DDO's Problems

[bennyson]

There are some really bad game-breaking things that I've experienced for the 5 years I've played this game.

Why are people able to solo raids? Why, WHY are people able to solo raids?

Why are some character enhancements trees bad while others are good?

Why aren't quests challenging? Why isn't Epic Hard hard and Epic Elite blinding difficult?

Why are some quests almost never run by players? The Twilight Forge is a good example of this

Why aren't more Heroic quests being turned into Epics?


So much, so much can be done.

Raids:
Raids are twelve player quests right? Aren't they meant to be difficult on all difficulties? Then tell me WHY are some character builds able to solo raids? This is game-breaking beyond recognition. Raids need to be turned into the hardest form of questing, make those who solo raids regret never having backup. If a raid demands twelve players, add something to the game's system where you can enter a raid if and only if you have 12 people in your party or make raids extremely difficult, like adding a butt-load more monster spawns to them instead of making monsters harder to kill.

Enhancements:
Why are some classes suffering from bad enhancements while others are benefiting from them? All character enhancements should be made so that even if you go pure or multiclass, the rewards are great for both sides. Instead of one side benefiting the most from the game.

Challenge:
Where is the challenge? Where did it go? Why are most quests currently unchallenging now? If they are still challenging give me one or multiple examples of these quests. Heroic Casual should be the easiest and Epic Casual should be a tiny be hard, Heroic Normal and Epic Normal should be slightly more difficult, Heroic Hard and Epic Hard should be harder, while Heroic Elite should be really difficult while Epic Elite should be blinding difficult. Give monsters Dodge, make them smarter, like "Kill the magic users first! Crowd control the melees!" Instead of giving them an overkill amount of HP.

Forgotten Quests:
Why are some quests almost never run by players anymore? I almost never see a Twilight Forge LFM anymore, they are extremely rare, the same thing can be said for TOD, VOD, Hound, Abbot, and even Chrono. If you are a player or guild leader who tries their hardest to do these quests or other forgotten quests, I admire you efforts then. Forgotten quests should be revived, they need additional value to make them worthy of a player's time again. Like the increasing the affects on items would help.

Heroic & Epic
Why aren't Heroic quests being turned into Epics? Gianthold was made into a Heroic/Epic, but why not other quests? Why isn't The Sharn Syndicate or Three Barrel-Cove made into Epics? So many quests can be brought back by making them Epics, even some raids would once again see the light of day (See Forgotten Quests)

This wall of text are my thoughts on the current DDO, I also wonder if other players or developers have similar views to what I've posted. I don't know if am alone on this or not. I'd welcome your thoughts on this.

[digital_terror1]

There are some really bad game-breaking things that I've experienced for the 5 years I've played this game.

Why are people able to solo raids? Why, WHY are people able to solo raids?

Why are some character enhancements trees bad while others are good?

Why aren't quests challenging? Why isn't Epic Hard hard and Epic Elite blinding difficult?

Why are some quests almost never run by players? The Twilight Forge is a good example of this

Why aren't more Heroic quests being turned into Epics?


So much, so much can be done.

Raids:
Raids are twelve player quests right? Aren't they meant to be difficult on all difficulties? Then tell me WHY are some character builds able to solo raids? This is game-breaking beyond recognition. Raids need to be turned into the hardest form of questing, make those who solo raids regret never having backup. If a raid demands twelve players, add something to the game's system where you can enter a raid if and only if you have 12 people in your party or make raids extremely difficult, like adding a butt-load more monster spawns to them instead of making monsters harder to kill.

Most I would say about this is the only change I could see being done legitimately is to require you to be in a raid flagged party (something you cannot do solo)...even if you're the only person to step into the raid. Nothing would stop players who want to solo a raid from gathering 11 other players who are just socializing, raid flagging, and running it solo anyway.



Challenge:
Where is the challenge? Where did it go? Why are most quests currently unchallenging now? If they are still challenging give me one or multiple examples of these quests. Heroic Casual should be the easiest and Epic Casual should be a tiny be hard, Heroic Normal and Epic Normal should be slightly more difficult, Heroic Hard and Epic Hard should be harder, while Heroic Elite should be really difficult while Epic Elite should be blinding difficult. Give monsters Dodge, make them smarter, like "Kill the magic users first! Crowd control the melees!" Instead of giving them an overkill amount of HP.


