The Reaper XP problem

[Br4d]

RNG grinds are the worst rxp is nothing in terms of scale massive but it has an end and alot less tedious then racials

Reaper is a *very* strange system that has mixed incentives built in and few of them aimed at people just playing the game for fun.

I'd be really curious what the endgame experience was like for people with maxed out trees and never or rarely wiping at R10. To me that would feel like the ultimate treadmill because in theory you are done but what you got out of it was uncompelling play and the feeling that things should be harder than they are.

 

[Ying]

Reaper is a *very* strange system that has mixed incentives built in and few of them aimed at people just playing the game for fun.

Reaper isn't strange at all. Every modern game has a difficulty slider. Elite was far too easy back in 2014 when I first quit the game. I soloed everything I wanted to, even raids and I had zero epic past lives. No challenge = no reason to play. Reaper brought me back in 2017. On top of the difficulty slider, it provides another progression system. My only issue with Reaper is that it is finite. It has an end. It needs to be more like EverQuest's alternate advancement system where there are new reaper points/abilities to earn every expansion. Something that continues to grow over time, just like new past lives are added to the game.

 

[Lazuli]

Reaper isn't strange at all. Every modern game has a difficulty slider. Elite was far too easy back in 2014 when I first quit the game. I soloed everything I wanted to, even raids and I had zero epic past lives. No challenge = no reason to play. Reaper brought me back in 2017. On top of the difficulty slider, it provides another progression system. My only issue with Reaper is that it is finite. It has an end. It needs to be more like EverQuest's alternate advancement system where there are new reaper points/abilities to earn every expansion. Something that continues to grow over time, just like new past lives are added to the game.

First you say you want challenges and difficulty, then you say you want more numerical rewards that will lower the difficulty.

The latter is what seems to matter to most of those calling for an expansion of the reaper system, not the former.

 

[Ying]

First you say you want challenges and difficulty, then you say you want more numerical rewards that will lower the difficulty.

The latter is what seems to matter to most of those calling for an expansion of the reaper system, not the former.

By your logic the game shouldn't add any more past lives because it makes it easier to play.

I want reasons to login to the game. New content is quickly consumed -- much faster than can be created. Acquiring reaper points takes time, especially with the current XP scaling. Yet I have multiple toons with 156 points. There won't be another toon for me. I'm suggesting that there needs to be a progression system beyond past lives. 156 Reaper points is arbitrary. The entire Reaper system could be rescaled to allow more than 156 and adjust the rewards in some sliding scale like the PRR formula. It's certainly overdue for a revamp after seven years, yet it's not even on the radar for 2024. These are hand-wavey suggestions. SSG already doesn't pay me for the QA I do, so I'm not going to spend time using my systems design experience to layout a complete proposal.

 

[Lazuli]

By your logic the game shouldn't add any more past lives because it makes it easier to play.

I want reasons to login to the game. New content is quickly consumed -- much faster than can be created. Acquiring reaper points takes time, especially with the current XP scaling. Yet I have multiple toons with 156 points. There won't be another toon for me. I'm suggesting that there needs to be a progression system beyond past lives. 156 Reaper points is arbitrary. The entire Reaper system could be rescaled to allow more than 156 and adjust the rewards in some sliding scale like the PRR formula. It's certainly overdue for a revamp after seven years, yet it's not even on the radar for 2024. These are hand-wavey suggestions. SSG already doesn't pay me for the QA I do, so I'm not going to spend time using my systems design experience to layout a complete proposal.

Well yes, my logic is that there are already more than enough PLs, and the reaper system gives more than enough numerical rewards.

There are other things that could be incentivized, and if you want more numerical grind, you can always work on an alt.

 

[Ying]

Well yes, my logic is that there are already more than enough PLs, and the reaper system gives more than enough numerical rewards.

There are other things that could be incentivized, and if you want more numerical grind, you can always work on an alt.

Expecting players to wait around for a non-existent incentivization will just result in people leaving the game on a regular basis. Updates may bring them back for a short time. But if the quality of updates continues like it has, I doubt that. U67 quests are incompleteable on release. U66 Dragon Lord had heaps of problems. It's a pattern of behavior players are tired of. I took nearly two months off this year for Last Epoch. Only came back because of the insane buddy bonus weekend and my friends wanting to TR together. Now that I got my past lives and I'm back at cap, I'm looking around with nothing to do but login once maybe twice a week for raids.

 

[Br4d]

Reaper isn't strange at all. Every modern game has a difficulty slider. Elite was far too easy back in 2014 when I first quit the game. I soloed everything I wanted to, even raids and I had zero epic past lives. No challenge = no reason to play. Reaper brought me back in 2017. On top of the difficulty slider, it provides another progression system. My only issue with Reaper is that it is finite. It has an end. It needs to be more like EverQuest's alternate advancement system where there are new reaper points/abilities to earn every expansion. Something that continues to grow over time, just like new past lives are added to the game.

