Multi-Patch/Update Preview: XP Changes

[erethizon]

You could have placed a portal aginst the wall leading to the sos slayer area and skip the pc entirely.
Just remove all the flagging from that pack, aka, let us craft and enter any slayer zone& quest. The pack is nearly 11 yesrs old, just let it go, just make it free to acces the slayer area.

Well that is only part of it. You need 3 stones and 3 essences, one of them (the essences I think) open the slayer area, the other allows you into the actual quest (as I recall it cannot be red doored even if you get access to the slayer area). So whatever prevents people from entering the actual quest as well also needs to be removed.

[HungarianRhapsody]

~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

Woohoo! That's awesome. Permanently declining optional XP isn't as horrifying if it resets on Epic Reincarnation.

I'm glad that this is a separate flag that can be reset without having to mess with other flagging, etc.

[erethizon]

Just to avoid exploits, it would be good to make this a once-per-life quest like the Hall of Dragonmark "free feat respec" quest.

As long as it leaves you permanently flagged for the quest that would be fine. We definitely don't want people to only be able to run the quest once before having to flag the hard way again or it will make it more difficult to fill parties.

[HouseAtreides]

we are trying to maintain parity so players don't feel we are trying to take away their XP.

Too late. How about those of us that don't really feel the need to be shoehorned AGAIN into the devs playstyle instead of our own?

This is not a positive change and will not make players stay or spend more money in the long run. This is going to make a lot of people quit. Most of my guild stopped running TRs and hasnt logged on since
this announcement because they've finally had enough.


The TR grind is already bad enough, please do not make it worse.

[Krelar]

~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

This address some of my concern, it still doesn't answer my question from the earlier about if running a quest with optionals in heroic will affect epic optional xp later.

~ We do not intend players to get full Bravery Bonus if they are over level. Like on live, if the player is more than 2 levels above the base CR of the quest they will get less Bravery Bonus and their Dungeons Completed count will not be incremented. The reduction - 25% on Hard and 50% on Elite/Reaper - will be the same as on live.

Are we still going to have the extended bravery bonus range in epics and will this now apply to reaper xp as well? Currenty I can run a level 22 quest all the way up to level 26 and receive bravery bonus.

~ There seems to be some confusion on Reaper XP over level penalties. The XP penalty for characters being over level will match the way it works on Elite. This helps things stay consistent. Characters who are too high level are still prevented from entering quests on Reaper difficulty. In the Epic levels this will work as it does on live; players are prevented from entering a Reaper dungeon if they are more than 6 levels above the base CR of the dungeons. In the heroic levels we have reduced this range to 4 levels.

Currently there is no over level penalties for epic quests does will this continue to be true and will it also be true of reaper xp in epics?

[Krelar]

Given that literally every experience I have had with this quest and every experience everyone I know has had with it says otherwise, I honestly don't believe you. You need to kill around 45 or so wolves, and then she spawns. The only exception is when she randomly spawns in the NE corner of the map, which is buggy.

I've also gotten it without killing wolves. As far as I could tell it's actually tied to killing the wisps, it's just really hard to kill them without also killing more than enough wolves. (I was intentionally running heroic on a high level toon and leaving wolves alive.)

[Silverleafeon]

Could we please see the formula for calculation rxp (including whether bravery affects thus)?

[bracelet]

Is anyone really having fun doing the same quests over and over?

Actually I love logging in and doing the Dailies. Nerf nuking them from outer space is a huge disappointment. If they want to change my behavior, they would need to make the other quests much more attractive, not knee cap the good ones. I am wavering in my resolve at the moment. If this nerf goes through, I might be putting it all aside. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

[John3000]

Greetings! Thanks for the feedback. Some notes:

~ It is not our intention to reduce the rate at which characters gain Reaper XP. We intend to boost Reaper XP to make up for the loss of the Reaper XP gained from the old Bravery Streak bonus. We are looking at the best way to do that.

