Is DDO circling the drain?

[~Sarghi]

Is DDO circling the drain? For a while I keep thinking it's about to die, and it never does, which makes me wonder if either I'm just plain out wrong, or it's circling slower than I expected. Also, sorry in advance for the wall of text.

What I see, and mind you this is my own perception, is:
- There are less and less "knowledgeable players" playing the game. - That is to say more and more people I seem to run with, and I almost exclusively PUG, are simply ignorant about the game. Willfully ignorant at that. This could be that the better players are only playing with themselves, or it could be there's just less of them. The spread from level 1-20 to 1-25 may also dilute the playerbase considerably. Which brings to my next point of...

- There are less players playing. - Perhaps it is the dilution, but I think not. There are alot of PUGs from level 1-5 or so, and a steady amount of a few posted PUGs at 20-25, with a giant wasteland in-between. When I started, shortly at the f2p shift, one at any level range could pick and choose between at least 3-5 PUGs with almost invariably one working for you. Now, if you want a full group, even for popular quests such as Litany/VON3/Shadow Crypt, it takes forever. This has led to people, including myself, posting IP groups. I will wait for about 3 minutes to see if anyone joins up, and then just start running by myself with occasionally someone joining IP. The posting of IP groups means one needs to be more and more self-sufficient, which limits in turn who can join the group. I'm far more interested in a WF sorc than in a pure barbarian, because while the barb can self-heal with SF pots, those are not things one tends to have until later levels. This in turn excludes people, due to the simple nature of an evolved playerbase towards self-sufficiency.

- Turbine makes puzzling decisions - There have been no shortage of decisions in the past which riled up the playerbase. Everything from nerfing WoP to defining clerics as healbots to the personal pet peeve of mine of in U9 they removed sorcerer versatility. However as of late Turbine's focus has puzzled me. The enhancement update at the moment looks horrific, and while it may change it shows where the developer's mindset is. The forums are very, very bad. Being logged out every 2 minutes, and the pages take 10x as long to load as before, names not transferring, and really I don't need to go into depth here as you can read this in *every other thread.* I tend to be forgiving of decisions made by those I see as more knowledgeable than I but I am simply confused by this. The only rationale I can give is…

- Turbine just doesn’t care – Insert here what you don’t think they care about. The way I see it is that Turbine, and yes I am lumping the whole company together, feels they know what is best for you, and gosh darn it they are going to force-feed it to you until you see they are right. This is not me talking about the forum-goers’ thoughts as I believe the forum is made up of players who have a different perspective than the majority of the game playerbase. I mean, people on the forums are complaining about how EE is too easy. Most of the players I know in game would be happy to survive EH in a reasonably timeframe. People in the game for quite some time have been increasingly fed up with the lag, broken quests, missing epic chests, and more for years and yet… Turbine has said nothing. Not even on the forums, which are kinda intended for that. I’ve played quite a few other online games, and in each and every last one of them the developers talked with the players to find out what was going on. A stupid decision was made, and they reversed it. A major bug came out they couldn’t easily fix, they announced they were working on it. They had a test server which resulted in things changing because they listened to their players. There have been major, major bugs in the same which resulted in Turbine, at least visually, ignoring completely. There was the person who lost all their ED xp, and only got a result after a significant number of prominent players saying ‘screw this.’ I mean, was lag ever acknowledged? Raids and quests were being lost purely to lag and yet the discussion was as if it never happened and they professed surprise as if noone had ever told them. The 100x billing issue; forgetting to renew their domain name; the list goes on, and those are only the very recent problems. Perhaps they really don’t know what goes on. Perhaps WB is deciding to put as little money into the game as they can to try to squeeze out the last few dollars because they know trying to fix the game would be cost-prohibitive. Perhaps they are working to fix it, but won’t tell us for some reason. I don’t know, but it is hard to get the impression Turbine cares when they tell us nothing while Rome burns. I keep being reminded of the Iraqi Information Minister telling us everything was ok as the US forces crushed the Iraqi forces.

So, sorry for the wall of text, and the rather free flow thoughts, but I can’t help but wonder if things are going downhill, or if it’s all in my head. I tend to financially support the games which interest me, but I have a hard time giving Turbine money, even before the forum fiasco potentially uncovering financial details, when I just don’t have confidence the game will be around in a few months. If I had confidence it would be around, I would be supporting, but I just don’t think I would be surprised at this point if they announced they were closing up shop in a month, other than that they delayed until after getting the money-grab from the newest expansion.

[~kruemeli]

- There are less and less "knowledgeable players" playing the game. - That is to say more and more people I seem to run with, and I almost exclusively PUG, are simply ignorant about the game. Willfully ignorant at that. This could be that the better players are only playing with themselves

I like playing with myself. I play with myself all the time.

I also have much less patience than I did 2 years ago... for players that summon a L1 WF Barb Hireling in Elite Kobold Assault!



- There are less players playing. -

When I want to PUG (orien) I have never had problems. Even now.


- Turbine makes puzzling decisions

Turbine has been bought by a company that wants to Profit from LOTRO.
LOTRO is more popular than DDO.
Turbine wants/Needs to be profitable in order to survive.
These Facts enable one to understand turbine perfectly. (well except Fernando... but then he is the reason some of us are still playing! Paralyzing weapons for everyone!!!)