AA's are different than RP's. Far from adding XP the way Reaper does, they cost you a percentage of your XP gained to level. They slow you down before cap, not speed you up. Also, they are auto-granted at specific levels if you are an All-Access subscriber. So level 51 gives you 102 AA pts and it scales upwards from there depending on what level you enter the system (returning players might have higher levels and no AA's yet.)

The last point, which is key here, is that EQ is levels of magnitude more difficult than DDO. Each expansion is progressively more difficult and aimed mostly at people at endgame. So the AA system doesn't become easy street as it progresses.

 

[DBZ]

1 tank or crowd controller can solo the trash rest just clean house

 

[Lazuli]

Expecting players to wait around for a non-existent incentivization will just result in people leaving the game on a regular basis. Updates may bring them back for a short time. But if the quality of updates continues like it has, I doubt that. U67 quests are incompleteable on release. U66 Dragon Lord had heaps of problems. It's a pattern of behavior players are tired of. I took nearly two months off this year for Last Epoch. Only came back because of the insane buddy bonus weekend and my friends wanting to TR together. Now that I got my past lives and I'm back at cap, I'm looking around with nothing to do but login once maybe twice a week for raids.

The absence of bugs in the updates can hardly be related to adding more numerical rewards. Asking for more quality control and for fewer bugs is something that I also sign, but those two things are different, it's not talking about pears and oranges, it's talking about pears and mountains xd

You can play reapers for fun, you know. If it's not fun for you to play reapers, it's not going to be fun for you to add a few dozen more points either. If you find it easy, adding even more numerical rewards will make it easier and even more boring.

If you were asking for new challenges to solve... new styles of dungeons, new raids, etc., I would understand those requests (and I would sign them). But more numerical rewards don't add anything new or exciting to the game.

 

[Ying]

AA's are different than RP's. Far from adding XP the way Reaper does, they cost you a percentage of your XP gained to level. They slow you down before cap, not speed you up. Also, they are auto-granted at specific levels if you are an All-Access subscriber. So level 51 gives you 102 AA pts and it scales upwards from there depending on what level you enter the system (returning players might have higher levels and no AA's yet.)

The last point, which is key here, is that EQ is levels of magnitude more difficult than DDO. Each expansion is progressively more difficult and aimed mostly at people at endgame. So the AA system doesn't become easy street as it progresses.

You're too myopic and have missed the point entirely. Look at it from a 50,000 foot perspective. It's not about how AAs are implemented. It's about having a progression beyond leveling, or past lives or gearing.

 

[Ying]

The absence of bugs in the updates can hardly be related to adding more numerical rewards. Asking for more quality control and for fewer bugs is something that I also sign, but those two things are different, it's not talking about pears and oranges, it's talking about pears and mountains xd

You can play reapers for fun, you know. If it's not fun for you to play reapers, it's not going to be fun for you to add a few dozen more points either. If you find it easy, adding even more numerical rewards will make it easier and even more boring.

If you were asking for new challenges to solve... new styles of dungeons, new raids, etc., I would understand those requests (and I would sign them). But more numerical rewards don't add anything new or exciting to the game.

It's not about fun. If I wasn't already having fun with friends, I wouldn't be here. You're ignoring powerful psychological reward systems. People want to feel rewarded spending their time on an activity. When you're capped at 156 Reaper points, there is no reward because there is no progression.

 

[DBZ]

If we had and end game and an economy and trading like all other games do well then

 

[Br4d]

You're too myopic and have missed the point entirely. Look at it from a 50,000 foot perspective. It's not about how AAs are implemented. It's about having a progression beyond leveling, or past lives or gearing.

EQ was released in 1999. It released in a meta, really creating that meta, where group play was the only effective play at cap.

EQ does not have past lives or enhancements or epic destinies. AA's were the mechanism to allow existing characters to solo and to add some progression to a system that otherwise only added levels as x-pacs released.

DDO is like a hamster on the wheel on crack. It already has a bunch of ways to advance your character and most of them involve playing the same wheel over and over again.

You think I am myopic but you do not see how many players the endless grind has cost DDO. Adding more grind will not increase the population at all. It will just deplete the population over time as players tap out for various reasons.

This is why I think mission 1 for SSG should be to find new players for DDO and help them get into the game. There are already years worth of grind backlogged for new players, complete with all the costs and revenues associated with that process. What we need are new players to take advantage of that.

 

[Br4d]

Just adding: Alexander the Great saw that he had conquered the known world and he wept. Sometimes you've just done everything there is to do.

 

[Ying]

I don't need an EQ history lesson. I raided from release through PoP on Drinal. AA is simply an example progression system that doesn't involve character levels or gearing. It's not a petition for "DDO needs to do it exactly like EQ did".

Nothing what I brought up is news to anyone at SSG. Every live service game has cycles where players come back when there's new content, and find something else to do when there's a draught or other problems. You readily bring up new players getting turned off by all the content in the game, but ignore the people who have nothing left to do in the game.

 

[Br4d]

I don't need an EQ history lesson. I raided from release through PoP on Drinal. AA is simply an example progression system that doesn't involve character levels or gearing. It's not a petition for "DDO needs to do it exactly like EQ did".

