Stealth Nerf to Spawn Monkeys

With todays update noticed that foes are no longer level 15 if both party members are not 17+ for the daily presearing quest. Not sure of full details of nerf, anyone?

edit: after testing with active daily quest on a level 20 team leader and partner of x level foe spawns as follow
Partner is level 0-9: standard quest spawned foe not there
Partner is level 10-13: standard quest spawned foe is level 8
Partner is level 14-16:standard quest spawned foe is level 11
Partner is level 17-20:standard quest spawned foe is level 15
Partner is level 1-20 (before update build March 11,2011): standard quest spawned foe was level 15
Please confirm my new research

Doesn't surprise me. They most likely now go off the lower level party member, rather than the higher one.

I think that they nerfed the levels even if you go it solo (a level 18 necro apparently was getting level 11 foes both alone and with a partner).

Maybe they just want the exp gained to be capped at 1k per day.

I just tested it Im level 20 with quest and went alone and still level 15 foes but when I had a party member level 14 and me as leader the foes were lvl 11.

That's good to hear, at least.

This will prevent very quick power-leveling of lower lvl characters. makes sense.

Yes it will slow down getting LDOA from 11 hours to 2-3 days. see ldoa speedway thread http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/f...t10473064.html

Wait. I've been using a level 2 character on my mule account to open the gate for my main pre character, and then mapping the mule out. So, this change means I will no longer be able to do the quests north of the wall this way? I will not only have to hire a gate monkey, but hire one of the right level not to screw up the quest?

Zone out on the alt acc before zoning into the northlands

no, this is flat out retarded.

the only people it punishes are the ones who don't care what level they party with. now, in order to maximize exp, people will be "elitist" and not party with lower levels.

for example:

i, as a lvl 18, am punished if i party with a level <17 for the quest.

where is the logic in that? reducing ldoa from 11 hours to 2 days?

you just gutted a title that took >3 months to attain and are concerned about 36 hours?

really, really lazy way to "fix" this.

i honestly hope this is reverted or an alternate "solution" is found because i really enjoyed taking random lower level pugs to complete the quest (and no i didn't farm it).

Anet stated they wanted to make ldoa slightly easier to get - not 1000x quicker.
First we get whiners that survivors now gettable on any chr and the booze titles too easy and now players are whining they cant get ldoa in a few hrs and now have to work for it.
I can see the next bit being players want an instant gwamm title upon chr creation - make the titles so much easier to get .
Drunk spam is easy to get yes - but u still have to do several damn thousand clicks to get it and i did a zero to max and it took ages and i`ll probably neeed a new mouse in a few days because of it - clicking 7k times doesnt make it easier , quicker maybe but not easier.
Coil - as far as i was aware most players did ldoa along with a gate monkey who left - so theres no real change now and the only ppl who are really affected are players who were charging for the ability to spawn/kill the higher level foes.

I knew Anet would change it. I've done everything wrong with my toon (i.e didn't even bother doing any of the secondary profession quests and went monk secondary as soon as possible) Even so, and without a great effort, I'm lvl 19 with 70% remaining for LDoA.

I'm glad to hear this. When I say people taking 200g for spawning enemies, I though: "What the frakkity frak? More people getting cash for doing practically nothing?"


Runners, rushers, monkeys and taxies that charge for it...
You are lucky I'm not the one that has the right or the power to do so, or they would have been dead 1 day right after being born!
Even farming and SCs would become either impossible or pointless.

Well, the ship has sailed but I really wish they would have capped the daily exp.

I appreciate the means to acquire LDoA by playing the game.. but... out of deference to the time taken by the old style LDoA earners it should have been a time consuming process.

I had a good laugh at the "Lvl 19 Quest Monkey 300g" How did ANET not see that coming?

What the hell is so incredibly attractive about rushing to LDoA anyway? Someone going to take their computers away soon?

I'm doing it on (1000 + as little as I can manage while finishing a daily quest) xp per day, i.e. a few weeks. I'm not spending a second more than absolutely required playing with a gimped skillbar, killing boring enemies.

Heck, I should go get me a level 10 spawn monkey from now on to get even easier enemies so I waste even less time getting to collect my 1,000 xp.

