My first thought: I wish reaper was only for at cap characters.  A level 30 extreme challenge option.  Either only only Level 28 and above content, only on epic content, or all content.  But, if you did that then you could plan for what characters have at level 30 and make the challenge unique. 

I think trying to make it be something people 1-30 can run makes it harder to develop a system that works with all the relative increases in character power from 1-30, with the spikes that happen at certain points. 

Since they did a 1-30 system, they were limited in what they could do to increase challenge.  Some things I like, some things I don't.  The reapers don't scale well.  They are OP early on and become less threatening than champions later on.  The champs are too much a part of the challenge.  I would rather the base quest mobs and traps and bosses were the overall difficulty.

My second thought:  It's not so much the difficulty as the trees and the XP system that I think is off.  The xp should earn more at cap and more in high skulls.  Less in heroics and in low skulls.  The trees should give less power creep.  The xp-AP earn system is way too grindy.  And the gap between current players and returning or new is getting too large.  These are more flaws of the xp/reward system, though, than the quest challenge configuration.  And this is where most of my disagreement lies.  I also don't like the lockout of 6 levels and the fact that the xp must be earned at base quest level instead of at effective quest level.  Both of these limit grouping heavily.  Which, given lower populations, is a negative.

The implementation isn't actually horrible by itself - there are certainly things I would change, #1 axing the reaper trees.

The issue is the complete utter lack of any follow through, and the bait and switch of the playerbase prior to releasing reaper.

Everybody thought was a gamemode designed for endgame players - turns out it was primarily designed as another hamster wheel grind. The devs didn't bend on reaper trees, or on some of the player made suggestions with regards to rewards / and quest difficulty.

In the end we have a system which primarily divides the playerbase from endgame players. Mostly due to not giving incentives to playing at cap. Racial trs further hammered the nail in.

Contrary to all of this - the base reaper mode is actually quite a big improvement from what we had before. In endgame, if I desire I can challenge myself. We can argue whether or not the challenge is the right type of challenge - but at least there's the option. The only way we could introduce difficulty was through speedrunning and shortmanning LEs prior to this; we were 4-6 manning LE shroud before our endgame guild died. Now at least, there's the option to have difficulty in a full raid or quest group.

The problem is the lack of players to play with at cap. And I know a lot of people say heroics are fine, which to a certain degree they appear to be healthy-ish. The issue is that its perceived as healthy but it isn't. Most of the grouping in heroics is being done by well established static groups (mine included). I've enjoyed my time in heroic reaper because I'm not treating it as a grind (even though it is) but more as a rotating list of quests to challenge me. Doing high skull at level heroic raids (like chrono, abbot, von, dq, and shroud) as well as a quest on r10 every level, has genuinely been a fun experience.

The issue is that nostalgia can only last so long. We need a server merge. We need an actual endgame (of at least the same magnitude as before MOTU). And most importantly we need the devs to start embracing iterative design - where they actually evaluate player response to the changes they make and iterate upon that feedback to produce a better product.

I've never been as conflicted as to whether the game is worth playing than I am at this moment. On the one hand, this game has a lot of potential and a lot of nostalgia driving me to keep on playing - holding off for the slim chance that ravenloft finally makes an endgame. On the other hand, the devs have shown time and time again that they not only don't know anything about their own game: they straight up don't care what the players think; they are just trying to squeeze the last bit of money from the game, likely in an effort to supply cash infusions necessary to establish new projects at their indie game studio (a practice which we have factual information happened in their predecessors company turbine).

OP im in the same boat you are in.  I came back from 2014 and at first I was like reaper is cool but then I saw how powerful the trees were and I was like wtf are the devs thinking?  it really just takes all the rules and flushes them down the toilet.  there is no fail state in DDO anymore you run easy reaper mode and have bags of HP and zerg to the end.  rinse repeat.  Each run is easier and easier as your HP bags increase.  Make a mistake oh no worries got a jibbers or res scroll.  No fails ever again unless you choose to "challenge" yourself by playing high reaper, but who would do something so dumb. lol  High reaper is a joke a myth.  No you play easy mode all the time and never fail. 

What was cool about the old DDO was you failed a lot and no one cried about it and begged for easy mode.  That whats reaper is, easy mode for mega HP jibber babies.   

The reason nobody plays elite anymore is because it is HARDER than reaper because you don't have a faggot tree for fags that are gay.

Sooooo..... you guys are saying you dont like reaper?

Ill tell you a little secret trick to fix that......

You ready?

Dont play reaper then....

I already know what you're gonna think now..  How the fuck did he know that I dont have to play reaper?

Ya.. lucky for you.. I have learned there are other options than reaper.. when you go to a quest.. dont pick the option to the right.. I know this sounds hard.. but... click to the left of that.. and youll not run into any reapers.. or have to worry about where to put those dirty reaper pts in at.. ftfy yw

Now for something else you didnt know.... Did you know that youre actually not fucking competing with ANY other people playing the game?

I know what youre thinking again... youre thinking... shit...he could be right... Theres no list of whos the best or has the most lives or the most reaper points anywhere in this entire game... fuck... i was sure there was.. But now that ive sat here and thought about it.. ive never seen any list like that nor anything fucking close to that..

So ya, no need to keep up with the joneses..  Or in fact worry about what anyone other than YOURSELF is doing in the game..  No need to call for nerfs of build that you dont want others to play.. nor worry about the exploits that tend to happen...

Do you wanna know why you shouldnt worry about shit like that?

The reason is very simple.... Its that You dont play against other players in this game ... well other than the 5 people that pvp. But nobody crys about builds/lives/reaper pts because of some pvp shit..

