Lammania Update 60 Preview 2 - XP Pass Pushed Off - But some Fixes may stick

[ShinuzukaRakam]

I've seen a few posts about changing the name "Delving Bonus" to something else, but I'm not sure I understand why, because "dungeon delving" or "delving into a dungeon" is a very common usage of the word, so "Delving Bonus" makes perfect sense.

 

[NightHiker]

Hey fellow players and people at SSG...

Good to see this nightmare of an idea getting benched, at least for now. Thanks everyone for standing against it, even if for different reasons. So I guess I'm back to playing this thing, at least for now...

I don't like that there's still a certain stubborness in thinking about a value proposition for "killing monsters", when in my opinion SSG should be looking at it as "solving monsters" instead - be it killing, bypassing thru social skills, sneaking, or any other creative way of dealing with them that is not an exploit.

I like the fact they're at least in concept trying to get monsters that can be "social skilled" out of the count for the kill bonus, but they still need to find a way to account for stealthing - It's also skill based and the mechanic is still supported by the game, after all. And Cordovan finally spoke clearly that the issue is the monsters you aggro and don't kill, so that should not include the monsters you don't aggro, be it while sneaking or not - maybe they don't have tech to differentiate it like they can with the dialogue options, but then that's something they need to work on and take into account if they really want to incentivize different approaches to dungeon exploration, before adding a kill bonus. It might very well actually get it (stealthing) back in a better place than it's now, even though it's still useful. Maybe even make it a prevalent point of one of their next expansions, have it include something of a stealth mechanics revamp or improvement somehow attached to the story.

In any case, it still looks like having the kill count xp bonus attached to "number of monsters aggroed" is the best alternative, if at all possible. Add to it the better monster pathing that will remove their aggro more quickly and even DA won't be needed much (though it still should be in place for the most extreme cases) - if you want to run away from mobs you aggroed that should be an option (if you can outrun them), and if they will just stop following you but still count toward the total for kill bonus then the xp penalty for not killing them should be more than enough to dissuade such behavior, without penalizing other, legitimate playstyles.

I guess I can get back to "cheers" for the time being,
NH

P.S.: I guess another good thing (for me, at least) is this dillema ended up saving me from spending quite a few bucks on the patrons coffer - at least until and if they put it up for grabs again...

 

[CBDunk]

I've seen a few posts about changing the name "Delving Bonus" to something else, but I'm not sure I understand why, because "dungeon delving" or "delving into a dungeon" is a very common usage of the word, so "Delving Bonus" makes perfect sense.

Yes, 'delving' is a perfectly fine word.

It just doesn't do anything to tell you what the bonus is for or how it works. Most of the other XP bonuses are descriptive; "first time bonus", "daily playthrough bonus", "VIP bonus", et cetera.

Delving is distinctly not descriptive.

Taken literally, a 'delving' bonus would suggest that you need to dig or search for things to receive it.

So, if we want to use a random semi-thematic word for this bonus then 'delving' is as good as any. However, I for one would prefer it be called what it is. Something along the lines of 'progressive difficulty bonus'.

 

[Rage]

How about 'Challenge Bonus' ?

 

[Lagin]

Devs, please look at Dreaming Dark (and other IQ quests) for adjustment, DD I run every life, (I like it) no way to get any bonus for kill count. ((unless it has some type of respawn, which I would not waste my time on w/ xp pot running))

 

[TeamScorpioRI]

I just don't see this change helping the goal any.

I'll start this off by saying I like the new proposed changes. That being said, the "capping the kill bonus at 100" has me questioning things. The goal is to have players kill monsters rather than running past them. Wouldn't capping the bonus like this be counter intuitive in the quests with a large amount of monsters (TOEE is an example, as is Castle Ravenloft)? Players are going to hit that goal, and just zerg past the rest as they already hit the bonus. There is no incentive for us to kill more.

One solution is to go through every quest in the game an code in the proper values based on the possible monsters in the quests (ignoring respawns, like in VON5). That is a lot of work.