It's the path of least resistance. It's still nowhere near "...a major time investment from the player..." but it's a hell of a lot better than it was a few days ago. Actually the way the dev notes read it seems to imply you were only supposed to gain experience from the quests anyways.

ldoa is a joke now compared to what it was...which may be why there are so many people actively doing it (and why there were so many people farming solely the level 15 baddies, not the dailies themselves). it's already been made ~3000% "easier".

but that's not what my point was & not what i'm whining about.

let me re-illustrate:

last night i had 2 level 10's pm me asking if i would accept them...if i go with a level 10, the spawns are lvl 8...where is the challenge and/or fun in that for me, as a level 18? i could do the same quest solo, or with an imp for 150%speed, get more challenge, more exp...

as a non-farmer of these quests/lvl 15's, i'd rather group with whomever i want without being negatively affected.

like i said, i think this was a lazy way to "fix" what they perceived to be a "problem" (but imo the problem is adding a farmable quest). all it did was increase the time to get ldoa by ~13 hours as those who were inclined to farm 32 exp kills beforehand are still going to farm, just not gonna have to pay 100g for a zoner.

just for kicks, here are a couple ideas:

-when player A leaves, spawns change level dependent upon player B
-utilize "anti-farm code" relative to number of lvl15 spawns in a map
-reduce the number of random lvl15 spawns in the map, leaving primary objectives +1 or 2 2pops
-change all quests to only 1 kill/mob
-when player A leaves, quest fails/lvl15's disappear or die or your party auto resigns out
-cap daily exp earnings per players character at ~1250-1500.

ps - i'm overdue for a new mouse too stupid double clicks

the funny part about quests like this is it gets rid of people actually playing a "multi-player" game in a party because it reduces the number of people you can do it with if you want to maximize your XP. I understand making it take longer, but why not gate it with needing a certain number of items as drops so that everyone can group together? The drops could be bound. Really, that is what they should do with Kath Hammers too: Make them Bind on Acquire so they can't be sold.

What I don't understand is why people get sooo uptight about how somebody else plays the game. If you want to do a daily quest only once each day, that is your option. If you want to spend five hours repeatedly kill the same beasties, more power to you. What is this obsessive need for be to make everybody else conform to there particular playing style. Who cares how long it take somebody to get a title or if it was harder back in the day. So what? In the end, it is just a game to have fun with. There really isn't anything to get worked up over IRL. So funny seeing the constant appeals to Anet regarding some perceived injustice or imbalance in a game. Just my 2cents.....

Guess i can still use my alt to zone in and out of northlands when quest in the northlands isnt active. i dont mind the update, you have to be level 10+ to get the quest, why is it fair for level 1 -9 to be able to get them aswell. good fix imo.

Set new spawns experience to zero, increase daily quest reward to 2000 or 2500. Upped daily reward drops it to between 41 and 51 days more in line with 'fast' LDoA runs on the old system and no death leveling required. Assuming you hold quests for 19->20 and farm northlands to around level 14 you could easily get it into the high 20s/low 30s range and it no longer matters who you group with. Damn, that sure was hard Anet.

Has it occurred to you that messing with the formula that determines XP might not be a very desirable thing to do, no matter how simply it solves the current problem? Or that adding exception code for the new spawns may be more difficult a programming chore than you assume? There may be very good reasons why the Live Team would choose non-optimal solutions in preference to modifying time-tested, working code that is the very heart of GW.

@BrettM

Set spawns to level 10 regardless of player level then and keep experience. Lets you grind to level 16 if you absolutely insist on doing so just like if you were farming Charr bosses over and over but would now prioritize the quest reward for fast gains. Isn't this the entire point of having the reward to begin with?

Or, another idea. Don't worry about changing anything and don't worry about what other people are doing or how. Problem solved..... I mean, we are talking about Pre-searing. Does it really matter?

I dont like the change in the quest spawns. In the guild we are playing with 3 people in pre. One is lvl 11 one 14 and i lvl 17. we are all in a different monster spawn caps now. So i can complete the quests really easy if we play together but i dont like it that im being punished because i like to play with guild mates.
Now im being forced to play alone.... now pre feels more like post again....

Right now, even after the 'stealth nerf', the full way from level 1 to 20 is still shorter and easier than the way from level 15 to 16 before the Vanguard Quests. Waaaay too fast and easy.

It would be by far the best if they just went with the original intent of making the special mobs not give any exp at all so the only source of exp above lv16 would be the quest rewards (which are VERY high by the way - see most Postsearing Prophecies quests reward just 250 or 500xp).

A player that has only Prophecies and wants just to make a new character (not caring about LDoA) can still get level 20 faster if he stays in Pre than if he went through the normal progression! Such a bad implementation, isn't it?

