An introduction: you can call me Doctor Loot

[DrOctothorpe]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your characters are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

[shibe]

It is unfortunate that the Nightmare got nerfed. Maybe lessen the nerf and we will have a winner again.

Oh and welcome....

[Silverleafeon]

Hello, love your avatar picture, don't let enthusiastic fans drive you away, and smiles at your post.


My main when at level 28 always wears bracers of +10 con +10 protection ac as bracers are less used by her.
She loves her cloak which is a busy spot for her: Sage mantel / EE jewel cloak / all five prismatic cloaks in EE.

She had a thanksgiving giveaway, and one of the hottest items were her two convalescent bracers of parrying.

I think one of the biggest problems in the random loot system is items bonuses to healing amp.
Could we consolidate and bring back thus dropping in the loot tables.
Perhaps like dodge ~ increase the item bonuses but make the item bonuses not stack.
This would free up space.
Also could we have the same nonstacking items bonus on a yellow augment.

Healing amp is a big concern for must toons.

Also remember, repair amp or negative energy amp on items could be a good thing too.

[HatsuharuZ]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

In Order:

1) The problem (to me) is the Accuracy and Deadly items. They're very powerful, especially Deadly. They lessen the importance of named loot, add to power creep, and will likely become a *necessary* item for melee characters to equip, do to the fact that Deadly items are widely available and stack with everything except for one or two named items and a barbarian enhancement.

2) Quarterstaves that break material-type damage reduction, and q-staves with the Densewood property. The former is important for enemies with DR, while the latter is important since q-staves break more easily than metal weapons.

3) Deadly items.

[rest]

Everything that's happened to loot recently should never have happened. DON'T DO THAT and I am certain that you'll be well loved.

Take a page out of Gensai's (RIP) book and actually listen. Don't let the loot YOU would love to use (OMG THAT'S SO RANDOMMMM XXXXXD ) cloud your judgement in such a way that it prevents you from seeing what the playerbase wants and uses.

When creating new loot prefixes and suffixes, don't completely remove the previous effects that people enjoyed. Convalescent, omniscience, meteoric, tempestuous jump immediately to mind as some of my absolute favorites. I'll never ever ever use a riposte or parrying weapon. Ever.

Stop with the roman numeral junk. In the long long ago, actual numbers were added (AND ROMAN NUMERALS REMOVED i.e. potency VI) to indicate at a glance how powerful an item was (see also disable +11 vs disable +15). This had the ultra happy side benefit of making stuff easily searchable on the AH. Now we have Flaming. How powerful? I don't know, let me hover over it and see. Actually I decided I don't even care how flamey this weapon is. I'll take something else that isn't just plain stupid.

[Munkenmo]

As the new loot dev, could you please put some pressure on the appropriate people to fix some enhancements that break the named short sword Celestia.

See this thread (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/427791-Drow-Warpriest-and-Celestias-%28) for an example of specific details.

[HungarianRhapsody]

1) I'd very much like to see Cannith crafting get new recipes. It's decent for leveling gear, but when you consider just how much you need to

2) I'd like to see the old scroll/seal/shard Epic items get some love. It takes a VERY long time to get those items and they're just mid-game "passing through" loot now. I do think that having a significant investment in getting end game items is fine, but for items that you're just going to wear for a few levels, I think it's reasonable to just have the item itself drop directly OR add a seal exchange and shard exchange just like the Scroll exchange that we have now.

3) I think that random loot is mostly fine. Most of it is vendor trash and there is an occasional shining example of a great item. I'd like to see raid loot surpass that lootgen gear in most circumstances. That's a particular concern for caster weapons since there is nothing exciting in CitW for Clerics/FvS that have spells as their primary focus and Twilight isn't very exciting for Wizards/Sorcerers/Artificers compared to a variety of the lootgen caster sticks that are available.

4) Interesting items are more appealing to me than items that just have raw power from better numbers. Madstone boots, Torc, etc. are all more interesting and more fun than just a +12 [blah] item even if that is better than a +10 [blah] item.

[Myrddinman]

Welcome Doctor! Love the name :) Thanks for stopping by and engaging.

Since this thread is in it's infancy, and before it gets blasted with responses (which I am certain it will), let me say that I would love to see some of the following...

- More named quivers...heck, random quivers would be awesome too!
- More named Shurikens
- Moar Ghostbanez (sorry, couldn't resist)


I will leave the finer details and discussion of the state of random loot to the experts...

[Grosbeak07]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

1. My biggest problem is that I don't feel I'm adding anything to my character, these days, but seem to be constantly rearranging the same things into different slots.

2. Less desirable items like Kukris, battle axes, shortbows, morning stars and stuff like scalemail armor, there is just nothing random loot wise that makes theme even remotely comparable to other items when it comes to random loot. Even with named loot, the types of items I mentioned are little more than niche items for certain builds. This means that these items need something (other than a straight damage increase) to make them more desirable with the random loot permutations.

3. In terms of armor, none of my main characters use random loot stuff at the moment. Many however, do use weapons when I come across one that has the "right mix" of attributes, this varies based on what I'm running, level and some role play and aesthetic points with my character.

[Dandonk]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

1) I would really like to see the non-straight DPS affixes back, as in CC/debuff effects. These are cool, and they add power that isn't just "I can now kill this boss mob .01 seconds faster because I went from VI to VII on my affix". It adds more variation, and more fun, without necessarily adding more "power" as such.

2) I would really like to see the armor/jewelry/clothing affixes that are missing back, too. Heal amp, for one.

3) I would like to have the affixes searchable. There's currently no way to distinguish Speed I from Speed X - and while one is very useful, the other is very useless. With everything being called the same, it's a ngihtmare to use AH - and I mostly don't bother anymore.

4) Power of random gen loot seem to be all over the place. I have deadly of accuracy goggles that have better combat bonuses than EE Dream Visors... and the random gen version is ML 17 (masterful + cursed, yes, but still). While some of the weapons are bland, boring and underpowered. I feel this needs to be looked at, leading to...

5) Power vs. named/raid loot. Some random gen loot is so powerful that it totally eclipses raid/named loot of the same, or even higher level. This is absurd.

6) Crafting. There are some grandfathered affixes that are really nice to be able to craft, but there are also a lot of back-log of affixes that are simply not craftable. Crafting has been neglected for a long time, which is sad for a system that has great potential - and demands such a large investment to get to high levels.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

I don't as such have problems with any effects being available on both named and random loot, though keeping a few for named would make those items more flavorful and more interesting. Not a huge problem for me, though, and I'm not advocating making half the affixes named-only. There are a few exceptions to my laidback approach, though - see below.

One problem I have atm is that named items are in many cases grossly underpowered vs. random loot.

Another is the "nightmare" and "lifesteal" effects: Affixes that are great and reasonably balanced on the named loot they first appeared on get thrown into the random gen loot table, and suddenly they're overpowered - in many cases due to crit ranges that are better on some random weapons than on the named loot. Then the effect itself gets nerfed, and suddenly the named items are useless.
This is sad - it makes interesting and useful named items useless, simply because the affix for some reason HAD to go on random loot, too.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

I'm wearing deadly (sometimes of accuracy) on all physial DPS characters. This should tell you something about how OP especially deadly is. It's a must-have affix for any physical DPS - people that may or may not need the extra DPS, but for sure people that already have to slot a LOT of affixes to be useful. Doublestrike, heal amp, DC boosters to tactics, and so on. While I appreciate the extra DPS, I think a rebalance of DPS vs. casters should be more fundamental in nature, and not dependent on a must-slot item.
You went away from toughness feat being must-have, but now we have must-have skills and items instead. It's not consistent.

I also wear convalescent of superior parrying. This is an extremely useful combination, saves and heal amp together.

[Teh_Troll]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The biggest issue is the whole concept just sucks. Random just SUCKS. The game was better when my level 20s didn't have a single piece of radom kit on them. Random should remain vendor trash . . . let us kit our toons how how WE want them to be.

Cannith crafting was the best thing ever to happen in DDO regarding trash loot. Being able to craft WHAT YOU WANTED was a zillion time better than having to rely on dumb luck.

Random loot over-shadowing named loot, even if a few levels higher, is friggin ******** as well.

Seriously, as long as you're on this "random" kick your loot/game will all be a bucket of fail.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Take a page out of Gensai's (RIP) book and actually listen. Don't let the loot YOU would love to use (OMG THAT'S SO RANDOMMMM XXXXXD ) cloud your judgement in such a way that it prevents you from seeing what the playerbase wants and uses.

Also, this.

[older loot philosophies good. latest philosophies bad.]

I know that's not the most polite way to phrase it, but it's the best summary that I can offer that would actually be helpful in seeing how I and many other forumites view the loot issue.

[Silverleafeon]

I like the deadly bonuses, it helps martial / ranged compete with casters.

[rest]

A few notable pieces of non-named loot that I wear are: Devotion 114 helm of omniscience, dexterity 10 ring of dodge 10%, greater convalescent bracers of superior parrying (i refuse to call them parrying VIIIVXWIIMLX or whatever stupid roman numeral junk got added) and meteoric bastard sword of something or other.


Hey look at that. 75% of those are no longer able to be found in chests. Imagine that.

[legendkilleroll]

Welcome Doc :)

My biggest issue with random loot is after U19was released, random was so easy to aquire and alot better than named items that people had worked for, the CHA10/RES10 type things were just so common, Id like more rare prefix/suffixes

I dont think any type is undeserved, just be nice if the named items were worth using, alot of the U19 items were not worth the effort, then the Gsword and docent in U20 continued that trend, even if an item only fits certain build or types its better than not fitting anyone

I think alot of non named gear is being used, stat +10 items, deadly, resistance, weapons idk, for melee i wouldnt use a non named at epic and my caster druid only hit epic recently but im sure a non named spellpower weapon will be got at somepoint

[HungarianRhapsody]

The biggest issue is the whole concept just sucks. Random just SUCKS. The game was better when my level 20s didn't have a single piece of radom kit on them. Random should remain vendor trash . . . let us kit our toons how how WE want them to be.

Cannith crafting was the best thing ever to happen in DDO regarding trash loot. Being able to craft WHAT YOU WANTED was a zillion time better than having to rely on dumb luck.

Random loot over-shadowing named loot, even if a few levels higher, is friggin ******** as well.

Seriously, as long as you're on this "random" kick your loot/game will all be a bucket of fail.

My last post in this thread - I promise. Teh_Troll is wise.

Shroud good.
Cannith crafting good.
Alchemical weapons good.
Augment slots to round out your gear needs good.
Cannith challenge items good (although it SERIOUSLY needs some help for high level characters who can no longer make the base items)

Eveningstar challenge weapons bad

[zwiebelring]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Treasure tablescaling. I want the highest item feature available on my regualr character's max. level (without a loot jewel and/or bonus days and/or store items).That includes highest stat tomes at lvl. 28 and further lvl. 30 but not 32 or higher. In short, erase planet constellations like bonus days + store items for maximum random loot hunt. When we could have +4 tomes in lvl. 27 chests we were running wildernesses for the thrill of ranom loot pre- and suffixes.

Named loot from raids was surpassed too quickly. New features for melees became a kind of must have (Deadly), others vanished (Convalescent). But my melees are running around like a christmas tree already. Fitting in Deadly is always a gain, while the trade-off is inacceptable.

I was close to sell my +4 Wintry Kopesh of The Icy Depths but right now that weapon has a status of unique item/raidloot. Return the coolness of the old random loot!


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Don't understand *underserved* correctly. But if I do, I then wonder if anybody uses crossbows aside from repeating ones.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Barb:
Deadly +9 Necklace of Resistance +8
Health +10 belt of FL +50 (WC on it, making it ML 27)
Greater Convalescent Bracers of Parrying VIII (bound with Eldritch Resistance)

Main toon:
STR +10 Bracers of Dodge +10%

Warchanter:
Kopesh: +4 Wintry of The Icy Depths
Kopesh: +4 Scintillating of The Icy Depths (+Festival Icy Burst)

Else I use epic GH gear and/or other raidloot, epic or non epic versions as I see fit. Generally I watch out for weapons, rings, necklaces and sometimes armors, bracers and belts.

[SebastianG]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)



Random loot is too powerful and can make named items obsolete. I prefer random loot to be a placement item until I get that awesome named item. Otherwise, why even try for those items.

My characters wear deadly, seeker, and dodge items, when I can fit them in.

[Silverleafeon]

Another problem is getting the DCs in various schools item bonuses.

Making it better would be items that contain multiple high level DC bonuses along with slots.

Feather probably make the effect worse by making augments stack with items bonuses,
instead of doing the proper thing and improving the augments themselves.
Why did he put that into the future updates without more thought/discussion?


The more I think about it, the less stacking items and item augments we have the more space we will have.

The main exception is energy absorption which one can overstack to help non evasion toon survive situations.
Be carefuly altering that stacking, as it will affect the balance of capstones and many other things.

[Silverleafeon]

My last post in this thread - I promise. Teh_Troll is wise.

Shroud good.
Cannith crafting good.
Alchemical weapons good.
Augment slots to round out your gear needs good.
Cannith challenge items good (although it SERIOUSLY needs some help for high level characters who can no longer make the base items)

Eveningstar challenge weapons bad

EPIC SHROUD level 30 raid, new recipes new epic ingredients!

[Teh_Troll]

Everything that's happened to loot recently should never have happened. DON'T DO THAT and I am certain that you'll be well loved.

yes, everything post MoTU was fail.

I cannot stress this enough . . . out-dating stuff every update just needs to stop. All armors out-dated by GH stuff, Random Gen out-dating all named stuff after one update, needs to stop NOW.

Nobody I run with cares about obtaining any specific items at this point because we all know you're gonna make it garbage next update.

DDO wasn't like this until after MoTU. People still ran Titan and Reaver at level 20 because there was still stuff worth pursuing.

Relevant loot keeps content relevant. This needs to be tatoo'd on the inside of your eyelids.

[Memnir]

http://i.imgur.com/rTWgf1x.gif

Welcome to the forums, Doc. :)

Just a passing thought before anything else... please don't be put off or offended if people seem to be blunt/rude/agro in terms of loot. It's a sensitive subject, and one that tends to raise passions and fan flames. It's not a personal attack, it's just venting from an enthusiastic player-base who have some frustrations. We like to talk to Devs - just sometimes our passions and frustrations get the better of us. Please try to see beyond what might seem to just anger to the root cause of that anger when this happens.

Again, thanks for dropping in. I hope it's a regular, and mutually beneficial, experience. On to the questions at hand...

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Items are now a huge pain to quickly identify on a rewards list. Okay, this sword is Flaming - but you don't know how powerful the fire damage is w/o examining the item. And it's this way for every effect on every item, making reward selection a major pain. It did not used to be this way - and it really should go back to how it was. The new way is an aggravating mess.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
I think that Seeker and Speed dropping like water nowadays has drastically undercut some formerly very valuable items. While I use both - I feel like I'm cheating, somehow. I don't think that newly implemented random loot should ever undercut named items or rare effects. It has diluted a lot of what makes that hard to get loot desireable and kills the urge to continue to farm for it.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
On what sort of character? Not being snarky, but it makes a huge difference on knowing how to answer. If you really would like to make further Polls for us to take - perhaps think about focusing in on Melee, Arcane, Divine, Bard, etc.

Some general effects I use on most alts are: Retributive armors, HP boosting items, Healing Amp, Deathblock, Striding. After that, it gets more divisive depending on the class I play.


Other random note: people really liked a lot of the loot prefixes and suffixes that vanished recently. Lacerating, Sun's Wrath, etc. They were only around for a short time, and nobody knows why they were removed, but I talk to people regularly who miss them. Please think about putting them back - it would please many. In fact, if you could champion repealing most of the changes to loot since MotU, people would sing your praises!


Thanks again! :)

[Teh_Troll]

I like the deadly bonuses, it helps martial / ranged compete with casters.

LOLz

[oberon131313]

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Heavy Picks. Currently someone wanting to use heavy picks in a viable way is limited to greensteel, alchemical, and Deathnip.

[SisAmethyst]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums.
...

First of, hello and welcome!

what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Very often the prefix and suffix is only +/- 1 enhancement level away.
- e.g. Goggles +4 Intelligence of Search +7 is effectively less desirable then two separate items with +6 Intelligence and Search +13 due to the resulting min. level
- bows and x-bows on the other hand could favour a lower enhancement bonus to allow higher suffix/prefix, as the enhancement bonus not stack with the ones of the bolts
- quite some combinations are either totally useless or odd (+2 Maul of Vorpal)

weapon and equipment types I feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- morningstars, picks?, kukris
- outfit, mithral armor

some of the non-named loot my character’s are currently wearing.
(if I now could just look over into myDDO...)
- Ogre Power +7 Bracers of Speed
- Deadly Cloak of Accuracy
- Clever +6 Goggles
- Gloves of Disabling +13
- +3 Night's Grasp Dagger of Deception
- Charismatic +6 Cloak
- Wise +4 Ring
- Health +6 Belt
- Charismatic +5 Ring
- +3 Riptide Dwarven Axe
- ...

[Wizza]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

There are two big problems here:

1) is that Random loot is getting more powerful than Named and Raid loot in general. While it should be useful, it should not be more powerful.
2) Random effects on Named items are NOT WANTED by the Community. Random loot belongs to the random loot and Named items should have its own effects.

- Trinkets. Also, a note about two effects: 1) Healing Amplification should belong to both Random loot, Named loot AND Augment system.
2) we need more items that gives +Assassinate DC. Might be a good idea to put it in the Random loot AND then giving us a few named items/weapons so that we will not be forced to use Epic Midnight Greetings anymore.

- +10 Health Belt of +45 HP
- +10 Charismatic Cloak of Wizardry X
- Deadly X of Resistance 9

[Rathic]

My biggest concern is updating all the named quest loot in the game to the new system(augments and W multipliers) currently a lot of low level loot has been updated and most high level loot was made in the new system, but mid level loot is still on the old, inferior system(madness chain, lords of dust chain, etc).

Oh and please add upgrade tiers to the cormyrian dragonscale armors, they need a blue slot at least.

[TFPAQ]

Can I have a Slaver's Hand Crossbow in a Longbow flavor please ...

[EllisDee37]

The only non-spellpower lootgen I wear is no longer available: Convalescent bracers of Superior Parrying.

Lootgen spellpower being clearly superior to all other options is bad.

Cannith crafting desperately needs an overhaul.

Updating shroud and lord of blades to allow ML24 and ML28 versions would spark a renaissance in DDO.

Updating crystal cove and mabar gear for ML24 and ML28 would be appreciated by many. (Mabar has 24s at least, but since Shadowfell the +3 necro dc on the robe is underpowered. Maybe revisit that?)

Guild augments should return to lootgen.

And welcome to the forums!

[taurean430]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

This ought to get interesting.

- Biggest problem with random loot is the fact that it renders named items that are harder to get useless in many cases. Also:

1. Cannith Crafting is very useful up to and including lvl 18, then loses all power. It sorely needs to be updated.
2. Running Eveningstar Challenges to gain mats (xp has been nerfed beyond recognition) with a low payout only to get random effects on your item you create is bad. Let us choose what we want.
3. Situationally useful prefixes and suffixes have disappeared from the loot tables. Put them back please.
4. Augment drop rates in newer content is too low.


- Convalescent has disappeared. This is bad. There are also no heroic level equivalents really available. Melee builds need healing amp soruces at both heroic and epic levels.

- Convalescent, Deadly, Resistance items. That's about it. Anything else is just for the stat increases that dwarf named items currently. The additional effects are largely ignored in favor of a +9-11 stat boost.

[Teh_Troll]

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

We need more augments with more stuff on them, especially Healing needs to be on a yellow like yesterday.

Have I mentioned random sucks?

[Rendron]

Welcome to the Game!

Hope we will get some nice and well thought loot now :)

Well what is under geared. i would say to get People running your packs again ther would be nice if you upgrade the Challange gear in House C or introduce some new lvl 25+ gear. The bard should get some more look at. They dont have so much gear to have or different Slotes to get there things on.

Like som already said we need some Gear again with some heal amp like we had befor all the big update.
the rendom loot was mostly to powerful to be honest but thats maybe because the lvl is now at 28 and will be getting to 30
so the next raid should have some very great gear to get. other wise people will not run it.
we need some more returning shurikens. they mostly dont drop and if shurikens drop they are not returning stuff. With the new enhancments the throwing builds are very nice to have but the gear/ weapons you get sucks or are rendom things where you have to be lucky. the new star out of wheloon is also not so great a tripple positive shroud shuriken is still better then the star out of wheloon.

break down:

- heal amp on gear
- better returning shurikens for throwing builds
- reposte not only on weapons !

thx

[Urist]

How about removing the tiered armour levels (magecraft, mountain, etc.), and instead tying the AC boost to the enchantment level of the armour/docent - as is now done with paragon/epic weapons?

[enochiancub]

Welcome.

I hope that you're able to introduce some things to please and delight those who focus on loot.

[Luxgolg]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

If it hasnt been said already, Raid/End Chain loot should be superior to ANY random lootgen at level. Give us a reason to run sagas apart from comms. See U13-U16 IMO for decent lootgen drops. U17 had some very powerful stuff that was great. U19 pre Mabar completely wrecked the whole thing. Epic level Greensteel I would think is due sometime also. That was a system worth grinding for. Cannith had great potential also. But then the direction changed to "easy"

[Silverleafeon]

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

Augments.

We need more augments with more stuff on them, especially Healing needs to be on a yellow like yesterday.

Have I mentioned random sucks?

Augments are choices.
Crafting is choices.
Shroud loot is choices.

Choices are good.

The Troll has spoken!

[DrunkDwarves]

Welcome to the forums!

As context for how I equip my characters, I play a lot of EE content and gear my toons accordingly. They can all either solo it outright or play very well with a team and all of them are self sufficient healing wise. Raiding isn't so much of a priority these days because I already have everything I need + a few random silly things so I can still be that one jerk dwarf everyone knows me to be (the torc on my fighter, pinion on my fvs, etc).

Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Lack of healing/repair amp options and the time it takes to get winning combinations. For the Wheloon Prison and Stormhorn arcs I would prefer the named items to appear every third arc reward (or not appear at all) and have every other reward list have NOTHING but wondrous crafting items. They are waaaaaaay better than the named loot and no one cares about the epic normal named items anymore because the AH/SE is flooded with EH versions since so many people run it on that difficulty. Having randomly generated loot being better than named EE loot is your biggest problem right now.
Also, please keep randomly generated properties OFF of named loot. Nothing sucks more than pulling the item you want for the 5th time only to throw it on the AH/SE because you can't use it and need to run X quest at least 20 more times.


What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

I haven't seen a khopesh people were happy with in quite some time and there was also no new rune arm for artificers in the last expansion. I can't really remember there being any new options for true seeing either. Having TS as a rare augment would fix that, but I kinda doubt you'll go in that direction any time soon.


I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

In whatever slots that it fits, I wear 10 strength/10 con (insert item) of 50 false life/10% dodge and a 10 deadly of 10 resistance/8 deadly of 8 resistance and a slot for all my melee and ranged toons. My wizard currently wears no randomly generated gear minus the named randomly generated stuff, and I'm only wearing those because I got super lucky and got both of the combinations I wanted on the first try (gave up on that stupid orb though).

[maddmatt70]

I just want to say Doctor Loot and this is very important please with the raid in update 21 err on the side of overpoweredness for the raid loot. It is really important that raid give very good loot. All the raiders in game or that have quit the game need something to strive for. We have not had anything to strive for in quite sometime. Start the new endgame with a real bang.

More stunning, shattering, incorpreal, minor displacement, devotion, and convalescent effects in different locations.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Welcome Lurker! :P

My primary character is working on heroic/iconic completionist. Does the 1-20 grind.

Will post gear fyi:

lv1 - 4
goggle: trapblast
wrist: black widow bracers
cloak: mirror cloak
boot: secret door detection of feather falling w. medium guild slot
belt: shield clickie x3; med (crafted) moderate fortification
ranged weapon - acid burst of deception or acid burst of puncturing (repeaters)
melee: muckbane (old)
greatsword: Guardian's Dagger
Trinket: pharlian pendant of time; crude bobble
runearm: (if applicable) khyber's fury
quiver of alacrity

lv5-8
goggle: time sensing / flesh render
wrist: Bracer's of Wind
cloak: Mantle of the Worldshaper; Cloak of Flames
docent: Upgraded Blademark Docent
boot: secret door detection of feather falling w. medium guild slot
belt: shield clickie x3; med (crafted) heavy fortification;
gloves (if melee): Charged Gauntlets
ranged weapon - acid burst of deception or acid burst of puncturing (repeaters w. red slot and mabar level drain ruby); Ghost Touch h.repeater of Gr. Undead Bane (MCI);
melee: muckbane (old)
greatsword: Acid Burst Blessed Silver Greatsword of Deception (handles just about everything ;p)
Trinket: pale lavender and deep purple ioun stone; voice of the master; pendant of time
runearm: (if applicable) khyber's fury; Hand of the Tombs (MCI)
quiver of alacrity

Level 9-12
goggle: Con-Op Wis Spell Point Greensteel goggle
head: MinII HP Fort Stoneskin Greensteel helm
wrist: Bracer's of Wind
cloak: Mantle of the Worldshaper; Cloak of Flames
docent: Upgraded Blademark Docent or Giantcrafted Docent
boot: secret door detection of feather falling w. medium guild slot
belt: Belt of Thoughtful Remembrance (old then swap to new with deathblock)
gloves (if melee): Gloves of the Falcon / Gloves of Gnollhide
Weapon: MinII; Triple Positive; Ooze (All Greensteel); haste and displacement clickies;
Trinket: pale lavender and deep purple ioun stone; voice of the master; pendant of time
runearm: Recoyle; Hand of the Tombs (MCI)
quiver of alacrity
Ring: FF of Greater False Life (MCI)
Ring: Ring of the Stalker
Other clickies: Ring of Spell Storing; Royal Guard Mask; Ring of the Ancestors

Level 12-TR
goggle: Con-Op Wis Spell Point Greensteel goggle
head: MinII HP Fort Stoneskin Greensteel helm
wrist: Bracer's of Wind
cloak: Jeweled Cloak (Elite: Deathblock and Master's Gift); Cloak of Flames
docent: Black or Blue Dragonscale Docent
boot: Boots of the Innocent w. stat or sonic diamond
belt: Belt of Thoughtful Remembrance
gloves (if melee): Gloves of the Falcon; Gloves of Gnollhide
gloves: Gauntlets of Eternity; Vile Blasphemy; Titan's Grip
Weapon: MinII; Triple Positive; Ooze (All Greensteel); haste and displacement clickies; Terror
Trinket: pale lavender and deep purple ioun stone; voice of the master; pendant of time; Litany of the Dead; Xoriat Trinket
runearm: Recoyle; Hand of the Tombs (MCI)
quiver of alacrity
Ring: FF of Greater False Life (MCI)
Ring: Ring of the Stalker

Some changes to fit build - but essentially that is it.

Cannith Crafting needs to be updated / revamped / completed.
Tier IV Greensteel (even to just add augment or ability to upgrade to use H.Comm's)
Guild Slotted equipment - bring it back.
Transition from heroic to epic is still rough for gear.
Yes, more augments.

Less BtC - at least until character storage grows.

Would love to have a Dimension Door clickie - very rare (like royal guard mask) - ML7 ish no UMD - something people would kill themselves trying to get.

[avepepix]

A random item has to be that, random and not better than a named item.

My highest character its a dwarf, its lvl 25, theres no named, dwarven axe at that lvl, im using a random with Legal, holy, desintegrate and stone prision. damage 19.25 if Im not mistake.

The mayor problem I have with the random loot, its that its not random.
With my dwarf defender. If I check the random loot option, the 90% of the loot are amors for not warriors, and if I didnt check the option, the 90% of the random loot its full plate armor...

It seems that if I play with a warrior i only see armors... armors everywhere
Playing with a wiz its a little diferent, still almost no weapons apear in the random loot, but i see docents (its a WF), bows, stafs, capes, full plate armors, and for some reason i see more dwarven axes with the wiz in random loot, that with the dwarf.

The half-elf bard/barbarian, with checked class loot, dont have any class loot in the chest.
What can a bard get in a random loot? it seems i almost see spells scrolls and some wands, and 1h weapons (shorswords and maces)


Trying to get a named loot its a waste of time. Specially if its for a racial item. Docent and dwarven axes. Specially dwarven axes.
You can get in any quest a item that its almost good or better than a named item.

[Ehmadeus]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
The only things exciting about random loot at the moment is multiple or odd slot colors to use as crafting blanks and the occasional cursed/mastercrafted/wondrous crafted item that happens to have a useful affix. A solid affix with two slots or a rare slot will also pique my interest.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
A large number of the one-handed weapons are hard for me to find a reason to keep/equip. I'm working my way into more melee lives, so that opinion may change.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
My main character is currently using three non-named items:
>Crafted feather fall ring of resistance +4 with yellow and colorless slots containing topaz of deathblock and diamond of vitality +20 augments with master craftsmanship added. (ML13)
>Ogre Power +6 gloves with Topaz of fear immunity and diamond of charisma +5 augments
>Health +6 belt with a green slot containing a sapphire of false life +25.

Secondary characters are using stat items and deadly items.

Note: trying to add in-line comments to a quote is an amusing effort.

[Urist]

We need more augments with more stuff on them, especially Healing needs to be on a yellow like yesterday.
And make it easier to obtain the specific one/s we want, too. I can see absolutely no reason why, for example, +1-3 stat augments shouldn't be purchasable using just plat.
Is it my imagination, or is it far far easier to acquire ML16-20 augments, than ML1 ones?

[redspecter23]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Besides the diversity issue, my biggest loot with random loot isn't so much the loot, but the undocumented and completely ignored nerf to ability tomes in both drop rate and min chest level required. Something was changed with U19. We were never told and all attempts at communication on the forums have met with a giant brick wall from Turbine. Is it an accident? On purpose? Will it be fixed?

I think most weapon types and equipment are served adequately right now. There will always be some types of weapons that have fewer named versions. We could probably use some more Dwarven Axes. A compelling reason to actually choose a shortbow over a longbow would be nice.

For non-named loot my character wears, deadly is pretty much a staple on my melees now as should be obvious. I have a con 10 of 45 hp set of boots I've been wearing at endgame. If I were ever able to pull an elusive +11 stat item with a decent suffix that suits my toon, I'm sure I'd try to fit that in. As far as loot gen weapons are concerned, they are all boring and generic currently and even while leveling a new toon recently, I stuck with named rapiers from level 8 to cap. I'm sure you've already gotten the idea, but loot gen weapons are a huge pile of boring right now. Feather's recent post detailing some upgrades is a step in the right direction. Healing amp and parrying (no, riposte is not the same) on equipment are the two abilities I miss the most and are very useful. I'd like to see them come back.

[Fefnir_2011]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

Nice to meet ya! Speaking of items, I hope you're wearing your Fireproof Undaroos of Asbestos Guard, and your +5 Cold Burst of Trollbane, you'll need both in great supply to brave the forums.


- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

I'm bored with it. Most of my end rewards are the same thing. Variety is great, but also meaningful variety. Before MotU, I only checked items for guild slots, and otherwise always took renown. in the post-MotU, pre-loot bork, I kept an eye out for any rare/unique weapon permutations, because even if it wasnt optimal, it was fun to have options. Now, I don't bother taking ANY items because there's 200 more just like it on the AH.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Weapons for divines who have a focus on casting. Also, the new loot is doing a good job of taking us away from the Big 5 (khopeshes, greatswords, greataxes, longbows, wraps). It'd still be nice to see named weapons for things like maces, scimitars, shortbows, great club, etc... that are on parity with the more popular weapon types. The problem with randomness in weapons is that it's artificial variety that mostly adds luck of the draw aspects to looting. Variety is good. Lottery playing is bad.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Cursed Bracers of False Life +30, Cursed Ring of the Archmagi, Cursed Item of Stat +6: love these because now I can get my +6 int item on at level 9
Red slot Weapon of x Lore: The changes to spell lore means that the difference between Fire Lore III and IV is 1%. So now I keep Cannith crafted weapons with Red augments, and slot them with the appropriate spellpower for my level. I love it cause my caster sticks level with me now.

[BurnerD]

Welcome :)

I would really like to see more done with augments and crafting.

The base items with this level of flexibility should be ultra rare drops or raid loot.

1. It would be nice to have an item grow with you (more than just upgrading the augments now). Being able to upgrade base damage, crit profile, or multiplier would be neat
2. More unlockable slots as levels increase.
3. Being able to infuse spells into a slot (from a scroll)... rechargeable by the character or a npc... Item is upgraded with a spell holding slot.. can hold a charge of GH for example. Number of charges and level of charges could be upgraded....

Doing these things should not be easy or cheap. Rare drops from specific quests or raids, or collecting a large number of something would be possibilities. For the latter let's say you want to increase an elemental damage (acid for example). Via Cannith crafting you would have to crunch a random loot containing acid damage to get a augment fragment. Level 1 = 5 fragments, Level 2 - 20, Level 3 = 50, etc... The requirements per level should go up dramatically. This would allow you to increase damage of said weapon over a long period of time. Of course the bean counters would be happy because you could sell some of these also, but not everything should be store available.

Some thought would have to be given to ML adjustments as slots are unlocked and augment are improved, but a cap level item should have no hard limit. the amount of materials required at some point would become unrealistic to obtain, but it would allow obsessed players to continually modify loot. Maybe the number of weapons / items would need to be limited per character.

I'd also like to see aesthetic crafting for items as well so if you invest the time and effort for a special weapon you can spend some resources to modify the appearance.

[Darkrok]

As the new loot dev, could you please put some pressure on the appropriate people to fix some enhancements that break the named short sword Celestia.

See this thread (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/427791-Drow-Warpriest-and-Celestias-%28) for an example of specific details.

Wanted to bump that one first. Big issue for certain builds.

Tons of other good feedback here. I'd just like to echo that raid loot should always be superior in some way to random loot. Crafted should be better than random as well. Cannith Crafting desperately needs access to any new random items in the game - if I can get it in a random chest then I should be able to craft it.

Deadly was a huge mistake going along those same lines. It allows random chest loot to eclipse Cannith Crafted and raid items.

I've got quite a bit of random stuff I wear on assorted toons. Mostly what's already been mentioned here - high value stat items, healing amp, parrying, deadly, resistance, etc.

[BruceTheHoon]

Hello and welcome!

I haven't been playing much since the latest expansion, but I can at least tell, what bothered me about loot back then.

My issue with the loot has been, that it forced me to play the lottery. With so many random effects, the combinations desirable to me were just ground up into near infinitesimal dust of unlikely probability. I used to mitigate that very well by investing time and other resources into Cannith crafting, but that's been left to rot with the first expansion. Suddenly my custom weapons were, comparatively speaking, **** and the system to get substitutions was reduced to: "get extremely, incredibly lucky". The only loot I still enjoyed getting has been raid loot.

[slarden]

Welcome.

For me the biggest things missing from loot are healing amp items and parrying accessories. I loved the healing amp bracers of superior parrying when they used to drop.

Healing amp is important to conserve healer spell points in raids/quests and also for any self-healing character relying on cure serious/critical wounds. Repair amp would also be nice.

I like the EN, EH and EE versions of gear in gianthold but I felt there should be a way to upgrade items like there is in Fall of Truth. One option would be to upgrade a tier with commendations of valor. Maybe 500 Coms to upgrade EN to EH and 1000 coms to upgrade EH to EE.

Lastly, think Shroud. People love the Shroud crafting mechanism that allows you to customize your gear with multiple tiers. Additionally, Shroud really supported the TR process by providing gear that could be used at level 11/12 and was still good at end game. It would be great if something like this existed for Epic TR. The main appeal for me was I loved not having to worry about switching all my gear every level.

Thank you.

[EllisDee37]

Oh, a lot of people have mentioned both augments and crafting, but just to highlight the holy grail:

Let us craft augments. For example, craft a shard of heavy fortification. Disjunct any blue, green or purple augment (all non-named augments should be disjunctable), add potential if necessary, and slap on heavy fort. Voila.

Instead of prefix/suffix, crafted augments would only be able to take a single shard.

Of course you'd have to add proper spell power to cannith crafting for crafting red augments, which currently tops out at a paltry 66. And then that opens the can of worms that is cannith crafting, which as a whole is about as out of date as its spell power shards.

[rimble]

This may not just be 'loot' related, but please keep in mind the 'searchability' of items as they are created. Finding things on the AH is really tiresome right now. 'Flaming' encompasses all of 'Flaming I' through 'Flaming VIII'. We can't search for augment slots. Things like that.

[RapkintheRanger]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

I have a couple of concerns:

1. Some of the random loot is better than stuff you had to work hard for. Dream visor anyone? Some other GH stuff that was top of the line is now less valuable than random loot. It seems backwards. you should be able to get good stuff and useable functional stuff from random loot, but top of the line?

2. I play a ranger. Paralyzing used to be such an important affix for a bow. At level 12 a paralyzing bow DC 17 was great. Now however Level 26 DC ranger enhancement has made those bows pointless.

3. There was always the second problem with paralyzing bows which has been eclipsed by the DC26 enhancement: but it was this... you can find "paralyzing" on bows up to 28 but they are still DC17. Which means that they are not effective at those levels and 2 they are still not as good as the arrow enhancement in the AA tree.

I really feel that the paralyzing in the AA tree should be weaker at lower levels and power up as you level up so that it scales with the saves of monsters. Likewise i think that you should be able to get bows (or augments for paralyzing bows) that have DCs that make them relevant.

[DrOctothorpe]

Just wanted to pop in and say thanks to everyone for the swift and voluminous response. Keep it coming. This is good stuff. I'm taking notes.

[DagazUlf]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Roman Numeral notation. Please get rid of this. It may save text space, but it makes the loot bland and dull and is really quite confusing for determination of what exactly it does. :mad:

[Desonde]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Hiya!

1) The largest problem I have with random loot today is that at low levels it cannot compete with named loot, and at high levels the dual odds system kicks in (You need something that the creatures you fight are not immune to, or a boost that is slightly better than what you have on, and it must spawn on the specific item you want to use [this is where the Cannith Crafting was supposed to assist, but it turned into a system that required a lot of extra loot to drop to grind levels to access the tiers needed, different rant of that though]).

2) At low levels, false life and constitution, prr bonuses, as well as blood/healing amp type mods. Until people can crawl above the 100% fort the low health and 20 dmg crit hits from dual wielding scimitar users is a pretty extreme hole to climb out of.

3) Deadly of Accuracy items are really nice, the higher the better as it easily knocks a named item from it's slot. Solar of Heartseeker/Bloodletting/Ribcracking are may favorite non-named weapons [they stop trying to be cute with situational effects/weak bonus, and just add pure dmg for the power creep that's become so prevalent].

[Grailhawk]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

First what do you think are the issue we can correct you if there not?

1. Some of it is better then named loot.
2. The numbers go to high. Deadly 10, +10 stat items the game wasn't ready for that.




- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?


Heavy armor needs love in general. We have returned to a point where robes are the only real option anyone uses.

It would be cool to see a few awesome one-handed axes that can give Balizarde a run for its money (aka axes with a great crit profile)



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


+10 Deadly of Resistance 10
Convalescence of Parring
+10 Main stat item

[QuantumFX]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
That, with incredibly rare exception, it completely overshadows named loot of the same level.
That, thanks to things like greensteel, I have to leave the item descriptions turned off. Now, thanks to the new random loot, I can't gauge how powerful a random loot weapon really is.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
I think that the removal of burst effects was an indirect and unfortunate nerf to weapons with good crit profiles. I understand the need to “Make other weapon types desirable”. But the current effects are insanely boring. <Damage> Burst should be something that builds off your new system. Perhaps drop the base damage by a die and add back the old on crit effect for the same level enchantments.

I also loathe the fact that my rogue and artificer are expected to give up serious inventory space for skill gear. Instead of **** like +15 Hide and separate +15 Move Silently gear, give me +15 Stealthy gear that gives +15 to both.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Mainly the Wonder crafted items, A couple of my characters wear Convalescent of Parrying VIII bracers, and Deadly of Accuracy gear.

Note: I *really* look forward to the named items discussion.

Edit: You have my permission to be “horrible” at your job. Because “Being really good at your job” got us to this sad state.

