Easy topics for dev communication

[Angelus_dead]

It has been once again pointed out that communication from the developers (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=247813) would encourage the players in many ways. However, it's understandable that the devs would be nervous to talk about controversial subjects or serious problems where they might not have any good answers available. So they may want to avoid things like raid lag, S&B, ranged DPS, AC, Pale Master, epic loot, and even Earth Stance.

However, there's still a lot of safer topics that won't get players upset even if the developer answers do come down against what some customer prefers. Below I will list a bunch of subjects that are either of low importance or barely disputable, meaning that developers who choose to discuss them will have minimal risk of saying something regrettable. In most cases, the implied question regarding the topic is "Are you satisified with how it works, and do you think that's good for the game?"


Rage and potions of Remove Curse. Several important encounters have tactical choices driven by which melee characters can or can't remove their own curses.
The Black Abbot raid has only one treasure chest.
Reflagging around Necropolis 1-3 and Threnal.
Three Barrel Cove and Devil Assault are the only adventure packs without named loot.
Dreamspitter from Reaver's Fate: Suppressed Power, eh?
Drow racial SR/Shuriken enhancements.
Barbarian capstone: Is it missing a listed benefit, and has another instead?
Bluff skill: It has an animation delay, but Intimidate and Diplomacy had theirs removed. Is Bluff meaningful in combat?
Assassin poisons.
Tumbling or opening a door while sneaking.
Kensei Longbow: the damage bonus as if one-handed, not two-handed.
Cleave and Slicing Blow feats: Meaningful melee AOE and DOT?
Master's Touch: How about the lag when that spell activates or expires?
Meteor Swarm: How many orbs do we get?
Phantasmal Killer: how does a mental spell vaporize the victim's corpse?
Summon Monster: Do they have to run out of spellpoints? They're no smarter about targeting than enemy monsters.
Mordenkainen's Disjunction: Ruin a boss's day?
Fire Shield: the web immunity has less duration than the flames.
Spells with HD limits (Sleep, Undeath to Death)
Grasp the Earth Dragon: no protection against Thunder Punch Stun.
Clicky spell items: The DC is lower than allowed in the D&D rulebooks.
Harm scrolls: Not sold at vendors.
Arrows in random treasure: why stacks of 20 instead of 100?
Caster loot: scepters vs staves.
The stack size of Siberys fragments is 1000, which is less than two typical drops, and less than 1% of the amount we're trying to collect.
Light Hammer: a Martial weapon strictly inferior to the most-similar Simple weapon.
Leather/Padded armor + Rogue/Ranger PC.
Air Elementals: What if they had knockdown as an occasional special attack, but not 5 times per second?
Monsters that move despite a condition restricting them to stand still (especially eg upon getting blinded)
Dungeon Scaling + Wildman Slave.
Gamecard to get Turbine Points.
Half Orc Druids: Awesome, or awesomest?


If developers decided to once per week touch on one subject such as from the list above, they could demonstrate concern and understanding to the customers.

[Lithic]

Whats the problem with wildmen slaves and scaling? I havent done the mines quest in so very very long.

[Jendrak]

It has been once again pointed out that communication from the developers (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=247813) would encourage the players in many ways. However, it's understandable that the devs would be nervous to talk about controversial subjects or serious problems where they might not have any good answers available. So they may want to avoid things like raid lag, S&B, ranged DPS, AC, Pale Master, epic loot, and even Earth Stance.

However, there's still a lot of safer topics that won't get players upset even if the developer answers do come down against what some customer prefers. Below I will list a bunch of subjects that are either of low importance or barely disputable, meaning that developers who choose to discuss them will have minimal risk of saying something regrettable. In most cases, the implied question regarding the topic is "Are you satisified with how it works, and do you think that's good for the game?"


