Torc
Torc
Systems Developer

    Jun 7, 2023

    #1

We are doing some updates to the XP system to increase incentives for killing monsters, and to make it a little less confusing. This all ties into a series of changes to make running past large numbers of encounters a less desirable behavior because of what it does to our servers due to pathing costs.

Changes:

1. Bravery Bonus is being renamed Delving Bonus. (this is mostly so people coming back to the game don't still think they need to worry about streaks, which came up a bit when we tried to talk about this to our surprise....).​
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2. The "First Time" bonus that appears per difficulty is being removed and its value is being absorbed into Conquest and the Delving bonus. It was redundant, a bit confusing and we need the numbers elsewhere.​
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Details Below:​
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First Time bonus Changes - These bonus are being absorbed by other bonus types.

Difficulty      XP Bonus      In New System
Solo, Casual, Normal, Hard      20%      Move to Conquest
Elite      45%      Move to Conquest
Reaper*      95%      Move to Conquest & new Bravery aka Delving tier

DELVING = BRAVERY BONUS

Increase Delving Bonus by adding a Reaper Tier

New Delving Bonus 50% on Reaper so...

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%.

Conquest Updates - Conquest bonus now scales with difficulty some and is a larger bonus.

Note: We will be doing a pass to address certain dungeons that have usual configurations that make getting these bonuses perhaps more difficult than they should be. We are still working on the details but Castle Ravenloft and the Vault of Night Dragon Raid are some examples.

Normal Difficulty:

    +10% Aggression bonus
    +15% Onslaught bonus
    +45% **Conquest** bonus

Hard Difficulty:

    +15% Aggression bonus
    +25% Onslaught bonus
    +50% **Conquest** bonus

Elite Difficulty:

    +25% Aggression bonus
    +50% Onslaught bonus
    +70% **Conquest** bonus

Reaper Difficulty:

    +25% Aggression bonus
    +50% Onslaught bonus
    +70% **Conquest** bonus

This change is Net neutral except for a very slight boost in hard.

TOTAL BONUS COMPARISON:

NORMAL      old      new      HARD      old      new      ELITE      old      new      Reaper      old      new
                                                                 
conquest      25      45            25      50            25      70            25      70
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      128            178      183            253      253            303      303

TOTAL BONUS COMPARISON REPEAT PLAYS: The increased conquest bonus does increase replay XP but a fresh quest is still X2-3 the bonuses, so this shouldn't really be a problem.

     Normal old      Normal new      HARD      old      new      ELITE      old      new      Reaper      old      new
conquest      25      45            25      50            25      70            25      70
1st time      0      0            0      0            0      0            0      0
Bravery      0      0            0      0            0      0            0      0
Ransack      15      15            15      15            15      15            15      15
Tome of Learning      0      0            0      0            0      0            0      0
Tamper      10      10            10      10            10      10            10      10
Observance      8      8            8      8            8      8            8      8
Total      58      78            58      83            58      103            58      103

I know this isn't a super exciting change because we're basically just trying to encourage most players to do what their already doing, but monsters are a major component of the game play in how time is spent, and our reward structure should reflect that so completely avoiding them doesn't seem as attractive and becomes a less common practice.​
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Note On Stealth - It is its own subset of game play and one that doesn't actually hit our perf problems. We would like to eventually get to some "stealth" game play bonuses to offset the Conquest adjustments but we want to do stuff that isn't exclusive from killing monsters or about just about walking through the quest without engaging anything. We're thinking about Assassinate bonuses (not the enhancement per say but just killing a mob from behind before it aggros on you), never triggering dungeon alert or maybe we'll even introduce picking pockets (but I warn you most monsters are full of pocket lint with the occasional rubber ducky, or a ring of power, that thing is sooo cursed). These things won't make it into this pass though as we'd probably want to do a focused pass on stealth and fix a lot of other rough edges while were at it.​

Last edited by a moderator: Today at 10:35 AM

Torc
Torc
Systems Developer

    Jun 7, 2023

    #1

So with the goal of saving on path cycles to keep lag off the server we recently reworked monster AI in several ways.

1. Better De-aggro logic: Monsters will now be bit better about dropping aggro against players they have no hope of catching, and dropping aggro against players who passed them by but were never primary targets and might be long gone. Note this does not effect the duration they'll contribute to dungeon alert, only killing them or waiting for the alert to cooldown will do that once they've aggro'd and added to the alert level.

2. Skips going home: Monsters will no longer try to path home when they drop aggro. Sometimes these paths could get very long and expensive. We may eventually have them teleport home but given the players may want to go back and re-acquire them we're leaving them where they "lost the player" in this preview. Monsters on landscapes will still leash normally which is the teleport they do with the little yellow stop sign when they get pulled to far off their spawn point.

3. Archer/Casters will generally try to run from you less often when you get close to them. These AIs when they got jammed into corners would spend a lot of time failing to find a good spot, and we feel it's not worth the server cycles. An Archer/Caster will still occasionally move away from you, especially when they first aggro, but typically won't spend cycles trying to maintain distance anymore. Mobs with baked in jump back animations will still do those behaviors though.

Last edited: Today at 4:29 PM

Torc
Torc
Systems Developer

    Jun 7, 2023

    #1

We are updating Dungeon Alert to put some bite back in the system which has not scaled well against the ever increasing player power over the years. Most of these changes focus on red alert which is really the alert we want you the player to avoid.

We are aware some content has some trigger issues and we are working through the feedback we've already received on those dungeons which will be tracked in a different post.

Changes:

1. Monsters movement speed bonuses have been increased for all dungeon alert levels by about 20% because players have access to a lot more movement effects than they did back in the day.

2. On red alert all monsters will gain True Sight just like bosses do.

3. On red alert all monsters will gain 25% dodge penetration and a very large hit bonus while flanking. To be clear this hit bonus only applies if the monster is behind you.

4. On red alert monsters who have been Crowd Controlled will break free in 6 seconds, and will break free faster and faster for every time that particular monster is CC'd.

Last edited by a moderator: Today at 10:31 AM

It's like they know they should drop one pinch of gold in the loaf to try and sell the steaming pile.

I wonder if we can get Half-Elf Arti Dilly to grant rune-arm use now.

I don't understand why SSG insists on nerfing zerging these past couple of months...

They won't touch XP Pots, they are a revenue part, since weverybody and the dog buy the best one from the store.
( with DDO points.. which were either acquired by buying them or being a VIP and hoarding them long enough, so in eithe case they earn some money )

Jesus fucking Christ talking SSG devs out of their stupid fucking ideas is a full time goddam job.

But who the fuck knows what shape that will take. How the hell do they not know that some quests dont have a conquest bonus?

1> Our lag problems are less about fighting monsters, then running from monsters and leaving them far behind. The bottle neck is in the path system doing long paths as the player gets far away. Ergo, not wanting to be bothered with the monsters at all feeds into that.