Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[Antheal]

Elf Priests in Elite Gwylan's Stand have infinite SP for spamming Heal on themsleves, in addition to casting Flamestrike/Cometfall or whatever it is.

Why is there one rule for player exploits, but no rule at all for monster exploits?

[zex95966]

Elf Priests in Elite Gwylan's Stand have infinite SP for spamming Heal on themsleves, in addition to casting Flamestrike/Cometfall or whatever it is.

Why is there one rule for player exploits, but no rule at all for monster exploits?


well the AI is stupid, they will continue to try and shoot at you through walls. if they had limited SP, all you would have to do is stand behind a wall or tumble around and dodge spells and they would be completely useless after a short while. To counter that, give them unlimited SP is fine with me.

If you want to get rid of their SP pool, you can kill them they are much less deadly that way.

I still think the game is to difficult for newer players, and TR's with optimal equipment don't even come close to 28 point newbies with Vendor trash and no plat.
Therein lies the problem.

[Antheal]

If you want to get rid of their SP pool, you can kill them they are much less deadly that way.


Except you can't when as soon as you get them down to about 10%, the cast Heal on themselves again.

[Kushiel]

So you want the game to be easily solo'ed on elite setting with bad character builds. Where does that leave those of us who like challenging progression in teams with great builds? My point is this; you have your setting. Leave one for us.


Heh. You type as if I want to take something away from you. I'm fairly certain that in another thread (maybe it was this one much earlier on) I did say that I would like the "game" to be *easier* for a broader range of characters/gear/races/Players/skills/weapons to successfully have fun playing and from which to accumulate rewards (Favor/XP above other considerations). I don't equate that to my having said "I want the game to be easily solo'ed on elite setting with bad character builds." [Maybe you are also implying that I've built a bad character?]

What I've tried a few times to point out is that Elite solo (and often *any* difficulty in a full party of 6/12 which turns dungeon scaling from what could be fun into an ordeal) becomes frustrating (to me) because the Foes we face are not limited in ways in which we are. They don't suffer from the same impacts of trying to press keys, discern icons at a glance, move a mouse, select descreet pieces of UI with a cursor that is not always unerringly maneuvered to the right position. The foes cannot be inturrupted (and I truly mean they cannot be inturrupted... I've held/paralyzed/soundbursted an approaching attacking Ogre/Scorrow/Troll - seen the graphics indicate my attack succeeded - and still been subjected to their full round of triple-smash attack or claw/claw/tail-whip. Where, on the other hand, I've cast Magic Missiles... seen my missiles nearing the Foe, been held or soundburst myself... and watch as my arcane attack (already cast and about to inflict damage - maybe end a worrisome fight) is nullified because I've been "inturrupted." BS! BS a thousand times over).

To continue that line of thought in a bullet-point fashion for a moment, because maybe that will add clarity for you:

* Dog/Hyena/Wolf - able to spam trip with no discernable cooldown
* Various Divine Casters fully self-healing via Heal uninterruptably, no SP used, full chain of physical attacks included or throwing out some offensive castings
* Player "Rapid Shot" for archery is hardly *rapid* at all
* Multi-Shot cooldown is a sad joke. Compare against trips and smashes and scorrow attacks.
* Foes AC/HP/Immunities/speed w/o self-hasting nullifies what could be fun
* Player cooldowns for special attacks or self-healing can be unforgiving
* Player casting, clicky, potion, scroll use in movement drastically cuts movement
* Jump casting/clicking/reading helps... a little. Foes are smooth as graphite coated glass. Always. Uninterrupteable. Limitless SP
* Foes attacks being resolved with less (no?) reliance on facing, line-of-effect, line-of-sight where our own get blocked or nullified (costing SP, using a limited count special attack)

Where you state "you have your setting. Leave one for us" has me interpreting your perception as being wholly reactionary... not willing to even "hear" differing viewpoints, shutting down voices that differ from yours... or intentionally "hearing" everyone who says "we'd like more ways for people to play in the world and have their own type of fun" as demanding that what you find fun be utterly devalued and stripped from the world. I don't think any of my posts have gone to that particular place.

(I'm also rather leaning to your use of "you have your setting. Leave one for us" to be interpreted as a dig at me in specific. As if I should be content with what can be reaped (Favor/XP) from 'the lower settings' - even though I clearly stated I've been running the more difficult settings and have only expressed frustration with descreet game mechanics that I find to be.... stupid.)

[parvo]

Elf Priests in Elite Gwylan's Stand have infinite SP for spamming Heal on themsleves, in addition to casting Flamestrike/Cometfall or whatever it is.

Why is there one rule for player exploits, but no rule at all for monster exploits?

If the monsters in this game attacked with half the ferocity a group of players can, you would quit the same day. What does it matter how many spell points the enemy caster has when most of them don't get a spell of before they are dead anyway?

[FengXian]

I still think the game is to difficult for newer players, and TR's with optimal equipment don't even come close to 28 point newbies with Vendor trash and no plat.
Therein lies the problem.

You don't start playing as a TR you know. If people make it to 20 and beyond as F2P, why shouldn't you be able to as a VIP? Get some gear, make better builds, run norm/hard instead of elite, grab a hire if you wanna solo. Ofc if you wanna solo In the Flesh at level on a barb/cleric build with korthos gear you'll find the game "too difficult". Not game's fault I guess :/

But seriously, after a couple of "test" toons I abandoned in the 7-15 range on random servers, my first "real" toon was a 28 point elven arcane archer, so far from being an "ube" build, and I had little to no problem leveling him to 20.


because the Foes we face are not limited in ways in which we are.

If someone's overpowered it's definitely not mobs, it's US. We can actually create useful builds and we can play them (I suppose) way better than AI does. That blows away any possible advantage mobs could have.

*The dogs...you win this one...trip can hurt, I agree, but it's the only thing they can do!
*Infinite SP? Please, they die waaay before they have a chance to take advantage of this.
*Can't be interrupted? Poor mob casters move once every 5 seconds making a few steps and spending the rest of time standing still while you chop them with your axe, you want to interrupt them too? Make them spawn already dead, I say :P
*Rapid shot has been actually improved and it is useful now. Not that you can see much of it if you stop at lv 6. Manyshot is Godly DPS. Be grateful mobs can't use it...
*If you can't hit, or if you don't deal enough damage, or if you can't get around some immunities, try and find a way to do so! Impoving oneself is what this game is and should be about. Besides even gimp builds can reach 20 leveling really isn't an issue here.
*If player abilities/clickies had no cooldowns you could spam you best spell/boost at will, remember manyshot cooldown bug?
*Less reliance on facing doesn't mean NO realiance. You can dodge spells, you can hide behind barriers.

I understand you're asking for variety, so:

-You want a challenge, big rewards, more xp? you have elite/epic, it is supposed to be challenging. Try some quests unprepared and yes they will be frustrating, it's your fault since you're not ready for them (not talking about you Kushiel just generally speaking).
-You want to enjoy the game, maybe playing a "flavor" build like a battlemage or something (and there are a lot of end-game-viable flavor builds anyway)? You can go on normal, you still can get good rewards and good xp, and it's EASY.
-You want something in between those two options, a little harder than norm but still quite doable even if you're not really well prepared for it? You got hard.
-You want just to get rid of the quest in order to flag for something else, uber-fast completion with no effort, and don't care about xp/rewards, or just wanna play an odd toon, or test some strange strategy etc? You have casual, can't possibly fail here.

I think that's enough variety, Normal and Elite alone would be acceptable as difficulty settings IMHO.

There is NO WAY you can say the game is too difficult. They even gave us Casual. Unless we want another setting named "Really?" I don't know what could be done. Honestly I don't even know why did I write this unbelievably obvious post, but oh well...

[parvo]

Heh. You type as if I want to take something away from you. I'm fairly certain that in another thread (maybe it was this one much earlier on) I did say that I would like the "game" to be *easier* for a broader range of characters/gear/races/Players/skills/weapons to successfully have fun playing and from which to accumulate rewards (Favor/XP above other considerations). I don't equate that to my having said "I want the game to be easily solo'ed on elite setting with bad character builds." [Maybe you are also implying that I've built a bad character?]

What I've tried a few times to point out is that Elite solo (and often *any* difficulty in a full party of 6/12 which turns dungeon scaling from what could be fun into an ordeal) becomes frustrating (to me) because the Foes we face are not limited in ways in which we are. They don't suffer from the same impacts of trying to press keys, discern icons at a glance, move a mouse, select descreet pieces of UI with a cursor that is not always unerringly maneuvered to the right position. The foes cannot be inturrupted (and I truly mean they cannot be inturrupted... I've held/paralyzed/soundbursted an approaching attacking Ogre/Scorrow/Troll - seen the graphics indicate my attack succeeded - and still been subjected to their full round of triple-smash attack or claw/claw/tail-whip. Where, on the other hand, I've cast Magic Missiles... seen my missiles nearing the Foe, been held or soundburst myself... and watch as my arcane attack (already cast and about to inflict damage - maybe end a worrisome fight) is nullified because I've been "inturrupted." BS! BS a thousand times over).

To continue that line of thought in a bullet-point fashion for a moment, because maybe that will add clarity for you:

* Dog/Hyena/Wolf - able to spam trip with no discernable cooldown
* Various Divine Casters fully self-healing via Heal uninterruptably, no SP used, full chain of physical attacks included or throwing out some offensive castings
* Player "Rapid Shot" for archery is hardly *rapid* at all
* Multi-Shot cooldown is a sad joke. Compare against trips and smashes and scorrow attacks.
* Foes AC/HP/Immunities/speed w/o self-hasting nullifies what could be fun
* Player cooldowns for special attacks or self-healing can be unforgiving
* Player casting, clicky, potion, scroll use in movement drastically cuts movement
* Jump casting/clicking/reading helps... a little. Foes are smooth as graphite coated glass. Always. Uninterrupteable. Limitless SP
* Foes attacks being resolved with less (no?) reliance on facing, line-of-effect, line-of-sight where our own get blocked or nullified (costing SP, using a limited count special attack)

Where you state "you have your setting. Leave one for us" has me interpreting your perception as being wholly reactionary... not willing to even "hear" differing viewpoints, shutting down voices that differ from yours... or intentionally "hearing" everyone who says "we'd like more ways for people to play in the world and have their own type of fun" as demanding that what you find fun be utterly devalued and stripped from the world. I don't think any of my posts have gone to that particular place.

(I'm also rather leaning to your use of "you have your setting. Leave one for us" to be interpreted as a dig at me in specific. As if I should be content with what can be reaped (Favor/XP) from 'the lower settings' - even though I clearly stated I've been running the more difficult settings and have only expressed frustration with descreet game mechanics that I find to be.... stupid.)

-- Dogs, hyenas, wolves can't come close to a player characters trip ability. A well built character can trip a dog easier than the other way around.

-- Player characters heal much more effectively than enemies. Even non-caster types. There is no comparison. A decent group will kill a self healing trash mob before it gets a single spell off.

-- Player ranged damage of all types is far superior to the enemy. A dart throwing specialist can outdamage a longbow using mob.

-- Multi-shot cool down should not even exist. It's an infinite instawin easybutton. The mobs should be given manyshot to attack the players.

-- ""* Foes AC/HP/Immunities/speed w/o self-hasting nullifies what could be fun"" << This was my earlier point. If it is fun for you to kill mobs with low AC/HP and abilities, play on a lower difficulty setting. For me, they could double the HP of every mob in the game and it would be more fun.

-- How forgiving do you want special attacks and self healing to be? Every player character in the game has about a billion more capabilities than any enemy mob. Every player character in the game can self heal in some manner. If you want a shorter cool down, create a character that has a shorter one. Have you tried Improved Trip? Improved Sunder? Stunning Blow? Sap? You could land those on dang near every mob you meet on your way to the boss. How much more often does it need to proc?

I know it's not worth arguing over. Fact is, the game can never be easy enough for everyone. Every single update brings more easy buttons, but it is never enough. Because there is no limit to how bad players can be, it is a worthless exercise to infinitely decrease difficulty in effort to appease them.

[zex95966]

You don't start playing as a TR you know. If people make it to 20 and beyond as F2P... Snip

The game has massively changed since then. That is what the thread is about. I don't see many brand new players TODAY taking no plat 28 point characters to 20.

As for the rest of your rant, I addressed most of it in my earlier posts, and I think some of it wasn't directed at me.

[zex95966]

Except you can't when as soon as you get them down to about 10%, the cast Heal on themselves again.

well your talking elite, I disagree with taking the game through elite by yourself - that is perfectly understandeable as to why it should be difficult and maybe gives those TR and raid geared vets something to do.
It is possible to take your toon to 20 without doing elite - maybe less efficient but good rewards take more effort.

I agree the game is to difficult, but i'm not even talking about elite. I die in freaking normal when overleveled for the quest at lvl 15 with good gear.

sorry double post, edit if someone can into one.

[MaximusParthas]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

The imbalance is in the over-dependence of melee on RL divines.
It's almost like being held hostage.
while the reverse is certainly not true for blue bars. atm it's a divide of survivability capabilities that seem to blatantly show overbalanced preference to blue bars. built in & wai.

In any RPG game there is a multitude of ways for self healing that can be improved with level and necessity. for a melee in ddo the best choices are:
1- 250 hp silver flame pots.
a crippling -10 stat effect makes these useless when needed most.
2-UMD
A huge unnecessary investment of too rare skill points for basic melee classes.
3-hires
placing the outcome of all your best personal efforts into a historically faulty ai bot.

in raids this imbalance results in 8,9, or 10 people of various classes completely at the mercy of, and totally dependent on the participation of 1 or 2 divines.
imo this really is putting players in an unreasonable and imbalanced circumstance.

[parvo]

...I die in freaking normal when overleveled for the quest at lvl 15 with good gear...

Surely there are a lot more players that could easily destroy a level 15 quest on elite setting with level 12 characters than the other way around...

Howabout a casual server? No normal/hard/elite settings allowed. Full XP and loot. Heck, double XP and loot. It still wouldn't be easy enough for everyone though.

[zex95966]

Surely there are a lot more players that could easily destroy a level 15 quest on elite setting with level 12 characters than the other way around...

Howabout a casual server? No normal/hard/elite settings allowed. Full XP and loot. Heck, double XP and loot. It still wouldn't be easy enough for everyone though.

what? you misunderstood.

I am level 15.
the quest is lvl 12.
It is on normal.
I fail.

Perhaps I could do it on casual, I haven't tried it yet.
Assuming I could there are not many quests to do at this lvl that don't require a group, I can only repeat a quest so many times before I gain nothing from it. As I mentioned earlier, I could probably do some low level explorer/slayer areas to lvl... woo hoo if I kill 10k kobolds in waterworks I can lvl my 15 to 16! oh man that sounds just so fun.

actually in all honesty I doubt that would lvl me, but maybe if I did that, + cerulean hills+ Gianthold I would level.... I've already done some GH slayer, though so who knows....

but what am I going to do at lvl 16? then GH would be maxed out, I might have a couple more quests available that are not party-required.
17?
18?

[voxson5]

What quest is it? We might be able to help you out.
Additionally, what is stopping you from victory? casters overpowering you? Melee mobs hit too hard? Traps too nasty? Not sure of the way?

And what server? My main is on Thelanis & he's just about to hit 12 - maybe I can help you out if you like?


Honestly, gear/skill/build have such incredible impacts on your game.

Quests I soloed elite with total ease and almost fell asleep on, I have had trouble with on differnt toons, even on my reasonably geared main.

You talked about a new f2p player soloing to 20; my outstanding guildmate Elegorne did just that - on a pure dwarven fighter no less! no UMD, and mostly blind luck :D but he kept going, listened to some ideas, and made it!

He even just capped his first arcane! (pure human wiz), solo again.

-----------

Level 8ish (elites) and up mobs have a pretty good to hit, and can pack a punch. If you;re not geared for it (ac gear, have a healer hire, twink cannith crafting etc etc), it can be real daunting.

Having good ac makes SO MANY quests an absolute cakewalk, but you generally trade ac for DPS (or something else).

Stocking up on resist 20 pots from the Twelve helps vs those pesky casters.

Ship buffs laugh in the face of mobs, especially low-mid level casters attempting to cast elemental damage at you.

--------------------------

There are now so many easy buttons to help people through quests, even quests themselves have been put on training wheels.

I wish old Tear would come back....

[voxson5]

... It still wouldn't be easy enough for everyone though.

Thats the trouble, new players who want to be like Joe-multi TR, but dont want to work for it.

[zex95966]

Thats the trouble, new players who want to be like Joe-multi TR, but dont want to work for it.

I know of no one like this.
I don't care if it takes me 10 minutes to kill a monster that you kill in one shot with joe multi-tr. As long as I can kill it at all I'm happy.

I've once spent 6 1/2 hours in a quest with some friends in Normal and overleveled. In fact, we were taking an experience penalty for someone being to high in the quest - we didn't mind, because we wanted to have fun and play together.
at the end of that 6 1/2 hours of time, we finally failed.

That my friend, is when I get frustrated.

[FengXian]

The game has massively changed since then. That is what the thread is about. I don't see many brand new players TODAY taking no plat 28 point characters to 20.

As for the rest of your rant, I addressed most of it in my earlier posts, and I think some of it wasn't directed at me.

You were the one ranting my friend. As for game being easier to new players 2 years ago, I strongly disagree. I didn't have casual, I didn't have free content such as 1st lordsmarch chain, acid wit, delirium, mired in kobolds (and demon's den, well, they say it's too hard but still...). So I ask you to tell me how is the game harder now than it was 2 years ago. Oh and I definitely wasn't running just normal.

Lv 12 quests you can't complete as a lv 15. Well first of all, if your toon has no self healing at all, you will need a hireling, likely. So what, get one.
We have: Wiz King, Cursed Crypt (don't think you're flagged as a soloer tho), Invaders: get a deathblock item. Use your hire smartly, if you have him charge into 4 beholders and 2 xorian orbs and he dies and then you die it's not because the quest is too difficult. Drink a pot of cold res before meleeing Raiyum, get a bludgeoning undead beater if you can't get past skellies or an outsider beater for renders etc.
Relic, Diplomatic Impunity, Frame Work, Eyes of Stone: not as tricky as cursed crypt or invaders might be to a new player. You just need some basic gear but a lv 15 should run them through on normal (end fights in frame work and EoS might be rough but you're 3 levels above the quest cmon). Unless you're a cleric or a bard build or something with no offensive ability at all. There are builds that aren't fit for soloing, it's dumb trying to solo with any build especially if you're new and don't have the gear etc...
ADQ1: the end fight can easily be too much for most new toons, so what, get a party.
ADQ2: while people do solo it a lot, it's not something you should expect to be soloable by a new player. If you can, good, if you can't it's ok, it's still a raid after all.
Titan: fairly sure you weren't talking about this.

And of course knowing your build would help.

I will add that once you acquire some gear and experience, the game becomes even more fun since often you will be able to run quests even elite with a melee party with no healers/hirelings and it won't be frustrating at all.

Select the difficulty according to you gear, skill and level. If you don't have deathblock or some way to deal with negative levels or to cc beholders or to kill them very fast, invaders might be very hard even on norm even if you're lv 15. So run something else until you have the gear. Any F2P can make it to 20 EASILY now since you definitely get enought TPs for free to buy some useful packs. I can agree that SOME, very few quests can be hard to complete even for a reasonably geared but unexperienced toon a couple of levels above the quest level, but you can simply move on to another quest if you need the xp to progress, and come back when you have the right gear and some more experience/skill. The rant about having to run WW slayers is silly and pointless, and a plain lie.

[parvo]

what? you misunderstood.

I am level 15.
the quest is lvl 12.
It is on normal.
I fail.

Perhaps I could do it on casual, I haven't tried it yet.
Assuming I could there are not many quests to do at this lvl that don't require a group, I can only repeat a quest so many times before I gain nothing from it. As I mentioned earlier, I could probably do some low level explorer/slayer areas to lvl... woo hoo if I kill 10k kobolds in waterworks I can lvl my 15 to 16! oh man that sounds just so fun.

actually in all honesty I doubt that would lvl me, but maybe if I did that, + cerulean hills+ Gianthold I would level.... I've already done some GH slayer, though so who knows....

but what am I going to do at lvl 16? then GH would be maxed out, I might have a couple more quests available that are not party-required.
17?
18?

I understand perfectly. You think the game should be easily soloed by players of any skill level with any character build. Maybe if there are enough players that want that, you can get a special server.

[zex95966]

You were the one ranting my friend. As for game being easier to new players 2 years ago, I strongly disagree. I didn't have casual, I didn't have free content such as 1st lordsmarch chain, acid wit, delirium, mired in kobolds (and demon's den, well, they say it's too hard but still...). So I ask you to tell me how is the game harder now than it was 2 years ago. Oh and I definitely wasn't running just normal.

Lv 12 quests you can't complete as a lv 15. Well first of all, if your toon has no self healing at all, you will need a hireling, likely. So what, get one.
We have: Wiz King, Cursed Crypt (don't think you're flagged as a soloer tho), Invaders: get a deathblock item. Use your hire smartly, if you have him charge into 4 beholders and 2 xorian orbs and he dies and then you die it's not because the quest is too difficult. Drink a pot of cold res before meleeing Raiyum, get a bludgeoning undead beater if you can't get past skellies or an outsider beater for renders etc.
Relic, Diplomatic Impunity, Frame Work, Eyes of Stone: not as tricky as cursed crypt or invaders might be to a new player. You just need some basic gear but a lv 15 should run them through on normal (end fights in frame work and EoS might be rough but you're 3 levels above the quest cmon). Unless you're a cleric or a bard build or something with no offensive ability at all. There are builds that aren't fit for soloing, it's dumb trying to solo with any build especially if you're new and don't have the gear etc...
ADQ1: the end fight can easily be too much for most new toons, so what, get a party.
ADQ2: while people do solo it a lot, it's not something you should expect to be soloable by a new player. If you can, good, if you can't it's ok, it's still a raid after all.
Titan: fairly sure you weren't talking about this.

And of course knowing your build would help.

I will add that once you acquire some gear and experience, the game becomes even more fun since often you will be able to run quests even elite with a melee party with no healers/hirelings and it won't be frustrating at all.

Select the difficulty according to you gear, skill and level. If you don't have deathblock or some way to deal with negative levels or to cc beholders or to kill them very fast, invaders might be very hard even on norm even if you're lv 15. So run something else until you have the gear. Any F2P can make it to 20 EASILY now since you definitely get enought TPs for free to buy some useful packs. I can agree that SOME, very few quests can be hard to complete even for a reasonably geared but unexperienced toon a couple of levels above the quest level, but you can simply move on to another quest if you need the xp to progress, and come back when you have the right gear and some more experience/skill. The rant about having to run WW slayers is silly and pointless, and a plain lie.

I'm using hirelings, maybe not p2p ones though and can only have 1... so it's always a cleric of FVS one.

I don't remember which quest it was, I remember that my hireling would quickly get surrounded, and the terrain was pretty open so I couldn't do much with the terrain (and my hireling was to stupid to follow me anyways.) I didn't get very far in it, so I can't say much about it other than that.

I don't need to "buy" the packs since I'm VIP... but are you trying to say that I need to buy them to get there?
I have DB, though I haven't needed it yet - my Mantle of the Worldshaper (no way I could have gotten this by myself, my guild helped me with it after failing a couple times) protects me from most neg levels from the beholders, I only run into problems with them if there are more than one, or maybe some other deadly enemies around, such as casters or that quest which has 3 bosses (one beholder, one troll, one uh giant I think.)
I can kiss my stupid hireling goodbye though.

here is what I'm using more or less (he's reincarnated since I made this build, so he's lost +2 tome, and some enhancements have been changed since I've learned more about the game since I've made the build) :


Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 03.12.01
DDO Character Planner Home Page (http://www.rjcyberware.com/DDO)

Level 15 True Neutral Dwarf Male
(13 Fighter \ 2 Rogue)
Hit Points: 294
Spell Points: 0
BAB: 14\14\19\24
Fortitude: 13
Reflex: 7
Will: 4

Starting Feat/Enhancement
Abilities Base Stats Modified Stats
(32 Point) (Level 1) (Level 15)
Strength 18 26
Dexterity 8 10
Constitution 18 20
Intelligence 14 16
Wisdom 8 10
Charisma 6 8

Tomes Used
+2 Tome of Strength used at level 7
+2 Tome of Dexterity used at level 7
+2 Tome of Constitution used at level 7
+2 Tome of Intelligence used at level 7
+2 Tome of Wisdom used at level 7
+2 Tome of Charisma used at level 7

Starting Feat/Enhancement
Base Skills Modified Skills
Skills (Level 1) (Level 15)
Balance 0 14
Bluff -2 1
Concentration 4 7
Diplomacy -2 1
Disable Device n/a n/a
Haggle -2 -1
Heal -1 0
Hide -1 0
Intimidate 2 19
Jump 5 9
Listen -1 0
Move Silently -1 0
Open Lock n/a 1
Perform n/a n/a
Repair 2 3
Search 2 5
Spot 1 17.5
Swim 4 8
Tumble -0.5 0.5
Use Magic Device 0 20

Level 1 (Fighter)
Skill: Balance (+1)
Skill: Intimidate (+4)
Skill: Jump (+1)
Skill: Spot (+2)
Skill: Tumble (+0.5)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+2)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Power Attack
Feat: (Selected) Toughness


Level 2 (Fighter)
Skill: Balance (+1)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+0.5)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Stunning Blow


Level 3 (Fighter)
Skill: Balance (+1)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+0.5)
Feat: (Selected) Two Handed Fighting


Level 4 (Fighter)
Ability Raise: STR
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Combat Expertise
Enhancement: Fighter Attack Boost I
Enhancement: Fighter Attack Boost II
Enhancement: Dwarven Axe Damage I
Enhancement: Dwarven Spell Defense I
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy I
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Fighter Strength I
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness I


Level 5 (Fighter)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Enhancement: Dwarven Spell Defense II
Enhancement: Fighter Critical Accuracy II


Level 6 (Fighter)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Focus: Slashing Weapons
Feat: (Selected) Weapon Specialization: Slashing Weapons
Enhancement: Fighter Kensei I


Level 7 (Fighter)
Skill: Balance (+0.5)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Enhancement: Dwarven Axe Attack I
Enhancement: Kensei Dwarven Waraxe Mastery I
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Trip) I


Level 8 (Rogue)
Ability Raise: STR
Skill: Balance (+1)
Skill: Open Lock (+1)
Skill: Spot (+2)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+7)
Enhancement: Dwarven Axe Damage II


Level 9 (Fighter)
Skill: Intimidate (+2)
Skill: Spot (+0.5)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Improved Critical: Slashing Weapons
Feat: (Selected) Improved Two Handed Fighting
Enhancement: Dwarven Spell Defense III
Enhancement: Fighter Dwarven Waraxe Specialization I


Level 10 (Fighter)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Enhancement: Fighter Strength II


Level 11 (Fighter)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Improved Trip
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Training I
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness II


Level 12 (Rogue)
Ability Raise: STR
Skill: Balance (+4)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+5)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Two Handed Fighting
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Rogue Wand and Scroll Mastery I


Level 13 (Fighter)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Enhancement: Fighter Strength III


Level 14 (Fighter)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater Weapon Specialization: Slashing Weapons
Enhancement: Kensei Dwarven Waraxe Mastery II
Enhancement: Fighter Kensei II
Enhancement: Rogue Sneak Attack Accuracy I


Level 15 (Fighter)
Skill: Intimidate (+1)
Skill: Spot (+1)
Skill: Use Magic Device (+1)
Feat: (Selected) Skill Focus: Use Magic Device
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Stunning Blow) II
Enhancement: Fighter Strategy (Trip) II


some things changes I've made: he used to have ALL the hp enhancements, but I've found the cost was really not worth it after the racial and fighter enhancements up to lvl II.
I replaced it with mostly the tactics stuff: stunning and trip. I didn't think they would be effective since I didn't focus on it, but I love them atm - they work in normal anyways which is good enough for me.

as for gear I'm wearing mantle of the worldshaper, heavy fort necklace, a couple pirate event items, and I recently changed my armor which I regret (I used to be wearing heavy armor - pirate cove one, but after going 2 rogue, I need robes/outfits) atm he's wearing fearsome robes of improved life - I find that the fear effect is a pain though, most of the times I have to chase them down... my thinking when I took it was that it would act as kind of a CC, where they would hit me, run away, and I could focus on other monsters while they weren't bothering me - sounds good on paper, but in practice it doesn't really work that way for me.
note that none of my gear is stuff newbies can get without friends. (except pirate stuff, but I don't think its nice for them to rely on event items either)
...well they can get the heavy fort anyways I also have blind, poison and disease immunity in places. which are also easy to get.

on and first lvl rogue hur hurr - you can get UMD faster if it's not at the first level. if splashing for merely UMD it's valid.


if I'm still not doing it right after all this, then doesn't that seem to suggest the game is to difficult for newbies?!

[voxson5]

Hmmm, looks like no AC is one of the biggest issues (for content you are running).

Things I would suggest:
-get a hire that has a summon
-leave hire at the start of quest initially, have hire on defensive, have hire summon his pet
-buff up (resists/stoneskin wand if you can etc etc), summon an air ele via cove gems (if you have any left), otherwise there are plenty of clickies you can go for/even umd a scroll (doesn't matter if summon survivies, It just give enemies a differnt target = less on you/your hire)
-move forward until you meet something to slice up & gain agro
-call hire
-kill the most dangerous thing first! Usually this is casters, but for some encounters mobs that trip can be even worse
-You have NO ac, so you need to move and fight. Run & stun a caster, move back to another mob & try a trip, sap the next guy, keep moving! Run away of you have to & regroup.

There is some reasonably easy to get gear you could work on to help:
-minos legens helm from the necro 4 explorer area (rares drop tapestries, turn in taps for helm)
-the challenge bracers (not sure what level gives you perma blur, maybe lvl4 ones?)
-could change your robes to a deathblock of something (elemental guard/ elemental resist), with maybe a guild slot so you can push your hp a bit higher
-even insanity (greatsword from the missing) can work to your advantage


*edit* Also using the correct weapons makes a big differnce! buy/craft a set of alignment of bane weapons for mobs you have the trouble with

*edit*

on and first lvl rogue hur hurr - you can get UMD faster if it's not at the first level. if splashing for merely UMD it's valid... how? UMD is not a fighter skill which means 2 ranks max at creation and 0.5 per level until you take your rog levels. Rogue at 1 means 4 ranks at creation and you can put a full point into it every level.

Sure, you get the points the same by the time you take both rogue levels, but you waste skill points in doing so.

14 starting INT, rogue levels and no trapskills? Kensai, no appreciable AC and taking combat expertise? I think I can see why things are difficult for you

[zex95966]

Hmmm, looks like no AC is one of the biggest issues (for content you are running).

Things I would suggest:
-get a hire that has a summon
-leave hire at the start of quest initially, have hire on defensive, have hire summon his pet
-buff up (resists/stoneskin wand if you can etc etc), summon an air ele via cove gems (if you have any left), otherwise there are plenty of clickies you can go for/even umd a scroll (doesn't matter if summon survivies, It just give enemies a differnt target = less on you/your hire)
-move forward until you meet something to slice up & gain agro
-call hire
-kill the most dangerous thing first! Usually this is casters, but for some encounters mobs that trip can be even worse
-You have NO ac, so you need to move and fight. Run & stun a caster, move back to another mob & try a trip, sap the next guy, keep moving! Run away of you have to & regroup.

There is some reasonably easy to get gear you could work on to help:
-minos legens helm from the necro 4 explorer area (rares drop tapestries, turn in taps for helm)
-the challenge bracers (not sure what level gives you perma blur, maybe lvl4 ones?)
-could change your robes to a deathblock of something (elemental guard/ elemental resist), with maybe a guild slot so you can push your hp a bit higher
-even insanity (greatsword from the missing) can work to your advantage


*edit* Also using the correct weapons makes a big differnce! buy/craft a set of alignment of bane weapons for mobs you have the trouble with

I've never focused on it - but 90% of the people I know say that once you hit gianthold AC levels get ridiculous - at 15 i'm on my way past GH already.
I forgot to mention my weapons: +1 Holy of shattermantle and a +3 Metalline of Everbright. Works for most things - but were gifts from my guild, I'd prob be using Carnifex if it weren't for my guild. (another raid item)

and again this is all stuff most people can't get without help of others (carnifix, mantle of the worldshaper, even the pirate event items are hard to do by yourself.)
So tell me how a newbie player with no high level guildies is supposed to make it? They aren't going to have the knowledge of where to get what, or have the ship buffs.

and one other important thing - even if they did get all said gear, where are they gonna put it? they have limited bank and inventory space.
(I don't, I bought a lot of stuff over the years.)

thanks for the help - i'm not trying to sound like I don't appreciate it, but we are off topic this thread is beyond the scope of just me and my character - I'm simply stating that with all that I have, I'm still having problems.

[Talias006]

(I used to be wearing heavy armor - pirate cove one, but after going 2 rogue, I need robes/outfits)

Having seen your build plans, may I suggest dropping the robes for some light armor like a Mithral Breastplate?
Even base of this will have better armor than most of the +Armor bracers out there.
And no AC isn't the same as low AC, which *can* help out in some places.

And you don't have any appreciable dex bonus to make good use of Evasion, which would help immensely with soloing on that character.
So getting a +4 to +6 Dex item will increase your survival chances, as will a +4 or better Resistance or Reflex Save boosting item.

Also, a lesser reincarnation to start level 1 as your first Rogue would be far better skill point wise, as has already been stated.

As to your point as new players not knowing better, they can if they ask for /advice.
There are usually several good players willing to help out a new player when they ask for advice on what works, especially if the newbie states what they want the character to do.

[FengXian]

I've never focused on it - but 90% of the people I know say that once you hit gianthold AC levels get ridiculous - at 15 i'm on my way past GH already.
I forgot to mention my weapons: +1 Holy of shattermantle and a +3 Metalline of Everbright. Works for most things - but were gifts from my guild, I'd prob be using Carnifex if it weren't for my guild. (another raid item)

and again this is all stuff most people can't get without help of others (carnifix, mantle of the worldshaper, even the pirate event items are hard to do by yourself.)
So tell me how a newbie player with no high level guildies is supposed to make it? They aren't going to have the knowledge of where to get what, or have the ship buffs.

and one other important thing - even if they did get all said gear, where are they gonna put it? they have limited bank and inventory space.
(I don't, I bought a lot of stuff over the years.)

thanks for the help - i'm not trying to sound like I don't appreciate it, but we are off topic this thread is beyond the scope of just me and my character - I'm simply stating that with all that I have, I'm still having problems.

Now while you can improve your build, that is really NOT necessary. 300ish hp and kensei II are more than enough to get you thru lv 12 norm content, especially since you're lv 15. If there is ONE lv 12 quest that still is too hard for you it doesn't mean the game is too hard, since there are TONS of content you can succesfully complete, even at level.
By the way, carnifex is not a raid item, and it is better than +1 holy or +3 metalline in most situations. It has double crit range, and it's keen so you'll crit x3 on 17-20 with it even w/o IC:slashing.

I honestly don't understand how can you find the game too hard. It's not like your toon is a colossal gimp or something.

Again, there is plenty of easy and rewarding content newbies can run to cap. There is a great increase in difficulty at lv 10-12, but that's because previous quests are a joke. You will find Gianthold or Sands much harder than Tangleroot or lv 10- f2p quests at level, but even then it's not too hard, on normal you can definitely complete those quests.

I still suspect this is just a joke btw, 28 pointers with a minimal amount of skill will still be able to reach lv 20. And that's actually a problem, cuz often you'll find capped toons with no heavy fort, no hp, no dps, in end game content, just because until lv 20 they never actually needed that stuff because the game was too easy. I really can't see how in the world you would ever have to do slayers in order to level because quests on normal are too hard, especially since you're VIP and have access to all of them.

P.S.: mind replying about how was the game easier to newbies 2 years ago compared to now? :rolleyes: back then it was pretty easy to hit 20 with 28 points but now it should be even "better"...

[zex95966]

Now while you can improve your build, that is really NOT necessary. 300ish hp and kensei II are more than enough to get you thru lv 12 norm content, especially since you're lv 15. If there is ONE lv 12 quest that still is too hard for you it doesn't mean the game is too hard, since there are TONS of content you can succesfully complete, even at level.
By the way, carnifex is not a raid item, and it is better than +1 holy or +3 metalline in most situations. It has double crit range, and it's keen so you'll crit x3 on 17-20 with it even w/o IC:slashing.

I honestly don't understand how can you find the game too hard. It's not like your toon is a colossal gimp or something.

Again, there is plenty of easy and rewarding content newbies can run to cap. There is a great increase in difficulty at lv 10-12, but that's because previous quests are a joke. You will find Gianthold or Sands much harder than Tangleroot or lv 10- f2p quests at level, but even then it's not too hard, on normal you can definitely complete those quests.

I still suspect this is just a joke btw, 28 pointers with a minimal amount of skill will still be able to reach lv 20. And that's actually a problem, cuz often you'll find capped toons with no heavy fort, no hp, no dps, in end game content, just because until lv 20 they never actually needed that stuff because the game was too easy. I really can't see how in the world you would ever have to do slayers in order to level because quests on normal are too hard, especially since you're VIP and have access to all of them.

P.S.: mind replying about how was the game easier to newbies 2 years ago compared to now? :rolleyes: back then it was pretty easy to hit 20 with 28 points but now it should be even "better"...

I suspect the no fort low hp toons at end-game content are simply getting carried by other toons either from their guild or friends or even pugs if they are lucky enough I suppose.

I honestly have no idea where I would begin addressing how much the game has changed, we have more contructs in higher lvl content and more fort enemies which means rogues (as an example) are less useful - more so with the arti's being able to disable everything + they tend to be int based (which disable and I think search are based off of.)
The amount of changes and it's effects would take to much out of me to even begin to contemplate.

I mispoke about carnifix, I was thinking of Hellstroke axe from Chrono.
I haven't been able to complete the Carnifix chain...

Yes, there are a few quests I "can" run but I fail pretty quickly at them nowadays, and the repair costs for even trying are adding up, it's why I'm resorting to lvl 12 quests on my 15 in normal. ATM, I either do lvl 12 ish quests (I also tend to stay away from those that say "very long" in the description without help - nothing sucks more than to waste an entire day doing a quest and failing at the end.) or I run GH or sands explorer areas. However the kills now are really really slow and I'm not sure I'll level off them.