So what about if we further incentivize things? For every 25 monsters we kill over the 100, we get a boost to the XP bonus. It can be small (2%-5%) but it will INCENTIVIZE and REWARD players for killing more. Otherwise, we are going to be back to the same problem we started with, just with different numbers.

 

[Cyran]

So what about if we further incentivize things? For every 25 monsters we kill over the 100, we get a boost to the XP bonus. It can be small (2%-5%) but it will INCENTIVIZE and REWARD players for killing more. Otherwise, we are going to be back to the same problem we started with, just with different numbers.

You would have to be very carful how you implemented that or people would just farm respawn points in any quest that have respawns. You would see builds that have healing/damage aura where they could just go away for a couple hours and come back with 1000's of kills.

 

[Ahpuch]

So what about if we further incentivize things? For every 25 monsters we kill over the 100, we get a boost to the XP bonus. It can be small (2%-5%) but it will INCENTIVIZE and REWARD players for killing more. Otherwise, we are going to be back to the same problem we started with, just with different numbers.

Or how about instead of incentivizing on raw kill numbers they go with one of the many alternative ideas presented in these threads such as reward killing agro'ed mobs specifically or vastly increasing the rewards to optionals to make them worth exploring. Rewarding kills directly (beyond the current 25%) encourages a single play style and devalues alternatives built into many quests and non-kill alternatives to quest solving. It makes the game shallower by reducing the appeal of those alternatives.

 

[l_remmie]

Some people have mentioned it before but what we really need is a rework of OPTIONAL XP!

In the same way that conquest/ransack only pays out xp at the end (some) optionals should do this as well.
We can adapt to wait for opt xp after quest finish if it is worth it.
That way they scale with the delving bonus etc.
You can then re-evaluate the base quest xp with regards to the optionals as well as conquest which you were doing anyway. I'm not asking for more xp i'm asking to give people incentive to do them.

 

[Retsam]

If you want players to kill everything in the dungeon, make it worth the time spent.

New bonus::

No Witnesses - Kill every available witness on the map, Dead men tell no tales. :: Doubles BASE XP of quest (or even triple if over 500 kills.. ect..)


For Pathing changes::

Adjust the pathing to allow the creatures to "skip" along the path if they're no longer in LOS of the player, treat it as the creatures know secret paths to get through their terrain faster than you. Even set a group to teleport to the next set of unagro'd creatures, as reinforcements.

[akin to LOS loss = teleport after 15-30 seconds of no available line of sight (invisibility counts towards this. So if you agro a pile of creatures, invis, 30 seconds later.. well they found friends to hang out with because they couldn't find you. maybe even teleported to the next necessary doorway as a blockade. )

Part of the "skip" would be fully disabling animation/draw calls for creatures out of LOS for more then 15-30 seconds, which would make dungeon alert take less process cycles as well. - to make up for janky looking animations when they appear/are seen again, have them use the ogre magi appears from the shadows after their invis cycle. AMBUSH!

Retsam

 

[TeamScorpioRI]

You would have to be very carful how you implemented that or people would just farm respawn points in any quest that have respawns. You would see builds that have healing/damage aura where they could just go away for a couple hours and come back with 1000's of kills.

I agree. The idea I had definitely is not perfect, nor was it intended to be. It could be exploited if there is no cap put on the bonus XP. What that cap would be, not sure. But just leaving it at 100 monsters is cap just brings us back to the same problem of players ignoring monsters. Now, players will just know when they can stop ignoring them (we killed 100, so max XP achieved. Time to run to the end)

Or how about instead of incentivizing on raw kill numbers they go with one of the many alternative ideas presented in these threads such as reward killing agro'ed mobs specifically or vastly increasing the rewards to optionals to make them worth exploring. Rewarding kills directly (beyond the current 25%) encourages a single play style and devalues alternatives built into many quests and non-kill alternatives to quest solving. It makes the game shallower by reducing the appeal of those alternatives.