The challenge in the game went the way of the dodo due to increasing power creep and player convenience. Remember when Flesh to Stone used to have a save only once every MINUTE instead of every couple seconds, and had a duration of PERMANENT unless you saved? Neg levels were permanent w/o a restoration, and only 1 was removed when you shrined? All curses were permanent w/o a remove curse? Mummy rot was actually something to be FEARED instead of just a minor annoyance?
Now we have players that can easily break 1000 damage with a melee in heroic levels. You hear tales of multishot rangers in fury ED doing upwards of 30000 damage, and barbarians in another ED critting for 22k+. You have easily obtained seeker, deadly, and speed gear in nearly every gear slot. High doublestrike and doubleshot builds that are easy to make. Arcanes that can easily manage both a high AC and PRR while still being an effective caster via the EK tree instead of being glass cannons that need a meat shield. The list goes on and on.



Forgotten Quests:
Why are some quests almost never run by players anymore? I almost never see a Twilight Forge LFM anymore, they are extremely rare, the same thing can be said for TOD, VOD, Hound, Abbot, and even Chrono. If you are a player or guild leader who tries their hardest to do these quests or other forgotten quests, I admire you efforts then. Forgotten quests should be revived, they need additional value to make them worthy of a player's time again. Like the increasing the affects on items would help.

Heroic & Epic
Why aren't Heroic quests being turned into Epics? Gianthold was made into a Heroic/Epic, but why not other quests? Why isn't The Sharn Syndicate or Three Barrel-Cove made into Epics? So many quests can be brought back by making them Epics, even some raids would once again see the light of day (See Forgotten Quests)

This wall of text are my thoughts on the current DDO, I also wonder if other players or developers have similar views to what I've posted. I don't know if am alone on this or not. I'd welcome your thoughts on this.

I'd have to search for it again, but I'm pretty sure it was stated that 3bc is the next pack slated to be made epic. Give it time, older content is slowly being revitalized to some extent. As for other 'forgotten quests'...Twilight Forge can be extremely annoying to run since just takes 1 idiot to cause a total fail. Chrono gear is practically worthless these days...yeah, the little bit of profane boost is nice from the set, but why bother with filling that many gear slots with gear you'll use for just 1 or 2 levels, and which you can probably craft better stuff anyway? ToD, VoD, Hound all have stuff that's out of date and eclipsed by gear lower in min level than the raid gear you can get from them. Abbott requires a lot more skill than anyone is willing to pug, as a result it is almost all private groups that run that. I know Abbott is still run regularly on Argo, it's just never pugged.
The upshot of this? The reason for all the 'forgotten' quests, raids, etc is lackluster gear such as Chrono, mechanics that are both buggy and too easily failed such as Twilight Forge, or just simply too unforgiving to pug.
Not much can be done about the 2nd and 3rd reason, and if anything were done about the first reason we'd either see a far greater amount of power creep being added to the game....or 4/5 of the game population screaming about being nerfed.

Myself? I'd LOVE to see a return to when mobs could hit players with really nasty effects that couldn't just be ignored, such as permanent curses, long duration holds, stones, etc, permanent neg levels w/o restoration, etc.

[Todkaninchen]

Raids:
Raids are twelve player quests right? Aren't they meant to be difficult on all difficulties? Then tell me WHY are some character builds able to solo raids? This is game-breaking beyond recognition. Raids need to be turned into the hardest form of questing, make those who solo raids regret never having backup. If a raid demands twelve players, add something to the game's system where you can enter a raid if and only if you have 12 people in your party or make raids extremely difficult, like adding a butt-load more monster spawns to them instead of making monsters harder to kill.

Some people have or use exceptional builds, over-level, and have acquired exceptional gear.

If you can do this, then more power to you.