I'm still evading with my robes on my fighter and I know I'd take a lot more damage when it does happen... I do have a +4 reflex item I believe from long ago in the STK in my bank somewhere though.

as for my server I'm on Argo.

Trap skills on my fighter? I hope your kidding - disable, search, spot and UMD... none are class skills and although I have 14 int, it's still not enough to get those to any appreciable level.

I even made a pure rogue at one point and with 16 int, moderate gear, and full ranks in trap skills I couldn't hit traps in normal on a lvl 3 quest... had +5 tools too! (STK btw) My fighter prob couldn't even match what my lvl 4 rogue had... I loved my rogue for the beautiful sneak damage and abundance of skill points, but gave up when I saw how much Plat I would need on equipment to outfit him with trap gear and buffs I have about 40k plat to my name - that took me 2 years to get btw. I'm aware I can sell collectibles, but I plan to use them myself so... I dunno if it's such a hot idea.

as per rogue first level it's quite simple: I take rogue at first level I get all of 4 skill points I can spend on UMD... but then I have a bunch of extra skill points I can't use on UMD. I have to spend it somewhere else.

If I take it later, I can safely spend it all on UMD if I delay it.
It works, play with the planner if you don't believe me. you still get extra skill points as a rogue taking it later.
now if I was aiming for traps or something it makes more sense.

But on a fighter? that's just crazy. I'd have to get 8 skill points per level to try it - 0.5 (x2) in disable search spot and UMD.

yeah with guildies and people who run the quest before I guess I don't need spot, but this is for newer players, that aren't gonna know where the traps are - I sure don't.

I'll keep in mind about AC though.

[FengXian]

I don't know...2 years to get 40k plat? Mmm. Anyway...game changes:

You say the game is harder to newbies because there is another class that has class trap skills? Sneak attack is less viable when you solo? An unlistable amount of other changes? I can tell you some:

There was no casual
Less PrEs
Less quests = less choice of what to run, less items useful for leveling (red fens, lordsmarch have good high drop rate stuff)
Less races, now you have Helf/Horc which give you even more options, as well as the new Arti class
Some quests were actually much harder. Yeah like tear where you had to unlock both shrines (yeah there was no underwater shrine) and the lock dc was actually high.
Now there is a HUGE amount of TR'd toons, 2 years ago they were really rare. I see way more decently geared new players too, thank to stuff like sora kell set or madness loot, which are very easy to acquire.

But really, I still think you're just trolling. In 2 years you haven't leveled a toon to 20, no you got up to 40k plats? Either you're playing 1h per month or you're really putting 0 effort into it. There are people complaing about the game being too hard but you beat them all^^

Well try to follow some suggestions you've been given here and best of luck.

[zex95966]

I don't know...2 years to get 40k plat? Mmm. Anyway...game changes:

You say the game is harder to newbies because there is another class that has class trap skills? Sneak attack is less viable when you solo? An unlistable amount of other changes? I can tell you some:

There was no casual
Less PrEs
Less quests = less choice of what to run, less items useful for leveling (red fens, lordsmarch have good high drop rate stuff)
Less races, now you have Helf/Horc which give you even more options, as well as the new Arti class
Some quests were actually much harder. Yeah like tear where you had to unlock both shrines (yeah there was no underwater shrine) and the lock dc was actually high.
Now there is a HUGE amount of TR'd toons, 2 years ago they were really rare. I see way more decently geared new players too, thank to stuff like sora kell set or madness loot, which are very easy to acquire.

But really, I still think you're just trolling. In 2 years you haven't leveled a toon to 20, no you got up to 40k plats? Either you're playing 1h per month or you're really putting 0 effort into it. There are people complaing about the game being too hard but you beat them all^^

Well try to follow some suggestions you've been given here and best of luck.

I admit I play less nowadays - but that's quite simply because it gets old failing after a while.
some metamagics got nerfed, and the rogue was just an example, I guess I shouldn't have put any examples, I didn't want to focus on one thing - I'm speaking generically. If I recall right the spell enhancements weren't as specific as they are now - I remember something like boosting fire and acid was the same back then. I can't remember now but I know it's not as focused as it is now which means more enhancment points for less benefit.

I spend my plat at times too, I dunno how much I've spent over the course of 2 years but it can't be much, I hardly go to the AH and the vendors mostly see me for repair bills and selling chest trash. I once bought about 40 heal pots which really hurt my finances - I only did it cuz my guild asked me to buy pots...
most of the time I rely on my hireling for heals. perhaps that is a mistake, but I cant afford to sustain myself on pots.
I haven't tried wands for an extended period of time yet - once I take my next level my UMD I think should be high enough to try them, so I'm not sure how much they will save me plat. I used them to good effect on my bard though.

well you can always myddo me if you doubt my word. I suppose you can't see my plat though. Then again I haven't checked on myself and I've heard myddo can be wrong sometimes...
your point about all those TR'ed toons is the same as mine - there are more TR'ed toons than before and I'd bet they are the one's complaining the game is to easy. Just a couple days ago I joined a 6 man quest and I was the only toon there that wasn't a TR.

That happened to be the quest that took me from 14 to 15 :) I felt kinda bad though as I felt like I was simply being carried by them.

[parvo]

I admit I play less nowadays - but that's quite simply because it gets old failing after a while.
some metamagics got nerfed, and the rogue was just an example, I guess I shouldn't have put any examples, I didn't want to focus on one thing - I'm speaking generically. If I recall right the spell enhancements weren't as specific as they are now - I remember something like boosting fire and acid was the same back then. I can't remember now but I know it's not as focused as it is now which means more enhancment points for less benefit.

I spend my plat at times too, I dunno how much I've spent over the course of 2 years but it can't be much, I hardly go to the AH and the vendors mostly see me for repair bills and selling chest trash. I once bought about 40 heal pots which really hurt my finances - I only did it cuz my guild asked me to buy pots...
most of the time I rely on my hireling for heals. perhaps that is a mistake, but I cant afford to sustain myself on pots.
I haven't tried wands for an extended period of time yet - once I take my next level my UMD I think should be high enough to try them, so I'm not sure how much they will save me plat. I used them to good effect on my bard though.

well you can always myddo me if you doubt my word. I suppose you can't see my plat though. Then again I haven't checked on myself and I've heard myddo can be wrong sometimes...
your point about all those TR'ed toons is the same as mine - there are more TR'ed toons than before and I'd bet they are the one's complaining the game is to easy. Just a couple days ago I joined a 6 man quest and I was the only toon there that wasn't a TR.

That happened to be the quest that took me from 14 to 15 :) I felt kinda bad though as I felt like I was simply being carried by them.

No one in my guild uses a TR character and we play with one of the most restrictive self imposed rule sets around. We delete characters that die. We don't buy any commodity magic or auction house. We don't share gear between us. We never quest below our character level. We never do normal, only hard and elite. We create a challenging environment because the "normal" game does not. Many of us don't play outside the guild at all. On our highest level characters, we are often seeing quests for the first time. Yet, somehow we progress. Outside my guild, in "normal" play, progressing a character to level 20, first life or otherwise, is a simple matter of time. Probably about 72-144 hours play time. I don't know why you can't do that, but it does not make sense to continue nerfing the entire game environment when it is indeed too easy already. Having said that, if there are enough players in your situation, you should have a special server set up.

[FengXian]

Yeah I didn't want to focus on the comparison between how easy the game is now and how it was 2 years ago but bringing casters as an example is not the happiest choice.

Now they have PrEs, free or almost free SLAs, metamagics that can be tied to specific spells (!) most spells had their costs reduced, you even got echoes of power now which means you can keep casting SLAs/cheap spells forever even if you dont have con-opp, torc, or other ways to get mana back. WoF has been nerfed, all other spells have been boosted tho and that's a good thing, more variety.

Seriously, I can understand elite or hard can be too hard for new players, and that's ok. Skilled newbies with good builds will still make it even on those diffs, in many quests, maybe not solo. Normal is completable by almost anyone. And being VIP you have tons of possibilities: more races, more quests available.

If I made it on a pure ranged ranger, 28 points, no twinked gear, no guild, no airhsip (right, we got guild buffs too now, didn't have those back then) no VIP, just GH, tangleroot and vale as my packs, how can you not make it now? I didn't do many slayers either, btw.

As for bank-inventory space, 100 inventory slots + 60 bank slots (do unlock them) are more than enough for a 1st life toon. When you tr a couple of times you might have some room issues, until then there's plenty.

[zex95966]

many responses to reply to, I'm sure you can figure out what is directed at who;

You were the one who brought up spellcasters - I agree that the benefit of pre's outweigh the nerfs, but I'm not talking merely about sorcs here. Nor am I talking merely about constructs. If you really want me to list every change since 2 years ago, I'm sorry it's not worth it. You admit that there are more TR's today than there were before - now the game is easy for everyone.

I know it isn't just me - I have three friends (actually family) that play and they have been playing as long as I have but none of them have gotten to 20.
Now they have other problems - such as they made their own guild (which I used to be in) and so a 2-3 man guild doesn't get much, even though they pay some serious money on it.
Unlike me, they don't visit the forums or look up builds.
They just play to have fun. However at this point they don't bother with even trying on their higher lvl characters, they just make new ones because it's to hard for them - and for me for that matter.

Back when I was with them, we played a lot together - of course back then we were all inexperienced at the game, I used the forums but they can only help so much. Nothing beats actually playing the game. For example I realize I fail at Twitch-fighting. I don't have the skill to continually apply it with the right timing.
of course my two family members that play don't even know what twitch fighting is.
As I said, If i'm still doing it wrong, my family is doing it wrong, then I think the game is to difficult.

I think your response might be something like: well your family doesn't look at the forums and follow the best builds - there is your problem!
honestly a game that requires you to know a million different things before playing?
They shouldn't be REQUIRED to ask for /advice and have someone tell them that their entire build is gimp, they are using the wrong weapon, they better byoh, if you don't know what that means then gtfo, and reroll.
Not everyone likes to start a game that way.

well anyway I think this will be my last post in this particular thread. I'll follow it, so feel free to respond, but if my point hasn't come across - it simply never will.

All newer players MUST:
1. Know what to unlock and where if they are gonna try to be FTP.

2. Play only certain classes if they are going to try to get through the game themselves (there should be a warning or something I think in character creation for rogues and bards as both are terrible for solo-play, Even Melee Virts have lots of party buffs that won't do them any good if they are by themselves - also due to the pre requirements they are very difficult to build - nay impossible on a newer player who won't know what feats are gimp or not)

3. Know where to farm for certain equipment relevant to their class.

4. Start with at least 12 con for elves, 16 for dwarfs and warforged, and 14 for all else at a minimum. (again another warning here would be nice)

5. Look on the forums for builds - build your own? like my family does? They weren't even aware of the prestiges until I told them about it. In my families case I can say that they are probably an exception to the rule. Still the point stands that quite a few classes must be built a certain way or be terribly gimp. Paladins are pretty enhancement and attribute starved - one of my family members made one, and dumped charisma, unaware of what it gives to a pally. He still argues with me about it in fact when I say he really should get some.

Casual players just trying to play the game for the first time stand Zero chance at starting this game without doing some serious homework beforehand. I also have a RL friend that plays and is unaware of the wiki and his only saving grace was that he came to my family for advice who suggested he play a fighter.
Fighters are pretty straightforward, have lots of feats so even if he takes a couple of bad ones, it won't hurt to much. Stat wise, using standard logic, most people are going to put it into strength and constitution.
...but that's one class - and me and my uncle have both pretty much given up to taking them to 20. At least without some experienced help.

One of my family members friends is thinking about getting into the game and he will probably play a paladin if he does...
Since it's my family giving him advice he will prob dump charisma on their suggestion.
If I say something, most times they say something like: "It's not your character to build, not everyone wants to play it your way."

[FengXian]

1. Know what to unlock and where if they are gonna try to be FTP.

2. Play only certain classes if they are going to try to get through the game themselves (there should be a warning or something I think in character creation for rogues and bards as both are terrible for solo-play, Even Melee Virts have lots of party buffs that won't do them any good if they are by themselves - also due to the pre requirements they are very difficult to build - nay impossible on a newer player who won't know what feats are gimp or not)

3. Know where to farm for certain equipment relevant to their class.

4. Start with at least 12 con for elves, 16 for dwarfs and warforged, and 14 for all else at a minimum. (again another warning here would be nice)

5. Look on the forums for builds - build your own? like my family does? They weren't even aware of the prestiges until I told them about it. In my families case I can say that they are probably an exception to the rule. Still the point stands that quite a few classes must be built a certain way or be terribly gimp. Paladins are pretty enhancement and attribute starved - one of my family members made one, and dumped charisma, unaware of what it gives to a pally. He still argues with me about it in fact when I say he really should get some.


Right! That's how it's supposed to work! You think it would be fair to join a game for the first time and create a viable build with ZERO knowledge?

This is not D&D this is DDO, if you know D&D doesn't mean you know DDO. So if you want a viable toon you will, most likely:

1) roll some random builds that will stay at lv 5-8 as failed experiments.

2) check the forums for advice. You don't HAVE TO copy a build from the forums, just look for what type of character is good for a beginner.

3) level your character. Check the forums when you need, about which packs to buy, what loot to look for etc.. You don't actually have to post anything, just SEARCH, it's all there. Wiki is helpful too.

You're too casual/lazy to do even this little? Fine, but don't expect getting to 20 without putting at least some effort into it. Is this not obvious?

[zex95966]

I've done all of the above and still fail.

meanwhile newer players to the game will quit in frustration because they don't even have the knowledge that I do of the game.

[sephiroth1084]

I've done all of the above and still fail.

What other games do you play, or have you played?
Maybe you just aren't good at this type of game?

Have you tried casual?
Have you tried grouping often?

[zex95966]

What other games do you play, or have you played?
Maybe you just aren't good at this type of game?

Have you tried casual?
Have you tried grouping often?

Well not many games are like DDO that I've found, so I doubt it makes much difference, but a small sampling of what I've played (listing everything would be quite a lot, i'm assuming you mean MMO'S):

Guild Wars (prob the most similar to this game, but still pretty different)
Runescape
Mabinogi
Warcraft 3
League of Legends
Maplestory
Champions Online
EVE Online
Minecraft
Left4Dead
Call of Duty
Team Fortress
Quake Live

...that's all I can think of off the top of my head


of course I've grouped with other people, and playing through casual for leveling is taking a
very. very. long. time.

Most times I feel like i'm being carried when I group with other people, and other times (depending on the class I play) it's not an enjoyable experience because I will get blamed for stupid things like everyone dying in a trap when i'm on my cleric who can't heal fast enough for people standing in traps, or running so far ahead that they are out of range.

most times on my fighter I just feel like I'm being carried by the Wiz TR in the group or whatever. I could prob level off of piking like that, but that's not how I want to go about doing it.

and still other times, I just can't find groups. I don't like making my own if I don't know the quest, since the star is blamed lots of times in pugs as well.

[sephiroth1084]

Avoiding blame is not a very good excuse for leveling slowly or having trouble with the game.
People are going to affix blame to someone whether it is their fault or not. Live with it.
If you don't want to be carried on a TR's coattails put up LFMs that say "No Zerging."
If you're going to solo, expect to level slowly, especially if you don't have a lot of choice gear.
Hunt for better gear, or at least utility stuff, to make leveling easier.

The game really isn't that difficult.

[grgurius]

Dunno how i missed this thread.

Anyway, my thoughts:
- Casual and normal are fine as they are
- Hard is more or less fine
- Elite could be a bit harder
- Epic should be harder then it is now

Ofc, difficulty should be reflected on the drop rates, shroud was a step in the right direction when it comes to this.
And no chance to fail = no fun, at least for me.

[twiliteslayer02]

IF you take out the whimpering, it basically seems to boil down to these:

Targets that hit hard , shouldnt...learn to avoid the hits, watch for the pre-attack graphics and get back.

Targets that self heal/summon/etc...should have finite spell points...Agree whole-heartedly, (although I beleive they would make them like hirelings with unending stacks of SP pots)


New players(under two years of playing) should be hand held until they are ready to go out on their own..
.In all seriousness, being that you have under a year ingame(and a year seems like a long time) it can be difficult to run some of the upper middle content. It really is and always has been a huge learning curve and will be from here on in. Dont think I dont understand, I have stared toons on every server and can understand how difficult it is to get geared.

The truth is, if you make a character that can use clikkies and wands, they last longer than pots,
If you are short on money, go break breakables and pick absolutely everything up to trade then sell.

DO NOT roll a cleric as your first toon, period, theres too many out there that are going to make you regret it

Be aware that when people on the forums talk about builds, you roll the dice when following them, you have no idea who or what they are, or how they play, and if you dont understand that fully, the build can feel cunbersome, and confusing. if you want a build idea, use the ones turbine has premade, they arent uber, but they are solid, and you can break of when you are ready..

Please understand, noone playing this game had any different basic start, other than we didnt get a gear setup right at the start, most only got a dagger, a shortbow, and rags.

[rkreutz]

@Zex

really didnt want to chime in but cant avoid:


- why do you use dwarven axe (1handed) enhancements if you are a thf build? the only 'reason' would be, cos you use a shield - fail -
- a shield is a defensive thing, kensai pre is a offensive pre, you mix stuff that isnt supposed to mix. if u want to be defensive, use the defender pre - fail -
- you were clearly saying that your ac doesnt hold anything, so why - again - you use a shield? - fail -
- same thing (no ac), why do you have combat expertise!??? its either wasted feat (you cant have it on at same time as power attack) or you cripple your damage that much, it isnt fun. - fail



conclusion:

switch to a greataxe (weapon and enhancements)

there is another option, swap out CE for shield mastery, AT LEAST now with the shield equipped, you take 20% less damage from physical attacks (still consider it FAR from optimal)




lets see the difference between your daxe + shield (+1 holy of shattermantle at lvl 15? really?????? / a +5 weapon is ml8, a +5 <of element) is ml10, a +5 holy of pg is ml14) and a +5 shock ga (leaving all plusses asde that are same for the 2 cases):


5.5 (base) + 1 (enhancement) + 7 (holy) + 8 (str mod 1handed weapon) + 2 (dwarven axe enhancements) + 5 ( if PA on instead of CE) = 28.5 = 21.5 ('base' for glancing blow) + 7 (effect)

6.5 (base) + 5 (enhancement) + 3.5 (shock) + 12 (str mod 2handed weapon) + 4 (dwarven axe enhancements) + 10 (PA) = 41 = 37.5 (base) + 3.5 (effect)

the difference for base is a full 9 points of damage, that means your glancing blows do 4 more damage (beside effects). thats already big and will add up very quick even more. Now add in that 26 str (what you say u have) means you use a +4 str item, get a +6, use rage pots - another +2 str mod, which means the greataxe will gain (compared to daxe) another +1 damage and +2 on glancing blows.
Now looking at your build, you have enough umd to actually use a +5 <elemental> of pure good, which would add another 3.5 on effects. We can go further, gaxe has significantly longer weapon reach than daxe, which DOES make a difference, cos since a few updates ago, mobs started 'dancing' arround / back&forth, which will force you as a daxe use to always readjust your distance to mobs (-4 moving penalty, 'missing' hits cos mob moved out of reach). And we still can go further, swap out improved trip for cleave. Excellent feat for thf users, whenever you face more than 1 mob (even against 2 its already justified).
And finally, you state only 2 weapons. Even on an caster cleric/fvs, who uses weapons just in between, as a secondary means, 2 weapons are WAY too few. The mobs you encounter can have very different properties, which means you need more weapons to accomodate.



Those were just the most basic problems i see. IF you were ever actually would state, on which mission, in which situation, you as lvl 15 have problems in normal lvl 12 mission, we could further it even more. But so far you simply keep saying (i rather use some diffrent word here, but well): its too difficult


And PLZ, dont now say: knowing all this stuff is too difficult
1.) the game is based in d&d, if it is, this game isnt for you
2.) diversity and amount of options equals to: i need to learn my stuff to make qualified decisions
3.) if i encounter a problem, i will look for a solution (either i rethink and come up myself or i go ask)

finally, thats exactly the problem. the game IS too easy. because of that ppl either get to 20 and dont know the real important stuff / didnt learn about game mechanics etc OR (it seems like you), dont understand that they need to learn more, ask for help, rethink their toon etc pp - and simply stumble through game, get frustrated and call for more easybuttons.
When i started playing, it was common that ppl came to forum: I have a problem, in this situatuin with this toon. What do i miss, how can overcome it
Nowadays i dont see that anymore - suddenly all ppl are supersmart and always figure out things themself.

If the game is too difficult, why do i almost never see any lfm's with casual stated!? And the 90% of the ones that are labeled casual, are the amrath missions 'to get flagged', for TOD!!!


EDIT:
2 things i forgot.
- get rid of rogue enhancements if you solo. Your not getting sneak attacks anyways
- get AT LEAST haste boost 1 fighter, better haste boost 2. Especially against bosses or in situations that are dangerous, 15/20% more damage / faster attacking is a very very bigg diffrence.

[Metaljaw]

Much of what I have to say is going to be a repeat, but they are looking for community consensus so I feel somewhat validated for providing my opinion. Saying that, for those that have already read through the thread and are looking for new and stimulating insight - you may want to check the post after mine.

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard? I have been playing almost 3 years now and don't have too much of a problem completing on pretty much any difficulty for quests, even solo. The exception to this would be the harbor, twelve, and house C quest lines which are ridiculously difficult on elite. Personally, I feel like Acute Delerium is harder than most epics, yet is it a lvl 19 quest on elite. I believe these two quest lines where balanced to the "Axer Setting." While I recognize that Turbine may want to keep people in the game, there comes a point where people will complete a game. Several of the more vocal players on this forum have been playing since inception at 2006. The reality check needs to be that these players, while being a very loyal player base, are most likely not indicitive of the majority player base. Balancing to these uber-twinked players is a mistake and will drive normal players away. Keeping these players should be done through the addition of content, not increasing difficulty on existing content. Adding HP/Fort/Immunities to existing raids does nothing other than lock out players and prevent new players from being able to gear their toons. Add new worlds for the Uber players. Create an uber server where difficulties are jacked 50% or some such thing. Make the move voluntary. However, there needs to be a place and a method for new players to gear up. Alternatively, if the uber players think they are that uber, switch to a new server where they don't have any gear/toons/favor and start grinding there. As much as these uber players gripe about how easy things are, I am not seeing PUGs going up as a rate they used to which means that the raids are beyond they level they should be now. People are not willing to chance failure so the cries for "more challenge" are probably not viable.

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout? Lower levels are more difficult for casters but easily completed by melee's. At about lvl 7-11 this starts to shift and it becomes easier for casters to solo than for melee's. Part of this is due to the inequity in healing available. At lower levels the Cure Serious pots have a reasonable capability to fill a melee's hp "relatively" efficiently. However, by about lvl 10 where each hit you take on a melee requires a full Cure serious pot, or multiple ones, to heal, the self healing and damage avoidance mechanisms of casters overcomes a melee's sustainable damage dealing capabilities. To balance the game out the Cure serious pots need to actually become Cure Serious pots instead of "cure a minor flesh wound" as they are at lvl 10+. There should be heal pots that do 100+ hp curing to even out the game, without making a player unable to do anything for 30 seconds as the Silver flame -10 stat debuff can accurately be termed. Hopefully this would address some of the game balance issues. I don't understand why the healing potions are so limited in this game. Every other game I have played the healing potions are actually capable of bringing a fighter to full health with 2 or 3. Not a stack of 50.

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you? It is more of what is the balance of reward vs. failure. As I remember it old style PnP DnD gave experience per kill, and a bonus on completion. If the current mechanism of provided delayed xp is retained until the end, then normal should be a virtual guaranteed success for a brand new toon. Hard should be a virtual guaranteed success for a player somewhat geared. Elite should be a 60% success rate for a toon having the best AT LEVEL gear. A lvl 14 quest SHOULD NOT be geared for a lvl 20 player with epic gear. Make a new difficulty for that player - EPIC. A lot of the griping could have been avoided if the changes to abbot, reaver, and the other raids made post U-11 were introduced as epic levels instead of changes to existing raid structures.

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating. If you fail then some XP should be granted for the time/objectives/kills that were completed. There is nothing more frusterating than stagnating at a given level and being unable to progress because of a limited quest availability at a given level range (I'm thinking 15-17 specifically) which being precluded from running lower level content because you have already run it and are now getting minimal xp rewards from it.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!' Please stop scaling old quests and raids to the "Axer Setting." If you want to continue to provide challenge to these limited individuals then create a server for them or add a new difficulty setting to address their requests. What is happening now is locking out of newish players.

[zex95966]

@Zex

really didnt want to chime in but cant avoid:


- why do you use dwarven axe (1handed) enhancements if you are a thf build? the only 'reason' would be, cos you use a shield - fail -
- a shield is a defensive thing, kensai pre is a offensive pre, you mix stuff that isnt supposed to mix. if u want to be defensive, use the defender pre - fail -
- you were clearly saying that your ac doesnt hold anything, so why - again - you use a shield? - fail -
- same thing (no ac), why do you have combat expertise!??? its either wasted feat (you cant have it on at same time as power attack) or you cripple your damage that much, it isnt fun. - fail



conclusion:

switch to a greataxe (weapon and enhancements)

there is another option, swap out CE for shield mastery, AT LEAST now with the shield equipped, you take 20% less damage from physical attacks (still consider it FAR from optimal)




lets see the difference between your daxe + shield (+1 holy of shattermantle at lvl 15? really?????? / a +5 weapon is ml8, a +5 <of element) is ml10, a +5 holy of pg is ml14) and a +5 shock ga (leaving all plusses asde that are same for the 2 cases):


5.5 (base) + 1 (enhancement) + 7 (holy) + 8 (str mod 1handed weapon) + 2 (dwarven axe enhancements) + 5 ( if PA on instead of CE) = 28.5 = 21.5 ('base' for glancing blow) + 7 (effect)

6.5 (base) + 5 (enhancement) + 3.5 (shock) + 12 (str mod 2handed weapon) + 4 (dwarven axe enhancements) + 10 (PA) = 41 = 37.5 (base) + 3.5 (effect)

the difference for base is a full 9 points of damage, that means your glancing blows do 4 more damage (beside effects). thats already big and will add up very quick even more. Now add in that 26 str (what you say u have) means you use a +4 str item, get a +6, use rage pots - another +2 str mod, which means the greataxe will gain (compared to daxe) another +1 damage and +2 on glancing blows.
Now looking at your build, you have enough umd to actually use a +5 <elemental> of pure good, which would add another 3.5 on effects. We can go further, gaxe has significantly longer weapon reach than daxe, which DOES make a difference, cos since a few updates ago, mobs started 'dancing' arround / back&forth, which will force you as a daxe use to always readjust your distance to mobs (-4 moving penalty, 'missing' hits cos mob moved out of reach). And we still can go further, swap out improved trip for cleave. Excellent feat for thf users, whenever you face more than 1 mob (even against 2 its already justified).
And finally, you state only 2 weapons. Even on an caster cleric/fvs, who uses weapons just in between, as a secondary means, 2 weapons are WAY too few. The mobs you encounter can have very different properties, which means you need more weapons to accomodate.



Those were just the most basic problems i see. IF you were ever actually would state, on which mission, in which situation, you as lvl 15 have problems in normal lvl 12 mission, we could further it even more. But so far you simply keep saying (i rather use some diffrent word here, but well): its too difficult


And PLZ, dont now say: knowing all this stuff is too difficult
1.) the game is based in d&d, if it is, this game isnt for you
2.) diversity and amount of options equals to: i need to learn my stuff to make qualified decisions
3.) if i encounter a problem, i will look for a solution (either i rethink and come up myself or i go ask)

finally, thats exactly the problem. the game IS too easy. because of that ppl either get to 20 and dont know the real important stuff / didnt learn about game mechanics etc OR (it seems like you), dont understand that they need to learn more, ask for help, rethink their toon etc pp - and simply stumble through game, get frustrated and call for more easybuttons.
When i started playing, it was common that ppl came to forum: I have a problem, in this situatuin with this toon. What do i miss, how can overcome it
Nowadays i dont see that anymore - suddenly all ppl are supersmart and always figure out things themself.

If the game is too difficult, why do i almost never see any lfm's with casual stated!? And the 90% of the ones that are labeled casual, are the amrath missions 'to get flagged', for TOD!!!


EDIT:
2 things i forgot.
- get rid of rogue enhancements if you solo. Your not getting sneak attacks anyways
- get AT LEAST haste boost 1 fighter, better haste boost 2. Especially against bosses or in situations that are dangerous, 15/20% more damage / faster attacking is a very very bigg diffrence.


...what? thf = Two handed fighting. not Two weapon fighting or sword and board. I am using a Greataxe that takes up both hands, I have no room for a shield. Greataxes get the axe enhancements from dwarf.

I have C.E to get Improved Trip. I have the intelligence to do it, and fighters get tons of feats.
In normal content, both Stunning blow and Improved trip work a fair amount of the time. I haven't tried enough hard content to say, but i'm still stunning casters in elite when I need to.

I don't ALWAYS solo and I still get sneak when my idiot hireling refuses to listen to me and grabs aggro.

I have haste boost actually, as I said it's not exactly the same build as I posted because the TR messed up some things. I'd have to log in and write it all down to get it exactly right.

Edit: after thinking about it, I'm guessing I marked the wrong enhancements from the Kensai pre- not the dwarven ones I thought you were talking about.
Dont' worry, I'm using the Greataxe ones.

[sirgog]

A bunch of people mention some quests being harder on elite than most Epics.

I think that says more about how much Epics were trivialised by Wail and Implosion than it does about Elite quests. IMO Mindsunder on Hard is harder than most Epics now, and the only Epics people continue to consider tough are the ones where Wail/Implosion don't deal with the hardest part of the quest (ones with hard bosses, nasty traps or eChrono-style resilient orange named trash).

I'm trying to think of a non-boss combat encounter that comes even close to the difficulty of trash fights in Elite Running with the Devils in any Epic, and cannot think of one. eRWTD is generally considered a PUGgable but challenging quest.

[voodoogroves]

A bunch of people mention some quests being harder on elite than most Epics.

I think that says more about how much Epics were trivialised by Wail and Implosion than it does about Elite quests. IMO Mindsunder on Hard is harder than most Epics now, and the only Epics people continue to consider tough are the ones where Wail/Implosion don't deal with the hardest part of the quest (ones with hard bosses, nasty traps or eChrono-style resilient orange named trash).

I'm trying to think of a non-boss combat encounter that comes even close to the difficulty of trash fights in Elite Running with the Devils in any Epic, and cannot think of one. eRWTD is generally considered a PUGgable but challenging quest.

I'm not sure it is wail and implosion. Yes, they work. Yes, they can trivialize some quests ... but they are easy enough without them - that I think is the real issue. It isn't even that the instakills now work.


At (basically) the same time that was enabled we also got ... a new Symbol of Death, Circle of Death, AOV debufs, FORT save reduction from sunder, stacking debuffs on more and more spells. I can do a lot with a sub-40 Enchant DC now.


I think mobs need to spawn with more variability, including SOME with Deathblock, FOM, higher saves (versus magic only maybe), resists, aborptions, special attacks (vorpal, paralyzers, etc.) ... not all of them, but a random chance based on the monster type when they spawn. Toss on a to-hit adjustment when they spawn to increase the range of effective AC as well (so some monsters will be poorer and miss, others will not).

... but I say this every time the topic comes up ...

[Calonderial]

an example of skewed difficulty, Acute delerium. Fairly easy on normal, can do at level 15 solo, take it up to hard with a level 17 legend build (level 18 quest on hard) and wipe, i can understand this if it was on leet but the exponential increase in difficulty from norm to hard just doesnt compute

[psi0nix]

I have had a whinge here and there about certain things in the game being "too hard", but looking back after cooling down it's just a case of being angry at losing.

And as far as "too easy" goes, try running the quests without using the "tricks" and zerg tactics, and it makes it alot more difficult. So it's the player exploiting the game that is making it easy.



I think the games difficulty is fine, it beats me sometimes when I am not prepared (as it should), and provides a decent challenge.

For the record i HATE MMO's - I really do, ALL of them, but this one - it's the only one I actually like, not that I'm any great game critic or anything, but I think it speaks volumes for a game when a number of people who hate the genre get it and enjoy it.

Overall I think it's been done very well, I don't have too much to say, but well done Turbine, keep it up.

[ohiolee]

There should be an amount of rest shrines comparable to the length and difficulty of missions. Missions shouldn't be "easy", but the more difficult (and longer) missions should be adequately stocked with rest- and resurrection shrines.

[grodon9999]

A bunch of people mention some quests being harder on elite than most Epics.

I think that says more about how much Epics were trivialised by Wail and Implosion than it does about Elite quests. IMO Mindsunder on Hard is harder than most Epics now, and the only Epics people continue to consider tough are the ones where Wail/Implosion don't deal with the hardest part of the quest (ones with hard bosses, nasty traps or eChrono-style resilient orange named trash).

I'm trying to think of a non-boss combat encounter that comes even close to the difficulty of trash fights in Elite Running with the Devils in any Epic, and cannot think of one. eRWTD is generally considered a PUGgable but challenging quest.

WHAT?

My first-live PM who was capped for a day can clear and entire room in Mindsunder elite with 1 wail.

My ranger has solo'd it.

I agree with about 95% of the stuff you say but this leaves me scratching my head.

There are some quests in non epic that are harder than some epics. "In the Flesh" yes, "A new Invasion" yes, but Mindsunder?

[grodon9999]

an example of skewed difficulty, Acute delerium. Fairly easy on normal, can do at level 15 solo, take it up to hard with a level 17 legend build (level 18 quest on hard) and wipe, i can understand this if it was on leet but the exponential increase in difficulty from norm to hard just doesnt compute

Yes, this on Elite at level is painful (and awesome at the same time, i love this quest) whereas the rest of the chain is much, much easier.

[hewimeddel]

New insights from me, the noob.

Quests have become harder with my level 13 paladin and i am now playing only on "casual" because "normal" is too hard - and even losing some times on casual.
But my main problem is not the difficulty, my main problem is that many quest are a long way inside enemy territory, so that the duration is even longer and that i often already have depleted my healing resources when getting to the quest entry (e.g. in the desert of menechtarun).
Also, self-healing monsters are a problem, they seem to never run out of healing potions or spellpoints.

Finding these quests entries has also needed a very long time, and was hard and very frustrating, i eventually resorted to looking only for a map of the dessert and quest entrances, which is something i really try to avoid.

bye
hewi

[slimkj]

Desert is fairly uncommon in it's size and sparse number of shrines, don't be discouraged. Best thing to do out there is clear to a nearby shrine, clear to the quest, go and rest, run back to quest.

If it was Chains of Flames you were doing, I can't think of another run like it to get in quest in game. It's also fairly tough first run (I remember back in the day of release straight in on Elite, what a fun run that was!) but will get easier with practice.

[heavenandhell]

Whether a quest is more difficult in terms of gear and skill are one thing. The real problem is the immense amount of tedium that the new raids have. Classic example, LOB takes a signifigant ammount of time to just get to. For what reason should it take 20 minutes to start a raid? Once in, you are forced to either kite, tank or heal. Besides Tanking, LOB is an extraordinarily repetitive raid. If you are a healer you are in robot mode scroll healing. In epic LOB I used 220 scrolls, healbot is one thing, but now its scroll bot. Ideally you want 3 people scrolling. So 2 people are not stop casting a scroll spell, 1 other pitches in. Then the kiters run in the same circle for up to 45 minutes. Is this difficult or innovative, no, its just pure tedium. On epic, they got rid of the shrine so people spend up to 15 minutes torq and concordant their sp back. So in epic LOB, 20 min to quest entrance, pure tedium. 5 to 10 min easy not technical trash fights, 15 min of sp torqing then the main fight starts where up to 40 percent of the party will do the exact same thing for the next 45 min, and none of it requires skill.

So from my perspective, why is the game getting more and more tedious. Hard is one thing, but the requirement that I caffeinate myself for a boring raid is shocking. Whats worse if you go for the extra chest, you just add 15 more minutes of tedium. Look at this way, how many times does the kiter run in circle, 200 maybe 500 times doing nothing but running in a circle - its really that bad.

So instead of being difficult, why are so many raids about fighting tedium?

[heavenandhell]

The difference between a veteran player and a new player has grown massively. It is now possible for two level 1 sorcs with identical stats to have a difference of 300 spell points. It is now possible for a level 1 wizard to start with more than 50 hp.

Well geared plus ship buffs makes you shockingly powerful. These advantages start to diminish at level 7 or so but at levels 11, 12, 13 the gap explodes with greensteel and raid gear. My level 12 barb has over 420 hp. New players reach that mark around between levels 18 to 20.

This reality should be recognized. Therefore the question about dificulty is moot until level 14 where twinking loses some of its luster. Until level 14, twinking and past lives provide an overwhelming advantage and even perfect quest design cannot overcome.

[grgurius]

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you? It is more of what is the balance of reward vs. failure. As I remember it old style PnP DnD gave experience per kill, and a bonus on completion. If the current mechanism of provided delayed xp is retained until the end, then normal should be a virtual guaranteed success for a brand new toon. Hard should be a virtual guaranteed success for a player somewhat geared. Elite should be a 60% success rate for a toon having the best AT LEVEL gear. A lvl 14 quest SHOULD NOT be geared for a lvl 20 player with epic gear. Make a new difficulty for that player - EPIC. A lot of the griping could have been avoided if the changes to abbot, reaver, and the other raids made post U-11 were introduced as epic levels instead of changes to existing raid structures.



Not that i completely disagree with this, but i need to nitpick few of the details. Normal should be almost always completed by people who are actually trying to complete it. I have seen to many players just running around like headless chickens, attacking everything, running into traps etc. Stupidity should hurt, even on normal.

Second nitpick, why are people always linking gear with difficulty, most of the quests still work on the principle that gear more or less doesn't mater if you play smart (besides few pieces like heavy fort, and i really can't think of anything else that i couldn't live without in pre epic quests)

And one final question, unrelated to the quote above, are we talking about quest difficulty or raid difficulty, because those are two different things imo.

[nibel]

WHAT?

My first-live PM who was capped for a day can clear and entire room in Mindsunder elite with 1 wail.

I call shenanigans. My first capped character was a pure WF wizard with "max" int (34, 18+5lvl+6item+3enh+2tome). He had about low 30 DC on his wail. About 3/4 of the time his wail/fod failed on mindsunder normal. Then we got Archmage released. He still failed half the time. He wasn't a palemaster because he was enchantment-specced when they were released.

If he had lich form and necro focusx2, even on that his DC still would be under 40. No way some first lifer without grandfathered items could auto-wail mindsunder elite the second he reach cap.

