Multi-Patch/Update Preview: XP Changes

[Nickodeamous]

+1 aye

On Khyber, players would roll thru the dungeon so fast the king would be dust...
If anyone objected, people would assume the objector simply was too slow getting to the entrance or something...

+2!

I used to do this daily on Khyber during my ETR hamster wheel. Never once did we stop after the optionals. The most common thing we ever heard or said was, "tell me when to pick up".

[Elfishski]

Which is utter sadness. Heroics at normal level on reaper was already mostly zerg. Going +2 or even +3 is just silly. Clearly a huge step in the wrong direction imho. Making reaper at level rather than at level+2 did so much good for the heroic game, pugs included.

Yeah, playing quests AT level has made them a lot more fun, and made level 18-19 quests actually relevant to the game as well rather than functionally not existing unless you're itching for favour. In theory I can just keep doing things at level for that fun, but in practice it's hard to resist the carrot of filling up on underlevel quests before advancing. If wanting to standardize the range (and I don't think it's needed), I think it would be much more logical to move regular BB to match reaper rather than the other way around given the power creep in the game. For all those first lifers who would suffer - they don't need much XP and will be just fine doing things without BB XP.

[Isolani]

Some of the quests getting xp buffs, I still wouldn't do for 10-20% more xp. Some of the quests on the list, like the Wheloon quests for instance, are reasonable xp/min already. It's running through a **** maze explorer area to get to them that makes them not worth it, a small xp bonus isn't going to fix that. When I do those quests, I just pay the 15 Astral Shards to get to all of them, it isn't worth it if you run to them...it could have been worth it if that explorer area didn't suck so bad. I guess it's ok if you buff them, I was already paying to get to them anyway, now it will be more worth it.

I don't consider 10-20% a major xp buff either. People that always skip Chains of Flame are still going to skip Chains of Flame with 20% more xp. Some of these quests would need 100% or more xp bonus before I would bother.

The only quests I ever repeat for heroic lives nowadays are VoN3, Shadow Crypt, and Litany. And even then, it was just R and E, maybe H, N too if I'm playing a weaker build. I have been repeating some of the Sharn quests, but that is trying to get loot still, not xp. So I don't see why there needed to be heroic nerfs. Aside from people powergrinding heroic/racial lives in less than 10 hours, I don't think most people are repeating quests very often in heroic levels.

By the way, you forgot to nerf Information is Key and The Kobold's New Ringleader by 10% also, two of the most repeated quests in the game. Then you can buff Protect Baudry's Interests by 10%, so we can guard boxes for 5 minutes to get 510 base xp instead of 464 base xp. That should make the game more fun. Good thinking. I should be a dev.

There are reasons people skip a lot of quests, and it isn't just the xp.

[C-Dog]

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.

The hard stop to entering Reaper on Epic will remain as it is on live, but Heroic will prevent characters from entering Reaper dungeons in the Heroic levels if they are more than 4 levels above the base challenge rating of the quest...

So, if(?) I'm reading this right, RXP penalty for (Heroic) quests is now...

Character vs. Quest Level:

At-level = 100%
Level+1 = 100%
Level+2 = -10%
Level+3 = -25%
Level+4 = -50%
Level+5+ = not allowed

(source: https://ddowiki.com/page/Experience#Quests

And this is based on the BASE level of the quest, not the ADJUSTED level?

So, if(?) I'm reading this right... Does this mean that characters can now be 1 level higher and still get the same RXP?

Because, currently, some exceptional characters can crush medium-skull Reaper content "at level", and many can run low-skull at-level without blinking. Is this intended to open the valve a bit on RXP? Because same RXP for characters +1 level higher... it kinda will, won't it?

(Or am I reading that totally wrong?)

[C-Dog]

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...

Which means that characters who are doing a series of Epic Reincarnations will possibly find themselves ransacking the optionals of their favorite quests, Epic life after Epic life? Is that WAI?

[AbyssalMage]

Greetings!

Greetings

We have been analyzing our data on quests, completion times, and completion numbers, and we have put together some changes we feel will improve players game experience throughout their leveling adventures. We realize that experience points and how players earn them can greatly affect a player's game experience, so we want players to understand the changes.