[darkly_dreaming]

Aside from the overall lack of diversity, the change that happened which bothers me the most is tactics enchantments on the wrong (or should I say WRONG) weapon types. Like Vorpal on hammers and Stunning on rapiers in random lootgen.

Ok, on named loot becuase you know ... named loot is supposed to be special, it can have special, wacky, normally impossible to find enchantments.

You stab people with rapiers, you don't hit them over the head and stun them. You wack people with hammers, you don't slice their heads off.

Minor maybe, but it just doesn't sit well to me.

[Qhualor]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

1) diversity is pretty much my biggest issue. Ghostbane practically in every chest and end reward list. We need more flavor. There's some things missing like many different types of bane and everbright is missing. Some of the random loot is actually BIS than some equivalent level named loot. I think this is wrong and invalidates named loot and takes away reasons for running certain quests.

2) I see a lot of the same named weapons like great sword, short sword and long bow. There needs to be more diversity in types of weapons. Dwarven axes and melee staves need some love. Also, a lot of the named gear can be underwhelming. There needs to be better scaling based on level range. Honestly, a min level 20 ESOS should be outclassed by level 28, but its not.

3) still wearing old gear passed down for heroic TRing. By mid levels they use a lot of the old loot from raids like VOD, Hound and Abbot plus GS is obviously great to use. TOD sets need to work again and updated. I'm not a fan of BTCoE loot. For heroic leveling I just want to pass stuff to alts, so I don't bother with slots either. Epic gear I don't mind if its BTCoE. I don't do a lot of epic questing since I've been on a TR train for all my characters for a long time now, so don't have a lot of epic gear. What they do have is old Chrono, VON and DQ epic gear so they have a lot of catching up to do.

[Kaytis]

I will add to the chorus. Genesai was one of the best loot designers ever. Take at a look at his rework of the carnival epic items. He had a thread on the forums dedicated to it. It was inspired and it is that level of thought and effort we need in named loot.

My advice -don't worry about over-powered random loot. It's actually not that big a deal -taking it away will only mean that new toons are SOL. Instead I would do this:

Give the same power, plus a little bonus of some kind, to named loot and lower the ML. That's what makes named loot nice: the same power as a higher level item plus some nice add ons.

Make Cannith crafting on par with current loot gen. This is a big ticket item, but it really needs to be done. In particular striding needs to be replaced with all flavors of speed, and at least +10 stat items are needed. There are plenty of other things needed too, those are just the ones that spring to mind.

Make interesting loot. The Roderick's Wand, Royal Guard Mask, pale green ioun stone are great examples. Even if the effects are just silly (like the Rodericks wnad) they are still fun and make the pastime more enjoyable.

If you are going to put random effects on items, MAKE THEM SYNERGISTIC. Don't just throw any old garbage on an otherwise decent +5 evo item.

Once upon a time, there were rare caster sticks that in addition to sp boosts and dc boosts, also had reductions in metamagic costs. These sticks were very rare indeed and it was like striking gold finding a good one. That's the kind of feeling you want people to have when they pull that one crazy good item.

There is an absolute truckload of named loot in the game, particularly from the old epics, that are utterly worthless now. It could not hurt to go back and boost those items, especially the epics which are nigh impossible to make in some cases. For the work involved they should be dramatically more powerful. See Genesai's work for ideas. You might want to pose to the forums a question as to what epic level items people still use and why. For me the last holdout is the ring of elemental essence, and that will be retired when I get my guardian ring.

Good luck. I suspect you are going to need it.

[Ralmeth]

Welcome! I'd be glad to add my two coppers.

Question: Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Answer:
1) Named items should be better than random lootgen equipment.
2) There's way too much vendor trash. There should be some sort of formula involved that sets a range of how good a piece of equipment is, based on the min level of the equipment. For example, at higher levels speed items are pretty useless unless you find one with 25-30% striding. Stat bonus for higher level equipment that only add 1, 2 or 3 to a particular stat are useless. Armor and shields that don't have the highest or close to the highest plus aren't very helpful. Etc. I don't want every piece of random loot to be useful. I'd prefer less loot (just add more plat to chests), but when you do find something it should have a chance at being useful.

Question: What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Answer:
As someone who plays a S&B Paladin more often than any of my other characters:
1) A good devotion item that is not a weapon. It would be nice to see a good devotion item as a different item (ex. ring, helm, necklace, etc).
2) Healing amp equipment is very underserved. I feel like my couple pieces of healing amp equipment are glued to my character and limit my gearing options.
3) Useful shields, as most are junk. I'd really like to see some good shields with tactic effects, such as stunning & vertigo.
4) A good, general purpose elemental beater, something akin to smiting, disruption, etc.

Question: I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Answer:
Sure, currently my Paladin main is at level 21 (for reference), and I have a Cannith Crafted +5 Spiked Tower Shield of Bashing +8 with a blue augment slot that I regularly use. Also have a Vertigo version as well. I have a pair of back-up speed boots for when I don't have a haste. Oh, and of course a Deadly of Accuracy necklace. As for weapons, I keep some specific enemy type weapons around such as a generic smiting & disruption weapon.

[PlagueVector]

The most irritating problem with the current loot system that I have is the end rewards...not the loot itself but the selection method. I'd like to get loot based on my character but I play a rogue with artificer splash and if I tell the system to give me loot based on character class I get lots of stabby stuff but no thwock-thwock-thwock. Is there any way this could be fixed to select class you want to focus end loot to?

[ThomasHunter]

What was shared last weekend by Feather had me more excited about U21 and beyond than I have been recently. The MotU loot was awesome (all of the wonderful named stuff including the commendation turn-ins stuff). I have learned to really enjoy and love the GH stuff. Thanks for making it fun even in the heroic levels.

U19 loot. I still haven't farmed these quests much. My guild simply hasn't run much of them and I am not sure why. I have done the whole Prison series on heroic, but I've only done a couple in the Stormhorns yet. That said, I'd love to get more of the named stuff in U19 for sure!

I do miss the MotU suffixes and prefixes. That was cool. Oddly enough, Feather's posts last weekend was a real education in that it wasn't intuitive to me that a "II" was better than a "Burst" (typically). Certainly in hindsight I can see that. However, as a long-time player, Burst was always "the bomb"! I've been on the lookout all week for items again with "II" and above ratings for elemental damage. So, the lesson here is that better educating the players out of their old habits might have gone a long way to "liking" the new system better.

I'd like to see more shields. The Wall of Wood seems like the only item worth it for my cleric. I LOVE set bonuses. MotU was wonderful that way. That made me work hard (does that make sense for a game???) to make those set bonuses work. Admittedly, I care much less about those particular sets since U19 and now simply mix and match where I can.

I've started getting into monks more recently, and it seems weird that the Garments of Equilibrium are almost necessary and that they can be worm from level 10 to 20 where you would then just get the Villagers outfit to replace it.

I can also say THANK YOU for making the Minos Legens unnecessary now. Wow, that REALLY helped my whole character slotting diversification.

Yeah, too much rambling. Obviously not a power gamer here, but I spend a fair amount of time playing each week and love this game more all the time. U14 and beyond have simply made this game amazing. Feather's loot thoughts for U21 seem like another awesome advancement. Thanks for caring and making a great game!

[alancarp]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

1. Sustenance items. I don't know how, but my Cleric found a set of Sustenance +15 Gloves (ML 17). Since getting that, I have not yet seen anything close to matching this below level 23 or so... and 99% of those items are multi-effect items (like Dexterity +3 Gloves of Sustenance +10 or something).

I want to see these new kinds of augments:
> Topaz of Heal/Sustenance (up to +30: gotta be a topaz even though Ruby makes more sense - healing Clerics don't carry many/any items w/Red augment slots)
> Topaz or Sapphire of Devotion (up to +140; same thing - Ruby makes more sense, but would be unusable)
> Topaz of Spell Resistance (up to +30? I was assured in a post last year that Update 17 would address that... no dice).
> Underwater Action (which should include Swim built-in)

2. Armor and shields are honestly almost useless as options. Oddly, for an end reward, when there is nothing else of interest, I'll still often choose a shield because it usually has the highest valuation. But of all equipment, once you get the armor and/or shield you want... that's it - for several levels. In my case, my epic toons all have the House C mournlode plate, Epic Cavalry Armor, and are starting into dragonplate. I have no use for any other armor.... and one epic shield each will be quite sufficient.

3. Non-named loot in use: My melees (2) are all over the Deadly items. Especially the paladin, since I had a ton of trouble finding any means of generating sufficient dmg-generation otherwise... at least prior to U19. Is it over-powered as some suggest? Relative to named items, yes. Relative to caster damage, Not at all. Even with an Epic Antique Great Axe and Divine Might, I really feel like the Deadly Items are still necessary (and even that wasn't sufficient in a couple of EE Underdark quests last night).

I used House C challenge items for a LONG time on my primary melee. But since lvl 25 (and U19), that has finally changed somewhat. I would rather have Tier 4/5 House C items, but that's a topic for another day, I suppose. The resistance, deadly, wizardry, natural armor and stat boosts (+7/8/9/10) were definitely welcomed above lvl 25... in absence of Shroud/House C/Alchemical upgraded levels, these new unnamed items have at least filled the gaps.

Otherwise. I guess Guild Augments are all but history at this point - no such items drop. That's kinda disappointing.

Thanks for engaging this.

[Oxarhamar]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself

*snip*



Welcome!

as far as random loot goes I absolutely love Masterful Craftsmanship and Wondrous Craftsmanship items

these Items have to potential to be the absolute best random loot since the level requirement is lower than the enhancement bonus

Cursed I am not so much a fan of I just haven't found anything Cursed that was worth the trade off


http://i42.tinypic.com/2q99xdy.jpg
*this predates masterful but has the prior race required ML reduction and is my absolute favorite lowbie Item

I have yet to find a better repeater at low levels and am constantly looking.

[Lauf]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


Diversity aside, you've corrected a major oversight a few updates ago, making items actually list their benefit in the title (e.g. striding boots became striding 25% boots). then, with the later releases, you went back to the unknown bonus naming (e.g. deadly, ghostbane etc) where people again have to click and read in order to see what the bonus actually is. essentially you've repeated a mistake after already fixing it. not smart.
why is it an issue? well, you try looking for a better item on the AH than the one you have.... you'd have to pull up every item with a bonus by the same name, and start to manually go through them one by one.
do this for several items, and you'll begin to wonder why the hell didn't we just name them differently?
please do.

as for your 2nd question, let me begin by saying there are currently weapon/ item types that are completely pointless. for example, light picks, light hammers, hand axes, to name a few.
veteran players will never use one, so these basically become traps for new players. leading to the obvious question - why have them in the first place?
hopefully you'll mull over that one for a minute.

as for items that aren't receiving proper representation: bludgeoning weapons of all kinds, picks, kamas.
at the moment (handwraps aside) anyone who wants to build a bludgeoning build would have a sub par dps, few item choices, and would basically build around a single named weapon. same goes for heavy picks.
this makes them pretty much another trap for new players.

[FlaviusMaximus]

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?


Weapon types that I feel are underrepresented as far as powerful endgame versions go: Dwarven Axe, Scimitar, Maul, Mace (heavy and light), Kama, Kukri, Great Crossbow (it would be nice if one or two of these gave repeaters a run for their money), Picks (heavy and light), Sickle, Handaxe, Long Sword, and Great Club. While high level named weapons of some of these types exist, I don't feel those weapons are powerful enough to justify using them.

I cannot name an wearable equipment type that needs to have more options. It's very hard to find room to slot everything you might want on a character right now as is. More augment crystal options and more slots on random and named loot items would help.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


Bracers with Convalescence of Parrying are on most of my characters. On non-strength based builds that still use strength to hit, I like accuracy items. At end game, items with +10 to a stat, +10 to Deadly, +10 Seeker, +10 resistance, wizardry X, false life +50, and fortification well over 100 are desirable for me. Slotted items with those stats or stats close to them are even better.

Possibly on a tangent, it would be nice to see exceptional seeker, sneak attack on wearable (non weapon) items, and more wearable (non weapon) doublestrike or doubleshot items pop up, although again, without more augment crystal options and slots, it is going to be very hard to find room on a character for such items. Oh, and wearable tactical gear is always desired.

*edit
Ohhh. Just remembered something big. Devotion. Would love to see Devotion on more random equipment or would at least like to see the augment color changed or expanded to yellow or colorless.

[Systern]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)


1) Random loot is just... random. There's no real grouping of what affixes appear on what pieces. Life-stealing is a really powerful affix that in the past only appeared on things like daggers and staves... weapons that underperform in the crit/base damage profiles. Put Life-stealing on a bastard sword and the affix gets nerfed. Okay, Nightmare is not OP anymore, but the daggers and staves that needed it now suck again.
Flurry is a decent concept as an ancillary DPS increase, but it appears primarily on weapons and mains. +2% double strike is always going to be less damage than +nD6 or whatever. So it's a good effect in the wrong slot. Much like Seeker on a weapon. I guess if the intent is to help sword and board, that's fine. But Flurry also encompasses doubleshot, and it'd help my arti and the rangers to be able to slot it somewhere which won't cripple us.

2) Please know that Epic Ward is a real thing in the game. You're designing loot for a playerbase conditioned to run Elite and Hard quests, not normal. Stat Damage and Energy Drain are severely weakened in these difficulties. For example, every named repeater in the game (other than Needle) is either niche (Silver Slinger), or does stat damage which is pretty irrelevant in the environment. Epic Ward causes mobs to be 90% resistant to stat damage in the first place, and regen damage and negative levels every 3 seconds. The proposed affixes that FoS designed doing a fixed 1 negative level on vorpal will be largely ineffective in EH and EE content.

3) My characters that are up that high are wearing Stat +10 of Accuracy, Deadly of Resistance, and older Convalescent of Superior Parrying, Strength +10 of Dodge +9%, Con + 8 of Protection +7 w/ yellow slot.

4) biggest problem with Random Loot is that the changes to it aren't reflected in Cannith Crafting.

5) U14 added Druids to the game. The players were asking for the class for 6 years. To celebrate, Turbine gave druids medium armor proficiency, and took out all random-gen non-metal armors!!!! Please, change the lower MDB medium armors to a non-metallic material type.

[Flavilandile]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

Hi! Welcome
to the DDO Party.



- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

1) Well, the diversity issue is a huge issue. Close second is the way they are done, at mid level it's next to impossible to find a single power item
( like a +6 stat item, or a plain +5 weapon with only a prefix or a a suffix ( but not both ) ).
At least for me.

2) diversity.... the trashing of the old system at U19 damaged that a lot.
For Named items we want certainties. A named item should be a sure thing with fixed powers and not something with random powers.
Named items should not have ANY random power at all.

3) The character ( rogue ) logged in right now has : a Tinker Set, a Black Dragon Armor and Helm, a Supreme Tyrant Greensteel Neckie, an Epic Treasure Hunter Spyglass, a LVL 20 Cloack of Night, and Epic Ring of the Bucaneer, a Pair of Cannith Boots of Propulsion, and a Pair of Bracers of the Sun Soul...

Oh and two random items : an Ogre Power +8 Ring of Balance +13 ( for the STR bonus ) and a health +7 belt of False Life +40 ( because I haven't found the +8 or more equivalent yet )

That should give you an idea where Random loot sits ( oh I forgot : Weapon Sets : Greensteel Lightning II, Mineral II, Rebellion, Balizarde, Celestia

Another character ( cleric ) for the fun :
supreme tyrant greensteel goggles, white dragon armor and helm, death's locket, planar focus of erudition, stormreaver tablecloth, sage sash, epic ring of the bucaneer, gauntlets of immortality, cannith boots of propulsion, ring of the stormreaver prophecy, supreme tyrant greensteel bracer of concordant opposition, blade of the high priestess and a madstone aegis....

who said random loot ?

[Zirun]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

A lot of the affixes are extremely weak (Absorption on armors/shields, Doublestrike/Doubleshot on weapons for example) or extremely strong (Deadly), especially at the levels you start seeing them. Seriously, why are Doublestrike/Doubleshot and Absorption so low on the table? They're worthless at level 5. The damage on Riposte is largely worthless, Retributive is largely worthless (and way too common), things like that. Either replace a lot of these bad affixes (especially on low-level loot) with better ones or just remove them from the low-level tables altogether and balance them better for higher levels.

In addition to that, the naming scheme that previously worked so well was destroyed. Being able to see that a belt was Health +6 of False Life +20 is extremely useful, and the new items don't do that. Everything is Acid of Riposte or Retributive of Cold Absorption with no indication as to their strength. Fix the names of these items.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

"Flavour" weapons (sickles, light hammers/maces/picks/crossbows, throwing weapons, hand axes, etc.) have very little going for them, since they're not only flat-out worse than other weapons but are largely ignored by things like the new enhancements. Offensive shields are rare; seeing things like a shield with almost no defenses, decent damage and 50% shield bashing would be a great boon to builds that are tied to being S&B (like a lot of Paladins).


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

My level 5 multi TR'd FvS is using almost none. My shield is random-gen, but only because I'm too lazy to craft one when it'll make a minimal difference at this level. Same with my armor, and maybe a few other pieces I can't remember. The important thing (my weapon) is Cannith crafted, because it's impossible to beat +1 Screaming of Bleeding at level 5 when there are no damaging suffixes on weapons that aren't Riposte.

[brian14]

Welcome to forum!


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


Endless stream of Deadly, Accuracy and Speed items is both overpowered AND boring. Yes, my level 23 currently wears Deadly VII (or is it Deadly VIII?) necklace of Magi -- or whatever suffix it is that gives +150 SP, -- but I will be quite happy if all Deadly items are gone from the game. Not just no more in chests, but retroactively vaporized or broken into crafting ingredients. :)

Update 14 random items were exact opposite of the above. Affixes with multiple functions, such as Lacerating, Rebel, Night's Grasp, "of the Sun", etc. were fun. They made the game more interesting. Removing them was a huge mistake.

I really miss Banes and Greater Banes. Yes, they can be crafted, but when combined with synergistic U14 affix, they were truly amazing. I would say the most treasured random lootgen item I have is Night's Grasp longbow of Greater Aberration Bane. My level 23 AA still uses it against epic illithids and such.

If you mean literally "wearing" as opposed to "equipped", the only random loot my level 23 wears are the aforementioned necklace and Ogre Power +7 belt of Greater False Life. Everything else is named. I TR'd my bard at level 24, and the only random item he wore at the time were Ogre Power +6 belt of Greater False Life and Fearsome shield of Radiance. Again, everything else was named or crafted.

[RavenStormclaw]

The biggest issue is the whole concept just sucks. Random just SUCKS. The game was better when my level 20s didn't have a single piece of radom kit on them. Random should remain vendor trash . . . let us kit our toons how how WE want them to be.

Cannith crafting was the best thing ever to happen in DDO regarding trash loot. Being able to craft WHAT YOU WANTED was a zillion time better than having to rely on dumb luck.

Random loot over-shadowing named loot, even if a few levels higher, is friggin ******** as well.

Seriously, as long as you're on this "random" kick your loot/game will all be a bucket of fail.

Sorry troll,

Gonna have to disagree. I think you should have a chance to get decent random gear. I hate Cannith crafting, shroud is do able but a pain, and I'm really not a big raider... And I suspect a great majority of players fall into my category and we also probably spend the bulk of money as well. Good random loot is our lives. So doctor loot don't listen to the troll just brandish a torch and drive him back under ground.

as to my thoughts:

red, purple, or orange augments on robes. Would help a lot of robe wearing melee/caster hybrids put.


And welcome!

[Ancient]

Some thoughts I have:

1.) Is it possible to control what prefixes/suffixes drop by pack? In addition to the diversity of what is dropping, there is no diversity of where it drops. Having a few unique to a pack prefixes/suffixes could help liven things up.

2.) IMO the biggest problems with random loot isn't the loot, it is the action house and cannith crafting. It is hard to search for certain features in the auction house and cannith crafting has been left so so far behind. Superior radiant lore is another drop that was rare in the past... I haven't looked recently.

3.) Convalescence / superior parrying bracers are an example of random loot that I wear.

[Rinnaldo]

Two quick issues:

I have a Cormyrian Scimitar that I traded Challenge ingredients for, and I like what I ended up with. A paralyzing scimitar with acid burst, that also does occasional DoT salt damage. What I don't like is that it seems to be treated like a Named weapon in terms of trying to craft Festival recipes onto it. I get that it is (was) slightly better than the average random loot of its level, but it is also essentially just randomized loot, in terms of the abilities.

The second issue is more annoying because it actually seems buggy, rather than just a hidden WAI feature, like the first. Collars. Crafting handwraps into collars is awesome. Not being able to put them on your Pet is not. I have a collar that has chaos damage on it, which requires me to be chaotic to use it. I am. However, the game believes that my wolf is not. I cannot apply it to him, even though he should fulfill the prerequisites for it. This is incredibly annoying.

[sebastianosmith]

Hey Doc,

To be perfectly honest, the new loot tables appear to have been selected by committee to address concerns regarding new player retention issues. While I agree that such measures are warranted, the chosen path has been less than satisfactory. Balance is a difficult topic to puzzle through. Distributing what is in essence a "newb-friendly" set of attributes across the entire user base can, and has, generated a great deal of controversy among the more established community.

I'm not going to delve into the minutia of "what" or "how" as the specifics are as always entirely up to Turbine. I would, however, like to point out that there should probably be a level limit on just when the training wheels can be disposed. Enhancements such as Deadly, Accuracy and Ghostbane, while useful at lower levels for those not so familiar with the game, are grossly overpowered in the hands of veterans at mid-range to cap. Not only do these sorts of things devalue named loot and lend an air of ease which can lull new players into a false sense of accomplishment, which will lead to player loss a few levels later, they also upset those who have been with the game for years and feel that their efforts have been diminished.

Well, that's about all I have to say on the matter. I wish you and the rest of the Dev team luck in finding a solution.

[ArcaneArcher52689]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are under-served in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


Welcome to the forums!

My biggest issue with current loot gen is that in some cases it outclasses old loot gen by miles, where in others it's miles behind.
Examples: deadly- as has been said, more damage is always better and it's widely available. Multiple augment sockets on one loot piece. I have a heal+9 helm with a blue and yellow socket that i'll be using as soon as i have the right augments. However, healing amp(as said by others) is no where to be found. many of the old loot-gen weapon aoe-effects, neg-level effects, or insta-kill effects were also worthwhile.

-I'm taking this as weapons/slots i'd like to see more of. Great Club/maul(when you're lvl 7 running delera's and need a thf blunt weapon right then), kama's(at least note-worth ones, cause DR/slash is a thing), then boots, necklaces, and gloves just don't seem to show up in loot gen as much as i thought they used to anymore (especially noteworthy ones. The past couple toons i've level have used +6 dex boots from 11-20).


currently, not wearing much loot-gen, but if i am, it has an augment slot

[Pooklebunny]

The biggest issue is the whole concept just sucks. Random just SUCKS. The game was better when my level 20s didn't have a single piece of radom kit on them. Random should remain vendor trash . . . let us kit our toons how how WE want them to be.

Cannith crafting was the best thing ever to happen in DDO regarding trash loot. Being able to craft WHAT YOU WANTED was a zillion time better than having to rely on dumb luck.

Random loot over-shadowing named loot, even if a few levels higher, is friggin ******** as well.

Seriously, as long as you're on this "random" kick your loot/game will all be a bucket of fail.

Want to pile in and agree with this (surpriiiise!) and would also like to point out that the stupidity of the random is a total immersion-breaker. Some demented crafter actually decided to make worthless combinations of tat like Keen of Ghostbane, Reconstruction of Healing Lore, blah, blah, blah. Random does indeed suck when it's *that* random. Likewise the interminably dull and stupid "Acid" (hover for MOAR!), "Flaming" and so on. Rubbish.

Upgrade Cannith Crafting, *definitely*. Some of us spent a vast amount of time on it, and it's practically worthless now. Ditch stupid incremental properties that "scale with level", but don't, like Speed. Was the ...person... who created that aware that you can slot 10% alacrity from level 1? Clearly not. Also, remember how to count when designing properties: do you have any idea how much damage is added by 1% doublestrike on a lowbie weapon? Think about it for a minute; just divide damage per swing for an average character in the level range by 100. Now, how much damage does Acid - or heck - even Righteous do by comparison? That's right! Still think rapid strikes is worth a slot on a weapon? Maybe on something higher-level, but not at the expense of a damage-dealing property... and it's far from unique in being something that only sounds good. I could go on, but people have already covered most things that make me grit my teeth :cool:

[SilkofDrasnia]

1) I'd very much like to see Cannith crafting get new recipes. It's decent for leveling gear, but when you consider just how much you need to

2) I'd like to see the old scroll/seal/shard Epic items get some love. It takes a VERY long time to get those items and they're just mid-game "passing through" loot now. I do think that having a significant investment in getting end game items is fine, but for items that you're just going to wear for a few levels, I think it's reasonable to just have the item itself drop directly OR add a seal exchange and shard exchange just like the Scroll exchange that we have now.

3) I think that random loot is mostly fine. Most of it is vendor trash and there is an occasional shining example of a great item. I'd like to see raid loot surpass that lootgen gear in most circumstances. That's a particular concern for caster weapons since there is nothing exciting in CitW for Clerics/FvS that have spells as their primary focus and Twilight isn't very exciting for Wizards/Sorcerers/Artificers compared to a variety of the lootgen caster sticks that are available.

4) Interesting items are more appealing to me than items that just have raw power from better numbers. Madstone boots, Torc, etc. are all more interesting and more fun than just a +12 [blah] item even if that is better than a +10 [blah] item.

Aye pretty much agree with this here especially point 2.

I would add I think named loot should be better overall than random junk and named raid items should be better than regular named items. Also old loot needs to be revamped random lvl 15~21 loot with +8 stats being better than hard farmed old raid loot (level 20 epic version) is just plain sad and wrong.

Oh and for the love of god if old loot is to remain like it is raise the chances on the seal/scroll/shard rates cuase right now if you only play a few characters you will hit 28 before ever ever seeing an old raid item become epic.

[FlaviusMaximus]

Also, remember how to count when designing properties: do you have any idea how much damage is added by 1% doublestrike on a lowbie weapon? Think about it for a minute; just divide damage per swing for an average character in the level range by 100.

Not to get sidetracked, but you would have to divide by more than 100 to figure out what % damage it adds to your character, because doublestrike does not grant glancing blows in THF and only applies to the mainhand weapon in TWF.

[Braegan]

Welcome Dr Loot!

Few randoms thoughts...

- I've never been a fan of random generated loot as being the "best in slot" for any build. To me random gear was something you wore until you got the piece of rare/raid loot you were looking for. This was the previous design of the game, the best loot was raid loot. This has the beneficial side-effect of producing a healthier then what we have now end-game. What's the point of raiding if you can pull better then raid loot out an explorer chest?

Raid loot and rare drops should remain the most powerful versions of loot until the ML of that item has been surpased by a respectably degree. If the highest stat value you can get out of the current level caps raid is 11, the highest random loot should go is 10. This provides a balance that grinders and powergamers will continue to pursue that last point, and casual gamers or alts will be perfectly happy being a slight margin below the cap or getting lucky.

A flaw of random loot is that it is random. Trying to plan a gear set without having any clear idea of what you will get (value/effect), where you will get it (item slot) and hoping you won't wind up doubling up on a stat/effect already covered in some other area is frustrating.

An example how random loot provided raid loot equivelent effects that was good: Having Shroud effects generate on weapons that were 20+. If you want to enjoy the rewards of a weapon of your choice with exactly your effects chosen at a lower level you had to raid (to at least get shards). If you wanted a lightning stike effect on a random weapon it wouldn't come until much higher level.

An example how random loot provided rare loot equivelent effects that was poor: Having Deadly effect drop in larger number, lower level and with extreme abundance thereby curb-stomping Dream Visors. The Deadly effect could have been introduced as D6(ml 26), D7 (ml27), D8 (ml28). That would have allowed for random loot to eventually eclipse a rare drop but without cripling the value of that rare item into nothing. In addition, with the last expansion I feel the values of stat gear jumped too high, too quickly. The newest and latest should be a bit better then the previous, but it doesn't need to "blow up."

- Random effects such as Dazing, Vorpal, Banishing existing on any kind of weapon not only doesn't make sense but also goes against anything that this game was based on (3.5 pnp). Now I know this isn't pnp, and it is a fantasy setting but a "no-holds barred" randomization is just silly.

- Pre-Motu epic items need a re-vamp of some sort. I understand that the amount of attention that area of the game would receive is marginal at best. But, at the least consider any one of and/or combination of:
-unbinding all shards and seals
-allowing a trade in 3-1 (like present sands scrolls)
-adjusting all shards/seals/scrolls to be from the pack. (I.E. any sands shard becomes Shard of the Sands, etc. base item plus shard,seal, scroll of that pack makes the item)

- I do understand that a certain degree of randomness and customization is healthy to prevent a game of clones all walking around with the same gear in the same slots, etc. I believe the best way to do this is with augments. Give us solid raid/rare loot with an attractive main feature with augment slots, random loot with a slightly lesser version of those main features available, and augments that are either orignal and values in design or combine enough effects to deem worthy of pursuit.

- The only random loot I can think of on any of my characters are a couple of high + stat items and conv of superior parrying bracers. Oh and some Deadly items in the mix.

Well that's all for now, thank you for listening.

[Kambuk]

Epic Shroud Level 30 Raid
This would get people back raiding in guilds in a big way.
Add Rune Arms and Handwraps to Shroud crafting at the same time.

Also

Random loot Rune Arms as quest end rewards the same way collars are now.
A new Epic house Cannith quest got added and it didn't have a named Rune Arm in it?

Level 25+ named weapons needs to have increased crit profile for them to be relevant.

Caster items need to have something more than just +x to spell power as that can be slotted with an augment.
i.e. reduced spell point cost (-10% discount to spellpoint cost), increased spellpoint cost while adding to damage of all spells - (10% penalty to Spellpoint Cost, offensive spells have 50% chance to deal 5d10 additional sonic damage)
Powerful dangerous items - Shradi Double Rainbow 7% chance targeted on the user (This would be good for an item that drops on quest exit - hmm that scepter you have to use in Rainbow in the Dark to give light would be perfect for the epic version... no wait that's far to evil)

Kambuk

[sephiroth1084]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary. Hi, welcome.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?[/qupte]

High-level random loot outclassing the highest tiers of named loot in a lot of ways, in particular making a lot of gear from Epic Gianthold (including from the Fall of Truth). This is due to things like +9, +10, +11 stat bonuses, +9, +10, +11 resistance, +6-11 Deadly, up to +14ish Stunning/Sunder/Trip appearing on random lootgen (and even stuff with slots, also).
The metagame has shifted to emphasize item augment slots, but it's difficult to acquire many augments, and there aren't enough worthwhile effects in yellow (and some effects that should probably gain augment equivalents, like some level of healing amp).
It used to be that good named weapons were the best things to be swinging with in general, but a few random loot combinations could be best in slot for a particular enemy or situation (Paralyzing of Pure Good had no named equivalent, and especially not at ML 12; high + Holy/Holy Burst of Greater Bane with the appropriate metal type to bypass DR, as examples), but the best named weapons beat out all competition due to enhanced damage and crit profiles. This isn't terrible, per se, as I think named loot should be better, but it means that anyone with one or two or three high quality named weapons probably has little or no reason to bother with lootgen weapons, making everything vendor trash.
Similar to the above, even level 28 lootgen cannot compete with some much earlier weapons, such as the Triple Positive greensteel variation for dealing with undead. The bundled affixes we got with MotU (multiple effects bundled into a single prefix or suffix) helps to address #3 and #4 a bit, but those have disappeared from loot tables entirely, and were still largely insufficient (though someone without the really good named items could find some pretty decent random stuff).
Affixes that come with a high enhancement modifier, but add little power to a character that lower the overall quality of the item by eaiting of "build points" result in a lot of items being complete junk. If you have Deathblock VI or whatever on a piece of equipment with an otherwise useful suffix, the thing will likely be junk, due to that other effect being kind of low for its level, probably, thanks to the unnecessarily high Deathblock enhancement value. +2 stat items on level 20+ loot are basically useless, and only get worn if the other effect on the item is amazing, needed for the character, and if the player hasn't been able to find a better item[quote]

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Exotic weapons are definitely underserved in named loot (dwarven axes, khopeshes...bastard swords to a lesser degree).
A lot of effects from greensteel crafting (5 years old now, and ML 12) have not really been replicated on higher level equipment, leaving a lot of people still slotting greensteel items at cap. Things like Elemental Energy and Spell Power, exceptional skills bonuses, exceptional saves, Concordant Opposition... It would be nice to see these showing up on random loot to some degree, but especially to see some high-level named replacements (that means some named items should have +45 total HP, or +150 total SP, and +4 or +6 exceptional skills).
Self-healing. Vampirism is pretty decent for a big chunk of the game, but doesn't appear on enough loot, and 1d3 HP is fairly insignificant in high level content where you're getting hit for 100-300 damage a swing even with a fair amount of healing amp. Bodyfeeder and Lifeshield are in the same boat. I don't know where the right balance lies, but it would be good to see these gain higher-level equivalents so that they might be used into epic elite quests.

Healing is a major issue in the game at the moment (it has been for a long time, but epic elite and increased soloability for a lot of characters has served to further emphasize it), or rather the lack thereof for some characters. Right now, barbarians are in great disfavor, because their only reliable ways to heal themselves through even moderately challenging combats are to use Silver Flame Potions, which are overly punitive (requires a lot of favor spread across several packs, expensive, only stack up to 10, and have a tremendous penalty when used) and are lagging behind other, common sources of healing for basically any other character not restricted in their options by Rage, or to splash a few levels of cleric for the ability to heal with special attack abilities. The game has long since moved on from the restriction of potions to level 3 and lower spells; the DDO Store has some better healing options, but that's kind of a ****** way to skew the game--you can only really play this or that character effectively by spending TP, while everyone else is spending plat, or investing in class/race/destiny abilities. Give us a vendor or turn-in for the better store-bought potions, and leave the store versions as emergency purchases for when someone runs out mid-quest.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Wis +10 of Resistance +10 cloak on my monkcher.
Looking for a +10 or +11 Int item of <something useful> for my rogue in a slot that doesn't compete with named necessities.
Deadly of<something useful> items on my monkcher, rogue, and monk (eventually also on my barbarian and paladin if they can fit them).
Necromancy Focus IV scepter of <some junk> on my Pale Master.
Festival Icy Burst Cursespewing, Vicious, or Shock weapon of Greater Elemental Bane (most are +3 to +5, and weapon type is based on the class...the Vicious one is on a greataxe for my barbarian, and a greatsword for my paladin, while my rogue has a pair of daggers).
Ghost Touch of Disruption.
Whatever of Smiting.
Parrying VIII Bracers of Healing Amp 30% or 20% depending on what other items they're wearing.



(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Trying to resist dropping a long post about named loot here in anticipation of those queries.

[mikarddo]

Welcome Doc

1) Named loot needs to be better than random loot.
2) Less random loot of higher average quality would be nice. Having to wade through endless piles of junk for the very off chance of a good item is just annoying.
3) Healing Amp needs to return to random loot as well as named loot. Removing that effect was highly annoying.
4) Make the naming such that searching for a particular effect is much easier. It should be possible to search for items with Wonderous Craftmanship for example. Without that ability its just too much of a pain to search the AH.
5) +4 tomes need to return to the random drop tables.

Mostly I am looking forward to the name item revamp. Thats where the truly interesting options are.

[zwiebelring]

I really do not udnerstand the claim for epic shroud. I cannot stand this quest except I want to have greensteel. If there is no improvement or difference in the optic and *just* an immense lvl. 30 challenge I gladly skip that raid.

If epic shroud then:

new voice overs

new looks/enemies/mechanics

new greensteel though the current greensteel was probably the best crafting system you ever invented. And the most useful from lvl. 12 till current 28 in some cases.

[Theolin]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

would like to see items with just a prefix or suffix drop more often 5%-10% of the time, maybe even without +s on occasion as well
in general cursed items are not worth it
balance in what drops there are some things that are just out of whack for how often they show up (see, I didn't say gho..... )

this also applies to things that almost never show up - deathblock on higher level stuff (but I have >9000 level 2 items with it)



- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

most things that are feat / enhancement related - if I thought this would be good its usually built into the character anyway




- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

items

usually highest + stat item when ML is important
Highest + stat item with something else useful (speed, dodge, deathblock, deadly, resistance)


weapons

usually those with the most add on damage effects
or with special things like banishing, smiting, DR breaking .... etc.

[Urjak]

Welcome Dr. Loot! ... You are desperately needed ;)

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Aside from diversity (which is the biggest issue):

.) Weapons:
The things that most people look for when it comes to weapons are increased base threat range, crit multiplier and base die size - all these things can only be found on named loot - which is imo not all that bad, but automatically makes most random lootgen stuff unattractive. Years ago this was compensated by random loot weapons often being very useful in certain situations (like holy burst silver threaded handwraps for devils or icy burst of greater dragon bane for velah, bodyfeeder on high crit range weapons for situations where survivability is more important than dps, ...) Unfortunately through lots of changes in the game mechanics most of these things are pretty poor compared to named loot AND most of the useful prefixes/suffixes no longer drop anyways (though we all have plenty of undead beaters now for sure lol).

If you REALLY want to make random loot weapons attractive, IMO the best thing would be to reintroduce niche effects - like banes only affecting a small range of foes, BUT being super effective versus them. Also debuffing weapons would be great - can remember times where people actually brought destruction/improved destruction/cursespewing weapons to help debuffing raid bosses, because else it was a lot more difficult -> give similar things again (and ofc the need to use such things - which is a game design issue and has nothing to do with the loot) - apart from these things I don't see much hope in making random loot weapons actually desirable except by making them more powerful than named ones ... and THAT would be completely wrong unless those specific random weapons were as rare as wop-rapiers during the time they were actually really powerful.

Also: Looking end reward lists and the like: It totally sucks that you have to mouse-over every single item to see what its actually capable of. I mean seriously move the tiers of effects in the header (Acid VI Greataxe of Ghostbane IV not Acid Greataxe of Ghostbane -.-). Another issue I have with random loot: Prefix and suffix seem to always be of nearly the same power. This totally limits possible effects! Why can't I have a Deadly XX Necklace ML 28? ... instead currently I get some useless suffix which just kills the desired attributes power (because both add to ML, and that one is currently capped at 28) - or to move away from possible OP stuff like Deadly XX ... what about Deadly XI with green and colorless slot? ... atm: not possible because Accuracy, Protection, Resistance of Natural Armor is ofc of tier X on any Deadly XI item - leaving no space for a slot because of ML restrictions.
Which brings me to:

.) Equipment:
Also totally boring atm, apart from deadly, resistance and stat-bonuses there really isn't much to look after. Allowing higher differences between the power of the prefix and suffix to either allow more powerful enchantments or combine powerful enchantments with slots could definitely help!
Lastly:

.) Crafting:
Lets face it: Random loot has actually been useless for quite a long time. BUT for some time it was in great demand again, which was when Cannith Crafting was introduced. Unfortunately Cannith crafted items are now so far behind in power that apart from twink gear for TRing they are pretty much useless. Make crafting useful again -> people will happily gather random loot again - even if it is just deconstruct it ;)

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Named loot:
.) Picks: come on deathnip is really getting old now lol
.) Shurikens: Ok, we got Morningstar now and also Snowstar ... but 2 useful named Shuriken in the whole game is still pretty lame (Shadowstars usefulness is very limited so not counted ;p)
.) Great Crossbow: Well this weapon is overall rly bad - BUT since rogue mechanics got extra enhancements to buff this weird weapon - where is the awesome named great xbow that offsets all the other disadvantages this combatstyle has?
.) Kukris: Yeah Midnight Greetings is cool and stuff - but also pretty old and DPS-wise already far behind newer weapons, yet rogue assassins get special bonuses to daggers AND kukris ...
.) Shortbows: Why are named bows recently always longbows?

