Let's Talk: Game Difficulty

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

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.

Exodus by whom ? By Elitists ?

That small number of players, the "vocal minority" ?



A solution to this would be to either have a much reduced drop rate on normal difficulty

Which would result in an mass-exodus by casual gamers. Fine. You can have the WHOLE game for your self, Eliticists !


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.

No, it isn't.

In YOUR world, maybne, but not in mine.

There's a thing called "altruism", too.

You are argueing like some psychopath assuming that everyone is as power-hungry as he is - and thus is trying to manipulate people by pressing their "power-hungry"-buttons.

Me, I'm your execption, by the way. I play DDO solely for story - and I do know that you will not believe me. And I don't care. Dream on.

[Xezrak]

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..

You are right, currently there are no issues with game difficulty and moving up in that ladder, what I don't want to see is the game moving back towards the direction of the old epics where there was a massive gap between the gearing of players who ran epics and the players who couldn't due to time they played, lack of guild etc.

[Ranncore]

You are right, currently there are no issues with game difficulty
LOL.
the game expanded five levels - obviously level 20 quests had to be made easier so that EVERY level 20 player could get to 21. the problem is that for a level 20, decked out multi TR, there was NO difficulty setting appropriate to provide them a challenge in between levels 20-25. Epic Normal and Epic Hard are auto win (and are auto win not just for the multi-TR, geared character, but for every casual player, new to the game, wearing their leveling stone gear), and epic elite is designed for level 25 characters. so people are left to a horrendously boring grind before they can do anything fun again.

its fine to say that they had a good idea. but to say that there is nothing wrong with the difficulty gaps right now? i think that's overstepping it.

me personally - i cancelled my subscription. if i want to point/click/win, there's game available with less bugs. if i want a challenge i can complete with a group of competent, like minded players - DDO is not the place for it. and thats REALLY what MotU changed.

pre-MoTU, when you put up an LFM for level 20 only, the players who joined (generally) KNEW what they were getting into. they knew it would be tough, they should bring their best gear and their A-game. Now, those people are hiding. I hadn't put up an LFM for any level 15-20 quests since the leveling stone came out. I wanted like-minded, dedicated players in my group that were willing and READY to take on challenging quests. Turbine has destroyed that environment in DDO.

So im glad the game is free to play! because i can still log on my character and hit up my friends and continue to sadly ignore the LFM list. I used to love pugging... goodbye, pick up groups. and goodbye DDO. sadly, ive only logged on a couple times since the update now. I thought I might still have fun as a premium player - but it hasnt turned out that way. So i havent logged on much :( and goodbye my 80 dollars for the xpac - i was really looking forward to a Dungeons and Dragons expansion set in a familiar realm - but with all the Epic Destiny abilities having NOTHING to do with any Dungeons and Dragons ability, and the loss of the D20 for basic gameplay function, this isn't familiar at all - its just another fantasy MMO. Except this one has A LOT of bugs.

edit, by the way, basic difficulty probelms - Harry in Shroud normal has more HP and does more DPS than the CAD in epic normal echrono. in fact, ide wager that there is not a single mob in normal shroud less challenging than any single mob in e normal chrono.

[slimkj]

Epic Normal and Epic Hard are auto win (and are auto win not just for the multi-TR, geared character, but for every casual player, new to the game, wearing their leveling stone gear)
I think this is exaggeration. I am more inclined to believe there are plenty of players around who don't just walk all over eH, given I've pugged with players who struggle with hH.

[Ranncore]

I think this is exaggeration. I am more inclined to believe there are plenty of players around who don't just walk all over eH, given I've pugged with players who struggle with hH.

ile admit that this is quest specific, providing another example of a broken difficulty system. "auto-win" in this case refers largely to pre-motu epics, except e-servants, which has its own threads because it is so broken, and a quest in the VON chain with an entirely disproportionate number of disproportionately powerful casters (preambled by cr11 mobs in a level 20+ quest).

try not winning in an EADQ normal. try to not win. ile give you a tip - dont swing, or cast a spell, and take all your guard items off. and dont have a cleric with an aura on next to you.

[Nitesco]

Exodus by whom ? By Elitists ?

That small number of players, the "vocal minority" ?




Which would result in an mass-exodus by casual gamers. Fine. You can have the WHOLE game for your self, Eliticists !



No, it isn't.

In YOUR world, maybne, but not in mine.

There's a thing called "altruism", too.

You are argueing like some psychopath assuming that everyone is as power-hungry as he is - and thus is trying to manipulate people by pressing their "power-hungry"-buttons.

Me, I'm your execption, by the way. I play DDO solely for story - and I do know that you will not believe me. And I don't care. Dream on.

How about you stop flapping your arms around hysterically and take a deep breath?

There, are you calm now?

Most people are kept interested in games by having our natural competetiveness stimulated by the desire to make our characters better, which usually implies some increase in power. If you think those players are a small minority then I'm afraid you don't understand anything about human nature. You should just have a look at the fate of any system which sought to retain its participants while failing to provide any competetive incentives.

Most people don't play for story, you are in the small minority there. Do you expect the game to cater for YOUR little group? Altruism has nothing to do with anything being discussed here, this is a game not a charity organisation. The word 'game' implies challenge and competition.

Here are some facts for you to consider:

Most people play this game to increase the power of their characters.

The loot system has always had something else to strive for, mostly achievable only through regular completion of the most difficulty content.

Taking that away would remove any incentive for most players to continue to participate in a system where the only way they can differentiate themselves from everyone else is by cosmetic 'skins'.

There are elites in every system, due to our competetive nature as human beings, we will never get away from this.

The fact that you fail to understand this, living in a modern technological society, at the height of the information age, with the educational resources we have available at our fingertips now, just illustrates how deeply buried in the sand your head must be.

Please, go and educate yourself in things like the social sciences, economics, psychology and the nature of human competetiveness and how it has shaped our world before coming here with your nonsensical emotive rants.

[Yehediah]

I think this is exaggeration. I am more inclined to believe there are plenty of players around who don't just walk all over eH, given I've pugged with players who struggle with hH.

Agreed. Depends a lot on the quest and the group. The newer Level 16 chain can be difficult on E Normal for some groups. If you have a really good group on a lot of quests, you do walk through them - but, if you don't, you can struggle - sometimes even if you are only have 1 weaker person in a key position.

[Yehediah]

How about you stop flapping your arms around hysterically and take a deep breath?

There, are you calm now?

Maybe you need to calm down! ;-)


Most people don't play for story, you are in the small minority there. Do you expect the game to cater for YOUR little group? Altruism has nothing to do with anything being discussed here, this is a game not a charity organisation. The word 'game' implies challenge and competition.

There's plenty of reasons and just because it isn't how you run, doesn't mean they are a "small" minority. I play to relax and therefore enjoy story as well. Some of us have a competitive enough life without having a game that competitive - that's why they have different genres such as 1st person shooters which are highly competitive. Frankly, you are in the wrong genre - RPG's tend to be less competitive and more about atmosphere/exploration/story/relaxation. There has to be enough difficulty to not be boring for the average player, but the average RPG/adventure computer game is not meant to be highly competitive by nature of the genre. If you look at the history of the game genre you will find it is usually not extremely difficult compared to other genres.

[Ranncore]

this games "storyline" is so convoluted and disappointing for an RPG that when i became interested in it i read the wiki. honestly, i expected more out of a dungeons and dragons game.

[Nitesco]

Maybe you need to calm down! ;-)



There's plenty of reasons and just because it isn't how you run, doesn't mean they are a "small" minority. I play to relax and therefore enjoy story as well. Some of us have a competitive enough life without having a game that competitive - that's why they have different genres such as 1st person shooters which are highly competitive. Frankly, you are in the wrong genre - RPG's tend to be less competitive and more about atmosphere/exploration/story/relaxation. There has to be enough difficulty to not be boring for the average player, but the average RPG/adventure computer game is not meant to be highly competitive by nature of the genre. If you look at the history of the game genre you will find it is usually not extremely difficult compared to other genres.

What exactly is your point?

[Yehediah]

this games "storyline" is so convoluted and disappointing for an RPG that when i became interested in it i read the wiki. honestly, i expected more out of a dungeons and dragons game.

Well, it is lacking at times - to a large degree because in a MMO it's hard to follow the story unless you solo - and a lot is designed so it cannot be done solo. It's part of the MMO genre that has been hard for the genre to develop. It generally bears more resemblance to RPG (and D&D is RPG by origin) than it does to 1st person shooter and other genres that are competitive. Yet, it as a genre has a hard time being completely story driven. But, it can still be relaxing and up until recently has had some significant strategy (such as when the standard was door blocking and dragging mobs to the door - something that doesn't work well without voice which seems to be the new norm).

The main point though is the MMO genre has never been a highly competitive genre. With the same build and the same gear, toons are basically the same. Skill comes into play some, but generally in this genre it doesn't matter as much as say a 1st person shooter - but, in those you tend to die quick anyhow and so it might be questioned how much skill is in that genre as well.

[Xynot2]

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 find that the difficulty setting are askew when it comes to quests like Amarath. There are quest in there I run til elite is complete and then I never run them again (overall and yugo favor). And even on casual some of them can prove deadly.

And then there are those I run normal on when Im 3-5 levels below the quest level like Depths.

You're right, the consistency is askew.

Do I feel like you're skewing it toward the uber players? In some cases. Challenges, some of the FR stuff, Amarath... I could name more.

Only idea in my head for resolution is to set casual and normal easy enough for moderate players to be able to complete and have elite be a challenge for the Ubers and still be doable with the right team of moderates. You may want to add more quests so that *house* favor is obtainable by everyone...eventually.

Jungles of Kyber is a good example. While I wouldn't change elite, I would make normal doable at level without a lot of difficulty.

Conclusion- Catering to all is never going to be an easy job but you can adjust things so that there is more consistency. Moderate players should never be able to solo elite but in the same respect, Ubers shouldn't influence normal. Why am I leaving out hard? That should be the balance between the 2 and when you get normal and elite worked out, hard is the point in between.

*note-whether or not you agree with the examples used, look at the message overall. The example isnt as important as the message.

[Nitesco]

Maybe you need to calm down! ;-)

Maybe you need to calm down?


There's plenty of reasons and just because it isn't how you run, doesn't mean they are a "small" minority.

Plenty of reasons for what exactly?


I play to relax and therefore enjoy story as well.

The game already facilitates your playstyle. Some people have differing definitions of 'relaxation'. Story only holds up for the first play through. After that it's some form of grind or other.


Some of us have a competitive enough life without having a game that competitive - that's why they have different genres such as 1st person shooters which are highly competitive.

I think you will find most players who put any time into this game or any other game for that matter, are competing in some sense of the word. They are competing with the AI, they are competing with the environment, they are competing with their friends, they are competing with themselves, they are generally trying to get the best out of their character. This doesn't run counter to being able to enjoy the storyline or have a fun or relaxing experience.


Frankly, you are in the wrong genre - RPG's tend to be less competitive and more about atmosphere/exploration/story/relaxation.

I think you will find that is incorrect. People are very competetive in all games. You just have to find the foci of that competetiveness. People are notorious for finding the most trivial things to compete over. I highly doubt that after their first few play throughs of quests and exploration of all the areas, that players are primarily playing to experience the storyline and atmosphere. They are playing to develop their characters and striving to aquire that next piece of gear which will give their character an edge. The drive to aquire better loot is the primary driving force behind these types of games. Having fun, enjoying the storyline and experiencing the content is nice too. But the two are not mutually exclusive.


There has to be enough difficulty to not be boring for the average player, but the average RPG/adventure computer game is not meant to be highly competitive by nature of the genre. If you look at the history of the game genre you will find it is usually not extremely difficult compared to other genres.

There are enough difficutly levels currently to cater to every type of player, from the most casual to the most hardcore. This is a game, like most in the genre, about building characters and aquiring loot. That is the driving force that keeps people logging in every day.

The only argument that has been presented so far, against the idea that the highest difficulty settings should provide the most substantial rewards, is by players of the most casual and niche playstyles, complaining that they won't feel 'epic' enough if someone else out there might be slightly 'better' than them. This is a very selfish and short sighted stance to take, when it's an already established fact that tangible goals are required to keep people participating in any system.

Noone is trying to take anything away from the casual players. They can continue to enjoy the game at their own pace, on an easier difficulty setting. The slightly better loot or loot drop rate on the highest difficulties should cater to those players who play those difficulties. Higher level gear for higher level play. It's a win-win situation.

[Xezrak]

I find that the difficulty setting are askew when it comes to quests like Amarath. There are quest in there I run til elite is complete and then I never run them again (overall and yugo favor). And even on casual some of them can prove deadly.

And then there are those I run normal on when Im 3-5 levels below the quest level like Depths.

You're right, the consistency is askew.

Do I feel like you're skewing it toward the uber players? In some cases. Challenges, some of the FR stuff, Amarath... I could name more.

Only idea in my head for resolution is to set casual and normal easy enough for moderate players to be able to complete and have elite be a challenge for the Ubers and still be doable with the right team of moderates. You may want to add more quests so that *house* favor is obtainable by everyone...eventually.

Jungles of Kyber is a good example. While I wouldn't change elite, I would make normal doable at level without a lot of difficulty.

Conclusion- Catering to all is never going to be an easy job but you can adjust things so that there is more consistency. Moderate players should never be able to solo elite but in the same respect, Ubers shouldn't influence normal. Why am I leaving out hard? That should be the balance between the 2 and when you get normal and elite worked out, hard is the point in between.

*note-whether or not you agree with the examples used, look at the message overall. The example isnt as important as the message.

Completely agree with everything you have said here, well said.

Edit: although I wouldn't say amrath is that bad, depends on class you play and quest.

[Xezrak]

LOL.
the game expanded five levels - obviously level 20 quests had to be made easier so that EVERY level 20 player could get to 21. the problem is that for a level 20, decked out multi TR, there was NO difficulty setting appropriate to provide them a challenge in between levels 20-25. Epic Normal and Epic Hard are auto win (and are auto win not just for the multi-TR, geared character, but for every casual player, new to the game, wearing their leveling stone gear), and epic elite is designed for level 25 characters. so people are left to a horrendously boring grind before they can do anything fun again.

its fine to say that they had a good idea. but to say that there is nothing wrong with the difficulty gaps right now? i think that's overstepping it.

me personally - i cancelled my subscription. if i want to point/click/win, there's game available with less bugs. if i want a challenge i can complete with a group of competent, like minded players - DDO is not the place for it. and thats REALLY what MotU changed.

pre-MoTU, when you put up an LFM for level 20 only, the players who joined (generally) KNEW what they were getting into. they knew it would be tough, they should bring their best gear and their A-game. Now, those people are hiding. I hadn't put up an LFM for any level 15-20 quests since the leveling stone came out. I wanted like-minded, dedicated players in my group that were willing and READY to take on challenging quests. Turbine has destroyed that environment in DDO.

So im glad the game is free to play! because i can still log on my character and hit up my friends and continue to sadly ignore the LFM list. I used to love pugging... goodbye, pick up groups. and goodbye DDO. sadly, ive only logged on a couple times since the update now. I thought I might still have fun as a premium player - but it hasnt turned out that way. So i havent logged on much :( and goodbye my 80 dollars for the xpac - i was really looking forward to a Dungeons and Dragons expansion set in a familiar realm - but with all the Epic Destiny abilities having NOTHING to do with any Dungeons and Dragons ability, and the loss of the D20 for basic gameplay function, this isn't familiar at all - its just another fantasy MMO. Except this one has A LOT of bugs.

edit, by the way, basic difficulty probelms - Harry in Shroud normal has more HP and does more DPS than the CAD in epic normal echrono. in fact, ide wager that there is not a single mob in normal shroud less challenging than any single mob in e normal chrono.

No way is epic normal too easy for the majority of players, if you find normal too easy please just play are higher difficulty it is simple as that. If you were playing baldurs gate and normal was too easy you would player a higher difficulty, same thing to do here.

I think the overwhelming majority would recognise your hyperbole. Anyway Elite shouldn't cater to maxed out (in terms of level) characters, Elite should be a real challenge at level and I think the quests do serve this purpose, remember Epics now are ment to be exactly like levels 1-20, at level 4 proof is in the poison can be really really hard, doesn't mean its not doable. Normal and Hard can be completed by the overwhelming majority, most parties can complete normal at those levels and the same should hold for level 20-25. Please note I am all for making Elite quests even harder if that is what is wanted, because this is the difficulty designed to challenge the best players.

Hard I think is more up for discussion here. Where hard should fit into the grand scheme of things I don't know, I personlly like where it is currently and has been with level 1-20 and now level 20-25.

[Springstring]

I have read so many posts on this matter that it just pops back and forth and no answer to the on going problem is ever really correct. You will always get those that say it is to say and those that say it is to hard and all in all Turbine never listens they will do what they think is best has always been the way of games or anything that deals with money.

I do have one or two questions and I am sure as heck no one will listen and there will be a few that will bad mouth what I am asking.

1, You have a CR 15 monster why does it have 1000 hp? Heck even a 20 level fighter has to chose right to have that many HP but each and every monster has that many and more. The Hp ratio is something like 4 to one in favor of the monster

2. What is with the spawning of large mobs, with meta magic feats, or magic uses that have just the right spell required handy.

I find that this in itself just makes the game less interesting. You have a boss with 15k hp and a spawn of 3K hp mobs, magic uses that never run out of spell points, never get interrupted, archers that do over 100 hp of damage per hit (so I take it every archer monster is a ranger!).

In an effort to balance the game it has again shifted over to those that are uber players, they wine because it is not hard enough and in reality there number is quite small but Turbine in their ultimate wisdom kowtows to them. Why?

I enjoy the game most of the time I have died many times and it is part of the game but when you have to dump 2900 sp on just healing for one mine boss fight something is amiss.

When something does work turbine finds a way to mess it up to cater to the ones that wine. For once fix the errors in the game and quite kneecapping items. Make things work fix the lag, the hiccup when you switch items, stop nixing things let it settle and fix what is wrong and stop messing with what works.

[Ebondevil]

One thing I've been thinking of lately is traps, especially after running Waterworks on Elite (I know trap damage is broken in Heroic Elites at the moment but it's still pertinent).

A few simple guidlines about traps that I feel should generally be followed:


There should always be some way to get around them without needing to disable them, whoever placed the traps in the first place needs to get by without disabling them, if the players can detect the traps then the players should be able to avoid the traps, without needing to rely on precise timing which doesn't work due to client/server lag (try playing from the UK and you'll see what I mean there).
Mobs should always be effected by traps if they are hit by the trap, there's no reason why they shouldn't take damage from the traps just like the players. This actually gives some benefit to Not disabling traps.
Traps should not be stupidly impossible to detect, level 6 quests where a search skill of 20 isn't enough to detect the trap panel is quite frankly stupid!
All traps should be possible to disable, I know there are a few in the game at the moment that you cannot disable, at all. you should be able to disable them.
The person disabling the trap should not have to run through the trap to disable it, regardless of whether they have Evasion or not (See point 1).


Follow these simple rules and you can make the trap damage as insane as you like, anyone who's careless to run into them can die, anyone who's playing sensibly and finding the traps will not, Traps shouldn't need to be disabled, it should be a bonus for disabling them.

Trapping should be fun, not mandatory.

[Starla70]

Some very good points through this thread. Some things I am curious about are...
why monsters can now hit through closed bars and we can't.
Why can they move and cast when paralyzed?
Why are their spells doing so much more damage then the parties, even with the same spells?
Why can they attack while swimming and we can't?
Why did the monsters get buffed and we got nerfed?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

why monsters can now hit through closed bars and we can't.

Not all can, on both sides.
Just watch an arti dog trying to bite an evil minion on the other side of a closed door in Necro 1, "Tomb Of The Crimson Heart".
And the evil minion isn't able to get him, either.

[DrunkDwarves]

Wow this is a long thread with a ton of stuff in it.

To keep it short, the only problem I have with the current difficulty is how hard spells and traps hit on heroic elite. Being killed in 2-3 hits by casters or traps on a barbarian while leveling is a little bit excessive.

[whitepawn]

Epic Hard is too easy. Epic Normal is already in place, leave that for the folks who just want to see content, get an insta-win, and (*shudder*) read/listen to the story line. EE should be more difficult than the old, it was a needed addition to the game. But, increase EH to the former caliber of the standard epic, pre-expansion.

There's really no point in having both EN and EH, so close in difficulty level.

Challenge is good. Without challenge, raiding loses value, bigtime. It also trains complacency in the general player base, which is very bad. The community as a whole then has the potential of taking a big hit to skill base.

The exception to the statement re challenge would be The Lag-Monster CR.420 Raid Boss that appears, at random, in any dungeon, only to squat down and take an enormous dump on the raid group. It is an unnecessary difficulty. There are more creative ways to add challenge to a raid. Learning or engaging in a challenging dance, so to speak, is fun...but not when a F4 tornado is in the process of rolling through the venue.

[Yehediah]

Challenge is good. Without challenge, raiding loses value, bigtime.

Many gamers say this, but they don't really believe it. At least not in the "paying" public that is working full-time. What they really want is to "feel" challenged.

Here's why. If a raid takes 1-2 hours to put together and complete, the average person doesn't have that kind of time to "waste" on a failure. So, the typical raid (and even longer quests) will always be done at the level where a virtual "success" is highly likely by the typical PUG. Especially when you are guessing you have to do 20+ to get what you want. Wasting "40" hours on a 50% success rate just ain't practical for the average person (students excepted - assuming the student's bills are being footed by mom and dad, not a part-time job). So, if Hard is believed to have a 50% PUG failure, then Normal will be done by virtually all PUGS except the occasional "favor" run (and even that won't be done if there isn't a "big" incentive in loot since currently Heroic Elite gives the same favor as Epic Elite, which is sensible due to other reasons in the game). There will be the occasional "bragging" rights run on the Hard or Elite to say you did it. This is especially true for healers who often have to pay for those raids in using expensive spell power potions.

So, what is really desired by most people is to "feel" challenged without really being challenged on day-to-day runs.

[voxson5]

So I just did an elite BB pit run, force traps were hitting for ~15

Elite.

One of the puggers mentioned that on his last life the same traps were hitting for around 100.


Ild love to rant about how pathetic this is, but it's just going to fall on deaf ears.

Who's the spaz that keeps making these changes? Does (s)he really think this is good for the game?

[Machination]

I think there should always be some quests that you need a trapper to complete. You need one. If you don't have a trapper you can't do that quest.

I am not saying 50% of the content, but ~10% would be reasonable.

Same thing with CC caster, healer, DPS tank, whatever. The game should always have requirements as far as group dynamics to get through a percentage of the quests. Otherwise, yes we should all be sorcs and be done with it.


One thing I've been thinking of lately is traps, especially after running Waterworks on Elite (I know trap damage is broken in Heroic Elites at the moment but it's still pertinent).

A few simple guidlines about traps that I feel should generally be followed:


There should always be some way to get around them without needing to disable them, whoever placed the traps in the first place needs to get by without disabling them, if the players can detect the traps then the players should be able to avoid the traps, without needing to rely on precise timing which doesn't work due to client/server lag (try playing from the UK and you'll see what I mean there).
Mobs should always be effected by traps if they are hit by the trap, there's no reason why they shouldn't take damage from the traps just like the players. This actually gives some benefit to Not disabling traps.
Traps should not be stupidly impossible to detect, level 6 quests where a search skill of 20 isn't enough to detect the trap panel is quite frankly stupid!
All traps should be possible to disable, I know there are a few in the game at the moment that you cannot disable, at all. you should be able to disable them.
The person disabling the trap should not have to run through the trap to disable it, regardless of whether they have Evasion or not (See point 1).


Follow these simple rules and you can make the trap damage as insane as you like, anyone who's careless to run into them can die, anyone who's playing sensibly and finding the traps will not, Traps shouldn't need to be disabled, it should be a bonus for disabling them.

Trapping should be fun, not mandatory.

[Xezrak]

I think there should always be some quests that you need a trapper to complete. You need one. If you don't have a trapper you can't do that quest.

I am not saying 50% of the content, but ~10% would be reasonable.

Same thing with CC caster, healer, DPS tank, whatever. The game should always have requirements as far as group dynamics to get through a percentage of the quests. Otherwise, yes we should all be sorcs and be done with it.

I agree with most of this except the sorc part :P

[-Avalon-]

I don't think quests are too hard per se... but, the problem comes in that the Bravery Streaks keep people from doing quests in some cases, as well as causing a much more inflated disparity between F2P and P2P than was intended I think...

Let's say I, as a F2P player (premium though, with several packs bought), want to go do some quests that I never see anyone do, but are part of the packs I have access to... I could very well solo them on normal, hard, maybe even elite... I put up LFM just in case because better safe than sorry... and end up with 2 more people, both F2P who saved points and bought the pack... I can SOLO the quest on normal no doubt... but that is all we can access is normal, so we have to decide: Is doing this quest worth breaking the streak? And the answer inevitably, is NO. The quest sits in our log uncompleted until we get so far ahead of it that it is almost worthless for rewards or XP... This does NOT encourage players to buy packs!!

And that leads into the other problem... F2P people, even those who have paid a TON of money to Turbine through buying packs, upgrades, cosmetics, or even subscribing for a long time but quitting the sub due to economic difficulties or whatever) can only access normal difficulty at first which severely worsens their ability to keep a streak of any sort... since they also have access to less content, this means they suffer a double whammy. I know they should have less than those who are P2P...

Consider this, I paid for 2 months when the game came out... since then, I have given them probably about 50-60 bucks in addition... so in total, I have paid Turbine 120-150 bucks over the course of playing, and have given a lot of word of mouth advertising for them as well! Yet, someone who DL's it for free, and pays 21 bucks for 3 months sub, is given a lot more leeway and advantage...

P2P should have its benefits, yes, but should they be so many that premium members, who have often supported the game as much (sometimes MORE) than P2P, are completely gimped? Lack of content + Bravery Streak = Almost impossible to get anywhere. Open up difficulties so that everyone can access hard or elite maybe? Or give Premiums access to Hard difficulty while P2P gets elite? It would give an incentive to people to become Premium at the very least...

The difficulty in the game is not just the quests themselves, but also the leveling process. If I cannot gain levels, then it does not matter how hard the quests are.

[goodoldxelos]

I don't think quests are too hard per se... but, the problem comes in that the Bravery Streaks keep people from doing quests in some cases, as well as causing a much more inflated disparity between F2P and P2P than was intended I think...

Let's say I, as a F2P player (premium though, with several packs bought), want to go do some quests that I never see anyone do, but are part of the packs I have access to... I could very well solo them on normal, hard, maybe even elite... I put up LFM just in case because better safe than sorry... and end up with 2 more people, both F2P who saved points and bought the pack... I can SOLO the quest on normal no doubt... but that is all we can access is normal, so we have to decide: Is doing this quest worth breaking the streak? And the answer inevitably, is NO. The quest sits in our log uncompleted until we get so far ahead of it that it is almost worthless for rewards or XP... This does NOT encourage players to buy packs!!

And that leads into the other problem... F2P people, even those who have paid a TON of money to Turbine through buying packs, upgrades, cosmetics, or even subscribing for a long time but quitting the sub due to economic difficulties or whatever) can only access normal difficulty at first which severely worsens their ability to keep a streak of any sort... since they also have access to less content, this means they suffer a double whammy. I know they should have less than those who are P2P...

Consider this, I paid for 2 months when the game came out... since then, I have given them probably about 50-60 bucks in addition... so in total, I have paid Turbine 120-150 bucks over the course of playing, and have given a lot of word of mouth advertising for them as well! Yet, someone who DL's it for free, and pays 21 bucks for 3 months sub, is given a lot more leeway and advantage...

P2P should have its benefits, yes, but should they be so many that premium members, who have often supported the game as much (sometimes MORE) than P2P, are completely gimped? Lack of content + Bravery Streak = Almost impossible to get anywhere. Open up difficulties so that everyone can access hard or elite maybe? Or give Premiums access to Hard difficulty while P2P gets elite? It would give an incentive to people to become Premium at the very least...

The difficulty in the game is not just the quests themselves, but also the leveling process. If I cannot gain levels, then it does not matter how hard the quests are.

VIPs can unlock hard and elite automatically, and some elite quests especially the ones with traps can be challenging even on a superbly geared double TR. Also, if your character is not a single or double TR why worry about streaks? Once you TR you can unlock hard (single TR) and elite (double TR).


Hard and elite explorer areas with XP bonuses.

[goodoldxelos]

I think there should always be some quests that you need a trapper to complete. You need one. If you don't have a trapper you can't do that quest.

I am not saying 50% of the content, but ~10% would be reasonable.

Same thing with CC caster, healer, DPS tank, whatever. The game should always have requirements as far as group dynamics to get through a percentage of the quests. Otherwise, yes we should all be sorcs and be done with it.

No way, if i can beast my way through traps with a titanic docent (or three) than what's the big deal. We don't want class monopolies for quests, multiple solutions to a problem is better than 1.

[-Avalon-]

VIPs can unlock hard and elite automatically, and some elite quests especially the ones with traps can be challenging even on a superbly geared double TR. Also, if your character is not a single or double TR why worry about streaks? Once you TR you can unlock hard (single TR) and elite (double TR).


Hard and elite explorer areas with XP bonuses.

You're missing what I am saying... F2P can only unlock Normal, Premium - Normal... Because of the limit of content that F2P has, the likelihood of them ever SEEING 20, let alone getting enough tokens from the new Epic-Able quests (all 4 of them?) is so slim, that saying "Once you TR you can unlock hard (single TR)" is next to ridiculous, and saying "and elite (double TR)." is downright naive about how things actually work in the game.

I understand that the point is to MAKE F2P people pay money for VIP and/or buy stuff... but what they don't realize is that it is a balancing game between how hard you push and how hard you pull... The difficulty in GETTING to 20 as a F2P person is insanely ridiculous because currently they have to hope for finding groups doing Elite streaking, hope they are GOOD groups that do not just bungle everything, hope that they do all optionals and get max XP (aggression and breakables plus traps and secret doors), and then hope the group doesn't just disintegrate after a couple quests leaving them to have to wait for 20-30 minutes before finding another group...

I don't see how this attracts players as much as they probably WANT to attract players. There needs to be some hand off here, right now it is VIP has everything (well, mostly due to FR MotU/ED), Premium has next to nothing on up to everything, and F2P has basically nothing. Even if they buy an adventure pack, it only assists them for a few levels... doesn't really do much overall.

Need around 6-10 packs to have a decently comfortable ride... and even after they purchase all of that, they STILL cannot open on hard or elite! lol Which means, they still have a difficult time getting anywhere, it just isn't impossible anymore. The likelihood of them getting to TR is still almost as difficult as before, which is only going to make the problem worse, btw... because if it was almost impossible before (but doable thanks to buying packs) then it will be pretty much impossible the second time, but thankfully they can open on hard now?

So, it remains nearly impossible, but doable, after they spend 40-60 bucks on the game? And this is to motivate them to subscribe?

With the plethora of MMO's (a good many F2P, and a bunch that are MUCH more modern) out there, using F2P on DDO as the trial period intended to attract people to play, is much like attracting someone to mountain climbing by handing them a couple rusty daggers and telling them to climb Everest, while they look around and see other mountain climbing companies starting climbers off with small hills that have solid footing and handholds...

The first one tries to attract people by pummeling them and punishing them for not forking over money... the second says, I know you are F2P, you can do THESE quests, and that will get you all the way to 20 with no problems... and the end quests (2 of them) are all the end game content for you... If you like what you see, and have fun, there is about 20 times more in the game... But if you want, you can just replay those quests over and over!

DDO, even if you repeat the same quests, you will be hard pressed to get more than maybe 14th level or so... If you happen to make it to 16, you can do Lords of Dust... It is better than it used to be, though, because there were only 3 quests from 14-20, and only 1 of them from 18-20... so a person was expected to (without streaking) play on normal, then hard, then elite, and continue playing elite and hope that quest held out til 20? And then have no way to TR...

Now, there are some extra quests that will assist them some... but it still seems like they are trying to get more players by kicking them in the privates while holding a sign that says, "for $10 a month, you can have an adamantine cup to protect yourself!!" And the player goes, screw this! And heads to some other game before finding out that DDO is really an awesome game!

[Ebondevil]

I've been putting some thought into what makes things fun and the way DDO is set up at the moment.

Some Basic premises to work from:


Elite is the desired difficulty level to run content:

It grants the most xp: People generally want to level as fast as possible
The best loot: People want the best they can get
The most favour: Desired to unlock rewards/Earn TP


Elite is the best to run first, at or below the effective quest level:

It grants the most xp*: People generally want to level as fast as possible
Saves repeating the quest multiple times
To get the best bravery bonus
To get the first time completion bonus (if any).



The game as it stands encourages everyone to run content on Elite, at lower levels this is certainly possible, it's dangerous, there's a risk of death and failure, but it's fun. At Higher levels I don't think this is the case, the gap between Hard and Elite in quests gets wider and wider the higher up the content you go.

The really high level content it is in my opinion to the point of being silly, the number of mobs and the challenge ratings associated with those mobs are significantly above the effective quest level on Elite, seeing a CR 32 boss in a level 19 Elite (effective level 21) seems completely out of whack to me, I would expect at most a CR 26 Boss, most of single mob encounters ranging from CR 21-23, and group encounter at CR 20 or below.

The quest in question wasn't a fun challenge it was just an unpleasant grind, a quest I would rather not repeat again. I would say it was harder than an Epic Level 21 Quest on Hard (effective Level 22), even though the Heroic quest had a lower effective level.

For Elite Content to be successful it needs people to want to rerun them, so I'm left wondering, how much people repeat and enjoy both Quests and Raids on Elite, and how much they do them just to get them done and never look back.

For example: I have yet to be in a party that wanted to spend the time and effort running a shroud on Elite. There's more loot and more favour (if you've not run it on elite), more challenge and it should be fun, yet I see level 20-25's running Shroud on Normal and Hard frequently, so why isn't it run on elite?

Where are all the people claiming the content is too easy and they want more of a challenge from their content? Probably only doing the elite runs once and getting bored with them before farming something they want on casual difficulty. If they really want the challenge they could always run the content below the effective level, the difficulty doesn't need to be increased to meet their demands.

* See 'The "Art" of Gaining XP' section at the following: http://ddowiki.com/page/Experience_points or to summarise: The most xp can be gained from a quest by running a quest multiple times on elite, then finishing off on normal and hard, and that's not taking into account Bravery bonuses.

Long Story Short:
Casual, Normal and Hard difficulties I would say are balanced about right, Elite is scaled up far too much compared to Hard, and it gets worse the higher the content level goes.

[Rawel_San]

I would say heroic normal/hard/elite work fine though elite does keep running away from hard at the higher
levels, but imo that's not a huge problem. It's more then possible to cap a tr2 now without running out of quests
to run even at the very high levels (though seeing the 1mill you have to get from lvl 18 to 20 is still very
demoralizing to me).

The epic normal/hard/elite quests could definitely use some tweaking though. Hard is way to close to normal and
incredibly far from elite. This is especially the case for raids. Destroying velah in two breaths with 1 or even no
healers and everyone staying in on epic hard just feels really wrong. The good thing about the old EE raids at the
current time though (Velah/DQ) is that there definitely seems to be a reason to run them EE as the drops seem
to be noticeably improved. Ofcourse the brokenness that is EE LoB should have been addressed long ago.

In my opinion epic hard could use a bit of a tweak upwards and maybe a lowered scaling. The scaling on Epic Elite
should be removed entirely and should never have made it in, in the first place.

I can't comment on casual/epic casual since I haven't run a casual quest since ENormal DQ1 became the old casual
flag. (Never liked running casual dq1/epic dq2, but epic dq1 took way to long and needed a much better party
then epic dq2 and running normal-elite dq1 didn't really make any sense)

Just my 2 copper,
Rawel

[Qwire]

Here's my thoughts at the moment...and I'll preface it with the following:

I'm trying to look at this from the perspective of a newcomer wanting to learn the game, and enjoy it, while enticing them to want to stay. There's already enough 'attitude' in game to drive them away. LFM's have already gone way down due to the game changes implemented...it'd be nice to see a reversal in this.

IE:
- LFM's that from condescending vets or elitists. "guildies & friends only"
(usually stems from too many blown quests from bad luck in pugs)
Honestly, I'd like to see the community itself take some action to deter these, as it's wholly unwelcoming to the community at large. Nevermind what it says to a newcomer.

- "know the quest" LFM's (understandable somewhat...but still abrupt to someone
just learning/relearning things) -could at least "be willing to take directions" or "be
willing to take instruction" or "teamwork required".
(Know the quest says, I'm too lazy to teach you, but I need your help in my party.) :rolleyes:


Balancing difficulty in this game is extremely difficult because of the range of players... Things that can be soloed by well geared TR could potentially crush a party of new ungeared players, especially if they don't already know the quest.

Agree completely. But I think being a TR should not be factored into the development for any Heroic quest level. Perhaps quests across the board should have the Heroic/Elite option to solve the problem for TR's challenge satisfaction. As currently there's not much of a way to balance things for TR's.


The difficulty levels at the moment don't quite feel right to me. When I first started playing ~1 year ago I feared running anything on elite because I failed them, regularly. Now with a couple TR's under my belt and more experience, these quests are mostly a walk in the park to solo.

As they should be, since you're twinked & TR'd... at least compared to a non-vet/fully geared toon. The problem is you don't have a proper format to challenge that TR level as you re-level.


So I think the levels need to be rejigged slightly:
Casual - Should be soloable by a new player on their first life with limited gear (This allows new players to learn quests, get xp and gear if for whatever reason they don't like partying up/don't have time for a party to fill)

Agreed.
Again, I think being a TR should not be factored into the development for ANY Heroic quest level.


Normal - Should be a slight challenge for a party of new players with limited gear (Where challenge means that if a couple of mistakes are made the chances of completing drop unless resources are used, Encourages better teamplay and coordination for better xp)

Agreed


Hard - Should be a bit of a challenge for a geared TR to solo( This 'should' also make it possible to do with a well geared party of new players/first life toons)

Disagree per what I've underlined above. Hard should require an at-level party with good communication, and reasonable geared for that level. Not 'well geared' -as I read that to imply having farmed a bit. Hard should be a challenge of tactics/communication, not an 'am I fully geared yet' for level test. That should be left to elite IMO.


