posters that say this is somehow a good thing so that old ML 20 epic items will become more relevant or that now they will have time to run some of the lower level epic quests. There is nothing preventing anyone from running all those low level quests now. There are no over level penalties in epics, and bravery bonus is possible two levels over the elite quest level if I remember correctly. If those low level epics are so great, they should stand on their own, and we should not feel "forced" to run them because of the shape of the XP curve. I still run LoD at level 27 for XP. The same goes for the items. If you like your ML 20 epics, use them at higher levels if you'd like. Just don't force the rest of us to stay at these lower levels longer because it fits in with your personal play style.

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread for shallower XP curves by other posters. I hope the Devs reconsider and use one of those instead of this flat curve that is currently on the horizon, because this current plan doesn't "make sense" as is.

[Assassination]

Just like epic greensteel. if eGS has a ml of 30 many will just go *meh* and not worry about it since they will be reincarnating straight away. (Make it ml:26 so much like original GS - good for reincarnation).

I second this! Will make epic Green much more useable.

[EllisDee37]

Actually, make epic greensteel ML20. That would largely solve the gearing issues raised by the flattened xp progression.

[Hafeal]

Actually, make epic greensteel ML20. That would largely solve the gearing issues raised by the flattened xp progression.

I like where you are going.

If it's tiered, perhaps make it:

ML 20 for base,
ML 24 for tier 1,
ML 28 for Tier 2,
ML 30 for Bonus Tier

BUT make it so that weapons equip and can be used at 20 only you do not get the benefit of each additional tier effects until you reach the minimum level. This is probably a lot to ask of programmers, but, if we can do it with Tomes, why not craftable gear?

[elvesunited]

Please no, If it can be avoided I'd like to have only one epic greensteel item that is of use during most of the epic levels. The great thing about heroic greensteel is that it's min level of 12 and has unique enchantments that can be useful even into high epics. It's a lot of effort to make one, but it's useful for the majority of the character life. That's why shroud raids are constantly going.

For epic greensteel to be popular it needs to also cover a significant portion of the character levels. Say starting at 22? If its 30, few will bother. If it's multiple tiers with different min levels.... that will require characters to have multiple versions of the same greensteel item which is also disheartening.

[FranOhmsford]

Thoughts:
My first thought on the flat XP curve was that I didn't like it. After letting it sink in, I realized the majority of lv17-21 content never really gets touched, and this may help some of those levels. As mentioned above, this will have a side-effect on ETR speed. Another way to get content in those levels visited would be to add sagas to the rareliest-played quests, or just to tweak XP rates up. I'm assuming you have metrics on which quests are hardly ever visited since you mention players sticking to level-appropriate quests. Who knows, 2.75x XP for 21, and 1.83x XP for 22 might just give us enough time to hit all the original epics plus Amrath again, so the flat curve might "fix" this on its own.

On the other hand the xp needed is now so high that I can't see ANYONE choosing to run Elite No BB Reaver's Refuge or even E-BB Amrath over VoN 3/4, Spies, Wiz King and OoB Multiple times on EN!

The XP differential between those High Level Heroics on Elite for the Lvl 17s or E-BB for the 18s and 19s and the likes of VoN 3 and Wiz King on EN is so high that this is going to kill those quests stone dead!

[IronClan]

I am cool with flat, it might drag lower epics out, but we'll see, I wouldn't be opposed to slightly less flat take 250,000 of the total so you have a nice round 8mil

Overall I like that the last couple levels will have those slots and twist of fate and points... something missing from epic levels is just how who cares they are if you don't get a feat choice.

[Vargouille]

Thanks for the feedback. We're likely going to reconsider just how flat the curve will be, though we do want more than ~24 hours for players to give feedback before we make any firm decisions. (If you have been quietly preferring the proposed flat "curve", speak up now and be heard.)

Instead, you should recalculate the xp, so that if I'm 90% done level 25, when I log in after the expansion, I'm 90% done level 25. There are no downsides to this over what you've proposed.

Since a couple of people have brought this up:

There is a major downside to this proposal: Players are strongly incentivized to stop playing DDO right now, this instant, because this unfairly rewards XP to those who happen to have stopped getting XP at a particular time/level.

Under this proposal, anyone who has exactly enough XP to gain level 22 should probably stop playing, especially if they think they won't hit level 23 before Update 29 comes out (maybe stop playing today, maybe in a week, etc.), or maybe get some alts up to exactly level 22 (or 21 or 23 or whatever breakpoint you think makes sense). Otherwise they are "wasting their time" because instead of playing they could just wait and get "free XP" for choosing to not play DDO.

While we will probably consider a more gently sloped curve, the same issue is likely to be there in some form. There's really no world in which we want to explicitly reward not playing the game. (Considering it's entirely fair to ask each character to earn the same amount of XP to earn the same levels, ultimately, we're willing to deal with the downsides, which we do recognize as being real downsides.)

[FranOhmsford]

Off topic...but I'm curious why people don't like Druid's Curse. I know the loot is nothing special, but I actually like the quests.

Wisps and Trees!

More Wisps and Trees!

Even more Wisps and Trees!

Yet more Wisps and Trees!

Who enjoys playing through quests where absolutely everything has 100% Fort, DR through the roof, Immunity to a tonne of different prefixes/suffixes, appears in huge mobs of enemies AND deals out insane damage!

Those quests are some of the worst made in the game {Along with Wheloon and most of the Madness Quests!}!