Let's talk about Named Loot

[DrOctothorpe]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

[GoldyGopher]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Okay, I'll bite...

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Crafting is good.
I think in general the Shroud Crafting has been the most universally like system in the game. I even remember when a former Executive Producer explained to me that the system was so great that all future Raid Loot systems starting with "Reaver's Reach" were going to follow this pattern. Even today many players best equipment comes from Shroud Crafting (not necessarily the high end player base, but more along the lines of casual players who may not have a level 28 character running around.)

Upgrading your item from Normal to Hard to Elite, isn't bad
I don't mind the system of named loot upgrading in which an Epic item can be converted to Epic Hard and even more to Epic Elite.
My only concern with such a system is that there isn't enough customization available or that upgrade path is keeping up with Random Loot. I dislike that many of our older systems have not been updated to keep up with our newer systems, for example we can upgrade Flawless Black, Blue, and White Dragonscale armor, but no such system is available for either Flawless Red (Cormyrian or Epic) or Epic Green Dragonscale Armors.

What works is almost important at what doesn't
I dislike the fact that so many Named Items "pigeon hole" characters. This is kind of hard to explain, but item A is only good for class I not anything else.
I dislike the fact their are so few set bonuses.
I dislike loot lotteries (Reaver's Reach I am talking about you and you too Epic Seals and Shards).

Any example of a system that I would like
All raid drop base items that are BTC. Items have a base function and many/most are part of a set. (Sets don't all have to be from a single raid) Multiple items from the same set have a minor bonus.
Base Items are upgradable.
I than collect ingredients (BTA) dropped from every raid and can customize what I am using by crafting augments. So an ingredient dropped in Titan could be used to upgrade and item dropped in Vault of Night.
The key is while the Item is BTC, it is upgradable using a BTA system (Cough commendations) and I can augment it using a crafting system from all raids.
So my Sorcerer gets a "Wizard Orb" dropped in Caught in the Web, it has a base function (Epic +60 Potency) that I can upgrade to Epic Hard (+80 Potency) and Epic Elite (+100 Potency) using BTC Commendations. The Orb has three slots in which I can craft augments to drop into them (+60 Acid/Cold/Elec/Fire/Sonic - Spell Pen ....) Like Item augments except I have to craft them from BTA ingredients.
Example of a Set Bonus - Armor of the Defender / Shield of the Defender / Helm of the Defender / Boots of the Defender / Ring of the Defender ... if three items are worn +5 AC and +5 PRR, if four +10 AC and +10 PRR, if all five items +15 AC and +15 PRR. The Ring of the Defender could be either of the TOD Rings... Just brainstorming aloud here.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.
Easy / Just Right
Items from Inspired Quarter and Flawless Black / Blue / White Dragonscales always felt to easy to me.
Red Dragonscales - taking about 40 to 50 runs to get a full set felt about right.
Too Hard
Current heroic to epic upgradable items (Base Item is Heroic, combined with Scroll, Seal and Shard) are all too hard to acquire. I have a friend who spent two years waiting to upgrade his Sword of Shadow because the Shard never dropped on a raid run any of his characters were on. It's a **** shoot, made worse by the fact that the two items were BTA mean even if they did drop no one would ever put them up for roll.

-What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
I feel like I am in a Geico Commercial here, live under a rock? I hope that doesn't sound too harsh....
Every class and items needs love when it comes to named items, short one Sword little is overly useful in todays endgame. However I would single out Artificers, Bards, Clerics, Favored Souls, Paladins, Rangers, Sorcerers, and Wizards as needing more love than Barbarians and Fighters, but not by much and anything that is not a eSoS needing love.

[Dandonk]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

I like the idea of Green Steel. It's highly customizable, you can get all sorts of fun and diverse effects that may be just right for your niche build, and well, there's just something in there for everyone.

The tiered system is good, making you feel you progress through real power levels - and not just add another + .5W damage, but a real effect.

The problem in it is the large number of ings and recipes you need to keep track of (though it's better with the barter system update).


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

The Dragonscale Helms were not too bad to acquire. The drop rate was high-ish enough that you could get one within a decent time frame, but if you needed something specific it would take longer, of course.

Too long? Esos, by far. Had far in excess of hundred completions before I got all the pieces (curses upon that shard!), and more or less everyone I've talked to in-game relates their own tale of eso


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Weapon types: Dwarven axes, shuriken and khopeshes.

Some decent divine loot would be nice, too.

[Drwaz99]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Heroic Comms tied to favor was my favorite. It gave PUGS incentive to run EE content, the favor wasn't set BONE CRUSHINGLY HIGH. Only problem is the minute chance of comms dropping in CITW (a huge mistake that persists to this day, and if FOT didn't give a guaranteed amount would make this my least favorite system.)

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Personally the VON series was just about right in difficulty in acquiring (but I know some have had a PITA time with SOS's and such), anything in the Sands was a **** shoot just because for the sheer amount of items reducing the chance to sub-minuscule. Shards from the old epic crafting are still so rare that it's stupid.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Throwing. GOOD Docents. Rapier's, Scimmy's, a good Maul. Throw in some really good augments.

[brucelee82]

1)Favorite Named loot system would be Green Steel. There are many good effects and you can tailor them to your needs. Many of them are still good at level cap. Also the low ML is great for Heroic TR. Also knowing each run of the raid got me a little closer to the item I wanted was nice.
2)I feel that Fall of Truth items had the correct difficulty to acquire/upgrade. To difficult would be the seal/shard/scroll/base item epic system. Other than that would be the reavers fate armor when it was unknown what you would get for an effect.
3) Needs love I would say are DC and melee Clerics or Favored Souls. Also Khopesh users have not seen much love.

Side note- For new loot I don't want to see higher stats such as Strength 12 items. One thin I really liked about DDO is raid loot with special or unique effects. Such as Torc and the Lion Headed Belt Buckle from the Demon Queen. Or the docent from the Titan raid.

[Ravand]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
I like the Lordsmarch Plaza Chain/Sora Kell, the lvl 5 House D upgrades (Mark of Goat, Dragon, etc.), and IQ suppressed-unsuppressed crafting systems. I like them because with a little work (repeating quests and quest chains to farm ingredients) I was able to upgrade the equipment into nice items for the level. Although the loot and mark rolls were random, the amount of work felt right to get the items I needed. After finishing my post, I now want to add the GH flawless dragonscale armors to this list too, for the same reasons.

In the middle is the Commendations of Heroism system. Although I cannot raid too often, it is nice to be able to run FoT on EH and get a guaranteed 1-2 CoH. I hate running CitW (other than foo the named loot) because there is no guarantee of comms though, and the difference in how long the raid takes is grossly disproportionate. Again, this system is nice because you know it will take "x" number of runs to upgrade "y" loot.

At the opposite end is the seal/scroll/shard/item system. Totally random, drops are too rare, so the expectancy theory of motivation (if I run this quest x number of times I am 99% likely to get what I am looking for) is non-existent.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Right difficulty? Dragon helms. You can get a nice one with some effort, but to get the perfect one for your build takes time. As for one that is too difficult? I am sure I will be one of many who says ESOS.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
I have no informed opinion here.

[SirValentine]

One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.


Sorry, going to mention it anyway. My issue isn't just, say, ML 20 old-style Epic and/or raid items out-powered by ML 27-28 random or easy-to-acquire items. It's ML 20 old-style Epic items out-powered by ML 20-23 random or easy-to-acquire items. Or in some cases, ML 15 easy-to-acquire items.



- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?


I rather like the upgrade approach with FoT & CitW items. I would like to see all only ML 20 Epic RAID items (not non-raid old Epic items), have some sort of similar upgrade path to make them end-game relevant again. (In addition to a straight-up buff so that they are best-in-slot at level 20.)



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*


Right difficulty: raid items in general, I think. A small chance every run, plus a good chance at 20 completions. Back when many raids actually got run regularly, trying to get a specific raid item was a reasonable goal.

Too hard: Shards (and, to a lesser extent, seals) for Sands Epic items. Also shards for raid items in general, before the new mechanic of having shards in 20th lists.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Loot for divines, and caster divines in particular. Melee or ranged divines can use the same sort of melee (or ranged) gear as any others. But most gear aimed at casters is over-focused on Wiz/Sorc. Cleric/Druid/FvS casters miss out, and, to a lesser extent, so do Bard & Arti. Example, "Arcane Augmentation", only works on Wiz/Sorc spells, instead of all spells (not even all Arcane spells). Example 2, some of caster-type items come with Int or Cha, or both, but not with Wisdom. Example 3, some caster-type items come with spellpower options for Force or Elemental, but no, say, Light.

Also, not so much overdue as not fully explored yet, I hope you gradually expand the selection of Orbs and of named augments.

[mrtweakin]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?


Green steel. In it's prime it provided lots of useful and unique (keyword) effects. It required some, but not a ridiculous, amount of grind in content that had reply value. ToD ring sets and upgrades deserve an honorable mention. I don't think it is strictly the implementation though, because LoB/MA crafting, while similar, never felt on par with green steel (imo).



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*


Good amount of difficulty to acquire: Green steel
Bad amount of difficulty to acquire: Old school Epic items that required raid drops (DQ, VoN). That was never fun.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Dwarven axes, Shurikens, Repeaters, Caster sticks (we have great random gen options, but named options fell off the chart with the level cap increase and new random gen options), Heavy/Medium/light armor, shields. Though the last two need more help then just new items.

[DagazUlf]

All of this:

1.
The tiered system is good, making you feel you progress through real power levels - and not just add another + .5W damage, but a real effect.

The problem in it is the large number of ings and recipes you need to keep track of (though it's better with the barter system update).


2.
The Dragonscale Helms were not too bad to acquire. The drop rate was high-ish enough that you could get one within a decent time frame, but if you needed something specific it would take longer, of course.

Too long? Esos, by far. Had far in excess of hundred completions before I got all the pieces (curses upon that shard!), and more or less everyone I've talked to in-game relates their own tale of eso

(note: esos means Epic Sword of Shadows)

3.
Weapon types: Dwarven axes, shuriken and khopeshes. Some decent divine loot would be nice, too.

[redspecter23]

My favorite upgrade system is Shroud Greensteel. It's not perfect as I don't think anyone really considers tier 1 useful at all and tier 2 is niche at best, but the feeling when you finally make your first dual shard item is fantastic. In theory, a system like this could have more tiers added on with new ingredients later. Or just put the word "epic" in front of all the ingredients and drop them in new content and have a whole new system.

An item that I feel is the right difficulty to acquire is the Seal of Dun Robar. It has a lowish drop rate (about 4% if I remember correctly) but it can be traded for and has a few different permutations that mostly all have some use.

As far as unbound items, I think Planar Gird is one that feels just about right. This item is useful from level 9 potentally right until level 28 and isn't overpowered. It provides a unique bonus without being overpowering and that's a nice balance to achieve.

Things that are bta or btc should be slightly higher drop rates and I think overall this is the case, though bta has been mostly abandoned lately.

Things that are too hard to acquire are most of the random named items from Shadowfell. The lowish drop rate (4%) was held over from MotU but a bunch of just trashy random abilities were added. Players not only had to hit that 4% jackpot, but had to also find a random element that wasn't horrible. The random element should have been a tiny bonus on an item that was already good to start with, not a major focus on an item that is very average to start with. A dishonorable mention goes to the Epic Sword of Shadows. It's hard to acquire, but it's the sort of weapon that defines a character. If you don't have this, there are certain builds that just won't be as good without it. It's just that far ahead of other options. Players shouldn't feel the need to put a character on hold for potentially years to get an item before they can feel complete.

I don't personally feel that any particular type of named item needs more attention though I don't object to those that want a bit more even distribution of weapons.


On a final note
.
.
.

Magistrate's Scepter... just no. No more standard trash loot with names. This really was a joke, right? A joke that was a colossal waste of time when players were clamoring that the named loot in that pack needed an upgrade and polish, this is what was delivered. The designer of that should be ashamed.

[Braegan]

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel Crafting. It allowed for wide variety of desirable effects in the location or weapon type the player preferred. In addition it provided a tradeable commodity (ingredients) as well as not needing to do all the work on the character you needed but did maintain a reason for you to run a particular character through the raid. In other words you could get ingredients on any character but did have to run the character you wanted to craft on at least enough to get the needed shards of power.

Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.

Greensteel feels a bit on the easy side. Seal/Shard/Scroll epics were mostly in the right difficulty, pack dependent. Sands s/s/s epics felt too hard mostly due to the large number of items providing less of a chance of obtaining what you were looking for.

What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Hmm. Might have to think about this one some more.

[RaidMR]

Ok I'll add my two cents:

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
I don't know if I have a favorite loot upgrade system, but so far I think I like simple. Using Heroic commendations for example to upgrade a toon's weapon is nice and the balance of getting comms and the rewards for spending those commendations is not bad (YMMV depending on what you're going for).

Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire.
This might not be the most popular answer, but Green Steel items seem pretty good.

They provide lots of choice in terms of effects.
GS Item or weapons still can be effective in epic content
Gathering Materials is a little slow (and only one quest to do it) but now with the end game pushed out more people are willing to share or trade small/med/large pulls
Crafting is complicated but the new crafting system helps a lot.
The fact that they have a low minimum level still make them viable for TR's.


Name one that felt too hard.*
First I must preface this with the fact that I fully understand random loot is still going to be random, however I say what feels too hard is the current seal/scroll/shard collecting for epic items.

(The Problem ...uh as I see it)
The probability of getting a shard, seal or scroll during a run is pretty low, the probability that it will be one you want or can use is even lower. It's come to the point now where I do the occasional run just on a whim to see if lady luck will smile and grant me one of the many pieces I'm looking for. Some of what I'm looking for I'm not sure will be 'better' than the EQ I now have on my level 25+ toons now.

(The solution?)
Even though I have some anecdotal evidence that the drop rates seem to be different in certain quests, I wouldn't necessarily bump drop rates. What I'd like to see is a universal three for one turn in so that if you collect 3 shards that you don't want or need you can turn it into a single shard you do need. Also I would look at having the base items show up a little more in the epic quest end rewards. Maybe, just maybe after that is sorted you can consider giving some epic items a bump like heroic comms do (but that would kind of be on a item by item basis).

[Loromir]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


The old epic items (Scroll, Shard, Seal to upgrade Items) are underpowered based on the difficulty it takes to get all peices (With a couple of exceptions). All of the Sands Items in particular are underpowered when compared to the work involved to upgrade them. I've never/ever seen an epic ring of spell storing. I would suggest either droping the complete epic items in the quests or dramatically increasing the drop rate of the Seals and Shards.

I think the CITW items are at about the right power level but some of the FOT items are abit underwhelming.

I would like to see a couple of named Khopeshes added to the mix as well as named Mauls.. I think we have enough named greatswords.

I would love to see an epic Carnifex (Which means we need epic delera's chain, but that is another discussion).

[Teh_Troll]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Anyone who answers anything other than Green Steel needs to have their kneecaps smashed with a herring. It is by far the best system in the game. Customizable is GREAT. Let me put the HP/SP item when I want it, not have to arbitrariliy move 10 items around because a new shiny only exists as a tiara. Seriously, a Troll wearing a tiars? Oh the Humanity . . .

And weapons . . . lots of great weapon choices in the weapon that I WANT.

A close second is the Colored slot system we now have. Customization is wonderful.

Honorable Mention to Cannith Challenge loot, but since I hate challenges with a passion I won't run them anyway.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Just right: Fens epics. TOD rings, Alchemicals back when Epic LOB was epic and not a joke (EE drops Tier 1 spirits? Are you high?). Green steel, non-Titan Raid loot.

Too ridiculous: Desert epics, VON Epics, especially the ESOS. Named loot in TOR. it's friggin ridiculous that at about 500 EE TOR runs (no, I'm not kidding) I'm still looking for helms (random SUCKS!!!). Titan gear but that's moot because it's all outdated junk.




- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Casters need some caster-sticks that consolidate stuff. Element of lore of necro DC or something. This is where the random revolution really sucks . . . I can't think of a named Caster stick that isn't ****.




*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Random loot wouldn't be so terrible if you'd adjust the halfling sacrifice modifier.

[alancarp]

...
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.* ...
*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

I don't have time to answer everything, but I can quickly give these thoughts:

1. I really hate the Shard/Scroll/Seal system as implemented. BTA for each component would help, but the difficulty of getting all three pieces together on the same toon that can actually use the item in question is really annoying. At this point in the game, though, even when you manage to do this, the items are typically underpowered (given that they were level 20 items at the time that level 20 was the max) to justify use. Exceptions I can cite for myself: the Epic Antique Great Axe is still very useful through many Epic levels. Epic Noxious Fang is likewise useful since Returning weapons don't get a lot better after level 20. Masks of Comedy/Tragedy: not so much.

2. The disclaimer about 'randomness' aside, the lack of ANY named item showing up to support Epic crafting (again, I'm thinking Shards/Seals/Scrolls) in their prescribed chests hampers the process significantly. I don't mind rolling the dice and not getting what I'm looking for. What I mind is that I often don't see anything at all. For example, there might be about a 15% chance of any Seal showing up in the Epic chest for The Snitch. Once you get a Seal, then there might be a 5% chance that it's the one you want. Then (as I say) you need to hope you are using the right toon.

In general? We have too many different named loot crafting 'systems' in the game (Alchem, Green Steel, Heroic Comms, Conflux, Adamantine Ore, Shard/Seal/Scroll ... that's off the top of my head). We have things that say there is possibly a way to unlock powers for some bracelet that I have never seen. I don't know that ONE solution fits all, but maybe at least fewer solutions?

Hope that's somewhat coherent. Oh, and I agree with teh_Troll.... how could I not? :)

[sirgog]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


Question 1:


Best system: The Shroud system (assuming you want at most two items, it becomes ridiculously grindy after that). If you aren't considering Shroud items 'named', then Fall of Truth raid loot is done well - the base item at 95% power is quite accessible, but unlocking the remaining 5% of the item's power takes a good number of runs or running the raid at a higher difficulty.

Why (Shroud): Minimal RNG (other than the '15 runs in a row with no LDS), constant progress toward your goal, immense customization.




Question 2:

Can we please make a distinction between challenge and grind here. The Epic Sword of Shadow is one of the 'easiest' items to get as it drops in content that is trivial on EN and still easy on EH, yet the low drop rates make people run that easy content over and over until any sense of fun has been sucked out. Likewise if you put a super-powerful item in Waterworks with a 0.2% drop rate, this would be awful for the game, and EN VON6 and 1 are not much harder than that at level 20-28.

- Right difficulty, levelling item: Boots of the Innocent. Seems to drop more on elite than normal, drops rarely enough to have some trade value but not so rarely that you never see it.
- Right difficulty, endgame item: Any single-version Gianthold item (e.g. EE Arcing Sky)

- Too rare: EE Helm of the Black Dragon, +3 Str version (because builds all want the same versions, these are super-rare)
- Also too rare: Desert and VON epic item components (Seal of the Marilith Chain, Shard of the Kundarak Delving Boots)

- Too difficult: There are no examples of this in game.


Question 3:

The Lord of Blades raid loot needs love the most.

[Grailhawk]

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Green Steal. It had the right balance every shroud you did you got 1 step closer. An important part of this was that 90% of the ingredients needed to create an item were unbound. This meant that if you didn't get a stone but needed one and your friend had one you could trade the arrow you got for his stone.


Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.

Green Steal items had the right difficulty. Old Shard/Seal/Scroll items had the wrong difficulty to much random chance involved you had to pray that the loot gods favored you 4 times in a row of that system. Named items having a low chance to drop is fine needing 4 chance to get your one item, no thanks.



What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Be very nice to have a selection of one handed axes with good crit profiles a few with 19-20/x3 base would be very nice. More 2 handed axes with the same 19-20/x3 base crit profile would be nice too.

[Livmo]

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Howdy Dr.,


My favorite loot system is when an named item drops its based on the difficulty setting, Epic, Epic Hard, Epic Elite. Same for heroic. Results are guranteed if you get one and you don't have to spend forever trying to get shards/seals//scrolls that never drop.

The Pale Green Ioun Stone is the only one that comes to mind at the moment from Shadow of a Doubt and running on elite difficulty that seems to be the right amount. These are the hardest for me to get and I don't have any, because the shards don't drop for me; Chimera's Fang, Darkstorm Helm, Templars Retribution, Doublecrossbow, Silver Slinger. In fact I've tried for a year now and have run the quests many times, and I still don't have any epic item that requires a shard, seal, and scroll. I'm not even sure they exist other than screenshot in DDO Wiki.

Rune Arms. As an arty I feel I lost spell power in the Enhancement pass. It would be great if the higher level rune arms offered a red/orange/purple slot so spell power can be buffed with a red augment. Right now the rune arm augment slot combos are colorless and yellow, or colorless and green, or green and yellow. Colorless can go in a any slot. It would be great if the augment slots are red/orange/purple and yellow, and red/orange/purple and green. I list orange and purple slots in the options, because you can slot a red augment into them to boost spell power. Also, how about an Epic Chimera's Breath rune arm with augment slots?


Rune Arms, http://ddowiki.com/page/Rune_arm
Augment slots, http://ddowiki.com/page/Augment_Slot

Thanks for the opportunity to share my suggestions and experiences.

Best,

Livmo

[rosedarkthorn]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

- If I had to choose an upgrade system, it would either be the House Cannith challenge item system, the Greensteel system, or the Comms of Heroism system. I'm not a big fan of grinding. I don't find it fun to do one specific set of quests over a hundred times to get or finish an item I want. I prefer simplicity. With the House Cannith challenges, I didn't mind doing them over and over because most of them last between 10 and 15 minutes, depending on which one you're doing. There were some I hated doing because they didn't feel rewarding enough compared to others. For example, Time Is Money compared to Disruptor. In Time Is Money, I could get 300 ingredients easy. In Disruptor, I was lucky to get 100 if I won at all. It felt really unrewarding. However, the items felt worth the time it took, even if I opted to trade in ingredients to get other ones I needed from challenges I didn't want to do, which took twice if not three times as long sometimes. Despite Greensteel's long grind time, I like how customizable the items are. It's much more preferable to randomly generated effects because you can control what you put on it. The only problem is I don't like the Vale chain at all and I hated Shroud for a long time. Now, I'm just desensitized to it. The Comms of Heroism upgrade system was alright because it didn't require a ridiculous amount of Comms and you could expect to get the item finished within a reasonable amount of time, as long as you had the favor. Plus, if you're farming Comms whiles farming favor, you'll probably have enough Comms by the time you get enough favor, so that works itself out. The only problem with that, was how long CITW items took to get, but the raid boxes kind of fixed that for the most part.

- The Elemental Longbow was my most treasured weapon up until I got Pinion and I felt that it had the right difficulty for the most part, even though I do believe some challenges are grossly unbalanced ingredient wise like I mentioned above. Upgrading Pinion wasn't overly terrible either once I started farming Fall of Truth, so both of those felt okay. The ones I felt are too hard are the items that require shard/seal/scroll drops in the older epic quests. I lost count of how many times I've repeated Spinner of Shadows to get the shard to upgrade the Bow of the Silver Flame. For a month or two, I used to run The Tide Turns once every day to get the shard for Midnight Greetings. I never did complete the Belt of Mrononan or the Goggles of Delving from Plane of Night and I started looking for those two years ago. I gave up.

- Shard/seal/scroll items need to have a solution to the grind. The grind is too much. Some of these items have even been outdated by items released in the expansions and are no longer worth farming. Plus farming one quest over a hundred times is just not fun. At all. As for weapon types specifically, I would like to see more named scimitars, falchions, greataxes, greatswords, bastard swords especially, maces, hammers and mauls. Morninglord clerics are even supposed to be able to get bonuses to hammers and mauls as well, so I think they should be added to their weapon proficiency feat list. Why do they have bonuses if they can't use the weapons? More diverse divine equipment would be great too, considering that most of the stuff that exists is mostly just focused on healing. Bards also need more equipment choices. I believe there are only one or two named weapons that are geared toward them.

[Aloka]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


1) Cannith Challenge equipment, hands down. It's less dependent on random luck and you know you're making progress towards upgrading your items. Not the best items in the game, but very reasonable for the effort (at least they were at lvl 20).
2) FOT and CiTW items seem about right. Old epic eq created by getting the seal, shard, scroll are waay to hard for their value.
3) Not technically a class or weapon type, but I'd like to see Cannith Challenge eq upgraded to include lvl 24/28.

[rosedarkthorn]

My favorite loot system is when an named item drops its based on the dififculty setting, Epic, Epic Hard, Epic Elite. Same for heroic. Results are guranteed if you get one and you don't have to spend forever trying to get shards/sea/s/scrolls that never drop.

I also agree with this.

[TPICKRELL]

Right:

Raid loot I'd vote for Shroud as about right, BUT note that's as much about Shroud being a very good raid as much as is it about GreenSteel crafting. If Greensteel were crafted in Caught in the Web it would be on my worst list. Greensteel was a very good crafting system made better by being linked heavily to the Shroud. Greensteel itself is good because of the good balance between drop rate and steady progress and BTA vs BTC vs unbound ingredients. It had a fair amount of randomness in it, but over time you were guaranteed to be able to make the item you wanted. And re-running Shroud was not as painful as grinding most raids.

Non Raid Loot- Although its outdated now I liked the final Dragontouched system. If the ingredients had been unbound or even BTA and a better exchange system in place for tiers of ingredients this would have challenged Shroud/Greensteel for the top of my list

Too Difficult:

Dream Edge -- The low drop rate, and number of items made it very difficult to get the right dream edge and everything except the right one or two was vendor trash.

TOD Rings-- I liked the TOD system, except that the number of rings and drop rate made it very random as to whether the grind was reasonable or over the top. If there were a more steady approach to getting the right TOD ring instead of a complete random draw on the base ring it would be on my best list.

TORC -- Low drop rate means depending on the 20th list and the number of items in the pack means depending on 40th or 60th or 80th lists. Not fun. The 20th list should have include choice of all items not subset. 20 repeats is enough for one base item IMO. That comment applies to TOD rings as well. 20 repeats should be enough to get me my choice of base TOD rings, I shouldn't have to do 40 or 60 or 80 to get the right one for my class.


Need Love:

#1 by a mile for me...Docents that are good choices for different classes rather than a mixed bag of meh

Shuriken have been neglected for years

[Qhualor]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

1. I like the Shroud crafting. With crafting planners its easy to understand and there lots of different weapon effects with bonus procs. A lot of item and weapon choices. Except for shards, the ingredients are not bound so you could trade or sell easily enough without feeling forced to run Shroud for one more large scale. This isn't to say it couldn't be improved or expanded on.

The scroll/shard/seal upgrade system is good too. Its a much simpler system requiring less ingredients to make an epic weapon or item.

2. Never thought the difficulty for level appropriate named items was a problem. We all have different tastes and what we think is a good item for our characters may differ from others. I just think a named item should be as powerful as level appropriate and worth going after.

A named item that I think is too hard to acquire? That's a tough one without including your * bards make for good loot sacrifices, but even better if they are halfling bards.

3. Eberron epics. All of it needs a good pass and long overdue. Start with Sands and Von.

My feeling for heroic level named loot is that I don't stay in those 1-20 level ranges for very long to really enjoy the named loot. Since the changes from BTA to BTCoE, I just sell all that when I like to pass heroic gear to my characters for TRing purposes. It doesn't matter if that level 15 named item is badass. I would only enjoy it for a day or two on one character than I would just vendor it off. Unless its BTA, I won't bother running heroic quests for named loot. The exception would be heroic items I can upgrade to epic versions. That I don't have a problem with.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Shroud GOOD.
Alchemical weapons (Lord of Blades) GOOD.
Cannith challenge (Vaults of the Artificers) crafted items GOOD.

Things that let you pile up multiple effects of your choice are very nice options. I especially love Shroud items because there are enough things to pick from that you still have to make real choices even though you can pile a bunch of effects on the same item.

When making weapons, please know that critical rage and critical multiplier are HUGELY important - more important than most other aspects of the weapon put together. It's the critical profile that makes the epic Sword of Shadow such a beast even more than the +10 and large base damage amount (although those two things are both nice as well).

[Missing_Minds]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Greensteel because you could create nearly any item you wanted, and it would have useful effects. It got less when Turbine nerfed skill point stacking. Note that useful can also mean fun.

desired item.... Just about any base raid item after the changes to raids to add to the list of 20th and such.
I'll name several that felt to hard. All upgraded version in CitW. Seriously, comms are too annoying to gather up with to such amounts. Now, please remember this point, I'll be back to its generic soon.

Weapon types/class equipment.... I'm a strange puppy on this one. I think that most gear got love, but being able to craft armor has been utterly forgotten compared to gear and weapons. In this same vein... potions, lock picks, healing/repair kits.


Now to Random and my previous point. Random is random and bad luck, but when I've run shroud for near a year and I'm near tripple digits with bone and sharpnel, barely in the teens with scales and stone, and about mid way for the rest, random can do some rather mean, nasty, explicit things. For the sake of FUN... PLEASE make conversion systems to help offset the complete, wretched, deposing offal that is bad luck.

Also some systems are great when they first come out, but then others never run it which makes it very difficult for your casual people and newcomers to ever be able to collect gear they want that does exist. While something like Shroud can most certainly be done at level, how often do you really ever see pugs up with the level range accepting such people? I lost track of the times pugs that were setup only wanted high levels to help guarantee a win. I don't know of any good way to fix this (without rewriting the entire reward system) so I just ask to keep such in mind. As the game ages/advances the old may not be run by the majority to the sadness of others.

[RapkintheRanger]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

So my favorite system is the Green Steel system -- sort of.

I partly like it for the flexibility and quality of the gear. The fact that you can create something of considerable high quality that you can use for leveling now and later if you TR (access at level 12). Some other gear, by the time you get it you will have out leveled it.

I also like this because i liked the Vale and i liked the Shroud. If this system was in place in the Storm Horns... all great. If this process was in place in that other part of the pack (the one with the prison and shardakai and all that), then i would hate it. because green Steel requires playing the same quest multiple times, lets hope it is an enjoyable quest/environment.

I also liked the Caught in the Web system. I liked getting the Pinion on my 20th completion, I like the upgrade system so you can add some power. Less flexible than green steel and a little frustrating to run a raid over and over and not get the base item... but still good. If u made it a guaranteed choice on the 20th completion, and maybe increased the comms that are earned per run.

I have tired of the seal shard scroll business. The lack of flexibility is no fun, the time it takes... outleveled by the time you craft it. Honestly i gathered 20+ envenomed blades but never managed to get a seal shard and scroll. Then i just quit. If the components were tradable with players or could be turned in (3 scrolls for any scroll you want) that would help a lot. But instead of 3 for 1, why not just replace the system with Green Steel mats....


THAT SAID: Green Steel. It is hard to see what you can get. You have to do an external search for a planner. That is silly. A build tree similar to the way that enhancements works would be nice. Some way to see what you can get, what you can combine and how you get from where you are to where you are going would be appreciated.

[Bogenbroom]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

I'd have to say greensteel, not that I love it. I am not a fan of repetitive raiding, but if the shards were the only thing that required running the raid and the ingredients were available in more 6 man quests I'd say it was excellent. The *rate* of building greensteel feel right, but the grind does not.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Dragontouched armor feels about right.
Anything in the old epic upgrade system was too hard.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Armor/docents. Armor has the dual effect of enhancing your character and being a cosmetic. I think a greensteel type system that took both aspects into account would be welcomed.

[Derana]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Seal, Shard, Scroll system. I loved to get that one part needed to finish an epic item. I still get super excited about special scrolls (sword of shadow), seals and shards (I was happy as hell when i pulled a shard of the red dragon last week and even happier when i got a 2nd one 2 days ago, what a luck!)

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
right difficulty: abishai set
too hard: epic ring of spell storing

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
I am quite happy with the gauntlets of immortality although they are limited to +120 devotion on max upgrade tier. however, I'd love to have a pure healer weapon with lots of devotion, but it must be better at stats than the citw weapons + planar focus of erudition (spell points/extra spell power is lovely) /prowess (prr is very nice for healers) effects or theres no need to even think about it, because, as i said, there are the gauntlets of immortality that cover the need and that i would not give up for +144 devotion.

[Dendrix]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Shroud Loot far and away.
Fun interesting raid. Items customisable to suit your character. Could get most bits on any character - only required a few BTC bits on the right character.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Epic Sword of Shadows. 300+ completions of the raid on 4 different to get it.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Khopesh Weapon
Cleric/FvS/Bard classes
But really, shroud stype build any weapon you want makes all classes, builds and weapons viable.

[Gratch]

1 What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
2 Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
3 What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

1) I liked the variable crafting capability and long term earned payoff of both the Shroud and Lord of Blades series. I don't feel all named items should fit this mold but it would be nice to have a system like this for > L20 items.

2) The green scale armor was actually an interesting item to acquire. It required a lot of one base item, some favor and some Comms. Too bad the green armors were mediocre when they came out and then fully replaced by the benefits from the epic blue scale set.

Getting the Ring of Spell Storing is nigh impossible. 4 items to get (2 of which are easy - base item & scroll), 1 of which is difficult (seal from wizking or ADQ), and 1 of which is nigh impossible (shard from ADQ/DQ but at a < .1% drop rate from one end chest). There are a number of other "desert explorer" items also in this "never drops" category. Sad that all these L20 shard/seal/scroll items - some of which are relevant again with ETR'ing are even tougher to acquire than before (mostly because there's so much more to run that running enough of a seal/shard-drop quest to finish an item rarely occurs). Would be nice if there were seal/shard 3 for 1 trade-ins as well for every set of epic packs using the old base-item/seal/shard/scroll method.

3) Any weapon type that isn't covered in the +1 natural crit range from CitW raid items...
More one of a kind special use named items that have their own special property: Examples: FoM from VoN Delving Boots, +11 stat items, Spell Absorption or Immunity type items, epic detect dc100 secret door item, epic knock item, more high level spell buff clickies: Mass Dward, Mass Heal, Mass Greater Restoration, Mass Tumble, etc. No dc spell items. Those always end up being caster level: not even good enough for casual.

[barecm]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks! - What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.All of my answers revolve around the same loot system. The original epic loot with the seal, shard and scroll. It is the best since it requires a bit of a challenge to acquire. By far, the hardest item I have grinded for is/was the epic Thornlord bow. I STILL have the seal, the scroll and the bow and cannot ever get the shard. Never seen it, never pulled it, nothing. I got to the point where I could solo DQ on EH, but still no shard. Then Pinion came out and I simply stopped trying. Basically spent 2-3 years trying and never got all the ingredients. I think the loot is WAY too easy to get. It is why people get bored and move on from this game. I have found myself playing less as a result. Now that the raiders boxes have been delivered to everyone, there is no standout loot to really go after. It is kind of sad, but that is what happens when you mass distribute the best weapons in the game.I would like to see the proposed loot where you can have your loot grow with you. In particular, I would like to see a lot of flexibility in choosing the weapon abilities so that everyone doesn't have the exact same thing. Also, give some bonuses for TRing and have the loot TR with you going back to 0 with some side effect benefit like TRing does for our characters.

[GotSomeQuestions]

Count me in as another vote for some good divine caster items. Not just +Heal and +Devotion, but stuff that's genuinely useful for casting offensive spells (and keep in mind we already have plenty of +Spellpower trinkets). A well-itemized +Wisdom item, for example (not one with Accuracy), would be great.

Here's some high level divine caster named items that I enjoy using:
Holy Symbol of Lolth
Wall of Wood
Gauntlets of Immortality
Sage's Locket (Evocation DCs matter much more to divine casters than to arcanes)
Sage's Skullcap
Leaves of the Forest

[ArcaneArcher52689]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
I like the cauldron of Sora-kell. Gives you lots of options to upgrade lots of different weapons. It's also very straight forward about what you need. The main requirement is farming the marks and weapons, which while a nuisance, isn't too difficult as long as you know where the chests are.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Just right:
*Staff of shadow- This item is not "uber" but just the right blend of power for a simple simple weapon 4 quests, anywhere from 1 to 3 times. It's also an extremely useful weapon (for fusing)
*King's forest barter rewards- These all feel appropriate for "starter" epic gear, and are easily acquired
*grave wrappings- great set of wraps, horrible drop rate. 4 quests 1-3 times, good.

Too hard:
*any of the seal of X rings from the three houses in MOTU. - These should have been an end reward option, or at least a third completion option.
*Epic X from the Web of Chaos (probably all epics, but i've gotten one epic item from the Sentinels chain in 1/4th effort it's taken me to STILL not have an epic from here)


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Shuriken - Great to have spell touched, great to have the morning star. can we get a named Spelltouched shuriken? or a named shuriken that has a chance of double rainbow effects?

handwraps - Gravewrappings are still the best wraps money can buy. Antipode is good, but neg-levels are better.
Q-staffs (can you tell i play monks?)- Stout oak walking stick and sireth. Not good aligned, forget sireth. Would like to see a q-staff with metalline/aligned that's a good DR breaker. Doesn't need much else.
Longswords- Hard to beat oathblade.
Bows- Bow of sinew, pinion, Silver longbow. Silver longbow is viable at later levels purely for the 19-20/x3

Trinkets- I think the trinket slot is a perfect place to implement a multi-effect upgrade-able item. Make it a chain of 5-6 quests to gather ingredients to add effects

[Theolin]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Shroud Loot: you will get what you want in a given (though sometimes large) number of runs
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Just right: shroud items
Too annoying/hard: I hear that cannith has some items in some raid or something
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
caster sticks (one handed types) - are there any? well, besides belashyrra's?

and just because ... anyone know why belashyrra's scepters are hammers?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.
Ring of Spell Storing .... that fits sooooo nice in this category
oh & Epic ring of spell storing ... does more than one person actually have one of these?

[GotSomeQuestions]

The ONLY case where skill point stacking from exceptional skills was a nerf was if you had three or more +1 items. In every other case you ended up with the same or more skill points. I'm willing to bet that affected less than 1 character per server.
I didn't bother read the rest of your post as your early sentence is such a blatant distortion of the truth that I expect the rest of your message to be similar distortions of the truth
+1 exceptional never stacked with itself, only with +2 or +3. There was NO combination of items that you could possibly have been wearing that would have had your skill totals go down after the change. It's impossible. Anyone calling it a nerf is either misinformed or deliberately lying.

[Shmuel]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Ok I'll bite.

-best loot upgrade system is unquestionably Shroud. This is because there is
1. always some benefit to running the raid and
2. (importantly) it is/was worth it for virtually all characters to seek multiple items from the raid.

- I think the ee items from the high road series are as close to good as possible with the current game.
I know that droprates for shards for the ring of spell storing, wolf whistle, epic thornlord, and the sword of shadows are MUCH too low (like 10X too low for sos and 500X too low for eross droprate)

- What is most lacking? I would say
1. Anything for the least loved class in the game, bards
2. Khopehes
3. items with greensteel effects that can replace greensteel items at epic levels. Specifically this includes items which have BOTH elemental spell power AND and improved elemental spell power, or elemental energy, improved elemental energy, and greater elemental energy. Since these are stacking bonuses to the same things, having one or the other tiers of them still does not replace the corresponding greensteel item in a meaningful way (I’m looking at you war wizard set!!!)


Even though you did not ask, I’ll add some things I think you ought to consider.

Other than flavor items which no one barely ever use, named loot is sought for one of two reasons:
1. It is significantly better than any random loot at the same level
Like 1-2 stat points better for quest loot or 3-4 stat points better for raid loot or
200% of the dps of random weapon for quest loot or 500-600% as much for raid loot

2. It has unique effects that can be found nowhere else in the game.- Where are the wolf whistles, the clickies of ruin, mass frog, and forced escape, the things that multiply damage instead of only adding to spell power, the items granting feats, true resurrecting items, stacking bonuses to important skills like UMD , the weird effects that enhance class abilities like the epic elyd edge making songs aoe, weapons that use unusual stat modifers for damage like the epic dynastic falcata or staff of inner sight? It is time to get a little more creative again folks.

Also- I will add- the number one single best thing about named items is that THEY ARE NOT RANDOM. Putting random effects on named items was one of the worst ideas in the history of ddo (only the offer wall was worse IMHO). It makes “ghostbane” seem like an epic win by comparison.
STOP PUTTING RANDOM EFFECTS ON NAMED ITEMS!!!!!!!!!

[AlmGhandi]

Greensteel is by far my favorite, but such has already been said! Its the variety, but the vale quests are also fun for me, and doable.

The sands epics are waaaaay too hard to acquire.... because of the sheer numbers-but then that has already been said!

[SirValentine]

Alchemical weapons (Lord of Blades) GOOD.


Not to disagree, I do kind of like the Greensteel & Alchemical crafting, too, but:

When you went from just Epic to Epic Normal/Hard/Elite, you totally screwed up the way ingredients for Alchemicals fall in Lord of Blades.

Please fix that! Try this rule: "Running the hardest difficulty you can will mean you need fewer average runs to get what you need."

Right now, people basically have to run Heroic Normal for Tier 1, Heroic Hard or Elite for Tier 2, Epic Normal for Tier 3 Spirits, and Epic Hard (or Elite) for Tier 3 binding fragments. Why don't Tier 3 spirits drop on Epic Elite? Why don't Epic difficulties drop Tier 3 stuff AND Tier 1/2 stuff? Having to deliberately run a trivially-easy difficulty because a challenging difficulty CAN'T get you what you need is silly.

[gelgoog]

-What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Cannith Challenge loot. You can plan and know what you are getting without having to leave game to look up what you are crafting via crafting sites.. The items are good for the level, and you don’t have to grind that much to aquire. Would love to see cannith challenge loot goto lvl 28-30 in the future.
Eveningstar trade ins are a close second for gear.




-Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Epic Elemental Greataxe of Fire Tier 3 felt good to acquire.

Epic Sword of Shadows is the weapon I find difficult to get, I don’t raid that much nor have hours upon hours to grind von 5-6. when I log I do what I can in the limited amount of time I can, hence I like doing cannith challenges for epic loot. Not a fan of the Shard, Seal, Scroll and item crafting.




-What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Dwarven Axes need a lot of loot love. Not one is in the Cannith Challenges, odd.
Also more trinkets, googles, rings, and equipment sets need more loot love. I love having equipment sets like the Purple Dragon Knight set in eveningstar. (would be nice to upgrade them to a tier 3 item)

[hit_fido]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Green Steel and Cannith Challenges


It's not all or nothing; each run (Shroud, Challenges) gets you some degree closer to your goal. Contrast this with the grind of seal/shard/scroll or the absolute worst system, the original Dragontouched rune crafting.
Progression tied to skill; each run's rewards are roughly proportional to your mastery of the content.
Customization; Green Steel offers a lot of customization aspects, effects, fringe benefits (exceptional skill bonus for example). Of utmost importance was being able to choose (almost) any weapon type - great for when named loot just doesn't satisfy a given niche weapon. Cannith Challenge less so, but even then there is a good variety of items, tiers and finally the crafting aspect at tier 3.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Could name plenty of examples; randomness may apply. Here's two. Right difficulty: Tira's Splendor. Too hard: Mysterious Bauble.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Dwarven Axes - stop coughing up really lame and un-creative dwarven axes. Mountain's Fist? Booooring. Prison Break? Boooooring. Templar's Justice is the last one that seemed to stand out in some way and even that one has a bastard sword copycat. Not much currently in the way of named hand axes either... the next big content is a dwarven castle? Don't let this opportunity slip by....
Named Augments - still far too few of these in game. Lots of potential for creativity.
Quivers - introduce two or three more of these with something interesting enough to make a harder choice over Abbot or Poison.

[DANTEIL]

I agree with many that Green Steel is probably the best named loot system -- even as a casual player when the cap was at 20, I was able to join in on Shroud runs and gather enough ingredients to make something that suited me. Most of the other named loot systems have seemed either out of reach for me (epic shard seals scrolls) or just too random to bother with (Reaver's). That being said, however, I agree with this:


Green Steel. It is hard to see what you can get. You have to do an external search for a planner. That is silly. A build tree similar to the way that enhancements works would be nice. Some way to see what you can get, what you can combine and how you get from where you are to where you are going would be appreciated.

Needing an external planner seems like an unnecessary burden.

[droid327]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


I like the Cannith Challenge system. I'm a soloist, so anything that's raid-gated is essentially non-existent, as far as I'm concerned. I like how its incremental, how you can do something to progress it without it being a complete jackpot/bust mechanic. I like how it integrates crafting (more Craftable +X on named items!!!). The items themselves are also very desirable over alternatives at-level.

I like when systems let you choose your base item (eg Eveningstar, Greensteel, Alchemical). Too often you're left out of new content if you're not a Q-staff, Shortsword, or Greataxe user. Likewise, too many nice items get underutilized because its a (for example) Maul, and the only decent Maul in the game, and no one's going to build a Maul user just to use it from L16-22...

Quiver of Alacrity is too hard to acquire, especially now that its not the only named quiver in the game anymore. Anything that's raid-gated runs into the problem of being too hard to acquire, once that raid is deprecated, which inevitably every raid does become...

I feel like Gianthold gear is appropriately difficult. You have to run half a dozen or a dozen quests, just like completing a quest arc, which I think is an appropriate amount of effort for a named item.

Item types I *personally* find myself wishing there were more named versions: **REPEATERS**. Docents. Quivers. Trinkets (quality more than quantity, most trinkets are junk). Throwers. Ammo (how about some 100% returning named bolts and arrows?). Scimitars, especially now that Tempest is Scimitar-specialist.

Named items I currently use on my main, a WF Arti/Rgr (or have in my TR cache to use later): Minos Legens, Giantcraft Docent, Bracers of Wind, both Cannith rings, Backstabber's Gloves, Ghost-Waking Cloak (Eveningstar repeaters, Archaic Device and Lucid Dreams, Golden Guile, Needle courtesy of the Raiders Reward).

[Qhualor]

1. I like the Shroud crafting. With crafting planners its easy to understand and there lots of different weapon effects with bonus procs. A lot of item and weapon choices. Except for shards, the ingredients are not bound so you could trade or sell easily enough without feeling forced to run Shroud for one more large scale. This isn't to say it couldn't be improved or expanded on.

The scroll/shard/seal upgrade system is good too. Its a much simpler system requiring less ingredients to make an epic weapon or item.

2. Never thought the difficulty for level appropriate named items was a problem. We all have different tastes and what we think is a good item for our characters may differ from others. I just think a named item should be as powerful as level appropriate and worth going after.

A named item that I think is too hard to acquire? That's a tough one without including your * bards make for good loot sacrifices, but even better if they are halfling bards.

3. Eberron epics. All of it needs a good pass and long overdue. Start with Sands and Von.

My feeling for heroic level named loot is that I don't stay in those 1-20 level ranges for very long to really enjoy the named loot. Since the changes from BTA to BTCoE, I just sell all that when I like to pass heroic gear to my characters for TRing purposes. It doesn't matter if that level 15 named item is badass. I would only enjoy it for a day or two on one character than I would just vendor it off. Unless its BTA, I won't bother running heroic quests for named loot. The exception would be heroic items I can upgrade to epic versions. That I don't have a problem with.

after thinking more on this, i would like to add also..

DT crafting. it needs to be updated badly. getting the runes isn't as hard as it used to be, be the effects you can put on the armor needs to be bumped up that is more fitting for the level range. there are better random items that are also found on those runes. also would like to see additional armor types and maybe shield crafting too? i would love to see a similar Shroud crafting for armor and i think DT crafting would be good for that.

TOD sets need to be fixed. i don't see much of a reason to even run the pack except for Yugo favor, despite that i do actually think its one of the best packs in the game. with the set bonus not working and the changes to exceptional not stacking, it pretty much killed it off.

[Nightmanis]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Heroic Comms tied to favor was my favorite. It gave PUGS incentive to run EE content, the favor wasn't set BONE CRUSHINGLY HIGH. Only problem is the minute chance of comms dropping in CITW (a huge mistake that persists to this day, and if FOT didn't give a guaranteed amount would make this my least favorite system.)

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Personally the VON series was just about right in difficulty in acquiring (but I know some have had a PITA time with SOS's and such), anything in the Sands was a **** shoot just because for the sheer amount of items reducing the chance to sub-minuscule. Shards from the old epic crafting are still so rare that it's stupid.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Throwing. GOOD Docents. Rapier's, Scimmy's, a good Maul. Throw in some really good augments.

Rapier's have Balizarde. They don't need a whole lot else, though some variety might be nice. Weaker version with more slots would be cool.

[N-0cturn]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel for the mentioned reasons. I also like the Weapons from the Cannith Challenges. You have a lot of choice regarding the weapon type and the weapons can be customized via Cannith Crafting.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Right: The GH-Armor system. I like that with the relict armor you have a starter version that is super easy to get and then can upgrade to dragonscale. The droprate from the scales rewards running at higher difficulties and you have a steady progress.

Wrong: Old Epics. Getting the Shard you need is a pain, especially for some Epics. Sometimes the drop rates for Shards is horrible (TTT) sometimes there are just to many different shards (Sands). Granted you gather quite a lot of stuff that you didn't want in the process but most of that is just useless junk even at level 20.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

- Longsword: There are quite a few named ones but no good ones after low/mid levels. It seems like every higher level Longsword is only good for one type of enemies (Evil Outsider, Dragons).
- Khopesh/Dwarven Waraxe: Very few named ones

[Jasparion]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Firstly on loot strengths:

1. Raid loot should be the best loot in the game.
2. Named dungeon loot should be the 2nd best loot in the game. If you are going to continue with difficulty based loot then Elite/Epic Elite loot should be nearly as good as Raid loot.
3. Random loot should be nice, but not as good as loot you need to actually hunt for - I should not be able to kit out a toon in 30 minutes of shopping on the Auction House and be nearly as good as someone who spent months or even years farming content endlessly for Raid items or EE items.
4. I really would like to see the love given to some of the iconic Named items which are from P&P. Maybe these should be as powerful as Elite versions. Maybe we can see some Epic versions of iconic P&P Named items.

Now, back to your first 2 points.

5. Im not a huge fan of loot upgrades, but the Dreaming Dark is a decent system now. So too Reavers Fate. If Im going to list something I really dont like - its the old Epic items with Scroll, Seal, Shard. Either remove this system, or give us the chance to swap any Scroll, any Seal, any Shard so we can complete our old items. You are already making it so we really dont run these much - with Epic Comms dropping in tiny numbers in the old dungeons.
6. The vast majority of items are a random drop rate. We'd probably like the idea of higher drop rates but then if everyone was rolling in uber Named loot we'd be complaining about power creep. I dont farm dungeons and raids, so Im probably not the best placed to give an opinion on how things could be made better. That said, if an item has a drop rate of 0.01% then you may as well make it a global item and not specific to any one dungeon. Even the serious farmer is relying on luck when they get that.

[xberto]

I'm a fan of sets and set bonuses. I thought the commendation collects in Eveningstar was great mechanic. The flawless dragon/helm and Tower ring sets worked well too. DDO has seen some way different ways a delivering loot !

A cool thing about some of the Tower rings, is they had special compliments for enhancements. I'd like to see this revisited. Maybe a set item that would have a general bonus but have something extra to compliment individual capstone enhancements (this idea inspired by the overpowered multiclass discussions.... they really are overpowered!). Enhancement complimenting sets would be a great followup to the Enhancement pass!

I loved sets back in the Diablo days!




- Khopesh/Dwarven Waraxe: Very few named ones

This too!

[MeliCat]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel - collecting and ton of ingredients and being able to make lots of different things that are still useful even today: 3x pos weapons, displacement clickies, haste clickies, raise dead. Shame it doesn't work for handwraps.

If you mean "named" named... then I'm going to say eSOS because it's still useful. I'm sick of systems that are only useful for lowbie stuff but not for the long term. Why would I bother investing time and effort into something if it's not going to last?



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Getting things on my 20th - so things from Reavers and TOD. Things like the Torc - well I've been lucky but others haven't. And before you go blaming it on lady luck don't you dare. You set drop rates of things to 2% or whatever. Therefore you are responsible for if a player only has a sample size of say 30, they miss out. Drop rates of 2 out of 100 are only seen as a true percentage if your sample size is in the 1000s. An *individual* doesn't have that sample size. You may look at it as "oh out of 1000 players the drop rate looks right". We look at it from our individual perspective. It is not fair for you to say that a 2% (or 3% etc) drop rate is ok - it's not. Suggestion: Make the 20th end rewards list contain *all* raid loot items instead of just a selection.

Also changing the DQ raid so that the 20th offers shards instead of base items without telling anyone was not cool. I still haven't got it confirmed if I run 19 runs on epic (for xp) if I run the 20th on normal I get a chance at a base item and it's not percentage of runs based. It also seems odd that this is the only raid that does this. Please don't do the same to Von56. DQ you can solo. Von56 you need at least a couple of bodies to help you open North von5 and going up South.

Another one with a crappy drop rate and not even a hope of a 20th end reward - mysterious bauble.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Um - handwraps of course. Also I would love to see caster kamas. Seriously good ones. I would like to see more armors with more 'stuff' on them - useful stuff not just flavour stuff - in random loot gen these days I just vendor trash armour automatically anything past level 10. More and interesting quivers too.

A reversal of the BTCoE nonsense would also be good.

[NPC]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Dreamforge - can solo - some OCD required, but not major OCD. ...and worth upgrading - the cost benefit analysis of the time to upgrade is equal to the benefit of the upgrade.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
right difficulty - multi-part quest chains
too hard - Ring of Spell Storing - I've given up

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Eveningstar - I would like augment slots and multiple armor types for each Commendation trader.
Multiclass equipment - Nice equipment sets in Eveningstar, most don't work well if you've splashed for evasion.
I'd like more named longswords and repeaters.

[Dunklerlindwurm]

One of the most important things about named items is (in my opinion) unique abilitys.

The reason why greensteel equipment is so nice and still very useful at level cap, is because it has effects you cant find anywhere else, yet it doesnt make other named loot pointless.

I even find cannith challenge loot very useful because it has unique effects and augment slots. For example i still wear the rock boots because they have earthgrab guard,stone prison guard and a yellow slot for striding. Where else can i find that :)?

A very bad example is the "new" deadly prefix(and other similar new replacement effects)on random loot that outclasses high level named items.
Example here Epic Elite Dream Visor a level 25 named item is outclasses by a level 13!! random heroic deadly item.
Dream visor gives +5 damage..random item +6 damage not to mention that deadly items make bards pointless somehow.

But to answer your questions.

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel like others already said. Best upgrade system. Unique effects+almost all slots and weapons covered.
Followed by Lord of Blades for the same Reasons. It is just not as good as greensteel.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

The right difficulty-Epic items from Red Fens,Sentinels of Stormreach,Phiarlan Carneval

Too hard to aquire-Epic items from Demon Sands. The problem here is the super high number of named items+the very very low droprate of Shards(Slayer area shards even lower than Raid shards)


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

If you believe it or not there are still weapon types that dont have a single named raid item.

If you dont count crafted items....

Great Xbow for example the only named one is a level 2 from Korthos.

There are no Raid Dwarven axes...
There are no Raid throwing weapons...

[Sebastrd]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Green Steel

- Every run brought you a little bit closer to your goal. I cannot overstate how important that was. With most of the other systems you could run a quest 100 times and be no closer to your goal than when you started. Named loot systems shouldn't be a lottery. That's what Daily Dice and random loot are for.
- It was customizable, meaning I could make what was right for my build instead of building my character around the loot.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

- Green Steel, Dragontouched after the update, Ioun Stones and IQ upgraded gear were all just about right.
- The whole Shard/Seal/Scroll system is just garbage. I wouldn't even call it too hard; I'd call it frustrating.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Honestly, it's not necessarily the loot that needs love. It's the acquiring of the loot that's important. There's a lot of really good stuff out there worth getting. But there are just certain items that I don't ever bother going after - no matter how good they are - because the road to acquiring them is no fun. Abbot and Twilight Forge are probably the two most notorious offenders, but someday when epic weapon options are broadened CitW will go on that list, as well.


*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Don't overlook RNG issues as simply a necessary evil. There are proven ways to mitigate bad luck with good design.

[Jasparion]

This too!

Melee combat focussed Heavy Maces could do with some love as well.

I will add to my post above by agreeing with others. Greensteel weapons or your first Greensteel item are fairly easy to do. Getting multiple items by Cleansing become a challenge.

Cannith challenge items are also fairly good - though I dont really enjoy the challenges themselves too much.

[danotmano1998]

Favorite Loot System:
Greensteel. Because there is something there for every build, and it is completely customizable.

Right Difficulty to Acquire:
Greensteel, or Cannith Challenges

Too hard to Acquire:
Anything with shard/seal/scrolls

Things that need some attention:
Orbs, Runearms, Augments!!!

[Systern]

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

1) Greensteel. The BTC, personal-achievement shards are fairly easy to acquire. The other ingredients being unbound adds a social, collaborative aspect to making the item you want. Every run offers incremental progress towards achieving your goal. The customization is integral to the raid still being popular and run. With static loot raids, once the 7 items in it have been outclassed or the meta shifts to different non-complimentary builds, the content falls out of favor.

Second Favorite is house C challenge gear. Although I don't like that tier 2 and tier 3 upgrades require mats from the level 15 band of challenges. Eveningstar challenges need a resource exchange like house C has. Again, incremental progress. No disclaimer necessary.

One that I don't particularly care for is the tiered N/H/E loot. The thing I don't like about those are the increasing MLs. Having the Normal item as ML 15, Hard as ML16, Elite as ML17 makes it these feel like 3 different items. Not Better versions of the same item. Coupled with the fact that loot is themed to the content of the pack, i.e. Gianthold Loot helps you do Gianthold content and not Necro 4 content, you usually get items with MLs after you need them.

2) Lucid Dreams was right. Third Completion lists made the grind through random chance tolerable. Quiver of Alacrity was too difficult. I held up our TR group because I insisted on getting the item before TRing again. I bought 12 bypass timers knowing that my only realistic hope of seeing one was on a 20th completion list. When that 20th list only had half the items and no quiver, I swore to never buy another raid bypass timer. Lotteries are a tax on people who are bad at math, and bypass timers are just lottery tickets. Turbine has accelerated the game so much lately that the reincarnation timer is the same length as the raid timers. You can TR, Reflag, and rerun the raid again sooner than you can rerun the raid without a bypass. 20 completions is just too far of a goal to have only a better chance at winning a lottery.

3) I've been looking at quarterstaves a lot lately, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of good staves for heroic levels. There's Breeze and Dreamspitter/slicer/which ever, but not a whole lot of sticks that are BTA or a New alt can reasonably hope to acquire. Souleater is good, but outclassed by the new Paragon/Epic +.5w weapons.
As for Class Equipment, Druids need some love. Medium Armor Prof, but all random medium armors are metal and break oath (Oh, but this is the named loot thread. There's a Imbued Darkleaf in TS, Leaves of the Forest, Terrorweb, Flawless Dragonscale for non-metal medium armors). There needs to be more 'gish' type weapons as there's random melee weapons and caster weapons, but very very few hybrid weapons like Ice Razor or Swailing Blade - ones with both caster and melee stats on the same item.

Also, Arti's seem to have fallen out of favor in the loot love. Most named repeaters do stat damage, which is useless with epic ward being a thing in the game. Rune Arms haven't appeared since GH (none in Shadowfell or U20).

[Rinnaldo]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Crystal Cove (Euphonia's barter box. Cannith Crafting is very similar to this.) I like that you can run content at your current, get an item for your current level, and upgrade it for your current level. If you want a higher level version, those are available, too. To contrast this, the loot upgrade barter box for the Mabar festival sucks. Here's why: You have start by buying the LOWEST LEVEL ITEM, instead of one of your level for a few more ingredients. Second, you cannot make good, incremental changes within a level range, you just upgrade to the next level version. It is way more expensive and that means way more farming. There is farming for the previous system, but it is more enjoyable the way it is set up.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Flawless Blue Dragon Armor felt about right. Once I started running Tor, it felt accessible at 20 scales, having gotten two or three in that first run. I happened to loot a Blue Dragon Helm that has a set bonus that goes with the armor, and that was more impetus to keep running to get the set bonus.

Too hard: Trying to upgrade any item using scrolls, shards, and seals. I have never yet gotten a matching full set of all three AND the base item. Frankly, Green Steel also felt like it took way too long. Too many runs, too many rare ingredients at the higher levels making it very limiting to get over the hump of having a half-upgraded item.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

I don't really know enough about what's available to comment on this.


However, I will re-post something I mentioned in another thread, because I believe it is very relevant to future crafting systems:

A system that actually ties together some of the disparate crafting systems would be very welcome. For example, if you go ahead with sentient rune weapons (great idea, btw!), mixing the ingredients from Shroud and, say, Gianthold, could work. And please throw in some rarer recipes/conversions for other old stuff we have stored in bags, like Motes of Night and Winter, 10,000 gold doubloons, etc. If you mix ingredients from various crafting, you end up with some great combinations of weird recipes: 1 Large Demon Scale + 1 Flawless Green Dragon Scale + 1000 Motes of Nights + 1 Lesser Cannith Power Cell + Green Steel Min II = Demonic Green Demon Sword of Soul Sucking. (Or whatever.) Convert essences of earth to dragon scales to demon scales to dream shards to epic item shards. It would make everything flow a lot more nicely. And if you're worried that people will buy one pack and not another and yet use the converter to gain the ingredients for that latter pack, keep in mind they probably can't actually enter the proper zone without purchasing the pack - in order to actually craft.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Thank you for asking.



Greensteel (but you knew that).
Abbot - love the gear - the quiver, gloves, all of it.
Alchemical (stone of change)- simple and everyone can do - even level 0 new players
Cannith Challenge Gear - love the ability to craft onto tier 3 - love the multiple levels of gear


Unique items need to be extremely hard to obtain - Royal Guard Mask - eSoS - these make a character unique.

Want more unique items like that - something like a D.Door item that is as hard to get as the Royal Guard Mask (ml:9 say)

when I gear a character up - I follow this priority

greensteel
abbot
cannith challenge
cannith crafted to fill holes / niche



I haven't spent much time pursuing seal.scroll.shard items yet - but will shortly.

Right amount of difficulty - Quiver of Alacrity; mantle of worldshaper; voice of master; Visor of the Flesh Render Guards; Royal Guard Mask; Ring of Spell Storing; Ring of Ancestors (note - all of these are highly desired for ANY toon; some of them are btc, some are bta, and some are not bound - which is great since it allows everyone to rarely benefit from a freaky subsequent pull)
Too much - parasitic breastplate - but that was just really bad luck. Current augment system - augment slot should not have advanced weight - ie when an item is wiped the minimum level should be 0 until enchantments are added and / or crystals slotted.

need love:
Dragontouched
cannith crafted (yes I consider it named - it SHOULD have the makers name on it)
Ring of Spell Storing
Shaverath (Incredible Potential)
The Bloodstone
Shimmering Arrowhead
Suppressed Power

[voodoogroves]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
This is difficult, as I'm not sure what you consider "upgrade".

Augments are good, at least were augments do not have silly MLs. Augments paired with abilities on the item that scale based on ML would be my favorite proposal ever.

I generally DISLIKE the bajillion different ingredient+combine methods. Madness, Lords of Stormeach, Sigils, Signets, Marks, etc. There's no reason why a single pack can't have a smaller set of "currency" ... we don't need 12 different ingredients to have to collect to make one of 8 different upgrades. Too much to track / keep / whatever.

I dislike N/H/E flooding everything.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Good/right: New Gloves of Gnoll Hide. Solid, TR-twink gear. Not a guaranteed drop, but something you can chase / farm.

Too hard: Sands explorer epic items. Those are essentially so rare as to be not worth pursuing.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
For weapons - any weapon types that you have enhancement systems for but NO actual named items. Great Crossbows. Late-game non-shuriken throwers. Shortbows.

Medium / heavy armors. The defense pass normalized any of them that had better than normal AC / defensive benefits - esp. VoD / HoX gear.

[Seikojin]

Anyone who answers anything other than Green Steel needs to have their kneecaps smashed with a herring. It is by far the best system in the game. Customizable is GREAT. Let me put the HP/SP item when I want it, not have to arbitrariliy move 10 items around because a new shiny only exists as a tiara. Seriously, a Troll wearing a tiars? Oh the Humanity . . .

And weapons . . . lots of great weapon choices in the weapon that I WANT.

A close second is the Colored slot system we now have. Customization is wonderful.

Honorable Mention to Cannith Challenge loot, but since I hate challenges with a passion I won't run them anyway.

Just right: Fens epics. TOD rings, Alchemicals back when Epic LOB was epic and not a joke (EE drops Tier 1 spirits? Are you high?). Green steel, non-Titan Raid loot.

Too ridiculous: Desert epics, VON Epics, especially the ESOS. Named loot in TOR. it's friggin ridiculous that at about 500 EE TOR runs (no, I'm not kidding) I'm still looking for helms (random SUCKS!!!). Titan gear but that's moot because it's all outdated junk.

Casters need some caster-sticks that consolidate stuff. Element of lore of necro DC or something. This is where the random revolution really sucks . . . I can't think of a named Caster stick that isn't ****.

Random loot wouldn't be so terrible if you'd adjust the halfling sacrifice modifier.


^This^ Pretty much.

GS had the right amount of work to reward ratio.

Most Epic unlocks are a pain to grind to get completed. Either the components drop too rarely to make it worthwhile, or the slot has something better in it.

I think something where you can add abilities to named items would be viable. This way if something is needed, you can slot it. Like augments.

Currently however, named items are far inferior to the random items for those specific tiers. For example:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Sun_Blade
Nice sword, however a plain lvl 6 sword with max enhancement may get chosen over this because it hits more often and does more damage to outside evil and undead areas. Same with something like:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Splinterskull_Chainmail
Same basic problem, the item is clearly inferior to lvl 6 armors. The slot stays empty since augments are not readily available (they don't drop), and what can be slotted usually doesn't make up for the lower bonuses.
The big hitter are non offense/armor slots, like rings and boots, etc.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Ring_of_Baphomet
A min lvl 11 that adds 11 to a single skill, an ability clickie you will never use (even at level), and penalties on top of it all. The slots, again are pointless (see above), so you are left with something to sell or skip over. It should offer at least +13 to intim, a scalable curse (or higher dc), and those 2 slots.

I think all named items need some scaling up in their abilities. Simple +3's moving to 4 or 5 should help make them more competitive, but wont make them best in slot.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Green Steel. It is hard to see what you can get. You have to do an external search for a planner. That is silly. A build tree similar to the way that enhancements works would be nice. Some way to see what you can get, what you can combine and how you get from where you are to where you are going would be appreciated.

Took some help from friends when I made first piece of GS some time ago - now have dozens. Love the crafting planner, the unbound ingredients, the whole taint concept, the update to the interface - but

a BUILD TREE is an excellent idea. Further expand the options and add Handwraps.

[Desonde]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

My favorite system is the greensteel system. When the level cap was 20, this raid was run constantly allowing for easy access to groups, something for guilds to build towards, improved the social aspect of the game, all while progressively moving your character towards an end goal. The best part is, after spending a month of farming materials you can change your mind and not have to restart, nor do you have to work on multiple congruent systems simultaneously. Also, the components had a market value allowing for a gold sink to help control the market.

For named items that are the right difficulty to acquire, I like the House D. system complete the final quest get a list of named items at sub par value. Complete each of the quests on elite and get a component to upgrade the item to an interesting degree.

A lot is overdue for some love, Sure the eSoS should be king of dps since that's all it's built for, but in a game that favors dps so heavily it can't be the only option, especially when many weapon types cannot dream of reaching 20% it's output. As far as other class based gear goes, what ever happened to the class based gear [midnight's greetings, Elyd's Edge, ToD sets]? These were things that enhanced the classes not just the builds, right now builds are purely; HP, +Dmg, Concealment, Incorp, Heal Amp, PRR (Result of another issue altogether sure, but is actually causing the death of viable class based items).

*Disclaimer on Random Number Disclaimer: Bad luck is bad luck, yes, however poor statistics is not an excuse to say 'It's random!'. If you have a 1:100 chance of getting an item at it takes 110 tries to get it, that's one thing. If you have a 1:6 chance to get anything, a 1:100 chance to get one part, but need two parts from one chest and a third part from another chest that has a 1:10 chance of giving you anything and 1:100 chance of getting the item you want, chances of getting the complete item suddenly become 1:1,200,000. If you are trying to control the number of said item in the game that's fine, but to claim it's anything else is a little short sighted.

[Postumus]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel loot. For two reasons:

1- It is versatile and players can tailor gear and item effects to suit their build, style of play, and creativity.

2- Almost every ingredient is completely unbound. This allows players to trade freely with other players and does not require one to run something hundreds of times to be able to craft some desired gear. If I pull a lot of ingredient A but need ingredient B, I can trade or transact with other players to get ingredient B and vice versa.




- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Lucid dreams and the other Mindsunder loot seems like the right difficulty. Also the highroad and king's forest quest items seem like the right difficulty.

The old Rube Goldberg epics (all the shard/seal/scroll stuff) have drop rates so low to the point that it just isn't worth the time to worry about them.




- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Pet Collars. It would be nice to have some named collars for pets at various levels.

Mauls. There are tons of great axes, falchions, two-handed swords, but no really impressive mauls that I can think of.




*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

This is why making crafting items, like greensteel, 100% unbound works so well. Being able to trade with other players means I'm not completely screwed just because I have a run of bad luck since I might pick up some items other players want and we can trade.

[Snapdragoon]

progression is the key to getting the gear you want.

random drop chance is random, sometimes it takes a lucky first run, other run hundreds of times and still no luck.

the thing that was so great about greensteel, and even cannith crafting. is the fact that every time you ran it you made progress to your item. the more often you ran it, the faster you would complete your item. then alchemical came out, but that was just a poor time to implement a spiritual successor to greensteel because soon after the MOTU expansion hit and rendered most of the gear worthless except for some select gear. same for the cannith challenges really, decent gear at what was the endgame at the time, released right before expansion.

good systems
alchemical - every run makes progress (though restricting drops by diff is not welcome)
greensteel - every run makes progress, increase diff increases the amount of progress made (PERFECT SYSTEM)
fall of truth - comms are progress in the new gear, every run gets comms, more drop on higher diff, perfect.

now that you know what system works, you can create gear that works

greensteel is praised because it covers nearly EVERY weapon and item slot available in the game, anyone can probably find a piece of greensteel gear for something. add to that some small but unique bonuses (the hp and sp items) that can stay relevant but not be required. add to that the customization that came with GS not only being able to go in any slot or weapon but picking the effects on the items and your all set.


TLDR
system needs to make progress on every run. and gear needs to not so much be op, as it needs to stay relevant and be slightly future proofed with nice unique bonuses that can be good, but not be required. customization is a bonus, an example of decent try would be twilight: it starts decent, then you can customize it to the particular elements of magic you use, instead of say slapping combustion on it then requiring every fire savant to need it :P.

ALSO: base item BOUND TO CHARACTER, upgrade items BOUND TO ACCOUNT its not hard.

good grind: fall of truth, white/black/blue dragon scale

bad grind: esos, sands, von, anything with tiny random percent drops really.

[ComicRelief]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Before getting into the above, let me first explain my post tile. Prior to the introduction of augment slot system, there were many named loot itmes that were the same as random loot. For instance: Bllodknuckle's Loincloth is just a 25% fortification belt, Grundok's Boots are just Jump +1 boots, Sword of Pain is just a +1 acid touch shortsword, etc. - nothing special or even different from some random loot. I remember picking up a named weapon (I forget which, now, but it was low-level) that was just a +1 'element' touch weapon and thinking, "Wow - nothing special about this named item." (seeing as how I just sold several random weapons with the exact same stats on it).

At least now with the augment system many of the named items also have at least one slot (Bloodknuckle's Loincloth and Grundok's Boots, for example) which helps, but it's still possible to get random loot with augments, so still nothing "special" about them. Now, granted, the named loot may have lower MLs - and that's good - but I think all named loot should have that "something" special that you normally can't get from random loot.

For example, Miasma's Fang is not just a +1 'deception' dagger (with an augment slot), but it also has Fortification Save +1. For an ML2 item, that nice - it has the little 'extra' (fort save) that you would not normally see in random loot.

And that's basically what I mean - named loot should not just be some "random" loot item with a name, but something "more" (doesn't have to be much, just "more" or "different" from random loot).

OK, on with answering the above:

Favorite Named Loot Upgrade System: You mean other than epic versions of certain named loot and the "stone of change" minor upgrades (and excluding "event/challange" named loot), there are systems to upgrade named loot? What am I missing?

Named Loot with Appropriate difficulty to obtain: Muckbane.
Named Loot with that's too difficult: Muck's Doom; Sun Blade*

Weapon Types/Class due for Named Loot Love: Um...that's a tough one. Probably regular bows (perhaps specifically shortbows? but also longbows). "Hand-and-a-half" swords (gotta be careful with the "B" word - young eyes could be watching). Longsword. Warhammer.


*Speaking of named loot, I would LOVE to see the Sun Blade be "epicifiable" (I even have some ideas for it). And, no, the Star of Day is NOT an epic version of the Sun Blade.
;)

[patang01]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Greensteel. One of the best and most flexible system. It only relies on your needs and the amount of possible permutations. You control it plus you can also trade the mats. I wish the shards were BTA since I have a glut of shards on some guys and few on my later toons. Time is time run; BTC is always such a arbitrary feature and especially on mats. So please consider a Greensteel 2 with more options and perhaps even tier 3-4 augment slots for even more flexibility. And crafting. Another system that allows me to create and control what I want. More recipes please and the ability to craft augment slots and guild slots onto items. With a wider amount of crafting options we can either trade or just make that hard to fit item for those levels that you need them.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Greensteel. I'm serious. It's just a matter of time. There are no better system then greensteel. Old epic was okay, but there was always a fickle glut of one specific item that dropped in one specific chest, like a seal or shard. Like Web of Chaos. I mean seriously - I can't pull a complete set for epic silver bow, silver cross bow and envenomed blade for the life of me. I have enough shards, seals and scrolls for everything else (strike that, I FINALLY pulled a shard for the double crossbow so I have ONE of those). So the old epic system was okay, but it should've had a way to replace one of the pieces with something else. Like cruching 4 of whatever epic shards for the one you need. Or something like that. In other words, similar to greensteel that it's just a matter of time before you have it. I don't mind grinding - but the incremental reward towards your goal always feels more rewarding.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Honestly - rune arms. Upper end. But something where the AOE rune arms are useful. Make them interesting. Something that complement the arti. Like a spell power specific rune arm with lore and spell power for something. Even better; a crafting system for rune arms. Make your own - pick element, how the element works, add effects and even augment and you can settle for low end all the way up to high end. Power and features decide ML.

[Satyriasys]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?


While I enjoy Greensteel because of the customization available, the system itself is too complex with so many different ingredient types. We have Shavarath Stones, Vale ingredients, crafted Vale ingredients, Shroud ingredients, Shroud crafted ingredients, power cells, shards. Way too many items involved in the process.

The Caught in the Web weapons on the other hand is a very simple system where I only need to combine my item with commendations. Far more straight forward, but lacks the customization of Greensteel. A hybrid of these 2 systems would be a good goal.

The Dragontouched Armor deserves a mention also. While the randomness of the runes becomes a tedious grind, I love the ability to choose between many different affects for each of the 3 tiers. The runes themselves need a major overhaul as many of them are redundant and underpowered.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*


Right - Cannith Challenge items. I am working towards crafting an item and I know exactly how long it will take me. I can grind for the ingredients at my own pace without any randomness or rarity of drops being a concern. The amount of ingredients required seems to be a fair amount. I can also solo farm for these which in a underpopulated game is unfortunately becoming increasingly important.

Wrong - The Scroll, Seal, Shard system by a mile. These items are so insanely difficult to attain I don't even bother trying for them. I have been playing this game for years and have only ever been able to make a handful of these items. The amount of luck required to find the 4 items is staggering. I could even get behind this system when level 20 was cap because grinding for these items was our endgame and the reason to cap. Now that we are level 20 for no more than an afternoon it seems unfair that these level 20 items should remain so difficult to attain. It makes no sense, what if level 8 items had the same difficulty for no apparent reason? Please just make the old epics drop completed like the new ones do or lower the ingredients to just one type.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Runearms!
1 - Lack of late game Runearms. The last decent Runearm we get is level 19. The ones introduced in Tor are really a joke.
2 - Most of the shots are worthless. The DCs are way too low making only the seeking shots (acid and force) viable. This further limits our options to only 2 varieties.
3 - They are ugly and noisy. Please see this post (https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/426555-Rune-Arm-Annoyance) for further details.

[Lauf]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

I would have to go with the cauldron of Sora-Katra, and the Shroud/ToD
Sora-Katra because you needed to run the different quests in the chains for different marks, it provided incentive for running optionals, and you had some say in what the end product would be.
another good thing about it was that if you had bad luck pulling your desired marks, it wasn't an endless grind trying to get one, because there was always a good chance to get them at the end of the chain as well.

the named items also had a set bonus, and some cool effects (who doesn't like having a true-seeing +6 wis item?). most notably these were named items that didn't short-change you (i.e. give you a +4/5 stat item in a level where you should be using +6s) even back when most named items did.
classic opposite example:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Choker_of_the_Silver_Tongue
anyone slotting a stat, would want/need that stat to be maxed, even if it means less fluff around it. if the stat isn't maxed (in this case, +6) then you'll need to slot it again in an additional spot, which raises the question why bother with the named item to begin with? random loot would be better. <--- here's the problem with named loot.


as to why I named the shroud/ToD, first of all the flexibility, second of all the fact that materials could be reused between packs.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's the best upgrading system out there, I think it could be recreated with less materials to be used, but at the moment the two reasons I've named set it apart from most existing upgrade systems. (note I am referring to the upgrade SYSTEM, as the named loot from ToD is far from being a favorite of mine)



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

again I go back to the Sora-Kell set, if you ran the chain 4-8 times you should easily have enough to create and upgrade any named item, and hopefully enough to create the set. this I feel is a reasonable amount of questing through a pack to guarantee you get and upgrade an item you are after (note-running the chain, not a quest).
one that felt too hard? anything requiring a shard from the tide turns, anything that drops from a random chest in Prison of the Planes, anything that drops from a 3bc rare... I'll stop here but honestly I could go on and on



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Warhammers.
at the moment if you want to build a character that dual-wields warhammers (there are a couple of nice ones at the epic levels) there really isn't a named one to be found on your way to 23. anywhere.

[sephiroth1084]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
None of them make me especially happy, to be honest. The old Scroll, Seal, Shard system worked okay in some ways, and terribly in others. I think the Desert would have worked well, if the loot tables hadn't been so watered down with around 50 items. The upside of the S/S/S system was that you had to work toward acquiring an item, and the drop rates for each individual piece could be higher than, for say Epic Elite versions of the current good named loot, without thrusting too many items into people's hands. It also was a cumulative system, where you would acquire more parts to complete more items as a function of hunting for whatever you wanted. But, it could also be very frustrating, and promotes some weird farming habits (slaying respawning troglodytes in the Snake hall of ADQ1, super-zerging the 3 optional chests in ADQ1, over and over and over). Another problem with this system, was that sometimes acquiring the heroic base item to upgrade is sometimes more difficult than acquiring the parts to upgrade it due to poor drop rates.

I liked the idea of the Cannith challenges upgrade system--not the running more challenges to improve the item through steps 1, 2 and 3, but the ability to use Cannith crafting to apply shards to the items you've made. If Cannith crafting had kept up with the augment slots sytem in terms of available item effects, and had the epic items from the challenges retained the "Craftable" designation, instead of gaining augment slots, that would have been pretty cool.

Augments are okay, but they're too expensive (20 Tokens of the Twelve; 9/9/9 Restored GH Relics + a Commendation of Heroism are kind of steep), too hard to acquire (the costs for the lower level turn-in augments are too high for randomly generated collectibles), and they're missing too many effects, and too strongly weighted toward Blue and Colorless augments for most items. The other big problem with Augments is that we cannot purchase Jeweler's Toolkits in-game, and they are seriously over-priced in the DDO store, so we're left with a choice between spending much too much TP to unslot our items, or regrind the pieces necessary to purchase a new augment, and that seriously exacerbates the too-high cost of the augments themselves.

I think the Normal, Hard, Elite item system is okay, but fails in that you cannot upgrade a lowered-tiered item to a higher tier. If I run a quest on Epic Hard and pull the item I want, and then run the same quest on Epic Elite 10 times, and the item doesn't fall, I haven't really been rewarded for taking on the tougher content, and if I do pull the EE version, now I have a Bound to Character item that is semi-useless. I'd have liked to see these all be upgradeable. Maybe by including an automatic drop token in Hard and Elite quests that can be combined in an altar with a named item from that quest to upgrade it? I'd say, Normal items can be upgraded to hard with 5 Hard tokens, or 2 Elite Tokens, and can be upgraded from Hard to Elite with 5 Elite tokens. The tokens would drop in the end chest of the quest if the item can be acquired from that chest or as an end reward, or in the chest that the item drops in if it only appears in a particular chest.

Okay...actually answering the quest:

My favorite upgrade system is greensteel (and Tower of Despair rings). It grants a lot of flexibility and variety, has both bound and unbound ingredients, can be rewarding even for characters that haven't been able to complete the raid (you can make tier 1 greensteel just by completing part 1 or 2 of Shroud, tier 2 greensteel by completing part 3, and can make any of them with some luck by running Devil Assault, Shavaraht quests, and Tower of Despair), and has several absolutely unique effects (unique for the time, and still without replication even 11 levels and 6 years later). It had something for everyone: casters, melees, archers, throwers, DPS brutes, tanks, stealthy characters, skill monkeys, UMD splashers, FotM builds, pure builds, flavor builds, wonky builds. It was generic enough that it continues to be useful to every class and build years and levels later, and even though some of the effects are outmoded now in level 20+ content, it's still useful from 12-20 (and a lot of it is still good even to level 28).

It also two mechanics build-in to make continuing to run The Shroud after you've acquired a single item still worthwhile: first, it yields both weapons and accessories/jewelery, so it covers a lot of needs, and is desirable to have both a weapon and equipment, and second, you cannot equip a second piece of gear unless you acquire an auto-drop item from a 20th completion, which competed with (at the time) the best tomes available in the game. So, even with trade-able loot, and the possibility of getting lucky and front-loading your Shard acquisition, you would still have incentive to run the raid to 20, 40, 60 completions.

The only thing missing from greensteel was the ability to deconstruct things you'd made, to adjust to a changing metagame, which was ostensibly to be addressed with Yellow Dopant, but the stuff has such a ridiculously low drop rate that it may as well not even exist--it's never on the Auction House (and the few times I did see it, it was selling for an enormous sum).

I expect that greensteel is going to be the far and away majority favorite here.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Just about every item from The Reaver's Fate (except Madstone Boots), A Vision of Destruction, and Hound of Xoriat were at about the right difficulty level and drop rate--you had a good chance of acquiring the item you wanted in under 20 runs, and an excellent chance of getting it on your 20th completion list.