Apart from that ... just quoting the weapon types with the least actual named weapons ingame from the DDO wiki (not counting gs, cormyrian, moldy, ember and alchemicals):
.) Light Pick: NONE
.) Throwing Hammers: NONE
.) Dart: 1 (ML8)
.) Great Crossbow: 1 (ML1)
.) Handaxe: 1 (ML14)
.) Light Hammer: 1 (ML16)
.) Throwing Axe: 2 (ML6 & ML10)
.) Heavy Crossbow: 3 (ML4, ML12 & ML20)
.) Light Crossbow: 3 (ML2, ML4 & ML8)
.) Shortbow: 3 (ML4, ML10 & ML20)
.) Shuriken: 3 (ML2, ML8 & ML14-27)
.) Throwing Dagger: 3 (ML4, ML6 & ML20)
.) Heavy Picks: 4 (ML6, ML8, ML10 & ML14)
.) Light Mace: 4 (ML2, ML10, ML21 & ML12-25)
.) Kama: 5 (ML2, ML8, ML12, ML18 & ML15-24)
.) Repeating Light Crossbow: 5 (ML4, ML16, ML20, ML21 & ML23)

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Currently:
On Myriellah (my main):
Deadly VIII Goggles of Natural Armor +6 with yellow slot: Dexterity +6
~ soonish: ~
Deadly X Spectacles of Wizardry X
Dexterous +10 Belt of Dodge 10%
Greater Convalescent Bracers of Parrying VIII

On Mayeena (lvl 23):
Clever +8 Goggles of Natural Armor +6
Wisdom +6 Hat of Natural Armor +8
Fortified 110% Belt of False Life +30
Deadly VII Ring of Wizardry VII
~ just until I can reequip my upgraded Cloak of Night: ~
Cloak of Protection +5

On Ryaleen (TRing @lvl 18):
Ring of Greater False Life

On Xryn (TRing @lvl 14):
Belt of Improved False Life
Feather Falling Boots
+3 Thaumaturgic Quaterstaff of Kinetic Lore IV (Potency +48, Impulse +72, Nullification +72)

[FalseFlag]

Greetings! I hope we don't scare you off!


- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Currently? The diversity issue is the biggest problem with random loot. After that, I would diversity again, but not in the weapon properties. Diversity in the weapon types that actually drop. If you go to Magic Weapons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/magicWeapons.htm), you'll find the tables used to determine magic item types and base weapon type. Weapons are divided into three categories: 01-70 Common, 71-80 Uncommon, 81-100 Uncommon Ranged.
This is the Common Weapon Table:
01-04 Dagger
05-14 Greataxe
15-24 Greatsword
25-28 Kama
29-41 Longsword
42-45 Mace, light
46-50 Mace, heavy
51-54 Nunchaku
55-57 Quarterstaff
58-61 Rapier
62-66 Scimitar
67-70 Shortspear
71-74 Siangham
75-84 Sword, bastard
85-89 Sword, short
90-100 Waraxe, dwarven

Now, the first problem is that some of these are not even available and they should be. The second problem is to my perception, the actual drops are nothing like what these numbers indicate they should be.

The next problem, at least with random (and named) weapons, is the nerfing of effects. For example, VORPAL. This is how a vorpal weapon should work:

This potent and feared ability allows the weapon to sever the heads of those it strikes. Upon a roll of natural 20 (followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit), the weapon severs the opponent’s head (if it has one) from its body. Some creatures, such as many aberrations and all oozes, have no heads. Others, such as golems and undead creatures other than vampires, are not affected by the loss of their heads. Most other creatures, however, die when their heads are cut off. A vorpal weapon must be a slashing weapon. (If you roll this property randomly for an inappropriate weapon, reroll.)

Strong necromancy and transmutation; CL 18th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, circle of death, keen edge; Price +5 bonus.
Note there is nothing in there about a hit point threshold, or deathward. It doesn't matter how many Hit Point the creature has. Roll 20, confirm, check if applicable creature type, dead. Now if you want to add an insta-kill effect to other weapons, fine. But at least rename them. Skullcrushing, Heart-rending, whatever. But fix the actual property so that it works like it is supposed to. Too powerful? I accept that. Immediately change all existing and future vorpalish weapon to BtCoE or BtCoA. At the same time, fix weapons such as SMITING and DISRUPTION. Within the same binding guidelines if necessary.

The next problem is RIPOSTE. This effect, since the complete nerfing of Armor Class, is effectively useless. If you're going to keep it, it needs some kind of revision to make it more useful.

For non-weapon items, the biggest problem is that the formatting is pointless. Get rid of the prefix/suffix divide. Maybe someone will get lucky and score a Minute Seeing +15 Goggles of the Eagle +15. There is no good reason this isnt' available, except that maybe it limits future named items. In which case, design better named items.

Next is appearance. Face it: 99% of the armor in this game is ugly as sin, and a whole bunch of it doesn't even resemble armor. A lot of the weapons are stupid looking too. The artists need to crack open some books on actual arms and armor, and then make stuff look like that!

There are other issues, but no need to overwhelm on first post, right?


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?There are NO types that are undeserved. In fact, I wish you'd bring back some, like HIDE ARMOR, and the other pointlessly removed armor types. I wish you'd introduce the missing weapon types. I want my double bladed weapons and mercurial great swords. I would greatly reduce the proliferation of Deadly and Accuracy effects. All they do is add to the power creep and they are freakishly common.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

And I'd love to tell you about some if it. But I have 22 characters on Ghallanda, and I couldn't tell you what random gear any of them are wearing, because it's all filler gear until they can use their named gear. Otherwise, they are using utilitarian crafted gear.

[stoopid_cowboy]

I may be the only person that thinks this, but I want to "Undo" the Vorpal nerf!

Remember what Vorpal and banishing and smiting were like before the nerf? A vorpal weapon flat killed a monster on a 20. Period! There were a number of people that crunched the numbers to compare Vorpal vs. named weapon damage (i.e. LitII) to compare. In EVERY number situation, Vorpal LOST! So, why was it nerfed so hard? I mean come on. Currently a monster has to be less than 1,000hp to be instakilled. Big stinking deal! Considering most Epic monster have many many thousands of hitpoints, this needs changed! That is just rolling a crit on a barb without adrenaline! Vorpal threshold needs to be removed!
Back to smiting and banishing. Again, 1,000hp threshold. LAME! Banishing and Smiting USED to proc on a crit. Were these abilities that overpowered that they needed to be changed to a Vorpal (roll of a 20) proc? Honestly, when is the last time anyone was Shroud flagging and said "wait, let me get my banishers out of the bank"? When was the last time ANYONE took a smiting weapon into House C quests?

There were some really good situational weapons in game that got nerfed into oblivion. Those need to return with a vengeance! I would like to pull a +4 Holy Adamantine of Smiting weapon and be excited that there is a place in game that it would be awesome! Is it overpowered? Hell no! Could it be an absolute blast to use in LoB? Hell yeah! Same could be said for a +3 Banishing Flametouched Iron of Elemental bane weapon. Overpowered by itself? Nope! But I would sure use it when the ele's started spawning.

Maybe we don't necessarily need new stuff. Maybe just think about resurrecting the the weapons that got trivialized for no reason. Vorpal, Banishing, Smiting, Nightmare to name a few.

[sephiroth1084]

For as long as I've played DDO, and probably for as long as the game has been active, I (and others) have wanted to see some of the iconic weapons from Dungeons & Dragons, but probably the most desired of these has been the Holy Avenger. For years we clamored for one to show up in the game, and finally, we got it with the introduction of the Divine Vengeance that was added to the side chests in A Vision of Destruction on hard and elite.

And it was supremely disappointing! It's an ML 18 weapon that is both outclassed by many weapons of lower ML (including several permutations of greensteel), and totally superseded by most ML 20 epic weapons. That's incredibly unsatisfying!

I had been bending the ear of one of the old loot honchos, but, alas, they're gone from the game. Still, I'd really like to see either that weapon get upgraded, gain the ability to become upgraded, or to just have an all new version added to the game.

I'd written a thread with suggestions for such a artifact 2 years ago here: https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/353503-Ideas-for-upgrading-Divine-Vengeance-Vengeful-Protector?highlight=divine+vengeance+paladin

That doesn't quite stand up to modern loot design, but it's not too poor as a starting place.

Please? PLEASE? PLEASE?! Can we get a real, significant, cool Holy Avenger in the game for high level paladins? Something in the 24-28 (or 30) range that is the best-in-slot weapon for paladins against certain enemies (evil, or evil and chaotic)? Please?

[Fnordian]

1. More Augments - I get tons of loot with augment slots and find very few augments to put in them (and turn-in rates at collectors are rather high in many cases). I don't think I've ever found a blue augment in a chest. So more augments of every color falling in random loot chests would be appreciated. Augment slots should be searchable too.

2. Roman Numerals - I don't think they're bad per se, but they should be in addition to a descriptive word, not instead of one. And that word should be in the title (with or without the roman numeral) so they're searchable. The good thing about them is they do make it easier to see the power of an item at a glance (well a hover/tool-tip glance anyway). The bad thing, as others have pointed out, is they're not searchable. So if each level had its own unique name (e.g., Burning, Fiery, Inferno, etc.) and then you kept the roman numerals internally in the description (this is a Flaming IV weapon), that would be perfect.

3. Named Loot Bonus - any effect that's on named loot should have a bonus multiplier, similar to the multipliers added to high level weapon damage (x1.5, x2, etc.), but not just on damage, on almost every effect. That would help to immediately re-balance named loot against the random gen loot and keep it from being eclipsed.

[IronClan]

I dig a well done random loot system (see Diablo/2/3). That said the random needs to be well done... the "max roll" items where every affix is the best possible roll; need to be rare and they need to knock your socks off and make you grin ear to ear when you pull one. They also need to not litter the auction house to the point where people are vendering them :) In fact they probably need to have a 50% chance to be bound to account.

As someone with decades of gaming, DM'ing D&D and playing RPG's I can appreciate the purpose and reason behind randomized loot the same way I can for randomized pathways/layouts and monsters affixes (Diablo) in quests. Unfortunately a lot of players here don't seem too experienced with why randomized is good for long term replay value. I guess they've never played a Rogue-like or much outside of MMO's and so have formed the expectation that RPG loot is supposed to be something you meta game. Static non variable and when you get the item you want you no longer ever play that quest.

There's the problem of course, static loot puts an expiration date on every quest you guys make. Look at any quest in DDO that is no longer run by anyone and I'll show you static loot that no one wants and mediocre to poor XP.

A lot of players are saying they don't want random loot to matter, and they only want static loot to be important or worth looking at. This is an impossibly narrow minded viewpoint.

They're saying they want to know what the quest might give them before they run it. If they don't know they aren't interested. if there are any unknowns they aren't interested.

Now the inescapable conclusion is either everyone wants to have no SURPRISE no SUSPENSE no "Discovery" which i find really hard to believe or....

Most players don't actually know whats best for their own long term enjoyment of the game.

PS: Cannith crafting = moar

[Bolo_Grubb]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Random loot being way better then Named loot of similar level. New lower level loot being better then older higher level loot (ie Giant's Fist, min level 17 being better then Drow Maul of combat mastery, min level 21)
Deadly should not exist on random loot. Niche weapons have disappeared. Banes, Everbright, Smiters, etc

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Mauls, morning stars and Kukris, a severe lack of these types of weapons in named loot and decent random loot.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Deadly, although it should not exist in my opinion on random loot, all my character wear it because it is so powerful, too powerful. Several stat +10 items on most of my characters.

[RavenStormclaw]

I may be the only one to say this but....as a serious casual gamer and some one who spends a fair chunk of change on this game I want my opinions heard. I represent those players who love the game, will spend money on the game but don't have a ton of play tome or play in off peak Horus when groups are hard to come by .

I want ant yo say random loot should be almost as good as named and crafted loot. Almost but not as. I love call the named prefixes such as suns fury before they disappeared. Bring those back and others and don't nerd random loot to oblivion. It's good for those of us who don't have the time or the abilities to raid shroud or do the challenges

[Zibowskij]

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


Greater convalecent bracers of parrying <3
Give us those back and you'll probably see a parade in your honor :D

[Gratch]

What I like with random loot:

The change from race restricted to wondrous/masterfulcraftsmanship got rid of some UMD lag and adds some further rarity/want of random loot.
Scaling a bunch of properties so they are useful at higher levels makes sense.


What feels a bit tarnished with recent random loot changes:

Most of my preShadowfell named and even raid items are weak for some properties compared to random loot. The EE Dream Visor dying the worst death. It just feels like (in particular) attribute bonuses (previously +8 @ L25 raid items, moved to +11 on random items (wondrous L28's)), DC bonuses +3 was "epic DC bonus" now compared with +5's in randoms and then the Deadly, Accuracy, Resist, Natural Armor all going as high as +11(12?) on random items really shamed L25 named items from before that point. I was okay with the scaling but somehow the addition of only 3 levels gave up to a 40% bump to certain scaling with no means to upgrade current tough fought over items. I mean it's good to have new items to get, but on day 1 for the items where a random scaled property existed, it beat out all my named items with that property by a large margin.
A lot of previously existing random loot properties are missing.
The crafting system is still stuck in heroic and should adopt all the new random item properties once you're settled on those properties.


After a few months with the new random property set, I'm not terribly sad that there's useful random items to try and find. I'm just moreso sad there's now some completely worthless named items (Dream Visor, any preShadowfell named item with a casting DC on it), etc.

Also... outside of the random items system... the recent named items have been mostly "meh". Maybe 1 or 2 okay ones. I know devs are trying to restrict total number of properties per item after they discovered some general lag comes from all our item properties... but especially weapon wise... there's nothing to even slightly consider replacing CitW weapons... especially now that everyone has at least 2 CitW weapons.

[PuppiesAndRainbows]

Problems with random loot


Even when I find something that would be beneficial I often don't bother with it.
Someone described gearing as playing Tetris, juggling items around to get everything to fit.
Once you have the gear Tetris-ed, attempting to using the random loot is like playing Jenga.
You might have to re-gear a lot of other items to use one new item.


I wouldn't bother with most random loot if a few items were added or improved in Cannith crafting.
Ability Stats, Natural Armor, Protection, Resistance, Striding being scaled up to match the new random items would help.
Adding Blurry to Cannith crafting would make playing the Tetris/Jenga game a whole lot easier.


I've got a lot of nice gear, someday I may even spend hours figuring out how to equip that gear.


The simple workaround for gearing might be allowing toons another gear option.
Magical earrings?


Some random combinations make no sense to me.
Clever of the Eagle - is junk IMO, but Clever of Minute Seeing or Wise of the Eagle are golden.
...and a dwarven war axe of dwarf bane is just plain funny.


Basically none of the random loot is much fun.
Maybe if some of the random gear worked like a Potion of Wonder it would be more fun.
Cursed appearance items would be more fun than cursed ability stats.
Or a random generated item that looked at what you are wearing and then automatically turned itself into something useful, that would be pretty sweet.
Maybe a stone of change for random loot? Put 10 random items in and it transmogrifies them into an item beneficial to the toon.


Underserved types
Bewildering - I would love to find a Bewildering Paralyzing heavy repeater with a red augment slot.
Ethereal
Freedom of Movement


Non-named loot in use
I use three yellow and colorless augment items and Cannith crafting to have all elemental resistances and ability stats.
Example: Crafted Wise helmet of acid resistance, slotted with constitution and fire resistance.

[Jefro]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Level Requirements still too high for certain statics and abilities on the items. Augments suffer the same problem, they should lower each by two levels. Armors from Eveningstar challenges are very underwhelming and need additional boosts to its random lottery. I think they should create items with lower level requirements that aid in those reincarnated, perhaps a buff if have a past life or lower requirement if had a past life class or race.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Quivers, Throwing weapons, Docents, Epic-level Rapiers, and better variety of repeating xbows

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

- +1 Flaming light xbow of laceration

[Sebastrd]

Disclaimer: cut and pasted from a previous thread of mine...

Random loot should provide meaningful choices for gearing characters, should be easily identified at a glance, should include some superior combinations for the gambling factor, should be not quite as good as named loot of equivalent minimum level, and should resemble something an enchanter would conceivably spend the time and effort to create.

1. Populate random item names directly from the item descriptions or item effects. Not all that long ago, someone had the brilliant idea to update items with abilities such as seeker and stunning to include the magnitude of the enchantment in the item name, i.e., a Seeker Mace of Stunning became a Seeker +2 Mace of Stunning +10. The new random abilities reverted to the outdated naming convention for some reason. My assumption is that this is an easy fix.
2. Put the old abilities back into the loot tables. Flaming Burst, Lacerating, Riptide et al are sorely missed. Flaming II might be objectively marginally better than flaming burst, but flaming burst is way cooler and provides a meaningful gear choice. (Do I take the cool effect over the marginally better vanilla effect? Are burst effects actually better based on my build/weapon type? Ect.)
3. Make abilities like burst effects and riptide solely the province of named items. For example, if a random level 2 weapon would have flaming or frost, a named level 2 weapon would have flaming burst or riptide. If a random level 10 weapon would have greater humanoid bane, a named level 10 weapon would have mauling.

Named armor is vastly superior to random armor because most named armors include multiple armor prefixes/suffixes and/or unique abilities. Invulnerability and life-shield are about the only useful abilities on random armor, and past levels where invulnerability is useful ALL random armors are vendor trash. Other useful abilities like deathblock or energy absorption are better gotten on accessories than on armor. Random armor should be only slightly worse than equivalent minimum level named armors, and should be either objectively better than equivalent level accessories or not compete with accessories at all.

1. Much like D&D Next has combined feat groups into single feats to make them more appealing, combine similar armor abilities into more powerful single enchantments. For example, combine the retributive (horrible name, by the way) abilities with their respective resistances and absorptions as in spells like fire shield. A Fire Protection III armor that combines Greater Fire Resistance, Fire Absorption 20%, and Fire Guard 3d6 is infinitely more appealing than any of its individual enchantments by themselves. Other combinations might include Vigilant (protection and fortification), Repelling (spell resistance and resistance bonus), and Gossamer (shadow, silent moves, and mobile).
2. Reintroduce special materials.

I think the only random loot my character is currently wearing is a ring with Dodge 6% on it, simply because there isn't a named source and miss chance is so critical at high levels. It should be noted that I'm currently on a FvS life. If I were playing a melee character, I'd most certainly have the best Deadly item I could find.

[IronClan]

We need enhancement bonuses above +5 (+6 to +10)
Potential increase from the current 15 item potential up to 21 (Tier 2 Epic enhancement level)
Add all the new Keen types including IV
Add the new deception
Add Lore V, VI, VII, VIII and IX
Add Spell power 84, 90, 114 and 120
Add Stats +7 +8 +9 and +10

If you want to keep the top level bonuses for non crafted loot (+11 stats, Lore X, Spell power 134+ ) fine but at least make Cannith crafting semi relevant as a way to make second tier gear until you find better. Or for those rare flavor builds (I have a Wiz that uses crafted throwing daggers, red augments (slotted with spell power) and crafted lore (currently restricted to lore V or 15%) a combo that no matter how useful and flavorful is going to be pretty gimpy past 20th level.

[gelgoog]

My answers as follows:

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Odd properties like cold iron, riposte, destruction and such. My favorite weapon in game is the Cannith Elemental Greataxe of Fire you craft from the Cannith Challenges. It has Metalline as the type and then has great features like Magma Surge, Greater Incineration, Flaming Burst, Brilliance, Greater Fire Resit, Colorless and red augment spots.

I am not saying that random loot should be like that axe but should follow a similar pattern of choices and relatable effects. For instance I would love to have more Named Dwarven Axes with similar effects to the Cannith Greataxe of fire.

Not many named Dwarven Axes in DDO and that should change. If you are not willing to add more named Dwarven Axes then at least have some random loot spawn some nice ones.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Destruction, Cursespewing, Underwater action on weapons, Riposte, Byeshk, Vicious, Strength Sapping, Bone Breaking, Shatter, Parrying, Shattermantle, Fearsome.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your characters are currently wearing.

Just deadly items, Protection with dex, Wisdom with natural armor bonus, not much random loot really, I wear named items and the cannith challenge gear mostly. I have an Eveningstar lvl 20 crafted Dwarven axe that has Improved Paralization, magma surge, and Icy burst on it which I enjoy using. Trying to get lucky again with that random eveningstar crafting which isn’t all that fun.

[Firewall]

1) Named items should be better than random loot at the same levels.

2)
- Some effects and their DC's are not really scaling all the way into Epics (Paralyzing, Freezing Ice, Righteousness,...) or not showing up (Banishing)
- All the nice high-level weapon effects like Obscuring are not dropping anymore
- Too few Throwing Weapons drop in random loot. Especially shuriken could drop a lot more. I so far i have never seen a random throwing weapon drop with things like Improved Vorpal, Improved Smiting, Improved Disruption or Improved Banishing and even the base enchantments (Vorpal, Disruption,...) almost never drop on them. Metalline is never seen either on throwers and most times it is even hard to find one which breaks DR/good
- Riposte and augment slots on Bracers are not dropping

3) I use a lot of random items with +9 or +10 attributes, deadly, accuracy, resistance and dodge. I would use a random Parrying or Riposte VIII or better (non-weapon) item if they would drop with other nice stats or augments on random loot. A high-tier Deception item would be nice too but i cannot fit that into most of my gear distributions.

[Scraap]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.


This? Right here? This gets you points.



- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The two largest issues with RNG loot that immediately spring to mind are:
1) On average, they out-class non-random loot that is easier to acquire. Be that (in order of ease of acquisition): MoTU fully-formed drop loot, non-guaranteed-drop named loot, crafted loot, non-epic raid loot, non-epic raid-crafted loot, epic raid-crafted loot.
2) An overfocus on effects with a high bias towards an average. Deadly is one example, but a high number of d6s that just bleed into an almost guaranteed bonus per-hit is another. Your average gamer is almost always going to gravitate towards maximizing their control over a situation. The problem is, with the lions share of content lacking randomized mobs or dungeons, too much control just ends up turning it into a repetitive slog once that is accomplished. It doesn't *have* to be a loot-only fix, but frankly, the latest loot changes have all but broken replay value in that regard, and the dungeons of late aside from the absolute latest haven't really given much hope for that changing that end any time soon. (Philosophically speaking, On-the-Dice doesn't just apply to saves and DCs. It's one of the reasons quite a few folks refer to the pre-epic game as DnDish and the post-epic game as not.)



- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

1) weapons:
a) Low rate of attack weapons are likely the worst offenders.
b) Low crit profile weapons a close second. (crit profile being range* multiplier)

2) armors:
a) The defensive end is largely down to the deltas between robes and heavy armor. Conceptually, there's a sliding scale for how much magic vs how much physical damage is mitigated. In practice, there's simply not enough bonus on the physical mitigation end to make giving up the magical defensive end worth it.
b) ties in to point a tangentially: using the same linear progression for probabilities for defensive procs as offensive procs makes the erroneous assumption that we're sitting there trading blows with things that have comparable hitpoints and damage as we do. We aren't. Ever. It's either a case of being offensively overgeared to the point of cutting through their defenses before a proc goes off, or them hitting hard enough those 2%s are unlikely to trigger before we're down and out in just about every encounter.

3) saves: we went from superior stability compressing the difference between an alignment-locked class with saves boosts and one without, even if only by a little, to almost double that for any alignment. Pretty much the opposite of what was needed to keep things on the dice there.

4) tactics vs DC augmentation: you've got two systems.
a) specific tactics stack with general tactics bonuses.
b) specific schools do not stack with general schools bonuses.
Pick One. (I'd personally prefer B to knock creep down a peg, but at this point, I'll take either just to get some consistency.)

5) debilitation:
a) stat debilitation is Mostly Not a Loot Problem, unless you want to bend casters over more by maintaining epic stat damage ward and going the usual 'just jack up the numbers' route to account for that -90% resistance, but the main thing there is absolutely needing to overcome a given stat vs the capacity to bring it down some really has made for a smaller game. For all characters.
b) non-damaging affixes such as knock-down, paralyzing, stunning (the chance to proc version), old vorpal (in it's many forms), nightmare, level draining ect serve as tools to bump up the utility of non-dps weapons and guard itemization without eclipsing the role of dps or pure defensive ones. I can't really say there's ever been a point where they've served that purpose well outside of when they have been confined to named weapons/armor alone, but biasing those toward otherwise poor loot when the RNG is generating them might serve to slow the bleeding there a little bit.

[LordDunmore]

I know this is a bit more specific than what you are looking for, but ....

How about revisiting again the drop rate of some of the 'very rare' raid items. The one that I sorely wish for is Yellow Dopant in the Shroud.

On all my toons, I would imagine I have run well over 100 shroud runs, the majority on Hard, a few norm and elite. Since dopant was introduced I have seen it drop ONCE in over 100 runs. On Hard/Elite, that is a minimum of 3 chests it could appear in. That's 12 people * 3 Chests per run, * 100. Which comes to a conservative 1:3600 chance of a drop? (or if you want to add that there can be more than one shroud ingredient in each chest, and the number is even drastically poorer... 1:10,000 or more?) Factor in loot boost weekends, jewels of fortune, etc. and its even more disappointing.

Of course there is the 20th reward list, but you are now choosing between cleansing stone and dopant.

Thanks for the thread. It's appreciated.

[Scrapco]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Aside from that? Nothing, I guess.
You can probably look it up somehow, but I'm infinitely curious about end rewards, if you track that. Was there an impact on the number of people taking guild renown instead of gear after the switch? I very rarely take loot anymore, just because I go down the list saying "garbage, garbage, garbage..." Once in a while I'll grab something with a slot and craft that to go on the AH.

Kind of off-tangent, but the *way* reward lists are decided could use a tweak or two. If you're playing a dark monk, say, it would be great to have shortswords drop regularly. Decent non-magic quarterstaffs might be fun if you have Henshin ranks. Instead, it's always the same old garbage handwraps.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Wraps, but that's my monk bias speaking. The part I *do* like about the randomness is that we're getting different effects in different places now, e.g. something other than Clever +x Goggles of Irrelevancy, which was pointless for half the classes.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your characters are currently wearing.

Level 12 monk, and apart from a crafted thorn guard robe of invulnerability, nothing. I'd be surprised if you find many people on their second+ life who have much random gear above level 5 or so, and of that, it's probably almost all "old" (like invuln, convalescent/parrying, lacerating, and so on). The only thing I'll probably add somewhere is Deadly. Sometime I swap in a fire resist item or whatever, but that's only because I get tired of popping pots and I don't have uber ship buffs.

+1 vote to update Cannith crafting, as well. There are a (steadily dwindling, it seems) few of us who have a) invested a fair amount of time into it; but b) also enjoy it. I like when a friend asks me if I can build some crazy boots, or a greatsword of mad hackery. The issue is after the first few levels, you can't really make anything great except for a few specialized items.


+10 votes for asking the questions in the first place though! The communication lately has been great, and we all hope it continues.

[HGM-Chi]

Stop with the roman numeral junk.


greater convalescent bracers of superior parrying (i refuse to call them parrying VIIIVXWIIMLX or whatever stupid roman numeral junk got added).

I find it funny they've gone to this system after having decided the player base couldn't possibly understand how 2d6 or 3d8 works.

[knightgf]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.





There are several issues. First, spell components are only in a stack of 10; why not 100 or more? Second, it can be difficult to get a random gen item you desire even when "Show end rewards based on class" is checked. For example, a pale master wizard is likely to end up with weapons more suitable for a barbarian than themselves. And finally, there are not enough 'cursed' variables thrown around; curses that are dependent on a condition (I.E.: Make a check every X minutes or have Y effect for Z seconds.), are unreliable (% chance every X minutes that item will not function for Y seconds), reduce maximum HP/SP/KI, exc. could be introduced. In addition, they really should not show up at epic levels, except perhaps for named items.
In random loot? Trinkets. In named loot? Medium armor, rapiers, shuriken, throwing weapons, light hammers (Which might as well be taken out of the game), tower shields, light/heavy maces, morningstars, kukri, greatclubs, mauls, warhammers, dwarven axes and great crossbows tend to be some of the more underserved loot.
If I wear non-named loot, its usually to accompany something named loot does not have.


As a bonus answer, here are some loot properties you could offer either on named and/or random loot:



(Metamagic name here): (Metamagic name here) costs no additional SP to use, and is automatically applied to all spells capable of using it. This effect lasts for 20 seconds.
Greater (Metamagic name here): (Metamagic name here) costs no additional SP to use, is automatically applied to all spells capable of using it, and subtracts the number of spell points used that spell would have otherwise used with the metamagic, but never below 0 spell points. This effect lasts for 20 seconds.
Lesser respite: Your action boosts, turn undead, remove disease, lay on hands, rage, and leap of faith uses regenerate at a rate of 1 every three minutes.
Respite: Your action boosts, turn undead, remove disease, lay on hands, rage, and leap of faith regenerate at a rate of 1 every two minutes.
Greater respite: Your action boosts, turn undead, remove disease, lay on hands, rage, and leap of faith regenerate at a rate of 1 every two minutes, and the number of times you can use them increases by two.

[patang01]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

First, look at what MOTU did right (and the releases up till the xpack.

Lots of new and interesting permutations across many different items. Restrictions were loosened and what were unique to named items added to random loot. Like heal amp. Spell power on rings and helmets. Much stronger random staffs etc. And ontop of that 'special' random loot that had special properties like Meteoric. In other words - what you could find on unique named items were now possible to pull on a random.

Then augments were added. Awesome - now even random items could add that diversity. This was expanded in the latest xpack along with the side effect of removing all interesting permutations.

In short order. The latest xpack did 2 good thing and everything else wrong.

First - it removed the BTC feature in a big way. So most items are unbound and not automatically bound because they seem stronger. Only the very top one random items with blue border binds. It's unfortunate since even if they are 'stronger' they're not always better and we players don't need more garbage in our banks. But over all most items are now unbound while named have the same BTC on equip.

Second - it expanded augments. Now you can find more blue, more red and more multi colored including 2 augments on items. That's good. It adds diversity. Like with my scepter with glaciation and acid lore and a red augment so I can add more acid spell power too it. That adds diversity. And since it's unbound I can either sell it or put it on a mule. Good.

The bad are of course the obliteration of all the good permutations from MOTU and forward with the addition of fewer to items. Ontop of they overboard power on random stuff to the point they've destroyed the value of some of the better named. Like deadly of accuracy items. It's 'good' but at the same time it made all other similar named items worthless over night. Especially since you can pull stronger random deadly items at lower level then what used to be a really desired item - the dreamvisor.

So how can this be Fixed. Increase permutations. To MOTU and forward levels. Heal amp, repair amp, spell power on items again (and not just scepters) with the odd lore item other then scepters.

Same with armor and shields. Diversify. Make them desired. Make them interesting. Also, revise the named items that got screwed. Make their bonuses stack, rather then take a meat cleaver to the problem.
Like with the dreamvisor - make it a stacking bonus different from the deadly of accuracy. Something like a sacred bonus, or even psionic. You can make it smaller to scale better - like the heroic gets a bonus that doesn't stack as well with deadly compared to other similar items where as the Epic versions get more unique.

Add more augments. Diverse augments. And have them drop slightly more often. No need to saturate the market with them, Just make enough of them to make exploring chests fun again. Augments represent the ultimate diversity item. It allows unique combinations.

Also, figure how to make something up-gradable. From normal to elite. We see a glut of stuff on the market now, make higher version more unique but with the posibility to upgrade them to elite. The name of the game here is time sink. If I spend more time in the system upgrading items then someone else do pulling EE items, I assume it's a win win for everyone. More importantly - we need a new 'greensteel' system. One were we spend real amount of time making the items we like.

Finally

Add a way to make greater tokens, heroic comms or for them to drop more. My suggestion while you guys ramp up and get the end game going is to add comms to all Epic raids. A chance in everything but Citw and fot and in citw and fot automatic like it is in fot now.

That would make people run these raids more - and making it possible once more to earn greater tokens since right now few run old epic raids making it impossible to get greater tokens. And with this redo the old epic system. Make it possible to create a missing piece of the 3 stuff needed to make an item epic by using say valor. Like if you have the shard and the scroll you simply use valor as a substitute for the missing seal.

The reason is simple; the old epic was far more arbitrary then what we have now but those items are good right now when we ETR. And I can't tell you how infernally frustrating it is to try to pull say the shard of the doublecross bow when I get every single other pieces after hundreds of runs. It's soul hurtin'.

[PsychoBlonde]

I'd like to see benefits like stunning, shattering, deception, and parrying on non-weapon items. I haven't been able to tell, but the new dc-boosting weapons don't seem to be working: the DC on my ability doesn't change and it fires as often as it does without my dc-boosting weapons. This is a major problem.

[RedOrm]

Just chiming in to agree with almost everything said so far:

Random loot should NOT be better than named loot. It should be weaker.
Named loot should NOT have random effects.
Bring BACK all the cool pre- and suffixes.
Make the power of an item VISIBLE in the name.
Cannith crafting/greensteel etc needs to be UPDATED all the way up to level 30. (YES please!! to an epic shroud I LOVE that quest)/
The old epic items should get an update, OR be far easier to get, either by substantially increasing the droprate for shards and seals, or by making them unbound, or at least able to turn in 3 for 1 seal.shard of your choice.
FIX the droprate for tomes, or at least explain to us how it works.
And so on.

A few things I haven't seen yet:
Please STOP making everything non-random BTC! I hate it when my wizard pulls an item that would be extremely cool for my tank but can't do anything with it except vendor it.
Likewise, remove this property from augments: I Hate how slotting an augment in an unbound item makes the item BTC. Apart from specicific rare named loot like ESOS, BTC is BAD.
I also feel many augments are too high ML for what they grant.
I would love to see more named loot that *doesn't* outright improve my dps. Storage stuff like component pouches, scrollcases, potion belts, and bigger quivers, funky stuff like the Horn of Plenty (could be a clicky that produces random tevern fare, or non-random based on level, or whatever)

Underserved gear would be halfplate, many light X weapons (light pick, light xbow), named docents, companion collars (do these even still drop? It's been AGES since I last saw one).

Non-named stuff: statboosters on all toons, from crafted +2 to lootgen +10 int/+10 resist goggles. Casting sticks (glaciation of icelore and such; I have Twilight thanks to the raiders box, but it went straigt from the box to the bank for if and when I find a use for it), armour, shields... tons of stuff really.

And finally a question from me: if you're the new Loot Master, what happened to Feather_of_Sun? His open, candid, *informative* posts of last weekend gave me great hopes, but altough the thread was labeled Weekly, there's been not a peep from him since, and now there suddenly is a new loot dev??

Greetz,
Red Orm

[lugoman]

Really need a high dps named Dwarven Axe.

Not sure if it is possible, but augment crystals that increase weapon proc rates (like lighting, disintegrate), increase weapon effects like smite and banish (so they go off on 19 and 20) or decrease cool downs (like intim).

[Backley]

Too many crafting systems has made it so that every system is incomplete and mostly ignored.

Start rolling all the systems together.

* Cannith crafting shards should all be usable in augment slots and augment crystals should all be usable in Cannith crafting machines (but if you Cannith-craft your Diamond of Vitality onto an item it cannot be recovered via a Jeweler's Toolkit, hence the continued worth of augment slots).
* Reaver's Refuge Dragontouched armor should be converted to a hybrid of Cannith and Augment crafting (like a blank DT Shroud is craftable +7 with a blue slot and a clear slot) and the Eldritch/Tempest/Sovereign Runes should all be converted to Cannith and Augment gems. Maybe a pile of Draconic Runes can add another augment slot or something. And make the Draconic Runes go in bags all ready!
* Fold Greensteel in there too, just like DT above.
* All random-gen effects should be craftable via Cannith crafting. Maybe some of them require an essence created from the random gen effect itself (so to make Paralyzing you need to crunch a Paralyzing weapon, as was originally demo'd.)
* Most named-only effects should be craftable via Cannith crafting too: if you want to crunch-up your Staff of the Seer for an Essence of UMD +5 or Essence of INT to Attack/Damage, go for it.

Choices, give us choices.

[oradafu]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

I haven't had a chance to read what others have written, so I might add some more stuff later. However, I can name a few petty peeves with loot right off the top of my head.

When it comes to random loot, quarterstaves need to have an easier time gaining metallic properties and more durablity. Darkwood helps some with the durability issue, but the few ways of getting a metallic property quarterstaff negates the Darkwood option for the most part. Sources of metallic quarterstaves are the DDOStore, the end chain reward of Deleras and Threnal, and the Red Augment slot. The Red Augment slot would be fine if the Quarterstaff didn't suffer from being a weak weapon (1d6/x2) and poor durability. I think an easy way to improve the random quarterstaff would be to include both the Darkwood property and two Red Slots, so Silver/Cold Iron/Adamantine/Flametouched Iron could be slotted in one slot while the second slot could be used to increase the DPS of the weapon.

When it comes to named items, the unique Docents are severely lacking. Since the IQ, there's been less than 5 unique Docents made and none of them have been overly great. That's not really saying much, since Armors in the game (especially in the Epics) are outright horrible. There's a reason why most players are running around with the same type of armors, there needs to be more work on the named armors. But the Docents really have the short end of the stick in good armors. For years players have pointed out for example the lack of Rogue and Monk Docents, such as the Frozen Tunic, Snakeskin Vest, Icy Raiment. There's soon going to be a total of 10 Epic levels and not a single great unique general-use Docent, much less specialize Docents for particular classes. All of this should have been fixed back in Update 11 with the release of House C, yet WF players are still waiting for a decent item to be released.

As for non-named loot my characters have, maybe Deadly. Weapon-wise, it's probably Smiting (and maybe Banishing) since there's so few named Smiting weapons for my characters.

I'll throw more more thing out there for you. I'd like to see some ranged weapons get an AoE effect. Whether its a thrown weapon, bow or ammo, it'd be nice for characters that aren't casters or Artis being able to take out several barrels at a distance, instead of having to walk up to each one and hit them to get the ransack bonus.

[NytCrawlr]

1) I'd very much like to see Cannith crafting get new recipes.

This, but I know there is a plan to have something come down the pipe, at some point...


2) I'd like to see the old scroll/seal/shard Epic items get some love. It takes a VERY long time to get those items and they're just mid-game "passing through" loot now. I do think that having a significant investment in getting end game items is fine, but for items that you're just going to wear for a few levels, I think it's reasonable to just have the item itself drop directly OR add a seal exchange and shard exchange just like the Scroll exchange that we have now.

All of this, they are going to become the new twink items for some ER characters, and I think it is old enough loot that we need to have some turns ins, or maybe just start having shard/seal/scrolls show up in end rewards (a chance), and then the whole list on third runs (still a decent grind if there are multiple items in a quest that you want). This would especially help with the Sands items.

More to follow. :)

[Scraap]

Actually, one other 'random' (ish) underserved item that's such a joke in practice that it completely slipped my mind to even consider in the initial post: offensive wands. No way to put it but bluntly, so: The eternals are meh, the charged ones we pull are laughable, and staves which were altered to use our casting stats (not that that really helps, say, a rogue) are pretty much non-existent.

[Trasak]

I have not taken the time to read the other pages so please ignore or +1 any of the repeated statements if you are keeping track.

For many people loot is all about slot consolidation and getting all of your bases covered in order to slot in those few unique named items.

To do that we look for items with good pre-fixes su-fixes in good combinations that fill the gaps in our current gear.
Secondly we look for unique effects that are only found on lower power items such as healing amp preferably once again with a second effect that is also desirable.

Everything else that isn't in one of those two groups is vendor/deconstruct trash. I would be very surprised if even 5% of the pre U19 items were even worth putting on the auction house at their vendor price and the post U19 gear is even worse off.

This glut of bad gear is mostly due to a truly or nearly truly random item generation. Good e-fixes are combined with bad, odd combinations of power levels are found on the same item ie Deadly +6 and say +1 ref save raising the ML for no real gain, and off element caster items.

It would help maters alot if items were generated with respect to previously generated features on the item.

The tree I am thinking of would be something along the following:

1)Item type: Melee Weapon, Caster Weapon, Armor, Clothing
2)Specific item: ie Great Sword, Orb, Breastplate, Trinket
3)Specific item properties: Normal, Special material (including non metal medium and heavy armor)
4)Augment slots: none, colorless, yellow, blue, red, green, orange, purple or a combination.
5)Item Quality: Weak(cursed), normal, powerful(master craft), single rare, double rare

Now it gets challenging.

Any item that has one close to max ability with a low level one should be considered weak due to the ML tax of the weak ability.
Normal items should be either one enchant only at a high level or a balanced pair
Powerful items should be a balanced pair at nearly the single enchant level.
Single rare would have one rare e-fix and one normal
Double rare would have two rare e-fixs

Now onto building the item
Weak items could follow the current true random item generation code.
Normal singles would be easy as they are just a single effect pushed to the maximum for that item level
Normal balanced is where the logic begins. Randomly pick prefix or sufix to be the first picked then based on the effect limit the list of second options to favoring like attribute effects. This would be like combining caster stats with spellpoints, deadly and accuracy, protection and fortification, stats(enhancement exceptional or insight) with skills they modify, and importantly in my opinion spell crit and spell power to the same school.

