U60 Preview of Preview 2 Lammania XP Changes

[Torc]

An updated proposal from feedback and additional leg work on a hot topic!

This is an early preview of what preview 2 might look like (this doesn't reflect what is in preview 1)

To recap our goal here is to make monsters a bit more worth while from an XP perspective using the conquest bonus. We also wanna clean up some of the confusion in first time bonuses (only one type plz). We got feedback on a mess of issues but one thing that came across is conquest is busted in many places and even when it's not busted, it's often not considered worth while because you need to go off critical path, and there are fears the XP per minute will slow significantly....

So we are changing our approach, and are using the lower conquest threshold of Aggressor as more the balance point with some XP buff-age for the higher conquest tiers.

Have a look. New stuff starts at bullet point 3. There are some important additional notes on reaper here btw.

Changes:

1. Bravery Bonus is being renamed Delving Bonus. Still. It's also getting a new tier for reaper so it will now work as thus...

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%.

2. the "First Time Bonuses" per difficulty are being removed (Still. We are boosting in other places though to make up for it)

3. Conquest, Aggressor and Onslaught Bonuses are be greatly boosted, and give different values based on difficulty.

NEW CONQUEST BONUS VALUES

	Normal	Hard	Elite	Reaper	Old Requirement	New Requirement
Conquest	50	75	100	100	kill 80% of mobs in quest	kill 75% of the mobs in quest
Onslaught	35	45	50	50	kill 65% of the mobs in quest	kill 50% of mobs in quest
Aggression	25	25	25	25	kill 50% of the mobs in quest	kill 25% of mobs in quest

Additional....

A> The thresholds to reach a bonus are being lowered. Getting Aggression is twice as easy as it was before.​

​

B> Dungeons with extremely large monster counts will get addressed - There may be 400 mobs in TOEE (guessing) will be adjusted so aggression/onslaught happen for running critical path, and conquest won't require that much extra exploring. Broken quests (haverdasher/vault dragon fight) in heroic will get fix. The previous preview 1 thread gave us a pretty good idea where problem quests were.​

​

C> We are looking into communicating how many monsters you need to get these bonuses in the quest panel. We THINK we can get this working.​

4. Reaper XP

So as we've been looking at this we saw a few things we want to tweaking about reaper. In general reaper XP will just go up due to the conquest/Aggressor increases because those apply, but most of what we want to address is feedback in the quest panel about reaper XP is really lacking.

Note: First time bonuses and bravery bonus never applied to reaper XP, this was terribly unclear, which we intend to correct.

A> Reaper XP will now display before getting your 10 kills , and let you know you don't get reaper xp till you kill 10 mobs​

​

B> The Reaper XP 200% first time XP bonus will now display in the quest panel when it applies, and it will state that this bonus is used instead of delving​

​

C> We are looking at making the Reaper XP 200% bonus apply separately for heroic and epic/legendary each - so you can play something on reaper on heroic that has a legendary mode without screwing yourself out of the 30+ level bonus later.​

BEFORE & AFTER CHARTS. Example of Total XP % Quest Panel Bonuses.

NORMAL	Old conquest	New conquest	HARD	Old conquest	New conquest	ELITE	Old conquest	New conquest	REAPER	Old conquest	New conquest
conquest	25	50		25	75		25	100		25	100
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	133		178	208		253	283		303	333

Reaper XP note - because conquest applies to reaper xp you'll see about a 10-15% increase of total reaper xp for those who get conquest in a reaper dungeon when playing it the first time. The replay value a bit higher. We may increase xp ransack on reaper if spamming quests becomes common, the but delta is still a 2 to 1 or great ratio in favor of new quests so we don't think that'll be to much of a problem.

Note on daily bonus. Someone asked if this was changing...it's not changing at all! (probably should of been in this example chart. Shrug.

-T

 

[Putti]

I feel like we're getting very mixed signals about what this change is meant to accomplish. This makes it extremely difficult to give relevant feedback.

From the first post it the goal was to "make running past large numbers of encounters a less desirable behavior" because it hurts the servers.
This makes it seem like the ultimate goal is to reduce lag and that this was just a thought on how to do it.

Then Cordovan comes in and says that the goal is to get XP/Min and general questing speed back to what they were pre-u59.
This makes it seem like the thing you're trying to achieve is to not have people level too fast.

