Blaster
Well-known member
If not for reaper, a lot of players, many of whom people on these forums turn to for advice, would have left.
A new mentality for doing quests as a solo first-lifer.
- Thread starter 1Th13rteen3
- Start date
Matuse
Join Date: February 2006
I'd rather have the thousands of people who wouldn't have left, or new players that would have stayed. Reaper is the slow death of DDO.
cdbd3rd
Well-known member
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Yulrem
Legend of the Troubled
That sounds exatly as exciting as licking a concrete wall constantly for 20 years. Bleh.
cdbd3rd
Well-known member
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
How the heck did y'all level to 20 in Korthos? lol
Mornyngstar
Well-known member
From the pervious forum post (old Forums) they maxed out the xp on quests until it zeroed out then continued with Monster Manual xp while using all their Silver/Gold rolls and it was specifically Snowy side Korthos which means they never left for gear or other items. That means first lifer step in from the Groto and never finishing Misery's Peak (which takes you to sunny side if you do so no completion xp from that quest either).
I personally am in awe of the dedication.
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
Oh I know, its just with THIS game it was a head-scratcher for me
Mornyngstar
Well-known member
Another example is what I am doing on my toon Seldissan of Thrane. Since I had done so many wilderness slayers (I am doing serial Epic TRs, 24 in a row so far), I have 70%+ish (need to update spreadsheet since Lamordia came out. Also, that includes all Slayers, Rares and Explorers.
(Things to do if you are bored running quests. . . . )
Sturmbb
Well-known member
May i ask how Reaper is the slow death of DDO. If anything i thought it revitilized the game for alot of older players and kept them from not leaving.
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
Its like a pump and dump of crypto. It was amazing at first, then people started abusing things, running overpowered classes in R1 and the devs didnt seem to do anything about it. Then the devs nerfed stealth. And then the devs made reapers always see thru stealth no matter what. I feel like Reaper was given 2 fold, it was to "combat stealth abusers" along with the stupid and very very clunky dungeon alerts, and to "give players an extra layer of difficult, but rewarding content modes". At first Reaper was great but now its like the new Elite. Because a lot of players who played reaper back then have hundreds of PL's and reaper is as difficult to a vet as casual is to a newbie (cause power creep).
The reason why this is causing the "slow death of DDO" has been outlined here already but if you need me to tell you its because NEW PLAYERS are getting ticked off when they join an R1 to try to progress in a manner that doesn't take a bajillion years and they are trying to join people running LFMs (because MMO.. whodathunkit?) and wanting some social interaction and camaraderie and all they are getting are people whizzing by them at millions of miles per hour and leaving up traps and mobs that 1 shot them cause "EXP POT TIMER TO GOTTA GO FAST", and that's turning some people off.
Reaper is not attracting anyone new. There has been little to no new people playing, if they are - they are solo or play for a small amount of time and quit, due to the aforementioned issues.
My 5 cents, technically speaking being f2p doesn't include the pack code or the 99 expansions that give you access to a lot of adventures.
Having an these adventures it indeed allows you to play the game just at normal and progress enough to reach the epics.
Not having these extra content, you will soon reach a point that there are not enough quests to level up and you will need to repeat stuff.
Point two, the game has three conceptual parts.
Heroic
Epic
Legendary
For heroic, you can play in normal with a bad build and still enjoy the game. You can literally for many quests just buy a hire and let the hire, pets, summons to clear the dungeon for you.
The moment you goto epic, it is like a different difficulty scale. The same happens once more for legendary.
On top of these difficulties come reaper as yet another step to spice things. Which has its own scaling.
When you are aware of these, and when you are aware of your limitations you can choose the difficulty that works best for you at each game stage.
For example, I solo run heroic r3, epic r1, legendary elite with my main toon (5pls). Because this is what I enjoy. I can run leg r1 but it takes to much time for my taste, without actually increasing the adrenaline.
I often play alts, currently I'm actively playing 3 characters on Moonsea, and 1 on each other server. Each character plays with a different static group.
Only one is a "viable" reaper build and can go fast (zergish if needed). The rest are for elite and to go slowly.