I am not going to disagree here. Other mechanics need to be taken into consideration. Stealth should actually be rewarded GREATER than kill, as the playstyle is more difficult and takes more time (I would lobby for doubling what kill bonus gives).

 

[Fizzix]

In reality, you should be making XP easier to get.

The reason people often stop or take a huge break after getting completionist & racial completionist is that it takes waaaay toooo long for each character. You're burned out at the end. It took 4-6 years. no one wants to do that 2x or 3x. y our attempt to drag it out is a gut punch to your paying customers.

If you made it easier to attain the same goal like a 1 year investment for alts (~520hrs), people would spend money on Tomes and XP/Slayer pots to get the other alts to the same level. I'd love to have a melee DPS, a tank, a healer, a ranged DPS, a spell DPS, a spell DC/Instakiller.

I could even see some sort of server based attunement where if you had dual completionist on one character, a new completionists heart (alt completionist PL) which gives an alt both race and class PLs at the same time, purchasable only by a character with dual completionist, but account tradable. This special past life Feat, and if you have at least one Alt PL of each class and race, you become an alt completionist which has the same benefits as a dual completionist. You could double up on iconic and epics in the same vein.

that would be a 6 yr investment for 4-5 chars which is plausible, right now its a 20+yr investment for 4-5 chars , totally ridiculous.

Give us a reason to spend store points that please us rather than just punish in hopes we'll buy our way out of it to help make your quarterly sales. If you build it they will come.

If you did that as well as worked on base 11 - 13 quests that actually give decent xp or rework the absolutely terrible xp that is Ravenloft C3, C1 is ok, C2 is meh, C3 is terrible xp.

Please give us a different path other than lordsmarch diplo chain... I want to like them, Ive just done them too many times, and the xp is weak in that whole level range. This is the real terrible spot in the TR train, with exception of The new lordsmarch chain; (peril) was soo welcome, the casting clubs are great, the quests are varied and well done.

 

[Fnordian]

How about replacing the conquest type base XP bonuses for killing x number of monsters with XP awarded for each monster killed based on the monster's CR rating, perhaps with an additional multiplier based on the quest level?

 

[Kmn]

If mob aggro is overloading your servers you should make de-aggroing and avoiding mobs more viable. Reapers have tremorsense and aggro everything, that is a design choice.

 

[namennottaken]

High Level Summary:

1. We are punting on any XP changes that change XP totals for ANY difficulty.
   
   
2. The Conquest XP bonus has problems, we've fixed some of them but not all of them.
   
   
3. This preview still has some of the "Stuff" we are punting on, but we are looking at only pushing some of the fixes for U60 build. You'll have to keep reading for those details.

More Detail:

Okie!

We are finding more problems with the conquest system logic than we expected, and it's going to take to much time for us to fix for this update cycle. If we can't fix conquest, much of the aim of this pass really is moot.

In addition! These adjustments are very controversial! We still believe the value preposition of killing a monster in the XP meta is probably lower than it should be, but fixing this may require flushing out other game play flows, and we have several promising ideas but not the time to do them for this update cycle.

We are going to try to keep some of our fixes to the conquest system that we have managed, and to the reaper feedback. A list of what we'll try to keep is at the bottom of this page. The conquest system as a whole will eventually be fixed. It appears to have multi issues so this may take some time.

Changes in this Preview

1. Bravery Bonus is being renamed Delving Bonus. Still. It's also getting a new tier for reaper so it will now work as thus...

Hard 50% Bonus
Elite 100% Bonus
Reaper 150% Bonus

2. the "First Time Bonuses" per difficulty are being removed

3. Conquest, Aggressor and Onslaught Bonuses are be greatly boosted, and give different values based on difficulty.

Onslaught was increased to 60% on elite and reaper in this build.

NEW CONQUEST BONUS VALUES

	Normal	Hard	Elite	Reaper	Old Requirement	New Requirement
Conquest	50	75	100	100	kill 80% of mobs in quest	kill 75% of the mobs in quest
Onslaught	35	45	60	60	kill 65% of the mobs in quest	kill 50% of mobs in quest
Aggression	25	25	25	25	kill 50% of the mobs in quest	kill 25% of mobs in quest

Additional....

