U60 Preview of Preview 2 Lammania XP Changes

[mikarddo]

None of this is making things better.
Kindly dont remove first time bonus, it works well, and the proposed new system is no less confusing than the current system.

If you want us to kill more stuff all you need to do is:
a) Up the bonus for killing stuff (but dont reduce anything else)
b) Show the number of kills needed (this will have a big impact).
Yes, this means we get even more xp - but with 183 past lives and 156 reaper points that is not a bad thing. Infact, the game badly needs easier access for new players to catch up and upping the xp is one way to do so.

 

[Love]

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

Please consider removing the "1st time bonus" for reaper. When I first read about the changes, I was excited to continue running the reaper quest I preferred at the level cap without having to worry about the first-time bonus. However, the decision to retain the first-time bonus solely for Reaper is a significant setback for endgame players.

It becomes a hassle to plan gameplay around which quests have been completed in a life. Having the freedom to coordinate groups without the need to factor in first-time bonuses would greatly enhance the gaming experience.

A rebalance to the way reaper experience is rewarded, making re-running quests viable, would be amazing.

 

[droid327]

A) Just call Delving "First Time Bonus" since that's effectively what it is. Adding more terms just adds to confusion, it doesnt clear it up

B) Going from 80% to 75% for Conquest is not really doing anything at all. This isnt going to solve the issue of many quests cant easily hit Conquest on the critical path.

You said you're making Aggression the balance point, but the "break even" point is still Conquest. Aggression is a more realistic metric, and it still achieves the goal of "encourages players to stop and kill mobs and not just zerg to Red Alert". You dont need to make us stop and kill every mob to ameliorate lag.

 

[Natashaelle]

A lot of good points have already been brought up in this and the other thread pertaining to the XP changes. But I just want to reiterate that - as presented - it will still significantly impact players who don't already cause dungeon alert in how they play.

With the caveat that this will vary according to variant playstyles -- yep !!

 

[mikarddo]

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.

-T

You claim Aggression to be the balance point, which would be great, but you continue to post the chart showing conquest. Please rebalance the numbers so Agression breaks even, Onslaught adds a small bonus and Conquest adds a large bonus.

Then your opening claim fits the actual numbers and you have something the players will not hate.

 

[Leo_of _Sarlona]

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

Torq
Thank you for new details, now like most, I'm even more confused as to what feedback anyone can offer. Sounds like the Devs have put hours and $$$ into changes and you are on the path. We spoke up and 30 pages said don't nerf XP. Tweaking the numbers is all that is left and so far the sentiment is SSG doesn't see the need for more XP, or faster leveling. XP Nerf coming no matter what. It is going to be a tough pill to swallow for all of us with 100+ past lives to grind out. The GRIND is real and what is really needed is a huge XP boost, not a nerf.

The Min/Max players are going to zerg and get the most XP/min and don't care about server performance.

Would it be possible to do as someone suggested or hinted in the previous thread:

After 25% completion on the main path the "quest BONUS mission" is rolled, one of 5 things, Conquest or a bunch of optional(s), something and the carrot is a big XP multiplier.

Zerg till the end on the old normal path, suffer an XP penalty vs today. Complete the random quest goal, get a significant reward in XP, this takes longer, takes a new path likely different than the old main path, server load is reduced and XP/min is better than it ever was and the quest was longer.

DDO's huge quest library now gets a randomness to it and running a quest on autopilot grinding out a past life is not mundane. I don't re-run quests till the next life if I possible. With a random aspect this could change many people leveling practices, it could revitalize the game. It could refresh old quests with minor changes maybe. TR and Character customization is what sets DDO apart, said a famous streamer, make TRs fun again.

If the problems of DA and server load is something you do want to fix, maybe cut the pathing substantially or all together in explorer areas. Maybe try it for a week. Unless I'm running a slayer pot I don't care about mobs in explorer areas. If this could be turned off based on running a slayer pot even better, being able to pause this agro is another option. When my goal is to get to a quest, I will not stop to kill anything enless I get knocked from my mount, even then I likely just get back on and ride away. I'm ignoring them, they should ignore me. This alone would save so many calculations that are pointless for your servers.

Leo

 

[Natashaelle]

Stick is what stick will be -- but what's the carrot recipe ?

 

[Triaxx2]

I don't feel like you can make this big of a sweeping change to the leveling process all at once and get a good answer. Personally I'd say make the conquest changes, And the Bravery changes, and see how it shakes out next preview.

Tamper bonus being part of the charts is also kind of misleading because a lot of quests either do not have traps to get that bonus, or get messed up by enemies dropping traps of their own. (Sharn and Icemount Curse both have this issue.) Same with Observance. (Also ignoring that proper zergers don't bother to take their fingers off W long enough to notice that traps even exist, let alone need to take the valuable 3 seconds to search for it.) If slowing people down is the objective, more quests need VoN3 style large area force traps, or Foundation of Discord's sonic hallway blast.

 

[DBZ]

Necro 2s shadow knight 117 kills onslaught lord 181 kills finally a conquest

Shadow king 126 too ez these numbers are all over the place

 

[Tesrali (sam-u-r-eye)]

1) First time bonus incentivizes diversity of content which keeps players happy. We will do the optimal thing for xp because we are lemmings, and you are going to enable a toxic farming strategy. This is a great case of Chesterton's fence.

