Multi-Patch/Update Preview: XP Changes

[erethizon]

'Cool'. Now, instead of TR once in 3 months I'd have to TR once in a year ?! What else are you going to do to make people drop DDO altogether ?

Do you only own 3 quest packs or something? This doesn't hurt the rate of TRing at all since there are plenty of quests to go from 1 to 30 without ever running anything twice. Unless you are talking about Epic TRing. This will definitely hurt that, but that is easily fixed by doing a Racial, Heroic, or Iconic TR as well.

[erethizon]

Hello, I understand that some XP balancing is needed from time to time, but this time your plan is really dangerous. Years ago people used to do optionals to get more xp, in reaper mode they are usually skipped. If the changes you planned go live, people will begin to skip them on normal too, especially in PUGS. There will always be someone that already ransacked them and they will run to quest completion, as fast as possible.

In six months, nobody will bother to ask other players "skip optionals?", we'll just run to end and close the quest. I am sure optionals take time to be implemented, and there are many in each quest. With this planned changes, you are removing them from DDO alltogether. I hope you change your mind about this subject because it's a major mistake. Thanks for reading, cheers.

What level range are you thinking of when you say this? From level 1 to 20 I don't think you will encounter someone who is ransacked for optionals on any quest more than once every 6 months. From 20 to 30 this could be a problem, but only for those people that don't catch on and combine the ETR process with the Racial TR process. Most people that still need to do ETR's also have some heroic or racial TR's to do as well. Ideally this will kill off the ever-so-common EH daily groups and we will see a lot more people doing only 1 to 3 ETR's for every racial or heroic TR. This change is good for helping people stop boring themselves to death with an ETR train that they don't enjoy. People do EH dailies because they are efficient not because they love them. This is a big help on making them less efficient so people will stop boring themselves.

[Feal]

I like your ideas of changing things, but there is one thing i'm not gonna like it

Currently, bravery bonus is not applied to rxp.

Lowering 1st time bonus will lower a lot the rxp you can get from it.

Please do something about this, i think lot of players will be sad as hell, and also this will not help new players in covering the gap.

i don't see the utility on nerfing the rxp, please consider this change deeply

[Alled78]

i like your ideas of changing things, but there is one thing i'm not gonna like it

currently, bravery bonus is not applied to rxp.

Lowering 1st time bonus will lower a lot the rxp you can get from it.

Please do something about this, i think lot of players will be sad as hell, and also this will not help new players in covering the gap.

I don't see the utility on nerfing the rxp, please consider this change deeply

they nerf reaper xp because they dont want new player joining the game to take care.

Or they didnt realize from 120 to 80 is a nerf??


All other changes are very interesting this is clearly a drama.

[slarden]

they nerf reaper xp because they dont want new player joining the game to take care.

Or they didnt realize from 120 to 80 is a nerf??


All other changes are very interesting this is clearly a drama.

Current

First Time: 120
Bravery: 50
Streak: 30
Daily: 25

Total: 225

Proposed

First Time: 75
Bravery + Streak: 100
Daily: 30

Total: 205

Does seem like a nerf unless we are still getting that 30 otherwise seems like a slight bump.

I've never run dailys for rxp, never farmed a quest for rxp - seems like the rest of the changes are minor and offsetting.

Bravery and Streak seem like dead notions. Why not just roll the bravery/streak into the first time bonus instead. Does anyone thing running hard, elite or R1 makes you brave?

[Feal]

Current

First Time: 120
Bravery: 50
Streak: 30
Daily: 25

Total: 225

Proposed

First Time: 75
Bravery + Streak: 100
Daily: 30

Total: 205

Does seem like a nerf unless we are still getting that 30 otherwise seems like a slight bump.

problem is, bb is not applied to rxp!

so math for rxp is:

First Time: 120
Daily: 20

Total: 140

Proposed

First Time: 75
Daily: 30

Total: 105

35% nerf

[Requiro]

Current

First Time: 120
Bravery: 50
Streak: 30
Daily: 25

Total: 225

Proposed

First Time: 75
Bravery + Streak: 100
Daily: 30

Total: 205

Does seem like a nerf unless we are still getting that 30 otherwise seems like a slight bump.

