Do you DDO player want the New XP System Adjustments will come on the U60?
- Thread starter Haramel
- Start date
Dragnilar
Dragonborn of Bahamut
Although I like the repeat bonus increase, the downside to it right now is that it's still a net loss of xp overall.
If they want to encourage kills, I think they need to lower the thresholds for the kill bonuses or do what someone else suggested, and give a small amount of xp per kill (up to a limit). The latter I could see being against the original design of the game though, so that may be something Sev and co wouldn't accept.
I also dislike the way the numbers work out with it favoring playing reaper to get the full xp bonus. I don't always play reaper until late epics / end game because of being predominantly a soloer. I think they should leave reaper the way it is now and push more of the regular xp gains on the standard difficulties.
If they want to encourage kills, I think they need to lower the thresholds for the kill bonuses or do what someone else suggested, and give a small amount of xp per kill (up to a limit). The latter I could see being against the original design of the game though, so that may be something Sev and co wouldn't accept.
I also dislike the way the numbers work out with it favoring playing reaper to get the full xp bonus. I don't always play reaper until late epics / end game because of being predominantly a soloer. I think they should leave reaper the way it is now and push more of the regular xp gains on the standard difficulties.
calouscaine
Grouchy Vet
So, here's my take on the whole thing. The new xp system is meant to enforce the new da alert system which in my opinion is one of the biggest issues in the game currently. Instead of fixing or removing the problem which is lagging everything out by all appearances (the new da system), they want to gloss over it and cement it more in place by forcing people to go slower.
Personally I run dungeons slowly and completely anyway, I see no point in speed running, but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell others not to play that way if they really want to. . .not like they'd change their play style anyway.
My proposition instead is to keep the current system and give dungeon/quest xp a 25-35% boost on base xp received before bonuses, and completely remove the dungeon alert system. The da system has never worked or done what it was intended to, and I seriously doubt it ever will, the only thing that it will do is drive off more players. . . and the game itself has been on a steady decline for years.
Sometimes a simpler solution is better than over complicating things.
I am not sure about the proposed ai changes, I didn't notice any difference on lamania compared to the normal servers in regards to npc ai. They still play ring around the rosey, or run away, or run past and turn back. I mean, there's things trying to back stab my character that it doesn't even make sense why they're even trying. (i.e. magic casters, things that look like straight out fighters or barbs, ranged types, etc.)
The limited aggro thing for the ai sounds good, if it works. But if the dungeon alert is going to stick in place, continue to buff mobs, debuff characters, then well. . .it's only meant to kill people at that point, not improve game play, or slow people down, or make things more difficult. It's a system put in place that only punishes players for playing.
As for the xp, it looks good number wise until you realize you won't get a bonus in every dungeon, so it's more like a nerf. Maybe a marketing tactic to try and force people to buy more xp pots instead of improve the game?
Personally I run dungeons slowly and completely anyway, I see no point in speed running, but that doesn't mean I'm going to tell others not to play that way if they really want to. . .not like they'd change their play style anyway.
My proposition instead is to keep the current system and give dungeon/quest xp a 25-35% boost on base xp received before bonuses, and completely remove the dungeon alert system. The da system has never worked or done what it was intended to, and I seriously doubt it ever will, the only thing that it will do is drive off more players. . . and the game itself has been on a steady decline for years.
Sometimes a simpler solution is better than over complicating things.
I am not sure about the proposed ai changes, I didn't notice any difference on lamania compared to the normal servers in regards to npc ai. They still play ring around the rosey, or run away, or run past and turn back. I mean, there's things trying to back stab my character that it doesn't even make sense why they're even trying. (i.e. magic casters, things that look like straight out fighters or barbs, ranged types, etc.)
The limited aggro thing for the ai sounds good, if it works. But if the dungeon alert is going to stick in place, continue to buff mobs, debuff characters, then well. . .it's only meant to kill people at that point, not improve game play, or slow people down, or make things more difficult. It's a system put in place that only punishes players for playing.