Elite - Should be a challenge for a TR party (This one is all about risk vs reward. A PUG consisting of a few TR's and a couple well geared new players will find it a fair challenge but could complete with good teamwork, A group of vet's who TR together and know each others abilities and the quests should even find this a slight challenge, but lets face it - if you balanced elite around those players it would become extremely exclusive and new players would never even attempt it)

Heroic Elite should be for properly ("well") geared, experienced, and parties that communicate well, and work together. With SOME "named gear" expected (as a first lifer rarely has a fully geared toon, unless they're getting hand-me downs from alts. IN WHICH CASE, that already says you have more experience than a normal first lifer).


Epic - Should be... Well, Epic. Capped Toons first life or not, with decent gear (Greensteel, ToD sets ect) should be challenged, somewhere around a 70% completion rate. At the moment most epics can be walked through with just a small amount of coordination just 1-3 well geared toons (One or more would need to be a caster but this isn't the place to be discussing that)

Epic levels should be for a TR or a well-geared (alot of named gear) party.

Epic Normal: Any TR should be able to run, and have a well balanced/fairly well equipped toon by this point. Capped (20+) first lifers should be well balanced, and be presented a substantial challenge -as they're not going to have all the Epic loot/gear in most cases due to lack of the incessant Epic item farming required scrolls/seals/shards. And no, I'm not talking about a persistent first-lifer toon that you simply don't want to TR. But a first lifer that someone is still learning the end-game ropes with! ;)

Epic Hard: TR's should be able to run together and communicate well. Fully named/some Epic gear. **First Lifers beware. Angels fear to tread here.** :D
(Unless you're a persistent first lifer that's FULLY Epic geared)

Epic Elite: Full on rage. Full blown first-life twinks and TR's only. With the loot to show for it upon success. And yes. Loot gained from EE quests *should* make life easier for running other EE quests.

But personally, those in this last category have ZERO right to whine about "everything being too easy" on content other than Epic Elite if you're geared to this level, as you're now an endgame player. STOP right there and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Or go TR again. :p :D

And lastly, since it pertains to "game difficulty" -PLEASE fix the **** physical environment in some quests. EG: the ledges/walkways in some areas such as Coalescence Chamber (which has improved, but could use more), and there's one similar to that in the Necro area (in the Tomb of the Shadow... series) that has the same style ledges as CC in the Vale, but I can't think of the name of the specific quest ATM. But the environment itself should NOT be a challenge in these examples. I mean all the swimming, and trying to get up the ledges in the Tomb of the Shadow 'X' quest takes longer than the darn quest itself. :(

[goodoldxelos]

I've been putting some thought into what makes things fun and the way DDO is set up at the moment.

Some Basic premises to work from:


Elite is the desired difficulty level to run content:

It grants the most xp: People generally want to level as fast as possible
The best loot: People want the best they can get
The most favour: Desired to unlock rewards/Earn TP


Elite is the best to run first, at or below the effective quest level:

It grants the most xp*: People generally want to level as fast as possible
Saves repeating the quest multiple times
To get the best bravery bonus
To get the first time completion bonus (if any).



The game as it stands encourages everyone to run content on Elite, at lower levels this is certainly possible, it's dangerous, there's a risk of death and failure, but it's fun. At Higher levels I don't think this is the case, the gap between Hard and Elite in quests gets wider and wider the higher up the content you go.

The really high level content it is in my opinion to the point of being silly, the number of mobs and the challenge ratings associated with those mobs are significantly above the effective quest level on Elite, seeing a CR 32 boss in a level 19 Elite (effective level 21) seems completely out of whack to me, I would expect at most a CR 26 Boss, most of single mob encounters ranging from CR 21-23, and group encounter at CR 20 or below.

The quest in question wasn't a fun challenge it was just an unpleasant grind, a quest I would rather not repeat again. I would say it was harder than an Epic Level 21 Quest on Hard (effective Level 22), even though the Heroic quest had a lower effective level.

For Elite Content to be successful it needs people to want to rerun them, so I'm left wondering, how much people repeat and enjoy both Quests and Raids on Elite, and how much they do them just to get them done and never look back.

For example: I have yet to be in a party that wanted to spend the time and effort running a shroud on Elite. There's more loot and more favour (if you've not run it on elite), more challenge and it should be fun, yet I see level 20-25's running Shroud on Normal and Hard frequently, so why isn't it run on elite?

Where are all the people claiming the content is too easy and they want more of a challenge from their content? Probably only doing the elite runs once and getting bored with them before farming something they want on casual difficulty. If they really want the challenge they could always run the content below the effective level, the difficulty doesn't need to be increased to meet their demands.

* See 'The "Art" of Gaining XP' section at the following: http://ddowiki.com/page/Experience_points or to summarise: The most xp can be gained from a quest by running a quest multiple times on elite, then finishing off on normal and hard, and that's not taking into account Bravery bonuses.

Long Story Short:
Casual, Normal and Hard difficulties I would say are balanced about right, Elite is scaled up far too much compared to Hard, and it gets worse the higher the content level goes.

I think you hit the nail on the head except the "Long Story Short". The challenge of elites is what is fun to our guild while leveling. Your gaining a large boost to xp for significantly harder quests. If you don't have the gear or experience running a quest perhaps that person/group should choose hard (which is still good xp and has a nice streak as well).

Yes there are a few quests on elite at level that are especially difficult(acute delirium, tor dragons to name 2).

I will agree with the original posters purpose then, a premium player should be able to unlock at least hard /signed on this.

[Artrish]

The quest enter the kobold in the reavers reach pack i find is setup a bit difficult then is necessary for some builds. A past life i remember it being manageable solo (ranger class using manyshot), so this life on my cleric i ran it on normal difficulty as a level 19 pure build battle cleric.

It is a level 17 quest, so i thought it would be easy going, i could use a tonne of exp being six lives in to the build but it wasn't.

The part i found annoying, was that there was many times that i was confronted by multiple wolves and a self healing caster. The caster cast deathward on everything, so i could not instant kill any targets that were key to take down fast.

It resulted, in my character being cornered multiple times, where i was being spammed knocked down by wolves (more then one attacking at a time) with a caster spamming his flame ball(i forget the name of it) that has a knock down effect as well. So this coupled with them all having deathward on that i couldnt take out anything in a hurry meant i got to take one swing in between being non stop knockdowned and took full minutes or so to try kill any monster at all.

I found this non stop being knocked over with no way to clear any fast to be quite ridiculous for a quest set to normal when my character is 2 levels above it.

My solution was to ddoor to the start and then crawl at a snails pace to take everything down one by one. Which i am sure is fun for some, but i chose to play on an easy difficulty setting so i could get it done easily. It was not easy thats for sure.

I have no suggestions on any changes, just wanted to mention that that quest was a pain. It took me 70 minutes for approximately 8k exp and it won't be one i will be repeating for a while. The rest of my levelling i am just sticking to slayers and house c challenges. Most of the content over level 17 isn't solo friendly for the non uber elitists (i'm just a regular joe that plays a lot, i don't have the skills to be uber elite).

[-Avalon-]

The quest enter the kobold in the reavers reach pack i find is setup a bit difficult then is necessary for some builds. A past life i remember it being manageable solo (ranger class using manyshot), so this life on my cleric i ran it on normal difficulty as a level 19 pure build battle cleric.

It is a level 17 quest, so i thought it would be easy going, i could use a tonne of exp being six lives in to the build but it wasn't.

The part i found annoying, was that there was many times that i was confronted by multiple wolves and a self healing caster. The caster cast deathward on everything, so i could not instant kill any targets that were key to take down fast.

It resulted, in my character being cornered multiple times, where i was being spammed knocked down by wolves (more then one attacking at a time) with a caster spamming his flame ball(i forget the name of it) that has a knock down effect as well. So this coupled with them all having deathward on that i couldnt take out anything in a hurry meant i got to take one swing in between being non stop knockdowned and took full minutes or so to try kill any monster at all.

I found this non stop being knocked over with no way to clear any fast to be quite ridiculous for a quest set to normal when my character is 2 levels above it.

My solution was to ddoor to the start and then crawl at a snails pace to take everything down one by one. Which i am sure is fun for some, but i chose to play on an easy difficulty setting so i could get it done easily. It was not easy thats for sure.

I have no suggestions on any changes, just wanted to mention that that quest was a pain. It took me 70 minutes for approximately 8k exp and it won't be one i will be repeating for a while. The rest of my levelling i am just sticking to slayers and house c challenges. Most of the content over level 17 isn't solo friendly for the non uber elitists (i'm just a regular joe that plays a lot, i don't have the skills to be uber elite).

I agree on some quests... seems that Reaver's houses these type.

I have not tried "Enter the Kobold" yet... but using my favorite toon (a VERY soloable build that I never had issues with before on normal or hard at same level content, elite if I was same level was doable but a little tough due to traps mainly - no rogue/arti levels)...

Went into "Prey on the Hunter" at 19 (entered on normal if I recall)... omg good thing I had multiple ways to get back spell points, and great thing I can kill fairly fast... respawning giants/wolves all the way to the dragon... so if you do this solo, and don't know that they keep respawning, you could be in for a SERIOUS problem. And then, the dragon fight, if you don't have some way to grab the giants' attention, you are just screwed. Right before the main giant entered the fight, something blew me all the way across the ice, so I had to run back to the fight...

Now, the problem here is... I was NEVER in any danger of dying... I just could not handle the giants fast enough, and due to mechanics of the fight, a ridiculously easy fight where I fully intended on killing the dragon anyway, resulted in failure due to not protecting the dragon enough? When they artificially make quests harder, it just makes the quests not fun... I never attempted that quest again because it was hard due to artificial means, not because the challenge was a real challenge... When there are real challenges, I will throw myself at it over and over until I absolutely MUST quit. I am exceptionally stubborn =)

But, in that quest, really, there ought to be a way to side WITH the giants or with the dragon... if you side with the dragon, then you have a time limit, the other way results in having to do a normal non-timed quest where you have to battle the dragon(s) with just your group... possibly have to fight baby dragons all the way there... get breathed on while running the maze, etc...

Make both ways hard, but don't fail me on a quest that is trivial at my level, all because I didn't kill respawning giants fast enough to save the creature I plan to kill :rolleyes:

[Yehediah]

I really think the people always saying everything is too easy on Elite:

a) Doesn't run EVERY quest (but only the more popular ones)
b) Has the "perfect" group on the few really hard ones they run
c) Is only thinking of the majority of quests and forgetting the really hard ones

Some are just ridiculously hard, while many are ridiculously easy.

[Nahual]

No way, if i can beast my way through traps with a titanic docent (or three) than what's the big deal. We don't want class monopolies for quests, multiple solutions to a problem is better than 1.


That is not a class monopoly as anyone can have a build that does traps.

[Shmuel]

IMO, and i admittedly do not know too much what it like to be a new player in the current state of the game, so ll leave my comments for epic. endgame has become so easy that for the first time in 6 years, i can honetly say i am becoming so bored that i am thinking about trying to find another game. and no, even when all there was was shroud for 18 months, i didnt feel that way.


epic needs to be epic. by the time you are moving PAST level 20, you should have a good toon, good gear, and know how to play your toon well, and work with the team.

if you cant do ALL of those things, TR, go back and get more high end heroic gear, practice playing whatever. Epic should be where the wheat gets separated from the chaff, without exception.

gain, IMO, epic casual is an oxymoron and should be eliminated. If it must be kept, then it should be about as difficult as epic hard is now. Epic hard is NOT HARD. it is something that vets mostly sleepwalk through, and pugs complete with little real danger of wipe.

If we must keep epic casual, which imagine we will, then something like this may be more appropriate:

epic casual: same as current epic hard, slightly lower endboss hp and damage (like 20%), no mobs other than rednames have blanket immunities or epic wards. droprates for items should be 10% of what they are on norm.

epic normal: same as current epic hard, but with the number of mobs (not individual mobs hp) increased about 10-20% from current epic norm. much better droprates than currently (like twice as much)

epic hard: same as old-style epics. Older Eberron epic raids, such as vault of night, chrono, adq, and any others i forgot should not be playable below this level. casual players can run them on heroic. droprates should be 2-3 times what they were on older epics. LOB and MA should be exempt from this no epic norm epic casual requirement, because some life starting to finally breathe into those raids and they originally designed to be so resource intensive as to make them pointless to run.

epic elite: take current epic elite and increase the damage dealt by mobs by 50%. increase the number of mobs by 25-30%, increase boss/raidboss damage dealt by 100% DO NOT INCREASE HP OF MOBS. Give more spells and more variety of spells to casters (especially disjunction), and grant some unusual special attacks and minions to the bosses (like the wolves the boss in von1 has, the eggs in ev6, etc, but more) have every group of mobs include at least one cleric who will always cast mass deathward on his monster friends as his first action. Completion of a quest or raid on this difficulty should never be considered a certainty, even by the best players, and should pretty much guarantee a rare loot drop, shard, or raid item for each and every player who completes it, every time.

my opinion/2cents

[xenobias]

I agree with most players when they mention the wide gap between the 'supposed level' of some quests and the actual level of them when it comes to some hard and elite.

If an elite quest is said to be 2 levels above norm then everything in it should be 2 levels above norm. This really isn't the case and I see the difficulty gap start to widen at around the level 8 quests.

This original distinction was created when everyone were first lifers.

If the spread is being increased-the documentation should say so.

So now a larger base of players are multi-lifers and elite is no longer difficult enough. At this point Turbine increased the quests to epic proportions.

If these, which were installed a mere weeks ago, are still not difficult enough for you, don't complain, it's beneath you.

Instead take it upon yourself to increase the challenge on your own. Take that twink gear off and run the epic elites with level 5 or 10 gear. Still not hard enough? Run it solo with no hirelings.

If your toon is so twinked that even that isn't hard enough-there is only one conclusion-you have spent way too much of the time God gave you playing this game! :P

You with multi lives, super duper twinked toons...The guys and gals that have run shroud 60 times on each of your 14 toons. You know who you are. You're the players that spend weeks crunching numbers, researching mobs and equip, skills, feats and enhancements.

In all my sincerity--I bow down to you, I commend you, your efforts, your blood, sweat and tears. If you put this much effort into a political career, there is no telling how far you can go.

Say what you will-grind teeth, mash bones, spew and flame-but the simple truth of the matter is you are a minority in this game-believe it or not.

This is a business that makes money on fun so the decisions are made looking at what gives the MOST fun to the MOST people.

You are exceptional players with valid and important concerns. Concerns that can be only handled 1 way.

Each quest needs to have one ULTRA EPIC GOLDEN ELITE level that is un-winnable.

Like the final level in DOOM where you jump into a black pit, blinded, surrounded by 1000 creatures and you with just a chain saw. Swinging away non stop till you're dead. The winner has the "Last Longer Title".

I just know that one of you Specials will find a way to beat even that!

[Shmuel]

I agree with most players when they mention the wide gap between the 'supposed level' of some quests and the actual level of them when it comes to some hard and elite.

If an elite quest is said to be 2 levels above norm then everything in it should be 2 levels above norm. This really isn't the case and I see the difficulty gap start to widen at around the level 8 quests.

This original distinction was created when everyone were first lifers.

If the spread is being increased-the documentation should say so.

So now a larger base of players are multi-lifers and elite is no longer difficult enough. At this point Turbine increased the quests to epic proportions.

If these, which were installed a mere weeks ago, are still not difficult enough for you, don't complain, it's beneath you.

Instead take it upon yourself to increase the challenge on your own. Take that twink gear off and run the epic elites with level 5 or 10 gear. Still not hard enough? Run it solo with no hirelings.

If your toon is so twinked that even that isn't hard enough-there is only one conclusion-you have spent way too much of the time God gave you playing this game! :P

You with multi lives, super duper twinked toons...The guys and gals that have run shroud 60 times on each of your 14 toons. You know who you are. You're the players that spend weeks crunching numbers, researching mobs and equip, skills, feats and enhancements.

In all my sincerity--I bow down to you, I commend you, your efforts, your blood, sweat and tears. If you put this much effort into a political career, there is no telling how far you can go.

Say what you will-grind teeth, mash bones, spew and flame-but the simple truth of the matter is you are a minority in this game-believe it or not.

This is a business that makes money on fun so the decisions are made looking at what gives the MOST fun to the MOST people.

You are exceptional players with valid and important concerns. Concerns that can be only handled 1 way.

Each quest needs to have one ULTRA EPIC GOLDEN ELITE level that is un-winnable.

Like the final level in DOOM where you jump into a black pit, blinded, surrounded by 1000 creatures and you with just a chain saw. Swinging away non stop till you're dead. The winner has the "Last Longer Title".

I just know that one of you Specials will find a way to beat even that!

2 weeks after that level is added to the game the forum will be full of whiners complaining that it is too hard, that most of the playerbase is excluded from this content because they arent uber enough and it needs to be nerfed. and turbine will nerf it, nerf it again, and it will be just as dumbed down and easy as the rest of the game.

how do i know this? because that was how EPIC was originally conceived advertised and intended for the game. and what i just described is exactly what happened.

[Ebondevil]

2 weeks after that level is added to the game the forum will be full of whiners complaining that it is too hard, that most of the playerbase is excluded from this content because they arent uber enough and it needs to be nerfed. and turbine will nerf it, nerf it again, and it will be just as dumbed down and easy as the rest of the game.

Firstly I believe Epic's were changed because of the Epic levels, not because of people whining, and the Epic Elites, should still be the same difficulty as the old epics.

Secondly if there's no favour to be gained and no unique loot, just a better chance at the named loot, then I see no reason why the difficulty should be nerfed. If the content has favour or unique loot then it shouldn't be limited to a smaller fraction of the playerbase, hard yes, but not exclusive.

[Lyria]

I think a lot of the problem stems from the term "epic", honestly.

If you remove the word "epic" from 20-25th level stuff, they're simply 20-25th level quests. Considering that without ED, a 21st character has gained pretty much nothing over a 20th level character, it's not as though you suddenly had this massive spike in character power. The term "epic levels" is simply a holdover from the P&P game.

If people want a real challenge for their mega-geared mega-TR'd characters, petition the devs to create a new challenge rating for quests above elite. Call it "Lethal". Have it pop up a warning in front of you when you select it saying "You're going to die if you attempt this difficulty. You will be grease-stains on the walls after the first room, and your gear will be used to pick the monsters' teeth while they gloat about having slammed you with 75 negative levels after hitting you with Mordenkainen's Disjunction. And that's just the Weakling Kobold Scout trash mobs from the first encounter!"

Simply put, if you find the game too easy on epic elite, maybe it's because you've got a ton of TRs, full guild buffs, massively over-twinked characters, and ED abilities that are doing stupid amounts of damage? Try running quests without guild buffs, yugo pots, or all the other "crutches" that you rely on to push yourself into the stratosphere. Maybe it wouldn't be as easy. Maybe you'd be challenged. Who knows!

All I know is that at 22nd level on my first-life characters, "epic normal" is fun and doable just like any other "normal" quest. Epic hard is challenging, but doable if I'm careful and manage my resources well (as it should be). If I want to really test myself, I'll try one on epic elite. Haven't yet, though.

But I guess I'm just a "noob" to the "I have 47 TRs" crowd. :)

[-Avalon-]

I think a lot of the problem stems from the term "epic", honestly.

If you remove the word "epic" from 20-25th level stuff, they're simply 20-25th level quests. Considering that without ED, a 21st character has gained pretty much nothing over a 20th level character, it's not as though you suddenly had this massive spike in character power. The term "epic levels" is simply a holdover from the P&P game.

If people want a real challenge for their mega-geared mega-TR'd characters, petition the devs to create a new challenge rating for quests above elite. Call it "Lethal". Have it pop up a warning in front of you when you select it saying "You're going to die if you attempt this difficulty. You will be grease-stains on the walls after the first room, and your gear will be used to pick the monsters' teeth while they gloat about having slammed you with 75 negative levels after hitting you with Mordenkainen's Disjunction. And that's just the Weakling Kobold Scout trash mobs from the first encounter!"

Simply put, if you find the game too easy on epic elite, maybe it's because you've got a ton of TRs, full guild buffs, massively over-twinked characters, and ED abilities that are doing stupid amounts of damage? Try running quests without guild buffs, yugo pots, or all the other "crutches" that you rely on to push yourself into the stratosphere. Maybe it wouldn't be as easy. Maybe you'd be challenged. Who knows!

All I know is that at 22nd level on my first-life characters, "epic normal" is fun and doable just like any other "normal" quest. Epic hard is challenging, but doable if I'm careful and manage my resources well (as it should be). If I want to really test myself, I'll try one on epic elite. Haven't yet, though.

But I guess I'm just a "noob" to the "I have 47 TRs" crowd. :)

Lol, I pretty much never get ship buffs, yugo pots, or even epic destinies (not bought yet)... I just started my very first TR life... last life did EE quests, they were a little challenging, but only because of the amount of lag from AoE spells with high particles counts...

Want a challenge? Downgrade your internet speed to a 1 Meg service, have everyone summon Air Ele's, and get someone to cast fog spells at every possible chance during fights...

Even Epic Casual could be a real chore then! :p

[Yehediah]

Lol, I pretty much never get ship buffs, yugo pots, or even epic destinies (not bought yet)...

The very fact that most complainers about difficulty don't do things like this (and other things) to make quests harder (short groups, non-optimal groups, etc.) means they don't really want things harder. They just want to feel more "uber" because they can supposedly do something someone else can't.

[Grabin]

In general I think the content of the game is good. But it is to easy to solo and shortman most quest's.

The problem this and many MMO's have is how do you succed in having new and old players enjoy gaming together.

Guilds are a good but not enough. My suggetstion is that you increase the amount of reward regarding the size of the group. It could be droprate or xp. If the dungeon diff. is scaling so should the reward. This, I think, would encourage players to group more.

Another thing I think would do the game more exciting is more random dungeons. Keep the players on their toe's. Not knowing what to expect. This, I think would be great on epic levels (not for beginners). All quest's are in some respect's challenging the first time, but when you figure them out it becomes routine.

There should always be a risk of failing!

[Karavek]

Simply put yes the game is too hard, not due to challenge but poor design choices.

For example if you take into account the real world, the need to be able to get up and down at a moments notices, lag spikes, and other factors. having upwards of an hour or more become a waste that turns what should be entertainment into frustration is just not acceptable.

Something DDO players in the hard core min maxxer population have failed to grasp, and infected you devs with is a lack of understanding the basic truth. Real challenge is not suppose to ever come from the content but the players in MMO. Our PD community is a great example of this.

In another MMO city of heroes, the difficulty slider is actually capable of enough fine tuning that even power gamers can find a challenge in the form of mindlessly fighting through hoards lesser builds would simply be overwhelmed by. And turning end boss fights up to a group worthy battle, or down to a one on one that as long as you have a decent character and a few temp buffs, you cant fail.

There are no differing rewards in this system beyond per kill xp increases. since we dont award xp for kill in DDO this means in DDO challenge should be entirely player choice. While rewards should not be based on difficulty but on content being played through and completed.

Currently there is little reason for me to play DDO because far to often my time feels wasted. I can log into almost any other MMO and feel the moment I start killing, and completing missions that take only a quarter of an hour or less, that my character is seeing significant progress.

Part of the great flaw is the lack of the traditional xp per kill system that PnP is actually built upon. Most old school dice rollers still play by the rule that every GP in value you find equals an EP to write down. The system you all instituted at launch here is one of the biggest wrenches in this games evolution that you have ever had to deal with.

for example the current population of power gamers, the ones who set the bar so high others struggle to keep up to, currently say xp per minute needs to equal 2-4k. that is alot of xp a minute to players struggling to get through a quest that rewards maybe 4k xp and takes upwards of an hour. Especially when its the newer players who need the help, and the certainty of progression to even feel like its worth investing more time in.

That is about the sum of it. I am tired of wasting my time. Playing DDO feels more like a waste of time, then an active entertaining virtual adventure. I dont log on here to play. I log on to either do old dull things I KNOW i can get done in my limited time, or risk doing something new, but having it fail because of what often feels like a DM cheating.

One of the best changes you could make I guess would be an option to turn off red name status. Orange names are usually pretty tolerable. but red names typically come off as OP cheating mobs when your playing an average first life build solo.

Understand no difficulty can or should take into account anything past 28 point built first life non twinked characters. The very toughest characters should have NOTHING feeling like even a mild challenge. If they wanted challenge they wouldnt roll up such flawless characters.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Plenty of difficulty choices work just fine, and overall I enjoy the game. The game has some very rough edges in some missions, though.

Many have mentioned the length of the missions, combined with tthe "backloaded" nature of rewards and a sudden rise in the difficulty of encounters, as a frustrating source of difficulty that has a "Deux Ex Machina" feel to it. Those concerns are valid, in my view. And, even though more missions are fun than not, often the missions that are particularly annoying are quests that are required parts of a chain of quests, and so you either put up with the missions that aren't enjoyable or give up on the entire chain You might want to re-think forcing players to put up with some missions, in order to get to ones that are actually fun for at least some cases -- I get that flagging is a key "gating" mechanic and I'm not suggesting it be eliminated. It could probably appear less frequently, though, and I doubt that many players would miss whatever got dropped.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

A lot of missions have one or more tricks to them that, when memorized, make the mission far easier. But, until you memorize the trick, or unless you're willing to alternate between reading a wiki and playing the game (annoying, immersion breaking) you can waste a lot of time getting nowhere.

A few examples of "tricks" that I've learned, or not yet learned well enough.

Redemption: Target mobs through Heyton and have a cleric hireling, and you'll do fine; Heyton targets mobs sooner than you, so mobs get less hits on Heyton, and your cleric will keep healing him. If you don't have somebody healing Heyton, then you can easily fail, as a newer player. Over and over and over, until you essentially get lucky one run, then sigh in relief and move on to other missions.

Crimson Heart: Finding the runed skulls can be a pain. Why not make bigger hitboxes, for glowies? Why not make pressing a button (ie: "Q") show you all things with which you can interact in a room, or a wide amount of open ground? That's standard stuff in other games and I have no idea why that hasn't been implemented here. Playing "hunt the glowie" isn't really difficult, per se; it's just difficult to stay interested in missions where that's a barrier to completion.

Coyle: Personally, I hate "Guard the glass-jawed stupid NPC" missions., except when saving them is optional. Even worse, in the first mission featuring Coyle you get a dialogue choice at the beginning of the mission to bring Coyle with you or leave him behind. If you leave him behind, then he will die while you're in another part of a dungeon. An initial and from all appearances very reasonable dialogue choice leads to mission failure? Huh?

A Small Problem - Easy if you read the wiki, a pain to figure out on your own -- You eat stew to get the jump skill, from reading the wiki, and there's little mention of what that does or its value in that mission? Is this Myst, or DDO?

[HAL]

The thing I hate most about quest difficulty is the inconsistency. We have not 1 but 3 different criteria for informing the player of the difficulty of a quest:

1. Quest Level
2. Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite
3. Extreme Challenge warning

Yet what do these labels actually mean when some quests that have the same labels as others are clearly much more difficult or much more easy than the others? It is very frustrating to run one quest of a certain level with expected amounts of challenge and then run another of the same level (even in the same chain) and get your you-know-what handed to you.

[Cyr]

Crimson Heart: Finding the runed skulls can be a pain. Why not make bigger hitboxes, for glowies? Why not make pressing a button (ie: "Q") show you all things with which you can interact in a room, or a wide amount of open ground? That's standard stuff in other games and I have no idea why that hasn't been implemented here. Playing "hunt the glowie" isn't really difficult, per se; it's just difficult to stay interested in missions where that's a barrier to completion.


There is a button to select non-combat interactable objects...

[Lyria]

Crimson Heart: Finding the runed skulls can be a pain. Why not make bigger hitboxes, for glowies? Why not make pressing a button (ie: "Q") show you all things with which you can interact in a room, or a wide amount of open ground? That's standard stuff in other games and I have no idea why that hasn't been implemented here. Playing "hunt the glowie" isn't really difficult, per se; it's just difficult to stay interested in missions where that's a barrier to completion.

Really? I always found it easy, myself. Wander around the dungeon and tap Q now and then (my bind for "target nearest interactable object"). Most of them are in pretty obvious places, too.


Coyle: Personally, I hate "Guard the glass-jawed stupid NPC" missions., except when saving them is optional. Even worse, in the first mission featuring Coyle you get a dialogue choice at the beginning of the mission to bring Coyle with you or leave him behind. If you leave him behind, then he will die while you're in another part of a dungeon. An initial and from all appearances very reasonable dialogue choice leads to mission failure? Huh?

Coyle is pretty much on everyone's "raging hate" list, I think. It's what makes Threnal such a pain in the butt to get a group for -- nobody likes doing that 15m library quest where you can literally do it flawlessly for 14:30 and then in the last thirty seconds he somehow gets one-shot by a random aoe from a mob and you have to start the whole thing over again.


A Small Problem - Easy if you read the wiki, a pain to figure out on your own -- You eat stew to get the jump skill, from reading the wiki, and there's little mention of what that does or its value in that mission? Is this Myst, or DDO?

Again, the first couple times I ran through the quest when it first came out I had no problem figuring out what the jump stew was for. "Aha," thought I, "clearly you need it to clear some large gaps...and you're after an air shrine, probably way up on those rocks!" Easy peasy.

All it takes is a little bit of problem-solving. I LIKE quests like that, myself.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

There is a button to select non-combat interactable objects...
Two nights ago, I gave up in frustration after going methodically through the dungeon several times, looking for runes, and finding nothing. Pressing "Q" didn't help, that time around, for whatever reason.

The next day I went through again and I stumbled across what turned out to be the final rune in an alcove, off in a corner. I turned around while at an altar, just having picked up a collectable, and it was right in front of my character, already highlighted.

FWIW, the second time around the end fight was still easier than hunting around for the runes.

[Ebondevil]

Two nights ago, I gave up in frustration after going methodically through the dungeon several times, looking for runes, and finding nothing. Pressing "Q" didn't help, that time around, for whatever reason.
I spent ages one time looking, gave up, left and re-entered and found them easy the next, I swear one of them didn't spawn properly...

[phroggiepuddles]

I've read a number of pages of this thread, and it seems clear that most peoples comments - especially about it being easy... are very experienced players.

So I say this as a new player, playing for about 3 weeks, gone VIP and picked up HOTU on special (gave me Veterans and Tomes of Learning). I've been playing a lot, between work right now and I've made it to level 14 Paladin. I'm loving this more than any other D&D game - used to play a lot of Neverwinter Nights online... but DDO feels epic in scope, I actually feel like I'm growing in power and that I've earned it because it's taking me weeks to even get this far. I can solo most same level quests on normal, but shy away from the ones highlighted a Challenge or requiring a balanced group... I've been burned a couple of times needing 3+ toon solutions to puzzles.

The only frustration I have with the difficulty is when I adventure for the first time into an unknown same level dungeon... put up a great fight to get right near the end and then die to the boss, or because I wasn't prepared. 2nd run I can be prepared and good for it... but it might have taken me over an hour to get to that death, trying not to leave any stone unturned. I have just been able to solo the occasional Hard difficulty, and wouldn't even consider Elite solo until I'm out of the adventure level range.

I know some people were condescending of it, but I love the atmosphere and feel of this game... it's the closed "real D&D" experience I've ever had on a computer game. Of course it's irrelevant after multiple runs, and it's ruined in a group that I can barely keep up with let alone explore and enjoy the adventure.

So in regards to overall difficulty, for a first time player I think it is very well balanced. I love playing solo so I get frustrated when I can only find quests recommended for groups... I'd love to try out the raids but I'm on Sarlona and in Australia and I've only once joined in - never enough players doing them (and when they do, the story and adventure whizes by.... would love to solo so I can learn all the tricks myself).

I can't wait to start up more characters and try out more builds... it's hard for me to choose because a single characters needs a huge amount of time invested compared to any other D&D I've played... I want all my characters to be able to solo but then I don't want to be missing out on prestiges and capstones. So I have lots to explore and look forward to when this game might be too easy, I suspect it will take many months for that to happen... and if I buy a game and get months of play out of it then it's a very cheap entertainment investment.

[Kalikorz]

Difficulty is nothing more than a tool to accomplish a goal. I am a casual gamer who played for a while 2 years ago then quit and came back because I wanted a look at the new stuff. I like what I find. If something is too easy I get bored. I still don't get half the mechanics in the game and some of the lack of build options compared to PNP frustrates me.

I personally feel that the power-levelers ruin the game by moving too fast and so I don't group with them. The purpose of difficulty is to slow the party down. If it's so easy that the barb can run the whole thing rest and run farther so the dwarf is just running past dead bodies then that is no good. However difficulty should be created with keeping the party together in mind. Every time a swim through traps, a level pull, a defend spot or an event in a quest causes the party to get together and actually engage in party dynamics you've done it right. Every time some guy can just run through it. You've done it wrong. If the guy is soloing the quest obviously the quest knows that and adjusts the difficulty so it is done right. Still he should have to plan his approach. If you want the casual gamer AKA 90% of us. You must slow those zergers down.

That being said I have one primary complaint which I will post below.

BALANCING RANGED

Good Book, Still a Book, I'm sorry, skip to the bottom for the math to make the point quickly.

The whole issue here is where does the bow fit? It's actually quite simple. The Ranged weapon has AMMO, AKA an endless stream of damage as long as you bring enough of it.

Caster's should only have enough spells for some part of a quest. If it was PNP and their was a big adventure your caster would be hauling a cart filled with scrolls, wands, and magical items to try and fill in the gaps between gandalf moments. hell even gandalf had a sword. This is why caster's should have trouble going solo because they run out of spells and don't want to use up all their gear. DDO screws up because of SP. instead of needing to memorize the correct spells for the mission and use them at the correct time you have SP which makes all casters the same as Sorcerers and Sorcerers an over-amped version of themselves. I will give you endless wands, I will give you staves of pure awesomeness, I will give you sorcerers being able to cast a bunch of the same type of spell. Wizards are supposed to be pure preparedness class. You store x amount of spells you keep this wand in your back pocket you scribe a bunch of scrolls just in case you plan out your attack and map your way to the rest shrines. The wizard who has more than two fireballs isn't thinking clearly. He cast's something crazy awesome like haste and let's everyone else get the job done while he flicks his wand a bit. He summons a big monster and says I'm good for a while. He. Does. Not. Spam. Spells.

In DDO world the minimum you would need to do is nerf the sp. either reduce it or eliminate it. Being able to go a whole dungeon spamming acid blast as a wizard is just wrong. I have been pleasantly surprised in playing a wizard that my guy does actually try to conserve sp and that's cool but you have to balance it against the ranged guy and say my ranged guy is going to be useful for an endless stream of damage that is equal to the burst damage that I get from a caster with all his standard goodies over the course of a dungeon. You have to factor in the endless wands doing 30 damage a pop and you have to factor in the average scroll count on a wizard. Right now the wizard is way ahead especially with all the SP pots.

so 100 enemies at 100 hp each on average. Archer at about 6th level does 1d8+5+1d6 of something. The 5% of the time he does that times 3. In 20 shots he does 22d8+110+22d6 which is 148 - 418 damage he has enough arrows to hit every target at best that is just over 478 shots. at worst 1351 shots.

The wizard at 6th level currently has a wand that does about 16-24 damage since he has wand improvements. It's eternal so no need to worry about shots. His rate of fire is less but they are both probably kiting so who cares. He can cast approximately 20 splash damage spells which have an AOE damage of about 60 hitting on average 3 monsters. so in 20 shots he does between 320-480 in damage from his wand alone. Then you add the 3*60 which he can do once in 20 shots and still have enough for all 100. that is another 180. The wizard is doing from 540-660 damage every 20 shots or so. That is more than the archer at all times. This is where the system is broken. The wizard can finish the quest in 303-370 shots and he has all of those. He will not run out with only his base SP bar.

Same scenario with 1000 enemies.

Your Archer came strapped. 4784 shots later the quest could be over. ( that's 4 thin quivers. 1200*4)

Your wizard can only do 1 spell every 200 shots or .5% of the time. His wand is still endless. He may take twice as long but the wizzy can do it. 4016 shots later it is finally over though it probably took twice as long and a LOT of kiting. This is where it all goes sideways

Now you may think the problem is the endless wand. It's not if the endless wand were not magnified a ton and only did around 6-10 damage the archer would have an obvious advantage in the extended engagement which. With the addition of "spell-power" no one is going to use the endless wand of whatever they aren't amping.

Simple fix spell-power shouldn't work on wands. It's an item not you. If it's you then it should use your SP. This will make the Ranged space clearly self-evident to everyone. If your only going on short quests then obviously the wizard has an advantage but long quests with lots and lots of enemies the archer will stand out. In reality most long quests have maybe over 100 monsters with 3 rest shrines and short quests have like 20 and 1. So the game stays broken in the wizards favor while questing. However, fixing the wand damage will go a long way towards having the ranged character stand out especially in slayer runs which fits more toward the "ranger" as well. In addition nerfing SP a bit would make the buff caster much more appealing.

[Scraap]

Difficulty is nothing more than a tool to accomplish a goal. I am a casual gamer who played for a while 2 years ago then quit and came back because I wanted a look at the new stuff. I like what I find. If something is too easy I get bored. I still don't get half the mechanics in the game and some of the lack of build options compared to PNP frustrates me.

I personally feel that the power-levelers ruin the game by moving too fast and so I don't group with them. The purpose of difficulty is to slow the party down. If it's so easy that the barb can run the whole thing rest and run farther so the dwarf is just running past dead bodies then that is no good. However difficulty should be created with keeping the party together in mind. Every time a swim through traps, a level pull, a defend spot or an event in a quest causes the party to get together and actually engage in party dynamics you've done it right. Every time some guy can just run through it. You've done it wrong. If the guy is soloing the quest obviously the quest knows that and adjusts the difficulty so it is done right. Still he should have to plan his approach. If you want the casual gamer AKA 90% of us. You must slow those zergers down.

That being said I have one primary complaint which I will post below.

BALANCING RANGED

Good Book, Still a Book, I'm sorry, skip to the bottom for the math to make the point quickly.

The whole issue here is where does the bow fit? It's actually quite simple. The Ranged weapon has AMMO, AKA an endless stream of damage as long as you bring enough of it.