The Red Fens epic items (aside from the Gloves and Bracers of the Claw) were about the right amount of difficulty/grind to acquire, excepting the base item for the Shatterbow.

Name one that felt too hard.* The Helm of the Red Dragon, the Shard of the Sword of Shadows, the Shard of the Red Dragon (in over 200 runs, I've only seen the first three times, the second three or four times, and the last once, and never under my name, and only a couple of times up for roll).

Named items with randomly-generated portions; finding a +2 Str, +10 Stunning Seal of Dun'Robar ring, finding a +2 Con, +10 Trip Seal of Dun'Robar. Finding a +3 Insightful Helm of whichever Dragon, +3 Insightful Int or Wis Intricate Field Optics. Taking a low drop rate item, sticking it in a tough to hit chest (the dragons are challenging on EH unless you have a good party, and very hard on EE even with a good group--mind you, I've completed them, for the most part, with about a 90% success rate, but that requires assembling a decent group, which may involve a bit of waiting, and sometimes expending a lot of resources), and then also lowering the drop rate even further by randomizing elements of the item sucks. Look at the trades forums: the most commonly sought after items are the ones with random abilities, where people are looking for particular permutations of these.

I'd prefer to see variably programmable items--say, Intricate Field Optics drops with its current stats, but instead of the +8 or +3 stat, it has "Mutability" in that place. Then you click on the item and get a Barter UI pop-up wherein you may select which of the variants you want. The choice gets locked-in, and now you're happy that you pulled the item.

What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
DOCENTS!!!!!!!!!!!! Docents are notoriously short-changed; it seems like every quest pack introduces a new light, medium and heavy armor, a new robe and outfit, and maybe one docent (or no docents). Many docents also appear to be simple variants on older named docents, with many having similar stats, and very few docents match the better named armors of any type, especially for casters. It has been proposed in the past that we should be able to take a named armor, stick it in a Stone of Change, and convert it into a docent. That would be something seriously worth considering. At least going forward. That, or duplicate most armors made available in docent form. For an easy comparison, look at the Spider-spun Caparison, Spider-Silk Robes, Hide of Goristro, Terroweb Chitin Breastplate, Embrace of the Spider Queen, and the Stone Heart and Ancient Gemstone.

Khopeshes need a new named item or two.

I'd say the biggest problem with named loot in this regard is that it's too easy for a quest, raid, or quest pack to completely leave out certain classes or builds. Look at Caught In the Web: clerics and favored souls gain very little from the raid unless they are specced for melee/ranged combat, or do a lot of nuking with Evocation spells. Part of this is due to our never getting a Divine version of Arcane Augmentation. Casters who use DC-based non-Evocation, non-Enchantment spells were similarly left out. Anyone with an Epic Sword of Shadows. Unarmed monks have better options than the Antipode. Then, on top of that, if you run the raid and get the item you wanted, there is little reason to run it again, especially with Commendations of Heroism being easier to acquire from Fall of Truth (and now the Raider's Reward Boxes).

In older content, we got the Divine Vengeance sword, which was supposed to be great for paladins, but was only useful to S&B and TWF paladins (and even then not very)--THF paladins were left in the cold, because there was no two-handed version of the weapon. One should be able to combine two of the same 1-handed weapon into a single two-handed weapon in some instances.

[Grosbeak07]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


1. Honestly, the Shroud. As much as I may loath the Raid now, there was "something for everyone". You could make an offensive weapon, defensive weapon, something to boost skills etc. Wish it had been extended to shields and armor.

2. Reaver Items I always felt had a good drop rate, you might get lucky and get in a few runs, but something along 10 to 15 runs isn't bad. Which is also about the length it took to make your first greensteel in shroud. With the Shroud, you felt like you made progress every run.

2B. What felt too hard? LoB and ToD (tie). Lord of Blades was just confusing and not all that different from shroud. Given how little the raid was run due to the annoying open areas and well, making items from that was near impossible unless you had a guild dedicated to doing it. ToD had the problem of too many rings, watering down the loot tables. Given that maybe 1-2 rings *might* drop and you had a chance at 15 different rings, meant it was a long time before you even saw the ring you were looking for. And if you were looking for it, so was 20 other people. Unless you got super lucky and it dropped to you, most of the time you were out of luck. Which was a bummer.

3. Bludgeoning weapons like maces, morning stars, hammers etc. also Armor and accessories.

[Nightmanis]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Both the old Shard/Seal/Scroll system and the Heroic comms. If you could somehow combine the 2 (and obviously make it not as difficult to acquire as the Von/Sands gear) then I would be just absolutely giddy.

On a different note, my least favourite system is the whole EN/EH/EE setup.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.
Before Epics were changed so you could run them more than once a day, absolutely EVERYTHING from the House D chain. Maybe even if you had reduced everything by .5% on the drop rates, it would have still been wonderful. Then when you went into some other raids (Von actually comes to mind here) you could get the most powerful gear in the game, and it was exceedingly difficult. Hell, the ESOS is still the overall #1 weapon in the game, but Von6 has become such a cakewalk to complete. I liked it better when the breath actually could have wiped a party in one pass, now I just evade it. (That being said, maybe up the save DC by 5 points and quintuple the damage. This might just make only pally splashed characters play it, though...)

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
I would like a staff, one that is on par with Sireth (make it useful, more than just straight damage) that is just a plain stick. Nothing fancy, just a plain stick like Nat Gann's. I do think we've gotten plenty enough axe love for now, and honestly when it comes to range it's Pinion, and other bows (mostly GS) until you are the right level for Pinion.

Maybe try for a shield that is actually centered around offense, instead of just defense (Reverberate 10% of damage back into the opponent). Also, make a tower shield that actually looks like a tower shield (Skyvault and the Alchemical are the only ones in the game that actually look the part) instead of just making a large shield and giving it the title. I want to walk around with a Vault door, not a slightly enlarged saucer sled. People did enjoy this form of play, and it would be nice if some gear was given to help them.

Casting items could get some love, giving different effects totally unique to the item. This would be so much nicer than the "Just get something off the AH" setup we have now.

Also, set bonuses. Yes currently we have the Dragon armours, and the Planar sets. But I remember when having the Chrono was considered on top of the top end of gear. It was so cool how you actually had 5 different items, and any 3 would give you a certain bonus while all 5 would give you an even better one. I would just absolutely love to see this idea return to the game, and maybe even give it it's own simpler version of the S/S/S system (maybe just have you get the items from flagging quests, combined give a small bonus yet the end quest/raid drops the "Missing Piece" for that item which increases the bonus while also upgrading the item.

[dunklezhan]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?





A bit of a moot point. Named loot mostly all requires the favour of the RNG, so I don't bother caring unless something nice drops randomly, most of the time. Generally, it isn't any use for the character I'm on when it does, so generally just give it away. I tend to rely on lootgen - it's often as good, and it's no more random, but you do get stuff useful to you quite regularly. Not necessarily an upgrade, but worth looking at twice. Can't say the same for named loot that drops for me.

Anyway, since we're being asked to think about it:

-I like the system where you simply run on elite and get better loot. As a casual player, that is what I want. I want simple - not 'easy' quests, but I don't want to have to play a loot minigame. I'm not interested, it turns me off. I know I'm in a miniority and game theory says ignore this kind of player, but /meh. I'm fine with that, gonna say it anyway: I do not want 'turn in to upgrade' systems, they drive me crazy and only result in rerunning content with the same character, which I also hate. So grindy. Systems like shroud crafting and cannith crafting are a good concept: you make an item and then create extra effects of your choosing onto it based on the types of turn ins you have been able to gather. Now if you could just lay the smack down on the horrible, horrible grind of shroud, or sort out cannith crafting so the grind is actually worth it again... I'm fine with favour opening up access to a patron store with ridiculously pricey awesome named items in plat, with higher (more frequent) favour levels upping what you have access to. That then just happens with normal questing on harder difficulties, and you get a choice. There needs to be no clear 'best in slot' for each favour tier. This means you need loads of items to choose from . And I'm fine with that too.

-Eveningstar turn ins (e.g. to get sun soul gear) feel about right. I don't like turn ins, but you turn in once and buy your gear. Done. That's like a favor reward and I can live with that. Dragontouched by comparison just feels all wrong and random. Remove the RNG from that or give a reasonable way to convert to a chosen effect. It's really not that powerful anymore, so no-one runs it, so you can't get your gear anyway. And let us not speak of the greensteel grind again. Alright, we'll speak of it: it's terrible. Needing to rerun quests as well as raids, needing 20 raids to get a cleansing essence... ugh. I've done it, for two characters and a total of 4 items (and boy do I have buyer's remorse on that lit2 repeater. SO not worth it, even on a TR life where I can use it from L11 upwards). I will not be doing that again (although I'll run shroud cos it's quite fun, and save the drops to give to guildies). Plus the fact of the matter is that GS just isn't really that good anymore, comparatively (it's powerful, but... just not that powerful), but it takes so long to grind it out you're actually doing so for your next life, as you'll have capped 28 before you get enough ingredients, and the random lootgen and normal named drops are potentially better by then, particularly for weapons. A system you only take part in to twink a future incarnation? That can't be good in terms of new and experienced players getting together, surely?

-S&B AC builds need love. Lots of love. In other words: obtainable tiers of armour and shields that make a noticeable difference to defense particularly at higher levels. The swords are fine, not sure about the axes.

[Havok.cry]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Many have some very good points. Greensteel is by far the best upgrade system. This is because of several factors. First and foremost is the customizability of the system. There are so many options to have fun with. Some of them very unique, like my personal favorite Ooze2. The second reason it is at the top is that it's mats are found in other places than just one or two packs: Greensteel mats are found in amrath, the vale, devil assault, and are tradeable to other players. The thrid is that the materials are used for more than just greensteel. You also use them to upgrade the rings from Tower of Despair, and this extention of the system into further parts of the game makes it feel like a part of the game world rather than an "Oh look what random thing the devs did today, now lets get back to playing" sort of system.

After greensteel I would have to say it is a tie between the inspired quarter system, the lordsmarch system, and dragon touched armor with a nod to the trace of madness items as a runner up. Each has there good points that I would like to point out for you. The inspired quarter has items that can gain additional abilities when upgraded, but the reason that I like this system is that it is also used by other items, namely the ioun stones and the dreamsplitter, making it a system that feels like a part of the game world. The unraveling enchantments would have been an awesome system if it had extended into other parts of the game. In the lordsmarch plaza there is a system that lets you combine weapons to add an effect from one, to the other weapon creating a single more powerful weapon. This is an interesting thing to me, and it is akin to how cannith crafting was originally pitched to the playerbase. Dragon touched armor has the quality of being customizable. It is one of my favorite armors, simply because I can make it into how ever I want. It also has sundering ooze guard, and this will make anything better.

Trace of madness had potential. It had a small amount of customizability, and it almost looked like it would extend into multiple packs, but it didn't, so it ended up just kind of a meh system that involved some otherwise really nice items.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Right difficulty: Original Xacosian Eardweller before the spellpower changes. It was a unique power increase for spellcasters, and it was the most powerful. It was elusive and you had to hunt for it through a few quests. The hunt was fun.

Too Hard:
scroll/shard/seal items. All of them. Every single one. New items of the same level are better and easier to acquire. This is a very very bad way to do things. It should have changed when you abandoned the system for new content. It is at the same level of badness as the ghostbane situation.

Also Everything that drops in Zawabi's Revenge raid. You can not even reliably get what you want in the twentieth list. My first life I had 80 runs without getting one of the three items I was after. I won't run that raid ever again until this situation is fixed.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
-Named shields that are not metal, so a druid can use them.
-Named medium armor that a druid can equip. Seriously this one is a constant irritant to me. The game used to have hide armor, a medium armor made from skins, meaning it was not metal and a druid could equip it. Litterally just before turbine releases druids, they change the armor by removing many of the types, one of which was hide, the only medium armor a druid can use. Druids have medium armor proficiency, let them freaking use it dammit! (not directed at anyone, I just want to express how incredibly irritated I am about this.)
-new rune arms of various levels. So much potential here, and so wasted. You could do things like a rune arm that heals allies or fires webs, or soooo many other things, give us some reason to carry as many rune arms as we do weapons.
-Shuriken. There is what, 3-4 named ones? Need more.
-All Favored weapon types for divine characters. They need them at all levels and for all playstyles. Named caster greatswords, shortswords of divine smiting, heavy maces of holy wrath, longswords and longbows of divine vengeance, and scimitars of the deathless. Both for stabbing things with and for blasting things with.
-More items with gaurds/procs that summon monsters for you like Ooze2. It is my favorite effect in the game and I would like to be able to use it in more parts of the game. Please, please, please give us more things like this, whatever they are on.
-Docents. There have been no good or interesting ones for a long time. Make some that are just docents and not copy/pastes of some armor from the same pack.

As a note I despise the idea of items that require a certain class to use, with no UMD check. One of the things that made this game attractive to me was a complete lack of such things. Seriously such mechanics are immersion breaking for me. Don't do it please. UMD stands for use magic device. It is the skill for figuring out how to use something that you otherwise wouldn't be able to use. So when you make a class specific item give it a UMD check for everyone else. Not doing that is basically proclaiming that all other characters are to dumb to operate that item, and personally things like that irritate me. Instead, you could make items like Divine Vengence, the sword from VoD that gets better the more Paladin you are. You see one method is telling your players how to play, and the other is encouraging them to use items a certain way. Encouragement is always better. Rune arms should have been like this. They should have been able to be equipped by anyone, but only fired by characters with the use runearm feat that artificers get.

[SirShen]

Favorite Loot System:
Greensteel because it is completely customizable and Cannith Challenge Gear.

Right Difficulty to Acquire:
Greensteel and Cannith Challenges, doing the quests and raids get you ingredients needed, same goes for cannith challenges.

Too hard to Acquire:
Shard/Seal/Scroll epic system.

Things that need some attention:
Augments (why no true seeing augment?), Quivers, Handwraps, Wooden Versions of Weapons for druids (no wooden version of scimitar) and more named scimitars.

Just to add the reason i ask for wooden versions of weapons is so that you can use the spell Shillelagh (http://ddowiki.com/page/Shillelagh) on them.

[Propane]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

1) Shroud with Alchemical a close second.

GODD
Shroud was very well done - power shards bound to character - so you had to run it some - all other stuff bound to account - you could be flexible and farm with alts.
Lots of options for weapons and gear - options all classes and roles wanted.
Great 12-20 gear - can use long enough it is worth effort to get - works well with a TR or two (or three....)

BAD
Shroud was missing hand wraps and shield / armors.
Stacking stats are outdated at LV 20 - semi ok with that
Need 20 runs for some drops is daunting
Could improve with how TOD expands the shroud items - more cross over.

GOOD
Alchemical - nice to add more weapon types (hand wraps and great clubs) - good options (not quite as good as shroud).
+2 stats stack will a lot of stuff - does not get overwritten easily
Having the two raids work together is nice - gives you something to do during your 3 day cool down. Makes for a good story - not just a loot machine.
Having rewards at 5 and 10 completions is more reasonable

BAD
Alchemical
Missing CHR and INT bonus
Casting options are weak - need to go melee option for +2 WIS
Damage Die low should be 1.5, 2,0, 2.5 for 3 tiers
Missing other gear with guards / etc...
Duel crafting missing

BAD
Wish the sprits were bound to account and cells were bound to character - farming is much harder here than shroud.
It takes too long to get to raid (MA is much worse)
+CHR and INT are missing

2) The Cannith challenges are about right - reasonable grind for reasonable loot. A few more things could be added to make it more popular. The random gear of Eveningstar is a real turn off. (thank goodness items are not BTA)
The older seal / shard / scroll drop is a nightmare - I have some yet today I would like to finish - but there is no end in sight - no measureable predictable end... We like to see progress - after this run I have X more things - can estimate if I need 5 more runs, 10 more runs - I need a goal to work towards, not a chance each time. The 5,10,20 completions is a goal - that added to each 10 runs you get your pick of seal / shard / scroll would be great!

3) Stuff for our healers! They need to have interest in the loot to go along - Bound to Account helps (farming for others) - look at the raid items list - need more stuff to get the healer types excited.
More threat generation / threat reduction - more slots - every augment / item in store should be able to worked towards in game.
I like the flexibility of adding stuff to the weapon I want us use (style) - compare named Daxe to Bsword or Warhammer and Rapier to Scimitar - I want to pick a style / look and then get make a weapon - not get a raid weapon drop and have to compromise.

[FranOhmsford]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?


Heroic Gianthold Armours - Although you annoyed me when you changed the Black Plate from Cleric/Paladin Armour to Pure DPS Armour



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*


Really having trouble finding one that felt right unless you're willing to count Korthos items - And NO I don't believe EVERY Named item should be that easy to get!

As for too hard - Well there's numerous:

Base Ring of Spell Storing and ALL Epic Sands Upgrades are Insane!

BUT

There's Two items in game that have become almost required over the years {maybe not so much now but you all know what I mean}:

Planar Gird - Xorian Cypher
&
Visor of the Flesh Render Guards - Splinterskull End Reward

Visor especially should be made 100% available in the End Reward just like Voice of the Master in Delera's and Mantle of the Worldshaper in Threnal.

The Gird is harder to Pinpoint But even doubling it's silly low drop rate would be a big help to many!



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


CLERICGEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As for Weapons:

Flails
Spears
Polearms

Even if they could just be added as special named items it would be a huge advancement for DDO.

We could do with more choices for:
-Quarterstaves {Melee Staves NOT Caster Sticks}
-Repeater X-Bows {Lvl Range 8-15 needs some choices}
-Warhammers {Please give us a reason to go with a Bludgeoning Build on our Defenders}
-Falchions {These are ignored atm as G-Axe and G-Sword are too strong in comparison}
-Mauls {Something other than a Skelly Beater please}
-Morningstars {specifically make some named ones that break Pierce DR as well as Bludgeon}
and I'm gonna get flak for this one
-Scimitars {way too few choices in the 11-19 Level Range}


Oh and Shields - Real Shields of all types - From Bucklers to Tower Shields - We need GOOD Named Shields that FIT the Builds that are going to use them:
Bucklers for Rogues
Large Shields for Paladins and Clerics
Tower Shields for Fighters.

I.E. No Tower Shields with Sacred or Spell Power on them.
No Bucklers that compete with the Best Tower Shields for Tank Use {Swashbuckler was this when it first came out}.

[bbqzor]

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

1) Shroud Greensteel, for many reasons:
- Progress every run, even if its not an ingredient you immediately needed you always got something and never had 12 people complete a raid for a drop-less box.
- Good itemization, it effectively had every effect available in every slot.
- No randomization, there was none of the annoying and misplaced "randomization" which plagues modern systems (ie, no chance of crafting failure like cannith crafting, and no random modifiers like U14, Tor, and U19 exhibit).
- Meaningful effects, the loot had modifiers which were relevant and cared about by both new players and hardened vets.
-- To expand, A) the things which were good were actually good, and not just good because they were the least bad. An example, unique (at the time) stacking hp/mana, or lit2 new effect, as opposed to Master Illusionists Gloves which is only good because its a static high int modifier which is otherwise just available randomly and has a pointless illusion dc mod on it rather than something useful like necro or enchant.
--And B) the effects were ones people actively wanted, such as better dps through unique mutations, rez clickies (before they were nerfed), haste clickies, etc. Nowadays we get better dps through another 1d4 damage no one cares about, or mutation effects which are wholly unasked for and effectively pointless like Trapsmiths Crossbow. Really? A +0 Epic Weapon, not even repeating, which deals 1 stat damage that the epic mobs you use it on are effectively immune to? There is nothing appealing about it despite it being unique, and having (at the time) a unique mutation. It's just a waste of time and space.
- Tradeable! Why does everything have to bind to character... some of us (most of us, I would wager) enjoy playing different characters, or don't want to be discouraged against changing to a healer to help out over bound ingredients. I understand binding items, but the key to shroud was the ability for all your guys to help out both your other guys, and your friends and guild. Its a MMO, it should be massively-multiplayer, and encourage teamwork. Not encourage me to play only one guy for 100 runs, ignoring everyone else's goals, to get something I can't ever use anywhere else.

2) Just Right: Greensteel, for the first 2 accessories and weapons. If you wanted to wear 3+ items on one guy it became difficult, due to Essence of Cleansing bottlenecks. Those should have been craftable from an ingredient recipe too, like 6 of each large makes a BTC Essence or something and then it would have been 100% on.
- Considering JUST FoT, Heroic Coms are okay (items take 0-12, you get at least 1 per run, its fair that by 20th you can upgrade the one named item you probably got, and have a few left over for a crafted one like Dragonscale Armor). Once you add Web (which takes twice as many at 25 per item, and drops perhaps 10% as many, and takes 3x as long per quest) the system falls apart completely into the terrible affliction it is on players now... but the U17/EGH/FoT portion as a stand alone was playable. Note: Maybe you should go fix the Web Com drop rates finally... after Raiders Boxes its difficult to even fill an LFM for it, least you could do was make it less of a waste of time.

Totally Wrong: Where to begin... heres a few that come to mind:
- Reavers Refuge was the first of many terrible, terrible systems and its still terrible to this day. It needs a barter interface so you can 3:1 to what you want, that would fix it.
- Lords of Madness drops ingrediants too slow to make use of more than really one, or maybe two upgrades... the mobs in quests need to drop parts much faster so you can get 20-50 without doing dozens and dozens of runs, by which time you've out leveled the content and the items it drops.
- Inspired Quarter Dreaming Dark was bad, until the changes so every 3rd run you got a shot at some upgrade progress. That made it workable, just including this as an example that fixes are possible.
- Stormreaver Seals... taking 60 heroic scales for 1 seal is way overkill. It shouldn't take 3 full items, which are actually still useful on their own, to get one upgrade for something you'd only use while leveling. Making it use a full set of one color, so you trade a suit of armor for a seal is fair.

3) In response to several posts above... NOT Dwarven Axes, there's already like a half dozen of those at epic.
- How about some Heavy Picks or Warhammers, to go with the new Enhancements? Mornh is good but the definition of needing more choices is when you are pigeon-holed into one choice, and theres no picks at all.
- The only Kopeshes (not counting Drow Weaponry since every weapon got one) were Ironwood (just terrible, nothing to take advantage of its crit profile and an ability that won't even work on the mobs which drop it due to low dc) and Allegiance (pretty limited scope at best).
- A Khukri would be good, now that rogues have a reason to use them, perhaps giving them a choice of going slashing instead of piercing.
- Divine "favored weapon" choices for all the options. Right now Celestia is a great example of this done right (ps, warpriest enhancements still bug it out, can we get those coded to +atk/dmg/sp directly already so Vulkoor Warpriests can actually use them). But the other faiths have little choice (other than ESOS/Pinion of course). A good divine caster/melee longsword, and a morningstar, would be great.
- And some more weapons which use alternate stats. For example Elyd Edge is great for Cha-based Bards, but those builds have little recourse for advancement after that point and its a poor option at 28.
- Pet Collars. I know we can convert named Wraps, but really, it would be nice to see some pet-centric design. Perhaps as a choice on a quest hand in (ie, from a barter window like if you could use dragon scales in tor to buy dragon-fanged collar) so it doesn't bloat the loot table for the 90% of classes without a pet. As pet-only items they could be a little more robust (since pets only have two slots) without causing imbalance elsewhere. As an example, it would be great to see a "iron defender tank" collar which adds something like 100% threat, +30 intim, +30 prr, +10% dodge or whatever (I know some of those are traditionally armor mods, but since pets use player armor it would be a good idea to shift them to collars for balance reasons). Without a substantial boost, pets are borderline useless on Epic Hard, and completely worthless in Epic Elite... its sad to see a Unique Class Feature be worthless when it would be fixed by adding like one "Beastmaster" NPC Barter guy for druids and one "Tinkerer" NPC Barter guy for artificers to get some legit pet collars (honestly could be applied to all levels, but especially necessary post 20/25).

[Sebastrd]

My favorite loot system is when an named item drops its based on the difficulty setting, Epic, Epic Hard, Epic Elite. Same for heroic. Results are guranteed if you get one and you don't have to spend forever trying to get shards/seals//scrolls that never drop.

I don't mind this system, except that I'd like to see all versions set to the normal version's minimum level. That way when you acquire a higher difficulty version, there's absolutely no reason to keep the others clogging up your inventory - especially now that epic TRing has been implemented.

[nibel]

My $0.02


What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

I like the tiered upgrades, with a second tier with a good improvement, and a third tier customizable. Kinda like Cannith Challenge items. The second upgrade is always an improvement over some base stat, and the third tier is either a slot, or "craftable +X". Both allow you to put anything you want there.

The one-tier-upgrades (Visbane's Folly, Altar of Vulkoor, Sora Katra Cauldron, Altar of Insanity, Dreamforge, Reforging Station) are missing, to me, either the static upgrade, or the customizable update.

I know Shroud is popular and stuff, but personally, I didn't liked shroud crafting system at launch, with all the "secret" recipes we had to find (for years, we had to rely on fan-made crafters to plan them out), plus the easy way to mess up and having to start from scratch. Shroud definitelly, as a crafting system, do not feel "good" to me.

Alchemical Crafting tried to mimic Greensteel, but IMO, the major reason it didn't succeed as intended was because the upgrades would raise the ML of the weapons (One major advantage of GS is to powerlevel you during a heroic TR), the lack of non-weapon stuff, and the ingredients being tiered by the raid difficulty instead of raid "phases" like Shroud.

Dragontouched is too random to me. And currently, there are very few effects that are worth slotting.

The absolute bottom of the line to me is the old epic item system (Base, Shard, Seal, Scroll). The drop rate of each part is already small enough, and currently, 95% of those epic items are subpar to loot (random and named) about the same level. Eg, you migh prefer to use a Blade of the High Priestess (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Blade_of_the_High_Priestess) than an Epic Phiarlan Spy Dagger (http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Phiarlan_Spy_Dagger). For the former, you just need to finish one chain three times. For the latter, months of grinding.


Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.

As a mostly casual player, everything feels "hard" to me, except the guaranteed drops, either by getting a full list on X completions, or something that have over 50% chance to appear in chests (Like Insanity (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Insanity)). So, while I don't like greensteel as a crafting system, I like them as a reward. Because after every shroud, no matter what, you are closer to finishing your greensteel. It is not the same as if I was looking for, let's say, a Sword of Shadows. My first and my hundredth Vault of Night all have the same chance to drop the sword. And if things goes for too long, you give up after some time. The threshold limit varies from player to player. I know mine is very short.

But even I can name one single named item (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Quiver_of_Alacrity) that is so low on the loot chances that everyone agrees it needs to get some raises someday.


What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

We need bardic items that are not only "this things gives you more songs" and Anthem. Epic Elyd Edge have a unique mutation that put it on high grounds for any bard. We need more stuff like that. Maybe something that have sonic and devotion together, or that shorten the time of your singing, or allow you to keep attacking while you sing. Something new.

We need more longswords. With Warpriest out, a lot of Sovereign Host divines would love to keep a longsword in hands, but every epic named longsword simply are too defensive in nature to be worth wielding.

We need more picks. Up to today, Deathnip is the best pick in the game. And it is ML 14! We need a lot more picks because they are the only weapon type with a x4 crit multiplier. It is, theoretically, on pair with 18-20/x2 weapons, and need more representations.

We need more Great Crossbows. I know, people prefer repeaters. But we only have one named great xbow in the game, and it is given on Khortos! This seriously hurts anyone that might consider going the path of great xbow instead of the common repeaters.

A lot of simple weapons also are lacking in the named loot department: Sickles, light clubs, maces, morningstars, crossbows, and non-scepter clubs.

Finally, we need throwers. Darts, daggers, axes, hammers, and shurikens. They are backup weapons, but some good opener stuff (like shattermantle) or all-arounder (one with metalline and aligned) might be worth the farming time.

[Sethvir]

totaly to easy to get:
- everything u will get from, run some stuff on casual 3 times, then get a list of named stuff. this mechanic is just wrong


I disagree, with the old epic item system (shard, seal, scroll, base) being to difficult. This statement would again totaly fail to catch the real problem - RANDOMNESS.


Let me explain:

All stuff from the Phiarlan chain was SLIGHTLY to EASY to get. All the complains and the bad memories ppl have, about geting an item they wanted from there, are purely connected to bugs (missing drops of seal shards, droprates of stuff being way to low cos of bugs etc pp).
- The system here is random, but getting scrolls was never a problem, IF u realy wanted a certain scroll, cos they were tradeable and auctionable.
- Aquiring a specific seal was also never a problem, cos certain chests gave at most 3 or 4 different seals. If u wanted a certain thing, u simply did run that stuff, and with only 3-4 items fighting over a slot to drop and moderately high droprates, no problem to get what u wanted.
- For the base its same as the seals
- To get a shard in this chain u had to run big top and u had a guarantied drop of 1 shard, with 19 shards possible and 1 certain drop, it wasnt that hard to get what u wanted, especially with the longstanding bug of being able to shortcut that mission in 5 minutes. Now after that shortcut being removed, it will take quite a bit longer to get what u want, cos of randomness, and cos those items are mostly vendortrash, aka nobody is running that chain.


If u now look at the red fens, same amount of items, the difficulty to get what u want is much higher. why!??? Red Fens also has 19 items. So why its harder?
In fact it isnt. The point here is the percieved difficulty. Red Fens has/had a few very desireable items. Auqiring the base was a no brainer and totally too easy. But basically only from 2 of the 3 missions u realy WANTED something, leading to the fact that u did run mostly this 2 missions for scrolls and seals and both missions (claw and last stand) u did need a grp or a very specific build/class to run it solo. And to get the desired shard u had to run a pretty long mission PLUS a optional endboss that did proove for many many as too hard.
In the end, i still believe, red fens has a good power to aquire ratio (the epic claw set is STILL a good set).

Now look at sands or von stuff. totally friggin too hard to get what u want. Why? most things are just vendortrash. and to get the few items u want (or in case of von, its basically just 3 things sos, helm and armor) it took alot of runs to get lucky, cos of the problem of dilluted droptables(von 26 items, sands 59 items!!!). PLUS that preraid/raid problem. U run 2 missions for the chance(!!!) of a shard out of that many possible, to get what u want, is madness!

Randomness works only to a certain degree. If there are to many options for a drop, it becomes too much a thing of a chance and luck and ppl get frustrated.

In case of shroud this thing of randomness is broken down into smaller things (u WILL get a chance for a small, a medium, a large ing - not just a chance of geting any of the 3 - u dont end up unlucky with only small ings) and even when u get unlucky, u have the option to trade 2-3 stones for a scale if u needed it.
Thats why shroud is even now popular. U can get that lucky moment feeling of having pulled what u need or getting 2 large scales. But even if not, u did make progress and u can trade what u got for what u need.


If shroud is so good, why is LoB (alchemical) so bad???

shroud had a guarantied progress (getting small and mediums, even if u failed). LoB is all or nothing. Plus LoB also sufffers from dilluted droptables, getting exactly that type of khyber frags u needed was a thing of pure luck, getting that exact type of spirit (normal, refined, exquisite) is pure luck. U cant trade stuff. and LoB was a pretty tough raid, and even today many fail or dont even try cos they might fail.
If normal would only drop t1 stuff, guarantied only t1 stuff, u could raise the droprates slightly. Then hard would only drop t2 stuff (refined) and elite the t3 (exquisite). In this case ppl knew what they would get, decide what diff to run and make certain progress if they dont fail.

[nibel]

Now that the questions are out of the way, I'll throw more 2 cents on the discussion.

First off, I believe every single named item should be strictly better than a equal-level, same niche, random loot item. The only exception allowed is if the item is a guaranteed drop after the quest (like the staff at the end of Haywire's Foundry).

If you have a named item that their main point is that it have a stat or skill bonus, it should match or surpass a random loot item of the same level. A ML 11 item with three skills should give +13 to each skill, because even if it consolidate a lot of skills, if the character want at least one of those skills maximized, he will prefer a random loot with maximized bonus than the named item if the bonus were, let's say, +10. In the same vein, any ML 11 named item with a stat bonus should give at least a +6.

Items with unique, or rare effects (Torc, Madstone Boots, Scarab of Absorption...) may have sub-par stats because they are not the main point of the item. Even then, I believe it is good practice to keep them on pair.

So, a named item should have one of those gimmicks to be worth the search:

It have the same stats as a random loot item, but a lower Minimum Level.
It have multiple stats with the same level as a random item, but helps with item consolidation.
It have a unique effect that you can't find outside of this item.
It have the same stats as a random loot item, but in a non-standard slot (Used a lot before U14 messed the item stats to be all around all items. Eg, Previously, you could not get Spot outside of goggles, helmet or rings, thus the Gloves of the Falcon (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Gloves_of_the_Falcon) were interesting for slotting Spot in the Hand slot)

[karatemack]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Don't have one. If you could upgrade an item from EN to EH and then EE with comms then that would be it.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Just right would be staff of the necromancer.

Too hard would be fully upgraded ring of spell storing. Also named loot with random effects (why!?!?). Nether orb, for instance, is difficult due to low drop rate combined with random factor which has a chance of producing trans focus 5 items. Why not allow us to customer upgrade the focus instead with augments???


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Cleric. Turning. Gear.

Would love to see more set bonuses.

[Portalcat]

Favorite Loot System

Greensteel and it's not close. It allows you to put a lot of useful and unique bonuses in a single slot that stack with everything. It's a challenge to make the item and you get something worth the effort. That you need to put in a lot of effort to make multiple items and that there are other effects you still need to slot from other loot keeps it from superseding all other loot and and loot systems despite giving you so much per gear slot.

Augment slots are a distant second. They let you add the basic stats you need to fill holes created by other gearing requirements.



Item That Feels About Right

-EN/EH/EE loot generally, because it rewards playing harder content and its tradeability creates a market for it. As long as an item is useful to someone's build, I can sell what I don't need on the ASAH and buy the items I really need but haven't pulled.
-Eveningstar Comm loot. It's entry-level epic loot obtained with an entry-level grind.



Item That Feels Too Hard

Everything shard/seal/scroll. It's just too much for too little benefit. Even the good items don't justify the grind.



Something that Needs More Love

Caster loot needs a lot of help. Every build needs 5 or more weapon suffixes, with a secondary bottleneck at weapon prefixes. These do not drop randomly on any non-weapon gear and the prefixes only go on red augments. The result is that you're forced to build out around two very specific randgen weapons (or one randgen weapon and one specific nether orb) and the few particular Gianthold or Shadowfell items that put a needed weapon suffix in some specific non-weapon slot. You have to ignore interesting named loot in those slots no matter what unique effects it may have because there is essentially zero choice in how to slot your bread and butter casting affixes.

Please add some caster items or sets that condense more of these affixes into fewer slots, and though it's a different topic, having caster prefixes and/or suffixes drop on random non-weapon loot again would be a huge help.

[jasonchrist]

I believe that not as many people would have been complaining for the last few years about the old epic system (item + seal + shard + scroll) had you just made the shards and seals tradable in the first place. The raid loot is still bound and untradable, therefore the raids will still require you to play them.

Also, upgrade some of those items- many of them are very flavorful.

[bvermeul]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?


Shroud crafting. Reason being that you can trade what you don't need, and can create what you want. Flexible, but still gets you exactly what you want.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*


Right: Not sure. Wrong: Epic Ring of Spellstoring, Ring of Spellstoring, any desert epics.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Caster sticks (some decent consolidation is hard to find here; I want crit chance, spellpower and DC tyvm).


Please also take a look at the desert epics. You've upgraded the base items in such a way that some of them are better than the epic versions (Looking at you Adherants Pendant).
The same goes for lots of other epic items. They were best in slot, but are now made irrelevant by random loot only 1 or 2 levels higher.
.
*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


If the drop chance is low enough you may as well not put it in. I don't mind having a 0.2% drop chance for store stuff, but I would prefer to have a manageable drop chance for other stuff.
a 5% chance to get a desert shard means you have a 0.1% chance to get the desert shard you want. Being able to exchange it for the one you want would be appreciated...

[Raoull]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



1) greensteel. Sooo customizable, and reasonably regular in how long it takes to get it. Plus, tier 2 clickies are quite useful, as are both single and doubleshard tier 3 items. Few other systems have such a nice spread of difficulty in acquiring, and that spread lines up nearly perfectly with how useful it is. The "taint" mechanic is interesting too, to keep the accessories from getting out of hand.

2) FoT is pretty good. A bunch of good items, with some decent upgrades. The upgrades take quite a few more runs, but nothing too out of hand.

Dragontouched armor is WAAAAAAY too hard. Part of the problem is it is non-end game gear. There should be a mechanic that automatically increases the availability of gear that is end game, when it ceases to be end game. It should never be as hard to get a lvl 12 item as a 28. I can see exceptions to that, but they should only be used for the freakishly good twink stuff (ioun stones, greensteel... torc... that's about all I can think of offhand).

3) Eh.... for ages I thought wraps, especially with the CitW wraps that are more or less useless when compared to Gravewraps (they reaaaaaly need the level drain on them, as that is ideal for their main target), but the new Thunder & Lighting are rather... shockingly good, and monks certainly don't need more love.

While weapons are more less OK, Armor needs help. It is all quite horrible these days. Most people are wearing old Eveningstar or dragonscale... but only for the third of the effects that are useful compared to random accessories (oh my god is bluescale but a poor shadow of its former self), but random armor is soooo bad, that third still wins handily. Heavy armor and docents probably need the most love, especially Heavy armor.

Trinkets could use some love too. To me they seem the perfect item for funky specialized stuff. It makes far more sense to quickly swap a trinket for an encounter than to stop and change your boots.....

[InsanityIsYourFriend]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Loot upgrade system: Green Steel was by far the best; while i disliked the low drop rates of the old epic items, i admired the system, higher chances + old system = better (IE if i ran von 6 on epic normal 50% for everyone to get a shard, EH 75% for all to get shard, EE everyone gets a shard and we can pass em around as we like) idk if that is viable but on my scale running EE raids seems far away for someone like me...

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Alright one that felt right (not too easy, not too hard, something that i loved using) Breeze, my acrobat used breeze until it broke every time (its hardness/durability sucks, if you want it to be better then make me not need to do ada ritual V to keep it from breaking before EN CITW is over!)

One that was rather difficult to acquire for me: Sireth (well it was extremely easy thank you turbine!) but i ran CITW about 18 times without getting one, (except for the time that we completed, i hit SS when i saw it in my name, and then internet crashed for rest of night before i could loot it >.<)

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Big ones:
Bard's Epic Elyd Edge, is the highest level BARD item in the game, has only one slot (which is normally used for a higher teir of devotion) and while it is good, its not level 28 good, yet my bard still wears it...
Rogue's Epic Midnight Greetings, Other than the shadar-kai only item its the only one that boosts assasination DC's; Acrobats are getting their needed love!; Mechanics are *technically* getting their needed love, but they are supposed to use a Great Crossbow (or the level 18 core is lying to me!) highest level named Great Crossbow is..... (not including GS/Alchem) lvl 1?

Fighters, Barbs, Paladins, Artificers, Rangers, and Monks (sorta), are all in good shape with their named weapons
Not too many good castery items anymore, to implement good ones then I suggest you look at Belashyrra's Scepter, give us more variety but essentially its a good one


Item TYPES that need more:
Darts (remember send all your good returning darts to Xottox on Orien!) Great Crossbows (see above) Greatclubs, Mauls (Giant's Fist was nice, but it doesn't cut it) Warhammers (go go morne!) Dorf Axes (nuf said) Picks ..... I can go on but you get it




Solve: a new GS type of crafting that requires 28-30 but can be used once you hit 20 (THAT is what I think made Green Steel crafting such a hit, its usability even after you out leveled it)
now.... why.... just why is it going to kill all the formatting i just did to keep it from being a pure wall of text!

[LadyKoneko]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

............
I'd have to say a combination of greensteel/Alchemical. I love the customization of greensteel. Rather its a min/max build, a PvP build, some random dice roll build, or something else you can make something to fit. I think of all the systems greensteel is the most thought out... also the most encompassing. Yes its annoying to get all the mats buildt up at first and was hard to figure out at first but with the bater box system that went away. Even compared to alchemical, greensteel is more customizable and broader. What I like about Alchemical is the idea that different tiers add to the level required... which means the weapon gets that much better, or that we can put stronger effects on those.

I think back to dragon touched armor was good end armor. You could create any type (robe/light/med/etc) and change it at any time... any tier. Especially after the changing the runes to be named. Yes it had the problem of EVERYONE looked the same.. but hey armor kit sales! Sssooo it was customizable!!! And even better when 'random' was taken outta the equation.

Hardest piece of gear.. 7finger gloves and chatter ring... tho the ring isnt as 'hot' since ac changes. But that has to do with it being one of the hardest raids. Not do to challenge but just simply due to net issues. If dc in part one byebye stone. If you get a new player that doesnt listen they can completely ruin the raid and make it incompetible. And then if you get past part one there are still so many varibles outside player control. Random aggro sucks and makes tank builds useless and a waste of space. And I'll only mention it:LAG.
But even being over level getting past part one takes 30 minutes to even attempt part 2 again. Compate titan to DQ and Von (the only other 2 part raids) neither has so many parts that are auto fail. That said I love the puzzels and thinkin verses auto attack afk. But thats what I think makes those 2 piece some of the hardest to get.

Things that should come out... A new named khosphe, they used to be alk the rage, the best dps, but havent really seen in raids in a long time. New armors. The blue dragon scale out nerfed and most random gear is better aside from slots.