- Turbine just doesn’t care

See above. I am sure that they care.
It is just that they dont necessarily care about stuff that players care about!

I just wish that they would get it into their heads that selling torqs and SoS for 1000TP would be profitable.

EDIT: I had to relog in order to post (at least it didnt lose my text) and I had to open the EDIT in a new window/tab in order to edit!

[KweiLi]

Is DDO circling the drain? For a while I keep thinking it's about to die, and it never does, which makes me wonder if either I'm just plain out wrong, or it's circling slower than I expected. Also, sorry in advance for the wall of text.

What I see, and mind you this is my own perception, is:
- There are less and less "knowledgeable players" playing the game. - That is to say more and more people I seem to run with, and I almost exclusively PUG, are simply ignorant about the game. Willfully ignorant at that. This could be that the better players are only playing with themselves, or it could be there's just less of them. The spread from level 1-20 to 1-25 may also dilute the playerbase considerably. Which brings to my next point of...

Knowledgeable players don't pug. Simply put they don't need to.

- There are less players playing. - Perhaps it is the dilution, but I think not. There are alot of PUGs from level 1-5 or so, and a steady amount of a few posted PUGs at 20-25, with a giant wasteland in-between. When I started, shortly at the f2p shift, one at any level range could pick and choose between at least 3-5 PUGs with almost invariably one working for you. Now, if you want a full group, even for popular quests such as Litany/VON3/Shadow Crypt, it takes forever. This has led to people, including myself, posting IP groups. I will wait for about 3 minutes to see if anyone joins up, and then just start running by myself with occasionally someone joining IP. The posting of IP groups means one needs to be more and more self-sufficient, which limits in turn who can join the group. I'm far more interested in a WF sorc than in a pure barbarian, because while the barb can self-heal with SF pots, those are not things one tends to have until later levels. This in turn excludes people, due to the simple nature of an evolved playerbase towards self-sufficienct

I never pug and if I did, I'd never join an IP group. Why? Because whether I join the group or not, you will complete the quest. You don't need nor want me.

- Turbine makes puzzling decisions - There have been no shortage of decisions in the past which riled up the playerbase. Everything from nerfing WoP to defining clerics as healbots to the personal pet peeve of mine of in U9 they removed sorcerer versatility. However as of late Turbine's focus has puzzled me. The enhancement update at the moment looks horrific, and while it may change it shows where the developer's mindset is. The forums are very, very bad. Being logged out every 2 minutes, and the pages take 10x as long to load as before, names not transferring, and really I don't need to go into depth here as you can read this in *every other thread.* I tend to be forgiving of decisions made by those I see as more knowledgeable than I but I am simply confused by this. The only rationale I can give is…

Can't argue here. Although what people view as "bad" or "horrific" is variable. And remember web folk are not game devs.

- Turbine just doesn’t care – Insert here what you don’t think they care about. The way I see it is that Turbine, and yes I am lumping the whole company together, feels they know what is best for you, and gosh darn it they are going to force-feed it to you until you see they are right. This is not me talking about the forum-goers’ thoughts as I believe the forum is made up of players who have a different perspective than the majority of the game playerbase. I mean, people on the forums are complaining about how EE is too easy. Most of the players I know in game would be happy to survive EH in a reasonably timeframe. People in the game for quite some time have been increasingly fed up with the lag, broken quests, missing epic chests, and more for years and yet… Turbine has said nothing. Not even on the forums, which are kinda intended for that. I’ve played quite a few other online games, and in each and every last one of them the developers talked with the players to find out what was going on. A stupid decision was made, and they reversed it. A major bug came out they couldn’t easily fix, they announced they were working on it. They had a test server which resulted in things changing because they listened to their players. There have been major, major bugs in the same which resulted in Turbine, at least visually, ignoring completely. There was the person who lost all their ED xp, and only got a result after a significant number of prominent players saying ‘screw this.’ I mean, was lag ever acknowledged? Raids and quests were being lost purely to lag and yet the discussion was as if it never happened and they professed surprise as if noone had ever told them. The 100x billing issue; forgetting to renew their domain name; the list goes on, and those are only the very recent problems. Perhaps they really don’t know what goes on. Perhaps WB is deciding to put as little money into the game as they can to try to squeeze out the last few dollars because they know trying to fix the game would be cost-prohibitive. Perhaps they are working to fix it, but won’t tell us for some reason. I don’t know, but it is hard to get the impression Turbine cares when they tell us nothing while Rome burns. I keep being reminded of the Iraqi Information Minister telling us everything was ok as the US forces crushed the Iraqi forces.

Turbine gave up communication long ago in this game. Then again the forum community here is anyting but contructive and its mostly just vile. Anybody with reason or something actually constructive gets ignored by turbine and flamed by trolls.l

So, sorry for the wall of text, and the rather free flow thoughts, but I can’t help but wonder if things are going downhill, or if it’s all in my head. I tend to financially support the games which interest me, but I have a hard time giving Turbine money, even before the forum fiasco potentially uncovering financial details, when I just don’t have confidence the game will be around in a few months. If I had confidence it would be around, I would be supporting, but I just don’t think I would be surprised at this point if they announced they were closing up shop in a month, other than that they delayed until after getting the money-grab from the newest expansion.