Caster's should only have enough spells for some part of a quest. If it was PNP and their was a big adventure your caster would be hauling a cart filled with scrolls, wands, and magical items to try and fill in the gaps between gandalf moments. hell even gandalf had a sword. This is why caster's should have trouble going solo because they run out of spells and don't want to use up all their gear. DDO screws up because of SP. instead of needing to memorize the correct spells for the mission and use them at the correct time you have SP which makes all casters the same as Sorcerers and Sorcerers an over-amped version of themselves. I will give you endless wands, I will give you staves of pure awesomeness, I will give you sorcerers being able to cast a bunch of the same type of spell. Wizards are supposed to be pure preparedness class. You store x amount of spells you keep this wand in your back pocket you scribe a bunch of scrolls just in case you plan out your attack and map your way to the rest shrines. The wizard who has more than two fireballs isn't thinking clearly. He cast's something crazy awesome like haste and let's everyone else get the job done while he flicks his wand a bit. He summons a big monster and says I'm good for a while. He. Does. Not. Spam. Spells.

In DDO world the minimum you would need to do is nerf the sp. either reduce it or eliminate it. Being able to go a whole dungeon spamming acid blast as a wizard is just wrong. I have been pleasantly surprised in playing a wizard that my guy does actually try to conserve sp and that's cool but you have to balance it against the ranged guy and say my ranged guy is going to be useful for an endless stream of damage that is equal to the burst damage that I get from a caster with all his standard goodies over the course of a dungeon. You have to factor in the endless wands doing 30 damage a pop and you have to factor in the average scroll count on a wizard. Right now the wizard is way ahead especially with all the SP pots.

so 100 enemies at 100 hp each on average. Archer at about 6th level does 1d8+5+1d6 of something. The 5% of the time he does that times 3. In 20 shots he does 22d8+110+22d6 which is 148 - 418 damage he has enough arrows to hit every target at best that is just over 478 shots. at worst 1351 shots.

The wizard at 6th level currently has a wand that does about 16-24 damage since he has wand improvements. It's eternal so no need to worry about shots. His rate of fire is less but they are both probably kiting so who cares. He can cast approximately 20 splash damage spells which have an AOE damage of about 60 hitting on average 3 monsters. so in 20 shots he does between 320-480 in damage from his wand alone. Then you add the 3*60 which he can do once in 20 shots and still have enough for all 100. that is another 180. The wizard is doing from 540-660 damage every 20 shots or so. That is more than the archer at all times. This is where the system is broken. The wizard can finish the quest in 303-370 shots and he has all of those. He will not run out with only his base SP bar.

Same scenario with 1000 enemies.

Your Archer came strapped. 4784 shots later the quest could be over. ( that's 4 thin quivers. 1200*4)

Your wizard can only do 1 spell every 200 shots or .5% of the time. His wand is still endless. He may take twice as long but the wizzy can do it. 4016 shots later it is finally over though it probably took twice as long and a LOT of kiting. This is where it all goes sideways

Now you may think the problem is the endless wand. It's not if the endless wand were not magnified a ton and only did around 6-10 damage the archer would have an obvious advantage in the extended engagement which. With the addition of "spell-power" no one is going to use the endless wand of whatever they aren't amping.

Simple fix spell-power shouldn't work on wands. It's an item not you. If it's you then it should use your SP. This will make the Ranged space clearly self-evident to everyone. If your only going on short quests then obviously the wizard has an advantage but long quests with lots and lots of enemies the archer will stand out. In reality most long quests have maybe over 100 monsters with 3 rest shrines and short quests have like 20 and 1. So the game stays broken in the wizards favor while questing. However, fixing the wand damage will go a long way towards having the ranged character stand out especially in slayer runs which fits more toward the "ranger" as well. In addition nerfing SP a bit would make the buff caster much more appealing.

I'll say the same thing I did last time that came up: Spellpower on wands and scrolls isn't the issue. Spellpower on top of wand and scroll mastery is.

Wand usage is a class feature for a lot of classes, including rangers, and seeing it actually get used a bit is a good thing. So while the net effect at present might be a bit over the top at suitably low levels, killing it back to irrelevance outside of heal-scrolls once you hit mid to high level play via outright removal is just as detrimental to class differentiation. (not to mention it leaves a potential plat-sink empty)

[Ginarrbrik]

Interestingly enough I was chatting with a few guildies yesterday about this exact topic. I didn't have time to read through all the replies, but I'd like to eventually. Anyway, I'd just like to say that "Epic Casual" is a total oxymoron. It shouldn't even be an option IMO. eNorm is easy enough. In short, I would love to see the difficulty of Epic Hard increased to pretty much exactly the same as "old" epics. That would be a good balance because as it stands now, it seems eHard is barely any more difficult than eNorm. I agree that the variations of epic difficulties was to accommodate the epic lvls -- so that we're not forced to run almost all of the forgotten realms content on a single difficulty, not because ppl were complaining. But at the same time, its a fairly good attempt to appeal to different calibers of players. So get rid of eCas, leave eNorm the way it is to give something for the less-intense players to do, make eHard more difficult (essentially the equivalent of pre-u14 epics, in the sense that you could almost always complete with a non-gimp group, but still had to work for it a bit) and either leave EE the way it is or even make it just a tiny bit more difficult to satisfy the top-notch players or anyone that likes a good challenge. That would seem like a good system to me anyway. I know I didn't reference any lower lvl content but that's because I almost always run L20+ and it seems quite unbalanced to me atm.

Sorry if I'm basically repeating something someone already said. That was just the conclusion my guildies came to last night.

[Impaqt]

Anyway, I'd just like to say that "Epic Casual" is a total oxymoron.


Not when you understand that "Epic" in todays DDO just means L20+. now, If you want to argue that "Casual" can go... Thats fine. I thnk casual has been largely uneeded since scaling was introduced... but It doesnt really bother me one way or another.




It shouldn't even be an option IMO. eNorm is easy enough.


How exactly does anyone running "Casual" difficulty effect you?

[Ginarrbrik]

Not when you understand that "Epic" in todays DDO just means L20+. now, If you want to argue that "Casual" can go... Thats fine. I thnk casual has been largely uneeded since scaling was introduced... but It doesnt really bother me one way or another.

How exactly does anyone running "Casual" difficulty effect you?

I understand. That's why I said that the only reason to implement different variations of epic difficulties was to accommodate the epic lvls of 20-25. It's just a pet peeve of mine... It seems like that would have been the perfect time to do away with Casual. I never said it affected me. Like you, I just think it's entirely unnecessary. If someone is having trouble running normal, something's terribly wrong. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like by the time someone reaches epic lvl content, they shouldn't need to sit back and relax by running a quest on "Casual." Maybe if people challenged themselves just a little bit more, there wouldn't be as many gimps. Because eNorm is mindless enough.

[sephiroth1084]

I'd prefer to see Sirgog's proposals enacted:


Get rid of dungeon scaling entirely.
Tune Casual to being solo mode.
Tune Normal to being shortman easy mode (tuned for 3 people...he says 2, but I think the different between Casual and Normal should be a little larger).
Tune Hard for 5 people.
Tune Elite to be for 7 people (ie., with a full party, you're still going to have a difficult time).

Conversely;


Get rid of dungeon scaling entirely.
Tune Casual to being solo mode.
Make normal about as difficult as Epic Hard is now, maybe a tad easier.
Make hard about as difficult as old epics were (easier than the first wave of Desert epics, harder than the cakewalk of, say, Bargain of Blood).
Leave elite as it exists currently, or, my preference..

5a. Lower monster attack and damage on elite, but increase movement and attack speed.

Lower saves slightly, but make random buffs/equipment a thing.



Obviously that is largely regarding epic casual, normal, hard and elite, but the same can kind of be said for heroic levels, though I feel that hard and elite are more appropriately scaled in most cases. Some outliers exist, such as elite A Small Problem (level 7) having lots of enemy casters tossing level 7 spells around (caster level 13, or 6 higher than the quest).

[Ranncore]

Not when you understand that "Epic" in todays DDO just means L20+. now

This is the problem that myself and many other players are coping with. When we pre-purchased MOTU, we were told we would be getting a huge expansion to the amount of Epic content. Instead, what we got were just regular, easy, point-click-win quests for characters past level 20. Nothing epic at all. In fact, the "end-game," was actually shrunk, given that there's so little reason to run pre-motu epics on... any difficulty, really, since most of us already had that gear and were looking forward to new quests and rewards. And there's little reason to run the new content on Epic Elite more than once for favor, since the majority of the loot there isn't as appealing as the loot we already acquired in Eberron, even after a large sweep of nerfs were liberally applied to Eberron loot to make MOTU loot look more appealing.

The problem is that any time you give players an easy button, they will push it. There used to be no easy button for end-game quests, but they were still run, and run very often. I decked out my character in epic gear 100% from pugging. It's not just about the gear - I just like pugging end-game content.

But how often is end-game (real end-game, epic elite) content pugged anymore? Because on my server, all I ever see up is House of Rusted Blades e-boring farm.

[Scraap]

Actually, you know what I would truly love to see difficulty/repetition wise assuming this aspect-thread is aimed at the full game? More rares, including random packs of mob combos. VoN 3 comes to mind as something that's familiar, but can keep you guessing a bit as far as whats coming next, though I think the game could stand to take the concept a bit further. (Admittedly, that's not as easy as twiddling with numbers, but lets face it, it's also not as easy to meta-game into oblivion either.)

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Putting players in charge is the right step to take.

One way to take a further step in that direction is to allow scaling to be another choice that players control, along with difficulty. Don't allow players to set the scaling to a number of players below what is in a team, to prevent missions being set to "1 player" and then zerged by full teams -- ie: put in a floor for scaling equal to the number of team members. But, do allow soloists and "short man" teams to set their scaling to a higher player count, and provide (significant) XP and (minor) loot bonuses for doing it.

Unless the devs mess up the incentives (ie: loot, XP scaling), players having more choices leads to players picking the difficulty level that they find most enjoyable; they'll certainly stay away from whatever bores them.

Then the vets have more options for boosting the difficulty level; on a related point, they'll find TR less tedious, as well.

[Xezrak]

This is the problem that myself and many other players are coping with. When we pre-purchased MOTU, we were told we would be getting a huge expansion to the amount of Epic content. Instead, what we got were just regular, easy, point-click-win quests for characters past level 20. Nothing epic at all. In fact, the "end-game," was actually shrunk, given that there's so little reason to run pre-motu epics on... any difficulty, really, since most of us already had that gear and were looking forward to new quests and rewards. And there's little reason to run the new content on Epic Elite more than once for favor, since the majority of the loot there isn't as appealing as the loot we already acquired in Eberron, even after a large sweep of nerfs were liberally applied to Eberron loot to make MOTU loot look more appealing.

The problem is that any time you give players an easy button, they will push it. There used to be no easy button for end-game quests, but they were still run, and run very often. I decked out my character in epic gear 100% from pugging. It's not just about the gear - I just like pugging end-game content.

But how often is end-game (real end-game, epic elite) content pugged anymore? Because on my server, all I ever see up is House of Rusted Blades e-boring farm.

Just going to talk about the PuG scene, I think the reason there are a lot less Epic Elites at the moment is players (non power gamers) are still farming out destinies and basic gear, once this gets done I believe you will see more EE elite PuGs, the other day I put up an LFM for EE and it filled up really quickly, especially with the older epics that use to be PuGed frequently, (carnival, Deeps etc.) Also I think the talk of how hard epic elite has probably scared a lot of people away from trying them, give it time and the there should be more Epic Elites being run.

Also for xp, normal is most likely the most efficient difficulty to farm destinies but for loot (now I can't say this for certain as I don't know all the drop rates etc. etc) as players become more familiar with running Epic Elites, EE MIGHT become the standard again to grind for gear. I say give it more time. Also in the mean time put up a for LFM for Epic Elites and add 'All welcome' you may be pleasantly surprised.

[psi0nix]

Many times I have seen devs post "The game is not designed for solo play" .

Then why do we have dungeon scaling ? .....


That's the only thing, I'd like to see scaling removed, 1 or 6 shouldn't matter, it should be the same either way.

Currently it's much easier to run solo than it is to pug, there are quests that can be solo run on EE but with 6 geared players there are problems.

I don't mind the overall difficulty of the game, but find often the end reward just does not justify the time / effort and resource cost of running anything above Ehard.

I'd say to pull EE back a little, or up EH a little, basically just bring them into a reasonable distance of each other, going from EN to EE is like the difference between korthos and Amrath.

On a side note: whoever designed Amrath isn't being paid enough and needs to be brought back .

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Many times I have seen devs post "The game is not designed for solo play" .

Then why do we have dungeon scaling ? .....


That's the only thing, I'd like to see scaling removed, 1 or 6 shouldn't matter, it should be the same either way.
...
. Removing scaling is a great idea if the return to "ghosttown" servers is a highly prized goal. Otherwise, not so much.

Most players would probably like to be able to solo or short man quests when they have some spare time, but not enough to put together a full team. Many don't find standing around waiting for a team to fill particularly fun, and so they'd often rather just run a smaller team. Some prefer solo play, for a variety of reasons, which might include finding solo play more fun, needing to go afk frequently, handicaps that make keeping up with teammates and/or social interaction difficult, and so on. Building up favor is a lot easier now than in the past, as well, particularly for relatively unpopular quests for which putting together a team can be time consuming. Scaling is what allows these things to happen, for many players -- especially for those not fully kitted out with high end gear.

The intermittent calls for DDO to make the game unfriendly to those who like to solo shines as a beacon of hope to discarded, bloody awful ideas everywhere that they may once again enjoy their day in the sun. Other than that, I'm not certain what purpose calling for a game that's unfriendly to soloists might further.

[Pantronic]

I think the single thing that bugs me most about quest difficulty is when a quest is reasonably challenging for the chosen difficulty or even a little bit easy right up to the end and then suddenly insanely difficult. There are several examples, but my most recent experience of this was Enter The Kobold.

Another that comes to mind is In The Flesh.

[sephiroth1084]

Removing scaling is a great idea if the return to "ghosttown" servers is a highly prized goal. Otherwise, not so much.

Most players would probably like to be able to solo or short man quests when they have some spare time, but not enough to put together a full team. Many don't find standing around waiting for a team to fill particularly fun, and so they'd often rather just run a smaller team. Some prefer solo play, for a variety of reasons, which might include finding solo play more fun, needing to go afk frequently, handicaps that make keeping up with teammates and/or social interaction difficult, and so on. Building up favor is a lot easier now than in the past, as well, particularly for relatively unpopular quests for which putting together a team can be time consuming. Scaling is what allows these things to happen, for many players -- especially for those not fully kitted out with high end gear.

The intermittent calls for DDO to make the game unfriendly to those who like to solo shines as a beacon of hope to discarded, bloody awful ideas everywhere that they may once again enjoy their day in the sun. Other than that, I'm not certain what purpose calling for a game that's unfriendly to soloists might further.
You can get rid of dungeon scaling without getting rid of soloability. Scale Casual difficulty to be aimed at soloers (and super-easy for groups), and Normal to be fairly easy for groups (tuned for 3-4 people), which would leave it as still being soloable with a little difficulty.

Hard and Elite should not be scaling down for smaller parties or soloers. They would still be soloable, but you'd be fighting pretty hard to get through them.

[Chai]

Removing scaling is a great idea if the return to "ghosttown" servers is a highly prized goal. Otherwise, not so much.

Most players would probably like to be able to solo or short man quests when they have some spare time, but not enough to put together a full team. Many don't find standing around waiting for a team to fill particularly fun, and so they'd often rather just run a smaller team. Some prefer solo play, for a variety of reasons, which might include finding solo play more fun, needing to go afk frequently, handicaps that make keeping up with teammates and/or social interaction difficult, and so on. Building up favor is a lot easier now than in the past, as well, particularly for relatively unpopular quests for which putting together a team can be time consuming. Scaling is what allows these things to happen, for many players -- especially for those not fully kitted out with high end gear.

The intermittent calls for DDO to make the game unfriendly to those who like to solo shines as a beacon of hope to discarded, bloody awful ideas everywhere that they may once again enjoy their day in the sun. Other than that, I'm not certain what purpose calling for a game that's unfriendly to soloists might further.

The people who benefit from scaling are not those who "like to solo". They could still solo casual or normal if balanced for 3 people. The people who benefit from scaling are the overtwinked veteran xp farmers who would rather plow the quest solo rather than gamble on taking someone into their LFM which would cause the quest to become more difficult if the other member didnt contribute well.

People complaining about the lack of use of the LFM system these days? Do away with the majority of scaling, and encourage grouping as the fastest way to gain XP. That LFM system will light right up.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

The people who benefit from scaling are not those who "like to solo". They could still solo casual or normal if balanced for 3 people. The people who benefit from scaling are the overtwinked veteran xp farmers who would rather plow the quest solo rather than gamble on taking someone into their LFM which would cause the quest to become more difficult if the other member didnt contribute well.

Your analysis misses the main point in two different ways. First, having multiple difficulty levels that are accessible, whether solo or teaming, increases the replay value of missions by quite a bit, as well as making it more feasible to accumulate favor. If you tie difficulty level and scaling together in a strong way, then upgrading the difficulty to hard and elite exponentially increases the difficulty for a soloist and for small teams, which will reduce available options that are actually enjoyable.

Second, you're still locked in the same "thought box" in which mission difficulty is an issue over which players should be given very, very limited control. That's an overly narrow perspective, a perspective based on the history of DDO, and not much else. Figuring out ways to put players more in control of their gaming experience has a lot more long run promise.


People complaining about the lack of use of the LFM system these days? Do away with the majority of scaling, and encourage grouping as the fastest way to gain XP. That LFM system will light right up.What you really mean is that if you make hard and elite difficulties exponentially more difficult to solo or short man, for those without top end gear, then more teams will be formed.

The idea that further increasing the amount of gap between the small number of difficulty levels the game currently offers, for solo and short man play, will somehow enhance players' enjoyment of the game is not credible. To wit ...

"Aren't you glad that we're forcing you to team for higher mission difficulties, to avoid getting hit with the pain stick that gets applied when you try to solo on hard and elite?"

As long as you stay locked away in that box in which it's a bad idea for players to have more freedom to choose their gaming experience, perhaps that statement can be seen as rational. If you reject the idea that sharply limited difficulty choices for players is a bad idea -- and I reject that -- then the above statement doesn't read very well.

[Impaqt]

Many times I have seen devs post "The game is not designed for solo play" .


I haven't seen a dev say anything like that in years. Please provide a Quote.

of course, even if it was said, that doenst mean the game shouldnt be or cant be solo'd.

[sephiroth1084]

"Aren't you glad that we're forcing you to team for higher mission difficulties, to avoid getting hit with the pain stick that gets applied when you try to solo on hard and elite?"

As long as you stay locked away in that box in which it's a bad idea for players to have more freedom to choose their gaming experience, perhaps that statement can be seen as rational. If you reject the idea that sharply limited difficulty choices for players is a bad idea -- and I reject that -- then the above statement doesn't read very well.
Really not clear on what your point is here.

If it's that it is unfair/inappropriate for hard and elite to not scale down to soloers and shortmanners, all I have to say is that there is absolutely no reason to suggest or insist that those difficulties should be approachable without a (mostly) full group, other than the fact that people see everyone else running those difficulty settings, and they feel that they, too, should be able to do so. Why?

Most soloers don't feel too left out over the fact that they can't raid, but there are some that do. Why? Because they want the loot, because it's cool, and shiny, and some of it is very helpful, and they come to the forums asking for character building advice and everyone gives them a list of gear that includes raid items. Yet we absolutely should not scale raids to be soloable. They generally don't need the items if they are soloing on casual or normal, because character optimization (and the same for gear) isn't necessary until you start hitting challenging content. They just think they need it, or want it badly.

Take the Torc for example. It's an amazing item, and something everyone recommends to every caster ever, but if the caster in question is solo-only, unless they are attempting to solo hard and elite (which they shouldn't be having such an easy time with) the item is largely irrelevant, because shrines reset, and because you can bring to bear to much firepower that you don't need the extra mana income unless you are entirely incapable of SP management.

The fact is, soloing on hard or elite shouldn't be easier than running that quest with a full group, and soloing on hard or elite shouldn't be easier than running that quest with a full group on the next lower difficulty setting. That is, soloing elite shouldn't be easier than 6-manning hard, and so on. This is a little bit less true for elite to hard than hard to normal and normal to casual, especially for EE and on some specific quests, but that is by and large how the game works currently, which is inappropriate, because it discourages grouping, and removes much of the point of the difficulty settings in the first place.

[sephiroth1084]

I haven't seen a dev say anything like that in years. Please provide a Quote.

of course, even if it was said, that doenst mean the game shouldnt be or cant be solo'd.
Yeah, that is an old quote, and clearly inaccurate at this point.
My understanding of Turbine's current stance on this is that elite, and to a lesser degree, hard, are not designed for solo play, and raids are not designed for solo play.

That said, we've seen many, many tools introduced to encourage soloing, and I can't recall the last quest we've had that necessitated multiple people to complete, such as through forced party-splitting to hit levers and such in different places at the same time. Sure, those mechanics occasionally feel contrived, and directly prohibit solo play, but they are also a staple of the D&D genre, which has been eroded here, because of the dev team's accommodation of the larger number of people who really don't want to group up for one reason or another. I was happy to see these types of dungeons gain an indicator on the quest entrance screen to prevent people from having to discover that they absolutely cannot complete the quest halfway through it, but that should have been sufficient so long as we weren't seeing too many quests (and in particular flagging quests) with these mechanics. Instead, they're just gone.

[Glenalth]

I haven't seen a dev say anything like that in years. Please provide a Quote.

of course, even if it was said, that doenst mean the game shouldnt be or cant be solo'd.

They used to say stuff like that in the long long ago. There were even those "friends don't let friends solo" official videos.

More recently (thinking it was this year) we've had devs say that Elite was not balanced with solo play in mind.

[Xezrak]

Regardless of who is soloing Elite/hardcore players or newbies if that is the way they prefer to play the game then why should turbine change the game to be played in only 1 specific way?

I solo roughly 30% of the time PuG the other 70% of the time. I usually prefer to PuG but when I want to muck around and don't want to play my class role 'properly' or if I want to learn the ins and out of the quest at a leisurely pace, or if I can't be bothered to wait for the group to fill or whatever else my reason may be to solo why should that option be taken away from me (or anyone else who wants to solo)?

I also feel that if you are running in 'good' group then you will be able to gain xp/farm items faster then soloing in most instances anyway.

On a some what separate note I think giving melees better access to self healing may improve the PuG scene, because one of (for me) the worst things about PuGing is having to wait for a healer (if someone is uncomfortable with healing themselves).

[sephiroth1084]

Regardless of who is soloing Elite/hardcore players or newbies if that is the way they prefer to play the game then why should turbine change the game to be played in only 1 specific way? I have no problem with people soloing elite. My problem is with people soloing elite because dungeon scaling makes it so easy. If dungeon scaling were removed, and the difficulties were rebalanced a bit, you could go solo normal or hard for a little bit of a challenge, but usually wouldn't be too strained, or you could try soloing elite to post achievements to the forums, or because soloing hard is too easy for you.


I solo roughly 30% of the time PuG the other 70% of the time. I usually prefer to PuG but when I want to muck around and don't want to play my class role 'properly' or if I want to learn the ins and out of the quest at a leisurely pace, or if I can't be bothered to wait for the group to fill or whatever else my reason may be to solo why should that option be taken away from me (or anyone else who wants to solo)? If you're soloing elite like this, then that is exactly the problem. Elite isn't there for a "learn the ins and outs of a quest solo" expedition. It's supposed to be challenging. We have other difficulties for such exploratory runs.

What reason is there for you to be able to solo elite with relative ease? Entitlement?


I also feel that if you are running in 'good' group then you will be able to gain xp/farm items faster then soloing in most instances anyway. Which is irrelevant--if you can get a good group, and do so quickly, then yeah, most people who aren't focused on soloing will group, because that is largely true; however, getting a good group is far from guaranteed and often takes long than just completing the quest solo or shortman. In any case, that's not the issue. The issue is that right now the game has 3 easy difficulty settings and one very difficult setting, and that all of those are made significantly easier due to dungeon scaling.

When dungeon scaling was first introduced, the developers claimed that it would not be turned on for elite quests or for epic quests. Testing proved that, despite their assertions or desires, scaling does in fact affect elite quests. From the get go, the devs had no desire to allow players to easily solo elite quests thanks to dungeon scaling.

The fact of the matter is that people were soloing hard and elite content before dungeon scaling came out, before epic quests were nerfed the first time, and before all of the other tools were put in place to make soloing and shortmanning easier. That was also before we had the casual setting. They (and I, in some cases) soloed elite quests tuned for a full group of players (actually tuned for 4 most of the time) without computer assistance. Dungeon scaling has done nothing positive for the game--we have hordes of people in the game that have managed to level up without learning the game very well thanks to dungeon scaling covering everything in Nerf, which would be fine, if they were running casual, because that's kind of what's expected there, but they're running hard and elite quests a lot of the time as well, and then falling on their faces when they get to content that doesn't scale down well, or that they have to group up for.

Dungeon scaling is a significantly anti-group mechanic, anti-learning mechanic, and is often used as an easy button to quality, or fast, loot without the hassle of dealing with a fully powered-up dungeon. It doesn't do anything positive--people think it does, because it allows them to solo harder content, but if the game were retuned properly, they would be soloing normal for a tiny challenge, hard for a notable challenge, and elite if they are feeling particularly badass, or severely out-level/gear/skill the quest. People see the Bravery Bonus and assume that they are entitled to that bonus, because it's there, but the intent of BB was to give people an option for faster leveling, but with more of a challenge, not to simply give everyone an extra 25-50% XP.


On a some what separate note I think giving melees better access to self healing may improve the PuG scene, because one of (for me) the worst things about PuGing is having to wait for a healer (if someone is uncomfortable with healing themselves).
Agreed, but a separate issue. If you don't have a healer, run casual, or normal, or, if you're up to run hard. If you can get through the quest on elite without a healer, then do that.

Right now, most players don't make that kind of choice. They plunge ahead into hard or elite, irrespective of their party make-up or skill level, because dungeon scaling takes care of them. This is less true on Epic Elite and in some heroic level epic dungeons that are particularly punishing, but for many quests, that's the way the game is working currently, which is wrong.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

<Holy mother of mothers, was this part ever long> ...

Right now, most players don't make that kind of choice. They plunge ahead into hard or elite, irrespective of their party make-up or skill level, because dungeon scaling takes care of them. This is less true on Epic Elite and in some heroic level epic dungeons that are particularly punishing, but for many quests, that's the way the game is working currently, which is wrong.I don't know if you realize how much your reply reads like "AND YOU KIDS STAY OFF MY LAWN!", especially when you make it clear that you feel it's your business to comment on the gap between how others do play and how they should play -- the part quoted above.

Make it so that both teams and solo play are fun and rewarding, with teaming being generally more fun and rewarding, and then you'll get more teams. Try to herd players into teaming by applying a bigger pain stick to solo and short man play, on higher difficulties, and the result will be less players playing the game.

[sephiroth1084]

I don't know if you realize how much your reply reads like "AND YOU KIDS STAY OFF MY LAWN!", especially when you make it clear that you feel it's your business to comment on the gap between how others do play and how they should play -- the part quoted above.

Make it so that both teams and solo play are fun and rewarding, with teaming being generally more fun and rewarding, and then you'll get more teams. Try to herd players into teaming by applying a bigger pain stick to solo and short man play, on higher difficulties, and the result will be less players playing the game.
What reason is there for you to be soloing hard and elite quests? Answer that.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Elite scaling is a travesty .. just one of the things that have removed some of the sense of accomplishment from this game.

[Scraap]

Make it so that both teams and solo play are fun and rewarding, with teaming being generally more fun and rewarding, and then you'll get more teams. Try to herd players into teaming by applying a bigger pain stick to solo and short man play, on higher difficulties, and the result will be less players playing the game.

Curious how you would incentivise grouping in a manner that you don't think can be viewed as penalizing soloing.

[Faent]

Normal and Elite are fine. Hard is a joke. Hard difficulty should fall between Normal and Elite. It shouldn't be almost indistinguishable from Normal.

[azrael4h]

What reason is there for you to be soloing hard and elite quests? Answer that.

Same reasons to run them in a group. Same reasons to run any quest at any difficulty, actually.

1 - To have fun.
2 - To have a challenge.
3 - Because they can.

Not everyone finds elite easy as you do, you know. In fact, I highly doubt that there are very many of those you show such disregard and disdain for who can solo an at-level elite, despite all the "easy buttons" and whatever else you want to throw in there as so evil. Even on those few who can, like myself, they find it to not be worth the effort. The time investment is so different that I just run hard, and only run elites with groups.

So you're actually whining about an incredibly tiny portion of the game's population, and demanding that their fun be nerfed because, in your mind, they are all noobs who don't "deserve" to play DDO in any way other than what you specify as they can play it. When, in fact, you are whining about yourself and friends.

As far as people not learning to play, some people never will. I have a guildy who is proof of that, with no less than 6(!) lives as a Cleric or Favored Soul, and he still ranks as one of the worst divine caster players I have ever seen. Yet another, with 1 cleric to the L20 cap, and almost exclusively playing melee before, is so far and away better that the guild asked him to run another Cleric on the current TR group. Another guildy probably won't ever be able to play at the same level as the rest of the guild, as he basically plays only flavor builds, doesn't raid, and doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to much of anything.

You cannot force people to learn. Ever heard the expression "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"? This problem has been worsened by the real 'easy button', Stones of Experience (I do think that those were a horrible idea). Skipping from the easy level 8 stuff to level 16 immediately, without the gear and play experience, was a bad idea. It should have been TR-only, IMO.

If you want a harder difficulty, ask for it. Heck, Varusso (?) I think posted a thread on just that, a step above Elite for Heroic quests. Some of the ideas were off (no to more @$&! crafting!), I think the name was stupid, but the underlying concept is sound, IMO.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

What reason is there for you to be soloing hard and elite quests? Answer that.Hard and elite -- especially elite -- have a different feel to them and they provide missions with a lot more replay value when they're accessible to more players in more ways -- including short man and solo.

On that note, there's nothing sacrosanct about the number six; it's no less of an arbitrary number than five or seven. A team is a team is a team, whenever there are two players or more, and trying to make it so that players feel compelled to wait until they hit the "magic number six", because of a prohibition on scaling for certain difficulty levels, seems counterproductive.

Raids being intended for teams makes sense; they're supposed to be big, world-changing events and having a number of them adds quite a bit of depth and replay value to the game.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Normal and Elite are fine. Hard is a joke. Hard difficulty should fall between Normal and Elite. It shouldn't be almost indistinguishable from Normal.
The problem isn't the difficulty level itself. The problem is that players have very limited control over the level of challenge any given mission will provide them and they also have very different preferences and skill levels. This leads to exactly the kinds of conflicts that you're seeing in this thread.

The solution is to give players the opportunity to have fun in a variety of ways, in accordance with their preferences, while working to ensure that team play is rewarding and enjoyable enough that players will seek out opportunities to engage in it as some percentage of their gaming time.

[sephiroth1084]

Hard and elite -- especially elite -- have a different feel to them and they provide missions with a lot more replay value when they're accessible to more players in more ways -- including short man and solo. My question was in regards to why you feel that the hardest difficulty setting should scale down to accommodate you? Variety is good, but there's far more variety of experience without scaling, than with. That may seem counter-intuitive, but having scaling flattens the bell curve considerably, and while there can still be stark differences between a quest on normal and a quest on elite, solo, the difference is much slighter than if the scaling weren't there. Now, sure, you could argue that scaling allows you to get more than 4 different experiences, by having a different feel for quests at 1 person, 2, 4 and 6, but the difference between 1 and 2 is fairly negligible, and the difference between 4 and 6 serves largely to discourage people from grouping, and especially PUGing. The result of upward scaling is that many players would rather go shortman than risk taking on a PUGer that can't cut it.

Again, we didn't have scaling at all for something like 4 years of DDO. The only reason we got scaling, was that people complained that the game was solo unfriendly, but we also got casual, which fulfilled that need as well, and had the game difficulty lowered across the board, for the most, while the power level of players rose considerably without most quests keeping pace with the inflation. The game is much easier now than it was 3 years ago, even for untwinked, relatively fresh players (then and now).

All dungeon scaling does on the harder difficulties is dilute the experience. If you want a challenge, un-scaled content is far more challenging, and rewarding if you can handle it. Choices are restricted, because you can't choose to try tackling an extreme challenge solo in the game now, you can only attempt a moderately difficult challenge, because the game necessarily puts on kid gloves when you pop into a quest solo.


On that note, there's nothing sacrosanct about the number six; it's no less of an arbitrary number than five or seven. A team is a team is a team, whenever there are two players or more, and trying to make it so that players feel compelled to wait until they hit the "magic number six", because of a prohibition on scaling for certain difficulty levels, seems counterproductive.
You're right. In fact, you're so right, that the devs agree. dungeon scaling goes down if you have fewer than four people in your party, and up if you have more than 4. Again, part of the reason that shortmanning and soloing quests is easier than forming a full group most of the time.

Sure, you could make the argument that what we need is a greater variety of difficulty settings, or a toggle for Dungeon Scaling ON/OFF, but does the game seek to reward the DA OFF crowd for their increased difficulty? Would the folks running stuff with DA ON start complaining that they are being left out in the cold, because they can't get their hands on whatever drops in that harder difficulty setting, or the level of XP/favor earned?

Certainly such a toggle would increase variety, and address many people's desires for a greater challenge in the game, but the play experience of DDO is necessarily a marriage of risk and reward--sure, some people will occasionally seek out an unrewarding challenge, because the accomplishment is reward enough, but that's a fairly small number of people for a fairly small amount of time. Even the players that want a more challenging experience, don't particularly want that greater difficulty if it also means that their advancement slows down (whether because you're earning 15% more XP in 3x the time, or getting +0.5 loot level for half the chests, or spending five times as many resources, for twice the reward).

It's all well and good to say that people can just go make their own challenges for themselves, and some do some of the time, but few people are wired to seek that style of entertainment. It's similar to the folks that say, "just don't use your uber items," or, "play with one arm tied behind your back, then!" People generally don't work like that. Not over an extended period. Some do, and they play permadeath.

[RavenAmazing]

"We have been accused (and perhaps there's truth to this) that we've been balancing the game for the uber-player..."

As one who plays daily, but rarely posts here on the forums, I have to agree with this statement. It is too bad that since you have over 1000 replies already to this topic, I can only hope this reply can be read.

Reading the previous posts, I see the same thing I see everyday on these forums. Those with multi thousand posts arguing the same exact thing they argue in every other thread. I appreciate the chance to pipe into this argument as just a regular player that really enjoys the game, for so many different reasons.

I don't think the game is too hard on any non elite quest. Even for a 28 point build. What I do believe is the game is so utterly imbalanced it's almost silly. The multi thousand post posters, (yes, you're the Uber Player), complain about an easy button, sure, for a player that has everthing geared to top level on a toon that has many past lives, but put a 28 point toon in Red Fens wilderness, at level, and 1 shot of floating mage ball of electric loop later, and your at level toon was just destroyed for 310 points of damage, while every other mob on the map is very little threat.

I just don't believe that standard mobs should be able to 1 hit a character. That rule sould be relegated to bosses, and perhaps sub bosses. Ideally, it wouldn't. Ship buffs, past lives, amazing gear, etc and the Fens become no trouble at all. (I use the fens only as an example.) How about a new player doing butchers path? You see my point. Most any other game I have played, the 1 hit kill was an exception, not a rule.

You introduced the +30 ship resists, which allowed any toon to walk through any elite caster/trap with little to no damage, then, to counter that, you incerased the elemental damage of all casters and traps so it would bypass the +30 resists. Yeah...you did that.

I don't want all the bells and whistles of an eliteist toon. I like being regular. I don't like rushing to level 20 in 2 days, I take my time through quests. I do like the challenge, but I don't like spending 45 minutes to over an hour in a quest just to wipe near the end. Not all of us have toons that can solo the shroud, elite. I think you may be suprised how many "just average" players you actually have. Don't get me wrong here, I am not complaining about being average, I just think the game should be designed for those players and not those that live in DDO.

This is a great game, but I can see the path it's taking. The same path the last MMO I played. When I see screenies posted in these forums of players hitting for 45k and up, soloing shroud, or ToD, 1500+ HP, seeing the latest loot, (min level 20-25, of course.), that makes everything previous obsolete, The path it is taking is clear; Keep the end gamers happy at all costs. These are the folks that are complaining about the easy button. Show me one first life mid level toon with the same complaint.

Balance the game. Make equal amounts of gear for all classes, not just specific classes. Good lord, look at the amount of gear slots a Rogue has available versus a Cleric. Quit making casters stronger and nerfing the melees. Stop introducing End Player Only items and attributes.

Not all of us are elitists, as the majority of these forum posts would suggest.

Thank you for this opportunity to vent :)

[-Avalanche-]

The biggest issue for me with the current difficulty system is the benefits for certain settings. Epic normal is fine so that more casual players can enjoy themselves and succeed in content. Hard is just a joke as a halfway between normal and epic elite. Elite is fairly good for a challenge against elite players. However, the major issue is the benefits for running epic elite. Why do epic elite Von 6 when we can fight in the dragons fire and kill her in 5 minutes in epic hard. There needs to be diffenent and diffent drop improvement/benefit for epic hard and elite. (epic hard assuming it was made to actually be hard)

For example, Lord of Blades used to be my favorite raid. T1 and T2 weapons were good weapons but for the elite players you could add teir three and he was a true challenge on elite. I remember getting up a 6am to meet with the best players across the server to consistently complete that raid. I liked the fact that to many mistakes would cost you the elite raid but the reward was the best of the best alchem weapons. Of course, those weapons are out dated now and spirits drop on the wrong difficulties and the raid was destroyed.

Honestly, there are very few raids I run anymore and I spend most of my time farming for perfect random gen Lvl 25 loot. Still trying to get my 120null, +3 necro mastery, +2 Lvl 9 and down spell pen one handed weapon. For me there's not point for much else.

[wonkey]

These are the folks that are complaining about the easy button. Show me one first life mid level toon with the same complaint.



Permadeathers :)

Not that it matters to your post much. Just couldn't help myself.

[Sarnind]

Make a serious incentive to run raid in EE and improved EN and EH diff.

[Chaos000]

My expectations in DDO is that if I put time in it will result in progression/reward and to some extent xp received for completion of some objectives does help soften the blow of a really poor PUG experience that resulted in party wipe.