Some effects I'd like to see in higher level gear and scaled up: Spell point regen. Spell point cost reduction. Hp regen. blur/displacement. Saves v. posion/diease... some of those dang spiders are nasty!

[SisAmethyst]

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
1) Shroud Greensteel: This is the best crafting system of all and was made even better and easier through the barter system. Main strength is that it progress with you. Already after a handful of runs you can craft tier 1, a couple of runs further tier 2 and even till tier 3 the grind involved is painless due to fun and nice content.
2) Cauldron of Sora Katra: Because it is plain and simple and has dedicated upgrade like Teraza's Sight become Teraza's Perfect Sight for its level with only two marks that aren't that difficult to get and BtA.
3) Epic crafting: Once this was nice and powerful, now it has set dust. The good thing was that you had to grind and re-run the quests, so it was easy to find groups and it become even better with the auto distribution of fragments and scrolls. What it made a pain however was the low drop rate in combination with being unlucky on the random roll. This was partially addressed with the possibility to exchange scrolls. However there is some kind of substitute recipe missing as we got from Dragontouched rune exchange.
4) Dragontouched: Despite the randomness, with all the modifications to rune exchange it finally became an OK system. However at this state it is so outdated and uncompetitive that everybody runs the quests only for the XP anymore.

Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.
1) Wrath of Sora Kell Set: providing 3 nice stat items that aren't to difficult to acquire and even work in a mixed set.
2) Tinker's Finesse Set: again, not overly difficult to get neither, just right in a couple of runs.
3) Commendation Item Sets: Borderline at least, but I would say overall too easy even though a lot of casual players appreciate it. Especially if you not have all packs it might be just right to acquire.
4) TOD rings: The raid itself is already not easy (which is good) but to get the right ring, the chances are just crazy
5) Phiarlan chain: Base item and epic items are usually just right. Some players are more lucky then others but overall it felt right. Maybe the key here is that the overall chain is easy and often run.
6) Deneith chain: To get the base item is easy or all-right, however to acquire some of the epic items is already quite a grind or pain. If you finally had everything to craft you Epic Deneith Heavy Chain you now can just shed a tear over the fact that anything past MOTU including random loot may outclass this armor without a grind. On the other hand items like Epic Midnight Greetings, which still have value are still a pain to acquire.
7) VON & Sands chain: Well, depending on luck already the base item is rare as water in hell. Someone got a Bloodstone or Torq? Getting the epic version is more or less insane...

What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
That could be easily answered, just take a look at the DDOwiki (http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Weapons_by_type)
1) Picks: Through the bank a nice but rare as named item
2) Kukris: same as picks and from the 10, half is the upgraded version
3) Morningstars: This could as well have more options, but as none deity actually support them they have sadly meanwhile less value then e.g. scimitars for FvS/Cleric

What I as well miss in this group are special purpose items. For example Rogues always have a hard time with undead, especially skeletons. Except of crafting a GS weapon, there isn't much of a choice for characters that only have simple weapon proficiency. I like for example the Unraveling Enchantments as they give niche items space, like Chimera's Fang for dragonmark users, or Elyd Edge for the Bards.


PS: While I like the augment system, I don't really consider it crafting but would put it in a different category named slotting

[arkonas]

I don't have time to answer everything, but I can quickly give these thoughts:

1. I really hate the Shard/Scroll/Seal system as implemented. BTA for each component would help, but the difficulty of getting all three pieces together on the same toon that can actually use the item in question is really annoying. At this point in the game, though, even when you manage to do this, the items are typically underpowered (given that they were level 20 items at the time that level 20 was the max) to justify use. Exceptions I can cite for myself: the Epic Antique Great Axe is still very useful through many Epic levels. Epic Noxious Fang is likewise useful since Returning weapons don't get a lot better after level 20. Masks of Comedy/Tragedy: not so much.

2. The disclaimer about 'randomness' aside, the lack of ANY named item showing up to support Epic crafting (again, I'm thinking Shards/Seals/Scrolls) in their prescribed chests hampers the process significantly. I don't mind rolling the dice and not getting what I'm looking for. What I mind is that I often don't see anything at all. For example, there might be about a 15% chance of any Seal showing up in the Epic chest for The Snitch. Once you get a Seal, then there might be a 5% chance that it's the one you want. Then (as I say) you need to hope you are using the right toon.

In general? We have too many different named loot crafting 'systems' in the game (Alchem, Green Steel, Heroic Comms, Conflux, Adamantine Ore, Shard/Seal/Scroll ... that's off the top of my head). We have things that say there is possibly a way to unlock powers for some bracelet that I have never seen. I don't know that ONE solution fits all, but maybe at least fewer solutions?

Hope that's somewhat coherent. Oh, and I agree with teh_Troll.... how could I not? :)

you do know scrolls are unbound and shards and seals are bta. so i don't know what you're talking about you need to be on the right toon to get them. trade them through your shared bank

[Violith]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Greensteel. There was immense customization, as well as easy to group since pretty much everyone could run together and werent split by difficulty levels, Even after people ran it, they would continue to run it since the ingredients were unbound (could sell/trade to another too) so it didnt matter which toon they were on, they didnt have to pick and choose which one needed to run it which makes pugging alot more available.

Heroic comms. FOT version, where your guarranteed atleast 1 comm per run and the actual items are already upgraded depending on difficulty ran so no matter what your still getting something for the time invested, and the amount needed isnt astromonically (FOT you need anywhere from 0-13 depending on difficulty ran to get the item, that is a reasonable.

I dont like the CITW version of hero comm's where you your not guarrenteed anything when you run, and need to get the item which have low drop rates (I have yet to actually pull one I could use outta 3-4 of my toons that run it) along with 25 comms to upgrade. that makes people not want to run the raid since your not guaranteed anything and 25 may not seem like much but when people have 2-5 items that need comms to be upgraded on multiple toons, the number gets too be too much.
also dont like LOB or MA due to the amount of ingredients one needs, as well as some of the needed ingredients needing a higher difficulty, without anyway to upgrade the lower tiers or shatter the higher ones, this makes finding parties difficult/impossible, That and the long run to the raids is also a serious design flaw.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
item that felt right, pretty much all of the stuff in the newer expansion. being able to get the N or EN version from quest chain which helps build up our power to go after the higher difficulty stuff is nice and welcoming change.

One that felt too hard is Ivy wraps... I have yet to actually pull a pair of these on either my monk or drunk, and I have ransacked that chest numberous times.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Not really a item type, but Healing amp is overdue. I would love to see Hamp get turned into an augment since its hard to slot a hamp item on some toons (all 3 tiers, 10%, 20%, and 30%) (my drunk and monk both are still wearing the pdk guantlets since there isnt any more hamp gear aside from random loot bracers, which arent worth the item slot compared to other items.).

also would love to see more unique weapons like the mad lute, or items that add a unique item onto a character ( like barrel kegs that are back of a character even when they go into animal form, kinda sad that animal forms dont get any type of cosmetic stuff)

[sirgog]

On systems that do not exist that I want to see:


Levelling gear:
- Same stats for the Normal, Hard and Elite item. Same drop rates. The difference: Hard/Elite drops the item at a LOWER minimum level.
- That lets the 'self-found items' casual player get level-appropriate good quality items, but also provides an incentive for veterans to challenge themselves with underlevel runs, repeated elite runs, and to just get some awesome twink/showoff gear when TRing.
- Drop rates should generally be around 5% per version of an item, so that a persistant player that has a specific purpose for an item will definitely be able to get it, even if they are playing self-found.


Endgame gear:
- This is stuff that is intended to be best-in-slot for at least a modest percentage of players.
- Please avoid the super RNG dependence here. At the 20 cap, it took about as many runs of eVON6 to acquire 20 red dragon scales as it did to acquire an SOS shard, but the red scales were much more consistent and I think most people preferred the red scale hunt to the SOS shard lottery. (I say this as someone with above average luck on SOS shards, having had 4 drop under my name in perhaps 200-250 runs at the 20 cap - there are people who ran 500+ runs and never had one drop).
- Good example: Fall of Truth upgrade system; Shroud (back at 16 cap)
- This should definitely be split EN/EH/EE with the difference being item quality not min level. So you earn your EH version, then (optionally) strive to replace it with the EE. The difference between the difficulties can be very small, even just a single '+1' difference (think a weapon where EN is +8, EH +9 and EE +10). Some people will find it worth chasing the EE version, others will not.
- Decide for each item whether it is a 'standard' endgame item that everyone can realistically aspire to acquiring (e.g. Balizarde, or at the 20 cap, tier 2 Alchemical weapons), or a 'prestige' item that is intended to take a major collaborative effort between multiple guild members to acquire (e.g. the original implementation of red dragonscale armor). Communicate this to the players as soon as one of the items is made.
- Once this gear is no longer endgame gear, the non-prestige items should have their drop rates raised to reflect they are now near-endgame gear.


'Near-endgame' gear:
- This is the gear you use while you are hunting for the very best stuff in the game. Think of Lit 2 weapons at the 20 cap - these were not best in slot for anyone, but were very, very good.
- This should be things you can be sure to acquire in a reasonable timeframe so that you aren't grinding forever for things you won't keep using.

[Kingault]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


-Greensteel due to the customization.
-Tor dragonscale armor was fine. ESoS/Epic crafting gear in general can take a LONG time. Way too long, in fact.
-Handwraps, maybe, but only a small bit. Khopeshes, um, shurikens, not sure what else. Definitely docents.

[HatsuharuZ]

The Shroud crafting system felt right to me. You could run it on any difficulty, and by doing higher difficulties you could get more ingredients and thus get the item crafted more quickly. The raid was a bit long, but it was easy to get to. All ingredients were unbound.

On the other hand, there is the Alchemical Crafting system, which had a bunch of issues that made it unpopular. First, you had to run *two different raids* to get the ingredients. Both raids require lots of time since one needs to fight through two explorer areas to reach them. First players had to run Master Artificer multiple times to get the crafting blank they wanted. Then, players had to run the LoB raid on ALL difficulties to obtain the ingredients. God that's a lot of grind. Too much grind, imo. Compare that to Shroud, where all you had to do was run up to the quest after getting off your guild airship, run the raid a few times, then trade for the ingredients you wanted if you were missing something.


The dragonscale helms were a good example of worthwhile loot. You can get multiple named items from the chests they drop in, so even if you don't get the helm you have a chance of getting something. And if you did get a helm, but it's not the one you wanted, you could trade it for another helm or other item.

I really cannot stress how awful whole seal + shard + scroll + base item system was. I have a TON of ingredients in my bank (so much in fact that I need a spreadsheet to keep track of them), and very few completed items.


As for named items... there aren't that many named shuriken, nor are there many non-metallic medium armors for druids.

[redoubt]

1. shroud items.
2. shroud items were about the right difficulty to get
chattering ring drop rate was bad.
seal/shard mechanic was too long...
3. Make an augment that goes in the slot on Celestia that does light damage (so as to not wreck the DR breaking properties.)
need a repeater to compare with pinion.

[pjstechie]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
I particularly like the heroic comms and favor combination of Fall of Truth. I approve of the system that rewards you for running higher difficulty, but also establishes a route to upgrade your loot over time as an alternative. Its reasonable and rewarding of differing playstyles.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.
Raid loot in general has always felt decent with 2 noticeable exceptions - ToD rings (too many variations without a compensating 20th list or higher drop rate of raid loot) and CitW (heroic comm drop rate too low).

in terms of too difficult, the scroll/seal/shard mechanic - at the time it wasnt bad, but now comparatively is brutal. And there is no intermediate achievement, you just have to get really lucky that 1 time (which may never happen)

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
I would say the unpopular weapon choices - give us some of those options but make them actually desirable. (enhancements are a step in that direction).

also, closing thought, I dont like systems that 1) are unique to every single update requiring that 2) make me start completely over in how i upgrade loot and 3) pigeonhole me into running the same 4 quests over and over. Id rather see something where i run content to get the base items (maybe 1 or 2 special ingredients) and then can use, say Comms of Valor, to upgrade them.

[Silverleafeon]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.
+1 for finesse


Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!
another +1 for listening


- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Fawngate has 50ish past lives now, and tons of xp earned.

She carries more greensteels and keeps more greensteels in her bank than any other item type combined:

She has 3x haste clickies.
She has 3x displacement clickies
She has 3x raise dead clickes (one is triple healing amp)

She has triple absorbtion one handed weapons in acid, fire, cold, and electic
She has Conc Op scimitar
She has radiant (blinding) falcion and scimitar
She has lighting strike falcion
She has trap the soul light repeating xbow
She has radiant light (or is it heavy) repeating xbow
She wants to make a ozze master longbow

She has cleansed trap the soul bracers
She has cleansed enervation guard helmet
She has uncleased guard gloves
She has uncleansed sp boost gloves
She has cleansed hp heavy fort boots
She has cleansed conc opposition sp goggles

With all that, she has a set of shards in the bank wondering if she needs more,
although she is doing epic reincarnations she refused to throw those away.

If the spellcasting portion of greensteels was not so outdated she would have made from fire spell augmentations, etc...


{have max ranks in cannath crafting, like challenges, and the cove}

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire.

http://ddowiki.com/images/Vampiric_Cleaver.gif

Nice weapon at level, was able to make and even give a few away later on.


Name one that felt too hard.*

http://ddowiki.com/images/Epic_Sword_of_Shadow.png

Fawn still doesn't have this, after hundreds of million of xp.
Overpowered at level, highly favored the nonTRing group of players who do the raid every 3 days with a guild forever.
A weapon that makes developers fearful of repeating its mistake.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Warpriest is highly dependant on favored weapons.
Either expand the weapons available or pay close attention to them:

Forgotten Realms Iconics only have one religion with a favored weapon.
One would think they could use this:

http://ddowiki.com/images/Braisingstar_%28Tier_2%29.png

But its not a HEAVY MACE, so they cannot.
They could use this:

http://ddowiki.com/images/Magistrate%27s_Scepter_%28Level_28%29.png

But compare the two closely, then look again, need I say more?

This is a possibility, and I tried dual wielding an ee and eh version somewhat successfully:

http://ddowiki.com/images/Forgotten_Light_%28Level_25%29.png

{Epic Greensteel carefully planed would help with this.}


*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Lol, an npc that does ceremonial rain dances would be cool.

[QuantumFX]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
This is a tossup between Shroud crafting and the Fall of Truth/Challenges upgrade system. Shroud crafting is great because you can customize what you want. The Fall of Truth loot gives you more control over what difficulty you feel comfortable playing.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Just right: The Caught in the Web weapons right before you guys went full ****** with the Heroic Commendation upgrades.
Too hard: Anything that requires a base item + Scroll + Seal + Shard. That system is horrible.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
For me, this is a tossup between the challenge items and the Tower of Despair gear. Mainly because these packs could so easily be made desirable by being clever with the loot design. (Ex. Everybody buys the Vale of Twilight pack and plays it even at level 28. Why? Because greensteel is so versatile and has a long shelf life.)

All the Challenge gear named items need a tiers that support their level of play. The House Cannith challenges are meant for levels 1-25. So, why isn’t there level 24 versions of the challenge items? The same goes for the Eveningstar challenges; their difficulty scales all the way to level 30, but there aren’t level 28 weapons or cloaks? Why is Crystal Cove a dead event? Because there isn’t level 24 and 28 gear to grind for. You guys had some good ideas for Mabar, but you never addressed the loot diversity or gave us reason to upgrade our cloaks or handwraps.

Tower of Despair is another sore spot for me. Up until Eberron Unlimited, DDO had a history of never completely obsoleting raids. Then came ToD and you killed The Titan Awakes. You guys realized that that wasn't a great idea and gave us epic difficulty/upgrades to keep some of the older raids relevant. Then you gave is MOTU and killed all the old raids. Then you went and kicked The Reaver’s Fate just to make sure it was good and dead. Here’s a suggestion I made in another thread to turn ToD loot into useful and DDOstore scalable items. It’s a win for players and the development team:

Tower of Despair

Rings: Make the +6 and +1 Exceptional stats on the rings into a colorless and another color slot preslotted with an “Unstable Shavarath Augment of…” This would be an augment that is Level 18 and can either be overwritten *or* unslotting it will destroy the item it was taken from.
Necklace/Belts: Either turn these into dual slot items filled with more “Unstable Shavarath Augment of…” effects, or allow us to crunch these into colorless augments for the set bonus.
Set Bonuses: Would need to be handled on a case by case basis. However, I think it should be a basic effect plus an augmented effect based off of core enhancements purchased for the PrE. (ex. Henshin Mystic makes your centered weapons Flaming. A character with the Henshin Mystic capstone would have Fire VI weapons.)

[sephiroth1084]

Now that the questions are out of the way, I'll throw more 2 cents on the discussion.

First off, I believe every single named item should be strictly better than a equal-level, same niche, random loot item. The only exception allowed is if the item is a guaranteed drop after the quest (like the staff at the end of Haywire's Foundry).

If you have a named item that their main point is that it have a stat or skill bonus, it should match or surpass a random loot item of the same level. A ML 11 item with three skills should give +13 to each skill, because even if it consolidate a lot of skills, if the character want at least one of those skills maximized, he will prefer a random loot with maximized bonus than the named item if the bonus were, let's say, +10. In the same vein, any ML 11 named item with a stat bonus should give at least a +6.

Items with unique, or rare effects (Torc, Madstone Boots, Scarab of Absorption...) may have sub-par stats because they are not the main point of the item. Even then, I believe it is good practice to keep them on pair.

So, a named item should have one of those gimmicks to be worth the search:


It have the same stats as a random loot item, but a lower Minimum Level.
It have multiple stats with the same level as a random item, but helps with item consolidation.
It have a unique effect that you can't find outside of this item.
It have the same stats as a random loot item, but in a non-standard slot (Used a lot before U14 messed the item stats to be all around all items. Eg, Previously, you could not get Spot outside of goggles, helmet or rings, thus the Gloves of the Falcon (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Gloves_of_the_Falcon) were interesting for slotting Spot in the Hand slot)


I want to see more of the emphasized point. I'm getting a little tired of seeing so many named items that are just more efficient slot consolidation of things achievable on random lootgen. This is even worse of late thanks to augment slots getting tossed on random loot.

[Oxarhamar]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Best) Shroud hands down, the loot is great and extremely flexible, the raid is fun and there is something for everyone.

Mediocre) CITW most of the items are absolutely amazing however, the lack of flexibility with upgrading means its all the same

Worst) Shard/Seal/Scroll/Item never bothered with this system I know too many players that dedicated months/years to acquiring single items I ignore it if I get a set of Seal/Shard/Scroll that I need eventually maybe I'll craft a thing but, I'm not chasing any of this stuff I have other things to acquire like CoV now.

Dream Crafting System) something similar to the Shroud with the capability to Craft Tier 3 Shroud weapon effects into special Epic Shards that can be applied onto CITW weapons similar to the eldritch ritual only one effect per item.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

I'm confused by this one most items either seam too easy and end up trash to the vendor (I think its more that the items are trash too and undesirable) or the items are highly desirable and hunted by everyone ESOS and TORC come to mind.

In my personal experience pre MOTU when the Level cap was 20 Raid trains were popular our guild ran Vod, Hound, Von 5&6, TOD &, Chrono every weekend. We also had a daily Shroud & ADQ with alts. Shroud for gathering GS ingredients & AQD mostly for Torc. At that time in the state of the game Raid items were not very difficult to acquire. Since then Raiding has died off due to a number of different reasons.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

What we need is more variety in named loot and not the randomly generated effects on named loot that we had on the Epic Dragon Helmets or Goatskin Boots (the Helms were not so bad since there was so much other good loot in the Dragon Chests that looking for the right combo was not so bad)
Give us decent Basic Epic Items we can customize to our Builds (by decent I mean better than the lower level items of the same type) Bigger base dice not just more W's of 1d6, expanded Crit range, and increased Crit multiplier those are some of the things that make better base items.

Deathnips comes to mind LVL 14 Heavypick and really is untouched by any other Pick in the game.
ESOS although it may not be the highest DPS in every situation for every build all the new Great Swords are generally laughed at in comparison

Give use some variety Base items of every type that are superior to existing items Truly Epic then give us a Crafting system to add our own Epic effects to them.

Epic Shroud about sums it up really.

No more random effects on Named items.

[HuneyMunster]

I like the idea of weapons like Celestia, Brightest Star of Day. I think that could be expanded on with elemental types.

Better caster weapons are needed as now random x element of y lore are only options for casters. Crystalline Scepter is a good example of an improved version of these, but now outdated. Twilight, Element of Magic is now not worth considering to me due to spell critical changes.

A lot of new named loot now has a random effect added. This reduces the chance of getting the effect that you are looking for on a named item. A barter system where you can change the random effect to the one of your choosing using Valor as an example of the currency required.

Staffs always come with one lore type, but often two elemental types. This means that you are usually better off with two one handed weapons. Maybe these could also have the accompanying lore included. An example Copper Ingot Arcanum comes with electrical damage and lore, but also impluse without lore. Instead it has potency. Changing potency to kinetic lore would make this type of item more appealing.

[BOgre]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

1) House C Elemental/Calomel/Mournlode/etc Crafted, because we know exactly what to expect from mat drops, what makes what, where to find what, and after a run or two we can guess to a very narrow margin of error how long it will take. Also, each level of weapon/item can be upgraded to the next level rather than having to remade from scratch. A truly robust, user friendly, and rewarding system.

2) Shroud, because of the huge variety of items that can be made, and the relative ease of the grind involved. Tier 2 GS clickies can be useful from level 14 all the way to Cap. Who wouldn't love that??? Tier 3 stuff can be best in slot until well into Epic lvls, if not cap.

3) Lordsmarch/Sora-Katra stuff. Drop rates are good, forging two pieces together is cool, running the full chain for mats keeps the grind interesting.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.

Epic Elemental weapon of Element - Knew from the get-go what it was going to take, was not disappointed with the result.

Just about every other named item was too hard to get. And by hard I do NOT mean the required quest was hard, or the upgrade system was hard (although Alchemical Crafting is certainly not... intuitive...), no, by hard I mean far too random, drop rates just insanely low, grind insanely high.

Look at ToD rings. Drop rates low, chance of getting your desired ring on the right toon, riciculously low. Then run a whole different quest/questpack to upgrade it. Total Fail.
Look at Sands shard/seal/scroll mechanic. Another mind numbing, 20th run list fail, insanely rare, living hell. Most of the Epic loot is now irrelevant too... Utter Fail.
Look at Drow weapon of the Weapon Master. Good luck getting what you need on the character you want, PLUS ultra good luck getting the effect your build needs most. Random = Fail. Fast forward a year, weapon irrelevant.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Why is this even a question at all? Every weapon type and every item slot should have decent representation at all levels. You've given us the tools to build our characters how we like, but then forced us into weapon/item pigeon holes that cause us to Flavor of the Month. Make it policy to never ignore a weapon type or item slot for more than ONE update. This way you can hopscotch your dev love and everyone knows what to expect.


And now for your Asterisk:


*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Sadly? Sadly my patootie. Random IS fickle, and should be burned in fire. Running quests endlessly with no guarantee, not even any measurable progress, towards getting the item your grinding for is asinine. What you're saying is, if I've had bad loot luck, too bad for me? Too bad for your sales you mean. Your rain-dance comment is not funny, not appropriate, and frankly a little racist.

Loot systems, particularly crafted/upgraded loot should be predictable. Yes, they can and should incorporate a certain level of time sink, but to say that some players will just never see a return on their time investment because of bad luck, and to say that that's ok, and there's nothing you can do, well... I'm sorry but that's just not cool. Gaining small, measurable steps toward your goal is far smarter.

[LucidLTS]

Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO.
<snip>
- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


OK, I'll bite.

First, I freely acknowledge that my answer isn't right for the majority of the people who post to the forums. I'm a casual player, my total game time across all video games I play is usually under 15 hours per week, often way under.

But that is a demographic you probably have a hard time collecting data on, yet one that represents a large portion of the gaming industry, so I'll brave the slings and arrows of the more serious gamers and offer you a take on loot from the casual perspective.

I play mostly with real life friends, and we schedule time to game together, often with a planned objectives set before we log on. Named loot is important to us, but if it's too hard to get, it isn't worth going after.

My favorite, and a favorite among my friends, is Crystal Cove. It doesn't take a full time job to get a piece or two of decent gear, it can be traded between alts so if you out-level it you haven't wasted the effort, and the upgrade path allows steady effort with measurable progress. I actually take time off work to play Crystal Cove.

Another "just right" is ioun stones. We had guild runs for months to get everybody at least one stone, and we had a great time doing it. Even after we each had one, we kept running it because we had fun doing it and getting a second one or a better one would be cool. Success is fun, and the quests got associated with success.

An example of one that's too hard is Torc or Rayum De. We did short man guild runs for months (with way over leveled characters), and finally just gave up. It's closing in on a year since our last attempt. Sour grapes, it's not worth it. And we haven't set foot in since. It just left a bad taste in our mouths.

Named loot should definitely be more powerful than random loot, but it shouldn't be wildly more powerful. 10% or so more is enough. If it's too much more powerful it makes it much harder for you to scale quests so they are playable to people without the named loot and not a complete joke to people who have it. And 10% is definitely enough of an edge to get people to farm for it.

Thanks for listening

[xMund]

Thanks so much for these threads! It is really great to have these "official" lines of communication for input on the development process.

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

There are two systems that I feel work very well, both of which I am actively pursuing items in, and then one honorable mention. In prioritized order they are:
1) Epic Cannith Challenges/Crystal Cove
I love this system, because it is relatively easy to get the base items, but require a significant investment for subsequent gradual improvements. The loot offers great slot consolidation, plus often rare or unique bonuses (here referring to stacking UMD on the Spyglass, ghostly AND manslayer on Ring of the Stalker, and spell lore and spell power (although this is far from top end these days) on non-weapon items). These are important, because otherwise the system wouldn't matter, but the primary reason I love this system is that both the loot outcome and the expected time investment is fairly well known from the onset, and you feel like you are making progress. This is very important to me. I have completely sent the scroll/seal/shard items down the river, because I hate that I feel like I wasted my time, every time I've gone through a run that gives little to no XP and didn't drop any of the things I were looking for.

2) Green Steel
The three big selling points here is customization, flexibility and unique effects. Getting the effects you want/need, on your preferred slot and not being able to get them anywhere else, is hard to over-sell. The other thing I love is that it has an option for people who only raid enough to get base items (the shards in this case), to do their farming at a slower pace in a non-raid environment (i.e. Devil Assault). It seems to me, that the balance has been struck pretty well here, in that people who have the opportunity and the inclination to run Shroud regularly will usually not be farming DA, but it is still feasible (given a long enough timeframe) to upgrade items in this way.

I would like to emphasize that last point, because it could easily be integrated with other upgrade systems as well. Commendations of Heroism could, as an example, easily be made available through a barter interface for some number of Eveningstar commendations or Commendations of Valor. Again the trade-in cost should be so high that it is much more efficient to run the raids, but leaves the door open for the slow but steady crowd. This would personally make me a lot more likely to interact with these upgrade systems. This would also allow for the lowering of "prices" when things are no longer top-shelf, so they don't loose their relevance completely.

Honorable mention: Flawless Dragonscale Armor (the Gianthold Tor ones...)
I think it is a shame that the base items here require Commendations of Heroism. When the items are centered around a non-raid quest, I think it is a shame to require raid-ingredients to build the base. I would have loved to see base items @80-90% power, which can be had without raiding, and then the upgrades requiring raiding.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
I have yet to complete a dual shard GS item, but from my progress so far I would say it is about right. The Cannith-challenge items are probably a smidge on the easy side, if they were truly top tier but at their current relative power I think it is good too.
Besides the Commendations the Flawless Blue/Black/White Armors seem good as well.

I think the scroll/seal/shard items and the low drop rate + randomly mutated items (in particular the Shadowfell named) is not worth it.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Top-end spell power and spell lore on non-hand slots is a big one (especially positive energy). Repeaters is another.

[Rhysem]

Favorite upgrade system -- I actually like the tier2/tier3 upgrades in cannith/cove/etc. Lacks the flexibility elsewhere, but has a reasonable price and time investment to the upgrades you get. I intentionally didn't pick shroud, because the gear is A) way too good and B) its crafting interface (especially in the old days) sucked. If you had ML20 gear as good as shroud is at ML~12, people would use it all the way to 28 or 30.


Right difficulty: Vampiric Stonedust -- you have to work at it, you can sell your lucky score, and they are so so worth it.

Too hard: Dragontouched, in the bad old days of anonymous runes.


In need of love: Thrown weapons. Repeaters.

[knightgf]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



- Well, I suppose GreenSteel is a great loot upgrade system, if you factor in crafting, because it allows you to make powerful weaponry and accessories that is good for heroic levels 11-20. Though the accessories might be good beyond that because some of them are exclusive (Concordant Opposition) otherwise they're an excellent addition to heroic levels, unlike Alchemical Weapons. Though if you factor out crafting, hmmm....I can't really say. I suppose in practice, the Black Abbot raid items are nice because it just requires two items and there is only one upgrade step, making it simple, which all upgrade processes should be. The main problem I have with upgrading items in game is that there are too many differences and some of the paths are blocked off for players with the perseverance but not the skill. Any item, whether it be a raid or named quest item that has a upgrade mechanic, should be upgraded to its fullest potential whether the item was obtained on normal, hard, or elite. The only difference is that it will take longer on the easier settings. This will help smooth out the learning curve whilst helping the player to achieve their goals.

- Any named item that is useful right out of the box without upgrades of any kind are welcome. Upgrades should be rarely used. The items that usually feel right to acquire in terms of upgrades are usually the festival items; sometimes the ingredients or steps are excessive, but otherwise it feels fairly right. The main problem with them is the lack of simplicity; the upgrade steps are unnecessarily complicated. 2+3+5 still equals 10, so why not just do 5+5, or 10 if possible? I think one upgrade mechanic that's hard in particular is the CitW upgrade mechanic; to begin with, the weapons themselves are hard to acquire. On top of that, you need 375 Purple Dragon Knights favor to even try to upgrade them, which may not sound too bad now if you actually have the money to spare for the latest expansion, but otherwise, it wont be reasonable because that involves doing a lot of these quests on elite, and they are very challenging, usually in the wrong (AKA lazy) ways. My suggestion is to change it so that you can upgrade these weapons regardless of favor, the only difference being that favor influences the cost of upgrading. As long as you have the upgradable item and enough ingredients to upgrade them, that should be the only requirements. Everything else should be optional and makes it easier to upgrade.

- In epic levels, just about anything can use some love because epic levels are mostly still in construction. Even the weapons in CitW aren't enough to quench our thirst. However, if there's one particular category in epic I would like to see further developed, its armor, including shields. All armor types, and maybe all shields (Though at least heavy and tower) should be considered for raid loot. At heroic levels, the one thing that could REALLY use some love would be dragontouched armor; it is obsolete and needs to have better slot upgrades. Perhaps the minimum level should be adjusted as well, and the stats to make it viable at heroic and early epic levels. In addition, maybe cannith crafting could use a facelift as well; the minimum levels on the crafted items aren't quite popular with the playerbase, unfortunately.

A few other notes:

- Heroic loot tends to be mostly complete; if anything, epic loot should be focused on, because there's just SO MUCH that needs to be done with adding loot, especially at mid and high levels.

- When making loot upgrade mechanisms, think simple! It'll save the playerbase frustration, and the developers time + money. Fancy detail usually just gets in the way, so save yourself some work!

- If you work on modifying Amrath content, work on making the rings simple to upgrade: One good idea is to make rings blank items, and with enough ingredients, you can put any set effect on there in addition to the greensteel stuff; the ingredients should not vary based on what set you want in terms of item sets. That way, you don't waste time making 50+ rings, and that whenever a player wants a particular ring, they don't have to go through the frustration of getting luckier than lucky.

[Ivan_Milic]

Only have 1 thing to mention:Random loot should never be better than named loot of same lvl.

[CaptainSpacePony]

...

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
...

1. I like cannith challenges. Good items with a lot of utility (until about lvl 22-23. Sure would love to see higher than lvl 20 versions). You get what you want/need and can even customize it. Not too grindy considering how good the stuff is.

2. Cannith challenge items again were right difficulty (maybe a little easy, but not overly so). Alchemical items (MA/LOB) are too hard. I've never even tried. So much grind for melee weapons (the other stuff is junk IMO) from unpopular raids. With that said, it probably wasn't as bad as dragon touched armors, since at least when it's done. alchemical wpns are good, whereas the DT are underwhelming.

3. Armor needs attention--esp docents. I often feel armor is the least important gear slot. Artificers could use some interesting/cool non-rune arm equipment. Paladins too, oh and btw, longsword is NOT the ideal paladin weapon.

Legacy epic gear needs a serious buff. Considering how difficult it can be to epicify old stuff, (which is ok and interesting) these items should be much better. It would also be ok to increase the ML on legacy epic stuff to the lvl of the quests they come from.

[Silverleafeon]

If you believe it or not there are still weapon types that dont have a single named raid item.

If you dont count crafted items....

Great Xbow for example the only named one is a level 2 from Korthos.

There are no Raid Dwarven axes...
There are no Raid throwing weapons...

http://ddowiki.com/page/Category:Heavy_Maces

Just looked, add Heavy Maces (the only favored weapon available to an iconic) to the list of weapons types not available from any raid.


End game epic greensteel would help this problem a lot, imho...

[Jasparion]

Only have 1 thing to mention:Random loot should never be better than named loot of same lvl.

Aim higher. Heroic random loot should never have been released which is better than Epic Elite named loot.

[Silverleafeon]

Gaining small, measurable steps toward your goal is far smarter.
+1

[Dawnsfire]

I hate both the Green Steel and House C crafting systems. Both allow people to build wonderful and varied items, that is what I love about them. What I detest about them is all the varied pieces, the bag space involved and the inventory nightmare keeping track of all that ****. In other words, I love the result but hate the messy process.

Please do consider something to help clear all this up before you build another system like either. My head hurts sorting through all the green bags I have sometimes.

Thanks for listening!

[Mryal]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
The shard/seal/scroll system.As long as all pieces are unbound.Why? This system was perfect.It induced rarity, and market value of items.Why did this system fail and was replaced? Because of binding.In my humble opinion binding kills a lot of the fun in DDO.No trading, no real coin, lots of resources wasted on your character that you will never use.I personaly destroy 10-15 bound items whenever i TR.This is a waste of items that could be contributing to a more vivid economy, all because of binding.Binding has slowed DDO for too long, it really is time for it to go.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Right difficulty.I have to say all greensteel.It really matches up in a degree of grind required/power obtained.Too hard? Ring of spell Storing.Its so hard i didnt get it yet after 3 years

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Id say bards, kopesh users, anyone that is a battlecaster atm is lacking weapons (this could be fixed by fixing those ridiculous values on general arcane lore thought), but above all, Druids.My druid can only use Epic Luminous Truth, i tried and tried to find a better weapon that would fit both semi-decent melee and Spellcasting, but its considerably hard now.And, why is there no weapon designed for Animal form? Granted, some work very well but why is there no item specificaly designed to work well with animal form folks.

[Silverleafeon]

3. Armor needs attention--esp docents. I often feel armor is the least important gear slot.

Consider expanding Dragontouched Armor into a epic raid crafting situation:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Dragontouched_Armor

[Singular]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
.

Thank you for looking at these systems :)

1. Greensteel is, as everyone is saying, the best. Any class can make items + weapons that suited their goals.
1a. I like how FOT and GH in general work with the Epic/EH/and EE versions. It would be nice if most of these could, like the raid loot, be upgraded through coms.
1b. How the CITW weapons work is good, too. It's great how they upgrade, and how that's tied to favor. The raid only fails in its delivery of coms, unlike FOT.
1c. LOB/MA worked pretty good, but has now been eclipsed. Can you add a 4th tier? Perhaps an increase in weapon dice or crit multiplier? And revamp the caster items - they are now trash.

2a. FOT and GH seem about right (except TOR - too many items here so that random doesn't work; it takes far too long to get a specific item. The EE version of the quest takes about 1.5 hours, maybe 1 w/a good group, so 100's of times that is unacceptably long).
2b. Any system that is random, that requires shard/scroll/seal/item - totally worthless. I have never made an epic version of an item (been playing for 3-4 years) and I never will. The time cost is ridiculous, the items aren't worth it.

3: Crossbows (there aren't enough variety), Rune arms (no upper level force rune arm, decreased variety at end game), Khopesh (where are the raid khopesh???), caster rods/staffs/sceptres (the current end game ones are outdated by random loot), heavy picks (14th level items should not be best in game), dwarf stuff, divine stuff (can't think of good divine items), increased armor choices, increased robe choices, a wider variety of best-in-slot weapons in general :)

Request: please design a system where we can add an augment to any equipment that lacks an augment.

Also: lore augments would bolster current caster items.

[geoffhanna]

Favorite System
I prefer systems where you can target something you want and know you will eventually get it. This includes greensteel, the Cannith challenge rewards, the festival rewards, all of the Eberron raids, and the original epic system (although some of the original epic shards and seals are so difficult as to be not really attainable).

Acquisition
Epic Jidz-Tetka was crazy hard to get, I had to run TTT every day for a couple of months, but it was a dominant item at the time and the difficulty seemed appropriate. The Epic Hammer of Life on the other hand seems even harder and is totally not worth the effort. Although I still want one on my maul character. And forget about the Epic Ring of Spell Storing, that just ain't gonna happen. Way too difficult.

On the other hand, some named loot seems to drop nearly every time. For instance, both of the Lordsmarch Plaza and Harbingers of Chaos quest chains. Every run yields a nearly complete set of named items.

And I like the way newer quests only reward the very best items on Epic Elite. That is totally appropriate.

Overdue for love
I don't think any one weapon or item type is hurting as badly as was once the case. There are so many Epic items now, you can find something for every slot for every character. I'd rather see love applied to the weapons system as a whole. Some way to unify the various upgrade systems or combine items or Epify anything. I'd love to see a way to upgrade a Chattering Ring or an Ioun Stone (or whatever).

And I'd love to see the number of different upgrade systems consolidated and reduced.

Unsolicited Comment
It is not reasonable to assume that Titan gear (or Ioun stones or any other heroic named/raid loot) will always be comparable to lootgen items when the level cap is so much higher. It would be nice if each raid had a reason to run it, forever, but that is hard to do.

I miss the days when the best items of all were not bound. I pulled a wounding of puncturing shortsword back in 2006(? I think ?) while running the Reaver. I got tells from all over the server for days, people offering me the world for that shortsword, news of my good fortune spreading purely by word of mouth, I never put it in trade channel or advertised it for sale. In fact I didn't sell it and I still have it but ... well, you know what happened to WoP ... but wow what a thrill it was to first see it in the lootbox with my name on it. Another time I lucked into a Banishing Rapier back when Meridia was new and Banishing Rapiers were the shizzle. The stuff I got from that deal seriously upgraded my whole account.

You are not asking us for new out-of-the-box ideas but it would be cool if we could make _any_ named/raid item Epic. That would make it more fun to go for unusual or super-rare rewards at every level.

The very best and most rare lootgen should be better than any crafted item, and compare reasonably to same-level named loot. But not be as good as the very best comparably-leveled raid item.

[Oxarhamar]

On systems that do not exist that I want to see:


Levelling gear:
- Same stats for the Normal, Hard and Elite item. Same drop rates. The difference: Hard/Elite drops the item at a LOWER minimum level.
- That lets the 'self-found items' casual player get level-appropriate good quality items, but also provides an incentive for veterans to challenge themselves with underlevel runs, repeated elite runs, and to just get some awesome twink/showoff gear when TRing.


This is great

I myself prefer to use some EH or even EN versions on items since higher ML means less use in ETR

[ranthrock]

1. Greensteel was the standard
-Yes, we ran shroud every night, no we did not mind, even after it became automatic and we split-screened Naruto. Greensteel combined a great quest with a system that you knew you would get what you wanted if you worked hard enough and paid your dues. I remember after I crafted my first GS item and was sooooo happy.
-That said, your goal with upgrade systems isn't necessarily just to repeat what you did with greensteel. Just find something new that 1) has us grinding a quest we won't mind, and 2) gives us predicatble enough results to make every grind worth it a little (everyone knew that even a double-Bone run gave you one more completion to your essence of cleansing).

-The Necro Series has always been great at giving predictable rewards if you're willing to grind for things. Kudos to giving us easier access to shield frags and tome pieces. Would love for some of those weapons to be improvable with additional turn ins.


2. Too easy:
-Not sure I'd say anything is too easy, although just pulling EE ivy wraps or something didn't really feel like I'd earned them so much as accidented my way into them.

3. Worst :
-Dragontouch armor was always the ****cicle in the coffee. Horrible upgrade system, even after the improvements in named runes. Armor is so easily outclassed by other options that it's sad. I use GS items all the way to cap every life and usually well into epic levels. DT is molding in the bank. Please give DT some love and us a reason to go revisit Reaver's and grind out some completions of SOS. I miss SOS.
-The trinket turn ins from necro IV (for the armors) is not good. The armors are generally underpowered and don't have enough "Wow! I made it through Abbot!-ness"

Other notes:
-I hate it when upgrading an item increases its ML. I would much rather see ML's grouped into a few tiers (some items are ML 1, some are ML 7, some are ML 13, some are ML 18, some are ML 20, some are ML 25), than the 1-28 we have now.
-Purr also hates non-stacking ingredients, and non-bagable ingredients (Purr is looking at you, great shards of power).
-Single-use ingredients are bad, too ("oh boy, my 9th demon's blood...")
-Please give us some lee-way to upgrade our existing gear. A fourth tier of shroud would be great.
-What I would love to see is some grand system where you needed pieces from lots of different areas to craft some really powerful items. Maybe we'd have to collect shards in Gianthold and combine them with gears from House C and then we can add in powdered Ye's from Forgotten Realms (they are plentiful there).