Look at my post: here

It is a little nerf for quest XP. But big one for Reaper XP.

[slarden]

Look at my post: here

It is a little nerf for quest XP. But big one for Reaper XP.

I guess I never realized streak and bravery wasn't factored into rxp - I just always knew I got well over double rxp when running for the first time.

It's a little late to slow down rxp.

problem is, bb is not applied to rxp!

so math for rxp is:

First Time: 120
Daily: 20

Total: 140

Proposed

First Time: 75
Daily: 30

Total: 105

35% nerf

Odd timing to the say the least before new epic lifes are released. You would think they would want to encourage people to go back to 1 and box to reset first time bonuses instead of starting back at 20. Definitely not worth the hassle dealing with tr bank etc. with a 35% nerf to first time bonuses meanwhile daily is going up a little.

I wish there was a little more visibility into rxp bonuses on the xp sheet. I've earned over 20 MM rxp and never realized this.

[Feal]

what i am worried about is this:

Now, having a good 1st time bonus, people are motivated to do ALL quests, also the non-dailies ones.

with this change, playng dailies will get you more rxp.

Now, i don't know if this is wanted to encourage people to stay at cap, but what will happen is that there will be more grinding of same quests and less variety of questing.

At least with juicy 1st timers people are motivated to play stuff like tethyamar, or new comers and black and blue (bad rxp/time ratio, even with 1st timer).

True they said they will raise xp of some quest, i hope that include rxp, if it doesnt, risk is high of having less variety in endgame

[Feal]

might be too much, but is an idea to keep in mind.

RXP SAGA

for example places with low rxp with or without 1st time bonus, having a saga reward, according to the skulls you completed those quests on

[Silverleafeon]

Seriously concerned that reaper experience might be lessened, devs please explain and give examples including why this might or might not be?

There are players that simply reincarnate to reset bonuses because they want rxp without gaining any past life bonuses.
Rxp is rare and powerful, so any experience adjustment must take reaper experience into account seriously.

(Does the fact that Reaper might be run at 2 character levels higher than before a factor here?)
(Or is there a change towards more reaper experience at cap via the increased daily bonuses, should the daily bonus for reaper increase?)


Other than thus concerns, the revisions seems well intended and solidly based in a more varied gaming experience.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Do you only own 3 quest packs or something? This doesn't hurt the rate of TRing at all since there are plenty of quests to go from 1 to 30 without ever running anything twice. Unless you are talking about Epic TRing. This will definitely hurt that, but that is easily fixed by doing a Racial, Heroic, or Iconic TR as well.

That means more time spent in Heroic levels. That's not a good thing for everyone. In fact, at least some people don't really enjoy the Heroic levels at all. This can be a good change for some people, but it will hurt at least some others.

[Seljuck]

Really, now? You took the time to bold what made you mad in red, but you didn't notice that the beginning of the sentence- the one your bolding is in, mind you- specifically stated that the statement was for Normal, Hard, and Elite?

If it was for normal, hard and elite what happened to reaper? In OP there's no single word why reaper 1st timer bonus was lowered. Under new conditions playing reaper for the first time gives less xp, both standard and RXP (due to lower 1st time bonus).

To sum up, it's double nerf.

Don't forget that currently R1+ difficulty is new Elite. Elite is only for quests that don't have R difficulty or for repeating quests with good XP for first entry bonus.

[Chacka_DDO]

First of all, it is a very good idea to encourage players, even more, to play different quests rather than repeating quests over and over again for the best exp/minute.

But a big point on my personal wishlist is that reaper experience should be consistent with the normal experience bonus system.
There is no point that you get 100% normal experience and in addition several bonuses (however you call it) and for your reaper experience you get a penalty.
Therefore if you do a quest AT the (effective) quest level you should also get also FULL reaper experience (the means at the normal quest level plus the level modification for elite and normal, that's +2).
There is no point to divide the already very small player base in DDO even more in players who want full reaper experience and players who dont care about this!

