U60 Lammania Preview 1 - XP System Adjustments

[Chibuike]

Really sad to see that ddo is breaking the number 1 dev rule: don't punish bad behavior, reward good behavior.

Punishing bad behavior only makes players mad about the decision and feel cheated. The way I currently see this update is pretty much:
- Big nerfs to all exp (most quests you don't get conquest for killing all mobs in your path) so either players will take the exp loss or they will take more time to clear the dungeon until they get conquest which is pretty much worse for everyone.

- Having red alert is now extremely deadly.

I'll say the second point i find it not so bad but the first is absolutely horrible. If you want to make players kill all mobs and take more time in a dungeon to make sure they do get their conquest, give them a reward, don't punish them for doing it. To balance out the time it takes to clear maybe give a huge % boost so that it's at least equal in terms of exp/min as to just rushing through the end of the quest and starting other ones real quick. Nerfing the regular exp is not the way to do that.

As for your red alerts, the most common place i see those alerts happen in my playthrough, has been wild areas... Regular quest i see them very rarely (I usually kill everything anyways to try and get the most from the kill bonus). Wilderness area give you no reward for killing more monster (very little reward compared to quests in heroics) so players always skip the mobs with their horse and run through to the next quest, maybe making characters have access to teleport right away through the wilderness area would solve those alerts...

The way i see it now, players are probably gonna take this as they need to absolutely do conquest now so they will rush to aggro more mobs and aoe builds will be absolutely meta, and sad to say but i think that would be the route i would go as well to try to not get too much of a exp/min loss on my tr train with this update. I doubt that having more mobs aggro is the result they are looking for...

Just some thoughts on this update, really not hyped about it, hopefully they rethink their decision on exp changes.

 

[alcolitoz]

Devs finally came clean and said that they think players are finishing dungeons too fast and they think zergging is the problem.

To reduce zerging DA needs to reduce movement speed and player damage (reduce dcs, striketr, melee ranged pow), red DA also needs to increase monster damage. DA should also create a XP penalty.

If you want to extend time inside dungeons, give more xp in optionals, award xp to "dungeon explored" and stuff like that. You can also reintroduce the healing penalty in reaper.

Dont punish average players, they will just leave

 

[Monkey_Archer]

As for your red alerts, the most common place i see those alerts happen in my playthrough, has been wild areas... Regular quest i see them very rarely (I usually kill everything anyways to try and get the most from the kill bonus). Wilderness area give you no reward for killing more monster (very little reward compared to quests in heroics) so players always skip the mobs with their horse and run through to the next quest, maybe making characters have access to teleport right away through the wilderness area would solve those alerts...

This is true, but the more common alert issues I find is when reapers alert multiple groups of mobs by pathing through doors that were never opened...

 

[Kimbere]

Devs finally came clean and said that they think players are finishing dungeons too fast and they think zergging is the problem.

To reduce zerging DA needs to reduce movement speed and player damage (reduce dcs, striketr, melee ranged pow), red DA also needs to increase monster damage. DA should also create a XP penalty.

If you want to extend time inside dungeons, give more xp in optionals, award xp to "dungeon explored" and stuff like that. You can also reintroduce the healing penalty in reaper.

Dont punish average players, they will just leave

Zerging isn't the problem. Zerging is the symptom.

The problem is poor, repetitive dungeon design that attempts to use as many low-hp trash mobs as they can cram into the dungeon as a method of pacing and challenge.

 

[Fisto Mk I]

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 nailed it.

 

[DBZ]

Bloody crypt a fun run cleared the entire map solo in 11 minutes with 226 kills still no conquest

A good duo will still zerg it in 5 minutes or less

 

[Silverfox]

I am sorry to say but there is not a single reward that SSG can offer in heroics that will ever encourage many players to slow down, avoid dungeon alerts, complete optionals, and in general waste time in heroics doing content over and over again after running the same non challenging content for years and years and years.