DDO isn't close to dying. Asheron's Call is still going. I'd get worried when they close that game. Until then, the game will simply make $$$ from Otto's Boxes alone.

[~Sarghi]

KweiLi, I can't really disagree with much of what you say. I was more giving writing to thoughts I had been having for some time. Perhaps it is just that more and more of the bugs are affecting me, and it's time for me to take an indefinite break. Perhaps I am psyching myself out over the whole thing.

kruemeli, I can however respectfully disagree with you.

The PUG scene on Orien is a shadow of itself from a few years ago. Perhaps it falls down to what KweiLi pointed out of that the better players simply don't have to PUG any more, or perhaps there are simply less players, who knows. However, I can assure you that the PUG scene is much worse than it was when I can remember.

The profitability I understand, but their decisions just don't seem to make sense in that context. Alienating players, making things more difficult, ignoring gaping bugs which are bad enough to make people stop play? Those don't make sense. The things which do make sense, even if I don't like, are the increased P2P models, such as making bugs a solvable by store items, pets, etc.

I do however agree with you that I think Turbine cares, just not about what we care about. However, there needs to be some overlap, or the players not being satisfied will mean they stop paying, which Turbine should care about. I have little doubt the employees themselves care about their 'baby' but I simply don't think management understands that ****ing off your playerbase consistently is a poor business model.

(Ugh, logged out in the time it took me to copy/paste this? Seriously? I was on the post-page for all of 15 seconds after logging in...)

[Deadlock]

The new enhancement pass is in alpha. We demanded to see it as soon as possible, Turbine have obliged and now people are crying DoOm!11!!! because it's very rough. It has major design flaws in AP spend and junk enhancements, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. We wanted to see it early. We've got it. It's very much a work in progress. If it goes to beta without major changes, then I'll be the first to change my tune :)

The lack of LFM's is a constant issue, and this just feeds the nerd-rage on the forums at the BYOH parties that people post up - as I've said repeatedly before, the issue isn't with BYOH, they are designed for a certain type of player - the issue is the lack of available options that inevitably forces noobs and nubers to join a party they just aren't experienced/geared/built for.

The increased level range from 1 to 25 definitely spreads the player base. With a bigger player base we have more LFM's and more options. Sometimes we hear that people aren't LFMing because they're in guild parties or in channel parties. That's no different now from how it's always been, so I don't see that as an excuse for the lack of LFM's. And on Ghallanda, I'm in the raid channels and the raids aren't prolific enough to account for the lack of LFM's.

I will say that one of the things that we have seen over the years is that the player base has matured. We have people like myself who have been playing since just after beta. We've been around the block a few times. For some that makes them very reluctant to pug. As someone who still sticks up pug LFM's, sometimes I can't blame them for their reluctance.

Whenever a new game is released there's the usual end-is-nigh paranoia this created - last time it was something involving light sabers, this time it's some console rip-off that's stolen the honoured name of a classic PC game. A lot of people dabble, but many of them lose interest and return to DDO.

The biggest issue for me is the lack of cross-channel marketing that's instigated by Wizards Of The Coast as the owner of the D&D Franchise. Every single D&D product you buy right now should give you a code for 30 days VIP access to DDO. Maybe another code for Neverwinter, but I don't really care about that. To me, that is a complete no-brainer. You're getting people who (a) have an active enough interest in D&D to purchase a product (b) have just spent money on a D&D related product so have money to spend. Unfortunately it seems to be down to Franchisee whether that's Turbine or Warner Brothers to foot the bill for the marketing. And it's lack of marketing that damages the game more than anything.

If the people at Turbine / Warner Brothers were smart, they would be piggy-backing on the interest in the D&D brand created around the Neverwinter marketing. I would be marketing DDO as having all of the complex customisation, character creation, sophisticated mechanics and real-time combat mechanics that people want ... and Neverwinter as something like D&D with the training wheels still on.

Potentially, the new enhancement system and the new expansions that are in the works could be the best thing that we've had for a long time, but Turbine need to focus on what makes DDO unique. Flexibility and fun being paramount among them. Don't give us lousy restrictions on the new enhancements, give us more detailed character sheets to detail the mechanics that we have to deal with and eliminate the guess work from things like spell critical multipliers and glancing blow proc chances.

So I'd say no, it's not circling the drain, but the perceived lack of high-level action from the powers that be at Turbine could lead you think that.

[~kruemeli]

kruemeli, I can however respectfully disagree with you.

How do you know if I like playing with myself????

Are you spying on me?


The PUG scene on Orien is a shadow of itself from a few years ago.

I never said that it was as it was.... but I have always pugged when I want to. And I never really had to wait...
But then I can solo enough quests to make Progress... and pugging has become more of a pleasure thing than a need thing!
(or at least a thing that stops my guildies whining about PUGging...)


The profitability I understand, but their decisions just don't seem to make sense in that context. Alienating players, making things more difficult, ignoring gaping bugs which are bad enough to make people stop play?

Every dollar spent on DDO is a dollar that could be spent on LOTRO... hell even CORDOVAN has been spotted working the LOTRO Forums....

The point is that WB is interested in LOTRO... every piece of attention that is taken away from that is wasted (for them).