[grodon9999]

I call shenanigans. My first capped character was a pure WF wizard with "max" int (34, 18+5lvl+6item+3enh+2tome). He had about low 30 DC on his wail. About 3/4 of the time his wail/fod failed on mindsunder normal. Then we got Archmage released. He still failed half the time. He wasn't a palemaster because he was enchantment-specced when they were released.

If he had lich form and necro focusx2, even on that his DC still would be under 40. No way some first lifer without grandfathered items could auto-wail mindsunder elite the second he reach cap.

42 Necro DC with yugo, and yes she's done this. She did have an Epic Cloak of night crafted for her when she was level 4 (welfare epics, available to all) and a +3 INT tome that was BTA from an EDQ pull.

Casters have gotten a lot more powerful since you rolled your (an assumption, please correct me if wrong), it's stupid easy with how little needs to be invested in one to make it viable.

[nibel]

42 Necro DC with yugo, and yes she's done this. She did have an Epic Cloak of night crafted for her when she was level 4 (welfare epics, available to all) and a +3 INT tome that was BTA from an EDQ pull.

Casters have gotten a lot more powerful since you rolled your (an assumption, please correct me if wrong), it's stupid easy with how little needs to be invested in one to make it viable.

Yugo pots add a lot to almost every character. On the other hand, it isn't a buff widely available for anyone (requires one of the hardest packs around, and need to complete 3 quests on this pack on hard, one on elite, and the raid). Sure, many vets can solo elite Amrath with their eyes closed. My sorcerer had to flag for ToD on casual.

What I'm saying is: Many people that are used with the actual endgame have biased opinions about how hard it actually is. My first dedicated group found a wall in Amrath (and we TRed without completing a single quest there), and had to try 4 times to beat Sor'jek on refuge. I see people advising to farm prey on casual, or farming amrath for a con/GFL belt. Some even say to solo DQ once every three days for a torc because "every caster should have one". And don't let me start on all greensteel crafting.

The game is fine. Good groups can complete every quest on normal if they learn it. Undergeared people can farm things on normal. I just find odd people that says "this is too easy. I can pwn amrath elite on my first life bard with 550 HP and just 4 or 5 epic items".

And could you give a breakdown on your 42 DC? That could help me a bit (maybe even on PM to avoid derail the topic more).

[grodon9999]

Yugo pots add a lot to almost every character. On the other hand, it isn't a buff widely available for anyone (requires one of the hardest packs around, and need to complete 3 quests on this pack on hard, one on elite, and the raid). Sure, many vets can solo elite Amrath with their eyes closed. My sorcerer had to flag for ToD on casual.

What I'm saying is: Many people that are used with the actual endgame have biased opinions about how hard it actually is. My first dedicated group found a wall in Amrath (and we TRed without completing a single quest there), and had to try 4 times to beat Sor'jek on refuge. I see people advising to farm prey on casual, or farming amrath for a con/GFL belt. Some even say to solo DQ once every three days for a torc because "every caster should have one". And don't let me start on all greensteel crafting.

The game is fine. Good groups can complete every quest on normal if they learn it. Undergeared people can farm things on normal. I just find odd people that says "this is too easy. I can pwn amrath elite on my first life bard with 550 HP and just 4 or 5 epic items".

And could you give a breakdown on your 42 DC? That could help me a bit (maybe even on PM to avoid derail the topic more).


That's neither here not there . . . my point is Mindsunder Elite is NOT harder than epics. :)

Necro DC
Int 18 (46 with yugo, ship buff, gear, she's human)
Spell Focus 2
item 2
lich 1
Base/Spell 19

42 necro DC

[morticianjohn]

I'm trying to think of a non-boss combat encounter that comes even close to the difficulty of trash fights in Elite Running with the Devils in any Epic, and cannot think of one. eRWTD is generally considered a PUGgable but challenging quest.

I think where the disparity lies is that in my experience when you PuG elite vale quests you get plenty of casual players, first life toons etc... The experience level for most players who PuG epics is significantly higher. If I could take an average epic PuG on my server rewind each player 2 levels and do elite running with the devils it will be just as easy as whichever epic we happen to be working on.

Basically I disagree that the epic encounters are easier than elite running with the devils, or mindsunder. I think that they are more difficult but in general the PuGers are more prepared. There may be a handful of quests that are more challenging than a handful of epics but I don't see that as being horrible, it is very difficult to get perfect balance and no one wants perfect balance anyway.

[Blank_Zero]

The difference between hard and elite is night and day

This is not true of ALL quests though. Take Hard/Elite WizKing. The difference is mainly in mob HP/trap damage. But between Normal/Hard, it's ridiculous as the increase everything, including mob spawns and traps.

[noinfo]

I call shenanigans. My first capped character was a pure WF wizard with "max" int (34, 18+5lvl+6item+3enh+2tome). He had about low 30 DC on his wail. About 3/4 of the time his wail/fod failed on mindsunder normal. Then we got Archmage released. He still failed half the time. He wasn't a palemaster because he was enchantment-specced when they were released.

If he had lich form and necro focusx2, even on that his DC still would be under 40. No way some first lifer without grandfathered items could auto-wail mindsunder elite the second he reach cap.

The difference between a first life wizard DC and a TR wizard is 1 nothing more (edit Necro DC that is). You are missing ship buffs and +3 exceptional. +2 DC items can even be crafted. Epic +7 stat item could also be waiting.

That being said, I would think that that wail would have just been luck.

[iraiqat316]

I am purely and End Game Content guy that has been playing on Sarlona for close to 5 years.

Here is my point of view:

TR'ing takes a long time if you are a casual player. I LIKE the TR system because you get a lot of benefits if you want to recycle your character. Also, it gives you the opportunity to replay a lot of lowbie content and shake things up.

Dont Make EPICS too easy. When EPICS first came out they were very difficult. High DC's, critters with a lot of HP and and the TRAPS were AWESOME. Then people started complaining and you all scaled it back. Perhaps an UBER Difficulty setting for people who REALLY want to test their builds. The warning should be: YOU WILL GET PWNED

Keep regular updates coming, with all the New MMO's coming out, people like me dont want to spend another 5 years building toons in other games. DDO is awesome.

Thank you

--Uncle Mahmood

[svinja]

WHAT?

My first-live PM who was capped for a day can clear and entire room in Mindsunder elite with 1 wail.

My ranger has solo'd it.

I agree with about 95% of the stuff you say but this leaves me scratching my head.

There are some quests in non epic that are harder than some epics. "In the Flesh" yes, "A new Invasion" yes, but Mindsunder?

I agree with this. Some elite quests are harder than some epics but not those two... Also, I don't see anything magical about the word "Epic", I am fine with the way it is currently, where difficulty depends a lot on which quest it is, and not just the difficulty setting. Snitch on Epic does not absolutely HAVE to be harder than every single quest in the game on elite just because it is epic. Content varying in difficulty is a good thing. There are so many epic quests, and so few other worthwhile endgame quests, that some of the epics must be suitable for fresh 20 first life people.

I think sirgog underestimates epic trash, I personally immediately feel the jump in difficulty between epic and non-epic trash.

[HAL]

...some of the epics must be suitable for fresh 20 first life people.

I think sirgog underestimates epic trash, I personally immediately feel the jump in difficulty between epic and non-epic trash.

Devs, PLEASE don't listen to the hardcore players who like the recent increases of difficulty (including the ridiculous Challenges) and probably would like even more to be made more difficult!

As many have pointed out, those who have been playing the game for a long time have it down pat. Even new quests aren't going to be much of a challenge for them because there are only so many quest strategies possible.

Normal should be easy, Hard shouldn't be as difficult as it is in some cases, Elite should be difficult but not to the point where only fully-geared & multi-lived non-PUGs can complete them without burning huge resources. After all, how many of those kinds of groups are there in the game vs. all other players? And Epic is end game for ALL level 20s, not just the groups I describe above.

This game should be made with all players in mind. No part of the game should be tweaked to please a small minority.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I attempted the "Guard Coyle" for the first time this evening. My first effort was to leave him at the door and clear a path for him, because he has a notoriously poor reputation on the forums (undoubtedly deserved, based on what I've seen). After carefully and cautiously working my way through a significant part of the dungeon, a "Don't let Coyle die" mission requirement instruction popped up, about the same time that he died.

Why not have the "Keep Coyle from dying" instruction appear right at the beginning of the mission, so it's clear? Also, based on chatting with others after this happened, apparently if you choose the "stay at the entrance" option for Coyle, at the beginning, the mission will auto-fail because Coyle *will* die. But, arguably no mission should auto-fail based on a dialogue choice made at the beginning, for which there are no warning signs you're making the wrong choice. There's no fairness in that. How did a guaranteed mission failure that results from an innocuous, initial dialogue choice move all the way through quality assurance and bug checking, and into an AP? And, how has that not been fixed yet?

I'll be leaving Coyle for a long time, until I can cut through mobs easily, after significantly over-leveling my rogue. The issue is lack of balance in difficulty across character types, as a first life solo melee rogue with mediocre gear probably has a relatively low chance of successfully guarding Coyle, even on a lower difficulty level. Damage is insufficient and aggro perhaps cannot be pulled away fast enough to keep Coyle alive.

Guard missions need to be designed very carefully to avoid making them either exercises in building player frustration or trivially easy. But, it's very clear that the Guard Coyle mission was not carefully thought through and play-tested. Hopefully the "Guard Coyle" mission gets fixed.

[Calebro]

I attempted the "Guard Coyle" for the first time this evening. My first effort was to leave him at the door and clear a path for him, because he has a notoriously poor reputation on the forums (undoubtedly deserved, based on what I've seen).

Apparently, if you choose the "stay at the entrance" option for Coyle, at the beginning, the mission will auto-fail because Coyle *willI* die. But, arguably no mission should auto-fail based on a dialogue choice made at the beginning, for which there are no warning signs you're making the wrong choice. There's no fairness in that. How did a guaranteed mission failure that results from an innocuous, initial dialogue choice move all the way through quality assurance and bug checking, and into an AP? And, how has that not been fixed yet?

I'll be leaving Coyle for a long time, until I can cut through mobs easily, after significantly over-leveling my rogue. The issue is lack of balance in difficulty across character types, as a first life solo melee rogue with mediocre gear probably has a relatively low chance of successfully guarding Coyle, even on a lower difficulty level. Damage is insufficient and aggro perhaps cannot be pulled away fast enough to keep Coyle alive.

Guard missions need to be designed very carefully to avoid making them either exercises in building player frustration or trivially easy. But, it's very clear that the Guard Coyle mission was not carefully thought through and play-tested. Hopefully the "Guard Coyle" mission gets fixed.

lol...
Too bad that isn't the quest that everyone complains about. You haven't even seen that one yet. But it has admittedly become a lot easier now that we can knock him out. You'll see.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

lol...
Too bad that isn't the quest that everyone complains about. You haven't even seen that one yet. But it has admittedly become a lot easier now that we can knock him out. You'll see.
This one is bad enough, if only because an initial, innocuous dialogue choice guarantees mission failure.

It sounds like I *really* won't be looking forward to the follow-up, though. I may just find other things to do instead, and not bother with it until it's fixed.

[balancetraveller]

Epic Against the Demon Queen (EADQ1)
Need one more shrine on the lower center platform to make this epic quest more accessible to the 99% of the players.

In its current form, you need a star team of uber players to be able to beat this quest potless, with roughly an hour of time; for other epic-ready players, it'd be a 2 - 3 hours horrible struggle with countless SP pots, and the efforts aren't gonna be justified by the notoriously crappy shard drop rates.

[Glenalth]

Epic Against the Demon Queen (EADQ1)
Need one more shrine on the lower center platform to make this epic quest more accessible to the 99% of the players.

In its current form, you need a star team of uber players to be able to beat this quest potless, with roughly an hour of time; for other epic-ready players, it'd be a 2 - 3 hours horrible struggle with countless SP pots, and the efforts aren't gonna be justified by the notoriously crappy shard drop rates.

"Uber players" aren't taking an hour to run this.

It is a daunting task to a party full of people new to epics though.

[Stormanne]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

It's not the difficulty that I am unhappy with, it's the ways that the difficulty is achieved - Blanket immunities, unrealistic and unreasonable hit points for mobs, artificial pacing mechanics (Dungeon Alert), and messing with player mechanics (two weapon fighting losing it's attack bonus in favor of an off hand proc system, twitch fighting for two handed fighters). You've dumbed down the way the game is played (making all end boss fights toe 2 toe beat downs, with the partial exception of the Titan) while making the one way left a tedious exercise.


We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

No, you're not just balancing the game around the uber-players, you're balancing the game around the uber-players who've acquired every piece of raid and epic loot currently in the game. And, to make matters worse, you're changing epic and elite difficulties of end game content to make them even harder, so that players who haven't farmed for the epic gear already are completely hosed in ever getting it because only groups that already have all the gear are the only ones with a hope in completing the quest. The current game design leaves a learning curve that is nigh on flat until the level 16-17 range, when people start getting in to Amrath and Cannith, and then shoots upwards at about an 80 degree angle. This leaves the unlucky or the non-hardcore out in the cold because of lack of equipment.

Another thing that I've noticed, and bug reported, is that damage seems to be scaling based on what equipment you have equipped. Most notable example I have is my monk. Level 15, wearing heavy fort and a decent AC (42 in air stance, 46 in water). About a week ago, we were running Gianthold quests (full group and on elite for all)and really took note that when my monk was wearing his heavy fort item, the archers in Feast or Famine were doing an average of about 85 points of damage per hit; but as soon as I'd take off the heavy fort item, the damage would drop down to the regular 35-40 range with a crit hitting for around 80 points. I've noticed a similar trend on all of my characters (but it is most noticeable on my monk), with mobs doing more straight damage when I wear my heavy fort items then they do when I am not, even if in the same quest at the same level and difficulty.

[balancetraveller]

"Uber players" aren't taking an hour to run this.

It is a daunting task to a party full of people new to epics though.

No - It's a daunting task for any party that doesn't have more than 3 people already done it more than half a dozen of times on epic, and know all the drills and bits 'bout the quest, from what happens in each branch's end chamber, where to stand exactly to dodge all the force and disjunction traps, how to deal with certain ambush and how to kite the queen in the encounters...

And even with all these knowledge it can still fail/cost lots of SP pots for an above-average party on unlucky scenarios.

[bringjoy]

MadFloyd: Thank you for asking!

As a Day 1 vet who has a good amount of DnD knowledge (which helps!) who plays everyday and who reads the forums and wiki to develop my knowledge base, BUT who does not have uber skills or gear, I find many parts of the game very challenging, which is Good! And some parts so hard that they are simply not fun -- I'm looking at you Amrath. I have good gear and skills and a stable of lvl 20's (some TRs) and none have ever cleared the map in Amrath, yet they've run epic quests and raids. I'm glad you recognize that you went overboard on game difficulty and rethought it for the lines released in the last year.

Having recently come back to the game I've been enjoying the "new to me" content like the Harbinger of Madness and House C wilderness and quests. I've only started running them and the progression from normal to hard is noticeable and different traps on Hard! Nice surprise and well done;)

The addition of normal/hard/elite and hirelings and even epic were all steps to address concerns of the elite, average and casual players with regard to game difficulty. There will always be a schism between elite gamers and everyone else. You see it in this thread with some people sneering, "You can't do XXX on elite solo in 5 minutes??" Rather than recognizing their superior skills and gear and being proud, they simply sneer and mock those who don't have them. Can't change attitudes like that and nothing you throw at them is going to help.

My first impression of the content you've released since Update 10 is that you are trying to help the non-uber by making very nice gear available outside of raids (i.e.) House C. Having spent so long catering to the elite raiders, this is a long overdue change (and I imagine is fueled in part by the coming Epic levels). Sure the power gamers will have their elite loot alot earlier, but the average players will eventually have access to some decent gear too. I don't mind games having a very small percentage of quests that are unavailable to the average player, but when the percentage starts creeping from 5 to 20% I wonder why I bother. And elite gamers crying, "You don't need this gear if you don't run raids/epic" is simply not true. If you can run XX on epic in 5 minutes solo, clearly YOU don't need it:p We, the non-uber, need it. And kudus to the devs for recognizing this.

[McFlay]

I think the game difficulty is pretty decent for most of the content up to about level 17-18ish. Some of the newer content seems a little tougher at level then older content due to power creep over the years, but its still within a reasonable range to do everything at level, with norm being pretty easy and elite being more of a challenge.

Game difficulty at higher levels is awful. A lot of the quests, especially epics feel like difficulty just amounts to inflating everythings hp to stupid amounts. It makes for massively unbalanced play. Going into high level content on a caster really doesn't change much. If you have the right DC you can run everything just as easily on norm as you can on elite/epic. Melees get totally screwed with a lot of content. Early on you kill things in a couple hits, mid level a few more hits, then all the sudden end game it takes you 40 hits to kill a trash mob...while casters just run by insta killing groups of mobs from a distance at will.

It would be a lot more fun to see difficulty scale accordingly to all classes. Possible randomizing some stats on mobs would be sweet, so xxx mob doesn't always have the same hp/resistances/saves. That way some stuff might spawn with a wicked awesome fort save and be super hard to insta kill, but have low hp and be easier to dps, and the next mob might have insane hp and be hard to dps, but have low fort saves and easy to ik. Heck you might even spawn a trash mob thats a total pimp, or one thats a total gimp. It would add a lot more randomness, fun, and require more group diversity to form successful groups.

[Ungood]

I agree that there should be "stuff" for the Hard Core players, who just seem to blast past everything in this game.

However, that "Stuff" should not be level "Heroic" level raids, IE: Raids like, Shroud, Abbot, etc, etc, etc. Should not be getting messed with to placate the needs of the very few.

However, with the new expansion coming out and the introduction of Epic Levels, I hope, in fact, I honestly really hope that Turbine takes this moment, with this new content that is separate and removed from the Heroic adventure packs, to provide to the "Uber" and "Elite" players, what they are have been looking for, that being being neigh impossible challenges, that can and will stop even the best players.

In many ways, I hope that this happens, as it would be an ideal solution to the problem of people sitting at cap way to long for their own good.

[toapat]

As stated many times in this, there are many different varriables to concern difficulty. this is a list as best i can think of

Dungeon Scaling: This is not a consistent thing, some dungeons follow the Call of Duty curve (Too easy x3>the enemies will kill you in milliseconds), others are linear, but there is never a consistent power level between quests. For instance, at level, Chronoscope is a brutal quest, where as Tempest spine 4 levels later, is an absolute joke.

Raid Mechanics: These mechanics have been changed recently in a way that punishes melee for existing, while giving casters greater time to shine. Raid Encounters should be built around difficult and interesting mechanics, not just resource conservation and kiting. mechanics such as charming party members, heal the boss as it is attacked, or destroy the structures controlling the boss. As far as I can tell, most raids consist of numerous Tank and Spank bosses, the only ones i can think of not being so are The Titan Awakens, A Small Problem, and Prey on the Hunter

Loot Scaling: The few quests that have loot scaling, dont do enough of it to matter, while the quests which people typically run to level do not use loot scaling at all.

Classes: A Bard spell singer or a Paladin will have alot more trouble doing the same content as a Sorcerer Earth Savant.

Luck of the Draw/TR Caching: people can have incredible disparities in gear, such as when a Barbarian at lvl 10 pulls the Sword of Shadows on their first Plane of Night and proceeds to then obliterate enemies by looking at them, while a Duelwield Kensai using twin khopesh will struggle to keep reasonable pace behind the barbarian. The same applies to TRs, who spent the time to obtain powerful gear for their characters which is well ahead of the curve.

Familiarity: The more people remember about a dungeon, the easier it becomes for them. They also learn how to better manage resources. Thus it is obvious asto why a low level Sorcerer would burn through their manabar in a few spells, while at much higher levels, they more efficiently use their spells to much greater effect, while only having to spend a few more points of mana.

[Robert4818]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

You are in a catch 22 situation.

You have created a situation where you practically NEED to optimize in order to be effective, and at the same time, you have a system where Optimization isn't easy to do.

Once past level 5-6 you've created a game that has a mentality, both in players and in quests, where if you aren't max or near maxed you are horribly inefficient, and may have trouble finding quests/groups.

What do I mean by this?

With TR, favor, and Bravery Streaks, you've created a setup where "Elite" is the default difficulty setting. Why run any other difficulty? Of course, as you go in on elite, this requires more optimization, as DC's are scaled up, traps are deadlier, and anyone who's not really designed to handle that is now in for a world of hurt.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Interesting thoughts. I think they put into words what I was only feeling until now.

Yes, and this "Elite is the default difficulty setting" kind of feels "right", if look at the forums discussions here, and that there are seemingly only groups playing on elite left. "Need Elite Opener".

No-one does other levels anymore (apart from Epic).

Or at least doesn't write about it. As if writing "I did that level on hard" would result in an odd look and a decline in reputation.

[sephiroth1084]

Interesting thoughts. I think they put into words what I was only feeling until now.

Yes, and this "Elite is the default difficulty setting" kind of feels "right", if look at the forums discussions here, and that there are seemingly only groups playing on elite left. "Need Elite Opener".

No-one does other levels anymore (apart from Epic).

Or at least doesn't write about it. As if writing "I did that level on hard" would result in an odd look and a decline in reputation.
Untrue. I see groups up running quests on normal and hard all the time.
Most raids get done on normal still these days.
There are several quests that I really just cannot be bothered doing on elite, and I run those on hard.

[Candela90]

I do hard and normal all the time, and have no problem pugging it.
Elite more, true, because its easier to catch pug for elite, cause of BB.
But there are still pugs for other difficulties.

[Robert4818]

I do hard and normal all the time, and have no problem pugging it.
Elite more, true, because its easier to catch pug for elite, cause of BB.
But there are still pugs for other difficulties.

I never said the other ones were not ran, just that Elite seems to be the new default option for most groups.

[IBCROOTBEER]

Jungle of Khyber on Elite ... last set of bosses the beholder is CR 30'ish ... It's a level 9 quest (11 on Elite, I guess) a CR that high is rediculous. Last time I was in there was on my 3rd life TR fighter with all the canith crafted items for bonus to-hit, and I still only landed a hit about 10-20% of the time.

[Ebondevil]

Hmm maybe a little late to the thread but thought I'd add my opinions on the matter

While I'm not too bothered about the difficulty of quests or monsters in specific I do have some concerns about some of the mechanics that make quests tedious, annoying or just plain frustrating.

Firstly: Party scaling, if you bring more people to a quest it should get easier, not hard, currently it seems to get significantly harder, so I solo most things. I've even noticed the difference a single Cleric Hire makes to the difficult of a quest, so I'll frequently not bother with even that unless I feel I'll need a lot of healing.

Secondly: Automatic Failure objectives, The Library of Threnal comes to mind where you have a moronic Arcane caster constantly running into Melee and if he dies it's quest over, despite the fact you may have a cleric with raise dead on hand. Why can't we raise him if he dies? As long as he's alive and everything else is dead that should be good enough., shouldn't it? Why not change it to a bonus objective to keep him alive throughout, so you loose xp if he dies rather than failing the mission, applies to any quest where you shouldn't be keeping creatures alive or not killing things really, penalise XP for for their deaths, don't auto fail the quest.

Thirdly: Tedious puzzles, admitedly I've not run into many of these and I enjoy the majority of puzzles, but there's one in Particular I found so time consuming and boring I've not bothered with the whole adventure pack since I did it and I am rather reluctant to return, Specifically the one which I believe is Part of Necropolis 3 where you need to guide rats through mazes...

Fourthly: Some monsters seem to have effects that are just so annoyingly stupid that you can't do anything about them, I'm primarily thinking Air Elementals here who knock you around or down so often it's a struggle to do anything at all, then on top of that their Air spells wipe out area effect damage like Ice Storm or Wall of Fire, Why?!? Even worse in some challenges the bosses summon more than one and killing them doesn't really matter as the boss will just summon more... Oh, can I get 4 summoned creatures at once please????

Finally: Players have limited resources to complete a quest (not so bad since Echoes of power admittedly), more limited on Hard or Elite where you can only use each shrine once, and yet Monsters always have unlimited resources, (Endless casting of Heal spells comes to mind), even worse there are quests where monsters spawn in unlimited quantities. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about spawning monsters, that's a great mechanic, but unlimited spawns just make me feel like I'm making no progress at all and it's just a waste of time trying to kill the monsters. (Echoes of Power is great btw, helps to remove a lot of the tedium, please turn it on all the time, or increase the SP cap based on character level, so for example a level 20 Wizard would gain more SP from Echoes than a level 1 Wizard)

All that being said, I have noticed some discrepancies between quest difficulties as well, the Extreme challenges at lower levels is pretty nice way of indicating which are harder but I've not really noticed them at higher levels. Even so, three extreme challenges with difficulty discrepancies that come to mind are 'Proof is in the Poison', 'Irestone Inlet' and 'Freshen the Air' all level 4 quests, but I find Proof to be significantly longer and harder than the other two.

[grgurius]

You are in a catch 22 situation.

You have created a situation where you practically NEED to optimize in order to be effective, and at the same time, you have a system where Optimization isn't easy to do.

Once past level 5-6 you've created a game that has a mentality, both in players and in quests, where if you aren't max or near maxed you are horribly inefficient, and may have trouble finding quests/groups.

What do I mean by this?

With TR, favor, and Bravery Streaks, you've created a setup where "Elite" is the default difficulty setting. Why run any other difficulty? Of course, as you go in on elite, this requires more optimization, as DC's are scaled up, traps are deadlier, and anyone who's not really designed to handle that is now in for a world of hurt.

I kinda wonder are we even playing the same game. Its been a while since i have been a fresh player, but i still remember that normal quests were not that difficult.

If you are a new player, default difficulty is normal, if you cant handle elite don't go in on elite.

[Jubbers]

Hmm maybe a little late to the thread but thought I'd add my opinions on the matter

While I'm not too bothered about the difficulty of quests or monsters in specific I do have some concerns about some of the mechanics that make quests tedious, annoying or just plain frustrating.

Firstly: Party scaling, if you bring more people to a quest it should get easier, not hard, currently it seems to get significantly harder, so I solo most things. I've even noticed the difference a single Cleric Hire makes to the difficult of a quest, so I'll frequently not bother with even that unless I feel I'll need a lot of healing.

Secondly: Automatic Failure objectives, The Library of Threnal comes to mind where you have a moronic Arcane caster constantly running into Melee and if he dies it's quest over, despite the fact you may have a cleric with raise dead on hand. Why can't we raise him if he dies? As long as he's alive and everything else is dead that should be good enough., shouldn't it? Why not change it to a bonus objective to keep him alive throughout, so you loose xp if he dies rather than failing the mission, applies to any quest where you shouldn't be keeping creatures alive or not killing things really, penalise XP for for their deaths, don't auto fail the quest.

Thirdly: Tedious puzzles, admitedly I've not run into many of these and I enjoy the majority of puzzles, but there's one in Particular I found so time consuming and boring I've not bothered with the whole adventure pack since I did it and I am rather reluctant to return, Specifically the one which I believe is Part of Necropolis 3 where you need to guide rats through mazes...

Fourthly: Some monsters seem to have effects that are just so annoyingly stupid that you can't do anything about them, I'm primarily thinking Air Elementals here who knock you around or down so often it's a struggle to do anything at all, then on top of that their Air spells wipe out area effect damage like Ice Storm or Wall of Fire, Why?!? Even worse in some challenges the bosses summon more than one and killing them doesn't really matter as the boss will just summon more... Oh, can I get 4 summoned creatures at once please????

Finally: Players have limited resources to complete a quest (not so bad since Echoes of power admittedly), more limited on Hard or Elite where you can only use each shrine once, and yet Monsters always have unlimited resources, (Endless casting of Heal spells comes to mind), even worse there are quests where monsters spawn in unlimited quantities. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about spawning monsters, that's a great mechanic, but unlimited spawns just make me feel like I'm making no progress at all and it's just a waste of time trying to kill the monsters. (Echoes of Power is great btw, helps to remove a lot of the tedium, please turn it on all the time, or increase the SP cap based on character level, so for example a level 20 Wizard would gain more SP from Echoes than a level 1 Wizard)

All that being said, I have noticed some discrepancies between quest difficulties as well, the Extreme challenges at lower levels is pretty nice way of indicating which are harder but I've not really noticed them at higher levels. Even so, three extreme challenges with difficulty discrepancies that come to mind are 'Proof is in the Poison', 'Irestone Inlet' and 'Freshen the Air' all level 4 quests, but I find Proof to be significantly longer and harder than the other two.

While I agree on a few points in this, I totally disagree with spell point regeneration we need to make it as hard on the spell casters to conserve SP as possible. I run clerics/fvs mostly and even have a wiz, sorc and bard in there and the last thing a caster centered game needs is more power for casters.

Air elementals have been buffed, nerfed and buffed again. While I agree with the constant tossing around being obnoxious I like the blow out fire wall and ice storm effect. That was a change they made when they removed the tossing around part and never took away when they added player tossing back. It should be a special ability with a cool down like the djinn bosses in wiz king not an effect that is always on.

Party scaling is out of control... There should be a 4 person party normalized setting and then adjust +- 2 levels for scaling. Solo is to easy and 6 man elite too hard in comparison.

[Frotz]

I've thought it might be nice if you could pick the scaling (expressed as party size) and the difficulty separately for either an XP bonus if you're running under-manned or an XP penalty if you need to add more party members if you've been having problems at a difficulty (CR) level without making everything harder with the scaling going up with party size. That'd just be another row of boxes below the difficulty settings that could default to the current party size and gray-out lower settings on higher difficulty settings, keeping the default behavior exactly as it is now and gating favor with higher scaling but letting people make things harder if they want at lower difficulties for more XP. Perhaps there could even be an 8-man setting. (Yo, man, only noobs can't solo that on 8-man Elite! ;) ).

[Gletschi]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

As a relative new player without any raid / epic / uber / crafting gear and tomes: Yes the game is very hard for solo+hire, starting with lvl 13/14 or so. Expecially the high lvl adventures are very frustrating many times. And yes, i have played many MMOs before and I know dungeons and dragons cause I play it in RL with friends.


What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

On normal you should be able to do all quests solo+hire. Nothing is more frustrating running a quest for 30+ min, kill all things and go through the quest very easily and then wipe at the end mob, because he is very...strong. Sure, with 1000++ TRs, raid gear, good equipment and so on it will be VERY easy... but how to get this equipment, if you are not able to take part in a raid (i.e. Shroud) cause you cant solo the pre quests and dont find grps because you read: Experienced players only or know the quest -.-

[psi0nix]

I find the difficulty good at the moment, on normal it's not a complete joke but if you die on a multi-TR in a normal quest then there is probably something you did very wrong.

On elite most quests can be solo run, but carefully, of course the "boss" is going to be strong, it's on "elite", think about what that word means, best of the best, the elite, the most difficult, (apart from epic, which also lives up to it's name).

On that difficulty you need to be careful, do not stir up large mobs etc, being realistic if you actually tried to fight your way through hundreds of enemies armed to the teeth with casters around every corner, it would no doubt be extremely difficult.

IMO, the game is fine as it is, balance, difficulty etc, leave it all alone please, it's as it should be and turbine have done a great job of finding the "middle ground", as it is impossible to please everyone all at once.

[sephiroth1084]

One of the major problems with dungeon scaling (and difficulty) is in how trap damage scales.

The difference between solo and 6-man shouldn't result in a 100-point spread on trap damage.

[Inouk]

1) I like the fact that there is some inconsistency because it gives us more diversity to satisfy both the newer players and the grinders

2) I agree with other posters that there is generally too large a gap between hard and elite

3) there needs to be more consistency in experience and other rewards. The XP granted in the level 3-5 range is total ****, then from 6-9 you run quests that give 8k-15k per run and these levels blow by it seems in a few runs, then at higher levels it seems like you get 3k XP from at level content. Really? I'm doing quests 10 levels higher and getting 20-50% of the XP I got for doing Delera's and VON3? That and there is just a massive need to more/better quests from level 13-15.

4) Find another way to balance Elite other than traps. Elite trap damage is ridiculous, so unless you are uber-geared and know the quests like the back of your hand it becomes impossible to do elite without a rogue. Anytime I require not just teammates, but specific classes as teammates it becomes less and less appealing to try to run

5) I'm not a huge fan of increasing drops for higher difficulty as this increases exclusivity (elite groups get really particular about who they take for gear/rep/hp/etc when you give them real goals). What I do think we need is better scaling for XP for higher difficulties. The first time bonus and streak bonus encourage running higher difficulties... once, and then people farm normal as always. Bump the base xp (and maybe reduce streak accordingly) to make this distinction worth while all the time. However, for higher level quests I like the new shroud format.

6) Does zerg always have to be king? When I first started to do DDO I found I was hugely disappointed in the lack of strategy involved, especially at low level. There is so much depth in the game that gets ignored because it isn't required. Nobody uses crowd control at lower levels when you can just kill everything in seconds, and at higher levels this is often still the case. In many ways it makes every group, every strategy, every character 1 dimensional. I honestly think the answer may be that mobs need to hit harder in melee, hard enough that a swarm HAS to be crowd controlled, but no so hard that player HP has to be significantly raised. Or to put it another way, high enough that you will run out of healing without better defenses, and reduce grazing hits. This would be one step in making AC meaningful again. It would make spell casters more versatile again as well. I played an archmage up to level 20 and found his skills (compared to my 20 sorc) pointless for 19 levels, and still only really needed in certain raids. I'm considering making a stalwart defender but I'm afraid it will be even worse. In PnP defenses were VITAL, in DDO they are meaningless. It all comes down to DPS, HP, healing.... kind of lame.

[Yaga_Nub]

One of the major problems with dungeon scaling (and difficulty) is in how trap damage scales.

The difference between solo and 6-man shouldn't result in a 100-point spread on trap damage.

IMHO, trap damage shouldn't scale at all.

[sephiroth1084]

IMHO, trap damage shouldn't scale at all.
Where would you set it? The solo amount? 4-person party? 6? Do you think it shouldn't scale with difficulty at all, or just party size? If neither, which difficulty should the damage be set to?

[Orratti]

I'd say game difficulty was right on the money on introduction. Before dungeon scaling. When curses and blindness weren't temporary effects. When enemy caster could hurt you with their spells because there were no ship buffs. That is all nostalgia though. I am curious however how much you guys know about your players capabilities? Do player's ever shock you with

How high they can get a stat
How high they can get their hit points
How much damage they can generate
How high they can get ac, saves, damage reduction, healing output, healing amp

I mean if you don't know what we are capable of doing how are you supposed to know how to challenge us or even better how to limit our power. I know players often surprise game designers with the things they figure out. I know that happens to you also. I know that because when you realize it you go back and nerf it. I think you need to find a way to learn these things before you get surprised.

You need to find ways of allowing players to be able to use all of their abilities all of the time without limitations. No immunities of any kind for any monster. Instead find ways of making checks and balances for them against different classes.

Give some high ac
Give some magical reflection armor that sends spells back onto the caster
Give some the ability to assassinate

Equip those monsters! Find something besides huge hit points and massive damage output to challenge us with. I don't want it to be massively difficult just balanced. A war of attrition where winning is determined by whether you run out of resources before the enemy dies is not a way to go for challenge anymore than making sure the enemies are incapacitated to avoid getting slaughtered is. Balance isn't going to be achieved by making sure that no class can outperform another. It is going to be achieved by making sure that no matter what class you are there is going to be something in the quest that can probably stop you dead.

[added thoughts] Fighters and barbs are your weakest link and unless you want to say goodbye to them you are going to need to do something to make soloing harder for the other classes. They are the original one trick pony. All con and str. They can melee and that's it. It's easy to challenge them with enemy numbers and damage output not to mention magic. They are weak. They always were weak. They always will be weak. You will find the occasional barb who can umd heal scrolls but they are far and few between and probably made by someone who got sick of being stomped when soloing. They take splashes for evasion and umd because of this weakness. While some may be able to fall back on archery generally melee is the only thing they do well. They need a team to do their job well.

Arcanes and divines are your strongest link. There are 8 schools of magic and (at least) 4 of those offer offensive capabilities. Most of them are selfhealing. Many of them can fall back onto melee or ranging. Traps are their deadliest opponents. Many splash in some rogue because of this. They don't need a team to do their job well in fact a team usually slows them down. Dungeon scaling and sp pots are their best friends. It takes what was challenging and makes it a cakewalk. Quell and beholder antimagic effects are the only monster threats to them. We know how you used to deal with this, by making things inexplicably immune to their abilities which of course was and is completely unsatisfactory. Groups need them, too bad it doesn't work the other way around. Find a way to fix this without destroying the enjoyment of playing those classes.

The rest lay in between. They can solo well enough with practice and they can group well enough except monks and some rangers ;). Monks are just plain irritating in a group. If built to potential they will arrive and kill everything before any other melee can reach it. I'd much rather they spent their time soloing. Some rangers of course have the same problem rangers have always had which is pulling the mobs to and past the group while running backward shooting. Meh. Some things never change. Just sigh, shake your head, then move on without them. Really need that range pass you said was coming.

I don't want soloing to be destroyed as an option. I love soloing, for the challenge of it. That is the problem in the end. Soloing isn't a challenge for most of the classes, it is far easier than grouping. Adding more help should make a quest slightly easier, not the other way around. Raise the increments of difficulty per person marginally so in effect although the quest is at a higher difficulty having the extra people makes it easier. As it is now it is a good thing you put hirelings in the game so we don't have to sit around waiting for a class to join the group that doesn't need us.

You really need to go back and look at the whole of scaling period. Add more variables to it other than just the number of people in the party. Add variables for past lives, look for specific equipment used that affects damage output, look at spell dcs and keep the scaling running during the quest not just on entrance. We don't want a bunch of completionists entering the quest wearing nothing but starter rags to get an easy go of it. What you should be after is a scale of difficulty designed for the group running the quest.

Meh I don't know. It is an old game and I'm an old player of it. Like an evolving government over time it can lose touch with the ideals it was based upon. I'm glad you're coming out with an expansion and I'm excited to see if that will prove entertaining. If not though as long as you hold sway over the d&d name I will be waiting for you to release DDO #2.