[Oxarhamar]

I hate both the Green Steel and House C crafting systems. Both allow people to build wonderful and varied items, that is what I love about them. What I detest about them is all the varied pieces, the bag space involved and the inventory nightmare keeping track of all that ****. In other words, I love the result but hate the messy process.

Please do consider something to help clear all this up before you build another system like either. My head hurts sorting through all the green bags I have sometimes.

Thanks for listening!

Bags, and specificly BTC space is an issue but, it is a separate issue. I

t is no reason to abandon a system with the potential for variety of Greensteel... Deal with the bags like everyone else.

[Peo]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Greensteel of course.

Dragontouched Armor
Currently the worst upgrading system in the game. Runes are random, BtC, and only a select few are useful. Plus the ones that are have aberrant drop rates totally overshadowed by current randomly offered loot. Such as the famous heal amps, +10, +15, & +20 on a dedicated robe that took eighty runs or more just to snag that +20. Now, you can own +10 before taking your second Feat and epics offer +30.

Stone of Change
The ingredients are far to rare to use this system beyond binding items or increasing hardness. For example, on Cannith a typical Drowshroud can run as high as 90k platinum per, and you need nine of these to add a single point of damage to a weapon. I only rarely ever see the ingredients for a mere +1 boost to saves.

Cannith Crafting
Great for low level holy bleeders, specially in the overpriced Cannith market place that thinks "lacerating" is a +100k surfix on any item. But the system quickly becomes unuseful as the expenses and time spent for the crafting levels simply doesn't pay off. The best the system has to offer is a few select greater bane properties, all of which are trumped by such properties as smiting, banishing and disruption which can be found as low level randomgen. And if you didn't waste resources in those crafting levels, could have afforded.

Challenges
The BtC to BtA change was nice for the Eveningstar Challenges. Acquiring a decent weapon is still pretty random through. It's far easier to run a quest looking for rare named loot and letting the same random factor possible award you with combined prefix/surfix loot.

House Cannith challenges however are still kind of nice. Little slow to impossible to solo at times requiring a lot of repetition, but they are BtA till fully upgraded allowing you to trade them among toons as needed which is certainly a leg over the new epics which are BtCoE.

Item Upgrading
Kind of a catch all. Several quests offer an item that can be upgraded within the same quest chain. Sentinels, Red Fens, Artificers, Dreaming Dark and so on. I'm pretty neutral here. Either you like the item and these are easy enough you won't get too bored grinding for them, or you don't like the item but are allowed to give it to guildies and let them work on upgrading them.

Raid upgrades like Abbot and Gianthold however, just waste your time. You already spent several days failing to get your randomized item only a few people want, but now you have to waste several more trying to get an item everyone wants? Far easier to grind two levels and use higher level loot. It's much the same with the commendations, you need 25 of them to fully upgrade your weapon and 15 I think for dragonscale armor. 40 commendations and CitW often refuses to drop even one to a party of twelve people. It's why Gianthold's epics were ran hourly when it came out, people only had to run the raid for six months in a row to equip a single character rather than several years.

Alchemical Crafting
This has some perks in here. The base item is pretty common and easy to get, the material upgrade is cakewalk, the shards are BtA allowing you to farm them using multiple characters, the elemental ingredient being BtC reminds me of Greensteel's shards and is fairly acceptable. However, the cells are super rare and often you'll be hung up trying to obtain them.

Greensteel
My favorite through it could use some improving. You have a guaranteed progression towards your item on every single run. Sometimes you'll end up with more chains than you need, but you can trade or auction them off in order to get that last scale you need. The raid it's self is quite stable as well since it's been free of deva "improvements" which is amazing to be honest. Every time you guys "grace" a pack mobs are made ten times harder than they were (recall the stealth upgrade to lob?) and often break the entire raid (titan/citw). It's only negative aspect is the fact you have to run the same quest over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
I'll give you three of each.

None-epic Sentinels of Stormreach
Four quests later and you have a strong chance of owning a good 5th level item with (mostly) unique properties. Add to this it's possible to run these quests at the 4th~5th level as well rather than waiting until several levels later.

Greensteel
Meteoric X of a thousand suns and such is better but sold for impossibly high values. GS weapons maintain validity and help you obtain epic elite versions of specific, better, weapons. They also have a TR appeal in being amazingly useful because you can benefit from them at low levels rather than waiting till the end game.

Epic Normal Loot as Rewards
Does the quest suck? Do you simply hate running it? Is your luck at loot so terrible you get Handwraps as a Greataxe using Barbarian? It's ok, you can have this little make up gift to hold you over as you work up the motivation and effort to get the real one you want.

And three I hate.

Old Epics
It's like finding the same super rare item drop three times in a row. And then you still have to trade for the scroll. And the loot is often underpowered. You know I've ran Sentinels probably forty times so far and not seen even a single shard for the bladesmark docent? I'd love to own it, but killing a white dragon on an epic elite quest thirty times in a row gives you progression and loot. Old epics can have you walking away with nothing or seeing some noob pick up the item in the first go. "Despair" is not an emotion games should put you through.

(Normal) Red Dragonscale Armor
The armor is weaker than it's new epic Gianthold counterparts. Obtaining the amazing -10% spell point cost greenscale can even be obtained in three different locations (the well, king's forest & gianthold rare encounter). Even the Cormyrian version is readily obtainable.

But if you want the old style, it'll cost you a full set of dragonscale armor *AND* a shard. Which drops about one raid in a hundred, to 12 people who know how rare it is and thus trade it out of the chest. I mean don't get me wrong, I'd love free flaming burst on my weapons. But it's not free if it consumes my armor slot and two years of effort.

CitW Loot
I caught wind of the Raider's Box and tried getting as many types of raids in as I could on as many characters as I could. One does not pass up the chance to see CitW named loot or commendations of heroism. Six chests at the end, yet *maybe* one named item might drop. For twelve people. Oh, and it's BtC so there is a chance the named loot is worthless to everyone. Yeah, box please. Message me when the next one is coming out.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Old Epics
Personally, I'd be fine with abolishing the entire epic crafting system. The concept depends on the loot gods way to much and the epic loot is either weaker than readily obtained epic loot from Eveningstar (drop rares or turn ins) or useful but not quite up to epic hard+ levels.

Numbers!
I have an unexplained urge to fill my screen with numbers. Holy/shocking burst rings on top of a lightning the candle thraak wraps monk, a quiver of poison on an elemental enchanted primal avatar, a wizard with way to many chain missiles ticking DoTs and double rainbow damagers. Most of this stuff is easily ignored by certain mobs (teiflings for instance) but at the same time I'm easily distracted by the shiny symbols. How come we don't have a flaming shocking icy burst weapon of somemoredice? Even the new suffixes are like "this is vorpel only, and no damage dice." :(

Vault of Night
The quests drop nothing.
CitW's flag? All nine major quests drop named loot.
GH? Lots of named loot of all kinds of levels to be found.
Shroud? HoX & VoD drop named loot without a raid flag. Plus the other quests build your blank.
You essentially name it, it drops named loot. VoN's flagging quests have a lightning rod and that's it.


TL;DR: VoN is a prime example of how not to run named loot?

[EllisDee37]

Since you're asking about crafting systems, here's my ranking of best to worst:

#1: Cannith Challenge gear. Consistently making direct progress toward the goal is unparalleled in awesomeness.

#2: Greensteel crafting. It's random, so demerits on that, and the shards are BTC so another demerit, but Shroud is the social glue at the heart of DDO. Major points for that.

#3-5: Three-way tie between Alchemical crafting, FoT/CitW upgrades, and Eveningstar commendation sets. I love the LOB raid but alchemical crafting is overly difficult due to requiring different difficulties, unlike Shroud. The commendation sets are tedious to farm up, and I dislike that there are only two places to get commendations of heroism for the raid loot upgrades.

#6: Cannith Crafting. The grind is prohibitive. More importantly, cannith crafting is now almost completely irrelevant. This system badly needs some love.

#7-11: Sora Kell/Madness/Sentinels/Red Fens/Secrets of the Artificers: These crafting systems are nothing but meh, basically an afterthought that adds no real value to the game. Sora Kell is the best of the bunch but they all could go away (assuming some other way to get the final gear) without any complaint, much like encumberance did. Just put the final items in 3rd lists or something and let the systems go away. The madness and artificer systems in particular feel like complete wastes.

#12-#358,492: Every imaginable crafting system you or any game can or will ever create.

#358,493: Eveningstar challenge crafting. Random reward from turn-in is the anti-thesis of what crafting should be. Make each ability that can appear cost a specific amount of whichever mats you like, and when you craft it you get some kind of shard you can put right back in the altar with the item you want to attach it to. Base items of course get their own recipes. So I might craft cormyrian handwraps, a stunning shard, a lightning strike shard, and a holy shard. Then put the wraps and the three shards in the altar to combine. Done and done. Now this terrible system becomes a great one that players would flock to.

#358,494: Epic Shard/Seal/Scroll system. This system was specifically designed to fill an ocean of time for players at level 20 because there was nothing else to do. Level 20 now is practically the start of the game, not the end. This entire system needs to be scrapped.

[WanderingGrump]

Best System in the game: Shroud/Greensteel Crafting hands down. Like so many say the power of Greensteel is limited BtC Mats and a majority of them being unbound. The sheer power and flexibility keep this system relevant far beyond their ML. If nothing else the fact we can craft specific clickie effects, the wide variety of gear slots you can make make it hands down the single best system in the game. There is not a single build or toon that can't benefit from at least 1 to 2 items from this system even it it's merely a 2xPositive Raise Dead Clickie item or a simple HP item. They are just too good for words. When I first started making Greensteel I made "Cheap" items like a 3xAir HP necklace or a 3xEarth HP cloak because it was all I could do to afford the large ingredients to make them. Today I still run Shrouds regularly and in fact I recently built 3 separate sets of ConOpp HP/SP/CHA Skill boots for different toons because they truly remain useful for my epic level and my completionist project.

Second Best System for me is the Crystal Cove/House C Challenge gear. While not uber overpowered much of it is still effective despite the changes to the game after it's introduction. Kudos on the design. I would however love to see more than one type of Tier 2 or Tier 3 ability. If we could customize what add on effects we could get then this would truly be a stellar system that would surpass greensteel.

If I could see one major change it would be to the old epic scroll/shard/seal system where you get to exchange 3 or even 5 shards for the shard you want and duplicate that for the seals as well. These days there remain about 10-15 of the old style epic items that I truly would want to make of the what 120-150 possible items. The trouble is the sheer grindage to get the rest of the parts just stinks. In some cases it's the base item drops that are truly annoying. I have on one of my casters 64+ ADQ runs and no Torq, no Demon Consort Bracers which for a long time were items I wanted when I planned the toon. At this point I have regeared not even leaving room for those items and just run ADQ on an occasional basis where once I ground it out every 3-4 days. One can already trade for Sands scrolls why not extend that to the rest of the parts and extend it for the rest of the pack items as well. We like trade ins at fixed amounts we have a reasonable change to grind through. 50-100 runs for one last piece is annoying.

Finally I have to say if you do put upgrade items on named loot, don't make them random. Let us be able to pick effects/abilities to add. Customization is a key to this game. What keeps me playing is the fact that despite the bugs and grind there is such a vast, rich and deep character generation system where we can build so many varied toons. The fact that one of my favorite and best DPS toons is a rather unconventional Quarterstaff build, that I can make an epic viable toon which uses a returning throwing shuriken or make transformed bear tear through masses so I can pass my way through a barbarian past life means that loot for these toons needs to be varied and customizable.

[Gizeh]

[...]

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

[...]

Hint: So far (excluding iconic classes) there is exactly ONE item that affects assassinate DC.

[Cyr]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Favorite is greensteel no competition there. It had variety for many builds and customization for oddball neat effects. It also had as the crunch point unbound ingredients a critical part of it's success allowing those with what they wanted already a good incentive to still run the content! Lastly, it followed an important rule...upgrades are strict upgrades...no ML raises to make them not always desirable.

I will list the worst ones also since it is silly to ask the obvious favorite question without the counterpoint. Those would be Rreaver Refuge and the most recent different full items based upon difficulty mechanic. Reaver Refuge because it was a lotto system where you could make your item worse with lots of bound ingredients...super frustrating. The other not because higher difficulty content should not drop better loot...it should (or at least more mats to make better loot), but because harder content does not automatically drop better version of the gear because the ML goes up also. I have non EE gear in my leveling gearsets, lots of it, because it is better for the ML...literally most of those EE items are sell items for me because I will be swapping to another item in a level or two. That is really bad design, because better needs to be better or equal in every respect.

Right difficulty to acquire is cannith challenge gear and greensteel. Some grinding, but not crazy horrible and not much lotto involved.

Not right difficulty, desert epic items...particularly stuff like epic ring of spell storing (have had the shard since like a month after it came out and never got the seal...after thousands of chests..too much RNG with super small odd id not fun. That distinction (between GS and desert epics is critical and IT IS RNG extremes).

Weapon types...well without good design who cares? We get crazy underpowered stuff for weapons all the time that IGNORES PREVIOUS WEAPON DESIGN. I do not care if someone else designed the eSOS, it exists, it has a certain ML making worse itwo handed weapons with higher MLs is a failure of the greatest order. No one wants worse gear for higher ML. So if you bother making good weapons...shurikens (since they are pretty decent builds now with lame items), dwarven axes, and picks for dps. For caster stuff...almost anything those are really vanilla and boring now for the most part at end game.

[Singular]

This is great

I myself prefer to use some EH or even EN versions on items since higher ML means less use in ETR

Yes, absolutely. I was thinking 'hey, that EE Jeweled Cloak is great...but then I will only be geared after level 25." While that might be interesting for item choices - WE DON'T HAVE THE BANK SPACE TO DEAL WITH THIS LOOT LEVELING ISSUE.

(not yelling at you, Tanngiostr).

The solutions are to either give us more bank space or to make all versions of items the same minimum level (or let us carry more than one 'exclusive' item of the same name - since they are clearly different items, it shouldn't matter, but that's just a silly option and can be ignored).

[Thrudh]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Shroud crafting was awesome for a couple of reasons...

(1) You were always making progress towards your goal...
(2) Ingrediants were not bound at all, so you could buy what you needed from other players, and also it didn't matter what character you brought into the raid... So if the party needed a cleric, I could bring my cleric, even if my cleric already had all the greensteel he needed.

I like the raid loot mechanic too (although not as much)... I'm not a big fan of random drops, but the 20th list made it okay, because even if you got nothing, you still got a completion... and you were making progress.

What I totally hate is pure random drops... Where you can run a quest 50 times, and if the item you want doesn't drop, you are ZERO percent closer to your goal after investing all that time.

What I think you guys need to do with named loot is update all the level 20 epic gear to match (or slightly exceed) like-level random loot... For instance, the envenomed cloak... +5 resistance, +7 con, green slot... That should be updated to +7 resistance at least, maybe +8. Then you guys need to create an upgrade path for all that old epic loot to make it level 28 gear... So the envenomed cloak can be upgraded to +10 resistance, +9 con, green slot. This makes all the old epic gear worthwhile again, so people will want to run those packs... PLUS many people will want two of certain items, one for level 20 "twink" gear for epic TRs, and one for level 28-30 end-game.

[redspecter23]

Yes, absolutely. I was thinking 'hey, that EE Jeweled Cloak is great...but then I will only be geared after level 25." While that might be interesting for item choices - WE DON'T HAVE THE BANK SPACE TO DEAL WITH THIS LOOT LEVELING ISSUE.

(not yelling at you, Tanngiostr).

The solutions are to either give us more bank space or to make all versions of items the same minimum level (or let us carry more than one 'exclusive' item of the same name - since they are clearly different items, it shouldn't matter, but that's just a silly option and can be ignored).

I think it might be an interesting idea to allow us to upgrade our EE items somehow to give them -2 min level so you can use them at the same level you could use the EN versions. That way we don't have to have 2 versions sitting around for epic reincarnation purposes. Just a thought. Hmm, maybe a elite and epic elite only colorless augment that makes an item -2 min level? Great for ER leveling, then when you're going to stay capped for a while, you can slot something more permanent.

[Atremus]

Favorite Crafting: Shroud and the newer Raid + Heroic Comm upgrade

Worst: FR Challenges. I do not want to grind for a random reward. I want to know exactly or almost what I am going to acquire.

Easy to get Item: ToD Rings

Sucky to Get: Sands epics (any of them)

[Cleanincubus]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
The Cauldron of Sora Katra, from the Lordsmarch Plaza chain & Attack on Stormreach chain (off topic: when can we get some more of this quest line?! I loved it from the first time I played it).

I chose this, because it was simple to understand, and logical IMHO. Truth be told, I'm primarily a solo player only, who rarely even PUGs. So I haven't played much higher level content that I couldn't do alone, so there might be systems that are better. But back to why. It's simple. You do the quests, and run them until you get the items you want. Along the way you collect the Droaam Marks from optional chests, end quest chests, or as a quest reward. Then you merge them all together. This is perfect for middle level content, but might be too simple for new or Epic content. This could be enhanced by adding more items, and more combinations of items & collectables (like the Marks).

Strangely, the Cauldron of Sora Katra system is actually closer what we were all expecting for the Cannith Crafting system. Where you can take an effect from one item and add it to another item.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Divine gear. For me, it certainly hurt when Devotion had it's ML increased, to an insane level (but that's random loot).

Khopesh. One of the best damage dealing weapons (from crits) in the game. Not nearly enough named ones.

Docents. Every single named armor (cloth, light, medium, and heavy) should have a named docent, with the same features (or geared towards WF in regards to a healing amp type effect).

Wands. Eternal wands. I'd love to see a lot more mid-level and higher level Eternal Wands, especially. First and foremost, Divine Eternal Wands are seriously lacking. Second, I'd also like to see higher level elemental wands, as well as negative energy wands for Pale Masters.

Throwing weapons in general. We need more.

[J2345678]

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
The Shroud: Unbound crafting ingredients, can get all ingredients on all difficulties, a lot of effect options.


Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Good: Muckbane, Altar of Insanity, Cauldron of Sora Katra, Dreamforge, Green Steel.
Too hard: Dragontouched Armor, Epic Ring of Spell Storing.


What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Bastard Sword, Battle Axe, Docent, Heavy and Light Mace, Kukri, Maul, Mithral Armor and Shields, Quiver, Rune Arm, Throwing Weapons, Trinket.

[Matsu_Ieyasu]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
.

Hi, Thanks for asking

Favorite?
None really. I tolerate some systems more than others; and that's the problem. We have what 23 systems for named loot and potential systems to upgrade.

Right Difficulty
Things in DDO are either too easy or too difficult. Collecting Flawless Dragonscales from the Tor, too easy, collecting Flawless Red Dragon Scales too difficult. Upgrading the Ring of the Silver Concord, I have six sets of scroll, shard and seal, too easy, Epic SoS, I have seen ONE shard in god knows how many runs.

Needs love
What doesn't?

Final Thoughts
How come Raid loot isn't smart enough to match the players level. You upgrade an item and the upgrade only is in effect while handled by a character of high enough level.
Example - I upgade my eSOS I dream of getting. While my character is under level 20 it the level 10 version of itself, after level 20 it is the Epic version of itself. I shouldn't need to have two versions of the bad boy on a melee, one for leveling one for epic.

[Thar]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
shroud greensteel by far. it's the most custom, you grind but in the end get what you want. and in the beginning it was fun to find new recipes

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
right difficulty - web weapons. enough to tease you but not frequent enough that they became common... oh wait they were given away for free... bad choice i guess. next would be items from xorian cipher. again not too frequent but not insanely rare.

too hard - bauble... i swear it doesn't drop since the change to multiple chests per higher difficulty. followed closely by any epic shard/seal/scroll for desert items. make these an upgrade system... seal adds prefix, scroll adds another suffic, shard adds slot.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
khopesh needs a real realistic end game choice. rapier could use another end game choice for those not wanting dodge/saves. short bows for rogues, shuriken for monks (yes a recent one but still), scimitar? armor and helms are really only web or gh gear and could use some alternate options at end game. with an update or set of updates you should look to hit all weapon types to give everyone a option. even a throwing dagger for those type of builds.

if your looking at an update, make a set of items for all slots for a series of quests. the pieces should not be for all classes but worthwhile for a said class or design to use. is high road tried to appeal to too many different builds and is lackluster for any one compared to other options.


*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

[Ayseifn]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Old epics when they were end game items. I prefer random drops to things like challenge mats, if I can calculate that I'll have to do x quest 15 times to get y material I'll see that as a grind from the get go and be reluctant to even start doing those quests(Cannith Crafting is a huge offender here). With random drops I have just as good a chance of getting what I want from that quest every single run. The other nice thing was the Tokens, they were always useful for either slotting things or TRing and every quest dropped them, so even if you got no seal/shard you got something out of it. There were also a ton of quests to run and once you got say your Claw set from Fens and didn't want/need anything from there, there was always something niche to go hunting for in the desert. Scrolls were a currency to trade, and seals/shards were tradable so I could bring my divine to heal and not feel like I'd miss out on loot. While this system was maintained by buffing raid bosses, adjusting loot tables, making desert scrolls vendor tradable and even the EH/EE additions kept things fresh, it was only when it was forgotten about with the move to more FR content and level cap increases that the system fell to pieces. Hopefully something similar pops up when the cap hits 30, It'll get me playing more.

Green Steal is ok too I guess, the balance between random drop and reward seems about right, you might not get the large mat you were looking for but whatever you get might help with the next item you have planned. Only issue was that scales or stones were always the limiting items, if materials were closer to equally desired by the userbase it'd be close to perfect. The crafting system UI isn't great though, I still have to go to external sites and triple check that I'm making the right shards and it just feels tedious. The shards not fitting into bags is another annoyance, but that'll hopefully get alleviated with more character loot space next update, and yes I know they can be used can craftable trinkets but would rather stockpile over a few TRs.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*eSoS was perfect, dropped in a quest that required group work, was really rare but also really awesome and rewarded grouping with friends. Having an incredible item drop with a low chance in a raid/quest with other nice items will keep people coming back, the named augments from GH have a similar vibe.

Too hard: any named item with random mutations and varying levels like the EN/EH/EE items from Shadowfell or GH. I'd much rather a lower chance for an item on EN than a useless one, I'd much rather a lower drop rate on an item than the inventory bloat of have 3 different Planar Conflux trinkets, I'd rather a lower drop rate than have to throw away a useless +8 con Planar Conflux.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
All of them, the best thing about Shroud was it got you ready for end game stuff power wise and was incredibly open as to what mutations you could put on what items. Another shroud type thing for epic would be awesome, and then use other quests/packs/raids to fill in gaps, add a small amount of power, niche unique items like the Torc, Midnight Greetings, Wolf Whistle, etc. or even some items to help new players to get a leg up on questing without feeling like they absolutely need Shroud 2.0 items.

[sirgog]

On Greensteel.

It was the best system yet, but it wasn't perfect.


The good:

- Customization. You could go cookie cutter (10/15/20/Mineral 2 HP item), fill a niche in your build's requirements (45 HP/Radiance/+6 Balance item), or encounter specific (whatever/5 fire resist/10 fire resist for elite Tower of Despair part 1).
- Feeling of constant progress. The choke point was large ingredients and you were always getting those at a reasonable rate, and even if you occasionally went 10 runs without a scale, you probably had stones or shrapnels at least to show for it, and could usually trade those toward scales.
- Ability to react to game changes. Whenever something in the game changed, you could design a greensteel weapon to fit the new mechanics. Like my various Earthgrab picks.


The bad:
- Extreme grind. When Shroud was endgame, and even early in the 20 cap, most characters' optimal gearset had at least 3 and often as many as 7 or 8 dualshard accessories, as well as weapons. The grind for Essences of Cleansing was extremely painful and I cannot think of anyone that enjoyed farming them. This got better over time as there started to be more +DPS accessory options than just pure guard items, so best-in-slot melee gear stopped being so much about guards.
- The ingredient imbalance. If you made every possible Shard of Power, you would use an average of 2.5 large scales and only 1.167 large bones. This was because the formulae for combining them was not well thought out.
- The trivial things that slowed crafting down. Depleted Energy Cells, Shards of Power, etc - these should have been consolidated into one item you buy from a vendor (to maintain the plat sink effect the cells have). GS blanks should have dropped in walkups rather than having to mess around with the Fecundity altar. Etc, etc. These added a slight sense of wonder the first time, and a real sense of irritation on the third.
- The discrepancy in power between tier 2 and tier 3. When the Shroud hit, tier 2 items outclassed most other alternatives in the game, then the tier 3 effect was a huge upgrade on top. Had the tier 3 effects been small but cool, we'd have seen a lot less of the power creep that hit the game during the Shroud period. Power creep has the effect of making a game's endgame smaller.

[BOgre]

GS blanks should have dropped in walkups rather than having to mess around with the Fecundity altar.

Most of what you've written is fine, except this part ^^

This would bring us right back to having to grind endlessly for an item we might never actually get. I'd MUCH rather run the flags for pie pieces and make whatever blank I want, than have to run them who knows how many times never knowing when the blank I want will drop.

As for the imbalance of materials, that can/could have been addressed with Cannith Crafting. After a while the rarely used mats would reveal themselves (as they did), and those mats could be made useful in cannith recipes.

[Qhualor]

Most of what you've written is fine, except this part ^^

This would bring us right back to having to grind endlessly for an item we might never actually get. I'd MUCH rather run the flags for pie pieces and make whatever blank I want, than have to run them who knows how many times never knowing when the blank I want will drop.

As for the imbalance of materials, that can/could have been addressed with Cannith Crafting. After a while the rarely used mats would reveal themselves (as they did), and those mats could be made useful in cannith recipes.

this

its one of the best parts of GS crafting. theres so many different types of weapons and items we can craft and i love the freedom to craft what i want instead of hoping for a random drop. honestly, the grind for pie pieces and ingredients is just right.

[Singular]

I think it might be an interesting idea to allow us to upgrade our EE items somehow to give them -2 min level so you can use them at the same level you could use the EN versions. That way we don't have to have 2 versions sitting around for epic reincarnation purposes. Just a thought. Hmm, maybe a elite and epic elite only colorless augment that makes an item -2 min level? Great for ER leveling, then when you're going to stay capped for a while, you can slot something more permanent.

That would be nice.

I was thinking that it would be great if there was some process to upgrade any item in the game (with restrictions, of course). Such a system would immediately revitalize all old raid loot (if done well). I don't think old loot should just be auto-upgraded, but I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me on this position.

[Hafeal]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel. The run-away choice it appears. Useful from base and during upgrading. Useful for casuals to ubers. Very customizable. And even if you had a bad drop rate for the ingredients they were tradeable so you had no BtA or BtC issues. Brilliant.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Bloodstone, Ethereal Bracers, Planar Gird, greensteel ingredients, Propulsion Boots, Necropolis collectables (since change to all chests, including explorer), Shavarath sets, and Ring of Spell Storing - seem right.

Off the top of my head: BtC ingredients - especially commendations (I hate limiting grinds to 1 character - this especially punishes casual / new players), Marks (by the time you grind them, you are out of the level range), Xachosian Eardweller (http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Xachosian_Eardweller), ioun stones, Ring of Feathers, Bottle of Air, Royal Guard Mask, Ring of Ancestors, Firestorm Greaves and Ring of Regeneration (from Redwillow) too low. I think part of the problems with these items - and others I am forgetting at the moment - is they haven't been updated on how content is played and how fast players level to 20 now. 2 additional notes:

1 * Raids seemed to be fine with 20th reward lists and then raids become the red headed step child of Heroic levels, so, for newer players, getting 20th completions can be a real slog.

2 * Epic seals, shards and scrolls - if you are going to keep ridiculous drop rates, unbind them and let the market dictate price. Otherwise, drop rates should be loosened, especially on shards.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Just about any weapon with the word 'throwing' or 'light' in it. The reality is that the way the game is played you need a better crit range and/or crit multiplier or you go with better base damage. Save the trouble and let's steal from the DDOwiki and you can look at the tables here (http://ddowiki.com/page/Threat_range) to see where you steer players with the weapon profiles as they exist - with the notable exception of named / raid loot that DO alter the profiles.

You want some love for the lower tier weapons on the average damage list? Give 'em powerful named loot. Short Swords are on the bottom half of the list, yet, eSoS is the most sought after weapon in the game. By now, there should be an 'eSoS" equivalent for EVERY weapon class. That would create variety and give players a unique grind to chase, imo. Having 1 weapon like has made it the 'Minos Legens" of the game - only it doesn't have the dependable grind Minos did.

Overall, thanks for asking and thanks for listening.

[Thumbed_Servant]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears...

*Removes ears, passes to DrOctothorpe* Please return in good condition.

"- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?"

Green Steel: I can farm Shroud for ingredients, then combine them to craft items serving specific needs.

"- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard."

Just Right: I hunted a Torc for some time, finally got it. It felt satisfying to get it, but I did not feel discouraged that I had not acquired it before.

Too Hard: The Mysterious Bauble. It's a very low drop rate, but it's possession by any caster not only gives them extra spell points but knowing they can tap it relieves the anxiety over running out of points; it allows casters more comfort...and it is VERY hard to acquire.

"- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?"

Weapon types:

Rapiers Very few named rapiers in the game. Now, there are MANY named short swords, and some of them have an increased critical threat range so that they are effectively named rapiers, but having some named rapiers would feel nice.

Great Axes Count the number of named Great Swords, then count the number of named Great Axes...'nuff said.

Dwarven War Axes VERY very few in the game. Battle Axes are the same....maybe we don't want such ubber weapons of best type [Khopeshes and Dwarven Axes] in the game that they become *no brainer-must haves*, but give the 1-handed axe family some LOVE won't you?

Scimitars There are some, but they are few and not very memorable as far as named items go.

Class Equipment:

Paladins: Where are the Paladin-Aura boosting named items?

[Thrudh]

Sorry, going to mention it anyway. My issue isn't just, say, ML 20 old-style Epic and/or raid items out-powered by ML 27-28 random or easy-to-acquire items. It's ML 20 old-style Epic items out-powered by ML 20-23 random or easy-to-acquire items. Or in some cases, ML 15 easy-to-acquire items.

This.

[HatsuharuZ]

Getting any epic version of any item in the Sands pack is a chore. Just look at the drop rates for the Epic Ring of Spell Storing materials.

[Flavilandile]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

I haven't read the thread... Yet, so assume I'm just answering to DrOcto.

It's not a concern about old items being out powered by random items, it's a concern that random lootgen is more powered than named items of the same level.
It shouldn't be. Named Items are special and should always be more powered than random lootgen for the same level.

Don't make the assumption that we want to keep our named loot from Korthos up to 28... That's not the case, so don't try to create a system to have items that level while we level. That's something that is not needed and probably not wanted.



Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

- Greensteel Definitely.
Yes I know, technically it's not a loot upgrade system, but that's the most flexible and usable endgame ( at that time ) loot generation/upgrade system.

- The Dragon Armors and Helms felt right. By the time I had enough Scales to get 3 Armor ( one of each color ) I had two of the 3 Helms on EH.
Epic Sword of Shadow comes to mind when talking about hard... Getting a Shard to drop is worse than playing lottery. Especially with the stupidly low drop rates that some of
your predecessor considered right. ( it's valid for almost all the Seals and Shards... Scrolls have already been tinkered with and drops in a decent number now )
Ring of Spell Storing also is too hard, after checking that chest 10 times a day for 6 month and not getting anything you just forget about it and move on.

- Trinkets would need some love, rapiers too. There's more, but that's the two that comes to my brain right now.

[murf201]

There is 3 Quivers to date !!! Add some slots too new ones in the future as well , And you pretty much make a new gear slot for all classes .

While your at it what happened to Ranged attack items , Shimmering Arrowhead , Wind howlers , Etc .
When i seen the wind howlers i thought too myself , Were finally starting to go in a good direction , And that was the end of that lol .

If your not going to allow item mutations to work for both styles then make mutations for both styles on separate items , The ratio atm is 15 melee mutations to every 1 ranged mutation .

Can someone go back and fix the Black dragon set , So that the ranged portion adds a stacking benefit , While 90% of the game uses planar sets , Are niche gets screwed , Like how melee gets a 3% stacking doublestrike we get 2 points of non stacking dmg , It could have easily been 3% doubleshot .

Sorry about the ranged rant !!

[murf201]

What i mainly like was s/s/s/ , And it took me almost a year to make an E-thornlord , But when i did i was a happy man .
Maybe the rates should of been allot higher , And sands slayer items should of been sectioned into certain quests , But that's just me .

I actually love the citw , And fot , upgrade commendation system , Wish the upgrades were more variable but still great !!

Anyway just make great items that are upgradeable . Combine greensteel system with citw system , Like get your base item which is great as it is then upgrade it with permutations that you have to make from ings , While still having slots for augments . Just a thought

But whatever you decide to make , Finish it and do not leave it half ...... !!!

PS. Give us 3 great gifts this year , More btc space , A new gear slot like maybe another ring / trinket / Etc , And more healing amp on all gear and conv augments !!!!!!

[Thumbed_Servant]

Sorry, going to mention it anyway. My issue isn't just, say, ML 20 old-style Epic and/or raid items out-powered by ML 27-28 random or easy-to-acquire items. It's ML 20 old-style Epic items out-powered by ML 20-23 random or easy-to-acquire items. Or in some cases, ML 15 easy-to-acquire items.

THIS ^ ^

But...wow, the power creep in the game went ballistic with the changes to random loot with the launch of Menace of the Underdark. Once that ship has sailed, it's almost impossible to pull it back. Named items shouldn't be outclassed by random loot, but they were once MotU came out. Now to make named loot interesting it must be more powerful than the more powerful random loot...power creep nothing, it's power cascade.

[Lonnbeimnech]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Everyone will tell you shroud items, what they really mean is having level 18 weapons that are usable at level 12.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.
Dragon helms, But I was lucky and got the 2 I wanted after about 3 runs. Ones that were too hard...I don't have them yet.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love
Weapon types? Basically every weapon that isn't used. So everything that isn't greataxe, greatsword, khopesh, longbow.

[Njohrd]

...
1- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
2- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
3- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

1- Shroud crafting, because:
A- the raid involved is a very good raid, fun to play even for 999 times
B- the low minimum level of top tier items
C- The ingredients needed are a mix of BTC shards and unbound that can be bought / sell
D- extreme variety of the powers that can be obtained

2- Right: All named items of FOT; too Hard: all old epic items with the scroll/seal/system

3- give us variety... dont base your loot table on the builds that are more popular, give us variety and new build will arise.

One more important thing to schematize

random loot << named loot < raid loot

give named loot and expecially raid loot UNIQUE powers... like Torc, or Halycon boots. Keep random loot as a decent alternative if you are not able to find the raid/named loot best in slot for your build

[ishr]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Add a tier to greensteel or LOB crafting, these are otherwise heavily outdated.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
If anything, the best loot is too easy to acquire, you guys have done a generally good job so far.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Caster clubs/wands (not orbs), we have mostly been relying on lootgen for 2 years, the last decent ones were skiver and the quickly-outdated LOB crafted ones.


One more important thing to schematize

random loot << named loot < raid loot

give named loot and expecially raid loot UNIQUE powers... like Torc, or Halycon boots. Keep random loot as a decent alternative if you are not able to find the raid/named loot best in slot for your build
TOTALLY agree with this, loot power should at least roughly scale with difficulty to acquire, which is COMPLETELY bogus right now

[Silken-Akira]

1 Green steel

2 the whole Seal/Shard epic stuff is too hard in my opinion

3 -For my personal taste and considering with what I already have experience I would like to see especially more stuff that is usefull bard (they need some love an each area actually at this moment) and also would like to see some acrobat-orientated staffs please.
-As for type: Kukris, because at this moment I hardly understand why you even brought this type in the game even. And trinkets
-finally for the loot that fits all should not get something that is more powerfull compared to random gen. loot but sometimes is just enjoyable because it has something very unique.

[oradafu]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel has been the best loot upgrade system. It's really the system that all other loot upgrade systems should emulate.

Why? Players get unbound mats every time they run the Shroud, so they are always one step closer to making the item they want. Since the mats are unbound, players can swap unneeded mats for needed mats with other players. The flagging Stones and tier Shards make it necessary for players to run the quests/raid if they want to make and upgrade the items. Adapting the same system with the same mats in future releases could be made possible by making new types of the small handful of BTC/BTA mats.

Most importantly, players are given several different ways and combinations to make new items. This is where Alchemical Crafting failed. Alchemical crafting was limited to just weapons and shields and only had a handful of combinations. The failure of Alchemical Crafting, in my eyes, was a major reason I've never bothered to run the raids on any character.

I'd like to note that the Augment Slot system could be a runner up, since it allows players to customize items (and theoretically could keep low level gear useful at higher levels). There's problems with the system though. First, the Stats and Skills don't scale properly, such as +6 Stats and +11 Skills being level 20 when it should be level 12. Not to mention that Stats higher than +6 are completely lacking.

Also missing from the Augment Slots system is more variety or special Augments. Special Augments, such as the Mabar augments and the two from Update 20, should have been littering the quests for the Shadowfail "expansion", and this is yet another reason why that horrible overpriced pack should be revisited or die in fire.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

For a highly desirable item (until it was changed and became junk), I felt the Eardweller had a workable drop rate (since it could be farmed with little hassle). In fact, I wish there were more items that dropped like the Eardweller and the Bloodrage Symbiont. Both of those items (for a period of time) were pretty useful and farmable for players who wanted the item but bored with just doing full quests. The problem with these items now is that they are now junk and the drop rate/farmablity isn't worth it anymore. However, if level 30 will stay the end game and decent items are made, I can foresee players willing to seek out items that drop in abnormal ways.

Old Epic system as a whole was way too hard to assemble everything for the good items. This was true before MOTU and it's even worse post-MOTU. Pre-MOTU, getting the old epic items was a bit easier because everyone had pieces they didn't need and could swap in chest. Unfortunately, 90% of the gear at the time was junk (and this was why people were willing to pass many of the pieces along to someone else) and even less of the gear is useful now.

As for individual items that I still seek that elude me: Ring of Spell Storing, Torc and Bauble. The list was longer, but I've given up on many other items since they are no longer useful (or as useful) as they were when I was seeking them. Those three items are still useful for me, but I've only been able to pull a single Torc on a character that could use it. The other two items have never been pulled by me, although I've actively sought them.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

The most obvious equipment that has continually to fail to show up each update are -decent- -unique- docents. I'll repeat again the total failure by the Devs to give WF decent armor. Prior to MOTU, the last unique docent was in Update 1. Every armor between Update 1 and MOTU was an exact copy of another type of armor, with the heroic Blademark's Docent being only slightly different from its counterpart. The Devs failed spectacularly with not including even a single unique Docent when House C was released or the House C Challenges. Even after players raged about the lack of Docents in two updates that should have contained a docent (if not multiple type of docents), the Devs forgot to include the Docent as part of the MOTU armor upgrading system and had to throw something together at the last minute.

Second, Paladins need their Holy Avenger. And the Holy Avenger needs to be on multiple type of weapons, not just a Long Sword. Personally, I'd like to see it available on every type of weapon for Paladins since this would give players the weapon they want for their playing system. However, if it's limited, I could see it being available only for the various Axes, heavy blades and hammers.

Third, personally I find the lack of decent Epic Falchions (especially for my Paladin) to be disappointing. I'm sure other people can list other type of weapons that they find lacking in high levels, but a decent Falchion is at the top of the list for me.

Forth, I have to agree with others that the lack of Divine items in the game troublesome. There really should be more items in the game (especially in epics) not just for Healers but for DC Divine Casters and Paladins.

Fifth, personally, I'm not impressed with any of the non-Dragon Scale Armor as a whole in the Epic portion of the game. But I'm really disappointed that monks gain better defense than Heavy Armor characters. Although other Armors need help also, it's Heavy Armor needs a major boost in my opinion. Also there needs to be more variety of Docent/Leather Armor for Epic since that's the only way to make Arti/Druid pets more viable past level 20.

[OverlordOfRats]

The one thing I would say about name loot is the change to bind status of old non raid loot.

An example is Muckbane. It was unbound. Then you added a red slot to it to "upgrade" it. Now it is BTCoE. Revert the old named items back to their old bind status please.
Please make future non raid named items either unbound or BTA.

Items that are lacking. I would say named chainmail for melee. The named leather armors are better than the chain suits right now.

Thanks for asking.

[oradafu]

Oh, that's one thing I forgot to include in my post: my utter hatred of BTC items.

BTC needs to end. Many items that became BTC when Augment slots were added to them need to be converted to BTA. There were numerous nice items that could be passed from one character to another in heroics because they were unbound of BTA that now have been made BTC just because Augment slots were added to them. Those items are not worth picking up or using anymore because players don't have the inventory space nor the time to farm out those items. Their original bound status was a convenience of both space and time, but now they are worthless simply by their BTC status.

BTC is fine for Raid items or really POWERFUL items. But stuff like generic gear, armor and weapons...just revert the items back to their non-binding status, even if it means removing augments from these items.

It's just asinine that the BTC was pushed onto everyone when more Account bank options were added to the store. And when we bring up the horrible BTC practice and lack of space, you continue to make items BTC and more Account space. Stupid.

