Is Reaper Mode going to kill the Game?

[T.O.]

So almost 6 and a half years after reaper was introduced we have a 9 page debate on if reaper will kill the game. LOL. Going of pure memory here. No wiki. Reaper was introduced in Feb 2017 along with dragonborn and RTSO.

I really thought RTSO would kill the game back them. I guess we are both wrong.

 

[Oliphant]

So almost 6 and a half years after reaper was introduced we have a 9 page debate on if reaper will kill the game. LOL. Going of pure memory here. No wiki. Reaper was introduced in Feb 2017 along with dragonborn and RTSO.

I really thought RTSO would kill the game back them. I guess we are both wrong.

This thread went meta by page 2 though.

 

[DDO Gaming]

This thread went meta by page 2 though.

The argument really seems to be "I hate reaper therefore nobody should play the game". How folks apply their time, money etc is their business. Personally I think reaper is a brilliant addon to the game without dramatically re-engineering it. It also encourages players to build groups (especially if you're in a guild) so really the folks complaining are merely exposing their own weaknesses either as technical players or group players

 

[DDO Gaming]

BTW I levelledup my character from lvl10 to lvl20 in maybe 3 weeks, playing a few hours a week. So it is possible

 

[Oliphant]

Yeah I think reaper was necessary to extend this game and non-progression based idea was never realistic, this is a progression-based-fun style game. It does have some negative consequences in my opinion, and they should be thinking about mitigation.

 

[Aragadi]

The argument really seems to be "I hate reaper therefore nobody should play the game". How folks apply their time, money etc is their business. Personally I think reaper is a brilliant addon to the game without dramatically re-engineering it. It also encourages players to build groups (especially if you're in a guild) so really the folks complaining are merely exposing their own weaknesses either as technical players or group players

You are 1/2 right. How people spend their time and money is their own business. Reaper "could have" been a brilliant addon to the game that gave people the "challenge mode" they were looking for without re-engineering it. There is a glaring issue with this argument, however.

You see, reaper was not introduced purely as a challenge mode. There are rewards that are exclusive to Reaper mode, rewards you gain from playing Reaper that extend into the normal version of the game in fact.

You get more xp/quest in Reaper.
You get stat bonuses from Reaper tree cores outside of Reaper.
You get the stat boost from Reaper hats outside of Reaper.
You get increased drop chances from Reaper Chests.
More and more Reaper lfm's have become the norm.
Reaper raid groups are becoming more and more common.

You see, the challenge mode some players wanted was effectively shoved down the throats of everyone else. Want to stay relevant in the game, you better be running Reaper. During the discussion concerning Reaper before it went live I distinctly remember people saying there should be no reward structure for playing Reaper, it should be strictly a challenge mode. One of the primary counterarguments to this was "no one would play it if there were no sufficient rewards". This implies that the mode would fail on its own merits, a reward structure is needed to bribe people into participating. Because of this people who would normally have no interest in it were forced to deal with it else they would eventually be obsolete.

You are making a huge assumption that the people complaining about Reaper "suck at the game". I can not speak for others, but I can solo on R7 comfortably, I am not trying to brag about being "Uber". I'm not doing R10 solos, but I think being able to navigate all of the various forms of reapers and survive the massive penalties at R7 demonstrates a fair level of competence. I could make the counter-argument that people who can only complete high-reaper in groups are relying on other people as a crutch to carry them.

I mean, if we aren't soloing R10 we obviously are not very good at the game right? The common argument for adding on to the reaper system is that it has become too easy right? So since you can so casually insult such a large portion of the player base you can demonstrate your superior skills by providing us with some of your R10 solo videos right?

 

[Sylla]

This thread is so insane
Bruh, my wife is running reaper with like 3 past lives and 15 reaper points... I duo with her with my sub 20PL character and 38 reaper points.

If you think you need hundreds of reaper points and past lives to be able to zoom through reaper 1-4, i don't know what to say.. just get good i suppose.

You aren't even able to make use of that many reaper points during the leveling process. *** are we even talking about.

By no means are any of us veterans, i returned to this game after years, started fresh on a new server with nothing, to join Mimic Hardcore season. After i got my 5k reward i moved to new server and playing there ever since.

No 17+ years of past lives etc. And as i said above, even my noob wife can play reapers no problem and say Elite is too easy. Duo. Without farmed gear.

 

[Aragadi]

This thread is so insane
Bruh, my wife is running reaper with like 3 past lives and 15 reaper points... I duo with her with my sub 20PL character and 38 reaper points.

If you think you need hundreds of reaper points and past lives to be able to zoom through reaper 1-4, i don't know what to say.. just get good i suppose.

You aren't even able to make use of that many reaper points during the leveling process. *** are we even talking about.