[more added thoughts] On even further thought I'm not even sure you can bring the game back in line. Added fort, hit points, and immunities might be the only thing that you can do to keep players from stomping all over the content once they have gotten decent loot. How can you lower hit points or fort when you have parties loaded with lit 2 or better weapons. How can you avoid immunities when you give casters the ability to have near no fail dcs. How can you allow ac to work if it means we can't get hit. Once we have our loot or past life bonuses all characters are overpowered. The only option is to make monsters rediculously overpowered. You have shot yourself in the foot! DDO no longer resembles in any way other than on the surface the game it was based upon. Now it's just a video game with the name d&d stuck on it. It's nowhere near even just the combat of d&d which at least it was once. It's something else entirely. Furthermore how can you balance challenge in this thing you've made when you have to reach a balance between experienced fully geared tred groups, inexperienced 1st life ungeared groups, and everything in between?

[Yaga_Nub]

Where would you set it? The solo amount? 4-person party? 6? Do you think it shouldn't scale with difficulty at all, or just party size? If neither, which difficulty should the damage be set to?

I would split the difference between the two and make that the normal setting and then have hard be 1.5x, elite 2x and epic 3x the normal value.

Traps just shouldn't scale because of the number of people you have in the group. Nor should it scale if there's a rogue or artificer in your group. The trap doesn't know and doesn't care. :)

[Zyerz]

Sometimes I can simply take on quests on elite 100% solo. Sometimes, things go wrong and I get my butt kicked on normal. But I like that. I love a challenge. Spices up the game and makes it incredibly fun to play. I'd like to see maybe some harder diff than elite, an intermediate between epic and elite, but for the appropriate level. It would be so fun imo.

[miguelxp]

I believe the game is very easy atm and random encounters should balance it, when you never know what kind of monters you will encounter it will encourage full parties, same for traps they should be ramdomic and lethal too. Random respawn monsters at bosses can make the things more interesting. Maybe another kind of difficult with xp bonuses or only make ramdom on Epic versions. Repeat a quest could be fun.

[tomadren]

Well in my case there seems to be an imbalance of offense versus defence. as an example my friend can put out 1600 plus damage at lvl 15, and some mobs thought not that high can blow thru hp in a single hit, yet you get defences like resistance, and protection that just don't handle the amounts, or don't last long under those circumstances. There no balance that way, its too lopsided, difficulty shouldn't be easy no, but there has to be a reasonable chance to suceed without being one shotted just cause i'm not an uber-player because the defences aren't upto the offences

[Mastikator]

Hard and elite difficulties have both been given a big bump in exp reward, from +25%/+50% to +40%/+80%. Not even including the bravery bonus and streak bonus.
This has vastly inflated the avalable exp, but hard and elite SHOULD be balanced for the uber players. The twinked TRs of players who know what they're doing. It says so on the quest portal UI for Siberys sake!

Here is what I propose. In addition to what is already done, reduce the amount of shrines further. Give enemy casters meta-magic. On elite they should be rapid-buffing and rapid-casting similarly to player casters. Enemy melee attackers should be using tactical feats (like trip/sunder/stun/cripple) more often. Enemy archers should be focus firing on a single player caster or healer, perhaps using many-shot. Maybe the Lord of Blades could use effects life vorpal on elite?
This should especially apply for raids.

And for raids, cut down the extra free item on 20 completions to 10 completions, or maybe have a chance to get unique reward as an end reward (like you get ingredients as end reward on the shroud). It would cut down on the grinding needed to get good gear.

This would discourage newer players from doing elite only and blazing through their levels without having time to learn their classes.

Other than that, ditto on warning players when they're entering extreme challenge quests.

A third point. About low level characters getting uber-buffed with ship buffs. My suggestion how to deal with this is to make it cost the character platinum to get the buff, similar to how House Phiarlan or House Jorasco buffs work. This is the only place someone can get a free buff that lasts the entire quest and can't even be dispelled. (yes I know, renown and ships aren't free, but ship invites are free, perhaps a steeper cost if you are using someone else's ship)

[KutchemesTheDark]

@ Mastik

What for ? Do you believe Turbine can earn money with discouraging newcomers ?

Also you forgot that give deathblock all mobs in Elite so Vorpal weapons or instakill spells become useless. Give heavy fortification even rats, put a warforged titan with 250.000 hp most of elite quests, give Harry 2 million Hitpoint in Hard 3 million HP in elite. Lol.

People have real life and playing for discharge who wants to spend hours for failure ?

There's still in challenge in here. Enter Elite von 5 at level 10 with a human sorcerer and solo it if you want a challenge. Enter with a Level 10 Ranger to The Enemy Within elite solo. There are too many challenge options in game already.

[CivLord]

Lets Talk: Lag vs difficulty in DDO

I don't write at forums. Waist of time for me when i can play DDO in that time.
I'm playing DDO.
I think it will soon be 3 years.

But i feel urgent need to inform you about the main problem of DDO you (developers) are maybe not aware of.
Big Nasty Server LAG.

I like almost all changes you introduced to game during those 3 years.
I realy do.
I like all changes to raids (exept recent abbot tiles timer ninja change).

But as I highly support those changes, I wish they would go with reducing server lag in ddo.

Sometimes I think you guys simply dont know how irritating lag is.
Raid/quest diffculty should be equal to a designer challenge for players
Meanwhile raid/quest difficulty = challenge x lag

It is not fun when at epic VoN6 we dont even get to this cool eggs part, becouse we wipe in thrid Velah breath.
It wasn't that we missed time to hide. Becouse I've run it so many times, I always see her breath coming...
Even if I couldn't see it, I can still perfectly timed it, sometimes even making adjustments for little choppy lag...
But we just froze...
We froze for more then 5 sec.

It is not fun when you go to epic DQ and 3 healers are trying to spam mass heals and cures like crazy becouse spells are landing after 3 or more seconds delay... and in key moment they are clikcing their heal buttons and nothing is happening

It is not fun when people running epic LotB first check their location by /loc, and if they get "i2049" they do not go in there coze "i2049" tends to be home of lag (at least that is the rumor).

It is not fun when the most frustrating wipes are cozed not by lack of skills,gear or builds but by lag... and even if it isnt wipe raid or quest itself becomes much MUCH harder.

When i run epic VoN6, epic DQ, Shroud, ToD, im not afraid of my skills, im not afraid of other players skills even in complete pug...
The thing im afraid most is LAG. Do we get lag at velah breath? Do we get huge delay on heals in DQ?

Should it be that way?
Should it be the lag making the same raid easy hard or immposible?
Should players in place of developing their skills and strategies, develop more methods of lag mesurement and avoiding (like /loc 'i2049' check)?

You can make all raid bosses 20% tougher or weaker i don't care ... you can scale blades dmg in shroud i don't care , you can change timer on tiles in abbot, and change difficulty of ddo in countless ways - i don't care

But I do care will i get lag in my next raid - becouse it will affect game difficulty more then all above (sadly for me and raid designers i think).

Best regards
Drachenfels of Orien.

(edit) Is there a chance for dedicated high speed servers for raid instances?

[Rolston]

Its true. Difficulty is irrelevant compared to the amount of lag in an instance.
Dedicated servers would be nice but I would settle for instances dedicated to raids (or just epic raids).
How can an epic raid get thrown into the same instance as Crafting-Hall 1???
Please, please give us an i3000 or something that you only wind up in if you are in an epic raid.

[Mastikator]

@ Mastik

What for ? Do you believe Turbine can earn money with discouraging newcomers ?

Also you forgot that give deathblock all mobs in Elite so Vorpal weapons or instakill spells become useless. Give heavy fortification even rats, put a warforged titan with 250.000 hp most of elite quests, give Harry 2 million Hitpoint in Hard 3 million HP in elite. Lol.

People have real life and playing for discharge who wants to spend hours for failure ?

There's still in challenge in here. Enter Elite von 5 at level 10 with a human sorcerer and solo it if you want a challenge. Enter with a Level 10 Ranger to The Enemy Within elite solo. There are too many challenge options in game already.
1. Discouraging newcomers from doing only elite means they start by doing normal to learn the ropes of the game, then they move on to do hard and elite. If it takes time then there's a sense of advancement, not just in character level but in player skill. Advancement = fun, fun = people are more willing to purchase VIP or tokens = moneys

2. I explicity said "don't just give mobs more hp on hard/elite, let the melees do more tactical attacks and action boosts/rage/stuff and give the casters better spells and more meta-magic feats". Hard and elite should be deadlier and require more of the players, not just require more time to beat down mobs. Standing around a tough mob and beating them for an extended period isn't fun, it's annoying or boring. Perhaps Arraetrikos should have fire shield on hard, and be invisible on elite (fact: pit fiends get improved invisibility in PnP)

3. Agreed, the fail rate on non-challanging quests at level on normal should be close to zero as long as the players are playing as a team, they shouldn't have to have good gear or well designed builds to handle it.
Hard should keep the players on their toes, elite should be designed for the vets, not the newcomers.

[Chai]

@ Mastik

What for ? Do you believe Turbine can earn money with discouraging newcomers ?

Also you forgot that give deathblock all mobs in Elite so Vorpal weapons or instakill spells become useless. Give heavy fortification even rats, put a warforged titan with 250.000 hp most of elite quests, give Harry 2 million Hitpoint in Hard 3 million HP in elite. Lol.

People have real life and playing for discharge who wants to spend hours for failure ?

There's still in challenge in here. Enter Elite von 5 at level 10 with a human sorcerer and solo it if you want a challenge. Enter with a Level 10 Ranger to The Enemy Within elite solo. There are too many challenge options in game already.

Elite being tough doesnt discourage newcomers, who will soon enough learn they can level to 20 playing casual and normal if they choose. Making elite too easy discourages long time players who want to actually play a game that requires that even someone of their level of metagaming needs to work for it.

I agree that every sniveling rat and scorpion being given deathblock is ******** and doesnt really equal challenge, but thats not how elite is handled anyhow. Thats how epics are handled, especially epic challenges nowdays.

People shouldnt have to solo to find challenge. Theres already settings for newbies. Its called casual and normal. Most newbies I know come from FPS games and quickly - less than 3 weeks - graduate to playing hard.

[Jay203]

the game is not difficult in terms of challenge
all these "difficulties" comes from not having the top tier loot to deal with the power creep that came with them

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

... Not really about difficulty ... But implicitely yes, indeed ...

The higher my character's levels are, the longer the quests become.

It is as if someone had decided that quest difficulty rises the longer a quest is.

The only problem with this way of thinking is : I don't have several hours of time for questing all of the time.

So I just ask : Why aren't there any high-level short quests anymore ? Or of medium length ?

That's something I would really prefer. It would bind me more effectively to DDO, just the thought alone that I would be doing a "short quest" within let's say half an hour. Or even less, if possible.

There are imho various ways of developing short quests for higher levels : Just increase traps' damages, for example. Or give them more dangerous foes.


When I look into the quest list of my level 11 Ranger, then I begin to lose interest, because everything there is marketed as "long" or as "very long".

Because this simply means nothing but : I just cannot start a quest "just for fun".
Instead I haveto plan it. Because for at least the very firstt time of doing a quest - the time BEFORE any kind of "zerging" takes place ! (because zerging through a quest you simply don't know anything about, yes, absolutely nothing ! - that's what only a fool would do ...) -
- for at least the very first time of doing a "long " or a "very long" quest, I must plan - plan time in real life. I must plan not to be interrupted for it.
Okay, interruption is possible, but I can't complete interruped quests. I must be able to get through it at least once.

A "very long" quest is something I usually need at least ( ! ) 2 hours for. Depending on the difficulty it is even more (and yes, I managed to go through a "very long" quest for a whopping 3 hours ! Three hours of otherwise possible Real Life activity !)

There is also this question : Do I want to spend these hours for a single quest rather with my friends of with this very nice game ?


To cut things short : Personally, I do see the need for short and medium length quests for mid- and high-level chars.

Trying to make a quest more difficult by stretching it and putting more obstacles into it isn't bad as such,
but it also distracts a bit (imho) from the "fun of playing", because one must plan time and equipment for longish quests.

Short quests can be increased in difficulty, easily, imho, and can provide a "breakfast snack", so to say.
Medium-length quests in a similar way, too.

[Untfell]

Remove the increased xp requirement for TR's.

Scale the difficulty / XP ratio (of standard xp) instead.

1st Life:
Normal: 100%XP
Hard: 125% XP
Elite: 150% XP

2nd life:
Normal: 75% xp
Hard: 100% XP
Elite: 125% XP

3rd life (and each life thereafter):
Normal: 50% XP
Hard: 75% XP
Elite 100% XP

Still include first time on <insert difficulty> bonuses.

[Scalion]

There's two things to discuss:

1. Leveling speed -- xp required to level, and xp rewarded. This is something that can be adjusted easily enough and can be monitored by devs to decide what changes need to be made, therefore I don't really think it's worth commenting on.

2. Gameplay Difficulty -- I believe this is what this post is really about.

I think many of my feelings about this issue really tie into either damage mitigation or class disperity.

Melee with decent AC are powerful (perhaps too powerful) at lower levels. As the level increases, however, everything switches the other way around. Casters on high level quests end up carrying the rest of the group. This is due largely to the fact that AC becomes irrelevant unless it's the only thing you care about (and if you spec for AC you aren't good for anything else). Most quests are either heavily favored by melee, or heavily favored by casters. Quests where every class can feel equally useful are rare.

This is the issue that needs to be resolved before determinations can be made about specific dungeon difficulty. Melee are simply too dependant on casters at higher levels due to crazy AC requirements, damage needs to be better mitigated by melee, and not so easily avoided by casters. That way melees can offer more support and protection to casters and everybody can contribute more evenly to a group's success.

I think the first step towards improving this aspect of gameplay is for there to be actual 'mitigation' based on Armor, instead of hit or miss. I know this doesn't fit exactly with D&D, but in the MMO world the current system where AC doesn't even matter for 90% of players doesn't work.


*note* I'm talking elite difficulty here, I honestly don't run much at other difficulty levels.

[Altaweir]

Much has been said already, and not necessarily by the newcomer / casual players this thread was intended for IMHO.

Here are some random additional comments.

1. Grouping. Grouping is a very important reason why MMORPG exist in the first place. Yet, you can easily run through the whole Korthos chapter soloing with a sword-wielding wizard, and even up to level 10 on your first char without even opening once the LFM panel. This is wrong. One Khortos quest (perhaps even a flagging one) should be made 2-players mandatory (or at least 1 + hireling), to make newcomers use this game feature. Levers or something. Although annoying, this change would at least make newcomers aware that there's a grouping tool in the game, and use it.

2. Soloing. On the other end, beyond low level there's almost nothing to solo. That's sad. I played Raiding the Giants' Vault recently and had a blast. Having to complete alone, not even with a cleric hireling! Even better, there's an alternate route for group play. That's just perfect. Solo is excellent if you don't know how much time you have ahead, or have to go AFK often. IMHO Solo should be a quest type, not a difficulty level. Solo Elite, why not??

3. Length. The higher the level the longer the quests. Sometimes I switch to lower level toons simply because each high-level quest will take your entire evening. It might be possible to play the game for a shorter time without having to rely on something as pointless as Slayer. "Long" does not necessarily means "Fun".

4. AC. Critical at lower levels, laughable at higher levels. This is wrong. Sirgog and others have suggested different to-hit mechanic (using 2D20 at hard, 3D20 at Elite for example) allowing a greater spread of to.hit rolls and increase the array of values where "AC is worth something". I don't know, but I don't like the idea of investing in a game feature - Dodge or Combat Expertise feats - whose value gets to zero at high-level.

5. Downright hostility against newcomer / casual players in the game. Those days if you don't play everything in elite you're a loser. Latest example to date "Elite, know it, be an asset not a liability" in LFM panel. Countless "TR preferred" and so on. This is certainly caused by Power Discrepancy. A well built first-life toon is no match for any TR. Resurrection cache and low minimum level of great items unbalance everything - too easy for veterans, too hard for others.

6. Grinding. No one likes grinding and DDO was supposed to avoid that. Unless you attempt Greensteel, Cannith Crafting, and so on, that is. The named-every-3rd-completion is a great move. Too bad it just work for quest rewards. And 20th completion for raids? What is exactly the challenge when you succeeded 10 times already?? Grind, rince and repeat.

7. Challenges. These things are a disgrace. No storyline of any sort, played like a boardgame, annoying and long. And you have to grind them for ingredients of course. Duh.

8. Special Events - Mabar, 5 Yarrrrs, etc. Great loot, but as usual unless you play 24/7 that very week you're toast. Most bounty is bound to account so you can't even complete your recipes using AH.

9. Level up. How many times I discovered too late that I assigned a level-up point in the wrong ability, mixed things up in skills, even picked the wrong class. But once you press ok it's done forever. One can reset Enhancements every 3 days for a mere fee but it's downright impossible to change your skills points short of lesser reincarnation!! IMHO you should be able to reset your last character level for a fee. Maybe even resetting XP to the start of the level.

10. Character deletion. When first logging into the game, I created and erased my first toon several times, until I came up with something I was satisfied with. Too bad I didn't know about reincarnation and all this stuff. Now, myddo feature is locked for me. Old, out-of-date versions of my toon gets in the way. Fix myddo or add some warnings that this character name has already been used and will lock myddo if you take it!

[lamborgini]

I find that some quests/raids are adequetly challenging for there difficulty setting while others are just down right to difficult at whatever difficulty you play it on, especially when playing them at level. Most enemies allready have an advantage over your character with massive hp, huge hit bonuses and saves let alone somehow able to cause what seems crit dmg even though you have over 100% fortification. The CR on most don't seem to jive with the difficulty seeting to level range of quests all the time, and now enemies with ever more increasing spell usage like being able to chain cast multiple spells and seemingly unlimited sp's and always having a complete spell book at hand knowing exactly which spells so affect your given character the easiest so yeah the game needs more refining but in most cases it is challenging. As for the loot from end chests or end rewards they most deffinitly stink in almost every case when doing really hard quests on hard/elite makes alot of them not worth a **** for the difficulty you put up with to do it only to be robbed of some sort of decent reward for your efforts especially when you don't get that certain named item that can only be achieved by playing on hard/elite, you all know what I'm talking about.

[vermentto]

Well concerning difficulty , most of my problems are in epic modes
-AC-
While i agree that bosses should have fortification and high AC , giving 50+ to naked sahuagins is really weird.
Imo its not a good thing since its another limiting factor for melees.
Melee are not all barbs and fighters.Stop designing the game for them pls.
Even if its a minor problem.

-INSTA KILLS-
This was a not so bad idea on paper...but did you ever runned behind a PM wailing everything ?
Not fun.really not fun.
In fact ,at this moment i ask myself :
Did the devs ever saw what i am seeing , running in endless empty corridors coz one toon is more powerful than 10 times the whole party , insta kill on 5k+ hp mobs bringing an almost infinite dps ,while melees grind for months to get a poor +4 dom on each swing.
Is it more powerful coz the player is skilled ? not at all ,its because he spamms easy buttons.
Sorry devs ,but anyone student in game design would foresee that.
You are supposed to be pros.

I have an very easy way fix this :
each mob in an epic quest have
33% chance of DW
50% chance of a random immunity (school ,element ,status ;...)
25% of a 2nd random immunity
5% chance of magic weapon with CC ability (dancing like VoN1,paralyser,stone prison,etc)
25% chance to have trip,stun or sap ,and spamm it ,focusing people based on class : arcane and healer first ,then specialists,then heavy melee
(sun tzu rule : kill the weak and the dangerous first ,dont lose time on heavy infantry and slaughter it once it has no support )
Also ,in the same idea ,trash mob casters with random spells.

Here we go.
A better epic ,harder ,and without blanket immunities , creating an infinite number of configurations and encounters.
And epic mobs will be ...epic :D
If its too hard ,you can still work on AC ,hp to make easy fixes.

For the rest ,i suppose its ok imo.

Currently ,the only pb that makes some quests a pain to complete...is lag.

[Mjesko]

-INSTA KILLS-
This was a not so bad idea on paper...but did you ever runned behind a PM wailing everything ?
Not fun.really not fun.
In fact ,at this moment i ask myself :
Did the devs ever saw what i am seeing , running in endless empty corridors coz one toon is more powerful than 10 times the whole party , insta kill on 5k+ hp mobs bringing an almost infinite dps ,while melees grind for months to get a poor +4 dom on each swing.
Is it more powerful coz the player is skilled ? not at all ,its because he spamms easy buttons.
Sorry devs ,but anyone student in game design would foresee that.
You are supposed to be pros.

I have an very easy way fix this :
each mob in an epic quest have
33% chance of DW
50% chance of a random immunity (school ,element ,status ;...)
25% of a 2nd random immunity
5% chance of magic weapon with CC ability (dancing like VoN1,paralyser,stone prison,etc)
25% chance to have trip,stun or sap ,and spamm it ,focusing people based on class : arcane and healer first ,then specialists,then heavy melee
(sun tzu rule : kill the weak and the dangerous first ,dont lose time on heavy infantry and slaughter it once it has no support )
Also ,in the same idea ,trash mob casters with random spells.

Instead of a random immunity, that drives the monster design further away from D&D, monsters should be immune to some effects on elite or epic until their HP are 50 % or less and the HP of monsters should be reduced on elite or epic to make the fight more fun for all classes.

[Metaljaw]

Can we rename this thread to either "I hate casters" or "It's not fair that I can own a caster at low levels and not at high levels"

If you have that much caster envy, then why the persistance of melee in the game? Shouldn't everyone be a caster by now? Alternatively don't run with a caster if you don't like them. You would rather have the days when casters held and danced everything for you so you can have the kill count I am assuming. Because beating on a piece of wood is somehow more satisfying. Yeah, that was fun for casters. No really it was.

/sarcasm off.

[orakio]

Can we rename this thread to either "I hate casters" or "It's not fair that I can own a caster at low levels and not at high levels"

If you have that much caster envy, then why the persistance of melee in the game? Shouldn't everyone be a caster by now? Alternatively don't run with a caster if you don't like them. You would rather have the days when casters held and danced everything for you so you can have the kill count I am assuming. Because beating on a piece of wood is somehow more satisfying. Yeah, that was fun for casters. No really it was.

/sarcasm off.

The discussion is on the games difficulty as a whole and if there are differences between difficulty for melee and for casters then those become relevant talking points. There are things in the game that are heavily inbalanced in favor of either type of character, for example crateos is absolutely obnoxious for arcane casters much like air elementals are for melee. Imagine if there were tons of Crateos like mobs in content throughout the game and in challenges, that these mobs also had truesight and adamantine damage (bypassing your displacement and stoneskin) and were immune to all forms of cc and instant kill. Casters don't want to return to the days of cc/buff only, nor should they, but that doesn't mean melee should be relegated to piker's until it comes time to beat on a red+ named mob either.

You creating an inflammatory post to create negative discussion however does nothing to improve the discussion about the topic at hand. If you wish to start another argument regarding "melees with caster envy" please take it to one of the other topics created for and filled with that content.

[Chai]

The discussion is on the games difficulty as a whole and if there are differences between difficulty for melee and for casters then those become relevant talking points. There are things in the game that are heavily inbalanced in favor of either type of character, for example crateos is absolutely obnoxious for arcane casters much like air elementals are for melee. Imagine if there were tons of Crateos like mobs in content throughout the game and in challenges, that these mobs also had truesight and adamantine damage (bypassing your displacement and stoneskin) and were immune to all forms of cc and instant kill. Casters don't want to return to the days of cc/buff only, nor should they, but that doesn't mean melee should be relegated to piker's until it comes time to beat on a red+ named mob either.

Turbine had their chance to do this with golems, which in P&P are immune to most magic, and the stuff they are not immune to usually doesnt kill them but rether just has a detremental effect. They blew it, and made constructs a joke for casters, for the most part.


You creating an inflammatory post to create negative discussion however does nothing to improve the discussion about the topic at hand. If you wish to start another argument regarding "melees with caster envy" please take it to one of the other topics created for and filled with that content.

Theres no need to do that, it shows up in every thread already.

[voodoogroves]

Turbine had their chance to do this with golems, which in P&P are immune to most magic, and the stuff they are not immune to usually doesnt kill them but rether just has a detremental effect. They blew it, and made constructs a joke for casters, for the most part.


Man I really wish they would unring this bell.

That's why you're supposed to use things like Ice Storm, or spells-with-fort-saves-that-also-affect-objects.

Not "whatever - it is a speedbump"

[Bargol]

Man I really wish they would unring this bell.

That's why you're supposed to use things like Ice Storm, or spells-with-fort-saves-that-also-affect-objects.

Not "whatever - it is a speedbump"

I completely agree. It was a shock the first time I met up with a golem years ago in game on my caster and nothing worked I had prepared. Instead I had to beat it down with a quaterstaff that took forever and about 100 cure pots. It taught me to be prepared next time.

The changes made that remove this kind of difficulty was a bad move by turbine. The same thing with making things like blindness and curse on a timer. These should be perminant until you drink a pot, have a spell cast on you, or shrine.

I see so many who only carry one weapon, no healing pots, no cure / resist pots. The changes made ot the game didn't make it easier. It taught players instead to be lazy and steam roll through quests with MOAR DPS!!!

[voodoogroves]

I completely agree. It was a shock the first time I met up with a golem years ago in game on my caster and nothing worked I had prepared. Instead I had to beat it down with a quaterstaff that took forever and about 100 cure pots. It taught me to be prepared next time.
Amen

The changes made that remove this kind of difficulty was a bad move by turbine. The same thing with making things like blindness and curse on a timer. These should be perminant until you drink a pot, have a spell cast on you, or shrine.
Even if the timer were 5 minutes you'd achieve the same "you can survive without" safety-net, but you'd still rather ... you know ... BE PREPARED.


I see so many who only carry one weapon, no healing pots, no cure / resist pots. The changes made ot the game didn't make it easier. It taught players instead to be lazy and steam roll through quests with MOAR DPS!!!
And ship buffs. All I need is DPS and ship buffs.




Personally, and I've said this on exactly a bajillion threads already, I think adding that kind of variety into the game even in moderate amounts can help achieve balance.

There's that old adage about a hammer and a nail and how all problems start to look like nails if you only have a hammer. We're kinda in the same spot, where more and more problems can be solved the same way. Personally, I hate that my negative energy spells can affect portals and constructs. Hate it. I use them, because they work.

One of the great things about D&D is that, at the end of the day, a greataxe nearly always works to take down the HP of your foe. Heck, even on the demilich it does it's enchantment bonus in damage ... and magic didn't work on everything. Now that it does (largely), it's become a race in damage output ... can the greataxe keep up?

I don't think it should ... but I think there should be more cases where the greataxe works and the spell does not.

[Metaljaw]

The discussion is on the games difficulty as a whole and if there are differences between difficulty for melee and for casters then those become relevant talking points. There are things in the game that are heavily inbalanced in favor of either type of character, for example crateos is absolutely obnoxious for arcane casters much like air elementals are for melee. Imagine if there were tons of Crateos like mobs in content throughout the game and in challenges, that these mobs also had truesight and adamantine damage (bypassing your displacement and stoneskin) and were immune to all forms of cc and instant kill. Casters don't want to return to the days of cc/buff only, nor should they, but that doesn't mean melee should be relegated to piker's until it comes time to beat on a red+ named mob either.

You creating an inflammatory post to create negative discussion however does nothing to improve the discussion about the topic at hand. If you wish to start another argument regarding "melees with caster envy" please take it to one of the other topics created for and filled with that content.

The whole point of a wizard is to suffer through weak beginnings with lower hp so that they yeild awesome power to kill with a single word later on. What about this seems unfair to you? Melee's complaining that a wizard is out DPSing them on trash mobs seems kinda off the wall. That's what wizards are supposed to do. You will get your wish as drow with high SR make more of an entro into the game. Also beholders are all over the place and they are annoying as heck for spell casters, especially if you get in their anti-magic field. There are also plenty of things that are immune to insta-kills running around. Casters have just learned to adapt. Seeing a thread about game difficulty devolve into a discussion by melees in how to make casters less relevant is just more of the same whining. How that is any less inflamatory that my post is unclear as well.

Look at actual game difficulty. Across the class spectrum. Argue if that is difficult or not.

And as for challenges, they are easily solo'd by many melee at lower levels. Maybe not high level, but until about 10th level they are just as easy for melee. Melee just don't have the AOE ability of other classes. That is as intended and not related to game difficulty.

[Ungood]

Look at actual game difficulty. Across the class spectrum. Argue if that is difficult or not.

The problem with this, is that you can't take an overall balance of the game, when the classes themselves are vastly out of balance to each other.

Thus before balance in the game content can happen, a balance act among the classes needs to happen, and for that to happen, melee need to be augmented to be on par to casters as no one likes nerfs.

[Mjesko]

The problem with this, is that you can't take an overall balance of the game, when the classes themselves are vastly out of balance to each other.

Thus before balance in the game content can happen, a balance act among the classes needs to happen, and for that to happen, melee need to be augmented to be on par to casters as no one likes nerfs.

I do not think melee needs to be augmented. Instead many things (Ship buffs, Potions, Scrolls, Wands, Clickies) should be limited, because they make the game too easy and allow casters to spend too many SP on other things.

[Voldomar]

many things (Ship buffs, Potions, Scrolls, Wands, Clickies) should be limited, because they make the game too easy and allow casters to spend too many SP on other things.

Actually, they are mostly helpful to non-casters. Non-blue bar toons have no way of mimic certain kind of buffs otherwise.
Remove or limit scroll, wands and clickies and who will be hurt the most? Classes that have that same spell on their spell list or classes that don't even have a spell list?

[Schwarzie]

The problem with this, is that you can't take an overall balance of the game, when the classes themselves are vastly out of balance to each other.

Thus before balance in the game content can happen, a balance act among the classes needs to happen, and for that to happen, melee need to be augmented to be on par to casters as no one likes nerfs.
DnD never had, and never will, have balanced classes. Its a TEAMGAME and balanced for a teamapproach. Everyone in the party has a spot and a role to fullfill so ALL may succeed.

All this stupid "balancing" talk came into view with the soloers. DDO is not made for soloing. The very first design intention were GROUPS walking through a dunegon. And all this talk about casters doing all the work is grossly exaggerated. Yes there are a few quests where casters contribute more, as there are quests where melees contribute moar. So what?

[Mjesko]

Actually, they are mostly helpful to non-casters. Non-blue bar toons have no way of mimic certain kind of buffs otherwise.
Remove or limit scroll, wands and clickies and who will be hurt the most? Classes that have that same spell on their spell list or classes that don't even have a spell list?

Hmmm good point, but i think it should be more difficult for non-casters to do the same things as casters, because it is not easy for casters to kill monsters with melee weapons.

[Ap0k]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

I have read some posts in this thread, but i dont feel there is much for me to add, so ill just post my personal opinion like madfloyd asked.

Background: I started playing DDO in April 2006 and only took one major break of 18 months shortly before the european servers shut down. I came back to play my transfered characters on Ghallanda round october last year.

All in all I think the game is very inconsitant with its difficulty throughout the game. That may be due to the several levelcap increases and that quests where designed witha certain cap inmind and certain available loot. The main problem that I see, and that is skewed because I have just that much experience in the game, is the metagaming aspect of the game. Once you know what your character is capable of, how mobs move and how terrain affects gameplay and so on, most quests become very easy. At the same time, for a new player without that knowledge, the game can be frustratingly hard. I dont see a way to rectify this.
The choice that the Dev team has is really up to what people they want to cater to. If your numbers say that you make more profit of new players that stay for a short amount of time, I guess making quests easier is the way to go. I have no illusions about this, since its a purely business decision.

In my opinion though, the learning curve is what made me stay in DDO for so long. The feeling to get stronger and be able to do and accomplish things that you werent able to do before has been one of the most satisfying aspects of the game. In that regard I wish that the game remained reasonably hard. I dont see it as a fault of this game for a new player to not be instantly able to do everything. I also believe that the game difficulty should not be based mostly on the equipment you have, which is the case in my opinion of the newer updates.

I am not a fan of adapting old quests with new cap and equipment in mind. The reason for this is that when a new player gets to he/she doesnt have the "good Stuff" that vets have, not the amount of plat and twink gear that vets send their lowbies. And so for new players these quests get pretty hard.

Im struggling to find good examples. But maybe Invaders can serve as one. While TR's and vets have access to beholder optic nerves, DR breaking equipment, Silver flame necklaces and so on, a new player without gear is just hopelessly lost in there. I kow that this quest wasnt really made harder with new levelcaps.... but i hope you get the point. The reaver raid and velah raid on elite are an example, where the quest was adapted for new levelcaps.

Im undecided whether i like it or not, since the new trend in DDO is to make leveling even faster and people dont tend to stay in any levelrange for long. So adapted raids kind of serve as endgame.

To the failing a quest after 45 minutes and not getting anything... You could design new quests with decent amounts of optional xp. Ans loot is always a good thing, so you dont feel like you have wasted time.

Personal opinion: Id like the game to be harder, knowing full well that I have access to equipment and knowledge of the game that new players dont have.

[ThunderTank]

Increase difficulty on epics. Moar contente like e-lob would be fantastic.
Nerf insta kill spells on epic, like it was before when ppl had actually to put lfm's up to do the epic quests. These days i only log on my fvs and implode through the whole quest. =/

[Ungood]

Actually, they are mostly helpful to non-casters. Non-blue bar toons have no way of mimic certain kind of buffs otherwise.
Remove or limit scroll, wands and clickies and who will be hurt the most? Classes that have that same spell on their spell list or classes that don't even have a spell list?

This is a very good point.

Personally I never understood the cries to nerf another class to be honest. Nerfing a class should always be a last resort, with buffing and augmenting being the first measure to being balance. Case in point, I do not think anyone enjoyed the nerf to vorpal, and yet I see people demanding that spells and abilities of other classes get nerfed. No one likes a nerf, so I do not fathom why they would call for them to be used.

Can we not think of ways to augment classes to make them balanced?


DnD never had, and never will, have balanced classes. Its a TEAMGAME and balanced for a teamapproach. Everyone in the party has a spot and a role to fullfill so ALL may succeed.

All this stupid "balancing" talk came into view with the soloers. DDO is not made for soloing. The very first design intention were GROUPS walking through a dunegon. And all this talk about casters doing all the work is grossly exaggerated. Yes there are a few quests where casters contribute more, as there are quests where melees contribute moar. So what?

OH, this fallacy again.

Well, first off, I suppose I could say if you wanted to play a game were classes were shoehorned into roles, you might want to check out EQ or WoW, or some other MMO, that makes their deign and objective to demand that classes be dependent upon other classes.

However such myopic views of what a class should be limited to do, is not a selling point of DDO nor was it ever a selling point in the game that DDO is based off. In Fact, freedom and ability to play anything you wanted as the objective as the entire franchised moved though updates and expansions in the foundation system before it became an MMO.

Now, maybe you regal and reflect fondly back to the days when Arcane were nothing but buff bots and CC devices, and Divine has no place in this game world beyond to heal, maybe that was a nirvana for a player like you. But DDO moved away from that, and the game got better because it. It became dynamic and it opened doors to a whole new level of fun by breaking away from the concept of "role playing", and as far as I and many others are concerned they just need to finish the job they started.

Now again, for whatever reasons you seem to present this stand or have personal issues against offering freedom of choice and giving players options, but, thankfully Turbine did not, and in that spirit is it time for Melee to be given the same freedom that arcane and divine have been enjoying.

[orakio]

The whole point of a wizard is to suffer through weak beginnings with lower hp so that they yeild awesome power to kill with a single word later on. What about this seems unfair to you? Melee's complaining that a wizard is out DPSing them on trash mobs seems kinda off the wall. That's what wizards are supposed to do. You will get your wish as drow with high SR make more of an entro into the game. Also beholders are all over the place and they are annoying as heck for spell casters, especially if you get in their anti-magic field. There are also plenty of things that are immune to insta-kills running around. Casters have just learned to adapt. Seeing a thread about game difficulty devolve into a discussion by melees in how to make casters less relevant is just more of the same whining. How that is any less inflamatory that my post is unclear as well.

Look at actual game difficulty. Across the class spectrum. Argue if that is difficult or not.

And as for challenges, they are easily solo'd by many melee at lower levels. Maybe not high level, but until about 10th level they are just as easy for melee. Melee just don't have the AOE ability of other classes. That is as intended and not related to game difficulty.

The early game is in no way challenging, wizards/sorcs are able to melee just fine at that period. Heck, you were given echoes of power and super reduced spell costs just to handle the lower amount of sp at that level. In addition, with the advent of veteran status I and II, you get to skip the weakest part of a caster character and jump immediately straight to PrE's. The amount of time a character typically spends in the first 1/3 of the levels of the game is probably less than 10% of a characters total life.

It isn't about being outdps'd on trash mobs, that is what you don't seem to get. It is the fact that you maintain consistent dps with melee and yet have significantly more survivability (due to displacement/stoneskin/self heals in most builds/and being ranged damage) and more utility (cc/instant kills/ buffs) as well as significantly higher burst damage and AoE that is in now way effected by mob fortification. Many people are asking for increases to melee utility/survivability in endgame where AC (typically only survival advantage melee has) has become irrelevant due to epic mob hit values.

I am not advocating removal of spells or nerfs to casters however there is no justification for why casters should be unique in their ability to reliably cc and provide party buffs or do solid aoe damage.


Casters have just learned to adapt. Seeing a thread about game difficulty devolve into a discussion by melees in how to make casters less relevant is just more of the same whining. How that is any less inflamatory that my post is unclear as well. It is less inflammatory in that I am not attacking you or deriding you for your opinion or calling you a whiner. All that does is set people on edge.

[Schwarzie]

OH, this fallacy again.

Well, first off, I suppose I could say if you wanted to play a game were classes were shoehorned into roles, you might want to check out EQ or WoW, or some other MMO, that makes their deign and objective to demand that classes be dependent upon other classes. [SNIP stuff that was based on a false 'assumption']
This is a nice example of you writing something to my post without bothering to read it. :rolleyes:

I never wrote that class has a fixed role, nor would i ever intend to. That theoretically every class can fullfill several roles is one of the things i like most about DDO. Of course some classes promote some roles (sometimes through abilities, but more often through a rather fixed set of enhancements).

Nevertheless, for success in a quest you need several roles fulfilled, it doesnt matter what classsymbol one role has or if one character takes more then one role.

[Metaljaw]

I run with several people that prefer melee based toons. We rarely run full groups and I am actually currently leveling a stalwart defender 18/2 ftr/rog (only 8/2 now). I have a 39 AC as a first lifer and rarely get hit. My buddy has a 50 AC and almost never gets hit. Maybe this will change. However last life was run with a 12/6/2 monk/ftr/pally who has an 80 AC and stood by and tanked VOD (shortmanned, btw with only 4 players) and needed a total of about 6 heal scrolls cast on him.

Was the raid a challenge (3 people handling trash/orthons was interesting). Heck yeah. Was it fun. H-e-double hockey sticks yeah.

