U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

[Nissebror]

The Objective is to make players to kill all monsters that they agro, So why not only have ONE kill bonus Aggression bonus = 75% exp bonus and make the number of kill needed for Aggression = number of mobs along the fast way through a dungeon

 

[Lotoc]

If these changes go live, as there are currently suggested, and the "rest of the population" as you so simply put it, find out that leveling will now take 3-4 times longer, how well do you think they will react? I will agree that there are multiple play styles in DDO, however hitting everyone that doesn't play the way the Devs want you to, with an exp hit is wrong.

I hated leveling when my character was new as it took a long time to advance. It took the joy out of playing for me, but I struggled through with it, because I knew it would make my character better. Now that my character is a good one, having to go back to a system of leveling where i have to spend more time to level is frustrating. I fail to see why the players are being penalized because the system can't handle the DA that the DEV team put in place.

The Dungeon alert system was put into place to slow players down, it did briefly, until players learned how to manage it. Now the DEV team is telling us that the DA system is causing lag, so to fix that they will penalize the players by making everyone have to spend more time in the quest to get the same exp you can get now. Do you honestly think that all the players who zerg are going to simply stop? No, they are now just going to have to zerg more quests to get the same exp as before. This doesn't fix anything.

If I run a quest that can be done in a short run in about 2 min, or a long run in about 10, then I will do it the short way, and run it twice. The XP changes to reduce lag wont actually reduce lag, they just reduce the exp players get. Someone years ago wrote on the forums that "DDO isn't about exploration its about memorization." Players learned what rooms you have to go in to meet the quest objectives, and which rooms you didn't have to go into.

If there is a "pathing issue" with the DA system, fix it. To suggest that all player play as if they were a 1st life character is insane.

It doesn't help the issue or the discussion to willfully misinterpret and misrepresent the issue.
Dungeon alert itself is not what causes performance issues.
Dungeon alert exists to dissuade having enough enemies active that it causes server issues trying to calculate each monster's pathing around each other.

This whole "dungeon alert is the problem" thing is like blaming speed bumps for car crashes.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

We are doing some updates to the XP system to increase incentives for killing monsters, and to make it a little less confusing. This all ties into a series of changes to make running past large numbers of encounters a less desirable behavior because of what it does to our servers due to pathing costs.

Changes:

1. Bravery Bonus is being renamed Delving Bonus. (this is mostly so people coming back to the game don't still think they need to worry about streaks, which came up a bit when we tried to talk about this to our surprise....).​

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2. The "First Time" bonus that appears per difficulty is being removed and its value is being absorbed into Conquest and the Delving bonus. It was redundant, a bit confusing and we need the numbers elsewhere.​

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Details Below:​

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First Time bonus Changes - These bonus are being absorbed by other bonus types.

Difficulty	XP Bonus	In New System
Solo, Casual, Normal, Hard	20%	Move to Conquest
Elite	45%	Move to Conquest
Reaper*	95%	Move to Conquest & new Bravery aka Delving tier

DELVING = BRAVERY BONUS

Increase Delving Bonus by adding a Reaper Tier

New Delving Bonus 50% on Reaper so...

Hard 50% Bonus

Elite 100% Bonus

Reaper 150% Bonus

Uses the same logic as bravery bonus did before meaning if you play on hard then elite you'll only get a 50% bonus for reaper, or if you JUST played on hard and then reaper the bonus would be 100%. Playing reaper from the get go would be 150%.

Conquest Updates - Conquest bonus now scales with difficulty some and is a larger bonus.

Note: We will be doing a pass to address certain dungeons that have usual configurations that make getting these bonuses perhaps more difficult than they should be. We are still working on the details but Castle Ravenloft and the Vault of Night Dragon Raid are some examples.

Normal Difficulty:

• +10% Aggression bonus
• +15% Onslaught bonus
• +45% **Conquest** bonus

Hard Difficulty:

• +15% Aggression bonus
• +25% Onslaught bonus
• +50% **Conquest** bonus

Elite Difficulty:

• +25% Aggression bonus
• +50% Onslaught bonus
• +70% **Conquest** bonus

Reaper Difficulty:

• +25% Aggression bonus
• +50% Onslaught bonus
• +70% **Conquest** bonus

This change is Net neutral except for a very slight boost in hard.

