LDoN Could Really Use a Revamp

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Vedian, Oct 15, 2021.

  1. Vedian Lorekeeper

    Some people love LDoN but it’s pretty widely agreed that it’s the least liked expansion up to this point in the game. In today’s fast paced TLPs, why not make some tweaks to make people actually enjoy it and want to play it?

    Group Dungeons
    The rewards are okay and, in some cases, unique. The points system seems to work fine, but the fun drops off a cliff around 5-10 runs through each theme. By around 20 runs you should easily have enough points earned at each camp to unlock the most expensive items, and more than enough points earned to buy everything you want for any class.
    After 100 wins the Adventurers Stone progression just becomes a complete slog, for an item in this era that is pretty mediocre even if it’s a unique slot. At 20 minutes per run on average this is over 120 hours of pure grind (during an 8-week expansion), far worse than pretty much any rare item camp in the game at this point. Elemental group drops are as good or better and can be obtained far more easily. The grind for the aug is so bad it motivates most people to not even bother at all.

    Suggestion 1) Ideally, reduce the total wins required to 20 per camp. Alternatively, it looks like “new information” lore is only added every second win, so even cutting the wins in half by giving new information every win would be a massive improvement.

    Suggestion 2) Add an Easy difficulty to the adventure window. This would be normal difficulty but calculate group level by filling any open slots in the group with the minimum level range (e.g. a group of 3 level 65s would be joined by 3 fake 55s in the level calculation). This would prevent the incentive to intentionally pad a group with low levels to grind wins but would still motivate inviting lower levels if they are available.


    Raid Dungeons
    The drops are unique but in most cases are only a fraction of the stats of an item from Time for similar difficulty. Highly geared players won’t need many items from LDoN raids, and poorly geared players would gain far more value for their dkp from even the worst Time items. A 54 person raid clearing 4 LDoN raids in a night will receive 24 drops, many of which are total garbage (looking at you, weird Type 3s and HP regen augs). That same 54 person raid can receive about 45 items from Time. Almost twice as many items, almost all of which have more value.
    There is also very little incentive to run some of the raids that provide a couple of decent items, if any, which means that all of the time is spent in a handful of the available LDoN raids and skipping over the lower value ones.

    Suggestion 1) Double the drops from LDoN raids across the board. Every chest that drops 2 items would now drop 4 items from the same loot table. Alternatively, the 2 additional drops could be random from the entire LDoN raid drop pool or from other raids in that theme.

    Suggestion 2) Copy the group dungeon point system into a new raid point system. Each raid win would award 1 point that could be spent at any camp and you would unlock items for raids in each theme as you gain points. An example of pricing could be focus effects and items for 10, heroic stat augs could be for 1 point per stat, etc. E.g. Glowing Stone of Agility with 3 heroic Dex would cost 3 raid points and require a minimum of 3 raid wins in Guk. (One night a week with 4 LDoN raids would give around 4 pieces from this system on an 8-week expansion)

    Suggestion 3) Award group dungeon wins for raid dungeons to be counted for the Adventurers Stone advancement.
    Ezbro and Duder like this.
  2. Xyroff-cazic. Director of Sarcasm

    If you lower your average mission time to about 5-6 minutes per run, it's much less painful! And that's very achievable with a decent group running boss missions.

    Several LDoN augments also have much, much more staying power than any item from any expansion before them, or several expansions after them. The charm augment is still viable through SoD. Specialization augs from the raids are good until CoTF for many classes. Heroic strength and AC augments last for many expansions, and players still go back to farm all of these several expansions after LDoN, long after they've stopped farming anything in GoD/OoW, let alone PoP.

    I do think some of the LDoN raids could have their trash density reduced for sure though.
    Tweakfour17 likes this.
  3. Vedian Lorekeeper

    If by average you mean the theoretical minimum amount of time with the absolute optimal group comp, without medding, running to camp, zoning, or an occasional bio, then sure. Nobody is running 366 consecutive missions at average 5-6 mins each. But if they did, that's still 40 hours of extreme intensity grind which would be a minimum 5 hours/week grind for a single aug that in era is about half of an item.

    I'm not disputing some of these items have good staying power, no different than some of the clickies or other items from earlier expansions. But the expansion should be rewarding in era, not designed to be so unrewarding that it needs to be farmed for several expansions later at the expense of the enjoyment of those expansions.