The thing you are not getting is that if you want a challenge then drop down your party size, limit your class allowance (BTW we had not a single healer in that VOD, only people who could scroll heal), or any of the other possible combinations of making a raid more difficult.

If you run along blindly getting the max group size and pushing the easy button every time then don't complain it is too easy. If you are trying to solo a quest on elite/epic don't complain it is too hard because you can't do it on a first life fighter with no UMD healing. (They make hirelings for that too, btw).

Like the previous post said before, DDO is meant to be a party based game and is balanced for parties. With TR's and Epic items there is a definite power creep, yes, but isn't that as intended. If you have a 15 past life toon shouldn't the stuff be too easy for you? I would say start a new toon or move to a different game as you have clearly won DDO (the completionist feat even says that). Or, heaven forbid, put up an LFM stating no TR's. You can tell easily by the wings above their head.

Yeah PM's are stronger now. You know why? Everyone complained before about the repeated wailing of stuff in quests so they made insta-kills not work at all in epics. You know how fun that was? Run-Hold-watch as melee beat on unmoving target-maybe rehold-repeat. Boring as heck for all involved, though the melee classes racked up kill counts for essentially chopping wood and could beat their chests. SO people complained more. Re-insert insta-kills with now PMs knowing how to use circle of death, PWK, energy drain, crushing depair, hypnotism, wail and FOD. It's a debuff and kill instathon. Because we had to learn to.

[Ungood]

This is a nice example of you writing something to my post without bothering to read it. :rolleyes:

I never wrote that class has a fixed role, nor would i ever intend to.


Everyone in the party has a spot and a role to fullfill so ALL may succeed.

Really? Well...


it doesnt matter what classsymbol one role has or if one character takes more then one role.

Then, if you want to pander it that way, then you supposedly support that the class symbol be mutually exclusive to what "role" they can play, in that front, you should be by my side in supporting that a Fighter or Barb to have the ability to fill the role of a viable healer just like currently a FvS can be a viable Melee DPS.

Unless of course you don't really hold this stand at all, and still cling to some archaic concept of shoehorning classes into roles and are trying to not sound so obsolete in your game view.

[taurean430]

My very first character I was serious about in this game was a wizard.

I am of the opinion that comparing my experiences running that wizard then as opposed to now, it is much better.

You buff because you want to - not because you can't do much of anything else.

You use crowd controlling spells to enable the team to succeed - not because you can't do much of anything else.

You use your dps spells and wipe them off of the face of the planet spells because you can. And nowhere in the description of the class does it say you exist to merely gift wrap mobs for melee players while spam buffing them.

The gaming experience for the wizard class, my favorite btw, has improved markedly. Since day one here my wizard was viewed in a horrible light, and only allowed in parties to act as a bard does - but with more sp. That's changed as it should have been.

I am now so interested in making my wizard better that he has 3 past lives in that class, and is on life 2/3 in sorcerer. Following that, he'll rack up his fvs/clr lives, one bard life, and perhaps one barbarian life.

That's a 14 life long term build plan. And a hell of a lot work involved to get what I want with him. And if, by that time I still hear first and second life people complaining about the results of the work I put in I'm going to laugh.

[Bargol]

Increase difficulty on epics. Moar contente like e-lob would be fantastic.
Nerf insta kill spells on epic, like it was before when ppl had actually to put lfm's up to do the epic quests. These days i only log on my fvs and implode through the whole quest. =/

What so casters go back to being mass hold one trick ponies? NO WAY!!

[sweez]

What so casters go back to being mass hold one trick ponies? NO WAY!!

Yeah, have to say in my 2 years of playing DDO (yes I'm a newbie) the pre-u9 epics were the most boring part of the game. I fail to see how mass holding everything cept for red names and then woo-wooing them to level 0 was 'challenging'.

[Schwarzie]

Unless of course you don't really hold this stand at all, and still cling to some archaic concept of shoehorning classes into roles and are trying to not sound so obsolete in your game view.
And once again, instead of reading what i write you try to read something between the lines and base the rest of your post on that assumption.
Your post makes me seriously consider that your readying comprehension sills were somewhat overridden by arrogance. :rolleyes:

And no, of course im not of your opinion. Its stupid that all classes can do anything. While i agree that its bad to put a class into just one role its not needed that they actually excell at everything. But since were pretty much OT i wont answer here to that topic anymore -> pm if needed.

[Ungood]

And once again, instead of reading what i write you try to read something between the lines and base the rest of your post on that assumption.
Your post makes me seriously consider that your readying comprehension sills were somewhat overridden by arrogance. :rolleyes:

I would respond to you in kind. but as it stands, it seems you have totally removed yourself from anything I originally said and are now talking about something else entirely. I don't see anything further to discuss.

[Phemt81]

Your post makes me seriously consider that your readying comprehension sills were somewhat overridden by arrogance. :rolleyes:

Are you finding Ungood's posts arrogant? Are you serious? :eek:

Go post more in other topics and you will soon learn what is meant as regular "arrogance" around here... :D


Now again, for whatever reasons you seem to present this stand or have personal issues against offering freedom of choice and giving players options, but, thankfully Turbine did not, and in that spirit is it time for Melee to be given the same freedom that arcane and divine have been enjoying.

Yes to freedom, not so cool to create races and spells to overpower a single class on the other hand ;)

(guess what i am referring to! :p)

[Ungood]

Yes to freedom, not so cool to create races and spells to overpower a single class on the other hand ;)

I agree, and I believe that it should be about balance first and foremost, and in my mind that comes from leveling the playing field, more options and more freedom allows for example, a group of all melee to have the same chance to complete an average adventure as a group of all casters would. Right now, that is simply not the case.

I am not for nerfs, I find them to be the last resort on anything, and I firmly believe that there is no need to nerf a class, when an augment to another class would better address the issue.

With that, I believe simply that for a viable grasp on game difficulty to be fathomable, first the classes need to be a closer to balanced then they currently are.

Such is my feelings on this.

[garlor]

I feel the game difficulty is pretty good so far, normal is just easy for any twinked toon but a decent difficulty for new players without past lifes and twink gear

the real problem is this players have a hard time finding appropiate groups, and normal quests are too hard to solo for a new player, there should be ways to encourage new players to play quests on normal and band together, since what usually happens is that they find their way into a vet group running on elite on elite and just get dragged around the quest, but when it comes to them doing the job they simply cannot because they don't understand how the game is played

also there are 2 things that imo hurt a lot new players in a way really frustrating, one is oozes, easy to solve with a muckbane, but many new players do not know they exist or where to get one, and the other strong problem is melf acid arrow, right now it can be stacked on a toon once for every enemy caster, on a new player that is something like an announced instadeath they cannot avoid

[Monkey-Boy]

I'm going to be a little whiny here . . . but SOME of the traps and environmental effects on elite/epic difficulties are just absurd regarding there damage output, especially when they can double/triple tap you. They scale significantly more than the damage output of the mobs and some just aren't avoidable.

Though it's more of a case by case thing so it'd have to be looked at individually.

[Phemt81]

I'm going to be a little whiny here . . . but SOME of the traps and environmental effects on elite/epic difficulties are just absurd regarding there damage output, especially when they can LAG double/triple tap you. They scale significantly more than the damage output of the mobs and some just aren't avoidable.

Though it's more of a case by case thing so it'd have to be looked at individually.

This^

And if you don't mind i've added something ;)

[Truga]

I'm going to be a little whiny here . . . but SOME of the traps and environmental effects on elite/epic difficulties are just absurd regarding there damage output, especially when they can double/triple tap you. They scale significantly more than the damage output of the mobs and some just aren't avoidable.

Though it's more of a case by case thing so it'd have to be looked at individually.

Frankly, I like traps being lethal on higher difficulties. Yeah, looking for a trapper is a pain in the rear sometimes, but I still wouldn't have it any other way. It just adds something unique to DDO. Traps, puzzles, the Pit. All a part of the game.

[FooWonk]

Over 3 years of playing, here is the progress of my perception of game difficulty.

1st Characters, several 28 point builds
—> spell casting was complicated & never seemed powerful
—> deleted several wizards and sorcerers
—> built a dex-based rogue/barbarian, abandoned for 2 years @ level 11


During this initial 4-6 months of playing, even Korthos on normal seemed difficult. My first time running collaborator on elite, the entire party was killed by the Drexelhand. Similar experiences in Misery Peak, Haverdasher, Butcher's Path, etc. I decided to stay far, far away from elite.

Even hard was intimidating.

32 point builds
—> I built a favored soul, casting seemed a lot easier...heal heal heal
—> The favored soul was also an arcane archer...plink plink plink
—> It took me 4 months to cap the favored soul


Playing a healer class will result in constant assistance from everyone to help you improve your game play. Everyone wants a good healer in their group. Vets will be very helpful.

I was dragged back into elites in the last 2 weeks of my characters path to 20. Several TR groups helped me quickly reach cap.

Hard seemed easy. Elite was doable with a good group.

Shared bank & twink gear
—> I discovered the character planner...yay, builds!
—> I discovered the forums...yay, punters!
—> Sarlona, here comes my weird take on the exploiter (12 Ranger, 7 Monk, 1 Rogue)
—> I reached cap in 2 months...twink gear and knowledge FTW
—> Favored soul rebuilt as scimitar TWF
—> Started running epics with both my Favored Soul & Exploiter (VoN 1,2,3,6, eDQ raid, eTTT, eBoB)


This was about a year into playing. I had green steel built for both my characters. Both had raid items. Neither had any epic items.

Elite was mostly much easier - with some notable exceptions: VoN3, Bastion, Sins, I Dream of Jeets.

34-point built, Shield Mastery & DoTs
—> 2 month march back to cap with Favored Soul
—> Death just didn't happen
—> Started a wizard after spell changes, capped quickly
—> Lesser reincarnated my long abandoned dex-based barbarian, capped, TR'ed as monk & capped again


The spell changes really improved game play for casters.

Leveled characters by running E-E-E-H-N through high XP quests.

Bravery bonus & artificer
—> TR'ed my monk into an artificer legend and capped in 86 hours of game-play


While leveling, I host 1st-Five or be self-sufficient LFMs. Adventurers often join, but rarely contribute.

Weapons shipment & In The Flesh are the difficult quests.

Experience Tomes & Vet-7
—> I've yet to TR or start any new characters since these changes


...

Thoughts & Opinions

Tomes, Bravery Bonus, Reign of Madness & Web of Chaos helped alleviate the stress of GH/Orchard XP doldrums. I'll just move on to the level 15 quests even if it's not at an ideal level.

Also, I didn't start crafting until the 2nd update to the system. My artificer was low level crafter while leveling. The twink gear you can make does more to trivialize difficult content than any change to the game since I've been playing.

Normal difficulty is correct for those starting the game. But with bravery bonus and abundance of twink gear, it is difficult to find groups for normal. Even those that struggle in hard will try to maintain a streak.

Ideas & Suggestions on tuning difficulty

Casual — 2
Normal - 4-5
Hard -—- 6-8
Elite ---— 14
Epic -——- 20


The difficulty range for normal and hard represents dungeon scaling for 1-2, 3-4 & 5-6 party members. Elite and epic should not have dungeon scaling. And under no circumstance should a dungeon be easier to solo on a harder difficulty than it is to run with a full party on an easier difficulty.

Elite should be a substantial jump from hard. Epic should be similarly harder than elite.

Elite In The Flesh is beautifully well tuned. It is difficult to do without coordination, skill and gear. The challenge is that the combination of mobs and the boss, work well against players.

Elite Weapons Shipment is fun, but adding mobs & dungeon alert is not usually a good way to increase challenge. It's also the poster child quest for why elite should not scale. Anyone bauble hunting will solo then open an LFM.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

What I've never understood is this :

In EVERY quest you get the posibility to choose from a difficulty. You just need to have run the lower difficulty just once.

But this is not what I do not understand.

What I do not understand is this : Within the bar with these different difficulties, there's also "Epic" mentioned.

In EVERY quest.

Does this mean that there are epic Korthos Village quests, too ?

I just can't verify, because I don't have any level necessary to run anything "epic".

That's why I ask.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Having gotten my first character to the half-way point (level 10), I had a few thoughts about difficulty, looking back on what I've been able to do thus far. My "main" so far is a soloist, no hireling, no twink halfling assassin.

The biggest sticking point in multiple missions / APs has been "Keep NPC <X> alive" missions. I'm stuck in Threnal and unlikely to complete for several to many more levels for this reason. I'm stuck in Red Fens with this same issue, and not going back to that AP for quite a while, for that reason. I've given up on Faithful Departed as well, for the foreseeable future, and I'll probably do it as an elite favor run (so I only have to do it once) after I'm in my mid-teens or higher.

If my experience is just a product of my own stubbornness, well, then that's my problem. If it's a reasonably common pattern for your casual soloist players (there are probably a fair number of both, even if most don't post here), then consider offering multiple ways to complete at least some of the most notorious "Guard NPC <X>" missions. Here's a thread I started with one example of a suggested increase in ways to complete the notorious "Coyle" missions in Threnal:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4417177#post4417177

Also, please consider that of all the kinds of missions in MMOs, "Guard or fail" missions are one of the most common sources of frustration for players; in a game in which raising the dead is a common ability that's even more true, and it makes such objectives come across as an arbitrary way of raising mission difficulty, a glaring example of "Deux Ex Machina."

[Esserbe]

Frankly, I like traps being lethal on higher difficulties. Yeah, looking for a trapper is a pain in the rear sometimes, but I still wouldn't have it any other way. It just adds something unique to DDO. Traps, puzzles, the Pit. All a part of the game.

Many traps have no boxes.

[Dieterstrife]

I think just having checkpoints in the quests labeled long and very long would be nice. Just divide the final total xp up by however many checkpoints. maybe make it so you cant just farm to the first 2 checkpoints over and over for the full bonus xp, or something

no, I didnt read through 44 pages of entries.

[Fromthelog]

World of warcraft self destructed because it was nerfed to death. It's living on fumes and fond memories now. That's why I'm playing here. I want challenge, I don't want to see past achievements nerfed and made easy down the road.

[Fromthelog]

Just boggles me. I simply don't get it.

[psi0nix]

2 years of running the shroud and I have gotten a grand total of 10 large devils scales, that may seem alot but when it takes 5 to make one item, (I have two items completed now) that to me is a little "difficult", to the point where I just farm epic gear now, gave up on GS.

As for actual dungeon difficulty, I think it's pretty good all round at the moment, I may jump on the forums after a bad run and demand a nerf to the "bad guys" and scream bloody murder etc, but in a calm state of mind, the game difficulty is very well set.

[Expalphalog]

The biggest sticking point in multiple missions / APs has been "Keep NPC <X> alive" missions.

These are a perfect example of why this game is so difficult, if not impossible, to judge difficulty on. For some builds, these quests are darn near impossible to solo at-level. But for Healers, and possibly CC'ers (never played one, just taking a guess), they're not so bad.

So no it's not just you, but it's also not necessarily a 'common pattern' either.

[Hafeal]

*snip*

I really enjoyed your review, +1 for the time and input. :)

[Meetch1972]

Does this mean that there are epic Korthos Village quests, too ?

I just can't verify, because I don't have any level necessary to run anything "epic".

That's why I ask.

Unfortunately, no. Only the recently released free-to-play quests are epic enabled. The rest are in adventure packs you get through VIP or buying with TPs (and not all of them). At least the f2p epics enable f2p players to earn tokens for their next TR...

This doesn't mean that at some point these quests will be revisited and tuned to allow them to be run on epic. But it's not likely to happen with any speed if it happens at all.

As for balance, it doesn't really bother me that some classes can solo everything while pure melees are dependent on a healer/support. I would like to see a better balance to individual encounter survivability - where the barb can survive the same fight as the FVS or <insert element here> savant, even if at some expense - and I'm not talking excessive chugging of silver flame pots - it would be nice if there was a feasible option that didn't rely on favor. The question is, what?

I get that those with blue bars can and often do spend large amounts of coin on mnemonic potions, scrolls, wands and so forth. Maybe the tiers of cure medium/serious/critical wounds in potion form could use a boost of an extra 1d6/2d6/3d6 on top of their current values through an enhancement or tied to melee levels, with or without stacking with healing amp, and I'd pay more for that for when it's needed.

I'd also like to see pure melees able to get an option for a certain amount of fortification bypass, even if it's non-stacking. Perhaps barbarian frenzy could grant 5 or 10% per tier that stacks with nothing, and fighters may get something similar through another means. Just throwing it out there...

[Phemt81]

Does this mean that there are epic Korthos Village quests, too ?

I just can't verify, because I don't have any level necessary to run anything "epic".

That's why I ask.

Not really. You need to be 20th level to run epic quests.

You can verify which packs contain epic quests on this page http://ddowiki.com/page/Adventure_Packs

Also, the last ftp chain does allow epic difficulty.

If you have more questions feel free to ask. :)

[Albrecht555]

IMHO difficulty in DDO is and will always be very relative as long as 2 crucial aspects dont get fixed: AC and epics.

AC is a HUGE mechanic in this game and the fact it is broken is just sad. This alone will make the perspectives about difficulty vary alot. In fact, the first levels of any character in DDO are very enjoyable because there is consistency in about everything (damage output, defenses etc). The farther the game progresses you start to lose that consistency and the game becomes a min/max machine which is and will always be a step in the wrong direction for new players.

There is too much overpowered loot in this game which IMHO breaks the core mechanics of it. After all this is a d20 system... Making items that break that system is breaking the whole concept of consistency.

To prove what I am saying we just need to look into epics. I consider myself a veteran player and I have ran exactly 7 epics so far in 3 years. Why, you may ask? Because to me the idea of exploring "stupid" AI and kiting mobs that hit you every time is just absurd.

Correct the core mechanics of this game and you will get it as balanced as it can be. If we spend 80% of our time in quests fighting/casting spells is only fair that system is fair and allows progression with consistency.

Just my 2 cents ;)

[...v...]

The normal and hard difficulty is right in place with the game. Elite is not and I feel it should be more challenging since I can solo elite content with ease. As for rewards, it should also scale to content level.

[dragonofsteel2]

Normal seem easy to me, but I am vet with tons of gear. They should seem easy. Reality only Epics and Elite should even challenge me. I think quest should have chance for failure. The harder the Level the more chance for failure. One big thing missing from the game is the abilty to see which quest more challenging. The level of the quest lot time does not tell people enough about the quest. I believe you have been balance to much content for the uber players. I have level alot of toons and can tell you it is must certian that game has become harder to level toons. When I use to level melees you never missed, now you can miss with really good gear at level.

Should the content be made for TR's to level? I don't beleive so, to me this just a time to kick back and rock this stuff with my new powers. Though some believe it brings replay value to the game. I do not, reality is it still the same quest. I just trying to get my levels done to get back to end game. Some do like leveling though and that all they do. I alawys believe the challenge for the game should come in the end game content. This were you should push out the hardest and badest stuff. Just my 2 cents.

[soulaeon]

The difficulties are inconsistent. But that is a good thing, because you are satisfing casual and dedicated players that way.
However, please do not make adentures (especially raids) easy for the sake of easiness. D&D is progressive, not regressive, so there NEEDS to be a point at which players should plan and develop their characters, and appropriatly learn how quests work.
Since the release of payable Veteran status, lower and mid-level players have been terrible because they have no idea how to play their character, or even basic things like how to find a quest that has been bestowed to them. This could be a direct result of content being spoon fed to them, so I think there needs to be a line somewhere, or at the least SOME quests that are always difficult enough to actually reward people for learning the game.
Raids should always be the apex of level progression; whatever arch was played and whatever development happeing should lead to the raid experience. Thus, raids should always be challenging and fun, rather than scaled just to suit casual players.

[Zorth]

I just wanted to say I am glad this game is not arcade like.

Other MMORPG are arcade like and I salute to this game as not being one.

[teh_meh]

I think you guys have done a great job. To this day, I still look at many quests in DDO and think to myself "devs did **** good work here"

The only criticism I have, as others have mentioned previously, you have some quest levels heinously mislabeled. You're not managing player expectations well and that why there's so much consternation.

You also have some quests that are not scaling proportionally, at all. Undermine...going from normal to hard is a huge jump in difficulty. Servants of the Overlord is another example. On normal, there are 3 drow mining crystals at one spot. do it on hard and there are 9, srsly? Same quest...try to lower the barrier where the drow are having a ceremony. On normal, 2 fire reavers spawn...on hard? 6! Again, srsly?

[Starla70]

I think overall the game is consistent. You can make it harder if you want, or leave it as is. I like the different types of challenges we get. Some quests like the jumping part in a Small Problem take time to master. Others the terrain is the challenge like some of the Inspired Quarter quests. I also think overall the Teams that are making these quests are sticking really close to D&D ideas and rules. Which is why I am here in the first place.

Some times after an update we get surprised by certain quests being changed up or down a notch or two. It does keep us on our toes. I think you all have done a great job with this game!

[AMADHA]

As someone who almost totally solos because I generally don't have a lot of time to commit to play (highest char to date level 7) I must say that I don't find the game to be hard. Difficult at times... yes, but hard no. (Puzzles can be a pain at times though.)

The recent changes to Korthos Island really make getting into the game easier, but there are a few quests in Stormreach that are killers (i.e the alchemist one where he wants to poison the city) but if you do some other quests and try it again a level higher things are better. (Also, the burning sands off the Market is a surprise the first time you enter with all the immunities to damage.)

I do find that some aspects of the game seem to have a "only if you've done this before do you have a chance" kind of feel to them, so experienced players are for sure being targeted but that isn't bad if you let me know I'm probably going to die the first few times. ;-)

However, some quests are REALLY long and have multiple parts like the sewers in Stormreach but for the life of me I have not been able to figure out how to get out of a deeper one and not have to walk through all the earlier parts to get back to where I left? So some kind of partial save/restart would be most useful.

[danzig138]

For the most part, I don't have a problem with the difficulty of the game. If I'm soloing, I find Normal is just about right, and if grouping, Hard and Elite work.

The things that bring unnecessary difficulty, are in my opinion, things like overpowered bad guys for module level (I think there is a serious misunderstanding of the CR system among the developers), and poor quest physical design (Coalescence Chamber geometry, Bargain of Blood invisible walls, bad guys that you have to step up to to activate, etc).

[fizban1980]

Deaths should be more punishing. As it is, it's extremely trivial now to just run through everything, even traps on Epics, and just get raised on the other side (or, in the case of Lords of Dust, just raise and try again.)


Dungeon scaling should be removed, or reversed. It should be harder to shortman a dungeon not the other way around! Quests difficulty should be designed with full, balanced groups in mind, to increase the incentive to experienced players for grouping up and to increase the challenge for those who wish to shortman anyway.

The xp penalty from deaths should be per-player only (especially with the above points in mind) so if you die you only cost yourself the 10% xp not your whole party.

[heavenandhell]

I am in a level 80 plus guild and run with players with all the gear. They do so much damage and can use all the boosts so well, they run over content that I once thought was difficult. After level 14 and when they can start using raid gear it gets progressively crazy. When they run their capped toons and pull out weapons like the ESos's and midnight greetings then it gets worse.

There is no comparison between uber geared toons and casually played toons. I once was in a hard TOD and a monk solo'd the end of pt 2. Pt 2 of TOD on hard requires some teamwork and is not hard but it shouldnt be solo'd. A good average fighter does a few hundred on a crit occasionally. A good fighter with the esos does this nearly constantly. A strong necro caster is a lawnmower. In the guild one healer has over 640 hp, 36 str, full healing enhancements and has almost 3k mana-and first lifer and that is not the strongest healer in my guild by far.

I have come to the conclusion that balance is not possible at near to endgame when a geared toon is 3x stronger than an average one.

[protokon]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.

[Ape_Man]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.

I concur with your assessment and your opinion of it being "right."

[grgurius]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.

This sums it up pretty nicely.

[Chai]

I am in a level 80 plus guild and run with players with all the gear. They do so much damage and can use all the boosts so well, they run over content that I once thought was difficult. After level 14 and when they can start using raid gear it gets progressively crazy. When they run their capped toons and pull out weapons like the ESos's and midnight greetings then it gets worse.

There is no comparison between uber geared toons and casually played toons. I once was in a hard TOD and a monk solo'd the end of pt 2. Pt 2 of TOD on hard requires some teamwork and is not hard but it shouldnt be solo'd. A good average fighter does a few hundred on a crit occasionally. A good fighter with the esos does this nearly constantly. A strong necro caster is a lawnmower. In the guild one healer has over 640 hp, 36 str, full healing enhancements and has almost 3k mana-and first lifer and that is not the strongest healer in my guild by far.

I have come to the conclusion that balance is not possible at near to endgame when a geared toon is 3x stronger than an average one.

It doesnt impress me too much when people playing overgeared toons solo stuff they no longer need the gear from. Balance is possible, but for it to occur players have to use content they need the gear from as the measuring stick.

If your monk in this example was geared in shroud only gear and was soloing TOD part 2 I might think otherwise. This was likely not the case - they were prob wearing both TOD rings they needed, and had epic gear in every slot.

This is why I dont believe most of the exageration in alot of the "x needs to be nerfed threads" - epic geared necro spec wizards going into snitch and cleaning the place out didnt impress me, nor convince me that casters were OP for instance.

Using quests we need the gear from as the measuring stick is the better choice. It forces players to play with a cautious mind, rather than plow the quest the entire time thinking its a joke. Normal SHOULD BE too easy for overgeared vets. Elite SHOULD BE too tough for first timers. Thats the point of having more than one difficulty - which is where the balance lies in this game. So far from what I am seeing from this type of balance is that it works, even better than it works in the heroic game in many instances. The first timers can play 21-25 content and likely complete in groups that work together, and the ubergeared veterans have their "nightmare mode" which still challenges them.

[heavenandhell]

When I say balance is not possible, its because the constant attempts to nerf or buff seem futile. The power level of gear before and esp after the expansion is extreeme. There is no way to satisfy the uberplayers without completely shutting out casual players.

Personally they need to find a way to make quests more random so experienced people can be surprised and they need to come out with some way of recognizing completions where people left equipment slots empty like no armour and no bracers and still finished. It would also create a demand for less powerful but more versatile gear. If you can solo melee elite vod with only a weapon and only 2 gear items then that would be cool.

There is no comparison to uber geared and casual players and a quest cant be balanced for both of them.

[Maxson]

A new difficulty (with even higher streak bonuses) above elite! Balanced for Elite difficulty, but buffed enough that ship buffs don't allow you to steamroll it? ;p

[TasMagar]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.



I agree .

Many friends of mine play DDO but they are no powergamers . They play a casual hour or two every two days or so.
They are saying how they can try epic now and have a higher success rate and they enjoy that .

I'm glad i can kill a mob on elite now at epic normal :)

[KrumpetDog]

Difficulty is very hard to balance. Some players want a real challenge and others want to be able to level to 20 and be able to see the content. In my experience DDO's difficulty (on normal) starts to get to be more than what a casual (but experienced in games) player wants around level 10+.

Two of my friends stopped playing after their character's hit 11 to 12 level as the quests became more work than fun for them (some dungeons were just too difficult and grinding the easier ones got to be too boring).

On normal it should be reasonably easy to complete any quest for a casual player without much gear. Anything more than that and you are going to lose them. And yes that means a fully geared really experienced player should think its trival to complete any quest on 'normal'. Only Elite should challenge a fully geared player.

[Carkolda]

Two quests I would say have been made significantly harder, to the point of unplayable at level would be I Dream of Jeets and Running With the Devils. If you are playing these at-level on elite, they are virtually unbeatable.

Specifically for Running, you have those eladrin blasting you with light spells every five seconds, and there's no way to mitigate those damages. Searing Light was originally a ranged-touch spell, which required an attack roll. This helped mitigate in PNP because those with with high AC could effectively mitigate an otherwise un-resistable damage type. But since they are an auto-hit sort of attack, unless you are actually physically moving around the battlefield. And at 70-100 damage a shot, it makes it very difficult (if not impossible) for a party healer to deal with that much light damage to the entire group. I a game balance perspective, it would be fine if the enemies only had 3-500 hit points like the Players do, but since the HP of elite eladrin are in the thousands, our own light spells are virtually ineffective when compared to their light spells. As a percent of total life, their spells pack way more punch, which does not seem like a good balance to me. Some solutions for balancing it back would be a) Make it a ranged-touch spell, b) Reduce the damage to be more congruent with percent of life dealt closer to players, c) reduce the frequency at which they use the light spells or d) a combination of the above three.

With I Dream of Jeets, the issue here is the sheer number of enemies at the end of the quest and healers in a non-wave environment. If you have the traditional build of 1 healer, 1 arcane, 1 rogue, and the rest meaty types, you run into the problem of keeping them alive. The rogues inside these elite quests are hitting for over 200 on a critical sneak (i.e. flank), while there are an overabundance of healing abilities to keep the damsel alive. While killing the damsel would be ideal because with her dying the quest ends, you cannot DOT her enough to overcome the ability of the multiple healers of the enemies. If you focus on the healers, she and the other enemies will tear you a new one while doing so, especially if the arcane draws aggro. With heavy fort no longer fully mitigating sneak damage (again, in-congruent with RAW), there's no promise that you will be able to keep the group alive as a healer. They also all have evasion, or so many hit points that it makes BB and flame turret virtually pointless.

I believe the root of the problem here is the concept that players play by one set of rules, and the monsters play by another. The monsters (even regular ones) can have hit points in the thousands, and we are lucky to see 800-1k. I non-epic quests, you find creatures capable of beating heavy fort, but we don't. We have their damage output significantly higher as a percent of life compared to our damage out put. We have to make concentration checks, the enemy does not. We have facing issues (i.e. we'll swing at something but it won't register if they are moving past us), and they somehow never seem to miss the facing. We stun things and their attacks still go off and they still move, but we get stunned and... lo and behold we don't get to do stuff or lose what we were doing. For me the devil is in the details. I am all for a challenging game, because some stuff can get boring quick if there's no challenge, and I like some of the changes that were made in this direction. But I think in some instances the pendulum has swung too far and make it unplayable.

[Ebondevil]

Specifically for Running, you have those eladrin blasting you with light spells every five seconds, and there's no way to mitigate those damages. Searing Light was originally a ranged-touch spell, which required an attack roll. This helped mitigate in PNP because those with with high AC could effectively mitigate an otherwise un-resistable damage type. But since they are an auto-hit sort of attack, unless you are actually physically moving around the battlefield. And at 70-100 damage a shot, it makes it very difficult (if not impossible) for a party healer to deal with that much light damage to the entire group. I a game balance perspective, it would be fine if the enemies only had 3-500 hit points like the Players do, but since the HP of elite eladrin are in the thousands, our own light spells are virtually ineffective when compared to their light spells. As a percent of total life, their spells pack way more punch, which does not seem like a good balance to me. Some solutions for balancing it back would be a) Make it a ranged-touch spell, b) Reduce the damage to be more congruent with percent of life dealt closer to players, c) reduce the frequency at which they use the light spells or d) a combination of the above three.

In theory it should technically be possible to Manually dodge ray spells, but in practicality for the most part due to the Client and Server not being in perfect sync (Exasperated by Lag) such is not possible in reality, hence Ray type spells in general are a lot more dangerous in mob hands in DDO.

With the Recent changes to the AC and Combat mechanics, it would be reasonable for things like Dodge %, and Miss chance Due to Concealment/Incorporeality to have an effect on Ray spells in general.

In most cases there is a form of defence against nearly every damage type, from Elemental (Resist Energy/Protection From Energy) to Negative Energy (Death Ward), but there are a number of Rays with damage types that have no defence/mitigation, with mobs having unlimited Spell points, and damage types that can't be mitigated those Rays tend to hit significantly harder than other spells of similar levels.

[Modulex]

At least for my TR pal4/mnk2, when I compare last life and this life, the changes in difficulty are quite noticeable. The gear is mostly the same. Incoming dmg has been nerfed quite a bit. The constant spamming of trip has been cut down to almost non existent which is nice.
The hire bard's/cleric's heals are very sufficient, even in previously hard quests at lvl, like Swiped Signet (archers part) and Proof is in the Poison. Basically the only thing doing any relevant damage was from magic missiles (party of 4, so no scaling down) and even that could have been negated by UMDing 5 min Shield scrolls. 3 pairs of Anger Step boots last very long, so you don't have to save them only for the quest.
You get a really invincible feeling. I suppose that will change in the mid lvls.
The changes to Cleave and Great Cleave are... huge. Basically all melee should get them. IMO

Haven't tested Running with the Devils after update yet. Before that, for a melee to solo elite with a hire, you basically needed Terror, just to kill those air elementals. Eladrins save pretty well against Terror, so some other weapon is as good or better. You might get lucky with Terror ^^ Scaling took care of the light dmg, so the hire can easily heal through it.

[count_spicoli]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.


Agreed and well said. Nice job devs

[Slimeball]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.


this is a very difficult subject I think everything is where it should be for the most part. The problem I am seeing is with the bravery bonus thats what almost everyone wants to do. the problem is there are a lot of fail groups because they are not ready for the elite difficulty. My suggestion would be either to get rid of the bravery bonus or add a new bonus like a 15% bonus if you have a 1st lifer in party who has got at least 10kills. this would make it so the UBER trs wouldn't just kick the new guys from their parties.

I hear and see a lot of top end players booting people for asking for shares. bootting because too low health. booting because person has no wings. Declining because of no guild tag or because they know guild tag reprosence a casual guild theme. so these newer/casual players end up having a terrible time findign groups i have seen the same person in lfm for same quest on normal for 4 days in a row now. If I am level range i always join the normal runs even if it breaks my bravery bonus because I want to help out these newer players.

doing these normal runs with these newer/casual players we normally end up short manning the quests due to waiting forever to fill and having a very difficult time sense expansion normal traps are hitting very hard and by not having a trapper in group we end up failing. sometimes they will buy a rogue hire from store which i beg them not to. every single time the rogue cannot find box so I buff rogue heroism then it finds box only to blow it up. these players spend real dollors only to have a fail hireling.

so yes normal difficulty does feel to hard and the rogue hires are a waste of money and trying to get in a group has become insanely DIFFICULT. levels 9-15 especailly because everyone has used stone and because of level 25 not as many people are tring or leveling so a BRAND NEW player is going to go through HELL to make it past level 9. this new system is driving away costumers :'(. I think the quickest fix for this is the bonus for TR's to have a 1st lifer in party who has got at least 10kills. I put in the 10 kills because I can see this system being abused by someoen making a 2nd account and just piking their 1st lifer making it get at least 10 kills would prevent this.

2nd solution might be if a tr joins a 1st lifers group on normal it won't break trs bravery streak help the trs help newer players that is this games biggest flaw is no one wants to help anyone. I try but I can only do so much.

[Yehediah]

The difficulty in this game is schizophrenic. For example the Lordsmarch quest on elite are much harder than the GH quests on elite yet the GH quests are a higher level.

In the Flesh elite is harder than some epics

Generally, I'd agree - they are way out of wack in terms of balance. The hardest quests are mostly things that came in post Shroud update. But, that's not 100% consistent either.


VoD and ToD: are fine right now, U11 elite was stupid hard, this is just difficult but not terrible.
Shroud: The blades do too much damage, this needs a nerf in all settings. I cannot believe your intention is for Elite Shroud to be harder than Elite ToD.
Titan: the drop-rate suck, please increase so we don't have to run this tediously annoying content over and over again.
Reaver: A level 14 raid shouldn't throw a 500 point spell at people, other than that it's fine.
Abbot: The HP on hard/elite are insane, cut them in half. And evasion? Really?

Agreed on most of that. VoD was insanely stupid for a long time after U11 - even on normal the average pug failed well over 50% of the time from what I saw. Generally, I'd like to see it be easier to do these at level. Either remove them from Bravery Bonus altogether (so it doesn't effect your streak doing it on normal) OR tone them way down. Even with tweaked up TR's, it's a bit too rough at BB level IF you can even find a group willing to try.

Honestly, I know you have to have things challenge 900 hp barbarians, but having things like previously mentioned blades that poor casters and ranged attackers can't avoid is way too frustrating. Have stuff like that be less insane on low HP range characters. If you melee, then you can have that stuff be close to the boss - if you melee you have to find a way to have better HP.

And, I agree, those boss HP are just a bit too insane. The idea was good, but overboard - even on some non-nameds at times. It doesn't make it so much more challenging, just drudgery.


I don't think I want you touching Epic quests as I don't trust you not to make things worse.

Very negative, so I hate to concur and say, yep. Honestly, I'd prefer epic not to have changed to the N-H-E. It messes up streaks and most I'd hate to try on E the way so much new stuff seems to expect uber gear/past lives AND doggone great play and knowledge of the quest.

I know you have to balance a wide variety of play styles of different people. But, I'm not a kid and spending 45-over an hour in a quest to fail, well, that really gets my goat. Make new quests shorter to partly avoid that problem. I honestly believe that the average PUG should be able to run an Elite BB at level and succeed most of the time. Especially since BB had the unfortunate side effect of making BB the "norm" for most groups. Plus, many favor things make it so elites should be do-able. I know, some what that "uber" feeling, but short man it or figure some way that doesn't penalize the rest of us that don't have the time to waste regularly failing. This isn't to say failure should be impossible. Goofs happen, just not regularly. I can list half a dozen or so quests that the average TR will skip because the success rate is too low and too costly.

[Symphony88]

I agree that Game Difficulty is a difficult subject.
But, if you are truly interested in understanding game difficulty, then I suggest you take a look at the permadeath guilds. There are multiple permadeath guilds on all the servers last time I checked. They comprise a smaller but significant group of gamers in DDO and they challenge themselves in a way ordinary gamers and those who don't know any better do. The reason I suggest that you look at what these guilds are doing is that these guilds carefully consider what aspects of the game they permit their members to use in order to create a balanced yet challenging experience for their members. Despite the fact that they are permadeath, there are level 20+ players in the game and, yes, they do raids. Yes, questing is commonly done at the elite difficulty. For these players, failure means starting over at level 1 (even if you were playing a level 20+), so if something in the game is too hard, these players will know. If you do something that harms the balance of the game, these guilds will outlaw it. If you make an aspect of the game too easy, these guilds will outlaw it. This is why I suggest that you look at these guilds and see what they are doing: because their style of play provides interesting anecdotes on this issue.

[Machination]

Here is my advise:

For all content pre-U14, you don't need to change anything, here is a breakdown:

1. Normal is easy (even for a new player, yet probably still challenging for that player
2. Hard is a little more challenging
3. Elite is challenging for a new player. Elite is also really easy for a vet who knows the quest/tactics has a decent level guild ship, has a lot of gear, resources, crafting skills, and oh yeah probably between his 2nd and 13th life.

