U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

[Alco]

How about those you CANT get conquest bonus? Like haverdasher.

Why bother? This is a very short, low level quest. What would conquest add? 200 XP? Haverdasher is run for House K favor, not XP.

 

[Chai]

Xp/min nerf on the way people currently run TRs, but...

It puts quest daily farming back on the menu. If players like the same 3-5 quests in a specific level range they could run those for that entire level range, 1-2x/day.

 

[JangoEX]

Yeah... don't like that. A bonus becoming even more mandatory and convoluted and weird.

And the list of quests to run in order to level becomes even shorter. Can't or it's a hassle to get conquest? Don't bother running.

 

[Jummby]

Yep! We are reading, and looking at these dungeons that people are posting about.

So when we started looking at this we knew we'd have some "but I don't get conquest in this dungeon" problems. I eluded to this with Castle Ravenloft and the Vault of Night Dragon quests which have had their conquest thresholds adjusted in this build. We hoped these would be a few dozen outliers we could just fix.

We didn't expect not getting conquest to be presented as "really common" in general. If no conquest bonus is more of the rule than the exception this plan will not do! Us devs tend to ramble out into the optional wings when we play I guess....

Clarify a few things...

1> Our lag problems are less about fighting monsters, then running from monsters and leaving them far behind. The bottle neck is in the path system doing long paths as the player gets far away. Ergo, not wanting to be bothered with the monsters at all feeds into that.

2> As has been pointed out this plan was all stick and no carrot. We are looking at some combination of making conquest thresholds more forgiving and/or upping the conquest/onslaught/aggression bonuses a bit further as some have suggested. We also may punt until we can do more elaborate incentive systems instead.

2> We really want killing monsters to be a worth awhile activity. I understand some folks have perfected some play patterns that avoid such a thing, and we don't really want to impact your fun, but we do want the conquest option to have a certain attraction as well because so much of our systems and content do focus on combat. In a perfect world these both would be perceived as equally valid options. In our current world we feel that killing monsters has dropped a little lower in the play patterns than is probably wise.

4> Specifics are very helpful in regards to the conquest bonus issues! Dungeons you typically play, how you play them, and what level of conquest you get, how many kills, etc. What Optional are worth while? How you make the choices you do?

-T

Since it takes longer to run quests and pots aren't as effective, will they have longer durations or be less at the store?

I am guessing no...

 

[Titus Ovid]

snip

1> Our lag problems are less about fighting monsters, then running from monsters and leaving them far behind. The bottle neck is in the path system doing long paths as the player gets far away. Ergo, not wanting to be bothered with the monsters at all feeds into that.

2> As has been pointed out this plan was all stick and no carrot. We are looking at some combination of making conquest thresholds more forgiving and/or upping the conquest/onslaught/aggression bonuses a bit further as some have suggested. We also may punt until we can do more elaborate incentive systems instead.

2> We really want killing monsters to be a worth awhile activity. I understand some folks have perfected some play patterns that avoid such a thing, and we don't really want to impact your fun, but we do want the conquest option to have a certain attraction as well because so much of our systems and content do focus on combat. In a perfect world these both would be perceived as equally valid options. In our current world we feel that killing monsters has dropped a little lower in the play patterns than is probably wise.

4> Specifics are very helpful in regards to the conquest bonus issues! Dungeons you typically play, how you play them, and what level of conquest you get, how many kills, etc. What Optional are worth while? How you make the choices you do?

-T

I still don't get this. Why not tie xp to DA instead of kills?

1) There shouldn't be any strain on the system, If we don't aggro monsters that we don't need to, right?! Presuming the system runs that way. If not, that would be a point of improvement.
2) And if we aggro monsters, we need to kill them in order to prevent the strain.

So why xp boost a system with more combat than necessary?
Tie the xp to DA. If there is no DA and no strain, we get a bonus. If we get red or orange because we activated mobs and therefore put strain on the system, we get a malus on xp.

This whole Dungeon Alert thing is only a good solution, if you make sure that it works correctly. Especially in multi-level dungeons like castle Ravenloft and Inferno. Is that possible at all? Inferno still has problems, iirc.

If the motive for the xp changes is, it is too confusing for new or returning people, well then explain it better. There is no explanation in the game itself about how xp works or reaper or whatever, iirc. Make a tutorial, explain it so that people get it. Place a billboard in the marketplace for all I care.
You are wondering why people don't understand certain things. Because they are not explained ingame. It is that simple.
Binding xp to conquest is the easy way out, imo. It might help shortterm but it changes the game and playstyle on a fundamental level that is not necessary or wanted.

At least don't go on a feeling but numbers (#3). Because characters are more powerful today than ever. I really doubt, that there is less killing going on. Maybe with more finesse but there is enough carnage all over every game difficulty.

Cheers,
Titus.

 

[KylerrTheMajty]

Are you going to add stamina bars so we can all enjoy these awesome changes equally cuz right now

Almost pointless to play anything but a melee

Sarcasm? Or such a lie...

 

[Zaszgul]

Yep! We are reading, and looking at these dungeons that people are posting about.

