ManyCookies wrote on Sep 18^th, 2022 at 1:52pm:


Ask Tracy Hickman. The layout, the cards, it's all part of Ravenloft tabletop.

AAH wrote on Sep 18^th, 2022 at 3:16pm:


You would just rank them all as "lease favorite" in that case.

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The two quests are shit. But I honestly enjoy the raid myself.

It's simple in the premise atleast. Go and kill. It's easy.

It actually has mechanics you need to pay attention to the higher the difficulty, but for most pugs you can do LN without much of a hitch.

And it actually has two optionals that feel somewhat rewarding for doing. Sure it's just an extra chest. But hey I'll take it.

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Sorry but I think those packs are mostly shite.  Handful of decent quests scattered out but mostly long, boring, bland sloughs with just garbage XP.  Pretty sure the template for later bad packs started with IQ.  Back when there where less options, I used to dread the final level before TRing because I had to run (and often times, rerun since the XP was so bad) those packs.

Optional xp sucked for a long time while they decided what to do about xp bots.

But reaper xp killed players wanting to do optionals in normal questing.

5 Foot Step wrote on Sep 19^th, 2022 at 11:15am:


Nah, optional XP was never balanced anyway. In few cases it's like 20% extra xp for 5% more effort/time - but most of the cases its twice the effort for 10-20% more xp.

Reaper Mode was a mistake. Arguably the worst thing Turbine/SSG ever did.

In an ideal world, every quest would be balanced like Tear of Dhakaan or STK 2 (coincidentally, both Hobgoblin quests). Both quests have several side objectives to do which give respectable exp, don't take too long, and allow experienced parties to split up for better exp/min.

Another thing to consider would be Trap/Ransack bonuses. The stupid thing is that for a lot of quests, it's impossible to get Ingenious 30%, or even Tamper 10%. This is because of undisarmable traps. It doesn't reward Rogues/Artificers for doing their job; if anything it just encourages players to facetank traps and ignore them. That's not good game design. That's not D&D.

D&D is supposed to reward different playstyles and options, not force everyone to do the same thing. That's part of what made Reaper so awful, and it's part of why so many newer packs are awful. SSG only wants people to play casters + AoE based characters. Stealth doesn't matter.  Social skills don't matter. Single target builds don't matter. Trapping (usually) doesn't matter. Optional objectives don't matter. Summon bonuses don't matter. Charm doesn't matter. Wilderness areas largely don't matter. DDO has effectively become "just another MMO" with streamlined, stultifying build options + playstyles. It's a degenerate sense of game design and it's completely antithetical to what D&D is all about.

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I would still say Epic Destinies take the cake there. Reaper mode would have been fine if it was just about prestige and only had cosmetic rewards...as it was advertised.

Just like Epic levels would have been fine if they were more class levels like what people had asked for and not generic levels with OP P2P enhancements pasted on top of them that no one asked for.

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A lot of that isn't reaper, it's just lazy design.

When was the last time you saw mobs on patrol, like in Splinterskull?

Instead it's all lazy like ToEE. A huddled clump of 20ish mobs blocking the hallway every 10 yards for no apparent reason. Don't get me started on doors that won't open until you defeat all the mobs.

somenewnoob wrote on Sep 20^th, 2022 at 12:25pm:


That alone is symptomatic of the larger problem: power creep. They're never going to address that, so when R10 gets too easy expect a new, super-reaper or some bullshit.

You're an idiot if you think reaper saved the game.

It absolutely killed the new player experience - whatever of it was remaining. R1 is the new baseline. May as well tell any newbies to go fuck themselves and play a different game.

It killed grouping. You now have newbies who want to do N/H. You have powergamers who are R10 or bust. You have the R3-4 crowd. You have the R1 crowd. You have people like me who would prefer to run things on elite, but get suckered into R1 because we'd rather have a 3-person group for R1/2/3/4 than be bored soloing E for everything.

It killed optional exp, as 5 Foot Step already mentioned. This streamlined every single quest to be more of "just hit the main objectives and rush through as quickly as possible."

It killed build diversity. If fighters/assassins/etc were bad before, they're dogshit now. The self-healing penalty is the absolute dumbest way SSG could've handled things.

There are still plenty of past lives to obtain, even without RXP. "RXP is what keeps the wheels spinning" is the true dipshit take here. There are plenty of other ways SSG could've gone about rebalancing the game. The problem is they dug their hole so deep with endless power creep, that Reaper seemed like a semi-sensible solution. It never was.

Elite, as a difficulty, was never nerfed. It only got easier because everyone is so much powerful. This could've easily been averted.

The better solution would've been "reverse power creep." Revert enhancements back so that they were more in line with Eberron Unlimited enhancements. Definitely keep the new UI (old UI was awful), but drastically scale back the power of enhancements. Scale back the power of items too. +6 to a stat used to be endgame for level 20. Now, it's 9, +4 insightful. Get rid of Melee Power/Ranged Power/PRR/MRR because that's dumb homebrew shit which you would NEVER find in D&D. Make AC the primary line of defense like it once was. Making these changes would've been tough medicine, and it would've pissed some people off, but the game would be in a far better place now if these changes had been made.

I like challenging gameplay. But you know what? 2012 DDO was far more challenging than 2022 DDO, despite no reaper difficulty. It was challenging in (mostly) the right ways. In 2010, doing Elite Enter the Kobold or ToD or Shroud was far more challenging - and enjoyable - than 2022 running R10 Grim and Barrett and whatever other shit that comprises this Frankenstein Monster of an "endgame." Fuck that shit.

Fuck reaper mode and fuck anyone who thinks it was a remotely good idea. SSG cocksuckers, is what you are. 

Alex DeLarge wrote on Sep 20^th, 2022 at 2:50pm:



Y'all are both right. It was destinies that really brought power creep. That was their core mistake. Without destinies, Reaper would be stupid. But, given destinies, reaper was a "good" thing in that it brought difficulty back in line with elite kinda.

So, given the cluster ef, reaper was necessary and therefore "good".

If they would have just kept a kind of class progression (with no destinies), we could have going into higher level content without reaper.

noamineo wrote on Sep 20^th, 2022 at 4:06pm:


No thanks. As is the game overly favors multiclassing.

There's only about 3-4 instances I feel like being pure actually gives equable power to multiclassing. And even then; it's more of an utility play opposed to class power-fantasy.

There's nothing in DDO that feels like, "Oh yeah, I'm truly an epic wizard." that requires you to be a pure wizard opposed to a Pale-trapper, or anything of the like.

Capstones would require a radical revamp and power-creep to make pure classes feel good in DDO's weird homogenized mutliclass promoted gamespace currently.

Alex DeLarge wrote on Sep 20^th, 2022 at 5:33pm:



I agree with most of your post. But, this? Seems tough for any melee to delete packs as well as sorc/druid/alch.

I'll put it this way: As an ice druid on a quest I know well, no melee will outkill me. I don't think it's even possible. I will get there first, and I will have the pack down before they arrive. There are probably quests where this isn't true--and ones I don't know as well.

Anyway, I still agree with the general spirit of your post.