Nothing what I brought up is news to anyone at SSG. Every live service game has cycles where players come back when there's new content, and find something else to do when there's a draught or other problems. You readily bring up new players getting turned off by all the content in the game, but ignore the people who have nothing left to do in the game.

I was also a raider in EQ from release until WoW's release in 2004.

There's not nothing left to do in the game. However there may be very little left to do on your main character.

We know how to fix that. Release a new x-pac or raid content about twice a year for the existing endgame characters to play. Level alts up if the game is interesting enough to do that or go find something else to do if not. Endgame toons will raid other content as well as the new stuff. Also, every time a new race is released racial TR's open up and every time a new class heroic TR's.

DDO is just beyond the pale already in terms of single character grind. SSG needs to find a way to grow the player base and that is unlikely to happen by extending the reaper trees or by any other mechanism that is just pure power creep at endgame.

 

[rabidfox]

One doesn't have to have RP rewards go beyond 156, they could hardlock it and do a new system. GW2 introduced a rewards track system with various objects that reset daily, weekly, quarterly, and with festivals/etc. where new rewards are added quarterly and old stuff still left available to get too (Think of it like HC10 where at 5k you could claim any of prior 5k rewards or the current season's reward). Imagine of all the rewards SSG could do under a system like this:
Quarterly LEADERBOARDS!
Cool cosmetic gear
wings/footprints/mounts
X amount of RXP
Instant past life of your choice
new sentient jewel voices
X amount of sent XP
X amount regular XP
etc. etc. etc.

It would give reasons to log in daily, weekly, etc. for various folks. And by leaving old rewards available still, it removes FOMO issues too. Think of all the various objectives they could do:
Kill X of Y mobs.
Do X quests. Do X quests on Y difficulty.
Do X raids. Do X raids on Y difficulty.
PvP and win X times... (Could you imagine? hahah)
TR x times. ER y Times.
Earn X RXP or Y RP.
Do Y objectives on a 1st lifer character with no tomes used and without access to shared bank.
Etc. etc.

 

[DBZ]

If they'd bring back trading we'd have all kinds of things to do guaranteed money maker for ssg

 

[Kintaya]

It's not about fun. If I wasn't already having fun with friends, I wouldn't be here. You're ignoring powerful psychological reward systems. People want to feel rewarded spending their time on an activity. When you're capped at 156 Reaper points, there is no reward because there is no progression.

This.... I have a toon with all PLs, over 156 reaper points. I have no incentive to play the toon outside of raids.
And even then, it's "figure out a build for the next challenge raid push, TR, gear, park at cap for months".
Alts help, but that's really a band aid.
I like the trees for the first 100-120 points. It gives you options on how you wanna spend them up to the point where you've maxed out the tank tree + melee or caster. But after you've already farmed the 156 to max out all 3 trees - there should be some form of progression. It doesn't have to be huge. But if there's no sense of accomplishment - you won't do it.
I've done R10s from harbor to cap, i've done challenge raids (pushing difficulty and/or lowering group size). You can say I've done almost everything you could for bragging rights.
There are no bragging rights for having 300 reaper points, since it's still the same as 156: you maxed out your bonuses. Even if it's a small linear progression of 5hp>2 melee/ranged power>5 universal SP>10 spellpoints on repeat - that's already so much incentive to keep pushing my RXP.

One doesn't have to have RP rewards go beyond 156, they could hardlock it and do a new system. GW2 introduced a rewards track system with various objects that reset daily, weekly, quarterly, and with festivals/etc. where new rewards are added quarterly and old stuff still left available to get too (Think of it like HC10 where at 5k you could claim any of prior 5k rewards or the current season's reward). Imagine of all the rewards SSG could do under a system like this:
Quarterly LEADERBOARDS!
Cool cosmetic gear
wings/footprints/mounts
X amount of RXP
Instant past life of your choice
new sentient jewel voices
X amount of sent XP
X amount regular XP
etc. etc. etc.

It would give reasons to log in daily, weekly, etc. for various folks. And by leaving old rewards available still, it removes FOMO issues too. Think of all the various objectives they could do:
Kill X of Y mobs.
Do X quests. Do X quests on Y difficulty.
Do X raids. Do X raids on Y difficulty.
PvP and win X times... (Could you imagine? hahah)
TR x times. ER y Times.
Earn X RXP or Y RP.
Do Y objectives on a 1st lifer character with no tomes used and without access to shared bank.
Etc. etc.

Gotta be careful with "dailies". Because at some point it just turns the game into a chore of "gotta log in every day to do the dailies, or i'll fall behind". It's tough to balance between it becoming a must vs not worth bothering with.

 

[Jack Jarvis Esquire]

If they'd bring back trading we'd have all kinds of things to do guaranteed money maker for ssg

I agree with this. Opening up all items to trade by removing all binding would be really interesting.

In addition, I think making gear damage much more of a problem to players, effectively requiring refarming or purchase via AH/ASE would entice further repeat play.