The normals should represent good gear you can replace a lower level version you are currently wearing as you level, in pen and paper you would just pay a wizard to upgrade your current item when you had the gold.

Rares are where the grinding and hunting for unique and effectively named item level of power randoms, a perfect combination pre u19 caster staff is what single rares should be.

Rare effects need to represent multiple slot combination and unique twists. Weapons it sounds like are already on the right track with a strong base damage effect plus low chance procs. I would suggest adding things like wounding to deception items and a chance for all combat effects on a combat mastery rare.
Items need their own rares too. Healing amp should be back on the normal table but a multiple effect rare of healing amp, heal skill and alchemical healing spell power would be a good effect. Prismatic resistance at full normal strength of all 5 types, note not max power, both aligned and opposition spell power weapons so fire and ice or fire and lightning with both lores. I would also ask for turning Con-op from greensteel into an enchant effect that can only apply once per character and show up on the rare table, poor druids are shut out due to steel belts.

Double rares are the crem dela crem. Either one of the rare effects at full powerful effect or two of the rare e-fixs on the same item and maybe something else one an even more unique tier +10 all stats or something.

Everything above normal should be btcoe at least and double rares should be btcoa?


TLDR: Select set of good combos at each min level for normal gear and Op stuff you ninja loot and quit your guild to keep as rare

TLDRTLDR: Cannith Crafting of Augment gems, free the non producing cash cow.

[MeliCat]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


1) Problems with random loot other than diverstiy.
It just seems weak. It doesn't feel like things like riposte does very much. I hit things with ghostbane handwraps in the harbour at level 4 and I get yellow numbers. Same with the ghostly skeles in deleras (which need good DR). I don't like the names either. The names seem very mechancial and jolt me out of this fantasy world. I'm sad about that. I like that it's not bind on equip any more so I can move favourites around to other characters. I don't like how the minimum levels have changed so that a +2 con item is now minimum level 3. And I think it is very rude of Turbine to accuse me of exploiting with the burden of guilt debuff when you were the ones to change the minmum level. I like how slots of different colours are now appearing on my loot in different locations. I like how different stats are appearing in more locations. I don't like how mimum levels change. I think it's confusing when I slot something or when I craft something. I really wish the whole minmum level thing was easier to understand. (I am not saying I don't understand it. I am saying I wish it was easier to understand).

2) "weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot"

I'm sorry but I don't understand this question. Can you please rephrase it so I may understand you better? If I am to guess what you mean, if you mean "under served" meaning, "do not have enough of" then I would answer as follows:
- healing amp
- clickies like shield, expeditious, prot evil (that actually works - still broken) - side note: removing clickie from cloak of ice was kind of sad.
- good dps on weapons - i miss the tripple/quadruple effects.
- red slots on non weapons or some sort of amp for healing spells etc. spellcraft is something I guess.
- more DR breaking on weapons combinations either metal type or more good/holy
- good being tied to UMD need on i think still just named loot - not sure but has this been fixed on random?


3) My characters typically wear certain non named loot at certain levels:

Level 0-3 whatever - surviving on bulls str pots, bears pots, large guild slot health item, shield clickie, expeditious retreat clickie, invisibility clickies + pots, dualboxed monk. as there are no clickies in the game now and prefixes like "lacerating" have gone, there is no random gen loot that seems particularly helpful except maybe weapons with different damage types - due to the low levels I would be looking for the maximum single type. But basically surviving on Korthos gear.

Levels 4/5 - 8 random loot gen weapons or crafted ones if i can't find anything decent like holy of bleed. looking for damage reduction armors or bracers. still using expeditious retreat clickies as faster than any striding avaliable (quicksilver cassock has 20% at level 8). + to saves and deadly (great new effect - thank you) and stat items. not interested in things that don't add to damage or DR bypassing being on a weapon - I consider that a waste when I can find a prefix/suffix there that does add to damage there. experimenting with guard effects still as I really like the proc off the Frozen Tunic but I don't think it's the same so have ignored for the most part. bodyfeeder and invunerability are nice on armor. Still using clickies particularly for shield.

9-20 mainly high dps weapons, stat items, + life, damage mitigation, clickies. on casters the new random loot gen is nice for sticks. doesn't help me for meleeing casters (eg clonk but i guess eldritch knight same deal).

[losian2]

One thing that drives me crazy, personally, is the sheer "balance" of it. Breaking items into tiers and such really helps organize it, but it also makes it boring as all heck.

Considering how things stack in DDO, for example, I'll NEVER EVER want a +stat or +bonus of most any sort that's mixed with something else that lessens it.. The stuff with multiple things, i.e. low accuracy and low spellpoints, is just junk. Someone would rather take a full bonus to accuracy *and* a full bonus to spellpoints, and due to how painfully obvious the stepping is on enhancements, it really just *feels* bland.

I really get the design basis, organizing things into groups of five and ten and working in tiers and for every X pluses you get Y bonus up to A amount from Z list. It makes sense, but it's beyond boring as a player. Loot boosts are also beyond worthless in the present state - all I do is get junk I can't use for a while, rather than stuff that's arguably better.

We need some kind of rare prefixes/suffixes, something that's exciting to see. As it is you'd just steadily upgrade each I to II, II to III, III to IV, ad nauseum, and that's dull. I'd rather see a lot of these absurdly good bonuses disappear and be replaced with stuff that requires some thought and planning as for what goes where, what you take, and more importantly, what you give up. Choices aren't interesting if there's hardly a choice to be made. +10 dmg and +10 to-hit, or anything else.. well golly those are gonna trump every thing, in spades. I feel like there was a bit of an oversight in the loot shift with trying so hard to 'balance.' Keep in mind that balance isn't always a holy grail of making games more fun or better, there's a definite reason to want balance and trying to pursue it, but things which are too balanced, especially when you can glance at them and just *see* the arbitrary mechanics that bind them, become dull very fast. When no items stand out as unusual or special, no named loot have those unusually remarkable stats or odd slots or whatnot, it's just boring. We want a semblance of balance, for sure, and an item with X suffix that *nobody* ever uses could always use a nudge to have some usefulness, even just for some obscure quests/builds/etc. But really I've only just started playing agian and I was kinda floored at some of the loot I'm getting at like level 8 and 9.. +4 and 5 to-hit, damage, stat boosts.. Definitely blowing most named gear well out of the water.

Given the situation, I'd say I liked the old loot better - the random rare effects that had weird things and combined strangely.. They were definitely more interesting, though arguably nobody used "regular" prefix/suffixed items, so that's sorta the catch 22 there. Personally, either named items need to be pushed up nicely, or everyone else needs to be shifted around to accomodate, because a lot of the special items are really utterly lack luster, and it's disappointing when rather than wielding Grasshag the Western Axe of the Slayer of the Dark Deep or something similarly epic, you just whip on the next +5 Choppy Axe of the Choppy Chops that fell out of a barrel at random. don't get me wrong, good random loot is great, but named loot should always stand out.. not even necessarily always as better, but unique if nothing else.

Since coming back to DDO again I had a feeling something was wonky with the loot, and it definitely feels a lot more .. plain, is the best word. I don't find myself really wanting or looking forwards to many, or even really any, drops. None are really any more special, just the next slightly higher level version, and that linearly and obviously 'balanced' approach is what lacks luster.

Edit: Also, I love the cursed items. But I'd love to see what I mentioned above but in lieu of some of the rare/superrareawesome junk, have the same but cursed, i.e. a trade-off. Again, interesting decisions to make about items/upgrades are what make games like DDO robust in their gear. You don't just look at the obvious mainstat/otherstats and slap on the obvious choice, you have to mix and match, give and take, plan ahead, think about it.. not so in the current system. But some item akin to the old rare prefix/sufix (the cyan border stuff) that was rare BUT cursed, and thus on a higher drop chance (kind've a you almost got a rare, but not quite, but here's something pretty good with a slight drawback) would be great. Same with old racial stuff or other weird restrictions, it adds flavor. More flavor if what DDO needs now. Also also, sets are a very cool and kinda underused mechanic. The decision to trade off other slots for an overall boost and such is a fun one to make, and it's all the more fun to hunt down sets.. but dangerously enough, sets can kinda end up being a no-brainer if all their bonuses are just plain too good.

Also also - wearing pretty much all non-named stuff, save for voice of the master, coronach, and blademark's docent on my 9ish dual-class artificer. There's just nothing that compares with some of these items - at level 9 I've got wiz5 cloak, 5int goggles, 5str bracer, deadly 5, speed v, accuracy 5 random drops.

[GeneralDiomedes]

Issues with random loot


Too many overpowered effects that drop too frequently. There needs to be slightly more garbage out there, and 'perfect' combinations and more powerful effects need to drop less frequently. Increase even more the excitement of opening a chest and motivation to loot farm and check the auction house. Speed, Deadly, Resistance, Stat items all seem to drop like candy. I like the new effects introduced with Shadowfell, I just think the loot gods got a little carried away.
No thought seems to have gone into the relative power of some effects when calculating the min level. Examples
Deadly - +6 damage by the early teens seems OP
Resistance - I have a min level 7 cloak with +5 resistance. Incredible
Roman numeral damage effects - They quickly overtake older named effects at higher levels. I get the reason, just kind of depressing that a lot of cool effects are obsolete
We have this odd mixture now of old and new effects. It really is quite a mess.
A lot of named items have not been scaled up to be desirable at level vs random loot. e.g. Boots of the Innocent. Not sure if random should be scaled down or named scaled up.
I liked the UMD restriction on race restricted stuff. It added another dimension to builds. It would be nice to bring something similiar back, no matter how illogical.


What I like about random loot


New effects combined with random augment slots means opening a chest is MUCH more exciting than pre-Shadowfell. Well not quite on the par of wounding of puncturing, there are still some great combinations that can arise. I like that thrill.
Augments are always fun to pull
Non-raiders can still get some decent gear
Limiting some effects to Cannith-crafting only was a great idea, even if greater banes are about the only thing power gamers are going to craft.


p.s. I really hope FoS didn't get thrown under the bus :(

[CaptainSpacePony]

Underserved item types:
-Docent
-Maul
-Warhammer
-Shields
-kama
-hand axe (should be a mart wpn, since monks get them as a wpn prof)
-Trinket

Overserved item types:
-Khopesh

Things I'd like to see:
-Better/more interesting weapon suffixes.
-More precise names (Flaming X, rather than just Flaming)
-Raid loot > Named loot > random loot
-Cannith crafting (not what you asked for) needs a shot in the arm.

I also like sets and upgradable stuff.
A prism2 wand would be fun too. Random effects are often interesting, if the random table is large enough.

[Rathic]

Insta kill abilities should work off hp% or scale with ML of the item, a vorpal/banishing/disruption weapon should be able to kill anything less than 50%hp or 1000hp, whichever is greater, and do 5% of total HP or 100 damage on vorp whichever is greater. 1000hp threshold and 100hp damage otherwise is completely worthless when mobs have 600000hp.

Also, simple +W is not scaling well at all. names items have increased weapon Die that make +W attractive, but anything with less than D10 for a base die makes +W effects add very little. look at the frostbite blade or any ML25+ scimitar, if you have an ability that bumps up the weapon damage by 1W, you get an extra 3.5 damage per attack and 7 damage per crit. Now look at the oathblade, ML 20 (it already starts at 2.5[1d10]) if you bump up it's damage by 1W you get 5.5 damage per hit and 11 damage per crit.

On named 2 handers it gets even more ridiculous.

[CaptainSpacePony]

Forgot to mention that I'd also really like to see:
-Some older named and raid loot get a refresh.
-Legacy Epic Items need an overhaul. I recommend new versions have MLs tied to the new Epic Quest level. (Carnival ML20, where as VoN ML22). In general, these items should be VERY good for their ML considering how hard they are to get/make.

[Satyriasys]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?


Random loot has been totally destroyed in every way imaginable. Where do I start? It's too powerful, the new names are bland and boring, several pre/suffixes are missing. What happened to clickies? How about some spell power or spell DC items? I loved the combined affixes what happened to those? Why was the loot system butchered? :mad:



- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?


-RUNEARMS, how about some random ones? We also need more runearm looks, they're ugly and theres only like 4 different models.

-I would love to see some named rogue cloth armors.

-We could really use some named scepters for casters. Belashyrra's cleansed scepter is really nice for it's level but it's not even a scepter (please fix) we could use some higher level items like that.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Deadly, Necro focus 5 scepter, +10 stat, saves etc.

[BDog77]

Biggest problem with loot today:

Someone mentioned paralyzing, and I agree with them, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg. Making ANY epic weapon with a heroic DC is just a waste. Paralyzing is a good example. How is a dc of 17 worth anything at all in epics, and it just adds to the min level of the weapon with a useless effect. It's not the only effect like this, though. Just makes sure the DCs are relevant for the content that the weapon will be used for, or make sure those effects don't appear if they are not relevant.

As far as random lootgen I wear, I really like things like Acid Torrent, Lightning Storm, I think Freezing Gale was another one. Effects that let my melees do some AOE, even if the DCs are kinda low, at least those do half damage. Oh, and I know it's not lootgen, but I love the Calomel and Epic Greataxe of Fire's DOTs. Maybe DOTs should be left as a way to keep Named items better, but that is certainly something you could think about adding to some existing Named items to upgrade them, or something to put on new Named items.

Thanks for asking for our input!

[Violith]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

the lack of items most sought after such as healing amp, and basic +6-+10 items (meaning only having a +6-10 stat, etc, and nothing else except maybe wonderour/cursed/masterful and possibly augment slots) as well as the undocumented increase of chest level to tome drops (which has yet to be officially mentioned on), lack of assassination DC items (having them to have similiar DC's to quivering palm would be nice)

stumbling and dazing have their effects revesed (as of u19, not sure if it was fixed in u20 but didnt see a mention of it)



- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

random
orbs (and they should be coded as shields to qualify for S&B playstyle, and work with enhancements that require shields), and should give spellcasters who are proficient in staves use staves and orbs together (perhaps have the orb float around the character/staff when swinging)

non metal shields, druids currently have very few choices to use sheilds. think there is only 3 named shields that can be used by druids.

shield bonuses on items (such as white dragonscale) should count as wearing a shield and thus effects that require it should be activated.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

health +9 ring of false life 45 (on my main drunk, wouldnt mind getting a health +10 of false life 50 eventually to replace it)
clever +8 cursed ring of accuracy (on rogue)
impulse ring of power (wouldnt mind finding an impuse of kinetic lore ring to replace it with, hopefully prior to lvl 25)

[Shagarot]

Dwarven Axe.. Dwarven Axes everywhere! No really, right now Dwarven Axes are like a 50% of all random weapons I loot from chests. It's getting just a little bit iritating.

And a word or two about two-handed swords. We have now feats for paladin/cleric/favored soul "Follower of the Lord of Blades", and also we have Iconic Bladeforged that is sugessted to be paladin. In list of named two-handed swords there is only one suitable for a paladin - "Atonement" only named two-handed sword with holy. We don't even have any two-handed sword with a pure or greater good [and most of those named are so-so anyways].
We could use an upgrade to Necropolia IV - add some Two-handed weapons to the list in exchange for Tome of Untold Legends.

Another issue is that, the named weapons for lvl's 10-19 lost they value after U19. Now random weapons for lvl 10+ [or 8+ if master craftsmanship is on a board] have 1.50[W] dmg. And thaks to that, a lot of random weapons is far more greater than named weapons for the same lvl. Wepons that I used in past life, now are useless to me. Imho most named weapons [if not all] for levels 10-19 should have been upgraded by additional 0.5[W] dmg.

One last info is about NPC's end rewards for an artificer. My Warforged artificer always see list full of docents and repeating crossbows... but he's using Bastard Sword. This list should be upgraded. Random Dwarven Axes and Bastard Swords should be added.

[voodoogroves]

Named loot should be better than or contain unique abilities as opposed to random loot.
- Even classical D&D items (Frostbrand, etc.) should be a choice. Maybe not between perfect-crafted loot, but should beat most random gen.
- Gauntlets of Ogre Power need to be as good as loot gen, not worse.
- etc.

There should be some small chance that random loot is awesome.
- The old holy-burst-silver-of-greater-evil-outsider-bane, stars-align kind of loot. That makes looting interesting. I also like non-quest-specific named items dropping - the old D&D core ones.


Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Random loot (deadly, etc.) now outpaces most actual named items.

Putting special effects (nightmare) on random loot makes it so that you have to eventually nerf the named items. Back when that was on one sword and one set of handwraps, that wasn't an issue. Back when level drain / life stealing was on just a few items, you didn't need to nerf it either.

Regeneration is neat, but isn't fast or useful (and never has been).

What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
You have enhancements that seem to indicate non-repeating crossbows should be used - but there are essentially none. If you're going to have enhancements that work better with X, put some freaking X in the game.

Heavier armors need some sort of boost.

Ghostbane fixes a ranged-ghost-touch problem; be nice if others did.

I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Low level characters I nearly always wear the chrono set, cove trinkets ... and then crafted items. I switch around mid-levels to BTA items (Claw, maybe Sora Kell set) and whatever TR twink gear I may have (or Sands/Orchard/GH named items) ... + GS.
Melee/ranged DPS now I nearly always keep the best "deadly" item on. I usually also prioritize one of the sneak-wearables (Goggles of Intuition, Bracers of Hunter) and a ghost-touch item (Spectrals, Ethereal Bracers).
I keep deathblock on swap, and carry UA / FF / etc. as well.
Nearly always wear a solid resist item.
Depending on the character, I have 100% by 8 or 11 (fleshies) or mod. fort (giving 100% on WF) by level 3 on.

[voodoogroves]

And there should be a feat that lets you get a glancing blow w/ Warhammers in addition to d-axe, b-sword.

Also, I like the thought of more scaling abilities on items that increase based on the ML (which you adjust w/ an augment)

[Backley]

Put in a fix for most of the early Festival Frost/Icy Burst weapons that were destroyed by the automatic ML calculation:
Database search for any random-gem weapon with Frost or Icy Burst and another prefix effect. Convert those Frost or Icy Burst effects to Festival Frost or Festival Icy Burst. Earn some good will with the player base.

Also: Keep in mind that the ML of an item is often the best thing about it. A +6 Stat item is probably garbage if the ML is greater than 9, and definitely is garbage if the ML is greater than 11 and there aren't other great effects on it as well.

This was the entire appear of the old chain-reward random gen BTA items: their ML was lower than normal. The new automatic ML system destroyed all of those items people worked hard to find. Maybe do a query and find any random-gen BTA items and shove Masterful Craftmanship or Wonderous Craftmanship onto them to try to repair that damage. And definitely make sure that the chain end rewards now include Masterful/Wonderous on random gem BTA now.

[nibel]

Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

There are random loot that is strictly better than named items of the same or higher level. This should never happens for any reason. Sure, a good random item might be comparable to the best named items, but never best in slot. Before they were wiped from the loot tables, this was a problem with Convalescent Bracers of Superior Parrying. Currently, the problem is seem easily on stat items (Best named is +10, random goes up to +11) and AC buffs (Natural armor, Protection).

Just giving an example, when the level cap was 20, the absolutelly best random item you could find was +6. A few selected named items had +7 stats. So, if you wanted to be "properly equipped", the +6 was good enough, but you still desired that +7 to finish your gearing. We lack that desire with current loot tables.

Also, Cannith crafting needs an update to get the new effects. The roman numerals loot seems MADE to fit cannith crafting better, and yet we are still bound with effects from pre-motu tables.


What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

DDO currently have a bunch of weapon types that are just strictly inferior to other weapons in the same category. Eg, no one will ever equip a Greatclub when they have the option to equip a Maul. Both are martial weapons, and there isn't a single class that is proficient with Greatclubs that is also not proficient with Mauls.

Most underrepresented weapons are from those category. Light pick, shortbow, light hammer, all non-repeating crossbows, sickle, handaxe, throwers in general, kama, clubs, and greatclubs.

Outside the weapon category, we are missing non-fullplate heavy armor (Something with a Maximum Dexterity Bonus higher than 1. Old heavy armors with a higher MDB had mithral and are currently medium), Tower shield, specialized docents (like, good "melee docents" and "caster docents", instead of generic docents "average for everyone"), belts, and trinkets.


I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Most of my alts got parked around the time eGianthold was released. Almost all of them are using Convalescent bracers of Superior Parrying, and I got on the AH at least a Deadly VIII or IX item for everyone that is not a spellcaster. My main is on a TR train and I don't have been seeking loot for her to keep, so mostly I use whatever I pull during her current life (sans a few key named items, like her greensteels).

[katz]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

hi there! and welcome to the insanity! (and no, that wasn't a "hi welcome" crack... it was sincere :-P )


So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
it's TOO good. random loot should not be trumping raid/named-quest loot of equal level. even if it's somewhat higher level. random junk should never have been better than a Twilight or an alchemical shield, or what-have-you, etc. (note: for the shield, i can see random loot EVENTUALLY trumping it, seeing as how we go up to 28 now and 30 soon, but at the time it first got showed up, 25 was the max, and LoB/MA was still new. this was a HUGE kick in the teeth to all the people who farmed for it, only to have random quarterstaves only a level or 2 higher be better... with no real work to get them.) some effects are pretty darn cool, i'll give ya... but go way too far. deadly, for example. very cool, but the fact that it goes all the way to 10 or 11 or whatever totally makes dream visor worthless, right after it's introduction... yet again effectively neutering brand new content. capping it at 3 or 4 would still make it handy and powerful, without overshadowing a very nice and originally highly sought after named item... and these are only a couple of examples.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
dunno. what do you mean by this?


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
heh. on who? most of my favored characters are kitted out in named... force of habit.

for example: Pointless swings a Cleaver or an eAGA usually...wears cormyrian red dragonscale, con-op HP goggles, bracers and boots from the harper chain, level 24 mabar cloak, and a tier 2 cove spyglass trinket (i know... i know... i should have gone to tier 3... i'm a lazy turd) - but i recently bought random loot +7 charisma of +15 performing necklace and a dual-slot +8 str belt to round her out.

that's typical for all my serious characters. however... i have a hagglebard alt on a separate premium account who is outfitted almost fully in random. she uses a red-slotted metalline rapier of lacerating (slotted with devotion 78, to be replaced with 90 when i hit 20), blue-slotted buckler of vitality 15 (empty), a random (ugly) spell pen II outfit of heavy fort, deadly 4 goggles of natural armor, armored bracers of false life (25), colorless slotted (empty) helm of wizardry (175sp), 6 con belt, 5 charisma ring (makes it even), 15 perform ring (altho i could get rid of this now, as a friend just gave me a nightsinger mantle, one of my few named items), 13 haggle gloves, and 30 striding boots.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

i look forward to interacting with you more regarding these subjects. ^_^ thanks for being brave enough to stop by!

[Golddragon87]

First off welcome Dr. Loot! I hope you enjoy your position as a loot Developer and hopefully we do not scare you off too soon. I am a bit curious if Feather of Sun is working with you or if you are replacing him/her? Anyway here are some suggestions.

GIVE US BACK OUR SCROLLS - There is no reason to not have every scroll available for sell. At the very least every scroll up to level 7 or so. Think of it as giving players another platinum sink to empty all those bloated bank accounts.

GIVE US BACK OUR WANDS - For the same reasoning as the scrolls. Wands are almost exclusively vendor trash. Give us some variety to purchase at vendors. If we want a spell on a wand that is level 4 or below then let us buy it. Caster level 7 of any level 4 or below spell is hardly game-breaking.

GIVE US SCROLL CASES/POTION BANDOLEERS/WAND BRACELETS - Players carry a lot of these items. We need a way to store them in our bags with out eating up our entire inventory spaces.

LOWER DC'S ON UMD - It should not be as hard as it is to make a character self sustainable in DDO. The UMD DC's are way WAY too high for a lot of scrolls and abilities. A player should not have to pause and equip completely different gear in the middle of a fight to heal himself or resurrect a party member. If you raise the skill UMD you should be able to use the skill UMD without having to rely solely on rare items increasing it to a usable level.

BOUND TO CHARACTER IS A BAD IDEA - If it is not coming out of a raid then there is no reason to have it bind to character. It just adds to the massive storage problem that is plaguing our servers. Bound to account is fine.

BRING BACK GUILD AUGMENTS - Guild augments are a great idea and should be brought back in addition to the current augment system. Having both types on a single randomly generated item should be perfectly acceptable (Albeit rare). Just get rid of the countdown timer on the Guild augments and keep the non-guild augments more desirable in general. It should be a bonus for social play not an essential facet of game play.

CANNITH CRAFTING NEEDS AN UPDATE - If it drops on random loot it should be craftable. No exceptions.

CHALLENGE INGREDIENTS NEED TO BE TRADEABLE- Epic characters should be able to farm non-epic challenge items.

BRING BACK ALL LEGACY ENCHANTMENTS - If an effect has ever dropped in the game it should still be able to drop. I do not care how big the loot tables have to be to support this. Updated versions of old effects are acceptable replacements. Nerf bats are frowned upon severely.

PREFIX ITEM OF SUFFIX IS AN OUTDATED IDEA - Instead of Prefix of Suffix make it so that an Affix can be in either slot. As an example Disruption can be a prefix as well as a suffix. Do not allow it to repeat on both affixes however (no disruption of disruption items).

DEADLY IS HERE TO STAY - Unfortunately now that every character on every server has deadly slotted we are now stuck with it. Any nerfs to it would likely be met with a huge backlash from the players. My recommendation is to make it standard fare for a good deal of raid loot. Just throw it on in addition to whatever else you decide to put on them. Also make it an augment we can slot. We are stuck with it now so may as well make the effect more accessible. Any other item with a competence bonus to damage needs to be switched to another bonus type (ie. Dream Visor) and make the airship buff a different bonus type as well.

FUTURE RAIDS NEED ITEM CRAFTING SYSTEMS - The Shroud and Lord of Blades are extremely popular because of the customization available. Add similar mechanics to future raids and you will revitalize the raiding scene. You will also sell whatever pack it is in a heartbeat and sell a lot of bypass timers.

HEALING AMPLIFICATION - Essential for high hit-point characters. The community is mystified why it was ever taken away. Teh_Troll has it right on the money when he says it should be an augment.

HEAL OVER TIME ITEMS NEED AN OVERHAUL - Regeneration I am looking at you. The effect is just far too weak to be usable. With mobs hitting for 100+ a swing the 2 hp you get every 30 seconds from the most powerful regeneration effect is a laughing matter. An easy fix I recommend is have the effect scale based on the level of the wearer. 2 Hp every 30 seconds is a joke. 2 Hp per character level every 30 seconds is less so. Maybe eventually we will have a Barbarian that is able to solo something?

VAMPIRISM NEEDS TO BE MORE PREVALENT - The best potion we have in the game is Cure Serious Wounds. On a melee with 2000 Hit points you have to drink a stack of about 66 of them to heal. Making Vampirism style effects more prevalent will allow many more character types to not only solo but be able to join the dreaded BYOH PUGs you always see up.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE - I would LOVE to see an endgame named Khopesh. Preferably with Planar Conflux much like the many Caught in the Web items. If you want to get on my ultra good side give it Vampirsim and Bodyfeeding, lol. Many weapon types like my beloved Khopeshs have not been getting adequate love. Some far worse then the Khopesh. Also Double weapons are far over due. Just code them similar to Handwraps so that dual wielding feats effect them and PRESTO! A new and interesting weapon that many will base builds off of. Thank you for taking the time to sort through all of this. Good luck on the monumental task ahead of you! :)

[Ungood]

Greetings: DrOctothorpe, love the tag line DrLoot and the Avatar.

Strangely, I wonder if that means we will be getting Tridents in the game sometime in the future, LOL.

I would like to start off by saying I am sorry for the wall of text I am about to hit you with. Hopefully you will read some of it.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

This is a fair question, and forgive me if my answer comes in several parts:

I would like to start off by explaining somethings about what I loved about this game, and one of things that truly made the game endearing to me was the fact that I did not have to change my gear every few levels, I did not have run this every 3 levels gear treadmill, and always looking to replace what I had for some new best in slot item. The one thing that really sold me on this game was that there were people at level 20 (cap when I started) that were using level 10 gear, because, it had this eternal quality to it, it may not have been the best item, but it was the best item.

Like for example, Kundark Delving Boots, or Madstone Boots, each was in it's own way, a great item, and each was special, even if not the best item in the game, they had properties about them that made them worthy to grind for, special stats, abilities, or just a uniqueness that set them apart.

I loved that!

I loved the very idea that even low level gear had this endurance to it, this special property that made it something you would cherish, you would be thankful to get, because it would serve you well for the rest of your adventure in the game world, you would in fact not be throwing them away in 3 levels or so was very unique to me when I came to DDO, and thus it was suddenly worth running the same quest 20+ times to get it, because, it was 'it'.

Which brings me to my feelings on the current loot system: All of this is just my personal feelings on the matter. So, take that as you will.

First: Random Loot, or Loot Gen holds a special place in DDO as "Foundation" equipment for most players, this is what a player typically starts their adventure with, this is what they build up with, and what they use to get into the, well a ways back we called them the "Big boy raids" where the loot mattered.

You start with finding Loot-gen with desirable qualities that will get the job done, and then as you quest, grow, and level up, you replace your loot gen with rare and powerful named items as befitting a hero of renown.

Second: Loot gen should also serve as back-up loot. Like for example, lets say you normally use a 2H weapon, so you get a top tier named great ax or sword (Cleaver/eSoS/etc), but now you are in the market for a good blunt weapon because, the mobs you are facing are resistant to slashing or something along those lines, but you don't want to have grind to death for it, settle for second best and go with loot-gen.

Third: Ok, opening boxes should be fun, and it always was in it's own way, even when I first started playing there were those stars aligned combos that everyone wanted to pull, and sometimes very handy lesser combos, like a good Frost weapon of Dragonbane for example. But really at no time should opening a 'quest box' hold more hope to player then opening a 'raid box'. Raids have in DDO always been the source of the best loot in the game, they hold a special place in the loot hierarchy, because they take more team-work, time, and effort then a typical quest.

So what are the problems?

Loot-Gen is quickly becoming more powerful then Raid gear. As I see it, this problem stems from Raid gear not having unique, special, or ultra-rare abilities that are limited to the raid loot itself. The current switch in loot pretty much made Raid gear out of Loot-Gen abilities, but just added more loot-gen effects and called it Raid Gear. While in some cases if the effects were handled right, this could work, the problem is, if the effects were not, it lends itself to the raid item having nothing special about it, and thus at some point quickly becoming surpassed by loot-gen, or even is worse then loot-gen right out the starting gate. Neither of these situations are good for something that is supposed to be "raid" gear, after all, you are not going to stay at that level forever.

A prime example of how this can hold: Take Carnifex (I know, it's not a raid item), it is a keen Great Ax with an improved crit profile, this makes it special, it makes it unique, it's not going to get tossed to the wayside by a loot-gen axe that happens to be a few levels higher, because of that special combination of properties unique to it. So the only way this axe gets passed is either by a whole lot of levels and even old cap jumps, or, it gets replaced by other named items.

The issue here is that the only way to really fix this is either have all raids go to max level, and then drop max level loot that can't be surpassed by Loot-gen (Like the way the old Epic items were done) or the Raid gear needs to stand out, and be it's own thing, with effects and abilities to make it special.

For example:The Sets from ToD, they were made special, because they were special, unique even. (I think they need to be revamped thanks to the new Enhancement pass, which could be a great thing really, to revisit things like that)

For me, I believe that the Fix lies in Making Named Gear be "Worthy" of having a name and making Raid loot worth running raid for.

Sorry for that Long winded response, and I bet there is more I want to say, and a lot I am over looking, but that is what I can put to words for now.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Throwing Weapons, just all of them, Darts, Hammers, Axes, Daggers, Shurikens, just really, all of them, there is very few of them in the game at all. If you beefed them up, that would bring a new style of ranged to the game."Thrown Weapon" ranged is really lacking because the options are lacking.

As it stands, most other stuff seems well stocked, I am sure others could give a better list of things.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

When I TR, a put a lot of effort into getting decent twink items for my main, this includes looking for Loot gen with a single effect to keep the ML down, IE: Bracers of Speed 30/6, @ ML9, Ring of Fortitude 100% @ ML9.

In most cases single stat loot-gen is the best because it offers a high number boon at a lower ML, so it excels at the lower levels, until raid/named gear starts to come into it's own and then I swap to that, as the life needs, the typical GS @ 11 & 12, etc.

Side Note and Random Thoughts:

Old Loot Revamp: A major grip of mine with the change to loot when I came back after a long break, the "old" named loot got changed, but there was no means by which players could just swap our older stuff in for the newer stuff, not to mention the new loot with it's BtCoE, was not as desired, from what I heard many people (myself included) would move the loot to my main to TR, and then swap it back to a mule once I out leveled it to save bank space. The new binding method really ruined that, and now the new stuff while stronger is less appealing to me for Twink gear (and lets be real here, most of it is never anything more then decent twink gear)

Augment Slots: Personally, I am not a fan of the new augment system, (I may very well be alone on this) but the whole system seemed to be a cop-out of trying to design fascinating and dynamic gear. It just felt, I don't know how to explain it, it felt rather "I give up, make what you want" kind of system, and then loot-gen having dual slots, with masterful craftsman ship, it really felt like the whole plan was to phase out named gear overall, but the biggest problem with that is that, raid and named gear really are what make DDO's gear system special, that enduring aspect of it, that a 10th level item is still kept and used by a 28th level toon is testament to a designer that knows what makes their players tick.

I would love to see that intimate knowledge and appreciation for fine loot and knowing what makes players tick returned to the quest tables.

I wish you look and good fortune wearing your new hat, I hope that it fits well and that you fill it with grace, for what it's worth, I like you already.

[DemonStorm333]

id love to see an old epic revamp even if it comes in the form of legendary upgrades when lvl 30 comes around and u make us run these epic quests on legend mode or something cool like that but I would also love to see more bastard swrods not just any but good ones as there only like 3 in game that are good and would love to see chain weapons and can u get an eta on when they are actually going to make celestia have the light weapon effect??

o0o and welcome to the community glad you have steped from the shadows of earth and taken that doozy of a step into hell :D

[Hafeal]

Dr. Loot -

Welcome to the forums. Most don't bite but make sure you are vaccinated. I will echo many you have previously posted by answering your questions with my list addressing them:

1. Take those who complain about random loot with a grain of salt. While Named Loot should be as good or better than random loot - as good means you know what you are grinding for, while random means, nice lucky roll. All players, but the casual player in particular, likes to win the loot lottery every once in a while and I like that random loot now has relevance in the game. And think about the posters response to your query how many in this thread are loaded up more on random loot items than named/raid items? Not many, not many - ok, none.

2. Gonna have to fully agree with Zirun and brian14 regarding too many similar featured items and removal of old names and part of the 'fun'. Why couldn't there just have been "in addition to":


Affixes with multiple functions, such as Lacerating, Rebel, Night's Grasp, "of the Sun", etc. were fun. They made the game more interesting. Removing them was a huge mistake. I really miss Banes and Greater Banes. Yes, they can be crafted, but when combined with synergistic U14 affix, they were truly amazing. I would say the most treasured random lootgen item I have is Night's Grasp longbow of Greater Aberration Bane. My level 23 AA still uses it against epic illithids and such.

3. Raids have pretty much gone the way of the DoDo bird and I agree with RavenStormclaw that Cannith crafting is boring and especially tedious and time consuming - particularly if your game time is limited. To me, Cannith crafting is for the mega gamer as they are using it to power through lives anyway or the rarer soul who enjoyes their game time in this manner.

4. Augments are good, now keep working on them - don't abandon the system just as it seems to be getting understood and used. Of course, this should be a big money maker as well, so I am thinking this will continue to happen. I would suggest cutting the prices in the DDO Store and making more available. If you make the augments particularly inexpensive under level 16 or so, I think people don't mind buying them and destroying them but you have to price them as consumables and not as hardware.

5. All flavor weapons need love - blunts and light weapons (outside of short swords) in particular. Shields and Armor need a lot of help. Look, it is nice having finding certain features on equipment we historically could not do - but, it devalued some named loot in the process, leading to some of the problems in 1 and 3 above.

6. Many of my characters are using random loot of all natures, depending on level and class. My closer to end game characters tend to be using named items or raid loot with a piece of random loot mixed in; particularly casters as they are using Spellcraft items and other spell bonus loot more often than not.

Hope this helps and thanks for coming of lurk mode. http://www.themacguild.com/forums/images/smilies/Silly/peepingtom.gif


P.S. I want to throw in a request: please, for Eberron's sake, remove BtC from loot outside of raids. Please. BtA I can live with, BtC blows.

[dlsidhe]

Alright, without going into huge detail (which would involve asking, to begin with, what happened to the fun things like "Dynamo" and "Steam" as random weapon affixes?), here's my loot issue:

I have no issue with the power of random loot; named loot should be stronger, but by having more stats, not better stats necessarily; or by being an efficient way to have several needed stats/skills for a particular playstyle/build on one item - prime example, Leaves of the Forest is a BRILLIANT armor for druids. Introducing a sword/shield that had a set bonus that granted orb bonuses to the shield (if you had magical training) would be something that would benefit eldritch knights; add an outfit that grants +3 exceptional wis/str with reinforced fists; etc., those would be neat named items that have a clear intent. Most named items I look at and have no clue who they'd benefit directly.

My problem with random loot is it went from having neat things that were unexpected and encouraged creative slotting - like having spell lore on medium armor, leading to my FvS sporting the same two breastplates for large chunks of two lives - to every armor is Retributive Armor of Hammerblock, Retributive Armor of Deathblock, etc. Every weapon is Flaming of Ghostbane, Shocking of Ghostbane, Smiting of Ghostbane, etc., and you rarely see a caster stat on a martial weapon (at least in my experience).

I want to search the AH and find new and fun ways to gear my toons; not repetitive combinations of affixes.

As far as the gear I sport: melee toons have Deadly slotted somewhere, and my casters have appropriate DC boosts where ever I can fit them.

[toaftoaf]

steaming mad at loot.

[Shindoku]

The loot that drops now is really just too bland. We no longer have the effects that would occasionally drop together under a combined name (such as Pandemonium), augment slots are FAR too common now and make the random items you do get with decent effects feel worse because it doesn't have the almost expected coloured slot. Deadly seems to be the ghostbane of goggles as it appears in every reward list (but, I imagine that is because there are so few random effects that can now take place on an item). As for named gear, higher numbers don't make it feel like better gear. Adding items that are targeted toward a set of classes or directly at a class would be nice. Maybe an item extending the duration of a classes unique spell (eg. adds 10 seconds to a clerics aura) this does not just add to diversity of gear, but also avoids power creep. The idea of a random set of effects can drop on a piece of gear is not a good idea. For certain items, like Dream Edge, its acceptable. But remember, there's nothing worse than finally getting the item you wanted only to find out it doesn't have the effects you want on it. An example of Non named loot my main character wears is a nice Wise +7 Necklace of Major Luck, it has Wisdom +7, Resistance +6, and +2 Good Luck. For a weapon I have a +5 Pandemonium Longbow of Heartseeking, it has Screaming, Thundering, Roaring, and Heartseeking VI. I hope this helps and I look forward to seeing what loot looks like in the future because honestly, at this point in time, the new loot is worse than most of the random loot I overlook.

[LrdSlvrhnd]

As others have said, put the various numbers in the name of the item itself. Or add them to the searchable bit. I don't care if you do Roman numerals or Arabic (and really, people, is +7 really all that different from VII?) but make 'em so we can search 'em. Do this for Improved Banishing/Disruption/Smiting/Vorpal/Whatever. Oh, and don't change the numbers to Improved/Greater/etc., please. Numerals - Arabic or Roman - are far easier to figure out what's better than trying to figure out if Greater > Major or Major > Greater.

Also, welcome!