Honestly, if I'm grinding out xp on a TR alt (and boy do I loathe the grind but see it as a necessary evil) The "easy button" is what keeps me coming back to the game. Ship buffs + twink BtA gear makes the game way more enjoyable for me as a player and if I can solo a dungeon without an issue on elite (I'd run it on normal if not for the bravery streak and favor mechanic) I am more than happy to open the group to any player that wanted to join.

What I dislike most is the current failure mechanic due to npc death. Slavers of the Shrieking Mines... Therenal... Faithful Departed... Let Sleeping Dust Lie... talk about a suckfest. These quests can all be ruined by one poor player. I would prefer reduced xp at quest completion or a loss of an end chest instead of outright failure if we manage to kill the boss at the end.

As far as Cannith Challenges go. I may be in the minority with this but guaranteed xp or ingredients for the time spent (2 new players in a group can pretty much sabotaged the chances of achieving even the main objective) would make these a whole lot more fulfilling. My other suggestion is to make the challenges worth farming (less severe diminishing rewards?) on a capped lvl 25/including ED's character. The current system forces players to keep an alt at lvl 20/21 just to farm ingredients for the challenges. Right now it's a "hit it and quit it" because it is a chore each and every time.

[BlackSmith81]

What are your thoughts on the overall difficulty of DDO?Overall quest difficulty? None. You can walk 99% of the games quests with a random group of players that have never played the game and with you have never played with, with zero idea what you are playing and simply following class/DDO guides/walktroughs. This includes raids.
Myself I know what the story is behind two raids because they have been so stopping to the group that I have got the time to read the (ingame) texts. The first one is Vault of the Night, the other one being Tempe'st spine. I could also say Zawabi's revenge but it hardly has any story or tale and its simply dishing out damage.
Players are skim trough the game without any idea about what they are actually playing.

Hardest part of the game is not about playing the adventure itself, but everything around it. Let me list couple things that come up fast to my mind.
Far too many crafting systems, players stretched over multiple servers (six year old issue, while problem has been solved for nine years), moving around to the right NPC to talk with (because of incorrect information in quest logs and statics game world, I can't ask directions to a NPC from anyone), finding out what quests you have done and in what difficulty and to easily gather a group to do it, having space limitation in inventory instead of weight and figuring out why a remarkably powerful D&D character is considered a gimp in DDO.

All that should be really easy things to do or not a issue at all. After betaing most of MMORPG's out there, and playing fair deal of 'em plus playing D&D since AD&D, some issue are **** silly.

Sure, we offer difficulty choices When? No pun intended, but please elaborate one hard choice you think there is.

Do you find yourself in a position where even Normal difficulty feels too much like hard?When soloing and unprepared, yes then some quest can be hard in normal. The amount of power players have makes each quest virtually walk over with even minor preparation. I do mean with minor preparation, meaning the tank takes his metalline pure good axe with him and the casters have mana.

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? There is surely inconsistency, mainly how everything else except DPS and miss chance looses their meaning the longer the game goes.

The (end)game is not about tactics or knowing right tool to right situation. Instead there as been ever growing snowball about DPS. Its about how big the players DPS, miss chance and DR are compared against the (single) endboss.
Thus the bosses have slowly been turning in to demi-gods resulting from this trend.
That in turn has made smart playing pointless, impossible.
In D&D making something blind is something really powerful. In DDO it is pointless as every place where it would have huge impact, the NPC's are immune at it. Same applies to ability damage, ability penalty, level drain, slow, nausea, shaken, fear, poison, staggered, stunned and so on. Any kind of condition. Conditions that are core part of D&D rules, applying to everyone, distinguishing it from second class games.

Thus why I enjoy the most playing the first levels is the fact that there is great deal of monsters that can be considered as are bosses that are not immune, or partially immune, roughly 90% of the spells in the game. Sure they might have good saves or lot of levels/ability points making my enervation/cloudkill being no single shot kills (as they should not be), but at least I am not that 3452345th sorcerer in the game that has maxed fire/cold damage and just chaining the same spell(s) waiting that the target fails one save to make four digits worth of damage.

The game is not about tactics or knowing right tool to right situation. Instead there as been ever growing snowball about DPS. Its about how big the players DPS, miss chance and DR are compared against the (single) endboss.
Thus the bosses have slowly been turning in to demi-gods resulting from this trend. Not because the players would have been to better, they are just bigger.

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. First of all I wan't to distinguish and clear out that the quests where you can actually fail are in huge minority. All party members ending up dead (wipe) is not a failure, by far.

When the game was new, when party wiped there was no crying, pickering, blaming or ragequiting. Only question was who is going stay inside to keep the instance alive. Then the rest of group came in with full of holy vengeance (read: mana) and then there was lot of killing and loot. Wiping was not considered as failure, it only meant the group was badly prepared to the fight or had been wasting its resources earlier. I can count with my right hand the times over the past six years there was a situation where the party could not come up a winning strategy and the quest was dropped.
Nowdays wiping is considered as a failure and having similar results than a true failure. A trend that makes no sense to me.
Spending 45 mins to a quest and wiping is not frustrating, but it IS frustrating to see players leave the group instead of taking the extra 5 mins to replenish and finish the quest. Because that way I just wasted 45 mins and gained only couple chests when the finish line was just 10 mins away. Its zero gain against slightly minor rate/gain.

Those quests where you can really FAIL because of an time limit or failing to protect your target or such, those are the only quests in the game that I feel that are challenging in any way. Even those are usually walkovers because the amount of power players wield. No one cares about protecting the poor Coyle when the six TR'ed characters are pushing around 100k DPS, the melee ones only couple digits behind.
Raids where people need to split up, back in the days, the smallest group to wander of from the main group was five persons. Now there are thirteen players in one raid group that can solo any minor-part of the quest.

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!' The game is balanced towards uber. Without topend equipment, a single character can hardly stand a single attack from a any NPC in the (later part of the) game. Casters have lower HPs to compensate the waste power they wield but its silly that a tank that does not have over 85%/500HPs is considered as paper.
The game was supposed to be a group game, not something where what quests you can solo is used as metrics to see how good character you got.

Best starting point to fix the challenge level of the game would start looking at the AI.
Sure, I can buy that a ooze keeps following a archer that is running from it, but NPC's that can't loose your trail, casters NPC's that keep casting spells that have no effect/on targets that are invalid, no sense of threats, no tactics and NPC's having so narrow variety of spells and always the same (a CR:26 dragon casts spells as level 19 cleric and sorcerer). Those I have hard time to diggest.

The games biggest challenge six years ago was to have tanks stand blocking the door and casting firewall.
What has changed?
The numbers have grown bigger and now you can do that alone.
Where is the challenge?

By giving the game a even half decent AI, it would stand out from ALL the current MMORPG's.

[WangChi]

Difficulty is directly related to knowledge of a quest. Once you know the ins and outs of a quest, you know how to prepare for it and you know how to beat it.

AI of the monsters in the game is predictable to the point where casters have no problem decimating nearly and combination of monsters without breaking a sweat.

Monster groups are static in location and size (for the most part).

Traps are consistent in location and method of disabling (for the most part).

Puzzles are consistent in location and method of solving (for the most part).

This all leads to predictability, which allows players to properly prepare for and easily defeat any situation once they know it. For first time players, normal difficulty can pose a challenge if they are unprepared.

If all you did was randomize trap location/disable boxes, puzzle location/solving methods and monster groups it could add some difficulty, but would still not be to difficult, good for hard mode.

But if you changed monster AI so that instead of standing in a firewall, they got out of the firewall (or dispelled it!!), or targeted casters/clerics first, that could increase difficulty quite a bit, good for elite mode.

I really think randomizing quest setup would go a long way making quests more challenging. If players don't know what they'll face, it will make things more enjoyable.

[Nestroy]

For a while, please let the EN and EH difficulties where they are. They are just fine for the normal player that has 2-3 hours daily of DDO exposure and might be the bulk of your players. EH is just inflating numbers, nothing more, nothing less. Personally I would love to find EH mobs and bosses to act more intelligent instead of getting inflated numbers, but what the heck, we all know how problematic implementig AI can be, especially if the AL then would act like players - there would be an outcry of how hard the game got!

I would love to see doing away the casual/normal/hard/elite buttons to be substituted by something more neutral like a level adjustment button. So, -1 is casual. 0 is normal, +1 hard and I would level adjust (yes, lootgen too, but not experience, there I would only give a small bonus) +4 for elite - so the elitists would have a reason only to farm on elite. And everybody else would be warned that the quest is for the uber-player only. Lootgen is not too big a problem. The best thingies still would drop at abyssmal low rates and most of the random gear is sales material anyway. With the exception of secondary weaponry I never found much useful random loot anyway.

I like elite, but EE solo is too much trouble for me, so I leave this to those days I have a really good group with me. I would count as experienced casual player. For me, EH is exactly the right difficulty I feel perfectly well with. Sadly my toon cannot come up with hitpoints like most bosses on that level: 25k hit points or more... That difficulty already sports most unrealistic stats for mobs and bosses alike, so I really do not feel too less of a challenge here on solo. Only thing that annoys me big time: On level the end rewards do not feature guild renown on that quests.

[woodchuckslayer]

If you are capable of running elite successfully on any quest that same quest on normal should rightly be a cakewalk or your difficulty settings mean nothing.

Normal should be reasonable for a first life toon.

Hard should be reasonable for a second life and challenging for a first life.

Elite should be reasonable for a third life toon, challenging for a second life, and very difficult for a first life toon.

Elite being balanced for a party also seems reasonable. That being said perhaps we need a 4th(i dont count casual) option, 5th option if you do count casual.

I think there should be an elite solo option. This option might keep streak alive but carry a lower base xp and scale to solo play. The purpose that this would serve is to keep streak alive while playing on short time or when appropriate groups are not to be found or filling reasonably. Toons on their third life or greater really depend heavily on streak during leveling and while elite can certainly be done short man another option would be helpful for alternate personalities as well.

[Chaos000]

I think there should be an elite solo option. This option might keep streak alive but carry a lower base xp and scale to solo play. The purpose that this would serve is to keep streak alive while playing on short time or when appropriate groups are not to be found or filling reasonably. Toons on their third life or greater really depend heavily on streak during leveling and while elite can certainly be done short man another option would be helpful for alternate personalities as well.

I agree with this. Taking it a step further I believe the game would be more fun if we had a selectable option on top of the current difficulty choices: (normal, hard, elite)

Classic: Difficulty fixed for 4 players (Default)
Scaled: less than 4 = easier, more than 4 = higher base xp but heroic and epic difficulties becomes hard enough that it will challenge even a full group of multi-twinked multiple tr's using their foreknowledge of quest. The mechanics are already built into the game so it should be easy to implement.

Taking the scaled option futher for future development I feel that when a player is solo in scaled mode, there would be a lowered base xp but scales to solo play (mechanics of coordinated effort eliminated on solo: i.e. lever pulling, key passing, gate raising etc.). Definitely will be a boon to players that have limited time or want to grind out some of those last few lower level quests for favor on their capped toon.

[eachna_gislin]

If you are capable of running elite successfully on any quest that same quest on normal should rightly be a cakewalk or your difficulty settings mean nothing.

Normal should be reasonable for a first life toon.

Hard should be reasonable for a second life and challenging for a first life.

Elite should be reasonable for a third life toon, challenging for a second life, and very difficult for a first life toon.

Elite being balanced for a party also seems reasonable. That being said perhaps we need a 4th(i dont count casual) option, 5th option if you do count casual.

I think there should be an elite solo option. This option might keep streak alive but carry a lower base xp and scale to solo play. The purpose that this would serve is to keep streak alive while playing on short time or when appropriate groups are not to be found or filling reasonably. Toons on their third life or greater really depend heavily on streak during leveling and while elite can certainly be done short man another option would be helpful for alternate personalities as well.

I like the above system (normal = 1st life, etc). Maybe broken down this way:

1) Casual = meant for solo (or solo with hirelings). Maybe limit to a party size of 3, or just keep it with the limited loot optons?

2) normal = first lifers and the much-maligned 'easy button' version. The expectation would be that toons running through are undergeared by a few levels and DCs would be lower.

2) Hard - 2nd lifers or top-geared 1st lifer toons.

3) Elite - multi-lifers with the best gear.

Epics would be the same with the following caveat:

4) Epic Elites - This would be the version where everyone 'needs' 9 past lives because of the nosebleed DCs,

GET RID OF BRAVERY BONUS. Seriously. If there was no bravery bonus, there'd be no reason for the overwhelming demand for the 'elite for streak' push. It hurts both PUGs and social play among friendlies.

I can't always group with friendly people because I have some weak-@ss 1st life toons and the friendly types I run with are usually multi-TRs. They're willing to help carry my sorry toons for social purposes, but they're not going to break their bravery bonus on top of it (and I don't blame them!). But, I hate joining elite runs and either dying a lot, or at least not really effectively contributing.

Conversely, if I'm on hard runs, I'm at least "okay" as far as making a contribution. So I can happily both be social and pull my own weight.

My high bravery bonus friends can't just put their streak on hold. We can try to find a dungeon everyone with a streak has already done and enjoys, but that can be harder than it sounds.

If the streak wasn't there, it would solely be a matter of balancing gear and play skill to the dungeons we want to run.

[eachna_gislin]

If you are capable of running elite successfully on any quest that same quest on normal should rightly be a cakewalk or your difficulty settings mean nothing.

Normal should be reasonable for a first life toon.

Hard should be reasonable for a second life and challenging for a first life.

Elite should be reasonable for a third life toon, challenging for a second life, and very difficult for a first life toon.

Elite being balanced for a party also seems reasonable. That being said perhaps we need a 4th(i dont count casual) option, 5th option if you do count casual.

I think there should be an elite solo option. This option might keep streak alive but carry a lower base xp and scale to solo play. The purpose that this would serve is to keep streak alive while playing on short time or when appropriate groups are not to be found or filling reasonably. Toons on their third life or greater really depend heavily on streak during leveling and while elite can certainly be done short man another option would be helpful for alternate personalities as well.

I like the above system (normal = 1st life, etc). Maybe broken down this way:

1) Casual = meant for solo (or solo with hirelings). Maybe limit to a party size of 3, or just keep it with the limited loot optons?

2) normal = first lifers and the much-maligned 'easy button' version. The expectation would be that toons running through are undergeared by a few levels and DCs would be lower.

2) Hard - 2nd lifers or top-geared 1st lifer toons.

3) Elite - multi-lifers with the best gear.

Epics would be the same with the following caveat:

4) Epic Elites - This would be the version where everyone 'needs' 9 past lives because of the nosebleed DCs,

GET RID OF BRAVERY BONUS. Seriously. If there was no bravery bonus, there'd be no reason for the overwhelming demand for the 'elite for streak' push. It hurts both PUGs and social play among friendlies.

I can't always group with friendly people because I have some weak-@ss 1st life toons and the friendly types I run with are usually multi-TRs. They're willing to help carry my sorry toons for social purposes, but they're not going to break their bravery bonus on top of it (and I don't blame them!). But, I hate joining elite runs and either dying a lot, or at least not really effectively contributing.

Conversely, if I'm on hard runs, I'm at least "okay" as far as making a contribution. So I can happily both be social and pull my own weight.

My high bravery bonus friends can't just put their streak on hold. We can try to find a dungeon everyone with a streak has already done and enjoys, but that can be harder than it sounds.

If the streak wasn't there, it would solely be a matter of balancing gear and play skill to the dungeons we want to run.

[Viconiax]

In my opinion, any 1st life toon with good gears and toon setup can do ANY diff well.

And please, don't get rid of the bravery bonuses, it help TR a lot.

You can also have the option of running with your guild and/or post your own lfm if you don't like those "uber meany elite group." You can also have the option of not running with elite group and join normal pug. And like I said, you can make your own lfm if you don't like it. I seen few people around these days (this is not offending anyone in this thread but it based on my observation inside the game) running around complaining about how difficult quest is when they don't HAVE to join pug on elite and can also make their own lfm. (P.S. don't run diff that your toon is not ready for then complain about it). :)

[Nitesco]

Wy are people counting a past life as being meaningful when discussing difficulty? What does that get you at the most? 1 DC, a couple of spell pen, 10 hp, 5% healing amp or +1 tactics DC or something equally mundane. Past lives are the LAST thing you want to consider adding to your build, if at all. Because you are gaining more by working on almost any other aspect of your toon for a significantly shorter time. Stop talking about past lives as if they are worth anything more than bragging rights to people who probably get excited when they see a uniform or a badge. You are all so guilty, so many of you. ;)

[psykopeta]

mmorpg thought for solo playing = fails as mmorpg

simply, why are this players paying a net connection if they don't need one? it's the "single player" version of old games had

[Chaos000]

mmorpg thought for solo playing = fails as mmorpg

simply, why are this players paying a net connection if they don't need one? it's the "single player" version of old games had

I felt this way with City of Heroes, World of Warcraft, DCUO, SWtor, and GW2... Hate that it always felt like you're grinding your way to cap and solo for the most part before you got to content where you start to group with your friends. Even then the grouping interface was kind of clunky.

DDO was the only real mmo that i felt had the community inherently built in, not to mention the flexibility in creating customized characters that doesn't have to fit into a particular role of dps, heal, tank or that a you need 1 tank 1 heal 2 dps to make a good group.

My opinion is that so long as quests don't stop being designed for groups, optional solo play should be fine. They only have a couple solo only quests in the game, thank goodness. Scaling is kind of anti-grouping at times (improperly challenging larger groups? who thought THAT was a good idea?) I preferred the old system of designed for 4. If me and a couple buddies were questing, so long as the other 3 pugs joining our group amounted to at least 1 competent player... easy peasy.

[cyreme]

I know everyone is peeved about lag in GH and justly so, but just wait till seasoned players discover what changed in other quests. I found a line about "rebalancing" in u17 notes. This makes me sick everytime i see it. Someone keeps having an idea that some quests are too easy to run. I don't know who that person is, but this idea is idiotic. Here are reasons why:
1) Enemy casters now cast spells which deal 300dmg per hit - evasion only triggers if rs is about 30 or so.
2) At the same time (!) friendly casters are nerfed, capped damage on both divine and arcane, concentration system is atrocious and dc means almost nothing at this point. (can anyone explain to me how a mind flayer can resist a spell which requires a fortitude save of 40? My lvl 23 fighter barely has that much fortitude).
3) Rift now joins In The Flesh and Acute Delirium as off limits to first-life toons. Don't know what the idea is, but after battling cr 24 mobs of 20 plus enemies through demonweb portion, you get to underdark portion and are facing deathjumpers in same quantities and a mob of drow, who do stacking (!) slicing blow dmg. So my buddy and I beat through that - barely. I'm on my 9th life btw, certainly no stranger to tough quests. Then a mob of 20 cr 24 earth eles pops on me and another mob of 12 animated armors. My healer is out of sp at this point - no surpise. so we both go down. My buddy had 12 consequtive earth grab procs on him btw. Anyway, I use the cake and we sneak through to drow outpost. After battling 2 epic-level (cr 26) red names and large mobs with stacking slicing blow dmg we make it by the skin of our teeth. I ask: what first life champion lvl team would be able to handle epic content like that? I don't mind spending a couple of cakes, but i'm sad that only seasoned tr parties can now handle this lvl 16 quest on elite.

Final thought. Neverwinter is coming out soon. They promise that they will allow ppl to play the way they want to. No restrictions on solo play or w/e. Take a clue. I don't mind party-only quests, that's what raids are for. Most content should be soloable on elite with sufficient preparation. Solo or duo players are not the enemy. Fix lag, fix known bugs, stop messing up stuff that's already working. At this point many lvl 15+ quests that have enemy casters are off limits to 1st life players on elite- no matter what team size. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that? Right now I'm one ****ed VIP player. Hope someone pays attention not only for my sake but for the sake of other players.

[Deathbrings]

I know everyone is peeved about lag in GH and justly so, but just wait till seasoned players discover what changed in other quests. I found a line about "rebalancing" in u17 notes. This makes me sick everytime i see it. Someone keeps having an idea that some quests are too easy to run. I don't know who that person is, but this idea is idiotic. Here are reasons why:
1) Enemy casters now cast spells which deal 300dmg per hit - evasion only triggers if rs is about 30 or so.
2) At the same time (!) friendly casters are nerfed, capped damage on both divine and arcane, concentration system is atrocious and dc means almost nothing at this point. (can anyone explain to me how a mind flayer can resist a spell which requires a fortitude save of 40? My lvl 23 fighter barely has that much fortitude).
3) Rift now joins In The Flesh and Acute Delirium as off limits to first-life toons. Don't know what the idea is, but after battling cr 24 mobs of 20 plus enemies through demonweb portion, you get to underdark portion and are facing deathjumpers in same quantities and a mob of drow, who do stacking (!) slicing blow dmg. So my buddy and I beat through that - barely. I'm on my 9th life btw, certainly no stranger to tough quests. Then a mob of 20 cr 24 earth eles pops on me and another mob of 12 animated armors. My healer is out of sp at this point - no surpise. so we both go down. My buddy had 12 consequtive earth grab procs on him btw. Anyway, I use the cake and we sneak through to drow outpost. After battling 2 epic-level (cr 26) red names and large mobs with stacking slicing blow dmg we make it by the skin of our teeth. I ask: what first life champion lvl team would be able to handle epic content like that? I don't mind spending a couple of cakes, but i'm sad that only seasoned tr parties can now handle this lvl 16 quest on elite.

Final thought. Neverwinter is coming out soon. They promise that they will allow ppl to play the way they want to. No restrictions on solo play or w/e. Take a clue. I don't mind party-only quests, that's what raids are for. Most content should be soloable on elite with sufficient preparation. Solo or duo players are not the enemy. Fix lag, fix known bugs, stop messing up stuff that's already working. At this point many lvl 15+ quests that have enemy casters are off limits to 1st life players on elite- no matter what team size. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that? Right now I'm one ****ed VIP player. Hope someone pays attention not only for my sake but for the sake of other players.

Just ran rift. It didn't seem any more difficult than it has my other 10 or so times i've run it at level. I disagree that any new player (or vet without sufficient preparation) should be able to solo any quest on elite. That takes all the fun out of the game...if i want to play a game i can literally walk through i'll go find a game like that. I am not saying that you shouldn't be able to solo elites, just you definitely should need the proper prep in advance. maybe this life's build just isn't on par with your last? (not saying you are gimp or anything, just pointing out that different lives will have varying mileage.) I know a few people that can solo EE quests...and even one that has solo'd EE raids. That alone says the game is either right where it needs to be or maybe even too easy. Yes Neverwinter is coming out. Yes it may be catering to the casual player. On that note the customization of a toon's build is almost non existent, and if you do group with others there is no challenge.

Those that play ddo, tend to play it for a reason, since it is a very niche game. I play it for the challenge it provides and the insane amounts of customization it offers. If that isn't what you are interested in, then maybe finding another game is the way to go. i haven't run with you in game to my knowledge, but would like to get the chance to some day. :). i don't want you to leave, since it already feels like a lot of people are leaving. In the end, you should find a game that you enjoy, do not try to take away from ddo what i enjoy though. the quest hasn't changed this last update (rift). Or if so not noticeably.

[Zorth]

Game difficulty cannot be discussed until all the game mechanics, (Combat bugs), are solved.

This rumor that the store sold a cheat! Is it True?

[cyreme]

Just ran rift. It didn't seem any more difficult than it has my other 10 or so times i've run it at level. I disagree that any new player (or vet without sufficient preparation) should be able to solo any quest on elite. That takes all the fun out of the game...if i want to play a game i can literally walk through i'll go find a game like that. I am not saying that you shouldn't be able to solo elites, just you definitely should need the proper prep in advance. maybe this life's build just isn't on par with your last? (not saying you are gimp or anything, just pointing out that different lives will have varying mileage.) I know a few people that can solo EE quests...and even one that has solo'd EE raids. That alone says the game is either right where it needs to be or maybe even too easy. Yes Neverwinter is coming out. Yes it may be catering to the casual player. On that note the customization of a toon's build is almost non existent, and if you do group with others there is no challenge.

Those that play ddo, tend to play it for a reason, since it is a very niche game. I play it for the challenge it provides and the insane amounts of customization it offers. If that isn't what you are interested in, then maybe finding another game is the way to go. i haven't run with you in game to my knowledge, but would like to get the chance to some day. :). i don't want you to leave, since it already feels like a lot of people are leaving. In the end, you should find a game that you enjoy, do not try to take away from ddo what i enjoy though. the quest hasn't changed this last update (rift). Or if so not noticeably.

I realize that game experience is subjective. However I play often and can see a clear difference b4 and after u17. For example I ran a few challenges today. In one of them a wizard was able to lay me down with a simple command spell (not greater). I'm on a druid life and my will save is high (30 or so). I doubt this is WAI. I appreciate the fact that you are trying to defend the game you love, but no one is attacking the game itself. I'm asking to not break what already works. To be sure if devs don't change anything - which is something I would bet some money on - I will find a way around these "updates." I was able to solo most elites in my last 3 lives. I will keep doing it just the way I like it. However I feel sorry for newer players. They will have most interesting and challenging aspects of the game closed to them for a while. Perhaps it is a new marketing strategy - to make DDO even more of a "niche" game. I'm just one voice, but if these changes persist, you will hear more or ppl will start voting with their feet, which would be sad. Downplay my experience if you wish, but I don't post much as you can tell. Because I am too busy playing. Why am I driven to this? Perhaps I just had a bad day :p. Or someone screwed something up. One or the other I guess.

[psykopeta]

Game difficulty cannot be discussed until all the game mechanics, (Combat bugs), are solved.

This rumor that the store sold a cheat! Is it True?

still working, not fixed yet

that's a p2w, but in stealth mode!! XDD not WAI, but not fixed

[woodchuckslayer]

without an elite difficulty setting for solo play many third life toons are relagated to the lfm quest. I mean the one where folks sit there for far to long waiting for players that in many cases are not geared or otherwise prepared for the current elite difficulty. It is not currently scaled well. I am on a 10th life toon with plenty of goodies, etc. In fact I played the game since it's original release or very nearly so.

It is not opinion that says you will chase players away as it stands now. It is fact.

That is all.

[Yehediah]

without an elite difficulty setting for solo play many third life toons are relagated to the lfm quest.

A majority of the quests can currently (at this very moment) be solo'd on a TR with good gear (and using a hireling or two) - two to three players work even better.

However, there are exceptions and those exceptions tend to be so hard at level that you just rarely see it tried with any number of players. Frankly, some of those exceptions need to be equalized a bit, though some are fine even though challenging to do with a very small group.

A problem is there are wide swings in changes that greatly effect difficulty. What is insane today is not necessarily tomorrow. And, that often changes too fast and too much.


It is not opinion that says you will chase players away as it stands now. It is fact.

Confusing fact and opinion is all too common these days. It is not fact until they actually leave - otherwise it's stating an opinion as a fact. An opinion might be right, but that doesn't make it fact until it is actually right.

[ddobard1]

Quests in normal can be soloed with eyes wide shut!

Even elite can be soloed at level, at least some!

Game is becoming too easy!! Toughen quests up for more players in DDO!

[Yehediah]

Game is becoming too easy!! Toughen quests up for more players in DDO!

Too easy perhaps for the experienced DDO player, especially TR with good gear, etc. - you lose new players if you make it to hard for them.

And, the problem with toughening them is it's always done globally and the "average" quest might work fine with scaling up, but, there are plenty of quests that become too hard when they scale things up, and a few that become WAY too hard. So, statements about difficulty always depend on many variables (player level and level attempted, player, gear, TR, and specific quest difficulty in addition to general difficulty).

However, you can do plenty of things to make it more difficult for you - solo it, short man it, do so missing a key class for the quest, run it without gear or armor, do a higher level quest than you are, etc. But, most won't do that - thus, what they generally want is bragging rights, not for it to be actually more difficult!

[dunmoore]

I honestly dont mind things as they are in heroic levels,,,,But Epic Levels are just to darn easy since they added levels up to 25---Some are hard, but most are not.

[Turbosilk]

All I ask is that EE is at least truly EPIC difficulty. A true challenge to the best players with the best gear.

[Starla70]

I much prefer to do quests as a team. I very rarely solo. So I do not see the game as becoming to easy. I also do not put a weeks salary into the game a month like others must to get all the goodies they have. It would be nice to see a server just for those that want to run elite all the time and TR once a month if not more, so those of us who like the idea of a multi player game alone.

[Sorwen]

Spending 45 minutes into a quest only to fail can be very frustrating.This sums it up for me. I think the general difficulty isn't bad. My problem is that some quests you can just outright fail if you don't know all of the ins and outs of the quests. Group quests that you fail if you fall and there is no one to activate how you get back or you don't find out till your half way in that although it let you start the quest unless you have 2/3/4/5 people to flip switches in different rooms you fail, etc. If there is no way but to fail I shouldn't be able to enter in the first place. The warnings don't help because some group quests that say you need a party can actually be completed solo.

I also hate that the only way to get or complete some rewards is through group questing. I group with my friends, but that can't always be on and a random group isn't really a solution between elitists or know better attitudes.

[Karavek]

I felt this way with City of Heroes, ... Hate that it always felt like you're grinding your way to cap and solo for the most part before you got to content where you start to group with your friends. Even then the grouping interface was kind of clunky.

DDO was the only real mmo that i felt had the community inherently built in, not to mention the flexibility in creating customized characters that doesn't have to fit into a particular role of dps, heal, tank or that a you need 1 tank 1 heal 2 dps to make a good group.

My opinion is that so long as quests don't stop being designed for groups, optional solo play should be fine. They only have a couple solo only quests in the game, thank goodness. Scaling is kind of anti-grouping at times (improperly challenging larger groups? who thought THAT was a good idea?) I preferred the old system of designed for 4. If me and a couple buddies were questing, so long as the other 3 pugs joining our group amounted to at least 1 competent player... easy peasy.

First lol wut at thinking coh was anything but the most group friendly MMO ever and very easy to play out of the box characters, They may have had ATs called Tanks and Defenders, but some of the best DPS most self reliant builds in that game came from skilled builders turning defenders on their heads into offenders who could solo giant monsters more handedly then any other AT, or Perma double to triple stacked rage SS tanks who could hit like a real hulk. Or my blaster Bentley Berkeley who could out last nearly any tank on virtue and out DPS any dirt napping Fire X3 build used by a wowtard with my psi.ment spec.

CoH was everything good in a casual pug friendly MMO, from their sde kick exemplar system, to the in it for the long haul task forces that rewarded you well and fairly no matter your lvl compared to the content due to auto exemping and reward merits.

DDO from year one has been anti grouping due to player prejudice and preconceptions of how others should play their characters, from kamikaze barbs demanding clerics be nanny bots, to rangers for a long time in the early era being completely black sheeped as lacking in specialization and thus not able to fill a specific role as well. DDO is the only MMO that makes me prefer to stay solo most of the time and ignore people nor lead groups where as in CoH on any given day I happily logged in to lead pug TFs with as many as 7 different new people who would all often end up on my friends list by the end. DDOs poorly thought out mechanics like all or nothing xp for success or failure only lead to xenophobic closed off cliques of intolerant players not wishing to risk unknown allies and a possible waste of time during their play session.

This imo is why DDO will never reach its potential, too many who barely dabbled in other MMO spouting poorly thought out ideas based on preconceptions that belong back in archaic games like EQ.

[Starla70]

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

With things being changed, trap boxes being moved, or gone, or added, I think it is overall good for those I play regularly with. Giant hold on epic is very hard without a strong team. Most of the King's forest quests are more difficult then our group is used to. After you learn the quest and have leveled up one or two levels it is not that hard, but the first time through can get real rough.

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 think some quests are much harder then others in their level range Chronoscope at level with a pug group can be killer. Devils assualt, stealthy Repossesion most of my guild will not even go near.

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 personally like the quests that you should have a balanced team for. Changing things up for some quests with puzzles, some you need to collect things, keeps it interesting. For our guild, if we fail, or succeed we do it as a team. That idea is rare anymore in DDO. It is however how we like it.

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.

It is frustrating, but it has happened. Our group tends to just regroup, talk about what went wrong and fix it. I think part of that issue is the whole I can do it solo, why do I need a group attitude that has been growing the past year or so here. I personally think that hurts the game. As a MMO multi-player is just part of it. Our guild thinks it is much more enjoyable with a team. I believe that is one strength our guild has others may not. We may be a smaller guild, but we have loyal players.

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!'

I very much find this to be true. The uber/TR'ed 4 times/Okay with spending $50 or more a month on the game seem to have the advantage. I can't say I want an easy button, but I also play for the enjoyment. The team that has built the backgrounds have done an awesome job. There are times with our guild we stop to check out the moon, the dragon flying over head, the awesome sceneries from mountains you have to climb. I think honestly you should send out more surveys through email. There are many of us that just do not come to the forums daily. In my guild, I am one of about 30 that are active and only about 5 of us check the forums at all. So to only get feed back here, is cutting out many of the players, or maybe send something to the guilds top 2 officers. Most of those 30 in my guild are not free to play, but still can not afford to keep buying everything that is coming out, at least not at once. That doesn't mean most of us are not on 3 to 5 nights a week.

Would love to know your thoughts on this. Feel free to reference specific quests. The shards now is one issue. Several of our guild are not real happy you have to buy them to get anywhere with them. Having to constantly upgrade your equipment, green steel becoming almost useless to keep building on, Everything in evenstar resisting most of the spells we have, the monsters having better chances to hit us then we have to hit them ie around corners, through walls, and levels (This happened to our group several times this weekend Outbreak where the will o wisps could get us through walls and down a level)

[Seikojin]

I know I have said it before, but I don't think in this thread. I have had the same thought from the beginning of difficulties. This is how I see the game, both Heroic and Epic:

Solo/Casual:
Can easilly be done alone or with a hireling, any build, any gear loadout.
Normal:
Can be done alone or with a hireling, gear or build may make or break. Group always wins.
Hard:
Can be done alone or with a hireling if the build and gear are at level or better. Group play is smooth.
Elite:
Can be done alone with the best gear for the build, some builds will fail, group play can fail too, if the group doesn't work together.

Raids are one step up, so normal becomes like hard, hard is closer to elite, and elite raids are for those who do work together and know what they are doing and have the builds and gear to show it.

What I would like to see:

Solo/Casual:
Can easilly be done alone or with a hireling, any build, any gear loadout.
Normal:
Hard to do alone, easier with a hireling. Build and gear can make or break soloability. Groups generally trump.
Hard:
Solo play is very difficult unless best build/gear. Hireling makes easier. Group can fail, but very unlikely.
Elite:
Cannot be soloed. Needs at least a hireling to help mitigate the damage or traps. Groups that are built well and geared well can complete most of the time.

Raids are one step up, so normal becomes like hard, hard is closer to elite, and elite raids are for those who do work together and know what they are doing and have the builds and gear to show it.

[alex1972]

I know I have said it before, but I don't think in this thread. I have had the same thought from the beginning of difficulties. This is how I see the game, both Heroic and Epic:

Solo/Casual:
Can easilly be done alone or with a hireling, any build, any gear loadout.
Normal:
Can be done alone or with a hireling, gear or build may make or break. Group always wins.
Hard:
Can be done alone or with a hireling if the build and gear are at level or better. Group play is smooth.
Elite:
Can be done alone with the best gear for the build, some builds will fail, group play can fail too, if the group doesn't work together.

Raids are one step up, so normal becomes like hard, hard is closer to elite, and elite raids are for those who do work together and know what they are doing and have the builds and gear to show it.

What I would like to see:

Solo/Casual:
Can easilly be done alone or with a hireling, any build, any gear loadout.
Normal:
Hard to do alone, easier with a hireling. Build and gear can make or break soloability. Groups generally trump.
Hard:
Solo play is very difficult unless best build/gear. Hireling makes easier. Group can fail, but very unlikely.
Elite:
Cannot be soloed. Needs at least a hireling to help mitigate the damage or traps. Groups that are built well and geared well can complete most of the time.

Raids are one step up, so normal becomes like hard, hard is closer to elite, and elite raids are for those who do work together and know what they are doing and have the builds and gear to show it.

******
I would fully agree with this if not for how the favor system works. This means that the favor rewards that require Elite (or Epic Elite) runs near end game are fully out-of-reach for a pretty big chunk of the player base (myself included). I don't object to DELAYING favor rewards; which is how the low-mid level rewards would work out.

There are several possible solutions, approaching different sides of this situation:
1) Favor could be less dependant on the difficuly that is run, but the XP reward difference between the difficulties could be significantly greater.
2) Favor could be more progressively earned. Perhaps multiple runs on hard or a huge number on normal could earn the same favor as one run on elite.

[Nitesco]

The only reason this game is hard is because people don't play to their strengths when they need to. Mostly these strengths involve a little communication and standing back and letting someone who is good at something go ahead and do it. There are so many effects, tactics and build choices which trivialize EE without even dipping into FotM cheese builds. The only reason people think E is hard is because they can't just zerg in and win the war of attrition between the AI and their HP like then can in N/H.

What it comes down to is most people are too impatient to devise and employ strategies, so when things start to go badly for them once the initial onslaught has proven unsuccessful, they get dismayed and angry and start looking for something to blame. This is compounded by the pervasive 'too cool for school' attitude which tends to stifle any frank analytical discussion. I have always been a strong proponent of debriefing but in the aftermath of failure, ego's are often fragile so it can be difficult to regroup.

[ddobard1]

ddo became too easy

normal is a laugh.... elite can be soloed, yes EE

[Modulex]

What reason is there for you to be soloing hard and elite quests? Answer that.
Dungeon scaling? Spell and trap damage is lethal in a full/half full party, and tolerable when solo or with a hire .

"Dead Pykzyl's disintegrate hit you for 616 points of damage." With 3 players and 2 hires in party. If I were solo, it would probably be half of that, and wouldn't be an insta kill for 90-95% of lvl 17 toons :D.

[SweetDude]

Hello everybody, I'll state the thoughts of my guild Gryphons from thelanis server.

Low level quests on elite: the quests are pretty easy to veteran players with shipbuffs. Also, it is easy to solo with a good solo ability class (like artificer). Yet I remember having a very challeging time as a freshman player on DDO before shipbuffs.

Mid-level on elite: Nice and sexy :D

High-level on elite: Nice and sexy :D

Epic normal: really boring :(

Epic hard: really boring :(

Epic Elite: OMG, this is our kind of quests :D It makes me want to make new builds and gear up :D

One thing could improve our experience on DDO: RANDOM TRAPS :D

[AMADHA]

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.
Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11. I have started a number of other characters to "test them out" paladins, artificers, clerics, etc. most are dead now. I still have my Exploiter Tempest Ranger at lvl 11 and a level 7 (started there with the experience boost) artificer. I really like those two as I love the rogue/spell casting/kill them before they see you ranged attacks.