Reaper 1-4 in heroics are not a challenge. A well built and equipped first life are totally capable of running R 1-4 without any points by a capable player in heroics.

So one of the only things left for SSG to do is indeed punish players for creating dungeon alerts, avoiding optionals, and in general speeding through dungeons at top speed.

All the last change to dungeon alert introduced as I pointed out in the original thread about these changes were nothing but a new challenge mode.

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/change-to-dungeon-alert.131/page-2#post-496

This change only encouraged red dungeon alert to see if it was indeed more challenging and it was clearly not enough to consider changing play styles. It had the opposite effect; actually more players than ever began running dungeons faster than ever. Blame the streamers, zergers, power players or whoever you want to blame. Players will continue to do so until they are punished severely enough to discourage this type of play.

I pointed out a few ways to immediately start discouraging players from dungeon alert runs here. There are plenty of ways to discourage dungeon alert runs. Changing how the first time bonus xp is awarded is not one of them.

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/change-to-dungeon-alert.131/page-8#post-1547

Instead SSG has opted to change how xp bonus is awarded. Once again a few simple adjustments to spreadsheet data and the quest list changes a little bit for the dungeon alert runners. Rinse & repeat the quests that are the most efficient to run without the xp bonus since speed is still king vs wasting time in content that has nothing to offer.

Loot ? Heroic loot is a joke and totally not needed at this point in time without increasing the difficulty of quests.

Loot is the last reason to run an optionals at level. Players already farmed the loot with their capped characters that are completing content quickly.

Optionals unless they are mandatory to complete a quest they will be avoided at all costs unless they are on the path to quick completion.

Check optional completion percentage vs other quests. Then look at how the optionals that are being completed are not increasing completion times by much and you will start to understand why those optionals are being completed. Von 3 is a good example to start with.

 

[Drachmor]

I do not like these potential changes to the way XP works. I don't think it makes sense to shift the xp from the first time bonus into conquest since a lot of quests require you to go out of your way to get conquest. I think there should be more focus on fixing monster density and AI rather than trying to change the way players play the game.

Well-said.

 

[Drachmor]

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?

Frankly this makes no sense to me... I've been playing for a long time and this argument that speed of play has suddenly drastically increased due to the lag fixes is unsubstantiated, and not reflected in my play experience at all.

Yes, when there was unbearable server lag you couldn't really play the game. There were spikes of this here and there. But nothing over the past several years has caused any appreciable increase in the "speed of play." In any case, it doesn't seem right to say... well, we want players to spend more time killing monsters on one hand, and then reveal that this is just a measure to slow down speed of play in general, you know?

 

[Natashaelle]

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 ?

 

[Fizzix]

EXEC: I have a great idea
DEV1: What? Can we finally work on new dungeons with interesting methods to win?
EXEC: Nope
Dev2: We can make it easier for newbs to catch up to vets? or possibly create a mentor system so anyone can play together?
EXEC: Noooo
Dev1: Increasing player storage which everyone complains about? Maybe a private housing that players can keep trophies and gear so it doesnt get stuck in the stupidly old reincarnation catch?
EXEC: Heck no... banking lag is here to stay and everyone loves emptying their cache
DEV 1&2: ....
DEV1: c an we at least make TR ing less painful by instantly rebuilding from 1-20
EXEC: Nooooooooo
Des: What then?
EXEC: We'll make it take longer to play...
DEV 1&2: So we will increase the reward right?
EXEC: EXACT OPPOSITE its a hidden NERF!!!
DEV 1&2: You know this wont fix lag right and everyone is going to hate it?
EXEC: people will buy more pots
DEV1: or they will just leave.

30 pages of people telling you this is terrible, with one obvious forum paladin trolling and 2-3 people who would consider it an absolute joy to be assigned counting the grey pixels in Heytons Rest and the magenta pixels in Gianthold are somewhat supportive...

