Ryss
01-07-2009, 09:15 AM
Hey all!
My original post became so big and possibly somewhat complicated. Therefore I divided it in multiple parts. I will post them one after the other.
An important note though before I start: This post will mostly sound negative and it may seem like a bashing but I assure you it is not the intent. I will try to point out various design flaws in PnP D&D and DDO both. And since Turbine is doing the "translation" from PnP to DDO, they have to be analyzed as well.
I don't play any other game that is developed by Turbine. Therefore when I say Turbine I mean the Turbine we all know from DDO.
The Turbine we know has 3 major flaws: extremely short sighted, slow to react and heavy-handed.
a) Short sightedness
My crystal ball tells me that there is no individual working at Turbine who has a firm grasp of D&D. Or, there is someone but he/she gets constantly ignored by the management. How do I know this? Because DDO looks like it is run by a 15 year old DM. "Whoa, let's give fighters an enhancement that gives +10 to attack bonus! That'll be cool!". Of course it will be cool, but it will break your game. And it did. We've seen this back when the cap was 10. "Rangers are gimp, let's give them an enhancement that gives them +10% attack speed that will stack with everything. Wow!". "Barbarians are gimp, let's give them bonus crit ranges!".
You see where I'm going. This doesn't stop with enhancements. Clickies are also cool, but they upset the balance. +15 skill items are cool too etc.
In short Turbine is an inexperienced (and therefore impulsive) DM that tries to make its players happy by giving a lot of cool stuff without thinking thoroughly about their consequences.
b) Slow reaction
This one is pretty obvious: DDO doesn't have legions of staff. By staff I mean every branch: development, testing, QA etc. Limited staff = slow development, slow bug fixing.
c) Heavy-handedness (or "The nerf is strong with you")
We have witnessed this a lot: One mod's gimp becoming another mod's über. Or vice versa. Turbine generally can't make gradual changes because of reasons a) and b) combined.
Turbine wants to produce new stuff. That is what keeps the players from leaving. New content, new abilities, new classes, new races. You name it. Therefore new stuff gets the priority (naturally). That means that there is little resource left to fix old mistakes and gotchas. So every change has to be small and big at the same time. What do I mean? Small enough to implement, big enough to change balance. They don't have the luxury to think everything through because they neither have time nor the manpower to do that. This is why we see them trying to cure the symptoms instead of fighting the underlying disease. This lazy effort causes those big (mostly
unintentional) swings of the scale of game balance.
My two coppers.
Go to part 2: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=168661
My original post became so big and possibly somewhat complicated. Therefore I divided it in multiple parts. I will post them one after the other.
An important note though before I start: This post will mostly sound negative and it may seem like a bashing but I assure you it is not the intent. I will try to point out various design flaws in PnP D&D and DDO both. And since Turbine is doing the "translation" from PnP to DDO, they have to be analyzed as well.
I don't play any other game that is developed by Turbine. Therefore when I say Turbine I mean the Turbine we all know from DDO.
The Turbine we know has 3 major flaws: extremely short sighted, slow to react and heavy-handed.
a) Short sightedness
My crystal ball tells me that there is no individual working at Turbine who has a firm grasp of D&D. Or, there is someone but he/she gets constantly ignored by the management. How do I know this? Because DDO looks like it is run by a 15 year old DM. "Whoa, let's give fighters an enhancement that gives +10 to attack bonus! That'll be cool!". Of course it will be cool, but it will break your game. And it did. We've seen this back when the cap was 10. "Rangers are gimp, let's give them an enhancement that gives them +10% attack speed that will stack with everything. Wow!". "Barbarians are gimp, let's give them bonus crit ranges!".
You see where I'm going. This doesn't stop with enhancements. Clickies are also cool, but they upset the balance. +15 skill items are cool too etc.
In short Turbine is an inexperienced (and therefore impulsive) DM that tries to make its players happy by giving a lot of cool stuff without thinking thoroughly about their consequences.
b) Slow reaction
This one is pretty obvious: DDO doesn't have legions of staff. By staff I mean every branch: development, testing, QA etc. Limited staff = slow development, slow bug fixing.
c) Heavy-handedness (or "The nerf is strong with you")
We have witnessed this a lot: One mod's gimp becoming another mod's über. Or vice versa. Turbine generally can't make gradual changes because of reasons a) and b) combined.
Turbine wants to produce new stuff. That is what keeps the players from leaving. New content, new abilities, new classes, new races. You name it. Therefore new stuff gets the priority (naturally). That means that there is little resource left to fix old mistakes and gotchas. So every change has to be small and big at the same time. What do I mean? Small enough to implement, big enough to change balance. They don't have the luxury to think everything through because they neither have time nor the manpower to do that. This is why we see them trying to cure the symptoms instead of fighting the underlying disease. This lazy effort causes those big (mostly
unintentional) swings of the scale of game balance.
My two coppers.
Go to part 2: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=168661