First, I want to explain our goals with these changes:
~ The rate of leveling overall should not drop for an average player who is playing a lot of different quests.
~ Players should be rewarded for playing a wide variety of quests instead of repeating quests over and over.
~ Players should not be punished for breaking their regular play pattern to join a group or to help out friends and guild mates.
~ We want to close some loopholes for optional objectives.

• Actually unless it was addressed and I glossed over it, XP is taking a major dive. Are you trying to increase store sells? I get it but please just own up to it.
• If a player wishes to repeat a quest over and over, why does that bother you? You have provided more than enough variety of XP from 1 to 30. 20 to 30 could use some more help but that will come with more updates and you controlling your nature of power creep so more players wish to play them. WPM (once you scaled back some of the insane damage) was a nice start, Sharn not so much.
• Thank you. Will you be giving the Bravery Marshal a "pink slip." This honestly should have been done long ago.
• Let's just be blunt here. You are nerfing Wiz King and you are going to inadvertently destroy a lot of other content in the process. I know you really aren't taking suggestions but I can positively tell you that you are going to lose players. Award the optional XP to the end like you did with GH: The Crucible. Please do the correct thing the first go around and quit playing coy. You really can't keep your player attrition going if you want to continue receiving a paycheck.

As a result of these changes, we hope that more dungeons are viable for normal experience gains, and that playing through a wide variety of dungeons is more appealing and playing dungeons over and over is less appealing. 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.

You have played your own game correct? The TR/RR hamster wheel is already painful enough. Your reducing 1st time XP (unless the problem has already been addressed) in Heroics. If a player wants to maximize their time/effort it shouldn't be your place to judge. You are judging a segment of players because they are repeating quests. They want more options, not less.

1. We are going to make some XP changes to specific quests to bring them into line with their completion time and difficulty. Four quests will have their XP lowered, while many quests will have their XP raised. The exact list has been added to the bottom of this post.

Yeah, so punish people who zerg by completing a quest "too fast" what ever horrible metric you use. Just like you have a penalty for starting too late. Make a penalty for finishing too soon. Or just stop with the penalties and boost your under performing (which are more than your list currently has) quests that have had repeated requests to make better.

2. Bravery Streak for both hard and elite will change to Hard Dungeons Completed and Elite Dungeons Completed. Bravery streaks will no longer end; they won’t have a chance for ending, you won’t need to turn off your streak (or worse, mess your streak up by forgetting), and you can freely play at any difficulty without the count resetting.

QoL improvement that should have been done long ago.

The bravery streak bonus will be moved into the standard bravery bonus at its full value. We will still track how many times you finish hard and elite dungeons in the UI, but you are no longer required to playing 5 dungeons in a row at a specific difficulty to build a streak. More on this below.

Bravery Bonus will be based on the base XP for the dungeon as if you were on elite, even if you are playing on hard. Right now the Bravery streak is, at full bonus, 70% of the base XP on Elite. We are increasing that bonus to 100% so players will get more XP the first time they play each quest.

To clarify, playing a quest on Elite/Reaper will give the full 100% bonus. Playing the quest on Hard gives 50% of the Bravery bonus XP BUT you can reclaim the rest of the Bravery XP if you play it later on Elite. So the most efficient way to get the Bravery XP bonus is to play on Elite, but if you help a friend on Hard you can still get the rest of the difference on Elite/Reaper later. Yes, it is less efficient but you don’t *lose* the bonus.

To clarify how the new totals work: as previously, when you complete a Hard dungeon quest your Hard Dungeons completed total will increase. When you complete a Elite or Reaper dungeon quest your Hard and Elite totals will be increased.

Honestly I think you are making this too difficult. But developers never like KISS.

3. Increase the Daily bonus.

To further encourage a diversity of dungeons, the Daily bonus will be increased from 20% to 25% for Heroic dungeons, and 30% for Epic dungeons.

Meh, QoL issue for Epic's. But the extra 5% isn't going to do much for many players with the heavy hand of optional xp being nerfed. You are literally destroying the ER grind for Alt's and Players who have shied away from Epic's. I don't think you thought this through as a development team. Address the problem head on, it may be more difficult but it will save you headaches later.

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.

Normal difficulty will decrease from 25% to 10%.
Hard difficulty will decrease from 40% to 20%.
Elite difficulty will decrease from 80% to 45%.
Reaper difficulty will decrease from 120% to 75%.