There are imbalances in this pre-U14 content yes, but don't mess with it (I will get to reasoning later)

Don't mess with bravery bonus, it is the risk/reward and if a new player wants it, let him risk it. My advise to new players is always, go run normal, get to know the quests, your build, the gear, etc. You don't really learn much blowing through level 1-20 with a bunch of TR grinders, you just get to 20 fast and don't understand the game much.

Now, here is a very important point Turbine: Just stop messing with all the pre-U14 quests, gear, crafting, etc. Stop it. There is so much content and things to learn for the new player already. And all of us vets are not interested in changes to THAT content that we've run for years. We've run it how many times already? Then you introduced True Reincarnation we ran it 100's more. Do you think slight changes to difficulty make it interesting to us? It does not. In fact, its irritating and insulting. Just fix the bugs. I will repeat for clarity JUST FIX THE BUGS. And don't waste your time and ours by messing with anything else in that pre-U14 content.

I very good friend quit because of the U14 nerfed the min lvl of Cannith crafted gear. He spent millions in plat and a lot of time grinding to get to lvl 150 in all schools. Completionist and many legend build TR's now, he came to this game from WoW years ago. Why did he quit? Well, he put it like this, "The game operator/developer is a steward entrusted with making the game pleasant for players. When a game company decides to take what people have invested in, and destroy/diminish stats on gear that players worked for, they can't be trusted anymore. I'm done". He then went on to say, "They have time to mess with low level gear that I spent a lot of time and resources on and now I am supposed to just accept it and make new gear? What for, they don't seem to understand that I've run that content 1000's of times now and am just grinding a life out now, what do they care if I'm overpowered I am playing and paying....well not anymore! They have time to mess with my low level junk and not fix bugs, well enough is enough." Now, everyone understands that new levels make old gear obsolete and nothing is wrong with that. What is counter productive is messing with all of the old content, old gear, old crafting, old everything. Just let it go and move on. New players will enjoy it, old players will be forced to run it again for their past lives if they want those extra feats. Changing it accomplishes nothing and is a waste of your own resources.

Now, on to the second subject, which is U14 content:

Here are some points:

1. You made it easy for casual players to play Epic content with the "normal" difficulty on Epic. I think this was a very good move and will keep a larger player base as you focus on more new high level content.

2. You made it a challenge (but not over challenging) for hard difficulty to a newer player. For any of the gear'd and legend build vets hard difficulty is lacking any challenge straight out of the gates, the day of the update.

3. You made elite difficulty on these epic quests, only really more difficult due to mob stats. And I don't think it should be possible for 3 level 22 players to do all the evening star quests on Elite. I posted before that Elite Epic should be really only possible to complete (and I mean possible with a chance of failure) for level 25 full group (yes full group) with appropriate gear. What would be even more of a plus is if Elite difficulty included more or different objectives, similar to the difference between Von6 at lvl and Von6 Epic. Make things more difficult strategically not just extra HP, DC, damage, etc. Get a little bit more creative about objectives and strategies.

Now, all that being said above, I have heard players in PUGS in the new content say "its to easy" and others say "this is ridiculous they can't expect anyone to complete this", depending upon the situation. So it is true you can never please everyone, but you guys did a good job of giving yourself a real out with norm/hard/elite Epic difficulty options. I just think that you are not using it properly. Epic Elite should be that, Elite. There should be maybe one, two, Elite completions in total for each quest on each server from release date to today. It should be **** difficult and the best vet players should of had to go get to level 25 and grind out gear before being even able to complete the new Epic Elite. Instead, it was bravery bonus without failure for a lot of people on Elite (at lvl 22/23 ha). That's disappointing for a lot of players. You should of left the top tier for exactly that, the top tier players after they got to lvl 25..........

[Yehediah]

I've got pro and con views on a lot of your post.


For all content pre-U14, you don't need to change anything,

General agreement here. However, U-14 seems a strange cut-off to me. Stuff before the addition of Shroud, yes. There is some seriously wacked quests within U1-14.


Don't mess with bravery bonus, it is the risk/reward and if a new player wants it, let him risk it.

Generally agreed, though as I noted, it'd be nice for the raids (many of which are VERY VERY difficult at E BB and few attempt) were excluded from messing with streaks. It'd probably also be nice to have the high level quests that were designed for more "tweaked" toons to be excluded. For crying out loud, how many vets REFUSE to even attempt Lv 15 in the Flesh final chain quest on E for BB? If that's what players want (very challenging content), then drop that content from BB to let people finish it on a lower difficulty without ruining their streak.

Honestly, some raids have become VERY rare to see up simply because they are a pain and not worth the rewards except to a bunch of new people that are clearly unprepared for the raid challenge. So, giving vets a reason to go back in there would be nice even if they are pre-U14 raids.


Now, here is a very important point Turbine: Just stop messing with all the pre-U14 quests, gear, crafting, etc. Stop it. There is so much content and things to learn for the new player already. And all of us vets are not interested in changes to THAT content that we've run for years. We've run it how many times already? Then you introduced True Reincarnation we ran it 100's more. Do you think slight changes to difficulty make it interesting to us? It does not. In fact, its irritating and insulting. Just fix the bugs. I will repeat for clarity JUST FIX THE BUGS. And don't waste your time and ours by messing with anything else in that pre-U14 content.

Generally agreed with the above. However, I'd honestly rather see a "redo" of a quest pre Shroud era (that is lower than level 14 on Normal) than see a NEW quest in that level range - something like what was done with Korthos. But, I'd still much rather prefer bugs fixed. Way too many and it seems to be getting worse.


Now, all that being said above, I have heard players in PUGS in the new content say "its to easy" and others say "this is ridiculous they can't expect anyone to complete this", depending upon the situation. So it is true you can never please everyone, but you guys did a good job of giving yourself a real out with norm/hard/elite Epic difficulty options. I just think that you are not using it properly. Epic Elite should be that, Elite. There should be maybe one, two, Elite completions in total for each quest on each server from release date to today. It should be **** difficult and the best vet players should of had to go get to level 25 and grind out gear before being even able to complete the new Epic Elite. Instead, it was bravery bonus without failure for a lot of people on Elite (at lvl 22/23 ha). That's disappointing for a lot of players. You should of left the top tier for exactly that, the top tier players after they got to lvl 25..........

Here, I'd disagree alot. Yep, I always run into those (typically college age) players who think they are some kind of awesome and it's a status thing to think they can do what others can't (more often only because they have tons more time to run it over and over FAILING just to get that completion in). I work and don't have time to grind failures for that token feather. Further, I'm a VIP who pays alot to play (and a lot of those of the other view that I run into don't pay for it or uses their parents money to pay for it). Yes, you have to balance to attract all kinds of players - thus my reasoning for there being other "status" symbols for those people other than that they did an elite completion and few others did. Frankly, after the next update none of those types will care for running that old stuff again on E, so the rest of us are stuck with their leftover garbage.

Bravery streak is a major game effect now and Elite favor is also very helpful. Neither of those should be used as the trophy to distinguish supposed "uber" players from the norm.

[Machination]

Generally agreed, though as I noted, it'd be nice for the raids (many of which are VERY VERY difficult at E BB and few attempt) were excluded from messing with streaks. It'd probably also be nice to have the high level quests that were designed for more "tweaked" toons to be excluded. For crying out loud, how many vets REFUSE to even attempt Lv 15 in the Flesh final chain quest on E for BB? If that's what players want (very challenging content), then drop that content from BB to let people finish it on a lower difficulty without ruining their streak.

Honestly, some raids have become VERY rare to see up simply because they are a pain and not worth the rewards except to a bunch of new people that are clearly unprepared for the raid challenge. So, giving vets a reason to go back in there would be nice even if they are pre-U14 raids.

The reason the quests/raids category you are referring to do not get played by vets is because there is no motivation. Why do I want to go run a quest that has no unique loot, a lower xp per minute comparatively, and favor that is useless? Well, people just won't clamor to such quests, especially if they are mediocre fun and have a high risk of failure at level in a PUG. The fact is there is so much low/mid level content that its a no win situation to even bother trying to ever balance it, there will always be quests people don't run often (those that give the least xp/loot/favor etc. reward).



Generally agreed with the above. However, I'd honestly rather see a "redo" of a quest pre Shroud era (that is lower than level 14 on Normal) than see a NEW quest in that level range - something like what was done with Korthos. But, I'd still much rather prefer bugs fixed. Way too many and it seems to be getting worse.

I should qualify my statements about pre-U14 to be clear (but it is just my opinion, so take it as you may):

1. There is enough content between levels 1-20, period. There are enough quests, adventure areas, favor, carrots, bells whistles. Everything under level 20 I consider pre-U14. Enough is enough, we have enough. We don't need more content for levels 1-20.

2. Nothing pre-U14 should be tweaked, balanced, etc. Instead any and all resources applied to pre-U14 quests (and again I define that as lvl 20 or under) should be strictly focused on bug fixes. We don't need that content tweaked, it will not increase the attraction to that content in any way.



Here, I'd disagree alot. Yep, I always run into those (typically college age) players who think they are some kind of awesome and it's a status thing to think they can do what others can't (more often only because they have tons more time to run it over and over FAILING just to get that completion in). I work and don't have time to grind failures for that token feather. Further, I'm a VIP who pays alot to play (and a lot of those of the other view that I run into don't pay for it or uses their parents money to pay for it). Yes, you have to balance to attract all kinds of players - thus my reasoning for there being other "status" symbols for those people other than that they did an elite completion and few others did. Frankly, after the next update none of those types will care for running that old stuff again on E, so the rest of us are stuck with their leftover garbage.

Bravery streak is a major game effect now and Elite favor is also very helpful. Neither of those should be used as the trophy to distinguish supposed "uber" players from the norm.

Qualifying statements (again just my opinion, so take as you will):

1. Bravery bonus is a nice XP boost. Those who think it is a "status symbol" well there is that phrase "legend in your own mind". BB is just an XP boost you can choose to use and choose to drop on a whim. In fact, I've dropped it many times on different toons because the opportunity arose to get more XP per min doing something else. I've also kept it across multiple lives, it was after keeping it across multiple lives that I lost interest and just looked at the numbers. Its not a big deal to lose it and get back. When was the last time someone told you their bravery bonus count and you thought to yourself "that guy really is awesome"? I rest my case on that point.

2. There should be a tier of game play that is extremely challenging, which a small percentage of the player base are able to actually complete. There should be some reward for doing it. You can't have a top without a bottom. And you can't have a bottom without a top. I won't be in that tier. But I know people in that tier, and they will leave if that tier is not available, to other games. That difficulty and challenge need to be there.

Let me put it this way, are there people who play casual? I know there are. There are people that run casual. Do the masses run casual.....no. Do the masses call out for casual to be made more difficult....no. Just because everybody wants to run elite does not mean it should be made easier so that everyone can run it like it was normal. In the same vein if everyone was screaming for casual to be more difficult the answer is simple, tell them to run normal not casual.

I understand and partially agree with your comments about favor. Favor is a major incentive to run elite. And for the casual gamer limited on time unlocking that could be cumbersome at best. But, like everything there is a flip side, and there should be an incentive for the risk vs. reward of elite. Unfortunately, no one will ever be completely happy with the system ;)

[Yehediah]

The reason the quests/raids category you are referring to do not get played by vets is because there is no motivation. Why do I want to go run a quest that has no unique loot, a lower xp per minute comparatively, and favor that is useless? Well, people just won't clamor to such quests, especially if they are mediocre fun and have a high risk of failure at level in a PUG. The fact is there is so much low/mid level content that its a no win situation to even bother trying to ever balance it, there will always be quests people don't run often (those that give the least xp/loot/favor etc. reward).

Actually, most quests do get ran (with a few noted exceptions - such as In the Flesh) with the BB. So, if one is willing to lead a group, you can get it done at level if desired - as I normally do. So, the exceptions to "fix" on this point would be relatively small - some raids as you noted being prime. Adding items to it or lowering the 20th run to something far less could help (as well as either excluding raids from BB streak altogether OR making them easier to complete at BB level).


1. There is enough content between levels 1-20, period. There are enough quests, adventure areas, favor, carrots, bells whistles. Everything under level 20 I consider pre-U14. Enough is enough, we have enough. We don't need more content for levels 1-20.

Still generally with you other than noted above. IF they really want to add content, should be stuff above level 16 (so, my level limit is slightly lower than yours) - and it should not be the pain in the butt stuff like some of the newer stuff that cannot be done by a normal fairly decent PUG on E for BB.

I'm all for post 20 stuff being harder as long as it doesn't mess with the BB streak for a later TR - as it currently seems to do.


2. Nothing pre-U14 should be tweaked, balanced, etc. Instead any and all resources applied to pre-U14 quests (and again I define that as lvl 20 or under) should be strictly focused on bug fixes. We don't need that content tweaked, it will not increase the attraction to that content in any way.

And, again, we are pretty close in view. And, even with my allowance of 16-20, I'd agree here that I'd MUCH rather see fixes to bugs, etc. Though, being an old PnP player, I'd really like to see them add gnomes - the only "core" race/class missing from the current offerings. I'd also like to see more "prestige classes" as enhancements to add more "core" PnP stuff to the game. But, I'd still agree with you on the focusing on FIXING all the crud they keep breaking.


Qualifying statements (again just my opinion, so take as you will):

Rest isn't quoted, but no real contention here, just a couple of differences. I'd note there are a good number of players who don't like breaking that BB streak and a good number of players who like running most every quest 1/life over maxing that XP/minute. Nothing against ya'll that prefer the XP/minute - just recognition of different preferences and neither is the "only" or "right" way to play - two different styles.

Now on the extreme challenge stuff, I'm more of an adventure/RP player over a PVP type. And, generally, we are not so much into that "extreme" challenge as the journey/character development. I'm all for giving something for them, but the reward has to be balanced more to bragging rights than something that most players really need. The favor point difference is therefore an annoyance to me for this. Premium raid loot would be even more of annoyance here - assuming they are "uber" as they think, part of their "uberness" is that they have the "uber" gear that if they are really that "uber" they don't need! (It's us not so "uber" that would need the gear to make it "easier"). Honestly, yep, the highly competitive need to be attracted to the game, but most of that "uber" is in their eyes rather than them really being anywhere near as great as they think they are. I've played with plenty of truly great players and seldom would they be one's I'd group here - it's those that believe it's some kind of status and keep trying to use it to belittle others and frankly, I could do without those players!

[slimkj]

Now, here is a very important point Turbine: Just stop messing with all the pre-U14 quests, gear, crafting, etc. Stop it. There is so much content and things to learn for the new player already. And all of us vets are not interested in changes to THAT content that we've run for years. We've run it how many times already? Then you introduced True Reincarnation we ran it 100's more. Do you think slight changes to difficulty make it interesting to us? It does not. In fact, its irritating and insulting. Just fix the bugs. I will repeat for clarity JUST FIX THE BUGS. And don't waste your time and ours by messing with anything else in that pre-U14 content.
Please don't think you speak for all vets. I would love to see some of the older content get an overhaul. There are some old quests that could do with visual makeovers, long standing issues fixed and some that need changing to be less painful. Not to mention I would like to see some old raids have better loot tables so they are run more.

[Machination]

I realize there are probably some vets out there who would like to see changes to the old content. Considering that what would your priority be considering the issues you just listed, if Turbine resources could only be applied in serial order one at a time:

1. Old quests get visual makeovers.
2. Long standing issues fixed (BUGS fixed)
3. Old raids have better loot tables

Well, I vote #2, which is exactly what I put in my post. If Turbine would fix all those issues, and they had extra resources with no idea how to deploy them, then and only then would I say move on to #1.

#3 does not actually require any resources, because it is a run time variable (or something like that). It does not actually require any coding its just a setting for the quest(s) in question. It is an operating decision more than anything, and not resource intensive.




Please don't think you speak for all vets. I would love to see some of the older content get an overhaul. There are some old quests that could do with visual makeovers, long standing issues fixed and some that need changing to be less painful. Not to mention I would like to see some old raids have better loot tables so they are run more.

[slimkj]

That's reasonable. I didn't just mean bugs by long standing issues though. Some quests/chains have popularity and playability issues that puts a lot of people off them. They could do with a revamp and I would class them under long standing issues.

[laurawilder]

Some people are just laughable. So the game as a whole for years has been getting easier and more content created to avoid even certain quests if you like for any reason. Now some of you want to biotch about elite being to hard for you to get a bb? Really?! Are you serious? BRAVERY bonus. Whining that something is too hard for you, is not the act of bravery. It's not a casual bonus or thanks for showing up bonus.

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

Let me guess though you still want the loot tables to be the same or better so you look good running around in game. LOL.

[Ranncore]

This applies to Ebberon content, as I have not done enough in MoTU to talk about it.

Epic Casual - not even recognized as a difficulty setting by players, even casual players. This is problematic, as it seems the new difficulties cater to casual players.

Epic Normal and Hard are a complete joke, not even worth playing, not worth pugging because they are soloable.

Epic Elite is a challenge for well geared fresh twenties. I'm wondering about level 25s. It must vary from quest to quest.

I'm going to compare raids I'm familiar with and that are popular.

Normal Shroud vs Normal Echrono.
Not even a comparison. Every mob in shroud hits harder and has more hp, ESPECIALLY the bosses and red names. Level 16 vs level 21. So is the Shroud too hard, or is Normal Echrono too easy? In my pug Echrono, 1st day after updates, the whole team split up, healed themselves, no risk of every dying. We kited the abishai. There was absolutely no strategy involved. I later solod normal Echrono. I cannot solo a normal shroud.
Hard Echrono wasn't any different - we shortmanned it and a rogue tanked.
Let me just say that Hard Shroud is still challenging enough to be fun for a veteran player. Echrono is not.

Normal Tempest Spine vs Normal Demon Queen (preraid and raid)
This is a funny one. The traps in tempest spine hit harder than DQ. The boss in Tempest Spine takes strategy to defeat - the palemasters aura could have killed Lailat in DQ. What a joke.

[Phemt81]

Some people are just laughable.

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

"Things made for an elite are never good".

Aside that "elite" should not mean hyper-enhanced-frustration or totally bugged cause devs can't add a real challenge instead of giving mobs 9001 hp and damage us for the same amount with a magic missile.

Elite is not intended for being for an "elite" group of people, let's face it. With the favor and xp system lately modified the game suggests us to do it, either if you are first life or not. And this is a good thing since you were forced to run 3 times the same quest to get all the favors/xp in the past.

This new bravery stuff improved a lot the basic mechanics of ddo. Don't pretend to not know it, or don't pretend others to. It's the way the game is designed.

[Machination]

It helps when you post a quote. As your comments stands I did not see anyone in this thread (recent posts) complain about elite BB being too difficult or needing change. What exactly are you referring to? This is an old thread with only a couple of recent new comments, maybe you read something from the past.

My argument is that after U14 Elite Epic is too easy, and Elite Epic be a lot more difficult.



Some people are just laughable. So the game as a whole for years has been getting easier and more content created to avoid even certain quests if you like for any reason. Now some of you want to biotch about elite being to hard for you to get a bb? Really?! Are you serious? BRAVERY bonus. Whining that something is too hard for you, is not the act of bravery. It's not a casual bonus or thanks for showing up bonus.

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

Let me guess though you still want the loot tables to be the same or better so you look good running around in game. LOL.

[Yehediah]

Some people are just laughable. ...

It has elite in the name for a reason and bb is not a right its a bonus. If you cannot do quest at elite tough luck to you. Learn from what you did wrong and try again. To hit the forums crying about In the Flesh being too hard and should be made easier at elite or excluded should be embarrassing to said posters.

Actually, you are the laughable person. It IS a level 15 quest, 17 on elite. A very good hand-picked team has a hard time getting it completed at that level and likely will have a failure before doing so (and likely spend considerable resources doing so). It's WAY out of wack compared to level 17 quests.

Waiting to 20 and losing the BB is fine, but EVEN at 20, it's often hard to find a PUG that CAN do it at 20! Again, the quest is way out of wack compared to others of its level. Ergo, your defense of it is laughable.

[Chai]

Actually, you are the laughable person. It IS a level 15 quest, 17 on elite. A very good hand-picked team has a hard time getting it completed at that level and likely will have a failure before doing so (and likely spend considerable resources doing so). It's WAY out of wack compared to level 17 quests.

Waiting to 20 and losing the BB is fine, but EVEN at 20, it's often hard to find a PUG that CAN do it at 20! Again, the quest is way out of wack compared to others of its level. Ergo, your defense of it is laughable.

We did it in permadeath at level on elite.

And lived.

I dont buy the justification that all quests of the same level should be the same challenge. There have been quite a few examples in the game over the years where this has not been the case. It makes the game less vanilla and more fun.

The idea that elite should be accessible to everyone with no learning curve whatsoever is an entitlement issue. The real reason people ask for elite to be easier is they want the highest XP but they dont want to move slower or use tactics to play through elite - so they ask for quests to be nerfed to autocompletion so they can farm xp/min. The reason they want this is because if elite takes significantly longer than hard, then running hard is the best Xp/min. If they can run elite as fast as hard, thats 25% more Xp on a bravery bonus of 5 or more. If they run through elite and die, but do not die in hard, they are netting a 15% Xp bonus for running elite. If they die on elite but not hard, and elite still takes even slightly longer, the Xp/min becomes a wash. And of course, an epic failure = little to no XP - if they were farming Xp/min, shoulda ran hard.

Two TR lives ago, I ran all elites because I enjoy playing all content, wanted the challenge, and didnt mind less Xp/min because I was having fun. This last TR life, I wanted to get back to 20 to raid and experience the epic part of the game so I ran mostly hard. We were doing 4 and 5 minute completions of quests on hard that would have taken 20 or more minutes when using tactics and strategy on elite in the higher level content. There was still more than enough XP in the game where we could be selective and didnt have to run everything.

The complaints that elite should be accessible to everyone are unsubstantiated on all fronts, save for what I just pointed out.

[Xezrak]

Madfloyd,

I decided this would be the most appropriate thread to leave my feedback on the new epic difficulties introduced with the expansion yesterday. First off, I ran a whole slew of epics on all difficulties (I didn't run epic casual at all, but most quests I ran multiple times on normal, hard and elite).

Here is my impression of each difficulty:

Epic normal: for organized, prepared players this difficulty is a joke. For players that are breaking into epics for the first time or are simply trying to do epics without a full group, the difficulty is very appropriate. I am happy to see how this turned out, an epic difficulty for casual players to enjoy the experience beyond level 20.

Epic hard: This is where the above average/experienced players will spend most of their time I imagine. Without a properly balanced group, I still managed to walk through most of these quests easily with a group of coordinated players. Considering I play with well-geared veterans, this isn't unexpected. The increase in difficulty from normal is very appropriate and will leave a nice challenge for those ready to move past epic normal.

Epic Elite: Wow. This difficulty is truly challenging. I imagine it was designed for a geared-out group of level 25's with epic destinies. going through some of these dungeons at level 20 was pretty rough. We spent nearly 2 hours in Beyond the Rift doing this on elite. The amount of damage some of these monsters are pushing out is truly 'epic', and having a tank and/or strong form of crowd control is essential here. Mob saves are very high, and I liked how blade barrier kiting/Dotting was rendered inefficient in most cases.

Over all, I am extremely impressed with the balance of the new difficulties. You guys really pulled it off well and I look forward to pushing my skills with the new insane epic elite content (and old content, hehe - I still have a soft spot for red fens and von series).

Hats off to turbine for getting this right.

I think this sums it up perfectly.

Extremely well done turbine :D

Edit: the only changes needed are maybe tweaking some of the elites to be a little harder, leave norm/hard as is.

[Yehediah]

We did it in permadeath at level on elite.

And lived.

And your point is? Clearly you didn't read my postings. Yes, it CAN be done. As I noted, I've done it before. However, I've also seen it fail way more often than it succeeds and the average PUG won't even attempt it as a result. If you have a group that works really well together and have some people with very good timing and communication, yes, it's fairly easy. But, that doesn't describe the greatest majority of the PUGS. And, frankly, it's a RPG - so, that timing thing is highly annoying for those not into that style.


I dont buy the justification that all quests of the same level should be the same challenge. There have been quite a few examples in the game over the years where this has not been the case. It makes the game less vanilla and more fun.

Again, and your point is? Clearly you haven't read the posting, it's way out of whack comparatively. This sort of thing is easy enough for Turbine to monitor. See # of quest attempts at difficulty and see number of successes. They ought to be monitoring this, but sometimes I don't think they do. Having some quests more difficult than others at the level is fine - they have a variety of difficulties. But, when many 20's have a hard time with the level 17 quest (15 on norm, 17 on E), then that's a bit much on a game whose rewards are based at the level number. It means most won't do the quest.


The idea that elite should be accessible to everyone with no learning curve whatsoever is an entitlement issue. The real reason people ask for elite to be easier is they want the highest XP but they dont want to move slower or use tactics to play through elite - so they ask for quests to be nerfed to autocompletion so they can farm xp/min.

Uh, no - again, you make large assumptions that are not true. I seldom am concerned about XP/min - I like doing most of the quests 1x/life. I therefore hate quests like this because they are hard to get done because few want to do it - and if they are looking straight at XP and loot, yeah, it's not very worthwhile - especially with a higher chance of total wipe/failure.


There was still more than enough XP in the game where we could be selective and didnt have to run everything.

Well, that's kind of part of the point. Most won't because it is too hard and ain't worth it. Therefore those that do want to run it are usually out-of-luck because it is way out of whack for it's level difficulty.


The complaints that elite should be accessible to everyone are unsubstantiated on all fronts, save for what I just pointed out.

Clearly not Mr. Know-it-all, if you actually READ my complaints... only unsubstantiated for YOUR play style.

[phillymiket]

I don't think difficulty is too far off.

I've run some characters on F2P account with no gear recently.
Admittedly, one cannot simply turn off knowledge of the quests/game.

At level Elite quests solo, for me under those conditions, are challenging at times but easy to do.
There is a bit of a 'rocks/paper/scissors' thing with some quests seemingly undoable for some classes for me (like hold for reinforcements on a melee etc).

Normal and hard are Ok, I guess, but I feel Elite should be more difficult across the board.
I should have a very good chance of dieing on an ungeared 28pt build instead of dieing only when I get very unlucky or sloppy.
On a geared, main account TR soloing, death on Elite is a pretty rare thing.

Would amping up Elite make Elite unplayable for new players?

It might.
It would also increase the learning curve.
I don't recall being able to do Elite when I first started.
I also don't recall feeling left out of anything or feeling entitled to do every quest at the most difficult setting, either.

For Epics:
Normal seems good if you want to make them very accessible.
It's very easy on a 20.

Hard could be harder.
It should feel like more of a step up.
Only on certain aspects of E-H can you even notice a difference from E-N.
When a E-hard level trash mob hits you should think 'Oh, we're not on normal. Slow down'.

Elite is good like it is.

Long story short -
I have no problem making the game very easy for newer players.
Thats where Casual/Normal should be and pretty much is.

Hard, especially for Epics, could be harder. It's very easy on Epic and on Heroic it is very hard to predict how much of a step up it will be.
It should be where TRs can't just put it on auto-pilot but still not be too challenged.
New players should be at the edge of what they can do.

Elite, I feel, should be very hard.
On Elite, the game should be balanced for the top level players.
So for E-Epic things are good.
For E-Heroic you are way, way off.
.

[Machination]

I finally got around to running the old raids on hard last week (pre-U14). Von5/6, chrono, DQ, etc.

All I can say is, there is no point in having a normal and hard difficulty. Hard is way too easy, it should be exactly at the difficulty of Pre-U14 Epic. Then you have enough of a difference between normal/hard to justify having both of these difficulties on these older raids and quests (quest wise DA hard epic felt like the old lvl 18 elite, it really was pretty silly). You would still have normal for those really casual groups that just want an "epic" completion. It was so easy, everyone was commenting and saying was it really on "hard"?



I think this sums it up perfectly.

Extremely well done turbine :D

Edit: the only changes needed are maybe tweaking some of the elites to be a little harder, leave norm/hard as is.

[Xezrak]

I finally got around to running the old raids on hard last week (pre-U14). Von5/6, chrono, DQ, etc.

All I can say is, there is no point in having a normal and hard difficulty. Hard is way too easy, it should be exactly at the difficulty of Pre-U14 Epic. Then you have enough of a difference between normal/hard to justify having both of these difficulties on these older raids and quests (quest wise DA hard epic felt like the old lvl 18 elite, it really was pretty silly). You would still have normal for those really casual groups that just want an "epic" completion. It was so easy, everyone was commenting and saying was it really on "hard"?

Please remember epics are no longer 'epic' quests as they use to be, the refer to level 20+ not extremely tough difficulty so hard difficulty definately shouldn't be as hard as the old epics, considering epic was ment to be the most challenging difficulty, the equivalent difficulty to what epic use to be is epic elite which I think should always be scaled up to challenge the very best guilds and players.

[PsychoBlonde]

And your point is? Clearly you didn't read my postings. Yes, it CAN be done. As I noted, I've done it before. However, I've also seen it fail way more often than it succeeds and the average PUG won't even attempt it as a result. If you have a group that works really well together and have some people with very good timing and communication, yes, it's fairly easy. But, that doesn't describe the greatest majority of the PUGS. And, frankly, it's a RPG - so, that timing thing is highly annoying for those not into that style.

There are a number of quests in the game that are nearly undoable on elite if you're not a TR with access to specialized gear, and In The Flesh is one of them. Why? Because on elite, you don't just get tougher mobs, you get an entirely different TYPE of mob (beholders), scads of them, who destroy all your careful planning by eliminating your buffs and then one-shot your healer . . . and then the rest of the party shortly afterwards.

Oh, and let's not forget that you enter the end fight with a beholder RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU and it antimagics the ENTIRE GROUP instantly before you have even finished loading into the room. You can't "pull slowly" or "not zerg" because you're thrown into a room with a ton of mobs who can all see you and actually begin attacking you BEFORE YOU HAVE FINISHED LOADING IN AND CAN MOVE.

The rest of the quest is indeed susceptible to tactics and smart play, and, in fact, is not particularly difficult. The end fight, purely because of those beholders, is stupid. Replace them with chaos beholders and now it's appropriately difficult. Probably quite a number of groups will still wipe on that end fight because of the prismatic spray or frenzy. But they will not have hacked their way through a 30 minute quest only to watch the entire party get wiped by two trash mobs.

Anyway, I think I have said this elsewhere in this thread, but I'll say it again: I don't think elite really needs much tuning *overall* And I think if you're on your 3rd+ life, you OUGHT to be able to solo *most* elites if you're built to be self-sufficient and not, say, a straight barbarian or healer other heavily "unbalanced" build. Nothing wrong with those builds, *that* comes down to your personal play preferences.

I think what needs to be fixed is the *style* of some *very specific* quests. Heck, I'll even list as many of them as I can:

1. Problems with Traps:

The Bookbinder Rescue and Repossession.
Partycrashers.
Big Top.
Shan-to-Kor.
Monastery of the Scorpion.
Crucible.
The traps are on the non-optional path and often cannot be avoided short of knowing about them in advance and cheating. Some of them cannot be disarmed. The past few times I've done Monastery on elite, we pretty much had to accept that in order to get down the first shaft, we were all going to have to die and cake. Oh, and it's LOVELY how you can't use Death Pact because apparently the spike traps bug that out. I've seen someone get through the little spike maze ONCE on elite, never replicated even by people who've done it before and know how to do it, because the extent of those spikes isn't always predictable. Personally, I think Rackham's Trial out in TBC is about perfectly tuned for crit-path traps. They can be very nasty if you don't know what to do, and occasionally troublesome if you do, but if you pay attention and move quick you can manage it.

2. Problems with Fights:

Graverobber: either tone down the dread zombie HP a bit or make it so that you don't HAVE to kill ALMOST ALL of them to finish the dang quest.
Acute Delirium (the first 5 minutes of this quest are tougher than the ENTIRE REST OF THE CHAIN PUT TOGETHER, DOUBLED, AND ADDED TO ANOTHER, HIGHER-LEVEL QUEST. Although the 'blindness kills eyeballs" bit may help. IF you've got TR's with radiance gear.)
In the Flesh (already discussed)
Litany of the Dead: Cholthulzz side (and only that side, the rest is reasonable)
Running with the Devils (trash mobs are too powerful compared to others at level, and the self-healing on the eladrin bosses approaches the absurd)
Tomb of the Shadow King (there's too much incorporeal trash that respawns constantly and the end fight is paradoxically way too easy and doesn't *require* you to use the special)
Against The Demon Queen Part 1 (Lailat is a CR 28 on elite in this quest. CR 28. THAT IS TOO HIGH. Yes, you can cheese her out with ranged--assuming they don't get unlucky and get one-shot by a blade barrier while they're trying to stay away from her. Maybe tone down Lailat just a teeny tiny bit and throw in a few adds or something so people don't just walk in and sneeze all over it.)
Spire of Validus(the ENTIRE FLOOR falling out in the end fight is just BS. At least give people a CHANCE if they take more than TEN SECONDS to kill the ELITE LICH.)
Velah. Not epic Velah (although that sucks too), just regular old at-level VON. The amount of work you have to go through to get this raid together and run the pre-raid should militate against the kinds of ridiculous contortions you have to go through to actually kill the end boss at-level. She's pretty bad on epic, too, but I suppose that's reduced because you don't HAVE to do her on Epic Elitish any more unless you REALLY want to.
Weapons Shipment. I, personally, think the crazy fight we now have in here is actually kinda fun, I just think that a lot of people are not prepared for or can deal with the sheer quantity of force missiles they get when the 10 casters all spawn at once. I wouldn't mind if they took Gladewatch Outpost and Kobold Assault and made the mobs spawn like they do in Weapons Shipment, either, it would actually make those quests FUN instead of TEDIOUS.
Sins of Attrition/Bastion of Power. *Slightly* too many mobs, and the screwed-up alert does horrible, horrible things to you.
New Invasion: Get rid of the Binding Chain in the end fight. Barnzidu is more than nasty enough without having the ability to inescapably trap people in the curse platform explosion. (Genesis point, oddly enough, is just about right in terms of how hard it is vs. what you get.)
ALL OF THRENAL. Not one single thing out there that's actually fun to do. It's all annoying, stupid, badly designed, and the loot is not worth it.
ALL OF RESTLESS ISLES. Titan loot is junk now (not that any of it other than the chattering ring was that great to begin with), the flagging quests are WAY too long for the xp you get and the explore area is WAY too poorly mapped and convoluted to make messing with this part of the game worthwhile. Which is sad, because Titan is actually a pretty cool raid and there's some neat design ideas on display here.

The rest of the game, difficulty-wise, I really have no problem with. Some quests are unpleasant to do but they can still be fun. Every single life I DREAD the prospect of dealing with the above quests, however. Arguably some other quests are *perhaps* a bit too easy, but, hey, I don't *mind* if some people are having crazy silly fun time trouncing on some things. I do mind when nearly everybody uses words like "annoying, tedious, unrewarding, grind, pike, get it over with" to describe certain quests.

3. Abbot:

My problem with this has mostly to do with the fact that it's *so* easy for ONE PERSON to have a bit of packet failure or bad timing and FOOM, raid wipe. There's really only one change that I think would make the world of difference: in tiles, let the people who aren't wearing goggles see where the tiles are AT without being able to tell whether they're solid or not. Leave EVERYTHING ELSE exactly as it is. Why this specific change? Because then you won't have 60% of the people in the raid sitting around waiting twenty minutes while the tilers try to get themselves organized. If there's a required moment in the middle of the raid where most of the raid can go afk, take a nap, watch a television show, etc, then it's bad design. And then, if the raid wipes due to inferno lag or ice island failure, you aren't faced with, yay, another TWENTY MINUTES of sitting around WAITING for somebody else to screw up. I know that some people can do it faster. Yay for them. 99% of the playerbase can't do it AT ALL.

Also, one final note:

Devs, for crying out loud, defending one room/area/NPC for a certain length of time is boring as ****, and there are SO. VERY. MANY. quests where you do this. SO MANY. PLEASE STOP ADDING MORE WITH EVERY PACK. THERE ARE ENOUGH OF THEM NOW.

Thank you.

[Andveeter]

Difficulty is relative to class because the quests don't ask for variety. Apply liberal quantities of hack and slash until complete. Take rogue for instance... Sneaking should be a viable means by which to complete most dungeons... Many dungeons however demand you fight in order to proceed some quests this is understandable (I'm looking at you devil assault) other quests like Fear Factory where you have to kill various mook trash to even open a door? Broken... I don't even want to play my rogue anymore because every other quest has demands like this... Meanwhile as a sorcerer I waltz in drop Otiluke's once or twice everything dies and I top off what HP I lost from a monster managing to catch up to me with couple pots and continue on... Invisibility is more useful then a high move silently score in this comparison with the exclusion of monsters who can see invisibility... Oh did I mention my favorite monsters that can see invisibility you normally gotta fight through anyways such as servants of the overlord? It doesn't matter if I'm a sneaky rogue that manages to succeed the hide and move silently checks get to the end I have to fight a boss anyways so my stealth does nothing to help the completion and I must either go back to start help the melee and casters clean up the trash on the way or sit there and wait for them to catch up...

That's only comparing rogues to sorcerers as well let alone other classes... Difficulty doesn't need to be fixed... variety is what needs the fixing make more skills more useful in more areas with more content that is made easier by having wider varieties of skills... and traps that deal insane damage don't count for making rogues more useful... it's oversights in the development of dungeons that needs improvements... move silently is useless... maybe put in dungeons with keys guarded by invincible demigods that you don't have to fight but steal the key from to give a rogue purpose? Maybe make it so doors don't require wholesale slaughter to open but pick lock which is mostly a dump skill that isn't required to max since locks don't have insane DCs and don't blow up like traps... I rolled up rogue this life because it sounded fun... it isn't and I want to hit 20 again asap just to TR again... I'm essentially just melee DPS as a rogue that is squishier then a sorcerer or Kensei or monk or even a wizard... don't get me wrong nerf isn't whats needed more variety of content harder doesn't mean more damage more HP more fort etc... you can make things harder by asking us to use a wider variety of skills...swim is a dump skill no one can cast fly (which wizards and sorcerers should) which seems to use swim for a modifier... and there isn't many a dungeon that wants us to take a dive other then crucible... swimming fast and longer breath bar? why bother? just put on water breathing! not like you gotta swim fast enough a shark doesn't catch you right?... Listen is pretty pointless to nothing uses a listen check as far as I can tell and anything that does if you keep your spot check up it does far superior to spot it then hear it... VON5 and Xorian Cypher is the last place I remember requiring any form of splitting up and utilization of tactics... anything below or above those... axe to the head or fireball to the face fixes all...