Rage and potions of Remove Curse. Several important encounters have tactical choices driven by which melee characters can or can't remove their own curses.
The Black Abbot raid has only one treasure chest.
Reflagging around Necropolis 1-3 and Threnal.
Three Barrel Cove and Devil Assault are the only adventure packs without named loot. devil assualt was never meant to be it's own quest chain so it doent need/warrent named loot. 3 barrel has to much named loot at that level to need/warrent more lowbie gear.
Dreamspitter from Reaver's Fate: Suppressed Power, eh? they changed the life stealing to a "suppresses power" and also how it functions, nothing to discuss.
Drow racial SR/Shuriken enhancements.
Barbarian capstone: Is it missing a listed benefit, and has another instead?
Bluff skill: It has an animation delay, but Intimidate and Diplomacy had theirs removed. Is Bluff meaningful in combat? yes, a rogue can bluff to get temp sneak attack unless they change it
Assassin poisons.
Tumbling or opening a door while sneaking.
Kensei Longbow: the damage bonus as if one-handed, not two-handed.
Cleave and Slicing Blow feats: Meaningful melee AOE and DOT?
Master's Touch: How about the lag when that spell activates or expires?
Meteor Swarm: How many orbs do we get?
Phantasmal Killer: how does a mental spell vaporize the victim's corpse? how does a club to the face vaporize a body??? its one less thing for the server to track. Do you really want corpse lag after killing everything?
Summon Monster: Do they have to run out of spellpoints? They're no smarter about targeting than enemy monsters.
Mordenkainen's Disjunction: Ruin a boss's day?
Fire Shield: the web immunity has less duration than the flames.
Spells with HD limits (Sleep, Undeath to Death)
Grasp the Earth Dragon: no protection against Thunder Punch Stun.
Clicky spell items: The DC is lower than allowed in the D&D rulebooks. theres alot of stuff that doesnt follow the rule book because a 10 minute SF was just annoying and scrolls arent supposed to be an alternate to a real caster/healer. A lesson learned with FW/D-door scrolls.
Harm scrolls: Not sold at vendors.
Arrows in random treasure: why stacks of 20 instead of 100?
Caster loot: scepters vs staves.
The stack size of Siberys fragments is 1000, which is less than two typical drops, and less than 1% of the amount we're trying to collect.
Light Hammer: a Martial weapon strictly inferior to the most-similar Simple weapon.
Leather/Padded armor + Rogue/Ranger PC.
Air Elementals: What if they had knockdown as an occasional special attack, but not 5 times per second?
Monsters that move despite a condition restricting them to stand still (especially eg upon getting blinded)
Dungeon Scaling + Wildman Slave.
Gamecard to get Turbine Points.
Half Orc Druids: Awesome, or awesomest?


If developers decided to once per week touch on one subject such as from the list above, they could demonstrate concern and understanding to the customers.

Answered some of these to help speed things up

[Angelus_dead]

Answered some of these to help speed things up
That would not help.

The objective is not to obtain specific information- it is to encourage the developers to communicate and show that they've thought about these things. I provided a list of easy topics, some of which have answers that are obvious to most everyone, to illustrate that it's possible for the devs to discuss game design with their customers without necessarily getting into the dangerous territory of questions they can't really answer or promises they might not be able to keep.

[Angelus_dead]

Whats the problem with wildmen slaves and scaling? I havent done the mines quest in so very very long.
Oh, it's that killing Wildman Slaves will cause the quest to fail, so when Dungeon Scaling reduces the hitpoints of those monsters it actually makes things more difficult.

[Turial]

That's a good list of topics.

[Cylinwolf]

To be fair, even if he wanted answers from the general public (which he makes VERY clear is not the point of discussion in the OP) yours don't help much or go anywhere.

You said, in relation to suppressed power on Dreamspitter:


they changed the life stealing to a "suppresses power" and also how it functions, nothing to discuss.

So, you say they changed lifestealing to an ability that says that further power can be unlocked, ideally through the psionic crafting system of the same name. But you can't upgrade it, so that's just "the way it works" and it's fine to slap 'oh, you can upgrade this' on random items even if there isn't a way to do so?

The point of the TBC/DA topic isn't that there's enough lowbie named gear already (I can't say there is) but that those are the only two adventure packs, which are bought with money same as the others, that don't give a piece of named loot. For all the **** an at-level party has to go through to complete Devil Assault, don't you think some superior gear would make that quest more appealing to run?

The bluff topic was also based around the fact that the others had a cooldown removed, but bluffs' remained. He wasn't literally asking if it was useful in combat but whether or not it's supposed to be.