    I'd love to see the design reworked to be more enjoyable, but that isn't a simple process and could easily end up breaking the mechanics. Realistically I think if anything changes it's going to be the easy fix to balance the time vs reward payoff.
  4. Gnothappening Augur

    Will the items be tradeable or does anyone know? If so, then it might be worth it to not worry about it as "regular groups" will finally be able to farm some good stuff to sell.
  5. Xyroff-cazic. Director of Sarcasm

    It's still not the theoretical minimum, but fastest one in era for my group on Mangler was 2.5 minutes on a particular North Ro map. Average for the whole expansion was 5-6 minutes including request time. Have one player bound at the camp to go request the next one, and an evacer to evac as soon as the boss is dead for everyone else, leaving a pile of trash mobs behind. We did use an out of group box druid to punt the requester to Steamfont when requesting Lesser Fay theme though. They weren't run consecutively in a single sitting or anything crazy like that. Usually about 10-15 missions per evening, maxed the aug in about a month or so.
  6. Vedian Lorekeeper

    Your group is certainly not an average composition and had outside help. 5-6 minutes total time investment on average, for an average group, per win, is absurd. If anyone could log in for an hour and 15 minutes to knock out 15 wins and have their aug maxed in a month there would be more than a handful with them maxed.
  7. Xyroff-cazic. Director of Sarcasm

    For sure, agreed it's not 'average' but just pointing out that it's very doable. Group setup was strong, but still far from optimal. A lot of those runs had 3 healers which is obviously pretty weak on DPS. I'd contend that if you're averaging 20 minutes per mission on normal though, that's way below average.

    The only 'outside help' was just one guy boxing a druid at one camp to punt the requester back. I guess we probably leeched enchanter buffs sometimes, but not always.

    Anyhow, I actually hated LDoN on my first TLP go around on Phinigel. But in hindsight after doing it on Mangler, I realized it can actually be very fun and rewarding, and honestly isn't even that huge of a time investment if you run missions with a decently organized crew. Trying to run them with PUG's is definitely pretty rough!
  8. Xeris Augur

    I agree that it might not make much sense to grind LDONs on a TLP that progresses because the time sink to max the charm doesn't seem worth it. I also agree with your points, it would be awesome to see LDON be more rewarding, especially from raids.

    My guild did 5 ldon raids Tuesday and there were... 3/30 items that went for DKP? The most annoying thing about LDON raids is going through one and getting 6/6 garbage augs. It WOULD be awesome if there were 'raid points' you could earn to buy raid drops. I'm also down to make it exorbitant, so you'd have to complete like 100 raids to buy a raid Aug... I disagree about reducing the number of missions to max the charm. I think a good middle ground would be to make raids count towards the charm too.

    Also agree with other posters, LDONs aren't that bad. People just min/max and ignore them and go to paw/pofire exclusively in era. I took my warrior and did LDONs straight from lvl 55 until I maxed the charm. It took 3 weeks averaging about 15 missions per day. From lvl 55 I got to 65 with a bit more than 200aas and that was without using xp pots. The experience isn't terrible. The way I view it: you're getting XP and some of the drops sell for decent, AND you max your charm which in the POP/Ldon era is basically a free Quarm level item (your charm gets nearly 200hp/mana when maxed, assuming you also have your planar flags).

    To me, it's much more preferable to level that way than blow my brains out in paw for the 10,000th time.
  9. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Only thing I would do for LDoN on TLP is to add a multiplier for the points in a similar way to how Raid currencies were altered, could also do the same for DoN currency.

    Namely after 3 months multiply the currency by 2, after 6 months by 3, after 9 months by 4

    Then on TLP LDoN would get points x2 upon unlock and points x3 after GoD unlocks, and points x4 after OoW unlocks.
  10. Vedian Lorekeeper

    The problem that I see is that most people aren't motivated to go after this on a TLP due to the ridiculous number of wins. This is basically the defining item and quest line from this expansion and it's ignored by the vast majority because it isn't fun and there are way more rewarding things to do. It would be far better from a content enjoyment perspective if the number of wins was tuned so that a better percentage (maybe 50-75% of mains) were motivated to do it in era. Nobody would do an epic if it required killing 50,000 fire beetles because that's dumb and not fun. This is only going to be worse on Mischief and Thornblade where LDoN only lasts 4 weeks.

    I'm sure pricing could be tuned from my suggestion but, again, it should be functional in era. At 4 raids/week it would buy 1/3 of an item if it costs 100 which doesn't really help in era. This system should fill the gap to balance the rewards since LDoN drops can be brutal as you've seen.