As for the xp, it looks good number wise until you realize you won't get a bonus in every dungeon, so it's more like a nerf. Maybe a marketing tactic to try and force people to buy more xp pots instead of improve the game?
Dragnilar
Dragonborn of Bahamut
I have always felt DA was never intended to be anything but something akin to a DM "punishing" the party for trying to finish the campaign too fast. I GUESS it made more sense back when we were young, naive and didn't get hemeroids and mouse arm so easily.
I found it amusing, the first time I saw it, but I definitely do not like it now.
But as you put it, I think it definitely has run its course and it just serves to discourage new players who are more used to our modern world full of electronic adhd.
calouscaine
Grouchy Vet
I know it's been stated, but I've been in a dungeon that literally has ground to a halt due to an alert being triggered - and then suddenly every mob in the dungeon swarms me and the alert shoots to red. Everything drops in speed and it's impossible to even kill the mobs due to debuffs on the character and buffs on the mobs while everything begins spasming and teleporting around. If it's not the alert causing it, then I'd love to know what is?
Oh, and I don't zerg through dungeons, some are just poorly set up and alerts get triggered with the first mob you see, especially on hard - reaper.
Buddha5440
Well-known member
A "party" does not just run roughshod ("with no consideration for the wishes or feelings of others.") through a quest. A group of people who just want the XP/RXP do that. If you do that you will incur DA.I have always felt DA was never intended to be anything but something akin to a DM "punishing" the party for trying to finish the campaign too fast. I GUESS it made more sense back when we were young, naive and didn't get hemeroids and mouse arm so easily.
I found it amusing, the first time I saw it, but I definitely do not like it now.
But as you put it, I think it definitely has run its course and it just serves to discourage new players who are more used to our modern world full of electronic adhd.
Phoenicis
Savage's Husband
In heroic we pretty much NEVER repeat a quest. This will be a net loss of XP for us, making us run more quests and taking longer to reach 21 & reincarnation.
In Epic, I can't recall the last time we got conquest, much less onslaught. We do repeat quests in epics, mainly because there are a relatively large number neither of us like doing. Still, a net loss per quest for us.
We are not the target for this change (we don't charge past mobs willy nilly to get to the end as quickly as possible) but it WILL negatively impact our xp/quest, forcing more quests to be completed to achieve our overall goals.
In Epic, I can't recall the last time we got conquest, much less onslaught. We do repeat quests in epics, mainly because there are a relatively large number neither of us like doing. Still, a net loss per quest for us.
We are not the target for this change (we don't charge past mobs willy nilly to get to the end as quickly as possible) but it WILL negatively impact our xp/quest, forcing more quests to be completed to achieve our overall goals.
Correct and most of us know this.
But you guys seem bound and determined to use the fire alarm as punishment for certain playstyles not fitting your vision instead of actually fixing the root cause of the lag.
Problem = too many mobs aggro'd at once. Obvious solution = reduce the number of mobs that can be simultaneously aggro'd. KISS.
How about you try fixing the AI, the pathing algorithms, reducing the mob density? If you did those things, would this kludgy dungeon alert system even be needed?
The only time this system would ever be beneficial is if you repeat quests, which I'm not inclined to do when leveling because my main focus tends to be on getting a bunch of favor. I can see this being useful for me in Epic quests where I just don't have enough content to avoid repeating things a lot, but in general, this feels like a nerf with almost no benefit.
I... just don't think the game is at a point, playerbase wise, where it can afford to make leveling even more of a slog and discourage new players from joining. I honestly can't help but worry this is an attempt to nerf favor grinding as a way of trying to get people to spend more money.
I... just don't think the game is at a point, playerbase wise, where it can afford to make leveling even more of a slog and discourage new players from joining. I honestly can't help but worry this is an attempt to nerf favor grinding as a way of trying to get people to spend more money.