Also, a player can become a Legendary Defender of Ascalon without killing a single Charr! Just kill lv 5 Oakhearts +accepting basic quest rewards to get to level 10 and then just keep farming the same bandits near a zone portal...

If the exp came just from quest rewards then not only LDoA wouldn't become a complete worthless joke of a title but also players would have a GOOD reason to play together - when you don't have to worry about having to share exp with the other player you can take almost anyone with you so you both finish the task faster!

I wished for some actual mutliplayer activity but this very poor implementation is all about going solo, again. It just continues the tradition of subsequent updates making GW more and more a SinglePlayer Online RPG...

Instead of nerfing experience gain or something, they should just make the quests harder. Keeping everything at a low level is boring and, personally, would make me not even want to level up. I play pre mostly because I like solo PvE stuff, but eliminating all the challenge would make that suck (that's why I never bothered to get LDoA before the quests). Making the quests harder would be welcomed.

Just increase number of foes (2 level 11 charr are pushovers, even to a level 14) or give everything better bars (hammer and monk grawls and the undead necro groups were pretty good).

I am for making the quests harder BUT with correspondingly MORE exp reward. Less grind but with real challenge is what PvE should be about.

If they can't make it challenging, at least shorten the damn grind. I hate this stealth update since it just makes it more of a longer grind than anything else.

Yeah, the grind is horrible, like 5-10 minutes a day for a few weeks, and only on days when I feel like it. HOW WILL I COPE?!!??!

Seriously, you'd think there was an expiration date on this title given how people deal with it. Get it a few days later instead of scrambling for chump xp from kills.

Thousand experience. Every day. Minimal effort. Walk in the park. No grind.

You do realize that many casual players rather do something else than to go out and repeatedly kill the same old spawns and over and over again, do you?

I rather play new content than to repeatedly grind old ones. It is your choice if you like to play like a mindless bot, just dont expect everyone to do so.

If this is your stance it needs to be asked...did you max Sunspear and if so, how?

You can easily max sunspear by doing DoA, vanquishing, and the zaishen quests.

All that is left in this 6 years old game is to get titles for HoM. The only redeeming trait is, it is not much of a grind for most of the titles. For example, you don't have to keep vanquishing the same area 5 times, once for each of your characters, since HoM is account based now. But if I have to get GWAMM in order to transfer each of my characters to GW2, I wouldn't bother.

Optimal solutions (IMHO):

- Quest spawns SHOULDN'T have dynamic leveling and should be set at the same levels as the charr (bosses being L10, and so on) and give normal XP for those levels. If players want a higher level challenge THAT'S WHAT POST IS FOR. Soloing the daily quests with my L20 is fairly easy for me as is anyway. To keep it from being too easy, just increase the number of enemies in each group. This also keeps players from needing to team up at specific levels. Players L1-9 (L1-14, if all these suggestions are implemented) could still tag along and get XP from spawned quest enemies just like they can from the charr now. Dynamic leveling is a fun idea, but isn't the optimal solution for this MULTIPLAYER game in this case.

- Keep the 1000 XP daily quest rewards. Going from L16 to L20 by earning 1000 XP a day still doesn't take all that long. (Doing that, I would have reached LDoA a lot faster still than having had to get around to setting up DLs and hoping my computer didn't crash or my internet didn't get DCed. I actually would have achieved LDoA between 8 to 12 times faster than DLing alone, believe it or not, due to these reasons.) Players could still optionally benefit from setting up DL sessions to make it even faster if they wanted.

- Don't make the daily quests available until L15. That way there is at least some mandatory old-school charr farming from L11 to L14 (which shouldn't take too long) before doing the normal Pre quests to jump you to L15. This makes the daily quests a little more desirable to do and a reward for earning L15, and keeps players doing the quests (playing the game) instead of just farming XP to L20. If you think about it, repeatedly taking a quest and abandoning it or rezoning doesn't make sense for the LDoA title either...

These suggestions should (hopefully) make LDoA achievable (with or without DLing) within about 1 to 2 months of fairly casual, but purposeful and rewarding gameplay in Pre.

These quests aren't even two weeks old, and you are already complaining about how boring they are?

You know, they never took away death-leveling; you can still do that if you want.

I have always known about death leveling but it is something that I don't like to do because that is not playing the game in a fun way (unless being owned repeatedly by charrs is a fun feeling for you for some wierd reasons), or in the way that is intended to be played.