TOTAL BONUS COMPARISON:

NORMAL	old	new	HARD	old	new	ELITE	old	new	Reaper	old	new
conquest	25	45		25	50		25	70		25	70
1st time	20	0		20	0		45	0		95	0
Bravery	0	0		50	50		100	100		100	150
Ransack	15	15		15	15		15	15		15	15
Tome of Learning	50	50		50	50		50	50		50	50
Tamper	10	10		10	10		10	10		10	10
Observance	8	8		8	8		8	8		8	8
Total	128	128		178	183		253	253		303	303

TOTAL BONUS COMPARISON REPEAT PLAYS: The increased conquest bonus does increase replay XP but a fresh quest is still X2-3 the bonuses, so this shouldn't really be a problem.

	Normal old	Normal new	HARD	old	new	ELITE	old	new	Reaper	old	new
conquest	25	45		25	50		25	70		25	70
1st time	0	0		0	0		0	0		0	0
Bravery	0	0		0	0		0	0		0	0
Ransack	15	15		15	15		15	15		15	15
Tome of Learning	0	0		0	0		0	0		0	0
Tamper	10	10		10	10		10	10		10	10
Observance	8	8		8	8		8	8		8	8
Total	58	78		58	83		58	103		58	103

I know this isn't a super exciting change because we're basically just trying to encourage most players to do what their already doing, but monsters are a major component of the game play in how time is spent, and our reward structure should reflect that so completely avoiding them doesn't seem as attractive and becomes a less common practice.​

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Note On Stealth - It is its own subset of game play and one that doesn't actually hit our perf problems. We would like to eventually get to some "stealth" game play bonuses to offset the Conquest adjustments but we want to do stuff that isn't exclusive from killing monsters or about just about walking through the quest without engaging anything. We're thinking about Assassinate bonuses (not the enhancement per say but just killing a mob from behind before it aggros on you), never triggering dungeon alert or maybe we'll even introduce picking pockets (but I warn you most monsters are full of pocket lint with the occasional rubber ducky, or a ring of power, that thing is sooo cursed). These things won't make it into this pass though as we'd probably want to do a focused pass on stealth and fix a lot of other rough edges while were at it.​

Some very significant changes here with the following likely impacts:

1) Sitting at cap and running daily quests for rxp will be super rewarding as first-time bonuses were a huge part of the equation and now you can litterally get those every time you repeat a quest.
2) Optionals are likely much more rewarding as it frequently involves killing more enemies.
3) Sitting at cap will be a much more viable approach as earning rxp will be both faster and more rewarding than earning past lifes. This is potentially beneficial for casual and newer players that don't like he grind. It's a great catch-up mechanism even if by accident but will further the requests for higher reaper point tiers.
4) Some quests don't have high monster kill tiers such as Haverdasher and even Lords of Dust. Those quests are effectively getting an xp and rxp nerf.

Will delving count towards reaper xp?

From an rxp perspective the change is not net neutral since part of first-time bonuses were moved to delving. If delving is included in rxp it will be more rxp for your first time. If it's not included it will be less rxp for your first run.

For subsequent runs it will always be more rxp as far as I can tell.

In other words if you TR and run quests only once it's always going to be a net rxp loss if delving isn't included in rxp.

 

[TeamScorpioRI]

As others have already pointed out, this is only a net neutral change if you acquire Conquest. Overall it is a fairly large nerf.

Here's the table in the first post, but let's remove the bonuses that aren't changing since they're unnecessary when looking at the net difference:

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	Normal Old​	Normal New​	Hard Old​	Hard New​	Elite Old​	Elite New​	Reaper Old​	Reaper New​
Conquest​	25​	45​	25​	50​	25​	70​	25​	70​
1st Time​	20​	0​	20​	0​	45​	0​	95​	0​
Bravery/Delving​	0​	0​	50​	50​	100​	100​	100​	150​
Total​	45​	45​	95​	100​	170​	170​	220​	220​

Difference between Old and New when getting Conquest:

• Normal: +0%
• Hard: +5%
• Elite: +0%
• Reaper: +0%

This is the net neutral change shown in the first post, but we should also do it for when we don't get Conquest for comparison. Let's condense the above table by grouping the difference of the 1st Time Bonus and Bravery Bonus with the Delving Bonus. So before on Hard there is +20% 1st Time and +50% Bravery and after on Hard there is +50% Delving, for a net difference of -20%. I'll put this as -20 Delving in the Table below, with the appropriate value for each difficulty.

