U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

[Putti]

I think if the main issue is people zooming past mobs and not killing them then you should be looking at changing how DA works.

There are two ways to do this in my mind. One is to make sure people clear it if they get it. The other way is to deter people from triggering it in the first place.

• Give players -80% movement speed at red alert, -50% at yellow and -20% at green (numbers are just examples).
  
  • My personal favourite. This will severely harm the XP/min for zergers or even make it impossible to zerg.
  • The risk is that some builds are more dependent on movement for surviving, like ranged and casters. I think these builds are also the ones who tend to zerg, though.
  • Outside of the survivability issues it doesn't harm you much in fights that trigger insta-DA.
  • There needs to be some way to deal with people just using leaps to circumvent this.
• Make it so that you cannot interact with things on red alert (so you can't go through doors or pick up quest objectives).
  
  • There's a risk that a quest could soft-lock if mobs aggro from behind a door.
• Put dimensional anchor in place when under red alert so you can't DDoor.
  
  • This probably wouldn't have a huge effect, but there are some quests where the strategy is to run towards an objective, kill/pick up and then DDoor back to the start before all the mobs catch up
• Nerf the players power (Increase cooldowns, reduce damage done, increase damage taken etc)
  
  • This is kind of similar to how DA already works, but might be more server friendly to apply to one player instead of 10 mobs. It's also more fair to builds of varying powers.
  • This could be risky as you want players to be able to actually kill the mobs that are triggering the alert
• Introduce an XP penalty if alert is triggered.
  
  • Is a great deterrent for people.
  • Risks leaving a sour taste in your mouth if a mechanic, lag, another player or something else out of your control triggers it.
  • Should come with a warning that you're about to trigger Dungeon Alert, so you now not to pull any more.
• XP Potions only count down while in combat (not specially related to DA)
  
  • Since the game seems to be able to determine when you are in combat then this might be posssible. This would hugely discourage zerging with aggro as you'd be in constant combat.
  • It could potentially cause a lot of frustration if you get stuck in combat with a mob you can't reach, but I think that would be outweighed by the net gain.
  • Also has the added benefit of people not getting frustrated if a party member has to go AFK, gets lost, if there is RP and the like. Waiting won't be costing you money now.
  • Obviously might hurt the sale of potions quite a lot, but it might also incentivise people who didn't use them before?

Some approaches require some very careful fine-tuning for each quest as you don't want to have unavoidable alerts spoiling peoples run.

I think looking at DA is a better approach than this change to conquest as it won't drastically change the way a quest is meant to be played and you won't have to balance the conquest counter for every quest.

That being said I do think you should take the opportunity to look at conquest and optionals to incentivise them. As a side-note please don't have Reaper give more XP than elite. It was meant to be an optional challenge mode, but it has already become the norm.

I also think that going away from the first-time bonus is risky. I'm not a fan of the whole "repeat the best quest 10x for optimal XP" thing. I prefer when you're encouraged to run different quests.

 

[KylerrTheMajty]

I think if the main issue is people zooming past mobs and not killing them then you should be looking at changing how DA works.

There are two ways to do this in my mind. One is to make sure people clear it if they get it. The other way is to deter people from triggering it in the first place.

• Give players -80% movement speed at red alert, -50% at yellow and -20% at green (numbers are just examples).
  • My personal favourite. This will severely harm the XP/min for zergers or even make it impossible to zerg.
  • The risk is that some builds are more dependent on movement for surviving, like ranged and casters. I think these builds are also the ones who tend to zerg, though.
  • Outside of the survivability issues it doesn't harm you much in fights that trigger insta-DA.
  • There needs to be some way to deal with people just using leaps to circumvent this.
• Make it so that you cannot interact with things on red alert (so you can't go through doors or pick up quest objectives).
  • There's a risk that a quest could soft-lock if mobs aggro from behind a door.
• Put dimensional anchor in place when under red alert so you can't DDoor.
  • This probably wouldn't have a huge effect, but there are some quests where the strategy is to run towards an objective, kill/pick up and then DDoor back to the start before all the mobs catch up
• Nerf the players power. You could increase cooldowns, reduce damage done, increase damage taken etc.
  • This is kind of similar to how DA already works, but might be more server friendly to apply to one player instead of 10 mobs. It's also more fair to builds of varying powers.
  • This could be risky as you want players to be able to actually kill the mobs that are triggering the alert
• Introduce an XP penalty if alert is triggered.
  • Is a great deterrent for people.
  • Risks leaving a sour taste in your mouth if a mechanic, lag, another player or something else out of your control triggers it.
  • Should come with a warning that you're about to trigger Dungeon Alert, so you now not to pull any more.