For example, Against the Demon Queen can be soloed relatively easily by someone who can self-heal rapidly and/or render themselves very, very hard to harm and do ranged damage. This combination of traits isn't common for most classes ergo: why it's usually done by a combination of people who specialize in either healing easily/rapidly, gaining aggro and being very hard to harm, and doing a lot of damage either quickly and/or at range.

Putting together those basic abilities in a single build... you kind of deserve the privilege of soloing raids.



Enhancements:
Why are some classes suffering from bad enhancements while others are benefiting from them? All character enhancements should be made so that even if you go pure or multiclass, the rewards are great for both sides. Instead of one side benefiting the most from the game.

Most of the enhancements are pretty good and reward a character that is built to take advantage of them. The downside is the playing style implied by some of those builds aren't what people want to play and there are often inherent differences in the value of particular enhancement sets in different situations.

For example, I love the rogue mechanic enhancements. Added damage, some non-SP CC-lite and AOE abilities, benefits for ranged fighting. I usually splash 2-3 levels of arti for logistics, added trap and skill abilities, and a little extra damage.

Many other people hate that playstyle, claim it's "gimp" and complain about it while I--with my play style and gearing--can function as a DPS, trapper, back up scroll healer, etc. and often solo things not quite up to raid-levels with it because I kind of specialize on the build/gear/play style.

The programmers, on the other hand, probably took a more "generalist" approach in building the trees within the "specialist" focus of the enhancements. They aren't built to be One Right and Best Way, they're built to give us options...



Challenge:
Where is the challenge? Where did it go? Why are most quests currently unchallenging now? If they are still challenging give me one or multiple examples of these quests. Heroic Casual should be the easiest and Epic Casual should be a tiny be hard, Heroic Normal and Epic Normal should be slightly more difficult, Heroic Hard and Epic Hard should be harder, while Heroic Elite should be really difficult while Epic Elite should be blinding difficult. Give monsters Dodge, make them smarter, like "Kill the magic users first! Crowd control the melees!" Instead of giving them an overkill amount of HP.

I agree with you in general on this. "Plain old kill everything as it mobs you" and "Added difficulty = more HP and higher saves" is pretty boring after a while, but some of the quest mechanics do switch up a bit on that, they just aren't as popular with everyone.

I can also see where programming more complex AI routines would really be a game changer...



Forgotten Quests:
Why are some quests almost never run by players anymore? I almost never see a Twilight Forge LFM anymore, they are extremely rare, the same thing can be said for TOD, VOD, Hound, Abbot, and even Chrono. If you are a player or guild leader who tries their hardest to do these quests or other forgotten quests, I admire you efforts then. Forgotten quests should be revived, they need additional value to make them worthy of a player's time again. Like the increasing the affects on items would help.

Twilight Forge is pretty broken. Ran it a month or so again and the pillars knock the titan down for about 1 second, then he's back on his feet and invulnerable. Not conducive to completing it, most people know this is the case, so no one tries to run it.

Which sucks because there's some gear that drops there I'd like to see...

...which is the other reason some quests aren't run as much.

The gear has been overshadowed by newer or even lootgen items that are easier to get.

Personally, I'd love to see them revise some of the gear from those raids to be more relevant post-20 (mostly an issue with VoD and HoX raids) or do something like they did with Tempest Spine loot and others when they did the update that brought augment slots around: Take existing items and pull them into parity+ with the more modern updates.

For example, Divine Avenger needs a "For characters with epic levels" boost to it...

...otherwise, a level 18-21 raid dropping minimum level 18 gear has a very, very limited lifespan of use when--by the time you get it--there are better items in slot to use there.

[Lanhelin]

Why are people able to solo raids? Why, WHY are people able to solo raids?

This is a normal evolution in MMOs. Content, designed for a specific Level cap will be doable in a group or even alone when Level cap raises. Exceptions are quests that require physical presence of more than one player to pull a lever or activate other similar things.


Why are some character enhancements trees bad while others are good?

Careful about this. It highly depends on the build and on the goal you want to reach (having fun on EN and below, group on EH or solo EE). Not every build and every Enhancement tree will make your toon successful soloing EE content, but to solo EE is not the goal the majority of players want to reach. Many wishes are playable and actually played.


