U72 Preview 2: True Reincarnation

[Aelonwy]

2) Massively boosted optionals' experience points that also add to reaper xp earned (Current iteration: "Optional objectives completed in Reaper mode do not grant RXP in addition to the bonus XP attached. However, they may help indirectly, as optionals help you achieve the XP bonuses for traps, breakables, and especially Conquest, and these do boost your RXP. The system does require that you finish quests on Reaper to farm RXP from them.)

A long time ago when they did the epic dailies quest XP revamp, they said they would be boosting the xp of new optionals in the future because repeating them permanently decreased their xp. But they never really released worthwhile optionals in terms of XP after this revamp.

Perhaps what is needed is an ALL Optionals Completed XP bonus that does NOT decrease with repetition and/or adds directly to Reaper XP?

 

[Zavina]

I like epic souls suggestions.
Suggestion 2 the most.
Suggestion 3...the issue with that is the "wish for racial memory".
I will never play an elf. I will continue being Warforged, Dwarf, Dragonborn or Human and just paying the 995 points to cheese those lives.
Sometimes I think I am not alone in this and that's why SSG keeps giving us elf and elf related lives because they know racist people like me (it's a joke) will keep paying to not play those skinny pointy eared abominations.

I felt the same way about dwarves, warforged and shifter. My no.2 character used wishes to bypass the awful races that i disliked, and the third still has the dwarf x3, warforged x3 and shifter x3 wishes in storage for her.. maybe.. some time in the future.. The day i finished warforged on my main, i fed all non expansion docents into a sentient jewel.

 

[azrael4h]

Is there really any point to the increased XP for leveling further lives? Especially given that you still have a massive grind of what 72 Class lives (including the archetypes, and including the Dragon Disciple which isn't released yet), and 48 racial past lives (including the Dhampir from Lamordia). Iconics and Epics as well, though they can double up with Heroic lives or Racial (for Epic). 120 lives, plus 54 Epic lives and 30 Iconics (probably 33, as I expect a Dhampir Iconic with the Lamordia expansion). Even if you kept it at the 1.9m XP that is 228,000,000 XP to grind through for Racial and Heroic triple completionist. Another 445,500,000 for your Epic completionist on top of that

Average it out to the Second/Fifth life XP curve for all lives and be done with it. Keep it simple, don't over complicate things. I get the goal is to keep players engaged and playing, but at this point, the grind is a turn off for even long term players, not to mention new players.

Not to mention once you're on the TR grind, you tend to build a leveling list and never hit content outside that list. XP/min becomes the game, which negates the value of a lot of fun content that is poor XP. A lesser XP curve will let players pick through lesser run content just because it's not as important to maximize the XP gains per minute. That will drive engagement and keep players playing, as they're not getting burned out on the same content life after life.

Which comes to Epic; most of the Epic levels are severely short on content, while you have an absolute glut in Legendary. There's enough Legendary L31-32 content to run to cap three times over by itself, with L32 having the most content at 77 total quests and raids. 34 is next most packed at 42. 31 has 29. From 30-35 is 191 quests. 20-29 is 111, with the bulk being at 21-24. Only 34 quests at 25-29. Outside of Borderlands most of it also lacks any viable gear, with EGH stuff being comparable to EBL stuff. The lack of viable content and loot make Epic even more of a grind than Heroic.

 

[xaktakorf]

Overall I think this direction is backwards. For me, the boring slog of high numbers of TRs is due to the repetition, not the time taken.
Lowering xp requirements or increasing xp rewards just encourages even more highly optimised zerging TR paths with more repetition. And for me at least, more boredom and feeling like its just work.

I think a lot of people who have never really been into the TR grind, like me, are exactly the people who do not play optimized. I always take different quest when ever I do a new HC character. Just doing two lifes the same way or even repeating the same quest to farm is a no go. And then 3.8M becomes a very long way to go. Which is why my oldest and most TR'ed char (from 2009) is stil only on 5th life. I just cannot be bothered to play it. 1.9M feels just right, and I am ready for another go around with another batch of quests I did not do the last time round.

 

[Spook]

Not sure it been mentioned yet in the thread but please bring back the idea of not having to re-level 20-30 unless you epic reincarnate (like how legendary xp currently works)

 

[Tharminator]

Other mmos would make the entry lvls go by quicker so players can group together quicker as a majority of the pop would be at end game. Ddo tr is unique but as levels expand the playable party range hasn't. Maybe expand or get rid of powerleveling and limits on reaper xp so more groups can include more players. Similar to how end game sagas invite people 20-34. Some expansion might help in heroics

 

[Cernunan]

As someone who has been playing since the first year, with 3 full completionists, I have to agree with the idea that the XP penalty should be completely eliminated.

The number of full lives available now is so far beyond the original set, it's just a grindy waste of time at this point used to sell pots and ottos

 

[Shear-buckler]

I wish there was a way to encourage more quest variety and/or longer individual lives with the appropriate reward.