 

[Nokowi]

If we take a look at the history of SSG, they massively rewarded the play styles that cause system wide problems while neglecting those that killed every enemy and never caused any dungeon alert. They also changed agro so that dungeon alert happened despite the players intent. There are a couple of paths to fixing their issues:
1. Fix the way mobs agro each and give the players the basic tools so unintentional dungeon alert never happens
2. Change the incentive structure to reduce the player behavior causing the issue

I and many others asked for #1 many years ago and SSG gave it no traction. I assume SSG is not serious about a sensible agro system. If they still intend their system to share agro in a way that causes massive resources on their end, the best way to implement #2 is to have a variable reward structure. You enter a quest and at some point in the quest (~25% completion?) a special objective appears. You get 1.5x-2.0x the XP if you achieve this special objective. This could be
1) disable every trap
2) complete all optionals
3) slayer - bonus XP per kill
4) do not generate dungeon alert (there is no bonus if you did this prior to the special reward appearing)
5) etc etc

The point here is to mix up the strategy where zerging to the end and collecting many mobs is not the optimal general solution. Now as to the resource issue for those that do collect many mobs, this should come through better game design. D&D 3.5 has a chain metamagic where the secondary targets either get a easier save or where the secondary targets get a save. The AoE player should make one roll and each additional mob gets a progressively easier save or less damage. The most severe version would be each mob gets the combined bonus. This would be adjusted so the optimum play is to grab some but not too many mobs and players choose not to generate dungeon alert because that is the optimum method to deal with the mobs. This requires tools for the players to control agro - these used to exist but were largely removed when DDO switched to the angry bee agro design. SSG knows how to do this because they used to do this.

All of this takes intentional design. You can't effectively play with existing systems in hopes you get a different result. The long term benefit of better design is the reward structure for hardcore can eventually include this kind of variety - whether it is an entire day for one type of bonus, an entire quest chain for that bonus, or the randomized bonus. There is flexibility in design and SSG can figure out which types of rewards improve the way players choose to play along with how big those rewards need to be.

I wish this would have happened many years ago. Mass-agro sucking resources was the obvious result of previous design choices. The agro implementation choices were not good with respect to game design.

 

[Fallout47]

This game is old got 17 years I play it 14 , zerg it 13 years and now you tell me it make lag I just don't believe it.

We heard so many lag reasons and this point from a cross the years and all you do was nerfing something and yet lag is still there.

Make your nerf again fine but what will be next bc i can bet after this lag will still be there...

Very well said. I haven't played as long as you have, however, I have watched Turbine and now SSG cry Lag on many aspects of this game as an excuse to nerf. This is yet another example of a change they wish to force upon the players and are dressing it up as an anti-lag effort.

We call this putting lipstick on a pig.

 

[droid327]

There are some AOEs that have limited number of targets. It might be (ironically) kind of a nuclear option, but adding a universal target cap to all AOE might be another necessary change, to prevent players from herding mobs until yellow/orange alert and then nuking them all at once.

If no AOEs could hit more than 8 mobs at once, then there'd be no reason to try and fight more than 8 mobs at once

 

[Torches]

I'm not being contrary for the sake of being contrary: I've played this game for a few years, and 3.5 D&D for about a decade before then, and I have a love for the craft that goes into this game. I have put too many hours into video games before, because they're fun and I enjoy getting good at them. I have the True Witch achievement in Bayonetta 2, I've had a 72% win rate across 50 matches in Splatoon 2, and I put 2,200 hours into Team Fortress 2 before that. I like playing a game, getting good at it, and reaping the rewards of getting good at it.

And I like introducing people to games, because I know playerbases thrive when you bring in new blood. I've brought a friend group a dozen strong in, and gotten my girlfriend to craft a review on her YouTube channel that's probably pushed in a handful more.

This is some perspective for y'all to have when I tell you: you're treating the long postgame as if it's the true heart of the game. It is genuinely worth considering if you are the desired audience, given how entitled you are acting about this. People in the Discord have been yammering about "flower sniffers".