Some approaches require some very careful fine-tuning for each quest as you don't want to have unavoidable alerts spoiling peoples run.

I think looking at DA is a better approach than this change to conquest as it won't drastically change the way a quest is meant to be played and you won't have to balance the conquest counter for every quest.

That being said I do think you should take the opportunity to look at conquest and optionals to incentivise them. As a side-note please don't have Reaper give more XP than elite. It was meant to be an optional challenge mode, but it has already become the norm.

I also think that going away from the first-time bonus is risky. I'm not a fan of the whole "repeat the best quest 10x for optimal XP" thing. I prefer when you're encouraged to run different quests.

sarcasm?

 

[Oliphant]

When the lag goes away due to 50% loss of player concurrency, will they claim a win?

 

[Yndrofian]

Why do you think anyone would slow down if xp was doubled? The players going full speed would still do so - just getting lives twice as fast.

Truth

 

[KylerrTheMajty]

When the lag goes away due to 50% loss of player concurrency, will they claim a win?

THIS XD

 

[Putti]

I'm... a little bit surprised that no one's talking about this change in the context of getting favor. Intentionally increasing how long quests take, even if it gives more exp, is always going to result in slower favor generation and slower DDO store point generation.

This won't increase how long a quest takes if you're just doing it for favor. You can still complete it without doing conquest, you'll just get less XP.

 

[Dredre9987]

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?

So my question is why do you need us to slow down? You do realize your game is the longest grind in MMO history by a large margin correct? I mean all heroic and racial lives is now just under 400 million xp. There are people that play 3-5 hrs a day that this alone will take close to 7 years. As gamers we are going to do everything in our power to speed up this grind. This grind also makes running alts very very inefficient to do.

Maybe the real issue is the pathing coding you guys have in place.

 

[Stabitha]

Just call it a money grab for more XP pots and be honest

 

[The Narc]

I think if the main issue is people zooming past mobs and not killing them then you should be looking at changing how DA works.

There are two ways to do this in my mind. One is to make sure people clear it if they get it. The other way is to deter people from triggering it in the first place.

• Give players -80% movement speed at red alert, -50% at yellow and -20% at green (numbers are just examples).
  
  • My personal favourite. This will severely harm the XP/min for zergers or even make it impossible to zerg.
  • The risk is that some builds are more dependent on movement for surviving, like ranged and casters. I think these builds are also the ones who tend to zerg, though.
  • Outside of the survivability issues it doesn't harm you much in fights that trigger insta-DA.
  • There needs to be some way to deal with people just using leaps to circumvent this.
• Make it so that you cannot interact with things on red alert (so you can't go through doors or pick up quest objectives).
  
  • There's a risk that a quest could soft-lock if mobs aggro from behind a door.
• Put dimensional anchor in place when under red alert so you can't DDoor.
  
  • This probably wouldn't have a huge effect, but there are some quests where the strategy is to run towards an objective, kill/pick up and then DDoor back to the start before all the mobs catch up
• Nerf the players power (Increase cooldowns, reduce damage done, increase damage taken etc)
  
  • This is kind of similar to how DA already works, but might be more server friendly to apply to one player instead of 10 mobs. It's also more fair to builds of varying powers.
  • This could be risky as you want players to be able to actually kill the mobs that are triggering the alert
• Introduce an XP penalty if alert is triggered.
  