[fourrumtest]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

i gave up on loot years ago. short of a time machine to take me and the the loot back to pre meme status, i have no helpful suggestions. after years of adjective of bannings, **** loot i have no faith left. thanks for trying. even after i gave up because you guys sacked the d and d, you sacked loot, you made the money grab more blatant than my nearest panhandler.
so good luck undoing what he did. i already spent my ddo budget on something else thanks for pretending to care years to late.

why the hell can we not have docents(named or random)? where did heal amp go? can you prove you are not a renamed trasher of loot?

so you feel you can inspire me to spend money on your greedy company again? because i have years of unresolved issues/ disdain built up.

ps thanks for trying i guess, try not to suck as much as the last guy.

[sephiroth1084]

Oh and a BIG problem with named loot is the retroactive change to caster abilities (potency, spell penetration, spell lore) to sync up with the new system where these effects are tied to ML. A lot of named gear got completely trashed when it went from having stats that were a little ahead of the leveling curve, or that were near the top of a small set of possibilities (Greater Arcane Lore vs. Major <element> Lore), to now be on even footing with random junk at the same level, or even worse than that. Notably, virtually all of the caster-related early epic items became junk in an instant.

Then, after the first culling, we got the u19 changes, which included seriously nerfing Arcane Lore items, in part by adding the ability for things like 11% <element> Lore items to be dropping as ML 2 gear, which overshadows stuff all the way up to Epic Gianthold. It used to be that Greater Arcane Lore could stand in for your specific element Lore if you couldn't find somewhere to fit the latter, or could be used for your secondary/tertiary spells while wielding a higher bonus for your primary, but it worked because it wasn't that far behind. That's no longer the case.

Similarly, Great <school> Focus was considered a pretty solid ability for a few levels into epic, then we got a +3 version, which was the pinnacle of loot abilities, and was almost exclusively found on named gear, and then we got even random stuff up to +5, which, in a game where the highest content requires every single tiny bonus you can cobble together in order to be effective, meant that all of the old caster DC items became junk. It also meant that Spell Focus II (see Stormreaver's Tablecloth, Adamantine Cloak of the Dragon), also becomes worthless due to being so far behind the other bonuses available. It was a good bug when this was stacking with specific school spell focus.

[jakeelala]

The biggest issue is the whole concept just sucks. Random just SUCKS. The game was better when my level 20s didn't have a single piece of radom kit on them. Random should remain vendor trash . . . let us kit our toons how how WE want them to be.

Cannith crafting was the best thing ever to happen in DDO regarding trash loot. Being able to craft WHAT YOU WANTED was a zillion time better than having to rely on dumb luck.

Random loot over-shadowing named loot, even if a few levels higher, is friggin ******** as well.

Seriously, as long as you're on this "random" kick your loot/game will all be a bucket of fail.


This is not the opinion of many players. Having one best in slot item that requires a raid grinch and ends up in everyone having the same stupid items is awful. Random gen loot that is powerful is awesome. Loot weekends, chest blessing, all are fun. More of the fun exciting ultra rare prefixes for weapons, so I want the opposite of teh_troll. I want to see high loot table rolls in chests result in more than just suffix and prefix, like weapons that get augments, but on armor and accessories. Can you imagine pulling an armor that spawns with enough effects to be competitive with raid loot? That would be fun. I do think EE Raid loot should probably always be better than any loot gen since that's the highest level we get. Then again, I like the idea that loot gen while it might not be the BEST numbers for attributes, it might reflect some unique combinations that for the 1,000,000,000,000,000 or so different build possibilities in DDO represent a best or as good in slot item compared to the much more limited selection of raid loot options. THe problem with Raid loot being the absolute best is that once you grind and get it...then what? Opening chests isn't even fun anymore. You'll never need what you pull. That's a bad mechanic. Keeping the absolute best random gen loot pulls competitive with raid loot keeps your best players running high level content at high difficulty to to get it. That's also true of course of making EE loot THAT much better than EH that it makes it worth it. General rule of thumb: EE takes about 3x longer than EH for anything. The EE raid loot should be at least 50% better than the EH.

This could in large part be mitigated by updating ALL RAID AND EPIC LOOT IN THE GAME.

This is the single most important change you could make. You could change NOTHING about loot gen and just give us epic Greensteel, Epic VOD/TOD/Titan loot, and updates of all epic items to make them competitive. Like every piece of raid loot in VON, right now there is ONLY eSoS, and to a lesser extent for some builds Belt of Morons is ok. Other than that? Useless. We have +10 Stats now. There are so many that this would make the gear situation much more interesting in DDO.

Most importantly non-loot change: STOP MAKING THINGS USELESS EVERY UPDATE. There were what, 9 updates before Shroud gear started getting even sort of outdated? That was awesome, and made the grind worth it to make it. eSoS on the other hand has been hands down the best THF weapon in the game since VoN went Epic. That's REALLY REALLY bad too, and makes for very little variety, say if you want to roll a dwarf to use axes or an Elf to use a Falchion.

Expanding on that point, why would anyone EVER use a light pick? It's terrible. Ditto a great club, heavy pick, long sword, battle axe, heavy mace, light mace, etc. These weapons have unfavorable crit range and modifers, and are pretty much NEVER used by characters. One way to solve this would be to bake in certain enahcnements found only on certain weapon types, like the old banishing not on slashing, or puncturing only on peircing. SOme people didnt like that, but done correctly it could actually give MORE build choices. Picks for exmaple, should have a rare high level mod that give it an increased crit mult (x5). Maces should get special versions of Fracturing or a Bone Breaking suffix that can weaken undead or do special bone crunching damage. Whatever. The point is, there might be a reason to use one of the currently really lame weapon types.

Where are all the good returning weapons? Haven't had a high level one of those in a raid in a long time. The Corm ones are really cool, but they're random and you have to turn in a lot of mats and carry a bunch around. Plus, they are have the same crit threat/multi. Thrower builds are totally viable now, which is awesome. SO lets see some more interesting options. Also, increase the damage on a great crossbow by about 250% if you ever want anyone to do anything but vendor them.

Overall the take away message is:

VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF DDO. DO NOT MAKE 1 RAIDS ITEMS THE BEST ITEMS. The rising tide of level increases in content should RAISE ALL LOOT BOATS.

The secret to this is creating new effects, not just making things more powerful, when updates come.

You literally can save this game if you do this right. But it has to involve cleaning up all the old raids and epic gear to make them worth playing. Because right now DDO is only about TR'ing.

End Game is Dead.

Also: where are the loot gen trinkets?

[Haykone]

Please create some new high level named khopeshes for end-game play.
Or remove them completely so that we don't have a false illusion that khopeshes are any good.

[SilkofDrasnia]

Just wanted to add my voice to the BTC thing.

Was great when you occasionally got a really good random loot item because it was unbound you could use it, sell it etc. Named items however should be better than random loot in general and thus why it is BTA and raid items of course BTC because it should generally be BiS either for slot consolidation/power etc like it used to be.

This idea that random loot gen (as it is now) is misunderstood and we don't understand what is good for us etc like stated by IronClan (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430627-An-introduction-you-can-call-me-Doctor-Loot?p=5170296&viewfull=1#post5170296) sounds good and reasonable in theory and on paper but it is just not working in this game.

It has pretty much nerfed hard (hard can vary in this case) to acquire named items, for example Terror should have never been nerfed because some clever fellow decided its best effect should be widely available on lootgen weapons and so they nerfed the effect thereby nerfing this weapon and we see this happening again with Nightmare from citw, this just should not happen at all.

Secondly like others have said gearing is becoming ridiculous, we are having to do the gear swap dance every 3 levels or so now to remain optimal now which is very very annoying and becoming a serious storage problem.

Was great when you had gears set for like 1~7 then 7~12 then 12~18 or 20. IF this was addressed we could then do 18,20~23,25 and finally 23,25~28 or 30.

As to the notion that gear must be flexible and thus why the rise of lootgen welp I say that was why augments where made isn't it. I would go so far to say use that for variety and gives us back guild slots and revamp the guild augments a little cause some of it was pretty meh.

Good things about raid loot was that it took more than 2 days to acquire said loot but you knew it would be good for a long time once you got it, as it is now your can't even be sure you will get the item before it is nerfed in some fashion. Seriously every time you devs play with loot systems or add new things you need to sit down and look at how it will affect raid loot and think hard about it and either implement the new stuff so it doesn't result in a proxy nerf to raid loot and or upgrade the raid loot so it isn't surpassed by same ml or less random junk etc.

I mean:

http://ddowiki.com/images/Skirmisher%27s_Gloves_%28Level_15%29.pnghttp://ddowiki.com/images/Guardian%27s_Gauntlets_%28Level_15%29.png
Skirmisher's Ring (Level 15) - Constitution +8, Yellow Augment Slot now compare this to:

http://ddowiki.com/images/Epic_Lion-headed_Belt_Buckle.png

and try to convince me this is okay lol


On a personal note:

Yeah please a really nice endgame khopseh please to upgrade from drowpesh and perhaps look into making a decent Holy Avenger for pallys they needs some serious loving, see sephiroth1084 (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430627-An-introduction-you-can-call-me-Doctor-Loot?p=5170291&viewfull=1#post5170291) post about it.

[Vellrad]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The biggest problem with random loot, is the fact that it is random.

You can't just farm something until ransack, you need to open countless amount of chests and pray something useful will drop this time.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

I had a character specialised in TWFing dwarf axes.
It was fun with Epic Templar's Justice in U13, and GS before, but after motu, there was no single good named dwarven axe worth equipping in epics. It ended up with, I had enhancements, feats and ED made for dwarven axes using, but I had much higher DPS with 2 celestias.
[quest]
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
[/QUOTE]
None, when bellow level cap. If it can't be farmed, it don't exists.
At lvl cap I have +10 charisma cloak of resistance 9, deadly 8 or 9 or 10 necklace of concentration +19, with colorless slot filled with true blood, and +10 strenght belt of something worthless +9 (I think some AC bonus). I'm looking for deadly of healing necklace, and strenght 10 of dodge belt, but as they're practically lottery system, I need to settle with my junk (while necklace is not bad, AC bonus on belt is worthles level increaser only).

[droid327]

Dr. Loot? Can I add you on my network as my preferred provider? :)


- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

My problem with lootgen is its completely monotonic. The new system gives you a suite of mods that you must have (Deadly, Speed, False Life, +Stats, Spellpower and Crit, etc.) and you just check them off your list, and improve the values as you level up.

And then you have all the useless mods, especially on armor. I don't even look at lootgen armor before I vendor/disjunct it now, because theres no possible way its of any value for anything but scrap. There should be more variety in types of permutations on gear (not just prefix/suffix/augment slot/masterful). There should be rare affixes from named items that can appear on lootgen (things like Ghostly or Blurry or Manslayer, procs-on-attack, Boon of Undeath, etc.), so its possible (though rare) to get a "home run" piece of loot, the "perfect" items you go for in other loothunt games like Diablo.

Equipment is just equipment, its all interchangeable except inasmuch as certain mods don't appear in certain slots. There's no lootgen trinkets, that's about the only shortcoming (or orbs). As for weapons, in terms of RANDOM loot, they're also all the same of course. In terms of NAMED, then as an arti I notice the dearth of named repeaters the most - but non-caster Q-staves, D.axes, bastard swords, and scimitars also make the list. Khopeshes too, but that's less important because I doubt you'd put out anything that'd make me not use the Cannith khopesh anyway.

My Heroic characters right now all slot Deadly and Speed, which of course are only lootgen, and False Life, which is essentially only lootgen.

===

lootgen is a good place to start, but really its major problem is that diversity issue.

Now, when you come back asking us about what needs to be done for Cannith Crafting, I could write you a PhD thesis on how the game is failing that system right now....

[dragonofsteel2]

Ok loot should be a carrot dangling in front of the player. It should take in account risk vs reward. If you can just run Eh on loot weekend and get the best loot there something wrong. Name items should be more powerful in general then random items, but random items good enough to fill in voids left by name items. This way both are useful. Crafting system should be upgraded. More augements should be dropping name and rares.

Raids name items should be the most value in the game, because in theory they should be harder then all quest. Raids also tend to require more teamwork. Maybe make random drops in raids have higher +1 level enchantment bonus to the item, without raising the level. Like the masterwork gear. Some hate the items becoming better and better to fast, but if they do not increase fast enough there no point earning them. My old items will do just fine and with all the power we gain from ED we already flying through the quest.

Loot should not feel like you have to run something 1000 times to get something really nice or rare. The carrot should always feel like you have a good chance of attaining it. Some really rare items are fine, but should have items just little worse them dropping more. The lore of some real nice rare items is fine, but I want to feel progress in my looting. Not it just another boring loot day again and again. This is why like the raiding system loot, you feel like if run x raid 10 times I got a good chance getting a nice item. Not omg I got to roll 10,000 on a d10,000.

[2pleasegimmie]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Too much nerfing (holy, level pass, nightmare, stacking, etc).

Items need more customization opportunities.

Items need fun skins and effects (think the leafblower from EQ, but with butterflies or something; leopard print pants, etc)

Crafting needs updated, expanded, and to include augments.

Tomes need to drop level-appropriately. Same for bags and other things.

Reduce cost of older challenge and raid items, and permit ways to convert items within a system (think Master Artificer and Lord of Blades)

Banking and inventory need to be able to order items by name and level - as does the AH.

Hello, welcome.

[TDarkchylde]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The power creep of random loot is much too high. I spent years grinding out raid loot. While I expected it to eventually no longer be best in slot due to level cap rise, I didn't expect poor quality named loot at higher levels, nor especially random gen to even eclipse that. Many of those problems have already been brought up here, such as:


Deadly should not even exist - nuke the items from orbit or turn them into paste with the nerfbat
Lores for specific spell damage are way too high and generalized spell lore is worthless
No variety on armors (at least bring spell points and fortification back to them)
Formerly highly prized effects appearing on lootgen such as Nightmares, the result of which causes the nerfing of the effect on the named item in the process


Post MotU was the pinnacle of random loot - the rarer affixes made it worth it to dig in every chest, but only in highly specific cases did it displace named loot.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Weapons:
- Scimitars
- Falchions
- Quarterstaves without caster affixes
- All other weapon types with caster affixes
- Kukris
- Khopeshes
- Great Crossbows
- Collars for Arti and Druid pets - the only place random gen ones EVER appear is in the end reward, absolutely never in chests

Armors:
- Not so much underserved, but removed for no reason - BRING BACK HIDE ARMOR. It would be the best armor for low-level and PRR-favoring Druids if only it existed anymore. We're forced to use leathers or nothing until we can get named medium armors not made of metal such as Dragonscale.
- Docents

Accessories:
- Trinkets - Throw us a bone, give us incentive to not have the VotM perma-equipped if we don't have a Litany or haven't crunched it with a Mantle - don't make them common, just make them exist at lower levels.
- Rings

Other:
- Runearms
- Items with clicky effects
- Caster mods on non-weapon items, period
- Skill mods



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
My lower levels are either wearing +6 stat or +6 to Natural Armor or Protection (they are AC builds, for what good that does them right now) and Speed VI items. Some use Deadly. (I still want to see it wiped off the face of Eberron AND Faerun.)

My multi-TR is only wearing lootgen CON +6 and False Life +30 at this point, lower levels are a place where named raid loot still eclipses a lot of lootgen.

Pretty much all my dedicated casters are using Thaumaturgy staves.

[J2345678]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Random items should not outclass named and raid items.
Named and raid items should have free bonus effects not found on random generated items.
Add a lot more UNIQUE effects for named items.
Finding (+X item of +Y) with higher numbers is not rewarding.

Ability and Skill Items
Putting 2 effects at reduced strength on an item makes it trash.
If an item has +Ability or +Skills favor that effect and max it out before adding more.

Auction
Make the effect names and augment slots searchable on the auction.
Example: Red Frost VII Great Sword of Bloodletter V

Augments
Reduce the enhancement value penalty for colored augments to the same value as current colorless.
Let people choose an augment at the collectors if you're going to require the rare (useful in crafting / rituals) collectables.
You could keep the random option too, but stop asking for rare collectables, no one will trade 'Lightning-Split Soarwood' or 'Fragrant Drowshood' for a random **** augment.

Cannith Crafting
Add more effects.
Banishing, Disruption, Paralyzing, Smiting, ect.

Clickys
Bring them back.
Random: Detect Secret Doors, Divine Power, Expeditious Retreat, Heroism, Invisibility, Jump, Remove Fear, (Lesser) Restoration, Shield, Stoneskin.
Named: Deathward, Displacement, Fireshield, Freedom of Movement, Greater Heroism, Greater Restoration, Heal, Raise Dead, True Seeing.

Cursespewing and Improved Cursespewing
Raise the duration to 30 seconds.
It's on vorpal, give Two Handed Fighting some use from it.

Deathblock II+
Is bad. The only part that matters is "immunity to all death effects".
Higher Deathblock #s just make the other effects and the item weaker.
Remove the negative energy reduction and change it back to just 'Deathblock'.

Ghostbane
Is bad because it is a suffix so competes with Disruption which cannot be beat.
Any item that has Ghostbane and COULD have had Disruption is trash.
Ghost Touch was a prefix and better than Ghostbane because of it.
Make Ghostbane a prefix.

Greater Banes
Bring them back.
Consolidate the races similar to 'Greater Bane of the Unnatural' on the U20 Hunter's Slayer Great Sword.

Guild Augments
Bring them back.
Add a way for guild members to craft guild slots onto items.
Maybe with Cannith Crafting.

Healing Amp
Similar to Dodge, higher numbers / non-stacking.
On augments too.

Keen and Impact II+
Are bad. They don't stack with the Improved Critical feat which any character planning to hit things will have.
AND they make the other effects on the weapon weaker.
Remove the II+ versions and keep the base effect for low level items before you get the Improved Critical feat.
OR make the +W minimum +1W, and increment at +1 not +0.5, at no ML increase.

Proc Rates
No single digit proc rates. 2% is pathetic. Less than 10% is garbage.
Any effect with a "chance" of happening should be MINIMUM 10%, preferably 50-75%.
2% = 98% chance of nothing = I would never consider using one of these unless it was a 'bonus' (as in no ML increase, no slot used, extra) effect on something already useful.
Some will say Green Steel Lightning Strike, blah, blah. If it proced more often for less damage and equaled the same DPS it would be more fun and I might care to use it.

Rare Effects
Bring them back.
Convalescent, Fortifying, Lacerating, Mauling, Poison, Primal, Radiance, Radiant Prisms, Riptide, Searing, the Icy Depths, the Sun, the Sun's Fury, Virulent Poison, Wintry.

Tomes
Ability and Skill Tomes need to be seperate loot chances.
There are too many skills that are worthless to specific classes to dilute ability tome chances.

Weapon Burst Prefixs
Bring them back.
Should be similar to the new on crit damage effects on weapons.
Elemental versions of: Bloodletter, Heartseeker, Ribcracker.

Weapon DC Effects
If a weapon has an effect with a DC, make it on vorpal with no save.
Increase the effect duration if necessary.

Weapon Effects
If the effect is not crowd control, de-buffing, DPS, or tactics don't add it to a weapon.
No one wants an 'Underwater Action' sword.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Bastard Sword
Kukri
Maul
Throwing Weapons
Mithral Armor and Shields


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Non-Weapon:
A few +6 ability items with no other effects, because I found them so didn't need to craft it.
+15 skill items, because you can't craft them.
Deadly Accuracy items because they're better than epic named loot and you can't craft them.
Seeker because you can't craft it.

Weapons:
Banishing, Disruption, Paralyzing, Smiting, Bloodletter, Heartseeker, Ribcracker because you can't craft them.
Thaumaturgy and +Spell Power items, because you can't craft them.

[luvirini]

Ability Tomes:

When the skill tomes were introduced the ability tomes drops were "broken"

Before: Used to be that about 1/400? chest openings gave an ability tome with 3/4 being normal ability tomes and 1/4 upgrade tomes of the next bigger value.

It used to be that
level 23-26 would drop +3 tomes(75%) and +3 to +4 upgrade tomes(25%)
level 27-30 would drop +4 tomes(75%) and +4 to +5 upgrade tomes(25%)
level 31+ would drop +5 tomes.

Cannot remember the exact level ranges for the cutoff between +1/+1 to +2 update and the +2/+2 to +3 update. But they worked the same.

This made tome availability for +1 tomes very good, +2 tomes good, +3 tomes fair, +4 tomes low, +5 tomes really nonexistent. Most tomes were straight tomes not update so they were usable. So the progression was that each higher type of tome was harder and harder to get.

Update 19 broke the tome updates in several ways:

Most of the normal ability tomes were replaced with skill tomes, so a guess is that today the total tome drop rate is about the same as before, but most tomes that drop are skill tomes making ability tome drops much lower. Also it seems that most ability tomes that drop are upgrade tomes making them much harder to use.

My guess of the current drop table is something like:d100: 1-70:skill tome 71-75: straight ability tome, 76-100: Upgrade ability tome.

Also at the same time the level ranges needed to get tomes raised considerably making straight +4: about impossible.

The high number of upgrade tomes has meant that noone sells their pure tomes that they need to use the upgrade tomes, this has resulted in a strange tome availability probability: +1 tomes very bad, +2 tomes bad, +3 tomes very bad, +4 tomes really nonexistant, +5 tomes ugh? (not that those are mostly upgrade tomes and normal tomes do not drop, so you need to be lucky and find the +1 tome that is not upgrade)

Fix suggestion:
Reinstate the drop probabilities and level ranges for ability tomes from before u19. Set skill tomes as a separate probability, whatever you feel like they should be.

[MeliCat]

Don't worry guys... the end reward loot issue is fixed. Basically you do almost all EE to cap to 28... and you get ~1200 comms... so yeah, forget your end rewards as you'll be taking nothing but comms anyway to get to ETR anyway... you better start saving now even if you have no immediate intentions to ETR

[sephiroth1084]

One last thing (meant to put this in my first post here, but it slipped my mind):

Items with effects that have a DC are problematic, because the DCs don't scale at all, and end up way behind the curve, and completely off the d20. Now, Paralyzing used to be rather effective up through level 18, because saves weren't scaling so sharply, but a DC 17 Will save (or even the 25 on Improved Paralyzing) is worthless in high-level content, except as essentially a 5% proc with a short duration (everyone rolls a '1'). For weapons or effects that trigger on every hit, this isn't terrible, although it's also not very good, either, but for items with only a chance to trigger, adding a DC onto them gets even worse.

If Paralyzing only triggered on critical, for example, you'd have (on a rapier with the best standard crit profile) a .6 chance of the effect triggering, then a .05 chance of it landing, or a 3% chance of it having the desired effect. Unless the effect in question is tremendous, such a low chance of triggering successfully makes the thing worthless.

I bring this up, because Feather recently posted that he wants to add some new effects to the loot tables, including things like Meteoric, which would have a low % chance for triggering a CC effect, that then would also have a save. Even with his proposed scaling save DC of 20+item level (the best would have a DC of 48) would be completely worthless in tough content (where CC is most needed), since casters and characters using tactical abilities are needing to get their DCs into the high-60s to mid-70s to see a reasonable rate of success on things for which they control the activation (ie., not a random, small chance of occurring). Therefore, items with these kinds of effects, either need to have a lowish % chance to trigger, with no DC, or a very high chance to trigger (every hit) with hopefully a high enough DC that you're not just hoping your enemies roll a natural 1 to see a result. This is one of the reasons that Lightning Strike was more popular one greensteel than either Trap the Soul or Slay Living: Lightning Strike was always effective, whereas the two insta-kill effects had about the same chance to trigger, but often did nothing (plus, LS looks pretty **** cool), even though an insta-kill effect should be more popular than even a pretty big damage burst.

[viktorserak]

1. Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
2. What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
3. I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

4. (In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Shortened and nembered what I will react to:

1. Random loot vastly overshadows named loot. From last three updates, there were only THREE items I would want:

- That Stormhorn Orb that gives +5 focus.
- That Stormhorn ring that gives great bonus to PRR.
- That green and something Ioun Stone that works as a better Voice of teh Master from update 18 (pre-Shadowfell).
Main porblem that I see is - for some reason, you are afraid to create named loot that is worth something, but you havent placed any ceiling on random loot. So I will eventually get superpowered random loot, but I will never ever get decent named loot (this goes for last 3 updates, counting Shadowfell as update).

I would like to reverse that situation - I want to be geared in all hardly farmed, deserved named loot again. And for the love of Christ - yes, eSoS was insanely powerfull back when capp was level 20. And yes, even when capp was level 25, it was "kill-all" weapon. But now, the level is 28, can we please finally get stronger weapon then dreaden min level 20 eSoS?. I mean... eSoS is what? 4 years old? Dethrone it already!

2. Light and heavy picks, Dwarven Axes (not by number, but by usefullnes, I mean Prison Break is prime example of named item that no one will ever use as it is so weak compared to named items, it would make me cry), Kukris, Warhammers, Kamas, Greatclubs, Light Hammers, Light and heavy Maces, Darts, throwing Axes, Throwing hammers, Throwing daggers.

3. deadly X of Accuracy X, xxx of desired stat +11. Its generic stuff, that is sadly, that good.

4. That would be great. Seriously, rigght now, I feel like the loot system is on its greatest low since I started playing the game. The fun is simply gone for me, regarding the loot.

[era42]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The blandness and the balance of fitting the right items. Named items have multiple stats, lootgen has 2, so it gets harder to balance the items you can wear to get the necessary goodies: ,resistance, deadly, 4-6*stats, dodge, vitality, false life, archmagi, deadly, accuracy, seeker, sneak attack, healing amp (!), fortification, striding/speed, FF, exceptionals for many.

Previously you could get a nice named item covering 2-3 of those, with possibly a slot too. Now you have lootgen that you have to store endlessly (because finding stuff in AH is impossible with the poor naming of the items).

You are gearing up a toon and you have a few slots open and you need deadly, resistance and some others. You log on your bank toon to see the items:
* Deadly ring of Accuracy
* Deadly ring of Accuracy
* Deadly ring of Accuracy
* Deadly goggles of Accuracy
* Deadly goggles of Accuracy
* Deadly goggles of Accuracy
* Deadly goggles of Accuracy
* Deadly goggles of Accuracy

Which one do you wear for this toon?


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Retribution. Every single armor has retribution. And it's impossible to tell the difference, even if we cared. When the incoming damage is in the hundreds, and monster hitpoints are in thousands or tens of thousands, the few damage from guards means less than drinking a cure light potion for a warforged.

Damage type resistances in items. Nobody uses them. Pure shop trash.

Ghostbane weapons. Everybody wants ghostly anyway for the incorporeal, so disruption as postfix is way superior. Ghostbane [weapon] of Disruption would be awesome, Prefix [weapon] of Ghostbane not so much.

Any bracers. You wear convalescent bracers instead, so lootgen bracers are trash.

Any gloves. You wear PDK gauntlets (healing amp 30), so lootgen gloves are trash.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Convalescent Bracers of Parrying. I was lucky enough to get 3 of these, they're all in use.
Deadly items of Spellpoints / Deadly items of Accuracy - pretty much every melee has these
Fortified/dex/str/con/int/wis/cha items of seeking/dodge/falselife/spellsight/repair/heal

+15 Search/Disable/Open Locks items.
The pure +15:s are rarity, due to the lack of signle-stat items. I've seen 15-level rogues with just a +7 search items due to not finding better ones in AH/loot. Sure, you can craft +13, but new toons, not going to happen. This is extra brutal due to the upgrade in trap difficulties.

The amount of lootgen items a toon wears is dependant on how much effort I bother to go with gearing. The more effort I go through, the more lootgen the toon will wear. Finding the right combo of items to wear is painfully annoying, so many of my secondary/tertiary epic toons just wear the random nameds they get from chain rewards and/or named BtA items, finding just the right combo of items is too annoying.

[Ladislav]

Welcome to the forums and good luck!


I suspect some of this will be controversial, but here goes.


Firstly, whilst I definitely agree that there is a shortage of prefixes and suffixes in the new system, I think it was most definitely needed. Additionally, whilst I think more attributes are needed, I don't want to see it go back to as many as it used to be, as we had reached a point where there were just too many.


Please don't bring back Bane as an attribute. It is the main suffix that causes the "I need to carry 20 weapons to keep my dps up" issue, and I find the idea of carrying so many weapons somewhat absurd, not to mention a pain to hotkey as it isn't always easy to discern which is which on the bar without hovering over with the mouse, not something that is desirable when in combat.


Clickies - rather than having these appear on wearables, how about introducing gems with a number of uses of a specific spell that can be used from inventory. Use random drops of limited uses and rare named items with unlimited uses. Again, this would help reduce the amount of switching gear in combat (because it makes so much sense to change clothes during combat).

You could even put the consumable version into the cannith crafting system to help boost that a bit.


On that note, extend the crafting system and make the levelling difficulty a bit less extreme. I'd actually be in favour of the system forcing more specialisation as well, as it would help boost the economy if people had to trade for shards more often.


I saw a suggestion elsewhere in the thread about bringing back and consolidating things like healing amp. Sounds a good idea to me.


Balance out some of the named loot across the levels, especially shroud crafting, which is absurdly overpowered compared to anything else you can get at level.


As has been said elsewhere, making loot more searchable on the auction house would be good, including both making it possible to search for specific tiers of prefixes and making it possible to search for slotted items.


Well, that's my 2p for now, hope it helps.

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

so as to not put everyone else's words into a new format (which if I voiced my opinion on the question at hand would likely do) I will say something else!

I think that some effects should be tweaked a little bit (on named and random gen)

Vampirism: Instead of ONLY granting positive per hit change it to be like the golem's heart, where it heals all the types (so that a vampire that uses a vampiric weapon will actually heal)

Healing amp (while it would definitely need to be renamed): A vampire wears a healing amp item and gets nothing, a bladeforged with their reconstruct ability needs more than a single item and one enhancement to up their Ramp

the last thing that I could say: epic level random gen weapons should have an absurdly low chance for different weapon dice like named items (improved threat/multiplier/damage dice) i know i know, you all disagree with me but put your pitchforks and torches aside for a single moment, there is no way that the devs will be able to create named weapons of every variety (i can name a few that have less than FIVE named varieties in the game) and while the devs create ways for someone to focus on the item type, they give us none of the item type (im talking about picks, im talking about great crossbows, im talking about shuriken, im talking about hand axes, im talking about the normally unloved items that with the right enhancements could shine)

Rocksplitter varieties
Deathnip
Nightforge Gouge
Sparkstriker

Oladren's Crossbow

Shadow Star
Snowstar

Axe of the Unseen Blow

while subpar generally the unloved weapons have worked their way into some people's hands, and should deserve better!

[Lonnbeimnech]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
heal amp gear no longer drops
parry/reposit can only be found on weapons
what happened to tomes?


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
this is heavily related to the base damage and crit profile of weapons. Basically khopesh is the best one handed weapon, so people want better khopeshes since thats the weapon that they use. Greataxe is the best two handed weapon so people want those, except if they have the esos.

Now if it is better to make better versions of the best weapons because that is what the players want; or if it is better to make really good/viable/usable versions of every other type of weapon so that players have a reason to use a kama, for example... opinions will vary.



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
at low levels
acid/shock ___ of lacerating
pretty much everything else is named

at mid levels
striding boots
+6 stat items, unless I have crafted versions
search and disable items, if I have trap skills

situation use of ____ of disruption/_____of smiting weapons, where the blank is holy or shock or acid or whatever.
the rest named items

at high levels
+10 stat items
deadly of resistance
the rest named

[Tagros_Beta]

Welcome Dr. Loot

I Agree with a lot of what people have already posted. I don't do Raids but the general idea that Raid loot > Named loot > Random Loot should be followed. That's not saying that you shouldn't be able to get really good random loot, just that on the whole the non-random should improve on the random (even if it only has a greater number of effects). I have several random items I have used over TRs +1 Bodyfeeder Khopesh of Greater Evil Outsider Bane with added festival icy burst being one of my favourites.

I dislike the whole Flaming of Stunning type of bonus naming, where both prefix and suffix are just differentiated by their Roman Numeral, but as others have said - if we have to go down this route then at least have the numbers in the title of the weapon so we can search through them more easily on the AH or even just in your backpack/bank slots

Bring back the Pandemonium/Steam/Crusader/Rebel type attributes - they were things I actively looked for

Improve Cannith Crafting
- If its on random loot, I should be able to craft it - no if's, no but's.
- I should be able to create augment crystals and the like - or rather I should be able to take one, rip it apart and add the effects I want. So if I find a blue augment that has an effect I'm not interested in, I should be able to disjunct it and add fortification 100%/125%/150% to it (with appropriate MLs). Crafting augments like this should be restricted to existing colour/effect combos (so I can't put fortification on colourless augments), but I should be able to remake them

Add random Runearms (and allow them to be crafted)

Make the skill tomes and upgrade tomes be able to be handed in for purified Ebberron fragments (or whatever they're called - my memory's not what it used to be!)


If you have an item with Ooze Bane/Guard - it should BY DEFAULT be immune to the effects of the things

Bone Breaking should do purple damage to skeletons - it just boggles my mind that it doesn't...

I like the idea in Feather_of_Suns recent posts of combining Bane effects - so Humanoid Bane replaces Human/Elf/Dwarf/Orc/Gnoll/etc Bane

There should probably be named augment crystals

I never liked Guild augments, the current augment slot idea is much better.

[Derana]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

1. & 3. Random loot is too powerful and too easy to get. I wear 10 Dex & 10% Dodge Bracers on my main, bought from the auction house for 50k plat. Rest is actually named stuff. However, she's a survivability built healer, so i dont need to cover many different ways of playing. My Evoker, on the other hand, wears almost only Random loot and/or the granted end reward items from Stormhorns/Wheloon. These granted end reward items are better than rare named loot and you can get them with running epic casual cuz the end reward remains the same, ALWAYS. Other than that I usually wear 10/10 items. Wise 10, resistance 10, stuff like that.

If you want people to play the quests and therefore spend time in your game (exp is always an issue too!!!!), the named loot must be great and it should not be purchaseable from the (astral shard) auction house. Items must be worth it to play the quest. in fact, they makes the quest worth it. Random loot, right now, gives people the chance to get randomly generated stat combinations that have the same stats (or even better stats!) than the currently named items. Here one of the problems i faced: I had an EE Stolen Necklace with 10 Charisma, 9 Resistance, Yellow Slot. Its ML 27. However, the randomly generated items can give me 10 (or 11 if its a +21 item) Charisma, 10 Resistance AND can go on different inventory slots such as rings, necklace, helm, etc. Random items therefore offer the same stats on different slots, and that makes them better. I wont bother to farm the stolen necklace if i can buy the same stats or even better on the auction house for a few plat.

Another thing is this Bound to Character on Equip (btcoe) thing. I dont like it. It makes things too easy to achieve. If i can buy everything off the auction house to gear up my character, I dont have to play your game anymore, no matter if i finance my purchases with plat or astral shards. A solution would be to make only Epic Normal items btcoe. Epic hard = Bound to Account, Epic elite = Bound to Character. The casual 10h/week gamer should not be the basis to loot decisions, drop rates and how easy items are to achieve. The casual gamer does not play your game enough unless you want people to not play your game more than 1h per day.

What is also very annoying nowadays, is the variety of stats on named items. For me, a named item means it is a specific item with specific stats. However, with Menace of the Underdark, the variety of stats started like on Spidersilk Robes and Planar Focus' (it wasnt that bad back then though). Update 18 with Epic Gianthold continued this procedure with the Gianthold Tor Helmets but also, this is not that bad. However, U19 expansion massively extended this variety to a point, where the named item became a random loot item with a special name. Again, check the stolen necklace: ML27 gives always: Charisma +10 and a Yellow Augment Slot
AND THEN: One of the following:
Accuracy IX
Natural Armor +9
Resistance +9
Wizardry IX
Bluff +19
Haggle +19
Intimidate +19
Listen +19
Search +19
Spellcraft +19
Spot +19Spot +19

I guess its clear that this kinda rare dropping Stolen necklace is a Masterful Craftmanship Random Item that goes only on a necklace slot. This is horrible, its not named loot, but random loot hidden behind a name.

2. Please make old loot and Epic quests worth it again. If you dont wanna update the items itself because they are usually ML20, make it upgradeable with commendations of heroism. An idea would be to level upgrade it, as in ML20 item + 5 Commendations of Heroism and 7 Tokens of the Twelve -> ML22 and +2 to stats, item effects whatever. This ML22 item +7 Comms and 10 Tokens -> ML25 etc. Stats should be 1 or 2 better than the random loot level stat would be. For this to work, all Raids should drop 1 or 2 Commendations of Heroism, based on Difficulty.
Id love to use my old Abishai Set (that I dropped because the max stat on it is +7 because its ML20), Id love to farm old quests because the item is so good that I M U S T have it. Imagine a ML28 Epic Sword of Shadow or Antique Greataxe or any kind of Weapon, upgraded with commendations and Tokens, with increased dps and maybe some other stat. People would go for this, buy raid timers and actually play the game instead of waiting in front of the Astral Shard Auction house for an Epic Elite Bound to Character on Equip item to be posted.

My few cents.
Loulani.

p.s. On a very egoistic move, although it seems that Healers are a dying class in ddo and no1 really wanna play them anymore because every class is somewhat self healing nowadays, I'd love to have a really good one-handed (because healers use a shield) Healer weapon with devotion, radiance (sometimes i use divine punishment to dot the mobs), healing lore, heal skill +15 or higher, some spell point reducing thing like improved maximize/empower healing. There is no weapon like that in the game, the Gauntlets of Immportality from Fall of Truth grant this with +120 Devotion but its outdated already since there is +144 Devotion (on random loot, of course), in the game. So for the future, I'd love to see such an item that makes me have sleepless nights over the question if i can convince myself on giving up the planar focus buff for this new shiny weapon because right now, i am using a melee weapon (Balizarde) whose only benefit is the +2 Good luck AND the planar focus buff.


Thanks in advance for listening to us.

oh and what i forgot.... PLEASE, bring back the old random loot affixes like Invisibility and actually, clickies in general. Whats better to find on random loot than Invisibility clickies that make u invisible for 3 (ml 9-20) to 15min (15 min on a ml 28 item, maybe?!). Also, Please bring back the Guild augment system. I have no clue why it was taken out. It was awesome to find guild augments on random loot. Rings were worth so much because of the large augment slot... I miss that.

[sirgog]

Random items that have ever existed that are presently best-in-slot for some builds:

- +5 DC one-handers
- Convalescent bracers (ALL THREE tiers are relevant to at least some builds)
- +11 stat items (+10 a decent substitute)
- Resistance 11 items (10 a decent substitute)
- Cannith-crafted 33% elemental absorb items with two slots
- 'of Obscenity' weapons (less so post U20 changes but they are still situationally excellent)
(very situational) - Devastation/Debilitation suffixes
- Utility clickies. Invisibility most of all.
(very situational) - Improved Shattermantle


Things that are cool and need to come back (despite not being overly powerful)

- Phlebotomizing (that name is sooo awesome)
- Greater Incineration
- Lightning Strike/Dynamo/Scintillating
- Tempestuous/Meteoric
- Mangling (this can actually be competitive DPS when matched with Meteoric or Tempestuous)
- AoE damage on vorpal procs


Things that have never existed I would like to see:

- Low proc chance, extreme damage procs. E.G. 0.25% proc, 5000 lightning damage. (Powerwise, this is marginally stronger than Lightning Strike and a smidgen weaker than Shocking V)
- Will add more later when I have time.

[Claver]

Roman Numeral notation. Please get rid of this. It may save text space, but it makes the loot bland and dull and is really quite confusing for determination of what exactly it does. :mad:

QFT

I despise the Roman Numeral system. It sucks the magic out of magic items.

Something that is anti fun should not be a foundation of a game

[AlmGhandi]

My stuff:

1) The random loot should not overtake the raid loot... especially the things you have to farm shards/seals/scrolls for!!

2) Make the raid/epic-crafting loot worth it.

3) Random lootgen should not be the loot that I am choosing to wear on my 14th life, because the raid loot is not good.

4) Cannith Crafting should enable us to keep more or less up with the random lootgen....... if we have bothered to get our crafting levels up there.

5) Epic Shroud. Epic Green Steel.

That is all.

P.S. do not nerf two handed swords just as soon as I get around to getting them.

[SisAmethyst]

I will add to the chorus. Genesai was one of the best loot designers ever. Take at a look at his rework of the carnival epic items. He had a thread on the forums dedicated to it. It was inspired and it is that level of thought and effort we need in named loot.

My advice -don't worry about over-powered random loot. It's actually not that big a deal -taking it away will only mean that new toons are SOL.

