U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

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calouscaine

Grouchy Vet
I've been saying for a while, the way to balance casters in the game is to do exactly what they did with insta-kill spells. Hard cap the number of targets AoE spells hit. If an AoE only hits 4-6 targets, it will make no sense to herd 20-30 mobs together and it will make more sense to kill a pack at a time. You no longer have casters clearing rooms with the push of a button, you can keep spellpower and spell damage high enough to feel good without being grossly overpowered, and you can reduce people pulling multiple packs together to kill them. They already fixed Wail of the Banshee and Everything is Nothing in this way because they saw the behavior. Just do it for all AoE.

Or...fix the pathing rather than trying to get all of your players to play differently. I mean, that is an alternative....
wail of banshee and finger of death are pretty much useless after heroics. Wail is meant to be a top tier aoe spell, but it's more like a fart in the wind currently, there's absolutely no point in taking it as it is now.
Of course, d&d was also based on the premise of spells per day, but we have mana, i.e. casters are stronger as a result, which is probably why mp potions are mainly in the cash shop and can't be made and rarely found. But, my dual bastardsword wielder with whirl wind can usually do more damage than my wizard aoe spells. . .going to try sorc when I get back to heroic reincarnations and see if there is that much more of a difference in damage with spells compared to wizard.
I've never been a fan of nerfing classes, just my personal preference. I think warlocks were nerfed too much, and that many spells might have been too. It could be a balance issue, (granted I play mostly on elite or r1), but it seems to me that even the trash mobs are more or less resistant or immune to most things higher on up now days. Though I am comparing it to years ago when rainbow in the dark was a high end leveling quest. . .and finger of death was still semi useful if you could get your dc's high enough, now everything is basically immune to it, so there's little point.
I do think fighters and such should be able to get the 3.5 devastating crit though in epic levels, I think that would semi-balance the field some, so long as the death block on everything didn't stop it.
 

Br4d

Well-known member
DDO is a game of XP/min for the majority of the players who play the game regularly.

Nothing else really matters for that particular class of player. Anything that reduces XP/min is likely to meet resistance from the majority of the paying customers and then if it is not resolved in "the customer is always right" fashion likely to reduce the number of paying customers.

Just food for thought.
 

saekee

long live ROGUE
how about some algorithm that calculates conquest based on aggroed or activated monsters? Some mobs do not activate in some situations (this is often a stealthplay result, like sneaking by dormant earth elementals) but I am sure there are other examples. Anyway if you make it a formula that takes into account on non-aggroed, unactive mobs vs otherwise, and those slain vs left wandering about, that might be better than setting up straight kill numbers for quests
 

Dendrix Deathblade

Well-known member
Moving the 1st time bonus to conquest penalizes players who are levelling in heroics.

You do the dungeon once at the highest difficulty you can and then move on to other dungeons in the same level range, you do not run the same heroic dungeon multiple times. You only run the same dungeon multiple times in heroic if you are farming certain loot items and then the XP is irrelevant.

Running more different content keeps the game fun. 1st time bonus is a good thing.

Optional XP in quests is rubbish. In fact doesn't optional XP decrease every time you run the dungeon and now never recover? Going through the optionals to get the conquest multiple times leads to less XP each time you do the dungeon overall until optional is 0 and you are then just running that to get conquest.

Far too many dungeons don't have sensible Conquest numbers set in them as shown by the many reports people have made in this thread, some are in fact impossible to achieve without re-spawning mobs and others cannot be achieved at all.
Danger at Dunwater, a level 3 mission requires 166 monsters to be killed for Aggression currently. Level 3, 166 monsters. Seriously?
 

PraetorPlato

Well-known member
wail of banshee and finger of death are pretty much useless after heroics. Wail is meant to be a top tier aoe spell, but it's more like a fart in the wind currently, there's absolutely no point in taking it as it is now.
Of course, d&d was also based on the premise of spells per day, but we have mana, i.e. casters are stronger as a result, which is probably why mp potions are mainly in the cash shop and can't be made and rarely found. But, my dual bastardsword wielder with whirl wind can usually do more damage than my wizard aoe spells. . .going to try sorc when I get back to heroic reincarnations and see if there is that much more of a difference in damage with spells compared to wizard.
I've never been a fan of nerfing classes, just my personal preference. I think warlocks were nerfed too much, and that many spells might have been too. It could be a balance issue, (granted I play mostly on elite or r1), but it seems to me that even the trash mobs are more or less resistant or immune to most things higher on up now days. Though I am comparing it to years ago when rainbow in the dark was a high end leveling quest. . .and finger of death was still semi useful if you could get your dc's high enough, now everything is basically immune to it, so there's little point.
I do think fighters and such should be able to get the 3.5 devastating crit though in epic levels, I think that would semi-balance the field some, so long as the death block on everything didn't stop it.
Wail and finger are def not useless—along with trap the soul and weird, those spells are the most efficient way to kill trash at cap.
 

