U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

[mechlordog]

I enjoyed playing through adventures at Normal -> Hard -> Elite in sequence, even if Normal and Hard were a bit too easy for me. The first-time bonus still made them worthwhile without being "efficient" about the Bravery bonus. Since many quests don't give Conquest bonus when played without exhaustively clearing all optional areas (and/or optional OBJs), this feels like a straightforward nerf to my XP across the board.

 

[Natashaelle]

They do respawn but it is still not enough to get conquest.

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.

 

[PaleFox]

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.

I always thought it was a triggered event by running over some invisible threshold.

So running back and forth could speed things up?

 

[Ned_Ellis]

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?

Well lag reduction per se will increase overall speed even though I doubt to the level you are describing!
However I think the main challenge here is finding a balance between Devs (slowing our time in quests) Vs. Players (not slowing down the tr process) and the only way I can come up with is immensely buffing optionals. Tying kills to xp is, bar some specific quests, not a good fix at all; we want alternative ways to interact with the content (stealth, skills, etc), not to tie progress exclusively to killing!

Optionals generally involve lengthening travel through the quests hence lengthening the time of completion but the xp/min crowd (actually we all are, just to varying degrees!) will never take to this unless xp and, as someone else mentioned, possibly loot incentives were tied to these objectives.
However, even this might not be a good fix since if I've understood, the problem isn't the 'time in quest' but the 'mobs active in quest not being killed' and for this, instead of asking the players to mop up, a change in mob behaviour is the only way to do it (eg : mobs have guard duty and mustn't leave an area to chase after players and hence go passive, instead of a pack of 10 replace with one red and 2 henchmen, etc.).

The other alternatives like reducing player power, striding bonuses, etc. I truly hope are not being considered! Rather, in future content have encounters with longer interactions (not hp bags but things like the steal idea - love it!) but appropriate xp rewards. Any attempt to delay our progress will be the hair that breaks n.x camels' backs, it is already excessive...

 

[Scrag]

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, this is an interesting, off to the side observation. Trapping works only if the number of traps in the quest stays constant. The quest with the hag surrounded by traps is an example. You disarm the first (5?), and get ingenious. But then she "dies", the traps respawn, and you are back to no experience for the traps until you disarm the next set of fife. Rinse, repeat.

If you miss one or more traps in an earlier phase, thats it, you dont get ingenious. Maybe not even 20%. Pretty absurd.

 

[amsharkwei]

I'm a rigue player.I don't like kills.Add some EXP for rogue like players.like:
Sneak throuth some area without been spotted gives 30%base EXP.
Pick up some key/rune/crest/items without been spotted gives 30%base EXP.
Pull some lever without been spotted gives 30%base EXP.

 

[Natashaelle]

I always thought it was a triggered event by running over some invisible threshold.

So running back and forth could speed things up?

No, they just respawn. I suppose running about helps pass the time ... otherwise it's sit still and kill 4 mobs every 5 minutes for about 30 minutes to get conq.

 

[Dandonk]

No, they just respawn. I suppose running about helps pass the time ... otherwise it's sit still and kill 4 mobs every 5 minutes for about 30 minutes to get conq.

This seems like a fun change!

Maybe they can add watching paint dry in the new miniexpansion? That would be awesomesauce.

 

[Natashaelle]

This seems like a fun change!

Maybe they can add watching paint dry in the new miniexpansion? That would be awesomesauce.

That run was on G-Land -- but yep, if this change goes live as is, VoN3 conq in heroic non-Reaper works like that. I had such amazing fun !!

 

[Dandonk]

That run was on G-Land -- but yep, if this change goes live as is, VoN3 conq in heroic non-Reaper works like that. I had such amazing fun !!

Can we combine this with escorting the old-style Coyle somehow? Oh, such great fun this could be!

 

[Natashaelle]

Can we combine this with escorting the old-style Coyle somehow? Oh, such great fun this could be!

They could add "smash all breakables" as a required objective in many more quests. And escort lost Hounds to the quest entrance while protecting Coyle from them ...

 

[Dandonk]

They could add "smash all breakables" as a required objective in many more quests. And escort lost Hounds to the quest entrance while protecting Coyle from them ...

Such good ideas here

 

[Neain]

Here is some more food for thought. If every group of mobs is full of monsters that take multiple AOE spells to kill (or if we know we don't have the SP/HP for engaging each and every group...) then that ALSO incentivizes bringing multiple groups together so that a few things happen. not all the mobs can get to you because there are just. so. many. mobs. that they can't all reach you and now you can hit them all but only a portion of them can hit you. also, you are probably safe from that carnage or champ, and every spell or cleave used now gets more value than it did if you tried it on every group.

And thats not even getting into the issue that the game seems to be DESIGNED to require AOE despite the changes to some things to take away their AOE (sonic blast, making IPS weaker, etc.). AOE is king, not because we wouldn't enjoy doing something different, but because there are so many mobs in the way going from point A to B. Maybe make some tougher mobs that don't let you pass if aggroed? (But if not aggroed, don't stop you from progressing. You know, so that we can try to stealth?)