I do however agree with you that I think Turbine cares, just not about what we care about. However, there needs to be some overlap, or the players not being satisfied will mean they stop paying, which Turbine should care about. I have little doubt the employees themselves care about their 'baby' but I simply don't think management understands that ****ing off your playerbase consistently is a poor business model.

I am saying that DDO is irrelevant. SO whether we want what we want or not is irrelvant! Because every dev-hour spent on DDO is a dev-Hour that could be spent on something much more profitable!

I logged out and had to log in whilst posting this!

[~Sarghi]

I am saying that DDO is irrelevant. SO whether we want what we want or not is irrelvant! Because every dev-hour spent on DDO is a dev-Hour that could be spent on something much more profitable!

I logged out and had to log in whilst posting this!

Apparently I misunderstood what you were saying earlier. In that case, I can't help but agree with you. I suppose I hadn't really given the LOTRO vs. DDO perspective enough thought.

[~kruemeli]

Apparently I misunderstood what you were saying earlier. In that case, I can't help but agree with you. I suppose I hadn't really given the LOTRO vs. DDO perspective enough thought.

Sometimes I feel like I am suffering because English is not my first language.

I just hope that WB keeps DDO online because it brings some Money... I hope they realise that I would not jump to LOTRO if DDO dies....

I hope they realise that a dev. tracker is necessary for the Forums.
I hope.........

EDIT: I hope they realise I hate relogging. I hope they realise I hate having to open the edit in a new window/tab!!!

[PermaBanned]

Is DDO circling the drain?
The short answer is yes, but only since ~2006 ;)

[~Grumpycat]

However you wish to speculate, there is a counter to prove you wrong on both sides of that argument. The only advice I have is if you believe it, dont spend money. If you dont, then spend away.

Everyone is mad at one change or another. For me, currently, its the lack of GH quests in the compendium, Baudry down, broken things that have never really been fixed such as the rat maze in Necro 3 still being bugged a bit, and them talking about revamping the Enhancement system (which was fine the way it is) and lv 28 before fixing those. (especially the memory leak that's causing the majority of the lag).

But circling the drain? If you had the money that WB has, would you waste it on something that's dying? Maybe for a tax write off but it wouldn't be DDO. It would be something that you could actually make money on the loss like the several solar energy companies that have died recently so you would get a big tax break on both end from the government.

Even if Im wrong, which I'm not, DDO will die when it dies and we will move on. We will shed a tear (real or virtual) and play something else. I've been playing for 5 1/2 years and what I know one thing. Every month since I have joined there has been a doom thread.

[~Kaytis]

One slight problem on Orien is that the population is about 1/3 of what it was a couple of years ago. This can lead to fewer pugs in general. I suspect it's an even smaller fraction of what it was when I started playing but I didn't start keeping track of it that far back. These days there are about 500 to 600 people logged in at prime time Eastern. Top tier raiding guilds have no more than a handful of members on a night now.

I don't like what I am seeing on Lam either. I sincerely hope that Turbine doesn't follow through with the nerfs there. Nobody wants to see their efforts burned. I worked for two years ekeing out a halfway decent sorc (you and I have short-manned ADQ a few times Sarghi). If what's on Lam goes through, I am going to be hugely disappointed. I *really* *truely* don't want to do all that again with some class that hasn't been mutilated.

I do know people that have left after their toons got nerfed. I always thought they would come back. Many people on the forums have assured me that they would come back. But they have not. Nerfs don't bring new players to the game -but they do cause some to leave. At the moment at least one server is bleeding heavily. The last thing we need is another wave of disappointed players leaving.

[Ironclans_evil_twin]

It's not circling the drain any more than it ever was, it's just dropping below the critical mass of players it needs to overcome the massive anti grouping friction built into it's PUG system.

It's also just not the flavor of the month right now, with the terrible strategic timing of a forum change that is clearly a complete disaster and a scary looking enhancement pass that looks like they're going to push it in with minor changes regardless of how amazingly unpopular and newly restrictive it is.

As people have commented the Dev's chat Q&A's make it pretty clear that they're not interested in changing some of the more arbitrary and needless new restrictions no matter how universally disliked they seem to be. and by their own words "We know we're going to break your builds"... it's turning established players like myself off of the game. The fact that two simple changes would allow 99% of our builds to NOT BREAK, but they aren't listening, or they are and they intentionally ignoring those two simple changes, makes it even harder to log in and play a character. When you know it will be needlessly broken in a couple months, and the best they will do is pony up an LR with no class changes. Why level something that's going to be willfully (and needlessly) broken by the Dev's soon?

Then there's the Bad timing with Neverwinter Online launching at the very least, you've got droves of casual players saying "why keep playing this game that's hard to find groups in, and complex and dated graphics, and seems to be undergoing a bunch of changes that very few players support, when I can try this new flavor with simpler gameplay and fresh new stuff, and hey it's named after possibly the best D&D video game ever made. They are both F2P, one just has far less going for it from a casual MMO perspective.