The trick in enjoying, is to have a good static group. I play with my friends, I help them improve their characters so that we all contribute in the dungeons. We are 3-4 people at each run, so together doing elite is easy.
I also play with a Perma Death group, and even if we could easily zerg we don't! We go slowly carefully and have a blast. Last time was the first I almost died. And yes it was a trap I missed
. And believe it or not that was fun! I remembered the adrenaline of actually playing RPG where death means something.
I am also introducing my nephews to the game. We played a lot of normal in the beginning. But being 3 in the dungeon it made us very easy on Normal even for my nephews. Elite and reaper was sometimes deadly for them. But I did "pushed" them a bit to finish on elite a few coin Lords quests do we get the extra inventory.
I don't regret it, but I think they would have enjoyed more playing on hard.
TLDR?
the point is, the game gives you a lot of options when you have content. And there are players in the servers that play in many different ways.
Experiment, play with others and find what you enjoy! More importantly find a group you enjoy playing with.
Having an these adventures it indeed allows you to play the game just at normal and progress enough to reach the epics.
Not having these extra content, you will soon reach a point that there are not enough quests to level up and you will need to repeat stuff.
Point two, the game has three conceptual parts.
Heroic
Epic
Legendary
For heroic, you can play in normal with a bad build and still enjoy the game. You can literally for many quests just buy a hire and let the hire, pets, summons to clear the dungeon for you.
The moment you goto epic, it is like a different difficulty scale. The same happens once more for legendary.
On top of these difficulties come reaper as yet another step to spice things. Which has its own scaling.
When you are aware of these, and when you are aware of your limitations you can choose the difficulty that works best for you at each game stage.
For example, I solo run heroic r3, epic r1, legendary elite with my main toon (5pls). Because this is what I enjoy. I can run leg r1 but it takes to much time for my taste, without actually increasing the adrenaline.
I often play alts, currently I'm actively playing 3 characters on Moonsea, and 1 on each other server. Each character plays with a different static group.
Only one is a "viable" reaper build and can go fast (zergish if needed). The rest are for elite and to go slowly.
The trick in enjoying, is to have a good static group. I play with my friends, I help them improve their characters so that we all contribute in the dungeons. We are 3-4 people at each run, so together doing elite is easy.
I also play with a Perma Death group, and even if we could easily zerg we don't! We go slowly carefully and have a blast. Last time was the first I almost died. And yes it was a trap I missed
. And believe it or not that was fun! I remembered the adrenaline of actually playing RPG where death means something.I am also introducing my nephews to the game. We played a lot of normal in the beginning. But being 3 in the dungeon it made us very easy on Normal even for my nephews. Elite and reaper was sometimes deadly for them. But I did "pushed" them a bit to finish on elite a few coin Lords quests do we get the extra inventory.
I don't regret it, but I think they would have enjoyed more playing on hard.
TLDR?
the point is, the game gives you a lot of options when you have content. And there are players in the servers that play in many different ways.
Experiment, play with others and find what you enjoy! More importantly find a group you enjoy playing with.
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
Just as an FYI I did White Plume Mountain and The Newcomers last night and got a TON of exp ON NORMAL. I think doing The Newcomers TWICE I netted a total of 26,300xp (14,700 + 11,600) or something like that... Not too shabby. Trap bonus, onslaught, and other bonuses add up and there is really no reason to tryhard elite. Just do questing smartly tbh, take quests that are high in yield. I got a nice named staff from WPM also and it was account bound so can use for an alt. If you are just running through and ignoring boxes, mobs, and traps - you're gonna get closer to the BASE exp of that quest. I understand how R1 runners zoom around and spam R1's because you seem to get a lot of good exp on R1 but as a first life noob just do normal but do as many optionals and boxes/traps/mobs as you can and it will all pan out evenly.
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
This is not true. Sure on some quests but sometimes the hires ignore mobs or will stand in traps/lava. Also hires cant navigate water and some hires are pretty bad on combat and even spam stuff and waste their mana. Even the arti pet, although nice - seems to have "mob AI" and will bug out. pets/hires are nice, but they are a crutch and although I do use them, to me they are nothing more than cannon fodder attracting the mobs giving them other targets than myself.
They are nice to have for switches though. And i have on occasion used them for splitting mobs from packs, so they have their uses.