 

[NightHiker]

On all worlds. It is both a significant increase in completion speed in addition to a larger pool of players achieving these speeds. It is essentially why, after the recent lag work, the community has been seeing increased lag, as the speed has pushed to the point that things have become somewhat untenable. That was one of the main reasons why the suggestion to move first-time XP to the Conquest system was tried; it allows players to earn more XP in general since they can get that bonus XP every time they run the quest rather than just the first time, but also discourages some amount of the hyperzerging that had been taking place. We recognized that it would impact people's XP/minute calculations, but the hope was to find a solution that both encouraged exploration and offered generally more XP with an acceptable level of slowdown of player speed. For players who wished to continue at their current pace they still could, although they might need to run a few additional quests per level, but others might be encouraged to take advantage of these new bonuses.

Sorry, I'm getting a bit late to the discussion. I see some ambiguity in your replies that I think needs some further clarification.

Aside from mentioning "zerging without killing aggroed mobs" as one of the reasons for lag, you have also both mentioned "lower completion times" as a burden on server performance and asked for suggestions on how to get the "higher xp/minute ratio" back down. Those are two quite different things, though, that require different problem solving. You can increase the completion times without messing with the xp/minute ratio, for example.

So which is the issue? Completion times, xp/minute ratio, or both?

Cheers!

 

[Monkey_Archer]

Sorry, I'm getting a bit late to the discussion. I see some ambiguity in your replies that I think needs some further clarification.

Aside from mentioning "zerging without killing aggroed mobs" as one of the reasons for lag, you have also both mentioned "lower completion times" as a burden on server performance and asked for suggestions on how to get the "higher xp/minute ratio" back down. Those are two quite different things, though, that require different problem solving. You can increase the completion times without messing with the xp/minute ratio, for example.

So which is the issue? Completion times, xp/minute ratio, or both?

Cheers!

If they really wanted us to "slow down and stop zerging" then they'd just release R11+ like we've been asking for years now. Maybe the game is just to easy?

 

[Zretch]

Here is some more food for thought. If every group of mobs is full of monsters that take multiple AOE spells to kill (or if we know we don't have the SP/HP for engaging each and every group...) then that ALSO incentivizes bringing multiple groups together so that a few things happen. not all the mobs can get to you because there are just. so. many. mobs. that they can't all reach you and now you can hit them all but only a portion of them can hit you. also, you are probably safe from that carnage or champ, and every spell or cleave used now gets more value than it did if you tried it on every group.

And thats not even getting into the issue that the game seems to be DESIGNED to require AOE despite the changes to some things to take away their AOE (sonic blast, making IPS weaker, etc.). AOE is king, not because we wouldn't enjoy doing something different, but because there are so many mobs in the way going from point A to B. Maybe make some tougher mobs that don't let you pass if aggroed? (But if not aggroed, don't stop you from progressing. You know, so that we can try to stealth?)

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....

 

[Drunken.dx]

SSG you are aware this nerf will NOT force players to chase conquest but promote zerging through as much different questsbas needed for level up.

Let's use me as example.

I don't zerg, I don't chase conquest unless it's easy to do, i do 90% of optionals. (those optionals hurt my xp/min severely)

My main on her last heroic leveling skipped most of content and still was over leveled most of the time.

If players did not have pool of quest to do this idea might, just might pass.

I hate zerging but I'd rather zerg 3 different quests for same xp as chasing conquest in one of them.

 

[Putti]

To get back to the topic of incentivizing people to kill mobs -- each mob killed provides some small XP reward, as is the case in LOTRO and other MMOs ?

I think then you risk the new meta becoming semi-AFK farming of mobs instead of actually completing dungeons.

 

[Dandonk]

I think then you risk the new meta becoming semi-AFK farming of mobs instead of actually completing dungeons.

Auralocks ftw, yes.

 

[Findael]

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?

As several people have mentioned any global increase in questing speed is most likely due to removing the healing penalty out of combat in reaper. Changes made to burrowing or phasing critters in U57 may also contribute to faster completion times.

The proposed changes don't really address the underlying issues. If you want killing monsters to be important, get rid of experience for quest completions and award xp for every mob killed. If the issue is lag and lag is worsened by players zerging, cut the number of mobs in half and double or triple their hit points. Zergers will still zerg, but fewer calculations would place less stress on the servers. If profit is the motivation and the goal is simply to sell more xp pots, find a different way. Sell xp stones separately from Ottos boxes for 1995-2995 points. Add alternate advancement abilities a la Everquest and award alt advancement xp for conquest. There are ways to achieve any of these aims without massively annoying your player base.

Personally, I've got just shy of 250 past lives spread over three toons and I've been toying with the notion of running up a second and third racial completionist. There's no way in hell I'll go through another life with the proposed changes.