  • Is a great deterrent for people.
  • Risks leaving a sour taste in your mouth if a mechanic, lag, another player or something else out of your control triggers it.
  • Should come with a warning that you're about to trigger Dungeon Alert, so you now not to pull any more.
• XP Potions only count down while in combat (not specially related to DA)
  
  • Since the game seems to be able to determine when you are in combat then this might be posssible. This would hugely discourage zerging with aggro as you'd be in constant combat.
  • It could potentially cause a lot of frustration if you get stuck in combat with a mob you can't reach, but I think that would be outweighed by the net gain.
  • Also has the added benefit of people not getting frustrated if a party member has to go AFK, gets lost, if there is RP and the like. Waiting won't be costing you money now.
  • Obviously might hurt the sale of potions quite a lot, but it might also incentivise people who didn't use them before?

Some approaches require some very careful fine-tuning for each quest as you don't want to have unavoidable alerts spoiling peoples run.

I think looking at DA is a better approach than this change to conquest as it won't drastically change the way a quest is meant to be played and you won't have to balance the conquest counter for every quest.

That being said I do think you should take the opportunity to look at conquest and optionals to incentivise them. As a side-note please don't have Reaper give more XP than elite. It was meant to be an optional challenge mode, but it has already become the norm.

I also think that going away from the first-time bonus is risky. I'm not a fan of the whole "repeat the best quest 10x for optimal XP" thing. I prefer when you're encouraged to run different quests.

Excellent ideas here!

Just make sure in the DA punishments that there is something that lowers spell DC(-1 or even -2 per level of DA, so full red DA would be -15 to -30 spell DC) Many of players have already threatened that if the devs make this change they will just raise the DA more with their AOE casters to gather more mobs together for A Bomb drops. Ultimately that gathering would caue more in game lag, this should be severly punished!!

 

[rabidfox]

Excellent ideas here!

Just make sure in the DA punishments that there is something that lowers spell DC(-1 or even -2 per level of DA, so full red DA would be -15 to -30 spell DC) Many of players have already threatened that if the devs make this change they will just raise the DA more with their AOE casters to gather more mobs together for A Bomb drops. Ultimately that gathering would caue more in game lag, this should be severly punished!!

What? So you want to prevent anyone who casts/warlocks/etc. from being able to kill on alerts so the mobs never go away? Why not make melee and range do -25% less damage per level of alert why you're at it...

 

[The Narc]

What? So you want to prevent anyone who casts/warlocks/etc. from being able to kill on alerts so the mobs never go away? Why not make melee and range do -25% less damage per level of alert why you're at it...

Yeah i guess a -1 or -2 to attack and damage per stack of DA Would work there.

Alls fair lets do it!!

 

[Shefenhow]

This makes no sense at all to me. You are hard nerfing the XP/min for a very large number of quests no matter how you dress the table up. I can see the reasoning for quests like Kobolds New Ringleader if people are bypassing sections of the dungeon for quick completion (though I can't see how unactivated mobs add to Lag : but you know better than me I am sure).

But for quests like Invitation to Dinner, there is no reason to clear the castle. Our task is to get the Icon of Ravenloft and get out. If the changes go in as currently specified, it would be a requirement to be in there 90 minutes+ to get the same XP (if it's even possible). Thats one example. Actually most of Ravenloft would come into this catagory, as well as parts of Gianthold, well parts of pretty much all chains and a percentage of all quests.

1. Time wise, this cannot fail to increase the time required to level, which is driving a bigger wedge between vets and newer players.
2. It also seems to encourage repeating certain quests multiple times as there are no first time bonuses. I thought we were done with all that, and that moving to "once and done" was a positive move.
3. All this will mean is that more people will be activating more monsters (if they can be bothered to play), how does that help whatever you are trying to fix?

If you wanted to make it attractive, you would have to change it so that conquest gave you much more xp than is currently possible (with whats on Live now), so that on average working through a life would take a similar amount of time to now.

 

[cocopufff]

This won't increase how long a quest takes if you're just doing it for favor. You can still complete it without doing conquest, you'll just get less XP.

Yes... That's my entire point. Favor farming is now a lot worse for exp gains. Any change which means you need to spend longer in quests for EXP, even if it gives more exp, is going to be a net nerf to how much favor the average player gets.