LMFAO . Like we are supposed to trust anything you say? sorry no, you have wasted all the good faith I ever had in you
Vox
Well-known member
Like killing oozes, fighting quest end fights in wheloon & stormhorns, walking to a quest in wheloon & stormhorns, starting several encounters in slavelords chain & so forth.
If you're worried about server cycles, why is there additional load to server cycles (dungeon alert), rather than rectifying the engines limitations?
Why is SSG continually adding in more effects to players arsenal, and we still have situations like aura of menace proc'ng off vases & familiars? These seem like they're adding unnessecary server cycles, but they keep getting introduced via new enhancement tree's, monsters, spells & weapon effects, etc.
To use your own analogy of a fire, what SSG have done is replace the water in the sprinklers with gasoline.
Netflix from Khyber
New member
That will be more of a hasle other than a fun thing to play the game. We already been re-leveling this whole game for a long time, now imagine re-leveling it slowly. No thanks.
Dragnilar
Dragonborn of Bahamut
Ah, true... a XP farming / "zerg" group isn't exactly conducive to the concept of a "party".
Dusting off the old "Rambling mathematical wall of text" on the new username.
The difference in experience is significant. Let's look at the following situations (looking only at the first time complete and conquest bonuses to avoid complication, since those are the only bonuses being changed):
First time completing a quest on elite, no kill bonus.
First time completing a quest on elite, onslaught bonus.
First time completing a quest on elite, conquest bonus.
Gonna ignore repetition rewards, because to be honest most of the time when you're repeating quests you don't care about experience, you care about loot. Hypothetically, it *is* better to have this change if you grind the same quest, but that doesn't conform with what I have experienced with regards to experience farming, nor basically anything that I've heard from other users except ones who are basically just calling other people losers for not killing everything which is a pretty toxic take to be honest.
Looking at this table, it's obvious why there are concerns. If you don't get the bonus, you drop up to 70% of experience. Now, I ran five quests today and two quests yesterday looking for as many monsters as possible, and without something I missed, I would have lost out on this bonus.
Raven's Bane: Solo heroic elite, hunted all the scarecrows I could find, still only got Onslaught instead of Conquest (messed up the kill order on the last three brooms but not sure if that would matter since Conquest requires 260 according to the wiki and I don't recall what I had. I assume it's possible if the wiki has that information, but the fact remains that I spent an additional three minutes hunting down every single scarecrow (suboptimal pathing because I don't normally hunt every scarecrow).
Sunrise: Solo heroic elite, got Onslaught bonus. From the wiki: "To get a kills bonus may require killing respawning zombies." Don't know about you, but waiting around to kill respawning zombies is not "ordinary play" for me and leads to my primary concern (coming later).
Ruinous Schemes: Two man heroic elite. Got Onslaught bonus. I know this one is doable for conquest because I have done it, but it requires waiting for respawning enemies. Again, not necessarily something someone not familiar with the quest would do (which my teammate was not). Waiting pads the duration of the quest, which... I mean, I guess how long you wait relative to the conquest bonus is "worth it" time wise, but it leads to a concern I'll raise later.
A Sharn Welcome: Two man heroic elite. Complete run (all notes and optionals), pretty sure it was just an aggression bonus but I didn't check this one. Wiki only lists an aggression tier, which might mean that it's not possible, but I didn't check so not sure here.
Red Rain: Two man heroic elite. Picked every fight possible and eliminated all enemies. Onslaught only.
Best Laid Plans: Two man heroic elite. Onslaught, even with making it into the room quickly. Pretty sure there aren't any optionals to miss there or fights to avoid, but to be honest it's a bit labyrinthine of a layout and I could have missed something... but I'm not spending a few minutes hunting a lost mob in a corner.