By no means are any of us veterans, i returned to this game after years, started fresh on a new server with nothing, to join Mimic Hardcore season. After i got my 5k reward i moved to new server and playing there ever since.

No 17+ years of past lives etc. And as i said above, even my noob wife can play reapers no problem and say Elite is too easy. Duo. Without farmed gear.

As I have stated elsewhere in this thread, the desire not to deal with Reaper has nothing to do with skill. Only elitists with ego problems make this equivalence.

 

[PraetorPlato]

If you can solo r7....how does the game pose an interesting combat challenge to you on anything non-reaper? Soloing r7 means overkilling by a factor of 3 while taking 5x more damage compared to elite while healing for ~1/10th the amount.

 

[DBZ]

Since the heal reduction removal last update or so healing out of combat should not be a problem

 

[Aragadi]

If you can solo r7....how does the game pose an interesting combat challenge to you on anything non-reaper? Soloing r7 means overkilling by a factor of 3 while taking 5x more damage compared to elite while healing for ~1/10th the amount.

That's the thing, I am not looking for some form of extreme challenge out of a video game. I play games to relax from the challenges I face in real life. I have absolutely no problem with other people enjoying Reaper, what I take issue with is the fact that the reward structure associated with it invades every other aspect of the game. Also to be clear, when I say I can solo R7 I am only talking about my main character while playing at level cap, I am not suggesting that I run R7 while TRing from level 1 all the way back to cap or anything. I only run quests above R1 if I am farming for a specific piece of gear like a reaper bonus helmet for example.

While I was doing my Dark Hunter past-lives I entered the final room of Tomb of the Sanguine Heart on R1. R1 is a Zergfest. There typically is no real challenge to it at all, and the only reason I do past-life grind on R1 is the bonus xp/quest. But every single spell caster in the room was a champion, there were 3 fear reapers in the room and a plague reaper. The fight was insurmountable. Sure I had my jibbers available and made my way to the shrine to get myself up and since I had cleared out the fear reapers already I was able to finish the quest without having to restart it, but that is a level of stress I just don't want to deal with at all, even if it's only an occasional outlier experience.

Incidentally, most top-end raids offer significant challenges even on epic hard. For example, I have tried to solo Hunt or be Hunted multiple times and have not been able to accomplish it yet. I know it is possible, but I don't want to warp my character build just to be able to do it.

 

[PraetorPlato]

Fair's fair, different strokes for different folks. With that said, it seems like a good idea to have some difficulties for players who do want a challenge.

 

[Col Kurtz]

Fair's fair, different strokes for different folks. With that said, it seems like a good idea to have some difficulties for players who do want a challenge.

Its been said before and have to laugh a little

"players want a challenge above elite" and then farm 100+ reaper points, then some claim how uber they are, and some claim its to easy. The whole thing sounds like a badly written soap opera. You know who's gonna win when they have the Power of Greyskull behind them.

I am glad though, some find it fun, and I enjoy the faster r1 xp's.
I was having fun with r3-4 groups until they disappeared.

But, we have it and can enjoy it as we want !

Still...it might be nice to see some of those super reaper runners to drop the huge enhancement bonus and rally down to mid-tier reaper to help the community catch up a little, rather than worry about the under tier piking their r10's. Just a thought.

Either way...players posting r10 have the right to slap any requirements they want to their LFM> just do it with class...like roadhouse>show them the door if you have to, but "be nice'' while doing it

 

[DOMO]

As an on-again, off-again player, Reaper puts me in a tough position. If I run solo all the time, I can run elite (or even Hard!) but have a miserable time doing everything alone. Or I can join in a Reaper group, and feel like I'm contributing absolutely nothing, and worry about dying and dinging the group's XP/min.

It's not a great place to be in, and I haven't found a solution other than going to another game when I get tired of dungeon running alone.

Just want to mention that if a player's dies only that player will lose exp, not the whole party

 

[erethizon1]

10 years. Running Elites should be mandatory to get favor. It IS harder than R1 given the lack of reaper enhancements. Incorporeal enemies are a cakewalk to a VIP player that can get ghost touch weapons in Borderlands in less than 1/2 hour.

This is one of the most obnoxious rumors that has been floating around for years. R1 is not easier than elite no matter how many reaper points you have. Reaper points are helpful, but relatively minor compared to increased difficulty of reaper mode. I think this rumor exists because people see all the reaper trees and think they add more power than they do. I assure you, anyone that finds R1 to be a cakewalk will find elite to be even easier (though the difference can be hard to tell because once something reaches a certain level of ease they all blur together, like the difference between normal and casual where most people will one shot everything on both difficulties).