Why aren't quests challenging? Why isn't Epic Hard hard and Epic Elite blinding difficult?

Now that's a good question. Why is Epic Normal easier than heroic Elite? Idk. Probably to make Iconics progress faster?


Why are some quests almost never run by players? The Twilight Forge is a good example of this

Hiding in Plain Sight as pre is a challenging one depending on the build. Then to be rewarded to go to a Wilderness where the map is useless, quadrillions of isles and an inner and outer map with no hints where which exit leads to is simply not necessary but just confusing and what not else. I avoid Restless Isles whenever I can. I never did a quest there and I won't do any quest there. And I'm a fairly new player, joined in May 2013. If it get's epic'ed I probably have to go there, but out of free will - no, never.

Other Quests I simply outleveled to fast in my first and second life. Eg. I never did a quest in the Orchard, though I did the Slayer there. Vale of Twilight was easily outleveled too. Shroud? What's the Shroud? U do not need the Shroud and its crafting to TR and level up again. Found loot is similar effective and especially more fun.


Why aren't more Heroic quests being turned into Epics?

Good question. More variety is always the better way than to press players in a close direction. I want Epic Misery's Peak with the Dragon nearly killing the NPC party and I have to rescue all of them. And at the End the Cleric NPC follows me as permanent Hire^^

[AzB]

Why are people able to solo raids? Why, WHY are people able to solo raids?

Metagaming. When your game consists of gaming the game and getting your jollies from what you can get away with, you can create toons that are superpowered. Combine that with intimate game knowledge of monsters, safe points, and other relevant metagame data, you can pretty much do whatever you want if you're willing to work at it a bit.

There are some broken mechanics that help with this in some cases... there are classes and class combos that are broken in the sense that they can be made so powerful that there is no challenge left other than resource budgeting and timing. And there are some broken parts of quests that allow safe perches, shortcuts, or whatever to allow some encounters to be bypassed or trivialized.



Why are some character enhancements trees bad while others are good?

Good question. I suspect that the devs are doing the best they can, and they see DDO as a growing, changing game. When nothing is set in stone, it's easy to let things go live that maybe shouldn't.



Why aren't quests challenging? Why isn't Epic Hard hard and Epic Elite blinding difficult?

They can be challenging. There are methods you can use to return challenge to the game. Play naked, play permadeath, stop metagaming, roleplay, play a broken/weak class, etc. You don't have to roll a bladeforged sorc/pally/monk or a monkcher to play this game. All the classes can be very fun, some of them are quite challenging, especially with no monk splashes. Try a human arti, an enchanter mage, a bard, or a pure pally for some challenge.



Why are some quests almost never run by players? The Twilight Forge is a good example of this

Twilight Forge is an extreme example. It's got one of the most difficult flagging mechanics and the raid itself is broken. Also, the loot is pointless. The big issue here is that most players follow the mantra that xp/min is everything. But there are people that run stuff just for fun. Some of the lesser run quests are a lot of fun.



Why aren't more Heroic quests being turned into Epics?

My personal preference is to avoid this when possible. Much of the beauty of DDO is in the replay value. When you epicfy a heroic quest using the same map, and simply pumping up the monsters and traps, it's really not any different than the heroic version. And it's boring.
Epic quests should be epic and not contain CR38 wolves and rats just because the heroic quest had wolves and rats.

Much of the replay problem could be solved by some slightly more creative dungeon design. Randomization would go a long way towards making dungeon replay less boring, and getting rid of cheap game mechanics like bad guys that can't be attacked while monologueing, magic barriers that are not based on game mechanics but magically drop when all the monsters are killed, or bad guys that are auto immune to all kinds of stuff for no reason other than to make it simple to program are three that spring to mind.

[Teh_Troll]

Your ideas are terrible.

[Demonhalf5]

There are some really bad game-breaking things that I've experienced for the 5 years I've played this game.

Why are people able to solo raids? Why, WHY are people able to solo raids?

Why are some character enhancements trees bad while others are good?

Why aren't quests challenging? Why isn't Epic Hard hard and Epic Elite blinding difficult?