Disciples of Shar: Solo heroic elite. Onslaught, even with the optional mountain lions, cultists down that one dead end, and the wolves by the rest shrine which tbh I'm not sure whether they're "optional" or not but figured I'd mention it. Did kill the owlbear before four wolves because I forgot they spawned and they had pathing issues and didn't reach me, so I think in ordinary play I wouldn't have gone looking for them to get kills.
So, yeah. Basically, of my last seven quests, I got conquest on... none of them. There are three reasons why, and they come down to the following concerns:
1. Sometimes conquest relies on "skipable" or repeating spawns. This basically means that in order to get conquest, you need to run every area in the quest, pick the most combat heavy options (including sometimes fighting mobs that can be bypassed by an optional objective), sit around waiting for monsters to respawn, or otherwise approach the quest in a way that increases the base time to complete or ignores other routes and options. Any quest that has two pathways, one combat and one trap/skill check based, now *only* rewards the combat route with a significant portion of the quest experience, meaning that you need to clear both paths, sacrifice a bunch of experience from one route or the other, or sometimes pick decisions that lead to increased enemies and pad the time of the quest. All of these states fall into a category of "Things that take more time than they should and exist only to run pots and pad the length of quests." When this is 10% of the bonus, that's an elective choice based on how quickly you kill monsters. When this is (depending on the gulf between aggression/onslaught and conquest) 70% of the bonus, that's no longer elective. In some quests, this literally means sitting around waiting for respawns to get the conquest bonus, which is tedious, boring, and anti-fun. It is bad game design, and I will say it bluntly because it is a patently an anti-player high friction element of some quests. Some of it might be intentional, some of it might not, but it will ruin any non-combat alternative routes and make "streamlined" runs a lot longer than they are now, basically sucking more time for the same experience, which is a major decrease in experience per minute. If the experience payout is the same, but the time it takes increases by 10%, that is a reduction in experience per minute, even if the numbers work out to be the same in theory.
2. Some quests have ways for groups to "fail" conquest. There are a lot of quests in which the number of kills needed for conquest are only marginally lower than the total number of monsters, and these often come in as adds during the final boss fight. This means that players will need to ignore the boss monster and kill adds to make conquest bonuses happen, and if someone happens to kill the boss, that bonus is lost. I will be as polite as possible in saying that I have seen people ragequit because someone re-entered a quest immediately and the group had to leave and restart wasting fifteen seconds. This community, as much as I love it when it works well, has plenty of people who are one grain of salt away from declaring war and harassing another player away from the game. Having to re-enter a quest is not nearly as disruptive as getting your experience bonus yeeted because the New Guy™ didn't realize that the boss needed to die last and you had one Filler Trash Mob™ that had to eat an arrow first. When one mistake, or missing spawn, or missed cluster of enemies down a sidepath, can ruin the experience payout of an entire quest, that's a big deal. When it's 10% of the bonus, that's rough. When it's up to 70% of the bonus, that's actually huge. Even soloing, I managed to miss two sets of mobs during final fights, one because I screwed up and did too much damage to the boss (rough life, I know) and one because of a pathing issue where they didn't enter the fight until after the boss was dead and I moved to grab the loot. I would say that I'm a pretty experienced player- to err on the (extremely cautious) side, I'd say I've run both quests way more than ten times, and I screwed it up. A newbie could easily screw up without intending to do so. Losing out on up to 70% of the experience because a DoT burned the boss too fast or the new kid didn't wait to kill an add is not fun, or fair, or rewarding. It's frustrating, in a game that really doesn't need more frustrations.
3. Not all quests even have conquest rewards. I don't need to explain this one in full, hopefully, but that basically means that some quests are getting a hard experience nerf equal to whatever the differential is between the highest aggression/onslaught bonus possible in the new system and the current bonus possible of first time + aggression/onslaught. That's just a nerf. Without knowing the numbers, it's impossible to say how big a nerf it is, but it's still a nerf, which makes it hard to stomach the whole "it's not a nerf" line. This is especially true on lower difficulties, where bringing partial groups into quests reduces the numbers of spawns, so someone soloing on normal or hard will probably have a hard time hitting the bonus. Admittedly, that's less of a bonus to lose, but it's still a massive nerf.