DDO's biggest problem is that new players sit around wishing there was a group forming and spend 3 hours watching TV with the LFM window open instead of grouping. Some of them go solo, some of them (very few new players IMO) start their own LFM's and then get no joiners like a lot of of us that start LFM's. A lot of them are just going to look elsewhere for a different game instead of sticking it out with a DDOwiki window open to double check flagging and quest location before they click on someones group. I have struggled with the LFM system since I started playing. I have done every thing I just described, it may not be how you play DDO (just solo, go IP why waste time waiting for groups to fill) but it's what I expect from any multiplayer game. I still spend hours every night not wanting to solo, looking for LFM's or waiting for joiners. Sometime I fill right away, some times you get 1 other and 20 minutes later you go IP out of sheer boredom and sometimes the 1 other drops after 2 minutes. It's a carpshoot, at the best of times... when a bunch of the player base is off doing other stuff, it strangles the game.

DDO's grouping has so many impediments that sitting around and not playing is part of the DDO experience, as is DDOwiki running in the background so you can tab to it.

The sad fact is I don't think the Devs have any idea how many players are watching the LFM window not finding groups, not filling and not wanting to solo. I don't play MMO's for single player... they are frankly terrible at being single player RPG's. I am only interested in grouping and the chaos and unfettered variety of PUG'ing is my main source of enjoyment of DDO. Solo if you like that, but don't tell me the LFM system is fine, just go IP and/or solo.

[Chai]

The sad fact is I don't think the Devs have any idea how many players are watching the LFM window not finding groups, not filling and not wanting to solo. I don't play MMO's for single player... they are frankly terrible at being single player RPG's. I am only interested in grouping and the chaos and unfettered variety of PUG'ing is my main source of enjoyment of DDO. Solo if you like that, but don't tell me the LFM system is fine, just go IP and/or solo.

I dont believe any game can be coded differently to change peoples attitudes, short of making the game literal forced cooperation, EQ style, where everyone has a specific role and playing it to the top of its potential makes XP faster. Players have already expressed en masse that they wont even accept this for elite only, defending scaling and crucibling of quests that pose a challenge on the toughest difficulty in the game.

If people want to group but not want to lead, they are part of the issue. Turbine cannot code their game to make people want to be leaders, be nicer, all play the same way, etc etc. Attitude changes come from the players themselves. People need to start putting up LFMs if they dont see anything in their range, and want to play. They also need to lead when they put up the LFM. If they dont want the responsibility, thats fine by me, but then they CHOOSE to play the waiting game. Think about it, only 1 in 6 of those people who are all sitting there waiting for someone else to lead need to take the initiative, and theres no longer an issue.

[nibel]

The fact that two simple changes would allow 99% of our builds to NOT BREAK, but they aren't listening, or they are and they intentionally ignoring those two simple changes, makes it even harder to log in and play a character.

I hope those two proposed changes are not "allow us to have infinite trees" and "allow us to unlock tier 5 in a tree spending points in another tree" (or looking at only total AP spent). While I can discuss about three trees not being enough, unlimited access to any available tree, with all Tier 0 autogrants, is simply too powerful.

[Hokiewa]

Yes. It's been one debacle after another since the first expansion. Financial expectations for the second expansion should not be high, but I would doubt that is the case. It's a shame, but it certainly shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone paying attention.

[HotMaarl]

I believe many of the people at Turbine care plenty (look at any picture or video of Tolero and tell me she doesn't love her job!!!). Warner Brothers inserted the life-saving cash into the game and now they have a say on how things proceed. And it's clear that they want to make MAX money. This means we have to absorb some things we don't like.

Constant development and updates > all the petty things people here nerdrage about.

Play the game, or don't. WB reads metrics like new accounts per month and TP spent and bug reports filed. They don't waste time trying to gauge forum emo moods.

If you want them to notice, you gotta do something that registers on one of their metrics. Posts here just waste everybody's time. I can't believe this needs to be explained.

[~popejubal]

- Turbine just doesn’t care –

I think that Turbine does care - both individually and collectively. I think that they do want to put out a quality product and I do think that they want to be proud of what they do instead of being proud of the ideas that they have and then embarrassed by the implementation of those ideas.

And I think that they don't believe that the things they care about are possible. The company as a whole seems depressed and defeated, like a restaurant that needs Gordon Ramsay's intervention. There is real potential there, but the people at the company who make the decisions don't think that publishing a quality product that has fewer bugs at each release than it had in the previous release is even possible. And they feel like they're trying hard and they are doing a lot of work, but it's a lot of work trying to fix things that never should have been broken while they let new broken things slip into production. And if they could get on top of their problems for even a short time, then they'd have fewer issues because they'd spend *SO* much less time putting out fires that they could actually start preventing those fires in the first place.

But that would require both a tremendous effort AND the belief that it's actually possible. Turbine doesn't seem to have either of those things.

[Chai]

I hope those two proposed changes are not "allow us to have infinite trees" and "allow us to unlock tier 5 in a tree spending points in another tree" (or looking at only total AP spent). While I can discuss about three trees not being enough, unlimited access to any available tree, with all Tier 0 autogrants, is simply too powerful.

Infinite trees would not be unbalancing. Theres already a limiting factor in there that balances the equation. 80 points. What that 3 tree limit does is make it so toons we have built today cannot be built after the pass. It puts multiclassing in severe check.

[~mynameisnotallowed]

The company as a whole seems depressed and defeated, like a restaurant that needs Gordon Ramsay's intervention. T

I think "Ramsay's Gaming Nightmares" with Turbine as a first episode, would be awesome! I don't even get television, but I would find a way to watch that!