Now this post is saying that the goal is to make monsters a bit more worth while from an XP perspective.
I'm assuming this is again to fix the lag, but now you're making it sound like the only solution you'll look at is to make players kill more mobs.

What is it exactly that you're looking for feedback on?

 

[Ahpuch]

...

To recap our goal here is to make monsters a bit more worth while from an XP perspective using the conquest bonus. ...

Interesting, as yesterday it was indicated that the goal was to either slow down completion times or reduce server load due to monsters not be killed (reduce hyperzerging). It wasn't entirely clear but at that time increasing the value of killing mobs appeared to be a means to the goal while now it is the goal. In that case this seems to work. I think it is a bad goal as it devalues stealth and strategy and further encourages AOE murder hoboing. It will likely increase server load as players round up larger groups of monsters to kill zones (if they bother with it at all). But since reducing DA and serverloads is not the goal I guess that is not a big deal. I would say that I am not certain that this is the game I am as excited to play. Note, I don't tend to go that fast and I kill what I agro so its not that I want to "hyperzerg".

I still think as an XP revamp it is shuffling deck chairs but I guess the bad idea is better. As Putti said, it is hard to give feedback with mixed signals.

 

[Putti]

In regards to the changes proposed here I'm still not a fan.
This is still making Reaper mandatory by putting such huge bonuses on it. This is far from the optional challenge mode it was supposed to be.
Moving the First Time bonus XP into the quest itself encourages farming the same quest over and over.

Some of the changes are decent, but far from enough. Most of the XP is still loaded into conquest which even at 75% of all the mobs is unfeasible for most quests. It sounds like you'll be looking at the extreme ones like ToEE, but you'd need to look at every single quest to do this right.

I also think that by making the conquest bonuses different for each difficult you're making an already extremely convoluted system (I doubt most players really understand how XP works in this game) even more difficult to figure out.

 

[Zuldar]

This is significantly better than before but doesn't address having to go for conquest to avoid an xp penalty. With this proposal Aggression is a net 30% loss to xp than before and Onslaught is 10% less. I'd like to see Onslaught be brought closer to what the baseline was and Aggression not be so heavily penalized.

I propose boosting Aggression by 15% and Onslaught by 5% to make them less severe losses of xp.

 

[Zaszgul]

I feel like we're getting very mixed signals about what this change is meant to accomplish. This makes it extremely difficult to give relevant feedback.

From the first post it the goal was to "make running past large numbers of encounters a less desirable behavior" because it hurts the servers.
This makes it seem like the ultimate goal is to reduce lag and that this was just a thought on how to do it.

Then Cordovan comes in and says that the goal is to get XP/Min and general questing speed back to what they were pre-u59.
This makes it seem like the thing you're trying to achieve is to not have people level too fast.

Now this post is saying that the goal is to make monsters a bit more worth while from an XP perspective.
I'm assuming this is again to fix the lag, but now you're making it sound like the only solution you'll look at is to make players kill more mobs.

What is it exactly that you're looking for feedback on?

I'm glad your post was the first reply. I still don't understand why they're talking about anything except red DA, and whether it's concretely happening more often now.

How exactly do xp changes - in any form - help the servers? This just seems like wasted effort, or an attempt to solve something else.

 

[Ahpuch]

On the feedback front: This once again comes across as we are going to make these changes and we only want feedback on the numbers. Much of the feedback yesterday was "we don't like this approach" and rather than change the approach, you took one part "Conquest is not attainable" and tweaked those numbers without altering the approach. It may be more productive if the constraints of the feedback that is requested was better defined so people knew what was willing to be shifted.

In this case it seems like feedback requested is: "This is the new xp model we are using. Give us a reason to adjust the numbers."

 

[Fhrek]

What is it exactly that you're looking for feedback on?

Exactly... what is the goal to change Exp?
It isn't clear.

Is a lag issue?
Is a players not killing mob issue?
Is a slowing player issue?
If just want to nerf XP/min... just say it. Don't morph it in an overcomplicated/unnecessary revamp...

 

[Dandonk]

So we are changing our approach, and are using the lower conquest threshold of Aggressor as more the balance point with some XP buff-age for the higher conquest tiers.

Aggression would be better as a break-even point. But I'm not seeing this in the proposal. Maybe it's just me, though, but it still seems to use the conquest for about-same xp?