That said, I would first agree with the statement that you are balancing the game for the uber-player. I read a couple of pages of replies and I have no clue what they are talking about as I haven't even seen many of those quests. Uber-players. Not convinced? Look at the content you've been adding, what levels are they targeting? Done much adding of lower level quests? I have no doubt that you are not targeting new, or obviously clueless players such as myself.

On the difficulty, I play solo. I have played with one or two other players from time to time... some bad, some extremely good. By good I mean that they were so much better that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got their character to do the stuff I saw them do! I try to play every quest in an area on normal the first time. Often, I get killed right near the end. If it happens enough I normally just abandon the quest and never try it again. (Wish I could remember the name of that last one I dumped in Kundarak.) I have found that quests got substantially harder at level 9 on normal, so much so that I won't even try many of them anymore. I find that lvl 7 to 9 quests severely challenge my lvl 11 Ranger on normal to complete. I must play Lvl 8 to 10 quests VERY slowly so as to not attract more than a couple of monsters at a time and invariably I end up encountering two+ red boss characters together somewhere and I'm toast. I have, to date, not been able to complete a level 10 quest. Playing the various festivals clearly demonstrates that my character does not have remotely enough killing power to collect squat valuable... so festivals are no fun and since the 'loot' is bound to Char they are mostly useless as well. Collectors have undergone a huge change and collecting as a result is now pretty much a pointless waste of inventory space (collectors now require a TON of junk in return for squat). Delrina has been modified so that a hireling can't get you to completion of the second 5th level quest. Sure I could team up, but I have a busy life and I can only play as time permits. Its less complicated to play solo for me. So is the game too hard, in some ways... absolutely, in others... nope. There should be a risk of death/restart while playing. However, there should be room for learning. If you change tactics and do things right/better the next time you should survive... but if it really doesn't matter how well you try to play it or you MUST be part of a party to win then that sucks.

Also, the game is way out of balance in several ways... for example dexterity: it makes you quick. So please explain why my extremely high dex ranger consistently moves slower than a low dex character with boots of 15% speed? Why is a quest played by a single character nearly impossible but a snap if there are two or three? Quests have several levels of difficulty but from my experience the only things that seem to change is the type of spells the clerics/sorcerers throw and the hit points of the individual mob members. Why doesn't the size/strength of the mobs increase with the number of players entering (mob number = Std mob + (Std Mob x (number of players - 1)) OR mob strength/lvl = std mob + ((avg player HP/avg player level) x avg player class modifier(class mod per lvl x num lvls in class)) or some such mathematical gobbledygook? Then XP for completion = quest XP x difficulty modifier x Mob strength change(played strength/std strength). Play in a group, the quest is harder more XP given, choose a different difficulty more XP given. Note I added a class modifier since I have noticed that class impacts play-ability. Mid-level (level 7 for me) Rangers/rogues/paladins seem to fair much worse than full blown spell casters. Artificers seem to hold up better than those other three, but they are also pretty weak. Straight fighters and spell casters seem to do a LOT of damage by comparison. Oh, the poisoner quest in Marketplace (just past the guard with the demon invasion) is SERIOUSLY harder than similar quests at the same level... AND ITS LONG! In summary, you should have a chance to fail at any level, especially the first time through, and with any number of players and the game should modify itself to ensure that that level of risk adjusts to the number of players playing a quest, their character level, their class mix, and the level of their gear. The chance should be the same for a solo player like me and for a well heeled reincarnated twice group of six players at the same level of challenge i.e. Hero: C, N, H, E, or Epic: C, N, H, E.

As for game play... You SERIOUSLY need to allow for some sort of mid-quest save/restart. Some quests take FOREVER to finish like the Shanticor? quest and others which have three quests all linked together in a chain that you have to walk through each and every time... Yeesh! Sometimes I have to stop playing mid-quest because I've run out of time!

I play for fun. Puzzles should NOT be a Mensa IQ test, they should be solvable, and they should NEVER place a player into a situation where the only escape is recall. Your idiot hireling should be able to get you free to try, try again. There's one with Minotaurs in Gianthold that just traps you tight (the area with multiple levers after the swim).

On things not much fun: guard the idiot quests where the idiot tries to get themselves killed (and even when they don't) and ones where you have to stop the monsters from bugging me but they don't provide a progress monitor to tell you how close that loser is getting to finishing their job before they fall down and tell you they have to start over. Man! I've grown to hate those with a passion!

To be honest I'd rather play 0-8 than 9+ level quests. I'm finding levelling extremely tedious, probably because I'm doing something wrong and advanced game play is simply not fun for me (neither have I liked the recent 'additions'... astral shards and their push, the collector change with its pushing the shards as well, and the ridiculously stupid daily rolls.). While I like the challenge offered by each new quest I encounter in DDO, the game is simply becoming tedious... you detect a hidden passage, but damned if you can find it. Maybe if I got closer, oh! sorry you just got snagged by a leg-hold trap that you also didn't detect when you searched for stuff AND you just lost a bunch of hit points, but you get free, and look there's another one that you also didn't detect and now some ranger/spell caster has found you.... I'm currently a VIP, but to be honest I'm thinking of dropping VIP and perhaps quitting DDO completely.

So I think you can fairly easily fix the "Enough with the easy button" uber-players request and address the "I just want to have fun, play my character's role, be challenged a bit, be surprised a bit and leave." players such a myself. It's all in whether or not you want to spend the money rewriting a huge chunk of code or just keep doing what you're doing? Certainly adding some more lower level areas... perhaps areas targeting a particular class to train us newbies to be better might help, but it won't solve the underlying issues. However, those newbies might have more fun playing, because the alternative is that casual paying players such as myself will pack it in, and move on. To which I think I can hear "and good riddance!", but really is that how you build and grow a sustained community?

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.

[Charononus]

Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11. I have started a number of other characters to "test them out" paladins, artificers, clerics, etc. most are dead now. I still have my Exploiter Tempest Ranger at lvl 11 and a level 7 (started there with the experience boost) artificer. I really like those two as I love the rogue/spell casting/kill them before they see you ranged attacks.
I understand liking ranged toons, however some of this made me ask myself if you are following the path system. The path system is universally awful and has not improved with the new iconic classes.


That said, I would first agree with the statement that you are balancing the game for the uber-player. I read a couple of pages of replies and I have no clue what they are talking about as I haven't even seen many of those quests. Uber-players. Not convinced? Look at the content you've been adding, what levels are they targeting? Done much adding of lower level quests? I have no doubt that you are not targeting new, or obviously clueless players such as myself.
You admit to not have played past 11. It's not a matter of uber or not, you're just inexperienced. This is not a bad thing but just the learning curve that exists in any game. As far as adding low level content, there is way more low level content than anything else in the game. We need more high level content and exp and we are not getting it very well. There are multiple issues with xp and the xp curve for trs and where the quests are at. Low level packs will not fix this serious issue.



On the difficulty, I play solo. I have played with one or two other players from time to time... some bad, some extremely good. By good I mean that they were so much better that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got their character to do the stuff I saw them do! I try to play every quest in an area on normal the first time. Often, I get killed right near the end. If it happens enough I normally just abandon the quest and never try it again. (Wish I could remember the name of that last one I dumped in Kundarak.) I have found that quests got substantially harder at level 9 on normal, so much so that I won't even try many of them anymore. I find that lvl 7 to 9 quests severely challenge my lvl 11 Ranger on normal to complete. I must play Lvl 8 to 10 quests VERY slowly so as to not attract more than a couple of monsters at a time and invariably I end up encountering two+ red boss characters together somewhere and I'm toast. I have, to date, not been able to complete a level 10 quest.


Once again I must ask if you followed the path system. If not I'd post your build and ask for advice. Most of these quests are incredibly easy for long term players, ask a few questions and you might find yourself flying threw them as well.


Sure I could team up, but I have a busy life and I can only play as time permits. Its less complicated to play solo for me. So is the game too hard, in some ways... absolutely, in others... nope. There should be a risk of death/restart while playing. However, there should be room for learning. If you change tactics and do things right/better the next time you should survive... but if it really doesn't matter how well you try to play it or you MUST be part of a party to win then that sucks.

Most the quests at the level you're talking about I find easier to solo than to have party for because of dungeon scaling. There are only a few quests that require you to have a party for switches ext.


W
Also, the game is way out of balance in several ways... for example dexterity: it makes you quick. So please explain why my extremely high dex ranger consistently moves slower than a low dex character with boots of 15% speed?
Because that's not the way dex works in dnd, think of dex as coordination maybe if that makes more sense to you.


Why is a quest played by a single character nearly impossible but a snap if there are two or three?
Most quests are actually easier for a single player than in a group, but you need to learn some things first.


Play in a group, the quest is harder more XP given, choose a different difficulty more XP given. Note I added a class modifier since I have noticed that class impacts play-ability. Mid-level (level 7 for me) Rangers/rogues/paladins seem to fair much worse than full blown spell casters. Artificers seem to hold up better than those other three, but they are also pretty weak. Straight fighters and spell casters seem to do a LOT of damage by comparison.
If you are suggesting what I think you are just no, the last thing this game needs is for some classes to get xp slower.


Oh, the poisoner quest in Marketplace (just past the guard with the demon invasion) is SERIOUSLY harder than similar quests at the same level... AND ITS LONG!
That quest is a nightmare for new players, always has been.


In summary, you should have a chance to fail at any level, especially the first time through, and with any number of players and the game should modify itself to ensure that that level of risk adjusts to the number of players playing a quest, their character level, their class mix, and the level of their gear. The chance should be the same for a solo player like me and for a well heeled reincarnated twice group of six players at the same level of challenge i.e. Hero: C, N, H, E, or Epic: C, N, H, E.

I think you're missing the point of the c,n,h,e system.


As for game play... You SERIOUSLY need to allow for some sort of mid-quest save/restart. Some quests take FOREVER to finish like the Shanticor? quest and others which have three quests all linked together in a chain that you have to walk through each and every time... Yeesh! Sometimes I have to stop playing mid-quest because I've run out of time!
Last time that I stopped mid chain on this (it was a while ago) re-entering the quest entrance took me to the quest I left off on not to the first quest in the chain.
[qoute]
I play for fun. Puzzles should NOT be a Mensa IQ test, they should be solvable, and they should NEVER place a player into a situation where the only escape is recall. Your idiot hireling should be able to get you free to try, try again. There's one with Minotaurs in Gianthold that just traps you tight (the area with multiple levers after the swim). [/quote]
Most the puzzles are pretty simple in the game. The maze in gh is doable with just a hire, but for a player learning it, it's meant to be learned in a party. Also what level were you when you attempted it? On normal it's a level 13 quest I wouldn't do it till at least then on normal.


On things not much fun: guard the idiot quests where the idiot tries to get themselves killed (and even when they don't) and ones where you have to stop the monsters from bugging me but they don't provide a progress monitor to tell you how close that loser is getting to finishing their job before they fall down and tell you they have to start over. Man! I've grown to hate those with a passion!
Escort quests suck no matter what game they're in.


To be honest I'd rather play 0-8 than 9+ level quests. I'm finding levelling extremely tedious, probably because I'm doing something wrong and advanced game play is simply not fun for me
I'd really ask some questions on the forums or to friends in the game.


While I like the challenge offered by each new quest I encounter in DDO, the game is simply becoming tedious... you detect a hidden passage, but damned if you can find it. Maybe if I got closer, oh! sorry you just got snagged by a leg-hold trap that you also didn't detect when you searched for stuff AND you just lost a bunch of hit points, but you get free, and look there's another one that you also didn't detect and now some ranger/spell caster has found you....
Part of that is dnd systems. This is not a typical mmo and it has a serious learning curve in terms of knowledge about how to build a character and what it can do. For the secret doors for example if you don't have good search skills, you can use secret door detection spells and true seeing.




So I think you can fairly easily fix the "Enough with the easy button" uber-players request and address the "I just want to have fun, play my character's role, be challenged a bit, be surprised a bit and leave." players such a myself. It's all in whether or not you want to spend the money rewriting a huge chunk of code or just keep doing what you're doing?
They do need to do some things for new players, for example a good path system, removal of the no death bonus, and some kind of scaling tweak so that there is more incentive for vets to group with new players. That said this game is and should be harder if you don't want to group to learn or use resources to learn such as ddowiki. I remember being new, some things were hard but I asked questions, found a guild, and ran with others to learn what I needed to. I may sound harsh, but there are some things that need to be on that player. That said if you have specific questions I and many on the forums will be happy to help answer them.


Certainly adding some more lower level areas...
No this just makes problems you have yet to encounter worse.


perhaps areas targeting a particular class to train us newbies to be better might help, but it won't solve the underlying issues. However, those newbies might have more fun playing, because the alternative is that casual paying players such as myself will pack it in, and move on. To which I think I can hear "and good riddance!", but really is that how you build and grow a sustained community?

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.
As said there are many things that could be done to help new players but I'm really not seeing what you want here. Targeting a class to train new players? I just don't understand what you mean with that.

[AMADHA]

I understand liking ranged toons, however some of this made me ask myself if you are following the path system. The path system is universally awful and has not improved with the new iconic classes.

As said there are many things that could be done to help new players but I'm really not seeing what you want here. Targeting a class to train new players? I just don't understand what you mean with that.

I played a character/toon to lvl5 on the path system, did some heavy reading on playing that character and found out about the Tempest Ranger Exploit path which I'm currently following pretty rigorously. It does play WAY better than the Tempest Ranger path. Also, I do ask questions when in town from time to time and I do spend time with DDOwiki and reading these forums, obviously not enough.

Aside from my whine, I think dungeons should scale in difficulty and volume of nasties based on party characteristics one of which is level and number of players kind of like what PnP DMs do. Although your comment relating to dungeon scaling seems to imply that this is already happening to some degree.

Another thing I think would be neat which I included was the desire for a number of early quests assigned by the "dungeon master" that target a particular class. The quest would focuses on the use of the skills of that class in order to successfully complete it. There's that one in the Harbour to steal back a crystal which seems to target rogue skills, quests like that one. Level 1,3, and 5 quests of this type could be interesting.

The thing that bugs me is that I have tried punching various multi-class builds through the laminna? accelerated advancement process and following their published paths on ddowiki to lvl 18 and then playing them on a familiar dungeon which I found tough and I find that rangers (rogue 1, monk 1, tempest ranger 16), particularly elfish ones don't do well. Artificers seem to do much better.

[Charononus]

I played a character/toon to lvl5 on the path system, did some heavy reading on playing that character and found out about the Tempest Ranger Exploit path which I'm currently following pretty rigorously. It does play WAY better than the Tempest Ranger path. Also, I do ask questions when in town from time to time and I do spend time with DDOwiki and reading these forums, obviously not enough.

Aside from my whine, I think dungeons should scale in difficulty and volume of nasties based on party characteristics one of which is level and number of players kind of like what PnP DMs do. Although your comment relating to dungeon scaling seems to imply that this is already happening to some degree.

Another thing I think would be neat which I included was the desire for a number of early quests assigned by the "dungeon master" that target a particular class. The quest would focuses on the use of the skills of that class in order to successfully complete it. There's that one in the Harbour to steal back a crystal which seems to target rogue skills, quests like that one. Level 1,3, and 5 quests of this type could be interesting.

The thing that bugs me is that I have tried punching various multi-class builds through the laminna? accelerated advancement process and following their published paths on ddowiki to lvl 18 and then playing them on a familiar dungeon which I found tough and I find that rangers (rogue 1, monk 1, tempest ranger 16), particularly elfish ones don't do well. Artificers seem to do much better.

Rangers tend to be a bit weaker of a class is why the arti feels stronger. They just don't have the dps potential that other classes do with the same investment in gear, especially at low level. At epic level this evens out a bit with epic destinies.

There are a few quests with optional objectives that target "rogue" skills with sneaking for an extra chest ext. However they tend to get ignored by most as they are much slower and require one party member to be the "hero" while the rest sit around waiting for the rogue to finish. As far as the quest in the harbor most complete that quest with invisibility potions and running like mad.

Part of the problem with "elvish" toons is that they have the -con penalty which makes them very hard on newer players that won't have the gear to offset their lower hp, and won't have the dungeon knowledge to avoid most damage. I have a couple elvish toons but I would not recommend them to new players other than maybe as a wizard for the elvish arcanum enhancement line.

There is dungeon scaling as far as what you are talking about what it does is for every player (up to four) the dungeon mobs get a hp increase and a damage increase on their abilities making it harder to bring more players into a dungeon. That said this is probably actually a detriment to the game imo. (Opinions on this vary greatly) The problem I see with this is that it makes new players that won't contribute as much as a vet a liability to a group and discourages veteran players from grouping with new players. That said many veteran players can run elite quests with five others sitting at the entrance doing nothing, so it's a toss up I guess.

As far as asking questions in the harbor it's a start, however what I'd really recommend is to find a guild, there are many great guilds on each server that could help you out. If you aren't in one I'd maybe put a post in the server section of the forums for the server you play on explaining your playstyle and asking for guild recommendations. One thing that a lot of players think is that since they are adults with responsibilities to their kids ext, and may have to walk away from the computer that they shouldn't group. While you will always find a few <censored> anywhere, you can also find many many players in this game that understand that and guilds can be a great way to connect with such people.

One last thing that I'm not quite positive on but I think is true atm. The exploiter ranger build that's on the forums was a great survival build at one time, however last years expansion changed quite a bit about builds and this was one of the builds that was hit harder, I'm don't think the build was updated for these changes.

[Dawesome1]

Hooray just the thread I was looking for! Just failed yet another FOT raid for the second time today, and I am pretty upset with the game right now. Yes, we were playing it on hard, and yes, a couple of the players in our raid were new/not on par (one of the healers didn't know what Renew and Rejuv~ Cocoon were OMG), but overall I believe the majority of the blame lies on the raid itself. I really hate the new raid(s) (this goes for CITW as well, and some other quests too like the Crucible etc) because the raid is designed for the uber player. You are throwing 12 characters that are only human into a blood bowl of chaos. The Fall of Truth Raid is crazy complicated and difficult even on normal. There are TWO way-tough bosses, SIX mini-yet-not-mini bosses that have to be killed in pairs, lightning bombs that hit people for over 1000 on Elite, and to top that off tons of trash that randomly spawns/ spawns when players die. This adds up to insanity, and I have a hard time believe that people could complete the quest at all. I won't bother going into the plot of the quest (the chamber is sealed so how do the disciples get there? that kinda thing), but the idea of a raid that requires so much brute force and strategy is mean to anyone who is not the uber player, like the completionist warforged juggernaut who was the last guy standing in our raid. In order to complete the quest, you have to know the quest beforehand, and assign players tasks like tanking the stormreaver, kiting the undead dragons (he raises them from the dead! Seriously?!), healing the party, killing trash, etc. And you have to do all of that without a single rest shrine in the entire quest! This is not the way it should be. You should not have to know The raid/other quests too in order to complete them. The whole idea of questing is kinda that you are going somewhere where no one has ever been before and exploring etc, so having to know the quest beforehand is ridiculous. Quests lately have been getting harder and are requiring better players that know what they are doing, and this is bad as it decreases the fun people get out of the game and doesn't help to keep new (and even old) players playing. Quests need to be easy/simple/nice enough to let a party of first-timers complete on normal. I remember how hard CITW was when it was just released, and I failed many a time on normal and the raid is still no fun to run. Quests need to be fun! Quests and raids should be made easier (but not too easy as to be boring). Some good questions I would ask myself before I released a quest as a developer would be along the lines of, "could a first time group figure this out and complete? Is this quest too stressful and or too complicated? Is this designed for the uber player? Are people going to enjoy this raid, or just run it because they have to grind for the loot they want?" That kind of thing. I would love to see a raid in the new expansion pack this summer that isnt designed for the uber player and doesnt require everyone to do their job perfectly. I want to see a raid that is fun to play and doesnt leave everyone angry and throwing blame on people after the second wipe of the day.

P.S. Sorry about the huge novel of a post I hope someone reads it Please and Thank you.

[Dawesome1]

Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11. I have started a number of other characters to "test them out" paladins, artificers, clerics, etc. most are dead now. I still have my Exploiter Tempest Ranger at lvl 11 and a level 7 (started there with the experience boost) artificer. I really like those two as I love the rogue/spell casting/kill them before they see you ranged attacks.

That said, I would first agree with the statement that you are balancing the game for the uber-player. I read a couple of pages of replies and I have no clue what they are talking about as I haven't even seen many of those quests. Uber-players. Not convinced? Look at the content you've been adding, what levels are they targeting? Done much adding of lower level quests? I have no doubt that you are not targeting new, or obviously clueless players such as myself.

On the difficulty, I play solo. I have played with one or two other players from time to time... some bad, some extremely good. By good I mean that they were so much better that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got their character to do the stuff I saw them do! I try to play every quest in an area on normal the first time. Often, I get killed right near the end. If it happens enough I normally just abandon the quest and never try it again. (Wish I could remember the name of that last one I dumped in Kundarak.) I have found that quests got substantially harder at level 9 on normal, so much so that I won't even try many of them anymore. I find that lvl 7 to 9 quests severely challenge my lvl 11 Ranger on normal to complete. I must play Lvl 8 to 10 quests VERY slowly so as to not attract more than a couple of monsters at a time and invariably I end up encountering two+ red boss characters together somewhere and I'm toast. I have, to date, not been able to complete a level 10 quest. Playing the various festivals clearly demonstrates that my character does not have remotely enough killing power to collect squat valuable... so festivals are no fun and since the 'loot' is bound to Char they are mostly useless as well. Collectors have undergone a huge change and collecting as a result is now pretty much a pointless waste of inventory space (collectors now require a TON of junk in return for squat). Delrina has been modified so that a hireling can't get you to completion of the second 5th level quest. Sure I could team up, but I have a busy life and I can only play as time permits. Its less complicated to play solo for me. So is the game too hard, in some ways... absolutely, in others... nope. There should be a risk of death/restart while playing. However, there should be room for learning. If you change tactics and do things right/better the next time you should survive... but if it really doesn't matter how well you try to play it or you MUST be part of a party to win then that sucks.

Also, the game is way out of balance in several ways... for example dexterity: it makes you quick. So please explain why my extremely high dex ranger consistently moves slower than a low dex character with boots of 15% speed? Why is a quest played by a single character nearly impossible but a snap if there are two or three? Quests have several levels of difficulty but from my experience the only things that seem to change is the type of spells the clerics/sorcerers throw and the hit points of the individual mob members. Why doesn't the size/strength of the mobs increase with the number of players entering (mob number = Std mob + (Std Mob x (number of players - 1)) OR mob strength/lvl = std mob + ((avg player HP/avg player level) x avg player class modifier(class mod per lvl x num lvls in class)) or some such mathematical gobbledygook? Then XP for completion = quest XP x difficulty modifier x Mob strength change(played strength/std strength). Play in a group, the quest is harder more XP given, choose a different difficulty more XP given. Note I added a class modifier since I have noticed that class impacts play-ability. Mid-level (level 7 for me) Rangers/rogues/paladins seem to fair much worse than full blown spell casters. Artificers seem to hold up better than those other three, but they are also pretty weak. Straight fighters and spell casters seem to do a LOT of damage by comparison. Oh, the poisoner quest in Marketplace (just past the guard with the demon invasion) is SERIOUSLY harder than similar quests at the same level... AND ITS LONG! In summary, you should have a chance to fail at any level, especially the first time through, and with any number of players and the game should modify itself to ensure that that level of risk adjusts to the number of players playing a quest, their character level, their class mix, and the level of their gear. The chance should be the same for a solo player like me and for a well heeled reincarnated twice group of six players at the same level of challenge i.e. Hero: C, N, H, E, or Epic: C, N, H, E.

As for game play... You SERIOUSLY need to allow for some sort of mid-quest save/restart. Some quests take FOREVER to finish like the Shanticor? quest and others which have three quests all linked together in a chain that you have to walk through each and every time... Yeesh! Sometimes I have to stop playing mid-quest because I've run out of time!

I play for fun. Puzzles should NOT be a Mensa IQ test, they should be solvable, and they should NEVER place a player into a situation where the only escape is recall. Your idiot hireling should be able to get you free to try, try again. There's one with Minotaurs in Gianthold that just traps you tight (the area with multiple levers after the swim).

On things not much fun: guard the idiot quests where the idiot tries to get themselves killed (and even when they don't) and ones where you have to stop the monsters from bugging me but they don't provide a progress monitor to tell you how close that loser is getting to finishing their job before they fall down and tell you they have to start over. Man! I've grown to hate those with a passion!

To be honest I'd rather play 0-8 than 9+ level quests. I'm finding levelling extremely tedious, probably because I'm doing something wrong and advanced game play is simply not fun for me (neither have I liked the recent 'additions'... astral shards and their push, the collector change with its pushing the shards as well, and the ridiculously stupid daily rolls.). While I like the challenge offered by each new quest I encounter in DDO, the game is simply becoming tedious... you detect a hidden passage, but damned if you can find it. Maybe if I got closer, oh! sorry you just got snagged by a leg-hold trap that you also didn't detect when you searched for stuff AND you just lost a bunch of hit points, but you get free, and look there's another one that you also didn't detect and now some ranger/spell caster has found you.... I'm currently a VIP, but to be honest I'm thinking of dropping VIP and perhaps quitting DDO completely.

So I think you can fairly easily fix the "Enough with the easy button" uber-players request and address the "I just want to have fun, play my character's role, be challenged a bit, be surprised a bit and leave." players such a myself. It's all in whether or not you want to spend the money rewriting a huge chunk of code or just keep doing what you're doing? Certainly adding some more lower level areas... perhaps areas targeting a particular class to train us newbies to be better might help, but it won't solve the underlying issues. However, those newbies might have more fun playing, because the alternative is that casual paying players such as myself will pack it in, and move on. To which I think I can hear "and good riddance!", but really is that how you build and grow a sustained community?

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.

/Signed. Game needs to include new players like yourself. And on the lines of puzzles, wow yes some are way too hard and you have to be a friggin einstien to solve them or wiki it which is cheating. And if you think lvling is tedious with a first lifer dont ever TR lol I am hating it need another million xp to hit lvl 20 ugh.

[Teh_Troll]

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.

LOL . . . wait until you get the above level 20. If we could only convert your nerd-rage to electricity.

[Charononus]

Hooray just the thread I was looking for! Just failed yet another FOT raid for the second time today, and I am pretty upset with the game right now. Yes, we were playing it on hard, and yes, a couple of the players in our raid were new/not on par (one of the healers didn't know what Renew and Rejuv~ Cocoon were OMG), but overall I believe the majority of the blame lies on the raid itself. I really hate the new raid(s) (this goes for CITW as well, and some other quests too like the Crucible etc) because the raid is designed for the uber player. You are throwing 12 characters that are only human into a blood bowl of chaos. The Fall of Truth Raid is crazy complicated and difficult even on normal. There are TWO way-tough bosses, SIX mini-yet-not-mini bosses that have to be killed in pairs, lightning bombs that hit people for over 1000 on Elite, and to top that off tons of trash that randomly spawns/ spawns when players die. This adds up to insanity, and I have a hard time believe that people could complete the quest at all. I won't bother going into the plot of the quest (the chamber is sealed so how do the disciples get there? that kinda thing), but the idea of a raid that requires so much brute force and strategy is mean to anyone who is not the uber player, like the completionist warforged juggernaut who was the last guy standing in our raid. In order to complete the quest, you have to know the quest beforehand, and assign players tasks like tanking the stormreaver, kiting the undead dragons (he raises them from the dead! Seriously?!), healing the party, killing trash, etc. And you have to do all of that without a single rest shrine in the entire quest! This is not the way it should be. You should not have to know The raid/other quests too in order to complete them. The whole idea of questing is kinda that you are going somewhere where no one has ever been before and exploring etc, so having to know the quest beforehand is ridiculous. Quests lately have been getting harder and are requiring better players that know what they are doing, and this is bad as it decreases the fun people get out of the game and doesn't help to keep new (and even old) players playing. Quests need to be easy/simple/nice enough to let a party of first-timers complete on normal. I remember how hard CITW was when it was just released, and I failed many a time on normal and the raid is still no fun to run. Quests need to be fun! Quests and raids should be made easier (but not too easy as to be boring). Some good questions I would ask myself before I released a quest as a developer would be along the lines of, "could a first time group figure this out and complete? Is this quest too stressful and or too complicated? Is this designed for the uber player? Are people going to enjoy this raid, or just run it because they have to grind for the loot they want?" That kind of thing. I would love to see a raid in the new expansion pack this summer that isnt designed for the uber player and doesnt require everyone to do their job perfectly. I want to see a raid that is fun to play and doesnt leave everyone angry and throwing blame on people after the second wipe of the day.

P.S. Sorry about the huge novel of a post I hope someone reads it Please and Thank you.

Is this the only mmo you've played? I'm serious, because I've played a few now and DDO has probably some of the most relaxed raids where you can make the most mistakes in of any mmo I've played. While I have issues with citw they're different issues than you in that I find citw very very boring. Honestly I find it disappointing that many think first time in a raid should be a complete for a party.

As far as FoT currently, there are many tricks to the raid, and the main thing is coordination of members. Take the time to read the guide to it on the forums the strategy is outlined pretty well there.

As far as quests that are released lately being harder I have to disagree. Compare any of the new packs to lets say reavers refuge, or amrath, and the quests are much easier.

[Dawesome1]

Is this the only mmo you've played? I'm serious, because I've played a few now and DDO has probably some of the most relaxed raids where you can make the most mistakes in of any mmo I've played. While I have issues with citw they're different issues than you in that I find citw very very boring. Honestly I find it disappointing that many think first time in a raid should be a complete for a party.

As far as FoT currently, there are many tricks to the raid, and the main thing is coordination of members. Take the time to read the guide to it on the forums the strategy is outlined pretty well there.

As far as quests that are released lately being harder I have to disagree. Compare any of the new packs to lets say reavers refuge, or amrath, and the quests are much easier.


Actually when LOTRO went free I started a character and got him up to around lvl 25. My impression of LOTRO was that it was way easier than DDO and more relaxed. I was soloing skirmishes at level, and the only time I died was when I went into that creepy forest by the shire and didnt know the trees came to life, and one of them killed me before I knew what was going on lol. Perhaps I didnt get a very good impression of LOTRO difficulty because I stopped playing it at lvl 25. I simply liked DDO better and felt that LOTRO didnt let a person customize their character very much. Besides I had already bought packs in DDO and didnt want that to go to waste.

I agree with you on the lines of quests getting harder as of late. That is not very true as amrath and RR are very good examples of tough quests that are not new to the game. And yes perhaps expecting to complete a raid first time is stupid. However, I think we can both agree that CITW and FOT are tough, brute force raids that are harder than usual and not very fun to run.

[Charononus]

Actually when LOTRO went free I started a character and got him up to around lvl 25. My impression of LOTRO was that it was way easier than DDO and more relaxed. I was soloing skirmishes at level, and the only time I died was when I went into that creepy forest by the shire and didnt know the trees came to life, and one of them killed me before I knew what was going on lol. Perhaps I didnt get a very good impression of LOTRO difficulty because I stopped playing it at lvl 25. I simply liked DDO better and felt that LOTRO didnt let a person customize their character very much. Besides I had already bought packs in DDO and didnt want that to go to waste.

Actually those quests are all designed to be soloed in lotro. None of that is group content. If you want to compare that to a ddo quest you have to compare it to something like Home Sweet Sewer in the harbor.


I agree with you on the lines of quests getting harder as of late. That is not very true as amrath and RR are very good examples of tough quests that are not new to the game. And yes perhaps expecting to complete a raid first time is stupid. However, I think we can both agree that CITW and FOT are tough, brute force raids that are harder than usual and not very fun to run.

Actually I disagree with them being harder. Old epic raids were much harder when the cap was 20 and the raid was new. EE is still a good challenge with these but en and eh I disagree. In fact there are only two things that make citw difficult, healers getting hit with the please buy an sp pot from the ddo store beam, and falling asleep while running it.

[Waaye]

An experienced elite MMO player will probably desire a higher level of difficulty than a casual newcomer just wanting to explore the virtual world.

It is unlikely that both types of players will be satisfied by an adventure with the same degree of difficulty.

One solution would be to always have three instances of every area with different degrees of difficulty. One instance could be easier so that newcomers do not get frustrated and quit. A second could be of moderate difficulty for veteran players that enjoy exploring as much as fighting. The third instance would be the hard one for elite players that enjoy a constant challenge.

Having instances with different degrees of difficulty should help to increase overall player retention.

[Ivan_Milic]

Remove scaling from elite quests.
Make them all be as if its full party.

[Eliyse]

I'm just a casual player, and am now finding that higher level content often seems to involve hitting things many, many (MANY...) times to grind down their hitpoints. Otherwise, just hoping that some of the advanced powers/weapons proc to take down the rat (literal or figurative) with 3000hp. Guess I'm not really the target market at this stage - with people here playing for many years who know the ins and outs of all the quests and able to do a full TR in days, the difficulty probably feels too easy and they are geared so that the 3000hp monster can go down quickly.
However, I feel there may be a way to help casual players like me (especially one who is thinking about wandering around the TR system just to try out all the classes). "Unstack" the penalties for multiple runs of a quest (especially, maybe even only, on casual/normal difficulty). Say that if a quest has not been run for a week, then tick back a completion penalty against it. The hard-core would have already zoomed past the quest and out-levelled it, while for the casual it would allow the gradual accumulation of xp to make levelling possible without having to grind out some of the elite level quests, as I'm pretty sure there just isn't the xp to really advance without going through the elite/hard/normal grind.
I don't think this will adversely affect balance, or give power-players any undue advantage, or be abused, but can help casuals. However, for the more experienced here, thoughts/suggestions? Have I missed anything obvious?

[Frotz]

"Unstack" the penalties for multiple runs of a quest (especially, maybe even only, on casual/normal difficulty). Say that if a quest has not been run for a week, then tick back a completion penalty against it.

Good news!

From https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/418925-Upcoming-Quest-XP-Changes:

One of the other changes we are working on for the upcoming Expansion release is a change to the way quest repetition XP penalty works. Currently whenever you repeat the same quest over and over, the XP degrades until the quest permanently gives little to no XP. With the Expansion, we will allow the penalty to reset after a grace period, similar to the way chest loot ransack works.

[Eliyse]

Good news!

From https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/418925-Upcoming-Quest-XP-Changes:

Thank you!

(And DOH! Looks like I don't read this stuff widely enough)

[zaphear]

Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11. I have started a number of other characters to "test them out" paladins, artificers, clerics, etc. most are dead now. I still have my Exploiter Tempest Ranger at lvl 11 and a level 7 (started there with the experience boost) artificer. I really like those two as I love the rogue/spell casting/kill them before they see you ranged attacks.

That said, I would first agree with the statement that you are balancing the game for the uber-player. I read a couple of pages of replies and I have no clue what they are talking about as I haven't even seen many of those quests. Uber-players. Not convinced? Look at the content you've been adding, what levels are they targeting? Done much adding of lower level quests? I have no doubt that you are not targeting new, or obviously clueless players such as myself.

On the difficulty, I play solo. I have played with one or two other players from time to time... some bad, some extremely good. By good I mean that they were so much better that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got their character to do the stuff I saw them do! I try to play every quest in an area on normal the first time. Often, I get killed right near the end. If it happens enough I normally just abandon the quest and never try it again. (Wish I could remember the name of that last one I dumped in Kundarak.) I have found that quests got substantially harder at level 9 on normal, so much so that I won't even try many of them anymore. I find that lvl 7 to 9 quests severely challenge my lvl 11 Ranger on normal to complete. I must play Lvl 8 to 10 quests VERY slowly so as to not attract more than a couple of monsters at a time and invariably I end up encountering two+ red boss characters together somewhere and I'm toast. I have, to date, not been able to complete a level 10 quest. Playing the various festivals clearly demonstrates that my character does not have remotely enough killing power to collect squat valuable... so festivals are no fun and since the 'loot' is bound to Char they are mostly useless as well. Collectors have undergone a huge change and collecting as a result is now pretty much a pointless waste of inventory space (collectors now require a TON of junk in return for squat). Delrina has been modified so that a hireling can't get you to completion of the second 5th level quest. Sure I could team up, but I have a busy life and I can only play as time permits. Its less complicated to play solo for me. So is the game too hard, in some ways... absolutely, in others... nope. There should be a risk of death/restart while playing. However, there should be room for learning. If you change tactics and do things right/better the next time you should survive... but if it really doesn't matter how well you try to play it or you MUST be part of a party to win then that sucks.

Also, the game is way out of balance in several ways... for example dexterity: it makes you quick. So please explain why my extremely high dex ranger consistently moves slower than a low dex character with boots of 15% speed? Why is a quest played by a single character nearly impossible but a snap if there are two or three? Quests have several levels of difficulty but from my experience the only things that seem to change is the type of spells the clerics/sorcerers throw and the hit points of the individual mob members. Why doesn't the size/strength of the mobs increase with the number of players entering (mob number = Std mob + (Std Mob x (number of players - 1)) OR mob strength/lvl = std mob + ((avg player HP/avg player level) x avg player class modifier(class mod per lvl x num lvls in class)) or some such mathematical gobbledygook? Then XP for completion = quest XP x difficulty modifier x Mob strength change(played strength/std strength). Play in a group, the quest is harder more XP given, choose a different difficulty more XP given. Note I added a class modifier since I have noticed that class impacts play-ability. Mid-level (level 7 for me) Rangers/rogues/paladins seem to fair much worse than full blown spell casters. Artificers seem to hold up better than those other three, but they are also pretty weak. Straight fighters and spell casters seem to do a LOT of damage by comparison. Oh, the poisoner quest in Marketplace (just past the guard with the demon invasion) is SERIOUSLY harder than similar quests at the same level... AND ITS LONG! In summary, you should have a chance to fail at any level, especially the first time through, and with any number of players and the game should modify itself to ensure that that level of risk adjusts to the number of players playing a quest, their character level, their class mix, and the level of their gear. The chance should be the same for a solo player like me and for a well heeled reincarnated twice group of six players at the same level of challenge i.e. Hero: C, N, H, E, or Epic: C, N, H, E.

As for game play... You SERIOUSLY need to allow for some sort of mid-quest save/restart. Some quests take FOREVER to finish like the Shanticor? quest and others which have three quests all linked together in a chain that you have to walk through each and every time... Yeesh! Sometimes I have to stop playing mid-quest because I've run out of time!