    XP is actually one of the things that I think is tuned fine in LDoN. It's decent but not great, but combined with the other rewards is good enough. On TLPs though most people don't need the XP at this point or are far more interested in getting better XP and ignoring the aug. Spending 3 weeks on Agnarr in LDoNs leveling an alt doesn't translate to the typical TLP schedule. And definitely not now that LDoN is only a 4 week expansion.

    A Time clear takes a few hours and drops about 45 pieces. This aug is about half a Time piece and maybe it takes 40 hours or maybe its closer to 100+ hours. The reward/time ratio is off by an order of magnitude. It isn't even really half of a Time piece either, just 100 HME since stats and resists are likely maxed or high enough with buffs at this point. There's no focus effect or clicky or attack or FT or anything.

    I think the points system in LDoN is fine. It takes a reasonable amount to unlock each camp and the points awarded from each run and cost of items are balanced. You'll have purchased everything you need on any class and still be only 1/4 done toward maxing the aug though.
  11. Machen New Member


    There is no ldon raid that is similar in difficulty to Time. They are all considerably easier than the more difficult time encounters. Especially when you factor in the lack of motm.
  12. Vedian Lorekeeper

    This is definitely not true and MotM has nothing to do with it.

    Pretty much every LDoN raid is more difficult than P1-P3 while Time drops more loot and better loot.

    Compact takes more tanks than anything in Time.

    The final encounter of Hidden Vale and Sunken Library are on par with or more difficult than pretty much anything in Time. In reward, Sunken Library only has 3 items a Time geared player might be interested in between the two 50 HP or mana augs and the heroic strength ring but everything else is elemental quality.

    Ritualist is more difficult than Time pretty much start to finish with unresistable AE, bosses that all hit like a truck, the mana drain/push fight, knockbacks, and wild ramp that's very difficult to avoid without stepping out of melee. Then for 5 difficult bosses, instead of 15 Time level pieces of gear you get 6 pieces which probably includes 2 HP regen augs, a divination aug, an attack aug, and maybe 2 other pieces that won't rot if you're lucky. And to top it off, unlike Time that rewards you as you go, if for some reason you came with a smaller force because you thought the LDoN would be easy, and you end up failing on the last boss that destroys melee DPS, there's a chance you get to leave with nothing for the 4 bosses you killed.
  13. Xeris Augur

    Going to agree with Machen here. The ldon raids aren't exactly trivial, but... Talking/Vallon, RZ, Inny are harder than any ldon encounter.

    The only thing that makes ldons "hard" for people is them not knowing how to beat the encounters because a lot of people skip over ldons and don't do them much. Probably on a TLP there's a small number of guilds with raid leadership familiar with ldons, otherwise people try to look up stuff on Alla before the raids. It's because a few encounters have some unique mechanics that kill people. Almost every ldon we can do right now on Agnarr with like 25 people... We DEFINITELY cannot do potime with 25, for reference.

    Ritualist is easy as once you know how it works. Within the Compact requires a specific raid comp but we routinely beat that ldon in less than 15 minutes start to finish. People take longer to complete hard missions than that entire raid takes.
    Machen likes this.
  14. Machen New Member


    Dunno why you are bringing P1-3 in when I specifically said the more difficult time encounters. But, if you want to talk about the easier encounters, Frozen Nightmare can be done in era with less characters than any Phase 1 trial.
  15. Machen New Member


    Lol, an item that is pretty mediocre? I didn't catch this my first read through, but this is dead wrong. This is the best in slot aug for a whole lot of expansions. A maxxed ldon aug won't be replaced until SoF/SoD depending on how your expansions fall vs. the annual calendar. It is only beaten in overall stats in ANY slot by a small handful of augs before SoF. (BiC being the most obvious, and that takes nearly as long as 366 ldon wins.)
  16. Vedian Lorekeeper

    Clearly you guys are just trolling.

    TZ/VZ/RZ/Inny are slightly harder than the hardest LDoN fights and in exchange each have loot tables where every single piece is far better than any item out of any LDoN. It's rare for any of their loot to rot.

    Kill time including prep if you round up for these is like 10 minutes. In the time you can get 6 great items from two bosses in Time you could maybe clear the fastest LDoN with the exact same raid, and you would get 6 pieces that at best are a fraction of any item from those bosses and half of the loot will probably rot.

    The easier bosses in Time that are easier and faster than a lot of LDoNs also drop loot far better than any LDoN.