[Ironclans_evil_twin]

I hope those two proposed changes are not "allow us to have infinite trees" and "allow us to unlock tier 5 in a tree spending points in another tree" (or looking at only total AP spent). While I can discuss about three trees not being enough, unlimited access to any available tree, with all Tier 0 autogrants, is simply too powerful.

The changes are often discussed on Lam forums and are highly popular even among people who tend to disagree with each other regularly. They include using a universal AP spent requirement (as in how it works on live) instead of "AP spent in tree" as well as removing the generic enhancements from highly specific PrE trees which can arbitrarily lock you out of taking them if you don't want "20 AP spent in tree" to get an enhancement that used to have nothing to do with any PrE.

With those two changes most current builds can be re-created in the new system.

As it stands the only new builds are just overpowered combinations of previously impossible Teir III + Tier I or II PrE's... Once they raise those minimum levels which seems like an inevitability to me, those impossible combinations will be gone or highly mitigated. And we will be left with a system that breaks every thoughtful build in the game, while giving a few shiny new flavors of the month, and a whole lot of pathways to pigeonholes.

By definition if things that are currently possible are eliminated then the pass has restricted choice and lowered variety. Right now the shiny "new choices" are mostly broken combinations that wont survive "beta phase".

If our current builds break, and the shiny Demi-god "you only need 5 levels to get all the good stuff in two different PrE's" builds never make it into the game... well I don't have to point out that it's a massive movement towards the drain.

[~ChipmunkFunk]

I was visiting family late last year, sitting at the kitchen table playing ddo on my laptop and my nephew was sitting next to me playing league of legends on his parents laptop. I asked him why he did not play ddo anymore. He said his friends had stopped playing. When I asked why they stopped playing, he explained that the game was too complicated. After asking for more detail it was clear that his group of friends did not want to play a game that they had to tab out to the wiki to know what to do next.

There really should be a quick and easy way to get all important (for a new player) information in game. For example is the quest giver in a tavern, on top of a building, is the quest a walkup, is it a flagging quest, do you have to be flagged to do the quest and if so what quests do you need to do and in what order.

All of this information should NOT be imbedded in npc dialog. There needs to be a quick and easy way to check for this information in the game.

[nibel]

Infinite trees would not be unbalancing. Theres already a limiting factor in there that balances the equation. 80 points. What that 3 tree limit does is make it so toons we have built today cannot be built after the pass. It puts multiclassing in severe check.

It would be if the first core ability stay costing zero points. Eg, a Rogue 18/Ranger 1/Monk 1 would have cheap access to:

Infinite arrows (1 AP on AA tree)
+1d6 sneak attack damage (1 AP on Deepwood tree) and more ranged sneak range
Centered with shortswords (1 AP on ninja tree)
Access to grandmaster stances
Plus their main shtick on the three rogue trees

Unlimited trees works if they remove the autogrants. Some of them are flavorful enough to be a problem to remove them. So, I stand by my reason that unlimited trees are unbalanced.


The changes are often discussed on Lam forums and are highly popular even among people who tend to disagree with each other regularly. They include using a universal AP spent requirement (as in how it works on live) instead of "AP spent in tree" as well as removing the generic enhancements from highly specific PrE trees which can arbitrarily lock you out of taking them if you don't want "20 AP spent in tree" to get an enhancement that used to have nothing to do with any PrE.

I'm all in for generic enhancements to be very low on the tree (T1 or T2). I'm totally in for removing feat-required enhancements from T1 altogether (Like Kensei tree have 2 feat-dependent abilities on T1). But I'm not found on the "total AP spent" idea at all. The examples made themselves. A clonk could send all their points on their domain trees, and then go and grab a T5 monk ability because they already spent 78 AP on a non-related tree?


With those two changes most current builds can be re-created in the new system.

The loudest cry I see for re-creating current builds are from non-ranger AAs: Bardchers, angels, bowbarians, monkchers...

All the other build splashes are based on class abilities and feat combinations. Enhancements there are a bonus. However, the current archer builds will be forced to spend some points on racial tree, and then invest A LOT of points on the AA tree to be reasonably good/versatile with a bow. I agree this change will kill those builds.

And I don't care about them. Builds that use every single scrap point to milk the system are expected to be broken if the system changes.

Pure classes, in general, will be better.

12/6 builds, in general, will stay the same or better.


By definition if things that are currently possible are eliminated then the pass has restricted choice and lowered variety. Right now the shiny "new choices" are mostly broken combinations that wont survive "beta phase".

If our current builds break, and the shiny Demi-god "you only need 5 levels to get all the good stuff in two different PrE's" builds never make it into the game... well I don't have to point out that it's a massive movement towards the drain.

It depends on how much the devs will make the 6/12/18/20 core abilities more powerful. I think it is too early to say the sky is falling. On the second pass, the panic button can be closer to our hand. But on alpha? Test things out, give your feedback, answer the surveys, and wait. Scream nerfs on Beta, and panic when the release date is set.

[Chai]

It would be if the first core ability stay costing zero points. Eg, a Rogue 18/Ranger 1/Monk 1 would have cheap access to:

Infinite arrows (1 AP on AA tree)
+1d6 sneak attack damage (1 AP on Deepwood tree) and more ranged sneak range
Centered with shortswords (1 AP on ninja tree)
Access to grandmaster stances
Plus their main shtick on the three rogue trees

Unlimited trees works if they remove the autogrants. Some of them are flavorful enough to be a problem to remove them. So, I stand by my reason that unlimited trees are unbalanced.