I agree that Genesai did some good work and whoever was responsible for the combo effects like Oceanic, Riptide, Night's Grasp, Pandemonium, Tempestuous, Desert Sand, Forecful, etc. which I really, really miss! I also agree that it is a bit late to throw all the new random loot away, however maybe reduce some drop rates and bump named loot accordingly.

[nibel]

On the loot discussion, I would like to ask.

How hard would be to code raid items to be Bound to Account on Acquire, and Bound to Character on Equip at the same time?

This could greatly improve raid party making, because there are some raid where, lets say, my tank have no items he desire, but my wizard does. However, the party needs a tank. But since the loot is BtC, I need to run it on my wizard. If the items were BtAoA, I would jump into an alt that the party needs, and if I get the item, I throw it to my wizard. After getting it, it is bound to my wiz anyway.

BtA items can't be sold in the Auction House (plat or shard), so I still need to run the raid and earn the item myself.

[SisAmethyst]

One last thing (meant to put this in my first post here, but it slipped my mind):

Items with effects that have a DC are problematic, because the DCs don't scale at all, and end up way behind the curve, and completely off the d20. Now, Paralyzing used to be rather effective up through level 18, because saves weren't scaling so sharply, but a DC 17 Will save (or even the 25 on Improved Paralyzing) is worthless in high-level content, except as essentially a 5% proc with a short duration (everyone rolls a '1'). For weapons or effects that trigger on every hit, this isn't terrible, although it's also not very good, either, but for items with only a chance to trigger, adding a DC onto them gets even worse.

If Paralyzing only triggered on critical, for example, you'd have (on a rapier with the best standard crit profile) a .6 chance of the effect triggering, then a .05 chance of it landing, or a 3% chance of it having the desired effect. Unless the effect in question is tremendous, such a low chance of triggering successfully makes the thing worthless.

I bring this up, because Feather recently posted that he wants to add some new effects to the loot tables, including things like Meteoric, which would have a low % chance for triggering a CC effect, that then would also have a save. Even with his proposed scaling save DC of 20+item level (the best would have a DC of 48) would be completely worthless in tough content (where CC is most needed), since casters and characters using tactical abilities are needing to get their DCs into the high-60s to mid-70s to see a reasonable rate of success on things for which they control the activation (ie., not a random, small chance of occurring). Therefore, items with these kinds of effects, either need to have a lowish % chance to trigger, with no DC, or a very high chance to trigger (every hit) with hopefully a high enough DC that you're not just hoping your enemies roll a natural 1 to see a result. This is one of the reasons that Lightning Strike was more popular one greensteel than either Trap the Soul or Slay Living: Lightning Strike was always effective, whereas the two insta-kill effects had about the same chance to trigger, but often did nothing (plus, LS looks pretty **** cool), even though an insta-kill effect should be more popular than even a pretty big damage burst.

That is a very good point! Tactical and effect DC don't scale with the level of the player wielding them.

[SisAmethyst]

On the loot discussion, I would like to ask.

How hard would be to code raid items to be Bound to Account on Acquire, and Bound to Character on Equip at the same time?

This could greatly improve raid party making, because there are some raid where, lets say, my tank have no items he desire, but my wizard does. However, the party needs a tank. But since the loot is BtC, I need to run it on my wizard. If the items were BtAoA, I would jump into an alt that the party needs, and if I get the item, I throw it to my wizard. After getting it, it is bound to my wiz anyway.

BtA items can't be sold in the Auction House (plat or shard), so I still need to run the raid and earn the item myself.

If my mind serves me right I already have seen items like that in the past. After all I am pretty sure that I have items that have two such lines in the description but don't have an example at hand yet. So yes, this would for example increase the incentive for Clerics to run Raids like CitW that just don't have any items for them, because they could pass them over to their alt.

[susiedupfer]

1) We need clickies back. We need them back badly. Invisibility, Jump, Blur, etc at levels coinciding with the use of the spell, please. PLEASE add FoM and TS clickies. Those two things drain SP bars faster than everything else.

2) Random loot should never, ever, be better than the named loot from a raid or crafted in some difficult(but achievable) manner. We should have to work for the best stuff. You take away the need to strive for something, and you take away the need to run the content.

3) We need some sort of GS type crafting at epic levels. Something that is a tiered system, e.g.: you get the "base" mats from these quests, then you get tiered mats from a raid, then you can individualize the item to suit your needs. With so many different builds(viva la difference!), many people have item problems that a crafting system could solve nicely. The MotU pack, and now EGH, is ideally suited for this type of crafting system TBH. I know the devs tried to do this with Alchemical crafting, but the problem with that was that the very next update made most of that gear obsolete. We know we are going to max at level 30 for a while. Please give us something to help bridge that gap as we farm those ETRs. If you could make some of those choices clickies, so much the better! :D

4) Paralyzing, Banishing, Disruption, Smiting all need to make a return. And at their old levels. Not just epics.

5) BTA/BTCoE would be awesome on named items. Would help fill raids/EE's.

[Ungood]

I wanted to take a moment to discuss RNG

The main reason why players do not like RNG is because in most cases it works against them, they want a specific item, with specific stats, when you add in RNG to that mix, it becomes a double game of getting more junk you don't need or want.

To use a real world example: That is like playing a game a carnival where after you go thorough all this effort to finally win, they hand you the stuffed animal, but it's the wrong color.

[Rakuda13]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)


- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
The old loot had names and not numbers.Troll Shamen or Troll 2,what sounds more DnD.
There is no trapping gear other than named loot now.
Smiting isnt found under lvl 23 anymore. Smiting could be found on random loot at lower levels before and is useless after lvl 19.
ALL of the old loot should come back and you can add your new loot to it,that is what should have happened.
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
There are only a few named Dwarven axes,sort of small for a whole feat spot.So its ghostbane or nothing for dwarven axes.
No new rune arm.The ones from Epic GH are just rehashed old ones.
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Basically I am running old loot gen,I have to swap it from one toon to another because the new loot is basically not helpful unless im a Melee guy. I have two lvl6 toons,both same class only one is using pre update 19 gear,the new on is post update 19 gear. Post update gear toon basiclly cant run with any TRS.He can only solo so no LFMs for him.Thats how bad it is at low lvls.

Good luck with your new job,and welcome to hell :)

[Saekee]

Most of the suggestions seem to be about the numerical balance behind the loot. In this sense I think the posters here have been very accurate. I suggest here though more imaginative and intuitive changes:


1) Keep item effects as imaginary in their disguise as possible. So a description like 'Phlebotomizing', though indicating a specific numerical relationship, is better than something too numerical like 'Acid III.' Gamers are somewhat autistic in their numbers-obsession and like to be fooled that they are not so. (As an aside, in RL I never use the metric system; it is too bland--give me feet, yards, etc. with their bizarre numbers instead of a perfect decimal.)

2) Set items. I love set items, like the Red Fens sets. Why not create special set stacking in random loot? So that it is not overpowered, make it so that one of the set items must be a named/raid item. Not sure what this would be, so this requires imagination. For example, a deception weapon might get some strange boost from a cloak of shadows. I would do this mostly in the area of tactics.

3) Relate skills to item bonuses, either as a bonus or a limit.
It is intuitive that Dodge and tumble should be somehow linked; how can someone have a dodge of 25% and only 1 point in tumble?
How might Spot influence Vorpal? Or intimidate and Deadly? Heal and healing amplification? Diplomacy/bluff and Deception? (This currently works vice-versa--deception suffixes boosting Bluff.) As things sit now, there is almost little to no relationship, making some skills nearly useless or, as just mentioned like with tumble/dodge, non-intuitive builds possible. My proposal would boost Rogues and INT builds heavily.

[psteen1]

I never see epic random items that are just a prefix, or just a suffix. I would like to see that again-- if all I want is +xx to a skill, then I want the best skill bonus I can get for that slot, rather than diluting it down with something I don't want.

Right now I have an open boots slot and open google slot that I just can't find any random item that fits it. I have resistance, charisma, intelligence, etc, all in other slots.

[Hendrik]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

- Wow! factor. When we had prefix/suffix of Meteoric/of the Sun and things like that, there was a big wow! factor and excitement in opening a chest. Instead of just hitting 'loot all' you actually wanted to take a minute and see what you and others looted. We need that wow! factor back.

- Shurikens, Daggers, previously mentioned Quivers, Scimitars. Ideally, for me, every weapon type should have a named version or two for various level ranges.

- I mostly wear all named loot from 20+ at this time.

[Spoonwelder]

1) I'd very much like to see Cannith crafting get new recipes. It's decent for leveling gear, but when you consider just how much you need to

2) I'd like to see the old scroll/seal/shard Epic items get some love. It takes a VERY long time to get those items and they're just mid-game "passing through" loot now. I do think that having a significant investment in getting end game items is fine, but for items that you're just going to wear for a few levels, I think it's reasonable to just have the item itself drop directly OR add a seal exchange and shard exchange just like the Scroll exchange that we have now.

This I have a large bag and a half of epic seal/scroll/shard and at this point can make 3 items (two are necklaces of prophecy which are basically junk). An exchange for seals/shards would be awesome. Still keeps the grind up and makes it so you can actually make an item you can use.

[Archetype]

Hi. Welcome.

I am really tired of feeling like my characters are decked out in tacky Walmart Jewelry Counter BLINGwear. :(
https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQDqTtjkL-DhnfDlA7DukZ1tGKxIZtz9XWQtGjeEpcaHhpcwLyv

At levels 20+ (or earlier), we should NOT care about RANDOMgenLOOT at all. There should be enough NAMED loot (preferably with set bonuses) or Cannith Crafted items with unique properties to keep us questing to fill our builds with EPIC-worthy goodness. Having multiple sets to choose from that synchronize across the slots to make multiple gear-builds viable (e.g. INT stat bonuses on gloves or belts on randomgen and named items) would really help as well. Nothing worse than spending an inordinate amount of time re-gearing at certain levels because one new "must have" item for that level throws off ALL the other slots.

[RD2play]

Remove ML increase for empty augmentslots, I mean come on ! the augment gives you a ml right. I can live with the aug slot adding to ML when filled (according to augment colour not slot colour)

Make named EPIC ELITE loot bound, normal and hard may remain tradable. its just BS that you can get best gear without actually running the quest at difficulty! whats epic about that ?
acquire your hard (trade/farm) gear to get to run the elites and get the best gear.

Lower the ML of BTA lootgen by 2 compared to unbound lootgen. this should stack with masterful craftsmanship.

Bring back material types for armour ! and scale them with the "production" types,
i.e. adamant full plate = 3DR/ada, adamant; battle full plate = 4DR/ada, up to 7DR/ada for planeforged. (8dr/ada for 6th tier AML 28 ?)
Mithral = one lower weight class and increasing reduction to armour check pen 3, up to 7 for top tier (to min 0).
cold and flame iron 1 to saves vs X, up to 5 save vs X for top tier
Maybe add crystal with stacking ASF and counts as non-metal


Order of power: Raid(+5) > elite named(+4) > named(+3) > "rare" random(+2(wouderous)) > "uncommon"random/cannith(+1(masterfull)) > "common" random loot(quest lvl)
this means raid loot has to stay vialbe for at least 10 levels compared to random loot

common = prefix-item-suffix, doulbe prefix item, double suffix item.
uncommon = prefix-item-suffix + MC, double_prefix-item-suffix, prefix-item-double_suffix, double prefix/suffix + MC
rare = prefix-item-suffix + WC, double_prefix-item-double_suffix, prefix-item-double_suffix + MC,....

you get the point!

double suffix i.e. agility: +X to tumble balance, tinkering: +X to OL & disable, ...
double prefix i.e. riptide: frost + tidal

Return the minor/lesser/improved/major/superior in the names. use +X only for enhancement and skills

Give augmented items and indication in the name that it has one, like "augmented-prefix-item-suffix"

item: {cursed}{augmented}{prefix}{item}{suffix}{(augment )}
weapon: {cursed}{augmented}{enhancement}{prefix}{material} {weapon}{suffix}{(augment)}
Armor: {cursed}{augmented}{enhancement}{prefix}{material} {production}{armor}{suffix}{(augment)}

few examples

"Augmented +7 Major Holy Cold iron Greatsword of Greater Eviloutsider Bane (red)" empty
"Augmented +7 Major Holy Cold iron Greatsword of Greater Eviloutsider Bane (vampire slayer)" slotted with vampire slayer augment

"Cursed Augmented +4 Bracing Adamant Mountain Breastplate of Improved Axeblock (Blue)"

"ring of thinkering +7"


Abillity to recharge wands, with scrolls/other wands to the max of 50 charges. (stone of change?)

[RD2play]

My stuff:
5) Epic Shroud. Epic Green Steel.


I posted on this some time ago :)

they should indeed follow up on the story after ToD.

Horoth must be pretty angry after being humiliated in his own house !

in short: "14th eclipse" lvl26, stop Horoth from gaining the power of the eclipse(14th), ?Arretrikos tells you about Horohts plans you have to reënter the shroud and stop him! btu is Arretrikos to be trusted ??
-> Epic GS -> T4 ML 22 adds 4th shard + augslot(red) +6 enhancement and atunable to heroism (+7 (red->purple)/+8 and 2nd slot(red)
Epic "Return the Status Quo" LvL 30: after being betrayed by Arreatrikos, help Horoth reclaim his place as ruler of shavarath: reënter the tower of despair and defeat Areatrikos.
-> epic ToD rings, will work with destinies instead of pre

[Wyvernsting]

Hello, and welcome. I hope (sincerely hope) that your time here will be fantastic and that it's a positive one. I know us players can get snarky, rude and downright mean at times .

The main issues I've seen with the loot are the unforgiving nature of the randomness, the outdatedness of the rewards for the old chain quests (non-raid) and often times the fact that loot doesn't help the player at all.

OK, time to elaborate. I was playing this game years ago, back when the level cap was ten and the Kundark Vault raid was the first dragon (it was right after doing that raid that I quit the game for years and have only been back a couple of months due to broken mechanics and an unresponsive Dev team). Back then, I remember that the mummified bat was a cool little trinket to have (and I smiled when my main got it again - still need to find the Accomplice cloak, but I digress).

So, the other day I was soloing, pitting my skill, luck and whatever against dungeon after dungeon when I saw in the Trade channel someone selling a "Dagger of ***". Apparently, this dagger dropped randomly and had a decent plus. However, it was a dagger of true law and chaos (I forget the actual suffix name). In effect only Lawful Chaotic characters could equip it without suffering negative levels. This gave me an insight of how distorted the random loot generator is and also let me relax about the... **** I was getting out of chests.

So, that's the biggest issue, the second issue I've seen is that the chests in dungeons don't seem to notice anymore what class is looting it. Back in the day, I remember they implemented a check where the chest would see the classes of the player dipping their fingers into it and would have something for them. I've gone to chest after chest since being back and have pulled out the most random stuff, things that I have absolutely no use for. I'm not just talking about things that are underlevel for me, or if I had a slightly different build would be decent, I'm talking about pulling things on my human rouge that are docets, wizardry items, runearms, etc. Now, this is all well and good, but after three or more chests and not one thing I can actually use, gets a little annoying (not to mention expensive when I have to go buy my upgrades off the AH or Pawnbrokers). I would like to see at least one chest per dungeon be tailored to the classes gong through them. Hell, still might be **** items for all I care, but at least there's going to be one chest in this whole thing where I know I might pull out something new and improved.

And the last, bit I really noticed on my Drow Mage last night. I did the old school Marketplace quest chain of the Sharn Syndicate, soloing it. After hours of plugging my way through, especially one part where trying to save the family and those damm traps killing me time and time and time and time.... anyway, again. I get through it and get offered the "chipped" or "knicked" end quest rewards. In that table was a +! Heavy Flaming Mace as well. Now, when I finish a quest and see none of the rewards are really worth anything, I do what any enterprising adventurer does, see which is worth the most for when I sell it. I was shocked to see all the named quest reward items were worth 200 plat and the +! flaming was worth over 800 plat. It reminded me just how old that quest chain was and hoe little attention the old quests seem to get. That loot table didn't keep up with the times. Hell, the gear of a first level hireling is better than what was being offered as a "reward" on some of these quests.

Meh, anyway, that's been my observations thus far on these quests. I find it funny to still see places that weren't frequented a lot when I played the first time, still not frequented a lot (*ahem* Tanglefoot Gorge anyone?). I also see that the questing is a bit difficult now where people who've done it hundreds of times run through at break neck speeds, and players that like to take their time (like me), break everything they can just because they can, explore the entire map, etc, are either left behind or scrambling to keep up. But, that's another thread entirely.

[RD2play]

Hello, and welcome. I hope (sincerely hope) that your time here will be fantastic and that it's a positive one. I know us players can get snarky, rude and downright mean at times .

So, the other day I was soloing, pitting my skill, luck and whatever against dungeon after dungeon when I saw in the Trade channel someone selling a "Dagger of ***". Apparently, this dagger dropped randomly and had a decent plus. However, it was a dagger of true law and chaos (I forget the actual suffix name). In effect only Lawful Chaotic characters could equip it without suffering negative levels. This gave me an insight of how distorted the random loot generator is and also let me relax about the... **** I was getting out of chests.

So, that's the biggest issue, the second issue I've seen is that the chests in dungeons don't seem to notice anymore what class is looting it. Back in the day, ....


1. they prefix you are talking about was a special one, one of the composed affixes , those got lost somehow ...

2. there is a toggle in the options panel to allow for loot to drop based on class (dunno if this actually still works).

[Ivan_Milic]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

What were you doing in the dev team before loot?
Problem with random loot is that in u19 random loot got a lot better than most of the ee gh named loot and we went from +8 to stat, to +11, in 1 update.
I have 10 str, 9 seeker bracers on my jugg(lvl 28), dex 10, speed 8 boots, will probably get random loot gloves too because they are much better than named items we currently have, thinking of getting 10 or 9 con with false life 45 or 50.

[red_cardinal]

You put to much effort into randomness. Far better it would be to boost named loot. Here particulary I mean Sands and Fens epic items. Alchemical crafting is great, but loot for epic versions could be better. Avoid using random things in generating named loot. Generate level 24 and 28 versions of challenge loot. Loot from latest expansion pack is silly and shows you didn't put much effort in making it->shame. In general I like to work for effective items, not roll for them after grinding materials.

[karatemack]

1. Better cleric gear (some high level turning gear? eternal faith is currently "best" and avail at low level)
2. EPIC Shroud with updated recipes
3. REMOVE old scroll/seal/shard and replace with EN/EH/EE
4. REMOVE all random effects from named loot and replace with augment slot so people can customize how they want without relying on a random drop
5. Expand augments (more types/effects)
6. MORE set bonuses (makes multiple pieces of gear viable depending on build/play style)
7. Random loot should NEVER be better than named of the same level (or within a couple levels)
8. Expand Cannith Crafting
9. Do to healing amp what you did to dodge (double bonuses and change the stacking)
10. EPIC Reavers for epic dragontouched

[red_cardinal]

What were you doing in the dev team before loot?
Problem with random loot is that in u19 random loot got a lot better than most of the ee gh named loot and we went from +8 to stat, to +11, in 1 update.
I have 10 str, 9 seeker bracers on my jugg(lvl 28), dex 10, speed 8 boots, will probably get random loot gloves too because they are much better than named items we currently have, thinking of getting 10 or 9 con with false life 45 or 50.

Yes, nerf random loot. Ddo uses dice but it's not a cursed casino. Shame you cannot come up with greater lightning strike and similar effects on named loot. Random items should be barely auxiliary and not OP like now.

Also, reward effort, don't strive on luck when getting loot.

[BOgre]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Hi, Welcome.


Biggest Prob w/Random Loot:
The biggest problem with random loot is that it is pointless. 99.9% of it is vendor trash. Of the remaining 0.1% maybe half has enough synergy to Auction, and then only if it also has an Augment Slot or two. The remaining 0.05% maybe has the synergy, the Slot, and suits our class/build. So, for the most part, random loot is more of a hassle than it's worth. D&D purists will likely disagree, but I'd be perfectly happy to see Random Loot go away completely. Replace the entire Chest Loot mechanic with Plat, Crafting Mats (i.e. Pack-specific crafting like Shroud Mats, or Incredible Potential, or Dragontouched, or Dampened, etc...), Cannith Crafting Essences, Favor, Augments, and finally ONE (semi)Random Item. The (semi)Random item should NEVER be non-synergous. When desiging the semi-random loot generator, it should be with an eye to creating an interesting item every time. That is, no matter what drops, I should at least be TEMPTED to take it, over the other rewards. Interesting and level appropriate affixes, Aug Slots, enhancement +'s, Metal Types (don't forget Crystal), stacking bonuses, etc.
Basically, if the loot is vendor trash, you've wasted your time coding it.


Underserved items in Named/Random Loot:
"Flexible" affixes. I am soooo bored with looking at the lists of loot at Pawn Brokers and seeing ALL the same affixes. Start widening the Flexibility of affixes on things. More choices = More Interesting = Good.
As for underserved Named Loot, go look at DDOWiki's lists of named gear. You'll see plenty of areas that could use a significant boost in named items. Boots, Belts, Necklaces, and Bracers (for MY characters at least), seem to be problem areas, for me.


Not on your list of questions,

but I also have a problem with Rarity. I understand that drop rates are what they are... I guess... but some players do seem to have TERRIBLE luck with the loot gods. I have had exactly TWO tomes drop in my name. I've bought a couple, traded for a couple, and got a couple recently from Mabar (Thanks a bunch for that btw). Same goes for Augments. I would LOVE it if the game would somehow check to see how many chests I've opened since my last Tome/Augment dropped, and then raise my personal drop chance after certain milestones. For example, if say my chance to get a Tome from an appropriate level chest is 1%, and I haven't seen one drop in 100 chests, then raise my personal drop chance to, say, %2. Then if I still haven't seen one drop in another 50 chests, raise it to 5%. (Numbers are all hypothetical). This way, players who are actually having lower than average drop rates on certain things actually start having a better chance to pull those things over a reasonable time.

Now, I know I'm talking about more than just crafting some new copy/paste elements for the current loot gen machine... But the loot system doesn't need a simple fix. It needs an overhaul. DDO's current loot system is not only boring, it's a system with major disasters waiting to happen, like the Ghostbane fiasco. Bring the thing into the 21st century, for real, and design something that will actually last past the next update.

[Thalone]

Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Hardly any of it is worth using. When rolling up a new character or doing a TR, most everything I use is Cannith-crafted or named from previous lives. The main exception would be the Deadly/Accuracy items.


What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

The DPS character I play most is a heavy pick user, still using Deathnips at cap.
Removing Metalline from the loot tables really hurts new players. They can't get cheap all-purpose DR breakers.


I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your characters are currently wearing.

Cannith-crafted with augment slots for energy resistances on classes that don't get the spell, or when I expect to get dispelled.
Primary stat items, fortification, false life, wizardry, deadly, accuracy.
Caster sticks (damage/crit chance/DC).
Old heal amp bracers or doublestrike rings where I can fit them in.
I have a "Vertigo" weapon (which actually adds to Stunning DC!) on my tactics fighter, since it offers a better DC bonus than accessories.
Search/Disable +15 items since they can't be Cannith-crafted. Rarely, Intim/Diplo/Bluff items to hit noncombat benchmarks.
Speed boots on characters without a Quiver of Alacrity.
BtA chain-reward clickies (Shield, Invis), which seem to be using the old loot tables.


Off-topic to your questions, but to reiterate some of the points other posters have made, and to make some new ones:

The loot seems to be going madly off in all directions. MoTU introduced a lot of enchantments which were suddenly removed a year later. Auction-searchable titles were introduced, then removed. (Incidentally, from a usability perspective, it's terrible that we can't search for the slotted attribute. Even a visual cue like a hole in the item icon, perhaps with a superscript number indicating the number of slots, would be better than making everyone mouseover every single item. Searchable description text, rather than just item titles, would be even better.) The recent life-stealing nerf (and apparently life-stealing has gone back and forth a couple of times already) has affected three of my characters, which I purposely built (or rebuilt via LRing) as neg-levellers, since their primary role was not top-tier DPS and I wanted to contribute meaningfully to killing stuff. (Upgrade) tomes and bound status... With the advent of skill tomes, I'm probably going to end up deleting most of these, since I'll never find or splurge the prerequisite tomes to use them. There was great fanfare on the forums when +4 tomes and upgrade tomes were announced, but without warning the treasure level was raised for these. You can certainly argue they were too easy to get or cutting into the store profits, but changing it without announcing it is low. Some people spend a lot of time, and perhaps even TP for loot boosts, farming for tomes or that max enchantment level item.
There are way too many crafting ingredients. I have no idea why Cannith lesser essences are even in the game. It doubles the needed carrying slots for no reason. You could just adjust every recipe to use to add a greater essence for every 5 lesser essences in the recipe and everyone would be happy. Why have Boots of Anchoring ingredients? The NPC should just give you boots after you've flagged. Random drops in the Manufactory/Madness chains: anyone who's going to craft stuff is going to have far more random-drop ingredients than they'll need by the time they've collected enough real ingredients to craft their items. Outdated epic scroll/seal/shard system. I can understand why you'd want small/medium/large ingredients for green steel tiers, but is it necessary to require charged and uncharged power cells for all three levels?
Too much divergence between random gen and Cannith crafting. It's valid to argue that Cannith should be a subset of random gen, to keep people grinding those chests or to preserve that "wow" feeling when they loot the perfect item. But it should be a large subset, viable for both heroic and epic.

[SisAmethyst]

Some thoughts I have:

1.) Is it possible to control what prefixes/suffixes drop by pack? In addition to the diversity of what is dropping, there is no diversity of where it drops. Having a few unique to a pack prefixes/suffixes could help liven things up.

Maybe not put certain suffix/prefix exclusive in one pack, but set the probability. For example have the probability to get a Ghostbane weapon in the Necro quests at 75%, while in other areas only 25%. On the other hand the quests in Gianthold might have a higher chance for Giant Bane weapons and VoN for Dragon Bane, etc.

Additionally they should look in the code that is supposed to give class specific loot, as it seems that my Fighters get all the scrolls and caster stuff, while the wizards get the Greate-axes and Heavy-armors!

PS: DrLoot, if you see it necessary to change or screw up something, don't approach it with a 180° turn around, which seem to be sadly a quite common tactic (e.g completly shutting off things like Phlebotomizing). Instead adapt gradually...

[SisAmethyst]

...
The second issue is more annoying because it actually seems buggy, rather than just a hidden WAI feature, like the first. Collars. Crafting handwraps into collars is awesome. Not being able to put them on your Pet is not. I have a collar that has chaos damage on it, which requires me to be chaotic to use it. I am. However, the game believes that my wolf is not. I cannot apply it to him, even though he should fulfill the prerequisites for it. This is incredibly annoying.

Attention, pet's don't automatically share the alignment of it's master. You can define the alignment of the pet via the enhancements, like for the artificer dog you can take 'hunter of boxes' which make it chaotic aligned.

[PermaBanned]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.
Hello & welcome! While I'm glad loot is getting some due attention, your new hat sparks some questions for me.

•First, is this related to Feather_of_Sun's candid comments in this thread (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430045-Dear-Feather-of-Sun)? I do hope no ill befell Feather because of that. To be honest, if we're going to have productive discussions we'll need to have that level of clarity rather than the non-committal "speaks much - says little" and "side-stepping of issues" we typically receive.

•Second, in that thread (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430045-Dear-Feather-of-Sun) Feather said certain things were going to happen like Spell DC Augments stacking with gear, returning Burst effects and named effects to the loot tables. Does a new face in charge of loot mean those are off the table?

•Third, it seems whenever we get a new loot developer, we get a new loot system. Are you planning this, or are you sticking with what we have and working it into something palatable to the player base?

Now on to your questions:

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
•Random loot should never trump named loot of approximately the same level.

•Random loot should not receive rare properties of named loot, leading to a nerf of said property. To use Nightmares as an example: it existed on 2 items and was great if you could get them. Then it was added into the random table and determined to be too powerful to exist that commonly.

•Random loot with DCs need to scale with item min level. If an item has a min level of 26, it needs to be more effective than item with a min level of 8 or 16. A Paralyzing item is phenomenal for level 10ish quests, decent in the Vale and occasionally effective in Amrath. If the same prefix drops at epic levels, it's DC is unchanged and so almost useless. Perhaps instead of basing an item's DC on "standard" vs "Improved" or "Greater" it should be a function of Minimum Level, or that "+ value" in the upper right hand corner?

•Missing affixes/properties. Convalescence, Blindness Immunity, (effective) Secret Door detection, ASF reduction just to name a few. Dear to my heart in particular: Turn Undead Gear! Why is it that with a level cap of 28 (soon to be 30!) the best in game Turn effecting property is obtainable at level 7, and still used (with absolutely no modifications/improvements) for loot from the highest level raid in the game?!

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
•Quarterstaves need the chance of having a metal type.

•More named Docents please.

•Collars. Sure they can use any (converted) handwraps, but why no love for Fido? Some named Collars would be cool.

•Beyond that it's hard to say. It seems different items (weapons/armor/gear) get love at different times/levels. Unless you're wanting a specific dissection of (X) item @ (Y) level range, it would seem that there's a plethora of options for every slot (with the noted exceptions above, and quivers which should remain extremely rare IMO).

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
•Convalescence of (various) Parrying. Arguably one of the best random drops since Arti's devalued DR breakers.

•Stat items, HP & SP, Spell DC boosters... By a wide margin, the highest value items are random gen now - this IMHO is a sad state of affairs, but you've painted yourselves into a corner here. You can't produce competitive named items without jacking up the power creep even further. How will you make a Named Item to compete with Int 11 of Wizardy X, or Con 11 of False Life 50?

•Skill swaps. Search, spot, haggle, diplomacy etc. I carry random stuff for these to use on an as needed basis.

Beyond that, not much to be honest. I've spent years in the game collecting Named goodies for my two main toons. They mostly TR, and so mostly reuse the same stuff in various combinations 'pending the build of that particular life.


(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)
Some food for thought...
•When loot properties are changed, they need to be retroactive and comprehensive - existing Named items need to be updated.

•Greater Hearoism as a stand alone property does absolutely nothing to make higher level Named armor anything but vendor trash - it's obtainable as a low level clicky for Pete's sake!

•"Good enough" isn't. We now know (which we had all assumed anyway) that this currently shabby & unfinished excuse for a loot system was implemented because management decided other things were of higher priority. The decision it's self was great! Enhancements were in need of extra work, so the loot was put on hold - no problem there - but it's implementation should also have been put on hold until work was resumed and completed. There is no "return on investment" issue here, nothing of that was for sale, none of it was attached to pack sales. If anything, implementing it was a poor financial decision as it led to a major erosion of consumer confidence & satisfaction.

[Cyr]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Simple answer to first question...Reinventing the wheel and then destroying the old wheel while you have a shabby blueprint of the new wheel is not okay.

More complex answer...

* Old work was ignored and defacto destroyed by new loot work
* Random loot does not always have to mean more random modifiers thrown together, it should mean you open a chest and anything from its level and below you can find in it including store items and named loot
* Random loot design has ignored other loot mechanics recently including cannith crafting (which should be updated every update to match new available modifiers) and named loot
* Random loot design never needs to be REDESIGNED, it just needs to be expanded
* Stat tomes went away for all intensive purposes which were one of the main drivers for opening chests
* Difficulty in storage/lots of junk
* One prefix/suffix to rule them all design with everything else being vendor trash. If a prefix/suffix is always junk then it should not have such a high enhancement modifier on it and/or be combined into something better as a new prefix/uffix...read ALL armor mods
* The name should say it all, and it does not now...very hard to see what loot you actually pulled without z-examine
* RNG modifiers thrown together is going to be mostly junk with rare okay moments. Do not hinge random chest loot upon this mechanic.

On another loot note...

Recent suggestion had an interesting thread about a one weapon to rule them all idea where you collected all the named weapons of one type (ie longbows) and got the UBER BOW. I would suggest expanding upon this idea with named loot and random loot in a UI collection type idea where you can use your 'uber' item partially finished likely with selectable/reselectable UI of powers based upon what you have collected....something like you could take a BASE of one of the items you have in the UI list and then get some more stuff form the other things in your collection (ie you wear your 'imbued epic frozen tunic'. Basically a reason to keep collecting loot even if itself is kind of junk...I would say the 'base' items you could expand on would have to be collected more then once (and once in the UI collection they are not removable for trade/individual use). In that way, the base items would see use directly as well.

[Saravis]

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?


In epic levels there's a lack of longswords, battleaxes, dwarven axes, scimitars, kamas, and throwing weapons.
There's a horrible lack of Spell Orbs.


Additionally, with the recent changes to Lore on items, Arcane Lore, now Spell Lore, was nerfed. By extension, a few of the top Caster Items (Twilight and Flawless Blue Dragon Armor) was nerfed. Its understandable that specific Lores should be superior to Spell Lore, but going from a difference of +3% to a difference of +10% is too much and should be reevaluated.


Finally, I realize this is probably not your dept, but it somewhat has to do with it. There needs to be more Favored Weapons for Divines.
There are far too few, some races not even having their own. So if that could be looked at or run by whoever can, that would be appreciated.

[Oxarhamar]

Some food for thought...
•When loot properties are changed, they need to be retroactive and comprehensive - existing Named items need to be updated. .

to expand on this almost anytime an item gets a buff we need to require the item (Orchard collectable turn ins for example)

on the other hand when an item gets a nerf our existing items get nerfed (ML changes on our existing +2 weapon of Monstrous Humanoid Bane or Plant Bane (ML 1) Acquired by collecting Rosy Swamp pearls in Red Fens)

the exceptions have been things like upgradeable Raid gear from Reavers Fate the old items could be turned in and upgraded to the new (this is more a expectable approach)

[ycheese123]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.


-Aside from diversity and missing effects... see Perma's comments.
One good thing that was done was getting rid of 'btc on equip' random loot.

-Heavy Picks!, Kukri, Khopesh.

-Some random loot that I wear or swap to:
Greater Convalescent Bracers of Superior Parrying
Health +10 Boots of False Life +45
Fortified Gloves (120%) of Dodge 10%
Deadly Ring (IX) of Resistance +10
Doublestrike 6% Ring of Sustenance (Heal) 15%
Fortified Gloves (120%) of Seeking IX

[Alistina]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.
Welcome Dr :D Hope you have your 20 DR/Forum Trolls Hat on ;)


- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Like others have said, post U19 random loot has overpowered named/raid loot. As it is the low/mid level named/raid loot is meh. With all the deadly and seekers dropping left right centre, there is no fun in getting a named item at those levels.
Eveningstar challenge items are just plain useless and not worth the ingredient grind.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
As far as named loot is concerned, low and mid level loot needs an overhaul. One set that jumps right to my mind is Carnival end loot, there is not a single item on that chain end reward list that is decent enough to be used (I still do like the shortsword and returning dagger)..since you have increased the xp for it how about making the loot useful. This is just one example, I rarely use any named items before hitting GH loot levels except for Red Fence and kora sets. A kick to the abashai set wouldn't hurt as well.

Dragon touched armor is insanely tedious to craft (craft a desirable one I mean) and not worth it at all. Needs to be made better. A plain and simple (retroactive) increase to the AC if nothing else at least.

Weapon types, I don't think I have seen anyone use non repeater crossbows (in spite or the obvious attempt made to promote them in U19 trees) or shortbows, picks and morning stars. They are all just thrash, even if you get one with an otherwise good prefix/suffix and don't get used or sold on AH.

A revamp of the cannith crafting system is long overdue. That said, if and when you do decide to work on it, don't change everything like its been done recently with everything taken up by devs recently. Just add the new prefix/suffix and higher level shards, epic crafting would be good to. But don't take away the banes from it.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
I don't use any random loot on my toons (except just maybe for the new deadly/dodge items). I mostly craft items to get exactly what I want where till hitting 11-12ish, then I switch to GS and GH loot and other named stuff as my level progresses. Similar items as what others have mentioned at end game levels.

PS. We want epic GS please :)
GH and motu loot (minus challenge craftables) is awesome. Look at it for what is loved in the game when creating loot.

Welcome again and good luck :)

[oradafu]

Some food for thought...
•When loot properties are changed, they need to be retroactive and comprehensive - existing Named items need to be updated.


I'm going to disagree slightly with this.

When loot properties are buffed, existing Name items with the same type of property should be buffed. Especially raid or expansion gear.

Now nerfing named items is a different beast all by itself. Too often nerfs happen, intentionally or accidentally, that does nothing to improve the player's enjoyment of the game.

For example, I disagree with slamming the nerf hammer down on named items because of bad decision by the Devs. The two most obvious examples of this is the nerfing the Dreamspitter via Life Stealing multiple times because the Life Stealing shard that was never introduced then adding it too high crit named MOTU items and the nerfing of the Terror for putting Nightmare on high crit generic loot. If the mistake is on the Dev end, there's no reason to destroy old loot.

Speaking of the Dreamspitter, the Reaver's Fate weapons are worse than Paragon weapons. When Paragon weapons were added to the game the generic loot automatically got the damage boost, yet RAID items didn't?! It's shoddy work and/or decisions like this that helped kill the vibrant raid scene that existed in the game pre-MOTU.

[PermaBanned]

Some food for thought...
•When loot properties are changed, they need to be retroactive and comprehensive - existing Named items need to be updated.
It seems I should expand on and clarify what I meant ^here.^

Specifically, I was thinking of things like the Deception & Deathblock properties, where newly generated items have one function, and older ones have another (usually weaker) one. The same is true for many other properties on older or "pre-existing" items as well. I was also thinking of things like Dragontouched Armor. When changes were made to Exceptional Skill boosts, Spell Penetration and more; the descriptions of Green Steel were altered to match, but Dragontouched was not - leading to doubt, speculation and ultimately "taking your chances" when crafting to see if it worked right.

Also, as Tanngiostr and Oradafu pointed out: Nerfs never seem to fail to apply retroactively, while buffs or upgrades seem to require getting a new item. This is unfair and, to be perfectly honest, just plain rude. As the noted examples:

•Tharak Wraps were one of two weapons with the Nightmares* property, and were a difficult to acquire raid item. When the property was added to random loot, it was nerfed beyond belief.

•When the Orchard turn-in items were buffed, we all had to acquire more Tome Pages & Shield Fragments to enjoy the upgrades - though that was debatably ok because there was also a change in minimum level involved.


*As an another addendum to my earlier post, Nightmares with it's double save mechanic would be a prime example of an item with a DC property that needs to scale with an item's minimum level. This would also be true for the Nightmare Guard on things like the Mabar Cloak of Night.

It would also be an excellent gesture on y'alls part to go through and auto update all the Striding items to Speed items, and do the same for other similarly replaced/outdated affixes.

[karl_k0ch]

1. One of the biggest problems is/was the power creep. Compared to items from epic Gianthold, post U19 random loot looks better (I'm looking at you, +11 Stat and +10 Deadly items). This isn't a bad thing per say, but it's sad when there are no niches and no unique effects which make named loot interesting. I'm not saying that named loot needs to be better, but it should provide unique, relevant and interesting effects. Named items which have been overshadowed by U19 random loot are, for example, Twilight, Epic Dream Visor, Bronze/Copper/Silver Ingot Arcanum.

2. Weapons: Dwarven Axes, Greatswords. Equipment: I can't think of underserved item types. For most of my characters, there are a lot of competing interesting items in the same slot.

3. Random Loot currently equipped on some of my level 20+ characters (only listing attributes, not item slots): +9 Str/Con/Int item, False Life +40/45 item, Deadly +7 to +9, Resistance +7 to +9.

[Clatterfist]

Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

The inability to either make or find epic level items that fit with my heroic level gear scheme as the bonuses keep getting stronger and stronger makes it very hard to gear up properly. By the time I'm level 20, each piece of gear is serving up to four specific needs and I can't simply yank something out to stick in a +6 or higher bonus even if I would very much like to upgrade that stat, because that would leave crucial holes in my character's equipment profile. In order to be able to replace anything (aside from a couple of slots that are generally less strictly assigned, like weapon and trinket), I basically have to be able to replace multiple items at once and hope that the affix juggle breaks down into something resembling a working whole despite the fact that I've got a very limited supply of items to draw upon to do the job. This wouldn't be a problem if Cannith Crafting were updated to let me put the new mods where I needed them to go, and it's also less of a problem where named items have plenty of augment slots because that increases their flexibility in replacing bonuses that I would otherwise lose by swapping them in. In almost no cases are random items useful at all, because it's rare enough for them to spawn with the right combination of mods, and they need the right combination of augment slots on top of that. The one exception is for the mandatory deadly item, which has been demanding its own slot since the affix was introduced.