I'm trying to be supportive of your complaints, but like the very first person to reply to you, I also had trouble accepting your first post based on the spreading of inaccurate information. There is no need to make elites mandatory to get favor. They are easier than Reaper and Reaper adds an additional path of progression to make the leveling process more enjoyable. If we need more help for newbies I am all for making all difficulties give max favor, including normal and casual.

 

[erethizon1]

I leveled up to Rogue 8 on a brand new account with all elite favor on f2p content on Wayfinder. The game really got too easy. I'm not arguing it's too complex, I'm arguing it's really gotten soulless and uninspired with the emphasis on TRs over all other forms of play. There is no point to grouping and yet these dungeons would be fun with proper grouping and proper difficulty.

Well now I am just confused as to your complaint. You are correct about all of this and it is the reason why Reaper exists. I fully support elite being easy because favor should be accessible to all. Granted, my request for years was for favor to be additive until you hit the favor cap for a quest (so running once on normal and once on hard, or 3 times on normal, would give the same favor as running once on elite), but that, unfortunately, never happened. Thankfully, elite was made easy enough that people can just run that now instead.

For those seeking a challenge, Reaper was added. And you can group up to have fun in these dungeons by picking a proper difficulty for your group. The only real problem we have is a player base that doesn't want to be challenged ever. Trying to get people to run heroic quests even on R6, much less R10, is incredibly difficult. I usually end up soloing when I play heroics on R5+ because DDO players are allergic to challenge (and R10 is much, much easier when level 29+ than at lower levels). Perhaps increasing the amount of RXP for lower-level quests would help, but unless it is much more than offered at level 32 I suspect we would still rarely have anyone running high reaper heroics. DDO players like putting in the least effort possible for the reward and so challenging content isn't appreciated.

 

[erethizon1]

DDO points are way too expensive to cash customers given the prices in the DDO store. Prices in the DDO store are balanced around the idea that VIP customers can get 100s of free points per month just for farming favor, often on very easy r1 runs of dungeons. There is no reason to alienate people paying cash for points to balance off the impact of all the free points given to VIP players. VIP players should get 500 points per month. People who have paid cash for points should get some kind of bonus, more than the 1st Monster Manual and the extra 2 character slots. Perhaps they could offer a rewards account like Red Robin has where as long as you agree to receive emails it stays active. After the 1st ddo point purchase you would always get double bonus points on the 1st 3 DDO point packs. This would stack with other promotions. Premium rewards would not be available to active VIP players just like adventure packs are not available to active VIP

I don't know how accurate the online reports of total DDO accounts are but given the actual active player base it implies a ton of alternate accounts for every paid account. It does seem to be limiting developer resources

They definitely need to make most older packs and expansions cheap. Old quest packs should cost 25 DDO points and old expansions should be 99 points permanently. Get new players used to shopping in the store and allow them to easily acquire most of the game content.

 

[Reaped and Ravaged]

To clarify Reaper(particularly R1) is way too easy for the existing player base and way too abrasive/abusive/conducive to trolling for new or returning players. Why not cap the tier of active reaper points for lower level of reaper? You would only get the 1st level of reaper abilities on r1-r3, up to the 2nd of reaper ability on r4 and everything on r5 and higher. Alternatively only apply 10 points for r1, 20 points for r2 and so on. There are so many lfms by very rude and entitled players for r1 where they are very much are used to leaving people dead or stranded. Many(not All) of these people have no core player skills and are used to ignoring traps. I understand that r6-r10 are a legitimate challenge mode and I am not proposing they eliminate Reaper all together. I suggest they stop making r1-r3 so value packed for mediocre players. Too much xp/favor/DDO points for personalities that would be vulnerable to Giant Bane in the real world. Why reward these people for driving people from the game?

I favor farmed on a new account over multiple servers to get some idea of the personality of servers. Wayfinder was ironically the friendliest.

 

[rabidfox]

To clarify Reaper(particularly R1) is way too easy for the existing player base and way too abrasive/abusive/conducive to trolling for new or returning players.

That's a generalization that isn't true. R1 is plenty hard for lots of people and I've known many new/returning players to find it easy. It's a game where skill levels, time commitement, gear grinds, builds, etc. are all over the place and results will vary widely from player to player.

Side note: I move just as fast on 1st life alts with zero reaper points where I'm testing ideas out. So much power is based off knowledge, build, and gear.

 

[Reaped and Ravaged]

....my request for years was for favor to be additive until you hit the favor cap for a quest (so running once on normal and once on hard, or 3 times on normal, would give the same favor as running once on elite), but that, unfortunately, never happened. Thankfully, elite was made easy enough that people can just run that now instead.

This would be the best solution. Elite should be a lot harder, like it used to be, and include an expanded/elevated loot table. Elite should be an opportunity to get proper grouping going.

I would settle on running Hard 3X for full heroic favor.