	Normal	Hard	Elite	Reaper
Conquest​	+45 New -25 Old -20 Delving = +0% Net difference	+50 New -25 Old -20 Delving = +5% Net difference	+70 New -25 Old -45 Delving = +0% Net difference	+70 New -25 Old -45 Delving = +0% Net difference
Onslaught​	+15 New -15 Old -20 Delving = -20% Net difference	+25 New -15 Old -20 Delving = -10% Net difference	+50 New -15 Old -45 Delving = -10% Net difference	+50 New -15 Old -45 Delving = -10% Net difference
Aggression​	+10 New -10 Old -20 Delving = -20% Net difference	+15 New -10 Old -20 Delving = -15% Net difference	+25 New -10 Old -45 Delving = -30% Net difference	+25 New -10 Old -45 Delving = -30% Net difference
No Kill Bonus​	+0 New -0 Old -20 Delving = -20% Net difference	+0 New -0 Old -20 Delving = -20% Net difference	+0 New -0 Old -45 Delving = -45% Net difference	+0 New -0 Old -45 Delving = -45% Net difference

There's already a loss if you only get Onslaught, a large loss with Aggression, and a very severe loss with no kill bonus.



My suggestion for some number changes:

Delving Bonus on Hard: 50%
Delving Bonus on Elite: 125%
Delving Bonus on Reaper: 175%

Conquest (all difficulties): 50%
Onslaught (all difficulties): 35%
Aggression (all difficulties): 20%

This results in the following net differences:

	Normal	Hard	Elite	Reaper
Conquest:​	+5%	+5%	+5%	+5%
Onslaught:​	+0%	+0%	+0%	+0%
Aggression:​	-10%	-10%	-10%	-10%
No Kill Bonus:​	-20%	-20%	-20%	-20%

So a very slight buff for Conquest, neutral for Onslaught, small nerf for Aggression, moderate nerf for no kill bonuses. This also keeps the paradigm of bonuses being the same regardless of difficulty, so no extra complexity added.



Some additional thoughts:

The first problem I see is that incentivizing Conquest doesn't necessarily keep total active aggro down:
-The intended effect is that players will want to immediately kill all enemies they aggro, thus keeping aggro down.
-A possible side effect is that players actively seek out as many enemies as possible to kill. Doing this efficiently means things like grouping large numbers of enemies together for killing with AoE, or party members splitting up to clear different parts of dungeons, both of which lead to more simultaneous aggro.
This is why I feel this sort of incentivization should be left to Dungeon Alert.

If a pass is done to make Conquest easier to acquire than it is now, it should be thorough and exhaustive such that nearly all groups will acquire Conquest through normal game play. This seems like a significant amount of balance work rather than just tweaking a few outliers as the first post implies.

I do plan to get on Lamannia and test, but how, if at all, is this intended to affect reaper experience?
Currently RXP benefits from a 200% 1st Time Bonus and does not benefit from Bravery Bonus. Will this stay the same, or will the removal of the 1st Time Bonus also result in the removal of the 200% bonus? If the Delving Bonus is made to affect RXP, many quests that are used to level through Epics will now want to be avoided in order to not greatly reduce RXP when doing them at cap. Maybe instead of RXP benefiting from a 1st Time Bonus or Delving bonus, the formula for calculating base RXP could be modified to compensate?

I have a lot of other desires for the XP system in DDO. It'd be simpler for quests to have a single base experience value instead of different values for c/n/h/e. Instead there could be a fixed difficulty bonus for each difficulty. Then you could remove 1st Time Bonus/Bravery Bonus/Delving Bonus and increase the Daily Bonus to function more like a first time bonus (which would make back to back Epic Reincarnations less painful and would mean you wouldn't have to TR to reset RXP bonuses at cap). And we'd still have the quest Ransack Penalty discouraging running the same quest over and over, especially since you wouldn't be able to dodge the Ransack Penalty like we can now by running R->E->H->N->C for all the different 1st Time Bonuses.

I will add my vote to the "Do not like" category for this change. It is just not thought out enough. The above post by Gavaleus lays out the math and gives a good alternative to the system. If it was done like this, I would be happier with the change. Often times than not, conquest is a LOT of extra work. It should be a BONUS to clear out all the dungeon, not a requirement.

The argument that this is to "reduce lag" does not hold up either. Monsters who have not agro'd onto any player, and often are not anywhere near a player should not contribute to lag at all. Now you are asking us to actively seek out and engage these creatures. This, IMO, will only add to the lag (more combat = more calculations = more stress on the server = LAG).