A> There is now a Cap on numbers of monsters required to get conquest bonuses, so you will get the following bonus if you hit this value.... This should fix conquest in many of our larger dungeons.​

​

Conquest	100 Kills
Onslaught	67 Kills
Aggression	34 Kills

​

B> The following Dungeons were reviewed and fixed for conquest bonus. Note - Monsters with alternate solutions (social skills, quest story branching, splinterskull just being splinterskull) are not counted against your conquest total - Example Feywild Make Believe - The Eladrin guards or the two Redcap groups that can be eliminated via social skilled. The majority of this pass is about allowing for special cases like that.​

​

1. Primary Sharn Story Line (Not Cogs)
2. Ravenloft Series
3. Gambler's Den in the Harbor
4. SplinterSkull
5. Feywild - Make Believe and Windmill

​

C> Monster Conquest counts in the UI are not in this build (We kinda got it working but there are to many bugs for even a preview)​

4. Reaper XP

A> Reaper XP will now display before getting your 10 kills , and let you know you don't get reaper xp till you kill 10 mobs​

​

B> The Reaper XP 200% first time XP bonus will now display in the quest panel when it applies, and it will state that this bonus is used instead of delving​

​

​

5. Changes we are considering trying to keep for U60

1. Lower the Conquest threshold requirements - So Aggression would go to 25% monsters killed, Onslaught 50%, Conquest 75%, etc, but XP bonuses would NOT change.
   
   
2. The Monster Count Cap for Conquest - So as the chart above, killing 100 mobs in a quest will always get you full conquest. This just fixes conquest in a lot of big quests.
   
   
3. The Fixes to the listed Quests - It's not feasible at this point to hand fix all of our conquest problems, but might as well take the ones we got.
   
   
4. Reaper UI improvements - As above
   
   
5. We may keep the name delving - First Time Bonus is still around, but the extra 50% that Reaper gets over Elite is going to stay in the new Reaper Delving Tier. This means that the bonuses are as follows:
   Solo, Casual, Normal, Hard: 20% (as before)
   
   Elite, Reaper: 45% (as before for Elite, was 95% reaper before, that 50% is moving to Delving)
   
   Delving Bonus for reaper goes to 150% (total xp remains the same)

From my last life this just feels like a straight up -15% xp nerf where ill need to put more effort into leveling. It's been a while, but that's how it feels and it doesnt make me want to come back and finish any lives.

 

[seph1roth5]

I like the idea of making optional xp trigger at the end. Then maybe we can get some of the old xp back like in shadow crypt lol.

 

[Dunspartacus]

I like the idea of making optional xp trigger at the end. Then maybe we can get some of the old xp back like in shadow crypt lol.

Yeah ever since this stuff was first put up on the forums ive just been noticing how much optional objectives I just don't do because the exp is so incredibly underwhelming most of the time, and for most players a ran-gen chest isn't a good incentive to go out of our way.

 

[xaktakorf]

Sooo... you are rewarding players extra for playing Reaper? The mode you have REPEATEDLY told us is a major source of lag?

Perhaps you should hold back on that until you fix the reaper mode induced lag...

 

[Dunspartacus]

Sooo... you are rewarding players extra for playing Reaper? The mode you have REPEATEDLY told us is a major source of lag?

Perhaps you should hold back on that until you fix the reaper mode induced lag...

I don't think reaper is going to give much more than its currently giving unless I'm missing something in the numbers (which is definitely possible). But yeah sadly with it still giving more than elite reaper will probably remain the default mode for most players/groups.

 

[T.O.]

Pretty much figured once the realization of how many quest's don't even give conquest bonus. This would be punted. I am ok with the change when everything that needs to be fixed is fixed. Once conquest is fixed can a dev work on some quests that trap bonus is borked on. I know one that IDB gets obliterated in heroics. The legendary version there is no problem.