Not trying to be a jerk. But this is a stupid change. A stupid idea. I get that it "meshes with how most of the community plays the game" in so far as most groups do enjoy killing as many monsters as possible because we're all horrid murder hobos. Fair enough. But it *doesn't* actually preserve current experience payouts, it forces some very specific playstyle choices like waiting for respawns, zerging every last monster in every last corner, some quest specific speedbumps like clearing multiple routes in order to clean up every monster, and even just actually shaves off rewards in some quests where there *aren't* any ways to get conquest bonuses.
I can only think of two ways to fix it:
1. Universally deflate the number of kills necessary to get the conquest bonus to match the actual "standard" kill rates (probably actually adjusted down a bit further to account for Reapers, optional routes, fight avoidance skill checks, etc.) which would require either sloppy automatic data application from player kill counts or manual adjustments based on the number of monsters in the quest along the "primary" line.
2. Increase baseline experience to account for the fact that experience payouts are going to get hit for any group that doesn't murder every last kobold huddled in a corner crying for their dragon mommy to come save them.
Unless you have a really valiant intern or really confident data on kill counts by which to adjust the conquest threshold for every quest in the game to be reasonably obtainable by an ordinary group playing as average players do this is a nerf to a bunch of quests and anyone who doesn't choose violence every quest. To be honest, if you do have data on kill counts, assuming every group basically gets conquest bonuses every time would be an extremely baffling decision given that it is fundamentally not accurate to my experience both soloing and in groups and while I understand selection size bias is a thing I am one of the aforementioned murder hobos looking for every last quivering kobold to stomp and waiting for enemies to respawn to squeeze out a bit more of that sweet sweet experience juice. In my last seven quests I got conquest a grand total of nope times. It also further encourages one specific playstyle which ignores some of the really good quest design in some quests that allows for other ways to progress, like skill checks, hidden paths, etc. I get that it will encourage people to not just drag hordes of trash mobs throughout the dungeon (which is leading to pathing, which is leading to lag, which is the problem being addressed, I assume) but it's using an atom bomb to target a single building. Yeah, that building is going to be absolutely gone. But it's also going to take out the entire neighborhood, nerf a ton of quests whose only problem is having unobtainable, opposed, or finicky conquest completion criteria, and pad out either quest times or number of quests to grind for anyone who is playing a build that makes hunting every trash mob inconvenient.
Actually, I take it back. It probably won't fix that, because for most of the players who are doing the whole drag hundreds of mobs through a dungeon, they either still will and then just nuke them all at the end (a problem fixed by a different proposed change to AI pathfinding) or they'll just... still not kill the mobs because it will still be faster to just run through even though you're getting less experience, but you just have to do it more times to level up. Which means, instead of less pathing lag, you get the same or more, as people do the exact same thing again.
Anyway, I know I've written a book, so I'm going to stop here, but basically tl;dr this is going to nerf a bunch of quests in which conquest is impossible, force certain routes and playstyles and introduce drag on running through quests since you now need to smack every kobold or you're forfeiting a bunch of experience, and make you spend more time in quests for the same (or less) experience since you need to be 100% certain you get conquest or you lose a bunch more experience than before.
The difference in experience is significant. Let's look at the following situations (looking only at the first time complete and conquest bonuses to avoid complication, since those are the only bonuses being changed):
First time completing a quest on elite, no kill bonus.
First time completing a quest on elite, onslaught bonus.
First time completing a quest on elite, conquest bonus.