The level 12 or 13 FVS or CLR (Tanya Brightstone I think it is) that spams greater command (AoE knockdown) is amazing. BUT you have to disable her holy smite, because she casts that non-stop and it quickly drains her mana.
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rabidfox
The People's Champion
If reaper hadn't been introduced, the other option would've been for them to rebalance the entire game to cover years of power bloat to make hard & elite challenging again. And newbies would still have the same exact issue, they'd be dying, getting lost in quests they don't know, playing on bad builds, have no gear, etc. and vets would still be zipping thru content. The gap is there either way, it'd just be a different difficulty label. And the knowledge gap that vets bring really shines during hardcore seasons when some folks (that having nothing to start with) tear things up.
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
I never see vets in anything but R1.
Know why? Cause reaper points.
Also your point about newbies dying in "elite" which I think is what you were meaning I disagree with because elite seems pretty tame compared to R1 champs and reapers. If you have ghost touch its not that bad, and the souls that drop to refill mana are nice, but the stoneguard champs with 1500+ health in low level dungeons which are equitable to a boss are rough on R1. Elite champs CAN be an issue but for me it seems that the difficulty spike between Elite~R1 is noticeable. But like I said if you have a vet with lots of PLs and reaper points, R1 is like a wet napkin to them.
(Preemptively I will say this: I don't care what the wiki says about the differences between reaper and elite... MY experience with R1 as a noob has been much MUCH harsher than when say I was on elite. I think even trap DC's are higher in reaper, but I could be wrong about that. The wiki also says on reaper if you die, you have to completely start the run over, so there's also that.)
Also it seems that healing is heavily nerfed in reaper. Every time I heal myself i get barely any heals in R1 but in N/H/E this feels like its untouched. So equating R1 to elite as if reaper didnt exist, you cant really compare the two.
"Most notably, self healing in reaper mode is significantly reduced." -Source: https://ddowiki.com/page/Reaper_difficulty
- Self-healing while in combat is dramatically weaker. (60% at 1 Skull; an additional 4% per Skull, up to 96% reduction at 10 Skulls.) This applies also to Lesser Restoration potions, making them fairly ineffective for restoring ability damage. Since U59, self-healing while out of combat does not have as strong a penalty as while in combat (it now has the same penalty as out-going healing).
- General-healing is weaker. (0% at 1 Skull; an additional 4% per Skull, up to 36% reduction at 10 Skulls.)
- As of U40, damage and healing values now have a minimum value of one due to Reaper scaling. If Reaper scaling would reduce a value for damage or healing that is above zero to zero, then the value will now be at least one.
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rabidfox
The People's Champion
My point is reaper getting add to the game didn't cause the slow death of DDO. Power bloat occured over the years and n/h/e got way way way too easy as a result. So the option was either rebalance everything to bring it back down to make h/e matter or add a new difficulty (reaper). In the grand scheme of the things, it's the same difference. If they hadn't added reaper, you'd still be getting smacked around, just on a rebalanced elite instead.
1Th13rteen3
I'm on meds.. Leaf me alone!
And my point is that with newbies joining the game, wanting to try it out, seeing -ANY- LFM up that will 99.9999% be REAPER 1, they will join that LFM not knowing what it is, go in, get killed over and over and say "F THIS ITS NOT FUN" and uninstall. If you don't think this contributes to "the slow death of DDO" in some form or fashion, then you are just a "YES MAN" for the devs and I have literally no more time or patience with you.
The slow death of DDO is indicative of the plethora of issues its been having. Look at them churning out content that is paid but not fixing technical issues. I don't have access to their financials so I cannot say emphatically but, where there's smoke - there's fire.
I am not a big fan of SSG or it's shareholders, what with how they very obviously treat their customers, but I do with wish this game well and don't want to see it die. I love this game and want it to THRIVE, which is why I made this post in the first place, to help people such as myself in this same predicament to rather than UNINSTALL AND QUIT to try something else out that might work better. But growth wont come with churning out content and not fixing technical issues that are making people leave, and the new people joining getting frustrated because the only people in LFM's are reaper runners where they are gonna have a bad time because of the difficulty spike.