[PsychoBlonde]

Listen is pretty pointless to nothing uses a listen check as far as I can tell . . .

Ahh, you forget about the floors that fall out in Wizard King. If you have a decent listen (which you can get by having a high wis, no need for RANKS, and it's NOT ANY HIGHER ON EPIC), you can tell in advance whether there's a possibility the floor MIGHT fall out!

TOTALLY justifies the existence of the skill! TOTALLY worth pumping it!

There are a couple of other quests where you can get Free Extra Pointless DM Text, too. But something actually useful? No.

They really ought to do what 4th ed did, and take Hide/MS and make those one skill, and take Spot/Listen and make THOSE one skill, and take Tumble/Jump and make THOSE one skill. I'd say swim/climb too but we don't have the climb. If invisibility is OP put in occasional mobs who aren't fooled by it. Oh wait, these already exist. Put in occasions where there are doors where a stealther *can* go open and pull the necessary lever, sparing some time. Someone with stealth can sneak up and kill that obnoxious dude who rings that **** bell and summons like 50 other mobs. (Or, you can do it at a distance in a tenth of the time with a spell. Hmm.)

This has been a problem with rogues in D&D since first edition. Why have one when the casters have Invisibility 10' radius and Silence 15' radius? Who cares about backstab when you have disintegrate? Who cares about open lock when you have Knock? (And, in fact, knock used to open many, many doors that open lock DIDN'T because you couldn't pick magical locks but you COULD knock them). Who needs a sneaky person to go get info when you can just Scry it? Who cares whether your Ranger can avoid getting lost in the woods when you can just Teleport? Or fly? Or Dimension Door? If you look at ShadowDancer, apparently the way to increase the power/relevance of Rogues is to give them access to Dim Door, Shadow Walk, and Implosion! *Facepalm*

Another problem is that *only* the Rogue can do what the Rogue can do in a group. So if you have a stealth section, *what* is the rest of the party doing? The fighter and paladin and barbarian can't come along. They can do one thing: Beat stuff up. So yeah, the least common denominator for questing is that there ALWAYS has to be stuff to Beat Up, because otherwise fighters/paladins/barbs have NOTHING to contribute.

The ultimate solution is to let everybody do everything, but have it work in different ways. How do rogues/rangers/monks bypass mobs? Sneak. How do bards? Fascinate em. Or bluff em. If you're out of sight before the effect wears off, they forget they saw you. How do clerics/favored souls/paladins do it? Maybe Diplomacy. Most mobs don't aggro on them. How do casters do it? Invis. Shadow Walk. These are not the droids you're looking for. Something. Maybe Fighters/Barbs can be so intimidating that the mobs run away instead of wanting to fight. Maybe some mobs don't aggro on druids in animal form, because, hey, it's just an animal and who cares. It doesn't have to work all the time or apply for every quest--a good beat-em-up is fun too. But having stuff like this salted a bit more liberally through the game would indeed be fun. Also, *finding this stuff out* would be a challenge and an adventure by itself.

[Ebondevil]

One thing which I have noticed which does disappoint me, is that the turbine Developers seem to have thrown the concept of Challenge Rating and Encounter Levels out of the window. The Effective Encounter Level of some fights, primarily in Elite quests is well above what it should be, at least based on the Pen and Paper, but that's not really a bad starting point.

The Encounter Level of a fight is generally based on how tough the mobs are to face as a group, and should roughly equate to the Overall party level of a 4 Person party, 6 person parties can of course face tougher encounters.



% of Encounters Encounter Difficulty
10% Easy EL Lower than party Level
20% Easy* Special**
50% Challenging EL Equals that of the Party
15% Very Difficult EL 1-4 Higher than Party Level
5% Overpowering EL 5+ higher than Party Level

* Easy If Handled properly
** There's a trick to handle this and if the party can discover it
they have a good chance of succeeding.Now the D20 SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) Site has a very nice Encounter calculator (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/), If we plug in the aforementioned Elite 'Against the Demon Queen' with Lailat at CR 28. If we plug that into the Encounter Calculator with a full Raid of Level 14 Characters it throws out that it's unbeatable.

A full raid of 12 Level 14 characters comes out at an Overall Party Level of 17.2 and they shouldn't even get any experience from the kill because the Demon queens CR is too far above their level. This in no way falls into the 20% of encounters that are 'Easy if Handled correctly' It doesn't even really fall into the 5% of encounters that are Overpowering, it's just too much. And that's before you add in the additional Purple named benefits that make it immune to the players doing anything clever.


As for Beholders, they need two simple fixes to stop them being so totally broken.


Have them suppress the buffs on players, while the Anti-magic is on the player, not wipe them, so when the Anti-magic effect ends, the buffs come back.
Players should be immune to the beholder Rays and all other harmful spell effects when under the effects of the Anti-magic.

To sum up: I feel that Challenge ratings of mobs should be closer to the stated quest level. not disproportionately above, if that means increasing the quest level of Elites beyond 2 higher than normal then so be it. And Beholders need fixing.

[Truga]

Have them suppress the buffs on players, while the Anti-magic is on the player, not wipe them, so when the Anti-magic effect ends, the buffs come back.
Players should be immune to the beholder Rays and all other harmful spell effects when under the effects of the Anti-magic.


I have a slight problem with this:
1. Yes, please. Currently people will often get stoned by beholders, just to be dispelled. Getting stoned again when the beholder turns away would be pretty awesome.

2. No. Here's why: In PnP a beholder will turn look sideways or even away with his large eye before staring you into stone age. In DDO, enemies always face the people they're attacking. Unless beholder AI gets updated and customized especially for beholders, the only kills they'll be making are accidental ones after switching aggro, but not yet turning around.

[Ebondevil]

2. No. Here's why: In PnP a beholder will turn look sideways or even away with his large eye before staring you into stone age. In DDO, enemies always face the people they're attacking. Unless beholder AI gets updated and customized especially for beholders, the only kills they'll be making are accidental ones after switching aggro, but not yet turning around.

Except I know this isn't true for Beholders as I've been hit by Beholder rays even when standing directly behind them, which honestly I'm fine with.

Also in PnP the Beholder could close it's Central Eye to hit the Players with it's Rays, but under those circumstances the Players should be able to get the effects of their Buffs: Energy resistance, Boosted saves from Greater Heroism etc. because the Anti-Magic is not effecting them when they get hit by the Ray. So even if the facing is a problem it should be fixable by the Beholder being able to turn the Anti-magic effect on or off, but that requires the buffs to be suppressed, not erased.

A Beholders Anti-Magic is very powerful, but that power does have a number of Drawbacks in PnP, none of which work have any effect in DDO.

Really it should suppress all magical effects, including weapons and gear, but I suspect that may be a bit beyond the DDO engine capabilities.

[Truga]

Except I know this isn't true for Beholders as I've been hit by Beholder rays even when standing directly behind them, which honestly I'm fine with.Like I said, just after switching aggro, the beholder can and will often kill you even before turning around. Unlike other mobs in DDO it doesn't need to turn around to do that. But it will, after a second or two turn around to face you if you're not dead by then and still hold aggro :P


Also in PnP the Beholder could close it's Central Eye to hit the Players with it's Rays, but under those circumstances the Players should be able to get the effects of their Buffs: Energy resistance, Boosted saves from Greater Heroism etc. because the Anti-Magic is not effecting them when they get hit by the Ray. So even if the facing is a problem it should be fixable by the Beholder being able to turn the Anti-magic effect on or off, but that requires the buffs to be suppressed, not erased.

A Beholders Anti-Magic is very powerful, but that power does have a number of Drawbacks in PnP, none of which work have any effect in DDO.

Really it should suppress all magical effects, including weapons and gear, but I suspect that may be a bit beyond the DDO engine capabilities.

Agreed with all of this. I think beholders need some new stuff. Doesn't the Abbot use disjunction on people to suppress their items? Since the mechanic is there, it shouldn't be too hard to code it in for anti-magic gaze. And, Beholders could use new AI. Whether it's looking away or closing their eyes. I'd go for turning away, because it's much easier to notice, and has the side effect of also nerfing anyone flanking the beholder.

[Machination]

Yes I am very aware that the "hard epic" is designed to be less difficult than previous "epic", which was by design somewhere between the new "hard epic" and "elite epic". My point, is that that entire design is flawed because the new "normal epic" is too easy, and "hard epic" is not much harder than "normal epic".

My suggestion (it is just my opinion so take it as you will), is that "hard epic" be brought in line with the previous "epic" difficulty. As it stands, the previous "epic" difficulty is already much easier due to power creep (gear, epic destinies) with the new update. So we should have (again, in my opinion):

1. Normal Epic - either what it is now or maybe slightly harder. I don't think it is too big of an issue which.

2. Hard Epic - which is in line with the previous "epic" pre-U14

3. Elite Epic - which is something I think should be more difficult than it is now, and on any quest really only achievable with a group of level 25 toons with decent gear.

So, yeah, I understand Turbine's intention, its just that I think the implementation is not really such that it will please the largest number of players. I think something like the above would please a larger percentage of players and have something for everyone.

Again, its just my opinion......


Please remember epics are no longer 'epic' quests as they use to be, the refer to level 20+ not extremely tough difficulty so hard difficulty definately shouldn't be as hard as the old epics, considering epic was ment to be the most challenging difficulty, the equivalent difficulty to what epic use to be is epic elite which I think should always be scaled up to challenge the very best guilds and players.

[Duncani_Daho]

I agree that the connotations of Epic should be "difficult" and "challenging." Let those who just want to see and experience the content sweat-free run Epic normal difficulty. But Epic hard, which is now Epic "easy", should be a tough nut to crack. And Epic Elite should be the Mount Everest of DDO.

Why make the new "Epic" content easier than Amroth? Bastion of Power, the New Invasion, Sins of Attrition-- all of those quests are more difficult for their level than the new Menace quests. Tons of shrines, short-cut versions, and power creep (easily obtained Epic gear from the Cannith challenges) all combine to make Epic hard a stroll through the park.

It makes one think-- these drow sure design nice Houses but man, they really are wimpy.

Don't Drink the Water-- we ran that Epic elite, and yeah there were challenging moments, but the boss didn't do a very good job of finding us and stomping us into oblivion. Much of the time he bugs out and can't locate the players.

Please make Epic hard more challenging. And please kick Epic elite up a notch. It's ok if players fail there first few times. People can experience the quests on normal and hard, but elite should be reserved for those who want a major accomplishment upon completion.

Thanks!

[eden2760]

Not picking on you, or trying to be condescending, but feel a few things should be pointed out.


There are a number of quests in the game that are nearly undoable on elite if you're not a TR with access to specialized gear...

Let's start with that, which seems to lead into a lot of your other points. As a non-TR you can skip these quests without gimping your xp. You need far, FAR less xp. If you can't do them as non-TR / don't have the gear, skip them until you come to a life / get gear where you can. You went on to touch on / talk about elites. The same principle applies... you don't need to elite streak as a non-TR to get through the grind of xping to cap. Even TR-1s can get by with a hard streak and hard is significantly easier. Stick to that until your character matures enough gear-wise/stat-wise to be able to handle the elites.

As a 28-point build, with no gearing from alts, etc., you should probably not be able to zerg through everything elite all the way to 20. You should have to work up to that level of play. And this seems to be the mindset of many newer/less experienced players in many cases. They can’t automatically tackle the top echelon of the available difficulty in quests, so it must be too hard. I know you were speaking of specific quests… but these principles absolutely apply in those quests (perhaps even more so) where you can do less face-rolling to get by.




1. Problems with Traps:
The Bookbinder Rescue and Repossession.
Partycrashers.
Big Top.
Shan-to-Kor.
Monastery of the Scorpion.
Crucible.
The traps are on the non-optional path and often cannot be avoided short of knowing about them in advance and cheating. Some of them cannot be disarmed. The past few times I've done Monastery on elite, we pretty much had to accept that in order to get down the first shaft, we were all going to have to die and cake. Oh, and it's LOVELY how you can't use Death Pact because apparently the spike traps bug that out. I've seen someone get through the little spike maze ONCE on elite, never replicated even by people who've done it before and know how to do it, because the extent of those spikes isn't always predictable. Personally, I think Rackham's Trial out in TBC is about perfectly tuned for crit-path traps. They can be very nasty if you don't know what to do, and occasionally troublesome if you do, but if you pay attention and move quick you can manage it.

Again… this is going to require a very specific type of player: one with improved evasion, and decent saves/hps to absorb the blow. Of course an arcane/divine/melee without imp evasion and less than stellar gear/hp isn’t going to be able to negotiate these traps… they shouldn’t be able to. Again… party balance and having specific roles in your party. This involves knowing the quest, and being patient enough to wait until you get these required roles for these specific roles met before going in. As far as the DC involved in disabling them… anyone that is specifically specced for dealing with traps (trapper, or arcane/divine rogue splash with regular ranks) and optimal +dd +search equipment should be able to handle these. I’ve never had a problem on elite with a 1 rogue splash, +13 disable device/search, 1 enhancement point rogue skill boost, and ship buffs to disable even on monastery (reputably some of the highest dc traps in the heroic game). The same goes for crucible and the evasion/swimming/low wisdom roles needed. Fill that role!

I can’t speak about abbot, not having ever done it, but every other specific quest you mentioned boils down to the same. If you’re not well geared enough / your build/stats aren’t right to contribute to the quest, either move on, or form a party and get the builds you need to do it.

I like to solo a lot, and I guess this is just my personal preference, but I don’t think every single dungeon should be completely solable on elite if you don’t have the skillset to deal with the traps, types of mobs, etc.
You either get your character and party up to the level required or move on. And it is possible… people do these things all the time, but they’ve had to put in their time grinding for the gear, grinding out the past lives, and tweaking their builds to be able to do so. They didn’t walk in and be instantly able to do things as a 28-point build with no gear either.

To expect that even this list of specific quests will be nerfed down to make that possible is unreasonable… it’ll leave you nowhere to go.

As for me, as far as the difficulty goes for leveling from 1 to 20 as a TR-2 with close to optimal twink gear, I'd say the difficulty is pretty much spot on. When I'm doing elites, it's not ZOMG end of the world challenging, but I know that if I screw up and get too much DA, don't take my time and think things through on certain quests properly, then I'm going to die. And for me, it's been reaching that level of ability that has been the real challenge. For the more casual player, that's why there's normal, hard difficulty and the ability to fill out a specific group of roles.

Endgame? I haven't touched much of the post-motu end game... so I can't really comment.

Just my $.02.

[CombatLibrarian]

The low to mid level trap search DCs. Dear god, the trap DCs on low to mid elites. I just came back after a break from the game, excited to try new content, but this is killing the game for me.

I enjoy playing trappers. I am not a 5x True Reincarnation with loads of plat in the bank. My characters are of varying levels, but all "first-lifers". I've still spent quite a bit of money on this game over time on races, classes, account upgrades, and adventure packs. I own 32-pt. builds.

Running all-elite is how people play the game now. It's somewhat Turbine's own fault for introducing the bravery buffs, but also the fault of a game balance that allows everyone BUT trappers to still do their jobs at the same level.

This is what really bothers me about the state of trap DCs:

Let's say the party is an average level 5 and runs a chain that runs Elite 5 to Elite 8.

Damage Dealers: Can still deal damage. I've never heard anyone say "Wow, I just can't hit anything in here, it's all misses."

Healers: Can still provide enough healing to keep the party up.

Tanks: Can still pull together enough mitigation to live and enough taunt to grab aggro.

Trappers: Useful as **** on a construct bull in the capacity of a trapper. Can still be damage dealers, but may as well go spec out of all of their trapping enhancements as they're still not enough.

To anyone saying "Just run normal/hard": TRY IT. Try finding groups that want to run anything but elite all day every day lest they break BB.

Bottom line, this is what you should need to trap on low to midlevel ELITE quests:

1. Be a minimum level of what the quest would be on Normal difficulty, or (Elite Adjusted Quest level - 2).
2. Solid ability scores in the appropriate abilities. (NOT TR/Tome'd values).
3. Max ranks/level in spot/search/disable device for warning/finding/disabling traps.
4. Appropriate item bonuses for spot/search/disable. This should be the best REASONABLY available gear. The insanely rare items with far above average bonuses for their level req. should not be factored in here.
5. Max bonuses to search/spot/disable as appropriate to character level from enhancements.
6. Max skill boost enhancement as appropriate to character level.

If the player has all of these things, but cannot hit the DCs, THE DCs NEED TO COME DOWN.

Either that, or you need to jack up the damage, AC, and saves on elite quest mobs until the other roles are just as useless in that elite as trappers are and force everyone out of elite runs that isn't TR geared to the teeth etc., but somehow I doubt most people would approve of this solution.

As it is, right now, trappers are the only role currently unable to do their job in low-to-mid elites without overleveling/overgearing compared to all other roles.

EDIT: A friend of mine came up with a rather good suggestion.

The problem with uber-optimization right now is that traps are binary. Either you can disable them, or you can't. Optimizing DPS, Tank, and Heals are a slightly different proposition because it's still possible to just take a little longer if you're not the Uberest of the Uber. So, how to reward the uberest of the uber trappers without telling those less uber to GTFO?

Scale the reward for the check, in a fashion similar to this:

Spot:
Base DC: You notice the trap at the standard range.
Exceptional DC: You notice and can search for the trap from further away.
Uber DC: As above, and you also get short stacking buff to search checks.

Search:
Base DC: You successfully find the trap.
Exceptional DC: You get a short stacking buff to disable device checks.
Uber DC: As above, but the buff is more potent.
ALTERNATIVE for Uber DC: Add more secret doors that require an Uber Search DC. Make these immune to detect secret doors. They don't all need to be alternative paths, not every mod can support that and it would be a huge task. Just toss some loot chests behind them.

Disable Device:
Base DC: You disable the trap, chance for a minor trap explosion that damages you (no crazy numbers or instant kills, just a penalty), however the trap is still disabled.
Exceptional DC: You disable the trap with guaranteed no explosion.
Uber DC: You disable the trap. Guaranteed double parts from trap or other similar material reward.

Something like this would make it easier to have reasonable DCs for most trappers while rewarding those who go the extra mile or the extra several miles...just as the other roles enjoy already.

[Hilltrot]

The problem I have is that you're everywhere.

One second the dungeons are a cakewalk. I mean really easy. The next, you've got your really hard adventure even on normal mode.

Most of your level 14 adventures are more difficult than your level 15 and 16 adventures.

Sometimes the ones you've labelled challenging are easy. Sometimes they aren't.

I never know what the difficulty will be.

[Hesselbacher]

Maybe I am alone here, maybe I am just an old man. It is interesting that you say 10th lvl. I usually run by myself. I can run elite at my lvl through lvl 4, 5 sometimes. That is to easy. 6 -10 at a couple lvls above, that is ok. But once I reach 10, I start having problems. Some dungeons I am 4 lvls above and I can't even run casual. The monsters ai is in my opinion messed up. They seem to be able to cast 2 or 3 spells at the same time. They seem to have unlimited spell points casting heal more time than my hirling cleric. I have had many hirling clerics watch me die. I was tring GH and running in wilderness. One on one I was doing what I expected. I could take out small groups of 6 or 7 But when I have to fight an army by myself, I don't expect the guy I am killing to hang on the the last of his hit points while I hit him over and over. If it showed him being healed or drinking a potion then I would understand.

In my opinion, casual should be easy enough to walk through dungeon to see what you can expect At lvl there is no reason anyone should be killed on casual. Normal shoud be a challange, but you should be able to test what works best against monster. Hard should be hard at lvl, but if you are running it 3 or 4 lvls above you should not get your but wooped. Elite should only be possible with group. If I run elite 6 lvls above dungeon, I should be able to squeeze through if I know dungeon well. This is only with higher lvl dungeons. How can I learn a dungeon to know what to do, if I can't even get throguh on casual.

If I continue to get killed runing a high lvl dungeon on casual when I am at lvl or a few lvls higher, then maybe I am just not good enough to play this game. I did much better at rolling the dice with the orginal.

[Nitesco]

Epic Normal is fine for casual or solo players.

Epic Hard needs to be a bit harder.

Epic Elite doesn't need to be any easier.

I think loot drop rates are where the balance can be fine tuned. Loot should have a significant increased in drop rate between difficulty levels. It should be significant enough so that if people can run the higher difficulty, they will. There might be room for an increase in Epic Elite difficulty once people are capped and have their Epic Destinies mastered. Then I would like to see only the best and highest quality loot dropping from the most difficult content. I think we are getting closer to this now.

[Ebondevil]

The monsters ai is in my opinion messed up. They seem to be able to cast 2 or 3 spells at the same time. They seem to have unlimited spell points casting heal more time than my hirling cleric.

They do have Unlimited Spell points...

[azmodeus1]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?

If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

sadly you're mistaken if you think the games been balnced for uber players, old epic content was trivalized completely.

seriously do you even play your game? logon, run the motu chains on each difficulty and its perfectly clear, en is fine, ee is fine, eh needs to be more midline. en should have a very poor droprate for named items, eh should have a poor droprate, and ee should have what is currently dropping on en [from what i've seen the drops are the same on any epic difficulty].

getting everything iwanted from the xpac in two weeks was fun, but whats going to keep me playing, when i can get multiple epic items in a few hours of play.

sadly the idiotic implimentation of the xpack with these difficulties has ruined any lasting play experience.

catering to new players seems good, but i bet not nearly as many as you had hoped for started playing, and alot of the vets who've been playing several years or more will simply move on to something more worth thier time if difficulty/reward/grind aren't addresssed....soon.

[danzig138]

They do have Unlimited Spell points...

Yep. Unlimited spell points, and, it seems, Quicken Spell (which is great if you don't have to worry about the spell point cost).

[Xezrak]

sadly you're mistaken if you think the games been balnced for uber players, old epic content was trivalized completely.

seriously do you even play your game? logon, run the motu chains on each difficulty and its perfectly clear, en is fine, ee is fine, eh needs to be more midline. en should have a very poor droprate for named items, eh should have a poor droprate, and ee should have what is currently dropping on en [from what i've seen the drops are the same on any epic difficulty].

getting everything iwanted from the xpac in two weeks was fun, but whats going to keep me playing, when i can get multiple epic items in a few hours of play.

sadly the idiotic implimentation of the xpack with these difficulties has ruined any lasting play experience.

catering to new players seems good, but i bet not nearly as many as you had hoped for started playing, and alot of the vets who've been playing several years or more will simply move on to something more worth thier time if difficulty/reward/grind aren't addresssed....soon.

Except the issue with this is that players who already have excellent gear will be able to aquire better gear easily while everyone else will find it even more difficult to catch up.

I agree loot drops rates should be higher on harder difficulties but only to compensate for the longer duration it will take to complete the quest or maybe 10-20% bonus on top of that. Drop rates should still be significant in normal so that everyone else can acquire the required gear to attempt the elite difficulty without excessive grind. Remember the players who are running normal will also be unlikely to have access to a good guild to always run quests with.

That being said I complete agree that Elite difficulty should have some kind of reward to show off your achievement, this reward imo should be purely cosmetic in nature, it shouldn't make running elite quests even easier.

Maybe each time you complete an elite quest you gain a currency of some sort which you can exchange for various cosmetic rewards such as pets, maybe pet hats etc. visual effects, robes etc. If you want to make it even more grind orientated make it some kind of token system where you exchange a token for random cosmetic loot and make some cosmetic loot particularly rare.

The problem with the old epic quest implmentation was that you needed to be very well equiped (x hp, x DC, x weapon etc to join PuGs) or be 'in' with the elite circles to carry your character through until it got the appropriate gear.

Also giving better loot to players who frequent elite quests in a twisted kind of way is counter productive. Why? It is the very players who keep complaining the game is too easy who run this difficulty all the time, so why make them exponentially stronger than everyone else? Let them face the elite difficulty using skill, not farmed out gear which is too hard for everyone else to farm. It is the players who call even epic normal too hard that could really use the boost from better equipment to make their game more enjoyable. So why make it extra hard for them to get any decent gear? People want a challenge, don't take it away from them by equipment based power creep. Keep the rewards comestic.

[crzygrndrgn]

Well the over all feel of the game i like, but I feel that elite is way out of wack. First off, npc casters are just way over powered with the speed and casting ability. These caster can cas a spell once every .75 seconds. This can be too challenging when they seem to crit with a spell 200+ in a low level quest when even a tr with the right gear would only have a max of 180 hp. This is a level 5 character facing a Cr 9-11 average npc mob character. The Scaling needs to drop just a little like maybe to CR 7-9. Second, traps are another big issue. My level 5 monk had made is evasion roll and even roll a critical success and still was killed bya trap damaging me 3 x's my hp. that is kinda bs. I know that traps serve a perpose but traps that give a character a no chance to save is wrong. so how could even the trapper get to the box, if he had to go to the other side to get to the box and evasion doesnt work. Poisin is just plain wrong to give to a warforge. Warforge have no living tissue for all heroic poisions and dieseases. They should only get affected by magical that is een in evening star content. Last thing is gear. Gear is supposed to work all the time. I getting kinda tired of switching my gear in and out to get teh effect it has. This gets annoying when you fortifaction disapears when you in the middle of an end fight and the boss starts to hit you for critical damage when heavy fort prevents that. This is would make it balacanced again.

[Machination]

Sorry Xezrak, I am calling you on this one. You can take a player with zero uber gear whatsoever, a level 20 player 32 point build, and do kings forest, normal runs, etc. for commendations and have what I would call Uber-light gear in a week as a casual player with all the commendation turn ins and the random loot that drops in eveningstar. Ok, let's go all out and say TWO weeks. And thats just running all that stuff on norm. And, by that time you are level 23-24. With that gear, you can do everything up to the raid. You can run elites with good groups with that gear. Done.

Say it can't be done? I did it. I stopped even wanting an evenomed cloak, because I don't need it anymore, and no way I could really fit it in now with those sets. Are they the abosolute Uber setup gear? No. Are they 90% there and enough for your character to blast through elites when he is level 23-24 with that gear and Epic Destinies? Yes, yes, yes ,yes ,yes. Been there done that






Except the issue with this is that players who already have excellent gear will be able to aquire better gear easily while everyone else will find it even more difficult to catch up.

[Nitesco]

Except the issue with this is that players who already have excellent gear will be able to aquire better gear easily while everyone else will find it even more difficult to catch up.

I agree loot drops rates should be higher on harder difficulties but only to compensate for the longer duration it will take to complete the quest or maybe 10-20% bonus on top of that. Drop rates should still be significant in normal so that everyone else can acquire the required gear to attempt the elite difficulty without excessive grind. Remember the players who are running normal will also be unlikely to have access to a good guild to always run quests with.

That being said I complete agree that Elite difficulty should have some kind of reward to show off your achievement, this reward imo should be purely cosmetic in nature, it shouldn't make running elite quests even easier.

Maybe each time you complete an elite quest you gain a currency of some sort which you can exchange for various cosmetic rewards such as pets, maybe pet hats etc. visual effects, robes etc. If you want to make it even more grind orientated make it some kind of token system where you exchange a token for random cosmetic loot and make some cosmetic loot particularly rare.

The problem with the old epic quest implmentation was that you needed to be very well equiped (x hp, x DC, x weapon etc to join PuGs) or be 'in' with the elite circles to carry your character through until it got the appropriate gear.

Also giving better loot to players who frequent elite quests in a twisted kind of way is counter productive. Why? It is the very players who keep complaining the game is too easy who run this difficulty all the time, so why make them exponentially stronger than everyone else? Let them face the elite difficulty using skill, not farmed out gear which is too hard for everyone else to farm. It is the players who call even epic normal too hard that could really use the boost from better equipment to make their game more enjoyable. So why make it extra hard for them to get any decent gear? People want a challenge, don't take it away from them by equipment based power creep. Keep the rewards comestic.

There are so many things wrong with this on so many levels. Open your eyes and look around you. Look at societies and economies and what drives and motivates people. Look at the natural world too. None of your assertions have any foundation in the universe we occupy. I just don't know where you got these ideas from. I think what you have put forward here is just wishful thinking on your part. I doubt you would find many who would agree with you, who could back it up with any kind of precedent or rationale based in observational reality. It's almost like an inverse reality.

[Yehediah]

There are so many things wrong with this on so many levels. Open your eyes and look around you. Look at societies and economies and what drives and motivates people. Look at the natural world too. None of your assertions have any foundation in the universe we occupy. I just don't know where you got these ideas from. I think what you have put forward here is just wishful thinking on your part. I doubt you would find many who would agree with you, who could back it up with any kind of precedent or rationale based in observational reality. It's almost like an inverse reality.

Actually, I think he's right on target - maybe you spend too much time in game worlds and not enough in the real world! ;-)

Motivations and economies in a game world are often very different from a real world as the world is generally make-believe and tend to deviate from reality as a result.

To start, the "level" system of games have the experienced becoming super-men of sorts - something very different from actual reality. So, the more powerful they become by whatever supposed "elite" means they get there will have a resulting easier time in quests. Making it harder to satisfy them is self-defeating as it alienates any newcomers or part-time players that have a real life (unlike some gamers). This doesn't match reality as hard work does help one succeed, but it doesn't make you a super-man compared to others who come to challenge you.

[Truga]

Actually, I think he's right on target - maybe you spend too much time in game worlds and not enough in the real world! ;-)
No such thing.

[Nitesco]

Actually, I think he's right on target - maybe you spend too much time in game worlds and not enough in the real world! ;-)

Motivations and economies in a game world are often very different from a real world as the world is generally make-believe and tend to deviate from reality as a result.

To start, the "level" system of games have the experienced becoming super-men of sorts - something very different from actual reality. So, the more powerful they become by whatever supposed "elite" means they get there will have a resulting easier time in quests. Making it harder to satisfy them is self-defeating as it alienates any newcomers or part-time players that have a real life (unlike some gamers). This doesn't match reality as hard work does help one succeed, but it doesn't make you a super-man compared to others who come to challenge you.

He isn't on target for anything other than causing an exodus from DDO and for it to then fade into total obscurity and vanish into the past as other developers step into the breach with games more in tune with what people are looking for. Just like what happens to bad ideas in the real world, heh.

[Thundaga]

Spot:
Base DC: You notice the trap at the standard range.
Exceptional DC: You notice and can search for the trap from further away.
Uber DC: As above, and you also get short stacking buff to search checks.

Search:
Base DC: You successfully find the trap.
Exceptional DC: You get a short stacking buff to disable device checks.
Uber DC: As above, but the buff is more potent.
ALTERNATIVE for Uber DC: Add more secret doors that require an Uber Search DC. Make these immune to detect secret doors. They don't all need to be alternative paths, not every mod can support that and it would be a huge task. Just toss some loot chests behind them.

Disable Device:
Base DC: You disable the trap, chance for a minor trap explosion that damages you (no crazy numbers or instant kills, just a penalty), however the trap is still disabled.
Exceptional DC: You disable the trap with guaranteed no explosion.
Uber DC: You disable the trap. Guaranteed double parts from trap or other similar material reward.

I like your ideas for Spot and Search. But I don't like your idea for DD.

The trap is disabled even if the box blows up? That's not right. The box blowing up indicates a lack of experience/talent for disabling traps. If a trapper wants to do well with traps they should have to BUILD for it. This is why we have Mechanic Rogues. What ****es me off is that mech rogues have been rendered useless since the artificers showed up in Eberron. Mech rogues are supposed to excell at two main things: Crossbows and Traps. They're SUPPOSED to be the intelligent tinkerers. But overall their damage output is subpar at best. They still excell at taking care of traps, but really what is the point if they can't contribute good damage? As if that wasn't bad enough, along come the artificers who arguably do better damage with crossbows thanks to their buffs and bolt conjuring skills. If they were to make traps easy enough for anyone with a single point in DD to disable, where does that leave the intelligent mechanics? They might as well just scrap them from the game in that case since we probably won't see any improvements towards mechanics in the near future.

[Xezrak]

Sorry Xezrak, I am calling you on this one. You can take a player with zero uber gear whatsoever, a level 20 player 32 point build, and do kings forest, normal runs, etc. for commendations and have what I would call Uber-light gear in a week as a casual player with all the commendation turn ins and the random loot that drops in eveningstar. Ok, let's go all out and say TWO weeks. And thats just running all that stuff on norm. And, by that time you are level 23-24. With that gear, you can do everything up to the raid. You can run elites with good groups with that gear. Done.

Say it can't be done? I did it. I stopped even wanting an evenomed cloak, because I don't need it anymore, and no way I could really fit it in now with those sets. Are they the abosolute Uber setup gear? No. Are they 90% there and enough for your character to blast through elites when he is level 23-24 with that gear and Epic Destinies? Yes, yes, yes ,yes ,yes. Been there done that

You are correct, under the current system people can acquire the gear, however if you change it to make normal/hard etc. hard and provide good gear only when running elite then it would be much more difficult to get equiped properly. My proof is the old epic system, only a certain few had access to groups who ran epics consistantly, for some one starting out it was very difficult to get geared and gain access into this content.

[Xezrak]

He isn't on target for anything other than causing an exodus from DDO and for it to then fade into total obscurity and vanish into the past as other developers step into the breach with games more in tune with what people are looking for. Just like what happens to bad ideas in the real world, heh.

First of all which point I have made do you disagree with? If you can tell me exactly what is wrong with my arguement I can refute your claims, instead of generally saying my whole post is incorrect... I made several points.

Infact I think alot of people do agree with me, that is why this discussion is extended and prolonged. The way I see it there are people who need easy normal difficulty to acquire and enjoy the game who are against making it harder. I don't see a mass exodus happening at this point in time otherwise the Devs would've already changed it, the only thing I really see as causing an end to this game is the sheer lag that has been taking over the servers.

I am sorry but some people are not uber gamers, they play casually, they don't enjoy the grind, DDO I remember once upon a time was advertised as the MMO without the grind. I think the only reason you want the grind is so other players don't have access to the same content you are able to access.

[Nitesco]

First of all which point I have made do you disagree with? If you can tell me exactly what is wrong with my arguement I can refute your claims, instead of generally saying my whole post is incorrect... I made several points.

Infact I think alot of people do agree with me, that is why this discussion is extended and prolonged. The way I see it there are people who need easy normal difficulty to acquire and enjoy the game who are against making it harder. I don't see a mass exodus happening at this point in time otherwise the Devs would've already changed it, the only thing I really see as causing an end to this game is the sheer lag that has been taking over the servers.

I am sorry but some people are not uber gamers, they play casually, they don't enjoy the grind, DDO I remember once upon a time was advertised as the MMO without the grind. I think the only reason you want the grind is so other players don't have access to the same content you are able to access.

I think a generalization here is appropriate. The drive to aquire power and status is what keeps people interested. Just like in the real world.

[Xezrak]

I think a generalization here is appropriate. The drive to aquire power and status is what keeps people interested. Just like in the real world.

Ok that is a fair point, to answer your concern, I think the reward to the grind should be comsmetic, ranks, glow effects, spell pets or pet actions, what have you that can be grinded out at elite difficulty only. The cosmetic rewards will provide status and incentive. The power gamers can still have their badge of honor. The only thing I am concerned about is that if normal is too difficult then many players will find it too hard to run and gain access to the best (by best I mean similar to previous epic) gear. I understand raid loot and such should be hard to obtain, fair enough, but a whole tier of gear shouldn't be out of reach to players purely because they don't already have good loot and friends in power gamer circles.

To pre emptively answer any doubts about cosmetic loot, look at Team Fortress 2 and the hat system, which adds no power what so ever but the company is making millions selling keys for a random chance at a rare cosmetic item. A similar thing might be the best armors in the game on normal look dull and shabby while elite quests drop armors in various colors and designs.

[Ebondevil]

Don't make quests harder because some people want more of a challenge, they can always run quests above their level if they want a challenge.

Quests difficulty should be a reasonable challenge for the average player(s) at the level stated for the quests, regardless of whether the quest is normal, hard or elite.

There is of course some room to manoeuvre within that as some quests can be 'Extreme Challenges' for their level.

[wax_on_wax_off]

Game Difficulty: the ability to choose difficulty means that everybody should be able to choose a difficulty when doing at level quests that is challenging for them.

I like this about the current not-WAI trap/spell damage issue though it needs to be tweaked in some instances as it requires cheesy tactics to get past (like the boss in elite RwD who throws 350+ searing lights).

[Nitesco]

Ok that is a fair point, to answer your concern, I think the reward to the grind should be comsmetic, ranks, glow effects, spell pets or pet actions, what have you that can be grinded out at elite difficulty only. The cosmetic rewards will provide status and incentive. The power gamers can still have their badge of honor. The only thing I am concerned about is that if normal is too difficult then many players will find it too hard to run and gain access to the best (by best I mean similar to previous epic) gear. I understand raid loot and such should be hard to obtain, fair enough, but a whole tier of gear shouldn't be out of reach to players purely because they don't already have good loot and friends in power gamer circles.

To pre emptively answer any doubts about cosmetic loot, look at Team Fortress 2 and the hat system, which adds no power what so ever but the company is making millions selling keys for a random chance at a rare cosmetic item. A similar thing might be the best armors in the game on normal look dull and shabby while elite quests drop armors in various colors and designs.

First person shooters are games in which power and status is defined by player skill. In MMO's the power level of characters is mostly based on equipment. I think you have to take into account the different demographics that a first person shooter appeal to versus and MMO like DDO.

I am confident in saying that from my years of playing both, that adding a *Guildwars style cosmetic system to DDO as a substitute for strong equipment that differentiates the casual or 'noob' players from the hardcore 'vets', would substatially alter that demographic. Whether that would cause a decline in overall players I can't say for certain, but I know I wouldn't stick around if Turbine took that route.

*The only comparison between GW and DDO I am making here, is the cosmetic system. I just used GW because it is widely known, not because of any game mechanics similarities. But as it happens, GW (the last time I played), still didn't have much in the way of mechanically strong end game loot. It was mostly cosmetic pets and armors and such.

[Xezrak]

First person shooters are games in which power and status is defined by player skill. In MMO's the power level of characters is mostly based on equipment. I think you have to take into account the different demographics that a first person shooter appeal to versus and MMO like DDO.

I am confident in saying that from my years of playing both, that adding a *Guildwars style cosmetic system to DDO as a substitute for strong equipment that differentiates the casual or 'noob' players from the hardcore 'vets', would substatially alter that demographic. Whether that would cause a decline in overall players I can't say for certain, but I know I wouldn't stick around if Turbine took that route.