Gonna ignore repetition rewards, because to be honest most of the time when you're repeating quests you don't care about experience, you care about loot. Hypothetically, it *is* better to have this change if you grind the same quest, but that doesn't conform with what I have experienced with regards to experience farming, nor basically anything that I've heard from other users except ones who are basically just calling other people losers for not killing everything which is a pretty toxic take to be honest.
| Elite, no bonus (current) | Elite, onslaught bonus (current) | Elite, conquest bonus (current) |
| 100%+45%+0%=145% | 100%+45%+15%=160% | 100%+45%+25%=170% |
| Elite, no bonus (proposed) | Elite, onslaught bonus (proposed) | Elite, conquest bonus (proposed) |
| 100+0%= 100% | 100%+???%=???? | 100%+70%=170% |
Raven's Bane: Solo heroic elite, hunted all the scarecrows I could find, still only got Onslaught instead of Conquest (messed up the kill order on the last three brooms but not sure if that would matter since Conquest requires 260 according to the wiki and I don't recall what I had. I assume it's possible if the wiki has that information, but the fact remains that I spent an additional three minutes hunting down every single scarecrow (suboptimal pathing because I don't normally hunt every scarecrow).
Sunrise: Solo heroic elite, got Onslaught bonus. From the wiki: "To get a kills bonus may require killing respawning zombies." Don't know about you, but waiting around to kill respawning zombies is not "ordinary play" for me and leads to my primary concern (coming later).
Ruinous Schemes: Two man heroic elite. Got Onslaught bonus. I know this one is doable for conquest because I have done it, but it requires waiting for respawning enemies. Again, not necessarily something someone not familiar with the quest would do (which my teammate was not). Waiting pads the duration of the quest, which... I mean, I guess how long you wait relative to the conquest bonus is "worth it" time wise, but it leads to a concern I'll raise later.
A Sharn Welcome: Two man heroic elite. Complete run (all notes and optionals), pretty sure it was just an aggression bonus but I didn't check this one. Wiki only lists an aggression tier, which might mean that it's not possible, but I didn't check so not sure here.
Red Rain: Two man heroic elite. Picked every fight possible and eliminated all enemies. Onslaught only.
Best Laid Plans: Two man heroic elite. Onslaught, even with making it into the room quickly. Pretty sure there aren't any optionals to miss there or fights to avoid, but to be honest it's a bit labyrinthine of a layout and I could have missed something... but I'm not spending a few minutes hunting a lost mob in a corner.
Disciples of Shar: Solo heroic elite. Onslaught, even with the optional mountain lions, cultists down that one dead end, and the wolves by the rest shrine which tbh I'm not sure whether they're "optional" or not but figured I'd mention it. Did kill the owlbear before four wolves because I forgot they spawned and they had pathing issues and didn't reach me, so I think in ordinary play I wouldn't have gone looking for them to get kills.
So, yeah. Basically, of my last seven quests, I got conquest on... none of them. There are three reasons why, and they come down to the following concerns:
1. Sometimes conquest relies on "skipable" or repeating spawns. This basically means that in order to get conquest, you need to run every area in the quest, pick the most combat heavy options (including sometimes fighting mobs that can be bypassed by an optional objective), sit around waiting for monsters to respawn, or otherwise approach the quest in a way that increases the base time to complete or ignores other routes and options. Any quest that has two pathways, one combat and one trap/skill check based, now *only* rewards the combat route with a significant portion of the quest experience, meaning that you need to clear both paths, sacrifice a bunch of experience from one route or the other, or sometimes pick decisions that lead to increased enemies and pad the time of the quest. All of these states fall into a category of "Things that take more time than they should and exist only to run pots and pad the length of quests." When this is 10% of the bonus, that's an elective choice based on how quickly you kill monsters. When this is (depending on the gulf between aggression/onslaught and conquest) 70% of the bonus, that's no longer elective. In some quests, this literally means sitting around waiting for respawns to get the conquest bonus, which is tedious, boring, and anti-fun. It is bad game design, and I will say it bluntly because it is a patently an anti-player high friction element of some quests. Some of it might be intentional, some of it might not, but it will ruin any non-combat alternative routes and make "streamlined" runs a lot longer than they are now, basically sucking more time for the same experience, which is a major decrease in experience per minute. If the experience payout is the same, but the time it takes increases by 10%, that is a reduction in experience per minute, even if the numbers work out to be the same in theory.