 

[The Narc]

Yes... That's my entire point. Favor farming is now a lot worse for exp gains. Which I personally think is a really bad change, since farming favor is already pretty slow.

Favor farming is a way of earning free ddo points, which means at the end of the day less money in the coffers of the game. I dont think this will be a goos argument to use with the devs.

 

[Pesh]

I really think that rewarding players *well* for not inducing high alerts is the best way to do things. After all it's not the players fault that it's possible to play the game in a way that causes so many problems.

The grind is so long and the lag problem so easy to induce that xp/min shouldn't just be maintained with the reward, it should be increased; this would also compensate for the quests where high alerts are out of the players control.

 

[J2345678]

...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.

On all worlds. It is both a significant increase in completion speed in addition to a larger pool of players achieving these speeds.

So now we see the real reason for the nerfs that wouldn't in any way stop zerging or lag.
Some streamer posts a video and SSG is losing their minds.

---

I LIKE playing the game, I WANT to do the optionals and kill the monsters, but you PUNISH doing that.

Run a quest in ~10 minutes or kill everything and do the optionals in an hour.

• No optional named loot.
• No monsters drop anything.
• No XP for killing the monsters, just reaching some # of kills which is impossible in MANY quests.
• The 'optional' XP is so low you're losing (a lot of) XP per minute.

---

...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...

No one wants to run the same quest multiple times.
We do it for loot or they're the only decent XP per minute quests at that level range.
MANY quests need base XP bumps and loot updated to not be a waste of time.

---

You WILL NOT force people to 'slow down', only force them to quit the game altogether.
SLOW is NOT an option, if it feels like a waste of time IT IS!

You want people to kill monsters?
Have them give decent XP and guild renown per kill.
Drop collectable treasure bags and Fragments of a Token of the Twelve(which should be renamed).

You want people to do the optionals?
Have them give decent XP that gives MORE XP per minute not less and drop named loot.

You want less monster combat pathfinding?
Stop making every fight 10+ guys where multiple groups can be alerted and give explorer zones teleport to quest guides like Ravenloft.
Fix monsters 'seeing' you or hirelings through doors and walls.

Dungeon Alert is lazy and spiteful.
Remove the underlying issues don't punish the players for bad design.

 

[Lorrgar]

How will this impact quests that are both heroic and epic/legendary?

 

[DBZ]

A better solution 1 front load racials 2 remove the 3 day tr timer done

Sov pot sales go through the roof and everyone is happy to spend on them

 

[dng242]

I wonder if some of these xp changes are due to streamers showing how to hyperzerg quests because of the lag fixes?

No doubt it made for faster adoption, but players are going to optimize for the goal at hand video or not.

I think this is the problem Dev's are having. They aren't thinking how the Players will adapt, and thus what problems those will cause. Dungeon alert exits in many ways because the dev's had and problem and pulled out the stick. Of course, the solution would have been to fix the problem in the design, not the behavior. You do this because that tends to be a permanent fix. Correcting the behavior works... until the players find a way around it again (or the dev's other design changes undermine it). Resulting in more behavior fixing needed. It's a poor solution

Think about the quest Red Rain. I'm sure we have all run it. Do you leave monsters behind in that quest? No, well okay, maybe one or two in few places, but in general you leave none. Why? Because you can't can't advance until you eliminate them all and there are several places where this check is made. That's where the design solves the problem. This is the sort of answer the Dev's need to start using, not make new rules and punishment that the player base will work around.

I realize you can't change every quest, but you can change the worst offenders, then the next release change the next worse and so on. You can also design them right in the first place.

 

[Shagarot]

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?

I would crank up Red Alert's to become very deadly, but if you want people to slow down and actually spend more time on each quest then:
- More exp for doing optional content.
- Move some named loot into those optional chests. Right now main reason why people are skipping almost every optional that gives chests is because no named loot (except for maybe augments or filies) drops from it. If people are farming gear and it can drop only from end chest then they are going to zerg through the quest to reach that end chest ASAP. If you re-distribute different pieces of named loot to drop in different chests then more people will start doing optionals.