~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

Thank you Sev for at least taking player feedback into account, but are optional flag resets sufficient to keep ETR rates at least at the same level they are now with dailies ?
I haven't crunched the numbers, but at first glance I don't believe this to be sufficient to keep ETR XP/minute gain on par with on live.
New and recent players need some help catching up the 130+ lives completionists who don't really care abour this XP nerf because it seems to affect new and recent players much more than the Veteran and completionist crowd.
I don't think an XP nerf is a good idea for the future of DDO. You should really consider reseting first time completions on ETR as a compensation for penalizing running dailies or at the very least insure that All Quests offer a minimum of the same XP/minute as running dailies and that ETRs can be completed in the same or less time than on live.

Cheers

[monsoon22]

Greetings! Thanks for the feedback. Some notes:
~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

I don't think you are understanding the objections, at least certainly not mine. While I admit this is infinitely better than the original proposal, and for coming this far I want to express appreciation, it is still an xp nerf to quests that are being completed as intended (not talking about the exploit, that is fair game and I think everyone realizes it). The concept of dailies is used to get through lives, particlularly 9/1/<blank> lives, as painlessly as possible. While some might say "play those lives because it gives you valuable experience with class <blank>" or what have you I have toons for that class. It is a peculiarity of the TR system that if you want to have a barbarian in fury, you don't get to play that until the end of a very long process of playing everything BUT a fury barbarian. And if you also have a cleric, then the same holds true. I have three pre racial triple completionists and ~15 other toons at various stages. I have cannith crafted multiple generic levelling suits for strategic levels on the process so the last thing I want is to slow things down to even more of a crawl that progress currently is.

This xp nerf is just that. I am not interested in new low level gear since it just breaks the suits nor am I looking to inflict inferior builds on a group running content beyond my toons capabilities so there is no attraction in raising xp for ToEE, I am not going to run it with these toons except maybe once for first time reaper and favor. (Interestingly enough I have oftened stared at the slayer optional in there and felt if it payed better the resetting slayer idea was a good one and promoted actually clearing the dungeon, ironic that you are going to kill the very thing that was never quite alive in the first place.) But then that makes the optional nerf pointless, doesn't it? With this in mind, these xp nerfs are not at all welcome. And this pattern of doing things is more or less standard with the people I know, in fact two people I know have over 30 active toons. This is not a popular scheme with any of them for much the same reasons.

[Clemeit]

~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

This is a huge improvement over the original proposed system. Thank you, Team. However, I'm still skeptical. Epic lives are going to be considerably more difficult without Dailies. Dailies have been a great way to augment traditional questing - everyone knows them, those groups fill quickly and are almost always being posted, and they are good XP/min but still require investment. Nerfing WK farms is a good idea. Killing dailies is not.

~ We do not intend players to get full Bravery Bonus if they are over level. Like on live, if the player is more than 2 levels above the base CR of the quest they will get less Bravery Bonus and their Dungeons Completed count will not be incremented. The reduction - 25% on Hard and 50% on Elite/Reaper - will be the same as on live.

~ There seems to be some confusion on Reaper XP over level penalties. The XP penalty for characters being over level will match the way it works on Elite. This helps things stay consistent. Characters who are too high level are still prevented from entering quests on Reaper difficulty. In the Epic levels this will work as it does on live; players are prevented from entering a Reaper dungeon if they are more than 6 levels above the base CR of the dungeons. In the heroic levels we have reduced this range to 4 levels.

Allowing players into reaper that are 2 levels above quest level without killing everyone's reaper xp is probably one of the best changes this game as seen in a while. This is really going to open up LFMs. Props.

[nemo1375]

Greetings! Thanks for the feedback. Some notes:

~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

Sev~

PS: While I would love nothing better than to burn the XP system to the ground and re-implement an easier to understand system - maybe with, I don't know, one way to reward first time play and one system to penalize playing over level, we are trying to maintain parity so players don't feel we are trying to take away their XP.

You appear to have looked at about 2 of the 24 pages worth of feedback on this system and I do feel like you are taking away my XP. The eTR solution fixes one of the problems with this proposal, not the fact that you are dictating how people have fun in this game.

There appear to be a few outcomes that come from the optional ransack.

1. Stop people from farming WizKing Optionals
2. Stop people from running dailies
3. Have people run more diverse quests
4. Sell more quest packs

I don't understand why anyone (including devs) care how others get their experience. You sell experience in the store, which I don't fault you for, but this clearly isn't a fairness thing. It really feels like prescribed fun, which isn't fun.