[Feal]

i would also like to spend few words about this.

i understand you wanna stop the brainless wk opt farm, and i'm one of those player who would like to not have people getting easy PLs grinding dailies (earning bonus without learning to play basically),

but permaransack feels too much.

Lets say, i reach 30 and wanna do rxp at cap before etr and go again at 30. on the quests i did for rxp i will have ransacked the optionals, getting slower to go to 30 again. doesn't make much sense.

A possible solution i like to suggest is, increase the ransack clear time.

current is 18 hours, might get doubled or tripled, so people will be more incentivated to play a large variety of quests before going back on "classic".

This sounds more fair than permaransack

[Sho-sa]

Devs,

Lot of good points in here, please listen.


Not all players want to do the complete TR train. This proposed setup hurts Epic players who don't care for heroics.

You just sold Destiny pots in the store, now you are going to hack XP from players who want to play a certain way in quests they like and enjoy, but the XP will dry up for them to BUY your new Destiny pots and GIVE you money. Just thought I'd connect the dots on that one. (Especially with tons of new Epic Past Lives being introduced.)

We all agree the Wiz King opts are a bit of a cheese. Just like farming Amber Temple was. You changed Amber, wasn't all that good of a change, you listened to us and modified it into a compromise. There has to be one here.

Options: One- Put optional XP on a ransack timer just like the Quests are. I think we all suspect the coding might be a mess to enact this or it would have been done already. However, we do not know for certain. Can you confirm or deny this?

Two- Since adjusting XP is a proven option, how about just lowering the Wiz King opts to a reasonable level? Even better, compensate Wiz King base XP in return. Your players are currently incentivized not to run the entire Quest, we will tell you what will. Players will run the Quest a few times (just like all the other good Quests out there) and move on to something else or wait the 168 hours instead of running it for Opts until their eyes bleed.

Three- Have opts reset on Epic TR. I recognize this is probably not your preferred option.


We are on board with you for an XP adjustment and having a FUN game. We want DDO to stay in business or we would not be here after all this time. Please don't enact any changes which will drive any more players away. People have different ways they like to play and we need them all.

You have made a great step in limiting Reaper bonuses to a set range by level, therefore you don't have to drive yourselves crazy with XP changes.


TL; DR I don't stay at epic level, but I know some people do. The proposed changes will hurt them and we will lose some players from the game which we cannot afford to lose. Please modify your proposed changes.


P.S. Mines of Tethyamar need a MASSIVE boost in XP along with Tower of Frost.

[erethizon]

6. The over and under level bonuses for Reaper will be changed to be the same as Elite. This will reduce confusion and provide a wider grouping level.

I've a question about this. I am assuming this means if you run a quest that is base level 10 (such as a Restless Isles quest) you would get 100% of the normal Reaper experience even if you are level 12 and would get a 20% reduction if you are level 13. Is that right?

What about epic quests? Epic quests have a larger range for Bravery Bonus. A level 20 epic quest gets Bravery Bonus up to level 23. Would you still get 100% of the normal Reaper experience if a level 23 was in the party? Would it be a 20% reduction for having a level 24 player in the party? Gianthold epic quests are level 24 with full Bravery Bonus up to level 28. Would you get 100% of normal reaper experience if you had a level 28 in the party? Would there be a 20% reduction for having a level 29?

Or is it even better than that. All epic quests can be run with level 30 characters in the party at no experience penalty (though you may lose Bravery Bonus if the players are too high). Does this change mean that there is no Reaper experience penalty at all (but you can still only enter Reaper if you are 6 or fewer levels above the base level of the quest)? That would mean a level 26 could play a level 20 epic quest and still get the full 100% reaper experience. Is that the way it will work?

[Splunge]

~ Players should not be punished for breaking their regular play pattern to join a group or to help out friends and guild mates.

That's a great objective! I don't see how anyone could be against it.

~ Players should be rewarded for playing a wide variety of quests instead of repeating quests over and over.
~ We want to close some loopholes for optional objectives.

Both reasonable.

~ The rate of leveling overall should not drop for an average player who is playing a lot of different quests.

