Sweet_Bud
10-06-2011, 02:41 PM
Hi, I've returned after 8 months playing LotRO and loving the solo-experience there. The guilds ('kin') there weren't half bad enough, once you found a good one. Nonetheless many players could skip doing any group play until level 50+ (of 65 max, going to 70 soon) which makes the game boring. Thus, I return to the mid-maxing haven that is DDO. I've seen a few things worh noting:
- Props to giving Sorcs a prestige enhancement line. Others had 3 or more before they even had one.
- Props to displaying hp/sp for the benefit of healers. I've asked before in groups "what's your total hp, so I know how much to heal for?"
- Boos for increasing the Von6 (Plane of Night) raid difficulty. If it was too easy before, now it's too prone to wiping. While I'm at it, the epics are pretty mean too and could use some decrease in save DC's so that those with DC 35 spells have a chance, not just DC 45 (note: nearly impossible to achieve).
To this end, I have a few suggestions for the next update:
- In the Vault of Night epics, change things so that the seals drop in VoN 1-4. Currently all the seals, shards, and gear only drop on the end raid. This means that the only VoN epic that ever gets run on epic is Von6, the Plane of Night. If this were corrected, it might actually means something to have Von 1-5 available to run at epic.
- Fix the bloody AC issues. After L10 or so, the to-hits of monsters become ridiculous. Boosting to-hit for players is easy after buffs and +5 gear (seriously, +5 to +10 weapons should only be available to L16+ players in PnP...), but boosting AC is not nearly as easy. When I have to have a 50 AC to avoid getting his in Gianhold, there's an issue. Scaling back the to-hits would actually make armor relevant after L10.
- Cut down the saves of monsters on Epics so that casters with a DC 35 spell can actually succeed with regularity; players shouldn't have to do endless Abbot raids to get those myrad +1-3 DC boosting items.
- Add access routes through the town so that one doesn't have to constantly travel through the market. It's nice, but after the first 50 times you stop noticing anything beautiful in it.
- Open up at least one set of quests above L13 - L16 or so - for f2p players. This could partially help correct the dearth of options for many players in that range, while still allowing lots of p2p content.
- Allow more options for gaining TP w/o buying, or drop the cost of packs. Paying 1500 TP for a shared bank account to make "bound to account items" relevant is ridiculous. LotrO had far more options for this and allowed for lots of purchases w/o as much actual money (of course, you had to pay for more incident options too...)
These wouldn't be too hard to implement (outside of the AC option). Try to implement these for the next update!
- Props to giving Sorcs a prestige enhancement line. Others had 3 or more before they even had one.
- Props to displaying hp/sp for the benefit of healers. I've asked before in groups "what's your total hp, so I know how much to heal for?"
- Boos for increasing the Von6 (Plane of Night) raid difficulty. If it was too easy before, now it's too prone to wiping. While I'm at it, the epics are pretty mean too and could use some decrease in save DC's so that those with DC 35 spells have a chance, not just DC 45 (note: nearly impossible to achieve).
To this end, I have a few suggestions for the next update:
- In the Vault of Night epics, change things so that the seals drop in VoN 1-4. Currently all the seals, shards, and gear only drop on the end raid. This means that the only VoN epic that ever gets run on epic is Von6, the Plane of Night. If this were corrected, it might actually means something to have Von 1-5 available to run at epic.
- Fix the bloody AC issues. After L10 or so, the to-hits of monsters become ridiculous. Boosting to-hit for players is easy after buffs and +5 gear (seriously, +5 to +10 weapons should only be available to L16+ players in PnP...), but boosting AC is not nearly as easy. When I have to have a 50 AC to avoid getting his in Gianhold, there's an issue. Scaling back the to-hits would actually make armor relevant after L10.
- Cut down the saves of monsters on Epics so that casters with a DC 35 spell can actually succeed with regularity; players shouldn't have to do endless Abbot raids to get those myrad +1-3 DC boosting items.
- Add access routes through the town so that one doesn't have to constantly travel through the market. It's nice, but after the first 50 times you stop noticing anything beautiful in it.
- Open up at least one set of quests above L13 - L16 or so - for f2p players. This could partially help correct the dearth of options for many players in that range, while still allowing lots of p2p content.
- Allow more options for gaining TP w/o buying, or drop the cost of packs. Paying 1500 TP for a shared bank account to make "bound to account items" relevant is ridiculous. LotrO had far more options for this and allowed for lots of purchases w/o as much actual money (of course, you had to pay for more incident options too...)
These wouldn't be too hard to implement (outside of the AC option). Try to implement these for the next update!