The 80 point limitation keeps them from attaining even 2 of the entire main lines. Theyd have ACCESS to those things, but they would not be able to have anywhere near all of them at the same time. So I maintain that the number of points required to move up trees combined with having 80 points total is already balancing enough. Arbitrary 3 tree limitation is arbitrary.

Its going to be really terrible if this turns out to be one big stealth proxy nerf. There are already things I can build today that cannot be built on lamannia. Changes should make the game better, which means less restricting in this case. People think end game is too cookie cutter now? If this goes live and its more restricting arbitrarily than what we have now, its only going to make the game more cookie cutter, not less.

DDO sets itself apart from other MMOs through character building customization, and FPS play action. The three tree limitation makes it look more like a clone MMO.

[Chai]

And I don't care about them. Builds that use every single scrap point to milk the system are expected to be broken if the system changes.

With the new system being more limiting than the old system, theres no way it could be broken to allow people to take enhancements in more than 3 trees. Its not even broken today, due to the 80 point limitation. Having ACCESS to alot of stuff does not equal having ALL of it at the SAME TIME.


Pure classes, in general, will be better.

Not with the way abilities I can have ALL OF on live are distributed in a way that I CANNOT HAVE ALL OF after the pass goes live.


12/6 builds, in general, will stay the same or better.

12/6/2/ builds will be dead. This is where the 3 tree limitation ABSOLUTELY KILLS MULTICLASSING. The player sacrificed 8 levels of vertical advancement in one class to gain absolutely nothing in the other 2 classes. Using enhancements in the 6 level class or the 2 level class negates ENTIRE TREES in the 12 level class. Sacrificing vertical enhancement in one area should allow for lateral advancement in another, as it does today on live.

[nibel]

The 80 point limitation keeps them from attaining even 2 of the entire main lines. Theyd have ACCESS to those things, but they would not be able to have anywhere near all of them at the same time. So I maintain that the number of points required to move up trees combined with having 80 points total is already balancing enough. Arbitrary 3 tree limitation is arbitrary.

Notice that my original reply implied that the suggestion would be allow infinite trees AND general AP spending unlocking. Requiring AP unlocking by tree will balance the unlimited trees somewhat.

But as showed up, looks like you and Ironclaw are against one of my opinions, but not on the same point.

If we should have unlimited trees, the core abilities (The bottom line) should be weaker on the 1-3 level, and higher tier enhancements should be gated by AP unlocking on the tree.

If we should have general AP gating, there should be a limit on how many trees you have, so that you don't spend all your points in tier 1-4 on two useful trees, and catch only a powerful tier 5 ability in a third/fourth/fifth one.

[nibel]

Not with the way abilities I can have ALL OF on live are distributed in a way that I CANNOT HAVE ALL OF after the pass goes live.

12/6/2/ builds will be dead. This is where the 3 tree limitation ABSOLUTELY KILLS MULTICLASSING.

Just like you can't have all stuff you have on live with some builds, you CAN have stuff you can't have on live on the actual lamma build (that will be changed in a near future). And at least on two builds of mine (a halfling rogue and a dwarf fighter), when I tranferred them to Lamma, they got better stuff than what they have on live, except by obvious bugs, like stalwart stance turning off every time I switched weapons.

12/6/2 might be dead IF they were making use of a lot of enhancements on the 2-level class. You might miss an Haste boost, or wand mastery. Maybe a class Toughness. But that heavily depends on that your 12/6 classes are. Eg, an acrobat rogue/monk/(fighter or druid) 13/6/1 will survive having only the acrobat, assassin and ninja trees. A bardcher 16/2/2 Bard/ranger/fighter will suffer to qualify for AA, but can switch up the fighter levels for a 16/4 bard/ranger and get access to T4 AA tree without requiring 22 points on the elf tree.

And there is the problem that not every class have three trees right now. So, for a 2-trees class like bards, paladins and fighters, multiclassing just give you an extra tree. You are not worse than going pure (except by missing the core 20).

[~Grumpycat]

I believe many of the people at Turbine care plenty (look at any picture or video of Tolero and tell me she doesn't love her job!!!). Warner Brothers inserted the life-saving cash into the game and now they have a say on how things proceed. And it's clear that they want to make MAX money. This means we have to absorb some things we don't like.

Constant development and updates > all the petty things people here nerdrage about.

Play the game, or don't. WB reads metrics like new accounts per month and TP spent and bug reports filed. They don't waste time trying to gauge forum emo moods.

If you want them to notice, you gotta do something that registers on one of their metrics. Posts here just waste everybody's time. I can't believe this needs to be explained.

This and TOTALLY this.

If you want to effect real changes, speak with your wallet or lack of it in this case. You stop spending money and they'll hear you. Whining in the forums, as stated in the above quote, is a waste of time.

[Drus-the-Axe]

The devs have already said the divine trees need work. What exactly that turns into remains to be seen, but that's the nature of "alpha". It works. Barely. For some values of the word "work". I for one am glad to see they shared so early. I have some reservations over various specifics, and the overall 'holistic' impacts ('simplifying' most into 'simpler' and more limited roles, for one), but others have expressed the concerns well.