If you want to argue number 1 is an exploit, I disagree, but I guess sure. If you want to move all the experience to quest completion, that is a reasonable way to stop that form of leveling. Just convert all optionals in the quests you are concerned about to be mandatory.

Dalies are actually really healthy for the game. I started grouping in dailies because I knew the quests and knew the difficulty. Now when I run dailies I am confident my adventuring will be timeboxed so I don't find myself in an hour long quest that I need to quit 3/4 of the way through because my daughter woke up from her nap. I don't run them every day, but when I have limited time they are great. This is also a way for people of different skill levels to play together. I met my current static group through running dailies a couple times together. Without those, they would have been running R5s and I would have been running EH.

Number 3 and 4 are very related. The simple solution to this is make the other quests more compelling. As has been outlined a lot previously, people don't run the other quests because they are bad in some way. I ran SoS last night for the first time. It was a really fun quest, but flagging for it was terrible. I probably won't run it again until that gets fixed, which probably means I will never run it again. If other quests aren't as fast leveling as the dailies, fix the experience on the other quests. 5% and 10% arent going to do it. Split slavers up into 6 quests and make the (epic) crafting more reasonable. Increase the experience of all quests to be competitive with the ones you are worried about. Make getting to the quests not take 10 minutes. Have some of the drops in the quests be level competitive with new stuff, or at least interesting in some way. Ask your customers why they run some quests and not others, rather than actively trying to hurt the quests they do run. I can give you a list of a bunch of packs that I played once and regret buying.

Honestly, I don't like WizKing because soloing it is slow and when I am pressed for time, I solo, but I find it insulting that you are trying to hurt one of the things about the game that makes it more accessible for me. And unlike the people who have said otherwise, I actually do enjoy running dailies.

[Hobgoblin]

Allowing players into reaper that are 2 levels above quest level without killing everyone's reaper xp is probably one of the best changes this game as seen in a while. This is really going to open up LFMs. Props.

yes.... if it works out. he was not clear when he was saying it.

[Clemeit]

yes.... if it works out. he was not clear when he was saying it.

I totally get where you're coming from, but he gave an example:

You are running a level 10 dungeon on Reaper. The modified challenge rating is 12 - since Reaper uses the CR for Elite. If your character is level 13 or lower there is no penalty. Level 14 would give a reduction of -10% of base XP. Level 15 would give a reduction of -25% of base XP. Level 16 would give a reduction of -50% of base XP. Level 17 would give a reduction of -75% of base XP. Level 18 would give a reduction of -99% of base XP. Higher levels would reduce the XP to zero.

He didn't explicitly say that he was talking about reaper XP, but I don't see what else it could be since that's how the regular XP system works right now, isn't it?

[nemo1375]

I can understand the wish to encourage players to play different quests instead of farming the same over and over.

However, we need to look into WHY we farm quests over and over.

I can only speak for myself, but one reason is that some quests are easily accessible and others take a long time to get to. E. g. you need to walk quite a bit to get to the quests in the Menechtarun desert. Wizking is not too far into the area, but e. g. Chains of Flame and Offering of Blood take a long time getting to. Combine that with late entries into the group, new players who don't know where the quests are and you see that people are reluctant to run such quests. This can be fixed by having a person in the bar who can send you to the different quests in that area. This works so well for Ravenloft and other areas.

The XP you get from a quest is important to evaluate if it's worth the effort for the life you're doing. Right now there are more quests than what you need to get to 20 (or 30) so you will have to pick which you prefer. Some quests are more fun than others so you skip those that can be frustrating (lots of traps, group splitting mechanisms (E. g. Xorian Cipher), nasty monsters (Legendary Shroud flaggers) etc.).

In quests with many traps you might skip them if you're not lucky enough to get a trapper PC in the group. Heroic trapper hirelings are not free to purchase and the epic ones can't find any traps on elite++. Maybe you should offer free trapper hirelings who can find traps both on heroic and epic even on elite and low skull reaper.

Some quests have splitting mechanisms so they are much harder to short man. E. g. one of the Necro 1 quests and Xorian cipher need 4 people. Hirelings can be used for some, but still. The same with one Delera quest. Maybe it would be better to not have group splitting mandatory for quest completion.