Why are some quests almost never run by players? The Twilight Forge is a good example of this

Why aren't more Heroic quests being turned into Epics?


So much, so much can be done.

Raids:
Raids are twelve player quests right? Aren't they meant to be difficult on all difficulties? Then tell me WHY are some character builds able to solo raids? This is game-breaking beyond recognition. Raids need to be turned into the hardest form of questing, make those who solo raids regret never having backup. If a raid demands twelve players, add something to the game's system where you can enter a raid if and only if you have 12 people in your party or make raids extremely difficult, like adding a butt-load more monster spawns to them instead of making monsters harder to kill.

Enhancements:
Why are some classes suffering from bad enhancements while others are benefiting from them? All character enhancements should be made so that even if you go pure or multiclass, the rewards are great for both sides. Instead of one side benefiting the most from the game.

Challenge:
Where is the challenge? Where did it go? Why are most quests currently unchallenging now? If they are still challenging give me one or multiple examples of these quests. Heroic Casual should be the easiest and Epic Casual should be a tiny be hard, Heroic Normal and Epic Normal should be slightly more difficult, Heroic Hard and Epic Hard should be harder, while Heroic Elite should be really difficult while Epic Elite should be blinding difficult. Give monsters Dodge, make them smarter, like "Kill the magic users first! Crowd control the melees!" Instead of giving them an overkill amount of HP.

Forgotten Quests:
Why are some quests almost never run by players anymore? I almost never see a Twilight Forge LFM anymore, they are extremely rare, the same thing can be said for TOD, VOD, Hound, Abbot, and even Chrono. If you are a player or guild leader who tries their hardest to do these quests or other forgotten quests, I admire you efforts then. Forgotten quests should be revived, they need additional value to make them worthy of a player's time again. Like the increasing the affects on items would help.

Heroic & Epic
Why aren't Heroic quests being turned into Epics? Gianthold was made into a Heroic/Epic, but why not other quests? Why isn't The Sharn Syndicate or Three Barrel-Cove made into Epics? So many quests can be brought back by making them Epics, even some raids would once again see the light of day (See Forgotten Quests)

This wall of text are my thoughts on the current DDO, I also wonder if other players or developers have similar views to what I've posted. I don't know if am alone on this or not. I'd welcome your thoughts on this.

This would save this game big time but sadly we all know the game is too far in and deep in failure (if it keeps up the way its going) to turn around like you said instead of making the quests fun they just make the mobs HARDER to kill and give them 20k hp just give us more numbers to take on not 3 mobs with saves at 60 and hp at 25k. I have no words to express how I feel this game has alot of potential.....But the people that make the game are to blind

[fmalfeas]

I was discussing this in guild just the other day. My person take on what should be happening on EE is this.

CRs should be around the level of the quest. No need for these giant bloats. Instead, we don't even have to go so far as massive swarms of enemies, or even huge AI upgrades to crank the difficulty.

Say you have an encounter with 6 mobs. We'll even call it a fairly balanced party of mobs. You've got 2 arcane casters, a divine, a specialist (probably a rogue) and 2 heavy melees. We'll call them fighters.

Upon sighting your party, the Arcanes immediately pop off Quickened Mordenkainen's Disjunction on people. Hopefully on two different people. The Divine tosses a Mass Death Ward. The rogue immediately enters stealth. The fighter's AI becomes pretty simple to boost challenge. They charge your casters. If someone intercepts them, they're programmed to pause just long enough to hit them with Improved Trip, and then resume seeking the casters unless they get hit with Intimidate, or enough threat from boosted-threat actions to draw them off. Any player that is vulnerable to sneak attack at this point finds the rogue rushing them.

That would not be a pleasant fight, and it would just be trashmobs. The Disjunctions alone would crank the difficulty enormously, stripping off the victim's buffs, and shutting down their gear. Among all the other misery of being reduced to effectively Masterwork equipment for 2 minutes, there's the fact that you're suddenly vulnerable to Instakills again, and your saves have been nerfed due to lack of resistance items active. And since your True Seeing is gone, blur and displacement are suddenly problems again.