This is the way. Shorter lives only risk leading to repetition and burn out. The devs have entertained the idea of longer lives on stream a long time ago, so I am assuming they will just never go for it.

 

[mikarddo]

Interesting that some posters write about an xp penalty. I think of the lower xp for the first lives as a bonus.

 

[Anurakh]

This is the way. Shorter lives only risk leading to repetition and burn out. The devs have entertained the idea of longer lives on stream a long time ago, so I am assuming they will just never go for it.

No, thanks, i don't want longer lives.

 

[Shear-buckler]

No, thanks, i don't want longer lives.

Optional longer lives for multiple past lives. It would make the grind a lot less repetitive. What is the downside?

 

[Anurakh]

Optional longer lives for multiple past lives. It would make the grind a lot less repetitive. What is the downside?

The grind is huge right now. It needs to be shortened, and this is not a shortening. If once a proper system is in place, they want to look at the possibility of getting more lives by playing all the quests in the game, that's fine by me, even if it's for a minority

But first, the real catch up mechanism. Not a fake one that only leads to more grind for the majority.

 

[Karadon]

I wish there was a way to encourage more quest variety and/or longer individual lives with the appropriate reward.

Maybe something like adding a different optional heart of wood that TRed the character but didn't wipe the quest-log. Then playing through the new life you get double the XP or whatever rewards for doing content that you didn't run on the previous life.

 

[Monkey_Archer]

The grind is huge right now. It needs to be shortened, and this is not a shortening. If once a proper system is in place, they want to look at the possibility of getting more lives by playing all the quests in the game, that's fine by me, even if it's for a minority

But first, the real catch up mechanism. Not a fake one that only leads to more grind for the majority.

Right. DDO is work. Make work easy, not fun.

 

[Spook]

Interesting that some posters write about an xp penalty. I think of the lower xp for the first lives as a bonus.

Those of us that were around before reincarnation remember that the 1.9M xp to reach cap 20 so yes to us 2nd and 3rd lives were penalised in exchange for more power.

 

[Shear-buckler]

The grind is huge right now. It needs to be shortened, and this is not a shortening. If once a proper system is in place, they want to look at the possibility of getting more lives by playing all the quests in the game, that's fine by me, even if it's for a minority

But first, the real catch up mechanism. Not a fake one that only leads to more grind for the majority.

A longer life that takes twice as long but grants three times the reward would be a significant grind reduction. This should be added at the same time as significant XP increases. For example making conquest and ransack multiplicative and massively boosing monster manual XP rewards.

 

[Anurakh]

Right. DDO is work. Make work easy, not fun.

My fun is at end game But they're not going to give me a chance to get the benefits of PLs in the cap. So yeah, I don't want longer heroic lives, thanks. And if they do a poll, I'm pretty sure I'm not in the minority.

 

[Anurakh]

A longer life that takes twice as long but grants three times the reward would be a significant grind reduction. This should be added at the same time as significant XP increases. For example making conquest and ransack multiplicative and massively boosing monster manual XP rewards.

I highly doubt it. With the millions of XP required for a current life, it already seems like a huge slog. Almost 8 million has to be enough to get you to the madhouse straight away.

Not for me, thanks.

 

[Sophie The Cat Burglar]

The people at Standing Stone Games are never letting anyone off the treadmill.

This is slight of hand to lure dum dums like me onto the treadmill for a while. We spend money while walking on the low slope settings. Occasionally, one of us increases to the medium slope settings.

This is not about grind reduction. It is not about decreasing the time required to make a done everything character. They do not want any of us to finish a character. Ever.

They are expanding the kiddie pool.

Most of the ideas in this discussion are pie in the sky nonsense. If it cost 1,000 experience points to earn a past life feat, a week after everyone had them all, you would all be complaining for something to do. The developers would add a gigantic, new, decade long grind.

Now if you will excuse me, since Miss Tolero and her team made a successful Bluff check, I need to return to the kiddie pool.

 

[pevergreen]

This is a positive change, less XP for new players to get them a bit closer to longer term players.

Only positive things to say about this approach.

I don't like the complex ideas floated around different XP amounts per iteration of the life (would require a heavy rewrite of the TR process for it to be set at the start - what then about wishes?). I also dont think they can cut down xp to 1.9m for every life, that would mean boxes are too good.

I also dont want XP amounts to be massively different per player - grouping with a static friend and knowing you both need the same XP and gain at the same rate (assuming VIP, tomes, xp pots etc) is good.

I do however, think the idea of 1% xp per missing life is a nice one. Probably hard to implement, but a brand new player.

45% xp for not having any racial PLs
45% xp for not having any class PLs
Whatever you throw in for iconic/epics

And they reduce over time, representing your character's mastery - each time they get a tiny bit stronger, it gets a tiny bit harder to hit the same XP amount.

This change in its current form won't benefit me much (most of my alts are getting towards 10th life) but I'm dreading the TR i've got my main on, even though I have less than 10 racial lives to go...Its just such a HUGE time investment for every life, even with running an XP pot.