Narc may be onto something. This seems more about slowing the player down so things like XP potions burn up quicker than anything to do with helping lag or rebalancing XP

 

[Eoin]

This is a good point. But also more basic. This proposal is going to shift the focus of the game from doing the objectives in a quest, to killing everything. From storytelling and multiple roads to success, to a much greater focus on just wiping out everything.... who cares what we're there for? We need to kill every living (sorry, have to be more inclusive: non- and unliving as well) thing because that's what heroic adventurers do. Wipe them out... all of them.

One quest that comes to mind is Blockade Buster. Where it is kind of fun trying to sneak onto the ships, set the charge, and get out. So instead of trying to 007 the quest, the game will now push us to swab the decks with blood. And if we are doing that, it makes more sense to sail the ships to port than scuttling them.

 

[Scrag]

Some very significant changes here with the following likely impacts:

1) Sitting at cap and running daily quests for rxp will be super rewarding as first-time bonuses were a huge part of the equation and now you can litterally get those every time you repeat a quest.
2) Optionals are likely much more rewarding as it frequently involves killing more enemies.
3) Sitting at cap will be a much more viable approach as earning rxp will be both faster and more rewarding than earning past lifes. This is potentially beneficial for casual and newer players that don't like he grind. It's a great catch-up mechanism even if by accident but will further the requests for higher reaper point tiers.
4) Some quests don't have high monster kill tiers such as Haverdasher and even Lords of Dust. Those quests are effectively getting an xp and rxp nerf.

Will delving count towards reaper xp?

I agree with 1, 2 only if the optionals don't take an inordinate amount of time, 3, do not know enough on 4.

Sitting at cap is already feeling like the de facto position. There are a lot of things I want to try, but unless there is a convenient way to bypass the early content, I am just not motivated. And even then (i JUST bought the tiefing bard iconic), its hard to pass up the work I put in to have a good feeling of fun that I am getting between 25 and 30, and really enjoying at 32 where my character feels complete.

 

[Dunspartacus]

I don't really have much to add that hasn't been said already but yeah this change just feels pretty bad. I like the idea of upping the rewards for going out of your way to do optionals/extra kills, but not if it punishes you for not doing those things. As most people have said getting conquest can add a lot of extra time to most quests and is straight up impossible in some.

 

[Jummby]

I agree with 1, 2 only if the optionals don't take an inordinate amount of time, 3, do not know enough on 4.

Sitting at cap is already feeling like the de facto position. There are a lot of things I want to try, but unless there is a convenient way to bypass the early content, I am just not motivated. And even then (i JUST bought the tiefing bard iconic), its hard to pass up the work I put in to have a good feeling of fun that I am getting between 25 and 30, and really enjoying at 32 where my character feels complete.

Thinking sitting at cap is going to be the way right now. I have 4 racials left on one of my alts and after that is done, I will just be cap toons if this goes through.

I think people will leave game for sure on this one sadly. It feels like they are punishing the player base to me over something that is broken on there end.

 

[Ying]

XP math aside, there's something fundamental the devs do not understand about the Conquest approach: Players hate quests were you can't advance unless you kill all mobs in a room. Most of Creeping Death is like that where doors remains locked until every mob is killed. Black and Blue has similar doors. The entirety of Just Business is like that, and many people *hate* that quest. It's especially aggravating when mobs spawn in a wall or position themselves somewhere they can't be killed, so you have to restart the quest. The Archon's Trial is like that, where mobs can jump behind a hallway portal where you can't attack them because you can't physically advance past the barrier. Just this week in Demon Assault during the last portal before the boss, I had a Hezrou teleport to a location where it couldn't be attacked. I had to restart the quest. And making me restart a quest due to no fault of my own is infuriating. So you're tapping into a player primal rage by forcing us to kill every mob to achieve Conquest. Do. Not. Want.

 

[Cashery]

Get rid of dungeon alert. Make the XP changes. Those who don't get conquest miss out on the bonus XP. Fixes lag (lag became a problem when DA was introduced to the game), and those who decide not to go for conquest can play how they want to play. Quicker quest completions from the zerg means they do more quests to make up for the xp loss.

Still haven't seen any comment from a DEV to see if the Reaper XP from R1 to R10 has changed as it was not mentioned in the opening post.

 

[popejubal]

Disappointed that this is going to result in less XP for most quests and that it's going to result in far less Reaper XP because the bonuses for conquest/trap disarming/etc. don't increase the RXP earned as far as I have seen.