In situations like that, you're left with your own abilities only, making your ED, Enhancements, and class abilities vital. And suddenly there's a good reason to have a paladin along too. Their natural high saves, immunity to fear and disease, and ability to compensate for shut-down equipment with Smites and such becomes a valuable contribution. Their aura boosting everyone else who had their gear shut down may save everyone's life. And if they have points in Stalwart, they can rez people as well. Should the fight go poorly, all that combined with good HP means a paladin in the party may well prevent a wipe.

All this change brought about primarily through having the mobs use Quickened Disjunction on players.

If the bosses do similar, or have support-trash doing it, boss fights become serious business too. And since dragons (especially old ones) are powerful spellcasters as well as combatants (except for white dragons...they aren't so magically inclined. And Fang Dragons, since we have Forgotten Realms too. They don't tend to cast at all.) a dragon could gleefully disjoin people, and then melt them once their defenses are down. That single spell, right there, changes the entire nature of the fights.

And that, to me, is how difficulty is supposed to scale. It's how it's done in tabletop (and in this case, would work in DDO as well). At least here we don't have to worry about getting hit with the real Improved Sunder feat, and losing gear.

Also...let caster mobs be truely cruel, and summon things. But not shadows or anything relatively benign like that. No, no, have them summon Rust Monsters and Carrion Crawlers. Xorn. Cloakers. If it's a boss, let him cast Gate, and have Balors pour in, with their fire auras and Vorpal weapons. Or Pit Fiends and Barbed Devils. Yes, I suggested Barbed Devils. The ones that kill you by tanking. Chain Devils doing AoE improved Trips of the entire party.

You could even go so far as to implement the Hallow spell. Why? Because at the same time, you implement Vile Damage (only from the most horribly and purely evil of foes) that can only be healed by a Good-aligned healer, within the confines of a Hallow spell. That would also spike the difficulty immensely.

There's tons of ways to do it that don't involve 25k hp, and saves in the 60+ range, with hits for 400+ a pop from trashmobs.

[AzB]

I was discussing this in guild just the other day. My person take on what should be happening on EE is this.

CRs should be around the level of the quest. No need for these giant bloats. Instead, we don't even have to go so far as massive swarms of enemies, or even huge AI upgrades to crank the difficulty.

Say you have an encounter with 6 mobs. We'll even call it a fairly balanced party of mobs. You've got 2 arcane casters, a divine, a specialist (probably a rogue) and 2 heavy melees. We'll call them fighters.

Upon sighting your party, the Arcanes immediately pop off Quickened Mordenkainen's Disjunction on people. Hopefully on two different people. The Divine tosses a Mass Death Ward. The rogue immediately enters stealth. The fighter's AI becomes pretty simple to boost challenge. They charge your casters. If someone intercepts them, they're programmed to pause just long enough to hit them with Improved Trip, and then resume seeking the casters unless they get hit with Intimidate, or enough threat from boosted-threat actions to draw them off. Any player that is vulnerable to sneak attack at this point finds the rogue rushing them.

That would not be a pleasant fight, and it would just be trashmobs. The Disjunctions alone would crank the difficulty enormously, stripping off the victim's buffs, and shutting down their gear. Among all the other misery of being reduced to effectively Masterwork equipment for 2 minutes, there's the fact that you're suddenly vulnerable to Instakills again, and your saves have been nerfed due to lack of resistance items active. And since your True Seeing is gone, blur and displacement are suddenly problems again.

In situations like that, you're left with your own abilities only, making your ED, Enhancements, and class abilities vital. And suddenly there's a good reason to have a paladin along too. Their natural high saves, immunity to fear and disease, and ability to compensate for shut-down equipment with Smites and such becomes a valuable contribution. Their aura boosting everyone else who had their gear shut down may save everyone's life. And if they have points in Stalwart, they can rez people as well. Should the fight go poorly, all that combined with good HP means a paladin in the party may well prevent a wipe.

All this change brought about primarily through having the mobs use Quickened Disjunction on players.