2. Some quests have ways for groups to "fail" conquest. There are a lot of quests in which the number of kills needed for conquest are only marginally lower than the total number of monsters, and these often come in as adds during the final boss fight. This means that players will need to ignore the boss monster and kill adds to make conquest bonuses happen, and if someone happens to kill the boss, that bonus is lost. I will be as polite as possible in saying that I have seen people ragequit because someone re-entered a quest immediately and the group had to leave and restart wasting fifteen seconds. This community, as much as I love it when it works well, has plenty of people who are one grain of salt away from declaring war and harassing another player away from the game. Having to re-enter a quest is not nearly as disruptive as getting your experience bonus yeeted because the New Guy™ didn't realize that the boss needed to die last and you had one Filler Trash Mob™ that had to eat an arrow first. When one mistake, or missing spawn, or missed cluster of enemies down a sidepath, can ruin the experience payout of an entire quest, that's a big deal. When it's 10% of the bonus, that's rough. When it's up to 70% of the bonus, that's actually huge. Even soloing, I managed to miss two sets of mobs during final fights, one because I screwed up and did too much damage to the boss (rough life, I know) and one because of a pathing issue where they didn't enter the fight until after the boss was dead and I moved to grab the loot. I would say that I'm a pretty experienced player- to err on the (extremely cautious) side, I'd say I've run both quests way more than ten times, and I screwed it up. A newbie could easily screw up without intending to do so. Losing out on up to 70% of the experience because a DoT burned the boss too fast or the new kid didn't wait to kill an add is not fun, or fair, or rewarding. It's frustrating, in a game that really doesn't need more frustrations.
3. Not all quests even have conquest rewards. I don't need to explain this one in full, hopefully, but that basically means that some quests are getting a hard experience nerf equal to whatever the differential is between the highest aggression/onslaught bonus possible in the new system and the current bonus possible of first time + aggression/onslaught. That's just a nerf. Without knowing the numbers, it's impossible to say how big a nerf it is, but it's still a nerf, which makes it hard to stomach the whole "it's not a nerf" line. This is especially true on lower difficulties, where bringing partial groups into quests reduces the numbers of spawns, so someone soloing on normal or hard will probably have a hard time hitting the bonus. Admittedly, that's less of a bonus to lose, but it's still a massive nerf.
Not trying to be a jerk. But this is a stupid change. A stupid idea. I get that it "meshes with how most of the community plays the game" in so far as most groups do enjoy killing as many monsters as possible because we're all horrid murder hobos. Fair enough. But it *doesn't* actually preserve current experience payouts, it forces some very specific playstyle choices like waiting for respawns, zerging every last monster in every last corner, some quest specific speedbumps like clearing multiple routes in order to clean up every monster, and even just actually shaves off rewards in some quests where there *aren't* any ways to get conquest bonuses.
I can only think of two ways to fix it:
1. Universally deflate the number of kills necessary to get the conquest bonus to match the actual "standard" kill rates (probably actually adjusted down a bit further to account for Reapers, optional routes, fight avoidance skill checks, etc.) which would require either sloppy automatic data application from player kill counts or manual adjustments based on the number of monsters in the quest along the "primary" line.
2. Increase baseline experience to account for the fact that experience payouts are going to get hit for any group that doesn't murder every last kobold huddled in a corner crying for their dragon mommy to come save them.