[karl_k0ch]

Favorite Upgrade System: Greensteel. While being quite deep, GS has two clear advantages:
1. You have a lot of customization options, which is a very good thing, once you know what you want.
2. You can gradually work towards your goal of weapon XY. Of course, there is some luck involved in getting your 5 Large Devil Scales, but in the big picture, every shroud completion brings you a step closer to your weapon.
3. The Materials are unbound. This means that you can substitute plat/AS to fill the gaps if you really have bad luck.

The more small crafting pieces are needed for one weapon, the more rewarding it feels to complete the corresponding raid, if it yields a reasonable amount of materials. This partially applies also to alchemical weapons, but I don't particularly like Lord of Blades and I don't find the weapons to be interesting enough to be bothered to start to make one.

Right difficulty to acquire: Base Sword of Shadow/most Eberron raid items. I think that 20 raid completions are a good number to get a certain raid item you are looking for. It would be nice to have a full list of all named items as a 20th rewards list.

Too hard to acquire: Epic Sword of Shadow. After running Epic Vault of Night on a pretty regular basis (I'd estimate 0.5 - 1 run/week) for 3 years now, I finally got an eSoS shard. I haven't crafted it yet because I can't decide on which of the 3 toons which could make some use of it I want to have it.

Named Loot Love Needed: Hammers, Picks, Dwarven Axes, Throwing Weapons (Axes, Hammers and Shurikens).

[Standal]

If we're only talking about named loot, I think Turbine has actually come up with about the best possible system right now. Various items drop in different raids, giving people a reason to run varied content. Commendations are valuable to all players, since they can upgrade all items with them. I'm running FOT as often as possible because I want comms even though I don't care about the loot. CITW is a problem child because it doesn't guarantee a comm drop, but that's easily fixed. The good thing about the comm system is that it can be expanded across the entire endgame. Since commendations apply only to raid gear at this point, maybe a lesser commendation should be introduced similar to how there are standard and Greater Tokens of the Twelve. There's also no reason that each item needs to have a specific number of tiers or that all items need the same number of commendations per tier. If you converted the ESOS to a comm turn in system and told me I got the +10 at tier 1 for 10 comms, the base damage increase at tier 2 for 80 comms, and each slot for 10 additional comms that would be a big grind, but the item is the best in the game and that has to be worth some effort.

I don't think the current playerbase is really ready for greensteel 2 unless I'm mistaken about how it was actually implemented. My understanding is that the devs just put the Shroud out there and told the players they could make cool stuff. Nobody knew what was possible and just had to randomly assemble weapons from the flaggers, then randomly put ingredients in the Shroud altars to find out what happened. That's why we have planners. Some kind souls wrote down everything that they personally saw or that was posted in the forum and then programmed the planners that we have today. If you don't like random effects on named loot, I doubt you're going to like a completely random setup like the original greensteel.

What I'd like to see from a raid crafting system is the ability to make greensteel style weapons and accessories with the addition of armor, but have the upgrade process like the Cannith Challenge crafting. The system should be known by the players as "Raid Crafting", not "New Shroud Crafting". All new raids and possibly the older ones should be incorporating into this system if Turbine decides to go that way.

[Wizza]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


- Lob. because it incentivated to run multiple difficulties and even the hardest one for the best gear. Also, you get something with every run, same as Shroud.
- Chronoscope items was about right in terms of difficulty/difficulty to acquire. Epic Ring of Spell Storing and Epic Sword of Shadows are too hard, specially the first one.
- Single lore scepters, Kukris/Daggers, Boots for casters.

[Derana]

No more random effects on Named items.

this, very much!!! If i loot a named item, i wanna know what i get without checking if i got a "good" or a "bad" random stat. Random effects make named items bad. Can get a nice EE named item with a bad random stat (Swim +20 for example, LOL) and the entire item is quite worthless...

[Ivan_Milic]

Aim higher. Heroic random loot should never have been released which is better than Epic Elite named loot.

Forgot about that because I didnt buy the pack, but yea, 8 stat item at lvl16?
Turbine is crazy.

[Urjak]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Definitely Greensteal ... just take a look at how often this ancient raid is still run! (at least on argo i currently see shroud and von5/6 lfms most often)

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Eardweller felt just about right ... also Fabricator Bracers (although Lady Luck really didn't like me, when I was farming for them) ... too hard: Epic Kundarak Boots: took me ages to get the base item (thanks again Tink for putting them up for roll :D) and still have yet to see a shard or seal of them ... guess I'll finish an eSoS earlier O_o

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Weapon types:
.) Melee Kukris and daggers: Now that rogue assassins specialize in them we could definitely need some more (and nope, Fell Shiv does not count, as it is utterly useless)
.) Great Crossbows: Their attack rate is horrible, their dps neglectable, yet devs chose to grant rogue mechanics special bonuses to just that very weapon -> give us some extremely powerful epic great crossbows to make the dev time spent on those abilities worth it!
.) Throwing weapons, especially shurikens: Yes EE Morningstar is niceish versus undead (those few that don't have /blunt DR) ... but for all bosses except TO (and Abbot if I would still run it) I still use Snow Star ... a minimum level 8(or so) weapon ... I think that kinda says it all ... any ETA on Epic Snow Star? :D

apart from that I think really overdue are:
.) A replacement for greensteal aka a new awesome (even after hundreds of repetitions) raid with tiered ingredient drops which allow to craft a lot of different weapon and equipment effects on all weapon types and all equipment slots (maybe except armor, rings and trinkets like gs) ... most of these ingredienzes should be unbound to provide a new ingame currency, as plat is worthless, lds and frds aren't really worth a lot anymore too, scrolls are available in abundance and thus worthless as well and finally shards are kinda cumbersome to use as currency.
.) Also I would love some crossover crafting ... like combine a rare ingredient EXCLUSIVELY available from lets say Sorrowdusk Island with other ingredients from some-new-raid to create even more powerful stuff. ... I think something along these lines would fit the idea of intelligent/sentient items nicely.
.) Cannith Crafting: This REALLY needs to be updated ASAP!!!


I don't have time to answer everything, but I can quickly give these thoughts:

1. I really hate the Shard/Scroll/Seal system as implemented. BTA for each component would help, but the difficulty of getting all three pieces together on the same toon that can actually use the item in question is really annoying. At this point in the game, though, even when you manage to do this, the items are typically underpowered (given that they were level 20 items at the time that level 20 was the max) to justify use. Exceptions I can cite for myself: the Epic Antique Great Axe is still very useful through many Epic levels. Epic Noxious Fang is likewise useful since Returning weapons don't get a lot better after level 20. Masks of Comedy/Tragedy: not so much.

2. The disclaimer about 'randomness' aside, the lack of ANY named item showing up to support Epic crafting (again, I'm thinking Shards/Seals/Scrolls) in their prescribed chests hampers the process significantly. I don't mind rolling the dice and not getting what I'm looking for. What I mind is that I often don't see anything at all. For example, there might be about a 15% chance of any Seal showing up in the Epic chest for The Snitch. Once you get a Seal, then there might be a 5% chance that it's the one you want. Then (as I say) you need to hope you are using the right toon.

In general? We have too many different named loot crafting 'systems' in the game (Alchem, Green Steel, Heroic Comms, Conflux, Adamantine Ore, Shard/Seal/Scroll ... that's off the top of my head). We have things that say there is possibly a way to unlock powers for some bracelet that I have never seen. I don't know that ONE solution fits all, but maybe at least fewer solutions?

Hope that's somewhat coherent. Oh, and I agree with teh_Troll.... how could I not? :)

Uhm ... you DO realize that seal and shards ARE bound to account, right? And scrolls are completely unbound ... so not getting your point here ...

[Vanhooger]

What we miss?

Falchion
Mauls
Picks
Quarterstaff (melee and caster version)
Morningstar
Rapiers
Dwarwen Axe
Shuriken


This game is just boring greatsword/greataxe. And one day, I hope you will nerf that stupid Esos, so people start play with different weapons.
Looks like DDO is just slashing dmg. I never ever saw a bludgeon build apart from Monk.

I love the old loot system scroll/seal/shard. Just make it tradable and you'll see people running more quest, and not just the one that drop your EE item, the economy will benefit as well with the rare scroll/seal/shard.

And use augment to add something useful like displacment clicky, guard, heal amp, repair amp ecc

I don't like shroud. I dont want to run that quest forever and every single day. How boring is that?

[Silverleafeon]

I love the old loot system scroll/seal/shard. Just make it tradable and you'll see people running more quest, and not just the one that drop your EE item, the economy will benefit as well with the rare scroll/seal/shard.I wonder what sort of outroar would occur if one could trade 4k heroic coms for a shard or seal or scroll of your choice?
It's not a concern about old items being out powered by random items, it's a concern that random lootgen is more powered than named items of the same level.
It shouldn't be. Named Items are special and should always be more powered than random lootgen for the same level.
One might conclude that named Raid loot should be more powerful than nonraid loot?

[Silverleafeon]

-Uhm ... you DO realize that seal and shards ARE bound to account, right? And scrolls are completely unbound ... so not getting your point here ...
Guess he wants to see more action on the astral shard auction house?

Personally, unless there becomes a way to advance the shard/seal/scroll items from level 20 to 30 with heroic coms or the like,
most would not find much interest in the idea?

[FAQ]

I have to think about the questions before I answer.

But I just wanted to get this out there: one thing that seems to be common to the answers are that the seal/shard/scroll system is too dificult. And I agree. But I (and I'm sure others as well) have been accumulating these items in our ingredients bag for a while. So if you change the system, please don't screw me (us) over by making the seals and shards and scrolls we collected useless (like what happened to the augments from Devil Assault!). If your going to change it, give us something in return for these items we have aquired.

[Mryal]

Guess he wants to see more action on the astral shard auction house?

Personally, unless there becomes a way to advance the shard/seal/scroll items from level 20 to 30 with heroic coms or the like,
most would not find much interest in the idea?

This is a good idea.I personaly have heroic comms sitting in my inventory on several characters that dont use em.
Also why not using the tokens..and eveningstar comms.

[slarden]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Favorite Named Loot Upgrade System
Winner: Greensteel of course - customizable. This rewards higher difficulties but doesn't prevent people from getting the best stuff - it just takes longer at lower difficulties
Runner Up: Epic Gianthold - drop rate for items and coms is reasonable. The upgrade system from EN to EH to EE is outstanding. Again, you are rewarded for running on higher difficulties but you aren't prevented from getting an item if you run on lower difficulties - it just takes longer

Items that feels like the right difficulty to acquire
- Greensteel items
- Fall of Truth Items
- House P and Red Fens Epics

Items that are too difficult to obtain
- Epic Sands wilderness items - for example epic ring of spell storing. You can run the preraid and raid every 3 days for years and still not get the seal or the shard.

Items overdue for loot love
- A little bit off your point but - All festival items - they should keep up with your level cap increases
- Armor - right now there aren't many decent alternatives besides dragon scale armor.

[patang01]

To add

Lets also reconsider bind status on all items. The bottom line is there's not enough space and items are not good enough to bind to character at all times.

I understand raid loot. It should be the best (and is in some cases) so BTC is okay but for most parts named items should be BTA. Or BTAoE. Not BTC. MOTU made a mess out of bind status and it got worse with the re-release of augmented items. Where previous low level items suddenly got BTCoE. It's silly. Most items are not that good.

Also consider a upgrade system for all static named items. It removes a glut of items on the market. Like you have the EN item with a possibility of getting a EH and EE version but where you can upgrade a EN to EH and EH to EE. Like with FoT loot. I know, some people say that EE should be unique but honestly, I only find that raid loot should be. So make the EN and EH version BTAoE and the EE version BTC. That makes the most powerful items special to one character and everything else bankable on mules. Plus it also creates a good alternative to work towards a goal. You can either run EH and EE for a smaller chance of an upgraded version or slowly work towards upgrading it. Again - progressive and incremental goals towards something. It removes the frustration of hit and miss. Nothing worse then wasting tons of runs for the fickle option of finding the equivalent of 'that' shard (like with the old Epic system).

To always work against a goal is good.

Finally consider dropping heroic comms in all Epic raids. Make good use for them for upgrading items - that would spark renewed interest in the old raids and provide a steady trickle of comms for people. Give it a chance to drop similar to citw and make the citw drop them automatic like in FoT. Add incentives to run these raids and let us use heroic comms to upgrade old epic items (like replace missing seals, shards and scrolls with comms or use comms to 'create' the missing piece). That provides a long term goal towards something and progress instead of frustration (it took me 2 years of Chrono runs to complete my first and only epic scorched braces and almost daily runs of Spinner to create a double crossbow - that's not fun).

[deconedi]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Shroud system (need epic version)
Note: The commendation upgrade system adopted in everningstar, gh is one great system too

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Old system for epic items (seal, shard and scroll), all old epic packs should be revamped

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Repeaters, khopeshes, staffs and orbs (returning to a widely discussed subject, the orbs should be used in conjunction with staffs, old argument if artificers have rune arms, caster could have orbs)

[ValenGodspeed]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck.


The favorite upgrade system is with none of the other even close Green Steel. You get the sense of needing to Work a bit for it but it has a lot less (well none) of the random factor that I dislike a lot.

Right amount of grind to me was the old scroll/seal/shard system for most of the items that were not generally needed on all accounts. I liked that it spured a need over greed aproach for most I grouped with, even in pugs.
Wrong amount of grinding (this hav a lot to do with the remark about Random numbers. Random my ass - more like weigthed dice) ESOS shard is the Winner hands Down along with ROSS seals + shards

Due for some love. Docents, Dwarven Axes and generally some Devine focused items prefrebly some creative ones with new abilities we didn't know we had to have.

[Satyriasys]

Please do not ignore low level named items. All the chain rewards from Catacombs to Threnal and beyond should be competitive with random loot. Aside from a few niche items almost all of these are ignored. Please go through them and surpass or at least match the +stat found on random items of the same level.

[TeacherSyn]

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Green Steel wins, hands down--with one caveat. I play Monks predominantly (no surprise there for those who know me) and the lack of Green Steel handwraps (in relation to crafted wraps you can generate from other systems now, such as Calomel) seems less like a "we can't code that" issue to a "we don't wanna bother" issue.

If I were to improve the GS system, I'd allow one character with Shards of Power of any type to convert them from BtC to BtA using a special formula of several Shroud ingredients, so that acquired shards just aren't wasted between characters. The higher tiered the shard, the more ingredients required to transform it to BtA so that other characters can use it.

Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.

I've stopped bothering attempting to use the original Seal/Shards/Scroll upgrade system. In my years of play I have never received what is required for upgrading any item. I don't expect an easy button for any ingredients, but, especially with the easier to obtain items in other later expansions and quests, it's clearly not worth it. I'd recommend greatly increasing the drop rate for these items or abolishing the system. It's that unhelpful.

After trying and becoming immediately frustrated with the Cannith challenges, I was pleased to see that the Eveningstar challenges can be done solo (with a hireling or two). I'm able to farm for the spelltouched shurikens quite well as a result. Cannith challenges are too hard for solo play (and I'm not a spring chicken anymore). Challenges shouldn't absolutely require a party nor should also require one to have pure caffeine running through their veins to play them.

Same is true for the Dragontouched crafting system. Few people run these because the results are too random. They'd get more of what they want from the updated Gianthold armor/robe systems (great change!!!). That's too bad since the quests there are challenging, but the grind isn't worth it.

What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

I mentioned Green Steel handwraps already.

While a new shuriken was added lately (thank you!), that weapon type needs a major change. There are only three named stars in the game. More would be appreciated. There is no point to having non-returning shuriken in the game. The drop rate for any returning shuriken is very very poor. I have never seen one with augment slots and these should appear from time to time. While it takes time for players to make specialty stars (spelltouched and Green Steel stars work nicely), there is one that cannot be crafted and never appears: a smiting shuriken. Add this to a VoN loot list (a Heroic and Epic version) and life will be happier for star throwers. Did I mention more returning stars with augment slots? :)

I'll make a shout out to the Warforged out there. Not being able to get good docents that are counterparts for popular armor and clothing is shameful. Perhaps a special forge for WF characters can take a item (say, the Garments of Equilibrium) and use Cannith ingredients to convert it into a special BtC docent that has most of the applicable properties of the original item. The process might not be cheap but it should be possible.

[brian14]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Greensteel, definitely. Very customizable, most ingredients are tradeable, ingredients which are BtC drop at reasonable rate.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

About right difficulty -- Eveningstar reward items (Purple Dragon Helm, Bracers of the Sun Soul, etc.), dragonscale armor.

Too hard -- all old seal/shard/scroll epics. Amount of effort needed to acquire them is so out of proportion with the items' value, I do not even bother. Make seals and shards unbound, or 3-1 tradeable, or something.

Another item which is totally not worth the grind is dragontouched armor. Which is a pity because it is so customizable.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

I'd like to see some named augments in teen ML range.

[Jefro]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Cannith Challenge Crafting

-able to swap ingreds, lower the level requirements by two, use extra ingreds for an xp pot or token of twelve, and level 20 versions has augment slots so you can keep updating it as you progress.



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

- Right difficulty - Quorforged Docent of Battle (The Mindsunder ) - When I needed the item was able to get it via either chest or running quest three times, then able to run Dreaming dark and use the running three times to get components needed to upgrade it.

-Bad difficulty - Epic elite dragon helm from Gianthold Tor or Seal of midnight greetings from Sentinels


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


- Bard items - casters got their orbs maybe it is time for some instruments. Instruments as a weapon (Mad Lute) was a bit silly so maybe create a slot near the cosmetics for misc bonuses? Bards having more range of choices of that said slot might edge them closer to compare to other classes.
- Items that are rewarding to True reincarnation characters (Make named items lower level and maybe tie in past life feats similar vain of Divine Vengeance from vision of Destruction for alignment/class)
- Docents - just not enough good docents out there.
- Augments on a whole need to be lowered by two levels to be more useful but like seeing new augments.

[brian14]

Side note:

Everyone seems to hate lottery-style named loot, such as dragontouched armor. Now we have yet another lottery -- Cormyrian weapons. They are quite powerful, but if effects combination is not suitable for the specific character, their only use is vendor trash. I recommend a system to break them down either back into Eveningstar Challenge ingredients (admittedly boring), or into crafting ingredients, or (my preferred choice) into Fragments of Tokens of the Twelve. Yes, I know the Twelve are Eberron thing. So let me take the Cormyrian weapon back to Eberron for that :)

[zaphear]

On a final note
.
.
.

Magistrate's Scepter... just no. No more standard trash loot with names. This really was a joke, right? A joke that was a colossal waste of time when players were clamoring that the named loot in that pack needed an upgrade and polish, this is what was delivered. The designer of that should be ashamed.

I just had to look this weapon up.. are they serious? Some developer actually wasted their breath making that thing?

[Renvar]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


Favorite - The Shroud. Hands down. Well designed. Some might argue the items were OP, but it was a good system.
Second favorite - The Comms for upgrade system used for CiTW weapons and FoT items. (Disclaimer: The CiTW Comm drop rate was terrible. Way too low. FoT was good, maybe a bit on the high side).

Difficulty - LoB Items felt appropriate. (before EN/EH/EE). As did any Raid with 20th runs. (Reavers, VoD, Hound, DQ, VoN, FoT, CiTW, ToD, etc).
Too Hard - Old Epics, particularly VoN and DQ. Terrible grind. DT Armor sucked too. Especially when the runes were unlabeled.
Too Easy - Blue/Black/White Epic Dragon Armor. Named items from all the eGH quests, except Tor. Named items in U19/U20.

Items needing attention: Any weapon types not addressed in CiTW (Khopesh, Battleaxe, Mace, Pick, Club, D-Axe, Kama, Kukri,Maul, etc). Also, rather than creating just new loot, more upgrade levels for CiTW loot, FoT loot, LoB loot, ToD Rings, Dragon Armors, FoT loot etc with Comms or something else would be great. Let me keep that dragon helm and the set bonus but upgrade the STR +8 to a +10 something. GS, LoB, CiTW, FoT all with multiple tiers is great stuff.

Classes - Divines(all 3), Bards, Artis, and Casters for the new EK line.

[Docgem]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.


Not sure if anyone mentioned this idea and if they have already I missed it and apologize.

I really do like named items and don't mind farming a quest for them within reason. But when you finally do find one and it turns out to have different stats then your looking for it is VERY frustrating. Why not provide a way to use a barter window on the item to trade it or upgrade it to the stats you want then it becomes bound to character. A perfect example is the Epic Tor helms. First you have to do the basic quest to even get a shot to go after the dragons, then after you get to the dragons and kill them you have a small chance of getting a Helm and even a more remote chance of getting the helm you want for your build. I'm not saying to offer an upgrade from Epic normal to Epic elite, just offer us some way of making it what we need. Perhaps providing a black smith that can customize our named loot within the options that are currently available for the said item.

[Raiderone]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
The current system for Epic Normal, Epic Hard and Epic Elite items along with three versions of Heroic. Shroud is another favorite when it comes to a crafting system.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
The new items end rewards from Gianthold, Wheelon and Stormhorns. I just wish that items would drop based on Difficulty selected (Epic Normal, Hard and Elite versions).
Most definitely the old seal, shard and scroll system. Would love to see all items made into the six different versions for Heroic and Epic !!!
LOB crafting system is another system that is just way too hard and turns off many players. It's determining what setting for the essence and what setting to get the shards.
LOB crafting system needs to be more like Shroud. All items available in one run...not many different runs and different difficulty settings....Broken !!!

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Without a doubt Khopeshes, Bastard Swords and Dwarven Axes and even Scimitars.. Would have been nice to see more weapon types available for named items in CITW. Or an option to set the weapon type during selection of item from end chest.
Single handed spell items for Clerics, FVS, Wizard and such would be nice too. Instead of the usual Two Handed Quarterstaffs. Too bad an item couldn't have two sets of properties that get set by adding Martial or Mystical Cube!
For INstance CITW items, Celestia add Mystical to it and you have Radiance weapon with lore and spell power. The long sword could be Glacial powers.. The Warhammer could be Devition line... Just a thougt..similar to LOB crafting.
I would like to see additional set bonuses for other Armor Sets like Green and Red Dragonscale and Helmets.

[FuzzyDuck81]

Favourite upgrade system:

Probably classic shroud/challenge based (though some of the cannith challenges themselves i can't stand) - put in the effort, you're more or less guaranteed to get the thing eventually. The new augment system is pretty nice too in that they have far fewer ingredients to juggle to get the augment. A mix of both, ie. small number of ings, then select from barter box interface which upgrade to put on your weapon or get the component to assemble into your finished item would probably be ideal IMO.

Right difficulty to acquire:

Difficult to call.. probably something like the dragonscale armour (feels like its 50/50 split of luck on drops & simply doing the work) & the dragon helms - specifically because regardless of which version you get, they're all pretty decent.. then it's a matter of luck getting the specific one that's particularly good for you.

Too hard to acquire:

The older shard/seal/scroll epic items are far, far too reliant on miniscule chance combined with luck of getting the specific thing you want, and are now (with a few exceptions) easily outclassed by far easier to acquire items. An expanded ingredient exchange (like how desert scrolls can be swapped 3:1 for one you actually want) to work with seals & shards from the same pack, plus making seals & shards guaranteed drops in end chests or 3rd reward lists, maybe a chance for a BtAoA/BtCoE version of the completed item would make these worth having again.

In need of love:
Niche stuff like dwarven axes, kukris etc. to make flavour builds more viable & a few (across all levels) for each of the deity weapon choices. Also, more medium/heavy armours & heavy/tower shields that don't break druidic oath would be nice too.

[Silverleafeon]

I just had to look this weapon up.. are they serious? Some developer actually wasted their breath making that thing?

And it came with iconics, so someone knew we needed a decent heavy mace badly for favored weapon, then someone else totally failed.

[Drwaz99]

Rapier's have Balizarde. They don't need a whole lot else, though some variety might be nice. Weaker version with more slots would be cool.

Heh, forgot about those. Variety is good. Khopesh then gets my vote.

[Spoonwelder]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?




I haven't read anyone elses responses to keep mine free of bias - it also means I am likely unoriginal in all my thoughts.

1. - Greensteel - accessible, somewhat random (shards of power induced a Khaaaaan! like reaction on some toons) but you always felt like you were making progress. Also tier 1 and tier 2 versions were okay but the dual shards where where you got significant power - unlike say the CITW weapons where the planar conflux and heroic upgrades aren't as significant of an upgrade over the base weapon
2. Greensteel was about right - the old epic scroll, seal, shard system was too hard - not out of difficulty but out of sheer randomness and stupid low drop rates.....3 things with sub 5% drop rates meant unless you spent weeks or months grinding a single quest or two you would never get anything done. I have played for 4 years and have made 2 items - can make 3-4 more (useless VoN necklaces) and am short one of the three on about 20 more.....progress was never assured no matter how hard you tried.
3. I can't speak really well to this but my impression is there isn't alot for clerics either caster focused or melee focused (ie. weapon with wis damage bonus+red/purple slots that isn't a mace because you know that a melee focused cleric isnt wielding a stick with a lump of metal on it they want a big ass sword or axe)

[Matuse]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Any system where you get flexibility in how the final item will turn out. Shroud, Cauldron of Sora Kell, Alchemical all offer these abilities. Some of the mechanics of those systems are annoying (specifically, the bizarre drop behavior of LoB ingredients for different difficulties), but I like having it recognized that the stats for one character won't necessarily work for another.

I also like systems where pieces are either guaranteed or highly likely. Then you can do that content without feeling like you're just marking time until you die. Getting a large bone in the Shroud is not as nice as a large scale, but it's SOMETHING. Looking at yet another chest full of garbage just makes me not want to do that thing again, because this is what happens every time.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Right difficulty is impossible to say, since in many cases it's entirely dependent on luck. I can't control that it took me 68 runs of Xorian Cypher in order to get a Planar Gird when it took someone else 5 runs to get 3 of them.

Too hard? Anything with preposterously rare or obscure drops. Namely, Shard/Seal/Scroll epics. Desert ones in particular. So many items, so few of them any good at all. And the ingredients are sickeningly rare. I keep track of all of the ingredients that I get on a little spreadsheet. For Desert items I currently have:
Shards: 6 (I had something in the area of 45 completions of WizKing, OOB, DQ2 before I had the first shard of any type drop for me)
Seals: 35 (almost all from farming the 3 initial chests in DQ1)
Scrolls: 29

Total number of items I can successfully make: 1. That's only because someone took pity on me and passed over a shard in DQ2.

What makes it worse is that so many of those items are TERRIBLE. Not just now that they've been hopelessly outclassed by newer gear (the Epic Lion-Headed Belt Buckle was amazing when the cap was 20 and the +6 Str/Con was top end...now that's n00b gear); they've always been complete garbage. If you offered me an epic version of 9/10ths of the Desert items completely free, I'd just ask for the money I'd get vendoring them instead to save me the time of doing it myself. Now with MotU and L28 gear, there's only a tiny number of these items that would be worth peeing on if they were on fire. Torc, Ring of Spell Storing, Demonscale Armor, Demon Consort Bracers...and yeah, that's about it. 4 items out of 62 is quite disheartening when you consider the odds of getting a piece that's actually useful to you.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

This is a long list.

Docents: I don't even play WF, and I know they get the short end.

Any-Armor-That-Isn't-Pajamas: This is due in part not to the design of the items, but the design of the game. Dodge has become a critical survival tool, and any armor heavier than cloth restricts it massively. There needs to be some kind of incentive to put on armor (and by extension, not to splash monk levels into EVERY build). AC needs rebalancing, PRR for heavier-than-cloth needs to be bumped...something! I never look at the AC value of any piece of armor. It's completely unimportant to me. I only care about bonus effects, and mostly survival-related ones. Saves, element resists/absorb, etc. A greensteel-type system where I could build my own armor from scratch would be awesome....and please include the ability to adjust appearance, not just stats.

Shields: The number of shields in the game is very small, and the number of GOOD shields is embarrassing. Shield use is already monumentally penalized by other mechanics. It doesn't help when the shields themselves either barely exist, or aren't worth using when they do. The revamp of the Orchard shields was a good first step. Dalorent's Seal, Fanion, Bijio are all pretty nice. It would be a refreshing change of pace if there was a reason for a Divine to use something other than a pair of caster sticks. The Wall of Wood is a good first step, but it is stupidly rare (it took me 5 weeks of ransacks to get the ENormal version) or stupidly hard to get (Wiping out the Woads on EE is supremely difficult). It also generally will play second fiddle to a Radiance of Radiance Lore stick in one hand and a Devotion of Healing Lore stick in the other. The defensive boost you get from it is for all intents and purposes completely pointless. It just becomes another slot for stats, and the stats it gives don't cut it. Give it a Green or Blue augment slot.

Helms: Well, there's the Minos Legens, Greensteel, Dragonscale ...and um, er...uh... Maybe some +10 lootgen item if you were able to get your Heavy Fort and/or Vitality/GS HP in another slot.

Weapons: Dwarven Axes, All types of returning throwers, maces/morningstars, one-handed caster sticks, longswords, greatclubs, mauls, all non-repeater crossbows. These items either have little-to-no representation among named items (D.Axes, Mauls), or the name items that exist are cover-your-eyes awful (Tinah). There are Turbine-implemented character concepts which SHOULD be able to be built around these things (Any Dwarf fighter, Melee based Amaunator Cleric/FvS just to name a couple), but simply can't because the options to make those characters effective just plain don't exist.

Divines: Pretty much since day 1, Divines have been sucking hind teat on their itemization. Essentially forced to use repurposed Arcane equipment (until Shadowfell, it was ARCANE lore, and divines were just fortunate that it was permitted to work on their spells too). When level 20 was the cap, there was ONE item in the entire game that gave +7 Wisdom. There were something like 5 each that gave that level of bonus to Int and Cha. ToD sets for FvS/Druid? No, you don't get that. ToD sets for Clerics that aren't based solely on healing? It is to laugh. Many of the items for divines have fallen into the category of STAY IN BACK AND BABYSIT EVERYONE ELSE, HJEALBOT!

Augments1: More augment slots in stuff. Retroactively. This is a nice level of customizability that is hugely helpful for making up for other shortfalls in gear. All named items except the most uber-powerful ones should have a slot (Uber powerful ones like the eSoS should have their slot REMOVED).

Augments2: These slots should be retroactively applied.

Augments3: Existing augments should have their ML reduced by about 2, or their bonus upped to the next tier (or both). I don't know of anyone who uses a +1 stat colorless augment. Pointless. Between the fact that it probably leaves your stat at an odd number and thus isn't giving any benefit at all, plus how quickly you outlevel it, and there's just no point. If the L1 colorless gave +2 stat, then that would be worth slotting in once in a while.

Augments4: More named/special augments. Add in type specific spell lores to Red. Put in Orange/Green/Purple augments for those slot colors...make them combos augments (say, a Green that had +10 PRR from the blue side and +8 Disease Resist from Yellow), or effects not currently available (like Melodic Guard, or Vorpal).

[barecm]

I am reading all these posts about how the old epic system was too hard. I am here to say everything else is way too easy. It should take you a while to get that uber item. If the items in the Desert Sands were the best in the game, I guarantee you there would be group after group listed in the LFM list every day. If the juice is worth the squeeze, then people will squeeze for as long as it takes to get the juice they want. The only thing I see in this thread is how easy this game has gotten to appease the masses who Turbine hopes to pluck a few coins from before they head out to the next game after realizing this one is too easy. The raids are a joke compared to the how hard the old ones are at level (or with the current loot tables when they first came out). Epic normal and hard are a joke. Even Epic Elite is not that difficult if you put the time in. Regular loot drops with +11 stats (higher than any raid loot currently) and 1-2 free raid weapon items from one of the top raids in the game for all your toons. I mean seriously, what goal do I have now when logging in? TR yet another time to do the same quests with a different way to kill everything in sight? I am sorry, but this game is stale and way too easy at the moment. There are no challenges and no loot that are top tier that is hard to get. The hardest items in the game to get are not the best items, and that is wrong.

[Satyriasys]

I am reading all these posts about how the old epic system was too hard. I am here to say everything else is way too easy. It should take you a while to get that uber item. If the items in the Desert Sands were the best in the game, I guarantee you there would be group after group listed in the LFM list every day. If the juice is worth the squeeze, then people will squeeze for as long as it takes to get the juice they want. The only thing I see in this thread is how easy this game has gotten to appease the masses who Turbine hopes to pluck a few coins from before they head out to the next game after realizing this one is too easy.

Maybe when cap was 20. Now those "uber" items are surpassed by random junk. Why should I have to grind for 2 years for something that gives +7 to a stat?

[Mryal]

One thing that nobody seems to be mentioning and that ive alredy mentioned before but would like to elaborate is what happened to 'Arcane Lore' Items:

Recently all lore items where doubled, except for the general arcane lore ones.This creates a massive difference where things like twilight or 3rd tier epic blue armour are getting 9% lore, while ml 20 staves with specific lore get 15% or more, making it hard to find sources of Lore outiside of weapon or shield/orb slot.This creates a great lack of weapons to use on caster/melee hybrids, wich ironicaly just recieved another ED that would help them.

How is this affecting me? I have a 28 druid, and even thoght i focus more on Fire spells and fire form, you end up using all elements as druid.Currently all i can use for weapon is epic luminous truth, as with fire form you find yourself using melee a lot aswell.The lack of lore also greatly affects my friends on their wolf druid build.I can see this affecting pretty much anyone that uses EK not just as a splash but with your main class being wiz or sorc, and also melee clerics/FVS to some extent.


I am reading all these posts about how the old epic system was too hard. I am here to say everything else is way too easy. It should take you a while to get that uber item. If the items in the Desert Sands were the best in the game, I guarantee you there would be group after group listed in the LFM list every day. If the juice is worth the squeeze, then people will squeeze for as long as it takes to get the juice they want. The only thing I see in this thread is how easy this game has gotten to appease the masses who Turbine hopes to pluck a few coins from before they head out to the next game after realizing this one is too easy. The raids are a joke compared to the how hard the old ones are at level (or with the current loot tables when they first came out). Epic normal and hard are a joke. Even Epic Elite is not that difficult if you put the time in. Regular loot drops with +11 stats (higher than any raid loot currently) and 1-2 free raid weapon items from one of the top raids in the game for all your toons. I mean seriously, what goal do I have now when logging in? TR yet another time to do the same quests with a different way to kill everything in sight? I am sorry, but this game is stale and way too easy at the moment. There is no challenges and no loot that is top tier that is hard to get. The hardest items in the game to get are not the best items, and that is wrong.

Totaly agreed.Again, the old epic system was perfect, what really screwed it was the binding on ingredients.

[barecm]

Maybe when cap was 20. Now those "uber" items are surpassed by random junk. Why should I have to grind for 2 years for something that gives +7 to a stat?Exactly. There is now lvl 15 items that are a static drop that have +8 stats. So, I don't get your point in some respects. I do agree that if the lvl 20 items were top for lvl 20, people would still run it. People still run LOB for items to bridge between lvl 20 and lvl 23.

[Lifespawn]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

cannith challenge crafting i feel is ahead of shroud personally because it was advanceable 100% of the time running different ones gave you different ingredients and if you didn't like a particular set of quests you could run extra ones that you do like and trade them across.

Good power on the base items with the ability to upgrade them with slots making even more customization the ingredients are already there adding a couple more tiers and making the loot ml 25 and then 28 is an easy way instead of a ton more ingredients when we have too much to keep track of as it is.


Greensteel is a very close second for me ultra customization choose your slot or weapon and then go from there keeping the same ing for upgrades and making shroud epic and adding in epic shards of power for a tier 4 and then tier 5 only dropping in the last part in 1 chest 5% on norm 10% on hard and 30% on ee would make them not too hard to acquire while selling bypass timers so a win win for turbine.

Tier 4 take 2 shards and tier 5 take 3 shards guaranteed 1 drop in 10th end reward list would make these attainable but something you would still have to work for probably an average of 40 runs if you run all en or eh and less if you ran EE and put the effort in.





- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too
hard.*

other than the cannith and greensteel i'd say tod rings most rings being useful for a variety of classes with set bonuses and some customization making them desirable and generally most people got them in 20-30 runs with adding more rings and the tables being diluted i think thery needed a bump in drop rates or a larger pool for 20th reward.


Too hard shard seal scroll i personally ran about 100 claws for the gloves piece and finally got 1 and that was when it was timered i used to complete and let people just come loot and still only saw a couple in those 100 runs that people kept then having to run for the shard i think only took me 25 runs with a much better rate saw 6-7 in that time that people kept.

The sos is just crazy along with the spell storing ring easily 300 von runs and only seen the sos shard once.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Throwing weapons,caster sticks in general and divine sticks specifically dwarven axes scimmy's and rune arms come to mind as well.

[SirValentine]

Everyone seems to hate lottery-style named loot, such as dragontouched armor.


I don't hate the way Dragon-touched works NOW (though the armor is pretty much obsolete).

But the OLD way, where you'd have to apply a rune without having any idea what it was, that REALLY sucked.

[BananaHat]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?


The answer to your named item questions lies in allowing the player base to make their own, this is why green steel is my answer and I can see it as the response of many others. You had ingredients that could be traded and bought and they had the ability to be shared for the most part amongst our own characters (remember, the player still puts in a lot of time, allowing them to reward the character of their choice is a good thing, it leads to them bringing alts to a raid which is good for longevity). The ingredients dropped consistently so you were always making a little progress and now with the barter interface, they are easy to use.

The flexibility of the system is the best part. Allow us to make any weapon type we choose. Let me repeat because it is that important: let us choose our weapons! Not everyone is proficient with everything and different builds and players have quirks of weapon choice. In addition, please add customizable orbs and rune arms, which includes different attack types. With hand slots being covered, allow us to craft every single other slot, quiver included. Seriously. All armor types and all body slots, including trinkets and quivers. They don't all have to have the same options like greensteel accessories, but by taking a little extra time upfront to make a large and robust solution, you will have the players running a real endgame for a long time. Look at the longevity of the Shroud, a good raid with a good reason to keep running it. Let me deck myself out completely in this new endgame gear and I will keep running it for a while because there will always be a next item to pursue.

On the topic of what should be on the items: cool, fun, and unique effects as well as the ability to cover our bases. Lightning strike was a sweet new ability when greensteel came out, recapture that feeling. Large numbers, big effects, useful effects. Make a guard effect that isn't terrible. Introduce auras with meaningful effects. Limit new abilities by slot, so you can only bring 1 of 10 auras to the party. Allow unique abilities in every slot, so you have a choice of how you want to build your character. In addition to allowing the item to cover base needs like stats/fort/hp/saves/DCs/attack/damage/etc, have cloaks provide an aura, amulets a defensive clickie, goggles offensive clickie, head utility/buff clickie, bracers summon clickie, armor guard effects, rings on melee/ranged/spell hit, boots movement clickie, gloves permanent held item buff, trinket could choose one.

Is it a lot of effort, yes, but creating a strong end game item system will help this game in the long run.

[SirValentine]

-
- Bard items - casters got their orbs maybe it is time for some instruments. Instruments as a weapon (Mad Lute) was a bit silly so maybe create a slot near the cosmetics for misc bonuses?


Nice idea about instruments, but instead of creating a new slot, just make it work like runearms do with an Arti. They let an Arti have a 2-handed weapon (crossbow) AND a runearm, so let Bard use a 2-handed weapon AND an instrument.

[Silverleafeon]

The answer...

+1

[Silverleafeon]

Nice idea about instruments, but instead of creating a new slot, just make it work like runearms do with an Arti. They let an Arti have a 2-handed weapon (crossbow) AND a runearm, so let Bard use a 2-handed weapon AND an instrument.

Cool idea.

[Arcath]

Also some systems are great when they first come out, but then others never run it which makes it very difficult for your casual people and newcomers to ever be able to collect gear they want that does exist.


This is a big factor, it's not just the loot, but the loot drops that need to be looked at. I was lucky enough to get my tharnes set in 40 runs with my rogue and in 60 runs with my Wiz/Rogue. At that time it was easy to find someone running one most nights, so running it every three days was easy. Working on my artificer I never see a VOD or hound listed. With the low drop rate and lack of routine running of these quests the named set items are really unrealistic to farm.

I'd love to see a system where you can turn in raid collectables for named items. If someone really wants a named item they can barter 20 epic raid tokens for it, or maybe its commendations of heroism, or 5 heartstones. Or add a token to 20th completion lists, if you don't like your options for named loot then select the token instead, get 2 or 3 tokens and then trade them in for the torc that you were unlucky enough to not get offered on any of your 80 runs. Or just get rid of the random and list every named item on the 20th list so we don't hear stories of 100+ runs without madstone boots, or the torc, or whatever else is being elusive and unfun.

[count_spicoli]

I am reading all these posts about how the old epic system was too hard. I am here to say everything else is way too easy. It should take you a while to get that uber item. If the items in the Desert Sands were the best in the game, I guarantee you there would be group after group listed in the LFM list every day. If the juice is worth the squeeze, then people will squeeze for as long as it takes to get the juice they want. The only thing I see in this thread is how easy this game has gotten to appease the masses who Turbine hopes to pluck a few coins from before they head out to the next game after realizing this one is too easy. The raids are a joke compared to the how hard the old ones are at level (or with the current loot tables when they first came out). Epic normal and hard are a joke. Even Epic Elite is not that difficult if you put the time in. Regular loot drops with +11 stats (higher than any raid loot currently) and 1-2 free raid weapon items from one of the top raids in the game for all your toons. I mean seriously, what goal do I have now when logging in? TR yet another time to do the same quests with a different way to kill everything in sight? I am sorry, but this game is stale and way too easy at the moment. There are no challenges and no loot that are top tier that is hard to get. The hardest items in the game to get are not the best items, and that is wrong.