Not happy with this change.

 

[dogonovo]

I play solo, on a potato PC, and take breaks/AFK in quests a lot due to personal stuff. I don't chase max XP per min, don't pay close attention to best XP spots, tactics, and go my merry way inside quests reading dialogue and killing 99% of the mobs I encounter. When I read about these changes I immediately canceled the auto renew for my VIP and I'll explain why.

As mentioned, in many quests you can't get the Conquest bonus at all, no matter what. And with the DA changes, I WILL run into Red Alerts caused by no actions of my own, apart from entering a quest/room.

That is two aspects of gameplay that are planned to be changed, with NO FIX IN SIGHT for insta-DA, or making Conquest possible in every quest.

If SSG had announced their intentions to make these changes AFTER working on these two issues (insta-DA and impossible Conquest) I could give the company and game design team the benefit of the doubt. Now, seeing those changes being previewed as they are, with the promise of future work to improve insta-DA, and rework quests to allow Conquest IN THE FUTURE, someday, somehow, feels very disrespectful.

What if it becomes the new Ladders (tm)? Or Ravager? Or many other systems that were left behind and never patched/reviewed/fixed?
What if those things can't even be fixed/changed in a way that is being promised (like we are told inventory issues can't be solved due to code, or even just the current DA discussion) because of technical/code limitations?

I play from a country with bad exchange rates so at least for my budget, something had to give when I returned to DDO and subbed. I love D&D and really like playing DDO, warts and all. It's not the XP loss, it's the message.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

Disappointed that this is going to result in less XP for most quests and that it's going to result in far less Reaper XP because the bonuses for conquest/trap disarming/etc. don't increase the RXP earned as far as I have seen.

Not happy with this change.

Currently all bonuses to xp except tome and bravery bonus apply to rxp. So with this change running a reaper quest will result in the following changes (assuming delving bonus doesn't count towards rxp which is uncertain).

First time reaper run:

-95% first-time bonus
+0-45% monster kills
Net result: -50-95% off of base rxp depending on number of monster kills

Subsequent runs:

+0-45% added to base rxp depending on number of monster kills

If delving is included in the rxp bonus it will always result in more rxp, but bravery bonus was not included in rxp so I am assuming delving will not be included unless a dev specifically indicates they will change it.

 

[FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted]

I think the idea here is good but the implementation is a bit off. Making us get conquest for same xp means quests will take longer and/or give less xp due to not getting conquest. here is my suggestion: keep the bravery (delving) bonus the same as it is now, and kee the conquest bonus as it was presented here. This means on average we will get slightly more xp, which is a good thing. It would incentivize us players killing all the mobs, but it would not penalize us xp-wise compared to now if we did not.

 

[Ying]

How did this XP design proposal ever make it past the Player's Council? Surely the devs would have solicited feedback about something so impactful, and we'd be having a very different, far more constructive and perhaps even supportive discussion right now.

 

[The Narc]

IF that were part of the proposal, i'd stop complaining. But its not.

EDIT: The change to Reaper XP would still need to be addressed... So I guess I'd stop complaining about normal xp...

Nope, leave the reaper as is so the pay to win players on hardcore have to pay more for their ego fed.

 

[The Blonde]

I had hoped that eventually the extra XP that Reaper granted (levelling XP, not reaper XP) would be done away with, as it incentivizes even people who don't care about Reaper to play it if they want the most XP. Sad to see this system remain.

 

[Dom]

How did this XP design proposal ever make it past the Player's Council? Surely the devs would have solicited feedback about something so impactful, and we'd be having a very different, far more constructive and perhaps even supportive discussion right now.

Either the devs didn't ask for feedback from the Player's Council, or if it was brought up to the PC, the members need to be reconsidered... effective immediately.

 

[Dom]

Nope, leave the reaper as is so the pay to win players on hardcore have to pay more for their ego fed.

Spoken like someone who struggles to get the 400K rxp reward on hardcore.

 

[Dunspartacus]

I think the idea here is good but the implementation is a bit off. Making us get conquest for same xp means quests will take longer and/or give less xp due to not getting conquest. here is my suggestion: keep the bravery (delving) bonus the same as it is now, and kee the conquest bonus as it was presented here. This means on average we will get slightly more xp, which is a good thing. It would incentivize us players killing all the mobs, but it would not penalize us xp-wise compared to now if we did not.

Honestly this, give incentives for doing side stuff, but don't penalize players for playing the quests as they usually get run.