Protection quests are particularly frustrating. It's not fun failing Let Sleeping Dust Lie just because a PC you accepted killed too many spiders. Coyle in Threnal was renowned for failing quests. The first quest in the Sharn chain in the Marketplace is just as frustrating if you have to short man. Change the protection quests where protecting the particular person is linked to an optional bonus and not quest completion.

Some quests are run because of favor regardless of how frustrating they are. The most typical favor quests are Coin Lords and House Kundarak for the inventory and bank space. Why not look at the favor rewards again and ensure all different ones give bonuses players would really want to have. Some bonuses are linked to just being useful for a small group of players like arrows / bolts. Add favor bonuses for all tiers that players can possibly reach.

I think a good way of dealing with favor is to grant small toon bonuses similar to what we get from past lives. E. g. bonuses to skills or stats. That would be a way for players with not many lives to boost their toon. The goal should be to let favor grinding be an easy alternative way for players to become a bit stronger. The people on the TR train will usually get to 20 asap and start over so they won't spend the time to get favor from many different sources. However, those who advance at a more casual rate and won't TR at the first opportunity might get bonuses via favor instead.

Maybe you can link some nice bonuses to players who get to the highest tier of a favor patron. Now you usually unlock a enhancement tree at the highest tier. That is needed just once. Maybe you in addition could get a character bonus you only have while you have the favor.

More quest areas should have saga rewards. It would be nice to have a saga in the Desert of Menechtarun, Necropolis, Vale, Amrath and even other places. There should be enough quests in these areas to award sagas.

I would also look into what you're offered as Saga rewards. Now you get skill tomes, XP, guild favor etc. Maybe you can offer a random stat tome as reward for true elite? Maybe reaper XP or Sentient XP? Make the variety bigger so players can use Saga collecting as a way to build power to their toon.

Another area that will determine which quests to run is what kind of loot you can get. Many quests have obsolete loot. E. g. raid loot. For the shard, seal, scroll kind of epic loot I would skip those and instead introduce new epic loot that will drop directly. So you introduce an epic Sword of Shadows which can drop in the epic Plane of Night instead of having to hope for the seal, scroll and shard to drop.

Loot from quests should at least be as powerful as what you can farm at the same level. It doesn't make sense that you can only get +7 gear and insightful +2 with comms from King's Forest for level 21 while you can craft +8 gear and insightful +3 gear at level 15.

I would also make some special gear that are not necessarily directly powerful, but very handy for players. The Jibber's Blade is a very good example of such gear. For that item I would make it drop as a saga reward from Epic Three Barrel Cove in addition to just Two Toed Tobias. This way you get get a chance at the item via running all quests in the area and not repeating the same over and over.

Other items that should be able to get via saga rewards are Teleport items like the Key to Eveningstar, Bottle of Mist to Ravenloft and Boarding Pass to Sharn. Maybe you can introduce items who can summon rest or repair shrines etc. Such items now can only be purchased from the DDO store or drop as a dice roll. It would be nice to have a chance to get them in a saga reward list too. Not every time, but a chance for them.

The point is to encourage players to finish Sagas and get the highest tiers of favor. That means running all quests in an area instead of just the ones with the most XP.

This entire post is fantastic. I agree with nearly everything said in it as a way to get people to run different quests.

[Silverleafeon]

Devs, maybe you could have a conversation about where you intend players to default group at:


Currently on test server:

Bravery applies to all, rxp not at normal dungeon cr +3 = place where players default group lfm


Sevs projections;

Bravery limited to normal dungeon cr +2

Question whether bravery applies to rxp, if so then also normal dungeon cr +2
if not then rxp group wants normal dungeon cr +3



Do you want players to default at normal dungeon cl +2?
Do you want to establish default at normal dungeon cl +3?
Do you want multiple good choices depending upon desires?

I will be shooting for normal dungeon cl +3 more likely since for me bravery > rxp if rxp has the predicted +200 first time bonus regardless of level?
Unless bravery affects rxp which players say is not true on live since reported pausing bravery marshal does not change rxp totals.