Do you know what that's trying to talk about?
People exploring the damn game, for the sake of exploring the damn game. Taking it in. Witnessing it. Admiring it. Studying it, from the polished chrome to the battered rust. Engaging with it.

Something you've stopped doing if you're in the reincarnation loop. You've stopped engaging with the art. It's okay to put down the mouse or controller, and find something more engaging to do. Maybe write material for a homebrew 3.5e D&D campaign. Something more productive than complaining about how many quests you need to play to move from past life 70 to past life 71. Something that will actually bring some kind of satisfaction to your life beyond the base pleasure of pressing a button and seeing a big number pop up (a pleasure I've had before in my life, and still occasionally partake in).

So it's going to devalue XP potions. That means you stop buying them. Let that be that.

Go find who you are, because it shouldn't be someone posting in this thread.

 

[Oliphant]

Torches, this is a thread about a massive xp boost called Conquest for mass murdering entire dungeons.

 

[Gabraell]

I like the idea of significantly boosting optional xp, if people also go for optionals it help in getting said conquest

 

[PaleFox]

So, we ask for interesting quest design with dialogues based on alignment and stats, possibly some favor sprinkled in.
We ask for interesting puzzles to be rewarding.

What we get instead is going murder hobo.

If you want optionals to be done, make sure there is both good loot and xp there.

 

[Kipp]

So your way is the only way to play the game and everyone else should quit? The game is all about repeating content over and over and eventually for most people it becomes about doing it quickly, simply because they've done it so many times they can do it in their sleep. How many times can you really run the same quest and stand and admire every bit? I do agree in general that the game should slow down a bit but not for people to spend time looking at the walls, but because of the increase in monster pack sizes, monster damage and player damage, zerging groups down as fast as possible has become the default. This needs addressing by but incentivizing slowing down, not by nerfing those that choose to go fast. By your logic they should remove the stealth bonuses because I, personally, do not enjoy stealth in games.
The main problem I see with the changes is that in a lot of cases, people who zerg will still continue to do so because tripling quest length for a .5 modifier on something that is already 2.5 (reaper) makes very little sense if you can just repeat the quest on elite after. It won't slow down quest completion time, just time to level up which isn't the reason they are doing this.

 

[Noite Talo]

You are looking at the issue from the wrong angle.
The lag is the sympom of the real issue, and we are trying to treat the symptom, not the issue itself. This has been a trend lately (ie. caster reaper dmg nerf). And near as I can tell, the caster dmg nerf and the lag here stem from the same underlying issue.

Why do people not kill mobs?
1) They do, they just gather large packs of them and AoE them down. Why? This is how casters are designed, they do okay damage over a large AoE, so it makes sense to kill 2x, or even 10x the mobs with the same spell, conserving resources.

2) Mobs are an obstacle to quest completion. The best way to deal with any obstacle, is to not need to deal with the obstacle. ie. run past the mobs, if the catch up later deal with them then.

So solutions?
Well reducing player xp unless they spend 2-3x the time running the quest is one method, but it isn't a good one, and it only adresses 2).

a) Reduce overall mob count and make mobs stronger to compensate. Yeah its a bit of work, but if there were half the mobs in a dungeon with 2x the hp and some dmg increase say, then even if mobs are ignored, there is half the server load from pathing. This is only adressing symptoms on 2), but also addresses 1) withoutout arbitrarily nerfing specific archetypes dmg in certian content and should also involve a rollback on that.

b) Mobs could group up and use flocking behaviour when more than certain distances from players, Forming mega-packs of mobs to hunt down those pesky players, and also reducing long distance pathing as only the 'leader' needs to path long distance whilst the rest of the flock paths off the leader. This only addresses 2) but it is a solid solution.

- As a big fan of stealth play, the game already goes out of it's way to punish stealth play, really dont need to start charging players xp for enjoying a certain playstyle.

- As for completion speed of quests following other changes, I have seen 0 change personally, I have completed at the same rate I always have and have seen no change in lag one way or another.