I play for fun. Puzzles should NOT be a Mensa IQ test, they should be solvable, and they should NEVER place a player into a situation where the only escape is recall. Your idiot hireling should be able to get you free to try, try again. There's one with Minotaurs in Gianthold that just traps you tight (the area with multiple levers after the swim).

On things not much fun: guard the idiot quests where the idiot tries to get themselves killed (and even when they don't) and ones where you have to stop the monsters from bugging me but they don't provide a progress monitor to tell you how close that loser is getting to finishing their job before they fall down and tell you they have to start over. Man! I've grown to hate those with a passion!

To be honest I'd rather play 0-8 than 9+ level quests. I'm finding levelling extremely tedious, probably because I'm doing something wrong and advanced game play is simply not fun for me (neither have I liked the recent 'additions'... astral shards and their push, the collector change with its pushing the shards as well, and the ridiculously stupid daily rolls.). While I like the challenge offered by each new quest I encounter in DDO, the game is simply becoming tedious... you detect a hidden passage, but damned if you can find it. Maybe if I got closer, oh! sorry you just got snagged by a leg-hold trap that you also didn't detect when you searched for stuff AND you just lost a bunch of hit points, but you get free, and look there's another one that you also didn't detect and now some ranger/spell caster has found you.... I'm currently a VIP, but to be honest I'm thinking of dropping VIP and perhaps quitting DDO completely.

So I think you can fairly easily fix the "Enough with the easy button" uber-players request and address the "I just want to have fun, play my character's role, be challenged a bit, be surprised a bit and leave." players such a myself. It's all in whether or not you want to spend the money rewriting a huge chunk of code or just keep doing what you're doing? Certainly adding some more lower level areas... perhaps areas targeting a particular class to train us newbies to be better might help, but it won't solve the underlying issues. However, those newbies might have more fun playing, because the alternative is that casual paying players such as myself will pack it in, and move on. To which I think I can hear "and good riddance!", but really is that how you build and grow a sustained community?

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.

The TL;DR: You want an easy button. ftfy

[LeadHeros]

Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11.

That was my situation as well. What it took me awhile to realize and appreciate is the vast gulf that can exist between a new clueless casual player and a max build/gear/knowledge/skill player at the same level and class. In spite of everything that has been done to enable new people to solo and still keep high end people interested; the quests are and should be tough to solo at first. The solution is to group with like minded people. At the core, this is a social, cooperative game; and I think it would be a mistake to not keep that. After a few tries, I am in 2 guilds and having a blast. My stalled rogue at 12 that couldn't solo level 9 quests, is now pushing 17. Any excuse people use to avoid groups like 'I play at off hours', 'what if RL interrupts', 'what if I die, am slow, no good?'. There are lots of people like that out there.

[Scrag]

That was my situation as well. What it took me awhile to realize and appreciate is the vast gulf that can exist between a new clueless casual player and a max build/gear/knowledge/skill player at the same level and class.

Yes. The difference between first lifers and everyone else in the game is a massive massive gulf.

That being said, I have found it to be very reasonable to find absolutely random groups, even if I drag feet and/or suck.

That also being said, nothing drives me more insane than not being able to do traps as my fairly well geared rogue on anything but normal (or in some dungeons, hard). Meanwhile, people lower level or same level can trap the same dungeon. :|

TRAPS. I HATE THEM. My solution? Play a pure monk. evade evade evade.

[Charononus]

Yes. The difference between first lifers and everyone else in the game is a massive massive gulf.

That being said, I have found it to be very reasonable to find absolutely random groups, even if I drag feet and/or suck.

That also being said, nothing drives me more insane than not being able to do traps as my fairly well geared rogue on anything but normal (or in some dungeons, hard). Meanwhile, people lower level or same level can trap the same dungeon. :|

TRAPS. I HATE THEM. My solution? Play a pure monk. evade evade evade.

Sounds like either a gear or build problem on your rogue man, I haven't done a lot of rogue lives but I have done arti. Why don't you post your build up and your gear layout and people can help you sort out what you need.

edit*
Not in this thread in a new one.

[TBot1234]

Spell and trap damage is lethal in a full/half full party, and tolerable when solo or with a hire .

"Dead Pykzyl's disintegrate hit you for 616 points of damage." With 3 players and 2 hires in party. If I were solo, it would probably be half of that, and wouldn't be an insta kill for 90-95% of lvl 17 toons :D.

This sort of thing in a quest frustrates me, and the static group I play with. Disintegrate, Ice Flenser polar ray, INSANE trap damage, light damage to Vampire PMS, etc. Didn't used to be this way, at least not that I remember; it seems that damage to PCs from spells and traps was really ramped up a few updates ago. I don't mind a challenge, but I don't think an elite at-level quest should usually have components that can instant-kill multi-TR, skilled, prepared, experienced, well-geared characters. Not my kind of fun. Not looking for an easy button, but I don't think a good DM would ever do that to players (unless they really ticked him off).

[Charononus]

This sort of thing in a quest frustrates me, and the static group I play with. Disintegrate, Ice Flenser polar ray, INSANE trap damage, light damage to Vampire PMS, etc. Didn't used to be this way, at least not that I remember; it seems that damage to PCs from spells and traps was really ramped up a few updates ago. I don't mind a challenge, but I don't think an elite at-level quest should usually have components that can instant-kill multi-TR, skilled, prepared, experienced, well-geared characters. Not my kind of fun. Not looking for an easy button, but I don't think a good DM would ever do that to players (unless they really ticked him off).

It's not pnp, saying a good dm wouldn't do that is comparing apples to nuclear reactors.

[Soulfurnace]

This sort of thing in a quest frustrates me, and the static group I play with. Disintegrate, Ice Flenser polar ray, INSANE trap damage, light damage to Vampire PMS, etc. Didn't used to be this way, at least not that I remember; it seems that damage to PCs from spells and traps was really ramped up a few updates ago. I don't mind a challenge, but I don't think an elite at-level quest should usually have components that can instant-kill multi-TR, skilled, prepared, experienced, well-geared characters. Not my kind of fun. Not looking for an easy button, but I don't think a good DM would ever do that to players (unless they really ticked him off).
No offence, if disintegrate and polar ray are that bad, you aren't "skilled, ..., experienced" players.
I went just fine going through Running With the Devils as a melee wizard - with only 10 wizard levels and no improved shrouding.

I myself am a noob - but even I can take that sort of damage without an issue.

[TBot1234]

No offence, if disintegrate and polar ray are that bad, you aren't "skilled, ..., experienced" players.
I went just fine going through Running With the Devils as a melee wizard - with only 10 wizard levels and no improved shrouding.

I myself am a noob - but even I can take that sort of damage without an issue.

Seems you don't know what you're talking about. I never even mentioned that quest. Most characters don't have 700 HP at level 17 and getting one-shotted isn't fun for me. If you like it all the power to you.

[Charononus]

Seems you don't know what you're talking about. I never even mentioned that quest. Most characters don't have 700 HP at level 17 and getting one-shotted isn't fun for me. If you like it all the power to you.

It isn't 700 if you make your save.

It isn't 700 if you dodge the ray.

It isn't 700 if you use one of the many spell absorption items.

If you can't do any of these 9/10 times you probably should drop down to hard.

[Teh_Troll]

It isn't 700 if you make your save.

It isn't 700 if you dodge the ray.

It isn't 700 if you use one of the many spell absorption items.

If you can't do any of these 9/10 times you probably should drop down to hard.

Oh come on, it's still broken and stupid that the spells in heroic elite hit as hard as they do.

Just because I have no issue overcoming an encounter doesn't mean said encounter isn't ********. EE Thrill of the Hunt I'm talking to you.

[Charononus]

Oh come on, it's still broken and stupid that the spells in heroic elite hit as hard as they do.

I'd say to ramp up heroic melee mobs to compensate.

[Soulfurnace]

Seems you don't know what you're talking about. I never even mentioned that quest. Most characters don't have 700 HP at level 17 and getting one-shotted isn't fun for me. If you like it all the power to you.
You mentioned light damage to vampires - don't play a vampire if you can't take the damage? I mentioned what's regarded as the worst quest IG in regards to light damage - I made it just fine. I try to, y'know, not get hit.

Go on, name 5 quests that are hard because of scary disintegrate, polar ray or anything else.
Also, if you have an issue with elite, don't run it. It's not meant to be a cakewalk.. even if it is anyway.

[Aviya]

Game is too easy.
To fix that we shoud get rid of dungeon scaling completely both in heroic and epic.
Dungeons must always like 6 people are inside, even if you are alone.
If you want to solo them you have to be a beast. If not find yourself a pug. It's also more fun!

[SynalonEtuul]

I enjoy the sort of difficulty that comes from an interesting and unique quest, like The Titan Awakes and The Black Abbot. I dislike the difficulty of MotU: everything is huge, has high saves and hits for a ton. If mobs are to be hard, I prefer the kind of hard where each one can still be affected by spells and don't take especially long to kill, but each pose some kind of threat to the party, such as casters in low-level quests with dangerous elemental damage spells, or beholders.


Game is too easy.
To fix that we shoud get rid of dungeon scaling completely both in heroic and epic.
Dungeons must always like 6 people are inside, even if you are alone.
If you want to solo them you have to be a beast. If not find yourself a pug. It's also more fun!

I also agree with this.

[TerysDethswind]

The level provided for quests seems to be a completely arbitrary number with the sole intention of limiting experience and loot. For example, Lords of Dust on Epic Normal is listed as level 21. I step into the quest (solo) and find myself confronted with dogs that are tougher than most of the dragons in the game (hard to imagine a level 36 attack dog chewing through full plate armor) and a mini-boss caster at level 43 with near 25,000 hit points. Love to figure out how to get that build with over 550 hit points per level! There are many less extreme examples in the game, but that one sticks out. If you play a quest on elite it counts as two level higher and the scaling really becomes ridiculous, far higher than two levels. I spend a lot of my time dong solo quests, because, frankly, groups are difficult to fill and tend to be dominated by arrogant elitists who have no idea that a game is supposed to be about having fun, not building your character in the way they think would be optimal or following there exact instructions about the quest should be completed. The alternative is frequently playing above level for quests. Many of the quests scale higher when you come in over level, and although everything in the dungeon becomes more difficult to attempt to match your level, the experience disappears because the initial quest level is lower. If the dungeon is increased to still provide a challenge, what is the point of reducing the experience gained for succeeding? Back to the original example, if having a supreme tome +4, three years worth of gear for your character to choose from, and a second life build on a tempest ranger makes you about as tough as a dog, what's the point?

[psykopeta]

The level provided for quests seems to be a completely arbitrary number with the sole intention of limiting experience and loot. For example, Lords of Dust on Epic Normal is listed as level 21. I step into the quest (solo) and find myself confronted with dogs that are tougher than most of the dragons in the game (hard to imagine a level 36 attack dog chewing through full plate armor) and a mini-boss caster at level 43 with near 25,000 hit points. Love to figure out how to get that build with over 550 hit points per level! There are many less extreme examples in the game, but that one sticks out. If you play a quest on elite it counts as two level higher and the scaling really becomes ridiculous, far higher than two levels. I spend a lot of my time dong solo quests, because, frankly, groups are difficult to fill and tend to be dominated by arrogant elitists who have no idea that a game is supposed to be about having fun, not building your character in the way they think would be optimal or following there exact instructions about the quest should be completed. The alternative is frequently playing above level for quests. Many of the quests scale higher when you come in over level, and although everything in the dungeon becomes more difficult to attempt to match your level, the experience disappears because the initial quest level is lower. If the dungeon is increased to still provide a challenge, what is the point of reducing the experience gained for succeeding? Back to the original example, if having a supreme tome +4, three years worth of gear for your character to choose from, and a second life build on a tempest ranger makes you about as tough as a dog, what's the point?

notice 1 thing:

it's not the same a lvl 18 quest on normal (18 lvl base)

than a lvl 18 quest on elite (16 lvl base)

look at the names, aren't different? they're aimed to different players too

in both descriptions you say "lvl XX on YYY" no matter if XX is the same lvl, what makes the real difference is YYY, the difficulty

also trying to solo an epic quest with a toon that has simply lvl 20 isn't a good idea, quests and difficulties are designed considering grups, gear and ED the more you have from 1 part, the more u can skip from another one

[zwiebelring]

I think the game difficulty is fine till the jump from ehard to epic elite. It seems incosistent that you are able to solo ehard with a hireling but epic elite is just insane. Either make epic elite less frustrating or ramp up epic hard a bid. Epic Giant HOld is a good benchmark for that. Epic hard still demands attention but is not too tough. That is with a geared out toon still searching for final gear setup. The difficulty is well balanced even for the exp. grinds attached to epic levels.

Epic elite, however, should be the peak of all endgamers. But i is far too selective, imho. Too tough for soloing it, too frustrating with full scaling (I am one of those semi casual players sirgog mentions when giving critique on ee difficulty. Definately not unskilled but not interested in soloing everything on ee, as it is at the moment).

p.s.:
The game is not too easy. But in some areas the challenge seems to be totally random. I am still for a level selection like in challenges regarding epic quests.

[intruder1]

Can someone confirm a detail about Scaling?

I am very interested in the mechanics, but just how it affects Heroic Difficulties.

Does Dungeon Scaling "Start" with a party of 1, then increase HP, DC's and such with each added player and/or Hireling up to a 6 player party?

Or does it start with a 4 player party and scale backwards with fewer players, leaving 5-6 players parties with no increase in difficulty?

[Frotz]

Or does it start with a 4 player party and scale backwards with fewer players, leaving 5-6 players parties with no increase in difficulty?
AIUI, that's the way it's supposed to be working.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

I favor leaving dungeon scaling "on" by default, for newer and casual players who find themselves soloing quite a bit. I'd also favor allowing players and teams to "opt out" of dungeon scaling, to set themselves a higher level of challenge if they'd like to do that. Slightly scaling up the quantity of rewards received could be the incentive offered for opting out of dungeon scaling.

Making dungeon scaling "opt out" would be better because it's the knowledgeable vet who would know about the mechanic and switch it off, while most casual and newer players would never know that dungeon scaling existed unless it is switched on by default (UIs are busy, that point would get missed).

[intruder1]

Once again......can anyone answer the question.
(I guess the answer lies with the Devs.)

Does scaling work "up" from "solo" to 6, or
"down" from 4 characters?

[harry-pancreas]

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 rarely expect failing on normal, maybe specific hard quests.
I never ever expect failing on epic normal, unless i have 0 leveled destinies.

I'm more in the "stop with the easy button" group than the "you're doing things for uber players". People just shouldnt go elite if they can't handle it. Diffs shouldnt exist anyways, a D&D game should be hard enough to motivate people to group, use strategies and go a bit slower cause if you run ahead, you simply die, no matter if you're completionist or whatever exploiter build you have.

i think most of the game is pretty much easy, even heroic elite. Depends on the quest. I find old content (reaver's reach, gianthold, shavarath are some examples) harder and i really like it that way. Think i'm not the only one.

Normal diff is easy, and epic normal is just a joke.
Hard and epic hard seems ok for most quests
Elite is ok, sometimes really hard (that's ok), and EE is insanely hard, which i love.

My suggestion would be to make normal just a bit harder, and make a "TR scaling system" somehow, making the quests harder if there is a TR in the group.


Simply enough, i think it should actually help new players if you stop with the solo friendly stuff. If no one can solo anymore, we would have lots of lfm's and people would be more patient with "noobs".




thanks for the game, i really enjoy it.

[mcalm3000]

I have done epic elite on multiple quests and they have amped up hp saves and dps of the mobs but not speed so the dominant strategy is hopping in circles and kiting. Since a mob that cant reach cant melee you , circle hopping is quite effectives esp since you have to wait for cooldowns. Because of this, many of the cheats/ exploits involve circumventing cooldowns for ranged. It is possible to avoid this with a real and I mean real tank but that is not reliable for pug play.

How bad is this, I have seen up to 5 members of a six person party running in their own circles. Fight starts people draw agro the circle hopping starts 1 or 2 cooldowns of super abilities and on to next cycle of hopping in circles around group of mobs - welcome to epic elite awesomeness.

I would be so happy if they reduced the mob damage and saves and dps and amped their speed to actually make it possible for a mob to stop the world of circle hopping but that ship has passed.

[FlameDiablo]

For me: normal and hard are both easy, and is fine so, just they should have to be a bit more different, if i don't read on XP table the difficult i cannot find any notable difference.

Elite: i'm fine to zerg (with some diffs sometimes), but if i find a trap i die: monastery of the scorpion traps: 44+11= fail O.o how should i have 55+ reflex on heroic? Yesterday an arti with evasion and insightful died 7 times to disable von 5 traps (yes some ppl was healing him). Traps can deal 100+ damages at lvl 5 and 300+ at high lvl heroic. My suggestion is: yu can strong a bit more the mobs (expecially bossess that can be shotted expiacially at low lvls), but nerf a bit the traps.

Scaling: last TR i run Elite invaders on a full party, ice reaver was dealing 200+ from polar ray, we wipped. I did it again in solo, this time they deals half and was easy. Now: what's the point to have a party if soloing is easier and faster? Usually i join in party just if splitting is a great advantage and just with good ppl, for the rest i prefer to solo. Great scaling = less party. My suggestion is to modify scaling, is fine if mobs got more HP (DPS is supposed to be higer), is fine if mobs are more, but the damage should not increase by 100% expecially for the skills/spells that can shot ppl.

[nibel]

monastery of the scorpion traps: 44+11= fail O.o how should i have 55+ reflex on heroic?

You can disarm all traps in monastery without making a single reflex save.

[FlameDiablo]

Maybe i don't wanna wait for party to drop barriers, BTW is just an example

[donweel]

I have been a casual player since Eberon Beta I have played hardcore raiding in the game before this one and I settled on DDO cause of my fond P&P memories and the better community I found here.
As far as difficulty I am generally satisfied with a few exceptions.
As said by others penalty for wiping is extreme. Due to the length of some of the quests it means the end of the party and possible hard feelings. I would suggest that at least on normal change the leashing on your soulstone to allow a corpse run back to the nearest shrine. I expect to die the first time running a quest as I never research them I like to experience fresh. Also going in blind I am not aware that there may be a puzzle that could take three hours to solve in there somewhere. On normal there should be an option to get around the puzzle for a penalty or there should be a big warning at the entrance. I have had to break up a few parties due to getting stalled out for example Enter the Kobold. True there are solvers and spoilers but that is immersion breaking.

Things like Greensteel crafting I never expect to do. It is just too complicated and the whole idea seems to lack pen and paper adventure feel. I like finding stuff in chests I just cant see flagging and rerunning the same map over and over again to craft something, it is fine for some players but my lifestyle, game style is not there. It would be nice if there where some alternatives to things like Shroud but more adventuresome in a P&P flavor. Maybe an epic story arc that gives similar rewards but is unique.

Over all I like the game and never laughed as much in other games like when a trapped chest blows up in our face or like when we got wiped by a mimic last night in Army of Shadow. It was ok because I could reach the shrine and we carried on to defeat Casko.

Speaking of Wheloon, that is another sticking point. The wilderness part is pretty much unplayable for me due to hitching, rubber banding etc mostly in the Netherese areas when everything turns pink. We had to resort to using shards to teleport to the quests. This detracts from the value of the Shadofell pack but the Iconics were a great idea and a great addition to DDO.

One more thing. DDO is fun but a complicated game. It would be nice if the was better documentation. A central collection of how DDO works what effects stack what enhancements work together. What quests are in which pack. etc. A live real game manual .

[Exiledtyrant]

For me: normal and hard are both easy, and is fine so, just they should have to be a bit more different, if i don't read on XP table the difficult i cannot find any notable difference.

Elite: i'm fine to zerg (with some diffs sometimes), but if i find a trap i die: monastery of the scorpion traps: 44+11= fail O.o how should i have 55+ reflex on heroic? Yesterday an arti with evasion and insightful died 7 times to disable von 5 traps (yes some ppl was healing him). Traps can deal 100+ damages at lvl 5 and 300+ at high lvl heroic. My suggestion is: yu can strong a bit more the mobs (expecially bossess that can be shotted expiacially at low lvls), but nerf a bit the traps.

Scaling: last TR i run Elite invaders on a full party, ice reaver was dealing 200+ from polar ray, we wipped. I did it again in solo, this time they deals half and was easy. Now: what's the point to have a party if soloing is easier and faster? Usually i join in party just if splitting is a great advantage and just with good ppl, for the rest i prefer to solo. Great scaling = less party. My suggestion is to modify scaling, is fine if mobs got more HP (DPS is supposed to be higer), is fine if mobs are more, but the damage should not increase by 100% expecially for the skills/spells that can shot ppl.

I agree trap and spell damage can get way to high. I guess part of the problem is in heroic it's stupid easy to maintain 50-60% miss chance and then put displacement on top of that and it's almost impossible to get hit. It also makes physical traps a complete joke unless they run a stupid amount of checks. I stopped doing elite quests while leveling as the trap damage is usually a 1 hit KO. I think traps should be used to run down a parties resources not flat out kill them. That should be the actual encounter or boss fights job. I am more afraid of traps in a quest than any actual fight. Hard seems to have the right amount of damage but the encounters aren't nearly as hard as they should be.

Spells also get stupid scaling sometimes. Level 14 black dragon shaman kobalds can do 400+ lightning bolts damage. I have never been hit by lightning as strong as those even up to epic levels before I TRed. Polar rays from ice flencers in Brothers quest again did 400+ polar rays hardest I've been hit and these are heroic mobs. Some fire elemental also get pretty high with 200-300 fireballs. this is after protection from elements and flat resist. It's not consistent at all and the damage is always insanely high in these select few quests.

[mishraif]

if your under lv 10 you should get a 5 ship bonus to resistances.. 11 to 19 you should get 10 and if your 20 to cap it should be a 15 bonus.
Damage and other such buffs should be similar.

[neain2008]

<rant>

Scaling seems a little out of whack.

I will say that when I solo a quest on EH or HE i feel like my toon is awesome. but when i then get into a group and find the scaling changed the game so much that most mobs are saving or have so much HP that my spells that would almost one shot the mobs on my own wont even get the same mobs down to half hp.

I dont notice this much at heroic levels (though there are always exceptions to any rule. most notably wheloon) but at epic levels I notice it far more often.

and that does not even come close to what happened in Wheloon. while I agree that higher level quests should be more difficult than lower level quests, the scaling in wheloon is kinda crazy. I can take a toon that can work effectively in GH EE and depending on the quest in wheloon I will get creamed without seeming to add anything to the group. this seems to come from both the monsters saves (which is already higher in wheloon than in the rest of the game) and the fact that the monsters there seem to have more HP than their counter parts in same level quests.

If Wheloon is the game developers idea of what players should be experiencing at those levels. you need to re-visit all the other heroic/epic content to make it the same. if all the other content is the correct experience, then shame on whoever came up with the wheloon.

at the moment I will only ever run the heroic wheloon quests when I am far over level and probably epic. and then only because the end list includes the nice named items it does. if those items ever left the end reward list or I had to farm for them, I would stop running those quests at all.

I do like the story line in wheloon, but the game play makes it hard to enjoy it. at the moment I will do the chain once possibly twice and a max of three times.
once when leveling in epics if i get a bravery bonus. once on heroic elite once I hit level cap so I can get the favor. and once right before I TR so I can get some decent min level 15 items. and most of the time I will combine 2 and 3 for that final favor grind for the last tier favor stuff before I TR.

and again im going to rant about the saves. even in heroics their saves are enough that my level capped caster druid with a past life of sorc and wizzy, with epic evocation focus and of course heighten, cannot keep all the mobs tripped with earthquake. I know that 20s happen, but on half the mobs, more than half the time? (ok, im exaggerating. but not by that much)

I realize that I spent this entire post griping about wheloon, but with that one exception it feels like most of the rest of the game is balanced with itself.

</rant>

[Knightsubzero]

I think the issue i have noticed is with traps.

Creatures are fine, but if you dont have a rogue in your party you are often screwed...While this is ok sometimes...it should not be the norm.

I would like to see more traps on chests, and less traps on hallways. so that moving around and fighting is alot easier...but when you open a door or a chest....uh oh boom!

Also...saves never work for traps...or at least very rarely....out of ten traps...you should be able to save maybe 6 times....or 8 or 9 times if you have bloated saves. But as it stands on hard or elite, saves are non existant, you may achieve 1 out of 10 saves.

now the hard core players will say...your just being a wuss, or you can get around traps...and maybe that is so if you can handle playing the game and getting frustrated by traps for awhile. but for alot of people the traps are too much...not everyone wants to play a rogue, how about some love for the other classes.

also gettiing more rewards as you go along would be much nicer. in case you fail you at least dont come out entirely empty handed.

and the necro 3 quests are extremely frustrating...dont do that again.

[ishr]

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.

endgame raids are too easy, and EE does not offer appreciably better rewards than EH. please make the upcoming raids as difficult as LOB was at inception.

[Connman]

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 believe that the difficulties in the game are for the most part spot on. In some places quests seem a little harder than others, but that is a good thing. Not every level 11 quest should be exactly as difficult. Some quests should be known for their extreme difficulty.

My take on difficulties in general is this:

1. First life characters, and new players, should find normal to have some challenge but not be overly brutal. Normal should be the option for the casual player with a casual amount of gear. I believe this should be the same for the epic content as well.

2. Hard should be scaled to provide challenge for second life characters, and players with a fair amount of experience and gear. For example if you are going to be joining a quest on Epic Hard, you should need a few pieces of epic normal gear to find the quests challenging but not brutal.

3. Elite should be scaled for third life plus characters, and those that have a serious amount of gear and experience. You should FEEL it when you go into an epic elite quest with a first life under-geared character. If you have no epic hard items, are on your first or second life and have never even done the quests before, you should get mutilated on epic elite. Epic elite should be scaled as the extreme challenge it is supposed to be. If you have a bunch of epic hard gear, are on your first or second life, and have the experience of having run the quest a few times you should be able to go into epic elite and find challenge, just not soul crushing challenge.

So ultimately I believe that some difficulties should be brutally difficult for noobs with no gear. I mean that is what the normal and casual setting are for. New players, people with no serious gear should not even consider epic elite, they should farm epic normal and epic hard until they have the gear to compete in epic elite.


Thanks and have a great day!

[barecm]

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 "easy Button" is more so the case than it was 2 years ago when this thread was started. I have seen little if anything added to the game that keeps my interest. Top Tier loot is way too easy to obtain (Raiders Loot bags for crying out loud!), the quests are too easy and the thoughfulness of old raids is long gone. I can remember spending months as a guild trying to figure out how to complete The Titan raid. Not only was it fun trying to do so, it was so rewarding when we actually completed it. I remember when the VoN series was released how much of the population was stuck on VoN 3 for weeks I can remember the Demon Queen being pretty hard to beat. Now, raids are a joke at the time they are released, not offering even an initial challenge to complete like old raids did. The overall issue is that while it is easy to suck new players in for a week or two by making awesome loot readily available with limited difficutly in completing quests or raids, it is this same stategy that drives them away in a few weeks leaving the VIPs left footing the bill and carrying the game for months on end between content releases (which are only pay for expansions now). So what is the point? TR or Epic TR? Eventually, even that bell gets rang too many times to save things. We need challenges, not easy buttons. Keep the casual and normal levels as is, but we need more difficulty at hard and elite. Make raids Epic, fun and challenging. I would rahter have Abott type difficutly than CITW difficulty. Also, lets seperate the top tier loot out and make it harder to achieve. Certianly not giving it out for free via Raiders Bags. I don't mind there being a second tier of loot that is more easily obtained for the casual gamer, but the vets / grinders need something to strive for that satisfies the need to stand out. It is not everyone's goal in gaming, but there are those who are willing to put the time in if the rewards are in line with that dedication. As i stated in a different post, if the juice is worth squeezing, people will squeeze as long as it takes to get their juice. The shard, seal, scroll method was great until newer, laughably easy to obtain better stats loot was introduced. Now getting from 0 to Uber is a joke as is this game's difficulty level. The response to people leavign this game seems to be give more free loot, xp, or other bonuses that cut down on game playing time.

[ishr]

game is way too easy, especially at EE content. please make the hardest loot more difficult to acquire, this extends the longevity of your player base.

[brian14]

The difference between hard and elite is night and day
^That

Why is Brothers of the Forge EN (level 28) easier than Bargain of Blood EE (level 22)?

[barecm]

game is way too easy, especially at EE content. please make the hardest loot more difficult to acquire, this extends the longevity of your player base.^This. 100% agree. I log in these days less frequently and, when I do log in, stuggle to keep myself interested beyond catching up with friends and maybe running a quest that someone needs help with. Then loggin off. Maybe an hour or so at a clip instead of the 4-5 I used to spend raiding and gear grinding etc... There is simply nothing left to strive for now that the easy button loot has hit the game.

[avepepix]

57 Pages its make me think if the devs gonna take something in clear...

Lets see...

Nomal its easy, you can have some complication in EN but its accesible

Hard, its interesting, not so hard, not so easy (can be very easy in some classes) EH Much more interesting, but still if you are in a quest, with the wrong class you are in troubles.

Elite Can be a pain in the A%% some HE are most dificult that an Epic....
EE Its almost imposible. Why? Because actually the game its scaled to the best character class convination posible... so if you are not in that classes you are doomed.

Like, EE its imposible if you are not a monk, im not a monk (noone of my char) so its imposible.

[avepepix]

No offence, if disintegrate and polar ray are that bad, you aren't "skilled, ..., experienced" players.
I went just fine going through Running With the Devils as a melee wizard - with only 10 wizard levels and no improved shrouding.

I myself am a noob - but even I can take that sort of damage without an issue.

Play that quest with a dwarf defender and then tell me... 6 spells and you are dead, 1 o 2 if its a critic.

[Teh_Troll]

Like, EE its imposible if you are not a monk, im not a monk (noone of my char) so its imposible.

Wrong. Seriously, I'm of the mind that monks are over-powered and needing some quality time with Ike Turner and a Nerf-hammer but the above statement is just nonsense.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Play that quest with a dwarf defender and then tell me... 6 spells and you are dead, 1 o 2 if its a critic.

http://www.sitcomsonline.com/boards/attachment.php?attachmentid=185501&stc=1&d=1375187666

Jay Sherman hits you for 9000 damage. You have died of dysentery.

[avepepix]

Wrong. Seriously, I'm of the mind that monks are over-powered and needing some quality time with Ike Turner and a Nerf-hammer but the above statement is just nonsense.

Maybe im too exagerated with that phrase, but EE its not made for everyone

[barecm]

EE is not impossible, since many, many people run it exclusively and seem to survive. It is not a run through as you actually can get killed in one or two hits. That being said, the Loot aspect of this game has become somewhat of a joke. You can run a raid on normal and upgrade it to an elite version.... sad. Free loot bags given out, not once, but twice? Economy broken. Thanks.

[schelsullivan]

Most of the EE is just perfect for my solo play style. I play a stealthy ranger and I like for it to be hard enough that I have to plan each encounter carefully. When anything goes run I usually have to run like heck! This "dungeon crawl" pace I enjoy a lot.

When im in a pug with experienced EE players, it usually becomes too quick and easy. Groups like this can cut right through most EE stuff. I guess its nice sometimes when you need to grind out something, but I miss that crawl pace. The most fun ive had in EE pugs is when its a bit underpowered, and we have to slow down and start using actual tactics and strategies. Even when we fail its more fun for me at that pace.

[Wongar]

One thing I would like to see is the ability to select the group scaling option (harder only). A simple selection that allows the quest to be scaled for a larger group than you have. For example, you could solo a quest but select it to be scaled like you had a 2 person, 3 person or full group.

Something like this could help bridge the gap between EH and EE.

[Gljosh]

Currently, I find EN to be great easy solo material, no hires. EH is a pretty solid PUG quest. EE is just wickedly tough, if not properly geared and with a good team. I have been in 3 EE quests, Feast and Famine, Bargain of Blood, and Caught in the Web both as pugs. CitW we wiped early. F and F we made it but it took forever (mostly melees) just hacking at orcs for about 30 seconds to 1 minute a piece. It was just trip or stun and run through Melee Special Attacks and normal attacks on cool down. B and B we ran to the end and fought the boss killing the least amount possible. I also have been in PUGs that have almost wiped on EN, Von 3 seems to give some people problems. So the player base is pretty well mixed, the Uber tend to stay Uber, the strong tend to stay strong, and the gimp tend to stay gimp.

[PsychoBlonde]

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!'

I don't think the game is balanced for the "uber-player". I think the super-high-level stuff is increasingly balanced to *waste people's time*. I mean, seriously, do we REALLY need so many monster spawns in the Wheloon explore area that it takes 20 minutes to run to a quest and 3 people lag out, die, and have to restart their machines? If QUANTITY of spawns is causing framerates to drop into the SINGLE DIGITS on HIGH END GAMING MACHINES, there is a PROBLEM. Storm horns is kinda cool except for What Goes Up, which is a giant barrel of Annoying and often bugs out, requiring people to summon a GM just so they can finish the dang thing. (I have run the quest FOUR TIMES and it has bugged out and become unfinishable TWICE.)

Quit dropping 50 mobs on us. All this does is encourage people to solo because it's actually EASIER than dealing with the excessive numbers of extra spawns.

If you guys really want to challenge people, eliminate "safe spots" and make us actually go toe-to-toe with the boss. (And, conversely, don't create bosses that can one-shot people with 900+ hp and crit people with 200%+ fortification.) Don't promote a playstyle that consists of finding a place where you can't be hit, turning on auto-attack, and going to watch a movie while your character plinks the boss down with a throwing weapon.

What happened to having bosses like Velah and the Lord of Blades where they have a couple of nasty attacks that can really mess people up, but those attacks are telegraphed properly? It's a challenge to pay attention to when the fire breath is coming with everything else that's going on. It feels like an accomplishment the first time you build a character who can stay in and eat the breath on epic Elite. Or who can tank the shadows in ToD. Or who can tank the Stormreaver in Fall of Truth without getting boomed to death. Instead we get a boss in What Goes Up who takes FOR EFFING EVER to kill simply because he teleports the second you get to him, over and over and over. That's not an exercise in paying attention and building your character and being prepared, that's sheer pointless frustration for no good reason.

It's amazing to me that people think they're an "uber" player and the game is "too easy", because if you watch how they play, they never actually go up against anything. They kite. Everything. Or run past it invisible. Or sit in the safe spot. Real "uber" players don't kite. Any idiot can kite in this game, it is an effortless strategy and requires no investment other than the willingness to read a book while auto-attacking or chaining your SLA's over and over and over and over and over and over until finally everything is dead and you can progress. Of course these people feel that the game has become too easy--their lazy strategy is the only useful one left for the really high-end stuff. Melee doesn't feel useless because wizards just one shot-everything with finger of death. They feel useless because if they TRY to go toe-to-toe with Karleth, they die INSTANTLY and it's up to the wizard and the guy with the bow to plink him to death.

You know what would have been a GOOD way to design that fight? If Karleth can hit the levers in the room from anywhere with his chain, he ought to be able to hit any location in the room with the chain. You should have made it so that the chain-swinging is TELEGRAPHED (it isn't, in fact, I usually take the damage BEFORE HE VISIBLY SWINGS THE CHAIN--I'm lucky if I get to HEAR the sound before the effect fires) and that bluff/intim/diplomacy KICKS HIM OUT OF IT. Then make it so that if there's nobody in melee with him, he starts randomly hitting ranged people for big damage. Now you have an INTERESTING fight, where the ranged people can only be effective if there's someone up there in melee and the melee person needs to be watching for that chain telegraph and hitting the intim or running away (and then back in) in time. You can't solo THAT fight on Epic Elite by hopping around throwing a shuriken for half an hour or by sitting in the rafters spamming magic missile. You CAN solo it on Epic Normal, though, as long as your character is reasonably well built so that they can survive standing in melee with Karleth or survive his ranged damage.

Bring back stuff like choke points and control. Quit making everything new a 50-mob kitefest. Let people zerg if they think they can handle it instead of locking them in a room with slowly-spawning mobs: part of the fun of building a truly awesome character is that you can handle it when there's a ton of aggro that you go get BY CHOICE, you don't have to pull one mob at a time. That doesn't mean "ton of aggro" should be the DEFAULT.

The best quests in the game are ones where if you know what you're doing you CAN steamroll through it, but also contain some killer bosses/situations/traps that can nuke even experienced groups into next week if you stop paying attention or have some bad luck or over-estimate your abilities. Lets have more of that and less slog.

To be fair, the slog isn't a completely new phenomenon and much of the newer content is actually pretty darn fun and clever. I think part of the problem is that the new Epic system has severely limited the AMOUNT of content you play for "endgame" stuff. Before the MoTU changeover every bit of content from level 14+ was worth running for relevant endgame gear, and the level 10 and 12 raids were still run! FOR ENDGAME GEAR!! You might not even care about making it epic!

This problem is going to persist as long as you guys keep raising the level cap and making whatever new content you put out the ONLY quests appropriate to that level. There desperately needs to be a *numbers freeze*. Older epics need something along the lines of the Monument of the Stormreaver so you can (if you like) kick the gear up a few levels and keep it relevant. Anything to broaden the AMOUNT of content that's worth running for gear as well as XP. When people can freely avoid the quests they don't care to run (or put it off because they're busy pursuing something else), I think a lot of the complaining will fade.