What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Thematically appropriate caster weapons, most particularly magic staffs. Thaumaturgy staves were a good idea but can still generally be exceeded by using two clubs, and the highly random nature of the mod means that you're unlikely to get a thaumaturgy staff that's better than dual wield for your character at any given level, let alone consistently across all levels. If we could craft thaumaturgy staffs or a suitable replacement then this would a big step in the right direction... staffs that have charges and cast spells or otherwise do useful classical D&D things would be even better. I hate playing a caster and walking around with clubs and the like in hand, but I do it because it works. I'd much rather wield a staff, and look good doing it.


I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

OK, these are the non-named items currently worn by level 23 pure barbarian, which is his 7th life:

Deadly VII Helm of Resistance +6 w/ Yellow Slot filled with Striding 30% gem. It came with Masterful Craftsmanship, and is part of my attempt to free up other slots by moving resistance away from the gloves slot.
Belt of Greater False Life w/ Colourless Slot filled with +5 Constitution and Yellow Slot filled with Acid Resistance 25. Cannith Crafted w/ Masterful Craftsmanship. This is my default level 16 belt, which I won't be able to upgrade like-for-like until I'm slightly higher level and can earn level 20 augments from Gianthold. That's still an unattractive proposition because a direct crafted upgrade would still only be Greater False Life, +6 Constitution, 30 Acid Resistance. The hope would be to replace it in a shuffle that opens up stuff like +8 Constitution.
Mobile Ring of Spell Resistance (20). This is a crafted item, largely an experiment on my part to see if Spell Resistance items stacked with the Occult Slayer capstone (they don't). Mobile seemed like the best available prefix at the time, and the real purpose of the item is to give its Colourless slot with Charisma +5 and its Yellow slot with 25 Electrical Resistance. Once again, these are outdated augments that I can't earn replacement for at level, and the direct replacements aren't that good compared to what's theoretically possible when/if I ever find enough appropriate epic gear to do a comprehensive shuffle.
Gloves of Resistance +5 w/ Yellow Slot filled with Cold Resistance 25 and Colourless Slot filled with Strength +5. More handmade level 16 gear: I've successfully made the resistance and strength bonuses redundant via my helm and my planar focus trinket respectively, so I can nearly replace this one and hopefully start to make some progress, but I'll need to sort out cold resistance first. That should be doable with yellow slots and some gianthold grinding.
Featherfalling Boots of Springing +13 w/ Yellow Slot with 25 Fire Resistance and Colourless Slot with Wisdom +5. No surprises here, I'm sure.
+5 Life Shield Spiritcraft Scalemail w/ Blue Slot filled with Natural Armour +5. I have epic normal Leaves of the Forest which I could use to replace this, but it'll only really be worth it as part of a gear shuffle that includes putting the basic natural armour elsewhere. I've also done a few Deal and the Demon runs in hope of acquiring a Terrorweb Chitin Breastplate, and I might also craft a planeforged breastplate. It's really just inertia from uncertainty about the rest of my gear that's staying my hand.

[Nascoe]

Some thoughts I have:

1.) Is it possible to control what prefixes/suffixes drop by pack? In addition to the diversity of what is dropping, there is no diversity of where it drops. Having a few unique to a pack prefixes/suffixes could help liven things up.

2.) IMO the biggest problems with random loot isn't the loot, it is the action house and cannith crafting. It is hard to search for certain features in the auction house and cannith crafting has been left so so far behind. Superior radiant lore is another drop that was rare in the past... I haven't looked recently.

3.) Convalescence / superior parrying bracers are an example of random loot that I wear.

Point 1. is a very good one. It would be more fun if you got halfway predictable what kind of effects drop from certain packs (based on what favor they give or on what the pack focusses on) - in the catacombs you would get devotion, sacret, undead focussed, necrotic and that kind of things for example. in the Red Fens you would get things focussed on mon. Humanoids, vermin, and plant things for example.

[JOTMON]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

As we progress in the game we are building toons to have more with less.
We are looking for items that will eliminate/reduce weaknesses and enhance strengths.
Pieces that are good enough we will build other items around, so the puzzle play comes into effect as we figure out how to mix this with that.
We need growth items that are specifically powerful as well as items that are versatile.

1. Start with Shroud namely the best versatile system ever put into place... every gear slot and almost every weapon can be built with an extensive amount of versatility and usefulness,
Most people running shroud have minimum 2 fully crafted pieces and many have more. I generally have 6-8 pieces that remain useful through endgame.
Shroud is one of the few quests I will never skip over and will run many many times on every toon.

This brings up a some issues..
-nothing since shroud has had the versatility that shroud offered.
-augments are a good start, but missing too many things that greensteel offers and likely will never come close.
-at some point you really need to address the things like HP and SP item from shroud should be augmentable and we will need items with 3 or more useful augment slots
-weapons.. very few useful named weapons stray from a small pool of choices. the ability to create useful powerful weapons for any weapon choice is just not there in any meaningful way.
-the ingredient system.. unbound!. except for key items the entire system is unbound, there is a recognizable progression and items are achievable in a reasonable amount of time..not like the BS that we go through trying to get shards/seals for things like spell storing ring, Torc, eSOS..with almost non-existant drop rates or requiring thousands of BTC ingredients from a bunch of different challenges that no one wants to run when they are only useful for specific items usable by specific players.


2. Deadly of Invulnerability was the biggest random surprise... we go from Dream Visor which was looking lie the best in game damage booster item with stacking +5hit/+5damage as an epic elite decently difficult item to get to a barrage of random +1 to+10 with lower min levels.
I have a +9/+9 random drop one that blows the dream visor away and it is a lower min level. .. this made no sense in the level progression.

3. As we level/head to endgame... we not only want better stuff but we also want the occasional interesting clickie, options for self healing, damage mitigation, utility items that don't require UMD...
~level useful of course ~not like Wheloons mostly fail epic items like the shadow walk clickie when any umd scroller can carry stacks of scrolls at level 15. or the GH outfits that offer nothing to entice anyone away from anything else at the same level except for those that don't have the level 9 clickie and want to earn a couple extra plat selling scraps to the vendor.

I would love to see an epic worthy version of Greensteel crafting. this would be a legacy to leave behind..
but don't fail and do something weak like the LoB system that was a complete flop with insignificantly few craftiog options and too many BTC/BTA poor drop items.
The system needs to have a growth and be usable across a decent level range.


You have your work cut out for you...

[dunklezhan]

Late to the party, as ever, but here goes in case anyone is still reading thus far




- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.



1.Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Number one burning issue for me is that the crafting system isn't keeping up with it. A lot of folk put a lot of time into that system and we're still getting our ingredient bags stuffed with dozens of different types of essences despite the fact they're becoming increasingly useless. It is exceedingly demoralising to see it abandoned like this. I don't care if there are plans afoot to bring it into line at the moment, that's fine and dandy. I DO care about future gaps emerging: please, when introducing/modifying prefixes/suffixes/special effects to lootgen, don't forget to consider the necessary changes to match in cannith crafting. It can result in higher MLs if need be to maintain the usefulness of real random lootgen when those golden combinations come up, but don't leave Cannith Crafting behind again please.

It would also be nice if there was just a *little* more influence on what you pull from chests & end rewards based on your class. Not too much, got to keep the economy moving. But a little more.

Beyond that, because there are so many new (and wonderful, actually) suffixes and prefixes, the current random loot doesn't actually generate useful combinations often enough. An awful lot of my gear is still old-style as a result: while a new acidII weapon may be better than an old straight out acid weapon, if my old one also has 'bleeding' on it and the new one has doublestrike or some x% chance or on crit effect for the suffix... then I'll tend to stick with the old loot. In my combat weapons I look for straight out damage dealing, not special effects, and many of the new suffixes are the latter. Also most of the new lootgen weapons I loot seem very "%chance" or "on vorpal" dependent. I don't build character's that way, I can't *rely* on randomness and I steer clear even of crit builds as a result. I tend to carry a great many different weapons because I hate seeing 'immune' on my screen and yet none of my characters have even 25% replaced their old weapons with new ones.

It's quite telling I think that for my AA ranger who dual wield's scimmies for melee, that she is still using 90% old style weapons, if not 95%. If I had to pick any one thing I would say I wanted to see far fewer 'x% of the time' and 'on vorpal' effects in favour of either on crit (which at least players can invest in to improve. I won't because I don't build crit builds, but they are better than %chance when that %chance is 5% or less) or just in favour of straight out, predictable damage dealing.


Oh, and named loot doesn't seem to have the [W] scaling that lootgen gets (from class abilities, enhancements, feats etc). I consider that a BIG problem at the moment when it comes to named loot. I suspect because it's named loot and 'breaks the rules' it's imposing it's broken will on the wielder's ablities. The master enchanters making that stuff need a good spanking please.


2. What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

I *feel* Longbows and scimitars, because my Ranger has an amazingly limited choice in the AH and rarely do I pull a usable one on any character to send to her. Yet I pull uncounted handwraps, shields, maces, armour of all kinds, a veritable plethora of xbows and repeaters, bastard swords up the wazoo (no tidy lasses, but they wouldn't fit up my wazoo so it's probably for the best), but an almost total lack of longbows or scimmies. My other characters are regularly mailing each other weapons they've pulled, for comparison in case it represents an improvement, but that never happens to the Ranger (who does get lots of cloaks, rings and necklaces sent her way).

Looking in the AH (argo), the price and low number of scimmies and bows compared to other weapons, as well as the fact that even some of these still have old lootgen effects, and the rest seem to be about 50% 'special effect' or '%chance' would appear to corroborate what I'm saying here - they are all VERY expensive for often not actually that good a combination of effects compared to the ML10 holy of pure good longbow I've got. I suspect that's because it's the best of a bad bunch and the actual good stuff probably isn't making it onto the AH because it's so scarce people are holding onto it! By contrast my monk, rogue, arti and S&B fighter are all completely spoiled for choice (though more tower shields wouldn't go amiss :) )

In named loot: handwraps and bows. My rogue is sitting on *pairs* of various named and identical lootgen shortswords (mostly old lootgen if I'm honest, because you got more useful combos more often) from L12 up even now she's at L20 . My ranger, by contrast has one named bow (sinew), and it's more or less useless compared to my cannith crafted holy of pure good (mostly because of the non-[W] scaling I mentioned above: sinew is still 1d8 while my random loot gen of the same or lower ML is [1.5]1d8. Its not a huge difference but it's there. Its not just bows either with this issue it's the same on handwraps and presumably everything else.


3. I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

I still wear quite a lot of pre-new-suffixes/prefixes loot, because the name of the game with random loot is slot consolidation. I will turn down named loot over random loot if it means I'm going to have to go on the 'upgrade everything else to plug the new gap' cycle. The new loot gives you more flexibility and that should be great for slot consolidation, but so far about the only things I have really taken pains to replace are my ghost touch (as you would expect, upgrading every ghost touch weapon I had to ghostbane was not a problem over recent months, but I would much rather have been able to use my carefully acquired sets flametouched crafting blanks to do it), attack bonus (now 'deadly') and Striding (now 'speed').


Those latter two effects are easily, easily, the best of the new lot by the way, given the number of slots they can drop on never mind the hugely buffed effects compared to their predecessors. That either means those effects are too good (I hear the sounds of torches being lit and pitchforks being removed from barns), or it means the rest of the effects are a bit 'meh', or that other effects don't drop on a wide enough selection of slots, or that other effects less obviously of benefit when combined with another effect that turns out to be 'meh', or some combination of all of that.

Doublestrike, Dodge, and fortification are probably the things next I look for, but only if I can do it without losing my +stat or +save items. I would really, really, like to see deathblock either on some more items/slots, or dropping more frequently - I can't wear named armour on some characters even though as armour it's a clear improvement, because I can only find deathblock on armour or one or two other slots on named items. I know it's a powerful ability but it's absolutely essential gear above a certain level, and if something is essential then it should be relatively easy to fit in your gear workup without having to sacrifice too much.

[SimCat]

Welcome to the team!

1. Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Besides the diversity? IMHO the top tier items should be raid items, not random gear. Higher level named loot needs a boost (Wheelon and
Stormhorns) so it makes running those quests more desirable.

2. What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

I think that there are a lot of weapons that just don't see play, because they don't have the best damage profiles or don't have support
like daggers, most non-repeating crossbows, etc. However, with iconics and the new enhancements that's starting to change. Many
weapons don't have a lot of choices anymore for end-game gear. Spell-power boosting named items need a boost. I would really love to
see more spell-power boosting items that are in other gear slots other than weapons. I'd love to see more random and named trinkets. I'd
like to see more weapon types so we have more variety (like scythes for example....slashing, pierce damage with x4 crit profile).
The old epic items (all the shard, seal, scroll stuff) a) need a power boost....seriously and b) get rid of shards, seals, and scrolls all
together and have the items looted whole just like in the rest of epic content with slightly different levels of power based on the epic
difficulty you run.

3. I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

10+ stat items and something with Deadly. Spell-power non-named items (like Impulse, Magnetism, etc) are far better than anything
named atm.

[Nascoe]

1. More Augments - I get tons of loot with augment slots and find very few augments to put in them (and turn-in rates at collectors are rather high in many cases). I don't think I've ever found a blue augment in a chest. So more augments of every color falling in random loot chests would be appreciated. Augment slots should be searchable too.

2. Roman Numerals - I don't think they're bad per se, but they should be in addition to a descriptive word, not instead of one. And that word should be in the title (with or without the roman numeral) so they're searchable. The good thing about them is they do make it easier to see the power of an item at a glance (well a hover/tool-tip glance anyway). The bad thing, as others have pointed out, is they're not searchable. So if each level had its own unique name (e.g., Burning, Fiery, Inferno, etc.) and then you kept the roman numerals internally in the description (this is a Flaming IV weapon), that would be perfect.

3. Named Loot Bonus - any effect that's on named loot should have a bonus multiplier, similar to the multipliers added to high level weapon damage (x1.5, x2, etc.), but not just on damage, on almost every effect. That would help to immediately re-balance named loot against the random gen loot and keep it from being eclipsed.

I agree that we need more augments. I find a decent amount of items with augment slots, and tend to keep them more than others. I have some that I want to add that one perk I am missing on several characters, but I just cannot find an augment to fill it with. The augments are a great idea, but I would really love to have better things to fill the slots with. Best would be something you can slot and then upgrade to better augments after growing in lvl, because it makes you feel more attached to your items that way (which is great for roleplay, having that slightly damaged but lovely balanced greatsword you got from garrison felmar, or something).

So more, and more varied augments. And it would be nice to have more variety of looks of armors (well and something to actually make someone wear a scalemail and to a lesser extent breastplate) - the leathers look almost all the same.

[TekkenDevil]

Please create named loot for Great Xbows and disperse them into existing quests!
With Rogue Mechanic the way it is, there should be at least as many named GXB's as there are named Repeaters.

And more Falchions, please.

[keiner]

I would really appreciate if we get negative energy amp on items at all!
Healing and repair amp are important as well but negative energy is the most important IMO since the self-healing of palemasters is quite limited in terms of healing per time. You can heal by far a lot more HP/time via positive energy or repair spells compared to death aura+ negative energy burst.


yes, everything post MoTU was fail.

I cannot stress this enough . . . out-dating stuff every update just needs to stop. All armors out-dated by GH stuff, Random Gen out-dating all named stuff after one update, needs to stop NOW.

Nobody I run with cares about obtaining any specific items at this point because we all know you're gonna make it garbage next update.

DDO wasn't like this until after MoTU. People still ran Titan and Reaver at level 20 because there was still stuff worth pursuing.

Relevant loot keeps content relevant. This needs to be tatoo'd on the inside of your eyelids.

You got it! One of the best things of DDO compared to other MMORPGs was that many good items never outdated pre MotU! I really liked that there is an incentive to run abbot, titan, reaver etc even on lvl cap. Its especially nice since it makes the work the developers put into dungeon/item design much more worth it as compared to other MMORPGs where you never run raids again after the next one or two updates (played WOW for quite a long Time and this was the main reason I quit).
I think a great strength of DDOs item design in general is that there is the possibility of many niche abilities. This is the reason why I use litany, vile blasphemy and noxious embers still on capped toons although these items are many years old. Same would apply to the dodge ring from titans if they didnt change dodge mechanics.
In DDO pre MotU I always felt that the time I invest into getting specific loot is worth it because those items are something to count on in the future. This totally changed!

Preferred solution: Would be great to go back to and introduce more niche abilities, which are useful in specific situations but not too powerful in general. This allows those niche items to be attractive even after many updates, since they still will might be the best items in their niche. Furthermore, this hopefully makes us players feel like those niche items are worth the grind and something we are proud of if we get a hand on them.

[andy310]

In an effort to not of OT, and not make it hell for this new dev to read forum posts I would suggest using a more formatted kind of discussion tactic... auto warn on anyone who doesn't answer your questions!? :P


- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Ghostbane. Yea I know you know know, but why not mention it again. I hate the fact that stuff gets sneaked under our (the players) noses this way. Sure it's your game you do what you want but hey WHO pays your salary in the end? Should we not have a say? - and thankfully I think addressing that situation is what you are here for.

Aside from ghost-bane, I find very few pieces of random loot that are worth keeping. As I will mention below there's almost NO double stat random loot items, and the old named items are way less then they should be compared to random loot.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
None. Literally, there's nothing that's powerful enough or that powerful anyway. - But here we'd have to talk about making monsters and EE mobs with human amounts of HP anyway so it's doubtingly off topic.
The new augments seem really cool, if only I could find one?



- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Depending on character levels, my top tier toon is all dressed up in what used to be u18 max gear. However I did find a better random loot version of the EE dream visor. And that's what I want to complain about actually. Why does the EE dream visor have to be surclassed this way? IF random loot can go up to deadly 10/seeker 10 etc. should the dream visor be retroactively upgraded to keep up to par? Some people did pay 5k TP for their visor, it used to be "the thing" now it's trash.

Sure, just like that there's a lot of other gear that had the same faith. However I prefer wearing one item and satisfing 2 stats. Manacled of ceasless toil, Stormreaver's Tablecloth kind of situation.
The only problem with them is that they now stop at +8.
My personal problem with that is that you should (and do if you bought the latest pack) get +8 to stats around level 15.

In the end, every level and every toon of mine will get a somewhat standard set of gear for that level. I might tweek stuff around a bit here and there to accommodate for new loot or testing new things, however things that work really well with the new random loot are:
striding, double strike, and augment slots.
However you must consider that power-players like me will just craft whatever gear they need anyway - and that cannith crafted gear can't hold a candle to the current random loot stats. This is something that should probably be addressed? I mean why can you find CON +10 gear but you can't just craft your own? Ok let's say maybe crafting +10 is too much, but at least +7 and +8, maybe +9 ?



Random weapons deserve a whole section of their own.
Premises
1) I craft stuff that just owns at level monsters every 3 level or so since I like to level up naturally running every quest once in elite instead of sitting in the same instance and farming.
2) Very, very, very few random items are good, but some that are were introduced way back when.
3) IF i can I prefer to just stick to metal/augment BTA stuff, so I can move it between my toons even if crafted and equipped.

So I was recently handed by a friend that quit an exquisit set of rando gen handwraps. here's how they go:
+5 Corruscating handwraps of divinie light - Cheapo random gen Endless Light mockery.
+5 Impellent Byeshk studded handwraps of Shattermantle - Shattermantle kind of sucks ok... but think about it, it's for mindfliers anyways and you def. want to reduce their SR for the party.
+6 Holy Adamantine Lined Handwraps of Steam - I mean, untyped damage... just goes will with constructs.
+2 Metalline handwraps of the Crusader - BOE unfortunately. However it's a ML18 harry smither. Kind of perfect.
+6 Metalline handwraps of Steam - DR breaker with untiped damage...

These are the idea of "primal" good random loot. I have NOT seen a random loot item the like of these in 6+ months. And sure recently it's just all ghostbane.

Now while I'm only listing hand-wraps here the concept for the few other builds I go with are similar. I mean if I could monk a barbarian i surely would, but since I can this concept applies gevely to long swords, great swords, bastard swords, and great axes. Also bows/repeaters.
An example of good random loot bow (found back in 2007)
ML14 +3 Holy Greater Chaotic Outsider bane Long Bow.
Again, DR breaking (silver arrows), and extra damage to 1 set of monsters so that I can just finish the quest.

Now that you sort of have an idea on that, let's talk damage types.
How about adding some unique SLASHING hand-wraps? why can't we put razors on our hand-wraps or wear batman style gloves with razor blades?
Sticks have that. Short Swords have that. Hand-wraps don't yet monks are usually better off in dmg with wraps then they would ever be even with Whirling Steel Strike and long-swords (which is how I'm rolling recently).

Last but not least here's what I craft:
roaring + bleed. everything bleeds, they can't hurt you when afraid.
Slicing + screaming. Everything takes screaming, most take slicing.
Shocking burst. Almost nothing's immune to it.
I tried Deception, destruction, etc. they just don't work. There's no point in making a fight last 10 seconds longer over losing elemental/untyped dmg to make it so that they are more vulnerable when they aren't red names. Like wise they might be good on occasion but it kind of sees a full party situation which isn't likely now a day.

Apologies, this is getting lengthy boring and stale. My point is that random gen weapons stopped being good since at least u19. My point is that to pull silver (bta or not) wraps now you just can't. 4 lives since u19 kind of proved that. Haven't seen metal typed ghostbane either. DR breaking is still important even though you have the biggest up-rise of light monk since your fellow devs decided that dark monks must suck at dealing damage, and that light monks would get 1d8 unarmed... as terribly off-topic as that might be.

Cutting the rest of this short. If you have questions or i'm not understandable for anyone don't hesitate to PM me about it. I'll try and be more illogically logical if it serves the purpose of achieving better random weapon generations.


PS: As you can see I mentioned the out-dating of stuff too prior to reading what other had to say btw. Maybe that's an issue that should be taken to (gereater +20) hart (of wood)?

[Kriogen]

I like solid random loot. It makes things more interesting. I didn't like it when long ago, every single player and hes pet chivava was running around with Dragontouched armor. Boring as hell.

You see, since a very long time, I like opening chests. I mean any given chest and not just a couple of "named" ones. Something nice could drop.

If random loot is basicaly junk compared to named items, then why have it in the first place? Plus why even have quests that don't drop named items. Or quests that do drop named items, but those named items are not so cool in the eyes of players.

Thing I'd change:
- less of Ghostbane. Not every second weapon has to be "of Ghostbane".
- add effects from before (pre-U19?).
- do NOT remove anything (yes, for a change I'd like that you don't change things)

[Thrudh]

The problem with random loot:

You made a huge jump from +8 max stats to +10 and +11 on items... You bumped natural armor and protection and resistance up to +10 as well, from a max of +6 and +7 before.

You added deadly and accuracy, also going up to +10

These made all old named gear worth much less.. The FIRST thing you guys need to do is go back and make a pass on all old named loot, and make it match like-level random loot. Old named loot with +5 resistance, protection, nat armor, damage bonuses need to be upgraded to match random loot. The new deception is very nice... but you didn't upgrade any of the old named items deception. Go back and change the named items to match the new loot.

Don't ever jump +3 or +4 in one update again... You could have bumped up new named items to +9 stats, and all the powergamers would have been perfectly happy grinding that out for a few months, and the +8 stuff would still be considered solid gear.

People spent real money buying astral shards to buy epic GH stuff off the ASAH, and then one update later, you released a bunch of stuff that made all that gear worth a LOT less. This is NOT a good way to get people to spend real-life money on your game.

The other big problem with random loot is that we lost all our old prefixes and suffixes... There's very little variety anymore... Deadly and accuracy and ghostbane and riposte are on EVERYTHING. Do clickables drop anymore? I don't think I've seen any.

You do need to continue to introduce new loot into the game with each update or two, and it needs to be SLIGHTLY better than what's out there today.

Thanks for listening.

[neain2008]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

To start off with I will agree with about every third post in saying that named loot should be slightly (notice the word slightly) more powerful then good random gen items at the same level. it gives a reason to run all the quests with those named items, while still giving random gen a good nitch that most people will like and so slot in places that are not covered by the named gear that took me X hours to find.

maybe just drop the min level on the named loot so that when I TR and eTR I can use the named loot for more than the 1 level that I end up with now?

Then I will agree with about every third or fourth post and say that I want canith crafting to be both updated and scaled for it to be a decent option (because I choose what I craft) at higher levels. even if canith crafting was slightly behind the better random gen items. this means that crafting can be a slot filler until I get that sweet rare random loot or that named Awesome something of Awesomeness.

and I agree that I would like to see a bunch of the old random loot gen items back. heal amp, real vorpal, stability, parrying and more


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?



- More named quivers...heck, random quivers would be awesome too!
yes i would like to see a random quiver or two.
on that note. why do i never see a random returning arrow? or even semi returning arrow? it would turn my random arrow/bolt vendor trash into a item i would inspect and possibly keep for DR/specific monster encounters.

what is up with paralizing? it used to be a decent and rare option for any weapon. now its just vendor trash because by the time i could use it, the AA has a far better DC than I will ever get even in epics. Maybe change it back to the same as stunning? or make more ranges of paralyzing than just DC 17? not both, but either one would make me happy to find a paralyzing weapon that I could pass to another of my toons.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

I usually run a caster druid so when I am at cap I have a small bunch of random gen weapons that have lightning, fire, and cold lore and spell power that i switch out between. I would like to find some of that in a shield version every once in a while btw. but most other slots are filled with the new sages set.

On my melee/ranged alts I find a place to put that deadly item of accuracy someplace that it does not interfere with the named items I like.


- now for what i would LOVE to see in random loot gen. (though it may not be possible/feasible)

Make it so that what i get in my random loot gen tables/chests semi relevant to the quest i finished to get the list.

ex. I run deleras I get a list/chest with more undead bane/undead guard items and in general anti undead gear. or in Meridia I find more stuff to deal with outsiders. or in evening star maybe find anti drow items. these items should not be the only items you find in loot lists/chest but make it so that stuff drops more often.

It kinda makes sense that in a crypt that is full of undead I would find old gear from dead adventurers that equipped themselves for that dungeon. not this total random mis mash of stuff. i can understand that at low levels, but by level 10-15 the dumb adventurers would be dead and only the ones kinda prepared would set foot in dungeons.

[andy310]

We need to get Convalescence back.

Nuff said.

[rosedarkthorn]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

For me, loot is all about fitting all the most important aspects of what I want my character to do in all the slots, aka not having to switch equipment very often because I forget to do it and I consider it a hassle. So, my current biggest issue with loot right now is how underwhelming level 26+ loot is overall.

Let me offer you an example. My ranger/rogue main character, and the only character I have at level 28, wears the following:

Supreme Tyrant Green Steel Helm of Smoke - I still wear this because it gives me 45 extra hit points and permanent blur effect.
Pendant of the Stormreaver - I wear this all the time because it gives me permanant lightning and fire resistance (thanks to the yellow augment slot).
Epic Treasure Hunter's Spyglass - I wear this all the time due to search and spot and insightful intelligence. I haven't found anything to replace it because I don't want to wear two separate items (because search and spot aren't found on many things together and farming Plane of Night over a hundred times is not my idea of fun, even though the I would love to have Epic Kundarak Delving Goggles. More on that later.) when wearing this allows me to wear one. This also makes it so I can't use the Planar Conflux trinket, because I don't like having to switch around my equipment on account of not remembering to do so.
Adamantine Cloak of the Wolf - I wear this for the extra seeker and damage in general, although diversion is a nice bonus.
Epic Spare Hand - I wear this for pretty much the same reason as Epic Treasure Hunter's Spyglass. It has disable device and open lock on one item, plus a place to put heavy fortification, because, before augment slots were added to low level equipment, that was wear I generally had heavy fort. Plus an extra colorless augment slot for the intelligence +6 bonus.
Epic Ring of the Stalker - Manslayer, Seeker +6, and Ghostly are the effects I most benefit from, as well as the yellow slot for feather falling and the colorless slot for wisdom for the spot and spell point boost. I have yet to find anything I would be willing to replace this with. After I got this and the Cloak of the Wolf, I finally retired my Cloak of Nightmares and added Deathblock to my Green steel bracers.
Frostproof Gloves of Dodge 9% - I wear these for the cold resistance and the colorless slot to add an insightful dexterity +2.
Health +7 Boots of False Life 35 - This pair has a yellow and colorless slot which I'm using for acid resistance and Dex +6, while is has Con +7 and 35 extra hp.
Guadian's Ring - I'm using this mostly for the extra prr, but it also has Strength +8 and gives me a yellow slot to keep underwater action on.
Supreme Tyrant Green Steel Bracers - I still wear this because it gives me Deathblock, immunity to fear and blindness immunity so I don't have to waste augment slots to have them.
Hide of the Goristro - I have this one specifically because I used to have the Woodman's Guile set for the extra attack bonus. The extra vitality and tendon slice was just a little bonus. However, the boots and goggles in this set were nearly useless to me. I already have seeker, true seeing, and attack bonus, and the only thing the boots gave me that the Cannith Boots of Propulsion didn't was Insightful Dex, so when I found random loot from Stormhorns that gave me better bonuses, I switched. I would switch the armor, but I haven't found anything worth wearing yet.
Guardian's Glasses - Seeker VII, Vitality +40 and green slot with PRR.

Every piece of equipment, I wear for a reason. I switch the boots and goggles maybe 1% of the time because I hate switching my equipment. The only time I do switch them is when I need to make a large jump and I need the Cannith Boots propulsion effect to help, or I'm in the Underdark and need to wear the Malchor's Undersun Goggles. The only reason I'm wearing named Stormhorn's equipment is mainly because the Woodman's Guile set had nothing on them I didn't already have and they were wasting slots because I had nothing better. I gave up my Epic Ring of the Buccaneer because I needed some extra PRR and the hit points didn't hurt either. I'm wearing random gear to make better use of my existing slots and because there were certain things I couldn't fit. Personally, I would prefer not to wear any random loot at all. I would prefer to have all named at least on capped characters, but I haven't found anything that meets all my needs.

However, as it stands, I am not planning on ever taking off the other epic gear listed because there is nothing else better in 26+ to replace it. The level 26+ equipment admittedly doesn't feel very epic to me at all. We have all the level 20 scroll/shard/seal stuff with a bunch of effects and level 26+ stuff only having three? How is that better? I'm not going to trade my Epic Ring of the Stalker for a Seeker +10 item because then I would have to give up manslayer, which gives me an extra 100 damage to humanoids and 2 slots I desperately need to keep. This is just one example of why I won't switch my existing epic items. The only thing I would consider replacing the Spyglass and Spare Hand with is the Epic Kundarak Delving Goggles, because I would prefer to have all rogue skills on one piece of equipment, but I absolutely will not run that raid 100+ times to get it. Which leads me to my other issue. The scroll/seal/shard farming is outdated, and, quite frankly, is one of the biggest, most tedious hassles in the game right now. There's plenty level 20 Epic things that I want, but I don't find running one specific chain or quest 100 times fun, so I don't do it. Level 21+ gear (barring CITW and possibly FOT) is easy to get in comparison, which is ridiculous. Please fix this flawed system. Make the full items drop, or create a trade in system similar to what exists in the Sands so we can get our items with little to no hassle.

I also think it's ridiculous to have to run raids like CITW 30+ times to get one weapon you want. I think all raid items should drop in the reward list on the 20th run, not just half of them. I think this should be done in all raids.

I'm also not a fan of the new weapon effects. I like ghostbane just fine, but I don't care about riposte. I preferred the bane and burst items that we used to have. I also don't think heroic effects should show up on epic equipment. Regular paralyzing or vorpal won't work on higher level enemies, for example.

[snowdog13]

One thing I loved about ad&d is when a dungeon master made a roll to see if a character recognized the inscriptions or stylings on a magic item. If not, you'd have to find someone to figure it out for you. I think some items should be unknown with a dc check, modified by race, languages spoken, class, and int and wis to see if you can figure out the item. I wear mostly unnamed, crafted items specific for a set of adventures. Also, more crafting items and less junk would be nice.
Thanks :)

[Sethvir]

- deadly and seeker needs to be removed from random lootgen, and i mean not just removed, all item already ingame needs to be removed
# with deadly10 and seeker10 in game, there is no way to design named loot worth its name
# if u design named items that are more powerfull than those 2 effects, u basically destroy the game again and balance will be out the window even more


- righteuos suffix was a very nice suffix on weapon (+2 damage against evil foes, which are most mobs). i still have a complete selection of elemental/holy of righteousness greataxes added with festival frost from ml2 up to ml10
# again, deadly and seeker completely make this obsolete after lvl 10


- bane weapons (mainly elemental bane)
# same as righteousnes


- when i came back to ddo and firstly stumbled over a +5 natural armor necklace ml9, i was totally shocked. not only was natural armor not obtainable in items (except for some odd profane SETBONUS or on EPIC items), no, u could now get more natural armor than a ranger at that level could get with his spell (also making the ranger active past life feat totally worthless)



all the points above reduce diversity in gearing out ur toon, aquiring beneficial effects. if random loot is better than special abilities from certai classes, epic gear, set bonis etc, its NOT healthy




i mainly use random loot with the stats i need (int/chr/wis etc) and augment slots to fit in missing stats, missing effects to consolidate. this is working good (aka that system does what it should do). what is missing, are more effects on augments.

all this on a stunning monk with 4d6+1 sneak attack, no mercy and sense weakness.
beside epic envenomed cloak (will be replaced with es cloak with combat mastery), arkats cord (nonepic, will be replaced with epic with 2 slots for con), shadow ring (non epic with blur on it) or omniscience (instead of shadow ring when tanking bosses), tharnes googles, flawless white robe, greensteel hp con skill necklace, epic tresure hunter spyglass with +2 luck, i wear these random gen items (which will be upgraded at 28 to +10 ones, so no chance for any named stuff, which at most would give +8):
# +8 wis +7 resistance ring
# +8 dex +8 dodge boots with augment slot (charisma)
# +8 deadly +9 natural armor hat


all the named items have something that is not available on random lootgen or not in this combo. THIS makes named items desireable. and new random gen loot should never obsolete this point.

# in case of heal amp being added to random lootgen (im totally against this), this would obsolete epic claw set and 2 more named items would be removed from my fitting
# in case of adding sneak attack +5 or higher on random gen loot, tharnes gogles would be removed
# in case of adding blurry on random gen loot in conjunction with stats or any other desireable effect, shadow ring will go
# etc pp

for other builds, this "removing named gear cos of random gen" already happened and to a much larger degree. adding new effects to random gen loot, without keepiong this in mind, will only worsen the situation.

if things like heal amp will be added to random gen, the random gen system of how items are generated needs a big overhaul, to make sure that no items are created that utterly destroy the usefullness of named stuff. a deadly 8 of heal amp 20 item shouldnt even possible as ml28. or what item can u make for named raid gear (eg) that would be more desireable than this and not utterly destroy any lingering game balance.

[Lutehor]

Double maces made an appearance on the A.H. for a long time (never saw 1). This game has been without polearms for too long. I think a Halbred would give my staff user a viable alternative.

[Dorrinson]

Some named high level Negative energy protection, and better set bonuses for named loot sets. being able to craft negative energy protection into Green steel items would be awesome. and for higher level bosses, a weapon with less "+" enchantment but some thing like a weapon with Greater disruption and holy V thats only a +2-4, instead of +8 regular disruption holy II. the weapon enchantment is almost worthless against things at EE level( unless you have the old pen and paper rules of "needing a minimum +"x" weapon to hurt a monster" but the greater disruption range and more holy damage makes it a more useful weapon for certain types of mobs. Same goes for smiting and banishing. being able to find and use certain weapons, even if they are randomly created would help a lot of non dps classes be able to go into EE or even EH in some cases. also the gaurdian set from Wheeloon prison and the stormhorns is awesome, it should be turned into a dark blue named set with set bonus.

[Exiledtyrant]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
I think absorptions need to be made more available maybe even combined with flat resist to make it easier for non evasion characters to itemize. Some of the spell/trap damage can be extremely harsh.

I would also like to see debuffs weapons made better. No one has time to beat on something for 30+ seconds or they do so much damage in that time that the thing is already dead. In fact if the debuffs were made faster and stronger in may help to expand DDOs role system a bit as melee and casting melee/caster hybrids could provide useful debuffer roles. The spell resist reducer shatter mantle and the save reducers are nice, but it takes far to long and the reduction is usually to weak to matter.

Powerful debuffs need to be made even if they are made in a way that sacrifice other things to really makes them shine. It would be awesome to have a a morning star of weakening for instance and actually see my target drastically weakened. Right now most effects do not give that kind of utility or combat changing feel. I can't rush in with a shatter mantle weapon or a save reducer and watch something awesome come out of it right now.

I do not know if you are familiar with Artemis Entreri, but he had weapons that provided wow factor. I would read about his life stealing daggers or his epic fight with Charon's Claw and the weapons came to life. Right now you could slap as many words onto the weapon in DDO and it would still just be a flat mess. Boring and without impact. Just another thing to beat something with.

Regeneration and vampirism are things that can definitely be improved upon. 1 hp a minute and 1-3 hp a hit does nothing to mitigate the extreme wall of damage players face. Increasing these affixes to make them functional in the self sufficient game you have now would go along way for classes that lack traditional healing.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are under served in named and in random loot?

Heavy picks and light picks are underrepresented. In fact if you go to the ddo wiki the basic loot types that need love should become dreadfully clear as you see the lack of name loot backing them. I personally would like to see spiked chains on more than just the iconic and trident/net. Weapons in general could use more utility functions. It is also hard to justify blunt weaponry over slashing in all categories. Critical range, base damage, critical multiplies etc all usually much better on a slashing weapon.

Crafting is also very lacking. Ribcracker etc make a total mockery of maiming among others. Crafting needs a lot of updates.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

I only play melee/caster builds but I usually use all the AC Affixes (they makes leveling against melee based opponents a joke with miss chance staying in the 50-60% range), I use deadly and accuracy as they are must have, I try to fit seeker in and I use the highest stats I can for my melee stats. I find it hard to fit in resistances and absorptions until I am in my 20's. I would say the only named loot I wear are weapons. Everything else either performs at or ahead of named loot.

[harry-pancreas]

Random loot should add variation. And i don't mean the problem of gettin 4 ghostbanes, 2 ripostes and 2 flurry on every list.

Desert sands, of the sun, pandemoniun and such enchantments were good enough for random loot, didn't eclipse the named stuff, and most important, it was different.
Don't add the enchantments we find on the named loot to the random loot. I.E: Seeker makes bloodstone useless and that's not good.
On the other hand, you could add some of the most popular eliminated enchanments to new named loot, and come up with something new (way less powerful than named) for random tables.

[EShadowbringer]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

In my opinion the biggest problem with random loot is that it has no real depth. Sure the named stuff should be better in a general sense, but what about those very rare combinations that people go nuts about. Remember when Metalline of Pure Good was truly a find and the gratz would pour in from your party members.

I think that some of the rarest loot in the game should be Random Gen ... Not a piece that falls from a specific chest in a specific quest that everyone will farm until their eyes bleed until they have one... But a truly awe inspiring item that gives a sense that you have found a treasure locked in chest while playing dungeons and dragons.

the new loot tables aside (obviously not good) there needs to be a reason to look through and end reward items. As it stands now if i don't see a masterful/wondrous border i select guild renown or mana pots and move on.

there was a time when i would quickly scan for guild augments through end reward (not that i am saying you should bring that back) but i would at least open up the items and look at their description.

I am actually going to follow this topic and see where it goes! I look forward to the improvements.

[Shaude]

1. My biggest problem is that I don't feel I'm adding anything to my character, these days, but seem to be constantly rearranging the same things into different slots.

2. Less desirable items like Kukris, battle axes, shortbows, morning stars and stuff like scalemail armor, there is just nothing random loot wise that makes theme even remotely comparable to other items when it comes to random loot. Even with named loot, the types of items I mentioned are little more than niche items for certain builds. This means that these items need something (other than a straight damage increase) to make them more desirable with the random loot permutations.