Aelonwy

Well-known member
Hard cap the number of targets AoE spells hit. If an AoE only hits 4-6 targets, it will make no sense to herd 20-30 mobs together and it will make more sense to kill a pack at a time.
I'd be okay with this so long as the hard cap is at least 6. Too many dungeons such as slavers and Toee have groups of 9 to 12 mobs on elite and above. Maybe stop exponentially increasing mob group size as difficulty and player group size increases too?! Couldn't hurt to ask. Other issue with those type dungeons is mob groups are sometimes so close together you can't fight one without alerting another. I guess my complaint has more to do with poor dungeon design than a hard cap on spell targets but one will affect the other.
 

rabidfox

The People's Champion
Wail and finger are def not useless—along with trap the soul and weird, those spells are the most efficient way to kill trash at cap.
It comes down to difficulty. If people run at setting where damage works well then they'll think insta-kills are meh and that nukers are gods; if they run at skulls where damage falls off then they'll love insta-kills and wonder why SSG doesn't like nukers.
 

ChaoticDrivel

Well-known member
We've had a lot of great feedback in this thread, but one thing that we haven't seen a lot of feedback on is suggestions to get players back to the XP/minute and general questing speed that was taking place prior to Update 59. We have seen a very significant increase in general speed of play since our recent lag reduction work, and as players have noticed, it's causing issues regarding game performance. Some of the goal here is to get players back to the pace they were prior to those recent changes. So, just to ask: How would you reduce player speed as it were to pre-Update 59 levels?


Whoa there partner! I've seen you(and a few folks) peddle this idea that lag was fixed, or significantly remedied. I can safely say that, in my own experience, this certainly isn't true. Some of the lag I've experienced post-U59 is up there with the worst I've ever had in DDO's history. And that's saying something. This Hardcore season was also the worst for performance that I've had. I know I'm not the only one. You can, with diligence, find numerous examples on the forums, Reddit, Discord, Twitch streams, and from the chatter in game that affirms this. For the record - my internet and PC is performing just peachy elsewhere. It may be that it indeed got better, for some people. And I have, in fact, noticed multiple times since the update, that not everyone in the party is experiencing the same debilitating lag, at the same time. But make no mistake - it's not gone anywhere. And this latest attempt to fix it - while diluting the game once more(see doublestrike, imbue changes), as well as its playing experience - is frustrating , to put it mildly.

Similarly, you seem to have arrived at this conclusion that players are suddenly completing dungeons at a much more rapid pace than before. Even "hyperzerging" post U59. Once again - I just don't see it. I've not personally changed anything about the way I play. Nor have I seen anyone I've grouped up with do anything different to how they were playing before. I would encourage other players to share their own perspective on this.

I don't doubt that you guys are looking into the lag - as well as this anomaly - and possibly found some data that would lead you to these conclusions. It may just be the methods of collating and interpreting the data are misguided. Or that there is some other explanation. For example - it may be that the changes to out-of-combat healing in Reaper, are having a large impact. I was against that change, and I can get into why. Though for now, I would be content, were it to be reverted.

What's particularly bemusing, though, is that you are suggesting that lag was bad>then mended>now bad again, because of player's actions. It's hard to follow this logic, I must admit. Respectfully - what did you fix, in the end, if the performance took a massive nose-dive from players just doing the same things they have for years? I think some more transparency and specifics would be welcome in trying to diagnose the game performance and completion times.

Don't want to come across as merely a naysayer, and nothing more - so I will post possible solutions in the updated thread. Thank you.
 

T.O.

Well-known member
Sorry computer glitched at worst moment so no screenshot -- but four mobs located at the mini-boss in the right side alcove on the way towards the breakables hole respawn infinitely, and I just got conquest in VoN3 heroic elite. Had to kill them 6 or 7 times for it. NOT a good use of one's XP/min time, looks like they respawn after 5 minutes or so, but it is achievable if you force it.
So 45 mins to conquest? Not something I would be doing. Thank you for your time
 
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