[barecm]

I don't think the game is balanced for the "uber-player". I think the super-high-level stuff is increasingly balanced to *waste people's time*. I mean, seriously, do we REALLY need so many monster spawns in the Wheloon explore area that it takes 20 minutes to run to a quest and 3 people lag out, die, and have to restart their machines? If QUANTITY of spawns is causing framerates to drop into the SINGLE DIGITS on HIGH END GAMING MACHINES, there is a PROBLEM. Storm horns is kinda cool except for What Goes Up, which is a giant barrel of Annoying and often bugs out, requiring people to summon a GM just so they can finish the dang thing. (I have run the quest FOUR TIMES and it has bugged out and become unfinishable TWICE.)Quit dropping 50 mobs on us. All this does is encourage people to solo because it's actually EASIER than dealing with the excessive numbers of extra spawns.If you guys really want to challenge people, eliminate "safe spots" and make us actually go toe-to-toe with the boss. (And, conversely, don't create bosses that can one-shot people with 900+ hp and crit people with 200%+ fortification.) Don't promote a playstyle that consists of finding a place where you can't be hit, turning on auto-attack, and going to watch a movie while your character plinks the boss down with a throwing weapon.What happened to having bosses like Velah and the Lord of Blades where they have a couple of nasty attacks that can really mess people up, but those attacks are telegraphed properly? It's a challenge to pay attention to when the fire breath is coming with everything else that's going on. It feels like an accomplishment the first time you build a character who can stay in and eat the breath on epic Elite. Or who can tank the shadows in ToD. Or who can tank the Stormreaver in Fall of Truth without getting boomed to death. Instead we get a boss in What Goes Up who takes FOR EFFING EVER to kill simply because he teleports the second you get to him, over and over and over. That's not an exercise in paying attention and building your character and being prepared, that's sheer pointless frustration for no good reason. It's amazing to me that people think they're an "uber" player and the game is "too easy", because if you watch how they play, they never actually go up against anything. They kite. Everything. Or run past it invisible. Or sit in the safe spot. Real "uber" players don't kite. Any idiot can kite in this game, it is an effortless strategy and requires no investment other than the willingness to read a book while auto-attacking or chaining your SLA's over and over and over and over and over and over until finally everything is dead and you can progress. Of course these people feel that the game has become too easy--their lazy strategy is the only useful one left for the really high-end stuff. Melee doesn't feel useless because wizards just one shot-everything with finger of death. They feel useless because if they TRY to go toe-to-toe with Karleth, they die INSTANTLY and it's up to the wizard and the guy with the bow to plink him to death.You know what would have been a GOOD way to design that fight? If Karleth can hit the levers in the room from anywhere with his chain, he ought to be able to hit any location in the room with the chain. You should have made it so that the chain-swinging is TELEGRAPHED (it isn't, in fact, I usually take the damage BEFORE HE VISIBLY SWINGS THE CHAIN--I'm lucky if I get to HEAR the sound before the effect fires) and that bluff/intim/diplomacy KICKS HIM OUT OF IT. Then make it so that if there's nobody in melee with him, he starts randomly hitting ranged people for big damage. Now you have an INTERESTING fight, where the ranged people can only be effective if there's someone up there in melee and the melee person needs to be watching for that chain telegraph and hitting the intim or running away (and then back in) in time. You can't solo THAT fight on Epic Elite by hopping around throwing a shuriken for half an hour or by sitting in the rafters spamming magic missile. You CAN solo it on Epic Normal, though, as long as your character is reasonably well built so that they can survive standing in melee with Karleth or survive his ranged damage.Bring back stuff like choke points and control. Quit making everything new a 50-mob kitefest. Let people zerg if they think they can handle it instead of locking them in a room with slowly-spawning mobs: part of the fun of building a truly awesome character is that you can handle it when there's a ton of aggro that you go get BY CHOICE, you don't have to pull one mob at a time. That doesn't mean "ton of aggro" should be the DEFAULT.The best quests in the game are ones where if you know what you're doing you CAN steamroll through it, but also contain some killer bosses/situations/traps that can nuke even experienced groups into next week if you stop paying attention or have some bad luck or over-estimate your abilities. Lets have more of that and less slog.To be fair, the slog isn't a completely new phenomenon and much of the newer content is actually pretty darn fun and clever. I think part of the problem is that the new Epic system has severely limited the AMOUNT of content you play for "endgame" stuff. Before the MoTU changeover every bit of content from level 14+ was worth running for relevant endgame gear, and the level 10 and 12 raids were still run! FOR ENDGAME GEAR!! You might not even care about making it epic!This problem is going to persist as long as you guys keep raising the level cap and making whatever new content you put out the ONLY quests appropriate to that level. There desperately needs to be a *numbers freeze*. Older epics need something along the lines of the Monument of the Stormreaver so you can (if you like) kick the gear up a few levels and keep it relevant. Anything to broaden the AMOUNT of content that's worth running for gear as well as XP. When people can freely avoid the quests they don't care to run (or put it off because they're busy pursuing something else), I think a lot of the complaining will fade.While I agree with a lot of what you are saying, you kind of lost me with your definition of Uber players. I think Uber players are those who are the first to figure out a strategy, not copying what others already have done; but that is MY personal opinion of what Uber is. If you only conisder one play style, going toe to toe with a boss, you will have a very narrow range of viable builds to play that one particular way. Everyone has their own opinion of Uber.... Uber gear, Uber build (they probably did not invent) or being able to run EE solo... whatever. That being said, there is no real definition of the term. From what I have seen, when you start thinking you are Uber, you probably are not.

[Icywave]

Personally I am fine with actual difficulty levels in the game....

However, I think that considering the amount of people who now have many many many past lives, hence most likely the " perfect " gear, and a bunch of passive bonuses, there could an other difficulty level added at Heroic Levels. Otherwise Heroic Elites feel more like a grind than a challenge.

Heroic " Impossible " or whatever you wanna call it.

Heroic/Epic Normal and Hard are good for the casual players, or first lifers without gear and I definitely wouldn't change them.

As to Epic Elites, I like them. They can't be randomly PUG'ed in most cases.

[Teh_Troll]

Melee doesn't feel useless because wizards just one shot-everything with finger of death. They feel useless because if they TRY to go toe-to-toe with Karleth, they die INSTANTLY and it's up to the wizard and the guy with the bow to plink him to death.


This quote is brilliant and explains a lot about what's wrong with DDO end-game.

There's too much "ZOMG! You're dead!" stupidity. It's all easily meta-gamed around if you have no problem with running around like an idiot and having some ranged DPS.

The Karleth encounter is the best example of what's wrong . . . very easy to handle perching with ranged and all bu impossible to melee.

[Thrudh]

Most of the EE is just perfect for my solo play style. I play a stealthy ranger and I like for it to be hard enough that I have to plan each encounter carefully. When anything goes run I usually have to run like heck! This "dungeon crawl" pace I enjoy a lot.

When im in a pug with experienced EE players, it usually becomes too quick and easy. Groups like this can cut right through most EE stuff. I guess its nice sometimes when you need to grind out something, but I miss that crawl pace. The most fun ive had in EE pugs is when its a bit underpowered, and we have to slow down and start using actual tactics and strategies. Even when we fail its more fun for me at that pace.

I agree... I did the Harpers' chain a few days ago, and we did most of it on EH, zerging at full speed... High Road we did on EE, and it was a very nice change, where we moved much slower, being careful. Felt like the good old days...

[mkmcgw17]

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 feel the general difficulty of most quests seems about right. A few of them could use a slight tweak. I think the game overall has gone too far towards the dreaded Monty Hall campaign and it wouldn't bother me at all if all the drop rates of items were reduced. if you give all the complainers and nay sayers everything they ask for the game is going to become unplayable. Certain of the classes have become overpowered with the new enhancement system and those could use reduction. Ranger and as always Monk are too powerful relative to the other classes which throws off the difficulty level. Overall Id say your pretty close to where the general game difficulty should be. Thanks for asking. :)

[Waaye]

[...]I don't think a good DM would ever do that to players (unless they really ticked him off).[...]

Before resurrection was possible in D&D it did happen on very rare occasions. Instances that resulted in physical violence made it into the news and some people wanted to ban the game. The rules were soon altered to allow characters to be brought back to life.

[the1bigun]

Almost everyone believes they are entitled to a completion of every quest they run. This is WRONG! Failing sometimes is required for people to learn to get better. While I Agree Sometimes some stuff is stupid and some stuff is overpowered/underpowered, I believe that sometimes people have to suck it up and realise that wipes happen. The only consistent I've seen in all these pages are that everyone is OWED a completion. DDO owes you nothing. Wipe and learn from it. Don't get sooky and whinge about it.
To the people that EE is too easy; teach the pugs how easy it is.
To the people who believe it’s all overpowered, join some of these pugs run by others that believe EE is too easy.

Good luck all and happy questing!!!

[bennyson]

What I dislike about the current challenge that DDO provides is that every single quest always has the same number and type of mobs, sometimes when I go down in the Butcher's Path, I was expecting to FINALLY face EPIC KOBOLDS with a CR of 100 or something, wielding an axe or something but no, its always the same. Always the same BORING CR 0.25 enemies, which takes one strike to kill...

Also, how about nerfing them Monks and giving Pallies some love when you fix the Bards, also, PLEASE do something about FOTW. (Seriously you guys, Adrenaline Overload + Arrow of Slaying with a Pinon/ranged speced character with some monk levels is OP - OVERPOWERED. This is like killing the challenges right there.)

Another thing, how about increasing the PRR provided by Medium and Heavy Armor? Because a Monk splash's Dodge is far more superior, rending these other armors almost useless.

[IronClan]

Very simple casual is pointless, call it story mode like someone else said.

EN nobody bothers with

EH is too easy for most vet players or guild groups by a lot, and even in a radnom PUG party with an insta killing arcane is a laugher EVERY TIME, you can literally run through an entire quest and not bother swinging because the insta kills take everything out long before a melee gets even 3 swings in.

EE is too much of a slog, too many hitpoints, and can be boring, but it is a challenge at least. and mobs hit hard.

Solutions:
EN keep it, it's a walk through for less experienced players
EH, raise mob DC's and give some mobs random perks like ED twists and feats like slippery mind etc. (this all goes to meta gaming like everything does give mobs som randomness and the meta gaming and boredom are mitigated)
EE, Lower mobs fortitude saves by -2 across the board, take away evasion from them at random, half their hitpoints but give them all increased ranged damage and +10d20 (10-200) spell power, give ranged mobs a 20% chance to have Manyshot/10k stars and give them 3d4 random feats/buffs/immunities including max/empower spell, evasion, etc give all mobs a 30% chance to have deathward item on. But also 1d4 random VULNERABILITIES take away "Epic ward"completely. While at it to compensate for the lower hit points allow EE mobs to bypass 1d4 player resistences, including possibility of players deathward and fortification, or elemental resists. or spell absorption. Again the main problem is meta gaming it leads to boredom... Mobs that are unpredictable and have weak spots or strengths you don't always know are far more interesting.

Better mob design would go a long way to spicing up EE, and would allow you to half the hitpoints so they aren't such a slog to beat down. If need be up their damage a titch more.

[Robbenklopper]

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.

So if we´re talking about difficulty, everyone has an own vision of it.

Heroics.

I remember when I was new to ddo and on my first life like a virgin, my friends and me knew less and "normal" WAS a
challenge. I was a "normal" player, noname geared for a long time. I could complete the most quests with only a hire, and when i teamed up with friends, we spend a token to do
"hard" and failed on "elite". With advanced playerexperience, "know you character", better gear and "levelmindmapping", "normal" got too easy, on 2nd and especially on
3rd life, when we was able to complete everything from beginning on "Elite". It was fun to feel strong and competent.
The engine in calculating damage and effects, AC and all the stuff needs to count the same for the AI like for the players. To what point the enemys are equipped, trained/specialized and leveled up with their feats and stats would give ddo a new way of average difficulty. Harry on normal should be what he is, with all his calculated powers and feats written in the players handbook. Let him deal his damage he can like it´s calculated for us players. To top that on hard, he´d have more friends of his kind brought to the party and beeing of higher LVL for sure. On elite, half of the nine hells should be there to party with harry agains the players. NOT one Harry with CR50 or whatever. Beating on him like an old tiger tied to the tree can only result in a success.

Let´s say you wanna define "Normal" difficuly, what can you expect? First you shall have in mind, for how many players this quest is created for and by what classes
it can be solved. IT´s not senseful, that any class can solve any quest from the point of a Multiplayergame and cooperation. To solo a raid is amazing, but we should calm down such godlike-feelings and you devs really really really need to fix such a twaddle.
Now consider to what point the player has advanced and how every player is geared when starting this quest. Now that DDO CAN build up your gear quest by quest if you do chains/arcs and we do have the AH, calculate the difficulty with that. Then you devs next consider yourself on the STORY you wanna tell and what YOU expect it to be: shall the quest be a "beat the local villain party" or a "extinguish the mighty arcvile and witch-queen from the fortress" with exceptional enemys and masses of foes to beat who are better trained and geared?
How strong (and tactical intelligent!) are the Orange and rednamed, how is it secured and what else can happen. Now calculate the Players power against all that and not the level-to-be to be successful. And voila, all this should be the "normal" difficulty! "Normal" shall not be a walk at the beach,
"Normal" could be very thrilling and give you a feeling of "hard/elite". Open every quest to every PC-level. A Lvl1 party would die in a "Normal" Lordsmarch-Plaza, while a lvl12 party could do it fairly easy.
The average citizen for LVL1 is "9" on all attibutes. Being an average local guard means beeing LVL3, having the main attributes 12+ and beeing specialized/focused with his weapon.

Ok, if this is normal, what is "hard". I´d say better geared common enemys, they shall be better trained with higher stats, commanders have magical weapons etc.
(a few more HP and a higher tactical AI in fighting and strategy overall). Average enemys are specialized and using their feats.
If you may have a lazy weak hillbilly town-sentinel on "normal", we have a trained townguard veteran on "hard"
The average citizen for LVL1 is still "9" on all attibutes. Being an veteran local guard means being LVL5, having the main attributes 15+ and beeing specialized and focused.

Next thought is, what´s about "elite". Yes, higher stats, better gear for the enemys, but never higher CR than the module is designed. But with enemys tougher and exploiting their powers to maximum. The average citizen for LVL1 is still "9" on all attibutes. Being an elitist local guard means being LVL7, having the main attributes 17+ and spezialized and focused and whatever possible to that level. Those elitists are more like an elite-force. And an elite squad won´t be recruited out of LVL1."Elite" would stongly depend on the highest AI (if this is possible at all), not only physics versus us players, even brain against us. A planning AI like in Ghost Recon or some shooters, they can do!

Epics.

Epic Normal Quest is like a normal quest. A quest you devs have created you mean a so-far-leveled-and-equipped player can solve it. The general AI is on Max at the point of epic quest. It´s EPIC! How can it get harder? Consider the monsters Elitists, other they wouldnt have made it so far. Kick senseless stuff like epic rats, it´s really lowminded in my eyes, RATS don´t get epic. For epic quest take epic monsters. A level suiting monster and pump it up! It´s okay to bring them in hordes or masses, they wouldn´t come alone against a Party of whirling axes and firing icecones. EPic monsters are epic geared, other they wouldnt made it that far to be called epic, but not every enemy is an epical one. The average citizen is still Lvl1 and not CR30. Enemy stats are epical like players. They do wear deadly rings, have perma boosts, go on rage, momentumswing, using epic feats and destinies, all this should be open to the AI too. There was democracy in feats in PnP for the enemys, so shall it be in Onlinegaming.

These are just my own thoughts about creating difficulty and how it could suit, bringing some experience from a life of a DM. It´s discussable and not omniscient. Can´t say how it´s possible to reflect in an AI and to what point it wouldnt be too deadly.

[dydzio0614]

In my opinion EE is not rewarding enough in this game, in many quests there is no reason to increase dificulty. New players do not care about "epic elite" items because they find "epic hard" version good enough, and while they are not good enough to run EE's they also can lack motivation to improve because what is the point of being able to run EE when they dont care about having top gear etc? And existing EE quests are just too easy for veteran players, gather few random good players and you can run everything on EE where is the challenge? EE raids have still nice difficulty but I did them already, including deathwyrm/fot/citw and reward for doing them isnt anything special, so what else to do in this game? Other games deal with this problem by having PvP system when there is nothing to do, but if DDO is going to be still quest based then there should be some challenge, something that veteran players will have problem with on EN difficulty. Before Menace of teh Underdark the Lord of Blades raid was really challenging.

[capsela]

Thanks for asking. I've been playing for about a year, off and on, and I only have been able to get to level 11. I have started a number of other characters to "test them out" paladins, artificers, clerics, etc. most are dead now. I still have my Exploiter Tempest Ranger at lvl 11 and a level 7 (started there with the experience boost) artificer. I really like those two as I love the rogue/spell casting/kill them before they see you ranged attacks.

That said, I would first agree with the statement that you are balancing the game for the uber-player. I read a couple of pages of replies and I have no clue what they are talking about as I haven't even seen many of those quests. Uber-players. Not convinced? Look at the content you've been adding, what levels are they targeting? Done much adding of lower level quests? I have no doubt that you are not targeting new, or obviously clueless players such as myself.

On the difficulty, I play solo. I have played with one or two other players from time to time... some bad, some extremely good. By good I mean that they were so much better that I cannot for the life of me figure out how they got their character to do the stuff I saw them do! I try to play every quest in an area on normal the first time. Often, I get killed right near the end. If it happens enough I normally just abandon the quest and never try it again. (Wish I could remember the name of that last one I dumped in Kundarak.) I have found that quests got substantially harder at level 9 on normal, so much so that I won't even try many of them anymore. I find that lvl 7 to 9 quests severely challenge my lvl 11 Ranger on normal to complete. I must play Lvl 8 to 10 quests VERY slowly so as to not attract more than a couple of monsters at a time and invariably I end up encountering two+ red boss characters together somewhere and I'm toast. I have, to date, not been able to complete a level 10 quest. Playing the various festivals clearly demonstrates that my character does not have remotely enough killing power to collect squat valuable... so festivals are no fun and since the 'loot' is bound to Char they are mostly useless as well. Collectors have undergone a huge change and collecting as a result is now pretty much a pointless waste of inventory space (collectors now require a TON of junk in return for squat). Delrina has been modified so that a hireling can't get you to completion of the second 5th level quest. Sure I could team up, but I have a busy life and I can only play as time permits. Its less complicated to play solo for me. So is the game too hard, in some ways... absolutely, in others... nope. There should be a risk of death/restart while playing. However, there should be room for learning. If you change tactics and do things right/better the next time you should survive... but if it really doesn't matter how well you try to play it or you MUST be part of a party to win then that sucks.

Also, the game is way out of balance in several ways... for example dexterity: it makes you quick. So please explain why my extremely high dex ranger consistently moves slower than a low dex character with boots of 15% speed? Why is a quest played by a single character nearly impossible but a snap if there are two or three? Quests have several levels of difficulty but from my experience the only things that seem to change is the type of spells the clerics/sorcerers throw and the hit points of the individual mob members. Why doesn't the size/strength of the mobs increase with the number of players entering (mob number = Std mob + (Std Mob x (number of players - 1)) OR mob strength/lvl = std mob + ((avg player HP/avg player level) x avg player class modifier(class mod per lvl x num lvls in class)) or some such mathematical gobbledygook? Then XP for completion = quest XP x difficulty modifier x Mob strength change(played strength/std strength). Play in a group, the quest is harder more XP given, choose a different difficulty more XP given. Note I added a class modifier since I have noticed that class impacts play-ability. Mid-level (level 7 for me) Rangers/rogues/paladins seem to fair much worse than full blown spell casters. Artificers seem to hold up better than those other three, but they are also pretty weak. Straight fighters and spell casters seem to do a LOT of damage by comparison. Oh, the poisoner quest in Marketplace (just past the guard with the demon invasion) is SERIOUSLY harder than similar quests at the same level... AND ITS LONG! In summary, you should have a chance to fail at any level, especially the first time through, and with any number of players and the game should modify itself to ensure that that level of risk adjusts to the number of players playing a quest, their character level, their class mix, and the level of their gear. The chance should be the same for a solo player like me and for a well heeled reincarnated twice group of six players at the same level of challenge i.e. Hero: C, N, H, E, or Epic: C, N, H, E.

As for game play... You SERIOUSLY need to allow for some sort of mid-quest save/restart. Some quests take FOREVER to finish like the Shanticor? quest and others which have three quests all linked together in a chain that you have to walk through each and every time... Yeesh! Sometimes I have to stop playing mid-quest because I've run out of time!

I play for fun. Puzzles should NOT be a Mensa IQ test, they should be solvable, and they should NEVER place a player into a situation where the only escape is recall. Your idiot hireling should be able to get you free to try, try again. There's one with Minotaurs in Gianthold that just traps you tight (the area with multiple levers after the swim).

On things not much fun: guard the idiot quests where the idiot tries to get themselves killed (and even when they don't) and ones where you have to stop the monsters from bugging me but they don't provide a progress monitor to tell you how close that loser is getting to finishing their job before they fall down and tell you they have to start over. Man! I've grown to hate those with a passion!

To be honest I'd rather play 0-8 than 9+ level quests. I'm finding levelling extremely tedious, probably because I'm doing something wrong and advanced game play is simply not fun for me (neither have I liked the recent 'additions'... astral shards and their push, the collector change with its pushing the shards as well, and the ridiculously stupid daily rolls.). While I like the challenge offered by each new quest I encounter in DDO, the game is simply becoming tedious... you detect a hidden passage, but damned if you can find it. Maybe if I got closer, oh! sorry you just got snagged by a leg-hold trap that you also didn't detect when you searched for stuff AND you just lost a bunch of hit points, but you get free, and look there's another one that you also didn't detect and now some ranger/spell caster has found you.... I'm currently a VIP, but to be honest I'm thinking of dropping VIP and perhaps quitting DDO completely.

So I think you can fairly easily fix the "Enough with the easy button" uber-players request and address the "I just want to have fun, play my character's role, be challenged a bit, be surprised a bit and leave." players such a myself. It's all in whether or not you want to spend the money rewriting a huge chunk of code or just keep doing what you're doing? Certainly adding some more lower level areas... perhaps areas targeting a particular class to train us newbies to be better might help, but it won't solve the underlying issues. However, those newbies might have more fun playing, because the alternative is that casual paying players such as myself will pack it in, and move on. To which I think I can hear "and good riddance!", but really is that how you build and grow a sustained community?

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to vent.

First off I read the whole thing, secondly I salute your patience you have a long fun journey ahead of you if you stick with it. Thirdly, the quests are designed for groups so if you solo, it's understandable you are gonna have a hard time. I'm not sure why you refuse to group but I understand its difficult to be in a party where someone makes you feel inferior. If you can logically understand that you can be as good as them if you put in the time and effort it makes it easier to stomach your emotional response. It's much harder starting from scratch in an older mmo like this one with so many vets, but the vets were all noobs at some time too and felt like schmucks too.

I soloed the necro quest you complain about, because I read the wiki and it said you can kill a mob on the sensor and it stays activated for about 10 seconds or so just about enough time to open the doors if you are quick.

Back to the subject, heroic difficulty is fine. I don't think there should be scaling as it leads to soloing which I don't think is healthy for the game.

Regarding Epic levels, EC should be dropped, no one uses that level. I think EN should become EC. EH should become EN. The new EH should be easier than EE. And EE mobs should have there HP doubled, but have their damage and saves decreased. That would still make it a challenge but, it would make non optimal builds feel useful as well. The mobs would be annoying but because of the reduced saving and damage they could be dealt with using strategy instead of exploits.

[Thayion516]

Regarding Epic levels, EC should be dropped, no one uses that level. I think EN should become EC. EH should become EN. The new EH should be easier than EE. And EE mobs should have there HP doubled, but have their damage and saves decreased. That would still make it a challenge but, it would make non optimal builds feel useful as well. The mobs would be annoying but because of the reduced saving and damage they could be dealt with using strategy instead of exploits.

What?? I know ALOT of people who use EC for farming Sagas and chains for Comms. Example is the Druids Chian reward with chioce of 3 of each Comm. I solo it on EC at least 1 time a week.

Also, I have some very casual friends that are terrible players (lol, I know..) and they Duo/Trio EC upper level stuff.

[Thayion516]

I have seen several people say that Character Balance is not the only thing out of whack, and I agree. Environment Balance is also off. Some things can be done to the Enviroment/Mobs that will increase balance.

1. Bring Back Epic Death Ward. Not on all mobs tho. This will prevent the InstaKilling of everything in sight, which happens to a great degree now.
2. Make the DCs/Resists on Mobs better. Like a ogre Fighter should have a load of Fort/Balance. But weak to Will. Stuff like that. A Firegiant should be immune to Fire. A 75 Stunning Fist DC on a mage mob?? 80 to Trip a Orc? really? Those need to come back down to earth.
3. Make Traps KILL. Honestly a EH Trap should do 700 damage... not 300.. a EE trap should be 1500. Want to stop some kiting? Put some Pit Traps in the Floors. Sure u can Kite, but it would make it harder.
4. EE Mobs hitting a toon for 400-600 damage in 1 hit, that always hits BTW regardless of AC..

But on the flip side of that.. there ARE some things on the character side that needs work.
1. Adrenaline+manyshot+10kStar needs to be looked at.
2. Shardari procing on every MM is kinda over the top.
3. Melee are forced to fight the mobs by default and they get demolished. Why is Melee so bad? Thats like turning off 50% of your character designs.

But honestly SMALL changes can easily adjust all these.

PLEASE fully test any changes and make small targeted moves. And give honest feedback on direction of changes and what you feel are inadequacies.

[The_Human_Cypher]

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.

Someone recently pointed out in these forums that the Elite is now the default difficulty in DDO. I have been playing for over 4 years and I do nearly everything on Elite, except for Epic content. Even Epic Elite is not terribly hard with a full party of seasoned players.

Making the game too easy will drive potential long term players away from the game. For example, Neverwinter Online is so easy even as a beginning player that many people lose interest in it and move onto other games - there's no real challenge. DDO has older players that are willing to invest the time to become good at a game that is involved and feel rewarded for doing so.

[Ivan_Milic]

4. EE Mobs hitting a toon for 400-600 damage in 1 hit, that always hits BTW regardless of AC..



I dont think we are playing the same game, or your ac is 50 and you want it to work on ee.

[Ivan_Milic]

Regarding Epic levels, EC should be dropped, no one uses that level. I think EN should become EC. EH should become EN. The new EH should be easier than EE. And EE mobs should have there HP doubled, but have their damage and saves decreased. That would still make it a challenge but, it would make non optimal builds feel useful as well. The mobs would be annoying but because of the reduced saving and damage they could be dealt with using strategy instead of exploits.

Give mobs more hp?
You should work for turbine, would fit right in.

[Vanhooger]

Most EE are easy(not on my build :)), or very easy if you run with veteran that are running monkcher or shiradi/wiz/sorc. Any other build still quite challenging when doing EE.

I reckon on my 20 sorc fleshy, that I do kill stuff easy enough, but as a trade off my save, hp, prr, dodge and ac suck, so I can get intakilled, my self healing is just cocoon and scroll, that mean i need to be very careful, but i cant....if I want to make my sp last till end of the quest I need to aggro a bunch of mob and rely on my cc + hold and nuke to not get killed.

For me still a good challenge, not for shiradi infinite sp, sla reconstruct + reconstruct spell, no additional cost for maximize, +evasion, +high save and the delirium of joy and arcane supremacy, or monkcher on evasion dodge, manyshot+adrenaline+arrow of slaying and kite fest.

Fix those build, EE is already challenging enough.

[dydzio0614]

While EE might be challenging enough for most of the players, veterans who already did EE stuff have kinda nothing interesting to do in the game. Because DDO lacks some challenging content 'not for average player' that should be difficult for experienced group on EN difficulty. And it was previously implemented in DDO. Before Menace of the Underdark there were raids such as ToD / LoB / Master Artificer and on hard or elite they were very demanding, causing over 50% of the tries to be wipes. There were shiny rewards (only when doing LoB on hardest difficulties you could get ingredients to finish alchemical weapon and it was probably harder at that time than deathwyrm on EE currently). If you make some raid that is hard only on EE then there will be no reason to do EE as loot will be available on lower difficulties (unless you make most of loot drop only on EE). Stop giving DDO a 'casual player mode' because everybody wants to be instantly able to do everything on EH. Give it a challenge. As far as I know nobody was able to solo ToD on hard/elite before MotU and after The Fall of Truth was introduced then after few days some good builds started to show their EE solo completions. And we had some 'imbalanced' builds before MotU as well, they were called FvS with SP regen items. Another funny thing about The Lord of Blades raid is that the boss himself still seems to be more difficult to me than Truthful One.

But giving players a challenge is not enough to be done, it should go in pair with character rebalancing, CC casting looks so useless for me now and it is very complex system with many interesting spells, missing the times when people were looking for some web spell caster for golems in Master Artificer raid. I do not think that so many things should be replaced with equivalent Epic Destiny stuff.

Also missing the times when The Chamber of Raiyum on Epic was easily 120 minutes run when pugging, and epic shards / seals were really looking valuable, epic items were hard to get, now if you have one good character you can get half of the endgame gear for some new character within a month and without big effort as some of good gear parts arent even bound at all (thanks to Shadowsight / Guardian's Ring / Goatskin Boots / Ring of Shadows / Purple Dragon Gloves and similar). And such character if played by somebody who knows the game becomes fairly good and is often enough for running EE content and some EE raids (will not be the strongest of party members but still).

[pHo3nix]

Most EE are easy(not on my build :)), or very easy if you run with veteran that are running monkcher or shiradi/wiz/sorc. Any other build still quite challenging when doing EE.


Most EE are quite easy as long as you have good defense, decent self-healing and good DPS: there are way more builds than just monkchers or shiradi that make EE easy, it's just that shiradi requires no PLs and just basic gear.

[Grimlock]

game is way too easy, especially at EE content.

I agree with this part if your statement. If I was a developer at Turbine and was reading the Achievement thread one to two days after rolling out the Thunderholme or FoT content and saw people soloing the content on EE I had just worked on I would be extremely embarrassed.

Under no circumstances should any build in this game be able to solo a raid. Period. DDO was supposed to be centered around groups and parties to complete content with a small portion of quests available for soloing. Now, nearly every quest in the entire game with the exception of what maybe 4-5 quests can be done via solo EE. This is a problem.

*EDIT*

And I would go on to say that the answer is not adding more hit points. Like the Kuldjargh - which was a dumb idea. 300,000+ hit point red names? Seriously?

[pHo3nix]

Under no circumstances should any build in this game be able to solo a raid. Period. DDO was supposed to be centered around groups and parties to complete content with a small portion of quests available for soloing. Now, nearly every quest in the entire game with the exception of what maybe 4-5 quests can be done via solo EE. This is a problem.



So what's your idea? Add random levers here and there to be pulled at the same time so a single player can't do it? If someone is good let them solo raids, why would you care?

[moo_cow]

I remember when you use to need cc and healers for epics..... Epics are way to easy compared to the good old days. The 2 new raids on ee aren't a walk in the park but 6 man quests are way to easy. I regularly pug ee's with byoh's and I take the first people to hit the lfm and every time we steam roll the content. (even with the people that don't byoh) People say that we shouldn't make the game challenging for the 1% of people who have no problems steam rolling ee's in group but honestly I generally never run into pugs that can't steam roll content. 90% of the time I'm in a random pug with people I have never played with and the content is still a walk in the park. So ya, it's a lot more than 1% of people who are looking for more of a challenge people. Game is to easy and you all know it.

[Grimlock]

So what's your idea? Add random levers here and there to be pulled at the same time so a single player can't do it? If someone is good let them solo raids, why would you care?

The difficulty of the creatures you fight should require that the raid party is equipped properly with a variety of classes. Roles can overlap through multiclassing, but it is utterly ridiculous to look at the achievement thread on these forums and see nearly every epic quest in the game with a 10 minute completion time on EE solo. If I was an exec at Turbine and looked at that thread, then opened up my Microsoft Project file for Fall of Truth and looked at the logged labor hours associated with that project heads would roll.

Putting in levers or making it impossible for one person to do a quest (ie- VON doors) is one approach. Another would be aggro management and monster UI/abilities that cripple movement. Game designers need to watch people running these raids on Lam and have the players find the ledges monkchers love to look for so they can sit pretty and plink plink their way to a solo completion.

Prevent kiting.

I will say this again so there is no confusion.

Prevent kiting.

Little hopalong monkcher running around in giant circles shooting Pinion at things until they die on Epic Elite does not require any skill just as standing on a ledge shooting things until they die does. One developer had a novel idea that is used in Shroud part 5 - Harry's teleportation ability. This prevents people from kiting, or hiding on a ledge avoiding a beat down. Another tactic developers could use is to apply a chains like effect like in VoD to hinder movement. By removing the kiting technique for raids and assigning other necessary objectives like pulling levers, destroying an object within a certain time frame, solving puzzles, defeating another enemy in an entirely separate part of the raid you are ensuring it is necessary for more than one person to solo a raid.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The point is we have ideas in game now that we can draw upon and simply apply them to future content. The development team needs to try harder. EE solo completions should be a freaking miracle. EE raid solo's should never exist - even for monkchers/shiradi builds.

The game is sad when not only are EE quests/raids doable by yourself, but some of you guys have this down to 10 minutes or less. The game is no longer about "how do we defeat this as a group", but who can solo it in the fastest time possible, which is usually done within the first week of release.

Pathetic.

[moo_cow]

I agree with this part if your statement. If I was a developer at Turbine and was reading the Achievement thread one to two days after rolling out the Thunderholme or FoT content and saw people soloing the content on EE I had just worked on I would be extremely embarrassed.

Under no circumstances should any build in this game be able to solo a raid. Period. DDO was supposed to be centered around groups and parties to complete content with a small portion of quests available for soloing. Now, nearly every quest in the entire game with the exception of what maybe 4-5 quests can be done via solo EE. This is a problem.

*EDIT*

And I would go on to say that the answer is not adding more hit points. Like the Kuldjargh - which was a dumb idea. 300,000+ hit point red names? Seriously?

Are you talking 4-5 quests or raids?

[Grimlock]

Are you talking 4-5 quests or raids?

Both. Like my quote said - in the entire game we have maybe 4-5 quests that require more than one person/hireling assists in order to get a completion.

[moo_cow]

The difficulty of the creatures you fight should require that the raid party is equipped properly with a variety of classes. Roles can overlap through multiclassing, but it is utterly ridiculous to look at the achievement thread on these forums and see nearly every epic quest in the game with a 10 minute completion time on EE solo. If I was an exec at Turbine and looked at that thread, then opened up my Microsoft Project file for Fall of Truth and looked at the logged labor hours associated with that project heads would roll.

Putting in levers or making it impossible for one person to do a quest (ie- VON doors) is one approach. Another would be aggro management and monster UI/abilities that cripple movement. Game designers need to watch people running these raids on Lam and have the players find the ledges monkchers love to look for so they can sit pretty and plink plink their way to a solo completion.

Prevent kiting.

I will say this again so there is no confusion.

Prevent kiting.

Little hopalong monkcher running around in giant circles shooting Pinion at things until they die on Epic Elite does not require any skill just as standing on a ledge shooting things until they die does. One developer had a novel idea that is used in Shroud part 5 - Harry's teleportation ability. This prevents people from kiting, or hiding on a ledge avoiding a beat down. Another tactic developers could use is to apply a chains like effect like in VoD to hinder movement. By removing the kiting technique for raids and assigning other necessary objectives like pulling levers, destroying an object within a certain time frame, solving puzzles, defeating another enemy in an entirely separate part of the raid you are ensuring it is necessary for more than one person to solo a raid.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The point is we have ideas in game now that we can draw upon and simply apply them to future content. The development team needs to try harder. EE solo completions should be a freaking miracle. EE raid solo's should never exist - even for monkchers/shiradi builds.

The game is sad when not only are EE quests/raids doable by yourself, but some of you guys have this down to 10 minutes or less. The game is no longer about "how do we defeat this as a group", but who can solo it in the fastest time possible, which is usually done within the first week of release.

Pathetic.

I am definitely in agreement that the game is to easy at this point. One of the things I liked about the game back when the cap was 20 was that there may have only been groups of 5-6 mobs at a time but you couldn't cut the mobs down in less than 2 seconds like you can to 10 mobs at a time now. Damage has become to high on most characters and mobs get slaughtered like nobody's business. This made people actually have balance parties of casters/healers/melees(groups of divines and casters were very good groups as well but that is for static groups and not really pugs). Also when people did solo's it took them a long long time and was a lot more difficulty. For example fastest solos- eDA (59 minutes), eCoF (167 minutes). Some of the quests were done fast but those were the already really really fast and easy quests.

[capsela]

I think one problem with game difficulty is that you made epics so difficult that only a few strategies are viable. That leads to the same builds for everyone and the same spells and the same attacks. That is boring. Everyone doing the same thing. You wonder what's the point? Why do we have 13 classes if only a few combinations can succeed in EE?

[Ivan_Milic]

I am definitely in agreement that the game is to easy at this point. One of the things I liked about the game back when the cap was 20 was that there may have only been groups of 5-6 mobs at a time but you couldn't cut the mobs down in less than 2 seconds like you can to 10 mobs at a time now. Damage has become to high on most characters and mobs get slaughtered like nobody's business. This made people actually have balance parties of casters/healers/melees(groups of divines and casters were very good groups as well but that is for static groups and not really pugs). Also when people did solo's it took them a long long time and was a lot more difficulty. For example fastest solos- eDA (59 minutes), eCoF (167 minutes). Some of the quests were done fast but those were the already really really fast and easy quests.

Did epics scale then?

[pHo3nix]

The difficulty of the creatures you fight should require that the raid party is equipped properly with a variety of classes. Roles can overlap through multiclassing, but it is utterly ridiculous to look at the achievement thread on these forums and see nearly every epic quest in the game with a 10 minute completion time on EE solo. If I was an exec at Turbine and looked at that thread, then opened up my Microsoft Project file for Fall of Truth and looked at the logged labor hours associated with that project heads would roll.

Putting in levers or making it impossible for one person to do a quest (ie- VON doors) is one approach. Another would be aggro management and monster UI/abilities that cripple movement. Game designers need to watch people running these raids on Lam and have the players find the ledges monkchers love to look for so they can sit pretty and plink plink their way to a solo completion.

Prevent kiting.

I will say this again so there is no confusion.

Prevent kiting.

Little hopalong monkcher running around in giant circles shooting Pinion at things until they die on Epic Elite does not require any skill just as standing on a ledge shooting things until they die does. One developer had a novel idea that is used in Shroud part 5 - Harry's teleportation ability. This prevents people from kiting, or hiding on a ledge avoiding a beat down. Another tactic developers could use is to apply a chains like effect like in VoD to hinder movement. By removing the kiting technique for raids and assigning other necessary objectives like pulling levers, destroying an object within a certain time frame, solving puzzles, defeating another enemy in an entirely separate part of the raid you are ensuring it is necessary for more than one person to solo a raid.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head. The point is we have ideas in game now that we can draw upon and simply apply them to future content. The development team needs to try harder. EE solo completions should be a freaking miracle. EE raid solo's should never exist - even for monkchers/shiradi builds.