What does this mean:
~ On Normal, Hard, and Elite the first time through a Heroic dungeon including the daily bonus will be the same as it is on live. The first time through Epic dungeons will actually give slightly more XP.
~ This makes the practice of repeating dungeons on each difficulty less attractive than finding a new dungeon.

Yeah, if you haven't addressed this, it NEEDS to be addressed. You are going to lose players. A lot of players. Which isn't a lot by the server counts. The players you were hoping to pick back up in fall when the weather starts getting colder? They are going to find a new game. Don't punish people who want/like to repeat adventures. Boost the stuff that isn't being repeated so they naturally want to go there.

How do you "Boost" an adventure? Glad you asked because we have been telling you!

• Teleports to remote locations. No one wants to run to an adventure that gives mediocre or less xp.
• Standardize NPC's to earlier content. No one wants to face HP bloat, especially in Heroics. Have some self-control. You gave Reaper to those who like HP bloat (along with a lot of Power Creep).
• Boost XP that is mediocre or just plain horrible. This has been a problem long before you became SSG. Allow players to do DDO the way they want to play it.
• Fix Dungeons you did a poor (being polite) job of scaling (honestly this could be combined with above). Both ToEE and Tower of Frost are MAJOR candidates for this.
• Break up annoyingly long quests into "smaller" parts. Most/Many/Maybe just me, hate spending 30 to 45 minutes zerging through a dungeon. Some of your new content is just rage worthy making me want to quit, or step into it again, because of how long it takes to complete. Slaver's and ToEE are on people's "Never doing again" lists for this very reason. Did developers forget people like having fun?
• Lower mat acquisition for an item. Have I mentioned your Optional Objective XP nerf wasn't well thought out enough yet? Add in your developers penchant for 15 to 20 runs for a single item and now they are going to get less (r)Xp. If the standard is 35% on Elite, I should be able to make a new item every 7 to 10 runs at most. But I can make the "exact" item I want so I should be penalized? Do you know players play DDO to have fun? Ask how many of your players looked forward to running Slavers after Sharn was released.

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. To compensate, optional objectives will ransack more slowly. With this change we can add more, or make more of them have greater rewards. Note: the reduced rate at which optional objectives ransack has not yet been changed on the test server.

Yeah, you haven't thought about the ER game, those players who you finally got to remain at cap (to quiet the section of players who wanted a reason to stay at cap), or your player base who may have a limited selection of packs (i.e. the few new players you acquire). You get it? I hope!

*** Must show some restraint. Still have more to comment on ***

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.

The hard stop to entering Reaper on Epic will remain as it is on live, but Heroic will prevent characters from entering Reaper dungeons in the Heroic levels if they are more than 4 levels above the base challenge rating of the quest.

I'm not sure why you feel you need to hard cap Heroic to +4 when +6 wasn't hurting anything. I guess you don't want people farming Illusions, WPM, and DoR in Heroic's. I personally think it's petty but it's your paycheck.

THE QUEST CHANGE LIST
<snip>

Yeah, nerfing things isn't going to help you retain players. Especially when players used 3 of the 4 for dailies after an ER. Nerfing the Heroic one is just hilarious but I guess you threw us a bone so now you are taking 1/2 the bone back. Typical protocol for you guys.

Boosting the XP will be fine on the rest. It's still too low of a boost but something is better than nothing.

Feedback is welcome.

Sev~

We know you are going to make the changes with or without our feedback. You best hope is by putting this out here we aren't as angry when the majority of the population realize what you have done as a development team. Those who have already grinded the RR's aren't effected. So that leaves the other 85% who are caught in the middle, took a pause, or haven't started.

We all know you are nerfing the optional XP because of Wiz King. Just fix it and do it right. You literally are going to make so many more problems by going this route than just making the xp contingent on completion.

[erethizon]

Personally, I don't believe so.
People rather don't play it because it is a strong STORY quest. People rather want to zerg than reading long dialogs. XP-farmers hate dialogs, they want to get xp as fast as possible, and that includes zerging as fast as possible.

People don't like STORIES anymore.
They want POWER instead.
And this is a direct mirror of the gaming world out there. Just look at how many story-driven adventure games like Monkey Island or Indy Jones & the fate of atlantis exist these days. No-one does them anymore (except Indies). The current gaming world seemingly has become a man-driven world in which games are developed to be an expression of manlihood and that requires guns and explosions, and - MOST IMPORTANT - kills !

"A Small Problem" isn't a kill game. So people don't play it.