What you're not mentioning here is that, by design, the rate of leveling overall will drop for most of the other players. DDO already has an ever increasing grind for PLs. Why would you make that harder? I'm glad I got so many of my PLs in before this change. It will be harder to get them after this change.

If you are playing the quest the first time in Heroic, you should get the same experience points as before. In Epic you will have an additional 5% bonus.

The regular XP on reaper is lower than before the change. This seems especially odd since you're planning to make R1/R2 more difficult.

3. Increase the Daily bonus.

This seems like it would encourage running the same quest tomorrow that you ran today.

4. Move some of the XP from the First time bonus, which is per difficulty, to the Bravery bonus.

It is not our goal to increase outgoing XP; to pay for the above increases we plan on lowering the First time bonus per difficulty.

If you aren't increasing the amount of XP for the first run of a quest, players aren't being "rewarded for playing a wide variety of quests instead of repeating quests over and over" any more than they are now. The only incentive to do so comes from punishing the repetition of quests.

5. Optional objectives will ransack, and that ransack will not reset over time; they are essentially being changed to a play-through bonus with ransack that only resets with a Racial, True and Iconic Reincarnations.

This has already been discussed a bunch in this thread. This change really hurts if you aren't going to reset the ransack with an Epic Reincarnation.

6. The over and under level bonuses for Reaper will be changed to be the same as Elite. This will reduce confusion and provide a wider grouping level.

It appears that I'm one of very few people who doesn't like this change. I would have much rather seen the level lowered for Elite.

One of the reasons I was happy to see reaper come out is that doing elite two levels above the base level of the quest has become a total face roll. Being in a group of people who can all solo zerg the quest is no fun for me. Running R1 at the base level of the quest at least provided a little more challenge. It's going to be hard to find groups willing to do that now. In fact, with the reduction in normal XP for running reaper, it might even be harder to find R1 groups at all. I guess I'm just going to be stuck soloing more.

The following quests will have their XP lowered.

Grim and Barett: XP lowered by 10%
The Jungle of Khyber: XP lowered by 10% on Heroic only. Epic will remain unchanged.
Spies in the House: XP lowered by 10%.
The Litany of the Dead: XP lowered by 10%

The following quests will have a MAJOR increase (10-20%) to their XP:

It made me laugh that a 10% reduction is just lowering the xp, but a 10% increase is a MAJOR (in caps) increase. This, the total avoidance of mentioning the reduction in normal XP on reaper, and a couple other things makes me feel like you're purposely trying to spin the changes so that they look better than they are.

[Splunge]

A Small Problem needs to be on the Major list. That one quest is the reason why people don't run this chain much.

I completely agree. The other reason is that the air elemental falls off the mountain, making it longer/harder/impossible to complete. About once a year, I forget exactly why I hate this quest so much and try running it again. I either get little or no xp for it, and I get frustrated enough that I don't run the rest of the chain.

Only Black Loch needs an increase, BoB and Storm the Beaches can be completed in under 2 minutes and Tide Turns is also potentially extremely fast.

I also agree with this. I run the heroic pirate saga each life, and the saga bonus is the only reason I run Black Loch. The quest feels like a slog, and I don't get much xp for it.

Also, all 4 Druids Curse quests need BIG xp increases.

I agree here, too.

[nemo1375]

i understand you wanna stop the brainless wk opt farm, and i'm one of those player who would like to not have people getting easy PLs grinding dailies (earning bonus without learning to play basically),

Why on earth does it matter to you how other people play the game. I understand not wanting optional farming to be far and away the best way to level, but this is a game and people play it for fun. If someone else wants to repeat the same quest over and over, or not complete it and get XP, that should be none of your concern.

EH dailies groups are the bane of real groups.

I am dying to understand what a "real group" is and how a dailies group is not that.

I actually enjoy running dailies, partially to see how efficient I can be with them, partially because they are quick and a predictable amount of time; sometimes I only have a little while to play after my daughter has gone to bed, and partially because I like repetitive brainless tasks while I am watching TV. I also don't particularly enjoy heroic, so I don't want to TR after every eTR. Why is this version of fun bad?

I understand these ways of playing aren't everyone's cup of tea, but this feels like trying to dictate other people's fun.