EDIT: I'm still confused about the endgame, as others are. Is this to get monsters valued more as kills? To combat lag? To slow down xp/min? All three for the price of one?

 

[Lichcrak]

An updated proposal from feedback and additional leg work on a hot topic!

This is an early preview of what preview 2 might look like (this doesn't reflect what is in preview 1)

To recap our goal here is to make monsters a bit more worth while from an XP perspective using the conquest bonus. We also wanna clean up some of the confusion in first time bonuses (only one type plz). We got feedback on a mess of issues but one thing that came across is conquest is busted in many places and even when it's not busted, it's often not considered worth while because you need to go off critical path, and there are fears the XP per minute will slow significantly....

So we are changing our approach, and are using the lower conquest threshold of Aggressor as more the balance point with some XP buff-age for the higher conquest tiers.

Have a look. New stuff starts at bullet point 3. There are some important additional notes on reaper here btw.

Changes:

1. Bravery Bonus is being renamed Delving Bonus. Still. It's also getting a new tier for reaper so it will now work as thus...

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%.

2. the "First Time Bonuses" per difficulty are being removed (Still. We are boosting in other places though to make up for it)

3. Conquest, Aggressor and Onslaught Bonuses are be greatly boosted, and give different values based on difficulty.

NEW CONQUEST BONUS VALUES

	Normal	Hard	Elite	Reaper	Old Requirement	New Requirement
Conquest	50	75	100	100	kill 80% of mobs in quest	kill 75% of the mobs in quest
Onslaught	35	45	50	50	kill 65% of the mobs in quest	kill 50% of mobs in quest
Aggression	25	25	25	25	kill 50% of the mobs in quest	kill 25% of mobs in quest

Additional....

A> The thresholds to reach a bonus are being lowered. Getting Aggression is twice as easy as it was before.​

​

B> Dungeons with extremely large monster counts will get addressed - There may be 400 mobs in TOEE (guessing) will be adjusted so aggression/onslaught happen for running critical path, and conquest won't require that much extra exploring. Broken quests (haverdasher/vault dragon fight) in heroic will get fix. The previous preview 1 thread gave us a pretty good idea where problem quests were.​

​

C> We are looking into communicating how many monsters you need to get these bonuses in the quest panel. We THINK we can get this working.​

4. Reaper XP

So as we've been looking at this we saw a few things we want to tweaking about reaper. In general reaper XP will just go up due to the conquest/Aggressor increases because those apply, but most of what we want to address is feedback in the quest panel about reaper XP is really lacking.

Note: First time bonuses and bravery bonus never applied to reaper XP, this was terribly unclear, which we intend to correct.

A> Reaper XP will now display before getting your 10 kills , and let you know you don't get reaper xp till you kill 10 mobs​

​

B> The Reaper XP 200% first time XP bonus will now display in the quest panel when it applies, and it will state that this bonus is used instead of delving​

​

C> We are looking at making the Reaper XP 200% bonus apply separately for heroic and epic/legendary each - so you can play something on reaper on heroic that has a legendary mode without screwing yourself out of the 30+ level bonus later.​

BEFORE & AFTER CHARTS. Example of Total XP % Quest Panel Bonuses.

NORMAL	Old conquest	New conquest	HARD	Old conquest	New conquest	ELITE	Old conquest	New conquest	REAPER	Old conquest	New conquest
conquest	25	50		25	75		25	100		25	100
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	133		178	208		253	283		303	333

Reaper XP note - because conquest applies to reaper xp you'll see about a 10-15% increase of total reaper xp for those who get conquest in a reaper dungeon when playing it the first time. The replay value a bit higher. We may increase xp ransack on reaper if spamming quests becomes common, the but delta is still a 2 to 1 or great ratio in favor of new quests so we don't think that'll be to much of a problem.

Note on daily bonus. Someone asked if this was changing...it's not changing at all! (probably should of been in this example chart. Shrug.

-T

Appreciate the quick work on trying to address the feedback!
While I think this is a good step in a better direction, having less change between the tiers might be preferred.