While power creep may have changed this, I distinctly remember A Small Problem being one of the very few quests I played on Epic Elite rather than Reaper 1 because it was too difficult on Reaper 1. Party wipes can happen on that quest and playing it on Reaper requires you to start over rather than reentering. It is the only epic quest I ran on EE rather than R1 this life (though like I said, perhaps that is not necessary anymore). But with the level cap of 23 if you want BB and the difficulty in finding a full party especially for low level epics this quest is just a pain when it comes to the endless, very powerful trash when confronting the sky spirit. The story aspect is fine. The difficulty for an at level party is not. That is my guess as to why people don't run it. The presence of story isn't the problem.

[erethizon]

Please add Restless Island quests to that list (consider even more increase than 20% to make them worth playing):
Slavers of the Shrieking Mines
Bring Me the Head of Ghola-Fan!

Why? Well, first those quests are HUGE and take some time to complete, 2nd even the path to those quests is long and twisted. Right now those quests give near zero xp. Nobody is running those today except if you need that favor for Falkonry enh. tree.

I still run them once each every life, but you are right that I am lucky if I can find even one person to join me. Usually I do find one person in part because people see LFM's for them so rarely that they are interested in the opportunity to run them when they see them. That said, you are right that they should probably have a major experience increase so that I'm not the only LFM that month for these two quests.

[erethizon]

If OPT Ransack is permament, there needs to be a floor to the XP drain that is not 0%. 25% is as low as I would see it, 50% would be better. 5% per run, down to 25%, I think I could live with. Usual progression to 0%? Bad. Idea.

According to the thread on this board that lists all the planned changes for the update, the floor is 20% (much like the daily repeat penalty for base experience is -80%, which also leaves you with 20%).

[erethizon]

100% agreed - same way with how Amber Temple was being run before it was changed. The game is being played exactly as designed. how is this an exploit?

Why are people acting like we don't understand what he meant? Yes, the word exploit is greatly overused on MMORPG message boards. But I do agree with that poster that when we see a quest (like the Amber Temple you mentioned) that gives out experience far, far faster than anything else in the game, it probably was not intentional. You are correct that you are not cheating by taking advantage of it, but we know full well that it is incredibly unlikely that the developers decided to make one quest that pays out far more experience per minute than all the other quests in the game in the hopes that we would farm that quest and only that quest for months at a time.

When you see a quest that pays out far better than anything else, it was probably an oversight. In most cases the developers did not imagine that the players would find a way to complete the quest so quickly and thus made it worth more experience than they probably should have. When they first came out, quests like Wiz King and Spies in the House were incredibly tough and time consuming so it made sense why they were worth so much. Once epic destinies and EH dailies were introduced, the quests started paying out way more experience than their difficulty and time commitment warranted.

Amber Temple was meant to be difficult. The developers failed to realize that people would learn the easiest card and simply reset the instance endlessly until they got it. Sure, if you know MMO player psychology it makes perfect sense that they would. But developers are rarely hardcore MMO players (they tend to be more casual) and so they failed to realize what would happen. Was it an exploit? No, in the sense that it wasn't cheating and against the rules. But yes, as the poster that keeps being quoted point out, we all knew full well that people were taking advantage of an unforeseen way of playing. The developers obviously wouldn't have put that in on purpose. And when 5 quests get repeated 10 times more frequently than any other quest, you know something is amiss. It probably wasn't intended and we know we are capitalizing on something that wasn't intentional.

[Iriale]

aha, you want to stop the wizard king farm (something that the truth I only know from this forum, because I have never seen it on my server), and instead of adding the experience of the optional ones at the end, destroy all the optionals. Very smart, devs. In my country we call it killing flies with cannon shots. I don't know if you will kill the fly with the cannon shot, but hey, you destroy the whole place. Very efficient.

I guess it is useless to say that the normal thing in this game is zerg to the end and ignore the optionals, and that if something you should do is improve the state of the optionals, not destroy them, but... bah. It is useless to point out the obvious.

Changes to BB were very necessary. All right. BB streak was one of the stupidest concepts I've ever seen. Reducing the rank of grouping was another really bad idea.

But in general it sounds like a nerf to the XP gain. Taking into account the insane grind of this game, that is to test the patience of your consumers. Give more experience, the grind of this game is endless and has already killed the alts. I don't even want to think about being a new player now.