This! +1 to you my friend. Couldn't gave said it better.

My 2 cents.
Best crafting system.
Green steel by far and I think most people would agree.

Second best.
Citw items with comms upgrades. Adding augments is nice touch. Unfortunately come drop rate in Citw rendered raid useless and freebees made it completely useless.

As far as items I would like to see upgraded is some kind of upper level armor crafting. Maybe even the top level. Gh armor could carry us 25 to 30 then some kind of cool end armor.

Also I would consider getting G rid of raid timers

[deconedi]

Nice idea about instruments, but instead of creating a new slot, just make it work like runearms do with an Arti. They let an Arti have a 2-handed weapon (crossbow) AND a runearm, so let Bard use a 2-handed weapon AND an instrument.

I agree Sir Valentine, how i said, so let Wiz use a staff and orb

[Failedlegend]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Honeslty I love greensteel, alchemical and similar system I love being able to do a bunch of different quests and be able to build an item that suits me instead of having to build a character to suit items



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire.


Honestly most of them because its all about drop rate in general except for certain quests (see below) my static group and I seem to get along just fine without needing to repeat quests too often unless were after a specific item (our group has done demon queen MANY many times...so much good stuff in there :P)



Name one that felt too hard.

Anything from Titan it's an amazing raid but its very difficult to complete (in a good way) and takes a very long time so the drop rate of items in a raid like this one should be higher than normal to compensate and honestly I've had several runs not drop a single raid loot item for a group of 12 so it might actually be lower

The one thing I loathe is the shard,seal,scroll system you essentially need to get THREE specific drops just to upgrade one item that's complete overkill...this goes for the Sentinels of Stormreach quests as well I hate getting the "damaged item" to of the required ingredients and than having to grind repeatedly for that last seal or w/e I rather just have to get or not get the item than have to carry around a "part" of the weapon I don't have. The system of greensteel, alchemical and challenges are a better way to do this the difference being you ALWAYS get a fe ingredients and have to run the quest a few times instead only needing 1 of the ingredient and having to hope it drops...the former is fairer.



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Mainly Orbs, Throwing weapons (specifically daggers) and Druid Friendly Heavy Armor but I'd also like to see a few more Bastard Swords and D-Axes as well as their very important to S&B users and Arties.


As an aside I'd also really like to see more work done on the crafting system (is this under your jurisdiction Doc?)....I'd also like to see different professions added and make it so everyone can only have Cannith Crafting and 1 other profession to promote trade and socializing cause honestly DDO isn't very social its very guild/static group focused...I mean I love my guild and static group but I'd like to see something that promotes those groups to intermingle with others...maybe something like the (warning: lots of words lie ahead but please read it is worth it...i hope)



The way I see it, players should have to choose a "school" of crafting it promotes trade and your more likely to actually get the relevant recipes you need. Crafting is entirely based around Essences, Dragonshards and collectables. NPC collecters are now vendors who sell their stock for plat (because hoping for the right random augment is a PITA, also it would be nice for PMs to buy Harm scrolls from their special vendor since we didn't get it as an SLA and it would still be limited since only PMs can access that vendor *make the scrolls BTC*)

First I'd take "Cannith" crafting and rename it "Enchanting" because that's pretty much what it is...this "School" is special in that everyone can use it (mainly because not allowing this would cause much anger) and it doesn't use "recipes" it pretty much remains the way it is now except with new "Enchants" added to coincide with the newest Prefix and suffixes added to lootgen items.

Also some raids and quests will need to start dropping "recipes" for the better craftable stuff as well as having a few added to random loot drops (not bound remember were trying to promote trading)

Note: The Crafting "Schools" below include some stuff assuming a personal housing system exists (which is apparently in the works right now so cool), also all schools of crafting have the ability to imbue their items with superior quality (ie. a Darkwood Q-Staff or Silver Scimitar) and all items created by players come with the "Enchantable item effect (same as craftable effect except changed to match name change)

Fletcher - This one primarily makes bows,xbows,bolts, arrows,leather stuff, boots and gloves

Carpenter - Makes wood stuff like Some trinkets, Wooden shields, Quarterstaffs, Mauls, Greatclubs, even some druid-safe leaf or wooden armor, Also stuff for guild ship/housing stuff but has some cool in-quest items...like the rest bench :P

Blacksmith - Pretty simple Metal Weapons and Armor, can make a few things for guild ship/housing like a new stove

Alchemist - Potions, Augments, Throwable potions with various effects (similar to sun flask,pumpkin bomb,etc.) and Dyes for Armor and helmets/goggles

Magitech - THIS is Cannith crafting...runearms, docents, pet collars, goggles, some gloves and belts, weird clickies this is one of the VERY few things I wouldn't mind if turbine were "inspired" by WoW for...I loved the engineer crafting school just all kinds of weird and wacky somewhat unreliable gadgets.

Seamstress - Cloaks, Robes, some gloves and hats, some guildship/housing related stuff, handwraps, Outfits

Jeweler - Rings, Crowns, some gloves, trinkets, etc.

Arcanist - Mainly Wands and Scrolls but also a few trinkets and hats and last but definately Not least the ability to convert normal armor into a cosmetic armor.

Now a couple questions for you guys

Anything obvious/cool I missed for any of the above "schools"?

Any other "Schools" I may have missed?

Also should each house have different crafting zones? Should they just all be in the marketplace? Maybe sort of "Crafting Hall" with different section for each craft?

Like This:

Fletcher & Blacksmith in House D
Enchanting & Magitech in House C
Alchemist and Arcanist in House P
Jeweler in House K
Carpenter in House J

Note: The Crafting schools are far less complicated than Enchanting for your crafting you just walk up to your relevant work area/building and it opens up a simple craft UI with your list of recipes (separated into collapsible sections of course so you don't have an annoyingly long list) and clicking on an item tells your the requirements and you click craft i you have the required items. Only recipes you currently own are listed in this UI making discovering new recipes a fun surprise...recipes can drop out of a variety of content from all levels including special seasonal events.

[Seikojin]

Another way to look at this ask is to look at the current loot systems as a framework, and not specific things, like Raid X does it right, Raid Y does it wrong.

We have several systems in place that generate special loot.
1. Named item drops - Most random gear that has a special name that really isn't that special considering random lootgen today (muckbane, loincloth's, etc)
2. Named Chain drops - The special items you get in an end reward that are specific to a quest chain (Mantle, Splinterskull chain, etc.). Some better than random lootgen, many are not.
3. Random lootgen - this is special combinations of prefixes or suffixes that are used to make a single property slot more desirable and allow other properties to be added to the item. A big reason why named items are inferior.
4. Crafting. I will split this into a couple of subsections. A good reference: http://ddowiki.com/page/Crafting
.....A. Stone of Change - Works on every bound to character item. Can add various small properties using collectibles.
.....B. Cannith - Make items from the ground up using components from deconstructed items. Does not have every property for balance.
.....C. Augments - utilizes color coded sockets to restrict bonus/ability addition to items with sockets.
.....D. Traps - Rogue only: Make place able traps from deconstructed and bought components.
.....E. Events - Barter based component trade in system for prebuilt items and upgrading them.
.....F. Item upgrading - Items with hidden abilities if you barter upgrades out of them.
.....G. Green Steel - Component based item crafting that includes ability based combination abilities (lit2, concordant opposition)
.....H. Dragontouched Armor - A rune based upgrade system for armor only.
.....I. Incredible Potential - An item upgrade process for specific pieces with the keyword Incredible Potential/Supressed power.
.....J. Alchemical Crafting - Component based item crafting with less hidden abilities than Greensteel.
.....K. Epic Crafting - Barter based system where you upgrade an item with random dropped components.

As you can see, a lot of different systems in the game for gear. I will try to tackle what I see in that format; since it will make more systematic and scale able sense to do so.

1. Most of these items need a serious boost. Some suggestions:
.....- If it is bound to account, drop its min level by 1. Bound to character, drop it by 2.
.....- Perhaps increase generic bonuses to equal or be one better than that quests level range drops. Example Lvl 3 quests can drop some +2 enchantment and +2 to a stat kind of properties. So any named loot should at least have that for those specific properties (+2 enchantment or +2 to a stat if it offers it).
.....- Can add a third property slot for named items; offering a random or specific flavor ability for that item (what became augment slots iirc).
2. Most of these fit niches and are kept far longer than they should be. So their unique abilities are desired. However, I think they could use the following treatment:
.....- Perhaps increase generic bonuses to equal or be one better than that quests level range drops. Example Lvl 3 quests can drop some +2 enchantment and +2 to a stat kind of properties. So any named loot should at least have that for those specific properties (+2 enchantment or +2 to a stat if it offers it).
3. I like the changes to random lootgen. It just needs periodic expansion to keep it desirable.
4. I will break it down similar to how I set it up:
.....A. Stone of Change - Not many seek this out because the components are skipped (the collectables part). Perhaps swap out collectables for cannith components.
.....B. Cannith - Update this to have hidden combinations, similar to Green Steel, but unlocks the newer combination abilities that Random lootgen provides.
.....C. Augments - Augments aren't too common, so a lot of people pay a ton or ignore it. Can utilize Cannith crafting to allow Gems in trash loot to combine cannith crystals that are made to create player made augments.
.....D. Traps - I think there needs to be a wider range of traps, and stronger traps.
.....E. Events - Very specific, so the items are pretty good. Not always best in slot, but typically are for their levels. The server lag during events and short event windows are the crippling factors here.
.....F. Item upgrading - The Unraveling Enchantments need a boost similar to number 2. Maybe some drop tweaks as suggested everywhere else in this topic.
.....G. Green Steel - The most loved and powerful and used system we have. No item compares to it at level. When my tr hits 11, the survivability increases soo vastly that I can run at level or better on elites. This is perfect work to reward ratio. The last sets of changes made the only problems with this system almost disappear (extra chances for comp drops based on difficulty, extra chests, and more end reward comp options).
.....H. Dragontouched Armor - Antiquated and needs a facelift. Add more slot able spots for runes, and expand the abilities the runes can offer.
.....I. Incredible Potential - Pretty solid for what it is. Perhaps up the drop rate for some comps or offer a barter system to allow trades, since most of the Amrath work is wasted.
.....J. Alchemical Crafting - Does not live up tot he power that GS offered; despite offering a lot. Perhaps upgraded versions of GS abilities (higher proc rates, more gains)
.....K. Epic Crafting - Drop rates are the bane of epic item's existence. For example, in Von, you can only get certain items from certain chests. Then you can only get the upgrade components in the same fashion, the last being in the raid. However, the loot tables become soo large, that a small chance turns into a once in a 3 year drop for you. Far too grindy considering how little you actually live with the epic item (TR). A commendation barter system would easily remedy this.

[taurean430]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Shroud Crafting: This system is customizable, and you can see your progress as you aquire mats for your upgrades. Very appealing.
Cannith Crafting: I prefer this system as I TR a lot of characters to improve them. Again Customizable = awesome!
FOT Upgrade Mechanic: This is good. People who can't handle epic hard can run epic norm and still upgrade their stuff. It encourages more alike players to group together.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Named rings from House DunRobar and House Szind: The bosses can be tackled in a group or solo. No required number of people. No lockout mechanism, save chest ransack. Completing the quest not required. That was good.
Loot from FOT: Excelent that different difficulties can be run by players of varying skill levels and they can still get the gear they want.

ESOS: Currently the shard, which has a drop rate akin to lunar eclipses on odd Tuesdays. Bad, bad, bad.
Drop Rates for named items and commendations of heroism in CiTW are abysmal. Bad, bad, bad.
Chain end rewards for epic content offering either heroic gear variants or only the epic normal version. Yeah, I just ran this chain on epic elite, couldn't pull anything from any chest named. Okay, there is always the end reward for finishing the chain. I still have a chance! Oh wait... :(




- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Can you do *something* with the Dream Visor? Those were not easy to get and now are outclassed by min level 7 random gear. It makes me want to punch a kitten...

You folks have almost nothing out there for Druids that's competetive. Or really any non arcane caster. Why do you continue to design loot for sorcerers and wizards (sometimes) yet conviently forget about every other caster class?

It would be nice to have Red augment slots for Alchemical Wraps.

It would be nice to revisit the values you've given Most of the Alchemical Items. Especially considering the difficulty in building the items by comparison.

Raid loot from Pre Motu needs a hand: Chaosblades for example. Years of grind for an unusable item is very disheartening.

Random effects from Crafting with your newer systems needs to seriously go away. It's beyond insulting to grind, grind, grind, for something you now can't use. Let us pick what we want.

If your standard for level 20 is spell augmentation 90, shouldn't raid loot be above that? I mean, it has to stand out as being worth getting, right?




*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

I'd still like to touch on that for a moment. While it's true that bad luck is bad luck my feeling is that as devs you folks should be paying attention to players who are mentioning insane amounts of runs of content to get what they want. I have a few toons that could make use of an ESOS for example. But after a few hundred runs across my toons was I able to make one. And even then the scroll was given to me by another player who empathized with my plight. So 6 years of playing, 1 ESOS.

The Torc of Prince Rayium De is another example. My caster has 13 lives currently. Each life I ran at least 20 runs, most lives 40 runs. Still can't get one in a reward list or to drop in a chest. In fact across all of my characters (16) I've only one, which is on my main. He got it through dumb luck on his first run while still a newb. Won it on a roll.

There are rare drops - then there are chances so low in raid group required content that it's a turn off alltogether. If as a dev group you feel it's okay for players to grind something for years and still not manage to get the item, something is very wrong...

[Certon]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Favorite named loot upgrade system: Reign of Madness' Altar of Insanity. I wish there were more choices on the menu system, but I love how customizable your armor feels. I'd love to see this more widespread.

Desired Item/Right Difficulty: Epic Hard Ivy Wraps. A rare drop in a rare encounter. It was frustrating, but ultimately worth it.

Desired Item/Too Hard: Torc of Prince Raiyum-de II. I've played this game six years and I've never seen the necklace drop at all, or the shard to upgrade it. This is WAY too rare, though admittedly I've never run the Zawabi's Revenge on one toon enough times to get the loot list to choose it the 'easy' way, lately mostly because the raid is almost never run anymore.

Weapon types that need more love: Quarterstaves. We need more of them. We need them to be sturdier. They wear out WAY too quickly in combat. Heavy and Light Picks. There are not enough named versions of these.

Item types that need more love: Docents. Every armor type that doesn't already have a docent version should be able to be converted irreversibly into a BtC docent. It would solve a lot of problems in the Forgotten Realms content so you wouldn't have to worry about docents dropping there. It would also allow Warforged monks the ability to turn the Cannith Crafting Frozen Tunic into a docent for their use.

[taurean430]

On Docents:

Couldn't you devs create a system where one can take a comparable armor and convert it into a docent? Much like making collars out of handwraps?

[PsychoBlonde]

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

My favorite upgrade system is probably The Shroud. Run it and you're guaranteed to get some ingredients, which can be freely traded. The items are very nice with an enormous useful range and tons of customization. Second favorite is probably Cannith Challenges (and the pirate challenge). It, too, is fairly predictable in dishing out measured amounts of ingredients and giving you lots of useful items to choose from. I also find challenges quite fun.

My LEAST favorite is probably the seal/scroll/shard epic crafting. It's way too random, several of the packs (sands and Von) have WAY too many different items, and only the scrolls are tradeable. This system DESPERATELY needs to be rationalized and brought up to date. Next least favorite is probably dragontouched armor--I haven't touched this system in ages, in fact I wound up THROWING OUT the DT armor I made at ENORMOUS effort back BEFORE the runes were labeled because it is now total junk and not worth the space. Third least favorite is probably alchemical weapons out of MA/LoB simply because of what a pain in the butt it is to get a group together for these raids. If we could just go directly TO the raid instead of having to run through the explore areas . . . these are the longest raids in the game due to that one fact. Yeah, Hound and Vision of Destruction have the same thing going on, but at least those drop LOOT instead of PARTS OF LOOT. Run those until you get the items you want and you're done. LoB and MA should be like the Shroud--you run them to get parts even though there's not anything you want to make at the moment. Then, later, when you DO want to make something, voila, you have the stuff. But they're a huge PITA so this doesn't happen. Also the way the difficulties on LoB work is idiotic and needs to be fixed. I have to run one difficulty (epic normal) to get the epic spirits, and ANOTHER difficulty (epic hard) to get the shards? ***? All the stuff for a given tier should drop on the same difficulty. Also you really should be able to trade higher-level stuff for lower-level stuff or something along those lines. It's just too effing complicated.

I'm pretty indifferent to all the other systems--they neither bother me nor do I particularly enjoy them.

---

Hmm, desired item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire? Epic spare hand. I had to run a bunch of challenges, sure, but I could solo them if I wanted. Running with a group sped the process up. Parasitic Breastplate was another. Most of the items out of the newer *quests* actually seem pretty reasonable--except for High Road, the drop rates out there are poo.

If you want a contrast, here's an item that I think is WAY too difficult to get: Epic Ring of Spell Storing. I've spent over 3 years trying to get one of these, and at LONG last I actually have the scroll and the seal. No shard yet. It's my hope I might EVENTUALLY be able to acquire one of these for my completionist caster. That's right--it was easier for me to get TWO completionists done than to get this ONE item made. I don't have an Epic Sword of Shadow yet, either, although I have scroll and seal for that one, too.

---

I don't know about "weapon types"--the problem is that there are a lot of weapon types that just aren't that useful. Maybe put in some serious epic picks? People might be interested in using them again--they are super high crit, after all. The thing with weapons is that apart from rare exceptions purpose-built ones tend to be superior to named ones because the named items always have some lack such as not breaking DR or not boosting your stun DC's. As for named loot--there aren't a lot of useful high-level trinkets. My personal hope is that those Greater Heroism armors will turn out to be blanks for customization in a later raid--there hasn't been a worthwhile armor customization system in a long time.

I like to epic TR, and I found that this has seriously changed my loot requirements. I actually sold off most of my Epic Elite gear because I want the lower-level versions that I can put on earlier instead. I have one set of max-level gear (which I don't really get any use out of, I just like to LOOK at it), and several sets of lower-level gear. So I'm kind of hoping that the eTBC items won't be ML 28 or similar.

[RedOrm]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Shroud. Great effects, highly customizable, tied to a fun raid.
Canith crafting is great as well, but urgently needs an update to include new items and especially higher levels.

The Shard/seal/scroll system WOULD be good, if the droprates didn't suck so badly (specifically looking at Sands here). Making shards and seals unbound would seriously improve things (and with cap being 30 now is a good thing to do), but even then the drop rates for s/s/s needs to increase. What you did with epic DQ giving shards was a good move, but the list is too short (at the very least it should include all dessert items), and seals should be in there as well. Scrolls are inbound AND can be bartered 3 to 1, so not so bad, but even when each epic 20tht run included all shards and seals, we're talking about 20 runs on heroic for the base item, and then another 40 for the shard and seal, so 60 runs or 3 months of dedicated farming to get ONE item. For that much work, the item needs to be pretty darn good -which many of them are not. In the current situation, it sucks far too much.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Good: Greensteel, Minos Legens.
NB: Once upon a time i'd have put the Crystal Cove items here, they used to be pretty darn cool and their being BTA was simply awesome. Sadly, this was before so many of them were nerfed into oblivion... The new BTC items are not really worth the bother either. Please make all Cove items BTA, and please restore them to their former glory. I can accept my tier 3 epic jeweled dagger being sub-par at level 25+, but at level 20 it should be AT LEAST as good as random trash...

Too hard buy FAR: Ring of Spell Storing. If it's even *possible* to loot that chest for 2 years running and not draw the ring, something is seriously off.
Most/all Sand items should have better drop rates. Giving them an enhancement so they become worth having at the new level cap would be good as well, but is kinda pointless as long as the drop rates are so abysmal. THe issue with shards/seals I already mentioned.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Bards need some SERIOUS love. Really. A good start would be a musical instrument that seriously reduces the casting time/cooldown of their songs so people don't have to wait so long for them to finish. Inspiring Echoes of the epic Elyd Edge should be made to include more songs as well. I'm fine with that costing extra song uses, it's the waiting time that's the issue.
Docents, rune arms and companion items also could use multiple fairy visits.
I'm not too familiar wih clerics yet, but get am getting the impression they might want some extra attention as well. Bringing back healing amp would go a long way here.

Finally a generic remark: PLEASE make items BTA instead of BTC. Introduce a (not too) rare macguffin into the game that makes existing BTC items BTA instead.
Put it in the store and make it drop in the new raid, and watch your sales go skyhigh. Seriously, this would be BETTER than sliced bread.

Greetz,
Red Orm

[Hathorian]

1) something to make DC casters viable again for EEs.
2) a superior mnemonic clicky, similar to the epic ring of spell storing (that nobody can get because the drop rate is so incredibly low for the shard).
3) more arcane / evocation augmentation items
4) more spell storing items (-10% spell cost)

[ComicRelief]

Um...from the looks of the numerous replies in this thread, I guess I'm in the minority, but as far as I am concerned, "greensteel" is NOT named loot. It is a crafting system. "Greensteel" is a descritpion describing the 'steel' (it's "green" or "raw") used to craft the items.

"Sun Blade" - that's named loot. "Aryln's Ring" - that's named loot. The various "Sora Kell" items (e.g. "Katra's Wit")- those are named loot.

So my initial reply ignored "greensteel" and Cannith crafting becuase those are crafting systems, not named loot.

As far as I'm concerned, anyway - you, of course, are free to disagree.

But you'd be wrong.
;)

-----
EDIT: Originally, I mentioned the challange systems - I have deleted that reference because, upon reflection, they couls be considered named loot. But "greensteel" and Cannith crafting are still crafting systems, not named loot. At least, IMO.
;)

[Engoril]

We don't need more item sets. Item sets are a pain when planning gear. They lock down too many equipment slots to speciific gear that only suits very specific builds.

We need more named loot for those effects that only ever appear on named loot and cannot be obtained by any other means. An example is "+1 KI on hit". At level 28 the named items that previously supplied this effect are all obsolete.

[FuzzyDuck81]

Um...from the looks of the numerous replies in this thread, I guess I'm in the minority, but as far as I am concerned, "greensteel" is NOT named loot. It is a crafting system. "Greensteel" is a descritpion describing the 'steel' (it's "green" or "raw") used to craft the items.

"Sun Blade" - that's named loot. "Aryln's Ring" - that's named loot. The various "Sora Kell" items (e.g. "Katra's Wit")- those are named loot.

So my initial reply ignored "greensteel" and Cannith crafting becuase those are crafting systems, not named loot.

As far as I'm concerned, anyway - you, of course, are free to disagree.

But you'd be wrong.
;)

-----
EDIT: Originally, I mentioned the challange systems - I have deleted that reference because, upon reflection, they couls be considered named loot. But "greensteel" and Cannith crafting are still crafting systems, not named loot. At least, IMO.
;)

Ahh but part of the initial question was about loot upgrade systems... and greensteel is a way to upgrade from a basic +5 weapon with better base damage to one with very customisable additional effects, so would definitely count :)

[Death_Mystic]

There are way to many comments to sift through all. So if I repeat someone I am sorry.

I would like the old Epic Upgrade System eliminated. So in saying that I would like the Old epic loot (that requires grinding for 3 items to make epic) have a chance to drop in Epic level chests for the chains. Like Chimeras crown, Denith Chain, etc...

Also I would like some epic Bard named loot. The only only I can think of (which took me more than a year and a half of ransacking to epic) is the Elyd Edge. By Bard loot I mean Weapons/Shields that a Bard can use that Apply CHA to attack and damage at MLs Higher than 20. Also think a better version of the Epic Elyd Edge (ML 25+ ish) would be great.

I know that PDK get the ability to make swords go off CHA but I am talking for all other Bards of different races that do not get access to that :)

[Death_Mystic]

2) a superior mnemonic clicky, similar to the epic ring of spell storing (that nobody can get because the drop rate is so incredibly low for the shard).


This would actually (maybe) make me bank the Archivist's Necklace.

So I agree

[Vasax]

Items:

common (rank 1 item)
-all random loot, all NPC bought items, all masterwork

uncommon (rank 2 item)
-all non-Quest Difficulty tier items (ex: ring of feathers, regen ring)
-all World named items (ex: luck blade, ioun stones)

rare (rank 3 item)
-all Crafted items (greensteel crafting, alchemical crafting, canith crafting, canith challenges, eveningstar challenges)

exotic (rank 4 item)*
-all Quest Difficulty tier items (heroic, h-hard, h-elite, epic, e-hard, e-elite)

unique (rank 5 item)*
-all old system Epic items (shared, scroll, seal)

mythological (rank 6 item)
-all Sentient crafting items, all moral/learning tiers

Omnipotence (rank 7 items)
-can be acquired, but can not be used non-Gods. Might be used in the crafting process of Mythological items.

Notes:
1. *Due to the loot politics/direction of DDO, exotic/unique could be swapped.
2. Ranks repersent a increase in power in some form that has a total enhancement value greater than the previous rank.
3. Mythological is only surpassed by Omnipotence.
4. While drop rates should be increase, the system itself is not the issue. Unique items might be used in the crafting process of Mythological items.

Review more here
The Grand Scheme https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/432615-Running-List-of-ideas?p=5197087#post5197087
Dragon Touch, Augments revisit https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/384556-Epic-Augment-Crystal-Updates!
Epic Wands https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/385015-Is-spellpower-affecting-wands-scrolls-WAI?p=4606214&viewfull=1#post4606214

[Orcelius]

1) Green Steel, the customization, the constant progress toward a goal via drops. The Fall of Truth upgrade system, the Lordsmarch and Sentinels of Stormreach pack upgrade systems, and the Cannith challenge loot. The new augment system, too, for it's customization. These were all well designed systems, in my opinion.

2) Anything from the old seal/shard/scroll system were just awful, but most other named items aren't really difficult to acquire. Maybe I'm just lucky.

3) Bludgeoning weapons, one handed and mauls specifically (Not staves, there are a great deal of named staves, both melee and magic, from 1 to cap). Docents occasionally pop up, but aside from the carbon copy druids pack one (which I greatly enjoy), most of them lately are not very desirable. There are also only a couple of named dwarven axes or throwing items. Only thing I wish to add to this portion is to not just pile a bunch of loot at the cap. Seriously.

This game stands tall on it's huge diversity of builds, but loot is usually fairly limited.

[Jasparion]

Don't make the assumption that we want to keep our named loot from Korthos up to 28... That's not the case, so don't try to create a system to have items that level while we level. That's something that is not needed and probably not wanted.

You really should only speak for yourself. Personally, I would love to have gear which levels up as you level up. Means replacing a HUGE amount of gear which I only ever use for a couple of levels each life.

That said, I would not want it to be viable at level 28, so maybe it peaks in the low 20s (or even at 20).

Of course, this then looks amazingly like Heirlooms from WoW.

[SisAmethyst]

Um...from the looks of the numerous replies in this thread, I guess I'm in the minority, but as far as I am concerned, "greensteel" is NOT named loot. It is a crafting system. "Greensteel" is a descritpion describing the 'steel' (it's "green" or "raw") used to craft the items.

"Sun Blade" - that's named loot. "Aryln's Ring" - that's named loot. The various "Sora Kell" items (e.g. "Katra's Wit")- those are named loot.
...

I guess what other players referring here isn't to the question of named loot but to the first question of upgrade system and while Greensteel is not named loot but raid loot, the crafting system accompanied with it is one of the best upgrade systems in the game.

[TDarkchylde]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Might as well join the chorus. GREENSTEEL! It doesn't matter whether it's your first Shroud run or your last, you are always making progress towards getting the item you want, in the slot you want, that fits the unique needs of your character, no question about it. The fact that you can make up the gaps either by trading or using the AH means that even if you can never pull anything but Large Bones, you're not screwed when it comes to making said dream item.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Right: Any VoD raid loot, when that raid was still relevant for more than Monster Manual entries to get that last damned bat type. The list was small but varied, with something for everyone where even the caster gear offered a benefit to melees and vice versa, and you could usually get the item you needed before a 20th unless you were one of those Bonepullers I mentioned earlier. Other raids before and since had a little too much loot in the loot tables, causing dilution (Demon Queen, ToD), too much difficulty for said loot (ABBOT... grrrr), too much subpar loot aside from the one really desirable item (Titan, HoX) and/or way too low a drop rate (Abbot again).

Honorable Mention: Epic Gianthold. While there are some headscratchers (WHY in the name of $deity are the stats on the helms random instead of something you can craft like the ToD rings? You've got perfectly good crafting materials already in the game in the form of (Restored) Relics and Comms of Heroism!), aside from the dragon helms, the system is very solid, and as I am about to explain, needs desperately to be backported to older Epics.

WRONG: DESERT EPICS!!! The entire scroll/seal/shard system is too much work for (especially now) too little benefit, but the Desert is especially so. Just change all the non-raid quest loot to EN/EH/EE like Epic Gianthold, give us an Epic explorer area to get the explorer epics (with only a single version), and change the raid loot to a single drop with comms required to upgrade, where higher difficulties of the raid give items with some or all of the upgrades already done.

You hit it out of the park with Epic Gianthold. Start working on bringing the Desert, VoN and Lords of Dust/Servants of the Overlords/Spinner of Shadows up to that standard. Especially the Desert. DO IT FIRST. Chrono could use it too, but after Desert and VoN are addressed. Carnival, Fens and Sentinels work decently enough with the S/S/S system for now to save them for last - they have their own issues preventing them from being run more frequently anyways.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Put Divine Augmentation in the game already. Caster divines are getting shafted at every single turn lately. It's one thing for a caster divine to be slightly behind a caster arcane, like it was pre-MotU. It's another for a Shiradi arcane or a DC Magister to make a caster divine about as effectual as a splashed Bard from a casting standpoint. Some dedicated gear would be very VERY helpful in that regard. And make them drop as faith weapons, for crying out loud!

Also, Docents. Warforged need some love.

And Khopeshes, loathe as I am to see that weapon type rise back to unparalleled top of the heap like it was before the enhancement pass - there simply aren't enough of them that other weapon types don't pound into the pavement with enough mods from the enhancement trees.

Did I mention faith weapons? Yes? No matter, I'll mention them again, specifically longswords and scimitars. Not enough good ones across the level ranges that actually fit the theme of what a melee divine would actually want to do. Give us something with some nice DPS mods (the more unique, the better!) and maybe Devotion or Radiance on them as well so we get our Implement bonuses without having to resort to inferior DPS randomgen.

Show Mauls and Warhammers some love. Not all DPSers want to hack and slash things. Some of us like to pound on our problems instead.

Finally, one last thought. Lemme grab my Epic Ratkiller for this so it gets nice and in there.

If it is not raid loot, it should NEVER bind to character.

If it is not a chain reward, it should NEVER bind at all, even to account.

Named loot from random quests that is not a chain reward or raid loot should NEVER bind! Period. End of story.

I won't even use named loot out of quests anymore because of the binding. If I have older versions that don't bind, I use that. If I don't, I do without. Onto the AH all of the BtCoE excrement goes, unless it's total garbage like the glorified vendor trash in the Harbor. Then it goes to the brokers without even a second thought.

[Inoukchuk]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Like most people I really liked greensteel. I also like Fall of Truth, and I think most people will tell you that epic Gianthold in general was well done from a loot perspective.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.
The CitW weapons felt about right, as does greensteel. Overall GS was maybe the best since you almost always made some progress towards you goal and could customize the result. And again, the Tor and FoT stuff was about right.

Also I have to echo what everyone else said about the old seal/shard/scroll system. It's awful. The grind is awful. And in many cases the result was awful. House P items weren't quite as bad, but there are so many useless (even back then) epic items in sands and VON3 that all they do is destroy the loot tables by adding an insane amount of randomness to what you get (if you are lucky enough to get anything, which was also a low chance). All such items, for the amazing grind that goes into them, should be VERY good items and useful for many levels. As it is now there are about a handful of such items anyone cares about: ESoS, EMG (only for assassins), Epic Elyd Edge (only for bards), some still use Epic Ring of Elemental Essense... maybe the VON boots, really it's pretty thin.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Khopesh and D-axe for sure. You make players take a feat to use superior weapons, then never give them any competitive named versions at high levels so they're better off using weapons that don't require feats. Scimitar comes to mind also.

And a friend of mine repeatedly points out that since loot gen trivialized Twilight there are ZERO named caster weapons worth using (arcane or divine). Also, since the AC system makes armor nearly unusable maybe release some armors with good enough special properties to be enticing. For that matter, since we all wear robes now having some variety there would be nice.

[SisAmethyst]

I am reading all these posts about how the old epic system was too hard. I am here to say everything else is way too easy. It should take you a while to get that uber item. If the items in the Desert Sands were the best in the game, I guarantee you there would be group after group listed in the LFM list every day...

It wasn't even hard, it was and is still tedious. Your socks will start to fall asleep while trying to get those items. Further it was those crazy randomness to finally get that single shard that you where looking for since two years. No its not fun, especially not if you are overwhelming unlucky on the pulls. And for new players part of this game is still not necessarily easy. The point is you don't make a single progress while trying to get closer to your goal. Don't get me wrong, it shouldn't just pop in your inventory after your first run, so yes, it should take a while, but not forever and still be no step closer.

So why is greensteel so great and popular compared to epic crafting, which is no matter how you slice it is a pain? For epic you need to hope that this single one shard, seal or scroll drop and the overall drop rate is low. You only need three ingredients but the chance to get them is crazy. On the other side GS ingredients drop far more frequently but with just five ingredients you are still only a small step closer. However you see a progress, something that you will not see in epic. In epic it is having the shard or not, but sure, your mileage may vary.

Maybe one solution would be to break down those seals, shards and scrolls in smaller parts and pieces with an overall higher drop late. heck if the drop rate of a shard is 3% and you would break it in 10 pieces you could make the drop rate only slightly higher to 25% which is overall even a lower drop rate. However the chance to acquire a piece of it is in general higher. You get the impression to progress against something. Like with the epic token fragments, they eventually sum up to be able to buy a heart.

Further it is far more easier to balance drop rates of smaller more frequent pieces. It was a design law in my eyes to make a crafting system that only depend on a very small ingredient size, because it mandate it to make the drop rates crazy low. This on the other hand lead to the fact that some players are very lucky and pull 3 seals in a row, while someone else doesn't pull a single one in 2 years. Heck you can simulate this even with mathematical models.

Sure the old epic items may need an update too compete against the new random loot and a lot of players would scream "no, not again more ingredients" which I somehow subscribe. But this should have taken more and smaller ingredients right from the start which would have saved us the trouble to break them down later.

[deahamlet]

Friends, forumites, adventurers, lend me your ears. I come not to tell about Named Loot, but to ask about it. Really, we want your feedback on named items in DDO. This is the promised follow-up to my introductory post, where I asked you all to share your thoughts on random items.

Let me give a quick report on the prior thread: you guys gave us a lot of great feedback, and a couple major themes came out, all of which we are actively digesting. One of those themes was concern about old named items (especially raid items) being out-powered by new, high level random items. We heard ya, and we're looking at solutions and scheduling now. So there's no need to talk about that today.

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Shroud crafting!!! Love it. It has a BTC component that you can pass on to the next life if you want. It has another component that is completely unbound (someone can craft you the base and sell/give it to you). It has many components that are completely unbound and can be acquired over many characters and if you are missing one LDS for example to finish and the last 2 weeks have been bad luck city, you can exchange with another player. I love the fact that they are useful on such a wide range of levels.

I also like one thing from Cannith challenges and LOB crafting... That you can upgrade a lower ML item to a higher one. You lose the item, sure, but you can use the level X item to TR a whole bunch of times and then BAM upgrade it when you think you're done with it and now you have a level 20 item. LOB had some good ideas but it was a PITA raid to run and the items just weren't such a huge upgrade for the casual crowd to endure. Shroud appealed to casuals and uber players in a way that LOB just did not. I think the BIG BIG BIG difference is that Shroud you get FEWER components running normal versus hard and elite, but you can get something. LOB you need something from various difficulties... (and still the LOB raid itself wasn't as loved by casuals... Shroud x10 LFMs at least every day before MOTU... LOB 1-2 if you're lucky).


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

TOO HARD:
Honestly the Desert is the unholiest of grounds. Torc was a PITA, I know people with 200 completions and nada... and the epic system of upgrading the loot was a pain in the buttocks. VON honestly... I found that MOST items were okay-ish to try to get/complete, but eSOS was a pain. Maybe its drop rate is that bad, I don't know. Desert had the issue of some very nice items (back in the day) but way too hard to complete. Hope for the base, hope for the shard, and honestly I never got anywhere close to completing any Desert item. In general the epic upgrade system was a nice grind in concept, but sometimes turned ugly depending on which pack it was from. I'm not sure it's epic system in general that is at fault, I didn't find the stuff from the other packs painful compared to Desert. I got a TORC by luck on my artificer solo-ing and then got another one as 20th reward but I didn't take it because I knew I had run 20 EPIC DQ raids and never ever seen torc shard. Also never seen torc scroll or seal and Desert epics had a high entrance rate back in the day.

I'm not sure I'm keen on the epic elite items in quests, I'd prefer an epic system where you get the epic version in whatever difficulty you run (but higher drop rates on elite) and then you can upgrade it using currency that is BTA and drops in epic elites and raids (raids on ANY EN, EH, EE with much bigger numbers in EE). Always in END CHESTS. Please stop putting good named loot in farmable chests.

TOO EASY:
MOTU quest named items. They had random stats, only one of which was desirable by most people fyi, and they were farmville to ransack.
It was easy, but I wouldn't call it appealing or fun. Too easy is just as demoralizing as too hard.

JUST RIGHT:
Named loot that was just right... I liked named loot that could appear as completion of chains after X number of chain completions. That was cool.

I know. The Abbot quiver back when you could pass it to your other characters through bank. That was a bug, I don't know if you guys fixed it but was my favourite loot drop because of that. See... Abbot is hard. See... I might want to run said raid to heal or buff or whatever. But you know how bitter I was that I couldn't bring my wizard PM most of the time for the robe? Very bitter. If the loot had been BTA, I'd be happy.

Abbot was hard at some point. Ignoring the bugs really. The loot didn't have awesome drop rates but so so so so much better than TORC lol. When the quiver became BTA, that was a perfect storm. Hard raid, low (but not uber low) drop rates, and BTA! I didn't feel bad my sorcerer got it cause I knew I could pass it to my artificer.
I don't approve of BTCoE loot in raids. BTCoE base maybe if we go for an upgrade system, but buying EE loot in AH just feels meh. But BTA means I can bring whatever the party needs or whatever I find most fun in there and get the loot I need for whatever character I need.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

This might be too personal to be impartial. But gosh darn it, I want a reason to run my divines again! Give me some divine love already. And I mean CASTER divine love. We already have items that increase melee DPS and we have melee weapons from fighters and barbarians and whatnots if we want. We need something focused on divine casting. That means decent sticks, NAMED STICKS... 2h or 1h, whatever... Give us devotion, kinetic, etc... give us lore and evocation focus... Maybe even, omg could it be, a staff with EVO and NECRO focus? No way, crazy talk!

Other than that, hmmm... more rune-arms! :D (I hear a lot of people complaining about not enough range in terms of named weapons for some lesser used weapon categories but I don't play melee too much so I can't suggest anything)

[Postumus]

I am reading all these posts about how the old epic system was too hard. I am here to say everything else is way too easy. It should take you a while to get that uber item.



In this case 'hard' = 'tedious'. Nothing fun to most players about 'tedious.' Shards and seals should be unbound now.

[ComicRelief]

Ahh but part of the initial question was about loot upgrade systems... and greensteel is a way to upgrade from a basic +5 weapon with better base damage to one with very customisable additional effects, so would definitely count :)

Hmmm...I think your glasses have a smudge on them...
*cleans FuzzyDuck81's glasses and hends them back politely*


There you go - all better. ;)


*snip*
- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
*snip*

{Emphasis added}

"Greensteel" is not "named loot". QED
(hehehe)
;)

[Robai]

1. First, I LOVE Shard/Seal/Scroll system! It's very nice system.
But the problem is in drop rates.

Scrolls. These are unbound and it's ok for them to be rare. (Btw, making Scroll exchange in Sands was a terrible idea, because all scrolls lost their value, no point killing mobs there, just zerg a completion = no fun)
Seals/Shards. These are BtA, it's ok for them to be rare, but all they should have equal probabilities (I mean, I don't need 30 seals/shards with name "Vulkoorim", I need just one seal/shard with name "Ring of Spell Storing" instead)
Similar story with VoN, I don't need 40+ seals/shards with name "Kundarak" for example, give me SoS shard instead!
100 epic completions should give a list of all shards (many players don't do ADQ because they have no hope of RoSS shard, but if it would be there guaranteed on 100th then this raid would be alive for sure)


2. I don't like EN/EH/EE versions. The main problem is way too limited BtC storage. But not just that, those items have different ML, which means sometimes it would be nice to have EN and EE versions for example.
Make EE version more powerful, but keep the same ML.
But I'd prefer them to be upgradeable. Upgrading items is fun. For example, you can start with EN version, and upgrade it to EE version (keeping the same ML). Those who run EE can save the time and have higher drop rates and can get fully upgraded versions. On the other hand, more casual/undergeared/new/without powerful guilds/friends/etc players can have EE as well, if they are willing to farm it (or buy it from AH/ASAH).
For Heroic Elite versions make it this way: fully upgraded versions should only drop when quest is done with bravery bonus (on Elite). Hard version should drop when quest is done at level (on Hard, don't need bravery bonus). Otherwise it should drop only Normal version (but can be upgraded to Elite).
Don't use existing commendations for upgrading items, make some new materials instead, because too many commendations were duplicated by duping exploit.
Binding:
- found in chest versions should be unbound (or BtCoE), even EE/HE
- upgraded versions should be BtC (upgrading matts should be unbound or bta)

3. I like how Dragontouched armor upgrades were made. You can replace any tier upgrades any time, without changing other tiers (unlike greensteel items).
As for randomness, I like it, but just change Eldritch/Tempest/Sovereign runes to BtA (instead of BtC).
I like greensteel, because of it's quite a complex system (it's fun to make a correct GS item, it's a game in the game).
The perfect system would be Greensteel system combined with DT armor system (I mean complexity + easy to replace any tier at any time).