2) Slowing down the game will just make the players unhappy. Anything in this direction is not going to go over well, since we are "accustomed to a certain lifestyle." There are examples across genres in gaming that nerfs to player mobility are not received well. Mobility is viewed as a QOL.

~~~~

Please do not implement these XP changes in any form; I encourage everyone else to stop bargaining.

 

[The Narc]

Is this going live soon, i am excited for these changes, i especially like the change to reaper xp being calculated for heroic seperate from epic/legendary!!

What is the daye this update goes live??

 

[Lazuli]

I foresee disaster. You guys are hell-bent on nerfing our completion times, and honestly, if there's anything that can make people walk away from the game, that's it. For a long time you have turned the game into a grind fest where speed is the only thing that matters, and for that you, designers, are to blame, who have created trillions of PLs that never end and you encourage us to play fast selling those xp pots. You guys took the genie out of the bottle, and sorry, getting it in won't be so easy.



Sorry, but if this change goes to Live and it takes me longer to complete a life, I leave the game here. And I assure you that I will not be the only one.



If this is an attempt to minimize lag, you're seriously misguided. And the fact that you say that we are going faster since u59 does not make sense, nothing has changed positively in the capacity of our characters. At best, the nerf you've put on spell damage and the fact that thanks to your mess with free server movement, there are servers that are now half-dead at certain hours, people are more incentivized to play on less difficulty. And of course, less difficulty, faster. But it's the only thing that comes to my mind.



If you want people to stop zerg, then move the focus from an endless grind that promotes quickness so you don't die of boredom to exploration rewards. Look, I liked the way you've approached this hardcore. Searching for the treasures gave me a reason to explore without feeling exploited. The endless grind is already overused.



You'd better spend your time fixing what players are worried about, rather than trying to change the way we play and make us even angrier. If you get bored, here are three points that we have been waiting for you to solve for ages:

1-alts. You should have fixed alts dying state long ago, as the massive grind makes it almost unfeasible to have more than one alt.

2-Storage. Stop selling tiny amounts at exorbitant prices like you have done with your last two scams, and start thinking of a decent solution. There are many people who have felt cheated by your stupid underdark coffer, by the way. Not because of the chest itself, but because you clearly have no intention of solving the storage problem.

3-VIP. You've had a year and a half, and you still don't have a decent proposal. Are you telling me that you have time for this change that is going to cause players to leave the game and you don't have time to fix the deficiencies of the subscription? Because this is already insulting, frankly.



And one last reminder:

1- I don't want you to force me to do the whole quest otherwise I don't want to. Optional ways are optional. Stop proposing nonsense.

2-Killing monsters is already over-incentivized. You should promote stealth and clever play, not more and more killing.

3-Stop trying to get the players to play the way you want, you are the ones who have to please us, not the other way around. We pay your bills.

 

[rabidfox]

Is this going live soon, i am excited for these changes, i especially like the change to reaper xp being calculated for heroic seperate from epic/legendary!!

What is the daye this update goes live??

That's not new. That's how things already work on live...

 

[Lazuli]

Is this going live soon, i am excited for these changes, i especially like the change to reaper xp being calculated for heroic seperate from epic/legendary!!

What is the daye this update goes live??

What are you talking about? This is already happening now.

 

[Dandonk]

i especially like the change to reaper xp being calculated for heroic seperate from epic/legendary!!

This is the only part that would be really nice. But is it really a big difference atm? Not that I've noticed, but I suppose I could be wrong.

 

[The Narc]

That's not new. That's how things already work on live...

I meant the new 200% bonus as per the original op quote here;

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.


Does anyone know what day this update goes live??

 

[Cheeps]

Should up the insidious cunning bonus more than it is.

 

[Dredre9987]

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

Again, same as last thread, What exactly is the goal and why do you folks NEED us, the players, to slow down in leveling. As this stands it is the same thing basically. We take a hit in xp/min because we now have to track down mobs we wouldn't normally even go near. To me this sounds like it would cause EVEN MORE pathing and dmg calcs and the DA changes ALSO add in more calcs by adding and tracking buffs on mobs. Things like dodge penetration and such mean more calcs not less....I am completely confused by what you guys are actually trying to accomplish with this.

 

[Haramel]

Dear fellow ddotics players let's join forces and protest in marketplace, like in the season of hearts for reincarnation... Seriously now I would strongly ask you to reconsider and not remove / transfer the first time bonus, just add extra incentives for killing mobs (we already had dozens of suggestions in the previous post).

 

[cocopufff]

Two things:
First, as a player who is generally newer (only TR'd once) and who doesn't own a lot of newer content = doesn't have as brilliant of loot, reaper kicks my butt sometimes. A lot of times. It's a bit frustrating how the mode that was supposed to be an optional challenge is now basically a required thing if you want the best exp.

Second, I'm still frustrated that this is ALWAYS going to be a net-nerf to any attempts to farm favor and exp at the same time. Slowing down quest completion = less favor = less DDO store points. If you're going to force slower completion of quests, favor rewards should increase, even if only slightly, like 25 => 30. Kind of annoyed that this is a point that keeps getting ignored.