Do not make xp nerf to any quest. It is good to have carrots. Add experience to the neediest quests and then consider what are the other factors that make a quest not played.

You are not going to get TOEE or tower of frost to be played even with 1000% more of xp. These quests are so long and so poorly balanced that they are universally hated. Many other quests that you mention as little played fall into these two shortcomings, although less accused. Heroic slavers, for example: the quests are too long (too long! They are tiresome!) and stupidly hard on heroics. And besides, we are tired of an excessive grind in epics. Every time you force me to play that chain again to farm another item, I hate you, devs. With passion.

Small problem has the problems that others have pointed out: confusing map, it is very easy to fail in that quest, and the respawn in the area of the air altar is excessive. Know why a quest is not popular, devs. And remember that if these types of quests that present a challenge in difficulty are not popular it is because you promote an intense zerg due to the endless grind. If you want this style of quests to be popular, you cannot put the rewards only in the TRs and not in these types of challenges.

Please add sorrowdusk and threnal to the list of quests to receive an xp buff. They need it.

[karatemack]

Does this mean that you will be making all optionals more along the lines of the Wiz King/Von 3/Spies type optionals?

So many, many optionals are very poor xp.
Will you be changing thus?

Many quests would become much more attractive if thus was changed.
The main reason Von 3 is so good is the optional xp payoff and the amount of optionals available.

This could be a good thing if you are seriously upgrading option xp across the boards.
Otherwise it does seem simply an xp nerf to a very small handful of quests.

I believe that ransack XP on optionals and lackluster optional XP can be better addressed by granting ALL XP (optional and quest) at the end of the quest rather than throughout (as others have already suggested- looking at you Crucible).

Also... I don't really know why the dev team has any issues with how people earn XP. It isn't as if XP = skill... XP = time. Given the amount of endless, mindless grind in DDO... it isn't really reasonable to expect that ALL players will want to experience all of the content in the game each life. In the end, this is a case of the dev team treating a symptom of the problem (IE: repeating optionals to grind XP faster) rather than addressing the actual issue (IE: there is too much grind in DDO).

Here's hoping that after all of this feedback, they ditch the changes to optional ransack, flatten the XP curve in heroics and implement some way to share PLs (many different versions of this have been suggested throughout the forums). These changes would actually address the root of the problem.

[Elearim]

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. To compensate, optional objectives will ransack more slowly. With this change we can add more, or make more of them have greater rewards. Note: the reduced rate at which optional objectives ransack has not yet been changed on the test server.
...
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%

Feedback is welcome.

Sev~

While the overall idea is very much appreciated, the main need for the daylie farming is the problem of low XP per time rate after the first time completion on most of the quests. This problem intensifies when several ETR are done in a row.

Maybe a good idea to solve this is to reset the first time bonus and optional XP penalty on ETRs as well.

Sers

[bracelet]

I don’t want to quote the whole thing but AbyssalMage 100% nailed it in this post: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post6231643

Read it please. Print it out. Put a copy on everyone’s desk. Do the things he suggests instead of the things you are proposing. Nobody wants to wake up two years from now wishing you had done those things so that we could still be playing DDO.

The amount of XP required in this game is off the charts. Making it harder to get is unfathomable (with the exception of WK opt farming, although I have yet to see any LFMs for that on Orien).

[Iriale]

I believe that ransack XP on optionals and lackluster optional XP can be better addressed by granting ALL XP (optional and quest) at the end of the quest rather than throughout (as others have already suggested- looking at you Crucible).

Also... I don't really know why the dev team has any issues with how people earn XP. It isn't as if XP = skill... XP = time. Given the amount of endless, mindless grind in DDO... it isn't really reasonable to expect that ALL players will want to experience all of the content in the game each life. In the end, this is a case of the dev team treating a symptom of the problem (IE: repeating optionals to grind XP faster) rather than addressing the actual issue (IE: there is too much grind in DDO).

Here's hoping that after all of this feedback, they ditch the changes to optional ransack, flatten the XP curve in heroics and implement some way to share PLs (many different versions of this have been suggested throughout the forums). These changes would actually address the root of the problem.

So wise words. No hope they will listen to you, however.

They will not even consider giving special rewards to quests with a special challenge. They are only amazed that people seek quick experience when they only reward the insane and endless grind

[tarrith_dourden]

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. To compensate, optional objectives will ransack more slowly. With this change we can add more, or make more of them have greater rewards. Note: the reduced rate at which optional objectives ransack has not yet been changed on the test server.