Unless you have a really valiant intern or really confident data on kill counts by which to adjust the conquest threshold for every quest in the game to be reasonably obtainable by an ordinary group playing as average players do this is a nerf to a bunch of quests and anyone who doesn't choose violence every quest. To be honest, if you do have data on kill counts, assuming every group basically gets conquest bonuses every time would be an extremely baffling decision given that it is fundamentally not accurate to my experience both soloing and in groups and while I understand selection size bias is a thing I am one of the aforementioned murder hobos looking for every last quivering kobold to stomp and waiting for enemies to respawn to squeeze out a bit more of that sweet sweet experience juice. In my last seven quests I got conquest a grand total of nope times. It also further encourages one specific playstyle which ignores some of the really good quest design in some quests that allows for other ways to progress, like skill checks, hidden paths, etc. I get that it will encourage people to not just drag hordes of trash mobs throughout the dungeon (which is leading to pathing, which is leading to lag, which is the problem being addressed, I assume) but it's using an atom bomb to target a single building. Yeah, that building is going to be absolutely gone. But it's also going to take out the entire neighborhood, nerf a ton of quests whose only problem is having unobtainable, opposed, or finicky conquest completion criteria, and pad out either quest times or number of quests to grind for anyone who is playing a build that makes hunting every trash mob inconvenient.
Actually, I take it back. It probably won't fix that, because for most of the players who are doing the whole drag hundreds of mobs through a dungeon, they either still will and then just nuke them all at the end (a problem fixed by a different proposed change to AI pathfinding) or they'll just... still not kill the mobs because it will still be faster to just run through even though you're getting less experience, but you just have to do it more times to level up. Which means, instead of less pathing lag, you get the same or more, as people do the exact same thing again.
Anyway, I know I've written a book, so I'm going to stop here, but basically tl;dr this is going to nerf a bunch of quests in which conquest is impossible, force certain routes and playstyles and introduce drag on running through quests since you now need to smack every kobold or you're forfeiting a bunch of experience, and make you spend more time in quests for the same (or less) experience since you need to be 100% certain you get conquest or you lose a bunch more experience than before.
The Narc
Well-known member
We have had these siscussions in game Kimbere, you know how i feel and competely agree with you less mob density is the key and will make running single target actually fun again.
DeathTitan
Well-known member
In my TR guide I have only quests that last a few minutes: if they kill this purpose I'm gonna quit DDO because after 15 years repeating those quests there is no way I'm spending more time than before to complete them.
I magine shadow crypt quest, it has an 8 gears path to follow from which we don't get conquest bonus, so less xp: I don't wanna do the 12 gears path to get conquest bonus.
Anyway they are spending a lot of effort in this crap an I still have don't see embolden feat applied to burst of glacial wrath that should be easy to fix instead.
Consider also that most of the times we play solo heroic levels because there were few or no players joining groups and also when I play druid I don't have the spell points to kill everything in low/mid level heroic quests.
I magine shadow crypt quest, it has an 8 gears path to follow from which we don't get conquest bonus, so less xp: I don't wanna do the 12 gears path to get conquest bonus.
Anyway they are spending a lot of effort in this crap an I still have don't see embolden feat applied to burst of glacial wrath that should be easy to fix instead.
Consider also that most of the times we play solo heroic levels because there were few or no players joining groups and also when I play druid I don't have the spell points to kill everything in low/mid level heroic quests.
This change would definitely require sweeping changes so that conquest is possible in more routes through quests than just maximum murder hobo mode.
DeathTitan
Well-known member
developers will never made some changes to the way to obtain conquest in all quests, and I will never get conquest bonus because I never got it in 15 years and it's too boring to get conquest (I would rather quit DDO).
For me the solution could be drinking some xp potions to compensate but I don't know if everyone can do that.
Developers can fix the dungeon alert issues that cause lag, but they should not ask to the long term players to increase the length of the quests because we are repeating the same ones over and over in the years: remember that many aim to get more or less up to 160 past lives (how many past lives are there in the game?), what's the point on slowing that process that lasts many many years anyway? (and many new past lives will be added in the future).
Conquest = boring.
Boring = quit ddo.