So when we started looking at this we knew we'd have some "but I don't get conquest in this dungeon" problems. I eluded to this with Castle Ravenloft and the Vault of Night Dragon quests which have had their conquest thresholds adjusted in this build. We hoped these would be a few dozen outliers we could just fix.

We didn't expect not getting conquest to be presented as "really common" in general. If no conquest bonus is more of the rule than the exception this plan will not do! Us devs tend to ramble out into the optional wings when we play I guess....

Clarify a few things...

1> Our lag problems are less about fighting monsters, then running from monsters and leaving them far behind. The bottle neck is in the path system doing long paths as the player gets far away. Ergo, not wanting to be bothered with the monsters at all feeds into that.

2> As has been pointed out this plan was all stick and no carrot. We are looking at some combination of making conquest thresholds more forgiving and/or upping the conquest/onslaught/aggression bonuses a bit further as some have suggested. We also may punt until we can do more elaborate incentive systems instead.

2> We really want killing monsters to be a worth awhile activity. I understand some folks have perfected some play patterns that avoid such a thing, and we don't really want to impact your fun, but we do want the conquest option to have a certain attraction as well because so much of our systems and content do focus on combat. In a perfect world these both would be perceived as equally valid options. In our current world we feel that killing monsters has dropped a little lower in the play patterns than is probably wise.

4> Specifics are very helpful in regards to the conquest bonus issues! Dungeons you typically play, how you play them, and what level of conquest you get, how many kills, etc. What Optional are worth while? How you make the choices you do?

-T

Please just leave Bravery and First Time bonuses as they are. People are used to them, they know how they work and have built playstyles and habits around them, and they serve their functions well.

You can simply just buff up Conquest bonus. Don't touch Aggression or Onslaught. Yes, this will result in more total xp for the people who clear entire dungeons, but it won't impact the xp/min of power players/zergers (because as you have read in this thread - we almost never, ever see Conquest).

The OP was very focused on trying to keep total xp the same, but xp/min of the power players is all you really need to maintain parity with. The flower sniffers aiming for Conquest in every quest have always gotten very poor xp/min compared to the power players; you can easily afford to just give them more xp without upsetting any important balance or metas or fiscal concerns, or alienating large portions of the playerbase.

If you're serious about "offering the carrot instead of the stick" then all you need to do is buff conquest (and again, do NOT buff Aggression or Onslaught, because xp/min'ers DO get those), and see if that converts some zergers into flower sniffers. It's much simpler for everyone involved, and, well, it's just a nice thing to do because "going for conquest" has always been a poor meta strategy. That's your path to achieve a neutral or net positive outcome for you and all of us, the players.

And you can always reassess later. Just start by dipping your toe into the simplest thing -- a buff to conquest and no change to anything else.

 

[droid327]

2> We really want killing monsters to be a worth awhile activity. I understand some folks have perfected some play patterns that avoid such a thing, and we don't really want to impact your fun, but we do want the conquest option to have a certain attraction as well because so much of our systems and content do focus on combat. In a perfect world these both would be perceived as equally valid options. In our current world we feel that killing monsters has dropped a little lower in the play patterns than is probably wise.

4> Specifics are very helpful in regards to the conquest bonus issues! Dungeons you typically play, how you play them, and what level of conquest you get, how many kills, etc. What Optional are worth while? How you make the choices you do?

-T

I appreciate you presenting ideas like this at a point in the process where its still more hypothetical, and not "we already did all the work on this so its going to happen even if everyone is saying its a bad idea". As you see here, getting widespread player feedback can help you identify a lot of issues before you waste valuable dev time barking up the wrong trees.

If you want killing monsters to be worthwhile, then give XP for killing monsters, ie directly after each kill. I really think its as simple as that.

I think I'm in the majority for how I play, too (at least among soloers)...I go for high-XP/min quests, and complete them as directly as possible. I dont zerg, I'll do a full clear as I go, so I'm not specifically the player you're targeting with these changes, but newer Expansion/Saga-associated quests are mainly what I run, since those tend to be the most efficient. The level of conquest I get is whatever I get for killing everything on the main path, but aside from the most linear dungeon crawls, that usually is only enough for Onslaught.

The only optionals that are worthwhile are the ones that you get automatically, or ones that just require a tiny detour and no extra fighting (like finding the rat in Grimm). If you're averaging 5k XP/min at a certain level, then that 2000 XP optional can take no longer than 24 seconds round trip. That's my primary motivation while leveling, because that's pretty much the only reward I'm interested in.

When playing at cap, of course, the motivation is RXP and loot. Optionals never help with the former, so that's a disincentive, but I'll do them occasionally for the latter - places like IoD where there's crafting mats in side chests, or WPM where you can get SXP and Filigrees from certain chests. Again, provided they're just a minor detour off the main road.

 

[Natashaelle]

So when we started looking at this we knew we'd have some "but I don't get conquest in this dungeon" problems. I eluded to this with Castle Ravenloft and the Vault of Night Dragon quests which have had their conquest thresholds adjusted in this build. We hoped these would be a few dozen outliers we could just fix.