Yeah, I don't know about this one. I feel it's a bit overkill. Let an ETR reset it. If it still doesn't have the desired effect of discouraging dailies afterwards then you can still implement the perma-ransack on optionals at a later date.

Tarrith

[mikarddo]

While you are looking at xp.

1) Make the 10 first lives use the current 1st life xp curve and the next 10 use the current 2nd life curve.
This gives new players and alts a chance to catch up.

2) Remake the epic xp curve. Lower the first 9 levels by 100k each adding those 900k to level 30.
This means much more time to enjoy level 28 and 29 gear during an epic life.

3) Actually go through All quests and add appropriately more xp to those below the curve. 10-20% is a tiny increase. Many quests need 50% higher base xp and some even more to become competitive

[bloodnose13]

Greetings!

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.

Normal difficulty will decrease from 25% to 10%.
Hard difficulty will decrease from 40% to 20%.
Elite difficulty will decrease from 80% to 45%.
Reaper difficulty will decrease from 120% to 75%.

What does this mean:
~ On Normal, Hard, and Elite the first time through a Heroic dungeon including the daily bonus will be the same as it is on live. The first time through Epic dungeons will actually give slightly more XP.
~ This makes the practice of repeating dungeons on each difficulty less attractive than finding a new dungeon.


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. To compensate, optional objectives will ransack more slowly. With this change we can add more, or make more of them have greater rewards. Note: the reduced rate at which optional objectives ransack has not yet been changed on the test server.

Sev~

i said that before and i will say again, reaper should NOT give more exp over elite, that promotes REAPER as the ONLY USED difficoulty for leveling, and as such forces EVERYONE to run reaper either they are ready for or want to OR NOT, we are at the point where its either you do reaper or you play alone. i had people who apparently cant read leave party after joining because they thought its a reaper run, reaper should be optional difficoulty for those who want to feel challenged nothing more.


as for optional exp rewards, i think better solution to it would be to change all of them to % reward applied to END exp reward for completion of quest, that would stop all the farming of optionals, and at same time would promote doing optionals, its easy to see how people love those % bonuses for kills or traps.
if you think its too much work, set all of optionals to give 5% reward and adjust over time.

[Iriale]

Yeah, I don't know about this one. I feel it's a bit overkill. Let an ETR reset it. If it still doesn't have the desired effect of discouraging dailies afterwards then you can still implement the perma-ransack on optionals at a later date.

Tarrith

Why should the dailies be discouraged? What they have to do is give options (improve the experience outside the dailies), not force people to play as they want. This is a game, a hobby, and for it to be successful it is best to give options so that people choose how they want to have their fun.

And by the way, that the devs look at options for people who do not do TRs, instead of penalizing these people systematically

[Rob_65270]

So I guess my list of quests that I like/love to run is now going to have to be thrown out the window and now be forced to run quests that 1. I hate. 2. I don't know. And 3. That I have never had an interest in running ever.

Nice.

Greetings!

We have been analyzing our data on quests, completion times, and completion numbers, and we have put together some changes we feel will improve players game experience throughout their leveling adventures. We realize that experience points and how players earn them can greatly affect a player's game experience, so we want players to understand the changes.

First, I want to explain our goals with these changes:
~ The rate of leveling overall should not drop for an average player who is playing a lot of different quests.
~ Players should be rewarded for playing a wide variety of quests instead of repeating quests over and over.
~ Players should not be punished for breaking their regular play pattern to join a group or to help out friends and guild mates.
~ We want to close some loopholes for optional objectives.

As a result of these changes, we hope that more dungeons are viable for normal experience gains, and that playing through a wide variety of dungeons is more appealing and playing dungeons over and over is less appealing. 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.


1. We are going to make some XP changes to specific quests to bring them into line with their completion time and difficulty. Four quests will have their XP lowered, while many quests will have their XP raised. The exact list has been added to the bottom of this post.

Note: Not all specific dungeon XP adjustments are implemented, and not all values are final.


2. Bravery Streak for both hard and elite will change to Hard Dungeons Completed and Elite Dungeons Completed. Bravery streaks will no longer end; they won’t have a chance for ending, you won’t need to turn off your streak (or worse, mess your streak up by forgetting), and you can freely play at any difficulty without the count resetting.