But ya.. there are many things in this game that are broken.. I dont like most of the shit done to the game..
I do agree with many of the complaints listed on here... But... I do not like hearing stupid ass crazy talk shit.

1.. You dont have to play reaper... plenty of people running other diffs.. and if you cant put up an lfm for lower than reaper... then.. idk whats wrong with ya, try switching servers. And if you dont like reaper points.. Then dont put them in the trees..

2... You are NOT in competition with ANYONE.. Its not a PVP game.. there isnt any numbered lists to try to shoot past people on... So actually there isnt any need to worry about what others are up to at all..
Well, other than worry about the lack of people on the server... that is a legit problem that will never be fixed.. they wont ever merge shit.. idk why

Skrilla wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 9:58am:


You're not exactly wrong, but...you're not as right as you think you are.

In this game you have absolutely no choice but to compete if you want to keep up - and that includes even soloing.

You have no choice because the hurdles aren't set on an average - they're set for the tallest kid.
The class is graded on a curve - set by the kid getting his answer from the teacher.

Pick your analogy, but the difficulty rating of this game constantly and consistently goes up and that has nothing to do with you - it has to do with the people pushing the easy button marked CHR.

I haven't been here since they beginning, but I've been playing this game for over 7 years now and I can tell you this - every time I take a break I come back to a noticeably more difficult game.  Higher aggro, stronger monsters, more powerful traps, etc, etc, etc.  Quests I used to solo easily are now death traps because the bar has been raised, so I have no choice but to rework my toon (and hope my class hasn't been nerfed too much because it was making a flavor of the month splash OP), totally rework my gear and muddle through as best as I can while the CHR easy button crowd are flying through, complaining the game is too easy - so expect the bar to go up again in the next update.

Which brings us to the OP -

You just got to kind of suck it up man.  This is where the game is and they're not going to roll it back.  Solo where you can if you want, but mostly just rework your gear and adjust your build to the new challenges.

And don't be afraid of jumping into reaper mode.  Yeah, right now especially you're going to have a lot of kids who have been grinding reaper XP all summer who are OP as fuck - you're not going to be the superstar in the group.

But if your gear and build are solid, you should be able to hang in a low level reaper group for non-soloable quests.  Let them do the heavy lifting, collect your reaper XP and start (oh so slowly) filling in the reaper tree. 

It sucked massive ass when I came back, but I'm on my 3rd life now with really solid gear.  I can hold my own in a 3 skull reaper run now.  I don't stick out performance wise - but that also includes not sticking out as dying any more than anyone else, so that's something.

With a good enough build, you can roll with a reaper group and no one will know you don't have any points in your tree.

Have you tried a lower difficulty?

just quit the game; it's what everyone else did.

Rubbinns wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 2:12pm:



I was gonna ask . . .  people still ply this game?

Don't we get enough of this whining about reaper on the shit main forums?

hydra wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 12:31am:

Because Infinite Crisis did so well.

Skoodge wrote on Aug 6^th, 2017 at 11:45am:

This.

I think a lot of people mistake Reaper for something other than what it is: A supplemental system.

The REAL implementation SSG was aiming for was Racial TR.

rTR is the Hamster Wheel they wanted to bring in, and Reaper was a balm to the Whales and Whiners on the mobos who'd already p2w or ground their way through every other fucking objective in the game. The Triple-Completionist-Everything crowd.

So they roll out Reaper and accompanying trees to say "Look at teh new Shinies EVERYONE gets!" when in fact the rTR was the carrot on the end of the VERY long stick they wanted everyone chasing.

Don't believe me? Go ahead and look for a "True Heart of Reaper Reincarnation". You won't find one. rXP carries on through every life, almost exactly like Epic Destinies. Anything you're getting "free" means that they're bilking you somewhere else.

They even tossed in some vendors with pointless rewards for outrageously high rXP benchmarks. (And I'm a huge whore for cosmetics, and even I don't give a shit about them).

And you know this because rTR is a VERY back-loaded system, and doesn't hit "completionist" until triple lives in every race. Lots of opportunities to make people pay for Otto's Boxes and Heroic Hearts of (X).

Reaper is just something else to get while you're grinding out ANOTHER 30 lives on rTR.

Anyone running high skulls is stupid, a masochist or a shut-in. It's 10x the work and 20x the time sink for +10% of the gains of R1 completions. And filling in the Reaper trees is a VERY nominal increase in power early on.

And the cores functioning in non-Reaper is meaningless if YOU'RE NEVER RUNNING OUTSIDE REAPER.

Run R1 for the 120% XP boost and nominal rXP then call it a day. Your times will be maybe +10% more than normal Heroic Elite, and you'll be back there earning rXP again on the next (x)TR cycle sooner rather than later.

YMMV.

Digimonk wrote on Aug 7^th, 2017 at 3:23pm:


I think my biggest complaint is that its too easy (r1 to r10 all should have been much more difficult than they currently are). Not that its too hard. Also the fact that the reward system encouraged leaving endgame, which has left endgame pretty desolate.

My other complaint is that you can't play dps casters in high skulls, but that's more of a hybrid issue with class balance than anything.

Quote:


To be fair, that's not exactly uncommon in just elite quests for a good 5 years now.  Healing kits and don't count me out aren't exactly as useful as they used to be.  Long gone are the days of hitting -5 and hoping to recover and prevent a wipe.  Even low level quests, if you get hit hard enough to die, you're going to be -30 or below.  And there are way more things that can one shot you even on elite that will drop you from 200 hps to completely dead before you know what hit you.