No. The enhancement pass isn't DDO's biggest problem (or pending one). There are 2 critical flaws today, of Turbine's making:
1. Stone of Experience
2. Ship buffs
3. BB

Stones seem like a good idea on the surface. Jet folks forward to high enough level to play MotU. Problem is they work too well. Many skip levels 8-15, turning them into a nearly party-less 'dead zone'. Couple that with the thinner selection of questions in the low teens (and the ones available tend to be older, more complicated, or require multiple players). I enjoy PUG'ing. I generally don't run with a guild. And that's OK. Or at least, it was. The past year+ it's gotten harder to find parties, in that 'mid' range. Partly as noted the wider 1-25 range spread out the population a bit. Partly DDO's not the hot Game of the Month. But partly because of Stones. It's hard to explain anything else when you find multiple parties up, all oddly stopping around level 7, then nothing until high teens. TDNBW.

Ship buffs are horribly unbalancing and OP'd. Tell me why a level 1 toon can walk into a ship and get 30pts acid resist and other buffs normally requiring a caster level of 11+.

Ship buffs also produce a nasty SOCIAL affect. Since they're so OP'd, lots of folks want them. Think you _need_ them. So every quest or two it's time to go out for dinner and drinks, while many scamper off to their ships for the latest 'fix'. Buff junkies. Some parties I've been in, folks run off to their ship between _every_ quest. Now some of these are TRs who know what they're doing. Some are powerjunkies who want every last little boost. And many are 'introduced' to the life of a ship buff junky since 'everyone else is doing so I should/can too'.

Bravery Bonus causes many to run elite first (or only). Before BB folks would run normal + hard before elite (sometimes multiple times), but now many refuse to run anything but elite (whether or not they're up to it). I'd rather run no-elite quests than sit around for a half hour waiting for an elite group to form (oddly enough, the latter don't earn xp for those 30 minutes, and somehow think they're coming out ahead...)

DDO cannot survive as an Eveningstar-only game. Even if everyone had the option to start at level 15, there's not enough content (and won't be for a while).

I only see partial solutions.

Stones
The 7-16 game suffers (badly) whenever Stones are available (and quite a while after, since most don't take their lvl 5 toons to 10+ overnight). This is a problem of Turbine's making, and likely a profitable one at least in the short-term. I see fiscal incentive not to change this, but it has negative implications over the long-term. I've thought about it a fair bit, but the only solution I can see is to kill Stones, and I doubt that'll be desirable to Turbine (they undoubtedly bring in good coin), or to some of the community (3rd+ lifers no doubt tired of running some of that content repeatedly). This is worrisome.

Ship buffs
This is easily solved -- scale the buff to character level. A level 3 barbarian using a fire resistance shrine should only get 10pts resistance, or +1 stat boost, or... Resist Energy is 10/20/30 resistance for levels 1/7?/11, _at least_ use the same scale. Perhaps a bigger nerfbat is needed, to scale up through at least heroic levels, e.g. for 3 tiers go 1/8/15 or maybe something like 4/10/16. Considering they can't be dispelled like normal spells and cost a party 0 sp, they should give less benefit than spells at the same level. As is, ship buffs are unbalanced and OP'd.

Bravery Bonus
This has been discussed before. A simple change so you only get BB/hard on your 2nd life and BB/elite on your 3rd+ is one option. That may cause its own troubles, e.g. TRs would prefer to run elite-only and likely to see fewer non-TR in parties with TRs. Of course, one could question how that differs from today, and it would certainly encourage 1st and 2nd lifers.

Take a look at server populations via DDOracle e.g. Thelanis
http://ddoracle.com/Thelanis.html
Throw "Characters by Level" (2nd set of data) into Excel and make a line graph, and you see the trend
level 1 drops to ~half as many by level 3, flat through 5, then a HUGE spike at 6, plummeting for 7, then a ~60 degree slope up to 10, a drop at 11, a small incline to ~18 and then peaks then then a steep dropoff around 22-23 through 25. The numbers vary a bit but the chart's about the same for Khyber and Argo and others. Stones seem likely to be a key factor behind the spike @ lvl 6. That's also where the game starts to get harder, and some of the free content starts to get thinner. The trough @ 10+ seems likely due to content - the low teens have been a poor spot for quests for a long time. The popoulation doesn't really recover until ~16, and there's a dramatic rise ~17-18. There's an interesting valley @ 20, probably due to TR.


So..no. Sorry OP. The enhancement pass needs some serious love, but it is alpha so I'd be shocked if it didn't. I for one am heartened to see such early work shared for feedback. Kudos to Turbine for doing this.

The question now is how Turbine moves forward. Since they're removing the enhancements to test UI18 it'll be a while until the next batch of enhancement changes are shared. This hopefully gives them time to review and think on the feedback to date, and take steps to improve this change. What that new round of enhancement changes address (esp the meta- issues) will likely be telling.


But DOOM? No. It's premature to declare Doom.

There ARE reasons to fear today. Stones, ship buffs and BB are each destabilizing factors in their current form, inimical to the long term health of DDO. If you want to declare Doom, you should be pointing to those and urging Turbine to take steps to address those issues.