The bravery streak bonus will be moved into the standard bravery bonus at its full value. We will still track how many times you finish hard and elite dungeons in the UI, but you are no longer required to playing 5 dungeons in a row at a specific difficulty to build a streak. More on this below.

Bravery Bonus will be based on the base XP for the dungeon as if you were on elite, even if you are playing on hard. Right now the Bravery streak is, at full bonus, 70% of the base XP on Elite. We are increasing that bonus to 100% so players will get more XP the first time they play each quest.

To clarify, playing a quest on Elite/Reaper will give the full 100% bonus. Playing the quest on Hard gives 50% of the Bravery bonus XP BUT you can reclaim the rest of the Bravery XP if you play it later on Elite. So the most efficient way to get the Bravery XP bonus is to play on Elite, but if you help a friend on Hard you can still get the rest of the difference on Elite/Reaper later. Yes, it is less efficient but you don’t *lose* the bonus.

To clarify how the new totals work: as previously, when you complete a Hard dungeon quest your Hard Dungeons completed total will increase. When you complete a Elite or Reaper dungeon quest your Hard and Elite totals will be increased.


3. Increase the Daily bonus.

To further encourage a diversity of dungeons, the Daily bonus will be increased from 20% to 25% for Heroic dungeons, and 30% for Epic dungeons.


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.

Normal difficulty will decrease from 25% to 10%.
Hard difficulty will decrease from 40% to 20%.
Elite difficulty will decrease from 80% to 45%.
Reaper difficulty will decrease from 120% to 75%.

What does this mean:
~ On Normal, Hard, and Elite the first time through a Heroic dungeon including the daily bonus will be the same as it is on live. The first time through Epic dungeons will actually give slightly more XP.
~ This makes the practice of repeating dungeons on each difficulty less attractive than finding a new dungeon.


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. To compensate, optional objectives will ransack more slowly. With this change we can add more, or make more of them have greater rewards. Note: the reduced rate at which optional objectives ransack has not yet been changed on the test server.


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.

The hard stop to entering Reaper on Epic will remain as it is on live, but Heroic will prevent characters from entering Reaper dungeons in the Heroic levels if they are more than 4 levels above the base challenge rating of the quest.



THE QUEST CHANGE LIST

This list is not fully implemented on test. Values are still subject to change!

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:

Temple of Elemental Evil (both halves)

Precious Cargo

Desire in the Dark
Graveyard Shift
Records of the Past
Strike Back
Third Time’s a Charm

Black and Blue
The Newcomers

The following quests will have a MINOR increase (5-10%) to their XP:

A Small Problem
Partycrashers
The Snitch
Under the Big Top

Detour
Rest Stop
Lost in the Swamp
A Stay at the Inn
The End of the Road

Slave Pits of the Undercity
Secret of the Slavers' Stockade
Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords

Tower of Frost

Creeping Death (Monster stats will be fixed to be easier)
To Curse the Sky (Note: stating will be examined and maybe made easier)

Against the Demon Queen

Chains of Flame

The Dreaming Dark

The Portal Opens
The House of Broken Chains
The House of Death Undone
The House of Rusted Blades
The Battle of Eveningstar
The Lost Thread
The Unquiet Graves
Don’t Drink the Water
In the Belly of the Beast
The Riddle

Made to Order

The Cursed Crypt (And we want to move the failure condition to optional if we have time)

Memory Lapse
The Price of Freedom

Enter the Kobold
Monastery of the Scorpion
Prey on the Hunter
Stealer of Souls

Bargain of Blood
The Black Loch
The Tide Turns
Storm the Beaches

Archon’s Trial
Demon Assault
The Devil’s Details

The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar
The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar (extended)

Shadow of Doubt (Epic Only)
A Lesson of Deception (Epic Only)
Army of Shadow (Epic Only)
Friends in Low Places (Epic Only)
Thrill of the Hunt (Epic Only)
Through a Mirror Darkly (Epic Only)

A Break in the Ice
Breaking the Ranks
Lines of Supply
The Tracker’s Trap
What Goes Up

Fathom of the Depths
Into the Deep
The Claw of Vulkoor
The Last Stand

Acute Delirium
Terminal Delirum
Fashion Madness
The Lord of Eyes
The Palace of Stone


Feedback is welcome.

Sev~