*The only comparison between GW and DDO I am making here, is the cosmetic system. I just used GW because it is widely known, not because of any game mechanics similarities. But as it happens, GW (the last time I played), still didn't have much in the way of mechanically strong end game loot. It was mostly cosmetic pets and armors and such.

I accept your opinion and preference. I personally like DDO for the character building and customisation and I want to try out various characters on all different content. I understand what you want as well, I guess it’s up to the devs to decide if they want to create a game that has a grind which increase power which restricts certain content to non-power gamers as we had with the previous epic system or if they want to make content more accessible to everyone.

Personally I think the cosmetic rewards system would be optimal because it will satisfy at the very least some power gamers and non-hard core gamers who are more focused on casually playing the content alike, it has worked in TF2 and if my understanding of what you have said it correct it works in guild wars 2 which means it can function effectively in an MMO context. There is still a motivation to be better than everyone else, but its a mechanism which doesn't stop others from playing various quests or prohibiting access to loot that makes their characters effective.

Also in case you are interested I have also invested very heavily in this game although I don't consider myself a power gamer I have a 5th life toon, I have purchased all the adventure packs and then various other goods from the DDO store, definitely do spend money on this game, I just want to play it differently to the classic grind of other MMOs. I am sure I am not alone when it comes to players who play this game for other reasons than grinding.

Edit: As an afterthough, another thing that I think is reasonable to implement into epic elites to make them worth running is small temporary item buffs. What I mean is something similar to red augment crystals, weapons could be imbued with epic elite crystals that give maybe a +1 to hit, +2 to str etc. buff but the crystal disappears after 100 hours of gameplay. I think buff should be small enough that it doesn't really create a whole new tier of power but its still cool and provides an incentive to run the quests.

[Yehediah]

I think a generalization here is appropriate. The drive to aquire power and status is what keeps people interested. Just like in the real world.

Me also thinks you generalize just to make your argument sound stronger than it really is.

Your rational is also like a politician or big businesses that seek to have different rules for themselves to keep them in power over everyone else. What you propose "protects" the status of the already uber by making it easier for them and making it much harder for the one trying to achieve the status.

A game doesn't pay the bills as in real life - again, the major distinction between reality and games that changes the whole argument. There therefore comes a point in a game where that distinction has to be merely status and not better gear/access. I think most of us disagreeing with you do believe there should be better "leaderboards" and other ways to establish and show prestige for those who are great by their ability and not by their uber gear/access. Therefore, as the original argument that started this - epic difficulty shouldn't effect gear or access (in this case, favor). With that said, I wouldn't be opposed to having slightly higher gear drop rates for higher epic difficulty (but not much higher) and maybe providing an extra regular chest/loot - just not extra premium named loot.

[Nitesco]

I accept your opinion and preference. I personally like DDO for the character building and customisation and I want to try out various characters on all different content. I understand what you want as well, I guess it’s up to the devs to decide if they want to create a game that has a grind which increase power which restricts certain content to non-power gamers as we had with the previous epic system or if they want to make content more accessible to everyone.

Personally I think the cosmetic rewards system would be optimal because it will satisfy at the very least some power gamers and non-hard core gamers who are more focused on casually playing the content alike, it has worked in TF2 and if my understanding of what you have said it correct it works in guild wars 2 which means it can function effectively in an MMO context. There is still a motivation to be better than everyone else, but its a mechanism which doesn't stop others from playing various quests or prohibiting access to loot that makes their characters effective.

Also in case you are interested I have also invested very heavily in this game although I don't consider myself a power gamer I have a 5th life toon, I have purchased all the adventure packs and then various other goods from the DDO store, definitely do spend money on this game, I just want to play it differently to the classic grind of other MMOs. I am sure I am not alone when it comes to players who play this game for other reasons than grinding.

I don't think content has to be restrictive. Turbine have put a sytem into place where you can choose the difficulty that suits the amount of challenge you are after, so that everyone can enjoy all of the various content. Those who don't want to run the most challenging of difficulties are not obliged to. But for those who do, the rewards should be appropriate for that level of challenge, they should be scaled accordingly, as they are being used by people who are running that most difficult of content.

For everyone else, there will be loot available which is scaled according to the less difficult content they are comfortable with running. Making powerful loot available at the easiest levels, to be able to be aquired by the most casual players, so that they may easily overcome the most difficult challenges, isn't fun for anyone.

[Xezrak]

I don't think content has to be restrictive. Turbine have put a sytem into place where you can choose the difficulty that suits the amount of challenge you are after, so that everyone can enjoy all of the various content. Those who don't want to run the most challenging of difficulties are not obliged to. But for those who do, the rewards should be appropriate for that level of challenge, they should be scaled accordingly, as they are being used by people who are running that most difficult of content.

For everyone else, there will be loot available which is scaled according to the less difficult content they are comfortable with running. Making powerful loot available at the easiest levels, to be able to be aquired by the most casual players, so that they may easily overcome the most difficult challenges, isn't fun for anyone.

Here is the issue, pro players play elite difficulty acquire top tier gear quickly, less able players play normal acquire moderate gear. After pro players are strong they complain elite is too easy, they can solo everything etc. Monsters, required DC etc. gets buffed to match ability AND gear of top tier players. Casual player then attempts to try much more difficult content, unfortunately they can't effectively attempt it because they are lacking the gear.

Case in point as I have said before is the old epics, you were expected to have a certain level of gear to be taken into PuGs, however it was difficult to acquire certain gear until you ran certain quests.

I agree elite content should be rewarded, the temp weapon buffs through weapon augmentation and cosmetic rewards are two suggestion I have made, I am sure there are other ways too which don't create such a gap between how hard it is for casual gamers to acquire gear and power gamers. Keep in mind I am not against higher drop rates on elite, just not exclusive items on elite or significantly lower drop rates on normal. I think the way drops are implmented in shroud through the extra chests is a perfectly reasonable implementation of higher reward for higher difficulty.

[Nitesco]

Here is the issue, pro players play elite difficulty acquire top tier gear quickly, less able players play normal acquire moderate gear.

Noone is at a disadvantage, they are geared appropriately for the level of challenge they are comfortable with.


After pro players are strong they complain elite is too easy, they can solo everything etc. Monsters, required DC etc. gets buffed to match ability AND gear of top tier players.

Only the highest difficulty level is scaled for the uber geared players seeking a challenge. There are still the lesser difficulties for the rest.


Casual player then attempts to try much more difficult content, unfortunately they can't effectively attempt it because they are lacking the gear.

That's why there are lower difficulty levels. A casual player playing Epic Normal may find that as challenging as a veteran playing Epic Elite.


Case in point as I have said before is the old epics, you were expected to have a certain level of gear to be taken into PuGs, however it was difficult to acquire certain gear until you ran certain quests.

That gear was able to be aquired by running quests of an appropriate challenge level. Especially in the last 2 years.


I agree elite content should be rewarded, the temp weapon buffs through weapon augmentation and cosmetic rewards are two suggestion I have made, I am sure there are other ways too which don't create such a gap between how hard it is for casual gamers to acquire gear and power gamers. Keep in mind I am not against higher drop rates on elite, just not exclusive items on elite or significantly lower drop rates on normal. I think the way drops are implmented in shroud through the extra chests is a perfectly reasonable implementation of higher reward for higher difficulty.

No matter what level they are at, players can choose a difficulty setting appropriate to that level. Gear is not a factor in this system, as there will always be a comfortable setting available. Those that can take on the most challenging difficulty, should be rewarded by gear appropriate to that undertaking. Those that don't, will notice no difference.

The general gist of what I am seeing in this discussion, is that some people aren't happy with the idea that the more casual players can't share in the 'prestige' of being the best of the best. They seem to want that handed to every player, as if they are entitled to it. They shouldn't worry if those that choose the highest difficulty challenges get slightly better loot, because they will need it. Those who never want to be challenged, will be quite happy with the slightly less powerful loot, as it will perform just as well in relative terms.

It seems to me that the only argument here is that the most casual of players can't stand the idea that those who put in the time and effort will have slightly better stuff than them. Welcome to reality.

[njneer75]

Im not sure if this is even possible to code into this game or not, but i have a simple solution. you know how the dungeon difficulty scales with #players entered? Well how about DDO takes into account a character' overall at level ability (gear, ability score, enhanc, feats, level, etc) and assign it a point score. Incorporate that point score (maybe average of all players entered) and scale the dungeon with that too. Obviously non-uber twinked toons will get an easier dungeon but conversely, a well-outfitted group will incur a harder dungeon, no matter the level.

[Ebondevil]

I would expect the Difficulty of a level 21 Quest that was run on Elite (Listed as a level 23 Quest) with a party of 4 would be about the same Difficulty as a Level 23 Quest that was run on normal with a party of 4 (To account for dungeon scaling).

The reason I expect this? That's what level those quests say they are.

The challenge then for the players that want the challenge would be the level 25 quests run on Elite difficulty, effectively level 27 quests on level 25 character. If they want even more challenge they can then attempt to solo those level 27 quests.

When more and greater challenges are required then more content should be added, though I believe the Current Eveningstar Challenges go all the way up to Level 30 which should be a significant challenge even for a level 25 character.

I do not expect a level 20 quest on elite to have mobs kicking in at CR 45 on Elite (Effective level 22).

CR 45 should be tough for a team of level 40 characters, let alone a team of Level 22's.

[Xezrak]

Noone is at a disadvantage, they are geared appropriately for the level of challenge they are comfortable with.



Only the highest difficulty level is scaled for the uber geared players seeking a challenge. There are still the lesser difficulties for the rest.



That's why there are lower difficulty levels. A casual player playing Epic Normal may find that as challenging as a veteran playing Epic Elite.



That gear was able to be aquired by running quests of an appropriate challenge level. Especially in the last 2 years.



No matter what level they are at, players can choose a difficulty setting appropriate to that level. Gear is not a factor in this system, as there will always be a comfortable setting available. Those that can take on the most challenging difficulty, should be rewarded by gear appropriate to that undertaking. Those that don't, will notice no difference.

The general gist of what I am seeing in this discussion, is that some people aren't happy with the idea that the more casual players can't share in the 'prestige' of being the best of the best. They seem to want that handed to every player, as if they are entitled to it. They shouldn't worry if those that choose the highest difficulty challenges get slightly better loot, because they will need it. Those who never want to be challenged, will be quite happy with the slightly less powerful loot, as it will perform just as well in relative terms.

It seems to me that the only argument here is that the most casual of players can't stand the idea that those who put in the time and effort will have slightly better stuff than them. Welcome to reality.

Lets look at a game such as neverwinter nights or baldurs gate, in those games all equipment when played on the regular difficulty will drop, in higher difficulties it is the monsters stats and i.e the challenge that is increased, there is no rule or law saying higher difficulties should mean better items. If you play a higher difficulty the reward is the fun and sense of accomplishment, not extra items, not having access to all items is not fun, this is a game its played for fun, you shouldn't have to put in time and effort to have access to all content.

Edit: So that this isn't taken out of context I am not saying you should be given everything, but definately you shouldn't have to grind for several years. There are MMOs that do that but personally thats not the direction I would like this game to head. Elite should be to challenge yourself not to get the best loot.

[Nitesco]

Lets look at a game such as neverwinter nights or baldurs gate, in those games all equipment when played on the regular difficulty will drop, in higher difficulties it is the monsters stats and i.e the challenge that is increased, there is no rule or law saying higher difficulties should mean better items. If you play a higher difficulty the reward is the fun and sense of accomplishment, not extra items, not having access to all items is not fun, this is a game its played for fun, you shouldn't have to put in time and effort to have access to all content.

Edit: So that this isn't taken out of context I am not saying you should be given everything, but definately you shouldn't have to grind for several years. There are MMOs that do that but personally thats not the direction I would like this game to head. Elite should be to challenge yourself not to get the best loot.

Bottom line is that competition drives activity and interest. Take that away and you are left with nothing. It's not a cooncidence that systems which adhere to the principles I have outlined emerge as the most successful. Go and read up on Economics and the Social Sciences if you want a better understanding of why a purely cosmetic advancement system would cause stagnation in a game like DDO over the long term.

[Xezrak]

Bottom line is that competition drives activity and interest. Take that away and you are left with nothing. It's not a cooncidence that systems which adhere to the principles I have outlined emerge as the most successful. Go and read up on Economics and the Social Sciences if you want a better understanding of why a purely cosmetic advancement system would cause stagnation in a game like DDO over the long term.

I have studied economics subjects during my time at university and I understand the merits of competition, I am not denying competition is a good thing. This is why I have recommended cosmetic and temporary benefits and I am sure there are other ways to reward elite game play. What I have said several times to you now is that you can still reward elite game play without restricting access of content and loot casual players.

The argument here is not if players should be rewarded or not, it is how they should be rewarded, taking elite game play into another tier of loot and content while restricting various content to more casual gamers is not the way to do this.

[Nitesco]

What I have said several times to you now is that you can still reward elite game play without restricting access of content and loot casual players.

The system that is currently in place allows players to choose a difficulty setting which is appropriate for them, while at the same time working towards aquiring better loot which will assist them in taking on the more challenging difficulty settings in the future. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.


The argument here is not if players should be rewarded or not, it is how they should be rewarded, taking elite game play into another tier of loot and content while restricting various content to more casual gamers is not the way to do this.

I'm not sure why you keep raising the issue of content as a factor in your reasoning. As it stands all players can play all content. This mechanims exsists in the game already in the form of difficulty settings. Players who successfully take on the more difficult challenges should be rewarded with better loot.

Having slightly better loot isn't game breaking and doesn't exclude less well geared players from experiencing the content. Enough loot exists at every level of the game to enable players to equip themselves for taking on the next tier of difficulty. Better loot often translates into convenience or slot consolidation.

I still fail to see how less well geared players are restricted from enjoying the game, which seems to be the basis of your argument.

[Xezrak]

The system that is currently in place allows players to choose a difficulty setting which is appropriate for them, while at the same time working towards aquiring better loot which will assist them in taking on the more challenging difficulty settings in the future. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.



I'm not sure why you keep raising the issue of content as a factor in your reasoning. As it stands all players can play all content. This mechanims exsists in the game already in the form of difficulty settings. Players who successfully take on the more difficult challenges should be rewarded with better loot.

Having slightly better loot isn't game breaking and doesn't exclude less well geared players from experiencing the content. Enough loot exists at every level of the game to enable players to equip themselves for taking on the next tier of difficulty. Better loot often translates into convenience or slot consolidation.

I still fail to see how less well geared players are restricted from enjoying the game, which seems to be the basis of your argument.

The way the game works from level 1-20 is fine I completely agree. What I am saying is that this is the exact same way level 20-25 should work as well, What I don't want is loot that doesn't drop on normal difficulty.

Very simple example of what works is shroud, the loot still drops on normal difficulty, elite is rewarded with extra chests. What I am saying is there shouldn't be unique elite only loot and we definately shouldn't have all level 20-25 quests resembling the difficulty of the old epics (On normal difficulty not elite, imo elite should definately require a well geared full party, I am even in favor of removing dungeon scaling on elite epics).

[knightgf]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO? Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?


It has been a very long time, but it depends on the quest. I think this problem usually ends up in raids, such as the shroud, for example. You'd think that after 50+ runs, id be ready for hard, but I think im actually getting worse. Part of it is player skill, part of it factors out of my control.


If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

A lot of things <=10 is pretty easy, with the right layout. I think this is because of quests and possibly a few mechanics left behind ever since the game came out on the very first day, not the day of the reroll. Scaling, quest changes, player changes, all of that has made quests <=10 a lot easier. Perhaps the biggest chance that made these quests so much easier were the changes to SP costs and such. Mages with magical training are unstoppable, and this continues on even into endgame, though maybe not as much.



What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?


That depends, really. I think the biggest problem with challenge vs. success isn't always in the mechanics, but in the drop rates. For example, you can only get a +3 tome in a hard/elite Vision of Destruction or Hound of Xoriat, for example. What I believe is that EVERYTHING that can drop, no matter what, should drop regardless of difficulty, with the main difference being that the higher up you go, the more likely it is. I think if anything, with the effort we attempt to put in, Elite >> Hard > Normal, which means that elite should get double the chance of named loot than it does today, especially on the high level raids.



I'm raising this subject for a few reasons. I think a lot of people expect that when it comes to an MMO, if you put time in you must get progress/reward out of it - and that failure is just plain bad. Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.

We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player. Are you finding this to be the case? It seems like a couple years ago the salient message from the community was 'enough with the easy button already!'

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests.

To some degree, yes. Not all of it is your fault though, as the high-level players deserve a challenge. And a chance. I think the biggest problem you face in challenge is the NPC coding. The problem I believe is that they rely on attacks and such that are either cheap-shots that are BS or totally ineffective attacks that are laughable. The NPCS NEED a update to how they behave and such. I still hate it when those kobolds jump up and stick to the ceiling like spider man, or when in Lords of Dust, I easily evade any unwanted aggro from the boss by simply holding onto a ledge as he goes down the steps and swings wildly at the air, not realizing his weapons could actually reach me if he were to look up. Bottom line: The challengers in quests are delivering way out-dated tactics to players. The players need to be faced with a opponent that does more than just run at you like a zombie and either cast spells from a limitless pool of mana or hit you silly.

[Nitesco]

The way the game works from level 1-20 is fine I completely agree. What I am saying is that this is the exact same way level 20-25 should work as well, What I don't want is loot that doesn't drop on normal difficulty.

Very simple example of what works is shroud, the loot still drops on normal difficulty, elite is rewarded with extra chests. What I am saying is there shouldn't be unique elite only loot and we definately shouldn't have all level 20-25 quests resembling the difficulty of the old epics (On normal difficulty not elite, imo elite should definately require a well geared full party, I am even in favor of removing dungeon scaling on elite epics).

A solution to this would be to either have a much reduced drop rate on normal difficulty or have back-loaded loot on a tier system, where there are siginificant benefits on the final tier. Otherwise people will continue to run quests on casual or normal, just to farm the loot without there being any incentive to challenge themselves.

For example an EN quest might have a 5% chance of spawning loot, an EH quest a 20% chance and an EE a 50% chance. You could apply the same formula to ingredient reward ratios in crafting/barter systems. But the ratio should be significant enough to always make it worth running the highest difficulty you can manage.

[CombatLibrarian]

I like your ideas for Spot and Search. But I don't like your idea for DD.

The trap is disabled even if the box blows up? That's not right. The box blowing up indicates a lack of experience/talent for disabling traps. If a trapper wants to do well with traps they should have to BUILD for it. This is why we have Mechanic Rogues. What ****es me off is that mech rogues have been rendered useless since the artificers showed up in Eberron. Mech rogues are supposed to excell at two main things: Crossbows and Traps. They're SUPPOSED to be the intelligent tinkerers. But overall their damage output is subpar at best. They still excell at taking care of traps, but really what is the point if they can't contribute good damage? As if that wasn't bad enough, along come the artificers who arguably do better damage with crossbows thanks to their buffs and bolt conjuring skills. If they were to make traps easy enough for anyone with a single point in DD to disable, where does that leave the intelligent mechanics? They might as well just scrap them from the game in that case since we probably won't see any improvements towards mechanics in the near future.

Having the trap blow up but still disarm on a successful but low-grade disable device was just sort of idea spitballing. More of a general idea than specifics, perhaps someone could come up with better ideas for it.

You are, in your second point however, setting up a HUGE false dichotomy / strawman.


If they were to make traps easy enough for anyone with a single point in DD to disable, where does that leave the intelligent mechanics?

I never for one moment suggested that "anyone with a single point in DD" should be able to disarm traps. In fact, I gave an extensive list of what I think someone should be required to have to disable elite sub-20 traps, and it was way way beyond that.

Did you actually read my post, or just skim it?

Here's the thing...for better or for worse, Elite streaks are how most people play the game now. Any time of day, just about all you're going to find in the Grouping tool is Elite runs. Turbine has repeatedly added mechanics which encourage this style of play for everyone BUT trappers. That's the real problem here. Everyone but the trappers still do their jobs pre-endgame without insane amounts of gear and minmaxing, but trappers are the only ones who have to squeeze out every last drop of performance and even then still miss out if they're more than MAYBE one level under the elite's level. This is not giving rogues more of a place in the game. It's giving all trappers, including rogues, even less of a place in the game because with trappers of all flavors rolling >10 and having the best bonuses they have access to and still having traps failsplode in their faces, the groups may as well take a class with better utility to help them get past and bypass the traps rather than someone who probably won't be able to disable them anyway, especially on long chains where the encounter level ramps up over the course of the chain.

The basic idea of the varying results is to do exactly what you want...to give the uber mechanic rogues with multiple TR's and the best gear a huge reserve of plat can buy a purpose to exist before Epic Elite, but without making first-lifer trappers, including rogues, as worthless as they are now while leveling. Again, I said "low and mid level".

These suggestions are all aimed at the leveling game. If you want to experience the feeling when getting the best gear in the entire game and ultraminmaxing allows you to succeed, period, Epic Elite is the time for that.

[Xezrak]

A solution to this would be to either have a much reduced drop rate on normal difficulty or have back-loaded loot on a tier system, where there are siginificant benefits on the final tier. Otherwise people will continue to run quests on casual or normal, just to farm the loot without there being any incentive to challenge themselves.

For example an EN quest might have a 5% chance of spawning loot, an EH quest a 20% chance and an EE a 50% chance. You could apply the same formula to ingredient reward ratios in crafting/barter systems. But the ratio should be significant enough to always make it worth running the highest difficulty you can manage.

I have a question for you, do you feel the current way that shroud loot is distributed is unfair? I mean extra chests on hard/elite? do you think elite shroud should give 10x more ingredients as opposed to normal shroud?

Also I don't think people should be forced to try elite, I mean the whole point of difficulties is so that players who are capable have a challenge, there are many players who simply lack the skill etc. to do quests on elite. If elite is easy enough for everyone to complete then it really should be made more challenging.

[Thundaga]

I never for one moment suggested that "anyone with a single point in DD" should be able to disarm traps. In fact, I gave an extensive list of what I think someone should be required to have to disable elite sub-20 traps, and it was way way beyond that.

Did you actually read my post, or just skim it?



By "anyone with a single point in DD," I was thinking about your idea for Disarm Device, how if it blew up in the rogue's face it will still disable the trap, and I was thinking...as long as the rogue can spot and search to bring up the trap box, that the rogue could disarm it no matter what, even if that rogue didn't care to increase their skill to actually do it successfully. Of course, I didn't realize that maybe a rogue can't actually attempt to disarm a trap box without having a certain amount of ranks in DD. All of my rogues have always leveled up and geared into DD, so I've literally never been unable to interact with a box, if that even happens.

But to be perfectly honest, I did skim through your post. The points I read and quoted were the ones my mind focused on. By the time I hit Submit, I had forgotten you had a lot more in your post than what I quoted... It happens sometimes. Sorry about that.

The thing is, I enjoy not being able to disarm everything. Sure, I've had many trap boxes blow up in my face. It adds to the game's difficulty, to the story, to the quest, to the skills of the one who PLANTED the trap in the first place. I know that, we as players, sometimes get mad that we can't do everything we want. But the soul-crushing truth to a lot of you out there is that we SHOULDN'T be able to do everything we want just because we're human players. We are not GODS within the game world. I want the game to kick my ass every now and again to make it feel like there's still a push; to make it feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile. If the trap could be disabled even if you have the box blow up on you, it would be extremely boring. Please understand not everyone wants to be able to just storm on through a dungeon so easily. The traps are there to KEEP US OUT. If the enemies who put those traps up succeed in keeping you the hell away from their treasures and their secrets, then congratulations to them. Of course, there's always the fun of trying to dodge, jump, squeeze, and time yourself through the traps if the trapper is unable to disarm them. You have no idea how much fun I have trying to get by a trap. I suck at it and almost always get my butt kicked, but it's FUN.

Also, yeah, most people nowadays will want to do elite stuff, but it's not like you still can't find people who want to do Normal/Hard. I find them all the time. You just need patience. And if you really can't find anyone, join your server's section on these forums and find a static group to play with. Static groups are infinitely more reliable than pugging all day. You could always join a guild, too.

[CombatLibrarian]

By "anyone with a single point in DD," I was thinking about your idea for Disarm Device, how if it blew up in the rogue's face it will still disable the trap, and I was thinking...as long as the rogue can spot and search to bring up the trap box, that the rogue could disarm it no matter what, even if that rogue didn't care to increase their skill to actually do it successfully. Of course, I didn't realize that maybe a rogue can't actually attempt to disarm a trap box without having a certain amount of ranks in DD. All of my rogues have always leveled up and geared into DD, so I've literally never been unable to interact with a box, if that even happens.

Ahh, okay, you misunderstood me. What I meant is that on a critical failure (trap DC missed by a certain amount), the trap explodes WITHOUT being disabled. On what we'll call a "standard" or low-grade success, the trap explodes but is disarmed. Two different levels of DC.



The thing is, I enjoy not being able to disarm everything. Sure, I've had many trap boxes blow up in my face. It adds to the game's difficulty, to the story, to the quest, to the skills of the one who PLANTED the trap in the first place.

I touched on this before, but I'll try to be a bit more to the point with it. Currently, Trapping while leveling to 20+ holds a distinction that no other role in the game does.

1. It is entirely binary. Either you disarm a trap or you do not. This is what I was hoping the suggestions could fix.
2. Throw a bunch of players in an elite, all the same level, and it is very possible, even likely at the moment, that the dps will still dps, the healers will still heal, but the trappers can't disarm the traps. This is "unfair" not towards the entire group, but the trappers alone. This is a problem.


I know that, we as players, sometimes get mad that we can't do everything we want. But the soul-crushing truth to a lot of you out there is that we SHOULDN'T be able to do everything we want just because we're human players. We are not GODS within the game world. I want the game to kick my ass every now and again to make it feel like there's still a push; to make it feel like I'm actually doing something worthwhile. If the trap could be disabled even if you have the box blow up on you, it would be extremely boring. Please understand not everyone wants to be able to just storm on through a dungeon so easily. The traps are there to KEEP US OUT. If the enemies who put those traps up succeed in keeping you the hell away from their treasures and their secrets, then congratulations to them. Of course, there's always the fun of trying to dodge, jump, squeeze, and time yourself through the traps if the trapper is unable to disarm them. You have no idea how much fun I have trying to get by a trap. I suck at it and almost always get my butt kicked, but it's FUN.


I am a human player. My characters are...well a lot of things. None of them are what we in the real world would call "human". Don't fall into the "that's how life is" trap. Yes, real life isn't fair. Real life often stinks. That's why we play games.

Part of this is addressed above, simply that I never intended that all "explosions" disarm the trap, but rather that there be multiple types of trap explosion. An utter failure that causes the trap to be permanently non-disarmable, and an explosion that still results in a disarmed trap. The latter requires a higher DC to be met.

The problem with many traps as it is, also, is that if they go un-disabled...that's it. End of dungeon. Load up on resist energy and protection from energy all you like, you're still gonna die. There are quite a few traps where the success of the *entire run* hinges on a single trap DC being made. Either those traps need to be bypassable...with difficulty, the rogue should still be imporant...or the idea of "sometimes failing", just because, even if you do everything that can be expected of you is not acceptable.


Also, yeah, most people nowadays will want to do elite stuff, but it's not like you still can't find people who want to do Normal/Hard. I find them all the time. You just need patience. And if you really can't find anyone, join your server's section on these forums and find a static group to play with. Static groups are infinitely more reliable than pugging all day. You could always join a guild, too.

Having patience is all fine and good...if you have an enormous wealth of time to sit around, waiting to actually play the game. And guilds are good too, if you can find a good one...harder than ever these days with everyone and their dog starting a shipbuff guild. But these are not solutions to a problem on the design level, these are work-arounds...and even these work-arounds in no way address the problem with trap DCs. What you're talking about is best-case scenarios. Step outside your personal experiences for a moment and appreciate the wide range of people that come to this game.

[Machination]

I think the only reason you want the grind is so other players don't have access to the same content you are able to access.

Xezrak, under the current new system it is pretty obvious that any player, regardless of gear, has access to the content fit for his level. The same content (exact same) that a player that is geared quite different (way below or above) has access to. The only difference is the difficulty of said content that can be completed.

Scenario 1: So, let's look at my example above in the thread, the level 20 character, with zero epic gear, goes and grinds out the Eveningstar gear on normal. It takes him two weeks. Now he can run hard/elite. Now he can make everything from the raid. I would say he has access. Same content. Same difficulty (after a few weeks grind)

Scenario 2: For the player that already had gear or many past lives, etc., he just comes in and runs elite, gets all the favor. Farms his xp. Swaps out a couple of pcs of gear or maybe more, and is all ready for the raid.

What's the big difference? Nothing.

Scenario 3: Ok, for the casual player. I mean really casual, this guy does not want to do anything but enjoy the game and burn his time (everybody burns it in their own way right?) This guy runs normal and ends up swapping out gear but still wants to run casual. So be it.

In all three scenarios above, everybody ran the same content. Its just if and when they did it on different difficulties.

I do believe the new system of 3 difficulties of epic really does address all the issues that you raise. You just don't see it and just need to understand the game will always require a little grind. The new content really only requires a very little grind to get the new gear sets they are 90% of what you need, they are really decent "make do" sets while moving up the ladder..

[Machination]

Xezrak, at level, if you want a real challenge run Shroud Elite. Yes, you can get more chests, its for the challenge and for the chests that you would do it.

Now, we have up to level 25 toons now. I don't particularly find running the Shroud on normal with my level 25 particularly interesting. I'll take the extra chests and run hard/elite.

Now I also don't find on my TR coming up to run Shroud Elite at level, because the time/resources even with the extra chest are not worth it.

It is not something to complain about, it is just something you plan around. Yes, plan around. You can run that Elite Shroud when you are 6 levels higher at cap no problem.....do that then.


I have a question for you, do you feel the current way that shroud loot is distributed is unfair? I mean extra chests on hard/elite? do you think elite shroud should give 10x more ingredients as opposed to normal shroud?

Also I don't think people should be forced to try elite, I mean the whole point of difficulties is so that players who are capable have a challenge, there are many players who simply lack the skill etc. to do quests on elite. If elite is easy enough for everyone to complete then it really should be made more challenging.

[Ebondevil]

Now I also don't find on my TR coming up to run Shroud Elite at level, because the time/resources even with the extra chest are not worth it.

That pretty much says to me that it is too hard for it's level.

[Alaunra2010]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO?

I speak from the perspective of a player who plays a cleric exclusively. I feel that the game is fairly well-balanced, but that the user interface makes the game a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

Sure, we offer difficulty choices, but do you find yourself in a postion where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard? If so, do you associate this with a given level in the game (e.g. 10+) or do you think there is just too much inconsistency throughout?

I do not associate increase in perceived difficulty to be related to a given level. I also do not consider it to be a lack of consistency. The game only becomes interesting when the metagame is varied, after all. But that's the thing: I associate this increase in perceived difficulty with a lack of understanding of the metagame in an area. If a party cannot properly identify the things that impede DPS and build up healing pressure, the result is not only failure, but an increased likelihood of failure in the future because the conditions that caused failure were poorly understood.

I see red bars going down. I look at targets and heal, then heal again, then heal again. Whoops, I see red swirly things. Is everyone cursed? Oh, yeah everyone is cursed. Okay where the heck is the remove curse stuff... there it is. Okay, triage the injured, remove curse, remove curse, healing burst, remove curse, remove curse, heal. In the meantime, I just wasted about 100 spell points and 10 seconds trying to figure it out. In some content, 10 seconds of information gathering will result in a wipe. In other content, 100 spell points wasted can equal 20kpp for a mana potion farther into the quest.

Front-line characters prosecute the enemy directly. Rogues sneak in. Offensive casters cast. Support characters are the ones who must be attentive to the party, and they are the ones who are going to be able to see what is impeding team DPS output and what is preventing inbound damage mitigation. They are hindered from doing so due to the user interface.

Is your aim to help balance things out? This is what you need to consider:


Poor presentation of cues as to when my team has conditions that need to be removed (disease, poison).
No cues as to when characters need restoration.
Poor presentation of cues as to when casters need to be healed via negative energy.
Poor cues as to line of site / range.
No cues as to vector to friendly target on the mini map.
No cues in escort missions as to the welfare of the ally.


By improper presentation, I mean that I cannot look to the same general area of the display every time to become aware that intervention is needed. I don't want another player to tell me when they need it. I want to tell another player that I dealt with it, or even use it as a teaching moment to demonstrate to another player that they need to be equipped to deal with it themselves.

Concerning the escort missions, player allies need to be in the party list. Bare and plain. I will say no more about it. Fix it!


What's the right balance of challenge vs success for YOU? Do you expect to never fail when playing Normal - or would that simply bore you?

I do not expect to succeed every time I do a quest on Normal. What I DO expect is to be given enough information to understand why I failed. For me, it's not about CR manipulation. It's about making the UI better to help me perform better.

[Xezrak]

Xezrak, at level, if you want a real challenge run Shroud Elite. Yes, you can get more chests, its for the challenge and for the chests that you would do it.

Now, we have up to level 25 toons now. I don't particularly find running the Shroud on normal with my level 25 particularly interesting. I'll take the extra chests and run hard/elite.

Now I also don't find on my TR coming up to run Shroud Elite at level, because the time/resources even with the extra chest are not worth it.

It is not something to complain about, it is just something you plan around. Yes, plan around. You can run that Elite Shroud when you are 6 levels higher at cap no problem.....do that then.

Sorry, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to get at with shroud, not if its too hard etc. but how the loot is mechanism works across various difficulties, in shroud the higher the difficulty the more chests you get, no one has complained that this way of rewarding running elite shroud is unfair, and in fact shroud now is being run at all difficulties according to player skill so I think on the devs side the way they balanced the difficulties for this raid was a huge success.

[Thundaga]

Ahh, okay, you misunderstood me. What I meant is that on a critical failure (trap DC missed by a certain amount), the trap explodes WITHOUT being disabled. On what we'll call a "standard" or low-grade success, the trap explodes but is disarmed. Two different levels of DC.


You're right. I did misunderstand that part (sorry, I should seriously learn to read people's posts entirely before I fly off the handle with my own opinions). Different levels of DC sounds much better. However what I'm afraid of is that it will be too easy to succeed in disarming a trap (even with the blow up). It's a lot easier in PnP DnD to roll fail numbers than it is in DDO. In DDO, you have a handful of ways to take advantage of to increase your DD skill, and they should all be taken into consideration when setting the DC's for failure rolls.

Thinking about it, it would be neat if the trap box caused you MORE damage if it were to blow up on a fail roll while a low-grade success roll would result in the trap box explosion causing you LESS damage and also deactivating the trap. There's more "personality" in that. It shows the trapper has experience enough to know how to disarm the trap but not perfectly so. A more intelligent trapper, a true mechanic, would know how to gracefully disarm the trap and the box, and walk away undamaged. This way, mechanic rogues can still walk around with pride, while the "lesser" rogues don't feel so down on themselves in that area. Everyone's happy.

Now if only mechanics could take pride in their usefulness in every other aspect of their careers. Give them some group buffs. Let them tear down mechanical enemies much more efficiently (after all, technology is their forte), perhaps even give them the Repair Light Damage and Repair Moderate Damage spells so they can more efficiently take care of our Warforged buddies. Technically mechanics should possess the design knowledge of a Warforged as well as how they function, and know how to repair them. Just a thought.

[CombatLibrarian]

You're right. I did misunderstand that part (sorry, I should seriously learn to read people's posts entirely before I fly off the handle with my own opinions). Different levels of DC sounds much better. However what I'm afraid of is that it will be too easy to succeed in disarming a trap (even with the blow up). It's a lot easier in PnP DnD to roll fail numbers than it is in DDO. In DDO, you have a handful of ways to take advantage of to increase your DD skill, and they should all be taken into consideration when setting the DC's for failure rolls.

It is, but the thing is there's some key differences between Pen and Paper D&D, and what we're doing here. Most important among these being that in Pen and Paper D&D, the DM can roll with the punches...granted, they *can* design a dungeon that brings the party to a dead halt if one trap dc is sufficiently failed, but that wouldn't be a very good DM, imo. This is because the game ending right then and there isn't generally fun, so the DM can work with the party to figure out a different way to proceed if something that permanently bars the way happens. In DDO, this isn't the case. The dungeon is designed the way it is designed, and if the dungeon ends even though there's no TPK, that's not fun. (And with an extra helping of frustration due to the way DDO handles XP rewards.)

And yes, I did put those factors in my original list. The problem I've discovered with the current state of pre-20 Elite trap DCs is that I've gone in with max possible INT, max ranks in search and DD, full enhancements available for that level to search and DD, and the best trapping gear reasonably available (ultra-rare items with far above the average bonus don't count as far as I'm concerned)...you still can regularly hit elites where either you can't find the trapbox at all, or the trap blows up in your face way too often.

All in all, what I'd like to see here is just a way to separate the good trappers from the great trappers, without a merely "good" trapper meaning a tpk / incomplete.


Thinking about it, it would be neat if the trap box caused you MORE damage if it were to blow up on a fail roll while a low-grade success roll would result in the trap box explosion causing you LESS damage and also deactivating the trap. There's more "personality" in that. It shows the trapper has experience enough to know how to disarm the trap but not perfectly so. A more intelligent trapper, a true mechanic, would know how to gracefully disarm the trap and the box, and walk away undamaged. This way, mechanic rogues can still walk around with pride, while the "lesser" rogues don't feel so down on themselves in that area. Everyone's happy.

Yup, this was exactly what I was going for. I may not have been direct enough there, when I said "no one hit kills from the 'low-grade success' explosion, just a bit of damage", that's what I was aiming at. That sort of thing is exactly what I want to see happen.


Now if only mechanics could take pride in their usefulness in every other aspect of their careers. Give them some group buffs. Let them tear down mechanical enemies much more efficiently (after all, technology is their forte), perhaps even give them the Repair Light Damage and Repair Moderate Damage spells so they can more efficiently take care of our Warforged buddies. Technically mechanics should possess the design knowledge of a Warforged as well as how they function, and know how to repair them. Just a thought.

Yeah, Mechanic-build rogues could use some love in other areas, especially with Artis all over the repeater xbow shtick lately.

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

To start, the "level" system of games have the experienced becoming super-men of sorts - something very different from actual reality. So, the more powerful they become by whatever supposed "elite" means they get there will have a resulting easier time in quests. Making it harder to satisfy them is self-defeating as it alienates any newcomers or part-time players that have a real life (unlike some gamers).

I agree here.