3. In terms of armor, none of my main characters use random loot stuff at the moment. Many however, do use weapons when I come across one that has the "right mix" of attributes, this varies based on what I'm running, level and some role play and aesthetic points with my character.
mostly as noted above well done on our post sir. i agree with it.

i would like to add that i get the point i think that a lot of the different loot was to increase new players so they are a bit closer to veterans with all the named gear and I think it was a good idea nothing losses new players than those that would be so far out matched and cant contribute much.

My latest toon i use daggers and loot gen stuff is hard to come by, decent stuff anyway. not sure if then dont generate much or ppl are tossing them but i have yet to find any dagger for myself chest or end reward that is really helpful to me(assassin rogue)

maybe make some great stuff and place it in gen loot that was like the ioun stones when they where random drops and then could be upgraded maybe not in a quest setting like dreaming dark but mabe a solo quest or like the old epics where one would need multiple pieces to make it would be hard to get but worth it. b/c i know i dislike farming and im sure others feel the same way.

thank you for making this post and i hope it will help us all.

[Dark_Helmet]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Hi Welcome.

I haven't been using the forums since the changes, but this compelled me to actually reply. Please, PLEASE read how loot is done in D&D 3.5 (you know, the game this is supposedly based on?)

You see, when I was showing some IRL D&D players what has changed in DDO, they laughed (laughed!) when I showed them a holy weapon.

Hows of laughter at the idea that Holy only had 1D6 (that is 1-6 for you non D&D developers) on anything not good.

Then came the ghostbane.

I mentioned that holy didn't mean anything because they had ghostbane now. Ghostbane? What about incorporal miss chance? It is built in.... OMG! But, it has to be rare, right? NOPE. It is the most common thing since deception was added.

They thought nothing could be worse than Neverwinter's blatant lack of D&D anything..

Then they saw the vorpal staff.

Jabberwocky:
"He took his vorpal sword in hand..."
"... One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back."

With that, DDO was deleted by unanimous decision. Thank you for losing 2 million potential customers!

Have you evern thought that the different weapon types from 3.5 had some lore in them? Vorpals, disruptors. Each was a different weapon type and had a reason. Vorpals were slicing, Disruptors were blunt. Vorpals were so powerful, you needed to crit (okay, a 20 rolled).

How about reading the original rules and making the randoms fit them. Make custom ones of all the other **** that has been made up.

Also, why do items need to be at a higher level for an empty slot when there isn't anything useful to put in the slot? I never slot anything because the level requirements are stupid. Put everything back to the original levels (even if they have a slot since WHAT you put into that slot increases the level of the item).

[DeltaBravo]

Useing a +10resistence neckie with +10 deadly.


Problem with random loot is that it most of the time only got 2 bonuses on it. That are worth something. yes you can get augument slots on em aswell but that will cost on how good the bonuses are on the item. and will then in most cases, not be as good as a named item.

Augument slots and metal types , the stuff iam looking for on most random item. if that comes along with some nice stat bonuses or other usefull stuff, we got a winner.. Problem is its hard to get 2 usefull things on a item. And then it also have to be a item slot wich is usefull.



Idea = lower min lvl of random generated items, so you get bigger chance of getting augument slots and (metal types) on items, along with good high end stats. there sould be no limit to what bonuses the specific item can get. (neckie, gloves, breacers, rings, helms, and so on. SOuld have have posibility to get same bonuses. And last i kinda miss som high end clickies on random loot. that would be very cool.

[HunterjWizzard]

I'm sure others have nebtuibed this, but I particularly miss the 2d6 named prefixes(Blazing, Boreal, Caustic, etc); these had the ability to very rarely show up on low ML-gear that was NOT BTCoE. I have an ML8 Boreal repeating heavy crossbow with Festival Icy Burst that's been passed between 5 different characters so far.

I also REALLY REALLY miss the "of the sun" and "of the sun's fury" suffixes. I actually have an entire bank inventory page on one of my characters filled with nothing but "-of the sun" weapons I'm too afraid to use because I know once they are gone I'll never be able to get new ones. Name goes for Crusader suffix and the Night's Grasp prefix. I searched high and low for a useable weapon that was Night's Grasp of the Sun's Fury, but to no avail(the only one I ever even saw was a pick).

Personally I have equiped mostly crafted gear and named items. My mains have greensteels and use crafted weapons until they can get to them. My alts either have old-style "-of the sun" weapons or named items. Personally I feel like the weapons I'm crafting are better than the loot gen these days.

Nerfing holy from 2d6 to 1d6 pretty much means I'm never going to equip a holy weapon I didn't craft again. Yes I know about the piddling 'holy II' and 'holy III' items, but because of the loot restructuring it means you'll never see holy III on a low ML weapon, and holy II is just an insult. It was not hard to find oldstyle +1 Holy items(ML4 under the old system). As far as I can tell the new system does not appear to be able to GENERATE Holy items without suffixes and even if could, would not be producing Holy III no suffix. Therefore no nice low-level twink weapons.

There's this annoying gulf between about level 8 where my last good crafted weapons become insufficent and level 12 where the greensteels come out of the TR cache. I was able to fill the 8-10 slot with "-of the sun" weapons this life, but now I'm stuck at 11 slowly grinding lower-level content because I just can't find a good enough weapon.

Basically, the lack of available neat low-level weapons has me seriously reconsidering my TR plans. Instead of doing several lives in different classes I am now planning builds that are just going to play as artificers but get me fighter/monk/ranger-type pass lives, pretty much all because of the loot.

[Propane]

Hello and Welcome back to the forums!

A few high level tidbits to consider –

1) Cannith Crafting and Random Loot should yield the same items. Advantage of Crafting is you can get exactly what you want – expert craft it – find a blank with augment. Higher level shards need to be added – higher potential needed Pot 16 = LV21, Pot 17=Lv 22,….

2) Named loot needs to be better than Random – Random can catch up 2-4 levels later

3) Raid loot needs to be better than Named – Named can catch up 2-4 levels later

4) Upgraded Raid Loot (FoT) and Crafted Raid Loot (LoB, ToD, Shroud) should be top dog for a several levels. Shroud weapons are hard to be until LV 20. Alchemical weapons should be hard to beat until LV 26ish. We need a LV 28-30 Shroud/LoB like raid to work on grinding new stuff.

5) Retroactively fix existing items that are out of balance per item 1(this might hurt – but has been done before – needs to be done now). I would suspect that all accuracy and deadly are needed to be reduced by 50% to be “balanced”

6) Cannith Challenge Items are good – need to add LV 24 upgrades – allow 1 for 1 trade down Epic for non epic ingredients (consider named items)

7) Eveningstart Challenges have had some good changes made – get rid of the random part and you are almost there… maybe trade ingredients in for shards you can hand pick and combine to make your item

8) Need more threat INCREASING and DECREASING gear – every tank works to increase threat – DPS should be working to reduce threat – currently very few options.

9) What happened to higher level DR breakers? +7 Metaline of Supreme Good please

10) Figure out what the item cap will be at LV 30 NOW – so we won’t have to redo this

11) Ask for our help! Supply a list of effect and item power level on the forums – we can help say what is missing – what is out of wack – it will make your job easier by having us do some of the work!

[Karrai]

Add level 24 and 28 items to Vaults of the Artificers challenges turn ins
Add level 28 items to Eveningstar challenge turn ins
Remove the Seal/Shard/Scroll systems from the Eberron Epic quests and have the name item drop
Update old raid items to be more useful compared to random gen items. Ability to have a list or token system to get the raid item one is looking for after certain amount of runs.
More two handed items that Dont revolve around Greataxes or Greatswords.
Items that work off enhancements.
Items that use stats like charisma, wisdom Intelligence or constitution to hit and damage.
Ability to upgrade Normal items to Hard versions then to Elite versions.
Have Handwraps show damage dice.
More Curse items that do more then add -1 to a stat.
Scarp the current crafting/trapmaking system are go for something else which includes making one owns potions and other dual prefixs sufixs etc. The current system is a mess, difficult and uninteresting.
Alchemical Crafting have bound to character/Bound to account ingredients all Unbound so there is at least some interest in the raid like the Shroud.
More name Scimitars, ?Falchions,? Picks, ?Picks?, Spell Orbs, throwing weapons
Cleric items that dont revolve around Healing
Bard related items
Deck of many things
Items that summon other creatures
Merge Long bows and short bows together. No one uses short bows, there are hardly any name shortbows to begin with.
More decent and useful name Docents

I do like the roman numeral and the flat out number system. Better then trying to guess what the difference between sovereign, elemental, burst, superior ,lesser, touch etc and all those other names that were being used when trying to compare items.

[andy310]

Hum... handwraps do show damage dice... x amount of w 1[w]... it's always 1d6. you now get more numbers in front instead of an increase of die step. Also if you click details while the wraps are equipped you see exactly everything including the 1d6, or 1d8 if light monk....

[Uska]

Hello cool avatar and thanks for the heads up

I prefer my Dr.'s though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49z9OgmWKm0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXUbSyJyH_M

[GeoffWatson]

I'd like a lot of old items updated:

Named weapons in general: add extra damage to keep up with Paragon/Epic random loot.
Greensteel: Add shields, rings, handwraps and collars.
Dragontouched armour: Need a big upgrade/overhaul.
Epic Shard/Seal/Scroll: Increase the drop rate, allow exchanges of seals and shards, maybe allow upgrades with 2 of the 3 parts. Update the items, very few are worth the time.
Bring back the old random affixes.
Give a small chance for an item to have two prefixes, or two suffixes (or both).
Add all of the affixes to Cannith Crafting.
Show augment and guild slots on the icon (at least for random loot).
Raid loot. Most needs an update. Tempest Spine update was a good start, do something similar for the other old raids.

Geoff.

[Ungood]

I would like to take a moment to expound on a few things here.

Often (and I mean pretty much everyone I know in game and mos of the people on this forum) follow the mind set of:

Raid > Named > Loot-Gen

But really, it's not quite as simple as that, because even at the start of the F2P game, Loot-gen still had it's gems, and when Cannith Crafting went live, many people showed what "Stars aligned" random-loot gen could do, and it was not lacking in the least.

But see, loot gen is supposed to be "mostly junk, make-do, with the random rare combo that works wonders", that is what makes it work so well. I admit I liked the multi-effect of Loot-gen, like "Of the Tryant" "Nights Grasp" and the like, some because they followed the theme here in DDO, IE: The Tyrant from Orchard , Nights Grasp from DQ, etc.

It was nifty, and they should have been much rarer then they were in game, and those should have been added to the crafting tables.

Adding them to the crafting tables alone would have changed the game greatly.

The revision to Random-loot, IMO, was a bad move, Random loot did not need to be changed, and it could have been removed from the epic content completly because of the way the com system worked, in short time, anyone could have had a decent named epic weapon and armor, there was pretty much no need for Loot-gen in Evening Star at all, and if they simply added a comm turn in to Ebberon to replace the shard/seal/scroll system, that would have totally fixed all the loot issues at the end game.

So really, the Loot revision was a waste of time, effort, and all it accomplished was annoyed a great deal of players.

But getting back to my main point. Loot Progression:


Raid > Named > Loot-Gen.

To explain this, first you would need to start with a scale, so lets use the simple scale of 1 - 10. 1 being the worst, with 10 being the best. But this is not a scale in raw power, but in Usefulness. How well designed and fitting is this weapon/item.

Loot Gen should scale around a: 1 - 8

Now, what does that mean. Well first off, it's a large gap, and that is because Loot-gen should be volatile, random, from pretty much the worst items in the game to the near the best:

For example: The Mind Jobs like: Axiomatic of True Chaos, Anarchistic Handwraps of Absolute Chaos, Underwater action RR: Warforged, and the like kind of items, these catastrophically bad combos are what make loot-gen, well.. Loot-gen.

On the flip side you have stars-aligned: Where you pull a Holy Silver Outsider bane, or Adamitite of smiting. yes, very rare combos, but when you get them, they are great, they rival anything else in the game, which is again, this random nature of Loot-gen working for you.

This polar extremes of Loot-gen, are what make it, well, what it is. But all in all, Loot-gen should often fall in the middle ground, with means most loot gen should be around a 4 or 5 on the loot Scale, not great, but a serviceable piece of gear none the less.

Named Items Should fall around: 4 - 8

Notice, they start much higher then loot gen, so that means they should be devoid of the worst combos, but that should be a product of being hand designed, but even with that personal touch, there are simply going to be some poor combos, or things that just don't work as well as we would like to think, or just in some cases they don't compete well against what loot-gen/other named items could give within a close level range.

Because named items are hand crafted, tho, this more an issue with how it synergies with existing things then anything else. Case in point, at one time, the only helm worth taking out of orchard was the Minos, because it's combo of stats netted it around a 8 in the usefulness level, where all the other hats, while decent, were around 4 - 6, you could get the same effects on loot gen if you looked hard enough, or in some cases, they just fell short of what the Minos provided.

However, on average Named items would be around a 5-6, slightly better overall then Loot gen, but not massively so, but just enough to make them the constantly more appealing option.

Raid Gear Should fall around a 5 - 9:

Like Named Items, raid gear is hand crafted, planned, and then locked away behind a tiny drop rate and a large scale quest. Because of this, raid gear had this elevated placement as being "What everyone should be striving for", the "end game" gear in most ways.

While sure, there are simply some items that are not that great even in the raid gear list, either because they are just not grand items, like crossbows, or light hammers or the such, other times, they are simply odd combos that don't seem to work that well in function, or in some cases, when pit against what could be acquired from the same raid, or similar raids, it simply does not measure up. In either case, there are lows and highs in the raid gear list.

On average the gear from a raid should fall around a 6-7, better then all the the top end loot gen, better then most of the named, worth going after, but no super powerfully so.

So I guess now the question is, what is a - 10?

a 10 should it's own monster. When I started to play, in 2009, the 10, was the "epic" items, these were augmented named items that brought them to the next level.

In most games the 10 is "what is not made yet" but in DDO, it was hidden behind several layers of raids and quests, like collecting a dozen named items, or more, was what the 10 was.

I proposed a new 10, for the future of DDO (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/429492-Something-worth-Grinding-For). and I think it is about time something like this was put in, to replace the old epic grind that kept people looking/questing for that "little bit more" and that is what the 10 symbolizes, that "little bit more" that final piece.

Just hoped to expand a bit on this idea of what the scale really was for how loot should work, there is overlap, and overlap is good, as long as it is controlled, as long as it is not situations where something that should not be getting out classed is getting overshadowed.

Good Luck here DrLoot.

[Astarii]

I hope this gets read...

For loot, I would love to see

#1. Expanded Crafting. Adding paralyzation, smiting, vorpal, lacerating, crusader, Bane Type shards, Augments, etc... The list goes on, Even Dual types for High lvl Crafting.

*I think almost everyone would agree that some items prefixes or suffixes that people might find to powerful as just a random drop, can be part of game play IF added as higher level crafting shard so that work must be done for it.

#2. We need a way to Move BTC->BTA->NOT Bound.

#3. It would be nice for a BIGGER Bank to sort gear, INCLUDING BTC stuff. (Perhaps a Baba-Yaba's Hut. or even a monthly Paid for Storage $4.99/month or something where you don't need mule toons... and you could move BTC stuff into that location;).

*Now, with Epic Tring, we can expect more BTC items, and less room.

#4. Cycle the loot for Events in Crystal cove etc.., don't always every day have the items there, expand it to more items but every some many hours rotate it. This forces people to check / run it daily when the events are open.

#5. Please don't ever do non-attainable outside of game play, pay items from DDO STORE pay to roll items. ie. Mystery baskets that must be purchased for in the DDO store, that are random chance to get. This just angers players.

#6. Added Named Shards & Augments etc. or Dual shards / Augments.

#7. Add alchemy stone when equipped enhances crafting levels.

#8. Stack items such as hearts of wood, the X000 Experiance points, or other logical items.

#9. make use of more collectables items from your Red bag... without searching through all the realms for a turn in

#10. Add a scroll case... ie a scroll Bag

#11. Make Class, Skill,Tree, Iconic Required items (UMD OR skill bypassable of course) just like alinement required items. I would love to see the old nightmare or other critical hit items back, not necessarily wielded by a cleric... on critical (not on just a 20). basically like the second response wanting the old Nightmare back....

[Borathan]

Other than fixing loot gen, the big thing would be upgrading Cannith Crafting both for better capability and possibly upping it to have epic crafting. I also hope that crafted items can eventually be treated as generated items for the purposes of festival upgrades. It's a pain that they're already basically something as a stopgap for when loot gen hates you, making someone spend the time and effort and funds to raise crafting up enough to make what they need shouldn't have the additional penalty of being weaker than a randomly generated version of the same weapon...

Also metal weapons need to have some sort of increase in possibilities for special material. I'm seeing darkwood drop like mad, but I've yet to see anything mithril or other metal drop for me beyond named items. An augment version could be a fix, but it's kind of annoying

Bringing back guild augment slots would be nice, though I wouldn't really want to see it back in loot gen, my suggestion would be to shift it to the stone of change with guild vendors having something buyable that would add a slot to an item that's bound to the character. Guild augments should have their own type of bonus' as well, but not very large ones, just variety compared to the normal slots and bonus' from items.

I would also like something akin to the treasure map being acquirable at higher levels so that I don't have to go back the 3BC to earn more for the loot upgrade.

The last thing is that I'd really like something to be done with bows, both short and long, that makes the composite versions something slightly different than the normal ones. While the PnP solution (Composite allows STR to be added to damage) wouldn't work due to the feat that does the same thing, it would be nice to have some difference between the two.

[brian14]

Items that summon other creatures


I misread the above as "items that summon other characters". But that got me thinking -- I would like to see a limited-uses item similar to Bracelet of Friends which teleports party members scattered through the dungeon to the item's user. Occasionally it can be a quest-saver.

Obviously should not be a random loot item, so sorry for being off-topic.

[Eth]

Relevant loot keeps content relevant. This needs to be tatoo'd on the inside of your eyelids.
This, a million times.

The nice thing before MotU was that there were so many raids you could run that were relevant (ToD, Shroud, DQ, VoN6, Abbot, Chronoscope, LoB, Master Artificer, or even the odd Reaver, HoX or VoD for +3Tomes).

Today? The only thing I see regularly is VoN6 and that is for XP, not for loot reasons mainly.
Then there's a Shroud sometimes and maybe a FoT.

Bad loot design: Master artificer (I mean really run it once or twice, get your item and be done...or don't run it at all and buy the item you want from the AH).

Good loot design: Abbot (Unique things, that can't be found anywhere else - still relevant stuff today), Shroud


Until we get a new endgame thoon(tm), please consider making the old raids attractive again.
Some of them are actually difficult and worthy considering to be "endgame" (EE LoB).
There's just no reason to run them (again EE LoB - seriously, the loot system in this raid is so broken it's not even funny. There's really NO REASON to run EE LoB at all other than for fun).

For the very least add SOMETHING to ALL raids to make them worth running.
You know even if you had your rings from ToD it was still worth running it, because there was always the low odd chance to get a +4 tome.
At the moment the loot tables just seem to be broken. I haven't seen any +4 Tomes since U19.

Consider adding (relevant) tomes to all raids again, aswell as unique augments.
Just something relevant enough, to make people run these raids again.

[DrakHar]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Make named loot better than random again. Random loot is annoying and you can't plan for it.

[zwiebelring]

If loot keeps content relevant then maybe the loot table adaptation regarding tomes may be another big point to make certain areas attractive or attractive again. I want +4 tomes back at lvl 27!

[Leclaire1]

Welcome aboard Doctor!

Several things can be said. First of all, I have to agree with Teh Troll in the following respects-


The biggest issue is the whole concept just sucks. Random just SUCKS. The game was better when my level 20s didn't have a single piece of radom kit on them. Random should remain vendor trash . . . let us kit our toons how how WE want them to be.

Random loot over-shadowing named loot, even if a few levels higher, is friggin ******** as well.

Seriously, as long as you're on this "random" kick your loot/game will all be a bucket of fail.

I personally think random loot should be mostly for situational use, or temporary use until you can get better named items. Repeatedly they tend to overpower named items which are more interesting and are earned. This has especially been the case since U19, where OP named items went on crack during the endgame. We want to be rewarded for efforts in our loot world and not just dumb luck.

Going along with this I think we need a change in the stupid Sage's/Guardian's/Skirmisher U19 items. These are overpowered for the minimal amount of effort put into acquiring them, Overpower current named loot and thus become essential, and are uninteresting since they aren't really sets and have very generic names. I don't think they need to disappear as they are nice in their own regard, but they should appear as always appearing chain end rewards for the Wheloon and Stormhorns chains (and perhaps High Road and Druid's Deep as well), so that they are truly earned. You could perhaps add set bonuses for having certain numbers of pieces (like Might of the Abishai) to make them a more interesting gear option as well, and to encourage running these chains to get them. No one will miss the stupid armors, though perhaps you could keep those as chain end options as well.

Having different named quest items at different diff levels, like the great stuff in High Road, or hard earned raid weapons and armors are definitely the way to go. It gives us guaranteed motive to run these quests besides xp, and can even motivate is to run them on higher diffs. More named loot in the recently released quests would also be welcome.

Also, you should add some upgrade items to other hard to gain loot, in particular Dragonscale Armors. Right now Red and Green, which take much more effort to get, are overshadowed by higher-level armors. Add some upgrade options to Mikron Sum for Cormyrian Red and Green, and to the Stormreaver monument for Epic Velah.

Furthermore, as regards to hard-earned equipment which U19 made irrelevant with its thoughtless bloating of loot (EE Dream Visor), please either nerf some of the new random **** (massive deadly and +10 stats on everything), or upgrade or augment the named stuff to complete with or complement it. For instance, nerfing deadly on everything or simply changing the Dream Visor damage bonus to a unique type could accomplish this.

[Seikojin]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Thanks for stepping up to get pummeled by the forums. :)

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Ghostbane
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Ghostbane
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Ghostbane

:D

In all seriousness
- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
I am seeing a lot of items out of level range pop up in chests (lvl 17 items in a lvl 14 quest; without boosters running).

No way to really get crafted items sustainably made from grinding random loot. I think lesser and greater mats should come out of grinding gear. For example, instead of giving just X for a +1 flametouch weapon of bloodletting (or whatever suffix of lowish level), you should get X, y, and Z. Mats from each craftable component. The higher your craft level, the more mats you get. Let people grind lesser into greaters, not geaters into lesser.

Ability quality is another suck right now. Most abilities on an item, at proper level, are not good enough in slot to replace a featherfall item or underwater breathing. I think items over a certain min level, with a certain elemental affinity, should offer bonuses of offslot properties. Like a <air/electric element> item of sufficient level (8 or higher?) should offer featherfall as a freebie. And ice should offer underwater breathing. Or perhaps named items should get that, increasing their desirability and freeing a slot for something more useful for your characters build.

I would go into tomes, but that is a huge mess.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
I think named and random loot should be upgradable to a degree.

I think Off-type weapons (pick, bastard sword, kukri, etc.) need some attention. I don't see many users of those.

I think quarter staves, although awesome, should have two modes; caster and melee. As you bring up caster combat classes, some would want spell power bonuses, while others would like a combat weapon. I think having it rolled into a single weapon would be nice. Perhaps a toggle for them, or maybe a boost from the spellpower aspects (buffs for an element of electricity will offer electric melee damage bonuses). The higher the buff, the better the ability; ultimately leading to a staff that can spell buff and offers some swingability in combat for those who use staves. Maybe too OP, but it could be detectable?

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
All my characters slot stats and featherfall/waterbreathing where they can. Protection, deflection, shield, and save boosters where named items don't offer as much at that level. Which is the case 100% of the time. A level 7 named item doesn't offer as much stat boost as a random of that level.

[Livmo]

From my arty perspective I haven't seen allot of repeating Night's Grasp crossbows drop in a long time. These are my favorite. I have 3, 2 repeaters and 1 non-repeater (sniper rifle). Not all of these are the same. If I remember to I will post images of mine. I got these before U19.

Also I use a pre-U19 Smiting/Banisher, and several paralyzers.

I seem to get allot of ghostbane items now. I like and have kept some ghostbane items. However ghostbane seems to drop mostly for me, so the loot may be random, but most of it is ghostbane. Some more variety would be nice to have on the crossbows.

A long standing issue I 've had with loot drops, regardless of my game settings and updates, is that I get allot of Bard/Wiz/Sorc items. I notice allot of times the Wiz/Sorc gets the arty item and takes, or leaves it in the chest.

It could just be me, I but I rarely see a tome drop in a chest. My beef here is higher level Cannith Crafting recipies require ingrediants that I get from trading in tomes. It would be nice to have some tomes drop in the loot. I do get one every blue moon, but not enough to make the higher level recipies very often, let alone one to use on my toons.


~

Adding side note about epic gear, even though named items will be addressed later.

Do shards ever drop? I get tons of scrolls, some seals, but it seems like shards don't ever drop. Even in EE. I guess the bigger question I have is, does anyone even own an Epic Double Crossbow, Silver Slinger, Templar's Retribution, or any upgraded epic items form Sentinals of Stormreach?

I do know the shards for LoD are supposed to drop in end chest of Spinner of Shadows, but still haven't seen one.

[Hathorian]

I would love to see more healing amp gear and more Thaumaturgy quarterstaves for my sorc.

Also, more tome drops and augment drops. I almost never see tomes or augment drops.

Also, while maybe not just random loot, would you consider implementing a healing amp line of augments please? Something like 5% ML 8, 10% ML 12, 15% ML16, 20% ML 20, 25% ML 24, 30% ML28. Yellow slots would be awesome but I assume you will want to make them blue slots.

Thanks Dr. Loot!

[FynWarFyn]

Welcome and good luck with your job.

1. Random lootgen is not so random really. We used to have some 100 different enchantments that could appear on items, many were restricted to a few types of item, but they made the randomness exciting and a really lucky draw puts a grin on our faces anytime. Now we have like 10 enchants on weapons that keep reoccurring, like 6 totally useless enchants on armors and anything else is just about non-existent and vendor trash. Others have already covered all the missing and gone enchants.

2. All instant vendor trash weapons like light picks, light mace…if we are not gonna use them, what is the point of them being there? Besides taking space in the loot table so that more desirable items appear less? They made sense in the PnP game because there were no +10 stats everywhere that made using small weapons meaningless (and size did matter to halflings, dwarves…) and no 100k HP monsters to hack at for hours that made DPS so important to melees.

3. Just a couple of rings that I swap around depending on the sitation:
a deadly +7 ring of accuracy+7
a cannith crafted random augment ring ml1 with the Voice of the Master augment in it
everything else is named or crafted

Make raid and named loot upgradeable, so as to keep up with your current lootgen, which IMO is the opposite of what loot is supposed to be, lol. Anyway please don’t make it easier to get raid loot. If raid loot gets as easy to get as deadly, well this game is truly doomed. Don’t make it harder but maybe create different and more interesting way to get all the ingredients.
People have been wanting scroll cases and potions pouches since forever, but if you think about it, imagine stacking 100s potions and scrolls in your backpack and see if you have spaces for those 3 robes, 2 full armor plates, 5 different weapons, multitudes of boots, gauntlets, belts…multitudes of jewelries…and of course like 5 tons worth of plat coins………and people are still complaining, lol. Now what you can do that I think is a minor change in coding is making said case or pouch or quiver based on a total number of items in them, not by the different types of item in them: say I want to put more than 1500 arrows of 1 type in my quiver, I can as long as it is under the total number allowed, by the same token we can put more than 1 type of potion in an inventory slot as long as you can only put 100 in a slot (might make a pouch for it to be better).

What really messed up this great game was the huge HP and SP. The more I play this game the more it resembles an Asian mmorpg with tons of hp, sp, dps, crit dmg…what’s up with that? I love D&D because there was always a chance that a lowly goblin would land a crit on you and disable you from the fight putting you on defensive while your healer rushes over to heal you or that the boss rolled a 20 and saved against that special spell, so now the melees have to distract him while you start going thru your pouches for that emergency scroll because you only had so many spells to cast a day and you used them all. Besides content and a name, this could be a wannabe Asian mmorpg. There was a time when others games wanted to be a wannabe D&D mmorpg.

[Raliar]

I have played a lot of MMORPG's and have found solice in the game but loved the variety in loot from Everquest, WOW, to Dark age.

>just an idea but maybe add "world drop items" to certain clusters of areas and make them for certain lvl areas as well. These could be similar to the magic/unique system in WOW. I very much liked finding a surpize after adventuring.

>Master crafted and Wonderous items were a step in the right direction, we could take this a step further and have items rarely have multiple prefixes and suffixes. This could be combined with new abilities which I will get into later but I am not opposed to potentially "rarely" find items that can contend with the best items in the game. Maybe finding up to wonderous +10 which would also open up the need for +2 loot gems and other rarely taken feats.

>Unique abilities, something along the line of Obscenities and such but take it a step further and include spell procs like finding a rare sword at a low level that can shoot magic missle at a 5% chance. That is interesting and cool and somewhat useful. I always loved certain items from Everquest because their procs or on hit activated abilities made them useful like a sword that procs a attack speed slow.

>This was said before but I completely agree but this is for named items include other unused weapon types like: great crossbows, light picks, light maces. Make them flavorful and useful. Like a lightmace that gets an enhanced bonus of +4 and 2d6 fire for charisma based user.

I will keep thinking an additional ideas because you seem like someone that actually wants to listen and implement good idea's. I hope this works and we get interesting useful items because not sure about anyone else but I love loot! I think random gear has it's place and I feel it is ok to have it extremely powerful as long as it's extremely rare, which would make loot gems and running high end content doubly worth it!

[Certon]

Don't listen to people when they tell you they dislike random loot. Some of us love it. They say that random stuff should never be as powerful as named stuff of the same level. I disagree. I believe the rarest combinations of random equipment should complete with named items.

That being said, there should be more named items in the random treasure table at all levels. Sure, the chance of a named dropping should be rare, but it should happen much more often than it currently does (which is once in a blue moon) and the table it draws from should be much more massive.

Last thing, you should have item transmutation. That means that that you can convert one weapon type to another with a machine placed in House Cannith. A +5 Holy Club of Rapid Strikes becomes a +5 Holy Khopesh of Rapid Strikes. Simple.

[DrOctothorpe]

Wow, now this is an outpouring. While I'm (ahem) poring over all twelve pages (and counting!) of nutrient-rich feedback, there's some news over on the Lamannia threads regarding our first steps towards fixing loot diversity. If you have access, check it out here (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430864-Possible-Loot-Diversity-Changes-for-U20-Patch?p=5173142#post5173142).

[patang01]

Wow, now this is an outpouring. While I'm (ahem) poring over all twelve pages (and counting!) of nutrient-rich feedback, there's some news over on the Lamannia threads regarding our first steps towards fixing loot diversity. If you have access, check it out here (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430864-Possible-Loot-Diversity-Changes-for-U20-Patch?p=5173142#post5173142).

Thanks for listening.

[bsquishwizzy]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

As a guy whose toons use a lot of random loot (I don’t farm), the problem is that you have random loot, or named items. Random loot, the way it used to spawn, sucked.

Then – maybe it was post U15? – I stared seeing some specialized BtCoE items that were actually useful: Lacerating, Sun’s Fury, Pandemonium, Tyrant, Rebel. Loot pulls were actually something I looked at closely, and also showed off to other members in the party.

Then came U19, most of that got pulled away, and Ghostbane was now the standard. Now, random loot gets de-constructed for the essences, or sold off at a vendor if I don’t have time to hit the crafting hall.

The U15 special attributes were way-frickin’-cool. They gave my toons an intermediate step between pure random loot and named items – cripes I still use some of those items in epic levels. My pally has a scimitar with two poison attributes that works well from lvl 16 well into King’s forest. All I could ask for is an augment slot, and it’d be a great weapon.

So, whatever got pulled out of U19, please put it back.


- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

There are only two underserved equipment types I see in the game, and that is trinkets and quivers. I realize trinkets are something you can make from Shroud crystals, or purchased from the DDO store, but quivers and arrow / bolt management is a total frickin’ mess. It would be nice to have maybe some quivers with attributes? Not sure.
Also, what I do see is a lack of usability of prefixes and suffixes. In that regards, what I dislike about the current system is that deathblock is only an armor-based attribute.

One attribute that is HIGHLY underserved is stuff that resists negative levels. Yes, I know this goes along with the new deathblock attribute, but again: that only comes on armor. Deathblock is something that most people normally carry around as part of their standard equipment line-up. It would be nice if it appeared on other items. Or, along those lines, if you had stuff that offered neg level immunity and/or resistence apart from deathblock.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

I have a wizzy with bracers that have Enchantment and Necromancy focus on them, with a guild crystal slot – very nice. I also have some robes with Deathblock on them for one wizzy, that I found useful (thought these were pulled pre-U15). However, everything now I tend to craft with my crafting toon so as to avoid redundancy (and wasted attributes) with random loot. However, I DID purposely set up my equipment plan on that specific wizzy to work around those bracers. These I pulled maybe post U14 or U15. They were very helpful.

The rest is usually weapons, and of those I have quite a few that are from random loot. My wizzies regularly use scepters of things like Acid Mastery and so on (random loot). My paladin has a number of weapons that are random loot, aside from weapons like Truthblade and the blade from VoD (Divine Vengance?). I have a Poison Scimitar with Virulent CON Poison (very nice weapon, and I used it a lot), a Paralyzing long sword of Lacerating, a Solar long sword of Disruption, and a Holy Vorpal blade. My rogue has dual randomgen weapons sets coming out of his ears including a Tyrant rapier and a Rebel dagger, a smiter set of dagger and rapier, a dagger and rapier for banishers. I have dual Envenomed Blades for paralyzers, so I don’t use random loot for those. But for the most, I’m random loot for all of my banisher / disruptor / paralyzer / vorpal needs. The rogue also has an Acid dagger of (Greater?)Giant Bane that I used with Toothpick as my giant killers. Again, random loot.

My ranger had a Sun’s Fury bow, along with another BtCoE bow that I used a lot in Sands. This is where I caught on to the usefulness of the new random loot attributes. They have been especially useful with my ranger. I think it was the Sun’s Fury bow that just about made my jaw drop in Sands as I was one- and two-shotting gnolls all over the place. I think I used that weapon from about lvl 10 to lvl 16 where it started to show some weaknesses with mobs. But it was a HIGHLY useful weapon that was my go-to bow.

As far as crafting goes, dual-augment items are preferred blanks. If I am going to twink and use augments, I’d rather have a dual-slot item where I take a single penalty for minimum level. Therefore, this is a good thing for me as far as pulling one of these from a chest as random loot.

[Nibor]

If you want random loot to work, you really, really need to improve the Auction House. It's extremely difficult to use now, which means it's just not worth my time most of the time.

We need to be able to narrow things down to the features we're really looking for. Maybe I want to make sure the weapon has a red slot. Maybe I want to make sure there is *no* slot on the item. Maybe I want Sunder, but I want minimum Sunder VI. Maybe I want Flaming V, or Improved Banishing, or whatever. It's completely impossible to search now, which means most of the time people won't search, which means a lot of gear goes unsold, or eventually even unlisted.

Random loot is much better when the entire server can share in it.

[Livmo]

Wow, now this is an outpouring. While I'm (ahem) poring over all twelve pages (and counting!) of nutrient-rich feedback, there's some news over on the Lamannia threads regarding our first steps towards fixing loot diversity. If you have access, check it out here (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/430864-Possible-Loot-Diversity-Changes-for-U20-Patch?p=5173142#post5173142).

Thanks! I like the ghostbane, just not so much of it. I read the other post you linked and it sounds promising :)

[RapkintheRanger]

A: about roman numerals:

1. I find them very helpful. blah blah IV is not as good as blah blah VII
2. I find it a little boring to just number them that way....

I don't have any idea what a solution would be.

B: What would be helpful would be a way to search for gear of a certain level range within backpacks or bank spaces... It would help with organizing and finding look fro secondary characters.

C: I wish i knew exactly what stacked with what... Striding, speed, alacrity, haste, haste boost... (without having to buy it and try it on)

[PookaWitch]

I think that everything I really liked has already been named. I've always been a fan of varying bane weapons, pure good, holy burst etc, and really loved the newer elemental types that had come out with the first FR expansion like tidal and such. I really liked the armor effect that did trap the soul, it was super handy for trying to get soul gems for crafting.

For a suggestion, there is something that I have really wanted to see in here ever since the older visual version of the Celestia weapon (when it was all rainbow coloured). This was a weapon enhancement from the tabletop Minatures Handbook, prismatic. Basically on a natural 20 (or vorpal in DDO terms) it would do a prismatic spray effect. It could be a good way to bring in the rainbow effect for weapons that had been worked on for the Celestia sword.

[BoBoDaClown]

Bring back all the old prefixes and suffixes.

[Thar]

QUOTE Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
1) Change - stop making changes to loot. make smarter quests or npcs. did wounding of puncturing have to be nerf'd years ago? it is useless now even at it's former ability as epic mobs regen stat damage faster than you can apply it. Same now with changes to the level drain items which were only marginably useful since the epic mobs regen level drain too. Changes to level zero gear or something "special" that you found years ago are suddenly a lvl 13 item makes you sad and mad at the same time for a change that really didn't impact the game. does it really matter if you had a +6 item at lvl 1? it was limited and not in game anymore. you are only within range of not using like items for a week of real play time if not less. The biggest change was to end game stat loot. Gianthold made special loot that people wanted. then in months it was worthless compared to random loot. the same with the various named loot at lower level that just went through a redesign to add power but some items were skipped because they were already too good. is bloodstone too good now? I pulled the same effect multiple times since the last update in other more useful slots. named items should be more powerful than higher level loot to encourage farming and value. deadly at lvl 9 is now more powerful than epic elite dream visor?? the same with gianthold, lost almost all value and therefore interest in quests since it was no longer good loot compared with other items the same level. Did the gear need to be redesigned to give more power to lower level gear? no. the wheel doesn't need to be redesigned, only refitted with new tires for the continued journey. make new gear with special effects. ie torc so people have something special. fyi temporary spellpoints are bleh since they don't stack and the timer is too short.

otherwise, the problems with random loot are this. its not useful most of the time. a combustion scepter of ice lore... vendor... opposite spell effects. Even those that are useful are not up to par with green steel, lob weapons, web weapons with rare exceptions. So unless you get lucky with a rare combo that might be useful in 1% of the mobs you encounter, its to the vendor you go. and back to looking for named gear that wasn't under powered by the loot change.

Besides some equipment stat items (ie plus 10 con, dex etc), none of the weapons are useful compared to web/fot options most of the time. most of the random equipment is useless due to non maxed stat or other effect. banishing, disruption, vorpal are not that useful as they are. it was much better when it was on crit and you would see the effects. 5% of the time is not worth it vs another effect coupled with the 1000 hp cap when trash mobs have 10000 hps or more.

the double effects for prefix and suffix were a great idea to expand the usefulness of named loot and for some good combos were almost up to par with good named items. this should have been expanded on for armor/shield instead of removed for weapons. it also allowed for quick identification vs today's holy i, ii, iii, iv..etc.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

All armor is almost always useless. There are no good options with very rare exceptions (dragon armor or spidersilk robes) and most of the time it is either ok for effects to stats or ok for armor but not for both.

khopesh's are almost nonexistant in a good option. very few dwarven axes that are end game. exotics that you spend a feat on should make an appearance once in a while. There should be all options of weapons available at end game even if there is a reforging option to change it to another type. ie short bows that compare to pinion do not exist at end game.

desert items are almost all useless and too hard to epic.


- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

just stat items for the most part. ie con 8 hp 40. or a dodge item depending on slot/character.

fyi ghostbane was a good idea, just not on every other item...

[DrOctothorpe]

Regarding random loot that is more powerful than named / raid items: what are the level ranges you guys are seeing this on? There's a bit of a difference between a level 27 random sword vs a level 21 named one... and when those items when found in the same level range content.

[Livmo]

QUOTE Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
1) Change - stop making changes to loot. make smarter quests or npcs. .

To add onto your thought, I always thought it would be cool if randomly the raid boss, or quest boss, was played by a live employee from Turbine. This would make the AI less predictable. Of course it would have to be anyomous so you don't know if you are playing against another live person(s). Just an idea to get around predicable AI.

[Vellrad]

Regarding random loot that is more powerful than named / raid items: what are the level ranges you guys are seeing this on? There's a bit of a difference between a level 27 random sword vs a level 21 named one... and when those items when found in the same level range content.

deadly on heroic items beats deadly on EE dreamvisors.
Don't mention accuracy and spot, noone cares about them.