A huge outlier is Sunrise -- even if you park yourself at the top of the endlessly respawning zombies ramp for 30 minutes or so, no slayer bonus.

Ruins of Berez, kill everything, nada.

Really, the slayer bonuses should be determined from what proportion of individual mobs in the quest end up dead ; not the current seemingly arbitrary pull-a-number-out-of-a-hat "system" ...

 

[Vlyxnol]

I havent taken the time to actually check every quest that I run and verify end rewards each time, but I would guess that I end up with Conquest in maybe 60-70% of quests.

I almost never do optionals, but basically kill every mob along the primary path of the quest every time. Optionals have long been ignored by the playerbase due to their general absence of reward. As time has gone on we have had more and more scaling bonuses to the XP of quests, such that the base XP of the quest barely resembles the final rewarded XP. Bravery, first time, conquest, ransack etc etc etc. The issue is that optionals have not gone along with this scaling since such bonuses do not apply to them and their reward is always just some small percentage of the base XP of the quest. This results in optionals almost never being worth pursuing unless they are almost automatic along the main path of the quest.

For example, it is of course, worthwhile getting the optionals for rescuing the prisoners in Spies in the House - these optionals are basically gimmes as they are seconds away from the path and consume almost no additional time for reasonably significant bonuses. As far as real true optionals where you go out of your way in a quest to obtain them, the only ones I can think of that are really worth doing are Wizking. And this is because there are many of them and they offer massive XP.

This is further exasperated by the fact that named items basically only drop out of end chests now.

I think if you want people to start doing the out of the way optionals again you need to significantly bump up their XP rewards and make named items drop out of the chests for the more out of the way optionals. This was experimented with a bit in Ravenloft in a few quests and I think it worked out really well, not sure why it was not done that way in the future.

On the XP front, I think unless you rework how XP for optionals work you will just have this issue again and again going forward. Maybe instead of just offering some percentage of the base XP of the quest they way it does right now, it adds a small amount to the base XP of the quest whereby instead of giving a small amount of immediate experience, it will add to the base XP which is then multiplied by all the obtained bonuses at the end of the quest.

 

[Natashaelle]

a: Have an XP penalty for Dungeon Alert itself.

Wheeee !!! And I can't see ANYONE using such a mechanism for trolling ...

 

[wolfdy]

Can we please get Elite and Reaper giving the same exp?

Reaper should be an optional challenge for those who wanted it, giving xp bonus makes TRing players "forced" into r1, which is a big barrier for new players

We all know you "can" play on elite, but on MMOs everyone usualy just go for the better option, and thats r1 atm

 

[Natashaelle]

Optionals have long been ignored by the playerbase due to their general absence of reward.

I'm generally a soloist, but I have seen during occasional grouping that players pursue the optionals more religiously in Legendary Isle of Dread for the crafting materials.

i.e. carrots ...

If typical optional chests contained more than just the usual vendor trash more players might make the effort. Not the zergers -- but maybe some more of the others.

 

[Ahpuch]

...

If typical optional chests contained more than just the usual vendor trash more players might make the effort. Not the zergers -- but maybe some more of the others.

Every chest in a quest should be able to drop the named loot. If optional chests don't have their own unique loot (like WPM) then maybe optionals drop it at 25% of the regular rate but something to justify the effort.

 

[Xandrah]

Overall, this feels like such an intentional money grab, it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve been looking for something (hell, anything) from SSG to justify renewing my VIP when it expires. This update not only does just the opposite, it makes me want to curtail ALL my spending on this game.

Not joking when I say that the last time I felt as disgusted was the day I quit smoking cold turkey (and for good) after 30 years.

I do appreciate the devs speaking up and adding in their reasoning for the changes, but bottom line this just looks bad. I would also reconsider spending any sort of real life money further on the game if the answer to lag and undesired behavior from players is punitive in nature.

Don't bother going live with the xp changes until other known issues get fixed, please.

 

[rabidfox]

Every chest in a quest should be able to drop the named loot. If optional chests they don't have their own unique loot (like WPM) then maybe optionals drop it at 25% of the regular rate but something to justify the effort.

Could put chances for sentient XP and regular XP stones (same type stones we get from daily rolls) in all optional chests.

 

[Xandrah]

Seriously, do you just troll every thread? You seem to hate the idea of anyone spending money or their in-game earned DDO points on things that are for a style of play you don't like and want them to be punished with higher costs.

I was wondering if it was just me, but yes it seems there is one in every group.

 

[Ahpuch]

Could put chances for sentient XP and regular XP stones (same type stones we get from daily rolls) in all optional chests.

That would work as well. It keeps us running the optionals in SaltMarsh and WPM. The mats in IoD also work as well as the FeyTwisted in Feywild. The mats in Sharn don't do much any more so it seems that basing it just on mats has limited appeal.

 

[Cordovan]

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?

 

[Zaszgul]

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?

More information required.

Is this on HC or the live servers?

Are you seeing new record time completions, or just a higher percentage of players going for max efficiency? (i.e., the low end for time completions is the same as always, but it has become a more common case thus changing the average?)

Nothing has changed for me, personally.