    Time is faster, drops way more loot, and drops way better loot than LDoN, is possible to box without it being a nightmare, and is not significantly harder than LDoN. At this point the difficulty of either doesn't really factor in since the crew that was clearing Time moves on to clearing LDoN and it's a matter of which raid is more rewarding for the same group of players. It isn't surprising that people are far less interested in LDoN because the reward/effort ratio is garbage compared to the previous expansion that is still relevant and far more rewarding.

    But sure, let's squabble over miniscule differences in difficulty being justification to maintain LDoN as the hands down least rewarding expansion. Cutting it from 8 weeks down to 4 weeks clearly acknowledges the problem but does nothing to address it.

    Just because it's BIS for a while doesn't mean it isn't mediocre. People have far better ways to spend their time in era and very few people bother with it because 100 HME for the time investment isn't worth it. If BiC is the same time investment as 366 wins it also has the benefit of having much better stats and is an actual quest instead of a mindless grind. How many people finish BiC compared to the LDoN aug in era?
  17. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Some good points here but I think you're missing some points also. Time is easier and has better loot. Fair, however Time takes a few hours and can only be done once a week. Then what? I don't think anyone was suggesting that once LDoN unlocks you never go back to Time again and focus solely on LDoN raids. They are done in conjunction. You also need to remember that the main point of LDoN (at least from a TLP/Raider perspective) as an expansion is the augs. The actual gear is mostly not great compared to elemental / time armor. Augs augment the already good gear you have +AC, HStr, Pet Focus, Fire Focus, Heal Focus, raise spec caps etc.
  18. Xeris Augur

    I think nobody is quibbling with the fact that LDON is not super rewarding in terms of raid loot... I think we're quibbling with

    You're implying that LDON raid encounters are HARDER than POTIME raid encounters. Not true at all, as I've stated. The only reason people THINK they're harder is because people don't know HOW to do them. Many of the raids require like 1% more thinking than just: "auto attack on, /afk until boss is dead." But also, most LDON raids can be done with <30 people easily. The Rescue can be done with like 8 people. Frozen Nightmare same thing. My guild has done most ldon raids with 22-25 people. I'm not sure we could do some of the harder time bosses w/ 25 people.

    I mean your main point of: risk vs reward not being good in LDON, sure. Agreed
  19. Vedian Lorekeeper

    I realize these are done in conjunction but your points about augs and the low quality gear from LDoNs are exactly the problem.

    At the release of LDoN a guild will have had almost 12 weeks to farm Time and elementals. The next 8 (or 4 now) will have the option of Time, elementals, and LDoN.


    Assuming a 54 player raid force clears Time or 4 LDoN raids in the same amount of time each week.
    Time gives 45/54 or 0.83 pieces/person/week.
    Four LDoNs give 24/54 or 0.44 pieces/person/week.

    However, if you assume most of the LDoN gear is rotting because it is elemental quality or worse, and many of the augments are worthless to most players, the actual amount isn't 24.
    Progeny, Folly, Ritualist, Curse Reborn, Vale, Prison Break, Compact, combined average about 7-10 useful pieces out of 16 potential drops on the loot table. So assuming almost none of the useful pieces rot, about half of the LDoN loot is still rotting. Don't even consider the easier LDoNs where the loot is even worse and there are closer to 4/16 drops that might not rot.

    Four LDoNs actually gives closer to 12/54 or 0.22 pieces/person/week.

    And each of these pieces are generally augments that are equivalent to a single stat on one single piece of the gear they already have. The AC is about 1/2 the AC a class can get on an item. The HP and mana are 1/2 to 1/3 of a Time item, heroic stats and focus effects are about 1/1 each. So an aug could be considered around 1/8th of an actual Time item.

    LDoN is giving the equivalent 0.22/8 = 0.028 complete items/person/week
    While Time is giving 0.83 complete items/person/week. Around 30x more rewarding.

    This is so unbalanced it's comical. It's like charging someone $2 for a loaf of bread, then expecting them to want to pay another $2 for the heels to complete the loaf. Sorry, to "augment" the loaf.
    Tweakfour17 likes this.
  20. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Some of the augs will far outlast almost every piece of PoP gear. Also the useful loot per person per week in each expansion is different and sometimes goes down. Wait for DoN when the LDoN phenomenon repeats itself. Or OoW when guilds will do Epic 1.5/2.0 raids and most of the rewards for getting pieces of an epic are also junk. C'est la vie.