If the bosses do similar, or have support-trash doing it, boss fights become serious business too. And since dragons (especially old ones) are powerful spellcasters as well as combatants (except for white dragons...they aren't so magically inclined. And Fang Dragons, since we have Forgotten Realms too. They don't tend to cast at all.) a dragon could gleefully disjoin people, and then melt them once their defenses are down. That single spell, right there, changes the entire nature of the fights.

And that, to me, is how difficulty is supposed to scale. It's how it's done in tabletop (and in this case, would work in DDO as well). At least here we don't have to worry about getting hit with the real Improved Sunder feat, and losing gear.

Also...let caster mobs be truely cruel, and summon things. But not shadows or anything relatively benign like that. No, no, have them summon Rust Monsters and Carrion Crawlers. Xorn. Cloakers. If it's a boss, let him cast Gate, and have Balors pour in, with their fire auras and Vorpal weapons. Or Pit Fiends and Barbed Devils. Yes, I suggested Barbed Devils. The ones that kill you by tanking. Chain Devils doing AoE improved Trips of the entire party.

You could even go so far as to implement the Hallow spell. Why? Because at the same time, you implement Vile Damage (only from the most horribly and purely evil of foes) that can only be healed by a Good-aligned healer, within the confines of a Hallow spell. That would also spike the difficulty immensely.

There's tons of ways to do it that don't involve 25k hp, and saves in the 60+ range, with hits for 400+ a pop from trashmobs.

And traps; what happened to tilting floor with grease leading into spikes? Or whirling blades of death on both sides moving toward you? Now all we get is spell wards and bear traps.

This guy has the right general idea. I vote we make him the DM.

[fmalfeas]

Oh, and I just thought of something else too. Since there's the issue of things like Shiradi sorcs just blasting everything down...

Well, there's this magic item in 3.5 called the Antimagic Torc. When you activate it, it casts the spell 'Antimagic Shell' on you. What's this do? Well, first thing it does is strip all your buffs and shut off all your gear's magic. No, it can't be used offensively. Why would you ever do this, you may wonder? Because it while it runs, you are absolutely, completely immune to all magic. Not a single spell can touch you, or affect you with it's AoE. Sure, you can't be healed, and may as well have Masterwork gear, but a level 20 fighter in masterwork who's immune to magic of all forms is pretty likely to shred any wizard or sorc that doesn't just teleport away. And if they instead hit the guy with Disjunction (dispel and greater dispel aren't strong enough) to get rid of that shell? Well, the shell protected his gear, so it all turns back on. Not a bad thing to have show up once in a while on a boss or a sub-boss. Or even (in /very/ specific adventures) on multiple melee/archer mooks.

Another option is the less selective Antimagic Field. It does the same thing, but it's a area effect. Has the bonus of causing all summoned creatures that enter the aura to instantly be unsummoned. (Special note - though many of their special abilities turn off, Golems continue to function, so just because there's an AM Field running, doesn't mean the Iron Golem can't still just smash your face.)

Monkchers? Well, there's another spell called Wall of Wind. Utterly shuts down archery and thrown weapons below 'boulder' category that try to pass through it. So the archers have to close range, and stay close, if they want to shoot.

There's many more effects like this that could be brought into play to create an ever-shifting field of battle, where there is no 'I WIN' switch. Well, unless you're a Great Wyrm dragon that is hanging out inside an Antimagic Field. That's pretty close.

And if the Devs need to create a unique challenge that's not spelled out plainly in the old paper rules, but want to stick as close as they can? Well, that's where Wish and Miracle come in. (I personally just assume that Harry must have used his free annual Wish spell-like ability sometime before Shroud, or else things in there could have gotten /extra/ weird.)

[bennyson]

Your ideas are terrible.

And I'll be haunting your dreams with my nightmare reavers minions, Troll.

I hope you got the Will save for that ;)

[Irenae]

So basically the monster AI should scale with quest difficulty, so you would need to use better tactics on harder difficulties. Raids should be soloable, especially because try finding people to run them with you, it hard to find people to join them. The only thing I really agree with you on is enhancements, Turbine should promote class balance. Beyond that your suggestions are horrible and should be ignored.