4. Please unnerf (for example, spell lore was decreased on ALL named items by 3%), moreover, upgrade named/raid items so that they would have at least equal bonuses to random loot of the same level.
For example,
ML20 Tier3 dagger has only 3% crit chance,
while ML2 random trash has 11% crit chance:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2ypi4h4.jpghttp://i40.tinypic.com/30vyvrd.jpg

[BOgre]

Hmmm...I think your glasses have a smudge on them...
*cleans FuzzyDuck81's glasses and hends them back politely*


There you go - all better. ;)


{Emphasis added}

"Greensteel" is not "named loot". QED
(hehehe)
;)

Not sure why you feel the need to split irrelevant hairs in this way... Shroud Raid Loot and the Greensteel upgrade system produces Named Loot in the form of Supreme Tyrant xyz and Great Commander xyz et al.

House C Challenge Crafting Upgrade system produces named loot in the form of Calomel, Mournode, Elemental of xyz and others like Spare Hand, Frozen Tunic, Blasting Chime, et al.

So lets try to stick to the SPIRIT of the OP, K?

p.s. your proof was incomplete, so your QED should be edited out. :D

[G_Lich]

1) Cannith Challenge equipment, hands down. It's less dependent on random luck and you know you're making progress towards upgrading your items. Not the best items in the game, but very reasonable for the effort (at least they were at lvl 20).
2) FOT and CiTW items seem about right. Old epic eq created by getting the seal, shard, scroll are waay to hard for their value.
3) Not technically a class or weapon type, but I'd like to see Cannith Challenge eq upgraded to include lvl 24/28.

i agree with aloka, most people saying greensteel like the end result, but i doubt people love having to go here do that, barter this, guess that, and double check wiki and crafting planner to make sure theyre doing the right thing across 3 altars with weeks worth of farmed mats, screw up and want mats back? Ddo says "f*** you, pay me".

the best system would be barter box with few ing types (but same amount of acquire time) and many many more options like Gs, with a decon option

[Hathorian]

Some nice named yellow and colorless augments would be nice.

[Satyriasys]

"Greensteel" is not "named loot"

You are wrong.

[BOgre]

i agree with aloka, most people saying greensteel like the end result, but i doubt people love having to go here do that, barter this, guess that, and double check wiki and crafting planner to make sure theyre doing the right thing across 3 altars with weeks worth of farmed mats, screw up and want mats back? Ddo says "f*** you, pay me".

the best system would be barter box with few ing types (but same amount of acquire time) and many many more options like Gs, with a decon option

You make an excellent point. If it weren't for the monumental work of those vets that made sense of the completely undocumented GS system when it arrived, work we take for granted today, the GS system would be a horrendous failure. More importantly, if a system like that was implemented in today's game, the population would have a stroke.

IF Epic Vale IS in the works, I would hope that the devs take this into consideration. Any new system needs to be sleek, intuitive, non-random, and well documented. I doubt there are many players left that would attempt to take on a brutal task like the trial and error that was involved in figuring out the many GS recipes.

Fewer mats, intuitive crafting UI, and of course meaningful weapon/gear rewards.

[Captain_Pengie]

What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

None of them. Basically because they all require far too much grinding of the same quest chain over and over and over again hoping that you might be lucky enough to get the right item in the first place and then the ingredients you need to upgrade it. It should not be such a random lottery and you should not have to repeat the same quests many many times hoping to get lucky. It is boring, pointless grinding which just turns you off the game completely and by the time you eventually get the bits you need you have well outgrown the item anyway.

e.g. Trace of Madness items. You get these from the lvl 15 Harbinger of Madness quests where they are a rare random drop from some of the chests or a lottery in the end loot so you generally need to run the series several times to get the one(s) you want. However to upgrade them you then need to run the lvl 17 Reign of Madness series multiple times to obtain the ingredients so you can add an occasional (5% perhaps?) proc effect to the ML 14 item which you, buy now level 18 or so because of all the repeats, have now outgrown. The only plus for this one is that at least the item remains BtA when upgraded so can be passed down to an alt, however many items and most upgrades cause things to become BtC so they just become more wasted bank space.

What I would like to see is an upgrade system which:
1. Does not require endless repetitive grind so you can both have a life AND play DDO instead of having to choose between the two
2. Is not a complete lottery
3. Provides an item which is not immediately vendor trash or wasted bank space
4. Has far more player control over which effects are added to the item
5. Has a upgrade path throughout the whole game via multiple dungeons so that you can improve items via your normal game experience instead of gaining things and then throwing them away for the “new shiny thing”

So here is my thought:

Continuously Upgradeable Items

You start out on Korthos getting your chops fighting rats and bats and fishmen (oh my) at the end of which you venture into Misery’s Peak (an unusually named place since Misery lives in the Kobold’s Den – but I digress) to smack around some undead and their unholy masters with your unghostbane weapon. As you wipe the congealing blood off your weapon Heyton directs you to a chest within which you have the choice of a large variety of weapons at least one of which is useful to every class in the game so that nobody has a chance of being missed out. You feel greatly tempted by the +1 Ghostbane Axe of Ghostbaneness which sits at the top of the list but instead wisely decide to take the +1 “Weapon of Choice” which has the “Continuous Upgrade” feature.

Smiling somewhat smugly to yourself at your genius you dash off to check the wiki to find out what can be done with this feature. There you discover that items with this feature can be altered via the addition of “Upgradium”, a magical element which can be found on the bodies of some monsters, in chests or as end quest rewards. HUZZAH! You cry and dance your way into Stormreach whistling Jethro Tull’s “Thick as a Brick” joyfully as you sheathe your new +1 WoC knowing that it will come in handy as you face the dreaded Kobolds which now inhabit the Waterworks.

After slashing your way through many reptilian bodies you return to Guard Tember who offers you yet another list of many items (Armour this time – again a selection for every class) which also includes an option for a pile of upgradium. Checking your ingredients pouch and discover that you have collected quite a swag of upgradium from your kills and chest looting so you decide to select the +1 “Armour of Choice”.

Giddy as Scrag on a sugar high you skip your way to Madame Lash’s Pit of Pleasure … oops, I mean Hodor’s House of Upgrades (not that other place, that’s for after you upgrade your weapon if you know what I mean) where you sidle up to a crafting device, drop in your Weapon of Choice and some Upgradium and are presented with a list of affixes which you can apply to the item plus information on how this will affect the item’s minimum level and combat stats so that an informed choice can be made. Once again you are sorely tempted to add Ghostbane to the weapon but instead decide to go for Flaming. Finding that this only used part of your upgradium you also drop in your “Armour of Choice” and increase it to +2.

Laughing like an invisible vampire during Mabar you don your newly enhanced gear and while singing Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” at the top of your voice you barge your way through the Marketplace crowds and bravely enter the Steam Tunnels to take on the Hobgoblins of Shan-To-Kor …. etc etc.
---

You get the idea by now. These items would be linked in mainly to Quest Chains at the end of which you would get to choose from different item options; weapons from one, belts from another, rings from a third etc. At low levels these would be just a base +1 item but as the quest levels increase these might come with a generally useful affix already assigned to which you can then add more or even choose to remove the affix and replace it with something completely different. You would be able to obtain the generic ‘upgradium’ component from any quest in the game via kills (say from named mobs), chests and end rewards. Some affixes may need to use upgradium plus some other not impossible to obtain component such as collectables or perhaps certain monster parts. You would not be limited to just one prefix and one suffix but, like with greensteel, you could keep adding new effects to an item as you increase in level – sometimes dropping off old ones and replacing them with the latest things all the cool kids want (like Ghostbane!) or just keep on increasing the power of the existing effects (or item + enhancement).

This could even fit in with Producer Rowan’s concept of Sentient Weapons where eventually your item becomes so upgraded that it achieves sentience and starts demanding that you either sing songs that were written after 1990 or risk having your favourite head removed while you sleep.


So that’s my thought. Many of you are probably saying “hang on isn’t that Cannith Crafting” to which I say Hodor!

This would replace the horrendously ridiculous Cannith Crafting process which requires even more grinding than any other form of upgrade, doesn’t give you anything useful when you actually want it as you have to spend years gathering components and gaining craft levels by grinding out streams of immediately useless shards until you eventually get to a level applicable to something you may (in another life) have wanted, has too low a maximum effect level (e.g. skill increases only go to a miserly +13) and is limited to one prefix and suffix.

What is needed is an upgrade system which gives better rewards for a reasonably normal amount of effort for those of us who love the game but also have to deal with silly things like work, family and not going to the toilet in an empty Mountain Dew can. What is needed are items that you can potentially gain right from your first day in the game and keep with you throughout your entire adventuring career making them bigger, better and nastier all the time via the simple process of questing without having to go through a boring tedious grind of the same quest over and over and over and over and over and over ….


Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire.

None. They are all far too random, almost always require multiple runs and far too often the selection is so limited that you cannot find anything applicable to your class so end up having to take the Ghostbane weapon just because you can never have too many.



What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Druid Weapons – why were there not a pile of named scimitars added when the class was added? When you put in a new class you need to make sure the loot system supports them. In the case of Druids I found it pretty silly that when they were introduced to the game their main form of armour (i.e. Hide) was removed.

Light Armour – Druids, Rangers and Rogues are pretty hard pressed to get good armour - not all of us want to go down the robes path and instead prefer to wear something which reminds us of our last visit to Madame Lash's. Once you have a Rakshasha Hide that’s pretty much it for a pretty long time. There are tons of robes, outfits, docents and clunky tin can armours in the game but the selection of leather (and the long lamented hide) is very limited.

[Scraap]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

The latest revision of Greensteel for several reasons-
Acquisition Wise:
1- A mix of bound and unbound ingredients that allows for accelerating completion via trading, but still requires interacting with the content for full completion.
2- More applicable to when it initially came out, but: part of it included an item sink. (crunching weaponry to charge cells).
3- More recently, running the associated content in a higher difficulty accelerates completion.

Results wise:
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~delallea/ddo/shroud/cgi-bin/shroud.cgi?item=item&weapon=khopesh&altar=3
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~delallea/ddo/shroud/cgi-bin/shroud.cgi?item=belt&weapon=weapon&altar=3
Take a look at those lists. For the time, there really weren't more than a handful of non-desirable effects, either due to the magnitude of the effect it's self, or the lack of alternates anywhere else. Though I will admit 3 non-regenerating charges cloudkill for instance, likely isn't going to blow air up anyone's skirt, the concept of clickies adding effects a character couldn't ordinarily cause, such as raise dead certainly does, and goes right to the heart of the notion of adding abilities vs the latest run of simply engaging in an overly repetitive arms-race. (Yes, I do realize it's quicker to just plug in new numbers for old effects and maybe change the element type, but we've got random loot for that.)

Flaws:
There were a few flaws in the system. One of which was bursts on one end for augmenting high crit-profile weapons on one end and... nothing mutually exclusive to compensate the other end of the spectrum, and that did distort builds at the time.
The original interface was deliberately opaque, and list of unique required mats was fairly large.

Honorable mention design-wise since it's related: Cannith Crafting sans the added grind introduced during it's second revision which added extra mats per item and killed off being able to hot-swap prefixes and suffixes as you leveled/TRed. (This was of course, also before the shards started getting mangled and/or duplicated from folks playing games with minimum levels and already existing effects instead of being truly great at their jobs.)



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.

Apples to apples:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Archivist%27s_Necklace definitely too easy to use as a template.
http://ddowiki.com/page/Mysterious_Bauble about right
http://ddowiki.com/page/Epic_Ring_of_Spell_Storing If I've beaten that content often enough to get it without needing it, why bother? (Rain dances in the desert... why didn't *I* think of that...)



- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

I'd say what is vastly overdue are competitive uses for trinkets and quivers if you're looking to avoid replacements. There's maybe a handful of both combined that any I've ever talked to even mentions.

Replacements wise, I'd probably put the order for things most folks consider the least in terms of loadout (IE most likely to just fill with whatever's handy) at:
Cloak, Boot, Bracer, Belt, Goggles, Armor, Ring, Helm, Neck.

For offhand using the same criteria: runearm, shield, orb (Though for orb, it's less a case of having a progression of desirable items, and more a case of having a dirth of choices.) Really, those all need their own pass in terms of baseline mechanical utility anyway. DC for the runearms, PRR contribution for the shields, a decent passive saves system for the orbs to compliment the active-blocking component, and a lot more of them to be considered standard equipment. Those however are more systemic issues than enchantment ones.

For weapons, the current strongest inherent profiles are bows, handwraps, and two handers, with exotics, and lights bringing up the rear (and the low crit-profile weapons as an afterthought if at all considered by most folks due to neglect).

[SirValentine]

Don't make the assumption that we want to keep our named loot from Korthos up to 28... That's not the case, so don't try to create a system to have items that level while we level. That's something that is not needed and probably not wanted.


I think something like that would be pretty cool, if done right. But not needed, easy to do poorly, and potentially a giant pit of bugs. Certainly not something to devote huge time to right now when so many other issues and gaps exist.

[Neverwinterer]

Well, hope this doesn't get ignored, my time is money too.


- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
Shroud. It's random, but progressive. I't doesn't frustrate people like most of your other systems. And people will get their loot after investing time (more or less).
Also, Shroud system is great because of the unbound nature of the ingredients, for years these ingredients become the preferred coin of exchange for highly demanded items.

If you really want to know my opinion. A good system should have:
1- A feeling of progression (I quit trying to get the torc for my wizard after 2 years of frustration).
2- Tradeable ingredients (or parts, or whatever you decide to name them).
3- Good reward. Shard, seal and scroll to craft, for example, Garos Malice... Puag! Too much work for an almost useless epic sword.

I would LOVE to see a lvl 30 raid with reward tokens for upgrading "old Eberron epic items" into something useful at lvl 30. That would also add value to the old packs and people might run them again.


- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
Gloves of the Purple Dragon Knights: Good enough item. Took me 15 quests to get the commendations to buy it. If you are unlucky and don't get PDK commendations you can always trade the others.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?
Weapon types: Khopesh and Repeating crossbow (any kind). Only a couple named items good enough for epics.




*Random number disclaimer: sadly, bad luck is bad luck. Random is a fickle goddess, and if she has singled you out personally for Loot Denial, you have our sympathy, but there's only so much we can do. Though we heard ceremonial rain-dances can help.
You can't put a "bad luck" disclaimer like this when the chances of getting many many item falls below the 1% per run. Not winning the lottery isn't bad luck, it's the way of the system is designed, and the probabilities implemented. Whenever you decide to keep designing and supporting near impossible chances of getting items, no matter how much you repeat the content, it's your fault not a "magical bad luck".

[Enguebert]

Greensteel items are great because

1) you have lot of possibilities and can craft waht you want on the slot you want !
That means when you have 3-4 named items, you can look and says "i need this" for my build, you can craft it and slot it on the place you want
2) Each time you run the raid, you gain some ingredients and are closer to your goal

Cannith challenge is also great because
1) you have a good list of items
2) With Tier 3 , you can tune the items and add a (minor) effect, good to fill some "need to have" magic power
3) Each time you run a challenge, you get closer to your goal

Commendations are rather ok
1) you have a moderate list of items
2) Each time you run a quest, you have chance to be closer to your goal

On the other hand, the epic crafting is currently bad because
1) Each time you run an epic quest, you may be lucky, or you can have nothing
2) when you gain a scroll/shard/seal, there is a good chance that it is for an item you don't need
Epic crafting could be better if you can trade x amount of scroll/shard/seal for the scroll/shard/seal you need


Also it is better to have currency (greensteel ingredient/cannith mats/commendations) that can be useful to multiple items than items useful to only one item

[deahamlet]

Not to disagree, I do kind of like the Greensteel & Alchemical crafting, too, but:

When you went from just Epic to Epic Normal/Hard/Elite, you totally screwed up the way ingredients for Alchemicals fall in Lord of Blades.

Please fix that! Try this rule: "Running the hardest difficulty you can will mean you need fewer average runs to get what you need."

Right now, people basically have to run Heroic Normal for Tier 1, Heroic Hard or Elite for Tier 2, Epic Normal for Tier 3 Spirits, and Epic Hard (or Elite) for Tier 3 binding fragments. Why don't Tier 3 spirits drop on Epic Elite? Why don't Epic difficulties drop Tier 3 stuff AND Tier 1/2 stuff? Having to deliberately run a trivially-easy difficulty because a challenging difficulty CAN'T get you what you need is silly.

100% agree with this. It is rather frustrating to have to run heroic at all cause you're not at tier 3 yet. *sigh* (and the raid itself was nowhere near as popular as Shroud, ever ever)

[btolson]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Cannith Challenge (and Crystal Cove) gear are really the only tiered loot systems I've ever bothered with. I play a lot of toons, so the bta nature of these systems is the main draw. All of the btc systems would require a ridiculous amount of time across all of my characters, whom I value/play pretty evenly, so I just ignore those systems.





- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

I don't do much dedicated item hunting. I mainly just play the content I feel like playing on the character I want to play, and just accept whatever loot comes my way. Outside of the bta gear mentioned above that I pass around between my characters, and a few readily obtained items from e.g. MotU comms, I craft or buy anything I need to fill critical gaps. Consequently I can't think of good examples to put here.





- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Most of the exotic weapons need attention, as there are not many named, currently relevant items for most types. Getting rid of the light repeating crossbow category by converting all light repeaters into heavy repeaters would be a good idea, since they are identical except for a small difference in their [W] but require two feats to use them interchangeably which needlessly complicates design (or alternatively, create a new packaged feat that grants proficiency with both concurrently).

I would love to see Cannith Challenge gear scaled to 24/28.

I would also love to see Crystal Cove gear scaled to 24/28, and for the 4-16 gear to receive Augment slots that match their L20 versions.

Divine caster gearing options feel very constricted, as there are no Cannith Challenge clothing equivalents for radiant, devotion and force spellpower/criticals. You pretty much have to get these from random loot-gen weapons (especially the crit).

Addendum: Druid gear and material types are a problem. Due to non-metal medium armor being nonexistent in the random loot tables, our only recourse is named loot and there just isn't much of it out there. Of course, the better and more substantial fix lies in fixing the material types of random loot, but since that may never happen and this thread is about named loot I'll stick to requesting more druid named loot at all levels of play.

[AlmGhandi]

Getting things on my 20th - so things from Reavers and TOD. Things like the Torc - well I've been lucky but others haven't. And before you go blaming it on lady luck don't you dare.

Could there be something like a Wi-flag at work for the loot? http://asheron.wikia.com/wiki/Wi_Flag


Also changing the DQ raid so that the 20th offers shards instead of base items without telling anyone was not cool.

No, but I like the idea of getting a choice of shards after X completions... better chances of getting that thing I want!


More and interesting quivers too.

I think that Quivers should be opened up for Cannith Crafting...


A reversal of the BTCoE nonsense would also be good.

Yeah that is a massively annoying property, and I cannot really understand what it is supposed to achieve (other than my alts farming things and them ending bound to the main toon).

[Silverleafeon]

http://ddowiki.com/images/Boots_of_the_Innocent.png

Nice item.
Loot folks, do you realize the amount of thread complaining about lack of bound to character item space?
According to other devs, it is complex to solve.
If so, why did you compound the problem when you introduced the augment system?

Share your information, please.

Thank you for fixing this:
After it was released:

http://ddowiki.com/images/thumb/Hunter%27s_Slayer_%28Level_26%29.png/367px-Hunter%27s_Slayer_%28Level_26%29.png

But why did you not fix this too:

http://ddowiki.com/images/Magistrate%27s_Scepter_%28Level_28%29.png

They were both requested by other parts of your staff for exactly the same reason FAVORED WEAPONS of the new iconics.
Notice the much higher min level of the heavy mace, the extremely poor crit range, the lower enhancement value, the much lower base damage,
the random effects without a choice for us, etc...


Notice the introduction of warpriest and the possible new epic destiny designed for melee divines.
Notice the fact that ENCOURGING players to play divine is essential to RAIDING which needs improvement due to level increases.

Please be careful not to take the attitude of "we want to under help divines because we are scared everyone will want to play them"...

Thanks for listening.

[FAQ]

Another thing I would like to comment on: I really dislike the EN/EH/EE loot. It makes inventory management worse, much worse, for those that care about named items. Just apply different drop rates to the different difficulties (like it ws before). I can already hear the whinners saying: "But then nobody will run EE...". Fine, make EE drop rates much higher or something like that.

Also, could you please dial down the BTCoE loot!? Serioulsy, I miss the good old BTA named loot. Now you don't even need to buy the pack to get the loot for it. IMO, BTA loot would increase the amount of players running quests (if they want to farm it for alts).

BTA, I think, would also increase the generosity in PUGs. When I already have a piece of BTA loot, I always put it up for roll. But because of BTC storage problems, I never put up BTCoE loot for roll. For example, If I have it, but its been BTC, I just trash the BTC version and keep the unbound BTCoE version on a bank toon until I need it again.

[Rawrargh]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Fall of truth. You get the item on whatever difficulty you're comfortable running, but by running elite you reduce the grind since you won't have to upgrade the items as much.

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

Madstone boots (and anything reaver related really) You have a chance to get the desired item from the raid chest and pretty high chance to get it from your 20th since there isn't a bunch of other semi junk items to clutter up the list. Ideally I think you should get a chance to choose from ANY item from that raid, EVERY time (I'm looking at you sos and torc)

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Some new UNIQUE things for casters (one handers please) something that could indirectly help DC casters in particular (I'm thinking something along the lines of a stacking mantle of the icy soul (druid level 9 spell) apllying to all spells of a school in wich you have a spell focus feat) along with something that substantially boosts caster level and mcl increase that works properly. This is a way to get old fashioned nuking sorcs and DC wizards back in the game.



apparently I need to put something outside of the quote as well

[FuzzyDuck81]

Thinking more about the whole thing with named loot, I'd rather like to see more things with interesting & unusual or unique effects/profiles which simply don't appear in other places, a few examples of existing things which i think fit in that category:

Torc of Raiyum-de - If you have it, still almost a no-brainer for many casters despite its age
Shining Devastation - awesome damage profile vs. other greatclubs & with the right character setup frankly holds up well against the mighty eSOS? this thing is a beast in the right hands
Phosphor - a heavy mace, with better base damage & crit profile than a scimitar, does light damage AND blinds stuff on a crit, AND is immune to oozes/rusties as a bonus? This thing is awesome. Also a holy weapon for morninglords! Frankly this thing holds up well into epics on some characters.
Shimmering Arrowhead - especially with the high attack rate of a repeater or those shuriken-slingers, in EE content this rocks for crowd control
Xachosian Eardweller - hey, who doesnt want larve wriggling in their ear canal? It's almost as good as a babel fish!
Axe of Famine - That life-devouring effect is unusual & effective.
(epic) Pouch of Jerky - om nom nom nom...

[Dragon.Star]

Today, we want to focus more squarely on named loot itself. Please share your thoughts on these topics. The tapes are rolling! And thanks!

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
I actually enjoy 3 overall
1. U17 Raid Loot (Fall of Truth). The fact that you could get an item based on what difficulty you could do the raid on and then upgrade to a higher tier by running the raid for commendation was very nice. Only complaint is the 20th list is still too random (40 runs to get gloves, yes i know it happens).
2. Shroud Loot. When this system was introduced so long ago it was great, we the players actually had to figure out the recipes which was in my opinion very run and rewarding. This loot lasted us a long time and was honestly probably a bit Over powered, but the system is good.
3. CITW Raid / PDK Favor Upgrades. I liked how this system went, Acquire items through quests and the raid, earn favor to be able to upgrade them to better version. Only had 2 complaints (the raid doesn't drop comms everytime like Truthful Raid does and the favor tiers for upgrades should of been tiered out instead of all at the top tier.)



- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*

This one is very hard to answer mainly because of the Random Roll, But the worse in my opinion would be the Old Epic items (Needed base, scroll, seal and shard to acquire epic version) in todays game, by the time you might get all the material, you no longer need or want the item in general.


- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love? For God sake give us some quality Healer/Caster type of gear ( not all healers are melee centered). Healers have been overlooked for a long time.

[MadCookieQueen]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?



Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner!
Greensteel, I don't' think I need to spell out how awesome this system is. Well it got more awesome when it went to the barter style interface instead of the old wonkiness. It also really REALLY helps that the raid is fun as all heck. Beating Harry! It's how I roll.

~~~~

Runner-Up of Sparkly Goodness
Cannith/Eveningstar/Cove Challenge gear. The great thing is that you can get something at all levels. Also the gear feels right...just a bit higher than random loot gen, not necessarily as cool as named raid loot.




- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*



Mmmmm, yeah, feels good
This is pretty much subjective. Let's face it...you struggle and work your tail end off for something. Then the one day you are ready to give up.

BOOM! Candy baby!

In your euphoria you're like...omg this was totally worth it! Then you come down off your high and you hit reality. What The?! I ran that quest/raid HOW MANY TIMES?!

That's how I felt when I got my first real epic item...Epic Midnight Greetings...I ran the Tide Turns everyday for weeks (when it was 16 hours of waiting to run an epic)...it was like a religious thing. I almost sacrificed my hubby to get the item, hoping that in the right ritual format his blood would appease the gods of loot. (FYI I voted against this option because otherwise I wouldn't have someone to build my toons and that would not be fun...see...spouses to have a reason to be around)

So yeah the S/S/S thing was both way too hard and yet when rewarded...it was worth all the hours put into it.

~~~~

Too Hard for Comfort
That all being said...seriously guys...the Sands gear...really?! I have better odds of capturing a live unicorn than ever seeing a piece of epic gear from there. I've tried but unicorns are crafty.

So how about we start taking the old raid gear and convert it to the Normal/Hard/Elite system and give people an option of trading in their seals, scrolls and shards for the difficulties. Get a normal epic item (since they will be added to the 20th list), apply seal and scroll and get the hard version. Get the hard version apply the shard and like 10 greater twelve tokens and get the elite. This way people who farmed their butts off can get a little love (seriously how many times do you find x but can't get a hold of y) and you can phase in the new system without ticking off all the loot junkies....you will honestly tick off some people.




- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?



I think you need to look at adding things for Eldritch Knights...spell swords that actually work with the enhancements would be cool. Rangers go both dual wielding and ranged...how about weapons that synergize together for a combined effect when dual wielded. Also returning awesome arrows would be neat...like a Epic Construct Bane of Metal Doom would be neat but it would return to you...stack up to five so you can many shot the dang thing. Also Druids...seriously they should have some nature spiffy gear of elements or wolf biting.

You know honestly in general some class only items would be kind of neat. I know it seems to limit what kinds of toons people play because everyone wants the Great Axe of Pain and Suffering, Fighter Only with a 15-20 x5...but hey why not? (after all for mad power people tend to trend towards one build...like Monkchers...so hawt right now...which is why I don't have one. I shall not conform!)

Also...bacon. You gave us ham but dang it where is the bacon?

~~~~


If any of that made sense you can attribute that to Coffee! Yes, Coffee, making Kodara's ramblings actually look cohesive since 1991.

[Sethvir]

Because i had to turn in my draconic runes (had over 500, which is a full stack) and cos it wasnt realy mentioned:

The current system of dragontouched runes is in fact pretty nice regarding the ratio of difficulty and what u want. I would modify it a bit though, to remove the problem of diluting and randomness.

- each group of runes (eldritch, tempest, sovereign) should be broken down into groups of lets say 6 runes, which are associated with a element (eg).
- add an additional type of drop from endchests essence of air/earth/fire/.... this essences can be obtained as well as from the npc in reavers refuge as a semirandom turnin for draconic runes (like u can for eldritch runes currently)
- when u combine or breaking down runes, u also have to put in an essence, which will determine the result u get from the combining or breaking down of runes

with 6 runes in each group, it doesnt take that long if u put in the effort, to get what u want!!!


Additionally, each runes could have 2-3 ranks, which would be obtainable by combining the desired rune with comms of heroism to get the rank 2 and rank 3 one ( nice side effect, ppl have to get the base rune again to upgrade their armor with the new rank2/3 effect - aka replayabilty),


i strongly believe, ppl would be pretty happy with such a kind of system. cos its kinda like shroud. u always make progress and with effort put in u will get what u want, and the randomness IS THERE. aka ppl will have that moment of: "OH i got lucky and got the one i needed"! (which is a very important thing!!!)
It also allows to have evrything BTC or BTA, without upsetting ppl too much.



The only problem right now with dragontouched is, the effects as well as the armors itself, are hopelessly outdated and powerless, compared to other stuff. Which why ppl dont bother with it anymore.

[Aliss7]

Negative Nancy here: Things I Don't Like with Greensteel Crafting:

1. Too many ingredients. I am a walking apothecary. If we get another greensteel-like system, I imagine needing _another_ bag... ugh.
2. No crafting outside of quest.
3. A base-item greensteel weapon looks the same as a tier-3 greensteel. Boring.
4. Complexity. Albeit, that does give greensteel crafting its flexibility, so... a wash?

[MadCookieQueen]

Negative Nancy here: Things I Don't Like with Greensteel Crafting:

2. No crafting outside of quest.


FYI:
Guild ships can carry the Altars of Invasion, Devastation and Subjugation. Most people just throw up an LFM asking for a ship invite to use these.

Also one of the altars is in the Devil's Battlefield.


So yes, you can craft outside of the quest.

[SirValentine]

Put Divine Augmentation in the game already. Caster divines are getting shafted at every single turn lately.


I like where you're coming from, but NO! Instead, automatically convert all existing "Arcane Augmentation" items to "Spell Augmentation" items that work on ALL spells!

Do you really expect they'd go back and introduce a whole range of new items at various levels with Divine Augmentation? The Arcane Augmentation items already exist!

And Bards and Artificers would still be left out in the cold, as Arcane Augmentation doesn't help them. And if they did Divine Augmentation, they'd probably make it Clr/FvS only, the way Arcane is currently Wiz/Sorc only, and so screw the Druids, too.

[barecm]

It wasn't even hard, it was and is still tedious. Your socks will start to fall asleep while trying to get those items. Further it was those crazy randomness to finally get that single shard that you where looking for since two years. No its not fun, especially not if you are overwhelming unlucky on the pulls. And for new players part of this game is still not necessarily easy. The point is you don't make a single progress while trying to get closer to your goal. Don't get me wrong, it shouldn't just pop in your inventory after your first run, so yes, it should take a while, but not forever and still be no step closer.So why is greensteel so great and popular compared to epic crafting, which is no matter how you slice it is a pain? For epic you need to hope that this single one shard, seal or scroll drop and the overall drop rate is low. You only need three ingredients but the chance to get them is crazy. On the other side GS ingredients drop far more frequently but with just five ingredients you are still only a small step closer. However you see a progress, something that you will not see in epic. In epic it is having the shard or not, but sure, your mileage may vary.Maybe one solution would be to break down those seals, shards and scrolls in smaller parts and pieces with an overall higher drop late. heck if the drop rate of a shard is 3% and you would break it in 10 pieces you could make the drop rate only slightly higher to 25% which is overall even a lower drop rate. However the chance to acquire a piece of it is in general higher. You get the impression to progress against something. Like with the epic token fragments, they eventually sum up to be able to buy a heart.Further it is far more easier to balance drop rates of smaller more frequent pieces. It was a design law in my eyes to make a crafting system that only depend on a very small ingredient size, because it mandate it to make the drop rates crazy low. This on the other hand lead to the fact that some players are very lucky and pull 3 seals in a row, while someone else doesn't pull a single one in 2 years. Heck you can simulate this even with mathematical models.Sure the old epic items may need an update too compete against the new random loot and a lot of players would scream "no, not again more ingredients" which I somehow subscribe. But this should have taken more and smaller ingredients right from the start which would have saved us the trouble to break them down later. You make a good point. My intention was to say that fast = easy and this game is currently WAY too easy to get from 0 to Uber. I don't mind if the easy to get items are great, but the top tier ultra awesome items take a little work, patience, luck and persistence to get. The goal is to keep people around for a while and not just log in for a days after new content drops to farm what they want and then disappear for a few months until the next content is released. My suggestion for areas like Demon Sands is to have an Epic Raid timer (if they can manage to do that without breaking the game again) and add shards to the 20th completion list. If you want to grind for a base item, have those in the non-epic 20th completion.

[count_spicoli]

You make a good point. My intention was to say that fast = easy and this game is currently WAY too easy to get from 0 to Uber. I don't mind if the easy to get items are great, but the top tier ultra awesome items take a little work, patience, luck and persistence to get. The goal is to keep people around for a while and not just log in for a days after new content drops to farm what they want and then disappear for a few months until the next content is released. My suggestion for areas like Demon Sands is to have an Epic Raid timer (if they can manage to do that without breaking the game again) and add shards to the 20th completion list. If you want to grind for a base item, have those in the non-epic 20th completion.



Agreed. This game for far too long has been catering to the casuals and game jumpers who want it all and now. That drove all the steady vip'ers away. Hence their push and crazy incentives to get vip'ers back. (+25% xp I'm looking at you.) It's time the top tier and hard working players get some things they want. After all we are the ones who stick around and pay the bills consistently.

[count_spicoli]

Negative Nancy here: Things I Don't Like with Greensteel Crafting:

1. Too many ingredients. I am a walking apothecary. If we get another greensteel-like system, I imagine needing _another_ bag... ug?

I have 3 huge ingredient bags on my main and it more than holds all the ingredients from all the thing I run. If storage is a problem buy another bag from the store. That is a win win for you and ddo. You get storage and they get a little scratch. Not a big deal IMO.

[Saekee]

As far as other class based gear goes, what ever happened to the class based gear [midnight's greetings, Elyd's Edge, ToD sets]? These were things that enhanced the classes not just the builds, right now builds are purely; HP, +Dmg, Concealment, Incorp, Heal Amp, PRR (Result of another issue altogether sure, but is actually causing the death of viable class based items).

I don't have much to add.
Please modify the Heroic Midnight Greetings. Its only advantage, the kukri exotic weapon use for assassins, is now unnecessary with the enhancement pass. I think the heroic midnight greetings should be 'the thing to get' until a rogue gets the Guardian of the Liturgy. Every rogue enthusiast would help fill a thread with suggestions on this one.

Also there are some named weapons that have not had some updates that could use at least a tweak, i.e. The Fang of Syberis, a level 16 scimitar, should do more than d6 base weapon damage.

[Therrias]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?
- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.*
- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

1. Everyone loved greensteel. Highly customizable, not just in effect but in item slot. This bears repeating, accessories need to be raid loot too. (if you release another raid that only drops weapons, people are going to freak out.) It WAS a grind, but you could pass most items between character or even buy/sell them to relieve this.

2a. Flawless blue/black/white dragonscale armor. A lot of power up front, slowly unlocks full potential. The helmet sets were a nice bonus, but was a drawback for some as in diffculty getting the "right" one.
2b. Old epic shard/seal/scroll. Way overboard. 100s of VoNs, still not one ESoS shard.

3. Light picks, great crossbows and throwing hammers come to my mind. Can you think of a single named one?

[CaptainSpacePony]

Just had a thought that I recognize may be too hard to code, but think it interesting enough to present:

Named items that grow/scale with the character.

This would not be unlike some of the new epic past life feats (AC and HP) that improve as the character levels or the sentinels' dragonmark-dependant items (eg. epic Chimera's fang).

These scaling items would be especially appealing to casting types if the spell power increased w/the character's level.

If this is doable, I recommend using it to breathe life into legacy epic items. That would make the seal/shard etc scavenger hunt feel more worth it.

An example:
Epic Boots of Corrosion are currently:
ML:20
Corrosion +90
Nullification +90
Greater Might of the Abishai
Acid Resistance +30
Disintegration Guard
Green Augment Slot
Colorless Augment Slot

They seem well intended for acid spec PMs, but are outgrown almost immediately.
Breathe new life into them by making them something like:

New Epic Boots of Corrosion:
ML:20
Corrosion +30 + 3/character lvl (still 90 at lvl 20)
Nullification +30 + 3/character lvl
Greater Might of the Abishai
Acid Resistance +10 +1/character level
Disintegration Guard
Green Augment Slot
Colorless Augment Slot

Or the new Epic Souleater
ML:20
+1 enhancement bonus/3 character levels
Epic Trap the Soul (this still is not better than regular TtS btw). DC increases by 1 every 2 or 3 Char lvls.
Bodyfeeder,
Negative Energy Spike,
Vampirism,
NEW Demonic Might (+1 profane STR/10 char lvls)
Red slot

[CaptainSpacePony]

I don't have much to add.
Please modify the Heroic Midnight Greetings. Its only advantage, the kukri exotic weapon use for assassins, is now unnecessary with the enhancement pass. I think the heroic midnight greetings should be 'the thing to get' until a rogue gets the Guardian of the Liturgy. Every rogue enthusiast would help fill a thread with suggestions on this one.

Also there are some named weapons that have not had some updates that could use at least a tweak, i.e. The Fang of Syberis, a level 16 scimitar, should do more than d6 base weapon damage.

Juts wanted to add that Epic Midnight greetings took a HUGE hit when it no longer allowed INT to apply to damage. Previously it was THE assassin's weapon. Now many of the rogue players I know have by and large respecced away from int and assassin builds for lack of int based weapons.

[Seljuck]

Green Steel crafting! It gives excellent, well balanced items with unique effects and good clickies. Way of acquiring is well balanced and don't force players to repeat quests/raid ten thousand times. Give us More!

The Idea od uprg raid loot by ingriedients or special auguments that can drop in all raids is also nice. This should breath new life into the old raids.


The game lacks of named daxes, picks, throwing weapons, mauls, warhammers. armors, shields.

[PuppiesAndRainbows]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

I don't really like most of the upgrade systems for named loot and named loot sets.
Upgrading the items is kinda anticlimactic.

Most of the upgrade systems work this way.
First you farm for the named item.
Then you farm over and over for the item or ingredients.

By the time you have all the ingredients or set, you've leveled up to where the named item has lost its luster.
At the higher level you have access to better gear, or an update comes out with better gear and now the named gear is obsolete.

...and then I ask myself why was I trying to get the item in the first place

[kmoustakas]

My favoured named loot upgrade system is greensteel. The reason being, it's so customizable you can come up with exactly what you want and or what you need. Cleric gets co-op, you have supreme undead beater, you have all around min2, you have... you have just about everything! And their minimum level plays just about on DDO's TR system (where reaver's reach failed!). However, to be absolute I have to say that greensteel is my favorite MAINLY because it's complete and bug free! My least favorite upgrade system is epic normal epic hard epic elite three different items.

Desired item that was acquired easily was the lob loot and I'm talking about the named items, not the actual crafting. The drop rates are very good on elite. Named loot I found too hard to acquire and as a matter of fact four lives and at least 500 runs into them and still haven't got is lord of dust loot. I ransacked those chests so many times and I know there were a few months involved that the loot was bugged and nobody bothered to fix them but I still haven't got a silver flame bow (with new AA abilities don't need anyway) or any of the two repeaters. Bugs are bad. Bugs that don't get fixed for a series of months is 2xbad. Bugs in f2p quests than are new and everybody plays is 10xbad. Er, sidenote I've never ever seen a SOS, let alone an piece of ESOS so I pretend that item doesn't really exist, it's a myth and I run that every 3 days for xp.

As for named items that need help, armors definitely come first to mind. There are too few and too unspecific. The dragon armors are good but everybody uses them simply because there's nothing better to do. If dragontouched armors were to be slightly updated and their min level dropped to 12 like greensteel, that would be awesome (look at greensteel customization) but in general we need way more niche + unique armors.

[lostgunman]

- What's your favorite named loot upgrade system, and why?

Green Steel, mainly because almost every bit was non-bound. If I was short 1 piece I could trade for it. Shards were BTC, but that was forgivable. Green Steel was also customizable to what you wanted/needed...not stuck with a certain set of abilities of a useless weapon ability *cough* water-breathing/feather-falling *cough*

- Name a desired named item that felt like the right difficulty to acquire. Name one that felt too hard.

Cannith items were the best...multiple levels, upgrade to epic, multiple epic tiers...and you can run many challenges and there are a number of useful items available and I get to choose them myself AND BTA!

Eberron Raid epic items in general were horribly hard. VoN epics, Demon Sands epics...whatever. Had to get lucky and get the base item, then get lucky and get the 3 other pieces which were sometimes only available to drop in 1 specific quest you got sick of running 20 times. It was just easier to do without. Some have gotten worse because the quest/raid are not run much anymore (Titan, VoD, Hound) so drop rates should be REALLY increased or an alternate method to acquire made available.

- What weapon types / class equipment do you feel are due or overdue for some named loot love?

Dwarven Axes #1. Primary Dwarven fighter/barb/paladin whatever weapon and there are only few named versions out there. Repeating Crossbows #2, just not enough throughout the levels.