[rabidfox]

Any plans to adjust the old 20th completion raid requirements along with this? We're parking characters for 2 months between TR/RR in order to get some items. For example, there's a lack of decent epic level light/heavy xbows pre-lvl 29; so in order to get epic storm (outside pure RNG luck), it's multiple 2 months parkings just to get the base storm xbow (still some RNG even after 2 months time) + evil S/S/S stuff. It's already counter to the reincarnation system and now we're getting hit extra hard with the perma hit on optional XP. It'd be nice to see something done about these pre-endgame raids 20 system while you're redoing the grind aspect of XP.

[Rob_65270]

Greetings! Thanks for the feedback. Some notes:

~ It is not our intention to reduce the rate at which characters gain Reaper XP. We intend to boost Reaper XP to make up for the loss of the Reaper XP gained from the old Bravery Streak bonus. We are looking at the best way to do that.

~ We have looked at the feedback on optional objectives and how they affect the Epic reincarnation process. On live Epic reincarnation doesn't clear out quest flags so players don't have to re-flag for quests. There is no reason that we need to retain quest flagging for optional objectives, however. With the XP changes we will also reset optional objective flags (and only those flags) when you do an Epic reincarnation. This will give characters a fresh set of optional objectives for each Epic life while keeping their flagging for quests intact.

~ We do not intend players to get full Bravery Bonus if they are over level. Like on live, if the player is more than 2 levels above the base CR of the quest they will get less Bravery Bonus and their Dungeons Completed count will not be incremented. The reduction - 25% on Hard and 50% on Elite/Reaper - will be the same as on live.

~ There seems to be some confusion on Reaper XP over level penalties. The XP penalty for characters being over level will match the way it works on Elite. This helps things stay consistent. Characters who are too high level are still prevented from entering quests on Reaper difficulty. In the Epic levels this will work as it does on live; players are prevented from entering a Reaper dungeon if they are more than 6 levels above the base CR of the dungeons. In the heroic levels we have reduced this range to 4 levels.

Example:

You are running a level 10 dungeon on Reaper. The modified challenge rating is 12 - since Reaper uses the CR for Elite. If your character is level 13 or lower there is no penalty. Level 14 would give a reduction of -10% of base XP. Level 15 would give a reduction of -25% of base XP. Level 16 would give a reduction of -50% of base XP. Level 17 would give a reduction of -75% of base XP. Level 18 would give a reduction of -99% of base XP. Higher levels would reduce the XP to zero.

As an aside, I apologize for the delay in response. Any plans for changes that involve tech require some research before we can comment on a definitive plan.

Sev~

PS: While I would love nothing better than to burn the XP system to the ground and re-implement an easier to understand system - maybe with, I don't know, one way to reward first time play and one system to penalize playing over level, we are trying to maintain parity so players don't feel we are trying to take away their XP.

My concern isn't at all of the above mentioned. It's that I have a list of quests that I like/love and are therefore my favorites to run every life and with these proposed XP changes is now going to have to be thrown out the window and now with the proposed changes as it appears that I'll 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.

[droid327]

Yeah I'm also still very confused about what the goal is for making optionals perma-decay...

Is it only because of Wiz King farming? That seems like a very specific case that can be addressed individually...just get rid of those 50% optionals for those wings, and increase the base XP by 50%. That makes completing the quest, not the optional, the goal.

Are you trying to force people to stop playing dailies? You wont, you'll just change which dailies are run, to ones that are less optional-dependent. So all you're doing is devaluing quests like Lines of Supply and VoN3 and Mirror Darkly. I dont see what the point is in discouraging people from running a certain subset of quests over others - seems actually antithetical to your overall goals of increasing diversity in quest running.

Plus, I just LIKE running Overgrowth. Its a fun, quick quest that's easy to access. But it will be hot diarrhea without the optionals. Same for Breaking the Ranks. Why am I being punished for that?

Just seems like perma-decay is a solution in search of a problem. Seems like it's nerfing things without actually accomplishing anything positive and demonstrable.

[Silverleafeon]

~ It is not our intention to reduce the rate at which characters gain Reaper XP.

Regardless of the system, I am going to take this as a promise to make sure and not reduce rxp which was my biggest concern.