Aggression gives 15% more than before for a net -30%
Onslaught gives 35% more than before for a net -10%
Conquest gives 75% more than before for a net +30%

Maybe change it to something like this?
Aggression gives 35% more than before for a net -10%
Onslaught gives 45% more than before for a net 0%
Conquest gives 55% more than before for a net +10%

If you want to buff the xp though on conquest I'm not opposed at all XD. Just this way its less impactful since even with these reworks conquest will still be rough on many quests that give large chunks of xp. As it stands it'll still probably be an xp nerf overall, just less then the previous iteration.

 

[Ahpuch]

So we are changing our approach, ...

To be clear, you are not changing the approach, you are sticking with the previous approach of reducing the quest completion XP and letting players make up for it by killing monsters. You have simply adjusted the thresholds and distribution.

 

[Putti]

Maybe change it to something like this?
Aggression gives 35% more than before for a net -10%
Onslaught gives 45% more than before for a net 0%
Conquest gives 55% more than before for a net +10%

I agree. You should at least break even on Onslaught as that's usually attainable. If the goal is to make us do conquest, however, it would need to be a much bigger bonus as that will often double the completion time.

 

[Fhrek]

it would need to be a much bigger bonus as that will often double the completion time.

Which wouldn't be enough for those whom play running EXP pots, would still more advantage to run/complete/go to next quest than keep on the same quest slogging for Conquest.

Not solving the (?)problem/issue(?) they want to fix with this revamp

 

[J2345678]

...our goal here is to make monsters a bit more worth while from an XP perspective...

No, it's not.

Your goal is:

...get players back to the XP/minute and general questing speed that was taking place prior to Update 59.

These XP changes don't make the game better in any way.

 

[KylerrTheMajty]

No, it's not.

Your goal is:



These XP changes don't make the game better in any way.

this

 

[rabidfox]

We went from horrible in preview 1 to more "IDK" for this one. The amount of math involved to see where my XP/min falls is hard to tell. I can look at that chart and shrug because I don't know and likely won't know until I've leveled a life on it. Of course, once it's to the point where I've leveled a full life to see, it'll be too late as it'll be live. The chart is based on conquest once again (which means I'll likely see less XP or have to slog around killing more mobs wasting my XP pot timers) and a bunch of "will get addressed" things that worry me that it'll months/years before they actually get addressed (so many bugs that have gone for years on the we'll get to that list). And we have no clear view on your goals really are as we've keep getting told different things.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

So we are changing our approach, and are using the lower conquest threshold of Aggressor as more the balance point with some XP buff-age for the higher conquest tiers.

...

A> The thresholds to reach a bonus are being lowered. Getting Aggression is twice as easy as it was before.​

​

I think there is a bit of confusion regarding these 2 statements.

The balance point in these new numbers is slightly above Onslaught now, but new onslaught is the equivalent of old agression, ie 50% of quest mobs killed.

Put simply, if you killed 50% of mobs before you'd get aggression for 288% total xp, if you do the same you will now get Onslaught for 283% total xp. Still a small xp nerf, but I think its acceptable given the potential for higher also exists.

 

[Kortar]

3. Conquest, Aggressor and Onslaught Bonuses are be greatly boosted, and give different values based on difficulty.

NEW CONQUEST BONUS VALUES

	Normal	Hard	Elite	Reaper	Old Requirement	New Requirement
Conquest	50	75	100	100	kill 80% of mobs in quest	kill 75% of the mobs in quest
Onslaught	35	45	50	50	kill 65% of the mobs in quest	kill 50% of mobs in quest
Aggression	25	25	25	25	kill 50% of the mobs in quest	kill 25% of mobs in quest

I'm surprised by this table, this means that currently on live you get Conquest Bonus for killing 80% of the mobs in the quest. If that's the intent then it's bugged. Conquest is impossible (not inconvenient) to achieve in many quests even if you kill everything.

 

[Ahpuch]

We went from horrible in preview 1 to more "IDK" for this one. The amount of math involved to see where my XP/min falls is hard to tell. I can look at that chart and shrug because ...

I shrug because after 30+ pages (mostly) saying "this seems like the wrong approach for your goals" they come back with the same approach, new goals and convoluted grid of numbers that make XP less clear. The only thing constant between preview 1 and 2 is the approach (the disliked approach) so ... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Ambitious]

So there is still an rxp bonus for first time completion? That's a bummer. I was really looking forward to getting rid of that. For me it means I will still have to reincarnate toons that don't need / can't get more pastlifes, just so I get first time bonus for more rxp again.