If you have to sacrifice fun for the sake of gaining a title in this game, then it is time to ask yourself why are you even still playing this old game? Are you doing this merely for an e-peen that nobody, but yourself, cares about anymore? Are you just wasting your time doing things that you don't enjoy when you there are many other fun things you could have been doing? (i.e. I do have a life)

Being someone who has spent his hard earned money to buy this game, I am at least entitled to gain some fun from playing it, don't I? Titles, by themselves, are not important to me, I don't care about the e-peens, but it is the fun journey towards achieving such titles that matters.

Currently, I am only completing the daily quests once per day. Rather than farming the same old level 8 mobs, that are actually easy to kill. They should make the daily quests harder, give MORE exp reward than just 1000xp, but fix them so they are not able to be exploited by death leveling or farming the same spawns repeatedly.

dude, they don't want to just hand everyone LDoA, they want you to work for it a little bit. 1000xp a day is just fine, it still won't take very long.

Dude, learn to Read. I am saying the quests are too easy and easily exploitable for farming. If they dont want to hand everyone LDoA, they should make the quests harder and fix the farming exploits on them. Death leveling and repeatedly farming the spawns by abandoning quests are game exploits that should be fixed!

The game shouldn't be so easily exploitable by mindless bots (whether they be software or humans). If you abandon those quests, it should be gone for the rest of the day and not be allowed to take them again and again within the same day.

Initial thoughts...

The nerf was hard on guildmates wanting to team together but being punished for being different levels. It also eliminated spawn monkeys but not entirely. They still can be utilized if a person wants to farm quest spawned foes in an area of pre they don't have the quest for or if they want to farm the daily quest mobs but already turned in the quest. Finally, it doubled the grind for people farming quest spawned mobs. More on this later.

Furhter thoughts...

A similar title would be Sunspear. You can farm mobs for the title just like ldoa currently. You can also do daily zaishen quests or missions if they take place in the appropriate area of nightfall for title points just like the daily vanguard quests except Sunspear rewarding quests are not offered every day. However since sunspear is not in pre it has additional methods such as completing books. Ultimately, many people achieve the bulk of their points for the Sunspear title farming mobs on weekends that have double points.

Now the Sunspear title can easily be achieved in less than 2 days via mob farming so given that ldoa should not be more special than this similar title, therefore completing ldoa via mob farming in 2 days is perfectly reasonable.

Comparing the old way of getting LDOA to the current way is not reasonable because the old way of death leveling was a broken method and this is obviously why there was an update March 3rd. Just like the old way of getting Sunspear is not compared to getting the current method because it too was broken. What was the old way for getting Sunspear? Create a nightfall character on October 27, 2006 (release date), get to rank 8 via mob farming, wait for almost 6 months, till April 19, 2007 for hard mode to be released, than farm mobs to max. So lets nerf Sunspear to the old way and put in an artificial 6-month time delay for characters once they reach rank 8, na lets not.

Final thoughts....

Ultimately, comparing old broken methods of getting titles is not reasonable or suggesting artificial repetitive 24 hour time delays for current ones will just add frustration to some peoples play styles and is not found in other reputation titles such as Sunspear.

Certainly, the march 11th nerf was a mixed bag with pros and cons. Perhaps before it was too easy and now its just right and no further changes should be implemented. The only thing now left to do that would be inline with the other reputation titles would be to make a new weekend event - double experience for kills in pre-searing.

Allowing everyone to easily get their titles is on Anet´s agenda, as this would the final boost in sales they could give GW before GW2. Any arguing for making titles harder to get is pointless because it goes directly against the marketing strategy Anet is employing right now.

Instead people should focus on discussing how the end-game and/or PvP could be made better without using major resources, as those 2 elements decide how much fun people can still squeeze out of GW before GW2.

Comparing against the Sunspear doesn't hold, because there are MANY ways of progressing in the Sunspear title but there are only very few ways of progressing in the LDoA title.

For Sunspear, there are books, there are missions, there are Zaishen quests, DoA, other synergistic titles like Guardian and Vanquisher, you can also farm which is the most bot-like way.

For LDoA, there are no books or missions and no other synergistic titles. You can either only use Langmar's daily quests or exploit death leveling. The problem is combining these 2 would get you to LDoA too fast and they should slow it down. Now that they have Langmar's quests, they should FIX the exploits for death leveling and quest farming.

After fixing these exploits which would cut down the time taken for LDoA drastically, they should make the Langmar quests harder but more rewarding so people would STILL be interested in getting LDoA. Making the quests harder would also nudge more people to team up, since we don't have heroes in pre. What is the point of letting people solo all the way to LDoA by exploiting death leveling and quest farming? If you want LDoA, you should at least learn to play as a team.