The game is sad when not only are EE quests/raids doable by yourself, but some of you guys have this down to 10 minutes or less. The game is no longer about "how do we defeat this as a group", but who can solo it in the fastest time possible, which is usually done within the first week of release.

Pathetic.

Kiting is just the best solution to handle EEs as they currently are: if trash mobs hit for 250-300+ non crits, got 10k+ hp and sky high saves, the best solution to handle them is avoid getting hit at all and kill them as fast as possible, even better if you can use no save abilities. You can still melee them if you got enough displacement clickies(if they haven't TS, otherwise good luck :p), incorporeal, high dodge and PRR, but it surely is harder than the ranged/kiting option. There are still options, but they are way less than the ones we got when the lvl cap was 20 and we got no EDs.

Movement and the FPS gameplay are probably the only few things that still distinguish DDO from other average MMO and keep it "alive": prevent people from using their mobility to avoid danger and the combat becomes boring and unimpressive.

[capsela]

Kiting is just the best solution to handle EEs as they currently are: if trash mobs hit for 250-300+ non crits, got 10k+ hp and sky high saves, the best solution to handle them is avoid getting hit at all and kill them as fast as possible, even better if you can use no save abilities. You can still melee them if you got enough displacement clickies(if they haven't TS, otherwise good luck :p), incorporeal, high dodge and PRR, but it surely is harder than the ranged/kiting option. There are still options, but they are way less than the ones we got when the lvl cap was 20 and we got no EDs.

Movement and the FPS gameplay are probably the only few things that still distinguish DDO from other average MMO and keep it "alive": prevent people from using their mobility to avoid danger and the combat becomes boring and unimpressive.

So jumping on a perch shooting a boss who can't hit you is exciting and impressive to you? To me that is boring and unimpressive and I can't believe I spent so much money on this game OMG I'm an idiot.

[nayozz]

Kiting is just the best solution to handle EEs as they currently are: if trash mobs hit for 250-300+ non crits, got 10k+ hp and sky high saves, the best solution to handle them is avoid getting hit at all and kill them as fast as possible, even better if you can use no save abilities. You can still melee them if you got enough displacement clickies(if they haven't TS, otherwise good luck :p), incorporeal, high dodge and PRR, but it surely is harder than the ranged/kiting option. There are still options, but they are way less than the ones we got when the lvl cap was 20 and we got no EDs.

Movement and the FPS gameplay are probably the only few things that still distinguish DDO from other average MMO and keep it "alive": prevent people from using their mobility to avoid danger and the combat becomes boring and unimpressive.

/signed, i luv the fps style

[Nestroy]

Guys (and Gals ^^), you beat the game, you won. Get over it!

If EE is too easy, then you did something right. You beat the game, you won. You are the 1% of players that did it.

As long as any Joe Average cannot even remotely think of beating down EE easily the EE difficulty is OK. It´s not the difficulty, it´s you. You have grown out of the game.

Then again, you play Monkcher, Shiradi Sorc or BF anything, or BF Monkcher or BF Sorc? Well, you well deserved your "EE is too easy"!

EE does not need more power creep. If anything, the mobs and bosses need something to kill your kiters. And no, that does not mean more mobs. It means earth eles accompanied by casters, archers and whatever else can hit you from afar. The overall powercreep level of EE mobs is too high already - it only makes some few very specialized builds viable in that content. No one else can do this in the same time at the same few losses your highly specialized builds can do. Many others can do play EE - in groups, taking longer time, whatever. You alone can solo in a few minutes. You won, you beat the game! Hail to your builds geared to kick a** in EE! But then please stop complaining that the game is too easy. Your opponents cannot use tactics to reach you kiting them around. That´s the reason you feel the game to be too easy. And at the same time there are "Nerf Adrenaline Proc on Shiradi" threads in the general forum.

To make the game in EE better for everybody, I would suggest the devs to give better ranged / anti kite strategies to the mobs and bosses. Perhaps some tactic sets where they actually react to what is brought against them. A flexible script where they analyse the build in front of them and react accordingly. Ranger / Monk? OK, range and nuke. Sorc or Wiz in Shiradi? Defense up and range. Use debuffs. Then use CCs. It´s all a question of AI. But this is the long and hard way for devs. It´s easier to give another 100k hit points to mobs that should have about 2k only like the players. If current mobs with current EE hit points and saves would get only a few nice strategies to hit your kiters, like debuffs followed by CC and nukes, you will find yourself grilled crispy and fine like on a barbecue grill within seconds and you will cry out loud how infamously hard EE is.

Get over it. As long as the devs take the easy road of more hit points, damage output and saves instead of better AI, you are save, you won DDO.

[pHo3nix]

So jumping on a perch shooting a boss who can't hit you is exciting and impressive to you? To me that is boring and unimpressive and I can't believe I spent so much money on this game OMG I'm an idiot.

Who said jumping on a perch? I said kiting and moving to avoid danger, it works on melee as well, unless you stand still with autoattack on.

[capsela]

Talk about the haves and the have nots! Did you expect players to make 15 greensteel displacement clickies? Almost a half hour of the most powerful defensive spell ever? A spell that was nerfed to be self only!

There is your game imbalancer right there. Nerf that garbage! Make it exclusive. That's what you do when you have an item that is too powerful when it's stacked. You do it with everything else! Why is this any different?

How does a new player feel to be so far behind the power curve? So far behind, it would take years to grind the mats to make that many clickies. And meanwhile they are a bloody stain on the ground til they grind those mats.

Lol, nice balance.

[Powerhungry]

Talk about the haves and the have nots! Did you expect players to make 15 greensteel displacement clickies? Almost a half hour of the most powerful defensive spell ever? A spell that was nerfed to be self only!

There is your game imbalancer right there. Nerf that garbage! Make it exclusive. That's what you do when you have an item that is too powerful when it's stacked. You do it with everything else! Why is this any different?

How does a new player feel to be so far behind the power curve? So far behind, it would take years to grind the mats to make that many clickies. And meanwhile they are a bloody stain on the ground til they grind those mats.

Lol, nice balance.
Darn, my GS (displacement) goggles are exclusive, guess I'll have to make a cloak, helm, boots, bracers, one of each weapon type, etc...

[Powerhungry]

While I do wish for better balance, it should be in the classes and abilities (mainly seriously beefed up capstones and less 'low-hanging fruit' for multi-class) , not the equipment (or lack, there of)

[capsela]

Darn, my GS (displacement) goggles are exclusive, guess I'll have to make a cloak, helm, boots, bracers, one of each weapon type, etc...

Maybe if they nerfed displacement clickies they would be forced to fix the broken system where melees are can't be effective without it. I feel sorry for ppl forced to grind clickies. How is that fun? I've got 99 problems but lack of displacement clickies is not one.

[Banker]

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.

Hail and well met! I started in 11/06 and up until F2P the game was very difficult - so much so - it was a DDO EPIC Feat to accomplish almost any quest SOLO. Back then there weren't any hirelings! I use to try just to see if I could, knowing full well that I'd get a ton of 'penalties' if I failed... Usually I failed, but it was Awesome to just try! Back then - every party needed some type of healer - Cleric's preferred!!! Back then entering a quest meant a lot of risk - risk of XP Penality, etc! That was part of the excitement back then, the risk but then the reward of having the bragging rights: "I solo'ed xx quest!!" I also remember back in the day - "From Beyond the Grave" was a tough quest! There were a whole lot of quests that were difficult with a full party including a cleric!!! But back in those days the scope of the game, the player character's limitations as to what they could have for gear, their abilities, etc where all 'smaller'/'more limited' than they are today. But today is a totally different story... The scope is much, much larger than it was back then. The abilities a character can have has broadened many, many fold. This is my POV but there are too many "easy buttons" everywhere. I freely admit to using those easy buttons too. To some degree I like it, to another degree I hate them! Here we go:

<DungeonMaster> *Party*: You've all been killed by the acid trap!
<PartyMember> HEY! I got a rez cake! I"m going to use it!
<DungeonMaster> *PartyMember* You can't! You're dead!

But I do know and understand that "DDO" is a business. Personally I'd like to see more of a balancing of characters and their abilities, back towards the day when Clerics where actually needed in parties. Where Raids where run almost everyday; or on a regular schedule. Where you'd need a rogue, fighter type or two, one healer, and at least one caster. With all these easy buttons, pretty much anyone can grab a pocket cleric - especially if they're not a healer type - and do almost any quest on normal, but once you get to hard and especially Elite - it's harder to do unless you populate the entire party with pocket-players. Yes! I almost did this a couple of times - I added a cleric, fighter and caster - albeit not an entire party but that's all one of my characters needed on elite.

To me again - I think that 'you' haven't balanced it for the uber player - it's just that many of us have been here for many years and know many things 'by heart.' But this goes back to how large the scope of the game has gotten... Now you can have a character that's Reincarnated many, many times... So... IF that character goes to completionist then they get +2 to all stats! Anyway - at any given level - that character IS Uber-Elite as compared to almost any other character that hasn't gone completionist. And generally those whom reincarnate generally have some serious items with that character and even 'extra storage.' Now... On my MAIN Account - I have 2 - I have about 28 toons, and of those I generally play at least 10 and maybe 12 that are 'playable.' So that would leave 16 or so toons that are banks!!! On my secondary account I have like 12 or 15 and only 2 playable toons... That's at least 10 toons for banks. Although I don't consider myself uber in anyway - except for maybe total bank storage space - I probably seem uber to many out there. Most of my characters have at least one Greensteel item and most have at least 2 - which I made from many, many runs of The Shroud. So if you're starting out and you see a character 'lighting-striking' mobs down... You'd definitely think that they where uber. One last part I'd like to touch on is... I'm not sure if I'm calling this right but I'm going to say "Twitching" - where your skills at the keyboard and/or mouse are 'extra ordinary.' That too becomes a factor in this game. The game default for the keyboard layout is not 'my style.' I push the keyboard to the left with my left hand on the keypad, use the mouse in my right hand. Set a bunch of things to the keypad, then I also have like a 5 button mouse... Given the fact that I generally know when/where/how/why mobs spawn, timing of things, etc... Again, that may make me look uber to someone - when in fact "I'm not and just 'doing my thing.'"

I do think that there are way too many easy buttons... Just be careful not to make too many, because when you do - that can kill the game and more importantly - it can kill "The Business."

Cadamier

[Ivan_Milic]

Talk about the haves and the have nots! Did you expect players to make 15 greensteel displacement clickies? Almost a half hour of the most powerful defensive spell ever? A spell that was nerfed to be self only!

There is your game imbalancer right there. Nerf that garbage! Make it exclusive. That's what you do when you have an item that is too powerful when it's stacked. You do it with everything else! Why is this any different?

How does a new player feel to be so far behind the power curve? So far behind, it would take years to grind the mats to make that many clickies. And meanwhile they are a bloody stain on the ground til they grind those mats.

Lol, nice balance.
Years?
You can buy all ings except shards, which you can get easily in DA.
You dont need more than 5, unless you plan on soloing everything.
Besides, if you are new player, why would you feel the need to jump instantly in ee?

[Glascanon]

The EE content turns more and more to a pure Ranged content.

Its way to easy to keep mobs at distance while mobs hit way to hard even for specialized tanks.

To keep EE challenging for ranged toons the DPS of the monsters raised more and more in the newer content because u barely get hit kiting mobs around with Displacement.

AC really needs a buff in compare to Displacement.

The DMG output of EE mobs needs to be lowered meanwhile the ability to kite tons of Mobs around needs to be nerved.

ADD Some Striding on EE to the mobs and lower the backward running Speed of Players by half. Slightly decrease the sideways running speed as well.

Buff AC and lower mob DPS that its Possible for Mele DPS toons with a Healer in the background and/or a Tank with self heals to stay alive in the front.

Right now the balancing is more like:

EE lvl 20-21:
Meles feel uncomfortable
the Tank starts feeling the mobs do some reasonable damage
Healers are welcome
Ranged toons are bored

Devs: The Players may still crush EE´s so lets buff the DMG and HP of mobs

EE lvl 22-24:
many melees feel useless
the Tank feels uncomfortable
Healers start rezing the melees instead of healing because its cheaper in SP
Ranged toons are bored

Devs: The Players may still crush EE´s so lets buff the DMG and HP of mobs

EE lvl 25-27:
most melees feel useless
many Tanks start to feel useless too because they have to kite the mobs instead of fighting them
Healers? Lets take another ranged toon to speed it up since all the ranged can self heal.
Ranged toons get some action because they have to kite mobs since they often don´t die before they reach them.

Devs: The Players may still crush EE´s so lets buff the DMG and HP of mobs

EE lvl 28-30:
melees better go to hide mode and wait at the entrance until the content is done.
who needs a Tank since the most Bosses have random agro anyway and the trash can be easily kited around?
Also we would need a Healer with SP pots on cool down to keep a tank alive.
Ranged toons start getting onehitted if they do a mistake and displacement/dodge/incorp fails. So better have UMD to scrollrez each other.

Devs: Oh... the ranged guys start dieing so lets ADD some save spots for the ranged to make it boring again.

[bloodnose13]

well i would like to notice difficoulty at low levels, while high level content shows crazy hp, saves and survivability of monsters as oposed to player, on low levels game is way too easy, first life character can easly solo most if not whole harbor, low level bosses have hp values not much higher from common monster, 6 player party can kill them in very few swings, up untill lvl 6 or 7 quests, its very easy to solo any content, if low level content is soloable, then it teaches new players wrong idea of playing ddo, its meant to be a party based game.

so i would say lower hp and saves on high levels, EE content especialy, and boost monsters in low level content, their damage output is just about right, just that they die too easy. im not talkibng about more challenge, im talking about makeing low level quests less boring. idk how many new players are there in ddo, but i meet some from time to time, and i seen their reactions to someone who knows the game or is multiple tr, soloing a quest with everyone in tow who twirl their thumbs becouse there is nothing left to do.

that probably means that low level dungeon scaleing would need some fixing, OR that everything on low level would need to be boosted.

[9001]

I think one problem with game difficulty is that there's no separation of casuals and hardcore players in terms of difficulty. Everyone expects to be able to run Epic Elite, which is fine, I guess, but there's NO content that's hardcore only (of course that would hurt the bottom line, but I'm sure some people would pay for challenging content.) There should be a tier of either difficulty or just content period that is tailored to good players and offers better gear/ other incentives. I don't agree with the mindset that EVERYONE should be capable of doing EE . There's lower difficulties for a reason. (Casual player here by the way). In terms of the difficulty itself, I think it's been said to death, but more needs to be done than just add flat hp/ damage to mobs.

[bloodnose13]

I think one problem with game difficulty is that there's no separation of casuals and hardcore players in terms of difficulty. Everyone expects to be able to run Epic Elite, which is fine, I guess, but there's NO content that's hardcore only (of course that would hurt the bottom line, but I'm sure some people would pay for challenging content.) There should be a tier of either difficulty or just content period that is tailored to good players and offers better gear/ other incentives. I don't agree with the mindset that EVERYONE should be capable of doing EE . There's lower difficulties for a reason. (Casual player here by the way). In terms of the difficulty itself, I think it's been said to death, but more needs to be done than just add flat hp/ damage to mobs.

As long as ee will give favor, and better items, or EE only items, anyone who wants those will try to run them, ofc if there was none of that in EE, not many ppl would run it JUST for bragging rights. and here we have source of problem.....

so if there was a EEE difficoulty added to the game, it would have to be PURELY just for challenge, not much more.

i think for all that difficoulty scaled gear, there should be an upgrade system, you dont want to run EE to get best version of item? fine, run it on EH, gather 50 tokens from that quest and upgrade it to next difficoulty tier, with those new token based trade menus it would be not that bad to create, fall of truth items already use that idea so why not make it in all quests that use difficoulty based item scaleing.

as for favor i think we shoudl be getting ONE favor, completion favor, not scaled by difficoulty.

[9001]

As long as ee will give favor, and better items, or EE only items, anyone who wants those will try to run them, ofc if there was none of that in EE, not many ppl would run it JUST for bragging rights. and here we have source of problem.....

so if there was a EEE difficoulty added to the game, it would have to be PURELY just for challenge, not much more.

i think for all that difficoulty scaled gear, there should be an upgrade system, you dont want to run EE to get best version of item? fine, run it on EH, gather 50 tokens from that quest and upgrade it to next difficoulty tier, with those new token based trade menus it would be not that bad to create, fall of truth items already use that idea so why not make it in all quests that use difficoulty based item scaleing.

as for favor i think we shoudl be getting ONE favor, completion favor, not scaled by difficoulty.

See, I never thought about the favor aspect, thanks for pointing it out. I think if they DO make a high difficulty challenge mode it should indeed be segragated from the normal n/h/e, which would reinforce the fact that it's not for casual players. I'd like to see some non-combat items as rewards, but unlike (excuse my reference) WoW, which has a lot of non-combat options, DDO is kinda limited on that aspect. I do think there should be some incentive to do the challenge difficulty, but what it is would be up for discussion. I'm also for better versions of gear, or at least higher chances for gear drops, on higher difficulties.

[Seikojin]

This discussion has lost its focus. Game difficulty now is rough for some classes (pure or MC), builds, playstyles, etc. Changes coming may help that. However, in the longer run, we as a community must keep in mind that difficulty will be a constant flux. A real bard of power is when level 30 is up. Then you have something to stop at and measure against. Without a true endgame, you cannot make something more or less difficult. People who have advanced further will trivialize the content, while people not at that level will struggle.

It will always be this way.

[bloodnose13]

This discussion has lost its focus. Game difficulty now is rough for some classes (pure or MC), builds, playstyles, etc. Changes coming may help that. However, in the longer run, we as a community must keep in mind that difficulty will be a constant flux. A real bard of power is when level 30 is up. Then you have something to stop at and measure against. Without a true endgame, you cannot make something more or less difficult. People who have advanced further will trivialize the content, while people not at that level will struggle.

It will always be this way.

i understand what you are saying but as difficoulty i see the inflated hp and saves on enemies, devs created and were creating in past a lot of oportunity for creating powerfull/overpowered characters (by exploiting combinations of skills/enchancements from diffrent classes "monkcher" as example) or by items (greensteel, epic items), that in turn were the reason why game difficoulty was raised by buffing up hp and saves accross the board, creating problems for anyone who was THAT powerful.

i think that artificialy raising hp, saves, and what ever else on enemies in quests and saying its harder difficoulty is doing it wrong, change of ac and to hit systems created some problems too, becouse players have no trouble at all with hitting enemies, that means that since we hit nearly all the time enemy has to have high hp to keep us beating him for while. weapon effects are not without fault either, all weapon cc effects (paralyzing, limbchopper, etc) those things dumb down the combat to the thing it is now.

so i think first thing that would have to happen is nerfing of everything that has massive impact on combat, things that give inflated damage bonuses (stats to damage are not as important as they were before, becouse most of damage comes from weapon dice bonuses, and other extra damage bonuses) in class trees and in destinies, and at same time dropping hp and saves on enemies but instead giveing them dodge, all sorts of blur, dr, damage mitigations similar to prr, and survival tricks we use.
and then ddo would become a game where tactics and cunning, would be worth much more than blind bashing/nukeing everything.

[eden2760]

Something someone said in another topic really stuck out at me on this:

Make your own difficulty.

The game does offer ways to challenge you, and there are other ways to challenge yourself, if this is something that is important to you.

If one of your goals is to get as close to possible as trivializing all content with an overpowered character, then go for that goal. If you ever reach that goal to your satisfaction, then find a new goal.

Maybe try working towards being able to solo an epic elite raid or two (where it's mechanically possible) or something similar. The game can only impose so much on you. In the end you tend to get what you want out of it.

[burningwind]

the simple solution is to keep the game a little easier(reduce wheloon and stormhorn instant spawn rate..), increase low level named loot drop chance to 20%~50% (or buff them to make worthy of farming, new player who want them likely will never seen them until they no longer new, or no longer need them)

then make a new difficulty, which should be insanely hard, but give +5 loot bonus. 100% chance to add all named loot to the end reward. plus no longer give penalty on death... this could be called..something like.. abyss difficulty? this should give challenge to those who tr 40+ lifes and have no challenge in current elite~~

[BigErkyKid]

Maybe if they nerfed displacement clickies they would be forced to fix the broken system where melees are can't be effective without it. I feel sorry for ppl forced to grind clickies. How is that fun? I've got 99 problems but lack of displacement clickies is not one.

it is a pain for anyone starting a new melee character.

Read, either forget EE or splash to be able to self cast.

It is silly that it relies so much on a single ability.

Nerf it, then maybe mobs do not need to hit like trucks to be able to damage enough in the very few occasions that they manage to land a hit.

[Robbenklopper]

Feel yourself challenged by:

- playing a melee
- staying pure
- no exploits

[Robbenklopper]

Right now the balancing is more like:

EE lvl 20-21:
Meles feel uncomfortable
the Tank starts feeling the mobs do some reasonable damage
Healers are welcome
Ranged toons are bored

Devs: The Players may still crush EE´s so lets buff the DMG and HP of mobs

EE lvl 22-24:
many melees feel useless
the Tank feels uncomfortable
Healers start rezing the melees instead of healing because its cheaper in SP
Ranged toons are bored

Devs: The Players may still crush EE´s so lets buff the DMG and HP of mobs

EE lvl 25-27:
most melees feel useless
many Tanks start to feel useless too because they have to kite the mobs instead of fighting them
Healers? Lets take another ranged toon to speed it up since all the ranged can self heal.
Ranged toons get some action because they have to kite mobs since they often don´t die before they reach them.

Devs: The Players may still crush EE´s so lets buff the DMG and HP of mobs

EE lvl 28-30:
melees better go to hide mode and wait at the entrance until the content is done.
who needs a Tank since the most Bosses have random agro anyway and the trash can be easily kited around?
Also we would need a Healer with SP pots on cool down to keep a tank alive.
Ranged toons start getting onehitted if they do a mistake and displacement/dodge/incorp fails. So better have UMD to scrollrez each other.

Devs: Oh... the ranged guys start dieing so lets ADD some save spots for the ranged to make it boring again.

Glorious! :D
(y) +1

Note: But it´s a simple fact: in every war mankind fought, the ranged had been superior over the Close-combat. We have machineguns, artillery and air-strikes. Melees are only for Support. And don´t come to a Shooting with a knife (except you´re chuck norris)

[ddo.rsmo.pt]

I feel myself challenged with:



Enter Quest in EE
Play a challenging quest
Get crappy reward list
Repeat 1-3 too many times before getting good reward


This would be fixed, for example, with Chain Reward items being same level as the quests you played them (similar to sagas).
Doing a chain in Epic Elite, only to have a Epic Normal reward list after not getting any drops in the quests themselves is... blargh.

Carry on.

[Ebondevil]

I feel myself challenged with:



Enter Quest in EE
Play a challenging quest
Get crappy reward list
Repeat 1-3 too many times before getting good reward


This would be fixed, for example, with Chain Reward items being same level as the quests you played them (similar to sagas).
Doing a chain in Epic Elite, only to have a Epic Normal reward list after not getting any drops in the quests themselves is... blargh.

Carry on.

I have to agree utterly, the Mechanics are already there with the Saga, it shouldn't be too hard to adapt them for chain rewards, okay saga's have had some teething issues, but they should be fixed by now.

[4tonmantis]

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 rarely see people play anything on normal because of Bravery Streaks.

For level 14ish+ it becomes exceptionally difficult for a melee toon to keep stride with casters. Has been this way for a long time but moreover if you're trying to level and can't find a party... you're really kinda stuck. There are some builds that can do it sure, and I'm not saying the game should be soloable on Elite, but there is definitely a point where melee needs a party but casters don't necessarily.

Some of the Red Fens quests can also be a bit tricky.. but most problems I've encountered there have been from bugs (scorpions aggroing through walls while ones next to you still haven't detected you etc).

Higher heroic level quests where a melee character has to juggle different types of weapons to bypass different types of DR can be extremely tedious. The same with long quests where your gear takes a beating. I know you can strengthen your gear with adamantine rituals, but who wants to do that for leveling gear? It's time consuming and costly for gear you're just going to change out of in a few levels.

Several quests have horribly bugged maps/mini-maps. For new players or people who haven't memorized questing paths, this can make for an infuriating gameplay experience.

A problem I'm seeing lately is, people new to DDO buy the level 15 character option. They jump into a game that has a steep learning curve, don't understand concepts like saves, Difficulty Checks, Evasion, PRR, etc.. but they are in the level range for some of the most challenging content on heroic level. I was running some Sands quests and ended up grouping with people that were TRs but didn't know about the mummy curse/disease thing, had no idea about damage reduction, and were just really extremely inexperienced. The problem isn't about the game being too difficult, it's about there being too many shortcuts for the early, learning levels. I used to see people stuck around level 7 or 8.. They would flounder there for maybe a month. Then boom.. something would click, maybe they would watch a video or read up on some stuff on wiki, or I dunno.. but then they would "get it". The learning curve at level 15+ is so much steeper and requires a tighter understanding of the game. If anything, too much of the content has been made too easy. I would say that being grouped with these people is ruining my gaming experience. I expect to step into a level 15+ quest with a group and not have someone run up 15 steps and die. People are able to look up a video on zerging and I guess they assume that's the normal way to play.. then I get them in my group and I am stuck in dungeon alert red while this guy has gotten halfway into the quest and died in a pit trap or a giant mob.

At level 15ish + I will say that life becomes a lot more difficult for a melee character and for a tank it is almost impossible. I do understand that changes are coming for that but I hold reservations as to what will be accomplished by those changes.

[4tonmantis]

I have had another thought on this while leveling through another life on my main. The Evening Star quests on heroic difficulty are insanely hard. This particularly applies to A Stay at the Inn. The HE version of this features CR 28 mobs.. on what is, as far as I know just a regular quest. Other than having Bastion (not sure if there are other named items) I don't understand why this quest would be so far out of the difficulty curve compared to other quests of this level range.

[Scrabbler]

The HE version of this features CR 28 mobs.. on what is, as far as I know just a regular quest. Other than having Bastion (not sure if there are other named items) I don't understand why this quest would be so far out of the difficulty curve compared to other quests of this level range.
It's because Eveningstar is primarily an Epic area, with Heroic quest modes slipped in as an afterthought. For previous Epic quests it happened the other way around.

This means that Stay At Inn (and similar dungeons around there) use the Epic rules for how much CR a Hard monster gains, which is +15 to +20. Heroic monsters on Hard mode gain +2 CR (level 1-10) or +4-5 (level 14-20). So they accidentally made those Hard modes harder than they should be.

[4tonmantis]

It's because Eveningstar is primarily an Epic area, with Heroic quest modes slipped in as an afterthought. For previous Epic quests it happened the other way around.

This means that Stay At Inn (and similar dungeons around there) use the Epic rules for how much CR a Hard monster gains, which is +15 to +20. Heroic monsters on Hard mode gain +2 CR (level 1-10) or +4-5 (level 14-20). So they accidentally made those Hard modes harder than they should be.

Thanks for the explanation.. and I assumed as much. That said, it seems like something they should address. I wanted to run that area at level for xp and a chance to grab up a Bastion but our group, who had ran IQ 1 and 2 on Elite with no problem died horribly there.

[Therigar]

I'll just kibitz on this semi-resurrected thread to say that it seems like Turbine's focus is on players who prefer to solo, that the effort to compel grouping (if there ever really was one) is a complete failure, the routine objection from players is about quests where grouping is necessary and rarely about the desire for more group required quests.

The consequence of all of this is that there will be a continued and growing demand for elite quests to become less difficult. Turbine seems to have brought this upon itself by the decision to reward elite quest streaks as well as by introducing build capabilities that seem to have had unintended synergies allowing even newer players to rapidly dominate existing content.

I have long believed that the casual/normal/hard/elite model was just an easy way to recycle content to keep players active. However, at this point in the game almost all heroic content is first attempted on elite to earn the bravery bonus -- effectively reversing the difficulty model. As for epic content, while epic elite still presents problems for me personally I find that the norm is epic hard. And, even then, when groups are available the routine for first time runs is still elite (epic elite) if bravery bonuses will apply.

My personal feeling on this is that Turbine should eliminate hard and elite bonuses and instead ramp up the quests on those difficulty settings. The reward should be for streaking normal and the normal difficulty on heroic content should be raised to roughly equate to current elite difficulty for most quests (there are a few that are abnormally difficult where this might not be appropriate, but most are so easily beaten on elite that they are scarcely a challenge).

On elite content there should be no streak rewards. Normal should be the norm. Hard and elite should be precisely that -- leaving players in a cold sweat and feeling that they earned bragging rights if they can complete on the higher difficulties.

I believe quest XP should be adjusted to reflect this sort of a change.

Ultimately, I think that quests should just have a single difficulty level -- but I'm not sure there is enough content to permit that with the present game. Certainly the development effort seems to be in reinventing existing quests rather than in actually building new content areas.

[4tonmantis]

Ultimately, I think that quests should just have a single difficulty level -- but I'm not sure there is enough content to permit that with the present game. Certainly the development effort seems to be in reinventing existing quests rather than in actually building new content areas.

I was with you up until this part. I do think re-cycling old content is a rather bad move on their part. Mostly because any time you try to task anything for more than what it was originally intended, there are always problems. Likewise, it seems rather lazy from a design standpoint. That said, I don't think it's fair to say they haven't added new areas. I started playing around the time the Phiarlan Carnival was added. After that Red Fens was added along with (not in chronological order) Manufactory, various Asylum quests, the quests in the 12, Silver flame stuff in Harbor, Demonweb, Underdark, quests in Eveningstar, quests in all of the peripheral E Star locations, Lordsmarch, and I'm sure I am forgetting a few (these are off the top of my head not from wiki). I was a big fan of having Epic as Epic.. not all of this Epic N,H,E noise. However, I do also think having epic areas serves a purpose for players as well, and I'm okay with that. I just dislike the fact that there is such an emphasis on these now. As a point of fact, the fact that the X-pacs have also been zoned in on us by removing old wonderful lootgen prefixes and suffixes is really disappointing.

The problem I'm seeing is that new areas seem to be attached to x-pacs now. I would like to know if more will be released as a standard part of VIP or if we're expected to shell for that. E Orchard is cool, but it's not a new area per se. That said, I think having Epic (or even Mythic) level difficulty quests in Korthos would be awesome. Returning to stop a colossal dragon that lived deeper in the heart of Misery Peak. It could work, I would play it :D

[Therigar]

I was with you up until this part. I do think re-cycling old content is a rather bad move on their part. Mostly because any time you try to task anything for more than what it was originally intended, there are always problems. Likewise, it seems rather lazy from a design standpoint. That said, I don't think it's fair to say they haven't added new areas.

I'm not saying that there have been no new areas. I'm saying that this is not the focus of development.

Fundamentally, it is the easy button to just take existing quest areas, empty them, and repopulate them with higher (or in the case of Eveningstar, lower) level monsters and call it "new." However, that isn't really something new -- it is something old that has been repurposed.

If the choice is that or nothing then I'm all in favor of repurposing.

But, what I would prefer is to see actually new quest in actually new areas with actually new story lines.

Were there sufficient numbers of these then multiple difficulty levels and quest farming would not be needed and would not form the staple of what happens in DDO at present.

Let me elaborate just a bit further.

At present I almost always run exactly the same heroic quests on nearly every character in order to level from 1 to 20. Then I almost always run exactly the same epic quests on nearly every character in order to level from 21 to 28. In both cases I almost always run exactly the same explorer areas to fill in XP gaps.

I do that not because there are not alternatives but because the multiple difficulty settings and the freedom to willingly repeat quests makes that the most efficient way to get from L1 to L28.

Once at L28 I almost always run exactly the same epic quests to fill in XP on epic destinies.

The result is that there are many quests that I have never played and still more that I have not played in years. I almost never go to the Cerulean Hills, I almost never go to the Restless Isles, I almost never go to the Necropolis and Orchard of the Macabre, I almost never go to the Red Fens, I almost never go to the Sands of Menechtarun -- not that I've never been to those places, it is just that there is no reason to go there because I can get all the XP I want and need by farming the multiple difficulty levels in other quests.

What I would like to see is a combination of solo and group quests where completing ~80% of the available at-level offerings would enable a character to advance in level on a new character. Reincarnates might need to do all the at level quests or even quest above level to advance -- not an issue IMO since they would presumably be better equipped and financed and the player would have greater knowledge of the quests.

So, I am not saying there never is new content -- rather that the trend seems to be to repurpose old content and claim that it is new. Still a used car with a new paint job is better than no car at all. ;)

[4tonmantis]

I'm not saying that there have been no new areas. I'm saying that this is not the focus of development.

So, I am not saying there never is new content -- rather that the trend seems to be to repurpose old content and claim that it is new. Still a used car with a new paint job is better than no car at all. ;)

Wait.. all the new areas are not played by you because you can get the xp by repeating quests but you want new areas so you don't have to repeat the same quests.. which.. you don't have to repeat anyway? I just leveled my main to his 3rd life epics and I very rarely repeated any quests. You are staying in those areas by choice. If they added new areas why would you change your existing habits? I would surmise that unless the hypothetical new areas offered better xp or loot you would probably play them once then go back to your predefined leveling strategy.

I'm not saying you don't have valid points, just that what you are doing is a conscious decision on your part. Some people play the game to enjoy all of the content, others play it to see how fast they can level and grind out the newest OP gear. Personally I am somewhere in the middle but more and more I see people zerg rushing through quests and skipping anything that would slow down their beloved xp per minute ratio. New content is always fun but lets' not pretend that it would fix the problem.. which seems to start at the player base and not with the developers.

[Therigar]

Wait.. all the new areas are not played by you because you can get the xp by repeating quests but you want new areas so you don't have to repeat the same quests.. which.. you don't have to repeat anyway? I just leveled my main to his 3rd life epics and I very rarely repeated any quests. You are staying in those areas by choice. If they added new areas why would you change your existing habits? I would surmise that unless the hypothetical new areas offered better xp or loot you would probably play them once then go back to your predefined leveling strategy.

If the game remains as it is, with multiple difficulty levels and the ability to repeat quests as often as I want, there is no reason to change my current habits. That is sort of the point.

I would prefer to see the game give you 1 completion in a quest and then it is on to the next one. I know that is possible now as a matter of personal choice but the subject is game difficulty. Because the default for most players is elite and because elite is really not challenging players (usually) the multiple difficulty levels and ability to repeat quests as often as desired makes the game too easy.

The quests are too easy, gaining levels is too easy -- the whole thing is too easy.

Are there tough spots? Maybe. Nobody ever needs to run them.

Now, I posit two alternatives -- both of which are, I think, better than the present state.

One would be to make normal the new elite with streak bonuses only applying there and to make hard and elite so white knuckle difficult that beating them would be exceptional.

The other would be to eliminate alternate difficulty levels completely, eliminate repeatability completely and to have enough quests so that players needed to complete ~80% of them at level to gain the XP for the next character level. Reincarnates would have to complete more quests at level or complete quests while the character is below level. The so called hard and elite quests would then be above level cap quests at the end game.

The problem with these is that, once a character completes all -- or nearly all -- content, what next? DDO has already solved that by including reincarnation with perks for having done so.

So, while a player could certainly impose constraints there is no reason to do so with the current game. The game itself would need to change in order for such constraints to make any sense.

[Lanadazia]

i think epic hard is too easy.
considering this mode to be between epic normal and epic elite, it is not doing its job well.
i hardly feel any difference between eN and eH, not even really xp wise (well since there is almost no difference in quest difficulty, its ok that the xp are somewhat the same)

i'd say change epic hard to be epic normal, and tweak epic hard to the difficulty of the old pre u14 epics. also fix the xp then. so that epic hard is more xp (since its more work after buffing it)
epic elite is just spot on. not many people can solo it, what makes it a nice teamplay! i enjoy being part of a group, managing a difficult dungeon.

the difference between epic normal and epic hard is very small
but the difference between epic hard and epic elite is a really big jump in powerlevel, what makes it hard to get used to it, since there are 2 easy modes and one very tough one.

[Therigar]

epic elite is just spot on. not many people can solo it, what makes it a nice teamplay! i enjoy being part of a group, managing a difficult dungeon.

Bravo!

Here is the genesis of a possibly great idea. What if we only had two difficulties -- solo and group. Solo would be closed to groups and challenging but not impossible for a single player and has some restrictions on it such as (example only, not wedded to this) no more than 2 pets and/or hirelings. Group would be closed to soloing while challenging but not impossible for 2 or more players plus pets and/or hirelings.

This does three things all at the same time. First, it removes the clearly irrelevant difficulty settings that players routinely ignore as they move straight to elite for the bravery bonuses. Second, it creates a gaming environment that appeals to both solo minded and group minded players. Third, combined with the present penalties on repeating quests it encourages players to play a greater amount of content rather than camping as they do now in the more lucrative quests.

Speaking only for myself, I find that I am more likely to do quests that I regularly ignore when I am in a group simply because the group is headed to that quest and the entertainment value of being in the group outweighs my ambivalence about the quest. I think it might serve as a tool to encourage more grouping yet without denying players the option to solo if that is what they genuinely preferred.

[SilkofDrasnia]

If the game remains as it is, with multiple difficulty levels and the ability to repeat quests as often as I want, there is no reason to change my current habits. That is sort of the point.

I would prefer to see the game give you 1 completion in a quest and then it is on to the next one. I know that is possible now as a matter of personal choice but the subject is game difficulty. Because the default for most players is elite and because elite is really not challenging players (usually) the multiple difficulty levels and ability to repeat quests as often as desired makes the game too easy.

The quests are too easy, gaining levels is too easy -- the whole thing is too easy.

Are there tough spots? Maybe. Nobody ever needs to run them.

Now, I posit two alternatives -- both of which are, I think, better than the present state.

One would be to make normal the new elite with streak bonuses only applying there and to make hard and elite so white knuckle difficult that beating them would be exceptional.

The other would be to eliminate alternate difficulty levels completely, eliminate repeatability completely and to have enough quests so that players needed to complete ~80% of them at level to gain the XP for the next character level. Reincarnates would have to complete more quests at level or complete quests while the character is below level. The so called hard and elite quests would then be above level cap quests at the end game.

The problem with these is that, once a character completes all -- or nearly all -- content, what next? DDO has already solved that by including reincarnation with perks for having done so.

So, while a player could certainly impose constraints there is no reason to do so with the current game. The game itself would need to change in order for such constraints to make any sense.

LoL and watch the game bleed even more players, we have seen again and again even though some minority in the forums moan for "harder content" in the end they don't really want that or support it.